by Alex P. Berg
“You’re not buying it? Normally you’re so quick to accept the paranormal explanation.”
“Maybe it’s my inherent disbelief of anything rich people tell me.”
Shay glanced toward the house. “And Marcus? What’s your read on him?”
“He seems like he’s laying on the concern for his wife a little thick, but who knows? It could be genuine.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“So what did you mean?”
“You didn’t get the vibe?”
“What vibe?” I asked.
Shay shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re a guy. But something about him made me a little uncomfortable.”
“So…creepy old guy vibe. Should I be glad you never felt that from me?”
Shay smiled. “Who said never? Come on. Let’s find Fezig.”
We walked along the path, which loosely followed the edge of the home before branching out in varied directions. One fork led to a hedge maze, another toward a pond, and a third towards a gap in the trees to the back left of the home, one which appeared to have once held something. Maybe the servants’ home that burned down.
I suggested continuing on the fourth route, the one that continued by the home and, presumably, would curl around toward the front, but Shay’s chipper attitude and the day’s own blessings convinced me otherwise.
We headed toward the pond. As we walked, I couldn’t help but take note that my surroundings sagged from the same malaise that afflicted the front. The grass next to the path had been neatly trimmed, and regular beds of flowers peeked up from underneath piles of mulch, but farther away from the path, the grass grew unfettered as it did in the wide mall out front. The hedge maze to my right looked wild and overgrown, even from a distance, with rogue holly branches reaching toward the too-narrow path that led into them. Even the pond seemed less than content as we reached it, its surface thick with algae clinging to the sides of dense clusters of reeds before reaching and clawing its way toward the center of the pool.
“I take it back,” I said. “Green is the worst.”
“What’s that?” asked Shay.
We paused underneath a tree at the pond’s edge. “Nothing. Just having an ongoing argument with myself over color theory. That and lamenting the state of these grounds.”
Shay swept her head around, her nose slightly scrunched. “They’ve seen better days, haven’t they?”
“I sure hope so. I’d blame the gardeners, but Marcus said there was only one. How many do you think it would take to maintain this place properly? Twenty? Thirty?”
“More, maybe.”
“Regardless of the number, seeing the place in its current condition is unsettling,” I said. “The hedge maze? This pond? It’s borderline creepy. Even this tree above us doesn’t look so hot. I mean, what is that thing?”
I pointed. Above, a strange yellowish-green growth exploded among the branches like a giant puff ball, only partially concealed by the tree’s fresh new crop of leaves. A few other smaller balls of the off-color growths spread through the tree’s arms like a contagious disease.
Shay smiled. “Look at that. Mistletoe.”
“That’s mistletoe?” I squinted. “Well, it’s…festive, I guess.”
“I think your initial observation of sickliness is perhaps a better descriptor.”
I frowned and narrowed an eye at my partner.
“You do know what mistletoe is, right Daggers?”
“Uh…”
“That’s a no. It’s a parasite, feeding off nutrients it pulls from the host tree. That’s why it maintains its color through the winter, and that in turn is why it’s viewed as a symbol of fertility, because even in the winter cold and gloom it maintains a vivid hue. Never mind that it does so by sucking the life out of another organism like a vampire.”
I kept my frown and squinty eye in place. “How do you know so much about mistletoe?”
Shay shrugged. “I have a good memory. Besides, botany is a hobby of mine. Remember?”
I recalled her apartment full of potted plants. “Right. So I guess given your thorough understanding of mistletoe’s parasitic nature and your logical, science-based mindset, you don’t feel particularly motivated in any way by standing underneath a sprig of it.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Shay, smiling again. “I’m as susceptible to traditions as anyone else. Assuming I’m standing next to the right individual.”
“And does the right individual happen to enjoy sleeping in, wearing leather jackets, and taking a bite of the occasional kolache?”
“Just kiss me, you idiot.”
She needn’t ask twice. I leaned in, relishing in the subtle hint of lilac perfume that lingered on her skin. Her lips parted in anticipation of mine, warm breath escaping her lungs. I closed my eyes and let my other senses rule me, tasting her mouth against my own, feeling her body press into me. A thrilling rush swept through me as it did every time I kissed her, like a wave of goosebumps brought on by passion rather than a chill wind. Time eluded me. I wished it might never end.
Someone next to me cleared their throat, and I jumped.
9
My eyes snapped open as I pulled away from Shay. I turned in the direction of the noise, first to my left, and when that failed, down. Before us stood a grizzled dwarf in a pair of faded blue overalls, dark mud staining the garment’s knees. A salt and pepper beard stretched past his belly button, but he kept the hair on top of his head cropped short—what was left of it anyway. Color-starved follicles ringed his crown, leaving the top bare and gleaming in the late morning light. His nose, which sported its own collection of graying hairs, covered a good half of his face, and the frown he wore stole away half again of what was left. He scowled at us with his arms crossed over his chest, yet something about the man’s downturned smile seemed forced.
“Look,” he said in a voice raspy and tired from age. “I was young once. I get it. If I was your age, had someone to love and to hold and found myself standing under this blasted mistletoe tree, I’d probably kiss ‘em, too. But you’ve got to know this is private property. I don’t know how you managed to sneak in, but you need to get out of here before one of our security guys finds you. So go on. Git.” He nodded toward the path.
Steele disentangled herself from my arms, which had refused to let her squishy parts go. “Oh. No. Sorry about that. We’re not, ah… I mean, we’re not here illegally. Or trespassing.” She cleared her throat. “What I mean to say is, I’m Detective Shay Steele. This is Detective Jake Daggers. Mr. Vanderfeller invited us.”
“We were looking for Fezig,” I said. “Your security guy?”
The dwarf’s frown faded, leaving behind only the smug, knowing look that lingered underneath. “Weren’t looking very hard, apparently.”
“We got distracted,” I said.
“I can see that.” The frown had officially turned into a smile.
Shay pivoted like a pro. “You must be the groundskeeper, Mr. Brewstrong.”
“That’s right. Call me Thaddy. So…detectives, eh? I assume you’re here about Mrs. Vanderfeller?”
I gave him the old snap and point. “Old age hasn’t dulled your mind one bit, has it?”
The frown returned, this time without the mirth.
“Don’t mind him,” said Shay. “He suffers from what I call an abnormal vocal-plantar reaction time, in that before he’s had a chance to think about what he’s going to say he’s already stuck his foot in his mouth. But that’s besides the point. We’re trying to piece together clues that might help lead us to Mrs. Vanderfeller. We already spoke to Mr. Vanderfeller, as well as Lothorien. They suggested starting with the manor’s wardens, but since we’ve found you…”
Thaddy grunted. “You want to talk. Of course you do. As if I didn’t have enough to do now that spring’s arrived.”
“I can see you’re understaffed,” said Shay. “My apologies in tha
t regard. We’re just trying help with the disappearance. We’ll try to be brief.”
Thaddy sighed, uncrossing his arms. “Sorry. I know you’re here to do your job.” He glanced at the mistletoe. “Well…mostly. We’re all distraught over the loss of Mrs. Vanderfeller. Has us on edge. I’ll tell you what I can, but let me take a seat. These old knees aren’t what they used to be.”
The dwarf wandered over to a marble bench that overlooked the pond, one that had once been white before becoming crusted with dirt and overgrown with moss.
He leveraged himself onto the seat with a groan. “So…what can I do for you?”
“Been around the estate long?” I asked.
Thaddy snorted. “What do you think? Of course I have. Longer than anyone else. I worked for Mrs. Vanderfeller’s father, Edward, before he passed. I was here when Clarice was born and her poor mother died in labor, working for Frederick Claypoole Vanderfeller himself. Heck, I was here when the Aldermont was built. I laid the first bricks in the foundation myself.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You did? How old are you exactly?”
The corner of Thaddy’s lip turned north. “Nah, I’m kidding about that last part. Just seeing if you’re paying attention. I’ve been here about fifty years, give or take. Trust me, when you’ve spent as many decades as I have doing the same thing, day in day out, you start to lose track. Though the days do seem a heck of a lot longer now than they used to.”
“Because of the traumatic impact of losing Mrs. Vanderfeller?” offered Shay.
“No,” said Thaddy. “Well…sure. But mostly because I’m old. And because I don’t have any help anymore. You should’ve seen this place under Frederick Vanderfeller. Boy, did it thrive. Every path clear of weeds, the hedges trimmed, the flowers blooming. The grass a uniform two inches high over every square foot of the property. And no damned mistletoe.” He waved a hand at the tree. “Now I leave it. I don’t have time to cut it off, and my back hurts every time I carry the ladder out of the shed.”
“Must’ve been a hard few years,” I said.
“Years?” said Thaddy. “Try decades. This place has been in decline ever since Frederick Vanderfeller’s death. Edward slashed the support staff in half within weeks of his passing. It’s kept declining ever since. I’ve been on my own out here, battling the undergrowth for…what? Seven years now I guess. Ever since the fire.”
I glanced over my shoulder toward the oddly clear expanse I’d noticed earlier. A wall of trees hid it from sight. “Right. Mr. Vanderfeller mentioned that. The servants’ quarters burned down?”
Thaddy nodded, his eyes adopting a strange, faraway quality. “I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a cool spring evening, much like last night or the night before. Not too wet, but not dry. The sun had just set, but I’d still been hard at work. Never enough hours in the day to get everything done during the spring. And then I saw it. The glow.
“I raced over as fast as I could, which wasn’t particularly fast, even seven years ago. The smoke already boiled off it, filling my nostrils even with me upwind. A confused crowd milled around the front. All of us who worked here at the time, about twice as many as are here now. All except for one poor chambermaid. Sophie. She was still inside, someone shouted.
“A man near the front heard the shout and stood up straight. My fellow gardener and friend, Aaron, Opal’s husband. Without hesitation, he ran back in to save her. He’d always been too heroic for his own good, that man. It was ultimately his undoing. We waited the entire night as the structure burned to its foundation, all the while listening to the heartbroken wail of Sophie’s only child, her young son, Bertrand. The investigators found their remains the next day. They said it looked like Aaron had managed to find Sophie, but the pair never worked their way back out. Smoke inhalation, they suggested. Who knows…”
Thaddy blinked, the faraway look evaporating, blown into the wind like the ashes from his vision. “Anyway, the incident left me as the estate’s last groundskeeper. The Vanderfellers had been suffering financial difficulties—still are—but the loss of the servants’ home, followed by young Nell’s disappearance, was the final nail in the coffin. The smoke from the fire may have drifted away, but it left a cloud over the family. They let a number of the remaining staff go in the aftermath. I’ve been on my own ever since. But I’m not complaining, lest you get any ideas. I have work, a roof over my head, and hot meals every night. My health may be fading, but I’ll take that to a sudden demise at the heart of a raging inferno any day.”
I felt as if I should give the dwarf a moment to recuperate, but based on his eyes and recovered sense of morbid humor, whatever wistful reverie he’d snuck off to had already cleared. “So you said there were investigators here, for the fire. Did they ever figure out what caused it?”
Thaddy shrugged. “Not to my knowledge. A spark from the hearth, they said, but that was a wild guess, if you ask me. Chances are they had no idea. It certainly hadn’t been from a lightning strike, and as I said, it wasn’t particularly dry at the time. Nothing else burned down, thankfully, so the fire must’ve started from within.”
“Did you live in the servants’ home at the time, or in the mansion proper?” I asked.
“The home,” said Thaddy. “We pretty much all did, except for Lothorien. Why?”
“Do you think it’s even possible the home could’ve burned down from a spark?”
“Probably not. An accident, sure. If someone piled too much wood on the fire or left a pot unattended in the kitchen. Why are you asking, anyway? Aren’t you here about Mrs. Vanderfeller?”
“Just curiosity. I get distracted easily.”
“No kidding.” Thaddy made his eyebrows dance in the direction of the mistletoe tree.
“Speaking of Mrs. Vanderfeller,” said Steele. “What can you tell us about her disappearance?”
“Not a lot,” said Thaddy. “Only what I heard secondhand from Mr. Vanderfeller. That she was here one day and gone the next, or something similar. With her reclusive nature, it’s hard to tell exactly when she went missing.”
“So you didn’t see any trace of her, either before or after she supposedly disappeared?” asked Shay.
Thaddy sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You seem to be missing the point. Nobody did. Mrs. Vanderfeller kept to her room. Has for years. How could anyone have seen her? She didn’t go anywhere.”
Or so everyone believes. I gestured to Thaddy’s overalls. “You spend all your time gardening? Down on your knees, in the mud, weeding, that sort of thing?”
Thaddy eyed me curiously. “Yes…”
“So if there’d been any tracks on these grounds, you’re the individual who would’ve seen them.”
Thaddy sighed. “Look, I’m concerned, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know anything about Mrs. Vanderfeller’s whereabouts. I haven’t noticed anything suspicious. No people. No tracks. I hadn’t seen anything but hares and bumblebees in this garden for weeks, at least until you two came along. If Mrs. Vanderfeller wandered off, she must’ve done so by walking through the front entrance and down the path to the gates like any other normal person would’ve.”
“What about at night?” asked Steele. “Any chance you heard anything, maybe two to four nights ago?”
The frown returned to Thaddy’s face. “I sleep at night. Soundly, I might add, given how hard I work. Speaking of which, can I get back to my duties? You realize I’m the only thing standing between this estate and full reclamation by mother nature?”
“Sure, but I have one last question before you go.” I pointed through the trees. “Is that clearing over there where the servants’ home burned down?”
“That’s right.” Thaddy pushed himself off the weathered marble and onto his feet. “Why? You want to take a look?”
“At some point, yes.”
“You heard my bit about mother nature, right?” said Thaddy. “That wasn’t a joke. There’s nothing but weeds,
shrubs, and saplings there now. You’d have to be a psychic to decipher anything about that fire seven years after the fact.”
“Luckily enough, we have one of those.” I smirked at Steele.
Thaddy frowned. “Huh?”
“Again, don’t mind him,” said Steele. “He’s not as funny as he thinks. Do you know where we might find Fezig?”
“Check around the front,” said Thaddy. “He does loops around the property. Pretty sure I saw him heading around the south side a half hour ago.”
“Thanks.”
Shay waved to me, and I followed. Something told me my feet would get a workout today, but on the bright side, I could probably talk my way out of doing any more strenuous exercise later.
I might’ve changed my body and physical fitness routine, but I’m still a lazy bum at heart.
10
We worked our way back onto the stone path that skirted the home and followed it in the direction I’d initially suspected we should take, around the southernmost wing and back toward the front. As the wild, unshorn grass of the estate’s promenade came into view, I began to fear we might be following Fezig’s path at polar points on the loop, separated by a hundred and eighty degrees and countless tons of brick and lumber. I considered testing my theory by cutting through the manor once we returned to the front gates, but before I could make a decision on the matter, a creak and the clack of a latch distracted me.
I looked up from the path’s worn stone to find an enormous ogre exiting from one of the mansion’s side doors, far to the south of the main entrance we’d previously used. The guy must’ve stood about six feet, eight inches tall, and I wagered he tipped the scales somewhere north of three and a half century notes—after skipping breakfast and stripping his clothes off. He wore his hair about as short as one could get it without shaving it off completely, and his dark skin gleamed from underneath the stubble in the bright sunlight. A suit jacket hugged his shoulders too tightly, serving notice that his bulk was mostly of the functional kind, as did the snug shirt collar and tie that gripped his neck like a sausage casing.