Lock & Mori

by Heather W. Petty

  “I sat outside your chemistry class and you never came out.” He was awfully cute when he was smug. Irritating, but cute.

  “How do you know I didn’t just leave class early?”

  So, it was more on the irritating side when he leaned in and smelled my hair. “You’ve been in the park!”

  “You can smell the park on me?”

  “No, your hair tells me you took a bus. Your shoes tell me you were at the park, most likely after ten forty-five this morning.”

  I looked down, and there were grass stains along the white part of my trainers and little bits of grass stuck to the canvas. “Or maybe out on the football field.”

  “No, unfortunately for you, our school’s grounds staff mows the field after seven each night. The sprinklers come on at dawn, washing those pesky leavings into the thatch. But the park—”

  “You are now going to tell me that you know the grounds schedule for Regent’s Park?”

  He reached down and pulled a leaf off the bottom of my shoe and held it up. “This says you were down at the canal.”

  I very much failed to restrain my grin.

  “You were at the crime scene. Without me.”

  Lock was also cute when he scowled.

  “It had nothing to do with the case,” I lied. But then I didn’t know what to say next. So we sat in silence for a bit. Lily Patel was back at school, I noticed. I probably should’ve noticed before then, but I’d had quite a bit to keep track of. John Watson sat cross-legged, leaning against the far stage wall and watching her play her part, an open script in his lap. When she saw him looking, she turned away quickly and walked from the stage.

  I slid my fingers along Sherlock’s and then pushed them down between. “I’ll most likely be gone tomorrow, too. I have to go down to Sussex.”

  “What’s in Sussex?”

  “I don’t know yet.” A truth, and then the lie, “But it really has nothing to do with our case.”

  Lock didn’t say anything, leaving a nice gorge of silence for me to throw myself into. As one does.

  “You want to g—?”

  “Yes,” he interrupted.

  I sighed, partly at my own idiocy, partly at his. At any rate, I removed my hand from his. “I will need to go off by myself once we’re there.”

  “I’ll be busy taking clippings anyway.”

  “Clippings?”

  “Of the different vegetation to be found down there.”

  “You want to study the vegetation of Sussex.”

  “It’s on my list.”

  “Plants. Plants are on your list.”

  “The regional botany of England and Wales. How else will I know where you’ve run off to? I don’t suppose we’ll be going to Wales on the weekend?”

  I rolled my eyes, and Sherlock grinned and steepled his fingers together as he fell into his thoughts.

  x x x

  I retouched my makeup before dinner that night, to keep the worst of my bruises from my brothers, though I didn’t for a minute believe it fooled them. I hadn’t seen much of my father since I’d caught him out on the patio. He hadn’t done as much as look in my direction when we were in the same room, which was for the best, as I couldn’t keep my eyes off him when he was near. I also couldn’t seem to control my rage enough to keep it off my face. After watching Dad stuff three bites of potato into his mouth and practically swallow without chewing, all I could think was how disgusting he was and how I couldn’t believe my mother could stand to be near him all those years. And while I watched Dad, Michael had been watching me. He reached his hand under the table to hold mine, distracting me enough to look away. Unfortunately, my rage-filled gaze fell on Freddie, who shrank back before I could offer an apologetic look.

  Dad grunted something and left the table before the rest of us, which made me think I was free of him for the evening, but after everything was cleaned up and put away, I walked into the hall and found him leaning against the banister, flask in hand. It was enough to make me decide to sleep in the park that night.

  I made a face and tried to rush past him up the stairs, but he reached out and grabbed my arm. I shook him off and glared. “Don’t.”

  He shifted his weight and stared at the wood of the banister, like it was why he was there in the first place. “You were in the park today.”

  I silently cursed the entire lineage of that DC.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.” I practically yelled the word, which made Dad look at me before he remembered himself. With his gaze firmly fixated on the front door, he said, “You said I was with you.”

  I nodded, not that he could see.

  “Why would you do that?” When I didn’t answer, he barked, “Why?!”

  I shrugged, tried to regulate my breathing and force a calm, but that didn’t seem to make my tone any lighter. “Well, he was asking questions that were none of his business, wasn’t he?”

  Dad finally managed a longish glance in my direction. “Yeah, well.” He rubbed the back of his neck and took a drink from his flask. “You’ll say the same again if someone asks.” He punctuated this order with a single nod, then stomped to his bedroom and slammed the door.

  I looked at my arm where he had grabbed it, brushed my fingers over the skin as if I could clean him off me. That his DNA was part of my makeup made me want to retch until I was purged of him altogether.

  True to form, Lock had found his way into my bedroom again, still not ready to leave me in this place without a sentry. He seemed to know my thoughts the very moment I stepped into my room. Or maybe it was always his plan to jump up from my bed and surround me with his arms. In any case, he whispered in my ear, “Make an excuse, any excuse, and let me take you from here.”

  He knew I couldn’t, knew why. I’d said it too many times to say it again, and still he responded to my excuse. “We’ll bring them with us. Eat Mrs. Hudson’s sandwiches and watch movies on Mycroft’s tablet until they’re all asleep.”

  I smiled and turned my face into the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “And when he unleashes all the Queen’s men to find us?”

  Lock shrugged. “We are our own army, you and I. None can stand before us.”

  After I’d clicked out my light, and before I’d given up on sleeping alone and crawled from my bed to curl up with Lock on the floor, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and quickly typed “Sorte Juntos” into Google Translate. The words were Portuguese, meaning “lucky together,” almost meaningless—or might have been on another night.

  For the first time since I’d asked him, I felt glad that Lock would be with me in Sussex. I wasn’t sure what I’d find there, but I knew somehow Lock would make it seem manageable—­or at least survivable.

  x x x

  I spent most of the night thinking of all the reasons why leaving for a whole day was a truly horrific idea, but there was no way around it. The travel time alone was almost six hours round-trip. I only justified it by reminding myself that the boys would be in school most of the day, and Dad at work, but there were too many contingencies—too many ways this ended badly—for me to let it go. By midnight, I was in the bathroom texting Sadie and asking for her promise to check in on the boys after school, just in case Lock and I didn’t make it home on time. She was, predictably, still up reading, and texted right back assuring me she’d even bring over a snack, as she’d been baking again—her way of dealing with homesickness.

  Calls home are a special form of torture, she typed. I miss my family too much.

  About today, I sent back, but then I didn’t know what to say.

  After a few seconds my phone vibrated. Me too, she typed. We need more days like today.

  I slept fitfully and gave up at four a.m. to sneak down the stairs. Only one more thing for me to deal with—my father’s short sword. If we had the time, I would’ve waited for hi
m to go to work, but we had to be out of the house before any of them woke up or risk having to explain why I wasn’t in uniform, why I was leaving earlier than usual, and any assortment of questions that might come with every tick away from my normal schedule.

  Dad was snoring so loudly, the stairs were vibrating with the noise. The soft sound of his door clicking open didn’t even break his rhythm. A bottle of bourbon with maybe a tablespoon of liquid left was tipped over on his nightstand, a visual clue to the mystery of his deep, deep slumber. I was able to slide the closet open a few inches at a time until I could reach for the sword, where it was still wrapped in a sweater next to my mother’s tattered box of things. I had it in my hand and was out the door of his room in seconds, his snores droning on while I rewrapped it in a towel.

  The number of people in the park that early shocked me. I should’ve known it’d be popular with runners and dog walkers, but I’d never come face-to-face with the crowds until that morning. I made my way directly to the bandstand and then toward the lake, slipping inside the curtain of willow branches at the water’s edge. There weren’t any people there—no one on the water. But still I waited until even the few lingering shadows in the area seemed to have moved away. Removing the sword from the towel was the worst part.

  I spent a good five minutes wiping down every surface and scratching the fibers of the towel into every crevice, and then I checked again for early morning park people. I thought I saw a shadow by a tree around the bend from me, but then it didn’t move, and I knew it had to be my imagination. Even if it wasn’t, it was too far away to see me, much less understand what I was about to do.

  After one last swipe of the towel, I threw the sword as far out into the lake as I could without leaving the cover of the branches. It sank immediately, without even a trail of bubbles to show where it had gone in. And then it was done. My father was disarmed, of a sort. Not that he wasn’t a trained policeman, capable of killing in a myriad of ways, and I didn’t know whether he even knew how to find the Blue-Haired Girl or not, but the sword was part of his ritual, and perhaps its absence would be enough to at least give me a day. So with that chore done and the boys looked after with the promise of American baked goods, there was nothing to do but collect Lock and head for the station.

  Even though the train to Brighton didn’t leave until 8:37, it was still before seven when I left the house again, this time dragging an eerily quiet, barely coherent Sherlock behind me. Once I got him some coffee, he perked up, but he wasn’t very talkative as we took our bus to the London Victoria line. I thought we should buy all-day passes, just in case we needed to turn around quickly or stay late. But when I asked Lock about it, he merely mumbled his assent. Finally, when we were standing on the platform, waiting for our train, I decided enough was enough.

  “What?” was his only response to nearly a full minute under my direct scrutiny.

  “You’re quiet today.”

  “Thinking.”

  “About?”

  He studied my face before he answered. “How difficult it can sometimes be to keep a promise.”

  “And which promise it that?”

  Another unreasonably long pause. “I once promised a girl that she was the one mystery I would never solve.”

  I stared across the gap and up to the tiny panes of windows near the ceiling. “That doesn’t seem all that difficult.”

  “I agree. It shouldn’t be. And yet . . .”

  Someone jostled me closer to Sherlock, and I turned, moving into him without lifting my eyes. “It could be . . . ,” I started, but my throat suddenly felt unbearably dry, and my words wouldn’t come.

  Lock leaned his face down toward mine so he could speak softly in my ear. “I have made an observation of a different sort.”

  “And that is?”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and his cheek pressed gently to mine. “When a person cares for another, he wants to know everything about her all at once.”

  I grinned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  I kissed his cheek and he kissed mine back, and just when I had hold of his lapels and was leaning up so that our lips brushed, the train pulled into the station, bringing with it a gust of wind that blew my hair around our faces. “I’m sure she will tell you everything just as soon as she is able,” I said against his lips. I didn’t think he heard me over the noise of the train, but something changed in his eyes.

  His lips moved slowly against mine, playfully, teasing a kiss that never quite landed. The platform was a frenzy of movement and noise all around us, and I could only see him, only feel his gentle exhale against my lips. And then he kissed me, but it was the way he held me that made me feel the change in him. His arms completely surrounded me, pulling me in tight. One hand pushed up into my hair to hold me close even after his lips pulled free of mine. He rested his forehead to my temple and kissed my cheek before releasing me slowly—like he didn’t want to, like he might pull me back in at any second.

  Lock seemed more his old self once we found our seats on the train. He pointed across me to a woman seated on the aisle just two seats ahead of us reading a book. “She is a hairdresser. Tell me when you see it.”

  I might have assumed the same, just from the elaborate dye job and the critical mass of product that held the curls in her hair in a perfectly natural wave that most likely wouldn’t move in a hurricane. But then she lifted her hands to examine her nails, and I saw calluses on her thumb and forefinger. There were tiny hair fragments on her pant legs below the knee, and probably most telling, she was shod in the ugliest, most comfortable-looking Mary Janes of all time.

  “Shoes,” I said, because I knew it would be the one thing he wouldn’t notice. By his immediate glance toward them, I was right. “No one who spends that much time on her hair wears such soulless shoes unless she’s on her feet all day.”

  He didn’t comment, but I watched the corners of his mouth twitch before he gestured behind us with his head. “The gentleman behind us teaches chemistry.”

  “Chalky, cracked fingers? Too easy.”

  I watched as his gaze flitted from person to person in our car, sizing up and dismissing each in turn until finally he pointed at a girl who was crying in the back corner of our train car. “So, tell me about that one if you crave a challenge.”

  “What’s so challenging about a girl crying on a train? It could be anything.”

  “Exactly. Girls cry over everything.” He obviously didn’t see my expression or he’d have stopped talking. “She could’ve broken a nail for all we know. . . . Or perhaps it is something serious,” he added, only after he glanced at me.

  I made sure to enunciate when I spoke. “You are an idiot.”

  “And a Neanderthal. But you’ll have to take the blame for that. I warned you what would happen if you rewarded me.”

  I tried very hard not to smile, but my mind betrayed me by replaying the moments around his warning over and over, until it was inevitable. “Damn.”

  “Given up so soon?” He went back to studying our crying girl, his steepled fingers tapping against his lips. I joined in, never expecting to almost instantly discover her secret—a secret I was sure Lock wouldn’t have deduced were I to lay out the clues before him and wait until the end of time for him to see it.

  I quietly cleared my throat and turned to look out at the passing landscape.

  “You have given up,” he accused.

  “I haven’t.”

  “You don’t know the answer already.”

  “Tell me when you see it,” I said, still staring out the window. Though I could see his brow furrow in my periphery.

  He tried valiantly, my Lock, but he never did note the pale hue of her face, the way her bra appeared two sizes too small, or even the way her hand kept resting across her stomach just before a fresh wave of tears fell from her eyes. I never told h
im either. When he got twitchy and frustrated, I did give him a hint.

  “She hasn’t broken a nail,” I whispered.

  Chapter 17

  The first thing I noticed when we stepped out of Brighton station was the smell. Even blocks from the beach, I could smell the ocean and hear the gulls. It was tempting to stay and ignore the chore of travel to a tiny village like Piddinghoe, especially after we realized we’d missed the bus to Newhaven by minutes, which meant another train ride northeast to Lewes, followed by a bus back south to Piddinghoe, and then a walk into the village. I tried to get Lock to stay in Brighton, which seemed the most obvious place to waste a few hours, but he followed me back onto the train, mumbling something about the loneliness of beach towns.

  I spent most of our trip talking up the glory of Lewes, not that I knew much about the place. Still, I was able to distract him from following me on to Piddinghoe with a carrot in the form of an Herb Walk flyer that promised a tour around the Railway Land Local Nature Reserve with an herbalist.

  “Come with me.” His eyes were bright with all the possibilities, though they immediately shadowed a bit when I shook my head.

  “I’ve an errand to run. I’ll call your mobile when I’m back.”

  “Back from where?” He was barely restraining his smile over my slipup.

  “When I’m done.”

  “But that’s not what you said. You said when you’re back, which means you’re leaving Lewes.”

  I stepped close enough to kiss his cheek but didn’t. “You promised.”

  “An impossible promise.” He kissed me quickly, then again, just because he could. We stood in an awkward silence for a few moments like imbeciles before finally turning our respective directions. I didn’t look back, but his footsteps faltered once, so he could have. I decided to believe he did.

  x x x

  The bus dropped me off on a narrow road in the middle of nowhere—at least, that’s what it looked like. On one side of the road, I could barely make out a pond through a chain fence lined with skinny trees. Tall grass flanked the other side, along with a mishmash of wooden fence panels in a variety of colors and patterns. It must have been Piddinghoe, unless the bus driver was a liar. It was definitely the countryside. I remembered the bus driving past a turnoff just before stopping and managed to walk the right way toward it on my first go. The cross street would take me almost the entire way to the address, if Google Maps was to be trusted in such a remote place.