The Initiation (19 page)

C
URIOSITY'S A BLESSING AND A CURSE.
F
ATHER
had always complimented me and James on how much of it we displayed, how “critical it is to clear thinking,” words that I missed now but finally understood. Why, I wondered, did such valuable lessons have to come too late?

My curiosity was currently keeping me awake. Father used to walk to clear his mind, so in honor of him I decided to try it myself. I threw on some clothes and left the Bricks, headed for the sundial. Any middle student required a pass to leave the Bricks past 10 p.m., a pass I did not have. For this
reason I crept around outside like a spy, moving shadow to shadow. I'm not the touchy-feely type; I don't go in for the hippie-dippie “everything's connected” theory of life. I fight off inexplicable coincidences as just that. But stuff happens. It just does. I think about a friend and five minutes later the phone rings—it's her. That kind of stuff.

So, when I witnessed a school maintenance cart being driven poorly, headlights off, bombing across the JV field, I paid special attention to its driver. I did this mainly because I'd witnessed James using just such a cart a week earlier. If not James, then who? Information could be a precious bargaining tool; I was learning things at Baskerville Academy.

To my surprise, it wasn't a maintenance person. It looked an awful lot like Sherlock Holmes.

Natalie's bicycle was one of those road-racing varieties with a million gears, a place for a water bottle, and a gel seat. She'd offered me riding permission and had given me the lock's combination.

As I pedaled furiously around the end of the Bricks, aimed toward the state road, I caught sight of a gray blur that I took to be the golf cart. Two minutes later, I confirmed my sighting. We were both off-campus racing toward an intersection with another state roadway. To the right, the direction Sherlock steered the cart, was Putnam, Connecticut,
a nineteenth-century mill town in the midst of a modest revival. It was now home to two Indian restaurants, a good pizza parlor, a supermarket, and some craft shops run by people who dressed and acted like former hippies. I happened to know none of these was of interest to Sherlock Holmes. He was, without question, heading to the bus stop for the last ride to Boston of the night, the 10:42.

When I boarded the bus just before the door closed, Sherlock's eyes practically popped out of his head. I sat down next to him as if we'd planned this all along.

“How did you expect to get in without me?” I asked.

Wordlessly, he dug into his pocket and opened his hand, revealing my brother's key to our Beacon Hill home. “You're sweating,” he said.

“Are you going to tell me what we're doing here?” I asked, shivering from a chill at the darkened back door to our house.

“Shh.” Sherlock had been treating me like a dog deals with a twig caught in its tail. Snapping at me, not much else.

“What is it you hope to—”

“I think we might have been followed.”

“Nonsense! You think someone's watching the bus station?”

“Once we were on foot. Once we hit cobblestone. I heard someone.”

“Cobblestones.” I led him to the back of the house.

“I can't see anything.”

I took James's key from him and let us in. “The trouble with boys,” I told him, “is they have to do everything themselves. Girls are always a last option.”

He grunted and closed the door behind us carefully and quietly.

“Don't worry, no one's here,” I said. “Not at night. Not anymore.” London and Bath raced to greet us, nearly knocking me over. As I petted them and frolicked with them, I felt my throat tighten. Lois and Ralph were taking good care of them, but they were obviously lonely. I shouldn't have come back here so soon. “What are we doing here, anyway? Why did you get on the bus?”

“The Bible.”

“What? Are you crazy? The Bible's hidden at school somewhere.”

“No, it's not. It's here.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“The guys who broke in? The guys he told me about? Maybe they were hazing James as your father told you. Maybe, as James now thinks, they
were after your father, but I don't think so.”

“I don't need to hear this. And here I thought you were coming here to check out the photos I emailed you.”

“In a way you're right. I am investigating your father's accident.”

“That's better.”

“He was found wearing weekend clothes—blue jeans, a nice shirt, and
formal
shoes. In
two
of the photos you sent, there are framed pictures of you, James, and your father in the background. In both, he's wearing nearly the same clothes, jeans and a casual shirt.”

“I know the photos. They're in the foyer.”

“But leather Top-Siders, not dress shoes.”

“Meaning?”

“He was put into dress shoes to explain his slipping off the ladder. Furthermore, your father was left-handed.”

“But how do you know—”

“The stepladder was positioned in a way to favor a right-handed person climbing to wind the wall clock. Your father didn't position the ladder, someone else did.”

I couldn't feel my heart beating. “And he hated heights.”

“Exactly! We don't know why your father might
have had the Bible, or if he even knew the Bible was in the house, but it's apparently worth killing for, and that's troubling.”

“Whatever it contains, there's now a copy,” I said, recalling the computer lab.

He missed that I had tears on my cheeks, or he just didn't care.

“We must find it,” Sherlock said, “and we must take into consideration the headmaster's warning not to touch it. We can surmise it may be booby-trapped in some manner he deemed significant and therefore worthy of a warning. Do you hear me, Moria?”

“Barely.”

“Where would your father hide such a thing?”

“He didn't. You're not right about this.”

“I'm right about everything. Is that still news to you?”

“You're repugnant.”

“You needn't be pugnacious. I'm not going to spar with you.”

I reached for the wall switch. Sherlock caught my hand. “Neighbors. A torch?”

“We'll burn the house down?”

“Flashlight! You call it a flashlight!”

“Oh.”

Negotiating the downstairs by a flashlight's
beam was creepy. Shadows moved as we moved. It was like the walls and floor were alive.

“The Bible isn't the most important thing,” I said.

“Why not?”

“You need to get me into his office.”

“Because?”

“I'll show you if I'm allowed.”

“You're not making sense, Moria.”

“You see, not everything makes sense.”

“That's where you're wrong! You haven't given me all of the facts.”

“Get me into his study and I'll give you more facts.”

“Show me.”

Father's study door was locked, just as I'd found it on the night I'd wandered from bed. I explained that I didn't even know the door had a lock, but that Lois probably had an extra key. That hardly mattered since she wasn't here.

“I thought about the window,” I said, “but I'm sure it's locked. The hinges are on the inside. I saw a horror movie once where the killer took off the hinges and the door fell open. Terrifying.”

“Fascinating,” he said, irritated with me.

“If we break it, they'll know.”

“The men who were here,” Sherlock stated.

“Yes. It had to be one of them who locked it. Lois wouldn't have.”

“Unless your father had left her instructions.”

“Which is impossible since he left me instructions to go in there.”

“Did he?”

“Don't rush me. Get me inside, genius.”

Watching Sherlock work was like watching an art teacher sketch, or hearing a band leader play the trumpet. I began to find myself inside his complicated head as I tracked his eye movement, saw his thumb rubbing his index finger absentmindedly. I'd never had a boy intrigue me as this one did.

“His pants?” Sherlock said.

“What are you asking?”

“The pants he was wearing when . . . you know . . .”

“OK, then,
why
are you asking?” said I.

“His keys, of course. We don't have Lois, but there would have been at least two keys. Quite possibly a third put away for safekeeping in the event one or the other was lost.” He paused. “His bedroom?”

I was immediately angry with him. Not because he was asking personal questions about my father but because I wondered: Why hadn't I thought of that? This was the maddening part of spending
time with this particular boy: I couldn't help but feel inferior.

“There was a bag,” I said. “His keys, wallet . . . the police.”

“You know this because?”

“I may have intercepted a letter meant for James.”

“May have? Did you copy it?”

“Oops.”

“Do not tell me you did not think to copy it.”

I didn't say a thing. I was glad it was basically dark so I didn't have to feel the weight of his scorn.

“Amateurs,” he muttered. “Where is this bag?”

“The photos were taken at the police station.”

“There are photos . . . plural?” He sounded exasperated. He placed his hand to his chin. “His belongings would have been turned over to someone.”

“Lowry, our family attorney.”

“Quite possible.”

“If he didn't keep them, and he might have, then he'd have given them to Lois to do something with,” I said. “You're right! His bedroom!”

Together, we followed the steady stream of yellowish light emanating from my hand. Upstairs. Past James's room. I opened the door, but couldn't go in, my shoulders already shaking.

“I've got it,” said Sherlock tenderly, easing the flashlight from my white-knuckle grip.

I heard a plastic bag being messed with. The jingle of keys. I nearly squealed with joy. Had Sherlock told me that “most solutions are easy; we just like to make them hard,” or had I dreamed it?

Minutes later, we'd sorted through the keys and Father's study door came open. “I need to do this by myself,” I informed Sherlock for a second time. “I made a promise.” To his credit, he didn't question my decision.

“That's fine,” he said. “Just hurry, please.”

I'd forgotten about his hearing someone following us.

I stepped inside.

F
ATHER'S OFFICE SMELLED SHUTTERED, THE AIR
still and stale, my favorite scent of wood oil and leather slightly faint, as if Father had taken the goodness with him. Provoked by Sherlock's urgency, I directed the beam of light to the back of the fireplace and, switching hands, aimed the flashlight as I dug into the fluffy, dry ash.

Contact with the key sent electricity through my arm, into my chest, warming my heart. Father was the last to have touched this key, I thought. We had a tangible connection.

I hurried to his desk chair, catching my foot on
a rug and nearly face planting. Sherlock called in to me. I answered I was fine.

I was not fine: my heart was jumping around in my chest.

The key in my hand was all too familiar.

A gorgeous thing. A work of art, really. The tree leaves and limbs were tiny, threadlike wire. They were flat, not three-dimensional; they tickled my palm. A single gold wire wrapped around the tree trunk, adding a spark of color and making it even more exotic. It felt surprisingly heavy for such a small thing. Something more elusive emanated from it: power. It was as if the key had been struck by lightning and a good deal of the charge still remained. It connected to the man who'd challenged James near the soccer field, to Father, to the invisible-ink clue. I sensed it truly was the key to all of this.

It fit into a single drawer, that which Father had pointed out: the top-most drawer to the right. I turned the key. The lock mechanism was fluid and smooth. I slid open the drawer and aimed the light.

Inside was his passport. I took it out. It bulged with added visas and weather-warped pages.

“Lock . . .” I mumbled. “Lock, come in here, please.”

Standing behind me, he nudged my hand for the flashlight and placed his head practically inside the drawer.

“Nothing,” I moaned. “Only his passport. He traveled a lot, but believe me, James and I already knew that. Do you think it was Lowry or maybe one of the other mystery men who emptied it?”

“It's not exactly empty,” Sherlock announced in that annoying tone of his. “It simply doesn't happen to have anything inside it.”

“Not now, OK? Sometimes that stuff's cute, but not right now.”

“Think, Moria. If Lowry had emptied it—if anyone had!—then why leave the passport and why return the key to the ashes? That is illogical to the point of absurdity. In point of fact, he left you something on the back panel. Here, help me.” He handed me back the flashlight while he deciphered how to release the drawer from the
guides that secured it. The drawer came free and he plunked it down onto the blotter. As I moved the beam of light, I saw it: words had been burned into the wood of the drawer's back panel, like with a branding iron.

Sherlock grabbed a piece of notepaper from Father's leather desk organizer. He wrote down the message, carefully checking it for accuracy. Then he turned the drawer over, pulled on each panel, tried everything in the world to make the thing come apart, and returned it to the desk.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“You're going to lock it and return the key.”

“That's all?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“What's it mean? We have to do something.”

“We did something,” Sherlock said. “I wrote it down. That's something.” He pocketed the notepaper.

“But
what's it mean
?”

“I don't know any more than you do. Another
puzzle, another clue. We will make sense of it, Moria, but not here, not now. We're taking too long. We need to find the Bible and get out of here.”

“The Bible isn't—”

“Don't start with me! I humored you, now you humor me.” Sherlock left the room. A minute later I found him wandering the foyer. He peered into the blue sitting room, the dining room, and finally the library. I followed Sherlock through the kitchen. He moved around effortlessly, as if he knew the place. “His study is too obvious,” he said. “You knew the man. So where would he hide it, Moria?”

“Don't scold me!” I heard something outside the front door and I shushed him. “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

“I'm not scolding,” he said, also in a whisper. “And I didn't hear anything, but as you know, I'm concerned we may have been followed. I don't want someone finding two more ladders.”

“You really are an awful boy.”

“Insensitive of me, admittedly. Apologies.”

“Not accepted.”

“Understood.”

“I don't have any idea where he might have hidden it,” I said.

“Others will have looked for it. Searched top to bottom. Carefully. Efficiently. Perhaps they've
found it, but for now we will assume it remains in place. For one thing, having made the search public, the headmaster would likely call off the hunt the moment it surfaced.”

“How would he know any of this?” I asked.

Sherlock said nothing, but looked at me funny.

“Crudgeon's involved?”

“Most certainly. Motive, unclear. Degree of involvement, unclear. But involved? Yes. Little question of that. Is there a cellar?”

“It's damp. Father wouldn't put any books down there, no matter how carefully wrapped or packaged. He treats books with the utmost respect. Mind you, I think you're wrong about this.”

“Did he have a home safe?”

“I hate the past tense.”

“Sorry. Someplace he locked up important documents?”

“Not that I know of. And if he d . . . did . . .” I stuttered, “I wouldn't know the combination anyway. James might, I suppose.”

“I think he'd want you and James to be able to find it. ‘When all that's left is right.' He would have thought ahead. Where would he think you or James might look?”

“You know what, Lock? You scare me.”

“I don't mean to.”

“Not that kind of scary. Scary-smart. He's always told me and James that the best place to hide something is out in the open. The thing is, we never asked him about such things. He would just randomly bring it up at dinner. And not just once, either! It got to where James and I would kick each other under the table when he started into it.” The memory clenched my throat.

“So, something missing, or something added,” Sherlock said. “The genius is that only a family member would know such a thing. Brilliant! It's an unbreakable code.” He wandered the foyer. “I am positive your house has been searched. No wonder it wasn't found.”

“Again, so confident.”

“For the same reasons I just told you. I'm right about this.”

I looked around with fresh eyes. It was strange to see my family home and everything in it as a kind of stranger.

“It might be a painting. A rug. A piece of furniture. It might be something that's been moved from one room to another. It's here, and he's left you a clue to find it.”

“Don't get weird about this, okay? Just let me look around.” We wandered the ground floor. I was in the lead, with Sherlock a step behind. The
family portraits, the Charles River landscapes, the marble-top dressers, the stained-glass lamps. Everything in its place. The kitchen had never been made modern, other than some new appliances. Miss Delphine worked in a space that hadn't been remodeled since the 1970s. The decorative copper pots were where they'd always been, the wall clock. Nothing fancy. Nothing changed.

“I'm not sure what I'm looking for,” I confessed to Sherlock.

“It's okay, Moria. You're doing great.”

We were prowling the downstairs library—yes, we had two libraries in our home—when I stopped. A distracted Sherlock bumped into me and stepped back. “What?”

“Oh, dear,” I said.

“What?” he said more anxiously.

“See the theme?”

“I'd be blind if I didn't!”

Our downstairs library housed a coffee table fashioned to look like three gigantic books stacked flat. Each spine opened as a drawer. There were bookends of the same leather-bound look. There was a box made to look like a stack of fake books that Father used as a catch-all for pencils and rubber bands. A credenza with leather spines facing out.

“That lamp,” I said, pointing. “It's new.” It stood on a small French table at the side of a vast leather chair where Father read in the evenings. The lamp's design was similarly themed: a wrought-iron stand, a large book facing out contained in a wrought-iron cage, and a lampshade of animal hide. It was a gorgeous thing, but I'd never seen it before.

Sherlock craned his lanky frame over to read the title. “
On the Origin of Species
, Charles Darwin.”

“Fake as well,” I said. “See? It's wood. Painted like gold-edged pages.”

“But it's new?”

“It is to me,” I said.

“Then,” Sherlock said, reaching for the wall plug, “we must take it apart.”

“What? No! Why?”

He worked quickly, toying with the brass “rope” used as a pin to lock shut the cage surrounding Darwin's oversized book. “How clever,” he said, unscrewing the “rope.” “This design, this knot, is called a monkey fist. Get it?”

“No, I don't get it,” I said caustically. He was growing tedious on me.

“Darwin's theory of evolution involves apes and man. Monkey fist.”

“Ha ha,” I said, bored.

“And think of this: if it was locked with a real padlock, then it would draw more attention to itself. But this is just a pin, easily opened, so how could it be hiding anything important. See?”

“Just get it over with, would you? It's late, real late, and I'm not enjoying being back here.”

Sherlock muttered excitedly, something about how the lamp's construction hid the wiring inside the cage. “Meaning the book is free and clear, Moria. Usually, the wires go straight up through a tube to the bulb. Why the more elaborate design? I'll tell you why—”

“There's a surprise.”

“So one can remove the contents. That's why.” Either the wooden book was heavy, or Sherlock weak. He carried it with some difficulty to the floor, where it thumped onto Father's oriental carpet. He stood it up, examining it from all sides.

“It's a big piece of wood, Lock. Nice try.” I wasn't sure he'd heard me, so intense was his concentration.

He didn't look up as he spoke. “Magnifying glass on the dictionary, far corner.”

I looked over behind my father's desk, astonished to see a large magnifying glass lying on the page of the open dictionary. I wondered what else this strange boy had seen that I'd missed. I delivered the
glass to him, knowing that he was instructing me like a servant. He held his eye to the lens, distorting his face, and then lowered it to the upright wooden book. He mumbled and muttered and spoke to himself. I didn't understand a word. “Yes, yes, yes,” he eventually said. “Clever. So very clever.”

“What is it?”

Still without looking up or acknowledging me he issued another order. “Paper clip.” He held his left hand out, palm up and open.