The Transmuter's Daughter

by Laurence Dahners

  Morgan felt touched by Lindl’s obvious love for his sister. He wished he and Daryn had still been that close when they’d been in high school. “How old are you and Kiri?”

  “Seventeen and fifteen.”

  Adam said, “Wow, she doesn’t look seventeen.”

  Lindl turned to stare at him, then saw the twinkle in Adam’s eye. “That’s got to be the lamest dig I’ve ever heard.”

  They both laughed. Morgan felt a warming in his soul.

  Breakfast over, they worked on a few prosaic items: Wi-Fi passwords, making a shopping list, and learning the number for the digital door lock—1225—the date for Christmas. Lindl got out Daryn’s will for Morgan to read, but Morgan decided to put it off for a little longer.

  Morgan called the schools, Adam’s as well as the high school that Lindl and Kiri attended, to tell them that the kids wouldn’t be in that day.

  Since they hadn’t seen it last night, Lindl took them over to the garage. Daryn’s truck was in there. A beat up old Nissan Altima was in the other stall. Lindl said the Altima was his, but that he was supposed to share it with Kiri when she got her driver’s license. There was a lot of stuff up in the rafters, some of it unrecognizable.

  While they were out at the garage, a police car drove by and headed up the road behind the house. “Where’s he going?” Morgan asked.

  “Up to the mine,” Lindl responded. “Maybe we should go up there and see what’s going on?”

  “Okay,” Morgan said, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to visit the scene of his brother’s death. “Should we walk, or do we need to take the car?”

  “It’s an easy walk,” Lindl said, then looked down at their sneakers. “But, in case we go inside, you guys are gonna want sturdier shoes. I don’t suppose you brought any boots?”

  They didn’t have boots, so they had to settle for wearing what they had on. Lindl put on boots, then they started up the narrow dirt road.

  There were a couple of policeman guarding the entrance. One of them held up a hand, “Sorry, no one’s allowed in.”

  Lindl said, “Um, we’re the owners.” Morgan thought that, though it might not be completely true, it was close enough.

  The policeman shrugged, “Sorry, it’s a crime scene. No one’s allowed in.” He lowered his voice, “Besides, there’s still supposed to be a couple of perps in there.”

  Lindl gave the cop an astonished look. “They haven’t caught them?!”

  The man shook his head, “I haven’t been inside, but I hear the tunnels just go on forever. There’re all kinds of pitch black nooks and crannies where the dudes could be hiding.”

  “Oh crap,” Lindl said in an odd tone, “if they’re lost in there…” After a minute, he finished the thought, “If they’re lost, they are so screwed.”

  Morgan turned to the cop, “Do you know if they’ve figured out what the guys were after?”

  The cop gave him a speculative look, “Seems to me, if anybody would know what they were after, it’d be the owners. You guys got any ID?”

  Morgan wondered briefly whether there was any reason to resist providing identification, but he couldn’t think of one. So he pulled out his wallet and showed his driver’s license to the policeman. Lindl and Adam did the same. The policeman looked them over suspiciously, but finally nodded and handed the licenses back. He took out his cell phone and hit an icon. Morgan could hear the faint sound of it ringing, then a voice said, “Yeah?”

  The policeman said, “Hey Detective, you still wanting to talk to the owners? They’ve showed up out here at the mine entrance.”

  “Owners?” the muffled voice said. “I thought the owner was dead and the only ones left were his two kids?”

  “There’s an older guy out here now,” the cop said, looking at Morgan. He covered the cell phone’s mic and said quietly, “You a relative?”

  “Brother,” Morgan mouthed.

  “It’s the owner’s brother,” the cop said into the phone.

  This time Morgan couldn’t hear what the detective said, but the policeman turned off his phone and said, “He’s coming.”

  Morgan wondered whether he’d regret talking to the man.

  The detective showed up looking distinctly unhappy. Morgan immediately got the impression that the man didn’t like being in the mine. He introduced himself as Detective Chatfield. Looking at Morgan, he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, “So, what was your brother up to in this mine?”

  Morgan slowly shook his head, “I have no idea. He and I had a falling out twenty years ago and I haven’t seen him since. I’ve been looking for him for the last ten, but never had any luck. Then,” he took a deep breath, “I got the call about his murder.”

  Chatfield shook his head sympathetically, “That’s gotta be tough. He looked at Lindl and Adam, “Are you his kids?”

  Lindl said, “I’m his son.” He motioned at Adam, “This’s my cousin.”

  “That’s right,” the detective said, scratching his head, “the other kid’s a girl. She was up here during the shooting, right?”

  Lindl nodded.

  Still focused on Lindl, the detective said, “Do you have any idea what those guys might have been after?”

  Lindl slowly shook his head. “I know my dad found little bits of gold and platinum, but not enough to amount to anything. Certainly not enough to kill anybody for.”

  Chatfield doubtfully lifted his chin, “So why the Wi-Fi network and the cameras?”

  “He put those in right after he found a little bit of gold. I think he thought he was going to find a lot more,” Lindl shrugged, “but it never panned out.”

  The detective didn’t have any more questions, so they started back down the hill. Morgan turned to his nephew, “Installing Wi-Fi and cameras because he’d found a few nuggets? That doesn’t sound like my brother.”

  “Like I said, you’ll have to ask Kiri.” After a moment, Lindl said, “I’d recommend you wait a while before you do.”

  Just before they got to the house, Kiri glided across the clearing and flowed up the stairs into the house, looking as fresh as she had when she’d loped away. Lindl apparently saw Adam’s eyes on her because he elbowed him and said, “Hey, she’s your cousin!”

  Adam blushed, “Yeah, sorry.”

  By the time they got into the house, Morgan could hear the shower going upstairs.

  Taking Daryn’s will, he went in to sit at the breakfast bar and start reading through it. Upstairs, someone started playing some music. Melancholy acoustic guitar pieces were all Morgan heard. He focused on the will which indeed named him as Lindl and Kiri’s guardian until their majority. It also named him as the executor of the will with Lindl and Kiri being the two equal beneficiaries. They were each to get half of their own share when they reached age eighteen and the other half when they were twenty-five. Evidently the strategy was intended to keep them from foolishly blowing their entire share in the first few years.

  What the will didn’t do, was tell Morgan where any of the money in Daryn’s estate might be located

  He’d just started to wonder how he’d find the answer to that question when Kiri walked into the kitchen. She had on black jeans and a black T-shirt. There was a large ladybug on the front of the shirt with the word “Don’t” above it and the word “me” below it.

  The ladybug and the text were neon pink.

  “Don’t bug me,” Morgan thought, not sure what to make of her style choices. There’s certainly a theme to them. He said, “Can I make you some breakfast? The rest of us had waffles. There’s a little batter left, if you’d like?”

  “No,” she said. For a bit, Morgan thought that was all she was going to say, but then she sighed, “Toast’s all I can handle right now.”

  She put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster and waited for them to pop up. When they did, she plated them and walked around to Morgan’s side of the breakfast bar. She applied a thin smear of butter and took a bite. Glancing over at the papers in front of
Morgan, she said, “Couldn’t wait to get into the will, huh?”

  Morgan eyed her silently. When she turned to give him a curious look, he said, “Your dad named me as your guardian and as the executor of his will. I have lots of other stuff on my plate right now, but I’m going handle his request to the best of my ability.”

  “How much do you get out of it?” Kiri took a bite of her toast.

  “Nothing.”

  She chewed and swallowed, “Oh.” After a moment more, she said, “Sorry.”

  Her expression reminded him of Daryn—when he’d been contrite which hadn’t been all that often. Still, it tugged at his heartstrings. “So am I,” he said quietly. “So sorry he’s dead. Sorry about all the wasted years. Regretting that the last words he and I spoke to one another were ugly. And— sorry that you and I seem to be off to such a bad start ourselves.”

  “Yeah, I can be kind of an asshole when I’m upset.” She produced a weak grin, “It’s one of my many flaws.” She took a deep breath, “I’m going to do my best to treat you like my dad didn’t hate you. Unless and until you really do prove to be a jerk.” She studied him for a moment, then said, “So what’s your explanation for why you and my dad didn’t get along? I’ve heard his, but it didn’t make much sense to me.”

  Morgan thought back on the long explanation he’d given Adam. He boiled it down to its essence, “I was jealous of how brilliant Daryn was, so I treated him like a jerk. He had plenty of reasons to hate me.”

  Kiri frowned, “What were you jealous of? He told me he was jealous of you.”

  Morgan’s thoughts foundered on that bizarre claim, but then he decided Daryn had probably been trying to make light of Morgan’s jealousy when talking to his children. Maybe he didn’t want to ruin any chance we had of getting back together. He said, “You know he was almost two and a half years younger than I was, right? He started school two years behind me and we were best friends for what seemed like… forever. But then he decided he wanted to be in my grade…”

  “So?”

  “So, he skipped two grades to be in the same grade I was in. I just knew it’d be embarrassing to have him catch up to me and my friends. I told him not to skip ahead, but when he still seemed set on it, I started being mean. I hoped he’d decide he didn’t want to be in my class. My classmates teased me about him and I was mortified.” Morgan looked away then spoke in a raspy voice, “I should’ve cared more about Daryn and not given a damn about my classmates.”

  “Ah,” Kiri said with a nod, as if she understood.

  “You want to tell me about him? Give me a feel for what he was like during all the years I missed?”

  “He was my dad,” she said slowly, “so maybe I wouldn’t be the best judge.” She looked at Morgan with a wry grin on her face, “He didn’t always let me have my way, you know? And he’d get focused on stuff… So focused he’d forget everything else. Like I thought he’d done yesterday when he didn’t pick me up. But most of the time he was,” she paused as if hunting for the right word, “just amazing. He was great before Mom died, but after, when it was just him, he was there for Lindl and me every day. He was there more than he and mom had been together. Always ready to work on a project for school, or help me do pretty much anything I wanted to do.”

  “Um, he didn’t have to work?”

  “Well, I guess. He called himself an inventor. Whenever he’d be doing something with Lindl or me or both of us, he’d say he was doing research.” She shrugged, “Some of his inventions were toys, so it made some sense. When we were little, he listened to us talk about toys, especially ones we thought we wanted that didn’t exist. Then he’d try to invent something along the lines of what we’d said we wanted. Sometimes the new toy would show up in stores and he’d tell us that part of the money from them was going to pay for our college educations.” She got a worried look, “The toys were easy, he said, so there were a lot of them. After we outgrew toys there weren’t so many inventions. He said not to worry; it just took longer to invent stuff for adults. But, he told me that once they were invented the payoff’d be bigger.” She looked at Morgan, “Recently though, he’d been saying we might have to tighten our belts until he could get our newest project working.” She lifted an eyebrow, “Maybe there’s not gonna be all that much for you to disburse on the basis of that will.”

  Morgan felt a nervous twitch in his stomach at the thought that Daryn’s financial situation might be worse than his own. I may not have any money, but at least I’m not in the red. Daryn could be holding a big mortgage on this land, the house, and the mine. Maybe some other debts? Credit card debt? Loans for his most recent project?

  He started wondering whether the real estate might be worth more than the debt Daryn carried on it. He didn’t even realize he hadn’t been holding up his end of the conversation until, with a little acid in her tone, Kiri said, “What’s the matter? This not turning out to be the windfall you’d hoped?”

  Morgan sighed, “I’m worried our finances are going to be… difficult. I don’t know that we’ll have problems for sure, but there are a number of known and possible financial issues.” He eyed her for a moment, “I think it might be good if I explained them to you. Then you’d understand what’s worrying me and not constantly think I’m just trying to get your dad’s money. But, I’m also worried that you don’t need another burden right now.” Morgan watched her face, wondering if he’d be able to tell whether it’d be good or bad for her to talk her way through such issues.

  She blithely waved a hand, “Tell me about it. Sounds like it’s going to be my problem too; I’d just as well know what it is.”

  Morgan opened his mouth to start explaining it, but then his eyes crossed her plate. She’d eaten about half a piece of toast. Instead, he said, “I don’t know. If you’re so upset you can’t even eat toast, I probably shouldn’t be piling more stuff onto you.”

  She picked up the remaining half piece of toast. “Go ahead, I’ll eat. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Morgan said. “Adam already told you that yesterday my wife threw me out of the house and emptied my accounts. I imagine you understand that means we’re getting divorced.”

  “Yeah, what’d you do to her?”

  Morgan felt a grimace start to form in response to this fresh assault, but did his best to keep his expression neutral. He found he still didn’t want to explain the whole Matilda fiasco. “My… The company I worked for got bought out and everyone got laid off. I failed to negotiate the exit strategy she’d hoped for.”

  “So, you not only have no money, you have no job.”

  “Essentially correct. In theory, half the money that Arlette and I had at the time of our separation yesterday will belong to me in the divorce. However, by North Carolina law we won’t be officially divorced until we’ve been separated for a year. I’m expecting it’ll be hard to extract any money from her until all the legal stuff’s done. In fact, that’d be why she cleaned out our bank accounts. She hopes to claim that since the money was in her personal accounts at the time of our separation, it all belonged to her, not to us.” He sighed, “So, you’re right. I have no money and no job. A friend’s agreed to lend me $10,000, but that might not last long.” He decided not to try to explain that he had some retirement accounts in his name alone. Arlette wouldn’t have been able to get to those, but to his understanding there were some significant tax and other financial consequences if he took money out of them before he retired. Another thing I’d better find out about, he thought.

  Kiri frowned, “Seems like $10,000 ought to last quite a while. Are you some kind of big spender?”

  Morgan realized that, at fifteen, Kiri was probably pretty naïve about money. “No, you’re right, it should last quite a while, if there aren’t any outstanding debts to deal with. I’m not worried about the mortgage on my house. If Arlette won’t give me access to the money we had in the bank, I’ll figure she has to make the payments on our mortgage. The things I am worried about include
the possibility that there’s a mortgage on your property that needs to be paid each month. There might be a loan on your dad’s truck or the Altima that needs to be serviced. Certainly, you’ve got utility bills that’ll have to be paid. It’s possible your dad has some credit card debt or maybe even other kinds of debt that have to be paid off. We’d have to, at the minimum, pay the interest on any credit card debt. Are you guys going to public school or is there some kind of private school tuition I’ll need to worry about?”

  Kiri’d been looking more and more concerned as Morgan listed possible expenses. “Um, public high school, but I’m taking some dual enrollment classes at the local college. Lindl takes music lessons.” She winced, “I admit, I have no idea how much any of this stuff costs or how it’s paid for.”

  “Do you know where your dad does his banking? Where he might keep financial records, passwords for his computer, stuff like that?”

  She jumped down off of the barstool. “I know the computer password and I can show you where his paper files are.”

  “Finish your toast first.” When she paused and got back up on the stool, he said, “Talk to me about pleasant stuff. Tell me about your dreams.”

  “Dreams? They were all nightmares last night. Not pleasant in any way.” She took a bite of toast.

  “Not those kind of dreams. I want to know what you hope to do with your life.”

  She finished chewing and swallowing, a distant look in her eyes. “I’ve always been planning on being an inventor like dad. He and I were always talking about ideas and we were working on…”

  “Working on?”

  Kiri shrugged, “Some ideas. Without him I don’t know how they’d go anywhere.” She took another bite of toast, her eyes starting to well with tears.

  Trying to get her mind on a different track, Morgan said, “What about Lindl? Do you know what his dreams are?”

  She swallowed her bite, though it looked like it went down hard. “Music. With him it’s always music, music, music. Dad used to warn him that only one in 10,000 musicians got rich and the rest barely survived. He’d say, ‘Go for it if you want, but expect to be poor.’ I had it in my mind,” she chuckled bitterly, “that I’d be making enough money to support him. At least so he wouldn’t starve. But recently I’ve started to realize that inventing can be pretty difficult. Turns out that not every idea just magically works out. I’ve been wondering if maybe only a tenth of a percent of inventors get rich, just like musicians.” She shrugged, “I guess I’ll need to major in something that’ll provide me a decent day job.” She looked suddenly apprehensive, “If I can afford to go to college.”