I’ve always thought wall climbing was a stupid sport. Fumbling about for purchase, testing each hole where I stuck my fingers, pulling myself up half a foot at a time with throbbing muscles and trembling legs, going cheek to cheek with rough bricks, so that when I slipped I had a raw spot from forehead to chin-none of that made me change my mind.
I was very aware of how clear a target my dark clothes presented against the whitewashed brick. And that if I lost my grip and fell, I’d bounce off the domed roof underneath and break… well, a lot of bones. And that anyone lurking inside would have enough advance warning of my approach to be waiting for me with lead. A bullet or a pipe, or maybe molten in a pot, the way they did it in the Middle Ages. By now I was sweating freely, and not merely from exertion: imagination is not a gift for a detective.
The third-floor windows had narrow ledges, not wide enough to kneel
on, barely wide enough for me to stand splay-legged like a graceless ballerina. I hung to the top of the frame, gasping for breath, soothing my raw face against the cool glass.
Before adding to my racket by breaking the glass, I tested whether the window was even locked. The sash was stiff, but it moved-the security system on the first two floors had made Julius Arnoff and the titleholder complacent. When I had a wide enough gap to stick my arm through, I pulled up on the inside sash to lift the bottom half. I had to move along the narrow ledge like an Egyptian figurine, but I managed to slide my right leg through the gap, to ease down to a sitting position, one leg inside, one dangling outside, and finally push the window far enough open to duck into the house.
I pulled the headlamp from my day pack and switched it on. I was in one of the thirteen bedrooms described in the 1903 newspaper. No one had thought it worth redecorating, or even cleaning, for years. Dust was thick on the floor. A water leak was sending brown fingers down the faded wallpaper.
I tiptoed through the dust and opened the door onto a long uncarpeted hall. I -moved as quietly as I could, opening each door, looking in closets, in bathrooms, not seeing anything. Stairs rose from the lower floor halfway along the hall. I peered down. This was the top end of the main staircaseon the floor below me, the bannisters grew large and elaborate; presumably, by the time they reached the ground, they would be equal to what I’d seen at the Bayards’ yesterday morning.
On the far side of the main staircase, tracks appeared in the dust. Catherine Bayard, I had to believe. I followed her steps to a door at the end of the hall. I opened it quickly, crouching low behind it in case someone started shooting. No lead came pouring down at me. Instead, a scared little voice called, “Catterine, it is you?”
CHAPTER 26
The Jaws of a Giant Clam
I straightened up and turned on my headlamp. I was looking up a flight of narrow stairs at a youth in sweatshirt and jeans. His dark eyes were wide with fear. Far from trying to attack me, he seemed too frightened to move.
I stood still and spoke in a calm, slow voice. “I’m sorry, but Catherine can’t come tonight: her grandmother won’t let her out of the house.”
He didn’t say anything. He looked very young and vulnerable, like a fawn frozen in a clearing. He was gripping the handrail so tightly his knuckles showed white through his dark skin.
“Can you tell me your name and why you are in this house?” I spoke in the same slow, gentle voice.
“Catterine, she say I stay here.” His voice came out in a whisper. “Why is she hiding you?”
He swallowed convulsively, but didn’t speak.
“I’m not here to hurt you. But you can’t stay in this place any longer. People know you’re here.”
“Who know? Catterine, she say she tell no body.”
“The woman who used to own this house lives across the street. She has seen your light, your and Catherine’s lights, through the attic windows. The woman has a son who is a-friend-of mine.” The youth was so
frightened I didn’t want to tell him I was a detective. “Her son asked me to find out who is living in his mother’s old house.”
“And now what you are doing? You are telling police?” “I’m not telling the police. Unless you killed someone.”
“Kill? I not kill, you cannot say I kill, I am in house, not killing!” In his panic, his voice rose. We’d been speaking in whispers, so that the sudden shout was shocking.
Fatigue was making it hard for me to concentrate. Also I was getting a crick in my neck from staring up at him. “I want to come upstairs so we can talk properly”
As I started up, he began to retreat, his big eyes not wavering from my face. The staircase ended in a large open area with skylights overhead. So this was where light seeped out for Geraldine Graham to see. When Catherine came, she and the boy sat talking by flashlight or something. I switched off my headlamp-I hoped before Geraldine noticed it.
The roof was pitched steeply here. Odd corners stuck out into the room to accommodate the house’s four chimneys. This had been the servants’ common room during Geraldine Graham’s childhood. I pictured a wistful girl with dark braids sneaking up the stairs to watch the maids play poker.
Old furniture was piled against one of the walls-I made out a couple of dressers, a jumble of chairs and a bed frame. The boy and Catherine must have dragged out the leather-topped desk that stood directly under the skylights. Some books were stacked neatly along one side next to a plate, cup and glass. I assumed the desk and the rest were Graham family discards-they looked too old to have been part of the nou-nou family’s brief tenure.
The boy’s eyes darted from me to the stairwell; he was trying to summon his courage to make a break for it.
“You can run down the stairs and out the doors.” I kept my tone level, even friendly: good cop. “I won’t try to stop you. But you won’t get far, especially not without Catherine to guide you over the ground.”
He slumped on the top step, his head on his knees, forearms pressed against his ears, so desolate that my heart was touched. Instead of Catherine, his one friend, whom he’d been longing for, he’d gotten me.
I walked over to the north wall, which overlooked the back gardens. The windows were small and set up high, but he had moved a chair over so he could stand and see out. I climbed up. From here, you could watch for someone to appear around the corner of the garage. You could spend long lonely nights on this chair hoping she had gotten away from Chicago to come see you. You could also see the pond.
I climbed down and explored the rest of the attic. The common room led to a short wide hall with six monastic bedrooms and a Spartan bathroom. I turned the taps; cold water came out. At least he could use the plumbing. A mattress with a sleeping bag on it was set up in one of the rooms; his few clothes were neatly folded on yet another chair. A couple of flashlights and a box of batteries stood next to the bed.
When I came back to the large room, he was still sitting on the top stair, head on his knees.
“Who are you? Why are you hiding here?” I asked. He didn’t answer me, didn’t move his head.
“It’s cold up here. You probably haven’t had a proper meal in-however long it’s been. Come on with me and tell me about it.”
“I wait for Catterine. When she say `going,’ then is safe I going.” His knees muffled his voice.
“She can’t come. You can see the pond from your window here; you must have seen her grandmother arrive this evening. Her grandmother will not let her leave the house again tonight, and her grandmother may well call the police. We probably have until the sun comes up to get you out of here, but I need to know who you are and why you’re hiding.” I laughed suddenly. “You saw me, too, this evening, didn’t you, jumping in and out of that wretched pond. Poor Sister Anne, with nothing to do but watch the horizon, did you see-“
“I am not girl!” His head jerked up and he glowered at me ferociously. “Who said anything-oh, Sister Anne. A character in a children’s story who has to keep watch from a tower. I know you’re not a girl. But I know you saw me thi
s afternoon. And you must have been watching for Catherine on Sunday. Sunday night, someone killed a man outside this house. They put his body in the pond. Did you see this?”
When he didn’t answer, I moved so I was standing directly over him.
“You were watching for Catherine; you knew she was coming that night, or, anyway, some night soon. You saw the killer put the man’s body into the water. Who put him there?”
“Nothing, I seeing nothing.”
“Did you help kill him? Is that why you’re hiding?”
“No and no and no, and now-oh, where is Catterine? Only she-” He broke off and looked at his knees again. “I am a girl, crying, hiding behind another girl, I am a baby and a girl.”
He lapsed into a mortified silence. I frowned, trying to force my tired brain into some useful line of questioning that would get him to tell me who he was-and what he had seen on Sunday. Finally, I went to the leather-topped desk to look at the books: one of them might be his, one of them might have his name in it. I needed more light than the moon provided. Hoping this wasn’t one of Geraldine Graham’s wakeful times, I switched on my headlamp and picked up the open book.
I had never seen anything as beautiful as the coral reef. It stretched away for miles and was soft to the touch, like velvet. Stupidly I forgot the dangers that lay all around as I watched the many bright-colored fishes swim through the red reef. Suddenly I felt a pain in my left leg so sharp I tried to scream, forgetting in my fear I was underwater. I took in a mouthful of water around my breathing tube. I looked down in terror. A giant clam had grabbed my leg!
I flipped to the title page. Eric Nielsen on the Great Barrier Reef, published in 1920. “Calvin Bayard, His Book,” was printed underneath the title in a child’s drunken hand. There were two other Eric Nielsen adventures, along with Treasure Island and an old Tom Swift. Catherine Bayard must have raided her grandfather’s library for books she thought might appeal to a boy trying to learn English.
The other books were in Arabic, along with an English-Arabic dictionary. I looked again at the boy, light dawning.
“You’re Benjamin Sadawi, aren’t you? Catherine is hiding you from the FBI.”
He jumped up in terror and started down the stairs, then came back and
snatched up one of the Arabic books from the desk. I seized his arm, but he broke free and tore pell-mell down the stairs. I followed closely but didn’t try to grab him-I didn’t want to hurtle us both down on our heads.
We landed in the great front hall. Two wings led behind us and Benjamin darted down one, only to find himself in a closet. When he turned back, I wrapped my arms around his torso. His heart was beating wildly. I dragged him back to the stairs and sat him down. He was still clutching the book he’d snatched from the desk upstairs.
“Listen to me, you young fool. I am not giving you to the FBI or the police. But I am going to take you away from this house. It isn’t safe here anymore, and it isn’t healthy, anyway: cold house, no heat, no company.”
He struggled in my arms. “You must not hold me, you woman.”
“True enough, I’m a woman. With zero interest in your body: I’m old enough to be your mother.”
A thought no less depressing for being true, but I took my arms from his shoulders. He edged away from me on the bottom step but didn’t try to run again.
Glass panels framing the great oak doors let in just enough light that I didn’t need my headlamp to see him, although I couldn’t make out the details of his expression. I also couldn’t see the different blocks in the tessellated marble floor, the one that had taken Italian workers eight months to install, but I knew the marble was there: it was bleeding cold through the soles of my running shoes.
“Come on.” I stood up. “We have a bit of a hike to my car, and then we’ll get you someplace where you can sleep and be warm and not worry about whether someone’s coming into the house.”
“You have the key for door?” he asked. “Alarm goes to police if you opening with no key.”
I switched on my lamp and knelt to inspect the lock. Another depressing truth: the alarm was set on both sides of the door. I couldn’t just open the door-I needed a key, and, of course, I didn’t have my picklocks with me. We could go up to the third floor and climb down the way I’d come up, but I didn’t want to do that if I didn’t absolutely have to-the body of a woman old enough to have a teenage son was not happy after a night of pond diving, wall climbing and stair chasing.
The house had at least two other entrances-the one on the back terrace that Catherine had been using, and one out through the kitchen. There was probably also a basement exit that might be easier to use.
“I’m going to explore the other doors. You wait here for me, okay?” When he didn’t respond, I put my hands on his shoulders-woman though I was. “Okay?”
He stiffened but muttered, “Okay, okay,” sounding like the universal teenager fed up with adult bossiness.
I switched on my lamp again to navigate the hall. With no furnishings or rugs to soften it, the high, wide space seemed not just barren but menacing. Shivering from more than cold, I opened doors on empty rooms, checking windows and locks, until I got to the back of the house, where the hall opened onto the terrace room. This was the area that led to the gardens and the pond, with the French doors that Catherine Bayard had used.
I switched off my lamp and peered into the night, wondering if she might be going to show up, after all. It was one-thirty in the morning; Catherine might try to slip out if she thought her house was sound asleep. It would be helpful if she arrived with her key.
If I couldn’t get out any other way, I’d break one of the glass panels in the French door, but I moved on to my right, looking for the kitchen, moving past Geraldine’s father’s study, its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves empty, except for a CD by ‘NSYNC, presumably left behind by the nounous. I came to the swinging door that I’d expected after my jaunt to the Bayards’, and again found myself in servants’ space: narrower hall, cheaper wood in the floors, lower ceilings.
The kitchen held an array of appliances, still shiny with newness-a sixburner, restaurant-weight stove; three ovens, including a stand-alone bread oven; a walk-in freezer, two refrigerators. The current vanity of wealthy homeowners, these monstrous toys-although maybe Mrs. Nou-Nou really was an accomplished chef. Maybe she’d been baking thousands of quiches to support the family since her husband’s dot-com business went south.
I looked in the pantry, which was windowless. The computer for the house was there, too. Catherine had apparently switched off the motion detectors, but I’d need a code to turn off the current to the doors and windows.
Beyond the pantry I found a small bathroom. It did have a window, built high into the wall. Not only would it have been hard to climb out but it, too, had white security piping across it.
The back door had a heavy dead bolt, which I undid, but it was also keyed shut. I looked hastily through the cabinets, brushed stainless steel, covering one whole wall. A colander had been abandoned and a box of decorative toothpicks. I’d have to try to use the small knife in my day pack, but I needed a secondary tool. That meant the plastic toothpicks with their whimsical animal heads.
With the diver’s light trained on the door, I began working the lock, using toothpicks to hold the tumblers in place as I found them. The first time I had two pressed back, the toothpicks broke. The second time, a soft footfall behind me made my blood run cold. I dropped the knife and jumped up to see Benjamin standing anxiously behind me.
“I think you are leaving me,” he said simply.
“Just trying to open this lock. Look: kneel down here next to me, and hold this toothpick in place.”
He was still carrying his book, but he laid it now on a counter and came to kneel next to me. I showed him how I was pushing the cylinders back, and how to hold them in place.
“There are three altogether. You’ll have to hold two while I undo the third. No, don’t push so hard.” I s
poke too late; the toothpick snapped in his nervous fingers. “Not to worry. Feel my fingers, feel the way I’m holding it:’
His hands brushed mine nervously, as if contact would burn him, but the next time I had the roller pushed back he held the toothpick in place, and then a second. I was working the third and trickiest roller when we both heard the car.
“Don’t move,” I said sharply. “We’re almost there.”
His hand gave a convulsive jerk and the toothpicks clattered to the floor. “Is the police?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get this damned door open. Come on.”
On the kitchen side of the house, we couldn’t see the drive. We couldn’t hear activity at the front door. We’d only heard the car because it had driven past the main entrance toward this side of the house.
Maybe Geraldine Graham had seen my light and called the sheriff, in which case the deputies would make a brief survey and leave. But if fiddling with the lock had set off the alarm, or if Renee Bayard had summoned the law, then we were in trouble.
Benjamin Sadawi was shaking too hard to help me. I looked around the kitchen. He’d suffocate in the refrigerator. But he was a small, slim boy and the bread oven was big. I hustled him over to it.
“I’m not going to leave without you, unless I’m arrested and can’t help it. But you stay in this oven until you hear from me.”
He insisted on taking the book with him. I pulled the racks from their shelves, stacked them behind the refrigerator, and half-lifted, half-bent him into place. I took one of my work gloves and used it to keep the door open a crack, enough that he could breathe and hear, and then ran back to the outside door.
I was practically weeping with weariness, but I forced myself to work methodically. If the newcomers were outside the back door… I couldn’t let my mind wander toward unknown terrors. Keep your head in the game, Vic.
One pick in place, now the second. The third tumbler rolled back just as I heard footsteps moving on the uncarpeted floor toward the kitchen. I opened the back door, pushed in the lock to keep it from closing on me again, and stuffed my makeshift tools into the nearest drawer.
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