“Are you all right, James? Can you do this?” Lois asked.
“Why here at Baskerville? Why not in Boston?”
“Mr. Carlisle’s family wanted the service here. It’s as simple as that.”
“It’s not simple at all,” James said. “Why invite me and not others?”
“Because Miss Carlisle and you are friends, aren’t you?”
“I don’t even know.” James had sent a dozen texts to Lexie apologizing for, and trying to explain, the way he’d treated her. That he didn’t want her involved with the headmaster, whom he’d seen coming toward him. Someone later told her about the attack on the dorm, because the only message she’d written James—prior to the invitation to the funeral—had been one of concern for his safety. “I guess so.”
Lois wore a plain gray dress, only light red lipstick for makeup, and a look of real sadness. She smelled faintly of gardenias. They walked in the cold, heading nowhere in particular.
“You’ve worked for Father for as long as I can remember.”
“I have.”
“You must know a lot of the people he worked with.”
“Know of them, yes.”
“How’d you end up working with Father in the first place?”
“I knew him a long time ago. I was his assistant at the university. He liked the way I worked, I suppose. That was a long time ago, as I said.”
James had heard the story before, even if he didn’t believe it. “If I ask you some stuff, will you answer me honestly?”
“I’m not sure how much I can help.”
“I think Father—maybe all the Moriartys—kept stuff in the family Bible. I think that’s why the school freaked out when it went missing.” He thought of Father and how he’d had his accident while the Bible was still missing. He thought of Lowry and Crudgeon and the Scowerers. He thought of betrayal. His own, and the possibility of those who’d been close to Father.
“Are you okay, James?”
A silence settled between them.
“Mo and Sherlock . . . I think they’ve discovered this way to decode the family Bible. I think I was taken . . . I think those men would have tortured me to find out what I knew.”
“James, you really should see someone.”
“It’s not that. I’m not freaked out by that stuff at all. It’s Father, Father’s death. We, the three of us, don’t think it was an accident.”
“Is that so? That’s a horrible thought!”
“Greed, maybe power. Someone wanted him dead.”
“James . . . ”
“I’m certain of it, Lois. I need you to think, to think really hard. Who would have wanted Father out of the way?”
“James! The world doesn’t work like that! That’s all those videos you play. People don’t act like that!”
“Lois, I don’t know who else to ask.”
“Of course. Well, I’m glad it was me, and not Ralph. You mustn’t talk to Ralph about this,” she said. “He can’t be trusted.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked.
“He has a temper. If he made a guess. If he decided on his own that someone had—” Lois pursed her lips. A hundred wrinkles ran from her red lipstick like a bamboo umbrella from a fruit drink. “As to what you ask, I’d be pleased to do what I can.”
“I need a name.”
“Of course,” Lois said.
“And then you and I will forget we had this conversation,” James pressed. “You understand? This never happened.”
“Promise,” she said, a slight frown interrupting the wrinkles at either side of her tightly pursed lips.
CHAPTER 54
ACCORDING TO SHERLOCK, OUR TIMING WAS perfect: Headmaster Crudgeon would be preparing for Mr. Carlisle’s memorial chapel service. He could not, would not, turn me away if I asked to see him. I had no idea if we were up to carrying out Ruby’s plan for misdirection and the Bible’s substitution, but Sherlock liked the plan and so did I.
“The trick,” Sherlock had said, adding to Ruby’s plan, “is to interest the headmaster to the point where he can’t help himself. To tease him with something he already knows, but would like to know more about. And I believe we have just the tidbit!”
Another trick had been to find a backpack identical to mine and then bribe its owner into loaning it to me. Ruby handled that while Sherlock rode the school shuttle into Putnam, Connecticut, to canvass hardware stores in search of a padlock that matched the one securing the Bible in Crudgeon’s office. Meanwhile, I rehearsed my role and line a hundred times. When Lock returned, lock in hand, he demanded we rehearse together. Again, and again.
By the time I walked into Headmaster Crudgeon’s office, an appointment arranged by Mrs. Furman, his officious secretary, my hands were sweating. I was having a glandular moment of five-thousand-degree skin and a sense of panic.
“Miss Moriarty. Please, have a seat,” Crudgeon said, offering me a chair across the large expanse of his desk.
“Actually, I . . . I know this is bad timing, Headmaster.” I opened my backpack—important!—and withdrew a pair of thin knit winter gloves. “I wondered if I might have a look at our Bible?”
Here was the test Sherlock had anticipated. My Bible. But in his office. Would he deny me my right?
“You . . . what? Actually, Moria,” I noted the change to the familiar, “it is bad timing. It’s a busy morning, I’m afraid. Perhaps tomor—”
“Now would be great,” I said, using the phrase Sherlock and I had practiced. “There’s a painting in the Bible,” and there came the teaser, “of one of my ancestors. Sherlock Holmes and I think we’ve figured out why it’s in there, the purpose it serves.” Nothing new, we assumed, to a man in Crudgeon’s position, but information he had to hear for himself.
“I see.”
“All I need is a quick look. If you don’t mind?”
“I really don’t have the time.”
“Mrs. Furman, then? Some other adult?” This, Sherlock had said, would put the man into a paradox. His uncertainty would then make him ripe for Ruby’s plan.
I tried to lift the glass cover off the Bible, but it was locked. Crudgeon came around his desk, already reaching for the keys in his pocket. “I’ll get that!” he said. Phase one complete.
My phone, a phone I was allowed, was on an open call to Sherlock and Ruby, thanks to its conference feature. They were hearing all of this. Sherlock was also recording it all in case Crudgeon offered me anything juicy.
“Gloves on, please,” Crudgeon said, donning a pair himself.
“Yes. All set.”
“You will work on this table over here.” He fiddled with and removed the small padlock that secured the glass case. I had our matching padlock in my school uniform pocket. Carefully lifting the Bible, he carried it to the only table in the room, one away from the door, and therefore an important part of our plan.
I opened the Bible, delicately turning its pages intentionally slowly. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I said.
“It is.” Crudgeon sounded impatient, and with good reason. The Carlisle service was now less than an hour away—all part of the plan to rattle him.
Crudgeon and I stood shoulder to shoulder.
“Here it is!” I’d arrived at the painting of James Wilford and his sparkling necklace. “He’s my many times great-grandfather,” I said. “My great-grandmother was a Wilford, but she married Eldridge L. Moriarty and the family business has been run by Moriarty men ever since.”
“What exactly are you looking for?” Crudgeon asked. There it was, the question Sherlock had hoped might be asked.
“I’m looking for my mother,” I answered, as practiced. The idea was to knock Headmaster’s legs out from under him. And it worked. “My father kept a journal, did you know that?” That was intended to open a trapdoor now that we had Crudgeon on the metaphorical floor. He fell in.
Cue Ruby and Sherlock, who came down the hall and entered Crudgeon’s office without permission. Cue Mr
s. Furman coming from her post to stop them. Paint a picture of chaos and shouting: Mrs. Furman’s objections, Ruby’s insistence she was looking for me, Sherlock’s stealthy movement past Ruby and into the office.
Cue Crudgeon, turning toward his office door, his mind baked by the mention of my missing mother and Father’s journal.
“There you are, Moria!” said Sherlock, having moved far enough to only be a shadow in the corner of Crudgeon’s eyes.
Now came the part we’d practiced and practiced.
Two or three steps toward his secretary and Ruby, Crudgeon spoke loudly and with his usual authority. “No interruptions!”
With my back to the door to screen my activity, and trusting Sherlock to signal me if our plan went bust, I slid my backpack into position. I pulled the fake Bible out, replacing it with the heavier original. Practically before I had it closed inside, Sherlock tossed his backpack toward me, as Ruby physically pushed and rotated Mrs. Furman toward the hall to keep her from seeing us. I caught the throw from Sherlock, swung mine and, as rehearsed, delivered it perfectly into Sherlock’s waiting hands, ten feet away from me.
I was already carrying the fake Bible toward the case when Sherlock scurried to leave the office, anticipating Crudgeon’s next move.
“Out! Out! This is a private meeting!” Grown-ups can be so predictable.
I lowered the glass case, switched padlocks, and locked the case. I put Crudgeon’s keys on the top of the case.
Headmaster turned toward me. It was just him and me in the office now. The Bible back in the case, I indicated his keys.
“Thank you, Headmaster.”
“My pleasure,” Crudgeon said.
“You found what you wanted?” he asked, his inflection suggesting I answer.
“Oh, yes. Absolutely,” I said. “I snapped a photo with my phone.” I told the truth. It was just that the photo I’d taken had been of the painting in Father’s secret room. “If there’s a family secret hiding in that picture, trust me, I’m going to find it.”
“I would doubt that very much, Moria.”
“That I’m going to find it, or that it’s there in the first place?” I asked. “Because as it turns out, my father was full of secrets, Headmaster. And I am intent on uncovering every last one of them.”
Sherlock had written those words. I was directed to walk out with confidence. But I stumbled. Perhaps from the weight of the Bible in the backpack, perhaps because my knees had gone all soft on me. Perhaps—even if it did belong to me—because I was stealing something for the first time in my life.
And maybe not for the last.
CHAPTER 55
LEXIE AND HER MOTHER ENTERED THE SCHOOL chapel last. They sat down in the front pew among much murmuring. Sounds reverberated inside the stone church. Cars had begun arriving an hour earlier, amid falling snow. The chapel was packed, holding three hundred guests, every seat filled. The service went on for some time—music, a remembrance by the chaplain, a number of speakers, many of whose names James knew.
He didn’t care that much about the service. He wanted Lexie to turn and look for him. She hadn’t done so when coming down the aisle with her mom, causing James unexpected heartache.
The shocker came when some guy James didn’t know was up there talking about Carlisle’s time spent at Baskerville! He and Father could have overlapped here, James thought, or might have been in the same class! Why had no one mentioned that? He and Father were both now dead.
As the service wrapped up, James was looking for Crudgeon, for Lowry, for any face, anyone who connected with the headmaster and attorney. He wanted confirmation the Scowerers had done this to Carlisle.
“You should pay your respects,” Lois told James.
“Meaning?”
“The receiving line, just as you and Moria did at your father’s service.”
“I hated that.”
“It’s the polite thing to do, James.”
“The line will be massive.”
“James . . . you are a Moriarty.”
“Yeah, okay.” James wondered if he, the boy who’d spied on Mr. Carlisle, the boy who’d helped get him killed, could stand in line and shake the hands of his daughter and widow. What was he supposed to say?
The receiving line stretched from the door back toward the nave like a black snake with a thousand arms and a hundred heads. It looked creepy and crawly and sinister. James, somewhere in the middle, had already been greeted by adults he knew from the club and from barbecues on the Cape, but not by their names. One or two of the men seemed to address him with more respect than they might have a year earlier and this made James wonder who these people were, and how he could find out more about them. It also pressured him to stay in line. Leaving now would make him look bad. He shifted uneasily on his feet.
Looked off into the people standing around talking.
And there was Lois. And there was Lowry talking to Lois. Lois and Lowry? Sure, as legal guardian Lowry employed Lois, but the way they talked without looking at each other, both scanning the crowd, seemed off. Not right.
James asked the person behind him to hold his place. He set off toward the two, using other bunches of people to screen him and wondering how such instincts came to him so easily. He identified a direct route to the two down an empty pew. Hunching over and facing away from Lois and Lowry, he collected programs that had been left behind, as if cleaning up. He inched slowly closer to them.
James heard Lowry say, “Holmes.”
Lois nodded.
Was she ratting him out? James wondered. Like had happened with Carlisle, had James tagged Sherlock by telling Lois that Sherlock and I were investigating things?
Lowry head-signaled Lois, and for a moment James felt made of Jell-O, believing he’d been spotted. He shrank lower, collecting more programs from the floor, and he stayed down. Screened by the pew in front of him, he looked in the direction of Lowry’s head nod on the desperate hope Lowry might have someone else in mind.
And there was Ralph, who’d driven Lois but had not attended the service as far as James had seen.
And there was a man talking to Ralph.
Short and stocky, this man wore his gray hair long and combed back behind his small ears. It curled up at the back of his neck a few inches off his collar. He had puffy cheeks, feminine eyebrows, wet lips, and an odd-looking, flattened nose. He also had what appeared to be two bodyguards standing within reach, reinforcing James’s sense he’d seen the man before. The two kept busy scanning the guests, revealing their purpose.
Ralph spoke to the man intensely. James knew that Irish temper, was surprised to see it, especially in a church. Despite the distance, it was clear the two were disagreeing, if not outright arguing. The smaller man nodded a lot, looked around nervously, worried about eavesdropping. Ralph reached inside his suit jacket, removed an envelope, and passed it to the other, who pocketed it quickly.
James moved toward the two of them, feeling pulled between Lois and Ralph. His place in line was nearing Lexie and her mom. James headed there and waited only a couple of minutes before reaching Mrs. Carlisle.
“James,” she said. He couldn’t interpret her tone. A mother protecting her hurt daughter, or a widow doing what she had to?
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. “For your loss,” he added, saying what so many people had said to him not so long ago. “I liked him. He was nice to me.” He felt her every muscle tighten.
He moved on to Lexie. She immediately looked hurt and wounded. She lowered her head, refusing to look at him.
“Did you read my texts? I didn’t know,” James said. He hadn’t known they were going to kill him; he hadn’t known she was hurting when she’d approached in the common room. It seemed to cover so much.
“Go,” she said.
“There was a situation. I didn’t want you caught up in it.”
Mrs. Carlisle heard that. She turned to James. “Please, leave her be.”
James left, wishing h
e could feel nothing, but aching instead. He could feel him and Lexie locked arm to arm, the freezing water coursing over her, the two of their lives connected.
A few steps away from Lexie, he turned back. “I’m so sorry.”
Her head still bowed, she looked toward him out of the sides of her eyes, tear stains on her cheeks.
Ralph approached from within the church, his face as red and blotchy as James had ever seen it. Ralph stormed past James, breathing like he’d finished a long race. James knew well Ralph’s intense, uncontrollable anger.
The Irishman stopped next to James and met eyes with him. “We’re going to do something about this!” he announced.
He charged on toward the sea of parked cars, having never explained his outburst.
Someone coughed nearby and James looked in that direction—Espiranzo clearing snow. The Scowerer cocked his head sharply toward the back of the chapel. James hurried to get a view of whatever it was.
The short, familiar-looking man with the small ears and long gray hair, accompanied by the two whom James had seen inside, walked stridently through the falling snow toward a four-wheel-drive SUV, all black, with tinted windows and oversized tires. One of the men held the back door for the short man. A moment later they were off, the SUV backing up but turning to head down the hill, not up to the state highway. The SUV was staying on Baskerville property!
James got within proximity of Espiranzo, neither wanting to appear too chummy with so many people milling about.
“You asked me for a name,” said Espiranzo, head down, working a shovel against the light accumulation. “That’s him in the fancy SUV.”
He might as well have struck James across the face with the shovel, so stunned was the boy standing nearby. James took off, first at a fast walk, then broke into a run, pursuing a lookout spot in order to see where the SUV was headed.
The library terrace offered him a view of the distant varsity football field, the gymnasium, as well as, to the right, the road along the Lower Bricks. This access road connected to another that ran near the tennis center and also accessed the state highway. It seemed likely to James the SUV was merely shortcutting traffic by taking the back way off campus.
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