The Shadow Constant

by AJ Scudiere

  “That’s it?” Evan asked.

  With a huff, Kayla turned to him. “Yes. I only turned on a few lights inside. I didn’t want to overdo the power. But let’s give it a shot. Go. Turn on lights.”

  She stayed put while the other three traipsed through the back door and fanned out. Through the window above her she heard Evan heading up the stairs about the same time as lights flicked on in both sides of the first floor. As quickly as Evan made it up the stairs to the third floor, he must have come right back down.

  The second floor landing window, located just over her head, popped up with a squeak and a crack and Evan stuck his head out. “Someone’s coming. Turn it off.”

  She shook her head no. “Best thing is to leave it and act normal. I’ll stay back here.”

  Then Evan turned as someone must have called him. “One minute” he told her, then disappeared, leaving the window open.

  Kayla heard the knock at the front door as loud as any of them. The house was only about a third as deep as it was wide. A single hidden door connected the front lobby to the back room the stairs climbed over. But she didn’t head through the house toward the front door. She heard Ivy’s voice piping up the closest, “I’ll get it.”

  Stepping back out of the way, Kayla strained to hear as she stood guard over her machine. She tried to put enough distance between her and it to hear what was happening over the constant, additive chug of the Whitney Machine and the generator. She only made out a few words here and there.

  It was a man at the door. He offered something to Ivy.

  Frowning, Kayla scanned her area, then ducked into the back room, sliding sideways until she could get a glimpse through the space where the door no longer quite met the wall. Another man in an expensive suit. More shiny shoes. This man was heavier and older than the last. He was less happy, less inquisitive, more demanding.

  He told Ivy to get the lady of the house—a term Kayla had not heard in quite a while. She wondered briefly if he was trying to sell them a vacuum cleaner. Then figured that would make life much too easy and that was therefore most likely the last thing he was interested in.

  On cat’s feet, she went back and forth. Outside to scan the area around the machine, to make sure no one had come with him. Inside, to try to glean bits of conversation.

  Reenie appeared quickly, “I’m the lady of the house. What can I help you with?”

  “Are you the owner?”

  “Yes.”

  Where Kayla would have demanded to know why this was important, Reenie had pushed a smile into her voice and probably onto her face and answered him point blank.

  “Then you are the owner of the properties and all the items herein.”

  This was not going well. She should be darting back outside to look at the machine, but Kayla couldn’t move.

  Reenie hadn’t spoken. Maybe a nod had sufficed, Kayla couldn’t tell.

  But she heard his voice loud and clear from where she had plastered herself to the space where the wall met the old hidden door at the back of the foyer.

  “I buy antiques. Diaries, clothing, machinery, diagrams, dishes and even sometimes broken pieces of things.”

  “We aren’t selling anything.” The smile remained in Reenie’s voice, so bright that even Kayla could hear it there. “I’m sure you’ve heard we are opening the plantation in several months as a museum.”

  “You’ll never survive as a museum. Your best bet is to sell to me.”

  “I don’t think so. Thank you.” Kayla imagined Reenie shutting the door in his face. But that wasn’t what happened.

  “I heard you were robbed a while ago and that the police located the thief but not the document.”

  Silence waited a beat and Kayla was torn between staying to listen and running outside and pulling her gun and waving it around to make sure her precious machine was okay. The lights were still on, so it was still running. But that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there, hadn’t snuck up to look it over, steal her improvements . . .

  She couldn’t move. Her indecision held her where she was.

  Reenie’s voice was quiet and Kayla strained to hear.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No ma’am. I’m pointing out that your finances aren’t sound and your security is lax and you’d be best off selling me your plow and your cotton gins and all the other treasures that are here. I’m sure you have other documents, diaries. I’ll pay for them. Others won’t.” His voice rumbled deep with the resonance of menace.

  Reenie’s didn’t. Louder now and full of steel, she offered a sugar-sweet threat of her own. “You, sir, are on my property uninvited. That’s trespassing. You’ve offered thinly veiled threats. Also illegal. The sheriff is aware of our recent break-in and is nearby. Sir, I think you would look just dashing in handcuffs. You have five minutes to not find out.”

  “I’ll get the things from this plantation. Either now or when you go bankrupt.”

  15

  The Overseer’s House

  Evan ate his breakfast while talking shop with the girls. Sometimes he felt odd being the only man. Somewhere deep inside he knew what he needed was a beer and a football game. But football wasn’t on yet, and the beer wasn’t the same with Reenie.

  He wasn’t ready to leave the others alone yet, and he couldn’t invite anyone over. It wasn’t that kind of a home, at least not yet. He hoped one day to have the Overseer’s remodeled to resemble something from the previous century, but function like the next. He wanted a room with a leather couch and a big TV and a mini-fridge for beer and cheese dip. Sadly, that day was a long way off, Evan knew. And he wasn’t relaxed enough to talk himself into believing it would come anytime soon.

  A week and a half had gone by in relative silence. The women were relaxing their guard. Evan could see it in the slow draining of tension from shoulders, the longer gaits, the way they focused on each other when they talked. They had definitely dropped their vigilance. So he upped his.

  He’d asked Kayla at one time about how she and Ivy were getting along. Did they watch out for each other, make sure there was protection nearby? Kayla said they did, that they didn’t even shower unless the other person was nearby and on watch. But Evan figured that may very well have followed the other practices to the wayside now too.

  Their last visitor had been the heavyset man in the suit. He had threatened. He spoke like he knew too much about the robbery, but he’d left when Reenie had threatened him back.

  Immediately following his departure, Kayla had conducted another sweep for bugs and found none on her initial visual inspection and none when she came back through with her radio frequency tester. She’d shrugged and called the man a well-dressed thug. She’d pointed out his similarity in dress to their first visitor, but also the lack of matching MO and the fact that half the adult males in America wore suits. Kayla wasn’t convinced the two visits were related.

  So Evan enjoyed his eggs even as the girls all got up. His mouth was full but he asked around the food, “Where you off to?”

  Kayla smiled. “Building number three!”

  Kayla had machined some of it herself, joining him in his shop several days last week. And she and Ivy had made another trip to Cleveland, picking up pieces from Charles.

  After having the pieces back for one day, Kayla had assembled the second Whitney Machine and was powering both the Overseer’s and the main house. Evan had no clue what she was going to do with the third one, but with eggs in his mouth he didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Reenie leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you for pulling down the attic ladder.”

  Then she and Ivy went down the hall to see what had been stashed in the space over their heads here. He didn’t expect any great treasures. And neither did they.

  The attic and findings in the big house were catalogued and finished. The wine cellar had given up two bottles of wine, one red, one white, both rancid. Evan was building their display case today. The myriad things in the atti
c had been sorted for the museum by quality, historical pertinence, and any proof of authenticity Reenie could find.

  Reenie had tasked Ivy with writing out the first drafts of the display tags while she spent the morning ordering a machine that would make a museum-quality sign. She wasn’t ready to order one, nor tell the world that they had one of only a few remaining antebellum sugar chests—a truly historic find. It was enough that they’d had to pay someone to build the outside displays for Ivy’s idea of showing where they’d dug stuff up.

  The attic in the Overseer’s was just a last-ditch effort to delay Reenie’s new tasks another day. She had to figure out how to make candles, lye soap, and hand lotions. Evan knew she was not looking forward to boiling a big vat of tallow in the late-August heat. But she had to do several batches—and do them well—before she could teach the skill, plus she needed enough candles to put around the house. She’d hoped the weather would cool off, but instead, it had kicked up again.

  He, on the other hand, was enjoying the small green shoots the heat had peeking through his tilled earth. People would be able to pick and gin cotton here at Hazelton House. There would even be a spot with a few spinning stations. But first he had to insulate and air-condition the upper floor of the barn. Maybe that’s where Kayla’s third machine would go.

  He was scrubbing his plate to put into the avocado colored dishwasher that did not actually seem to wash the dishes, but merely spit at them, when Reenie came back in. Grinning through the dust, she smiled. “Look what I found!”

  “We. We found it.” Ivy gave her a half-hearted frown.

  “We.” Reenie smiled back at Ivy, but Evan could tell it was forced. He didn’t think Ivy could.

  He and Reenie had been watching their historian like a hawk. But nothing had come of it. Reenie had even tried to play I Spy and check out Ivy’s phone. But she hadn’t found any incriminating evidence, only additional pictures of the items found in the house.

  Where he had just vacated the table, Reenie sat herself down with a nearly audible plop. The leather-bound pages she held made a noise well beyond the audible. Ivy thunked down opposite her with a nearly identical stack. Dust rose in small puffs but neither woman seemed to notice.

  Frowning, Evan looked at the stacks more closely. Each had dates inscribed across the front in scrolling, lyrical handwriting. “Ledgers?”

  Reenie nodded, her eyes alight. He’d never seen anyone get bright-eyed over ledgers, but she and Ivy both looked as though they’d found Midas’s own account books.

  He doubted there was anything in there besides dust, so he pushed a grin and gave them a half-hearted “Y’all have fun.” And with that he was out the door.

      

  Kayla tightened bolts and added grease to otherwise pristine gears. She didn’t sand or buff any of the edges. She didn’t have to. Charles had made these for her, and Charles did quality work.

  She’d sent some of the measurements by text and some by email. She’d left a few numbers out here and there and told him those over the phone. No one method contained everything Charles had needed and it had made her feel like a child playing at spy games. Again her paranoia superseded her reason. But the alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.

  Evan had mentioned that they’d gotten lax, but she disagreed.

  She was working in the barn, building the third machine on site while Evan created cases. She didn’t comment on the machine or its parts while she worked. The damn bugs would get nothing from her. It didn’t matter anyway. She found it particularly funny that someone had been stupid enough to put a listening device in a wood shop. She hoped the whine of the saw busted their eardrums.

  Her brother was putting together the frames of the cases, adding moldings that he’d found here in the barn whenever possible. He worked with dovetails and occasionally wooden pegs. Not all of his construction was original; he’d used hinges from the hardware store, and occasionally added a false latch at the front of the display, something he’d found, or that she had brought from the blacksmith’s or the carriage house. Then he pointed to her.

  She was on sanding duty.

  Yes, she had a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. She could construct a building. In fact, she was pretty damn sure she’d modified Eli Whitney’s design to create a true free energy machine. She’d figured out all the math except that shadow constant . . . but she was apparently also her brother’s apprentice and she was on sand-paper duty.

  The sand paper turned out to be an expensive version of the cheap foam sander blocks she sometimes got at the hardware store. For a moment, Kayla just stopped and ran her fingers over the surface; the grit was so fine that she almost couldn’t feel it.

  “Kay?” Evan’s voice broke her thoughts. “It doesn’t work from over there.” He pointed to the case he had just finished. Both tall and wide, it had a cleanly framed Plexiglas front. Inside there were two dowels near the top, pointing out at her. A shallow divot was smoothed into the top of each dowel. Two dresses would hang here, on the hangers Reenie had found and Ivy had confirmed as originals.

  The dresses were long; luckily, the people had been short. So Kayla was able to reach the top and smooth the whole thing from where it stood.

  About fifteen legal type post-it flags graced the surface on various sides. Evan had tagged any spots he’d found in his last run. Kayla knew it was for him, not her. She wouldn’t miss. She had a pattern, and she’d get all of it.

  It was two hours later that she declared it done. The box—already basically finished when he’d given it to her—now was smooth as a baby’s butt and glowed with a low sheen from a thorough cloth polishing. They made a good team. Even Reenie did not believe in cutting corners. Kayla had calculated how long it would take to get the plantation up and running. Then she’d calculated how long it would take to do it right. They were doing it right, she thought, as she ran her hand along the edge where the back joined the front. Thanks to Evan’s very excellent workmanship, the box appeared to have no seams. Hopefully, no one would feel tempted to break in.

  Finishing the job shattered her reverie and she looked up at Evan. “Lunch?”

  He agreed, nearly finished with the stain he was rubbing in. He lovingly pushed the liquid into the wood, down to the last corner and smiled. “We shouldn’t be in here for a while. That stain is serious. After lunch, we can add the wattle to the slave cabin.”

  “It’s not wattle.” She deadpanned.

  “It’s our wattle.” He grinned. He’d read up on the original grout then discarded what he’d learned and created his own and deemed it “wattle.” Kayla was not amused by his historical inaccuracy. At least it looked right when it dried, even if it was definitely remastered for the twenty-first century slave cabin, a fact that Kayla found quite ironic.

  “It’s not wattle. It’s ‘Evan’s goop’.”

  “Um. Kay? Don’t call it that.”

  She frowned at him as they hiked up the hill. Plucked at her shirt, as though that would make the heat lessen. “What? Oh.” She sighed. “You have a dirty mind, Evan.”

  “Yeah, well yours is maybe just a little too clean.”

  They talked about how to do the next layer of wattle, and though it was beneath her skills, Kayla was looking forward to it. When they were kids, their parents often tasked them with jobs together. As an adult, Kayla could see it for what it was—a ploy to keep Evan’s watchful eyes on her—but something about this task, about the things here at the plantation, though they weren’t the things she would prefer to do with her life if she could just choose, were comforting in the way peanut butter and jelly were.

  They chatted about nonessential things as they approached the back of the main house, letting the bug pick up their menial conversation. Evan even motioned Kayla into her usual nonstop Aspy mode when she started ragging him again about the wattle. Let them enjoy listening to that, if anyone even was.

  Because she’d started, it was hard to stop. She was c
ritiquing his choice of neither sticking with the original recipe nor for going straight for a good everyday grout, but having to mix and test his own blend. She wandered right into the kitchen and practically into Evan’s back.

  Reenie and Ivy were at the table. To say they were sitting at it would be a mistake.

  Books where draped across each other, open to various pages. The old ledgers were leather bound and likely hand stitched, they didn’t stack or hold form, and they appeared to almost melt across the Formica.

  Kayla had time to take all this in, as did Evan. The two women were heatedly debating a timetable, but not against each other, more like on top of each other.

  “No, this was in 1825. That’s too late if you’re following the other time frame.”

  “That was a fast turnaround. What could have done that?” Ivy grabbed one of the books on the table and started flipping through pages. “I don’t see any notes on it . . .”

  “Let me look.”

  Reluctantly, she handed the book to Reenie, but immediately picked up another one and began reading and muttering.

  Still neither of them noticed Evan and Kayla standing there.

  But as she watched, Kayla realized the two were incredibly focused. They were so deep in whatever they were doing that they didn’t notice anything around them. They were acting as though they had Aspergers.

  For a brief moment she smiled, maybe now they would know what it was like to be her. She was like this far more frequently than they ever would be, but at least they would be able to relate. She would point out what they had done.

  Then she frowned. She didn’t do this. Reenie and Ivy were in it together. Kayla had never shared her drive with someone, and an acute pang of jealousy hit hard enough to force the word out of her mouth before she realized it would startle the crap out of them. “Hey!”

  They both jumped, Ivy reaching for her gun and getting her fingers around the grip before she grabbed her heart and let her breath gush out. Reenie sank to her chair looking like someone had set a firecracker off in her ear.