The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  “Speculation. Rumor.”

  “I’ll take whatever you have.”

  “It may prove false,” Espiranzo said.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “It could be that he came to realize he would not, could not, bring us down. That he could not only profit by joining us, but use us, push us in directions the Directory had intentionally avoided for a long time. Generations.”

  “Such as?”

  “Not for me to say.”

  “Ways my father objected to.”

  Espiranzo said nothing.

  “Lowry, too?”

  “Mr. Moriarty, sir—”

  “I have evidence. I’ve followed Lowry’s blood trail.”

  “What’s this?”

  “To the school observatory.” James hesitated, debating how much to share. “Are you . . . does the Directory know that Hildebrandt lives in a fixed-up part of that ruin over there? Across, on the other hill?”

  “He keeps a retreat there he uses rarely. His home is in New Haven. The Directory allows this. It was your great-grandfather’s estate. The Directory restored an apartment.”

  “What about his time before the FBI?” James said. “Earlier.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “It’s possible, I reckon.”

  “Find out. Where he was born. Raised. School. Who he hung out with.”

  “I will try.”

  “Soon. I need it soon!” James then apologized. He rephrased his request. “I’d appreciate that information as soon as it works out for you.”

  “Understood.” Espiranzo stepped closer. “How is it you avoided me not once, but twice? I watched your dorm all night.”

  “I’d rather not say.” James swallowed dryly. He wasn’t going to lie to Espiranzo.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE NEXT WEEKEND, I WENT TO THE CAPE house with Lexie and my roommate, Natalie. James said he was coming, too, but at the last minute he changed his mind and headed to Boston, saying he’d make it to the Cape by dinner. That meant Natalie, Lexie, and I had to go to Lexie’s parents’ summer house nearby in West Dennis, where a house sitter could “watch” us. So demeaning to have babysitters at our ages. If brothers were born to make sisters angry, James was doing his best.

  James arrived at our Beacon Hill home by bus and taxi, kissed Lois hello, and said he had an errand to run. Lois pointed out he’d made her late to the Cape. She offered to take him in order to speed things up.

  James declined.

  If brothers were born to make guardians angry, James was doing his best.

  “You will tell me exactly where you are going, young man. And you will allow me to follow your phone, or you’re not going anywhere.”

  James calculated how to satisfy Lois’s control-freak impulses, while still doing what he had to do. “Yes, ma’am.”

  One of the troubling changes in my brother was that he didn’t seem to care about how other people felt. I didn’t understand the change. I didn’t want to admit to myself it was happening. I couldn’t bring myself to face that my brother was hardening into a selfish, unsympathetic creature—not even a human being, but a creature. The evidence was there. Actions do speak louder than words. But when you love someone as much as I loved my brother, you make excuses for the other person, you tell yourself it’s only a momentary change, that of course it isn’t permanent. The more they lie to you, the more you lie to yourself. Pretty soon it’s like a pair of tangled earbuds.

  James hurried around the house. His room. The kitchen for a snack. The basement. The library. Lois couldn’t follow him around like a mother hen. Instead, she waited in her small office off the kitchen for James to tell her when he was leaving and when he’d be back.

  “Coffee shop. Library. Back. And then to the Cape. OK by you?”

  “Off you go,” she said, giving him twenty dollars and reminding him to use his ride-sharing app, not the city taxis.

  Lois kept a computer window open allowing her to watch the movement of James’s phone. He stuck to his plan. At one point the location software put him on the other side of the wall from the coffee shop. But that wasn’t too surprising. The software was far from pinpoint accurate.

  James arrived at the jewelry store counter, trying to look taller than he was. The woman was younger than Lois, but old enough to be a mom. Her hair was brushed thin, her makeup overly applied.

  “May I help you?” Her voice sounded like air leaking from a balloon.

  “I’d like to see the manager, please.”

  “I can help you. Would you like to purchase or exchange?”

  “Exchange, please. But really, I’d like to see the manager.”

  “That’s fine.” She sounded horribly condescending. “Allow me to collect just a little more information, if that’s all right?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “What metal is it you would like to exchange and in what quantity?”

  An annoyed James reached into his sagging jacket’s right pocket and hoisted the item onto the high counter.

  A kilogram brick of pure gold.

  Father’s treasure.

  James, Sherlock, and I had discovered a hidden room off Father’s office containing fine art, ornate jewelry, and dozens of heavy gold bars, each worth a fortune. Some of the valuables, including much of the gold, had paperwork to prove its authenticity.

  Several months earlier, fearing the treasure might be stolen, James had told me to move it. To hide it. James being James, he’d also advised me where and how to hide it—no easy task. I’d done as he’d asked.

  The woman pursed her lips, clearly believing James was showing her a replica of a gold bar, not the real thing. “If I may?” Her eyes darted between the gold bar and James. “Hmm. We will of course need the—”

  James produced paperwork accounting for the purchase of far more gold bars than this one. It had been cataloged along with all of Father’s treasure we’d found.

  “If you could wait a minute, please? I need to get the manager.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” said James.

  The manager, a Mr. Clarence Offel, wore a poorly pressed shirt, a thin tie, and a sour expression. He, too, studied the bar, including the writing that was stamped into it. He read the receipt. He typed something into the computer.

  “And you are?” he said.

  “Growing a little impatient,” James said. The man smirked. “I am the owner of the bar. James Moriarty. It was left to me by my dead father, and I want to sell it to you. For money. Cash.”

  “Are you aware of the value of this bar, James Moriarty?”

  “Thirty-seven thousand dollars. Give or take.”

  “Give or take. Yes. Correct. You are a minor. You must be eighteen years or older for us to do business with you. I apologize. We also must report any sale resulting in the payout of over ten thousand dollars cash to the Internal Revenue Service. Such a transaction as the one you request would most typically be executed in the sum of nine thousand dollars cash, and the remaining balance deposited by wire into an existing account or brokerage. A certified check can also be issued by our bank in that amount. Do you understand?”

  “You’re saying you won’t do this for me.”

  “Allow me to make a call. It won’t take but a minute. I will need some form of photo identification.”

  “My passport.” James produced it.

  “Excellent. I won’t be but a few minutes. Please, have a seat.”

  James didn’t want a seat. He wanted thirty-seven thousand dollars. He’d considered sawing off a chunk, but that seemed destructive and maybe even stupid, so he’d brought the whole thing. He now wished he hadn’t.

  He waited. And waited. Twice, the woman behind the counter told him it would be any minute.

  “I’m on a schedule,” James said the second time the woman called over to him through the nasal-sounding speaker. She grinned, apparently getting a laugh out of that.

  The
teller buzzed the front door open. Lois walked through the door.

  “Oh,” James said.

  Lois stared down at the boy disapprovingly as the manager appeared from the back room.

  “This is the last time I’m doing business with you,” James called out to the teller and manager.

  Lois walked James outside to have a chat. They got through the “What is the meaning of this?” as well as James’s answer. They found their way into a heated argument, during which James refused to tell her where he’d gotten the bar and reminded her that she was only his supervising guardian, not his legal guardian—and only because first his father and now Mr. Lowry, his legal guardian, had died. On top of that, he needed the money—admittedly, not all of it at once—to carry out what he termed “research,” and to make a donation to the school’s theater department for an upcoming play the school was putting on.

  “Two thousand, now,” he said. “The full amount gets split between me and Moria. The lawyers can keep whatever is needed to pay taxes. My one condition: we don’t tell Moria. Not now. End of summer, sure. But not now. When she gets curious, bad things happen. She can’t know.”

  Lois looked like she looked when London or Bath spilled the kitchen trash and spread it all over the floor. “You will make no conditions, young man.”

  “Fine. Then I’m going to request a new guardian.”

  “No, you’re not.” She sounded a tiny bit concerned.

  “Lois . . . this is about Father. You need to help me. That’s as much as I can tell you.”

  He might as well have punched her in the face.

  “Don’t think for a moment any law firm is going to hand a fourteen-year-old thirty-some thousand dollars.”

  “I only get half. Two thousand right now. It’s your decision, Lois.” James offered her the same look he’d given me recently. A look that reeked of darkness and brooding. A look that warned of a different creature within. I knew how gut-wrenching that look could be. It told you he meant what he said. It told you he was ready for what you might throw at him. More importantly it was a look of warning, and one to take seriously.

  An hour later, Lois and James sat down at our family bank, where the manager treated the Moriartys like VIPs. Two accounts were opened, one for me—Lois and I needed to sign some forms later. In addition, James had a bank check made out to the school for a gift of one thousand dollars. To Lois’s stern objections, he left with the remaining cash in a small envelope.

  “No alcohol. No drugs,” Lois said, once they were back in the car. “No cigarettes.”

  “Please! I already promised.”

  “Again.”

  “I promise. I swear. I would never ever think about that sh— stuff. My mother was on drugs, right?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “She walked out on us. She couldn’t have been normal.”

  “There’s no reason to think drugs were involved.”

  “Well, anyway, I hate drugs. The money’s for some stuff I want. Electronics and computers. You know how expensive all that is.”

  “Your trust will buy you computers, and you know it. Cash? If you misspend that money, if you lie to me, I will send you to military school just as your father threatened. I wouldn’t be too confident that that’s not in his will somewhere,” Lois said.

  James shut up after that. An hour later, he was staring out the window as they drove to the Cape. He couldn’t look at Lois. Military school! Yes, Father had threatened James. But Lois hadn’t been in the room.

  So how could she possibly know that?

  CHAPTER 26

  JAMES AND LOIS ARRIVED LATE BECAUSE OF CAPE traffic. Instead of grocery shopping, Lois took us to dinner at a fish-and-chips place on the beach with a view of the ocean. I like the tartar sauce better than the fish, and I like my French fries with vinegar, which grosses out most of the kids at Baskerville. Their loss. What struck me about the dinner was how normal we were. No drama. Some shared laughter. Good food. Gorgeous view. Other families around us. The smell of suntan lotion. It reminded me how dramatic everything was at school, how the real world was just families eating fish-and-chips. How laughter could change things so quickly. Make friends out of enemies. James and I reconnected at that dinner, no matter how briefly. We were “us” and even Lexie and Natalie were “us.” Even Lois.

  Later, when Lois singled me out to help her make up a bed, I took it as a hint that she wanted to speak to me alone. It might have been the only time I didn’t complain about being asked to do something like make a bed.

  Lexie was given the Frigate Bird, a room with one of the best views of the water. It was done in soft blues and white linen, seascape art on the walls, and a bathroom tile floor done as a compass. I loved Frigate Bird, but my chosen room was the Starfish and always would be.

  The linen snapped as Lois sent it across in the air for me to catch. We began smoothing and tucking.

  “I searched your father’s fireplace, as you asked.”

  “And?”

  “Only the key. I left it in place.”

  “Nothing?”

  “The key. That was all. Why did you ask me to look?”

  “Just curious if I’d missed something. Thanks for leaving the key. It opens a drawer in Father’s desk, but it’s empty.”

  “I see.”

  I suspected Lois had probably figured that much out. She was a curious, if quiet, woman. She had been Father’s secretary and our nanny since before Mother had walked out. James and I both knew that she’d cared deeply for Father. She’d taken his death as hard as anyone. We loved and feared her nearly as much as we had Ralph. But where Ralph had been funny and joyful, Lois was more reserved. It wasn’t a fault. It was just who she was.

  I assumed she was lying about leaving the key in the fireplace, but strangely it didn’t bother me. I didn’t believe for a second that she’d have decoded everything the way Sherlock had. And even if I was wrong, we’d moved everything of importance from Father’s secret room, so it didn’t much matter.

  “Your father told you about the key?”

  “Only that it was there and that it opened the drawer. He was mysterious about it. I was only to open it if he went missing. Strange thing to ask me to do. But of course . . .” I couldn’t say the next part. I could barely admit to myself he was gone. To say it aloud was still too difficult.

  “Of course,” Lois said, knowing what I had been about to say.

  “And it’s empty. So, it didn’t matter anyway.”

  “I see.”

  “You look worried.”

  “It’s all so troubling.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And now Ralph.” I hesitated. “Do you think it wasn’t an accident?”

  “What on earth, Moria? What a thing to suggest. He was driving. The car crashed. Leave his soul be.” Lois was also religious.

  “It’s just . . . I don’t know.” We were on to the pillowcases. I found them tricky. Lois tucked one under her chin in order to pull the case around the pillow. I was trying to stuff the pillow into the case, but just ended up chasing it around the bed.

  “Acceptance is important to resolving our grief. Things happen. Tens of thousands of people lose their lives in car accidents every year. Not one of their survivors can make any sense of it, just as we can’t make sense of losing Ralph.”

  “First Father, then Ralph and Mr. Lowry. Lexie’s father. Is that supposed to be coincidence? Do you really think that’s possible?”

  We were done making the bed. Lois fluffed everything and smoothed the cover a final time.

  The look she gave me told me not to ask such questions. Questions she couldn’t answer.

  “You and James, you’re so young. You shouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”

  “Don’t leave us, Lois.” I started crying. I hadn’t felt it coming. It hit me with no warning.

  She wrapped me in her arms and held me more tightly than I could ever remember. It felt so deliciously good. I hadn’t be
en held like that. Maybe ever. Not that I could remember. Maybe it was just the privacy of only the two of us. Maybe it was the thought of losing such precious people so quickly. Maybe it felt as good to Lois as it did to me. But we stayed like that for a long time. Not long enough for me.

  I wish it had never ended.

  CHAPTER 27

  SOCKS DISAPPEAR IN THE LAUNDRY. TOILET paper rolls run out unexpectedly. Lids don’t fit on plastic containers for leftovers. Keys vanish. Chargers go missing. I had grown used to so many inexplicable inconveniences. The reverse was occasionally true: a missing pair of pants would show up. A deleted file wasn’t deleted after all. Something lost would be found.

  But how was I to explain a photograph materializing inside my backpack? Starfish is an ocean-view bedroom done in sand colors with an underwater mural on the walls facing my bed. It is cluttered with all my beloved stuffed animals that I was too embarrassed to keep in my room on Beacon Hill, but never would consider getting rid of. A small, simple table at the window and a ladder-back cane chair faced the beach, providing me with a place to write in my diary, something I did more of at the Cape house than in Boston. My backpack sat on the floor next to the table. Zipped up, the way I always left it, because once, a long time ago, a big, hairy spider had climbed out of it, causing me to scream and later to change my underwear. The spider could have been James’s doing. But I didn’t think he had anything to do with the photograph. Lois, maybe, though I didn’t know when she might have managed.

  The colors in the photograph had faded to where they looked drawn by hand. It was mostly dark, a disease creeping in from the four corners. Didn’t matter, because the action was at its center. A sticker in the shape of a red arrow pointed to a car across the street (or a lamppost, maybe). I had no interest in it.

  It was the car in the foreground that intrigued me. The sidewalk and street I recognized as being out the front door of our Beacon Hill home. A younger Ralph stood holding open the car’s backseat door. I sank into the chair as I understood that the other man was Father, the person whose arm he held, Mother.