by Alex P. Berg
“He made the rounds.” The young woman straightened the harp upon its base and stood, extending a hand. “I’m Sydney Vanderfeller, although I assume you already knew that.”
Sydney hung her hand at a downward angle, almost as if she wanted me to kiss it instead of take it in my own. I shook it anyway and was surprised to find a hidden strength within. Maybe it came from years of plucking taut strings.
“A pleasure.”
Shay took her turn shaking the heiress’s hand. “You’re an excellent harpist, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Sydney nodded as she pulled her hand back. “Thank you, but I’m a hobbyist, nothing more. I take it you don’t play?”
Sydney packed a lot into that remark, managing to deprecate herself and call into question Shay’s judgment all in one fell blow, which she did with a prim smile on her face the whole time. For all their wealth, I’d found aristocrats were often judicious with their words, making them play double duty.
“I’m not a musician,” said Shay. “I merely enjoy the byproduct, unlike my partner.”
I enjoyed music just fine as long as it didn’t involve a saxophonist or have the word ‘smooth’ in the genre, but now wasn’t the time to belabor that point. “If you’ve spoken to Lothorien, then you know why we’re here, Miss Vanderfeller. We need to speak to you about your mother.”
“Of course. Come with me to my office. We can speak there.”
I’d expected an answer along those lines, though I still didn’t fully understand the reasoning behind it. “Do you Vanderfellers have some aversion to public speaking? Or speaking in hallways, as the case may be?”
Angela lifted an eyebrow and looked down her nose at me, despite the fact that I stood a good eight inches taller than her. “A man’s home is his castle, Detective, but we share ours.”
She headed off down the corridor, forcing me to ponder her sparse words while I walked. Like underprepared spelunkers, we delved into another unexplored portion of the mansion. Thanks to our guide, however, we didn’t have to use echolocation to find our way.
Upon arriving at Angela’s office, which resembled her father’s except with fewer books, more knickknacks, and a slightly brighter wallpaper, the elder Vanderfeller daughter crossed to the corner of her desk and paused. “Could you close the door?”
I obliged her. As the latch clicked, Steele took the opportunity to speak. “So, Miss Vanderfeller. Now that we’re in private, perhaps we could discuss your mother?”
Sydney picked up a marble globe from a golden pedestal and rolled the orange-sized stone in her hand, which I took as a poor sign. Not because I expected her to throw it at me, but because I’d gathered a cursory understanding of haptics during my years in the force. Perhaps her tactile obsession stemmed from the same internal pyre that drove her harp playing, but more likely than not it meant what it did for most people. That she was distracted, or about to lie.
“How much do you know about my family, detectives?” asked Sydney, paying more attention to the globe than us.
“Some,” said Steele. “Our captain briefed us before we left the station. Your father gave us additional information, including what he referred to as a curse. Lothorien and your groundskeeper Thaddy elaborated on that, as well as on the fire that destroyed your servants’ home seven years ago.”
“So they told you what’s public, then,” said Sydney.
“It’s public knowledge that your family is cursed?” I said. “I’d hate to be as famous as you are.”
Sydney kept her eyes trained on the globe. “They’re not matters of common discourse, but they’re public in that my father, and Lothorien and Thaddy by extension, are willing to speak of them. There are other matters my father isn’t so willing to speak of. The loss of social standing our family has suffered as a result of Nell’s loss and mother’s disease, for one. How it’s affected us all personally, changed our lives, isolated us from the outside world. And other more practical matters—our financial situation, in particular.”
“He mentioned your grandfather Edward’s failings as a businessman,” said Shay. “Said your family has been in decline.”
“Of course. Always placing blame elsewhere.” Sydney looked up. “Our family’s cash flow is almost negative. Did he mention that?”
I blinked. “You’re broke?”
“Of course not,” said Sydney. “Bankruptcy implies a lack of assets, of which we still have a considerable number. I was speaking in terms of our net income. We suffer from a cash flow insolvency. And from the bewildered look on your face, I can tell my father also failed to mention that I balance our family’s books, not he.”
I felt my bewildered look was justified given Sydney’s fancy dress and her erstwhile harp playing, but I kept the opinion to myself, otherwise Shay might lambast me later with a lecture on the uncorrelated nature of gender, appearance, and mental aptitude. “So you own the Aldermont estate, and maybe a few other things, but you can’t afford to pay your staff.”
“Only barely,” said Sydney. “The result of years of poor planning and senseless waste. Although my grandfather Edward often gets blamed for our current state of affairs, I’ll offer an unpopular view. Our decline is ultimately my great-grandfather Frederick’s fault.”
“Because he grew the fortune in the first place?” I said.
“A holistic viewpoint, but not what I meant,” said Sydney. “His hubris blinded him to the truth of the Aldermont’s construction. Even accounting for the enormity of his wealth, the creation of this estate drained him considerably. Anyone with a keen eye would’ve flagged the property’s operation and maintenance costs as unwieldy. Now we’re left with the aftermath, which includes not only the money woes but the offshoots thereof.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Shay.
“The interpersonal strife.” Sydney replaced the stone globe on its pedestal. “I’m sure you’re aware of the legal struggle following Frederick Vanderfeller’s death. You don’t think that animosity disappeared after his estate was divided among his offspring, do you? Yes, my grandfather’s siblings left New Welwic in the wake of the settlement, and my mother was an only child, which mitigated feelings to a certain degree, but only so much. Money corrupts everyone it touches. My family is not exempt.”
“Including you?” I asked.
She leveled her steely gaze on me. “Everyone, Detective.”
Shay furrowed her brow. “Pardon me, Miss Vanderfeller, but what does this have to do with your mother’s disappearance?”
Sydney shifted the piercing gaze to Steele. “What sort of police did you say you were?”
“We didn’t. Homicide.”
“So you already know. My mother, Clarice Vanderfeller, was murdered.”
I stretched my eyebrows. They stayed attached. “And…you have evidence to support this assertion?”
Sydney shook her head, a prim, precise movement. “It’s a suspicion, but an informed one. My mother had become inordinately reclusive. She didn’t even leave her room, never mind the home. While the loss of my sister Nell may have compromised her mental faculties over time, I can assure you she wouldn’t have wandered off. Someone took her.”
“That’s different than murder,” said Shay.
“Please, Detective,” said Sydney. “The crime must’ve been perpetrated by an insider. Someone with access to her. Someone with motive. What possible motive would anyone have to abduct her but keep her alive? And where would they keep her, precisely? We searched the home in the wake of her absence, I guarantee you.”
“And what motive would a member of the household have to kill her?” asked Shay.
Sydney gazed at Steele with that same disdainful look she’d given me earlier. “My mother’s attachment to this estate was the deepest of anyone’s. I may balance the books, but I don’t make decisions involving which of our investments, or properties, we should sell to keep the hearths warm.”
I put two
and two together. “Are suggesting your father murdered your mother so he could sell the Aldermont?”
Sydney’s shoulders lifted ever so slightly. She gazed idly at her desk. “I shouldn’t speculate. I wouldn’t want to influence your investigation.”
Sure, she didn’t.
I pursed my lips. “You know, Miss Vanderfeller, I can’t help but notice you’re not particularly bent out of shape by the current state of affairs regarding your mother.”
Sydney stiffened, only barely, but I noticed. “I think you’ll find none of us are, to be honest, Detective. Her behavior had become an endless drain on all of us, financially and emotionally. Which, I suppose, makes your investigation all the more difficult. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work I should see to.” She waved toward the closed office doors.
I looked to Steele. She lifted a brow. I nodded.
“Alright,” I said. “We appreciate your help. But before we go, I’d like to have a word with your sister. She mentioned a studio. Mind pointing us in the right direction?”
13
I passed through a set of wide, two-story tall doors into a room with equally tall ceilings. The latter towered above me, covered in painted black tin tiles that shone dully in the dim lighting, but the room itself didn’t feel cavernous thanks to its contents. Hundreds of canvases, stretched across frames anywhere from an arm’s length to fifteen feet across, lay stacked against the walls, some covered in dust, others shimmering with paint that hadn’t yet dried.
As they lay stacked, the paintings were largely hidden except for the foremost specimens, but on those I spotted a variety of subject matters. All were painted in the realist method, which was one of the few art styles I both recognized and appreciated, with the depictions ranging from portraits to bowls of fruit. What were those called? Still lives? Or still lifes?
The landscapes, however, were the ones that involuntarily loosened my jaw muscles. They tended to be the largest, so their size undoubtedly helped awe me, but I’d also gazed upon freighters the size of small cities without turning into a slack-jawed yokel. Rather it was the detail of the paintings that impressed. I spotted fanciful landscapes alongside familiar ones, panoramic views of the grounds and selected locations from within the Aldermont. In all of them, the shadows, lighting, and finely crafted strokes combined to make it seem as if you might fall into the paintings if you leaned too close.
I kept my feet firmly planted on the floor, just in case.
I walked among the paintings, Shay trailing behind me. “Hello? Anyone home?”
No one responded, and my voice died among the canvas.
“Maybe she snuck out to grab a bite,” offered Shay. “It’s getting close to lunch time.”
“Or perhaps she wandered off through a wall to wail and rattle chains.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. A joke.”
I followed the main path through the maze of artwork, eventually reaching a clearing. In the center stood Angela, palette daubed with paints in one hand and a glossy, hardwood brush with paint-slicked bristles in the other. She held the tip of the brush near her lips, observing the painting before her, a roughly six by eight foot rendition of the pond Shay and I’d locked lips by earlier.
“That was quick.” Angela didn’t turn, keeping her eyes trained on the painting.
“You left an impression,” I said, hoping my reply wouldn’t be interpreted as a dopey art joke.
“I always do.”
Angela flicked her brush, applying a swath of cerulean to the pond’s surface. Upon closer inspection, while the painting depicted the ground’s pond, it did so unfaithfully, if still realistically. A calmness and clarity infused the pool’s uppermost layers, free of any of the choking algae I’d noticed floating over it. The reeds punched through the pristine water, their bright greens contrasting against the pond’s deeper blues. Similarly, the grass at the edges rose to a uniform height, flowers sprouted from neatly mulched beds, and the tree under which Shay and I had smooched wasn’t afflicted by a single growth of mistletoe.
“Employing your artistic license, I take it?” I said.
Angela smeared another dab of paint on the canvas, streaking it between two blades of the reedy grasses to create a rippling texture. “Sometimes I paint places as they are, other times as I recall them, still others as I wish them to be.”
Shay split from my side and wandered into the clearing, peering at the artwork lining the edges. Perhaps she grew tired of my indirect approach, but something about Angela told me I shouldn’t rush her. Like a single beer on a divorced cop’s salary, she needed to be nursed.
I glanced at the paintings surrounding us. “These all yours?”
Angela nodded, still consumed by her work.
“And the portraits? Looks like some of those are family.” I spotted one of Nell, another of Sydney, and one of someone I didn’t recognize. Perhaps a rendition of Marcus as a young man? He had all the same features.
Angela nodded again.
“Well, I’m no art aficionado,” I said, “but even I can see your talent. The portraits and still lifes are impressive, but you have a real knack for landscapes.”
I thought she might snort in derision at my painful understatement, but she simply stood there, rooted in place, eyes on her painting. I might as well have been shouting at her from the other side of the Wel Sea.
“I’m Detective Daggers, by the way. I don’t think I ever introduced myself. My partner over there is Steele.”
Nothing.
“Having you been painting long?”
“A lifetime.”
“You like it then?”
“It’s therapeutic.”
Shay shot me a look. I shot one back.
“I don’t suppose you painted that large family portrait down in the living room near the front entrance?” I said. “The one with your whole family, Nell included.”
“The one where I was eight?” asked Angela.
“Yes.” Now that she pointed it out, I felt silly suggesting it.
“I don’t paint myself.”
“Of course not.”
“But I’ve painted portraits of our family, myself excluded. Several. They’re in the attic, if you’d care to look at them.”
“Your family as you recall them, or as you wish them to be?”
Angela simply hummed.
Shay shot me another glance, a more pointed one this time. I gave her a bug-eyed look and mouthed the word, Okay.
“So, Angela. If you don’t mind my asking, can we talk about your mother? You know? About her disappearance.”
Angela placed her palette upon a stool, then set her brush down atop it. As she released it, I noticed it was even more elaborate than I’d thought. The wood had been carved to resemble a dragon, with the bristles pouring out the beast’s mouth like a burst of flames.
Angela turned to me, her face as emotionless as a ceramic doll and only slightly more rosy. “What do you wish to know, Detective?”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“I heard she disappeared.”
“You heard?”
“I didn’t witness it. Otherwise she couldn’t have disappeared, could she?”
I didn’t need the young woman’s sass, but based on her flat lips and smooth cheeks, she didn’t intend it as a joke. I half wanted to reach out to Shay for help—the gods knew I wasn’t the best person to connect with an aloof, sixteen-year-old rich girl—but my partner continued to pace the studio, sending me the occasional curious glance. Maybe she enjoyed seeing me flail. I think she harbored a malicious streak inside her.
I continued to handle Angela with kid gloves. “Sydney told us she suspected some ill had befallen your mother.”
“That she was murdered. I know.”
I sucked on my lips. “Alright, then. What’s your take on it?”
“I told you Sydney wasn’t to be trusted.”
>
“So you’re saying your mother wasn’t murdered?”
“I wouldn’t know. I already told you I didn’t witness anything myself.”
I felt a strong urge to wipe one of my mitts across my face. I held firm only by the slimmest of margins.
“Look, Angela. Detective Steele and I are trying to determine what happened to your mother. Anything you could tell us that might point us toward her, or toward someone who knows what happened to her, would be useful. If you know anything about her disappearance, please tell us.”
Angela turned back to her painting, picking up her palette and paintbrush as she did so. “I can only tell you what I know, Detective, and I simply don’t know what happened to her. I spend most of my time here, lost in my paintings. I prefer them to real life.”
“And other people can confirm that? Your paint-based isolation?”
Angela hummed and flicked out with her brush, adding more of an asparagus green to the reeds.
I looked to Shay again. She shrugged. I felt as if I should ask more questions, but despite the seemingly endless pool of them to choose from, I couldn’t think of a single one.
14
I stopped at an intersection of hallways a few doors down from Angela’s studio, far enough away that I was certain Angela wouldn’t overhear us.
“Well, that was interesting,” I told Steele.
She lifted a brow. “And by interesting, you mean…?”
“Frustrating, unnerving, and not at all helpful. I’m not sure we can trust anything that young woman had to say. Then again, I’m not sure we can trust anything Sydney told us, or anything we know about Simon other than that he’s a jerk.”
“They’re making Lothorien look downright trustworthy,” agreed Shay. “And despite Sydney’s assertions to the contrary, Marcus’s story seems to be one of the most believable we’ve heard today.”
“Excluding the curse stuff. But you’re forgetting Thaddy. I got the impression he had nothing to hide. Old people generally don’t. Literally, in most cases. I don’t know about women’s locker rooms, but men’s?” I shuddered.