by Lis Wiehl
“Are you kiddin’ me?” he said. He turned to his partner. “Jimmy, you holding out on me?”
They joined Dani, Detective Casey, and the locksmith on the porch. The locksmith had an old manual he was consulting to research antique locks.
Tommy put his arm around Dani, gave her a hug, and kissed her. “How you holding up? Where’s Quinn?”
“He went to walk the dog,” she said. “Who is eating me out of house and home. But Arlo loves him. I didn’t know cats and dogs could get along so well.”
“I thought Quinn was staying at the inn.”
“Quinn is. His dog isn’t.” She looked over her shoulder to the locksmith. “Apparently the lock on the door is straight out of the Middle Ages.”
Detective Casey interrupted them, holding a business card between his two fingers like his number had been called at the deli counter.
“Dani says you both met this guy,” he said. “His card was under the door knocker.”
“George asked him to come by to appraise his mother’s art collection,” Tommy said.
“Oh yeah?” Casey said. “When did he do this?”
“After his mother died,” Tommy said. “Actually, I take that back. He didn’t say when George asked him. Just that he left a message.”
“Well, then he should be here, shouldn’t he?” Casey said. “I’d like to talk to him.”
Casey told DeGidio to send someone to pick up Julian Villanegre and invite him to join them. While Casey made arrangements, Dani brought Tommy and Carl up to speed as briefly as possible on the theories and explanations Quinn had laid out after looking at Amos Kasden’s proteomics. She told them the drug they’d gotten a sample of promised to create walking time bombs, children programmed to explode into anger they’d never be able to control.
“Was the sample you gave him Provivilan?” Carl asked her.
“No way to know.”
“Have you figured out who provided it?”
“No. And I don’t dare text him because it might give him away,” she said. “We haven’t had any luck tracing the cell number.”
Finally the locksmith got the door open. He then asked Casey if he could take the lock mechanism out of the door and study it because he’d never encountered anything like it. He was clearly disappointed when Casey told him he didn’t have the authority to allow that.
Casey opened the door, stepped into the darkness, looked around for a second, then moved aside so the others could enter. Outside the daylight was fading.
Casey noticed the glow of Tommy’s handheld infrared. “You looking for ghosts?”
“Demons,” Tommy said. “But they’re only going to show up if they’re standing still.”
Casey smiled at what he took for a joke. “Anything?”
“You’ll know when I know, Detective,” Tommy said, smiling back. He used the scanner to sweep the living room. Carl ducked behind him so as not to get in the way. “All clear.”
Casey nodded his head.
DeGidio turned on his flashlight and used it to locate a wall switch, but when he flipped it, nothing happened. Tommy could make out only dimly outlined shapes. The cop with the hand warmers was sent to look for the breaker box. A moment later, he called out from the hall off the back kitchen. “Found it!”
Suddenly the house was filled with light.
“Holy guacamole,” Tommy said.
The inside of the home was as elegant and well appointed as the outside was rough and overgrown. Tommy said it reminded him of the Mark Twain House in Hartford that he’d visited on a class trip in middle school. Dani had been on the same trip, different bus, but she agreed. The floors were made of intricate wooden tiles and parquetry; the kitchen floor was polished black-and-white marble. Every room save the kitchen and the parlor had exquisite Persian rugs and Oriental kilims. The interior trim was polished black walnut. Tiffany lamps. The furniture in the living room and library favored Mission and Stickley. The books in the library included leather-bound first editions, Carl noted, of various texts on religion, philosophy, art, history, medicine, and anthropology, as well as works of literature, many in languages other than English, shelved next to their English translations. The walls of the two-story library, where they weren’t filled with rosewood bookshelves, were hung with tapestries, one that had to be fifteen by fifteen feet. In the recessed nooks and alcoves were sculptures of ballet dancers in the style of Degas and distended graceful figurines that seemed to be in the style of Giacometti—until Dani took a closer look and announced that as far as she could tell, they weren’t works in the style of Degas or Giacometti—they were works by Degas and Giacometti.
More remarkable than that were the paintings on the walls. The kitchen and the dining room walls were crowded with modernist works by artists ranging from Monet to Picasso to Hammerstein. The rest of the house was decorated with the art of the Old Masters. These tended to have sacred themes, Italian Renaissance Adorations of the Magi and Crucifixions; Annunciations and Assumptions; Stations of the Cross; depictions of St. Jerome with a lion and St. Agnes with a lamb and St. Peter holding keys; Pietàs and scenes from the life of Christ; depictions of dramatic scenes from the Bible, like the fall of Jericho and Moses parting the Red Sea to lead God’s people out of captivity. Radiant oils glowing inside their gilt frames against the blood-red wall coverings.
“You looking at these, Carl?” Tommy said to his friend.
“I’m in the library,” Carl called from the room adjacent. “Pretty amazing.”
What they did not find was anything resembling a telephone, television, or computer. The sole concession to technology was a black, boxy radio on the kitchen table. The other thing they did not find was any sign of George Gardener. His grimy work overalls hung from a hook in the back mudroom, and his splattered work boots sat on a black rubber mat beneath them. The refrigerator was empty, as was the freezer, indicating that wherever George had gone, he’d intended to stay awhile.
In contrast to the classic opulence of the rooms downstairs, the five bedrooms upstairs were sparse to the point of monastic, each containing a simple single bed, a dresser, and a closet. Each had a large cross on the wall, and below it, a desk with a Bible on it. These were places to pray, Tommy thought. He wanted to get Carl’s opinion, but his friend seemed content to stay downstairs, examining the books in the library.
After they’d looked in each room in the house, they gathered in the living room.
“Anybody?” Casey said.
“I got nothing,” said DeGidio. “Jimmy and I’ll check the other buildings.”
“Dani?”
“I don’t understand how anybody could leave a house like this unprotected,” she said.
“I had the same thought,” Casey said. “Though if nobody knows about it, I suppose you could imagine it would be safe. But still . . . Tommy?”
“If George took off, he had time to prepare. It wasn’t a sudden thing. He was ready.”
“Carl?”
“I could spend the rest of my life in that library,” he said. “It’s practically the essential repository of human knowledge.”
“Minus pop culture,” Tommy added.
“This might be helpful,” Casey said as they all turned toward the headlights coming up the drive. A minute later, a uniformed officer escorted Dr. Julian Villanegre and a man whom Tommy introduced to Casey. “Ben Whitehorse. He’s a friend. From the Midwest.”
“Nice to meet you,” Casey said, shaking the man’s hand. “And don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, turning to the escorting officer, “but what’s he doing here? This isn’t an open house.”
“Dr. Villanegre said—”
“My new friend insisted that I bring him,” Villanegre said, looking around the room with deep satisfaction and admiration. “You can make him wait outside, I suppose, but I thought his opinion might be useful. I met him at the inn this morning and we’ve been talking all day. He knows more about pre-Columbian art than I do. Not my field.
Do you mind?”
“Do I mind?” Casey said, still baffled. He looked at Whitehorse, who was smiling placidly. “I guess not, but try not to touch anything. You said George Gardener contacted you about appraising his art collection?”
“He did indeed.”
“When was this?”
“Several weeks ago,” Villanegre said. “I gathered that he’d seen my name in some sort of press release or newspaper story and knew I’d be in town.”
“But you never met him?”
“No,” Villanegre said, unable to keep his eyes on the detective. “Do you mind if I have a quick look-see?”
“That’s why I wanted you here,” Casey said. “Knock yourself out.”
“Indeed,” Villanegre said. The art historian moved from painting to painting slowly, leaning in close, peering into the corners of some, studying the ways the paint had cracked and flaked, and with two of the paintings, he moved the frames away from the walls to look behind them. Ben Whitehorse accompanied him, keeping out of his way.
When Villanegre was finished, he strolled with his hands behind his back halfway into the library, took a step into the kitchen, glanced up the stairs, then returned to the living room.
“There are a few more on the upstairs landing,” Casey said.
“I know it might be difficult to give an estimate,” Dani said, “but what would you say, ballpark, the collection might be worth?”
“I could be wrong, of course,” Villanegre said, “but I’d say the entire collection might be worth something in the range of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s all?” Tommy said.
“Perhaps not that much,” Villanegre said. “Every picture in this room is a fake. They’re rather good fakes, so I suppose they’d have some value to people who wanted to collect handmade copies. The rug we’re standing on has a stamp on the back, under that corner there, that says it was made in a factory in South Carolina. It’s a nice enough rug, but it’s not worth what the owner wants you to think it’s worth.”
“But it’s a nice house,” Ben said. “A house is a place to live, not an investment. It’s a good place to live, surrounded by all these beautiful pictures of Jesus and scenes from the Bible.”
“Did you look at the books in the library?” Carl asked the Englishman.
Tommy noticed that Carl seemed uncomfortable in Ben’s presence, unable to look him in the eye. He wasn’t sure how to account for it apart from the general observation that Carl had seemed out of sorts lately, paler, with bags under his eyes, and more often lost in thought.
“I’m not an antiquarian,” Villanegre said. “I could recommend one.”
“I’m thinking we need to widen our search for George,” Casey said. “I talked to Irene. She’s ready to call Abbie’s death ‘cause unknown’ and let it go. Anybody here agree with that?”
No one spoke.
“Well, I want to keep looking,” Casey said. “I don’t like it when people die and I can’t figure out why. Maybe George doesn’t know either, but he was the last person to talk to her. Does anybody have anything to say?”
There was only silence. “I’m hungry,” Ben said.
Tommy walked Dani to her car. He felt a strong desire to be alone with her, where no one could get between them or hear them talk.
“I really need to see you tonight,” he said.
“I need to see you too,” she said, leaning into him.
“But I have an errand I have to run first.”
“It can’t wait?”
“No,” he said as he handed her a slip of paper. “I found this on George Gardener’s desk. I didn’t want the others to see it. It was propped up, like something he needed to remember to do before he disappeared. It’s probably nothing.”
Dani read the note.
It said Warn Ruth.
19.
It would not be a challenge, the beast thought, but perhaps it would afford a diversion. There would be no resistance and so there was no need for haste. The old librarian lived in a small cottage set back from the road, where her screams would not be heard by any nosy neighbors. She could be taken easily—bent and broken—and she would talk. Surprise would not be necessary, though some satisfaction could be derived from the shocked expression on her face as she realized her worst nightmares were coming true.
The thing took form in the woods behind the old woman’s cottage, on a hill above it. Feeling no hurry, it pounced on a deer and tore its head off, grasping it by the antlers and snapping and twisting in one brutal, lethal shake. It raised the carcass in the air and drank the blood gushing from the neck, not because it required sustenance, but because it liked the taste of blood, then threw the carcass high into the trees to leave a signature.
Through the kitchen window it could see the librarian at her sink doing the dishes. The oriel window looked out on the small garden she kept in the backyard, with bird feeders filled with suet, and mulch on the perennials. With all the lights on in the kitchen, the librarian would not be able to see very far beyond the reflected glare of her own windowpanes.
The beast moved down the hill, slinking on all fours, its talons ripping the earth as it moved. In the darkness behind the cottage it stood up on its hind legs, trying to decide the best place to enter.
Then, beyond the hill, it heard the whine of an engine. At the top of the hill a single headlight appeared, a man on a motorcycle approaching at great speed. When the motorcycle screeched to a halt in front of the cottage, the thing recognized the rider. Its instructions were to destroy the librarian, but the man on the motorcycle, her nephew, was a future target. The opportunity had presented itself to strike them both down. Would the masters be pleased, the beast wondered, or would they punish? It decided to wait to see what the two humans said to each other first. Perhaps they would divulge the whereabouts of the book. Knowing it could not depend on invisibility, it pressed its back against the cottage, where its light-absorbing armored skin would conceal it well.
Tommy was relieved to see his aunt through the kitchen window. He knocked on the door, and a moment later the light came on in the enclosed porch, where small stained-glass sun catchers hung from varying lengths of fishing line to receive the morning light.
“What a nice surprise!” she said. “Have you eaten? I have a nice lasagna I could heat up.”
“No thanks,” Tommy said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. I was trying to finish knitting that sweater I’m making for your father for Christmas.”
He smiled and then produced the handheld infrared camera from his pocket and flipped up the screen.
“What in the world is that?”
“Energy audit. This camera detects heat. Or cold.”
He stepped back out onto the enclosed porch, opened the door, and quickly scanned the road behind him. Nothing unusual.
“Why do you have it?” she said when he returned to the kitchen. “I don’t need an energy audit.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. “Last winter your heating bills were through the roof. Which was also where all your heat was going.”
“Last winter was the coldest in years,” she said, still puzzled by his sudden appearance. He left her in the kitchen to quickly scan the living room and the den, and when he pointed it at the ceiling, the images were normal. He returned to the kitchen.
Aunt Ruth was ready for an explanation. “What in the world?”
He put his finger to his lips to shush her. He pointed the scanner at her and saw how beautifully she radiated warmth, a finding he knew was as true figuratively as it was literally. But when he moved the scanner slightly to her left, he saw it—a massive dark blue outline with blurred edges, just on the other side of the kitchen’s back wall. His pulse quickened. He gestured for his aunt to come see what his screen was showing him.
“So how are the Thanksgiving plans coming?” he said as she leaned in to look at the screen. Her expression grew more puzzled when she saw the blue shadow on
her wall.
“What is—?”
Tommy shushed her again, then made a “keep it coming” gesture with his free hand to get her to keep talking as he approached the wall to take a closer reading.
“Thanksgiving plans are coming along fine,” she said. “I made the strawberry-rhubarb pie tonight. That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”
Tommy put his hand to the wall. It was ice cold.
He noticed that on his aunt’s refrigerator she kept a magnetic whiteboard and a marker for reminders. It read, in his aunt’s perfect cursive, Pick up turkey from Bredeson’s. He took the whiteboard from the refrigerator, where it was surrounded by family photographs and artwork the children from the library had drawn for her, erased her message, and wrote: There is something outside the house.
She gestured to ask what it was.
Wendigo
She took the pen from him.
Ha ha. Seriously.
“I talked to Dani, and she said she could make the corn bread,” he said, writing: Seriously. We are in danger.
“That would be lovely,” Aunt Ruth said. “I was going to make the cranberry sauce you like.”
You are scaring me!!! she wrote.
I’m scared too
“I was thinking of inviting Charlie,” Tommy said, raising his voice when he said the name. “I want to say, ‘Hey, Charlie—we could use your help right about now.’”
Who is Charlie? she wrote.
Angel
She added a question mark: Angel?
He erased the question mark and wrote: Angel! Will explain later.
“How many people are you expecting?” he said, taking a large carving knife from the wooden cutlery holder. He opened the door to her broom closet, looking for something else they could use as a weapon. Nothing.
“About a dozen,” she said. Tommy crouched low and scuttled across the floor, out of view of whatever might be standing outside the window, and opened the cabinet doors below the sink. Again, nothing.
