“Yes!” the professor shouted. “That’s how he won—by cheating! And then he took our coin!”
“Once again, I feel I must set the record straight.” I plowed the air with my words. “Our fabled ancestor, who had cuckolded Barnsley in the first place, threw our coin at Barnsley and stalked away, cursing.”
“And Barnsley kept it!” the professor blathered. “He kept what was mine!”
“Fever, stop.” Andrews had realized what I already knew: that Professor Devin Briarwood was insane.
But I couldn’t stop.
“And when Lady Eloise Barnsley lay dying in her seven-day labor, she repeated our family curse—and included us all: your family, my family, the sad residents of that foul heap there on the hill.”
Moonlight seemed complicit with my poisoned thoughts, and it filled the ruins with shadows and ghosts of light, dancing together in the desiccated mansion.
“And what did Godfrey Barnsley bring with him to America? The way my great-grandfather brought his own shame with him when he ran from Ireland? A portrait of the woman who had cursed him, and a coin from the father he would never even meet—the only vestiges of parental evidence he would ever know.”
“You have no idea how deliciously appropriate it all is,” Professor Briarwood oozed. “The coin of Saint Elian—and it may well be the only one left in existence—was minted by us Briarwoods in silver in the sixteenth century to pay a monk to curse someone or other with the waters from Saint Elian’s Well. That also belonged to us, the well. Oh, we made a pretty penny in those days. You see the beauty of that, in a story like this. My book—it’ll be nothing short of sensational.”
“But what your myopia won’t allow you to see, apparently, is the value of the portrait Godfrey had.”
“The portrait?” he sneered. “I know all about that. Rubbish. Had it appraised years ago. Gallery in London. Worthless.”
“The Ashton Gallery,” I confirmed slowly.
“Exactly,” he insisted. “Worthless!”
I flashed a look at Andrews. “Want to see a magic trick?” I asked him.
“What?” Andrews may have been concerned about my mental stability. He was still trying to remember why the Ashton Gallery sounded familiar to him.
I turned back to Professor Briarwood. The air was filled with sirens; stabbing white headlights confused the darkness around the mansion.
“You’re in quite a bit of trouble,” I told the professor dryly. “Should I call your lawyer? Sheriff, do you happen to have Mr. Taylor’s number with you?”
“Yes!” the professor replied at once, “call my lawyer, my American lawyer, Mr. Taylor! He’ll tell you. I’m not a violent man. I’m a university professor—a research analyst. I’m working on a book!”
“See.” I turned to Andrews slyly. “I pulled a lawyer out of a hat. And I believe said lawyer may also be an accomplice to fraud, embezzlement—even murder. Worst of all, of course, I can’t stand the way he dresses.”
“Preston Taylor is your lawyer?” Andrews stared at Briarwood.
“Brinsley Taylor,” Briarwood corrected, “was the family lawyer in America. Had been for years.”
“Because of Conner,” I whispered to myself, but loudly enough for Andrews to hear. “I can’t quite figure how, though.”
“Wait.” Andrews looked around as if someone else in the woods might have a clearer story. “Taylor?”
“Before we get too far away from something you said a second ago,” Skidmore chimed in, “what was that you meant when you said that Mr. Shultz wanted to go back on your ‘deal’?”
“Shultz, that fat bastard.” Briarwood’s energy had shifted again. “His father called me—I can’t remember now, must have been fifteen years ago—with a wild story about a coin. He’d collected it in the Georgia mountains—in America—and when he’d done his research, he’d come across several of my articles about Saint Elian’s coin, put two and two together. I disregarded it entirely then, because I was convinced that the coin was still in Derbyshire, the ancestral home of the Barnsleys. It couldn’t possibly have gotten to America. Spent several years in England chasing rainbows there. Long years, you understand, that brought me to nothing, to a dead end.”
“Hence the shoes, however,” Andrews whispered.
“Dead end.” Briarwood’s voice was beginning to sound a bit singsong. “Went back to university without a thing to show. Oh, no one said much, but I knew what they were thinking.”
“The deal with Shultz,” Skidmore prodded.
“Carl Shultz,” Briarwood snarled immediately, “knew all there was to know about the coin long before he visited you a few days ago. He was only supposed to find out from you how, exactly, it got to America, and who sold it to his father. I was paying him a good bit of money. I bought the coin from him, of course—gave him extra to help me. A great part of my book, you see, would be the amazing voyage of the coin across the ocean. That’s what I was paying him for, and that’s all he was supposed to do. But he couldn’t even manage it. He wanted to call off our deal. He wanted me to leave off. He liked you, he said. Told me to take the coin and shove off. We argued. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was—Call my lawyer; he’ll tell you I’m not a violent man. And anyway, there was no real reason to—he needn’t have made me kill at all. I had other contingencies, other ways of getting you to tell me the story.” Briarwood looked up at us with the grinning mask of lunacy, eyes nearly rolled back in his head, crooked teeth poking through the curve of his chalky lips. “I still do.” He had lost most of his humanity in that instant.
“Hey,” Skidmore spoke up, startling everyone. “It nearly got out of my head with all that’s going on. I believe he’s talking about that Detective Huyne.”
Andrews and I both turned slowly to look at Skidmore. His eyebrows were arched and his eyes were bright.
“Huyne and his buddy?” Skid went on. “They aren’t Atlanta detectives after all. I mean, there actually is a Detective Huyne in Atlanta, but he’s retired. The guy that was in your house? He was a private investigator hired by this man, Briarwood. Apparently, the plan was to scare you with the idea of arresting you for murder and getting the story of the coin out of you, far as I can put it all together. I went to arrest the Huyne imposter. He’s vanished.”
“How on earth did you—” I couldn’t finish the question.
“Simple, really. This Huyne didn’t have any paperwork, didn’t really seem right to me in the first place, so I called Atlanta.” Skid sniffed.
“Unbelievable.” I blew out a breath. “You really are good at what you do.”
“I am,” he confirmed. “By the way, there is no Shultz senior anymore. He’s been dead for a while. The man that was dead in your house? He’s all there was.”
“Then why would he say—” It was Andrews’s turn to pose an unfinished question.
“When a guy wants to buy a cow or a car or something important like that,” Skidmore answered philosophically, “it’s an advantage if he can say it’s for someone else. ‘I’m not asking for myself, you understand; this is for a friend.’ Puts him in a better bargaining position.”
“What are you saying?” Briarwood demanded. “Speak up. I can’t hear you. These damned sirens. What are they? What did you say about Huyne?”
“This is—How did you—,” I stuttered.
“You have to finish one of these sentences pretty soon,” Skidmore told me, highly amused. “But as long as I have you confused, let me just tell you also that your family in the old country—the Briarwoods in Wales?—they’re rich as all get-out. If Conner had stayed in touch with them, and you’d got your due, I expect you’d be telling your problems to the Rockefellers instead of me and June Cotage. Which, if you don’t mind my saying, would probably have been an all-around good deal for everybody.”
“That’s how this maniac could afford to do everything he was doing,” Andrews said.
“Bingo.” Skidmore took ahold of Briarwood’s elbow. “Let’s g
et on up now. We got to put you in my police car.”
“Wait,” I said instantly, scrambling. “I have a thousand more questions to ask.”
“Preston Taylor is your family lawyer?” Andrews asked Briarwood. He seemed a page or two behind.
“Brinsley Taylor, actually, started our dealings here in America. He was the founder of that firm. When Conner went to him for help, that Mr. Taylor did a bit of checking up, discovered the Briarwoods of Wales—and our money. He got in touch with us, never telling us about Conner, never telling Conner about us, as I have recently discovered. But his firm has handled many of our holdings in America since then, and it’s been mutually beneficial, so Bob’s your uncle at least in that regard. It seemed a nice nip of serendipity. But Preston Taylor’s my man now. And I’m his client.”
“‘Bob’s your uncle,’” Andrews pointed out, grinning.
I ignored Andrews. “That’s why Taylor lied about Shultz’s phone call. He didn’t know that Huyne was a fake?”
“What would that have got me?” Briarwood asked. “Huyne’s a private investigator; he found Shultz for me, and then he found you, too. He didn’t know that you were a Briarwood, though. That might have changed things a bit. Wish he’d dug that up. Doesn’t seem as if it would have been so difficult to—”
“You and Shultz were in league?” Andrews couldn’t believe it. “And there is no Mr. Shultz senior?”
“Well,” Briarwood allowed as Skidmore pulled him to his feet, “obviously there was a Mr. Shultz senior at some time or other. I mean, he did buy the coin from someone here in Georgia, in these mountains. We still don’t know who?”
I shook my head.
“Honestly?” he insisted.
“What would be the point of keeping it from you now?” I asked.
“No point, I suppose.” He winced.
His shoulder was beginning to sting. The blood had dried a bit, and might have irritated the wound.
“And you hired Shultz just to—what? Get a good story?” Andrews pulled on his earlobe.
“There’s a world of difference,” Briarwood lectured, irritated, “between a good story and a complete history of the facts. But if the two are married, well, then you have a book that someone might publish, and that could get you noticed at your university. Could just put you on the old map.”
I could hear people rushing up the hill toward us. Paramedics, I assumed.
“Why would that matter?” Andrews asked, absolutely amazed. “You can’t have needed the money, can you?”
“Did you go to England to direct at the Globe,” I asked Andrews quietly, “just to ensure the two percent annual raise at your university? There’s more to this sort of thing than a little bit of money.”
“Well.” He looked away.
“Come on,” Skidmore said softly, pulling on Briarwood’s good elbow. “We’ll ask a whole lot more questions after we’ve seen to your gunshot.”
“I just—I still don’t quite understand,” Andrews said, coming to stand next to me.
Paramedics had topped the rise and now rushed toward Briarwood. One of them examined the wound, and the professor gave a low moan. There was a bit of discussion about the stretcher going down and up the hills, but it was determined that Briarwood should walk—better for everyone.
One of the men who had hauled the stretcher up looked over at Andrews and me. “Is one of you name of Fever?” he asked.
I blinked. “Yes.”
“That man down there in the—whatever that is, the pond, I reckon—he’s asking for you.”
“Dan’s alive?”
I shot toward the downhill path.
Dan was lying on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. There was an access road behind the mansion that ended in a patch of dried leaves below the gazebo.
He saw me coming up the steps from the well house.
“Good,” he called out strongly. “You didn’t die. I didn’t think you would.”
“Okay.” I was trying to catch my breath. “But I thought you were dead.”
“Me? Not tonight. I have too many things to do this week. Maybe I could schedule it sometime in November—that’s pretty free at the moment.”
I made it to the ambulance and sat on the back, almost eye level with Dan.
“How’s your head?” I leaned against the inside of the ambulance.
“Hurts,” he grunted. “Last thing I remember is going down into the water face-first. I guess you turned me over and dragged me into the reeds. That’s where I came to.”
“Sorry I couldn’t stay with you,” I said between breaths. “I was trying to stay away from the man with the bat.”
“Is that what he hit me with, a baseball bat?”
“Cricket bat.”
“No kidding. Where’d he get a thing like that?”
“England.”
“Yeah. They got that sort of thing over there.”
“They do.” I smiled. “I’m really glad you’re all right.”
“Look.” He turned serious very suddenly. “They’re about to cart me off to a hospital against my will, and I told them I had to talk to you before they could take me. They didn’t like it, so I’d better make this quick. We did a good job, you and I, and the curse is gone. Nice work. I wanted you to know that we really did a great thing tonight, and it was important to me.”
“I’m not sure why.” I said it as gently as I could.
“Listen.” He struggled up on one elbow and leaned closer to me. “You can say this thing with the Barnsley family is bad luck, or karma, or physics. It doesn’t matter to me what you call it. Some people seem to have been dealt a strange hand, and that strangeness follows them wherever they go. I believe the Barnsley family was cursed because they used cursed water from a sacred spring when they shouldn’t have, and I believe that you and I lifted that curse tonight. I also believe that our activity was a part of a larger pattern, a participation in the Divine Mind. My impression is that you believe it was just another strange event in a random array of happenings in your life, and that’s okay by me. But I’m going to the hospital with a cracked head, and I’m very content because of what I believe. You’re going home to your nice little house in relative health, and you don’t seem all that content to me. So whose system is better, yours or mine?”
“Well, first,” I said hesitantly, “I wouldn’t call what I have a system. It’s more along the lines of a mess; second, I’m not the sort of person who can just say, ‘Oh, you’re right, I do believe in magic.’ I need evidence. And third, your system is better. Much better. And I’m sick with envy, wishing it could be mine.”
“I see.” He laid back down on the stretcher.
“It isn’t that I don’t—,” I began.
“That’s all right, Fever.” Dan nodded gently. “It’s your choice to suffer; be sick with envy. If that’s what makes you happy, who am I to intrude?”
“If it makes me happy? It doesn’t—Listen, if you think you’re finally going to get away with dispensing the Cherokee philosophy—” I wanted to make light of what he’d been saying.
He was willing to oblige.
“I don’t know why you always think that.” He grinned. “What I just told you? That’s from Krishnamurti.”
The engine of the ambulance fired up. The paramedic who had told me Dan wanted to speak with me came to the back and motioned for me to get out.
“I’ll visit you in the hospital,” I told Dan over the sound of the engine.
“Don’t bother.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll be home tomorrow. Visit me there.”
The ambulance doors slammed shut and the siren revved up; moments later the red taillights were lost around a corner of the haunted mansion, and Dan was gone.
Andrews came up beside me.
“Your friend’s okay?” He stared at the spot where the ambulance had disappeared.
“Yes.”
“Skidmore got Dr. Freakazoid into the police car. He was still raving about his boo
k. Skid didn’t want to let the man out of his sight, so he’s following the ambulance to take Briarwood to the hospital. I’m riding back with you.”
“Good.” I looked at his profile. “Hey?”
“Mmm,” he answered, obviously exhausted.
“You were like the cavalry tonight,” I told him softly. “I’d be very unhappy or dead if your timing hadn’t been so perfect.”
“Those are the perimeters? Unhappy to dead?” He smiled. “I know you were on the ground and he was on top of you, but you can be pretty mean when you’re backed into a corner. I didn’t count you out when I saw that. I actually thought Skid overreacted. It’s my belief that a single cricket bat hasn’t got a chance in hell against that titanium cranium of yours. Besides, Skidmore’s the cavalry. I’m the sidekick.”
He yawned.
“I’m pretty tired, too,” I admitted.
“I haven’t slept in days.” He looked around. “Where’s your truck? I’m ready to go home.”
“Up there.” I raised my head in the direction of the business offices of Barnsley Gardens.
We started around the hill, skirting the edge of the mansion.
Inside the walls, moonlight played; somewhere white nicotiana was blooming, moonlight’s perfect sensory metaphor, making each breath an ecstasy. Crickets and tree frogs rattled the air once more; the worst of the charcoal clouds had blown to the east, and the sky was clear. A crisp breeze rattled the first bare limbs of the season. I finally realized it had been cold all evening, and I thought that summer might be gone at long last.
When we wake up in the morning, I thought, autumn will surely have arrived.
Twenty-two
Our sky the next day was so hard and blue that it cracked the sun and light poured over everything. There didn’t seem to be a shadow anywhere on the planet. The air outside my bedroom window was so clear in my first waking moments that I thought someone had come in during the night and taken out all the glass. When I tossed off the blankets, I shivered—and was delighted by it. The spine of Summer’s book had been broken for the last time; that story was done, time to set it aside. Open the new one, turn the first page, white as frost, in the book of Autumn.
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