Murder Never Forgets (29 page)

Behind it all is a picture of Mrs. Sisal with her brains shot out.

Actually, I kind of liked Mrs. Sisal.

 
 
Actually, it’s a good idea not to think.

We settle in to a very good kiss. None of the tentative indecisive stuff of our walk through the woods. A genuine lips-teeth-tongue exploring, deep and fully, and then the hands moving and getting busy, and then the bodies shifting and pushing close.

And, good God, who knows what would happen next, except for some jostling and bed-creaking from inside at just the right time to remind us that my parent sleeps within and could wake up any time at all.
Pow, bam,
poor little defective father in the doorway, staring baffled.

He doesn’t, but it’s good for us to be reminded of the possibility.

We break apart, and I say, “Oh, go on to bed, Robbie. In your own bed.” And I unsteadily pull myself up, grabbing at the porch railing.

Chapter 22

It’s eight-thirty A.M., a bright, assertive morning, sun and breeze briskly attacking the eucalypti and grasses of the California countryside, as Rob and Daddy and I drive along a rutted road in Rob’s Honda. We’re en route to Egypt Regained.

“Homeland?” Rob has said. “
Home
land?” That’s the name of the post office/gas station near Egypt Regained. “I feel peculiar about this,” he adds after a minute.

“I feel peculiar, too. Have a sweet roll.” We’ve left the Best Western without eating our complimentary breakfast, but I have it in my backpack. One roll for Rob, one for my father.

“Did you sleep?” I ask.

“Not worth mentioning.”

“Me, neither. Anyway, Egon’s expecting us. He said he was thrilled. He said he’d put out the red carpet. That’s what he said. ‘The reddest red.’ He’s sort of affected. He’s proud of Daddy.”

“Red carpet?” My father turns around, arm over the back of the seat. He’s in the front, beside Rob. Rob and I decided the front was less isolating than the back.

“We’re going to see Mr. Rothskellar.”

“Rothskellar,” Daddy broods, dubiously.

“Where your coffin lid is. Remember? We’re going to see your coffin lid.”

“Oh! I am
so
glad.”

“Mr. Rothskellar is the man who has it.”

“My coffin lid,” my father says. “Yes. I am very glad.”

“He’s the one that used the climate control, darling.” For some reason I want him to remember this.

“This Egon,” Rob says to me, low-voiced. “Does he . . . Has he
seen
Ed recently?”

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “Egon won’t notice. He refuses to notice. ‘Your father is a genius,’ he says. The day Daddy delivered the lid, they had a lightning storm that knocked the cross off the Homeland church. Egon loved that. It was a sign, he said. He thinks Daddy’s magic.”

We pass a roadside stand with a tipsy array of
raku
pots, “Made by a Local Craftsperson.” My father is intrigued. “
Raku
. An old system,
raku
, difficult. Not Egyptian, of course. Perhaps discovered when someone knocked a shovelful of manure into the fire. Could we stop for the
raku
pots, do you think?”

I remind him about the coffin lid, and he says, “Of course. I have a good feeling about this. It’s time. To see my hieroglyphs again.”

“Well, I don’t exactly (have a good feeling),” I say, pitching the last part of my sentence into Rob’s ear only.

It’s curious; Rob and I aren’t acting very apprehensive, either one of us, but we’re expecting trouble. Egon said something peculiar when I called. “Several phone calls in for tickets already. Not some of our usual patrons. Of course, if they’re true devotees of Egypt, they’re very welcome. But I suspect perhaps they aren’t.”

“Yeah, I betcha they aren’t,” Rob agrees.

It’s not very far from Conestoga to Homeland. Twenty miles, a snap of the fingers on a good road. This isn’t a good road, so it takes longer. Robbie is a determined driver. “I want to get there and get it over with,” Rob says when I comment on damage to the spine.

“Like riding a camel,” says my father.

I’m trying to watch the road behind us, which is hard to do. First, because of the big cloud of tan dust raised by Rob’s driving. And second, because of the loops and wiggles in the road. There’s no particular reason for this road not to be straight, no eccentric hills or gullies, but it wanders like a sidewinder’s trail; it must follow some ancient cattle track. A couple of times I see a car behind us and then tell myself not to be paranoid, why shouldn’t there be a car behind us? And then I tell myself yes, I should be paranoid.

“There’s somebody back there,” I mutter in Rob’s ear.

He grunts, “Yep.”

We pass a gentle old California relic, a barn melted into the ground, its walls flattened, its roof the height of a chicken coop. “I could paint that,” my father claims.

“You know, Ed,” Rob tells him, “you do seem better lately. Your memory. Know what I mean?”

My father sounds pleased. “Oh, very much.”

After a minute he adds, “It was the pills. The blue ones, I think. I believe they were blue.”

There’s an immediate tense silence in the car: Rob in the front seat, me, in the back. Rob finally says, “Pills, Ed?
What
pills?”

“The blue ones. The blue ones were the ones that did it.”

“
Who
gave you the blue pills?” I snap at him.

“Oh?” He’s caught the tension in my voice. “Well, pills, you know . . . on the cart. You know, the cart . . . with the pills . . . in the evening.”

“Somebody’s been . . .” Rob says to me.

I say, “Uh-huh.”

A minute later I add, “I’m an idiot. He gave enough warning.”

“Kittredge?”

“Uh-huh.” I’m holding on to the fake leather armrest. I think I’m feeling murderous. “He wanted to jack up his memory. So he could find out what he knew. He could have hurt him. He could maybe have killed him. Nobody knows the side effects.”

Rob is silent, from his profile he looks very angry. Finally he says, “It’s probably all right. There are several kinds of stuff in Europe, and they
do
test there. I’ll check. It’s
probably
all right.”

“For God’s sake, Rob, just drive.

“There’s somebody behind us,” I add.

Rob agrees, “Yep.”

A minute later I say, “Sorry.”

“Just like a camel,” my father says. “The wobble of the car. Exactly the same.”

We go through a few more bends and road-curves in silence and finally, at the end of a handsome eucalyptus alley, I point, “That’s it, to the left. Egypt Regained. It’s pretty weird.”

Rob says, “Jee-sus.”

Plunked down in a little grassy field, at the end of an offshoot of this rutted road, there it is, Egypt indeed. Some of it is pink and has arches; some of it is tan and has latticed windows, as in “Meet me in the Casbah.” There is a waterfall down one side of the building, and there are narrow walled passages that meander around the outside. The building material appears to be pink or gray adobe. I’ve been here before, but that was three years ago; I’ve forgotten some of the festive details. There is a wide pond and a large parking lot, presided over by a gentleman wearing a turban and a loincloth.

If there was a car behind us it has disappeared, but it’s hard to be sure. The road has plenty of ambulation.

The bad news is that there are six cars already in the parking lot. And the good news is that none of them is Dr. Kittredge’s Miata.

Ever since the blue-pill discussion I have been thinking about Dr. Kittredge, very bad, evil, frightening thoughts.

We pull up to the edge of the parking lot, and the person in the turban and loincloth sticks his head in our open window and says, “Hi.”

My father is thrilled. “They have a native attendant.”

Native Attendant has a happy-smiles label on his turban that announces his name is Haroun. He’s blond and pleasantly suntanned, with good teeth and nice surfer’s pectorals.

Right now, Haroun needs to emote because the mention of Daddy’s name requires a big rise. “Oh, wow. Has he
ever
been waiting for you!” Haroun parks us in the best parking space and leads us to a monstrous gold metal front door, where an Egyptian god leans out to bless, palms raised.

“Why, I remember this!” my father exclaims, sounding pleased. “I suppose it’s impressive. He—what’s his name?”

“The god?” I ask.

He’s irritated. “The man. Who lives here. I met him.” When I tell him Egon Rothskellar, he says, “Ah, yes. Well, he knows. That figure is modern. Not real. Not even a copy! I told him, and he knows.”

We’re interrupted by the arrival of Egon himself, who appears, like an Arabian Nights djinn, half bent over and unrolling something as he approaches. Yes, indeed, behind him, a long red runner. He gets the last little bit of rug smacked down and arranged and then stands upright, dusts off the knees of his impeccable khakis, and holds his hand out to my father. “See? I told you! The red carpet. The only suitable greeting for our foremost scholar. Welcome, oh noble visitor, welcome.” And he touches his hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his belt buckle, probably hoping this comes out as an Arab salute.

It almost does. My father is pleased. “It is good to be needed,” he says.

And so we proceed through the door and into a cold carved-stone hallway, too dark for me to appraise the carvings, and finally through a second door and out into a long high-arched room with shelves and statues and upright glass cases and horizontal glass cases and stands holding pots, figures, clay models. The usual Egyptian mixture.

On either side of this room is another room with what looks like more of the same. And down at the end there’s a small fenced-off sort of alcove with a sign above it.

“Now,” I think, and I bend over and wonder if I can get my shoe untied unobtrusively. Because that’s where the token is now, in my shoe. Not glued under the sole, the way my father did, but just resting under my sock. And surely we’ll be needing it soon. I’m expecting a sudden dash or at least a purposeful march led by scholar Edward Day down to the cubicle containing his coffin lid where Verse Four will be identified and translated. I’m waiting for that. Daddy is supposed to say “My coffin lid, yes, I think it is in that space there.” Or something like that. “I need to see my lid now,” he’s supposed to say.

So. And, no, he doesn’t. He seems to remember that the lid is back there, at the end, in a special space all to itself, a place of honor, with a sign above it: EDWARD DAY EXHIBIT. “We will work our way gradually,” my father announces. “There are things in this room. Some of them, surely are original?”

Egon blinks and smoothes a hand over his hair. He is thin and elegant-looking, hawk-nosed, something like one of his Egyptian kings, except that he has well-coiffed, collar-length white hair. “Such an honor,” he says. “So wonderful to have Dr. Day here. How I have looked forward to it.”

I am starting to feel desperate. Please, there are things we need to do, and dangers if we don’t do them, and probably more dangers when we have done them, and here we are poised on the edge of disaster.

There must be a way of pushing my father. But pushing him is not a great idea; he could just fold completely.

“Daddy,” I say, “your coffin lid.” I gesture. “I’ve been wanting so much . . .” I make circles in the air to show him how much.

He smiles, his extra-sweet smile, “I wonder . . . perhaps . . . work our way around the room. Starting with this goddess . . .” He frowns. “I do know her name. It is right there, almost at the front. Carla?”

“That’s Sekhmet.” Sekhmet is the goddess of the brilliant midsummer sun; also she’s good for getting even with your enemies. She has a lion’s head and a woman’s body and is both interesting-looking and scary; the Egyptians liked her. My father circles her carefully.

Should I tell him Sekhmet would like him to move on down to the coffin lid enclosure? I should not. I can imagine the debate. Did she speak? Did I hear her in my head?

He probably would tell me that hearing things in your head is bad.

There’s another female figure in the room, a cartonnage, a figure made of gesso-coated linen wrapped around a mummy. My father is giving Sekhmet the appropriate attention, a little muttering and some bowing, but he’s inclining his body toward the cartonnage; I’m afraid he’ll be moving on to her next.

Oh, hell.
Again, it’s almost as if he were teasing us.

The cartonnage is a charming, cheerful, plumpish lady. A figure like this has the features of the departed painted on it. In this case the departed was black-haired and pop-eyed with a knowing, welcoming expression and lots of handsome turquoise beads.

Daddy moves on to her. He needs to flirt. “Why, hello.”

I am making eye contact with Rob. My eye contact says, “Help.” Rob’s asks, “Help
how
?”