by Jen Carter
Fitts shook his head at me, his lips pursed. Then he closed the door so that he was back in the office with Victor alone.
I might have been a tad more impressed with myself than he was with me.
Oh well.
Time to head back to OV and tell Livy what had happened.
TEN
I called Livy to tell her about the notes, but I tried not to make a big deal out of them. She was already having a bad day with stockroom issues, and I didn’t want to add to her stress. We could talk more after play practice when there was time to sit and really think.
I swung by home, picked up Uni and my junk drawer notebook, and headed over to Aldo’s house. I wasn’t helping in the tasting room until eleven, but I wanted to get to Otto Viti early. Livy was too distracted and stressed to talk about the notes left for Esther, but I knew someone who wouldn’t be.
“Holly?” I called upon entering Aldo’s house. “Are you awake?”
Holly was a champion sleeper, but apparently these days it was no longer a guarantee that she’d be asleep when I showed up in the morning. I was astounded that after all these years of sleeping until noon she was changing her habits.
Uni headed straight for Hudson and Thatcher’s playroom, and I went for Holly’s room. A jumble of sheets and blankets were pushed to the foot of the bed, and there was no Holly in sight.
“C’mon, Uni, let’s go,” I called.
My fluffy golden fur ball doggy met me in the hallway, and together we crossed the house to the patio door in the family room. If Holly wasn’t sleeping, she was likely in the wine cave behind Aldo’s house. There was a piano in there, and sometimes I found her playing it when she needed inspiration.
As Uni and I crossed the lawn, I did not hear beautiful piano music wafting toward us, but I did notice the wine cave door wasn’t completely shut. Hmm. Opened door but no music? Odd but not impossible.
I opened the door further, and Uni trotted inside.
“Holly? You in here?” I called down the long hallway of barrels.
“Yes,” my sister groaned. “Over here. Thinking.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. She didn’t sound like she was in pain, but the groany voice wasn’t a happy voice. Where the hallway of barrels ended, there was a game room on the right and a formal dining room with the piano on the left. Holly was still nowhere in sight.
“Where are you?” I asked.
Uni disappeared around the couch in the game room, and a moment later I heard Holly giggle.
“Ugh, don’t lick my face, yuck! Stop!” She giggled again. “No, seriously, stop!”
I looked over the top of the couch. Holly was on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, and Uni was not listening as Holly told her to stop licking. Then again, Holly wasn’t doing much to make Uni stop. Closing eyes and giggling wasn’t the command we used at home to signal stop.
“What are you doing down there?” I asked. I sat on the couch and gently nudged Uni away from Holly’s face with my foot.
“Ugh, get your foot away from my face,” Holly said. “I’d rather have Uni lick me than have to smell your feet.”
Some people were impossible to please.
“Just trying to help,” I said. “But really, what are you doing?”
“I’m writing.”
Sometimes it was so hard to take my sister seriously. She was stretched out on the floor of the wine cave, not a laptop, pen, notebook, journal, or textbook in sight. She said she was writing. Sure.
“Are you writing on the ceiling with invisible ink powered by your mind?” I asked.
“That is exactly what I’m doing,” Holly said. “If only I could transfer my invisible ink powers to you. Then you’d be able to see that chapter one is over there.” She pointed off to the left side of the ceiling. “And frankly, it’s brilliant. Chapter two is overhead.” She pointed straight up. “It has nine-tenths the brilliance of chapter one.” She pointed to the right side of the ceiling, “Over there is chapter three, and it’s terrible. I might have to scrap it and start over.”
Ah, of course.
“How about you come back to Earth and tell me what you’re really doing?” I said.
Holly sat up. The ponytail barely holding her thick, frizzy hair out of her face flopped off to one side, and she tried twisting it into a knot. “Okay, so you got me. I don’t really know how to power invisible ink on the ceiling, but I am mentally planning out the first three chapters of my book. I feel pretty confident about the first two, but the third is terrible.”
I nodded and gave my sister a sympathetic smile. “Is Chris making you do this? Did he put you on a schedule?”
Big changes had been happening in Holly’s life. She started dating a guy she had thought she hated, and as far as I could tell, she was actually happy in a relationship for the first time. Not only that, but she was now doing something I hadn’t thought would ever happen. Since finishing her Ph.D. in Art History over a year ago, she’d been half-heartedly talking about taking the concepts from her dissertation and turning them into a book. But she had been burnt out on Art History since before completing her program and hadn’t been able to muster the energy to get started. The fact that Chris somehow influenced her to move on with the project was a minor miracle.
Who knew? Maybe she’d be moving out of our grandfather’s house next, which hadn’t ever seemed possible. But with her working on this book, clearly anything was possible.
“He is making me stick to a schedule,” Holly said. “Crazy, right? But there’s a rewards system. I wanted a star chart like preschoolers who get points for managing their emotions, but he said I’d have to make it myself, and I wasn’t that motivated. Anyway, the rewards are super-good. As soon as I finish three chapters, we’re going to Santa Barbara for a weekend. When I finish another three, we’re going to San Francisco. Another three after that, and we’re going to Seattle. Before I’m done, hopefully we will have made it all the way up to Alaska.”
I smiled at my sister. “Look at you, making plans and growing up. I barely recognize you.”
“I know.” Next to Holly, Uni lay down and rolled over, waiting for her tummy to be scratched. Holly obliged. “And on that note, was there something you wanted? I should get back to thinking.”
“Yes, I need a smart person’s insight.”
I told her about the Romeo and Juliet curse in the girls’ scripts yesterday and the Midsummer Night’s Dream insults in envelopes today. Holly listened, her expression conveying mild interest. When I finished, she laid back down and stared at the ceiling where her invisible chapter two was written.
“And you think this is connected to Fleming’s death?” she asked. “Like whoever did this to Fleming is upset that he was found or upset that his drama program is continuing? So now they’re cursing the people involved?”
“Maybe. I mean,” I paused, second guessing myself. “Maybe?”
“It’s really creepy.”
“I think so.”
“I’m probably not your gal when it comes to piecing this together. If someone starts sending you threatening messages on the back of Baroque paintings, I’ll be all over it. But this literature stuff is outside my wheelhouse. You should go talk to Sandie Oakes. Her area of expertise is nineteenth century American literature, so Edgar Allan Poe is right up her alley. She taught at the university for decades. Maybe she’d have some insights about how the Poe story relates to Fleming’s death.”
I nodded.
Holly continued, “And then you should talk to Will, Amy’s husband. I hear he knows his Shakespeare. So does Amy for that matter. And Livy. And you’re an English teacher, so you know your stuff, too. Hey, what’s with all you people having literature backgrounds? I never thought about that before. Just don’t ask Stella. She never saw any practical application for fiction. If she couldn’t organize it or solve it, there was no use for it.”
Holly was right that there were a lot of people in Otto Viti who had an affinity f
or literature. I hadn’t given it much thought before, but I could see what she meant.
I stood up. “You’re right. I’ll talk to our resident literary experts. Thanks.”
“While you’re at it, maybe Amy’ll tell you what she’s been up to.”
Just as the words hit the air, Holly’s eyes grew and she clamped both hands over her mouth, gasping. “Shoot, I wasn’t supposed to say that!’ The words came out muffled from underneath her hands.
“Amy’s up to something?” I asked.
Holly shook her head, hands still clamped over her mouth.
“What’s she up to?”
Holly shook her head again.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
One more head shake.
“Okay, I’ll file that away for later. Thanks, dear sister.”
Uni and I walked down the wine cave’s long hallway toward the door. I wondered if Holly would call after me, begging me to forget what she had said about Amy. By the time we were outside and crossing the lawn, she still hadn’t said anything, probably fearful that she’d stick her foot in her mouth again.
I opened the French doors leading to the family room of Aldo’s house just in time to see a blonde ponytail disappearing around the corner of the adjoining kitchen and into the entryway.
“Jules?” I called after the ponytail. “Is that you?”
A moment later, my friend Jules reappeared from behind the corner, a sheepish smile on her face. “Oh, hi, Jill. How’re you doing? I was just, uh, looking for Holly.” She pointed over her shoulder toward the entryway of the house. “No one answered the door when I knocked, and since it was open, I just peeked inside. I thought maybe Holly couldn’t hear me. Like, uh, maybe she had earbuds in or something.”
I was ninety-nine percent sure I locked the door behind me when I arrived, but there was that one percent chance I hadn’t. “Holly’s in the wine cave,” I said. “She’s working on her book. Sort of.”
“Oh.” Jules gave a little laugh. “Okay, well I don’t want to bother her then. I’ll just see her later.”
“Is there something you need?”
Jules gave another little laugh and then started backing out of the kitchen. “Oh, no. Everything is fine. I’ll see you later.”
And she was gone again.
That was weird.
Holly had said that Amy was up to something, but I got the feeling that Jules was up to something.
Maybe they were both up to something.
I checked the time. I had thirty minutes before my shift at the tasting room began. Just enough time to swing by Nico’s shop to say hi and see how his day was going.
ELEVEN
I had really been looking forward to play practice that afternoon. I loved teaching English, and I always liked reading Shakespeare in my classes—but Shakespeare plays were meant to be seen. They weren’t meant to be read. As much as I tried to get students to act out scenes with me in class, I rarely had any takers. The opportunity to work with kids who wanted to act out Shakespeare was a treat.
But.
Then I got to the park, and everything I had looked forward to was obliterated within seconds.
“Jill! How could you?!”
Where was that voice coming from? I was a couple minutes early, and the park was pretty much deserted—aside from a couple toddlers and moms on the play structure on the other side of the grass. I turned around and saw Sophia flanked by Gracie and Ashlyn, all three of them striding across the street toward me like they were trying out for the Council of Elders’ power walking club.
Was it Sophia who had called to me? I pointed to myself, the universal sign for are you talking to me?
“Yes, you!” Sophia said. “How could you? How could you?”
The girls stepped onto the sidewalk and continued across the grass toward me, arms swinging furiously at their sides.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Victor!” Ashlyn said.
Oh.
Ah, yes. Victor. Victor and my Oscar-worthy bad cop performance.
“You totally messed everything up with Victor!” Ashlyn added.
Shoot. It should have occurred to me that yelling at Victor would get back to the other kids. And that it might make some of those kids mad. Or undercut my efforts to be some kind of mentor to them.
Huh.
Maybe I should have apologized to the girls and explained myself. Maybe I should have told them that it was nothing personal. Maybe I should have reminded them that their drama teacher had died in a terrible way and finding the person responsible needed to be a priority at all costs. There very well may have been a demented killer on the loose, and that demented killer might be threatening them with Shakespeare curses. Crazy, but possible. Any of those reminders might have been good to share with the girls.
But instead, I went with a juvenile, basically-irrelevant response.
“Seriously?” I said. “You all are sticking up for him? What is it about this guy that has you all under his spell? Do you remember—”
I was going to ask if they remembered him leaving them to fend for themselves post-Fleming-discovery, but I didn’t have the chance.
“He’s our friend!” Sophia said. “And he’s part of this play. You’re supposed to be helping him, not accusing him!”
Okay, she was technically right that I was supposed to be helping him, but only with his lines in the play. I was under no obligation to help him get away with being an un-charming, selfish guy who left girls with a dead body.
And the girls were missing the point. Good people helped others, even when it was inconvenient. They didn’t abandon each other when times got tough. This was important, especially for teenagers who were making character-building choices everyday.
I felt the urge to step onto my soapbox.
“If you can explain to me why he took off after finding Fleming, leaving you to clean up the mess yourselves, I’ll leave him alone,” I said. “But as far as I’m concerned, he has a lot of explaining to do.”
“He’s our friend,” Sophia insisted.
Yes, definitely soapbox time.
“Has the definition of friend changed?” I asked. “Because old people like me think friends stick together no matter what. Tall, dark, and what you probably think is handsome doesn’t change that. Let me just tell you—”
“Yesterday he told us that he had gone to get his brother,” Sophia said. “He wasn’t just leaving us there to clean up the mess on our own.”
“Oh?” I said. “Then why didn’t he show up with his brother later that night? He and his brother weren’t there when we were there. And when the police showed up, where was he? You can’t possibly believe that he was going to get his brother if they never showed up.”
The girls looked at each other but didn’t answer me. Their silence was telling. Either they realized I was right, or they were hiding something. It could have gone either way.
“Look,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, “if there’s something you need to tell me—something that vindicates Victor, even if it makes someone else look bad—you need to tell me now. If you don’t have something to tell me, then let’s get straight to practicing your lines, okay?”
Sophia rolled her eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh. “You don’t understand,” she said.
“Then let’s get to your lines,” I said. “And when you want to help me understand, I’ll be ready to listen.”
Victor and Eli didn’t show up for play practice that afternoon. While I worked with Sophia and Ashlyn, I was on high alert for whispering and surreptitious sideways glances, especially once it was clear that Victor and Eli weren’t just late. If the girls were hiding something, and if they were worried about Victor and Eli not showing up, I was pretty sure they’d exchange at least a couple worried looks. But I didn’t catch any shifty eyes at all. In fact, within five minutes of practicing, they seemed to have entirely forgotten about their indignation toward me over the b
ad cop incident.
About halfway through practice, Aldo appeared on a park bench to watch us. And shortly after that, Sandie Oakes appeared on the bench next to him. They really must have enjoyed play practice. My heart swelled. I loved seeing my grandfather delighted.
But if I wasn’t mistaken, Sandie was sitting a little too close to Aldo. I was not seeing enough personal space between them. Hmm.
As practice concluded, Livy approached me with an all-business look on her face.
“Victor just texted me,” she said. She handed me her phone, and I looked at the screen. She sipped her green drink, waiting as I read.
Sorry i didn’t come 2 practice ill show u y
I had to read the text three times to decipher its unpunctuated, un-capitalized meaning.
Beneath Victor’s oh-so-well-expressed message was a picture of a script page. At the very top was a blocky, handwritten message: Though she be but little she is fierce.
I handed the phone back to Livy and she put it in her pocket. “So he’s saying he found a message written in his script? And he didn’t come to practice because of it?”
“I guess,” Livy said. “And…” her voice trailed off as she looked across the grass at the dispersing teenagers. “I guess we’re supposed to think it’s creepy like the other quotes, which is supposed to explain why he didn’t come to practice. Like he had a legitimate reason to be freaked out and not show up. But…” Her voice trailed off again.
“Something else is bothering you.”
Livy nodded, drumming her fingers on the side of her green drink bottle.
She and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about the quote sent to L.G. earlier in the day, and I got the feeling our conversation about that quote was going to be combined with the conversation about Victor’s quote. Actually, I got the feeling Livy was going to skip almost entirely over her quote and focus primarily on Victor’s. That was probably for the best. If she and I sat and talked about canker-blossoms, we’d probably just get ourselves worked up.
“I think it would be easier to take the quote more seriously if he bothered to punctuate his text,” I said, unable to stifle the English teacher in me.