The Diviners (48 page)

The man seemed to be getting bigger. His eyes were twin flames and his skin was crawling. Changing.

“ ‘And the Lord said, let every tongue welcome and praise the Dragon of Old, for His is the path of righteousness.’ ”

From the fog came the terrible din of demonic whispers, a breath straight from hell itself.

“Will you look upon me, Gabriel? Will you look upon me and be amazed?”

Gabe found he couldn’t speak. For the thing before him was beyond words.

The papers reported the arrest of Jacob Call with screaming headlines:
KILLER KAUGHT! OH, BROTHER
—
CALL THIS ONE SOLVED! EVERYTHING’S JAKE!
Though Detective Malloy insisted publicly that Jacob Call was only a person of interest, in the court of public opinion, he had already been tried and found guilty. But Evie had talked to Jacob Call. It was obvious he didn’t know much about the murder of Ruta Badowski. It was almost as if he wanted to draw attention to himself once they’d brought him in.

Evie had left a peace offering for Mabel: a photograph of Jericho she’d found lying about. She’d wrapped it inside a letter that simply read, “Sorry, Pie Face. Forgive your bad pal? Evie.” Mabel had responded by coming up straightaway and hugging Evie, and they’d promised they’d never be on the outs again. Evie had arranged a lunch with Jericho, and then, at the table, she’d announced that she was awfully sorry but she had to make an important telephone call. When she returned forty minutes later, she found the pair having a pleasant conversation about Tolstoy. It
wasn’t fireworks and passion, but it wasn’t rude, either, and Evie took it as a good sign.

Now, draped in capes, Mabel and Evie sat in chairs at a beauty parlor on Fifty-seventh Street while a pair of beauticians washed and set their hair.

“How would you like an adventure?” Evie called over the rush of water in the sink.

“What sort of adventure?” Mabel shouted back.

“You trust me, don’t you?”

“Ha!”

The conversation ceased for a moment as the beauticians patted their hair dry and led them to waiting chairs, getting to work setting Evie’s finger waves and combing out Mabel’s long mane.

“There are times when one friend requires the blind faith of another, darling girl. This is such a time,” Evie said after a long pause. “Besides, when have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Would you like a list?”

“What if I told you this had to do with the Pentacle Killer murders and that we were about to undertake a necessary investigation?” The beautician’s comb paused over Mabel’s hair, and Evie gave the beautician a sidelong glance. “I’ll bet
you’d
go with me, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely positively! I’d bring a gun and shoot that horrible man with all six bullets. Then I’d stab him to be sure he was dead.” The beautician shrugged and resumed combing. “You gotta be sure.”

“And how,” Evie said.

“Ow!” Mabel said as the comb hit a snag. Her hand flew to her injured scalp.

“Sorry, Miss. That is some head of hair. You ever think of cutting it?”

“Don’t even try,” Evie said with a sigh. “We’ve been at her for ages.”

“Very well,” Mabel said decisively. “I’ll do it!”

Evie hugged Mabel. “Mabel, you’ve joined the twentieth century! Hip, hip, hooray!”

“Carpe diem!” Mabel declared.

The beautician shook her head. “Well, I don’t know from nothing about those foreign movie stars, but you’d look swell with Clara Bow’s haircut,” she said and grabbed her scissors.

The sun was a nice, fat ball as Mabel and Evie stepped off the train at 155th Street and walked north through streets of sprawling Tudor-style apartment houses and smaller brownstones, past the Old Wolf tavern and Johnson’s Greengrocer, around a corner anchored by a realty office with flats to let, and on toward the river, where the houses were fewer. A couple of boys in dusty coveralls tossed a baseball back and forth, narrating their play as if it were a Yankees game: “It’s Babe Ruth at the plate, the Great Bambino, the King of Swing hitting for the stands….” The boys nodded at the girls, and Evie made a swinging motion. “Clobber it like the Caliph of Clout!” she said. Finally, the girls turned onto Knowles’ End, a forgotten side street that wound up a hill overlooking the Hudson. There the house sat on the windswept hill like a gargoyle.

“Please don’t say that’s where we’re headed,” Mabel gasped, winded. It had been a climb. “We’re likely to be eaten by rats or meet Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Wouldn’t that be a thrilling afternoon? At least you’ll go out
with the ritziest coif in town. Your hair is abso-tively the cat’s pajamas! I am so happy you decided to bob it!”

Mabel refused to be charmed. “Evie. Why have you brought me here? What does this have to do with the murder investigation?”

“I believe this may be the lair of the Pentacle Killer.”

Mabel stared, dumbfounded. “Theta was right to nickname you Evil. I believe you need the services of Sigmund Freud. He’s the only person who could possibly understand the workings of your very unhealthy mind.”

Evie linked her arm through Mabel’s. “I’m going to tell you something confidential about the case. But you must swear on the King James Bible—”

“I’m an atheist.”

“You must swear on the atheist Bible not to tell.”

“There’s no such thing as an atheist Bible.”

“We should write one, then. Swear on the grave of the Sheik himself!”

“I swear on the grave of Valentino,” Mabel said.

“I have it on good authority that there may be clues inside that house that will prove the identity of the killer.” It wasn’t lying, exactly.

“I thought the police already had the killer locked up—that Jacob Call fella.” Mabel scrutinized Evie’s face for a moment. “You don’t think he’s the Pentacle Killer.”

“Call it a hunch.”

“Oh, no,” Mabel said. “No, no, no!”

“Please, Mabesie. I need to do this.” She broke down and told Mabel everything she hadn’t about the murder investigation—about holding Ruta’s buckle, the whistling, Naughty John’s
connection to Knowles’ End, and Memphis Campbell’s strange, brief visit to the museum in which he said the house seemed lived in.

“Jeepers, Evie,” Mabel said, shivering, and then she was thinking. Evie knew Mabel’s thinking expressions; the old girl was coming up with a plan. “We are not heading in there without taking precautions.” Mabel signaled for Evie to follow her as she marched down the hill and back to the boys tossing the baseball. “Do you know that old house on the hill?”

“Yes, Miss,” they said.

“Does anyone live there? Have you seen anyone coming or going?”

“Don’t nobody go in there. Not even for dares,” one boy said emphatically.

Mabel looked at Evie as if to say
You see?

“Well, we are going in. It’s… a dare. For our sorority,” Mabel informed them.

The other boy shook his head. “That’s your funeral, Miss.”

“How would you fellas like to make ten cents?”

The boys followed them to the corner, which was as far as their mothers would allow them to go, they said.

“If Miss O’Neill and I are not out in thirty minutes, bring the law,” Mabel instructed.

“We don’t get the law for nobody. They’re as bad as the house.”

“How about if we’re not out in thirty minutes, you throw that baseball at the window as hard as you can, then run for your mothers. Can you do that?”

“It’s our only baseball.”

“Fifty cents,” Evie said.

“For fifty cents? Miss, I’ll throw like Babe Ruth.”

“Spiffy!” Evie placed a quarter in each of their hands. “Now, we’re trusting you to be on the square as a couple of regular fellas and keep watch. You are knights entrusted with a quest.”

“Huh?”

“Just keep your peepers on that dive, and don’t you dare breeze,” Evie said. She made them spit and swear on it, and then, arm in arm, she and Mabel walked toward the looming ruin of Knowles’ End.

The house had surely been a beauty in its day, with its grand turrets, the terrace, two small chimneys and one very fat one, and the arched windows. But now those windows were boarded over and the only two remaining shutters each hung by a nail, threatening to fall. The double oak doors had grayed with age. Metal scars marked the spot where a large knocker had been, but it was gone now—probably sold or stolen. The door was locked.

“There has to be a way in. Look around the side,” Evie said. She tripped over something in the yard and saw that it was a child’s doll. Its porcelain face was cracked and mold had settled along the scarlike seams.

At the back was a servants’ entrance. Evie removed a hairpin and worked it into the simple lock, springing it. The door creaked open and they found themselves inside a butler’s pantry with tall cabinets. It smelled of rot and dust. Weak bars of sunlight showed through the shutters’ slats.

Evie drew a flashlight from her pocketbook and the beam showed cracked tin ceilings and dust motes.

“What the devil are you looking for in here, Evie?”

She wasn’t sure, exactly. She needed something that would give her a read. “See if you can find an old pendant with a pentacle on the front.”

“Pentacle, as in Pentacle Killer?” Mabel said warily.

“It’s just a pendant,” Evie lied. “Steady, old girl. Oh, my…”

Evie swept into what surely must have been a ballroom in its day. Some of the furniture had been draped in sheets, making it seem more like a graveyard than a home. Beside a large hearth was a velvet settee gone to mold, its stuffing piling onto the floor. Filthy yellow wallpaper hung from the walls in strips. In spots, it had worn away entirely, exposing the rotting beams underneath. Whatever had been of value had been removed from the home long ago. There were no books or silver or knickknacks, nothing to help Evie. Even the light fixtures were gone. A cobweb-strewn grand piano with a handful of keys missing anchored one corner. Evie plinked one and it rang shrilly in the dead space. A small black spider crawled out from between two keys and Evie yanked her hand away. On the far wall hung a cracked mirror. It reflected the room in a fractured tableau. For a moment, Evie thought she saw movement in one of the shards and jumped.

“What is it?” Mabel asked, and Evie realized it had only been her friend coming closer.

“Nothing.” Evie took in the whole of the room. “Funny,” she said.

“What is?”

“From the outside, I noticed a fat chimney, but this fireplace is very small.”

“We don’t have time to critique the architecture, Evie. Any minute, those boys are going to run for their mothers. If they haven’t already run to the pharmacy for cream sodas. You had no business giving them the money before.”

“Keep looking,” Evie instructed.

“For what?” Mabel called.

I don’t know.
“I’m going upstairs.”

Mabel raced to her side. “Evangeline Mary O’Neill! You’re not
leaving me for a moment! I’m sticking with you, just like George and Ira Gershwin.”

“Oh, rhapsody. Then I’ll never be blue,” Evie quipped, though it felt odd to joke in such a tomb.

“Will you keep moving, please?”

A grand central staircase led to a second floor. Its elegantly carved newels were rotted through in spots. The stairs creaked and groaned with each step, and Evie hoped the staircase would bear their weight. She swept the flashlight across austere oil portraits silvery with spiderwebs. At the top was a long hallway branching off left and right with doors all the way down. Evie kept her eyes open for something to take, something that might give her a solid read, something personal.

“This way,” Evie said, walking right. She rattled the knobs of several doors, but they were all locked shut. At the back of the house, they came to yet another staircase. This one was narrow and enclosed and led to an attic room whose dormer window had been boarded over. Small slices of sunlight bled through the cracks, but it wasn’t enough to cut the gloom. Evie waved her flashlight around the room. Its beam landed on a four-poster bed draped in curtains. A bureau with a tri-fold mirror. A wardrobe. Carefully, Mabel opened the wardrobe’s creaking doors. It was empty inside except for a few hats. The bureau held a tarnished hand mirror and brush.