by A. J. Aalto
“Is that like ‘his cheese has slipped off his cracker?’”
“That, too. But literally, the ball was behind his desk on the floor. I stubbed my toe on it. That’s a clue.”
“It sure sounds like one, Velma. Try the wings,” Schenk said, pushing the platter closer to me.
“Wait, you agree with me?” I frowned. “Cops almost never agree with me. Agent Batten mocks ninety percent of what comes out of my face.”
“Yeah, I could see that.” He shrugged out of his jacket and got more comfortable in his seat, letting one of his long legs stretch out under the table alongside my chair. “Bowling ball on the floor, bag on the table. What’s in the bag?”
“Maybe it was empty.”
Schenk’s lips did half of a pucker with a twist, this time; I interpreted this as a firm nope.
“Would you need a warrant to look at it if he didn’t wanna show you?”
His chin dipped and he grunted affirmative. “Get anything off the business card?” He made epic magical finger motions at me. I followed his fingers in the air with a return of my bemused smile, like his fingertips had bewitched and befuddled me. He swooped and swirled that hand and ended with his middle finger standing up. I shook my head at him.
“Nope, but Bad Habits is a lot louder and busier than the Oh Yeah! was. Can I keep it? I can Grope it later.”
“I probably shouldn’t let you molest the evidence out of my sight.”
I gave him a sour smile at “molest” and handed the card back to him. “Fine, we’ll do this when we get some space. You don’t think it’s weird that Scarrow didn’t bother to mention that he knew Simon and Britney, or that he knew who I was?”
“I think he’s as sketchy as Walt Disney's pocket protector,” Schenk said, “but that doesn’t always add up to guilt. He was excommunicated from the church for challenging their beliefs about demons, ghosts, and poltergeists.”
I let that settle in. “But he still calls himself an exorcist.” I left my glove off so I could eat finger foods easier, and chewed some more nachos, stealing most of the hot peppers. Schenk took up a chip and battled me for the remaining pepper. I let him have it. “Why would Britney and Simon go see an ex-priest working with ghost hunting dogs who bills himself as an exorcist, and want to talk to me?”
“Maybe one or both of them felt they were being haunted?”
“Well, so what? I told you: ghosts cannot affect the physical realm. A sighting can be a little upsetting, but there’s no reason to panic.” We thought about that in silence. I said, “And even if they were being haunted, why wouldn’t Simon just tell you that? Why pussyfoot around it? What’s the big deal? Scarrow says he believes a ghost dragged Britney Wyatt into the canal somehow, and drowned her, yes? So why doesn’t Simon concur?”
Schenk shook his head. “Maybe Hiscott isn’t the one who believed in ghosts. Maybe he only went with Britney to talk to Scarrow because he was humoring her.”
(“You should have helped her,” Simon had yelled. “Fraud. Phony. Con artist.”)
“Simon blames Scarrow,” I said, and picked up my phone. I texted Ellie about the business cards: Is there something you need to tell me? I knew I wouldn’t get a response while Ellie was at work. Ellie always put her phone in her purse and left it in her locker until the end of her shift so she could focus on her patients. I texted Mr. Merritt for directions to North House, and when I received them, I put my phone away, and pulled my glove back on. “When will you get a chance to speak to Simon?”
“Probably in the morning. Let him sweat a little overnight after he sleeps it off.”
“Can I come?”
“Considering he’s facing weapons charges for waving a loaded gun in your face and discharging that weapon twice? I don’t think so.”
“I’ll stand behind the whatchamacallit. The two-way mirror.”
He offered me the last chicken wing, and when I refused it, he said, “I’ll think about it.” The crease across his forehead was still saying no.
The waitress came by to see if we needed anything else, and Schenk shook his head.
“My treat” I said, reaching for the bill.
“Nope.”
I lunged for the check, but our hands got there at the same time. The paper trembled between our pinching fingers but we were both careful not to pull too hard. “You bought breakfast at the Oh Yeah!” I pointed out.
“So?”
“And you paid for Tim Horton’s,” I added.
Schenk looked decidedly uncomfortable, and his stubbornness made the Blue Sense yawn open, causing a spill of dizziness in the front of my skull. Some sort of macho obstinacy was preventing him from letting go, some vague, unnamed idea of who he should be, what sort of man he thought he was.
“Unhook your claws, weirdo,” he growled.
“Let me pay this time.”
“Let go.”
“Make me.”
“I’m the one with the gun.”
I huffed. “I could be armed.”
“You’re not that stupid.”
“You don’t know.”
Schenk’s lips curled to a smile. “Are you that stupid?”
“Fine.” I let go of the bill with a sigh. “What’s with you and paying for shit? Do you do this with everyone?” I knew the answer even as I asked it: he most certainly did. His pride demanded it.
Schenk tossed cash on the table and stood, unfolding those exceptionally long legs from under the table. He wrapped his scarf around his neck and zipped his leather jacket. I shoved my arms in my coat and plunked my hat back on, tying the strings with a jerk.
“It’s really aggravating,” I added.
“That so?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect.” He held the door for me. “Never met someone so easily irritated.”
I glared up at him as I passed under his arm and out the door, briefly considered a cheap shot to his exposed kidney, figured I’d end up in cuffs for my trouble, and refrained. People skills!
CHAPTER 9
SCHENK FOUND HARRY’S place with no trouble at all thanks to Mr. Merritt’s directions. Nestled below the street line on the river side of the Niagara Parkway just below Queenston Heights, hidden from view by a thick copse of evergreens, North House was a Georgian brick two story with black shutters on its eight front windows. The hearse sat in the driveway like a beacon. It was barely four o’clock, but the sky had grown dark, and as I climbed out of Schenk’s Sonata, I knew in my bones that Harry had already risen and was waiting for me. With a promise to contact me soon that sounded like a threat, Schenk left me to the cold evening, and I rang the doorbell, framed in the glow of a lighted Christmas wreath.
When Byron Merritt answered the door I was again struck by the easy silence of the old man. His every movement was economical; no flourishes or flouncing, no extraneous posing the way Harry tended to do; no clomping and stomping like Batten. His lip didn’t have to flap every time he went from one spot to another, like Wesley’s did, as though his tongue was attached to his feet. No, Mr. Merritt was a shadow stealing from place to place, accustomed to being overlooked, working in the background. I bet he’d never had paparazzi take his picture while he picked his nose. Probably he never picked his nose. I bet he’d never been in a newspaper with his mouth hanging open, or flipping a cheeky FBI agent the bird in a magazine article. There was a real possibility that, outside of a few friends and family, nobody knew much about Byron Merritt at all. Lucky bastard.
He held his hand out. I looked at it perplexedly. He inclined his head slightly. “I’ll take your coat for you, madam, if you no longer wish to wear it?”
“Oh. Um, thanks.” I wriggled out of my parka and handed it to him. He took my hat for me. “Sorry, I’m not used to having a servant. It’s really weird. Oh! Is ‘servant’ rude? Sh--sugar.”
“I am the help, madam,” he assured me dryly, “you may refer to me however you please. I assure you, it’s not my place to take offense.”
> “Will you take offense if I say you look like a shrunken Jean-Luc Picard?”
“Of course I would not, madam.”
“Because you totally do.”
“Thank you, I’m sure,” Mr. Merritt said. “Lord Dreppenstedt awaits your company in the Winter Room. I would be pleased to serve you a nightcap in there.”
Coming down from my lunch buzz, I ventured, “Coffee?”
He glanced at his watch but said nothing about my late caffeine consumption. “Very good, madam.”
The hallway had wide planks of original, old-growth wood, plaster ceiling roses around the lights, and painted woods in subtle greens and browns. I scanned the open doorways off the hall. “And the Winter Room is where, exactly?”
“Right this way.” Mr. Merritt swept ahead of me down the hall, and I noticed the jacket of his uniform had tails. I wondered if this was Harry’s doing or his own. “It may interest you to know that the Norths were deeded this property in 1794. The family were some of the earliest United Empire Loyalists to settle in the area, and had close ties to Sir Isaac Brock. During the War of 1812, this structure served as a convalescent home for dozens of wounded soldiers.”
“Did the Norths serve in the War?” I looked up at old portraits of strangers in uniform lining the hallway as we passed through a low-ceilinged area beside the stairs, wondering why Harry kept the portraits of the former owners on the walls after he’d bought the place. A funny quirk of my Cold Company, I supposed; Harry had a strong attachment to the past.
“Doctor Edward North did not initially serve,” Mr. Merritt said, falling back to walk beside me while talking, “but his older brother, William, served until his death on July 25, 1814 at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane. But when General Drummond filled the field the morning after, our young doctor was there in his brother’s bloodied uniform, ready to defend the position, and the Americans were forced to fall back to Fort Erie.”
He made it sound like Doctor North was the sole reason the Americans fled, and I wondered at the swell of pride I felt riding on a wave of psi in the hallway. I knew Lundy’s Lane to be one of the bloodiest battles of the War of 1812. The smoke from the cannons was supposed to have been so thick that soldiers couldn’t tell friend from foe right in front of their faces, and sometimes impaled their own men on their bayonets in the heat of battle. Cannoneers were faced with close-quarter fighting while in the act of loading their guns, with enemy muskets emerging from the smoke mere yards away.
“Wait a minute,” I said, coming to a full stop. The portraits left on the walls. The attachment. “Harry wasn’t here in 1812, was he?” I felt my eyes narrow. “Did he know the Norths? Did he serve with Edward North?” And if so, does he still have the uniform?
Mr. Merritt continued walking and didn’t look back at me, but the Blue Sense reported a little ripple of excitement in my wee butler. “I should think those would be questions best put to Lord Dreppenstedt himself, madam.”
We crossed to an irregularity in the architecture, jotting under the stairs, a two-turn wiggle where the old, original house had been added onto, and to my left I glimpsed a sprawling modern kitchen that had no flavor of the past in its gleaming white tile, stained glass in shades of red and copper, and polished stainless steel. A collection of smaller portraits hung in a group, here, one of which was a painting of the staff beside a handsome woman who stood apart.
“One of the Norths?” I guessed, pointing.
Mr. Merritt paused. “Yes, madam. That would be my great grandmother, Margaret, and her staff.”
“Margaret North was your great grandmother?”
“Yes, madam. Or, that is, she was Margaret North until she married my great grandfather—“
“William Hamilton Merritt!” I pounced, knowing the name from high school history classes.
Mr. Merritt laughed heartily, and it did wonderful things to his elderly face; smile lined carved deep trenches from the corners of his eyes half way down his cheeks. “Oh, no, madam, I’m not from that Merritt family. My family has been in service since time immemorial, following the Norths from their British home at Alderney. My great grandfather was called James, and he was a poet, the son of her father’s butler. The two eloped and ran away to New York.”
“Saucy,” I said, and he laughed again. “Would I have read any of his poetry?”
“I should hope not, madam,” Mr. Merritt said. “It was dreadful, stern stuff. But I understand he cut a dashing figure on horseback, and was quite the cook. He returned to service for the Norths to work in the kitchen for Margaret’s brother, William.”
Mr. Merritt opened a door off the hall just to the left of the kitchen, and held it for me as I entered.
Despite the opulence of the room, Harry was the first thing to draw the eye, and I had no doubt he’d planned it that way. He lounged in a high-backed leather wing chair in the far corner of a magnificent room done in chocolate velvet and cream fur, like the world's most decadent Hostess Cupcake. A massive velvet couch dominated the space in front of a huge fieldstone fireplace with a double-wide hearth. Any wall space not packed with glass-front bookshelves was papered in a storm grey, flocked print, subtle and modern, seeming to melt into the background. The windows were true leaded glass, rippling the moonlight. There was one source of light in the room other than the noisy fire popping at the hearth: a single lamp with an off-white shade, directly over Harry’s head, like a spotlight, putting him center stage.
And oh, how he thrived there, waiting to be noticed, watching my reaction, feeling my admiration of him through our Bond. He wore a soft-looking black sweater, grey flannel pants ironed to a sharp crease, argyle socks, and leather house slippers that should have belonged to someone Mr. Merritt’s age. What are you talking about, dummy? Mr. Merritt is seventy-ish and Harry is closing in on four hundred forty. In his hand Harry held a brandy snifter with a rich amber liquid in the bottom. He swirled it. I knew it was a prop, meant to finish his Gentleman Next to Fire outfit; Harry rarely drank alcohol that wasn’t already swimming in my veins.
Undeniably, this was the kind of room where a creature as elegant as Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt belonged. My shabby little cabin seemed a poor substitute, seeing him in the alternative. I tried to picture him in the bright red uniform of a British dragoon, complete with pistol and sabre. Something in my brain went unf, quickly followed by a warming low in my belly, and he knew it instantly; his eyes flared with victory.
“Why thank you, my own darling,” he said, a little smile playing on his lips. “I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?”
My reply might have been words. They probably weren’t proper English. It took me a moment of rapid blinking to gather my senses. “Hiya, Harry. Lookin’ mighty fine, tonight. This room suits you.”
“How kind of you to notice.” He lifted his nose to the air and a little flicker of anxiety came through the Bond. “Where have you been, and what, pray tell, are you hiding from me?”
He smells the priest. “I’m just working the case,” I said quickly. “Boy, you sure look mighty handsome. Is that a new sweater?”
“Your feeble attempts to play upon my vanity as a distraction have won you a much needed respite from my prying. Huzzah,” he said, nailing me with his clever, argentine gaze. “Come to me, my pet. We have family matters to discuss.”
I sighed. “And suddenly, you are less attractive.”
“Do try not to be ridiculous,” he suggested, patting his lap. “We need to talk, you and I, about seeing your parents.”
“I’m not.”
“You will. If not for yourself, then for Wesley’s sake. Your brother's future happiness depends upon it.”
“He's fine with us.” I chose to perch on the edge of the couch nearest to me, less comfortable by the minute. “Wes doesn't need them.”
“You are shielding the lad from taking a step towards personal growth.”
“Getting rejected by his own parents is not going to do Wesley any good.” Trust me, I
know.
Harry’s eyes softened and he inclined his head in a bob of recognition; he understood where I was coming from. “If there is a price to pay, then he must pay it.” I read between the lines: Wesley would face it and adjust, just as I had.
Harry continued, “Admitting what he has done, what he has become, on his own, as an adult who makes his own choices, is necessary before Wesley can completely heal. Your brother is in hiding with you; in truth, he is hiding from life itself. This can go on no longer.”
I heard life and didn’t touch it (wisely, I thought); Wesley no longer had life, and neither did Harry, but pointing it out wasn’t going to win me any prizes. “Do you have any idea what will happen if I go to my mother's house?”
“No, and neither do you. But we shall soon find out.”
Mr. Merritt appeared without sound behind me. “Madam, you have a call.”
“I do? Well, Mr. Merritt, if we can’t put our worries aside to politely answer a call in the course of an evening, then where are we?”
“Where indeed, madam,” Mr. Merritt agreed.
“Sorry, Harry, mustn’t be rude. Someone summons! See ya.” Thank Hestia. I got up and quickly followed Mr. Merritt’s silent footsteps upstairs, into the guest room, which had been made up for me. My deflated go-bag sat at the foot of the bed; I assumed my single change of clothes had been unpacked. A laptop was propped on a cherry wood vanity, an inbound Skype call awaiting answer. Mr. Merritt held the chair out for me, and murmured that he’d return directly with coffee and biscuits. I clicked to accept the call and was rewarded with, or punished by, the sight of a very hairy Kill-Notch.
Batten was sitting at my desk in my office like he owned the damn place, looking comfortable with a bottle of Left Hand beer in one hand and wearing another Hawaiian shirt, this one fuchsia with Cookie Monster blue flowers on it, half unbuttoned. His mustache had evolved to alarming fullness. Too much testosterone, my brain taunted. Batten was giving me a soft-eyed I miss you look. I expected something nice to come out of his mouth. Silly me.