The Downward Spiral

by Ridley Pearson

  DEDICATION

  In Memory of Timothy M. Wormser

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Acknowledgments

  Author Note

  About the Author

  Books by Ridley Pearson

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  AWAKENED BY THE SOUND OF AN OUTBOARD motor coughing to a start, I threw my legs out from under the down comforter, toes searching for the fuzzy lining of my slippers. As I stood and headed for the partially frosted window, I pulled a throw off the corner chair, accidentally dumping one of my Christmas presents, a novel, onto the plank flooring. Wrapping my shoulders, and reaching for the pair of binoculars that I’d been given four years earlier on my eighth birthday, I trained the glasses onto the churning waters of Nantucket Sound.

  The waves collided, thrown into a gray-green chop topped with white foam like a latte. The condition had something to do with currents and tides and a lot to do with wind direction and speed. Among the swells moved a flat-bottomed white fiberglass skiff called a Boston Whaler. The whaler threw foam and spray to either side as it cut its way atop the rough waters. I recognized its single occupant, the boy driving, as my brother, James. He wore a blue knit cap over his brown hair, a yellow foul weather suit, and over it, a bright orange life vest. He worked the wheel with his left hand and the throttle with his right. Oddly enough, the binoculars didn’t reveal the falling snow. Only as I looked with my naked eye could I see it as a fine white confetti blanketing the seascape.

  The sky held an elaborate mix of colors: aqua, gray, pink, and purple. A painter’s sky. Our mother had been a painter, a good painter. A fine artist, she was called. She’d hung shows in banks and the library and sold well at the Provincetown summer craft fair, where I remembered her in a straw hat, bright lipstick, and sunglasses. We all smelled like suntan lotion in summers, and hamburgers, and fresh-cut grass. Ice cream doesn’t smell or we would have smelled like that as well. I didn’t remember my mother clearly, but it’s all that’s left of her: memories. Father, too. Life stops. Life goes on. As a twelve-year-old I found it hard to wrap my mind around it all. James wasn’t doing much better at fourteen. (He looked and acted older—sixteen; seventeen if he wore a necktie—but inside I wasn’t sure if he had an identifiable age.) He’d changed in the last few months, during our first semester at Baskerville Academy, a boarding school in northeastern Connecticut. I suppose I had, too, but it takes others to see change in yourself, and I had few others around anymore. There was Lois, who’d been Father’s secretary, then our nanny, and who now was our guardian. Ralph had been Father’s driver, and maybe his closest friend. He felt like our uncle. It was odd to spend Christmas break with your family’s house staff, in your family’s Cape Cod compound that had been in the Moriarty family for three generations.

  Tragedy had brought us together; tragedy had torn us apart. The four of us existed in a kind of limbo, feeling halfway between blood relatives and unwanted second cousins. Thankfully, neither Lois nor Ralph had tried to play the father or mother card. Nonetheless, there was no getting around the awkwardness that these two adults were now employed by my brother and me.

  The skiff survived the chop to reach a sailboat that had arrived quickly from around the point that formed Lewis Bay to the west. Its white sails suddenly made to luff; I watched them flapping and knew the deafening sound of it. I watched shivering as James threw a bow line and was pulled to. A stern line pulled him parallel. He climbed aboard.

  The binoculars lacked enough power to reveal any faces. It was more like watching a stage play from the back row. I took away the general gist of the story: two adults—men, by their size—met James and led him into the cabin belowdecks, while the crew dropped a pair of bumpers between the whaler and the sailboat. There was someone in foul weather gear at the large wheel at the back of the cockpit. There was a sense of urgency on the part of all, even seen from this distance.

  James came back out of the cabin exactly five minutes later—I timed it. The same two men accompanied him back to the rail, shook hands with him, and saw him safely over the side. As the outboard engine started, it burped purple fumes. Lines were cast off and the skiff headed back toward shore. I confess to feeling something like relief. The ocean had no respect for humankind. I wanted James, the last of my living blood relatives, home safely.

  When I saw him later, I didn’t mention my having witnessed the rendezvous. I waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t I resented the kept secret. The time of day alone told me it had been prearranged and was clearly important; James was no early riser. His silence not only hurt, but scared me a little.

  Father’s untimely death, a scant six weeks behind us, had been surrounded by a great many unusual and sometimes dangerous events. My brother and I had been at the center of those events. I needed no reminder of the tragedy, or the shroud of suspicion covering our loss. James and I had sworn an allegiance to determine what exactly had happened to Father, and by whose hand.

  That same Friday night, we headed back to our Boston home, Ralph at the wheel, Lois in the passenger seat where my father should have been. Winter break was over. School would be starting up on Monday. The four of us made the ride as disconnected as strangers. I wondered if everyone else was thinking of Father as I was. Riding in the backseat with James, I repeatedly made eye contact, hoping he might tell me all about his dawn boat ride to the mysterious sailboat.

  He never did.

  CHAPTER 2

  AFTER FOUR HOURS OF HEAVY TRAFFIC IN LIGHT snow, and a meal of Cluck-and-Crow sandwiches and soda, Ralph delivered James and me to the front door of our Boston home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Ralph jumped out and opened the car doors for us—like the chauffeur he was—led us up the snow-covered stone steps, unlo
cked the royal blue front door with its gleaming brass horse head knocker, leaned in, and switched on the lights.

  Ralph’s body type might have been responsible for the term “barrel-chested.” Calling him sturdy would be an insult. Calling him young would be incorrect, but calling him old would get you clouted. Calling his heritage anything but Irish would drive blood into his face.

  The way he handled himself, I’d often wondered if Ralph hadn’t been hired partly as Father’s bodyguard. He had sneaky eyes that saw everywhere at once. When I started looking for it, I could see he always put himself between us and the street, or us and strangers. Looking back, I realized he’d done the same for Father. If Ralph had been part bodyguard it helped explain why he’d taken Father’s loss so hard. Father had died falling off a ladder while winding a clock in our vestibule—a task typically handled by Ralph. He probably felt guilty about that.

  Or, maybe like James and me, Ralph didn’t believe Father had been up the ladder in the first place.

  Thanks to James’s roommate at school, a boy named Sherlock Holmes, my brother and I now had our own opinions of what had and hadn’t happened that tragic night. We no longer believed it an “accident.” We had shared our theory with exactly nobody, but had pledged to investigate it, the three of us, to its rightful conclusion. Ralph should have been in the house that night with Father, but had been called away by a friend. Lois had been up in her room at the time. If by some strange reality warp we found out that either Ralph or Lois had been involved with Father’s final hours, James and I would see that person in jail for it. Or worse.

  I entered my room feeling heavyhearted. Being home made me long for Father. I didn’t want to put away clothes. I didn’t want to pile my laundry. I wanted to dive into bed, snuggle with my plush pets—Ellie (an elephant) and Cucumber (a Rottweiler)—pull the covers over my head, and have a meaningful cry.

  But first things first. I unzipped and stepped out of my blue wool dress, flushed with annoyance once again that Lois had required James and me to “dress proper for the ride back to the city.” This, I supposed, was to counterbalance that she’d allowed us to ride “casual” from Boston to the Cape—jeans and winter sweaters. The dress wool being scratchy, I’d worn a full-length slip beneath. I kept it on because the room was cold. Ralph had turned up the heat, but it would take most of the night for the steam radiators to improve things. I moved quickly, my feet chilly on the wood floor, my arms gooseflesh.

  I avoided the wardrobe door’s full-length mirror. I was a bit “underdeveloped”—a term I abhorred; as if my chest and hips had anything to do with my development!—more tomboy than princess, more freckle-faced than any girl would want. Nice eyes—a grayish green—good teeth, astonishingly red lips given the lack of cosmetics, the best haircut Boston could buy—which was saying something—and just the hint of an underlying intelligence that I was learning to manipulate given the situation. But unlike my friends at school, I wasn’t one to linger in front of a mirror. I was a realist. When things changed, I’d deal with it.

  A wardrobe is a piece of tall furniture that serves as a closet and, sometimes, a closet-and-clothes-dresser all in one. The house was old, as in two hundred years old. They hadn’t built closets back then; they constructed brick houses with rectangular rooms. Bathrooms were shared by all, typically at one end of a hallway or another. Wardrobes and trunks had held clothing, linens, and blankets. Our house had long since been remodeled so that James and I each had our own bedrooms with our own bathrooms. Dormers had been punched out of the roof line and windows added out to a fire escape. But no closets. My wardrobe had been built in the time of Thomas Jefferson. Its cedarwood smell reminded me of bunny rabbits and guinea pigs in elementary school classroom cages. My brother had hung an automotive air freshener in his wardrobe: Autumn Leaves.

  I pulled open the door with the mirror.

  As I tried to scream, a hand slapped over my mouth. The intruder, who’d been but a shadowy shape inside the wardrobe, turned me and stood behind me, arching me backward, his cheek pressed to my ear.

  “Not a peep, Mo.” A British accent. My family nickname. The scent of orange marmalade blending with a more complex, darker smell of milk tea. Oily hair smearing my freckles. Freakishly long fingers with equally long nails, clean and filed.

  I nodded. We both relaxed.

  “Sherlock.” I gasped. “You scared me to death! What . . . are . . . you . . . doing here?”

  He spun me around. We stood terribly close. I quickly crossed my arms. Embarrassed. Reaching past him I tugged a robe from a hanger and slipped it on, tying it tightly.

  “What are you doing in my wardrobe?”

  “Armoire.”

  “Shut up!”

  “If I shut up, how can I answer?”

  Sherlock and I had a relationship—small r. I’d only met him in September, on my first day at Baskerville Academy. It felt more like a year or two ago. A brilliant boy with far too high an opinion of himself and limited social skills, he could dress nicely when he wanted to, but apparently he rarely wanted to. He was a bit of a string bean and more than a bit of a conceited brainiac. Anxious to the point of jittery, he was not one to suffer fools gladly. His permanently rosy cheeks, high cheekbones, and royal blue eyes cut through all that. Maybe he’d be handsome someday, but he had his work cut out for him.

  “Explain yourself, or I’ll scream.”

  “No, you won’t. It’s me. I’m not some Peeping Tom, you know? Think, Moria. Why would I be here? Why would I have hidden outside your door until Ralph opened it and sneaked up here without anyone seeing me, if it wasn’t something important?”

  “You did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Just now?” I asked.

  “When else did Ralph open the door?” Sherlock answered.

  “You clever, clever boy.” It just kind of slipped out.

  “We established that a long time ago.” He smiled a thin but toothy grin that signaled his own sense of self-importance. “You will recall the last time you, James, and I were here together we discovered the words branded into the back of your father’s desk drawer,” he said. “I’ve figured it out, Mo. At least I think I have.” What was this? I wondered. A moment of modesty, even insecurity? Maybe being all alone over Christmas break had caused him to rethink the importance of friendships.

  What he was talking about was this: before my brother and I were sent off to Baskerville Academy, Father had left me—and only me—specific instructions in the event of his disappearance or any difficulty in communicating with him. I should have taken his precaution as a hint, a warning that he was worried, but at the time I thought he was just being his overly protective fatherly self. Anyway, he’d hidden a key for me in his private study, his office, that had opened a desk drawer revealing little more than some words burned into the back of the drawer.

  The words had puzzled the three of us. We’d worked hard to figure it out, but had ended up stumped by it.

  Or at least until now.

  Heart pounding, I searched his eyes for any hint he might share whatever he’d learned. Sherlock had a way of teasing that was rude and unpleasant.

  “So?” I said, giving him exactly what he wanted. He would draw this out until I begged.

  The thud of heavy feet on the stairs captured our attention.

  “Hide!” I said, pushing him back into the wardrobe and leaving him in there long after the threat had passed.

  CHAPTER 3

  IF I STOOD IN MY BATHROOM AND SHOUTED toward the air vent, James could hear me.

  “In here now!” I called.

  James entered, looking perturbed. I closed my door, revealing Sherlock standing behind it. James spooked, speaking a bad word.

  It was awkward for the two roommates, who had spent the first semester working out that they needed each other as much as they disliked the other. They shook hands as if concerned about the sharing of an infectious disease.

  “How goes?” J
ames asked.

  “It was an unfortunate holiday,” Sherlock answered in his British marble mouth. “I was saddled with being the guest of the Geissingers for the duration, an arrangement clearly uncomfortable for both sides. Their Lucy took quite the shine to me, I’m afraid.”

  “Goose Geissinger, Mr. Maestro, conductor of the Cow Chorale, has a daughter?”

  “A dog,” Sherlock said. “Lucy is a black Labrador, energetic and with a quick tongue. Hounded me, quite literally, day and night. The Hound of Baskerville. Made a point of jumping onto my bed when I was otherwise fast asleep. I don’t think I’ve slept for three weeks.”

  “Yeah, well, you look it.” James eyed us both. “I didn’t hear the doorbell, did I?” James took a quick look at my window that led out to the fire escape, no doubt suspecting I’d had a willing hand in letting Sherlock in. But the window was locked.

  Sherlock needed to work on his tone of voice, which tended toward condescending. “No, not the window. The front door, while all of you were coming inside.”

  “Impossible.”

  Sherlock shrugged, uncaring what James thought. I thought their mutual contempt came from their being so alike. Like Sherlock, brother James was a clever one, able to see not just what was in front of him, but what was missing.

  “You two contracted my services to help investigate your father’s accident. Need I remind you?”

  “Believe me, that was Mo’s doing,” James tried to clarify. “I just went along with it.”

  “Be that as it may,” Sherlock said, “are the two of you interested in the solution to the riddle branded into your father’s locked drawer?”

  “Of course we are!” I said, spitting a little by accident.

  James returned Sherlock’s early shrug of indifference. Tit for tat.

  “There were Boy Scouts at the school over the holiday.”

  “Yippee,” James said, disgusted. Bored.

  “They set up caravans in the forest between the old mansion and the hockey rink,” Sherlock said. He explained that the term “caravan” applied to what James and I called trailers, but with awnings and tents attached.