The Accidental Alchemist

by Gigi Pandian

  “After Sam left for the high school this morning, he came back to the house to grab a key. I didn’t think much of it until I looked out the window and saw the children in the car. I knew something was wrong. He’d been acting strange lately. I thought it was because he was tired from working two jobs. But when I saw what he was doing this morning, I began to put the pieces together …”

  “So you followed them.”

  “I don’t drive, you know. But I suspected where they were going. I took the bus to a tunnel entrance I knew about from Sam, and used the stories he’d told me to find my way here.”

  “Could you find your way back to get help?”

  She hesitated. “I followed the sound of Veronica banging on the bars with a brick. But without a sound to follow on the way back …”

  “How did you find us here?” Ethan asked.

  “Brixton’s mom called me, worried after she got a call that you were ditching school.”

  “Why didn’t you guys call Max?” Brixton asked.

  “I did. I told him my suspicions about Sam using the tunnels for smuggling tainted herbal supplements. He said he needed a search warrant to search Olivia and Sam’s house …”

  “You broke into their house?” Brixton said. “Wicked.”

  Olivia clicked her tongue.

  Another, louder click sounded a moment later. Everyone froze.

  “Sam?” Olivia called out, her body tensing. She wasn’t nearly as confident in her assessment of Sam as she wanted us to believe.

  There was no reply.

  “You see?” she said hesitantly. “He’s not here. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  I could have pointed out that Sam had killed not once but twice—the first time accidentally killing Anna West, the second time deliberately murdering Charles Macraith, and a third death was only foiled because I’d found Blue in time—but I held my tongue.

  “I don’t like it down here,” Veronica whispered. She tugged at the sleeves of her sweater, then wrapped her arms around herself.

  “You found Sam’s map of the tunnels?” Olivia said to me. “Why didn’t you bring it with you?”

  “I had to leave it behind.”

  Olivia threw her arms into the air, her shawl stirring up dust. She coughed before speaking. “We should split up. That way one of us should be able to find our way out of here and get help.”

  “We shouldn’t split up,” I said. “We can’t be sure Sam isn’t coming back.”

  “I told you,” Olivia said, “he wouldn’t hurt them.”

  “Only imprison them.”

  “He only did this to help me!” she said. “I knew he had gotten extra money to help pay for my experimental treatments abroad, but I thought it was Blue who was paying him generously because she knew about our money troubles. He never meant to hurt anyone! He would never have hurt anyone on purpose. He couldn’t have known he’d been lied to and given tainted herbs.”

  Ethan put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “Can we focus here?” The normally unfazed boy was visibly rattled.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Give me one second.”

  I retraced my steps into the darkened portion of the tunnel. I was hoping it was Dorian who’d made the sound in an attempt to draw me out into a private meeting. I walked forward a few yards until I was out of earshot.

  “Dorian?” I whispered. “Dorian?”

  Nothing.

  I waited for a few moments, but didn’t dare go forward for fear of getting lost.

  “Dorian?” I tried one last time.

  I sighed and walked back to the group.

  “Well?” Olivia said. “What was your brilliant idea?”

  “I thought I remembered which way to go,” I said. “But I was wrong.”

  “Looks like we could use these,” Brixton said, pulling a bag out of his backpack. It was filled with a dozen chocolate date balls. He took one and passed the bag around.

  Dorian had made the dessert treats. He’d made an awful mess of the kitchen at the time, searching for flour that I didn’t have. Instead of abandoning the ingredients he’d already mixed, he’d experimented without expectations and was able to create something even better than he’d initially envisioned. I breathed in the dusty air as an idea tickled the back of my mind. Giving up on expectations was exactly what I needed to do here.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, looking from the lock to the opposite side of the old jail cell door. The hinges were covered in rust. “Can I see that broken knife?”

  Using the broken blade of the Swiss Army knife, I eased the pin out of the upper hinge. It made a horrid squeaking noise as it pulled out of its socket.

  “No way!” Veronica said.

  Ethan swore under his breath, mumbling something about how he should have thought of it himself.

  “Mwmsm,” Brixton said through a mouthful of dessert.

  Olivia held the door as I removed the second hinge pin. Together, we swung open the door in the opposite direction than was intended.

  Veronica leaped out of the cell and gave me a hug. “Thank you, Ms. Faust!”

  “Now we can all get lost together,” Ethan said.

  The bright light of a flashlight came around a corner.

  Veronica shrieked like a banshee, causing the boys to cover their ears.

  Olivia and I stepped instinctively in front of the kids.

  “He wouldn’t …” Olivia whispered.

  It wasn’t Sam who came into view. It was Max. I let out a sigh of relief. Max’s shirt was askew and his chest heaved. He must have been running.

  “You’re all okay?” he asked.

  His eyes locked on mine while everyone spoke at the same time to say they were all right. I barely heard them. At that moment, I was no longer in a claustrophobic tunnel, surrounded by three teenagers and the aunt of a murderer, with a gargoyle somewhere in the shadows.

  “Thank God,” Max said, his eyes never leaving mine. He took a step forward and pulled me into a kiss. His lips tasted of licorice and spearmint. I found myself lost in the intensity of the kiss, something I hadn’t felt in nearly a century. The feeling scared me. I wasn’t afraid of Max himself, but the idea of Max. It was too much. We were too different. He was a skeptic who would never accept me if he knew the real me. I pulled back. As I broke away, the look on his face surprised me. The confident, stoic cop was hurt.

  “Mr. Liu!” Veronica said.

  Max cleared his throat. “It looks like everyone is all right.”

  “How did you find us?” I asked, clearing my own throat.

  “An anonymous person left me a map of the tunnels with this section circled. It was accompanied by a note saying I’d find Brixton, Veronica, and Ethan here. Was that you, Olivia?”

  “It wasn’t me,” she said.

  “You don’t have to protect Sam any longer,” Max said. “We’ve got officers at the house arresting him.”

  “I only figured out what my nephew was up to this morning,” she said, “and I have no idea who left you that map.”

  I knew the answer. I wondered how many Portlanders had noticed a stooped, child-size figure using a bulky sweater to cover himself as he ran through the streets, taking a great risk to rescue us from the cavernous tunnels deep beneath the city.

  thirty-eight

  Thanks to Max, the police had arrived at Sam and Olivia’s house in time to find Sam packing hastily for a getaway. And thanks to Dorian, Max had the map to find us and lead us all out of the tunnels.

  The kids were now safely at home with their parents, who’d left work when they heard what was going on. I was waiting at the police station to find out what was happening. I was torn. Part of me had wanted to return home to see Dorian, but the best way I could help Dorian was to learn what had happened to his book. If the police could break S
am, they might discover where he’d hidden it.

  As I waited to hear what was going on, I thought about how it was his own guilty conscience that had done him in. If he hadn’t acted, he would have been safe. The kids wouldn’t have gone to anyone else with what they saw, and Sam could have gone home “sick” and disposed of the merchandise to cover his tracks, now that he knew the boxes had been discovered.

  I knew about guilty consciences. But whatever blame I shouldered for the deaths of Thomas and Ambrose, it didn’t include murder.

  Max poked his head around the door of the waiting room. Was it my imagination, or was he blushing?

  “Your idea to remove the rusty hinge pins to get everyone out of those old hidden jail cells garnered a round of applause,” he said, “and Detective Dylan has agreed to let you watch the interrogation from another room.”

  I followed Max into a small room with a video screen.

  Instead of sitting down, Max left the room, leaving me to contemplate the man on the video screen. Sam Strum looked at peace. Not happy, but as if a great weight had been lifted. It made sense, now, why he continued to go to the teashop that was a reminder of the innocent girl who’d died because of him. The sadness I’d seen in him that day had been his penance.

  Max returned a minute later with two cups of tea.

  “Are we waiting for his lawyer to arrive?” I asked.

  “He’s declined a lawyer,” Max said. “Says he wants to get everything off his chest. All he asked for was his favorite tea from his house before he’d talk. One of the guys is getting it. That’s what we’re waiting on. Zoe, I—”

  Another officer entered the room, causing Max to break off whatever he was going to say.

  “Looks like they’re about to get started,” the officer said. “Took long enough to find that damn tea.”

  We watched Sam breathe in the steam from the tea. He smiled oddly before he spoke.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt Veronica, Brixton, or Ethan,” Sam said. “It’s important to me you know that. I was only going to keep them locked up until I could disappear. Then I was going to call in a tip so they’d be found.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning,” a voice from off camera said.

  Sam nodded. “When my aunt got sick a couple of years ago, she couldn’t live by herself. I moved in with her.”

  “That was a generous offer.”

  Sam shot a confrontational look toward the interrogator, but continued. “She’d essentially raised me, so it was the least I could do. Aunt Olivia doesn’t have any children of her own, and she needed me. It was difficult for her, as she went through her cancer treatments. She’d had cancer before, and beat it. But this time was different. They didn’t think she’d survive.” Sam paused and ran his hands over his face.

  “That’s where you met Charles Macraith—at the hospital?”

  “I knew him before, but that’s where we got to know each other better. Aunt Olivia and I had been going to Blue Sky Teas ever since the first time she got sick. I’d seen Charles around there. We were friendly but not friends. But at the hospital … We got to talking about how he’d been out of work for so long that he was hurting for money. And me and Olivia? She couldn’t work, so I took a second job at Blue’s. It was enough for us to get by, but not enough to try an experimental treatment for her. I had to find a way to pay for that treatment. She was dying, you know? How could I not do absolutely everything I could?”

  I knew that feeling. Sam’s heart had been in the right place, at least at first. But he’d gone way too far. I shuddered. Max glanced at me. His hand moved toward me, but he immediately pulled it back. I pretended I hadn’t noticed.

  “So you and Charles came up with a plan,” the detective prompted.

  Sam shrugged. “Charles was the kind of guy people would open up to. He knew a lot of people from all the home renovation work he did. And people knew they could trust him. He was never one to gossip.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We’d both seen how herbal remedies had been getting so popular. Olivia took some, to try to manage some of her side effects. I knew how expensive they were. There must have been a tremendous markup. So one day Charles and I were talking about our money problems and how expensive herbal remedies were, and he got all quiet. I mean, quieter than he usually was. Which was already pretty quiet. Then he said he knew a guy who could get us some Chinese herbal remedies in bulk. The guy had problems himself, so he was getting out of the business. He had all these unused, packaged herbal supplements that could help people. He was willing to sell them to us cheaply, and we could even take over a company he’d already set up, but we’d have to sneak the shipment into the country. It didn’t seem too risky. I mean, herbs aren’t regulated the same way pharmaceuticals are, since they’re safe. That’s what we thought. It was supposed to be easy.” He paused to take a deep breath and have a sip of tea. “Nobody,” he said through clenched teeth, “was supposed to get hurt.”

  “But then Anna—”

  “You don’t have to remind me. I’m getting to that. Because you need to know that was never supposed to happen. Charles and I scraped together the little bit of money we had to do this deal with the guy. I put in a higher percentage. Charles had the contacts on both ends, but what he didn’t have was money. He worked on selling the various supplements. You have to realize neither of us understood much about these supplements. We trusted the guy who sold them to us. That was our mistake. Being too trusting.” Sam took another deep breath.

  Sam was justifying his actions, still believing he was in the right. That had to have been obvious to Detective Dylan, but he didn’t aggravate Sam by saying so.

  What Sam was saying also helped me understand what had gone on with the different experiences that I and others had with the tainted herbs. There were different herbal remedies that had all been tainted. A large shipment from China, and they didn’t even know what they were getting. It was an idiotic plan, but I still felt a sliver of empathy for Sam. He’d acted irrationally because he wanted to help someone he loved.

  “We didn’t know the shipment he sold us was tainted,” Sam said. “We didn’t realize it until Charles’s distributor told him they wouldn’t take any more. Said there was something wrong with it. Nobody was dying, though. Not until Anna. She was a health nut. I had her in my class a couple of years ago, and I’d see her at Blue Sky Teas after school. When she killed herself—”

  He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of the tea he held in his hands. He brushed a tear from his cheek before speaking again.

  “When I heard she killed herself, I didn’t believe it. She’d been acting erratically in the weeks leading up to it, but I assumed it was boyfriend problems making her paranoid. Teenagers have a lot of drama. But when I talked to her mom, I realized she was taking a “brain booster” herbal formula that was supposed to help her focus on her schoolwork. She was responsible like that.” He laughed, and more tears rolled down his face. “She didn’t want to take any of the ‘real drugs’ some of the other kids were taking. Ironic, right?”

  Ironic, indeed. I knew what had driven Anna to kill herself. Mercury poisoning, also known as “mad hatter disease.” Hatmakers in the 1800s came in habitual contact with mercury, which was used to treat the felt in hat manufacturing. Many an alchemist had been poisoned by mercury as well.

  “It wasn’t your intent,” Detective Dylan said.

  “I told Charles, then, that we couldn’t sell the rest of the tainted supplements. He’d been trying to find someone else to distribute them, but I said it had to stop. I thought he agreed with me, but when Zoe Faust moved into that house, I knew he had no intention of giving up.”

  Max glanced sharply at me.

  “Zoe Faust was involved?” Dylan asked, sounding surprised himself.

  “She has an online shop called Elixir, with all sorts of apot
hecary items. The guy we bought the herbs from called himself an apothecary. I knew there had to be a connection. Charles told me he was going to work on her house because he was ready to go back to work and make an honest living. But when I looked her up, I knew that he was lying to me. I mean, who on earth would buy that house to live in? It gives ‘fixer-upper’ a whole new level of meaning. I suspected Charles found a sympathetic partner to buy the house.”

  “Why would you suspect that?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say? Because that house was the first place where we kept the shipment. It was abandoned and had a huge basement. I helped Charles make a false wall in the basement to hide the boxes. He knew the house wasn’t going to be occupied, because he was paid to do an inspection when they were ready to put it on the market. He said there was no way, with everything wrong with it, that anyone would buy it. That house was the perfect location to store the shipment, which was another reason we thought our plan would be easy.”

  The lights! That explained the “haunted house” lights people had seen in the house when it sat empty.

  Sam’s suspicion of me also explained how it wasn’t a coincidence that Charles Macraith had been killed at my house the morning after my arrival, but at the same time the murder and theft had nothing to do with me or Dorian. It was both related to me and not related to me.

  “After Anna died,” he continued, “we got spooked. We didn’t want anything to tie us to that place. I’m a local history buff and had done a lot of exploring in the Shanghai Tunnels under the city, including finding some that nobody else knew about. Those tunnels were originally built to transport merchandise to downtown shops from ships docked on the river, but they hadn’t been used for that in ages, and only a tiny fraction of the tunnels are open for guided tours. I thought the unused tunnels would be an ideal place to move the boxes. Charles and I thought that there, nobody would find them. I’d taken some of my students on a field trip to the tunnels, but never to the section where we hid the boxes. And just to be safe, I stopped taking the students on field trips to far-flung sections of the tunnels altogether.”