by Mary Bowers
“The last time I saw her, yes, she was with Jeralyn. Still.”
“Hmm. I’m beginning to think I need to deduct a percentage from my final fee payment, since one of you is derelict in her duty.”
“You only told me to bring her,” I shot back. “You didn’t say she had to do anything.”
This time, he did burst out laughing. I had expected thunder and lightning.
Quietly, very composedly, I asked him, “Why do you try to make people to think you’re eccentric? Because you’re not.”
That stopped him. He threw a glance at Ed, then looked back at me craftily. “Very good, Miss Verone. I might ask you the same question. The crackpot and the crazy cat lady. I’m beginning to think I hired you for all the wrong reasons, and I’m going to get my money’s worth anyway.”
“Why did you hire us?” I asked.
Before he could answer – and I wasn’t entirely sure he was going to – the spider came crawling out of its web and asked us what the hell we thought we were doing.
* * * * *
“I specifically told you that I wanted to be present, Ollie.” Maxine looked him up and down like she wanted to gut him, then turned on me. “Well? Anything possessed down here? Murmuring rifles? Angry swords? Anything telling you it’s itching to get down off the wall and start hacking people to pieces? Because they have, you know. In my books. Do you know why I write those books?”
I backed away from her, and was relieved when Oliver stepped between us.
“Behave yourself, Maxine. They’re here at my invitation. They’re our guests.”
“The hell they are! You brought them here for reasons of your own, and you’re going to let us wonder about it until you’re good and ready to tell us, but it sure as hell isn’t so they can eat turkey with us on grandfather’s birthday.”
“Why do you write those books?” Ed inquired mildly. I took two steps to be closer to him.
Maxine faced him eagerly. “So I won’t kill anybody in real life, that’s why. I write it out of my system, and then I’m all right.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Oliver said. “Nobody’s afraid of you. You’re just a silly old woman rotting away by herself in a prison of her own making. If anything, we’re all sorry for you. Ed? Taylor? I think we’re done here.”
He turned to lead the way out and I snapped to it and followed. But we all stopped in our tracks when we heard an unmistakable sound behind us. We turned around and found ourselves looking down the barrel of a shotgun. Once she had our attention, she lowered it and grinned.
Warily, I turned my back to her and got myself through the door, with Ed close behind me. Before Oliver could follow us, I heard Maxine demanding her key back.
“Have you forgotten that I own the castle?” he asked. I wasn’t sure, but I assumed that Oliver had kept the key. “Don’t forget to lock up when you leave, dear.” He slammed the door. “Upstairs,” he said to us, and we scrambled up the stairs.
* * * * *
He took us into his office and closed both doors. Seating himself behind the desk in the yellowish light of the sconce-lamps, he regarded first us, then just me.
“You. You felt something in the box room.”
“The box room?”
“The place in the dungeon where you saw the old portraits. But you felt nothing down there in the murder room, did you? I could tell. I think you actually liked the place.”
“I love all museums. Wasn’t too crazy about the curator, though.”
“Is your sister dangerous?” Ed asked.
Oliver smiled. “No. She just likes cultivating an image, and for some reason, she’s chosen this one. After I read one of her books, I made her go to a psychologist.”
“You made her go? How?” I asked.
“I own that woman. I own the place she lives in. I’m one of her trustees. Granted, she makes money from those filthy books, but not enough to live in grandeur, and she wouldn’t be able to stay here without my permission. I let her do whatever she wants, within reason, but if I say go get your head shrunk, she does it.”
“And what was the diagnosis?” Ed asked.
“She’s as sane as a kindergarten teacher. At least, as sane as we hope our kindergarten teachers are. The doctor said something about role-playing. He nattered on about her motivation, but that I didn’t care about. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to run amok. And I never read any more of her books. Have you?”
I shook my head, and Ed replied, “I read one and skimmed through a few others when I knew I was coming here. I always research my projects.”
“Bless you, boy, you really have earned your fee.”
Ed cocked his head to one side. “She has a way with words. People will wander outside of their chosen genre if they find an author who speaks to them, if you see what I mean.”
Oliver didn’t look as if he did, so I gave him a helpful example. “Not everybody who reads Harry Potter books is a kid. I’ve read those books myself, and I was in my fifties when I started.”
“And you normally read grown-up books?” he asked drily.
I deadpanned him. “For some time now.”
“Including my sister’s books?”
“Ah . . . no.”
He nodded and stood up. “I’m going to take a nap before dinner. We’ll all be too full to be able to lie down afterwards. Don’t be late.”
“Two o’clock sharp,” I said brightly. I couldn’t help myself.
He gave me a look and walked out, leaving the door communicating with the great hall open behind him.
“Would you like to rest now?” Ed asked gently.
I’d gotten over my episode with him earlier. In fact, after that little back-and-forth with Oliver, I felt pretty good. I was beginning to like him, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“No. I want to go look at the other long gallery. We’ve seen the one with the little French shops, but the one I’m really interested in is the one with the portraits. I think it’s time I looked Horace Moon in the face.”
Ed looked excited, checked in his back pocket to make sure he had something to write on, (he always does; he just checks because he can’t help himself), and followed me out. On the way through the great hall, I deliberately made eye contact with the bust. I felt strong again.
* * * * *
I liked him. Old Horace Moon, I mean. The bust didn’t do him justice, and if I ever decide to have my image immortalized in stone, I’m choosing something other than alabaster. Michelangelo could make touchable skin out of stone. Lesser artists just make something that looks smooth and sort of humanoid. Close, but no cigar. I’m getting something done that makes me look super hot, so guys in 2095 wish they’d had a chance to meet me.
Horace’s sculptor had made him look dignified, but frozen. His portrait painter had made him a man you could talk to.
He’d had the blue eyes that, generations later, would make all the difference between Fawn on the one hand and Maxine and Oliver on the other. Somewhere along the line, snapping black eyes had gotten into the family gene pool and changed the Moon look from handsome elegance to naked aggression. Even though Horace the First had been the founder of the family fortune, his eyes had been mild.
The portraitist and sculptor hadn’t agreed on Horace’s nose. I liked the one in the painting better.
Farther along the gallery, Orion’s eyes looked into mine out of the past, and were even milder. I could feel his personal warmth, know what he was going to say next, hear the way he would laugh. His expression was tender. This was not a man who would frighten women as they slept. Beside the large, professional oil was a dainty little pastel that made him seem even sweeter.
I stood for a long time, feeling connected to him, when Ed came up quietly beside me and said, “You like him.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I turned and looked at Ed. “Why? Why good?”
“Maybe he’ll protect you.”
I opened
my mouth, gave it a little quick thought, then closed it again. I wasn’t going to argue the point. “Maybe he will,” I said.
Turning back to Orion, Ed went on, as if addressing the portrait. “I want to make a few notes before I have to dress for dinner. You stay here a while and look around, if you like. We have time yet.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t turn to watch Ed walk away. I drifted further along, taking in the family. Orion’s wife Linda, strong but gentle. Horace’s wife Adela, elegant, proud. Clarice’s mother Hilda, colorless, the kind of woman you’d forget as soon as you said good-bye. Clarice, in a softer portrait than the one in the dungeon, but still with the look of the predator, needy and aggressive at the same time. And Fawn’s husband. Presidential wannabe. Her children, Elizabeth and Ryan, recently rearranged to hide the subtraction of both ex-spouses. And a photo portrait of young Horace when he was very young, a toddler, sitting on a draped platform with his legs crossed so that the sole of one shoe faced the camera. The thighs of his little legs were chubby, the backs of his hands were dimpled, and his face was surprised and full of joy. He had a lot of light brown hair and big caramel-brown eyes. You could almost hear his burst of laughter.
It’s a shame they have to grow up.
* * * * *
I decided that before going up to dress I’d have a closer look at those village storefronts on the opposite side of the castle. They fascinated me. I walked across the end of the great hall without looking into it, turned away from the spiral staircase and entered the south gallery.
The windows on my right bathed the hall in sunshine, and I walked along, taking my time, charmed by the dollhouse architecture on my left. Halfway down, I turned to the windows and stepped closer. Beyond the castle, some 150 yards or so, the coastline became sandy beach again, and threaded on until the line between the ocean and the land took a turn seaward and was lost to sight.
I stood gazing, letting my head turn slowly as I counted the pelicans that flew over in a wedge formation, heading south.
And then I heard a sniffing sound. I stopped and cocked my head. In a moment, I heard it again.
I turned to the little shop with the half-timbering and the diamond windows behind me and opened the door, poking my head inside. Young Horace was between the castle wall and the shop front, sitting on the stone floor with his knees up and his arms wrapped around them, all by himself.
Youngsters just breaking into teenhood are chimerical creatures, caught in the process of mutation. One minute, they’re kids, the next minute they’re young adults telling you something wise beyond their years. This particular one had shown all the lower instincts of the Dead End Kids, including the foul language, but I remembered that even the Dead End Kids could cry. And when the Dead End Kids cried, it was so much harder to take than when the crybabies did.
I walked in, shut the door behind me, sat down on the floor two feet away from him and looked through the shop window.
For a long time, we said nothing. Every now and then, he’d snuffle.
Then, at last, quietly, “I hate my name.”
I turned to look, saw that his eyes were dry now, and said, “Why?”
He threw me a disgusted look. “Horace? Nobody’s named Horace anymore. It’s a stupid name.”
“The first Horace Moon was a very great man. Everybody’s heard of him.”
“I’m not that Horace Moon. I’m me.”
“I see.”
He struggled around, getting more comfortable. “When I’m old enough, I’m going to change my name.”
I considered. “James Bond?”
He guffawed. “No. Daniel. Just plain Daniel, after Daniel Boone. I’ll be Daniel Moon. That’ll get people talking. They’ll notice I rhyme with him, and then we’ll talk about him. I know all about him. And I’m not going to let anybody call me Dan’l or Dan-o or anything like that. They have to call me Daniel.”
“Good choice. You’ll have a coonskin cap, of course?”
He gave me a superior look. “That’s Davy Crockett.”
“Oh, right. Silly me.”
“Daniel Boone wore a really cool hat, and it didn’t have a tail. Maybe I’ll wear a hat like that.”
“He died at the Alamo, right?”
Now he just looked at me like I was pathetic. “Davy Crockett again. You’ve got Davy Crockett on the brain. Daniel Boone was an explorer. He could go off into the woods alone and live off the land and not need anybody’s help. He could go anywhere and survive, for weeks – months – all by himself.”
I nodded. “I’m beginning to see what you like about him. No relatives.”
He chortled. “He had ten kids.”
“Okay, so just the part about being a solitary survivor. I still think you should reconsider, though. Davy Crocket was a man – a biiiiig man.”
Again, I was simply pathetic. “That’s Daniel Boone.”
“Exactly. But with Davy, you’ve got a man of the city and a man of the wilderness. He could handle himself anywhere. He was a crack hunter, but also a politician. And you gotta admit – the hat? American Cool with a handle.”
“Finally! You’re on the right track. That’s Davy Crockett. He’s the one who died at the Alamo, but if he’d lived, he might have been President of the United States.”
“Especially after the Alamo. Everybody would have voted for him then. Posthumously, of course.”
For that I just got a sidewise leer.
I went on. Irrepressible me. “Yes, I think he would have been a shoe-in. Davy Crockett, POTUS.”
“Davy Crockett what?”
“President of the United States. POTUS is an acronym, from all the first letters. It’s what cool people call the President.”
“It sounds like beef stew.”
I was shocked, shocked I tell you. “Don’t let the Secret Service hear you say that. They have rules about people who make lame jokes about POTUS. And wipe that silly grin off your face. I’m dead serious.”
“It wasn’t lame. Besides, what’re they going to do, arrest me?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Do they, like, send out the joke police?”
“Ah,” I said wisely, “so you’ve tangled with them before. I might’ve known. A repeat offender.”
He was grinning now. Then, submerging the grin, he considered me critically. I passed inspection, because suddenly he wriggled around, digging into his front pocket. “Want to see something?”
“That’s what I’m here for. My partner and I have been hired to observe everything that happens in Castle Moon this week and report back to your uncle, so I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down as evidence and used against you in a court of law. Consider me a spy. All confidential information will have to be included in my official report.”
He froze. “You can’t tell Uncle Oliver about this. I mean – he already knows about it, but we can’t let him know we know. Promise?”
“Your uncle is paying me to gather information. I am a professional, but . . . you look like an honest fellow. I guess I can make an exception, for somebody who admires an American hero like Daniel Boone. By the way, my advice: go ahead with the coonskin cap. You know you want to, and most people won’t know the difference.”
He was going to show whatever-it-was to me anyway because he was just dying to show it to somebody, but I made it easy for him. And in my own naïve way, I decided that no matter what kind of innocent, childish confidence he shared with me, I would not let Uncle Oliver know that his sneaky little grand-nephew knew about it. Oliver knew the kid; he probably already realized that young Horace had ferreted it out, whatever it was, I told myself.
Horace produced a folded note, written on plain printer paper, unfolded it and handed it over.
It was written in scrawling longhand, and a little hard to read, but I managed. I looked at the signature – a simple “O” – then read it again, wishing I’d never seen it at all.
“Where
did you get this?”
“In the hall outside of Jeralyn’s room. He must have slid it under the door, and she either dropped it or walked right over it because she didn’t see it there.”
“And what were you doing outside of Jeralyn’s room?”
“I like the view from the third floor,” he said.
“A likely story. There are no windows in the hallway up there. You probably have a better view from your room on the second floor.”
“I dunno.”
“Have you told anybody else about this?”
“And get my head smacked? No.”
I refolded the note slowly. “Can I keep it?”
“You won’t tell anybody? You’re just collecting evidence, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I guess you’d better, because Mom goes through my stuff sometimes, and we can’t let her see that. It’s dynamite!”
“It sure is,” I said, standing up with all the drama of a stiff, 62-year-old who’s been stupid enough to sit on a stone floor. “We’d better get dressed for dinner. It’s getting late.”
He looked at his expensive little watch and gave a yip. I let him run on ahead of me, amazed that the boy I’d considered an annoying little snot just a little while ago was now my co-conspirator. I needed to get fluffed out and painted before dinner, but I decided I had to show the note to Ed first. If I couldn’t talk to anybody about it until later, I was going to explode.
I knocked on his door, opened it when I got no answer, and walked into an empty room.
“Ed?”
No Ed.
So I walked slowly back to my room, figuring I was just going to have to explode after all. Then I was going to get into my glad rags and get down to dinner, but I was keeping that note in my pocket at all times. I didn’t even want to leave it in my room. We hadn’t been given keys to our rooms, so we couldn’t lock our doors.
Chapter 12
I came out of my room in good time to get down to the dining room early, and as I pulled the door closed behind me, I noticed somebody rising from the settee down at the middle of the landing. It was Jeralyn. She was holding Bastet in her arms.
