Old school bones, p.10
Old School Bones, page 10
“Don’t try to weasel out of this … unless you want to see me throw another fit.”
He shakes his head. “Why didn’t I go fishing?”
She shoots him a warning glare. Then her lip starts to tremble. “I think I’m going to cry again.”
“You ever eat moqueca or lombinho?”
A ghost of a smile. “There’s a first time for everything.”
“Let me make a phone call first.”
23
“WE need to talk!” Denise Pasteur closes the door behind her, steps into Awasha’s office. “Gracie Liu is missing.”
“What?” She puts down a copy of Sula by Toni Morrison that she’s been rereading for a seminar she’s running for African-American kids. Kicks her chair back from her desk, stares up from her seat at this tornado that has just blown into her life.
“She missed all of her classes today. I just got the attendance reports from her teachers. When did you see her last?”
“You were there.”
“This morning when Tory’s mother came to get her at Beedle Cottage?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t see her in the dining hall at breakfast later?”
She didn’t go. She was way too disturbed. Tory’s leaving came as such a shock … She just beat it over here to the office. Put on her headphones and lost herself in Al Green and her book for hours.
“You check Beedle Cottage?”
“She’s not there. Did she seem desperate to you this morning?”
“How should I know. I was a basket case. Why?”
“Because she and Tory had a couple of tough meetings with Bumbledork yesterday afternoon. Didn’t they tell you?”
No. When would she have seen the girls to talk? Doesn’t Denise remember they went to The Winter’s Tale together last night, then they …
“I guess I’m kind of out of it.”
“What happened with Bumbledork and the girls?”
“That man plays everything close to the vest. I was hoping you could fill me in.”
“How do you know about his meetings with—”
“Edith. She’s not only his secretary, she tallies the daily class attendance lists. Called me when Gracie turned up absent and was not on the infirmary’s sick list.”
“Oh.”
Did you see the blood? The bathtub so full of blood? Not like in the movies … but purple … Her body just a shadow …
They both know the two of them are going to be in the hot seat if Gracie doesn’t turn up soon. They’re the ones responsible for her safety. Dean and house counselor. First Liberty dies on their watch, now they lose her best friend. What else can go wrong?
“You want my opinion? I think your friend, that ex-lawyer, has something to do with this. I think this is about that man’s encouraging those girls in this misguided fantasy that Liberty did not take her own life.”
“He’s a good guy. He grounds us. He has the perspective of a man who has been through hell over a murder case. And a man who knows the law. Didn’t I tell you my mother really—”
“How do you know he doesn’t have Gracie with him right now? Doing god knows what? The girl is a risk taker and vulnerable, I mean really vulnerable, right?”
Something snaps in her head.
“Why don’t you call him?”
“I think he was leaving on a fishing trip today.”
“Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he lied to you.”
Streaks of pain are shooting up her throat. She picks up the phone, punches in his cell number, waits. The receiver shakes subtly in her hand. Her skin burns as the dean settles into a free chair, reading her from head to toe with impatient eyes.
The phone rings once, twice, a third time. Then a forth.
She is just about to click off when he picks up. His voice annoyingly cheerful. A bit like her brother Ronnie’s when he’s been drinking for hours. There’s some kind of noise in the background, the buzz of voices, a restaurant … or a pub maybe.
Suddenly she feels her throat flooding with stomach acid.
“Have you got Gracie with you, Michael?”
“I told her we should call you. That you would be worried.”
Denise Pasteur’s eyes still searing her.
“What the hell is going on?”
“It’s OK. We’ve had some bumps in the road. But I’ll have Gracie back at school in an hour.”
Some kind of Latin music—lots of drums—coming out of the phone, singing.
“What language do I hear? Where are you? It sounds like—”
“Awasha, I can’t hear you very—”
“What?”
“Meet us at Hibernia House, seven o’clock. Alone.”
The dean leans closer, trying to listen to the conversation … just as it ends.
“What’s going on?”
“He found Gracie. It seems they’re having dinner. She’ll be back around eight. We can get the story then at Beedle Cottage.”
“Those two are in a world of hurt!”
She has been waiting in the dark for at least a half hour inside her old apartment at Hibernia House, looking out the kitchen window. Now two figures are trudging up the alley. Staying in the shadows. As soon as she hears footsteps coming up from the basement entrance, up the basement stairs, she flings open the door from her study into the stairwell, pounces.
“What the hell have you two been up to? Were you in a bar when I called?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“It was a churrascaria.”
“What?”
“A Brazilian place. Kind of a barbeque. In Inman Square.”
“But it’s a bar.”
“Well …”
“Doc P, it’s not his fault. I asked him—”
“I’m in no mood for lame excuses, Gracie. You cut classes and you end up at a bar in the city with … with … Do you have any idea how this looks?”
Michael clears his throat. “I can explain. Things got kind of complicated today. But maybe a little clearer, too.”
“What are you talking about, Michael? Oh, yeah, they sure did get clearer. Can you even guess at the shit storm that is about to descend on your head from the administration of this school? The dean is freaking out.”
“The dean?”
“Denise Pasteur. My god, I went to you. I pleaded for your help. I trusted you because of my mother. And now—the two of you. Michael, she’s a child and you … What were you thinking?”
Gracie’s face darkens. “Jesus Christ, Doc. Stop! Just stop. Please! And listen for once. While there’s still time.”
“What do you mean?”
He blinks, trying to clear the static from his head. “We need to start looking through Hibernia House for a secret room.”
“I made Michael meet me this morning because he was the only one I could turn to …”
“What about me? I was right here.”
Not last night, she says. Not this morning after Tory left. She couldn’t find Doc P. She needed to talk to an adult. Really needed to talk. About Tory and Bumbledork. And Kevin.
“Kevin?”
“Gracie thinks he wants to help us.”
“He could be the guy who killed—”
“Maybe … maybe not.”
“What?”
“I called my detective friend this afternoon. He said his lab rats looked for a match between Kevin’s prints on the water bottle and the prints on the Red Bull. No match.”
“So?”
“There are two unidentified sets of prints on the Red Bull, plus yours and mine.”
“Kevin is out of this?”
He says maybe. Unless he was smart enough to use a pair of gloves when he was handling that Red Bull. Lou Votolatto thinks the kid is hiding some secrets. Who knows? But gave Gracie something new.
“I went to see him last night, Doc P. He’s taking things pretty hard.”
She tells Doc P about Kevin’s older brother Clyfe in California, about the rumors of a secret room in Hibernia House back in the Nineties.
“You mean a party place?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He slips four cinammon Altoids into his mouth, figures it would be smart to mask the scent of the two Brahma beers he drank with dinner.
“I told Gracie we better all have a look.”
“Where?”
“Kevin’s brother thought it had to be somewhere upstairs.”
“You think this kid is sending us on a wild goose chase, trying to distract us?”
“Have you got a flashlight?”
24
“DAMN, we have less than a half hour before I told the dean you would be back at Beedle Cottage, Gracie.” She sweeps the floor of the Hibernia House common room cautiously with the flashlight beam, even though they drew the shades on all the top floor windows twenty minutes ago.
“We’ve been through all of this, twice. Not a sign of a hidden room.”
“Maybe Kevin’s brother was wrong.”
Gracie drops onto the couch. “What about the attic?”
“There’s a hatch above the landing in the stairwell. We’ll need a ladder.”
“I’ll just stand on a desk,” says Michael. He already has one in his arms and is lugging it out into the stairwell.
A second later he is mounted atop the desk. With his arms extended, he pushes up on the overhead hatch, slides it out of the way. But even standing on his tip toes he is eighteen inches short of being able to see into the attic.
“Give me a boost, Michael.” Gracie clambers onto the desk. “Come on!”
He makes a stirrup for her foot with his hands. She puts her hands on his shoulders for balance, steps into the stirrup. Up she goes, the flashlight in her hand probing the space overhead.
“Shit!”
“What? What do you see?”
She drops back down to the desk, slides to the floor. “Two dead rats with their necks broken in traps. It looks like they’ve been up there for about a hundred years.”
“What else?”
“A stack of ancient window screens. And water pipes from the bathroom, I guess.”
“No sign it was ever a party place.”
“Sorry, guys. It doesn’t even look like there’s a floor. Just a few boards to walk on. And a lot stuff that looks like pink cotton candy.”
“Insulation.” Michael slides the hatch back in place, drops off the desk. “Looks like we’re back to square one.”
“And we’re almost out of time.”
Gracie has settled onto the couch again, legs stretched out, eyes closed. “Kevin said his brother sounded so sure.”
“Another urban legend bites the dust.”
Suddenly the girl leaps to her feet. “Hey! What about the chimney!”
“You think it was some kind of secret tunnel?”
“No. But when I looked in the attic, I didn’t see it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Shouldn’t I have seen it going up through the attic to the roof?” The adults shrug.
“You can see the top of it rising above the roof on the north side of the house. It’s black with white trim,” says Awasha.
He has his eyes closed, trying to picture the design of Hibernia House. “Maybe there are two rooms in the attic. The hatch over the stairwell is on the south side. Maybe there’s another way to get up there from the north side.”
“Which way is that?” Gracie suddenly has the look of someone who depends on the GPS mapping function in her cell phone to keep from getting lost.
“That way,” he says, pointing toward Liberty’s room.
Awasha is muttering. “Danielle is going to be looking for us at Beedle Cottage.”
But Gracie and Michael are already in Liberty’s room. Gracie pounding on walls. Michael tapping the ceiling with a broom handle. An urgent cadence. In the dark. Listening for someplace that sounds hollow or loose.
It’s on his third tap of a closet ceiling that something gives way overhead. Falls.
Dust, plaster clinkers, cardboard come showering down on his head. A choking cloud.
“Cristo Salvador!”
“What?”
He sniffs to clear his nostrils, looks down at the pile of debris at his feet. Awasha shines the flashlight.
“I think I found something … or else the maintenance crew has been patching this ceiling with plaster of Paris and cardboard from an old case of Pabst Blue Ribbon.”
He drags Liberty’s desk into the closet, stacks a chair on top of the desk, climbs. Disappears through the hole left by the false ceiling.
From the bottom of the closet, she can hear his footsteps take several steps across the wood floor overhead.
“Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“You won’t believe this.”
She stares up through the open rectangle in the top of the closet, watches the flashlight beam flickering through the dark above. Outside, the clock on the school’s classroom building chimes.
“Damn! It’s eight o’clock, Gracie. I promised the dean—”
The teenager’s suddenly hugging Awasha’s arm with both hands, shivering. “Do we have to go, Doc?”
Something claws at the back of her mind. An image trying to get out. She sees Squibnocket Beach, its rocks, boulders. The scent of eel grass beneath the cliffs of Aquinnah. And a greenish hatbox that feels almost too heavy for her free hand to clutch to her chest.
“Doc?”
“What?”
“What do you want to do?”
She pictures her mother, Black Squirrel. A faint gray cloud, blowing off over the Atlantic.
“I want to see!”
By the time she and Gracie reach the attic, Michael has found an old lava lamp, turned it on. It casts a red and golden glow, the shadows changing with the ebb and flow of the lamp. The gabled roof of Hibernia House makes the space seem a mix of stunted alcoves and vaults. There are fewer cobwebs than she would have imagined, but a film of silvery dust covers everything. No sign anyone has been up here in years, maybe decades.
She can see that once this was a living space. Servants’ quarters possibly … or a writer’s garret. With no windows. There’s a regular pine floor. The walls a web of peeling blue wallpaper, cracked plaster, exposed lath. Naturally stained wainscotting. One wall is lined floor-to-ceiling with empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans.
“I don’t get it,” says Gracie. “How did they get all this stuff up here?”
He flashes the light around. “There’s your answer.”
The flashlight beam settles on the remains of steep stairs circling the back of the big chimney on their way down to the third floor. But the steps stop short of a landing. Studs, drywall, insulation where once there must have been a door.
In the center of the room, three crudely made tables. Two with several decks of cards stacked in the center, one with a set of science lab scales and an immense, blue, glass bong. A dozen folding chairs sit in no obvious order. When she squints her eyes, she can see several crumby mattresses tucked into the remote recesses of the room. Closer inspection shows each with its own stack of Playboy, Hustler, High Times magazines from 1973, ‘74, ‘75. On the floor near the lava lamp is a phonograph. The Beatles Yellow Submarine LP on the turntable. Books of matches and half-burned candles of all shapes and sizes dot the landscape.
“Check this out.” Gracie points to the chimney. Above the bricked-up hearth hangs a green nylon banner. Two-by-four feet. Words on the banner proclaim CLUB TROPICAL in large orange script. Beneath the words someone has scrawled in what appears to be pink paint, SUCKS SHIT. And in fuzzy red lettering, maybe from some kind of marker, RED TOOTH RULES!
“Red Tooth again. Like in the News: Red Tooth Still Rules. This is secret society shit, guys. We’ve found a club room like Kevin’s brother said. You think this is the name of another secret society, Doc? Club Tropical?”
She doesn’t answer. Can’t think what to say. Something has stolen her voice. It’s as if she’s watching a movie, can’t talk to those people on the screen. Gracie drifting away from the banner, taking the bong in her hands, sniffing at the dope bowl. Michael starting to thumb through one of the High Times. On a distant wall a crude oil portrait of Jimmy Hendrix, in browns and yellows.
Her eyes fall upon a small box on the fireplace mantel. When she picks it up, she sees that it is an open six-pack of Trojan condoms. Two remain sealed in their red foil.
Her ears are ringing. She closes her eyes and sees her brother’s face. Ronnie in his red plaid work shirt, khaki pants. Moccasins. Tall and heavy like their father. His eyes wet. Wind blowing tears over his face. He tries to wipe them away, but the thin, jagged lines of fluid keep coming over his tan cheeks. A convulsion starting to rise in his chest. In her own.
“There’s something very wrong here.”
“What, Doc?”
“Come on Gracie. We’ve got to go!”
He puts down the High Times. “I’m thinking somebody might have been dealing dope up here. Stashed some drugs or money. Kind of looks like they left in a big hurry. And never came back. Mind if I look around some more?”
She feels a black rattling behind her eyes. “I’ll call you. Give me at least an hour or two … And try not to get caught, will you?”
25
THE living room in Beedle House is nearly dark. Reeking from the wet, smoky maple sputtering in the hearth.
It’s after eleven o’clock.
Denise pours herself a fourth or fifth glass of white. None for her Wampanoag friend, the long-term house guest. The one still nursing her mug of tea. She would rather watch the ripples of blue flame dying on the last burning log than say one more word tonight. Rather wonder if it might be better to be Liberty Baker right now. Maybe her mother and the tribal elders were right. Death could be a canoe ride to a better place.
Gracie is long gone from the scene. Dean Pasteur having told her to get her defiant little ass upstairs in her bedroom and do some homework for a change. She’s restricted to campus indefinitely, required to be in her room every night by eight. Like shape up or ship out, young missy.
The dean settles onto the sofa. Raises her glass, swallows deep. Sighs. She’s in her red silk pajamas, ready for bed, but looking across the room hoping to catch Awasha’s attention. Get her to come out of herself, out of the fire. This mystery with long silk hair, with the old Indian robe wrapped around her, feet tucked under her in the winged-back chair.
