“Obituary,” said Keir, like he was trying to figure out how some strange fruit tasted.
“It’s something they write after someone dies,” I said.
“I know what an obituary is,” said Keir. “It’s just we didn’t have much use for such a thing in the flophouse. The queen bee never allowed the jumper to come through the gates.”
“Who’s the jumper?” said Natalie. “A volleyball player? I’ve been thinking of joining the volleyball team.”
“The jumper is what my mam called Death himself,” said Keir. “In the château we could hear him rattling away, calling our names, but out he stayed. Though I guess he found those two all right.”
“Best friends dead in house fire,” said Natalie.
Barnabas was sitting in the back of the bus, his dark eyes scanning the aisle and streets, ever the protector. We had asked him to sit with us, but he’d declined. “I think it is better for everyone if I stay at a distance, Mistress Elizabeth,” he said. “Danger can come from any direction.” Even though his face didn’t crack into a smile, I think he was enjoying the intrigue. My mother had been doubtful about this whole Saturday adventure until I told her Barnabas was coming along.
“When the obituary talked about the families of the dead boys,” continued Natalie, “it said Travis had a sister named Pili. That’s how I found it online. But it didn’t explain why she was trying to kill you.”
“Maybe she just didn’t like your looks,” I said to Keir.
“What’s wrong with my looks?”
“Were you winking?”
“Or maybe there’s a story behind the deaths that explains it all,” said Natalie, “something tragic and full of horror. The articles told the basic facts, but there were gaps and I have questions, so many questions. It seems the more I learn about something, the more questions I have. I guess I’m funny like that.”
“You’re not funny like that in Mr. Armbruster’s class,” I said.
“Truth is, Lizzie, I don’t really learn much in there.”
“Who’s going to be the one to tell Mr. Armbruster the sad news?” said Keir.
“He’ll be crushed,” I said.
“When you guys are done laughing,” said Natalie as the bus slowed, “maybe we can start digging.”
“For bones?” I said as I stood for our stop.
She smiled slyly. “Why not?”
I turned to Keir. “I told you she’s a bulldog.”
When we hit the street, Natalie let her phone guide us through the neighborhood of tidy streets and small houses. Above us the kettle of vultures wheeled through the sky, and behind us Barnabas walked with his hands clasped behind his back. It was quite a little army trailing after our ace private eye, Natalie Delgado, out to learn the story of the girl with the wooden stake. And now you’re trailing after Natalie, too, as she makes her way across a ragged lawn and onto the rotting front porch of a little gray house, where she rings the doorbell.
Brrrring. Brrrrring.
There were cobwebs beneath the porch roof, and the shutter on the window beside the door was halfway to falling off. The house was dark and mournful, as if a funeral had just taken place. Natalie gave me a worried look as she waited for an answer. She rang again.
Brrrring.
Nothing. Until we heard the slight vibration of someone approaching the door.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice, muffled by the still-closed door. “What do you want?”
“Mrs. Johnstone?” said Natalie.
“She’s not here,” said the voice. “And she doesn’t have any money, so don’t be coming back.”
“We don’t want any money,” said Natalie. “We just want to talk.”
A moment later the door opened slightly and a woman older than my mother, thin with dark skin and drawn features, appeared in the crack. “Why, you’re just children,” she said, seemingly confused. “What do you all want from me?”
“Are you Mrs. Henrietta Johnstone?”
“Maybe I am. Why?”
“We just have some questions, if you don’t mind,” said Natalie.
“Oh, I mind,” said the woman before tilting her head. “Questions about what?”
“About your daughter, Pili,” said Natalie. “And your son, Travis.”
Natalie had replied with such brightness that it seemed impossible for the woman not to want to tell us everything about her children, to brag and boast. But the woman’s face turned from tired to bitter, as if she was suddenly chewing on a piece of garlic.
“My daughter’s gone and my son is dead,” said the woman. “What more do you need to know?”
“Your daughter isn’t really gone, is she?” said Natalie. “In fact, she attacked a friend of ours in the train station just a few days ago.”
“My daughter is here?” said the woman. “You saw her?”
“I did,” I said.
“How’d she look?”
“Strong,” I said. “Fierce.”
“That’s her, all right,” said Ms. Johnstone. “And back in the city. Imagine that. Who’d she attack? One of you?”
I looked at Natalie and Keir and then shook my head. “No, not one of us,” I said.
“Him?” she said, gesturing out to the street where Barnabas, pale and tall, stood watching.
“No,” I said. “Another friend, and she was lucky to get away.”
“Do you mind answering some questions about your daughter,” said Natalie, “and maybe why she’s going around attacking people? We’re worried about our friend’s safety.”
As the woman looked at the three of us, and there was something working along her features, like she was figuring things out. Then she looked up and saw the vultures perched on the trees. Her face hardened.
“Yes, I surely do mind,” she said. “I mind very much. I’ve nothing more to say. And if you children are smart, you’ve got nothing more to ask. Now go on home and hide beneath your covers and clutch your stuffed dolls and hope you don’t ever meet up with my daughter again. Go on. Scat.”
She waved us away as if we were some foul thing stuck on her hand before slamming the door shut. It happened so quickly we were stunned. It all seemed a little strange, and more than a little rude.
“Maybe we should have asked for tea,” I said.
Just then the door swung open and the woman was again in the gap, staring, first at Keir, then at Natalie and me.
“Let me tell you three just one thing more,” she said. “That friend of yours you say my daughter attacked. She is not a friend, do you understand? The only thing she’ll cause is heartbreak and loss, and then only if you’re lucky. Not a friend. Mark my words.”
And then the door slammed shut again.
POLEO-MENTA
Oh, Travis, he was so sweet a boy,” said Mrs. Acosta from the rocking chair in her living room. “He met my Diego the first day of first grade and since then it was always Travis and Diego, Diego and Travis. To find one you’d just have to find the other, on the playground, on the ball field, or at Mr. Jack’s Soda Shop. Travis was so loyal, it made my heart to see them together.”
As could be expected, Natalie hadn’t heeded Ms. Johnstone’s warning, which was pure Natalie. Tell her she can’t wear that top with those shoes and then watch her pull it off.
After we were chased from the Johnstone porch, while Keir and I were feeling shaky about the whole get-some-answers thing—maybe clutching a stuffed animal and hiding beneath our blankets wasn’t the worst of ideas—Natalie headed off to ask her next set of questions. A few blocks down was the house of Diego Acosta’s grandmother.
“Even as they grew older and things turned hard with Diego, Travis never abandoned him. I blame myself for some of what happened. I couldn’t watch him like I needed to. His mother would have done a better job, but when she wasn’t allowed back in the country after going home to take care of her mother, and when my son died, things started to, well… I tried. I suppose that has to be enough.”
“He became quiet, withdrawn. He had different friends, too. When I asked Travis what was going on, he just said, ‘Nothing good, Lita.’ That’s what they both called me, my two boys.”
“What was going on with your grandson?” I said.
“I never knew for sure,” she said, which I doubted. There didn’t seem to be much that Mrs. Acosta didn’t know for sure. “But Travis had the more sense of the two and I thought he could help Diego find the right path. Except Diego always had his own mind. He told me he had a plan. What could I say about that? How about school as a plan? How about a job as a plan? He would laugh and give me a hug and then he’d be gone again. Until that time he stayed gone.”
Ms. Acosta had invited us in without knowing what we wanted, and after Natalie told her in a rush of Spanish what it was we’d come for, she offered us tea without our asking. She was old and blind and full of life. I offered to help in the kitchen but she said, “No seas tonta. I don’t need help to make tea in my own house. You just sit and I’ll be right back.” And she was, with a tray and a teapot and four cups.
“Let it steep a bit while we talk,” she said after she’d placed the tray on the coffee table—misnamed, don’t you think?—and dropped down into her rocking chair. “Why again are you asking about my two boys?”
“It’s for a school journalism project,” lied Natalie with such assurance it was breathtaking. “We need to dig beyond the facts in an obituary, and I remembered reading about the sad story of the two best friends that was in the newspaper.”
“It’s tragic is what it is. But I don’t mind talking about it. I think about it all the time, but the thinking gets so lonely. It’s nice to share once in a while.”
“So what happened when your grandson didn’t come home?” I said.
“I grew worried, then I grew scared,” said Mrs. Acosta. “And then I called Travis. They hadn’t been together as much by then, different paths, but Travis told me he’d find Diego. He was that kind of boy, not the type to sit around and worry but do nothing. He would always do something. And wouldn’t you know it, he brought my Diego home.”
“Where had he been?” said Keir.
“They never said, neither of them. I have my suspicions now, after the fire, but then I was just happy to have my sweet boy back. And he always was—sweet, I mean. But after, he wasn’t the same anymore. He was so sad, and with different habits, sleeping all day and heading out only at night. And it was like there was something burning inside him. I could smell it.” She sniffed the air. “Why, I can even smell it now. Like a soul is on fire.”
She gasped, as if some new horror had stepped into her house, but then said, “Oh my, I’ve been talking so much I forgot all about the tea. I’m sure it’s ready by now.”
I poured the tea into her porcelain cups and handed them around, placing Mrs. Acosta’s cup in her hand. We sat in quiet for a few moments, sipping the rich minty tea. Occasionally Mrs. Acosta would sniff the air, as if she had a cold or something, and with each sniff, Keir would shrink back in his chair.
“The tea is delicious, Mrs. Acosta,” I said.
“It’s poleo-menta,” she said. “Of course it’s delicious.”
“So what happened after Travis brought your grandson home?” asked Natalie.
“It wasn’t long before he left again,” she said. “And that was that. I never got another hug. I never got to tell him one more time how much I loved him. Travis went after him again, I know that because his sister and her friend came here looking for Travis.”
“Pili?” I said.
“That’s right. Little Pili would always be trailing after them when she was young, playing their games, drinking a float with them at Mr. Jack’s. She even worked at Mr. Jack’s when the boys outgrew it. She was as loyal to Travis as Travis was to Diego. I told her and her friend Olivia everything I told you, and she had that same sound in her voice that Travis had when I told him Diego was missing that first time. The sound of determination. I regret so much now telling her what I did.”
“Why?” said Keir.
“Because she fell into the same hole as her brother. How much better would it have been if I hadn’t tried to meddle in what Diego was doing to himself? Then Travis would have been in college by now. And Pili would have still been drinking those root beer floats at Mr. Jack’s. And Olivia would have been planning for the prom instead of spending all her days at Travis’s grave. How much better for everyone would that have been, Diego included? Sometimes it doesn’t pay to try to save those beyond saving. Sometimes it’s better to just let them go.”
We three sat there and watched as a tear fell from one of her sightless eyes. Then she shook her head and brightened.
“More tea?”
ROOT BEER FLOAT
Maybe we should stop,” said Keir as we walked away from Mrs. Acosta’s house. “Maybe we should just go home and forget about all of this.”
“Pili Johnstone tried to kill you,” said Natalie. “Don’t you want to know why?”
“We know why, don’t we?” he said as he walked, his head down, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“But you haven’t done anything to her or her brother,” I said.
“It’s not about what I did,” said Keir. “It’s about what I am.”
“She’s wrong about what she shouted at you,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Elizabeth. Or what you think, Natalie. It matters what she thinks, or others like her. To them I’ll always be an abomination. At least I was protected in the château. Maybe I should go back.”
“What about your freedom?”
“It’s funny,” said Keir, “but right now, looking behind my back every step, I don’t feel so free. And I’m sure neither does poor Barnabas, trailing after me like some mother hen.”
“Then what about Dr. Van’s school?” I said. “His academy might be a safe place.”
“Or maybe just a prettier prison.”
“But with horses,” I said.
“Why don’t we find a quiet place to sit and talk it over?” said Natalie.
“Why do I get the feeling,” I said, “that you have someplace specific in mind?”
Natalie only smiled.
Mr. Jack’s Soda Shop was a hole-in-the-wall between a carpet store and a warehouse, but a hole-in-the-wall with a soda fountain counter, which made it something close to paradise. We sat three in a row on the red leather stools.
“What can I get you children?” said the old man in the apron. He wore a white hat and his smile shone out from his long gray beard.
“How much is your root beer float?” said Natalie.
“The question isn’t how much,” said the man, “but how good.”
“Then how good is your root beer float?” I said.
“Good enough that I’ll start making three,” he said.
“And another to go,” said Keir.
“That’s the spirit,” said the old man. He rubbed his bent and gnarled hands together before he pulled out three milk shake glasses from the cabinet behind him.
“Are you Mr. Jack?” said Natalie.
“That I am,” said the old man as he started to scoop out the vanilla ice cream.
“A girl we met told us we had to have the root beer float at Mr. Jack’s,” said Natalie. “Her name’s Pili, Pili Johnstone? Do you remember her?”
The old man kept working but something changed in his expression. “You met Pili?”
“In the train station,” I said.
“Nice girl,” said Natalie.
“She was,” said Mr. Jack. “Not so much anymore, which is a sad shame, and a story to boot.”
“We like stories,” said Natalie.
“You won’t like this one,” said Mr. Jack.
And then, with a little prompting—but not too much, not too much at all, almost as if he had been waiting for us to come in, sit down, and ask—he ste
pped out from the counter, turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED, drew the shade over the window, and locked the door.
As he built our floats, and as we drank them with the slurping from our straws accompanying his words, he told us Pili’s story. At first he echoed what Mrs. Acosta had told us about little Pili, trailing after her brother, Travis, and his best friend, Diego, spooning ice cream into her mouth at Mr. Jack’s as she lovingly stared at her two heroes, and later working at the very same soda shop.
Then her brother vanished.
Mr. Jack had heard about the disappearances of Travis and Diego, of course—the whole neighborhood had—but he figured they were just on a road trip or something. That was the way Mr. Jack had lived as a youth. But Pili sensed right off that something was very wrong. Their mother hadn’t been well. Travis would not have just left. The police had been called but were doing nothing. Pili felt it was up to her.
“But she didn’t know what to do about it,” Mr. Jack told us. “At least until the Dutchman showed up at the soda counter.”
“Eye patch?” I said.
“Pointy nose?” said Keir.
“Gray dog?” said Natalie.
“Trust me, children,” said Mr. Jack. “That’s no dog.”
The man said his name was Dr. Rudolph Van and that Travis and Diego were both caught in a trap with some otherworldly beasts. He told Pili that his purpose in the world was to save children he considered special cases and that Travis was just such a boy. But he would need Pili’s help to convince him to leave.
Pili, in truth, didn’t trust the one-eyed man. There was something strange about Dr. Van, and his whole act seemed too noble to be believed. Not to mention that accent. But in the course of their conversation she learned where her brother was being held.
She quietly went to the address—not so much a house as an isolated collection of glass-clad boxes on a cliff overlooking the river—looked around, and made her plans. She only trusted one person to join her in the rescue, her friend Olivia, the star of the school soccer and basketball teams. Mr. Jack remembered them getting ready in the store the night of the operation. The two of them were dressed all in black, with masks and flares and wire cutters in their backpacks.
Elizabeth Webster and the Portal of Doom Page 15
