by Glen Ebisch
ANGEL IN THE SNOW
Young Adult Mystery
Kindle: 978-1-58124-410-6
ePub: 978-1-58124-411-3
©2012 by Glen Ebisch
Published 2012 by The Fiction Works
http://www.fictionworks.com
[email protected]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
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
About the Author
Chapter 1
There was no fourth floor!
After I had trudged up three flights of stairs with a steamer trunk hoisted up on my right shoulder and an overstuffed suitcase balanced on my left—there was no fourth floor! I dropped the trunk on the top step. The stairway just ended and I faced a blank wall. Pretty mysterious.
Even more mysterious was the way my advisor, Mr. Hawthorne, had acted about fifteen minutes ago when he saw my room assignment.
“You’ve been assigned to room with Maxwell Templeton in Stoneham Hall, room 401,” he’d said.
“Okay.”
“You’ve been assigned there only because you transferred into the school in January, and there is no other room available,” he’d explained apologetically.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He’d given me a superior smile as though he knew something I didn’t. “You may change your mind on that before long. If you do, we’ll try to make arrangements for you somewhere else, just as we have for others.”
Others? What others? I’d wondered. But I’d decided to keep quiet. When you’re starting at a new school it pays not to ask a lot of questions right away. You stand out too much from the crowd.
* * *
So I had climbed up three flights of stairs in Stoneham Hall carrying almost all of my worldly possessions on my back. Fortunately it was a strong back. As my mother always says, “You’re a big boy who got his full growth early.” At 6’2” and 180 pounds, I do stand out from most seventeen-year-olds. Coaches at schools all over this country and a few others have been sorry to see me leave, as my family picked up to move yet one more time.
But even I was starting to puff a little by now, and despite the cold January weather, a trickle of sweat was meandering down my spine. I put the suitcase down next to the trunk and took a deep breath. To be fair to myself, this was my second trip in an hour up several flights of stairs playing packhorse. The taxi from the airport had dropped me off in front of the administration building, which was where my acceptance letter from North Hill Academy told me to report. I was supposed to see my advisor, this Mr. Hawthorne, whose office turned out to be on the third floor of that building. So I’d carried everything up there.
When I’d finally reached the third floor, a secretary with a face like a prune had stared at me as though I were living proof that human beings had evolved from the apes—and pretty recently.
“Hi,” I’d said, “I’m Charles Wood. I’m a new transfer student.”
“You could have left your things in the lobby downstairs,” she’d said, skipping the formalities.
“Yeah, well I was afraid someone might borrow them.”
“We don’t do things like that here.” She’d said “here” as though it was somewhere special, like heaven maybe, and everywhere else was down below.
She’d knocked on a door across the room, said a few words to someone inside, then had turned and announced that Mr. Hawthorne would see me. I’d dropped my gear next to her desk, which earned me another disgusted look, and gone into the small office.
Mr. Hawthorne had turned out to be sort of a youngish guy wearing a blue blazer, and chino pants that were probably right out of an L.L. Bean catalog. We shook hands and I sat down. He crossed his right leg over his left, and I noticed he was wearing docksiders. I wondered how they held up in the snow that covered the campus.
He’d glanced through my file and asked all the usual questions about hobbies and sports that seem to make counselors feel like they’re doing their jobs; then he got down to the serious stuff and looked over the transcripts of my ninth, tenth, and first half of eleventh grades.
“You’ve done very well. Especially for someone who’s moved from school to school so much,” he’d said in an almost disappointed tone. Maybe he’d wanted to stay in practice and was disappointed I didn’t need more advice? Then he’d made that odd remark about this Templeton kid, and, after the usual words of encouragement, sent me over here.
* * *
So here I was on the third floor with nowhere to go. Each floor I’d seen so far had a wide hall running down the middle with doors off to each side. The stairs were on either side of a small balcony from which you could look down on the fancy lobby. But as I stood there, working a kink out of my right shoulder, I tried to come to grips with the fact that the stairs had ended. There was no way up.
I wondered if this was some sort of bizarre initiation: Let the new guy find the nonexistent room, that sort of thing. But somehow Hawthorne hadn’t seemed like much of a kidder. I checked the numbers in the hall, they all started with three. And since it was a Monday morning and classes had begun last week, there was no one around to ask. I’d certainly feel like a fool if this wasn’t a joke, and I went back to tell Hawthorne that a floor was missing. I was about to go down the hall knocking on every door in the hope of finding someone who was sick or playing hooky, when a guy wearing a bow tie, striped shirt, and fancy loafers trotted out of one of the rooms.
“You must be Charles Wood,” he said cheerfully, as if meeting me were the highlight of his day. “I’m Randy Anderson, third floor monitor. I’ll bet you’re wondering how to get up to the fourth floor—everybody does. As monitor for the third floor, my responsibilities technically include the fourth, but with him up there . . .” he sighed. “You know how it is, no one wants to rock the boat.”
“Yeah, sure. How do I get to the fourth floor?”
“Oh, yes, just follow me.” He walked over to a large wooden book case right across from the third floor landing. With a gentle shove, he slid it to one side on some kind of metal track and revealed a door. He seemed a little disappointed when I didn’t ask about the peculiar furniture, but right now all I wanted to do was find my mythical room.
He slowly turned the doorknob, and acted surprised when the door swung open.
“My, my, I guess Templeton was actually listening to me for a change. I told him to leave it unlocked when he went to class because his new roommate was coming, and he actually did. I know he’s not to blame for what’s happened in his life, but it would be easier to have sympathy for him if he’d just be more cooperative.”
“Yeah, well thanks for the help,” I said, heaving the trunk back up on my shoulder.
He started to ask me if I needed a hand but thought better of it.
“You’re welcome. I only transferred here last year myself so I know how hard changing schools can be. If you need any help learning the ropes, my door is the third down the hall on the right. I am your floor monitor and also work in the headmaster’s office, so if you have any question about the rules, give me a call. If I don’t know the answer, I can find out.”
>
I nodded, thinking floor monitor and headmaster’s office—this guy is ambitious, and started up the stairs. The staircase was a surprisingly wide one of polished wood, with a small landing halfway up. As I turned to go up the final stretch, I realized I was being watched. Shifting the trunk back on my shoulder, I managed to twist my head and see to the top of the stairs.
He was tall, maybe even taller than I am, but thin—very thin. In one hand he held a large mallet, in the other a chisel. A sculptor? He certainly stood there still as a statue, staring at me as though he was a hawk and I was a helpless mouse about to be welcomed as dinner. He even looked like a bird of prey with his narrow face, dark piercing eyes, and a nose that hooked down at the end as though it might once have been broken and not reset.
We didn’t say anything to each other as I continued to climb slowly to the top. When I was about five steps away, he said in a surprisingly deep voice, “A little on the heavy side, aren’t you?”
I didn’t bother to answer him until I’d reached the top of the stairs and put down the trunk, purposely controlling my breathing to impress him.
“It’s all muscle.”
His eyes stared down into mine from perhaps an inch more height, something I wasn’t used to, and the slightest hint of a smile played around the corners of his mouth.
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, and stuck out a thin hand with amazingly long fingers with wide ends, almost like spatulas. “I’m Templeton, Maxwell Templeton.”
“Charles Wood,” I responded, giving his hand a firm shake. “My friends call me Charlie.”
“Yes, I suppose they do. If I had any friends, they would call me Templeton, as I expect you to do.”
“Any way you want it,” I replied.
“I see your father is a high ranking business executive who has undoubtedly been sent somewhere dangerous overseas and decided that you would be better off completing your education here.”
I almost dropped the suitcase on my foot. “How do you know that? Did you sneak into the headmaster’s office and look over my application?”
Templeton chuckled. “Nothing so devious, Wood. It really is obvious. That trunk of yours has clearly been around. Now a suitcase might look worn from vacation trips, but a battered trunk indicates a number of journeys overseas. From that I deduced that your father is either a military man, a high ranking business executive, or a diplomat.” He stopped, waiting for me to urge him to go on.
“Okay, go on,” I said, intrigued.
“Military men do not send their children, particularly their sons, to an institution as undisciplined in orientation as North Hill, which has a reputation for educating the children of the wealthy and near wealthy so that they can go on to Ivy League colleges and become critical of the government, big business, and the military. Not necessarily in that order.
“Diplomats are not well paid, and this is an extremely expensive place to learn the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. So that left only senior executives, and since you have clearly spent time overseas with your family, this must be a special assignment to somewhere that your father feels is not safe for his family.” He leaned back with a confident smile. “Am I correct?”
“Almost.”
“What do you mean, almost?” he snapped.
“My father was an executive with a large petroleum company, and we traveled around with him a lot in this country and overseas. But he got appointed ambassador to a small nation in the Middle East a few months ago, but not a particularly dangerous one. He and my mom just decided that I would have a better chance at getting into a good college if I finished school in the U.S.”
“A better shot at a football scholarship, you mean. Defensive line would be my educated guess.”
I didn’t ask how he knew, so after a second he turned his back to me and walked over to a large fireplace along the left wall. The mallet and chisel were still in his hand. He bent down, looked up the flue, then glanced back. “Overdeveloped trapezius muscles, the curse of the defensive lineman. Must make it very hard to find a well-fitting suit.” Then putting the chisel up the flue, he began to pound away, making a sound that wasn’t much louder than a jackhammer.
I wondered if Mr. Hawthorne’s offer to change rooms was still good, and whether I could do it today.
Preferably within the next five minutes.
Chapter 2
I glanced around the room, trying to ignore the racket Templeton was making. It was a huge room, which was made to seem even bigger by the high ceiling that disappeared off into the arch of the roof, sort of like a small church, with its wooden beams and unusual shadows. In the front there were double dormer windows cut into the slope of the roof, and on the opposite side was the fireplace that Templeton seemed so intent on tearing to pieces.
What was obviously his side of the room was to the left of the windows. There was an army surplus cot, a large table covered with papers, and attached to the wall, a number of long shelves filled with books. A barbell with some weights on it was shoved in the corner, along with what appeared to be an elephant’s foot umbrella holder containing a cane and a baseball bat. My side had a normal institutional bed and a small desk with a bookshelf on the wall above it.
I moved the trunk over to the foot of the bed and tossed the suitcase on top of the drab green blanket. Always make an effort when starting at a new school, I reminded myself. So I wandered over to see what my roommate was up to.
In front of the fireplace there was a large rug with what once must have been a fancy oriental design, but years of wear now made it difficult to identify the exact pattern. Two large, tired leather chairs were pulled up in front of the hearth. On the fireplace mantle a small clock with a pendulum swung out the time, to its right was a small trophy cup with Templeton’s name on it that had something to do with soccer, and next to that was a picture of a middle-aged woman. The left side of the mantle was bare.
“The left side is available for you to display any personal treasures you may have,” Templeton said, emerging from the chimney, sweaty and streaked with dirt. “Having clear boundaries makes for a better living arrangement.”
“Yeah. What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a round plaque that hung on the wall above the mantle. “It looks like a tree with piles of manure under it.”
Templeton smiled very slightly. “That’s an oak tree, and what you referred to as manure are supposed to be piles of acorns. Do you see the Latin words around the edge?”
I nodded. “I don’t read Latin.”
“Most people here don’t, even if they pretended to in order to get accepted. But roughly translated, it says, ‘Let the seeds of knowledge fall on fertile ground.’ It’s the school motto, there’s a similar plaque in every room. Most people here would agree that your description sums it up pretty accurately.”
“What are you doing under there?” I asked quickly, as he started to pop back up the flue.
He pulled his head out and frowned as though I were wasting his precious time asking why he was ripping apart our room.
“Ever since I first occupied this place in September, I have wanted a working fireplace. The administration, in its questionable wisdom, has had all of them sealed up to avoid having the building burned to the ground by what passes for the student body around here. But whereas the ones downstairs are sealed with bricks and mortar, this one simply has a metal plate attached by iron brackets to the inside of the chimney.
“My previous three roommates were afraid of the authorities and threatened to report me when I expressed my intention to undertake this project. Expecting nothing better from you, I had hoped to have it completed before your arrival.
“Are you going to rush off now and turn me in? It might earn you some points with the headmaster.”
“I kind of like toasted marshmallows, but won’t somebody see the smoke?”
“Not if we only use it at night. Some of the faculty cottages on campus have fireplaces, so if anyone smelled s
moke on the night air, they’d assume it was from one of those.”
I got down on my knees and looked up the chimney using a flashlight Templeton reluctantly handed me. Recessed about two inches up was a black metal plate covering the opening. There were brackets at each of the four corners, and the plate was welded onto the brackets.
“It looks like you’re trying to chisel out the brackets. That could be a slow job, and it might damage the chimney.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I might, if you have no objection to the use of brute force.”
“Do whatever needs to be done,” he said with a shrug.
I stood facing the fireplace, bent slightly at the knees, and let the steel mallet hang between my legs. I swung it back and forth for a few seconds to build up momentum, then on the count of three I brought it up with all my strength on the right rear corner. The ancient weld gave and the corner sprang free. In a few minutes all four corners were loose, and with a final blow in the middle, the plate fell out onto the hearth with a loud clatter.
“We done!” Templeton said. He gave me a thin smile. “Wood, you may work out after all. With my brains and your brawn we can accomplish a great deal.”
I turned without a word, went back over to my side of the room, and hoisted my gear back up on my shoulders.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m about to set a record as your quickest roommate ever.”
“Why?” he asked in genuine surprise. Then he paused and thought for a moment. “Ah, I think I understand. Someone of your size has probably often been ridiculed for an excess of muscle and lack of intellect. I didn’t realize you were so sensitive.”
“Because somebody my size doesn’t look it, I know. All muscle, even between the ears.”
“Very well. You will learn that I never apologize and very rarely explain, but in this case I will go so far as to promise that I will carefully avoid any reference to your massive body in the future.”