Murder of crows, p.5
Murder of Crows, page 5
“Get off me!” Noel shouted, her voice high in shock and panic. Her eyes were wild.
Wyn steadied herself against me and blinked slowly. “I was just going up to see him. I didn’t even make it all the way up the stairs. I forgot a fork …” She trailed off. “Is … is he dead?”
But before anyone could answer, the table legs—loaded down by cake and having taken the brunt of Mr. Wyatt’s fall—suddenly gave out with a resounding crash. Mr. Wyatt’s body rolled from the table to the floor, and the back of his skull fell off with a wet clatter.
The mayor heaved. Noel covered her eyes and let out a hysterical moan of anguish.
“Noel, go call the police,” Mr. Green said firmly.
He brushed his fingers tenderly against Mr. Wyatt’s face and took a deep breath. “My dear, you didn’t deserve this.”
Then he looked up at me and Wyn, still gaping down at the corpse, filthy with icing and smeared with blood.
“I think it’s time you two saw your way home.”
I thought the Lit Killer was done, and so was this podcast. But a suspicious death happening at the club full of people Levinson had been hunting, right after I showed up to talk about Levinson? Maybe my podcast is saying that it’s not done with me.
It didn’t slip my mind at all that Mr. Wyatt had been giving us forbidden information right before he died. Places like Hollow Falls … your past always comes back to haunt you. I knew that better than anyone—and I guess so did Mr. Wyatt. The book and spyglass he’d given me burned a hole in my backpack all the way home.
Of course the way he’d died was suspicious. People don’t just careen out of windows for fun. He could barely get from one end of his office to the other without a walker. It was unlikely he had managed to propel himself out the window with enough force to land where he did—and certainly not accidentally.
No, if you asked me, it looked like someone had either pushed him really hard, or they used his spectacular fall as a distraction to accomplish something else. After all, Mr. Green did say his house was full of secrets. And there’s nothing more distracting than watching your host fall to his death while being showered in blood and sugar.
I wish I had gotten a chance to see who was downstairs right before it all happened. Noel cornered me, and then there was too much going on to really be able to tell. It’s hard to find a suspect in chaos like that.
The only person I knew for a fact wasn’t down there was Wyn. And judging by the sweat on her forehead and the cake in her clutches, she hadn’t made it far before she’d turned around and come back down. So not only did she not make it up to the library in time to witness his death, but she also missed when everyone started rushing around in a panic. And that stairwell was so dark, the killer could have been right there and she might not have even noticed.
There goes my hope for a smooth murder-less transition into the new school year.
But maybe not. Perhaps the trauma of the last year had me seeing murder where there wasn’t any. Mr. Wyatt’s death could have been an accident—he was ancient. Maybe it was just an old man losing his balance near an open window? Or he could have had a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm. Or any of those other medical conditions that will kill a feeble old man before his body hits the ground.
But I still couldn’t shake how nervous he seemed when he’d spoken to us in the library. And how he had hidden that spyglass and asked me to keep it safe. Not to mention all that talk of factions in the MOC still being involved in The Hunt …
God, I wish he had gotten to finish telling us the rest of what he knew—and how Wyn, Max, and I were supposed to find some dead founder who’d been missing for over a century.
The book he’d hidden the spyglass in was a good place to start, though. And it made for interesting bus reading on the way home. It spoke of a long history of deaths, both explained and unexplained, but many of them violent and linked to a mysterious treasure: The Hunt. But as there was a giant hole in the center of the book, I quickly hit a dead end.
I couldn’t shake it. There was just something so sinister about Mr. Wyatt dying right after he asked us to help him. And I didn’t feel right letting him down.
His dying wish was for me to protect this spyglass and learn more about The Hunt. To find his treasure before anyone else lost their lives to it. And I had already failed.
Now I had an even bigger mission: to figure out who was responsible for Mr. Wyatt’s death and to make sure they never got their hands on that treasure.
The light in our kitchen was still visible from the street when I got off the bus, even though it was almost eleven and Abuela rarely stays up late. Dad liked to be up all hours of the night when he was in between stints on the oil tanker. But ever since he left a few weeks ago, it had been really quiet in our house.
When I entered the front door, I spotted a half-full cup of tea on the coffee table in the living room and an open book next to it.
“I’m home!” I called as I made my way into the kitchen. “Why are you still awake?”
“Welcome!” Abuela said. She was cutting apples by the sink. A box of gingersnap cookies was on the counter next to her. “I got sucked into a book, and by the time I looked up, it was late and I was hungry again. How was your party?”
I pulled out a chair and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Uh, it wasn’t quite a party. The Murder of Crows invited me to do a speech about the Lit Killer case … and then someone died.”
“Someone died?!” Abuela whirled around and then paused. “Why are you covered in icing?”
“Uh, Mr. Wyatt? The guy who hosts the meetings? He fell from his balcony onto the refreshment table. Hence …” I gestured down to my buttercream-covered clothes.
“I talked to him before he died,” I said softly. “He said he knew you.”
“Oh,” Abuela said, in a tone I hadn’t heard her use before. Curious but careful. Much less panicked than she’d been before my explanation but significantly less panicked than I thought she’d be, considering I just told her I saw yet another person plummet to their death.
Abuela turned around and resumed cutting, this time a bit slower than before. I hadn’t exactly told Abuela where I was heading before I left earlier in the night. Things had been difficult after Mr. Levinson was brought to justice. The resolution of that case had scared her more than I thought it would. It wasn’t that Abuela didn’t let me talk about what happened. It was more that, whenever I mentioned it, the room would fill with such sharp melancholy that eventually I’d stopped bringing it up altogether. It didn’t seem worth getting her upset over a Q&A with the Murder of Crows about stuff that had already happened.
However, seeing the uncharacteristic tension in Abuela’s shoulders, I was beginning to regret that strategy.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. It wasn’t, like, a planned thing. I had run into this Mr. Green guy at the bus stop this afternoon, and he gave me an invitation. The Murder of Crows were really impacted by what happened with Mr. Levinson, obviously. I think they really just wanted closure from the whole ordeal. Wyn came with me and helped with the presentation.”
“What did you think of Alan?” she asked quietly.
My ears perked up. I half expected Abuela to deny knowing any of the MOC members or totally change the subject. This was intriguing.
“Tall, old, really nice,” I finally replied. “He wanted to give me a gift for all I had done. And Wyn and I got to ask him a few questions for an article we’re writing for the school paper.” Okay, that last bit was bending the truth a little. But I wanted to see how much I could get out of Abuela before revealing my hand.
“I know I only knew him for, like, a half hour, but he didn’t seem like the kind of person who deserved to go out like that. It was terrible.”
Abuela flinched, her shoulders tightening.
I dug the book out of my bag, leaving the spyglass still inside, and placed it on the table. Abuela turned around and walked to the table to look at it, an inscrutable expression on her warm face. She stroked the spine of the book and ran her hand across the gilded pages, examining it under the fluorescent kitchen light. I could tell that she recognized it—but I couldn’t tell if she knew what was inside.
“I knew him a long time ago. When I was young,” Abuela murmured. “He must have really liked you; he doesn’t give away pieces of his library to just anyone.”
Abuela paused, her fingers still lingering against the old book. “Did you meet anyone else?” Abuela asked the question casually, but I knew it was loaded. She was trying to find out what I knew, just like I was doing to her.
“I … uh … I also met a guy named Judah who wants to interview me or something,” I said. Noel’s card was burning a hole in my pocket.
“Judah is very nice!” Abuela said. She sounded grateful for the subject change. “Very smart! I remember he did a speech on Founder’s Day back when he was in elementary school. He’s probably a few years older than you, but he’s a good boy. You should have him on your podcast.”
“Yeah,” I said, coughing lightly. I fingered Noel’s card for a bit before slowly placing it on the table. “I also met a woman named Noel.”
Abuela’s face went from encouraging to blank so fast, it sent a shiver up my spine.
“Did she talk to you?” she demanded.
“She did, but not for very long. We got interrupted by—well. By Mr. Wyatt. But before that, she said all this vague stuff about you, and she asked if you’d be interested in coming over for tea at her—”
“No.” Abuela cut me off so vehemently that I jerked back in surprise.
“What? Why? What’s the deal between you guys?” I asked.
Instead of answering, Abuela turned around, picked up the plate of gingersnaps and apple slices, and left the room. I looked down at the card lying untouched on the table and picked it up. I turned it over and read what Noel had scribbled on the back. I remembered her words about grudges and the way her eyebrows had crinkled with despair when offering the invitation.
I followed Abuela into the living room.
“I need a minute to process this whole thing. Don’t bother me about this again, Tig,” she said, her tone sharp with warning. Her book was in her hand and her reading glasses were on, but I could tell she wasn’t reading.
“Noel seemed sad, or at least like she had some regrets. She gave me this card for you.” I held out the card, but Abuela didn’t take it. She shifted so the card was pointing at her shoulder and turned the page of her book. I had never seen her act this way in my entire life. It was shockingly petty.
I relented and put the card back into my pocket.
“If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, fine,” I said stubbornly. “But I’m going to talk to her. She said it was my birthright. Whatever ‘it’ means, I was hoping you would be the one to tell me—not her.”
Abuela slammed her book shut and stood up.
“There are some things that I cannot speak about,” she began quietly. “There are some people that I will not see again. I am not strong enough for it. Please respect that.”
Abuela picked the plate up from the coffee table and tucked her book under her arm. When she turned to me again, her face looked tired and much older, as if the effort to control her anger had reduced her somehow. “Good night, mija. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The encounter left me feeling strange and a bit dizzy as I stood in the living room, rooted to the floor, staring at the space Abuela had abruptly vacated.
* * *
I lay on my bed in the dark, flipping Noel’s card back and forth in my hands. The room was awash in the blue of moonlight, and the tick of my wall clock seemed loud in the silence. I glanced over at my podcast recording equipment, then back at the card.
At dawn and dusk: even so, Noel had written.
I picked up my phone off the nightstand and unplugged it from the charger. It felt like snooping, but my curiosity and irritation were higher than my consideration at the moment. I typed the words from the card into Google and pressed search.
It was … from a poem?
I squinted at the tiny letters on the screen:
“Even So” by Victor James Daley
The days go by—the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms—
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!
Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they—
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling constantly,
Lashes with whips of steel the sea:
What words are left for Hope to say?
My thoughts take hue from this wild day.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream!—
That I should sing a song supreme
To gladden all sad eyes that weep,
And take the Harp to Time, and sweep
Its chords to some eternal theme.
I dreamt—my life is all a dream.
The world is very old and wan—
The sun that once so brightly shone
Is now as pale as the pale moon.
I would that Death came swift and soon;
For all my dreams are dead and gone.
The world is very old and wan.
The world is young, the world is strong,
But I in dreams have wandered long.
God lives. What can Death do to me
The sun is shining on the sea.
Yet shall I sing my splendid song—
The world is young, the world is strong.
Well. That was intense. Noel was around Abuela’s age—maybe she was sick and trying to tie up loose ends before it was too late? Knowing the secret message she had intended to send to Abuela was potentially news of her fading away, while also knowing Abuela would never receive it, was actually pretty uncomfortable.
I got up and crept out of my room and down the hallway. It was nearly midnight, and the entire house was silent. Abuela was probably sleeping already. I tiptoed to a stop in front of her door and placed the card, note-side up, directly in front of it. Abuela would be furious. But she would have to bend down to see what it was first and she couldn’t do that without unintentionally reading what Noel had written for her.
They had both already lost one friend today. Maybe this could help them from losing another.
* * *
The next morning, the house was quiet and still. Normally on a Saturday I would wake up to Abuela grilling tostadas and the smell of café con leche, while the sounds of trova filled the house with life. But today there was just the sound of birds and the cars outside.
Abuela must really be angry.
I got up and headed for the kitchen. As I passed through the main hallway, I saw that the space in front of Abuela’s bedroom door where I had left Noel’s card was clear. My heart sank.
I knocked on the door and waited for an answer, but there was none. I gently pushed inside, but she wasn’t there.
In the kitchen, placed neatly on the table, was the shiny foil of a Pop-Tart packet, lovingly arranged, a note, and Noel’s card.
Went to the park and then grocery shopping. I’ll see you later this afternoon. I love you very much. Sorry. Abuela
I picked up Noel’s card. In Abuela’s neat spindly handwriting, right underneath Noel’s loopy scrawl, were two words written in bright red pen: “Sonnet 34.”
Guiltily, I took out my phone and googled it.
Sonnet 34 by William Shakespeare
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o’ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke?
’Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,
For no man well of such a salve can speak
That heals the wound and cures not the disgrace:
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.
Ah! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds.
Harsh. Whatever Noel did must have been brutal. Well, at least Abuela didn’t seem to be upset at me anymore. I guess this was just one more thing to toss in the Trauma Closet and lock the door.
Noel, on the other hand? She was fair game. Like it or not, she was going to help me get to the bottom of Abuela’s involvement in The Hunt and her history with the Murder of Crows—and how it was all connected to Mr. Wyatt’s death.
But first, I needed to talk to my friends.
Promptly at noon, Wyn, Max, and Ella crashed into the Talon office and made their way to the desk where I was working at the computer. Wyn looked almost manic with energy.
“Hey, Tig!” She waved.
Ella, beside her was scowling. “I don’t know why I had to be here. I told you guys I don’t want anything to do with this Murder of Crows nonsense. And no one is spilling any good tea for my column here,” she griped.
