Fire mask, p.11
Fire Mask, page 11
“Kelvin,” Mrs. Vallence said.
“Thanks again,” Cliff said. “Really.” He gestured toward the house. “And don’t worry, we’ll let ourselves out. Your friends will get kind of mad if you take any more time—”
“Exactly,” the woman agreed hastily, and guided Nunn toward the doors. “Good night, children,” she called over her shoulder. “Thank you so much for calling.”
The moment the couple stepped inside they were surrounded and carried away in a swirl of gowns and tuxedos and low conversation.
When they were alone, Nora muttered, “Children.”
Candy took Cliff’s arm and said, “Oh, Clifford, I am so terribly bored with all this. Couldn’t we repair to our castle and beat the servants until dawn?”
“Children,” Nora said again.
Cliff grinned. “We’re not going,” he said.
And Del stood in front of him, nearly panting. “What are you talking about, Abbott? We have to go now.”
“Well, yes and no.”
Candy tilted her head in a silent question.
“I found something upstairs that I can’t tell you about. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”
“Upstairs?” Nora said. “But we can’t use the bathroom trick again. They’ll see us.”
“They’ll shoot us,” Del said glumly.
“Look, it’ll be easy,” Cliff said. “We go up, I’ll show you, we’ll leave by the back door, go around the side of the house—”
“Chased by thousands of hungry guard dogs,” Del complained.
“—and be gone before they catch us.”
“Is it really that important?” Nora asked.
“Yeah,” he said, though he wasn’t sure why yet. “It is.”
They were silent for several seconds before Candy puffed her cheeks, blew out loudly, and said, “Well, why not? We’re kids, right? What’s so weird about kids being in a kitchen? Especially one like that.”
“Okay,” Nora said.
Del glared at Cliff. “Nuts.”
And this time, with the lightning came a crackling roll of thunder.
SEVENTEEN
The moment they stepped back into the dining room, Cliff decided that he wanted to go home. It made more sense. After all, didn’t his father tell him not to snoop around? Didn’t his mother say she was sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid? He could go home, bribe Wilmont into flying back and snatching the picture, and they could all examine it in the safety of the Abbott house. No problem. Except that Wilmont probably didn’t know how to open casement windows.
Quickly, then, he led them around the food tables and through a side door into the hallway. No one in the small crowd in the foyer looked around, and he was just barely able to keep himself from running as he led them toward the back of the house.
“Do you remember where it is?” Candy whispered.
“Doesn’t make any difference,” Nora told her in a hushed voice. “Del can find it with his nose.”
“Hey! I’m on a diet.”
“Then what were all those hotdogs you were eating?”
“Memories,” he answered. “Memories.”
The kitchen was still busy, white-jacketed men and white-aproned women fussing over trays and ovens and bread boards as if they were preparing a feast for royalty. Only one or two looked up, smiled at the kids, and continued what they were doing.
Del grabbed a handful of rolls.
“Diet,” Nora scolded.
“Camouflage,” he retorted. “It’d look stupid if we didn’t pick up something.”
Moments later they ducked into the narrow stairwell that led to the upper floors.
The noise from downstairs hushed almost immediately.
Cliff began to wonder again if this was such a hot idea. But they had to see the picture. One of them had to know what it meant, how Mrs. Vallence had stayed so young. It wasn’t plastic surgery; she simply had not changed.
On the second-floor landing they pushed through a swinging door into a dimly lighted corridor.
“Now what?” Nora said.
Cliff motioned them to stay put, and hurried along the thick carpeting until he reached an intersection, ducked back with his heart and most of his stomach in his throat when he almost collided with the back of the old woman with the ebony cane. She had just left the powder room.
When his breathing returned to normal, he beckoned to the others, looked around the corner and, when the old woman had reached the halfway point to the main staircase, he fairly leapt across the hall.
“Down here,” he said quietly after the others had made the dash. “You’re not going to believe this.” He took them to the study, hovered at the threshold to be sure they weren’t followed, then ducked inside and closed the door behind him. He wished he could lock it, but he didn’t dare.
Del was already at the desk, staring at the photograph. “Impossible,” he announced when Cliff and the others joined him. “It must be Mrs. Vallence’s mother or something.” He turned around. “Impossible.”
“That’s what I thought,” Cliff told him.
“Thank God,” Del said, leaning heavily against the desk. “I thought I was going nuts.”
“But it’s her.”
Del straightened as if he’d been jabbed with a needle. “But that’s impossible!”
“What did you do, ask her?”
“She has the mark,” Cliff explained, pointing to his own jawline, midway up toward his left ear, then drawing his attention back to the picture. “Take a closer look, Ingram. She has the mark.”
Candy and Nora looked over his shoulder and stared.
“Coincidence,” Nora decided. “Lots of people have beauty marks, no big deal.”
“Lots of people,” he said, “do not look like other people who have the exact same mark in the exact same place.”
Nora remained clearly skeptical; Candy took the frame from Del’s hand and held it close to her face. She turned it slightly clockwise, held it away from her, held it close again.
“I hate to say it,” she said.
“Then don’t!” Del grabbed the photograph and replaced it on the desk as if he were afraid it would poison him. “This is crazy. If that’s really 1949—”
“Look at the clothes!”
“—that would make Mrs. Vallence older than my grandmother, for crying out loud.”
“Hey, you guys,” Nora said. “Come here. Look what I found.”
Cliff followed Candy over, wishing there was some way he could show Del that, as much as he hated it, he knew he was right.
Nora stood by the low table and nodded at its surface. “Look familiar?” she said.
Candy reached out a hesitant finger, and Cliff watched in silence as she traced the outline of a design inlaid in the table’s surface. The table itself, he could see now, was made of some kind of faintly pink stone; the design, made of triangular gold marble chips, was without question the fire mask.
“I want a medal,” Nora said.
“Del,” he said quietly, “come look at this.”
“If it’s the Fountain of Youth, I don’t want to know about it.”
“Del,” Nora said, “don’t be a jerk.”
“Cliff,” said Candy, “what does it mean?” She touched his arm, then, to keep him silent. “It has something to do with that picture, huh? You think maybe Del is right?”
He had no time to answer.
Voices in the hallway, coming toward them quickly.
“Nunn!” Del whispered harshly.
They raced for the door in the back wall, yanked it open and charged inside, nearly stumbling over each other in their haste. Then Cliff raced back out and switched off the study light, raced back and smacked into the wall where he thought the door had been. He staggered back with a groan, and a hand grabbed his arm and almost yanked him off his feet.
“Sorry,” Del whispered. “I closed the door.”
Cliff touched his nose gingerly, felt his forehead to be sure his skull hadn’t been smashed.
“You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
But you won’t, he thought, if we ever get out of this alive.
The room was too dark to see anything more than a few vague shapes over by the window when lightning flared. The image he had, though, was of a place not very large. And, by the smell of dust, not used too often.
Rain lashed against the panes.
The wind moaned somewhere above them.
The voices entered the study, and he crossed his fingers in hopes that Nunn, or whoever had just come in, wouldn’t have to come here. He doubted that even Wilmont could talk his way out of this one.
The outer door closed sharply; it sounded too much like a gunshot.
With one hand tight on the knob, Cliff opened the door half an inch and pressed close to the crack. He could feel someone beside him; by the perfume, he knew it was Candy.
“Thank God they’re gone.” It was Mrs. Vallence’s voice. “I was ready to scream.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
The light switched on.
“Kelvin, they’re children. They know nothing of manners.”
“I don’t give a damn about their manners, Gloria. I just wanted to make sure they know nothing else. Perhaps I should send Stefan out, to see that they are home.”
A drawer opened, papers were rustled.
“Hey, Cliff,” Del whispered hoarsely from another part of the room. “Look what I—”
“Shut up!” Candy snapped over her shoulder. “You want us to get caught?”
Cliff followed her gaze. His vision had finally adjusted and he could see that the room, less than half the size of its companion, had nothing in it but several empty bookcases on the far wall and a small table near the window. The table, and whatever was on it, was covered by a dark cloth that hung all the way to the floor. Del was examining one of the bookcases, and Nora was impatiently trying to pull him away.
Wonderful, Cliff thought; I’m inches from death, and he’s looking for secret passages.
A drawer slammed shut.
“Really, Kelvin, I wish you would calm down. Frankly, I think you’re making too much of this.”
“I am? I am?” A mocking laugh more like a bark. “Who’s the fool who panicked and tried to warn the boy off? Mysterious notes and cozy lunches. My God, I wonder sometimes if you’ve learned anything at all.”
“Well, you don’t have to shout. I was only doing what I thought was best.”
Nunn snorted.
More rustling of papers.
The rain sounded like ice pellets, and Cliff turned his head. In the sliver of soft light, he could see Candy’s face, so close that if he wanted, he could kiss her on the cheek.
“So what do we do now?” Mrs. Vallence asked.
“We return to our guests, Gloria.”
“But what about—”
“They are gone, just as they were told to do. That Abbott boy, a clever one, knew exactly what I had done. With luck, we’ll never have to see them again. I think they’re properly frightened.”
They heard the door open, and Cliff felt Candy sag against him in relief.
Then Mrs. Vallence said, “So long as you don’t go playing games again, you mean.”
The door shut again, hard.
Cliff held his breath.
Nunn was angry. “I was not playing, Gloria. I never play. I needed to be sure about what they did not know, what they did not suspect. Not even you could expect me to have known those idiots could see me.”
Nunn, Cliff realized then, had been the man in the white suit, the man in the fire mask.
“No,” she said. “You’re right about that part, darling. There’s a first time for everything. I thought from the moment I met him there was something odd about that boy.”
Cliff made a face.
Candy pinched him.
“And,” she continued, “I don’t suppose multiple murder could be considered ‘playing,’ either, could it?”
Candy smothered a gasp with her hand, and Cliff closed his eyes tightly, expecting the bullet or the knife or the cannonball to smash through the door any second now and pulverize them both.
They heard a whimper, then: “You’re hurting me, Kelvin!”
“I’ll do worse than that if you persist.”
Another whimper, then a sob. “All … right. I’m sorry.”
“If you must blame someone,” the man said bitterly, “you can blame Merv. He’s the betrayer, not me. We’re just lucky I found him in time.”
Lightning made Cliff jump; Candy grabbed his arm.
“Lucky?” Mrs. Vallence sounded close to hysteria. “How the hell can you call it lucky when he killed them? All of them! What’s so lucky about that?”
Nunn sounded smug. “That I was there to take care of him, my dear. If I hadn’t been, he would have killed you as well. And me. And everything else.”
The light switched off. The door opened.
Cliff prayed.
The door closed.
He could feel nervous perspiration soaking through his shirt, matting his hair to his scalp. He released a loud breath and looked gratefully heavenward as thunder rumbled over the house. Then he smiled at Candy and said, “If you let go now, maybe the blood will remember how to get to my hand.”
Her hand snapped away. “Very funny.”
“Hey, Cliff—”
Candy jumped at the next, dimmer, lightning flash and suggested that they not wait around for breakfast. “In fact,” she said, “I’ll race you to the police station.” A glance at the window. “I’ll be going so fast, I won’t even get wet.”
“We can’t,” he said.
“Who says so?”
“What are you going to tell them?”
Candy pointed at the door. “Didn’t you hear any of that. Cliff? The man confessed to murder!”
“And we heard him, right?”
“Right.”
“So we tell the cops that after we got invited to Kelvin Nunn’s house, we decided to snoop around, were hiding in here, and he and this lady come in and confess to a murder.” Glumly, he slipped his hands into his pockets. “Then, maybe, they talk to Nunn, who says, ‘Who, me? But I’m an old man. Officer. I couldn’t hurt a fly.’”
“But—”
“Who,” he said, “do you think they’re going to believe?”
Lightning flared, the rain fell harder, and Cliff realized that the storm had hidden the sound of people reentering the study.
Mrs. Vallence laughed. “Darling, it’s a good thing you married me. Otherwise, you’d lose your head.”
Nunn’s answering laugh was not quite so pleasant. “Whatever you say, dear.”
“So get it. Where did you put it, in the safe?”
“Yes, I—oh, damn. No, it’s in the other room. Fetch it for me, will you, Gloria?”
Cliff closed the door as quickly and quietly as he could, then looked around in a panic.
They were trapped.
Gloria Vallence was on her way in here, and there was no place to hide.
EIGHTEEN
Moving as quietly as he could, Cliff hustled across the room, his heart already lodged somewhere under his tongue. He had no idea what to do now. He was caught. They were all caught. They were all probably going to die.
Lighting flashed again, and time slowed down.
He saw, in the brief blue-white flare, a hole appear in the fat wall.
Before he could say anything, Candy and Nora disappeared into it.
A look over his shoulder—the door opened, and light flooded the room.
He felt a hand grab his wrist, felt a yank, and stumbled forward, into abrupt blackness.
His shoulder struck something hard, but a hand clamped over his mouth while a voice in his ear hissed, “Shhhhhh!”
He nodded, and the hand fell away.
He held his breath.
He realized he hadn’t shut his eyes when a narrow beam of light suddenly cut through the dark, and for a moment he panicked, thinking that Mrs. Vallence would surely see it, find them, and haul them all into the study by their ankles.
Then the beam began to move, slowly, and he saw Nora and Candy pressed against a rough brick wall, saw that part of that wall was made of wood, and saw Del holding his trusty penlight, and grinning.
“Secret passage,” Ingram announced. “Neat, huh?”
Cliff didn’t know whether to slug him or kiss him, so he took the flashlight and swept it around the cubicle. It was less than four feet wide and ended only a few inches beyond where the bookcase was hinged.
In the opposite direction there were stairs.
And the beam didn’t reach far enough for him to see the first landing.
“All we have to do is find the next exit and we’re outta here,” Del said, keeping his voice low. “Not bad for a former chubby, huh?”
Nora told him not to break his arm patting himself on the back.
Cliff took the first step down. Candy pressed close behind him, a hand on his shoulder, and he wondered if she knew, if she sensed as he did, that this staircase did not lead anywhere near the outside.
Here the thunder was felt more than heard.
The narrow beam did not illuminate much of the passage. But he was able to see that the high wall on his right never varied from its crumbling brick and mortar, the wall on his left primarily lathe and plaster. Spider webs swung at them and swung away; dust spilled in a waterfall whenever he touched one of the walls to keep his balance; something small and dark flew against his face.
No one said a word.
They went down.
In the walls something chittered.
Del tried whistling once, softly, but Candy hushed him; Nora complained in a nervous voice that something had tried to cut her ponytail off.
Cliff finally lost track of the landings they reached, didn’t even begin to try to figure out the floor they were on. At one point he thought he heard the orchestra playing, at another he swore he could hear voices raised in friendly argument through the wall on his left.
But except for their shoes scraping along the stairs, except for pieces of mortar dislodged and rattling into the black well ahead, it was silent.
