I might get at least a Saturday night with Mackenzie. Jake would be with his father or mother, the paperwork on the con from Kansas finished, and the detective at home. At this point, I’d even share him with the computer.
“You said Tea Roederer. Tea isn’t short for Margaret, is it?”
“Theodora.”
“Then the question remains, who’s Margaret?”
“Maybe she’s the woman who works there. The housekeeper. I think Margaret was her name. She was the boys’ friend. Jake was probably afraid to call Mrs. Roederer directly.”
When I leaned back, I felt the bulge in my pocket, and I took out the china pieces that had caused the rift with Tea. I held the St. Bernard on my right palm, the smiling cat on my left. Expensive bibelots. I’d seen them in catalogues. Several hundred each, and the Roederers had tabletops full.
“The Cheshire Cat,” Loren said, glancing at my left hand.
“No—there’s an entire cat here,” I said. “The Cheshire Cat was only a grin.”
“Eventually. But I’ll bet that’s what it is, with that gigantic smile. Do you think Jake made the connection?”
“He didn’t say.” I looked at the little figure with the big smile and felt as if I were being sucked in between its square teeth, pulled into the maw of something I didn’t understand at all.
I closed my hand around the cat until I couldn’t see it. Fatigue, I told myself. That’s all my vibrating nerve endings meant. I gave Loren the remaining directions, then closed my eyes and tried to doze.
Eighteen
The house by daylight was as spectacular and inviting as it had been by moonlight. We paused at the base of the long driveway, across from where first the effigy of Neddy Roederer and then the body of Harvey Spiers had burned. There were still remnants of the yellow Crime Scene tape that had roped off the area. Nothing else was left besides charcoal blocks, formerly known as books. We looked instead at Glamorgan’s sun-warmed stones, the old trees protecting it from the elements, the acres of wooded countryside surrounding it. This house made me understand the point of money.
And I definitely understood why Jake, boxed in by walls the color of depression, in a home from which all joy and sensual delight was removed, would consider this place heaven. It had the comforts of home—as long as you didn’t mean his home. I put the Limoges boxes in my pockets. He could return them today, close that chapter.
I thought Tea Roederer would understand what the “borrowings” had been about. She certainly understood the power of beauty. Proof was on her walls and tabletops and in the many gifts of the Roederer Foundation. Also, she had struck me as a woman who listened carefully, tried to hear what really was being said. She even tolerated Griffin and Jake’s cyberspace jargon, about which she admitted knowing precious little. The important thing was that she paid attention, which must have provided a delicious reprieve for Jake’s vocal cords, so long used to shouting into a void.
I tried to think what it would be like to be Jake. I took my recently shaken faith in what I thought I knew about my mother, something that felt like a betrayal by omission and stung just a bit, and I set it alongside Jake’s family.
There was no equating the two, or the pain they could cause. I had lost nothing except a certain smug assurance, because of unburied historical data that was actually irrelevant to my life. Jake’s loss was real, ongoing and massive.
“Some place.” Loren’s tone was a mix of awe and resentment. I could almost read his thoughts. No wonder his son had opted not to wait for him. Poor Loren couldn’t compete with a castle.
“It’s not too late to get him back,” I said.
“Of course not. Once we find out where he is—once he sees us, he’ll come back with—”
“I mean into a real relationship. With you, wherever he lives. I mean his affection, his trust.”
Loren Ulrich set his jaw and pursed his mouth with resentment. I had known too many others who, like him, suffered from Chronic Fatigue of the Heart and Will. Not a contagious condition, but definitely unhealthy for people close to the infected party, and it is my opinion that carriers are dangerous to children and should be quarantined or, still better, neutered.
“He’s your son, and he’s a terrific young man.” Still no response. I changed the subject, opted for pragmatism. “You can park over there on that turnaround,” I said. That was the only suggestion I made to which he responded.
I could see his disappointment when he met the lady of the house. She was not up to the standards of her surroundings. Tea Roederer looked haggard, and while she was too polite to say so, she obviously was not glad to see us and probably not desirous of seeing anybody.
Usually, her plainness was softened by her energy and graciousness, but not today. With fatigue and grief her only makeup, and with her reserved and chilly greeting, she seemed a poorly chiseled stone carving.
“I’m so sorry about your husband,” I said. “I liked him very much. It’s a great loss to the community as well.”
She nodded, acknowledging that I had said something polite. Her face arranged itself in a blank, patrician expression that managed to say I would be tolerable if I kept my mouth closed.
Silently, she ushered us into the entry hall. I glanced up at the spot where the glorious chandelier had hung. Only a hole in the plaster now. Someone had swept up the shattered crystals and carted the remains off.
Tea Roederer’s glance followed mine, and she bit her bottom lip. Then she looked at me directly. “What is it you want?” she asked. I wondered if she meant to be rude, or she was simply beyond niceties. And where was Margaret? Why was the exhausted and grieving lady of the house answering bell-ringers at a time like this?
“Mrs. Roederer, this is Loren Ulrich. Jake’s father.”
She studied him. Looking for resemblances, perhaps. Or waiting for something else.
I studied her as she studied him. Makeup would do wonders to reduce her growing resemblance to Young Abe Lincoln. And somebody should tell her to chuck the wig affectation. Hire an in-house hairdresser if she couldn’t be bothered blow-drying. The thing on her head, askew, was ridiculous. A nice enough style, and surely the best hair money could buy—but on a tilt, obviously fake. It took a lot of misdirected money and energy to have a bad wig day.
“I was supposed to pick Jake up at the station, but I was delayed, and when I got there, Jake had gone with someone he referred to as Aunt Margaret.”
Tea Roederer’s eyebrows rose and her austere and unadorned face softened into something near a smile. “Aunt Margaret, indeed,” she murmured. “I assume neither you nor your wife has a sister named Margaret.” Her voice, and the attitude propelling it, in contrast to her face, hair, and gestures, was remarkably unruffled. Cool, calm, self-possessed. She’d be a good person in an emergency.
“I don’t have a wife,” Loren said. My estimate of his IQ dropped. “Oh,” he said, too late to redeem himself. “You mean my ex-wife.” He shook his head. “No sisters, and not Harvey Spiers’ either. He might have family, but they’d be in Canada most likely, and even if they came down for the funeral, which isn’t even scheduled yet because of the investigation, how would they know where Jake—”
“Margaret Peek,” Tea said. “The housekeeper. The boys are her good friends, despite the fact that Margaret’s a black woman in her late fifties who knows even less than I do about computers and whatever else obsesses those boys. And isn’t it interesting, don’t you think, that he told the police she was his aunt? Aunt would be an insensitive term to use, wouldn’t it? Toward a middle-aged black woman. In movies, bigots talk in that dismissive way. But I suppose it would be difficult explaining the relationship in any more direct manner.”
“Then Jake called her here?” I asked.
Tea Roederer tilted her head side to side in a speculative, “maybe, maybe not” manner. “Margaret answers the telephone, so perhaps. She’s actually on vacation today, but she came in to help clean up some of the mess. She’s o
ff now, finally. Everybody is. A few vacation weeks while I get away from here.” She pressed the heel of a hand against her temple, as if here gave her an excruciating headache. “If Jake called Margaret, then I suppose it must have been here, because I doubt that he’d have her family’s number.”
“Mrs. Roederer,” I said, “do you know where Jake went with Margaret?”
She looked startled. “Of course. I assumed you knew, too.”
“Where?” Loren asked. “We don’t, so where was it?”
“Here, of course. Why else would you come by?”
“When did he leave?” Loren asked. “Where did he go, do you know?” There were moments when the man sounded like an actual father. I wondered if there were ways to fan those small embers.
“Yes,” Tea said, “to several of your questions. He didn’t leave at all. He’s still here.”
I couldn’t decide if she’d been oblivious to our sense of urgency, if we hadn’t made our concern clear, or whether for lack of any other pastime, she’d simply been toying with us.
“He came to tell me why Griffin couldn’t have run over Edward. To set my mind at rest on that point.”
Just as I’d thought. So Griffin was still in trouble, but not the very biggest kind.
“The discussion of Griffin led to many topics,” Tea said. “Including—I hope this doesn’t upset you—my accusations against him, to which he admitted his guilt and attempted to explain about the Limoges box. The cat, you know.”
I reached into my pocket. I could return her stolen goods right now. But Jake should be the one. I took my hand out, empty.
“I told him to keep it,” she said.
Them, shouldn’t it be? Keep them?
“As a symbol, a souvenir.”
Of what?
“He thought Griffin might have left a clue as to his destination in their hideaway. With all our bedrooms—Griffin has his own recreation room upstairs—the boys treated a hole of a closet in the basement like a clubhouse, the kind kids had in old movies. A place to take things apart, build them, go online, Lord knows what. They spent a lot of time down there.”
Less time than she thought, I bet, remembering Jake’s reference to sneaking out by the back stairs.
“And he’s there now?”
She nodded. “Seems to feel Griffin’s running away might be half a test, a serious prank, but that in his heart, he wants to come back. That may be wishful thinking. I know the boys are close and Jake must be experiencing a sense of loss. But Griffin does not have Jake’s common sense, more’s the pity. The school we found him is excellent. And it would give him stability, particularly now, when we—when I—will be moving, and he’d have to readjust to another school in any case.”
“You’re moving?”
“I can’t stay here. This has become…bitter. I’ve told the entire staff to take two weeks off, close up the house while I’m gone. I suspect that will become a permanent condition.”
“It’s supposedly not a good idea to make decisions right after you’ve suffered a great loss and are…” Her raised-eyebrow expression of incredulity stopped me. Who was I to give Tea Roederer advice?
“Where will you go?” Loren asked, as if he hadn’t noticed the deep freeze that had greeted my intrusions into her private life.
“Anywhere but here.”
I wanted to say how much it grieved me that this city that was so profoundly indebted to the Roederers now felt inhospitable. But her expression froze me out. It wasn’t my place to offer such sentiments—I didn’t have the credentials to equate my feelings with hers, to presume with my betters. Some horrid ancestral worldview that last served a purpose in the Middle Ages had been reactivated by the manor house and its mistress.
“Forgive me,” Tea said. “I don’t mean to sound harsh. This has been the most dreadful—and talking about it makes it worse. I appreciate your concern.”
We nodded. Loren cleared his throat. “Jake,” he prompted, bringing us back to our purpose. “His mother is worried sick.”
Tea Roederer nodded. Her mood had softened, her attitude toward us warmed. “Yes, of course, but please excuse the mustiness and clutter. It is a basement, after all.”
It was humorous, seeing the aggrieved aristocrat lapse into a flustered and apologetic housewife-mode. Her basement could be any damned way it wanted to be. It was a Roederer basement and I was sure that its discards and excess—even its trash—would be exceptionally fine.
“Follow me,” she said.
We were led to a cramped landing at the back of the house. The fabled Back Stairs, route of surreptitious expeditions. The landing ended at a heavy door with a troublesome knob. Tea juggled the key in its latch, mistakenly locked the door, and muttered, “Sorry.” Finally she unlocked and opened it. “Be careful on the steps,” she said, as she worked the lock. “They’re sturdy, but the whole place gives me the willies. I have a phobia about spiders, and despite all good efforts, we do get them down there.” She shuddered. “I never go down those stairs except in dire emergency, and we’ve never had a sufficiently dire one.”
Has never done laundry, is how I translated that. Has someone else pull the circuit breaker if a fuse blows. Is rich enough to have parts of her house she never visits and household functions she refuses to know about.
“Downstairs, there’s a sort of hallway off to the right of the laundry and heating area. Down it a few steps you’ll probably find Jake glued to a computer monitor. Forgive me for not leading you to him, but as I said, I simply don’t.”
“No problem. Thanks,” we both said.
“I’m going to close the door behind you,” she said, “if that’s all right. Those spiders, you know.”
As if arachnids, seeing the open door, would make a run for it. Nevertheless, we said everything was fine and walked downstairs. The treads weren’t rickety or dangerously unprotected, as in so many old basements. They were solid wood with a decent-enough handrail, and I didn’t know what the fluttery-housewife fuss had been about.
The open space into which we descended was unfinished, with pipes crisscrossing the ceiling, and large mechanisms—heaters of home and water, the guts of the house above it—bulking in corners. From what I could see, it was less overstuffed than most basements, but then, the Roederers had spent most of their lives in transit, and would have disposed of the redundant. So while there were a few trunks visible and at least one upholstered dining chair with a sprung seat propped against a wall, mostly it was concrete flooring and naked lightbulbs. Despite the wealth above us and its relative cleanliness, the basement managed to have a dingy subterranean ambience, with the lightbulbs losing the struggle against architectural gloom. I spotted only two windows in the large open area, and those were high up and small.
We walked into the hallway, which was lined with closed storage, and eventually reached a side room that looked like it, too, had once been a closet. Tea had been right. Inside the small room, Jake intently studied a computer screen. I could see the photograph of a man, plus the image of a newspaper that flipped pages as Jake clicked the mouse.
The room was makeshift, and in contrast to the open area we’d just left, knee-deep in clutter. Griffin and Jake had apparently used this place not only as hideout/clubhouse, but also as Dumpster. Sweaters, baseball hats, books, a boom box, CDs, a chair in need of reupholstery, newspapers, fast-food wrappers and containers, a printer.
Loren stepped over the discarded pages of a joke-a-day calendar, avoiding treading directly on them, as if following a magic incantation. “Jake,” he said softly, “you gave me quite a scare.”
Jake whirled around, eyes as startled as if we’d set off a siren under his chair.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Didn’t expect to see you here!” He looked shaken and pale, although it could have been the dim light cast by the computer screen.
“I thought you’d be glad to see me,” Loren said.
“I am, Dad.”
&nbs
p; “I wish you’d have waited for me, then.”
I needed to dilute the father-son tension or we’d all get stuck in it. “Are there all that many spiders down here?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not over-fond of them myself.” That was an exaggeration. I am not afraid of spiders. Not much, anyway.
“Spiders?” Jake shook his head. “Why?”
“Mrs. Roederer. Isn’t that why she never comes down here?”
“Where’d you get that idea? She comes down. She stores some of her clothes down here, and Griffin and me”—I didn’t think it a good time to stop and correct his grammar—“spent an hour with her here last week trying to explain what the Web was. Maybe she meant afraid of the Web, not spiders.”
I let it go, but not far. It hovered like a spider on a thread in front of my eyes. Why would she lie about something so inconsequential?
Loren seemed too far out of it to even notice the inconsistency. He leaned over his son’s shoulder, studying the multicolored screen.
“Can you show me that conference?” he asked Jake. “The one you got your column from?”
“I didn’t get the column from it, Dad. I wrote the column about it. There’s a difference.” Despite his grumbles, he clicked his way around the screen toward his father’s requested destination. “Incredible, isn’t it?” he said.
“Boggles the mind, eh?”
Eh. That Canadian trademark. The first time I was in this house, it was a topic of conversation. Harvey Spiers used it and Neddy Roederer commented on it. And now they were both dead. But surely not for the sin of regional speech patterns. Nobody had clearly related the two deaths, but both were dead, and they’d known each other, or at least, Harvey said they had. I was sure there was a link.
The Bluest Blood Page 20
