“This isn’t funny,” said Mr. Splinter. “If there are any more pranks that disrupt my business or seem disrespectful, that’s the end.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gilda, biting her lip in an attempt to squelch any further giggles. “No more high jinks,” she added. She sensed Juliet’s searing glare from across the room.
“All right then,” said Mr. Splinter, dusting off a shirtsleeve irritably, as if attempting to brush away the unpleasant conversation like some lint. “I think Rosa must be ready for us in the dining room. I don’t know about you girls, but I have quite an appetite.”
Mr. Splinter exited, taking the remains of his martini with him.
Immediately after her father left the parlor, Juliet hobbled across the room and grabbed Gilda’s arm with the tightest grip her thin fingers could manage.
“Ow!” Gilda yelled. “You’re pinching me!”
“Thanks a lot for showing my father that picture,” Juliet hissed.
“Well, you have to admit he acted pretty suspicious, spilling his drink and everything! I mean, it proves that he’s definitely hiding something—”
“I don’t care!” Juliet spit the words in a hoarse whisper. “Now my father probably hates me, and it’s all your fault!”
Gilda realized that she hadn’t expected Juliet to become quite this upset. She wondered if this situation was going to erupt into a lengthy fight like one she had had with Wendy Choy following an overenthusiastic game of water-balloon tag. “I’m really sorry I showed him the picture without asking you first,” Gilda said, softening her voice and doing her best to sound sincere. “Sometimes I just get a little carried away.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“On the bright side, I think we’re on the right track with the investigation.”
“We aren’t on any ‘track.’ In fact, I want you to stop this stupid investigation.”
“But you said you wanted me to help you figure out what really happened to Melanie! Don’t you want to find out what’s in the tower?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Juliet icily. “Please just leave me and my father alone.”
18
A Suicide Gene
Juliet stood facing the entranceway to the tower. She put both hands on the doorknob and tried to turn it. As expected, it was locked.
“Try using this,” said Gilda, handing her a crowbar.
Juliet took the crowbar, wedged it between the door and the wall, and with one great burst of strength, she pried the door open.
She realized something at that moment—a secret about herself that had either been concealed or forgotten. She had power. She could open locked doors.
The open door released a sickening odor—stale air combined with the scent of something rotting. Perhaps it had been a mistake to open the tower. Nevertheless, Juliet walked through the doorway. She felt a wave of nausea as her eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Gilda?”
Juliet glanced behind, but Gilda had disappeared. She was by herself in the tower.
“Help me.”
Then Juliet saw her: a woman crouching in the corner—so thin she was a mere skeleton. She wore decaying rags. Dirt streaked her face, and her blond hair had turned gray. Next to her, there was a plate on the floor—a few crusts of bread and a bowl of filthy water. Despite her deteriorated body, the woman’s eyes were fierce—speckled with multicolored flecks of light.
Juliet realized that she had walked into a prison: it was like a dungeon in a fairy tale with a princess chained to the wall.
“Aunt Melanie? Is that you?”
“He locked me in here,” the woman said. “He keeps me alive as a prisoner.” She pointed to the heavy chains around her ankles and shook them: clink, clank, clank, clank! “Your father has the key,” she said.
“But he hides things,” said Juliet.
“Yes,” said the chained woman. “He hides things.”
Juliet awoke suddenly, and earlier than usual. She had the disturbing, changed feeling that one gets after awakening from a vivid dream. Although she couldn’t remember the details, she knew that she had dreamed something about the tower and her aunt Melanie. She also sensed that it was not the first time she had had this dream.
Your aunt Melanie’s ghost may be trying to tell you something.
Juliet sat up and reached for her bathrobe. She noticed that, for the first time in weeks, she didn’t feel a stab of pain in her midriff as she used her stomach muscles to sit up in bed. She stood up and found that her ankle barely hurt when she walked without her crutches. Maybe this is a sign, she thought. She decided to go see Gilda.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Juliet. She found Gilda sitting up in bed, reading her Master Psychic’s Handbook.
“Again?” Gilda was growing weary of Juliet’s ambivalence; it seemed to her that one moment, Juliet would say she wanted to investigate Melanie’s death; the next, she would get angry and say she wanted nothing more to do with it.
“But I don’t want to question my father any more about it,” Juliet said. “I just want to find out what’s inside the tower.”
Mr. Splinter’s bedroom reminded Gilda of the elegant but impersonal atmosphere of a nice hotel room or a furniture-store display. There were no clothes strewn about, no socks on the floor, no rumpled sheets, no stacks of books and papers. It was hard to believe that a person actually slept in the bed each night.
Juliet lingered in the doorway, watching as Gilda surveyed Mr. Splinter’s bedroom. As much as she wanted to find a key to the tower—or at least some clue about what might be hidden there—she also felt paralyzed by the thought of violating her father’s personal belongings. She rarely spent time in his wing of the house, and she had the uncomfortable sensation of trespassing in a stranger’s room. Gilda, on the other hand, seemed unperturbed by any moral conflict associated with snooping through someone else’s room; she had a long history of spying, and now she simply viewed herself as an investigator with a mystery to solve. Besides, she knew Mr. Splinter had left for work and that Rosa had the day off. She and Juliet had hours of investigative time.
Gilda opened the drawer of a mahogany dresser.
“Be careful with his stuff,” said Juliet. “He has a specific place for everything. If you move something, you have to put it back exactly where you found it.”
“Don’t worry,” said Gilda, noting that Mr. Splinter’s underwear and pajamas were folded neatly and grouped in color categories. She also noticed that the only personal possession lying out in the open was a single book on the nightstand; its title was The Death Tax Reconsidered.
Gilda picked up the book. “Hey,” she said, “this looks like a clue!”
“That’s just an accounting thing,” Juliet explained. “When people die, their estates get taxed, and then their kids don’t get to inherit much. My father helps people find loopholes.”
“Oh,” said Gilda, thinking that it must be nice for the kids who inherited lots of money. She remembered how her mother had panicked when she discovered how many of her father’s experimental medical treatments had not been covered by insurance and how much her father’s funeral would actually cost. As a result, her mother had warned both Stephen and Gilda that there was “no guarantee” that she would be able to pay for college in the future. Gilda knew that her father had left behind debt, not an estate.
She opened Mr. Splinter’s closet and found perfectly pressed shirts, pants, and suit jackets hanging in neat rows. “There’s nothing here,” she said after checking the pockets of several jackets just in case Mr. Splinter might use them as a hiding place. “Let’s look in his bathroom.”
With Juliet trailing close behind, Gilda entered Mr. Splinter’s bathroom, which was similarly spartan and clean. The mirror and sink gleamed spotlessly. A bathrobe hung on a hook from the door. Inside the medicine cabinet, a shiny razor, shaving cream, a toothbrush, and soap were very tidily arranged. The only intriguing objects were a bottle of aspirin and
several containers of prescription sleeping pills.
“Interesting,” said Gilda, picking up one of the clear plastic containers of sleeping pills and examining it.
“What’s so interesting about it?” said Juliet. She remembered, with a small wave of self-loathing, the day she had toyed with the idea of taking an overdose of sleeping pills and how she had imagined her parents’ devastated reactions. “My father has insomnia.”
“Could it be that the sounds of a ghost keep him awake at night, too?”
“I guess it’s possible,” said Juliet. “But then why would he always tell me that he doesn’t believe in ghosts?” As she said the words, Juliet remembered how her father had concealed the fact of Aunt Melanie’s suicide until she had discovered the truth for herself. He hadn’t exactly lied, but he was obviously capable of hiding the truth. What if, secretly, he knew that there was a ghost in the tower?
“Okay,” said Gilda brusquely. “Let’s check out his office next.”
“I don’t know,” Juliet said. “He’s pretty picky about his office, and I don’t think he’d want us rummaging around in there.”
“Exactly the reason we need to search it. It’s more likely to be a place he hides things.”
An enormous oak desk and a leather chair confronted the girls accusingly as they entered Mr. Splinter’s home office.
“You look through the desk drawers, and I’ll look in these file cabinets,” said Gilda.
“You know,” said Juliet, “you’re being kind of bossy if you consider the fact that this isn’t even your house.”
Gilda threw herself down in the chair behind Mr. Splinter’s desk and put her feet up like a self-satisfied executive. “Okay,” she said, “why don’t you tell me what to do for a change?”
“Well,” said Juliet, “what about checking the computer?”
Gilda had to admit that this was a good idea. “Okay—you go ahead and check his computer files.”
“But I’m pretty sure I’ll need his password to get into his files, and I have no idea what it is.”
“You’re his daughter. I’m sure you can guess some words he might use.” Gilda turned her attention to the row of wooden file cabinets that lined one wall of the office.
Juliet sighed and tried to ignore a stab of anxiety in her stomach as she began attempting to log into her father’s computer. Meanwhile, Gilda opened the first drawer of the file cabinet and searched through one folder at a time. Most of the files were organized by what appeared to be names of Mr. Splinter’s clients: Allen, Ashton, Applegate, Billingsley, Borden … Gilda peeked into a few of them, but they only contained records of letters, bank statements, boring financial documents that didn’t mean much to her. After fifteen minutes of staring at numbers, Gilda had to admit she had no idea what she was looking for.
“I can’t get into his files,” said Juliet.
“Try typing in Juliet,” said Gilda.
“I already tried that.”
“How about … Melanie?”
“I tried that, too; it doesn’t work. For all I know, his password could be a series of numbers. I doubt he’d pick something easy to guess.”
The mention of Melanie’s name gave Gilda a sudden impulse; she jumped ahead to the file drawer labeled L—N and began to finger through the M folders.
Gilda’s mind was ablaze; she felt, for a moment, that she must be a genius. She also couldn’t believe her luck; there was actually a plastic file folder labeled Melanie. “I think I actually found something!” She sat down on the floor in front of the file cabinet and opened the folder.
The file contained several pieces of paper. The first was simply titled “Final Expenses,” and it seemed to be a list of costs associated with Melanie’s death:
Casket (closed casket service): $3,000
Flowers: $2,000
Minister: $900
Funeral catering services: $1,000
Organist: $400
Contractor (windows sealed, etc.): $3,000
Locksmith: $400
“What is it?” Juliet asked.
“Looks like after your aunt died, your father got right to work on locking up that tower,” said Gilda, noting the fees for “contractor” and “locksmith.” She felt that there was something cold and begrudging about the list of expenses.
“Let me see that,” said Juliet.
Gilda handed Juliet the document and continued to look through the file.
Beneath Mr. Splinter’s terse list of itemized expenses was a yellowed newspaper clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle, dated Monday, June 21.
Suicide Casts a Pall over Neighborhood Party
Residents of affluent Pacific Heights were shocked when twenty-seven-year-old Melanie Splinter plummeted to her death from an upper window of her house at approximately mid-night Saturday.
“We were just partying, and then I looked up and saw a woman climb out of a window and stand up on the window ledge. Then, before I could do anything to help, she jumped!” said neighbor Mick Young, who was hosting a late-night gathering on his patio when he saw Ms. Splinter fall to her death from her home. “We all rushed next door to see if we could do anything to help, but of course it was too late.”
Survivors of the deceased include Ms. Splinter’s brother, Lester Splinter, who owns the accounting firm Splinter & Associates, and her three-year-old niece, Juliet.
Mr. Splinter received the horrifying news of his sister’s death when police woke him with a request to identify the body. “I’m shocked,” was Mr. Splinter’s only comment. “We’re all shocked.”
The Victorian home on Laguna Street where Lester Splinter and his sister, Melanie, had lived their entire lives is widely considered a landmark in the Pacific Heights neighborhood for its many architectural features such as the tower in back of the house, from which Ms. Splinter fell.
A graveside funeral service for the deceased will be held at Sunshine Cemetery on Friday, June 25, at 3 p.m.
So it really was a suicide, Gilda thought. Her elation at finding an actual piece of information about Melanie’s death was tinged with some disappointment that her murder theory and psychic investigation had apparently led her astray: after all, here was evidence that an eyewitness had seen Melanie jump from the window. Gilda also hated seeing a person’s life and death summed up in a few brief sentences on a piece of aging newsprint. She remembered the feeling of revulsion she had experienced when she had first read her father’s obituary in The Detroit News. The words were tiny helium balloons that blithely carried away her father’s entire existence.
Nicholas Joyce—1959–2002
Joyce was born in Brighton, Michi–
gan. He was an employee of Amer–
ican Engines for twenty years.
Survived by his wife, Patricia, and
two children, Stephen and Gilda.
In response to her father’s disappointing obituary, Gilda had written an angry letter to The Detroit News:
Dear Detroit News Obituary Writer:
I suggest that you cut down on the gin-and-tonics during work hours and start attending some writing classes in your spare time to supplement the degree you apparently purchased at Walt Disney World.
I am the daughter of Nick Joyce, whose pathetic obituary recently appeared in the paper I am now embarrassed to call The Detroit News.
In order to help you do the job for which you are clearly overpaid, I have rewritten Nick Joyce’s obituary for you to reprint as follows:
Nick Joyce Makes It Into Heaven!
After a life of brave struggles, Nicholas Joyce III has made his way into the Kingdom of God.
Mr. Joyce died of a mysterious form of blood cancer. He battled this disease for more than a year with the valor of a knight fighting a dragon in a fairy tale.
During his life, Mr. Joyce worked as an automotive artisan for the great company American Engines, where he was well loved. “We laughed our asses off!” is the memorial chant of his admiring and ample-botto
med coworkers.
But Nicholas Joyce’s true love was the art of writing: he wrote like a madman, documenting his dark moods and sudden inspirations, his hopelessness and hope. His story (once discovered) will likely become a future source of English-paper topics and SAT questions.
Mr. Joyce is survived by his stylish daughter, Gilda, a promising young writer who possesses psychic abilities. To Gilda, Mr. Joyce bequeathed his most cherished possession–his typewriter.
Nicholas Joyce is also survived by his wife, Patricia, a hospital nurse who has been called “the Florence Nightingale of the new millennium”; and by a son, Stephen, who has rudimentary computer skills.
Gilda had sent her revised obituary to the newspaper, but, not surprisingly, there was no apology from the obituary writer who had attempted to erase Gilda’s father in two tiny sentences.
“What’s the matter?” Juliet asked, noticing that Gilda looked uncharacteristically glum. “What are you looking at?”
“Well, it looks like your father isn’t a murderer, at any rate,” said Gilda, doing her best to disguise the disappointment in her voice as she handed the newspaper article about Melanie’s death to Juliet. “Sounds like your aunt really did commit suicide.”
“Well, I’ll spare you the irritation of hearing me say ‘I told you so,”’ said Juliet.
“That’s big of you.”
“But you have to admit, I told you so.” Juliet frowned and twirled a lock of her white-gold hair as she read the news article.
There was one more item in the file for Gilda to investigate: a large white envelope. Gilda opened it and found copies of several medical bills for psychotherapy sessions—all for Melanie Splinter. There was also a glossy brochure from a place called Lilyvale Residential Facility. “Cutting-Edge Treatment in a Beautiful Setting,” the cover of the brochure announced. Inside the brochure, Gilda found a letter:
Dear Mr. Splinter:
This letter confirms registration of Melanie Splinter for in-patient treatment at Lilyvale Residential Facility. We enjoyed meeting with you and your wife, Margo, recently, and feel certain that the psychiatric expertise and safe but comfortable environment we offer here at Lilyvale will be beneficial for your sister.
Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Page 14