Kate's shoulders slumped and she nodded. "I know. I guess it's just hard to believe he's back. I mean, he still hasn't taken off that make-up he used to make himself look like a Mexican. And he doesn't talk like himself, either. When he's in disguise, he really becomes another person."
"I've been meanin' to ask about that." Mary's father had kept his own counsel, periodically adding Irish whisky to his tea and pretending no one else noticed. The Volstead Act was still in force, but even Ted, who was a cop, ignored it. "I know that Eric was an ace in the War, but how did he learn to disguise himself that way?"
Ted, Damien, and T.J. exchanged guarded looks, unspoken messages flashing between them in the language of men who have helped each other through the hell of combat and walked away.
Surprisingly, it was Kate who broke the silence. "You might as well tell him. I already know, and so does Mary." T.J. glared at her, but she met his stare with defiance. "Besides, he already knows everything else. He should at least understand where Eric is coming from."
"You shouldn't have told Mary," T.J. insisted. "It wasn't your story to tell. I'm sorry, Mary, but it wasn't."
Damien shifted his eyes toward Ted. "The question is, who told Kate…?"
As Ted shifted uncomfortably, Kate stepped into the breach. "The question isn't 'Who told Kate?' The question is, is anyone going to tell Uncle Aloysius?" She glanced at the older man, who was her uncle in name only. His face was impassive, but his eyes betrayed his wish that he had never asked about Eric in the first place.
T.J. raised an eyebrow to Ted. "Well?"
"Long story short," said the big man at last. "We all met in France. We were in the infantry together. We'd been on a patrol, come under fire, and we were the only ones who got out. We were approaching a small village, but we didn't know the Germans were waiting for us. Eric managed to arranged a parley between us and the Germans. It turned out that they thought they were surrounded, and they wanted a chance to escape. What they didn't know was that we were the only Allied unit within five miles. Just when it looked like it they were going to pull out, the Germans opened fire--and the villagers were caught in the middle. We got cover, but they didn't.
"When it was all over, the only German who escaped was the officer who'd broken the truce and given the order to fire. We set out after him, but we couldn't catch him. A few days later, Eric transferred to the Air Corps, and you know how that turned out. After the war, we thought we'd all get together, but Eric had dropped out of sight. We found out later that he'd joined up with Intelligence, and spent the rest of the war crossing back and forth over the lines. What even his bosses didn't know was that he was looking for that captain.
"He didn't come back with the rest of us. He spent the next two years in Europe, still looking."
"And did he find the man, then?"
Ted shook his head. "We don't know what happened. Eventually we met up again at UCLA, but he never told us how it turned out." Looking at each of his friends in turn, he added: "And as far as I know, the only people on Earth who have ever heard that story are in this room."
The steam rising from teacups made more sound than the six souls around the table when Ted finished speaking, some imagining how it must have felt to be standing in that cold French village on that tragic morning, and some remembering it despite themselves.
"And now he's decided to stay dead, to try to help people like that," O'Donnell murmured at last. "He saw the Vine People in the jungle, but in his mind he was back in France, back with those people who died."
"He wasn't going to let it happen again," Damien said. "He'd die first."
"And that's what he's done," O'Donnell agreed.
Suddenly, Kate put her face down on the table, sobbing. Mary stepped forward to put an arm around her shoulders as the men looked on helplessly.
Then there was a tapping on the window, and everyone in the room jumped a foot.
Chapter Two
Good News and Bad
Kate's head snapped up. "Eric!" she cried before she hurriedly wiped away her tears.
T.J., closest to the back door, opened it for Eric, who even now looked like Gonzalez, the disreputable Mexican pilot who had ferried them to the Amazon and back.
"Do I smell tea? I'm starving."
And like a pack of hyenas who had suddenly realized that tired as they were, they were famished, the entire crowd pounced on the O'Donnell kitchen. Thankfully, although Jeffries, the traitorous former butler, now lay in a shallow jungle grave, someone had kept the larder stocked against the day when the lord of the manor would return.
"Mary," O'Donnell asked as he helped empty the pantry, "what did you say the maid's name was again?"
"Audrey," Mary answered, her voice muffled by virtue of her head being in the icebox.
"Remind me to give Audrey a raise."
"Did I hear my name men---ahh! There's a mob in my kitchen!"
They all jumped again, and Mary hit her head on the icebox, eliciting a response that would have earned her a ruler across the back of the head at school. Kate ran to calm the startled maid.
"It's all right, Audrey. We were just hungry, and we knew you were busy."
"Of course, Miss Katherine. But--" she checked off on her fingers--"weren't there only six?"
"Uh--oh yes. This is Mr. Gonzalez. He's a--friend we met on our trip."
The look on Audrey's face said she had doubts about Miss Katherine's choice of friends, but she held her tongue.
"Mr. Gonzales will be staying the night. Please make up a bed for him."
"Of course, miss, but--I'm afraid we're out of rooms."
Eric said something in rapid Spanish, and Kate answered in kind. Turning back to Audrey, she said, "Mr. Gonzalez can sleep in my room. I'll bunk with Mary. That'll be all for tonight, Audrey."
Audrey curtsied and left with perhaps more haste than was seemly.
"That was quick," Ted said in a low voice. "Speaking Spanish so she won't think you know any English."
"This story's going to be all over town by tomorrow. The less she knows about me, the better. But it's for sure I can't stay another night."
Damien closed the door to the rest of the house, after making sure Audrey was not loitering nearby.
"You can stay with me for a few days. I have room in my apartment if you don't mind sleeping on the sofa."
"I've slept on it. It's pretty comfortable," T.J. added.
Kate and Mary ushered the men back to the big table while they worked to put together something resembling a cold supper. If anyone noticed that one of the reasons Kate preferred to remain apart was that she was having a hard time stopping the tears, nothing was said. Aloysius poured another healthy dose of comfort into his teacup, now entirely empty of tea.
"Thanks," Eric said to Damien's offer. "But I can't room with you forever. I can't stay with any of you, for obvious reasons. Our friendships are too well known. I need to find someplace to live."
"And how are you going to pay for it?" Ted asked.
His friend's face fell. "Oh. Yeah. You're right." Eric rubbed his forehead. "Most of my money I was keeping in cash, and that's gone. You'd be surprised how expensive it is being dead--especially when you have to get to Mexico so you can steal an airplane. I do have a little in a bank downtown."
"Uh, Eric?" T.J. grimaced theatrically. "You realize you're dead."
"Oh," Eric said again, with more feeling. "Great. There's no way I can get to it now. And I didn't have a will, so I guess eventually it'll go to-- Oh, no! Kate…!"
"What's the matter? I can lend you some money."
"Kate--the money. It'll go to STEPMOTHER and Dad."
His sister dropped the bread loaf she'd been planning to slice and staggered to the table, slumping into a chair.
"Oh my heavens. They don't know." Her face was stricken when she looked at him. "We've been gone for weeks--I cabled them about you before the funeral. So much was happening, I don't even know if they ever replied. And now I've gone m
issing… They must be frantic with worry!"
"There's nothing we can do about it tonight," Eric said rapidly. "I don't think there's an all-night telegraph office nearby. First thing tomorrow morning you can send a cable to Washington telling them you're all right. Wherever they are, the State Department will see that they get it." He shook his head, biting his lip. "It's all we can do."
Their anxious minds notwithstanding, their bodies were exhausted, and reluctantly they filed off to bed, and to try to sleep. The morning would be a busy one.
By the time any of them rose, the grocer's boy had already delivered enough food to sustain a fresh expedition to South America.
"I tried not to let on that something had happened, Miss Mary," Audrey reported while helping to lay out breakfast plates for the guests straggling in, "but everyone in town knows that you and Mr. O'Donnell have been away, and with the papers makin' such a fuss over it, I'm sure he'll be gabbing like a loon soon as he gets back to work."
"Which means we'll be knee-deep in reporters before lunch," Mary fumed. "But I suppose there's no help for it. You did well, Audrey. I'll see that my father knows."
The maid smiled, her cheeks going pink, and her eyelids started to flutter.
"I really didn't know what to do! You were gone, Jeffries was gone, I-- Miss, where is Jeffries? It was so late last night, and I was so busy, I didn't even notice he wasn't with you."
Mary took the girl by the arm. "Why don't you come with me into the sitting room for a minute? Kate, can you see to some breakfast?"
"Of course I can. And T.J. can help me."
The skinny geologist stared blearily over his coffee cup. He started to ask, "Who, me?" but when he saw the look in Kate's eye he scrambled to his feet and got busy.
Mary led Audrey out of the room. As far as anyone knew, she and Jeffries had not been any closer than any other domestics living under the same roof, but she deserved to be told in private. And since the story was going to come out anyway--it would make national headlines by sunset--there was no reason not to tell her the truth.
Despite being their acknowledged leader in most things, Eric was the last to come down to breakfast, still disguised as Gonzalez. He glanced around for Audrey and grimaced in sympathy when Kate told her what Mary had gone to do.
"Poor kid. After she kept this place together, too, even though she had no idea if anybody was coming back."
"But now that we are back," Damien said, "the question remains as to what you're going to do now. Audrey says the grocer's boy noticed something was up when he delivered the supplies, and we can expect to be swimming in busybodies and reporters any minute."
"Not to mention I have to go downtown and report in," Ted added. "When a cop just disappears, the entire department goes nuts."
"Lucky you," Eric told him. "You get to avoid the reporters. As soon as I finish breakfast, I have to clear out of here." Shoving a piece of ham into his mouth, he mumbled: "Have no idea where I'm going…"
Mr. O'Donnell unexpectedly cleared his throat. "Actually, I may have something to say about that."
Everyone around the table stopped eating and drinking to stare at him.
"Close your mouths, boys, before the flies get in. Before this ballyhoo all happened, I had just bought some farm property out in the San Fernando Valley. Fifty acres of orange trees. There's a small house in the middle of it, no neighbors to speak of." He took a healthy sip of Irish breakfast tea, watching the expectant faces with a glint in his eye. "You could move in today."
T.J. grabbed a slab of ham off the plate in the center of the table. "I made this breakfast with my own two hands. I'm not helping anybody move until I've finished it."
"'Small house in the middle of it,' he says. Anything less than eight bedrooms he doesn't figure's worth counting, I guess."
Touring O'Donnell's "small" Valley estate, Eric and Damien had to agree that the old man had been engaging in a bit of understatement. They counted five bedrooms, a library, kitchen, and sitting room. And much to Eric's delight, peering out of any of the numerous wide windows gave you a view of nothing but orange trees for almost 500 yards in any direction.
"This is perfect! I don't have to worry about anybody seeing me. I won't have to be in disguise all the time."
T.J. stopped to stare at him. "You were actually planning to do that?"
Eric shrugged. "I don't know. This whole being dead thing is new to me."
"This could actually work out really well." Damien took in the sitting room thoughtfully. "There are enough bedrooms that any of us could stay here if we needed to for some reason, and I saw a shed out in back that could hold all sorts of interesting things."
"What kind of interesting things were you thinking of?" Eric wanted to know.
"It rather depends on how seriously you're planning to take this whole saving-the-world-a-day-at-a-time thing, but if you are, I could use it to set up a lab. There are things my landlord won't let me make in my apartment." He paused. "Come to think of it, he's probably right. But they should be safe enough here."
"That's a good question, Eric. Just how committed are you to this idea? 'Cause if you are, we're with you, brother. You know that."
"Oh, I'm committed to it. Maybe that means I should be committed, but I have this feeling that all of this fell into my lap for a reason. I mean, what are the odds? I have the skills, and now I have the perfect cover. Somebody meant for this to happen."
T.J. and Damien exchanged sidelong looks.
"Okay," Damien said, "then I'm going start stocking my lab." He started for the door, frowning when T.J. followed behind. "Where are you going?"
"I am going to buy some newspapers," T.J. announced, opening the front door and holding it for his friend. "There's got to be somebody out there who needs our help."
"There is." Kate walked into the room slowly, holding a yellow piece of paper. She held it up for them to see. "I just receive an answer to my cable to Washington. Nobody at the State Department has any idea where Mother and Dad are. They've disappeared."
Chapter Three
Moving Quickly
"I managed to get a long-distance call through to Washington from the O'Donnells', for all the good it did me. All I could find out was that Dad was sent on a mission to China."
"China!" Eric blurted.
"Yes, I know. But he was actually travelling through there on his way to a little place in the Central Asia called Quanyu. --No, I never heard of it, either. I looked it up in an atlas before I drove over here. I think this house would overlap its borders. Apparently Dad was supposed to reassure the King of Quanyu of America's never-ending friendship, whatever that would be worth if the Japanese decided to climb the mountain. Anyway, he and Mother left about a month ago, before we were all kidnapped, so they probably never heard about it."
"Well, that's ironic," T.J. said, earning him hard looks all around. "Well, it is…"
"Never mind," Kate said. "They left for Quanyu, and nobody seems to know if they even got there. With everything going on between Japan and China, I'm frightened they may have gotten caught up in it. Dad's on a diplomatic passport, but when so many men with guns are running around, anything can happen."
"Quanyu," Eric mused. "China… I don't have any friends out that way, but I guess it wouldn't do me any good now anyway. I can catch a steamer to Japan and start looking there."
"You're going?" Kate asked, open-mouthed. "Just like that?"
Her brother smiled. "I've been away from home before. And if this is what I'm going to do with my life, I don't think I'm going to get any more of an engraved invitation. As I was saying, brothers, somebody wants me to do this."
"Are you going today?" Damien asked. "Because I got cash when I stopped at the bank this morning. You can't make it all the way to Asia without some scratch."
"I'm leaving right now; it's not like I have any packing to do. And I was planning to hop a steamer as a sailor to make some money before I got there, but your way is better."
Kate wondered where Eric had learned a sailor's skills, but set the thought aside. "Don't you think you should wait a bit? I'm grabbing the next plane I can to D.C. I know some people there. If I can find out some more details, I can give you an idea where you should be looking. For all we know, they'll show up somewhere and save you the trip."
"Now it's my turn. You're planning to fly all the way to Washington by yourself?"
Kate patted him on the cheek. "It isn't the first time I've been away from home, either, dear."
"Still, I don't like your going by yourself. I have this gut feeling something is wrong, and I don't think Dad and STEPMOTHER are just going to pop up at a hotel in Tokyo sipping champagne like it's 1927."
"Who do you want me to take, Laurel or Hardy?" She smiled at Damien and T.J. "No offense, boys."
Eric pursed his lips. "Ideally, you should take Ted. If you're going to be interrogating people, he's the one you want. But if you can't have him, you can take your choice of these jokers."
"Professor," Damien said to T.J., "do you think we should let Ted accompany Kate to Washington?"
T.J. wriggled his eyebrows. "If you're asking me, I'd rather take Kate to Catalina Island and leave Ted at home."
"Fat chance," Kate and Eric said together.
In the end, Kate would snag Ted as a chaperone, but not as soon as anyone planned. Kate snuck into the O'Donnell mansion late in the afternoon by way of a path through a neighbor's property to the back door that only she and Mary knew, to avoid the news hawks camped out on the sidewalk.
"They've been here all day since you left," Mary reported, "but the only people they ever saw were Father and me, and we simply told them we'd gone on a holiday. You should have seen their faces!"
"Has Ted been by?"
"No, only Leslie. He's very miffed; apparently no one even noticed he was gone! The newspapermen barely paid any attention to him. And speaking of attention, why are you looking for Ted?"
"I'm looking for him because I need him to go to Washington with me," Kate said forcefully. "I have no idea what you might be inferring, my dear. Ted is Eric's friend, and he's going to help me try to get answers from those federal weasels."
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