The Bluest Blood (26 page)

I did not, but I imagined the story had appeared in countless boys’ adventure stories.

“Look, a notebook,” I said. Both of us eagerly grabbed for it. I let Loren turn its pages, waiting for a revelation.

I might as well have waited for world peace. Or Godot. We found sketches—one that looked a whole lot like the principal, Maurice Havermeyer, wearing a dunce cap and writing
I
will learn to speak English
over and over on the board. We found brief passages—quotes and wisdom as revealed via hip-hop. We found checklists concerning the digitalization of the photo of a donkey. I feared finding out for what that was intended.

But we didn’t find
Margaret,
an
M
or even a phone number with no name attached. In short, nothing. “If not her, I’d hoped to find something that might take us to Griffin,” I said.

“Why? We’re looking for Jake,” Loren snapped.

I wasn’t going to tell him all my reasons for wanting Griffin around. “Griffin might know who Margaret is. Might be with her. Where else would Jake go? Where is Griffin? I’ll bet Jake knows. In fact, what if Griffin wore a disguise, pretended to be Aunt Margaret in high heels and a wig—”

“Doesn’t he have facial hair? Wouldn’t he look ridiculous? Don’t you have to show ID? And Margaret was black.”

“It was just a…” It had indeed not been meant to be taken seriously, but having said it, I gravitated back to it, feeling as if I needed to touch the idea again, get something from it I’d missed.

“Just a what?”

I shook my head, held up a hand while in my brain, a frantic voice repeated, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute!” So I did. And then I had it—via Griffin, friendship, wigs, Limoges boxes. “I don’t know who Margaret is, but I think I know where Jake would have asked her to take him.”

Loren stood up. “Tell me.”

I stood up, too. “Have your map-reading skills improved dramatically in the last ten minutes? Or your ability to ask directions?” I started refilling Jake’s pack.

“Do you think he’s in danger?”

“Not at all.” I didn’t want to touch Jake’s socks again, let alone put the china cat and dog boxes back into them. Instead, I pocketed the
objets d’art
and finished repacking. “He went to the only friendly place he knows. Knew. But they don’t know you, and you are not Canada’s answer to Lewis and Clark. You need a guide.” I put the pack over my shoulder.

“You?”

“You see somebody more qualified?”

“All right, all right!”

We made our way to Loren’s appalling car. “It’s the color of electrocution,” I said. “It buzzes.”

“I told you, it was the only—stop picking on it.” He opened one screamingly loud door. “Hurry up,” he said, when I wasn’t in my seat quickly enough.

“Get this,” I said, when I realized I had no idea whether Loren Ulrich was a competent driver. “There’s no danger. No emergency. No need to speed or be reckless.” This radioactive car would be stopped immediately if it were speeding. I closed my eyes, but the blue shriek of color remained on my retina. “No rush,” I repeated. “I wonder what they put in the paint to make that blue so painful.”

“How can you know Jake’s safe?”

“You don’t want me to talk about your car’s horrible color?”

“It’s moving, right? The color of a car doesn’t matter.”

Color
. The color of a car. That was it. And it could matter.

“You never said how you know where he is,” Loren said. “I’m not a chauffeur, I’m his father. Don’t you think I’m worried, don’t you—”

“It doesn’t take a Sherlock. Jake’s resources and options are limited. I’m sure he wants to comfort Tea Roederer. Her husband’s dead, and the poor woman thinks her adopted son murdered him.”

“Didn’t he? Accidentally or not—what more evidence do you want? His car had blood on it.”

“That’s just it. The color of the car is wrong.”

“For Christ’s sake! You have an obsession with paint jobs!”

“Last night Jake told me Griffin was driving a black car. They wanted to disappear, you see. But Griffin’s car is that washed-out, unattended, dull-finished, rusted-up no-color. A junker.”

“Interesting,” Loren said. “But if he had taken one of his family’s other cars, they’d have noticed.”

“I didn’t say he did. Other times, he did. But not last night when he was leaving for good. That would make the car too easily traced. I think he stole a car. It’s the only thing that makes sense, but Jake didn’t know what to do with that. Griffin didn’t commit manslaughter, because he was not in his car when it killed his adopted father. But he did commit grand theft auto. Jake wasn’t about to tell the police, at least not last night. All the same, I’ll bet he wanted to tell Tea Roederer, to set her mind at rest a little, tell her that things aren’t as completely bad as she thinks. An act of kindness. He likes her, and she was furious with him last night. As well she might be. I think he wants to begin to make amends.”

I might get at least a Saturday night with Mackenzie. Jake would be with his father or mother, the paperwork on the con from Kansas finished, and the detective at home. At this point, I’d even share him with the computer.

“You said Tea Roederer. Tea isn’t short for Margaret, is it?”

“Theodora.”

“Then the question remains, who’s Margaret?”

“Maybe she’s the woman who works there. The housekeeper. I think Margaret was her name. She was the boys’ friend. Jake was probably afraid to call Mrs. Roederer directly.”

When I leaned back, I felt the bulge in my pocket, and I took out the china pieces that had caused the rift with Tea. I held the St. Bernard on my right palm, the smiling cat on my left. Expensive bibelots. I’d seen them in catalogues. Several hundred each, and the Roederers had tabletops full.

“The Cheshire Cat,” Loren said, glancing at my left hand.

“No—there’s an entire cat here,” I said. “The Cheshire Cat was only a grin.”

“Eventually. But I’ll bet that’s what it is, with that gigantic smile. Do you think Jake made the connection?”

“He didn’t say.” I looked at the little figure with the big smile and felt as if I were being sucked in between its square teeth, pulled into the maw of something I didn’t understand at all.

I closed my hand around the cat until I couldn’t see it. Fatigue, I told myself. That’s all my vibrating nerve endings meant. I gave Loren the remaining directions, then closed my eyes and tried to doze.

Eighteen

The house by daylight was as spectacular and inviting as it had been by moonlight. We paused at the base of the long driveway, across from where first the effigy of Neddy Roederer and then the body of Harvey Spiers had burned. There were still remnants of the yellow Crime Scene tape that had roped off the area. Nothing else was left besides charcoal blocks, formerly known as books. We looked instead at Glamorgan’s sun-warmed stones, the old trees protecting it from the elements, the acres of wooded countryside surrounding it. This house made me understand the point of money.

And I definitely understood why Jake, boxed in by walls the color of depression, in a home from which all joy and sensual delight was removed, would consider this place heaven. It had the comforts of home—as long as you didn’t mean his home. I put the Limoges boxes in my pockets. He could return them today, close that chapter.

I thought Tea Roederer would understand what the “borrowings” had been about. She certainly understood the power of beauty. Proof was on her walls and tabletops and in the many gifts of the Roederer Foundation. Also, she had struck me as a woman who listened carefully, tried to hear what really was being said. She even tolerated Griffin and Jake’s cyberspace jargon, about which she admitted knowing precious little. The important thing was that she paid attention, which must have provided a delicious reprieve for Jake’s vocal cords, so long used to shouting into a void.

I tried to think what it would be like to be Jake. I took my recently shaken faith in what I thought I knew about my mother, something that felt like a betrayal by omission and stung just a bit, and I set it alongside Jake’s family.

There was no equating the two, or the pain they could cause. I had lost nothing except a certain smug assurance, because of unburied historical data that was actually irrelevant to my life. Jake’s loss was real, ongoing and massive.

“Some place.” Loren’s tone was a mix of awe and resentment. I could almost read his thoughts. No wonder his son had opted not to wait for him. Poor Loren couldn’t compete with a castle.

“It’s not too late to get him back,” I said.

“Of course not. Once we find out where he is—once he sees us, he’ll come back with—”

“I mean into a real relationship. With you, wherever he lives. I mean his affection, his trust.”

Loren Ulrich set his jaw and pursed his mouth with resentment. I had known too many others who, like him, suffered from Chronic Fatigue of the Heart and Will. Not a contagious condition, but definitely unhealthy for people close to the infected party, and it is my opinion that carriers are dangerous to children and should be quarantined or, still better, neutered.

“He’s your son, and he’s a terrific young man.” Still no response. I changed the subject, opted for pragmatism. “You can park over there on that turnaround,” I said. That was the only suggestion I made to which he responded.

I could see his disappointment when he met the lady of the house. She was not up to the standards of her surroundings. Tea Roederer looked haggard, and while she was too polite to say so, she obviously was not glad to see us and probably not desirous of seeing anybody.

Usually, her plainness was softened by her energy and graciousness, but not today. With fatigue and grief her only makeup, and with her reserved and chilly greeting, she seemed a poorly chiseled stone carving.

“I’m so sorry about your husband,” I said. “I liked him very much. It’s a great loss to the community as well.”

She nodded, acknowledging that I had said something polite. Her face arranged itself in a blank, patrician expression that managed to say I would be tolerable if I kept my mouth closed.

Silently, she ushered us into the entry hall. I glanced up at the spot where the glorious chandelier had hung. Only a hole in the plaster now. Someone had swept up the shattered crystals and carted the remains off.

Tea Roederer’s glance followed mine, and she bit her bottom lip. Then she looked at me directly. “What is it you want?” she asked. I wondered if she meant to be rude, or she was simply beyond niceties. And where was Margaret? Why was the exhausted and grieving lady of the house answering bell-ringers at a time like this?

“Mrs. Roederer, this is Loren Ulrich. Jake’s father.”

She studied him. Looking for resemblances, perhaps. Or waiting for something else.

I studied her as she studied him. Makeup would do wonders to reduce her growing resemblance to Young Abe Lincoln. And somebody should tell her to chuck the wig affectation. Hire an in-house hairdresser if she couldn’t be bothered blow-drying. The thing on her head, askew, was ridiculous. A nice enough style, and surely the best hair money could buy—but on a tilt, obviously fake. It took a lot of misdirected money and energy to have a bad wig day.

“I was supposed to pick Jake up at the station, but I was delayed, and when I got there, Jake had gone with someone he referred to as Aunt Margaret.”

Tea Roederer’s eyebrows rose and her austere and unadorned face softened into something near a smile. “Aunt Margaret, indeed,” she murmured. “I assume neither you nor your wife has a sister named Margaret.” Her voice, and the attitude propelling it, in contrast to her face, hair, and gestures, was remarkably unruffled. Cool, calm, self-possessed. She’d be a good person in an emergency.

“I don’t have a wife,” Loren said. My estimate of his IQ dropped. “Oh,” he said, too late to redeem himself. “You mean my ex-wife.” He shook his head. “No sisters, and not Harvey Spiers’ either. He might have family, but they’d be in Canada most likely, and even if they came down for the funeral, which isn’t even scheduled yet because of the investigation, how would they know where Jake—”

“Margaret Peek,” Tea said. “The housekeeper. The boys are her good friends, despite the fact that Margaret’s a black woman in her late fifties who knows even less than I do about computers and whatever else obsesses those boys. And isn’t it interesting, don’t you think, that he told the police she was his aunt?
Aunt
would be an insensitive term to use, wouldn’t it? Toward a middle-aged black woman. In movies, bigots talk in that dismissive way. But I suppose it would be difficult explaining the relationship in any more direct manner.”

“Then Jake called her here?” I asked.

Tea Roederer tilted her head side to side in a speculative, “maybe, maybe not” manner. “Margaret answers the telephone, so perhaps. She’s actually on vacation today, but she came in to help clean up some of the mess. She’s off now, finally. Everybody is. A few vacation weeks while I get away from here.” She pressed the heel of a hand against her temple, as if
here
gave her an excruciating headache. “If Jake called Margaret, then I suppose it must have been here, because I doubt that he’d have her family’s number.”

“Mrs. Roederer,” I said, “do you know where Jake went with Margaret?”

She looked startled. “Of course. I assumed you knew, too.”

“Where?” Loren asked. “We don’t, so where was it?”

“Here, of course. Why else would you come by?”

“When did he leave?” Loren asked. “Where did he go, do you know?” There were moments when the man sounded like an actual father. I wondered if there were ways to fan those small embers.