The Accidental Alchemist (17 page)

twenty-three

“Hold on!” I said
as Brixton rushed past me.

“We need to go!”

“No, we don’t.” I caught up with him before he reached the front door and put my hand on his dust-covered shoulder. “We know she’s okay, which is what counts. If the police are arresting her, it’s not a good idea for us to go to the hospital.” I thought of the dropper of tincture left on her bed. That was one reason I wanted to stay far away from the hospital. I also didn’t want Brixton to see Blue being hauled off by the police.

“I thought you cared about her too.” He shrugged off my hand. “But that was a lie, wasn’t it? You were just using her to help Dorian.”

I stared at him.

“You thought I didn’t know he’s dying?” Brixton said.

“He told you?”

“He didn’t have to.” He glared at me. “I’m not stupid. I saw there was something wrong with him, so I asked him. You could have told me what was going on.”

“I was—”

“What? Trying to
protect me?
You were trying to protect yourself. Are you going to
the hospital or what?”

“We’re not going,” I said.

“Maybe you’re not.” He ran to the back door, grabbed his bike, and sped down the driveway.

I wasn’t able to catch him, but I could follow. I knew where he was going. The tires of the truck screeched as I pulled out of the driveway and headed for the hospital. What I didn’t count on was the fact that there was traffic. The start-and-stop traffic inched along, making me more anxious by the minute. It was Saturday evening and apparently everyone in the city of Portland had decided it was a nice night to go out.

I ran into Brixton’s teacher Sam—literally—as the elevator doors opened on Blue’s floor of the hospital. I nearly knocked down his tall frame in my rush to find Brixton.

“Blue is with the police,” Sam said. “They won’t let me see her.”

“Have you seen Brixton?” I asked, catching my breath.

“He was here a few minutes ago. I assumed he was here with you. Were you parking the car while he came up?”

“He ran off without me.”

He gave a sad chuckle. “He’s like that.”

“You said he
was
here. Does that mean he’s gone?”

“I don’t know where he went. He was really upset when they wouldn’t let us see Blue.”

“She’s all right?”

“You could call it that. She seems to have made a miraculous recovery. But the police are questioning her. I heard a little bit of the conversation before they pushed us back. They’re treating her like she’s a suspect in her own attempted murder. I don’t get it.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

“Like what?”

Oh, I don’t know,
I thought,
like about a tincture dropper on her bed?

“I need to look for Brixton,” I said instead.

“If he left without you, I have a feeling I know where he might go.”

“Where?”

“His mom is still out of town, right?”

“Until later tonight.”

“Try Max Liu’s house.”

“The detective?”

“He’s one of the few adults Brixton trusts.” Sam consulted his phone and wrote down an address for me.

———

Thirty minutes later, I knocked on a red door with a gold dragon knocker.

“Have you ever thought of being a detective?” Max Liu asked as he opened his front door for me.

“I take it I was right that Brixton is here?”

“Come on in,” Max said.

“Go away!” a young voice called from somewhere beyond the threshold.

Max smiled at the admonition, quickly followed by a cough to cover it up.

The exterior of the single-story house was Spanish architecture with a red-tiled roof that matched the front door. Inside, Max’s house was simplicity itself. The open floor plan revealed only the barest assortment of furniture. A single white couch with a pewter-topped coffee table filled the center of the hardwood living room floor. Two large canvas paintings of scenic forests, each at least six feet high, covered one wall. The only thing out of place was Brixton’s bicycle, which was propped up in the entryway.

The main room looked over both the kitchen and, through sliding glass doors, the backyard. The only items visible in the kitchen were a cast iron tea kettle resting on the gas stove and two framed photos: a colorful image of a twenty-something south Asian woman in a field of tulips, and a black-and-white photo of an older Chinese woman in front of a row of metal jars.

Though it was a moonless evening, a soft light from an outdoor lamp illuminated the backyard. I could see that the small yard held a tree, an assortment of edible herbs and plants in a row of clay pots, and a wooden bench sheltered by an awning. The bench was in the perfect position for the person sitting on it to gaze at the tree, herb garden, and sky. Right now a cranky teenager sat on the bench.

“Your house is perfect,” I said, not realizing I was speaking aloud until I’d already begun.

“A lot of people ask if I’ve just moved in and haven’t bought any ‘stuff’ yet.”

“I don’t mean to intrude, but I need to get Brixton.”

Max tilted his head toward the backyard. “What did you do to him? It looks like he bathed in mud.”

“I have a new appreciation for mothers.”

“He’s a handful, but he’s a good kid.”

“I know. His mom is due to pick him up at my house any time now. I’d better let her know we’re running late.”

“I think Brixton already took care of that.”

Brixton opened the sliding doors. “My mom texted me. She’s outside.”

“Your stuff is still at my house. Should I bring it by your place later?”

He looked at his mud-covered shoes. I cringed when I thought about what Heather would think of my child-care abilities. “Nah,” he said. “Can Dor—I mean, can me and my mom go by your place on our way home? I still have the extra key you gave me. I’ll bring it back to you tomorrow.”

I hesitated for a moment. Even if he was at home, Dorian was good at hiding. And even though Brixton was upset, I didn’t believe he was trying to reveal Dorian’s existence any longer.

“Sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

Brixton gave Max a fist bump before leaving.

“He doesn’t want you to see where he lives,” Max said.

“That’s what that was about? Is it that bad?”

“Only the fact that the apartment is in a rundown building. I checked in on him there a few times after he got into trouble. It’s a nice enough place. His mom is a painter, and keeps the house full of art and books. But most of his friends have houses. He’s kind of touchy about it.”

“You mentioned when he got in trouble—”

“You want some tea?”

“I’d love some.”

Max went to the kitchen and put water in the kettle. It was both ornate and simple. And
old
. An embossed Chinese dragon wrapped around the iron kettle.

“Where did you find that?” I asked. “It’s beautiful.”

“It was my grandmother’s kettle.”

“It’s your grandmother in this photo?” I indicated the black-and-white photograph in a simple bamboo frame. In the photo, the woman stood in front of a cabinet of brass jars. I remembered Max saying his grandparents had been apothecaries in China. Her lips were unsmiling, but the photograph captured a mischievous smile that could be seen in her eyes. I could tell why he liked the photo.

“It was taken in China,” Max said, “before she came here with my mom. The other is of my wife.”

“Your wife?” I croaked. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but not everyone did. I had already been feeling foolish about my feelings for the man, and now I had even more reason to do so.

“Chadna passed away shortly after we were married.”

“I’m so sorry, Max.”

“It was a long time ago. Shortly after she finished medical school. Chadna was the one who saved me from the immature ideas I had about magic as a child. It’s because of her that I straightened my life around.”

I gave him a moment, but he didn’t seem to want to say more. “I w
asn’t kidding when I said this house is perfect,” I said, changing the subject. “It’s rare to find such an uncluttered space.” I couldn’t remember seeing anything so purposefully sparse in the last century.

Max turned off the kettle as it began to steam, then removed two handleless porcelain teacups from the cupboard, along with a box of loose leaf tea.

“If you have one teapot,” he said, pouring hot water over tea leaves, “that will do you quite well. How much does he lack himself who must have a lot of things?”

“You’re quoting Sen Rikyū,” I said. At that moment, I wished more than anything that I had been in Max’s house under other circumstances.

Max tilted his head and looked up from the tea. “How did you know that?”

“One of the few books I’ve kept in my trailer over the years is a book of quotations about tea. It reminds me to live in the moment and appreciate what I have in front of me.” I didn’t add how many years I’d had to read about tea and learn that lesson, but here in this house I found myself wanting to tell Max everything. It was a dangerous impulse, especially after hearing him talk about his scientific wife and dismissing the teachings of his grandmother. It was foolish of me to hope we could share something. Yet in this sanctuary he’d created for himself, I was more drawn to him than ever. I pulled myself back from that dangerous ledge and changed the subject. “You were going to tell me about Brixton.”

“I wasn’t, actually.”

“It sounded like you were.”

“You’re too damn easy to open up to, Zoe. Do you know that?”

“I feel the same way.” Our eyes locked and I lost all sense of time and place.

Max cleared his throat. “Breaking and entering, and assault. That’s what Brixton did.”

That startled me back to the present. “He’s just a kid. How can whatever he did count as assault?”

“He beat up a guy who was harassing his mom. His stepdad was out of town for a while and this guy was hitting on his mom—close to harassment, but not enough for a restraining order.” Max sighed and looked out the window. “Brixton was only twelve at the time, smaller than he is now. He knew he was too little to do anything to the guy if the guy could see it coming, so he broke into his house one night and beat him up, telling him never to touch his mom again.”

“That sounds more heroic than criminal.”

“The guy ended up in the hospital with several broken bones.”

“Oh.”

“Nobody liked it, but the guy wanted to press charges.”

“Did he go to juvenile jail, or whatever it’s called?”

Max shook his head. “Community service, but he’s got a juvenile record now.”

“You felt sorry for him, like he got a bad deal.”

“I saw myself in him.” He paused as he finished making the tea and handed me a cup. “I could see what was coming. I thought getting caught up in the system might push him into doing
more
bad things, because he saw that what he thought was a good deed was met with getting arrested.”

“Were you right?”

“Yes and no. His mom isn’t much of a disciplinarian. That friend of his, Veronica, keeps him in line more than his mom.”

“I thought he said he had a stepfather.”

“He’s not around much.”

“You said you saw yourself in him,” I said, wondering what he’d meant a minute before.

“So,” Max said, suddenly very interested in his tea leaves, “Brixton told me Blue woke up. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, except that now she’s being arrested.”

“At this point, she’s only being questioned. But that’s why Brixton came over. He didn’t know I was off the case. He was upset and thought it was my fault.”

“So she’s not under arrest?”

“I told you I’m off the case.”

“Surely you know what’s going on, though.”

“I’m on leave, Zoe. I told you I play things by the book. I’m here in my sanctuary, not following up on cases that aren’t my own.”

Max’s cell phone rang.

“Liu,” he said. He listened for a few moments, his face stoic. “Sure. I know where she is. I’ll bring her.” He clicked off.

“What was that about?”

“Blue is asking for you,” he said. “She says she’ll talk, but only if you’re the one she talks to. She says you saved her life.”

I gripped the teacup. How did Blue know? And what had she told people?

“Why would she say that?” Max asked.

“I visited her. I’ve always wondered if people in comas can hear what people say to them. Maybe she heard me.” I was used to leaving out details that would make people think I was crazy, but I hated lying to Max. Maybe I really should leave Portland before it was too late.

Max nodded, but his expression remained skeptical. “She’s still at the hospital under observation, with a guard checking on her regularly. They’re waiting for us.”

I wanted to take my own car to the hospital to be alone with my thoughts, but Max said he had something to tell me before we got there. He insisted we ride together. I slid into the passenger side of a sleek black sedan. It suited him.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked.

“Blue Sky isn’t her real name.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that.”

“It’s the real name on her identification,” Max said.

“You mean she officially changed her name?”

“Not exactly. After we started looking into her, I discovered the truth. Since you’re going to talk with her, you should know the truth going into this.”

“I thought you didn’t believe she was a killer either.”

“Instincts aren’t the same as facts, Zoe. You should know what you’re agreeing to when you speak with her.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“Blue’s real name is Brenda Skyler. Ten years ago, she faked her own death.”

twenty-four

“You came,” Blue said.
Her voice was weak, but she was sitting up in the hospital bed. It had been adjusted so she could talk without getting out of bed.

I was being allowed to speak with Blue alone, on the condition that the conversation was being recorded. I wasn’t sure why she would talk to me but not the police, but I was going to find out. “Of course I came. You know we’re being recorded, right?”

“They told me.” She held up her finger to her lips, then turned over her palm. There was something in her hand. It was the tincture dropper that had fallen into her bed after I’d given her a few drops. She handed it to me. “Thank you,” she said, “for coming to visit me. The nurse told me you were the last person to come visit me before I woke up, even though the police think I’m the one who killed—” She broke off and gave me an earnest look. “I didn’t do it.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“They told me Brixton was staying with you. That was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. He was supposed to stay with me. How is he?”

“Concerned about you.”

“But he’s all right?”

“He’s good.” Sure, he’d snuck out in the middle of the night and broken into a police lab … but he was well-fed and healthy.

“Does he think—he doesn’t think I did this, does he?”

“No, he believes in you. You’re the one thing he talks about more fondly than anything.”

She blinked back tears. I started to get up, but she grabbed my hand. “I asked for you because life is too short to waste time doing things one doesn’t want to do. I know, now, that the truth has to come out, but I’ll be damned if it’s going to be on someone else’s terms. I want to tell it to someone who understands.”

“You barely know me.”

“I know what you’re doing here,” she said.

My pulse quickened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Portland is the perfect place to reinvent oneself.”

“I’m not—”

She laughed, then cringed. “Owe, I’ve got the damnedest headache.”

“Let me get a doctor. I don’t think you’re up for talking.” I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. I needed an excuse to get out of there. I had the strongest impulse to hook up my trailer
to my truck and never look back.

“Wait, I want to get this off my chest,” Blue said. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re a kindred spirit. Someone who’s here to start fresh. Was it a bad breakup? No, you don’t have to tell me. That’s the whole point of starting fresh.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Something like that. I’ve been living out of my trailer for a long time. But when I got to Portland …”

“It feels like home, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“I’m glad my instincts were righ
t about you. You seem like you’re too young to understand what it’s like to feel so desperate that you need to flee your entire life, never looking back but always wondering if it’s right over your shoulder. But you’re an old soul. I hope you’ll understand.”

I wished I could tell her how right she was. That I could tell her I understood running more than she thought.

“You look like you want to say something,” Blue said.

I shook my head. “You should probably start telling me what the police want to know, before they decide I’m not a good interrogator and they should do it themselves.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“I already know,” I said, “about Brenda.”

“Ah. I suppose you want to call me that now.”

“Not if you prefer Blue.”

I was in no position to judge. After all, Faust was the name I’d chosen for myself after realizing what I’d become.

“I was going to tell you myself, but I guess they beat me to it.” She ran a hand through her wild gray hair. “If you can believe it, I used to have perfectly coifed hair and not a gray hair in sight. I paid obscene amounts of money to have my hair dyed, straightened, and styled.”

“I can’t picture you without your untamed curls. They suit you.”

“I agree. My old life didn’t suit me in any way imaginable.”

“Lawyer?”

“Lawyers always get a bad rap, don’t they? Don’t people think of any other profession that would be a drag?”

“So you weren’t a lawyer?”

“No, you were right.” She laughed. “I was a lawyer. Sort of. I went to law school straight out of college because it’s what was expected of me. It never occurred to me that I could do something different with my life. I met my husband during law school. He was the charming guy all the women in our class fell for—handsome but with a little bit of quirkiness that showed in his imperfect nose, smart enough to do well at school without having to study all the time, confident enough to be a good public speaker and to flatter women in just the right way. I should have known he was too perfect.”

“Things like that usually are.”

“He wasn’t as smart as we all thought. He was cheating on tests. The worst part was, after I found out, I
helped him
. I thought I was in lo
ve. I, however, took the code of ethics seriously. I couldn’t bring myself to take the bar exam, because I knew I was morally compromised. For him. He knew he had me. We got married right after law school. He did a clerkship for a judge, during which I helped him with a lot of the work without anyone knowing. After the clerkship, he started his own private practice. It was early in his career to do so, but he was charming enough to pull it off—with my help. I couldn’t legally practice law, but I helped him with research and cases, as a legal assistant. I played the part. I know I was fooling myself, thinking I was being ethical by not being a practicing lawyer myself. He was a master at psychologically manipulating me. It took years for me to see it. Years during which I blindly followed his lead.”

“What happened to change your mind?”

“He knew me. He knew I was a good lawyer who did everything ethically except for lying about the work I did for him. He knew he could only push me so far and that I’d never do anything I knew to be
morally
wrong. ”

“But he would.”

“There were some of his cases,” she said, “where he didn’t ask for my help. He didn’t even tell me he was working on them. I could see why. They were worse than I could have imagined. When I found out, I kept the knowledge to myself. But I knew what I had to do.”

“You left him?” I asked.

“If only it had been that simple. He kept meticulous records. One of his files was a fake record of everything illegal I had supposedly done—without his knowledge, of course. He’d been keeping the records as insurance, in case he ever did push me too far. A few years before I found out the extent of his crimes, I had a brief moment of clarity during which I thought about leaving him. It was induced by one too many martinis—an indulgence that used to get me through my days with him—so I stupidly told him I might leave him. That
’s when he showed me the file.”

“What was in it?”

“Falsified records about things he claimed I had done that would send me to jail. He had the gall to pretend I’d actually done these things and that he was being a faithful husband by protecting me and not turning me in. Spousal privilege and all that.” She scoffed. “If I left him or told any ‘lies’ about him, he would no longer feel obliged to cover up my crimes.”

“That’s awful.” What was even worse was that after everything I’d seen in my life, I could imagine him getting away with it.

“I knew, then, that I could never leave him. Not safely. I started putting away money. We spent so lavishly that it was easy to save a hundred dollars here and there without him noticing. It added up. But I didn’t yet have a plan. I was a broken woman then. I couldn’t see any way out. I still believed his only crime was in what he was doing to me—manipulating me into doing his work for him. He’d never physically abused me, so I told myself I wasn’t being abused, even though I was. It would have been easier if he’d hit me.”

As screwed up as that sounded, it made sense. Her husband had known how to push her just to the brink but not over the edge.

“Once I found out he was breaking the law to help corrupt clients, that’s when I had the idea to disappear.”

“But you knew you couldn’t leave him without repercussions.”

“Even if I’d gone to jail myself,” she said, “that would have been okay, as long as I brought him down with me. But knowing him, I’d have ended up serving a life sentence while he came off looking like a saint for caring for a de
ranged wife for so long. I wasn’t left with many options. But by then, I had saved up a decent amount of money that he didn’t know about. Not a great deal of money compared to what we were used to spending, but what did I care about that? I never cared about
the clothes or the spa treatments. I’d always wanted to do something like I’m doing here in Portland.”

She paused to take a sip of water. Her hand shook as she did so.

“Do you need a doctor?” I asked, helping her raise the glass to her parched lips and then set it back on the side table.

“Hell, no. I’ve been asleep for days. It’s just taking me a little time to wake up. Where was I? Oh, right, taking charge of my life.” She clapped her hands together. “I’d wasted too much of my life with that bastard. I wasn’t going to let him ruin the rest. Without him knowing, I collected my own evidence—real evidence—that he was falsifying documents for crooked clients. Sent the evidence to the proper authorities, left a suicide note, then drove my car into Lake Michigan.”

“You died that day.”

“Brenda Skyler died that day. Blue Sky was born.”

“Max said it was smart of you to take a name so similar to your own. That way you’d recognize it and respond when people addressed you.”

“
Max
, huh.” Her eyes twinkled. “I know that look.”

“You were explaining how you faked your death,” I said, feeling the color rise in my cheeks. “How did you pull it off? And please tell me your husband didn’t get away with his crimes.”

“I met a lot of interesting people while we practiced law together. I was able to get a fake ID pretty easily, then got a real one once I moved to Oregon. As for my husband—” She paused and gave me a conspiratorial grin. “The bugger got disbarred and served five years in jail. The last I heard, he was selling men’s suits in Detroit. I, on the other hand, have been living exactly the life I wanted to. No more working fourteen-hour days. No more dieting. No more playing hostess to people I never liked. No more straightening and dying my hair. No more manicures.”

She paused to pat her ample belly and show me her calloused hands with short fingernails.

“I eat without starving myself,” she said. “I use my hands to garden and collect wildcrafted plants, and opened the teashop to make enough money to live simply while doing something I love.”

“I suppose it’s illegal to fake your own death,” I said. “But why is that important now?”

“That’s not why they want to arrest me,” she said.

“I know.” I suddenly felt very awkward, knowing I was the one who found the poison attributed to Blue, which I was now certain had been planted to frame her.

“They have this crazy idea,” she said, “that Charles was
blackmailing
me about my past. They think that’s why
I killed him.”