Among the Barons

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Luke looked around. He saw the fear in the faces of Nina and Trey, Joel and John. If they were subjected to lengthy interrogations, would they be able to tell the lies they were supposed to tell? For that matter, could he? And what would Oscar say?

  Luke stepped forward. He tried to swagger every bit as much as Smits had when he’d first arrived at Hendricks. He tried to sound every bit as pompous and powerful as Mr. Grant.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said to the man who appeared to be the head guard. “Nobody was trying to assassinate the president. He didn’t get so much as a scratch. It was my parents who died, and my brother and I who barely escaped with our lives, in this tragic accident. And it had to have been an accident. Who could have planned to have an eight-hundred-pound chandelier topple at the exact right moment? And you want to hold an investigation now, here, at the site of my parents’ tragic death? When they’re still, um, buried there?” He pointed toward the broken chandelier. He was trying to sound grief stricken and horrified, like a boy who had just seen his parents killed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard. “I—my brother and I—we are the heirs to the Grant family fortune. And we say to you—you are no longer welcome on our property. Leave! Now!”

  The head guard stared back at Luke. His eyes said, very clearly, You’re just a punk kid. I don’t have to do a thing you say. How do I know you weren’t the one who set this up just to get your parents’ fortune? But then he stepped back and seemed to be taking in the mood of the crowd. People were beginning to mutter, “He’s right. How can you be so cruel to those poor orphans?” and “I’m a Baron. You’re not going to interrogate me.” And then Luke saw fear in the guard’s eyes, too.

  “All right,” the guard said. “We’ll just take everyone’s names and conduct the investigation later, as we see fit.”

  The guests began to slip away then, the women somehow managing to rush on their tottering high heels, the men so eager to leave that they drove off through the grass or squealed their tires on the pavement. Luke noticed that no matter how warmly the guests had talked to the Grants only moments earlier, no one bothered to stop and console Smits and Luke, no one hesitated even long enough to say, “I’m really going to miss my friends. I’m so sorry that they’re dead.”

  Everyone was scared.

  Finally all the guards and guests were gone. Luke had been standing numbly, watching the dozens of taillights depart. Reluctantly he turned around and found a hundred eyes staring straight at him. The servants were waiting for their orders. And now, improbably, he had become their boss.

  Luke wanted to ask, “Who did this? And why?” But he knew he’d hear nothing but lies in response. He wanted to shout out, “Why are you looking at me? Can’t someone else take care of this? Can’t somebody call Mr. Talbot or Mr. Hendricks?” But there were those special codes blocking all the phones. Nobody else could take charge. Luke swallowed hard, swallowing blood, and began pointing at servants, mostly at random. “You, clean up this mess. You, take care of my parents’, um, bodies. You, you, you, and you—clean up from the party.”

  And all the servants scrambled to do his bidding.

  Luke remembered a quote from one of his history books: “The king is dead, long live the king.” He’d always thought it was funny before, nonsensical even. But now it made perfect sense. The king and queen of the estate—Mr. and Mrs. Grant—were dead, and now Luke was in charge and everyone wanted to believe that he’d do a good job.

  Luke turned around, and out of the blue Oscar was suddenly hugging him.

  “You’re a good kid, even if you aren’t ready to work with me yet,” he said in Luke’s ear, barely loud enough for Luke to hear. “We were aiming for the president, but we held off so we didn’t hit you. You owe me now.”

  Somehow Luke couldn’t believe that. It didn’t make sense. He would have been dead if Trey hadn’t saved him. Oscar was just trying to manipulate Luke again, trying to turn a mistake into an obligation.

  “And I owe you for sending the guards away,” Oscar said. “Here’s my thanks.”

  Luke felt something fall into his pant pocket. But it wasn’t until Oscar had released him and walked away that Luke could gather his wits enough to reach in and find out what it was.

  His fingers brushed smooth metal, then teeth. It was a key.

  Luke knew instantly what the key unlocked.

  “Smits, come with me,” Luke said. “Nina, Trey—you, too. And Joel and John—you two are in charge while I’m away.”

  He gave them some quick instructions. Joel and John nodded numbly. This was a lot more important than leaving them in charge of the nightly games at Hendricks School, and they hadn’t seemed confident enough to handle that. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Luke led Smits, Trey, and Nina through a maze of rooms that almost seemed familiar now. In front of the secret room he didn’t even bother to look around to see who might be watching. He just thrust the key in—yes, it was the right key—and let his friends into the dark room. Luke began to fumble with the controls on the wall, but Smits took over, punching the right sequence to turn on the lights and seal the door.

  “Lee and I,” he said. “We used to come here sometimes, to hide. To make secret plans. Silly things like dropping water balloons on the cooks. Putting sneezing powder in our beds for the maids when they cleaned our rooms. We had so much fun before—before he died.”

  He looked around dazedly, as if he’d forgotten that he was speaking aloud.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know there were servants here. You can’t believe a word I say,” he told Trey and Nina. “I’m crazy. Everyone thinks so.”

  “No, you’re not,” Luke said. ‘And it’s okay to tell the truth now. Trey and Nina are my friends.”

  “Oh. Yes. Trey. I remember you. What are you doing here?”

  “Helping out,” Trey said. Smits’s stunned expression didn’t change.

  “I think he’s in shock,” Nina whispered to Luke. But Smits heard her.

  “No,” he said. “I think I was in shock for the past six months. But now I’m—am I free now? Is Oscar gone?”

  Luke remembered the way Oscar had hugged him, the way he’d slipped off into the darkness.

  “I think so,” Luke said.

  Smits eased down into one of the chairs and stared bleakly at the wall.

  “I didn’t think he would kill them,” Smits said, almost as if he was talking to himself. “He said he would destroy you.” Slowly he raised his head until his empty gaze was fixed on Luke.

  “M-me?” Luke stammered.

  “He wanted me to help,” Smits said without emotion. “Because you weren’t Lee. Because you’d taken his name. Because you weren’t a Baron. Oscar was a Baron, did you know that? He was just pretending to be a servant. To get revenge.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped. “What? Oscar wasn’t a Baron! He hated Barons!”

  Smits didn’t seem to hear Luke.

  “I wouldn’t help him,” Smits said. “Not when it mattered. I helped you, just to make him mad. Is that . . . is that why Oscar killed them? Because I wouldn’t do what he said?”

  Tears began to flow down his face. He brushed them away, leaving smears of blood on his cheeks. His hands must have been bleeding, and none of them had noticed.

  “Oscar was trying to kill the president,” Luke said. “Not your parents. He just . . . missed.”

  But Luke wasn’t sure that he believed that. How could he believe anything Oscar had told him?

  “People try to kill my parents all the time,” Smits said. “Lee and me, we weren’t supposed to know, but—remember when the flaming dessert exploded? That was one time. . . . And there was a bomb once, in my dad’s office. . . . But Mom and Dad, they always survived. Somehow. Maybe”—his face lit up, and he sat forward—“maybe they aren’t dead now. Maybe they’re just hurt really bad, and if we have the servants take them to the hospital . . .”

  Luke thought about the pile of broken glass, of the way that Mr. and Mrs. Gra
nt’s bodies hadn’t even been visible beneath the wreckage.

  “No,” he said gently. “They’re dead.”

  Smits slumped back in his seat, back into stony silence.

  “How did Oscar do it?” Nina asked. “How did he get the chandelier to fall when he was standing practically underneath it? If there’d been someone up there cutting the wires, someone Oscar was commanding, we would have seen him.”

  Luke hadn’t even thought about that. The chandelier’s falling had seemed like a tornado or an earthquake—something so sudden and cataclysmic that it didn’t make sense to look for explanations.

  “It was some sort of remote-control hookup,” Trey said. “I bet if we looked, we’d find a release on the wires that went off when Oscar gave a signal. Or maybe he pressed the button himself. Maybe nobody except Oscar knew what was going to happen.”

  Luke remembered Oscar’s warning: “Watch out for chandeliers.” Oscar apparently hadn’t given Smits the same warning. Even after Luke had refused to take sides, even after the chandelier had fallen, Oscar still seemed to have held on to some hope that Luke might join his cause. “You’re a good kid, even if you aren’t ready to work with me yet,” Oscar had said. The “yet” kept ringing in Luke’s ears.

  Especially now Luke couldn’t imagine ever joining forces with Oscar. Had he made a mistake, letting Oscar slip off into the darkness? Luke buried his face in his hands. His mind raced. How could he ever sort out the truth from Oscar’s lies? Oscar had tried to get both Smits and Luke to help him. But it was Luke he’d given the warning to, Luke he’d hugged, Luke he’d left with the key. . . . Luke could almost feel certain: Oscar probably had been poor. He probably had blown up mailboxes. He probably did hate Barons—including the Grants.

  “Smits?” Luke said gently, looking up again. “How did Oscar act around your parents?”

  Smits blinked.

  “Act?” he repeated, as though he’d misunderstood the question. “Yeah, it was all an act. Everything he did. He’d be all nice to them—all, ‘Yes, Mrs. Grant. No, Mr. Grant.’ But he was—was blackmailing them. The whole time.”

  “What?” Luke exploded. “It was Oscar doing that?” He’d never suspected such a thing, but somehow it fit.

  Smits didn’t even seem to hear Luke. He kept talking, as if in a trance.

  “They didn’t know it was him,” Smits said. “But I found . . . I found a check in his wallet. From them. Not his bodyguard pay. He was writing them letters, saying he knew that Lee was dead and how he had died. And he was going to tell the Government if they didn’t pay up. . . .”

  “Didn’t you tell your parents what he was doing?” Trey asked.

  “No,” Smits said. His expression twisted with guilt. “I thought . . . I thought they were getting what they deserved.” He was silent for a minute, then went on angrily, “They didn’t even want to tell me that Lee was dead. ‘Oh, he’s too busy to answer your E-mail,’ they said. ‘Oh, he’s just out when you call.’ ‘Oh, he’s having too much fun to come and see his pesky little brother.’ ”

  Luke could understand why Smits had been so upset.

  “But you did find out about Lee,” Nina said gently.

  Smits nodded. “Lee wasn’t like that. He didn’t think I was pesky. He took care of me. He loved me. So I knew something was wrong. I started spying on Mom and Dad. And I caught Mom in here, crying. And then I made her tell me, and she made me promise to keep everything secret, but . . . I couldn’t, you know? And I kept thinking, Mom was crying over Lee. And I didn’t think she would cry if I died. But then tonight, when that chandelier started to fall—Mom pushed me out of the way. She saved my life. And she didn’t have time to save her own. She—she must have loved me after all. And now—now I don’t have any parents at all. . . .”

  Smits began crying then, really hard. Awkwardly Luke patted his shoulders. Nina bent down and hugged him. Trey, who clearly wasn’t any good around emotional outbursts, drifted over toward Mr. Grant’s desk. He began rifling through the drawers. After a few moments Luke joined him.

  “It’d be nice if we could find some papers—some proof,” Trey muttered. “We can’t believe what Smits tells us, can we?”

  Luke glanced back at the sobbing boy.

  “Yeah,” he said. “He’s too sad to lie.”

  Luke was convinced: Smits definitely believed everything he’d told them was true. He’d mostly told the truth all along—until Oscar had begun pressuring him to betray Luke, as a way to betray his parents. Smits’s only lies were the ones that had come from other people.

  Luke was willing to stand there and try to figure everything out, but Trey elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Where’d you get the key to this room?” he asked.

  “Oscar gave it to me,” Luke said absentmindedly.

  “How do we know he hasn’t bugged the whole place?” Trey asked. “How do we know he isn’t still planning to kill you and Smits?”

  Luke stared at his friend. Luke’s vision was starting to go fuzzy around the edges. It was so tempting to give in to that fuzziness, to slump down in a heap and let someone else figure out what to do. But he blinked hard, blinking Trey and the secret room back into focus. And Nina and Smits.

  Most of all Smits.

  “Think one of us can figure out how to drive?” Luke asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  In the end they decided to trust the chauffeur. Joel and John sat in the front with him, ready to overpower him if he tried anything suspicious.

  Trey and Luke sat in the first seat in the back, all the papers from Mr. Grant’s desk spread out between them. Trey had insisted on bringing them. He was methodically reading one paper after the other with a penlight. Occasionally he’d mutter, “This is incredible!” or “Listen to this!” but Luke barely heard him. It was always something financial, something about Mr. Grant’s business. Nothing Luke cared about. Luke just stared straight ahead, thinking.

  Nina and Smits sat across from Luke and Trey. Or lay, in Smits’s case. He’d fallen asleep leaning against Nina, but he still whimpered and thrashed about. Several times she had to grab him to keep him from falling off the seat.

  Every time that happened, Luke knew he was doing the right thing.

  It had been the middle of the night when they started out, so their entire trip had been in darkness. There seemed to be no light at all in the world except in their car. But by the time Trey finally gave up on the papers and turned off his penlight, the first gleam of dawn had begun creeping over the horizon. Luke stopped staring at Smits and began pressing his face against the window, trying to see something familiar outside. He couldn’t get enough of staring at the landscape around him.

  When the car passed a crossroads with nothing but three mailboxes in the midst of a clump of weeds, he suddenly screamed out, “Stop!”

  The chauffeur hit the brakes so hard that Smits finally rolled completely off his seat.

  “Sorry, sir,” the chauffeur said.

  “That’s all right,” Luke said. “You can let Smits and me out here.”

  “Here?” The man sounded incredulous. Luke saw him looking around at rutted fields stretching all the way to the horizon. To the chauffeur and almost anyone else who might see this scene, it would look like a vast wasteland. The middle of nowhere.

  But that wasn’t what Luke saw.

  “You can take the others on to Mr. Talbot’s house,” Luke said. “Thanks.”

  Luke didn’t wait for the chauffeur to open the door for him. He pushed his way out on his own.

  “Come on, Smits,” he said gently, holding the door.

  Nina handed the younger boy over as if he were a mere parcel. Still, Smits stood up straight once he was out of the car. Luke saw him glance down at the dried mud streaked across the road, but he didn’t say anything.

  “You won’t change your mind?” Trey asked. “You can still come with the rest of us.”

  “No,” Luke said. “I’ve got to do it this way.�
��

  He had a feeling Mr. Talbot would disapprove. He was probably being a coward, not going to Mr. Talbot’s house first. Or foolhardy for not discussing everything with Mr. Talbot before making up his mind. But Luke knew now that Mr. Talbot didn’t know everything, either. Mr. Talbot was going to be stunned to learn what Oscar had done. Luke was perfectly willing to let Trey and Nina break the news.

  “Okay,” Trey said hesitantly.

  Luke shoved the door shut and turned to Smits.

  “Up ahead,” Luke said. “That house. That’s where we’re going.”

  They waited until the car drove out of sight, then they began walking. Luke barely managed to keep himself from breaking into a run—he was that eager. But he had the younger boy to think about, and Smits didn’t seem capable of running right now.

  Finally they reached the driveway, and Luke could restrain himself no longer. He raced up to the door and pounded.

  “Mother! Dad! I’m home!”

  The door flew open and Mother stood there, her jaw dropped in astonishment.

  “Oh, Lu—,” she began, then swallowed the rest of his name and just buried him in a hug. Then she stopped and held him out from her by the shoulders, much as Mrs. Grant had held him when she was planning all the ways to change him. But Mrs. Grant had been looking for his faults, and Mother was beaming as though everything about him was wonderful.

  “You’ve gotten taller and more muscular, and your hair’s darker and—are those braces?” she asked in amazement. She didn’t wait for an answer. Her face clouded suddenly, as though she’d just remembered why he’d had to leave home in the first place. “Is it safe for you to be here?” she asked.

  “As safe as anywhere else,” Luke replied steadily. For that, finally, was what he’d concluded. Oscar knew about Hendricks School and Mr. Talbot, the Grants’ house was a Byzantine mess of mixed loyalties—if Luke was going to be in danger, he might as well get to see his family. And he wasn’t going to be staying long enough to endanger them.