Always October (8 page)

I
hurried into the hall … and straight back to the painting of Tia LaMontagne. I studied it until LD began to squirm. Then I started walking, jouncing him gently and crooning as I wondered what it was like for Jake to not know whether his father was dead or had simply taken off for a new life.

I stopped in front of the picture of Tia LaMontagne again. Jacob definitely had some odd-looking relatives … but then, who doesn't? The thing was, none of them looked as odd as Tia. I paced with LD but kept coming back to that one picture, staring at it and thinking about what Jacob's father had said.

An idea was forming in my mind.

Just then Jacob came out of the room holding a box. “Found one!” he crowed.

I continued to stare at the painting.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, coming to stand beside me. “I found a camera!”

I nodded, then said softly, “Jake, what if your grandfather was giving your dad a clue?”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

I blushed a little, wondering if I was being foolish. “I just had an idea. Maybe it's crazy, but I think we should try it.”

“I repeat: What are you talking about?”

“Your grandfather told your dad there was a long story behind that picture, and the key to the family mystery, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what if he was being literal?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,
let's look behind the picture!
”

Jacob smacked himself on the forehead. “Good grief! Why didn't I think of that? It might be crazy, but it's the kind of thing my grandfather wrote about all the time. It's definitely worth trying.”

I examined the situation. The hallway was at least ten feet high and the portrait was a good three feet wide and four feet tall. The frame added another six inches on each side.

“It's going to take both of us to get it down,” I said.

“No kidding,” said Jacob. “Wait here with LD. I'll get a couple of chairs from the kitchen for us to stand on.”

A few minutes later LD was sitting on the floor, and Jacob and I were lifting the picture off the wall.

“Oh, crud!” Jacob muttered. “You were right, Lily, but it's not going to do us any good!”

I groaned. Two things marked out the area where we had removed the painting. The first was a rectangle, exactly the dimensions of the painting itself, where the wallpaper was bright and unfaded.

The second, smack in the center of that rectangle, was the round metal door of a wall safe. On the front of it was a dial, like the dial on a combination padlock. I wanted to scream. I thought I had been so brilliant working out the puzzle, and all it got us was this.

“I'm sorry,” I said glumly.

“Don't be silly,” said Jake. “You figured out more than I ever did. Let's set the painting down. We might as well give the thing a try. I read a book once—sheesh, I think it was one of my grandfather's—where a safe like this was so old that the dial just clicked into place.”

He spun the dial. It did no good. He twisted it back and forth. Nothing. He let me take a turn. I tried pressing my ear to the safe, hoping to hear some clue-giving click. Nothing.

Jake sighed. That made sense. What was there to say?

Working together, we got the picture back on the wall, which was even harder than taking it down. By the time we were done, LD was fussing for his dinner and I had to head for home.

I didn't sleep well that night. I kept thinking about the portrait of Tia LaMontagne. Something about it was tickling at the part of my brain that loves puzzles.

It took me a week to figure it out. Or, at least, to think I had figured it out. I still needed to actually test my idea.

“When is your mom teaching again?” I asked Jake that afternoon.

“Friday.”

“Can I come over then?”

“I suppose so. Why?”

“I want to visit the baby!”

I didn't tell him the real reason—that I thought I had figured out how to open the safe. I didn't want to build up his expectations if I had it wrong. As it was, my own expectations were driving me crazy. I was afraid my brain might explode before Friday got there.

Somehow I managed to live through the week. That evening I again hid in the bushes at the end of Jake's drive, waiting for his mother to leave. She didn't pull out until quarter of six, and by then I was in a frenzy thinking she wasn't going to go after all.

Once she did finally leave, I sprinted for the house. Jacob was waiting with the door open and LD over his shoulder.

“I figured you'd be here,” he said with a smirk.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “LD was fussing. Mom nearly flipped out, because she hates to be late for class. I think she was making him worse because she was so stressed herself. I finally convinced her to just go. The baby calmed down as soon as she left.”

“Can I hold him?”

“Sure,” he said, passing the warm little bundle to me.

I was surprised. “He's bigger than he was just last week!”

“Yeah, he's growing awfully fast. It's another thing that makes me nervous about him.”

I noticed that even though Jacob claimed the baby made him nervous, he was looking at the little guy with obvious affection.

“Come on, get inside. I don't want you standing here if Mom realizes she forgot something and suddenly comes back!”

With a sigh, I followed him in. Little Dumpling was gooing and shaking his rattle. When we were in the kitchen, I said, “Can we look at the painting of Tia again?”

“I suppose so. Why?”

I smiled. “I had another idea.”

He looked at me suspiciously but led the way up the stairs. Once we were in front of the picture, I said, “My grandfather has a book of art from the Middle Ages—”

“Your grandfather has an art book?”

“There's a lot more to my grandfather than you think,” I snapped. “Now listen. I used to spend a lot of time with that book. It had all kinds of stuff about how to, well,
read
a painting. Artists used to pack a lot of symbols and secret messages into their work.”

“What has that got to do with this?” he asked.

“Who painted it?” I replied.

“Tia. It's a self-portrait.”

“I was hoping you'd say that. Jake, I think she's telling us the combination to the safe!”

He looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. “What the heck are you talking about?”

“Just follow me. Some of the details in this picture are pretty odd, right?”

“You're not kidding!”

“Odd enough to make me think they must have meaning. Look at her right hand. What's it doing?”

“Pointing to that weird clock-faced moon.”

“What time does it show?”

“Five minutes to midnight.”

I smiled. “Say it a different way.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then said, “Eleven fifty-five?”

“Good. Now look at her left hand. What do you see?”

“She's extending three fingers.”

I grinned. “See? I knew you were smart.”

“Stop being a wise guy and tell me what you're thinking!”

“Okay, let's
merge
what the two hands are telling us. Right hand, eleven. Left hand, three. Right hand, fifty-five. Right eleven, left three, right fifty-five. That kind of number sound familiar?”

His eyes widened. “It's a combination! Lily, that's brilliant!”

“I don't know that I'm right!” I cautioned. “It's just an idea.”

“Well, it's more than I've had. Stay here while I get those chairs!”

When Jake returned, I put LD on the floor. He sat there, shaking his rattle and watching as we wrestled the picture off the wall again. It was easier now that we'd already done it once.

When the painting was down and safely propped against a wall, we mounted the chairs again.

“You want to try, or shall I?” I whispered.

“Your idea,” said Jake. “You get to try.”

I thought that was very gallant of him. Fingers trembling, I spun the dial a few times to clear the lock, then turned it right to 11, left until I went past 11 and stopped on 3, then right to 55.

We heard a small click.

“Bingo!”
said Jacob as I pulled open the door.

Inside were two things: a wooden box and a small brown envelope. The box was dark and highly polished. The envelope was oddly lumpy. Jake lifted them out of the safe; then we climbed off the chairs and sat down.

“Box first,” I said. I realized my voice was shaking with excitement.

Jake nodded and opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of midnight-black velvet, was a silver disk about three inches across. A series of twenty or thirty symbols, none of them familiar to me, had been engraved around the outer edge. Within that ring were four circles, each about the size of a penny. They had been marked with black enamel (or something) so that one circle was solid black, two were half black and half silver, and one was only a thin outline, so that the circle's interior showed all silver. They were equally spaced, with the black and the silver circles opposite each other. The two half-black circles—also opposite each other—had their silver sides pointing outward, toward the edge of the disk.

Mounted at the very center of the disk was a black arrow, something like the hand of a watch. Jacob put a finger against it. The arrow moved easily, clicking into place each time it pointed at one of the symbols.

“What is this thing?” I asked.

“Don't have a clue,” he replied. “It's cool, though.”

He slipped it into his shirt pocket—it just barely fit—and we turned our attention to the envelope.

“Your turn,” Jake said, handing it to me.

Working slowly, I started to loosen the flap on the back.

“Why are you taking so long?” asked Jake impatiently.

“We might need to reseal it. I've had a lot of practice doing this with mail from social workers and teachers.”

When I finally had the flap loose, I said, “Hold out your hand.”

Jake did as I asked, and I turned the envelope over.

An old-fashioned key fell into his waiting fingers. It had a long barrel and a flat head, making the shape a little like a hangman's ax. The “blade” had notches cut out to match whatever lock it went to.

I felt a chill ripple down my spine.

“The key to the family mystery?” I whispered.

“I don't know about that,” replied Jake softly. “But I'm pretty sure it's the key to the top floor of the tower.”

“What's up there?”

“My grandfather's office.”

“You don't mean it's been locked ever since …”

“Pretty much. Dad told me that Gramma Doolittle used to go up there the first year after Arthur disappeared. Then one day she locked the door and never went up again. He said he thought she threw the key away. I wonder if he was wrong.” He smiled at me. “Shall we give it a try?”

“W
owza!” Lily exclaimed when we entered the guest room, which takes up the second floor of the tower. “This is beautiful!”

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the compliment on Mom's behalf. She keeps the room in perfect condition, as if overnight company might drop by at any time. Lace curtains cover the window. The four-poster bed is topped by a beautiful handmade quilt she swapped a large weaving for. The inner wall is dominated by a huge painting.

Lily instantly went for the painting.