by Tom Dolby
Patch was also incredibly frustrated by his chat with Simone and the prospect of buying back the rights to his show. The possibility of DJ gigs in the future might help, but it would take a lot of bookings to make five grand.
While he felt distracted by everything going on, he was also amped up about Lia. After his visit to Simone’s former offices, he had met Lia for a coffee date at the Pink Pony on Ludlow Street. She was the only girl he had ever met who knew more about music than he did. He liked, though, that she didn’t lord it over him the way she could have-for the most part.
As Patch ducked under his building’s awning, he saw Parker Bell get out of a town car that had been idling at the curb. He looked at Patch, as if surprised to see him.
“Patchfield, it’s nice to see you. Are you just back from the meeting?”
Patch was momentarily surprised, as Parker was not usually so nice to him. The last interaction he’d had with him was at the initiation on a remote island in Maine.
Patch nodded as Parker handed his briefcase to the doorman and asked that it be left in his foyer.
“Will you walk with me for a moment?” Parker asked. “I’d like to confer on a few matters with you.”
Patch nodded, figuring that out on Fifth Avenue he wasn’t in any immediate danger. He still didn’t trust Nick’s dad after everything he had been through in December.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I just wanted to see how you were adjusting to Society life. You’ve entered our group in a rather unusual way, and I want to make sure that you feel fully acclimated. Of course, I know you are already friends with some of the members, my son included.”
“I’ve been fine. I know some of the other kids. It all seems pretty straightforward.” Patch knew this was a lie, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. “They told us about the Dendur Ball tonight. Sounds pretty cool.”
“The Dendur Ball.” Parker seemed almost wistful. “It’s amazing that they’re reviving it after all these years. You’ll have fun that night. The event is black-tie. Do you have a dinner jacket?”
“I think I have one that used to belong to my dad,” Patch said, thinking of the threadbare, moth-eaten tuxedo his father had. He would probably need to have it altered, but it still wouldn’t look right.
“I want Nick to take you to our tailor. He will make one for you. There’s nothing to make a young man look more handsome than a bespoke dinner jacket.”
“I don’t think I can afford-”
“You’re to put it on our account. You understand?”
Patch nodded. He wasn’t sure he was comfortable accepting something like this, but it would be nice to look sharp for the ball instead of having to wear hand-me-downs.
“Sir, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
Parker Bell smiled. He was a handsome man, tall and trim, with silvery gray hair. Patch had always seen him as foreboding, but there was something about him tonight that seemed friendly. Patch understood how Nick could have such mixed feelings about his father. The man was like a chameleon.
“Patch, I care deeply about my children. About their future and about their happiness. I care about who they spend their time with. You have always been close to Nick, and I know that he values your friendship. What happened between the two of you last fall was regrettable. We should have realized that you were Society material from the start. I am sorry for that choice, and I hope that we can make amends.”
Patch nodded, and there was a silence between the two. As if by unspoken agreement, the two of them turned around and started walking back toward the apartment building. Patch didn’t know what else to say. As Patch put one foot in front of the other, the thoughts swirled around in his head: This is a man who is evil. This is a man who killed people. This is a man I cannot trust.
PART II
INFIDELS
Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty minutes after the meeting at the museum ended, Phoebe and Nick were headed east on the Long Island Expressway toward the beach. The weekend had finally arrived, and they could focus on Palmer’s challenge from the previous Sunday. Nick was driving his old beat-up Jeep Cherokee that he parked at a garage on 106th Street with the rest of his family’s cars. The garage’s location amused Phoebe; it was right on the edge of where the Upper East Side turned into Harlem, and yet the Bells parked their cars there for one simple reason: the prices were cheaper. Garage rates in Manhattan were notoriously exorbitant, and parking their cars twenty blocks away had never struck them as an inconvenience.
As they left the city behind them, Phoebe was pretty sure they were breaking some kind of New York State law about driving without an adult present, but Nick didn’t seem to care. It was more important that they figure out Palmer’s riddle. Besides, Nick looked older than his age, he was a savvy driver, and he even had an illegal radar detector so he knew to slow down when cops were nearby.
“I feel like we should have done this five days ago,” Phoebe said as Nick passed several cars. “We should have driven out the day your grandfather told us about it.”
Nick shook his head. “It wouldn’t have made sense. We had the first day of school coming up. And then everything happened with you and Lauren and Thad.”
Phoebe gave a half smile. “Well, at least the way you drive, we’ll be there before midnight.” She sat back in her seat. For the first time in weeks, it felt like they were on the right track. Phoebe had also noticed a lightness in Nick’s step as they were walking to the garage. It was the happiest she’d seen him since the day that they had officially started dating.
Nick picked up a soda and Phoebe opened it for him so he could keep his eyes on the road. After taking a gulp of root beer, he reached over to stroke her knee. “It’s sort of an adventure, right? I mean, no one knows we took the car, no one knows we’re going to the house.”
“I like it,” Phoebe said. “We should do it more often.”
“Under better circumstances,” Nick said.
They were silent for a few minutes, and Phoebe watched the sea of red taillights ahead of them. She thought she might doze off, she was so exhausted, but she fought to keep her eyes open.
“This is going to sound weird,” Nick said, “but do you think we would have ever met if it wasn’t for the Society?”
“You tell me.”
“I think we would have. I noticed you, that first day, when I handed you the flyer.”
Phoebe laughed. “Yeah, right! Amidst the ten thousand other people you were inviting to your party.”
“Do you think we would have met if we didn’t go to the same school?”
“I think so,” Phoebe said.
“Why’s that?”
Phoebe took a deep breath. “Because I believe things happen for a reason. That certain things are, I don’t know, not necessarily predetermined, but if they’re meant to be, they’re meant to be.”
“So would you say the same for the Society?”
Phoebe looked out the window. Was it meant to be? If she could do it over again, would she have wished for none of it to happen? Or was it somehow part of a bigger picture?
“I don’t know,” she said. “We might feel completely trapped right now, but I think there’s going to be a reason for all of this.”
“You’ve certainly become very Zen about it,” Nick said.
“Maybe it’s just getting off the island,” Phoebe said. “Getting away, especially with no one knowing where we are. Did you ever think about that? What if we turned around and started driving west, out of New York, across the country? Just got the hell out of here? Couldn’t we leave all this behind?”
Nick frowned. “What about the others? And can you imagine leaving our lives here? Besides, what would we do? How would we live? I can’t just-I can’t just leave everything I’ve ever known behind me.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to u
pset you,” Phoebe said.
He softened a bit. “No, it’s not that at all-you’re so damn smart. You’re the only person in my life who would ever even suggest that option. And it’s, like, by bringing it up, even if we never do it, just knowing that it’s there, that you thought it-it makes me feel like… I don’t know. It’s just cool.”
Phoebe smiled. Nick had a habit, when he was bordering on something profound, of backing away from it. Tonight she didn’t want to push him.
His face grew serious. “Anyway, we should think about what my grandfather said. Are you worried at all?”
“What I want to understand,” Phoebe said, “is why would he decide to help us? Why would he go behind your father’s back?”
Nick kept his eyes focused on the highway as he answered. “My grandfather and my father haven’t always gotten along. They hide it well, especially in front of strangers, but they’ve disagreed bitterly about a lot of things over the years. When he was a member in his early years, my father tried to rebel against the Society himself. And I think there’s something in my grandfather-it’s almost like regret. Why, I don’t exactly know.”
Phoebe nodded.
“All I know,” Nick said, “is that I don’t want my life to be like that.”
“If your grandfather doesn’t believe in rebelling against the Society, why is he trying to help you do it?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’m not going to turn down the chance to make this right, to get us and the others out. I don’t know if we have any other option. We can’t work against them. We can’t skip the meetings. The police wouldn’t believe us, because we have no evidence. The only way to get out of it is to be officially released.”
“Has anyone ever done that?” Phoebe asked. “They don’t exactly seem keen on letting anyone out.”
“It’s not a question I want to pose to my father, not after what we saw on the island. I think we need to figure out this Palmer thing first.”
When they arrived at the Bell family estate two hours later, it looked as if it had been shut down for the winter. All the lights on the property were off and the ground was frozen. After parking on the gravel driveway, Nick opened the front door with his key.
“Home again,” Nick said as they stepped inside. The house was kept at a chilly fifty-five degrees in winter, and Phoebe shivered.
“Ugh, I wish I could just flop into bed,” Phoebe said. “Do you want to start our search tomorrow? For whatever we’re looking for. I guess we really should start now.”
“Oh my God,” Nick said. He stood in the central foyer facing the living room.
“What?” Phoebe asked.
Nick pointed to the space above the fireplace, and Phoebe looked up.
The Jackson Pollock painting, the one Nick had mentioned his mother had purchased at Sotheby’s for ten million dollars, was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nick sat with Phoebe in the living room, and they both looked up at the blank space above the fireplace where the Pollock had hung. There was nothing on the mantel, just a few family photos.
“Is this what he wanted us to find?” Nick asked. “This isn’t what I would call finding something.”
“More like the absence of something,” Phoebe said. “Maybe that’s part of the clue. Maybe we’re supposed to look for what isn’t there.”
“So we’re looking for something that used to be there in the first place? That doesn’t make any sense.” He rubbed his temples. A headache was starting to come on.
“Hey-more importantly: Should we tell your parents about the painting being gone?”
“We don’t have to. The caretaker will see it on Monday morning. Remember, we aren’t even supposed to be here.”
“Nick, they’re going to have police here eventually. They’ll see our fingerprints.”
Nick felt nervous for a moment before he relaxed. “We’ll just say we thought it had been sent out for restoration. My mom is always saying that the frame needs to be cleaned.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Search the place?”
They went through each room of the house, which was no easy feat, considering that it was a six-thousand-square-foot house with eight bedrooms and multiple public rooms. Luckily, because the house was built in the 1920s, it was not enormous in the way of newer houses in the area. Nick had always appreciated that; its size was manageable, and you didn’t need to run through every wing to find someone.
The house was immaculately clean but had that musty smell from windows not having been opened in more than a week. New Year’s Eve would have been the last time his parents were here.
After several hours of searching, however, they hadn’t turned up anything. It didn’t help that they had no idea what they were looking for.
It didn’t help, either, that it was four o’clock in the morning.
They went back to the living room and flopped down on the couches across from each other. “Your grandfather told you, ‘You’ll find everything you need at the beach,’” Phoebe said.
“We have no idea, though, if he was in his right mind.”
“Let’s think about this,” Phoebe said. “The one thing we’ve noticed is that the Pollock is missing. We don’t know if your grandfather moved it, but it’s all we’ve got to go on. So can we assume that this search has something to do with art?”
Nick furrowed his brow. “Maybe.” He stood up and looked at the space above the fireplace where the Pollock had been. He examined the panel, slightly darker, where the painting had been hung. Nothing appeared unusual or out of place. He pushed the panel, to see if anything would happen. Nothing.
Then Nick noticed something strange as his eyes ran over the photographs sitting on the mantel: while there had always been family photographs below the painting, they had now been switched out for specific ones. Every single picture of the Bell family was taken down in Palm Beach, where his grandfather lived during most of the year.
“I feel so stupid,” Nick said, looking at the photographs.
“Why?”
“Remember, he said ‘both beaches.’”
“Yeah, so what does that mean?”
“We’re at the wrong beach.”
It was a snap decision, but he and Phoebe knew that it was the right one. They had to find out what Palmer’s babblings were about. Nick wanted to include the entire group of five, as he felt everyone should be involved. Besides, Palm Beach would be a welcome break from the chilly New York January, as well as from all the Society madness. Making good on his request for them to keep their Saturday clear, Nick called everyone early that morning and told them to meet Phoebe and him at La Guardia Airport for a shuttle flight down to Florida. As far as getting permission, half the group had parents who didn’t care, and the other half would say they were staying over at each other’s houses. Half an hour after Nick invited him, Patch called back: he wanted to bring Lia, as they had made tentative plans and Patch didn’t want to cancel. Nick hadn’t met Lia, but at school the previous day Patch had been going on and on about her to Lauren and Phoebe and him. Nick knew that she worked part-time in a record store in the East Village and went to Stuyvesant High School, but most importantly, Patch was really excited about her. Nick supposed he should have been worried about the secrecy of their mission, but part of him was exhausted from all the hiding. If Lia lived downtown and she wasn’t in the Society, it wouldn’t matter if she knew what was going on. After all, who would she tell?
Before booking six tickets on an inexpensive flight, Nick placed a call to Horatio, his grandfather’s caretaker and butler, who watched over the Palm Beach property and made sure everything was in top condition.
“I’ll need to check with your grandfather, of course,” Horatio had said. “I believe I can reach him at the hospital.”
Horatio called Nick back in ten minutes and announced that his grandfather had said that whatever Nick wanted to do was fine. “I was quite surprised, actually, if yo
u don’t mind my being frank. Mr. Bell said, ‘Whatever my grandson wants, you give him.’ We haven’t had this many houseguests since, well, since…”
“I know,” Nick said. “Since my grandmother died.”
“You will all stay in the east wing. I’ll make sure that the bedrooms are ready. Three rooms, you said?”
“That should be fine.” Nick figured that he and Phoebe could sleep together, Patch and Lia could share a room, and Lauren and Thad could share another. “Horatio, can you do me a favor?” Nick asked.
“Certainly.”
“If my father happens to call, please don’t mention this visit to him.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Florida!” Lia said. “Are you crazy?”
She and Patch were already in a cab going across town, in the direction of the Midtown Tunnel. Patch had simply told her that he had a surprise, and that she should pack a change of clothing. It was only their second official date, so it was more than a bit unexpected, but Patch appreciated that Lia understood the value of spontaneity. The trip was like a present that had been dropped in their laps, the chance to escape from Manhattan.
“I thought maybe we were going to, I don’t know, the Hamptons or something,” she said. “But Palm Beach? What are we, like, eighty years old? Will it be warm there? I thought it would be freezing where we were going!”
