Regarding Ducks and Universes (30 page)

Aunt Henrietta waved us off. I could hear her yelling, “SEND ME YOUR BOOK,” as Bean and I went out the front door of the villa and proceeded down the garden path.

A cactus flowering by the side of the path caught my attention.

“Hey, that looks like Pak’s mother’s cactus, only bigger. He said it was called a lace hedgehog, didn’t he? I wonder how sharp those spikes are.” I knelt down to examine the multi-limbed plant. Without warning, I saw a flash of something rush at me and connect. Slowly I straightened up and looked down at the Dorothy Sayers I was hugging to my chest, away from cactus spikes and dirt. There was a small and round hole in it. It hadn’t been there a second ago.

“What is that?” Bean said. “It almost looks like a—”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

In the sculpted shrubbery behind the cactus the increasingly loud sounds of a scuffle could be heard. Then someone said, “I’ve got her.”

M
rs. Noor, accompanied by a younger, male version of herself, stepped out from behind a camel-shaped shrub and onto the path. “She’s over there,” the detective said, gesturing behind her and panting. She was clutching a hardcover book much bigger than the smoldering
The Nine Tailors
in my hands.

“Bean,” I said, “this is Miss Mar—Mrs. Noor from the investigative agency Noor & Brood.”

“And my son Ham,” Mrs. Noor said.

“And her son Ham.”

“And—well, this is Felix B,” I said. He was standing behind Mrs. Noor and Ham.

Bean said hello.

We followed Mrs. Noor, Ham, and Felix B back through the gap between the camel shrub and a peacock-shaped one and into the heart of the garden. Pink and white roses in bloom encircled two wooden benches. One bench was empty and on the other sat Gabriella Short. Her chic summer dress clashed horribly with the laserinne lying on the ground just out of her reach. I noticed that she was holding her hands rather stiffly behind her back.

“I will not say one word without my lawyer,” Gabriella informed us and looked away.

Mrs. Noor sat down heavily on the bench opposite Gabriella. “Gabriella,” she said, struggling to catch her breath, “has been scheming to dispose of you, Felix.”

“Are you reading something, Mrs. Noor?” I pointed to the book in her hands.

“This? It’s
The Chicago Manual of Detecting.
I keep it in my car for reference and such.”

Bean was looking at me. “Felix, did you hear what she said?”

“Yes. I knew someone was trying to kill me.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It sounded crazy. Also—well, I thought I knew who it was,” I said, avoiding meeting Felix B’s eye.

“I’ll let Ham tell the story,” said Mrs. Noor. “I had my suspicions, but he did the legwork. Go ahead, Ham, dear.”

Ham pulled out a notepad identical to the one carried by his mother, though his was blue, and flipped it open. “Item one. Tuesday. Subject trails client on Route 1 from San Francisco to Carmel Beach in car driven by male companion of subject. Also present in vehicle, one almost-dog and client’s alter.”

I remembered that Mrs. Noor had said one of her children didn’t seem to be cut out for a detective. Ham seemed very detectivish to me.

“Granola James and Gabriella Short, employees of Past & Future, drove Felix B down to Carmel,” elaborated Mrs. Noor. “They were right behind you for a while. A light green convertible with its top up. Ham was right behind
them
trying to figure out what was going on.”

“We showed them the contract I signed. Out of the window of Bean’s Beetle,” I said.

“Showed her the contract?” Mrs. Noor said. “She can’t have been happy about that. I imagine she felt you escaping her grip, going out of her sight. Perhaps with slightly more detail, Ham, please,” she added.

“Item two. Wednesday. Subject observed going into premises of Carmel B&B where client staying. Time: around midnight. Reason: unknown. Unable to ascertain.”

I recalled the item that had almost sent me crashing down the stairs at the Be Mine Inn. Had Gabriella snuck into the B&B after everyone had retired, unscrewed a light bulb, and arranged the rolling pin where I, the only occupant of the upper floor with its one tower room, would be bound to step on it in the dark and lose my balance and take a tumble down the stairs? It was such a classic mystery story scenario that I couldn’t believe someone had done it for real.

“Item three. Friday. Subject back in her own car. Black Speedster. Lost track of whereabouts in city traffic—”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “That’s Gabriella’s car? The car as sleekly black as the inside of a nonstick pan? The car that keeps trying to run me over?”

“I’m afraid so,” Mrs. Noor said. “It’s a rental,” she added as if that was somehow relevant.

“Later regained eyes on subject,” Ham continued. “Item four. Six minutes ago. Subject attempts to laser client. Thwarted by Mother and self.” He snapped his notebook shut.

Mrs. Noor smiled at Felix B. “
This
Felix contacted me not long after you did. Had a problem. Wanted to know more about his Universe A alter, had been informed by DIM that he was in town. Client confidentiality prohibited me from telling either of you that I had met the other one, but I gave you what information I could about each other. And when Felix B called me, concerned about Gabriella’s behavior—he found some of her questions about you, Felix, quite
odd
—I had Ham look into it.”

“She wanted to know if I thought you liked swimming alone or if you ever took walks unaccompanied late at night,” my alter ego said.

“Very perceptive of you, Felix. And so I had Ham keep an eye on Gabriella,” Mrs. Noor went on. “Ham followed her here, watched as she waited in her car until you went inside, and then concealed herself in the shrubbery. Highly concerned, he called me for backup. I came as fast as I could. I ran into Felix B at the garden gate.”

“I’m bringing Aunt Henrietta her character kit for tonight’s mystery dinner,” Felix said, explaining the sizable rectangular box he was carrying.

“Unfortunately,” said Mrs. Noor, “Gabriella was able to get a single blast off before I could knock the laserinne out of her hands with this.” She held up
The Chicago Manual of Detecting.
“As I said, I like to keep it around for emergencies.”

The
Manual
was twice the width and height of
The Nine Tailors
and looked like it could take the first edition Aunt Henrietta had given me, even before it had gotten perforated while saving my life, easily in a fair fight. Eying the still-smoldering Dorothy Sayers in my hands and reflecting that Professor Maximilian was right and that little things—like what reading material you happened to have around—mattered, I asked, “But why? Why did she do it?”

“The old story,” sighed Mrs. Noor. “Revenge.”

I
had almost forgotten she was there, as impossible as that seemed. Gabriella Short fixed her gray eyes on me and said only one word, then looked away.

“
You
.”

“But what did I do?” I asked quite stupidly.

“You ruined her chance of being an actress,” Mrs. Noor said. “There can only be one Gabriella Love.”

There can only be one Gabriella Love.
A child’s pacifier had bounced off a bridge railing—and landed on the right side for Felix B, who was standing silently next to Bean, and on the wrong side for me. In my Universe A, the rubber duck had detached and fallen and Gabriella Short had not needed to change her name to something more marketable. It’s difficult to be famous when your alter has gotten there first. More to the point, she never stood a chance. In Universe A, movie theaters had faded away over the past two decades, replaced by other forms of entertainment. It’s particularly difficult to be a movie star where there are no movies.

“Gabriella—” I opened my mouth to speak.

“You ruined my life,” she spat out. “We are not on a first-name basis.”

“Citizen Short, then. It was a single moment in time—”

“Can you imagine what’s it’s like to see your own face everywhere—on billboards, T-shirts, ads? At the crossing terminal
she
was on the cover of a Universe B fashion magazine that I wanted to buy. I could barely face the humiliation at the checkout stand. To be constantly mistaken for a celebrity, the disappointment when they realize you’re not
her
—”

She seemed to be saying quite a bit for someone who wasn’t going to say one word without a lawyer.

“—and it’s even worse back home in Universe A, because there no one looks at me at all, like I’m invisible. I never pretend I am her when I come here, you know. Never.” She spit the word out.

“
Doppelganger
,” I said.

The unfamiliarity of the word took her by surprise. She caught her breath for a moment.

“German word, coined when there was only one universe and it was a bad omen to see yourself,” I said. “Literally means body double, usually a sinister, ghostly apparition. If you glimpsed your doppelganger it meant something bad was about to happen.”

“Not the case nowadays, of course,” Felix B said tactfully.

Bean was standing next to him with her hands on her hips, glaring at Gabriella. “You could have stayed home in Universe A. You could have avoided coming here where your alter is so popular.”

“But why should I have to? I
knew
you had done it,” she said, not taking her eyes off me, “from the minute I saw you in the crossing chamber, looking at suitcases and idly browsing on your omni without a care in the world.”

“Hey! I had plenty of my own concerns,” I said sharply.

Before more could be said, DIM officials descended on the scene and took statements from everyone, then left after declaring the day’s events to be government property, thereby prohibiting us from discussing said events with third parties. “She wanted me to be her understudy. Her understudy!” yelled Gabriella as they led her away.

I sat down heavily next to Mrs. Noor. “I
knew
people would blame me.”

Bean was still looking stunned.

“It took me awhile to believe it too,” said Felix, giving Bean a reassuring squeeze around the shoulders. (There were only the four of us left, Ham having gone on a mission for another client.)

“It was clever of you to notice there was something going on, Felix,” Bean said. “You probably saved Felix’s life.”

“Yes, murder,” I said loudly. “She had it in for me.” I proceeded to recount my other narrow escapes—the attempted hit-and-runs, the rubber rolling pin in Carmel—and also mentioned the cherry chocolates sent to the Palo Alto Health Center. “Luckily I didn’t swallow any. She must have found out about my allergy somehow.”

“She was foolish to attempt murder at a health center,” Bean said.

“Why?” Mrs. Noor said. “It seems an excellent place to do it. People are always dying in health centers. It must have been aggravating for her that her attempts kept failing.”

I thought of something. “Was she responsible for the pet bug quarantine? Did Gabriella think exposing me to the pet bug would get rid of me?”

“No one was responsible, as far as we could tell,” Mrs. Noor said. “It was just one of those things that happens by chance.”

For some reason I believed her.

“I’m just glad we were able to stop her in time,” Mrs. Noor added, putting down the
Manual
on the bench next to her and leaning over to inhale the scent of a particularly eye-catching rose.

Or did we?
I could almost hear Professor Maximilian saying,
Did we stop her in time
? “Five murder attempts,” he’d have said. “There is a universe in which the first attempt succeeded and Gabriella ran Felix over shortly after his arrival in Universe B. And another in which the hit-and-run failed, but Felix succumbed to cherry chocolates in the Palo Alto Health Center. And another in which the first two attempts failed but Felix broke his neck in Carmel tripping over a rolling pin. And another in which the first three attempts failed, but Gabriella ran over Felix in her car yesterday, having tried that method again. And also one in which the first four attempts failed, but Felix died a few minutes ago because he wasn’t holding
The Nine Tailors
in front of his chest or because Mrs. Noor didn’t have
The Chicago Manual of Detecting
with her and was therefore unable to stop Gabriella in time. Isn’t that interesting?” the professor would have said, and I would have killed
him
in all possible universes.

“Do we think,” Bean said as if talking to herself, “that Gabriella got a job at Past & Future with the idea of figuring out who ruined her life, or did the idea slowly dawn on her as she researched the Felixes’ life stories?”

Someone barked.

Bean shook the thought off and greeted a heavily breathing Murphina. “Hello there.” She bent down to rub the creature’s pale, furry head. We heard a voice say, “Murphina, where are you?” and the bushes parted to allow James to join our group.

“Hello, Felix. And Felix.” He looked around. “Has anyone seen Gabriella?”

Yes, I thought. Government agents just took her away after she tried to kill me for the fifth time. It seemed socially awkward to say so, however. There was also the small matter of the edict the DIM officials had given us before they left; the events of the past twenty minutes—Gabriella’s final attempt to get rid of me because I was the universe maker—were not to be divulged to third parties.

“Gabriella tried to kill Felix,” Bean said to James. Murphina had rolled over on the white pebbles bordering the rose beds and was letting Mrs. Noor rub her belly. “Felix A, that is, not Felix B.”

“No, that can’t be right,” James said. “Gabriella called me and asked me to get here as fast as I could to assist her in an interview.” He slicked his black hair back with one hand and kept looking around as if expecting Gabriella to jump out from behind a rose bush or a giant-squirrel-shaped shrub at any moment.

“To interview someone?” Felix B said. “My Aunt Hen, you mean?”

“Ah,” Mrs. Noor said. “That must have been her alibi. Gabriella needed a legitimate reason for being here. No one would have suspected her.”

James heard all the facts, wordlessly attached a leash to Murphina, and started to pull her through the shrubbery toward Aunt Henrietta’s apartment.

“James, wait,” Bean said.

She took him aside and I heard her begin to whisper about Professor Maximilian’s omni campaign and James’s exclamation of surprise; then his frown disappeared and even from afar I could see the wheels beginning to turn as he nodded in understanding, probably already brainstorming about possible ways of turning the newest developments into a monetary advantage for Past & Future.

“It’s only fair that he knows,” Bean said defensively when she came back.

Felix B had been leafing through the
Chicago Manual.
He closed it abruptly and raised a high eyebrow at me. “I’m happy everything turned out all right, but did I hear Aunt Hen call out something about a book as I opened the garden gate? I thought you said you weren’t writing one, Felix.”

“It was the truth when I said it.”

“And now?”

“And now,” I blurted out, “I’ve started a novel about a murder that takes place in the Sierras just as a cooking competition is about to get underway. The detective’s name is R. Smith.” I winced. “Don’t tell me if you’re writing the same thing. No, tell me, I want to know.”

Felix B said nothing for a moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. “Mine is a cookbook.”

“Is it?
It is?
”

“I’m calling it
Cooking Up a Fiendishly Good Mystery Dinner Party
. Lots of recipes, of course—like for the Baked Alaska that we’re having at tonight’s Alaska mystery dinner—and Bleeding Beets—beets are a must at a mystery-themed dinner party, that ominous dark red—Killer Cocktail—Butcher’s Beef—Devil’s Dish—Chocolate Guillotine—” He counted off the recipes on his fingers. “And there’ll also be suggested plots, characters, costumes, historical settings, tricks of the trade, that sort of thing.” He gave a sheepish grin. “It’s more work than I expected. The recipes have to be simplified—seven ingredients maximum is what the publishers want, because more than seven and people get discouraged and won’t buy the cookbook. Not too many exotic spices either, as if turmeric is exotic…” He shrugged. “Being a chef pays reasonably well and I do like doing it—but I want more, a book of my own, maybe make enough money to open my own restaurant. I am thinking of calling it Bistro Mystery and having weekly mystery dinners, not the once-a-month that the owners of the Organic Oven consent to.”

I stared at the man. I had been wrong about him on all accounts. Like dough braided into challah bread or one of Wagner’s giant pretzels, our shared interests—mysteries and food—had intertwined, but in a different way in his life than in mine. The user guides I put together at Wagner’s Kitchen included recipes and anecdotes from the history of cooking, but the former were provided by our Creative Cooking department, not by me. I had never been tempted to incorporate my own food preferences, much less recipe ideas. My whole body felt lighter and I almost did a little jig. “Did you get an advance for it, your cookbook?” I asked.

“Not for someone like me, an unknown. And I have to find someone to stage the food and take photographs.”

“I can hook you up with some people,” I heard myself saying. “Wagner’s Kitchen, where I work, needs that type of stuff done all the time.”

Felix B having gone up into the villa to take the Alaska mystery dinner kit to Aunt Henrietta, the garden gate closed behind Mrs. Noor, Bean, and me. “Mrs. Noor, how did you know I was the universe maker and that that’s why Gabriella kept trying to kill me?”

“Everyone was swarming around you and Felix B like flies, if you’ll excuse my inelegant comparison,” Mrs. Noor said, making Bean wince at the unflattering description of her research group. “Also there was the fact that Gabriella reminded me of a past client. A young man, adopted as a child, came into my agency wanting to find his biological parents. He was certain they could help him realize his financial dream of opening a casino, something his adoptive parents could not. We found his biological parents, but they couldn’t help him either and so he ended up becoming bitter and committing a crime to get the money. A sad story. He forgot, you see, that he was in charge of his own life. As did Gabriella Short.”

“Are you familiar with the works of Agatha Christie, Mrs. Noor? I believe you’ll find that you and Miss Marple have a lot in common.” I added as we walked the detective to her car, “I suppose it
was
my fault, movie theaters disappearing. Universe A was set on its path by me.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Noor. She raised a stern hand and a passing car stopped to allow us to cross the street. “If you are going to argue that, then it follows you’re responsible for
everything
in Universe A. The pristine national parks. The clean air. And I’ve heard the public transit system is quite nice. Plenty of good things in A—”

“Microwave ovens,” I contributed. “Coffee.”

“There you go,” Mrs. Noor said, twisting herself into her two-seater and depositing
The Chicago Manual of Detecting
onto the passenger seat. “I don’t think we’re prepared to give you credit for any of those, are we? So you don’t get the blame for the bad or the inconvenient things either.”

“Mrs. Noor, thank you for everything,” I said, realizing that I had neglected to thank Felix B for saving my life.

“As I said, I’m only sorry she was able to get off a shot.”