I'll Let You Go (51 page)

“Nothing dramatic.”

“It's just
extraordinary
that I can't recall! Your father wasn't in television, was he?”

T
he next afternoon was an active one. After visiting his mother in the Louis and Bluey Trotter Family wing at Cedars, he returned home to find his old friend Samson Dowling in the living room.

Joyce sat off to one side while the detective faced the children, grouped in a semicircle on the emerald-green Roche-Bobois sectional. Edward had insisted on motoring up from the Boar's Head for the interview;
he would not have Olde CityWalk invaded by “the Spanish Inquisition.” (Though with a secret lodger in the attic, the setting certainly would have been more dramatic.)

Toulouse had of course already met the dapper Mr. Dowling, but the pleasure was a first for first cousins. Needless to say, Lucille Rose was smitten. Basking in the mannish cloud of their interlocutor's aftershave, eager for some of his authenticity to rub off on her authorial side, she could barely contain herself; it didn't hurt that the detective, as later described in a Smythson BIRD NOTES paean, resembled nothing less than a “Grecian god.” For his part, Edward, swathed in fine brocade, was haughtily up for an old-fashioned game of cat-and-mouse. Only Toulouse lagged behind, quietly, nervously,
dubiously
hoping that as the son of the detective's ladylove he might at least be given special dispensation—the slack would help camouflage his fear of inadvertently giving Amaryllis away.

The gang of three stuck to their prefabricated story, of which happily enough many details were true. They had first taken pity on the urchin, they said, after a random meeting on the set of Boulder Langon's film some months before. When the detective asked if she had been accompanied by anyone on that day—for example a “large-built bearded man”—the gang's denial was in easy unison. Did you invite her to the house?
Naturally not!
came their nearly indignant response. Did she contact you? Not until way later, said Lucy—we never gave her the
wherewithal
. She showed up at school, said Edward. A servant poured coffee for the detective and replenished a tray of Le Marmiton sweets. Edward offered that the girl told them she had learned about Four Winds from a magazine profile of the aforementioned Ms. Langon. (“I believe,” said the braided gumshoe-in-training, “the periodical goes by the name of
Twist
.”) Samson asked where the runaway had gotten her dress and Lucy confessed she had been the culprit. A quick glance at her mother revealed the woman looking rather charitable; even a homeless child deserved to look her best.

“You see, Detective,” said Lucy, “I've been working on a project about the disenfranchised—our whole class has. We're creating mobile environments for ‘urban nomads.' The goal is to
legitimize
the status of the homeless in their communities. The house I designed has sleeping quarters and a receptacle for scavenged cans and bottles. But when I saw
this girl, my project went out the window! I just wanted her to have cool clothes!”

Edward asked if they had done anything wrong—i.e., did they stand accused of aiding and abetting a crime? No, said the detective—that was a bit harsh. What you
should
have done was come to your parents and told them about the girl so that she could be properly helped. Samson turned to Toulouse, who'd been clucking and nodding his head in consternation and agreement with the others, and asked how long she had been in the group's “custody.” Well, said Toulouse, not very long. The children looked from one to another, and the detective read their secrets.

Edward said to his sister through the veil: “Would you say two days or three?”

“Oh, maybe three—no more than three!”

The detective wanted to know where the girl had been staying. Edward said in the sukkah, but instantly regretted it, for that placed her at Stradella House a number of weeks back. He corrected himself by adding somewhat ridiculously that she had stayed in the
remains
of the sukkah, because, homeless as she was and accustomed to sleeping under the stars, she had declined their invitation to come indoors. Samson sipped his coffee and asked where the girl was
now
. We don't know, said Toulouse. Do you mean, said the detective, that in the last few hours she ran away?

Yes! said Lucy mindlessly.

Tull spoke up: “She didn't
say
anything—I mean to
us
—but she probably recognized you. When she saw you at the maze. My mom said that you—and she … [he couldn't bring himself to say “Amaryllis”]—well, that you knew each other. From some sort of detention place. So that was probably why she ran away again.”

Lucy frowned while staring at her hands in remorse: “I told her I was making her a character in my new book—I'm writing a book you know, called
Mystery of the Blue Maze
. Though maybe it should be
Mysteries
. Mr. Hookstratten's already sent some chapters to a publisher in New York. He said he thought it could be big as Harry Potter!” Joyce admonished her daughter to answer the question. “Well, when I told her that I was creating a
character
loosely based on
her
 … well I don't think she was very
happy
. Maybe
that's
why she ran away.”

Edward said the orphan was already displeased at being the reluctant,
somewhat humiliating subject of a school project on the indigent, to which his civic-minded sister spontaneously made a spirited defense.

In the middle of this staged ruckus, the children were startled to see Dodd smoothly if belatedly emerge from the shadows, rather like a nerdy vampire.

“You'd better tell the truth,” said the billionaire, “because if you're still harboring her, then that
is
a crime. Am I correct, Sam?” The detective tilted his head ever so slightly as if to concur that, yes, by all laws of God and the land, the gentleman was correct indeed. “And if you are
not
providing the girl safe harbor,” he continued, “then any vital information you withhold—information that could prove helpful to the detective in his efforts to find her—the very
act
of withholding such information may ultimately prove harmful, even
fatal
, to the child. This, a vulnerable girl whom you purport to have real feelings for! And that, I believe,
would
be a felony.”

The collective pangs of guilt (each seconds long) aroused by his oration only weaved the gang's resolve into a more tightly knit revolutionary cell. They would not give her up.

Oddly, Joyce chose to accompany Edward back to Olde CityWalk, in the buggy. She knew better than to grill him further, instead remarking on how well he looked of late and how buoyant seemed his mood. She caressed the nape of his neck, and he shivered with delight.

Lucy and Toulouse sprinted to the Boar's Head like advance scouts. They rushed upstairs, to warn that they might be having “company.” But this never came to pass, Joyce choosing to stroll back to the house after planting a kiss on Edward's veiled forehead.

Dodd walked the detective to his car. He suspected that Samson was dating his sister, but would never think of discussing such a thing directly; he preferred to get his gossip from his wife. They talked about the terrible business with Bluey and how Mr. Trotter was taking it—not so well—and where she might end up if home care became too “challenging.” They could simply keep her at Saint-Cloud the way his father said Jennifer Jones had kept Norton Simon at the beach house during his decline; the luxurious “assisted-living” environments probably would not do. She was past all that now. The Alzheimer's facility at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills loomed hazily on the horizon, the irony being that Trinnie had almost finished the garden there.

Before Samson drove off, he expanded upon the reason for today's visit: Amaryllis Kornfeld. Her mother had been murdered, he said, and the perpetrator was probably someone who had befriended the child. The man was still at large, and that's why it was imperative that the runaway be found; if the two were in touch, she might lead him to the killer.

It occurred to Dodd that if what his old friend said was true—that the girl was “in touch” with her mother's attacker—then the children themselves might be in danger. It disturbed him that Samson hadn't played this bit of logic through. He was probably just exaggerating; it sounded like a TV thriller. Still, he would inform his staff of the situation and have them on the lookout.

He entered the house, replaying Dr. Janklow's words in his head. Was the whole world beset with memory disease? He decided not to tell his wife the details of the fiasco at Michael's. He could hardly tell himself.

They both went to bed with secrets, for that morning Joyce had gotten a call from the police about a baby found in the trash. She would name him Isaiah—the first soul the Candlelighters would lay to rest in Westwood Village.

When the cousin stepped from the elevator into his apartments, Toulouse and Lucy were literally wringing their hands in despair. The ladder dangled down from the attic; Amaryllis had fled.

After moments of furied search-party strategizing, Toulouse discovered the note scrawled on Edward's intagliated Francis-Orr stationery:

My Dearest Edward, Lucie and Tulouse,

“She's going to kill herself!” cried Lucy.

“No,” said her brother. “She wouldn't do that before finding ‘the babies.' ”

“That's what
we
should have been doing,” said Toulouse, fairly frothing at the mouth, “instead of dressing her up like … some fucking
doll
. We should have been doing something to
reunite
them—”

“It's not too late for that,” said the cousin.

“Bullshit! It
is
—it's
always
too late!”

With that, he stormed out. Lucy went after, but Edward shouted for her to let him be; and that some “fissiparousness” was to be expected.

Dusk fell as Toulouse left the main gate. Eulogio offered to drive him home, but the boy refused. The diligent servant shadowed him in a Town Car as he strode the serpentine road to Saint-Cloud.

The moon was full, and he had never felt such sorrow. The cold air stung his cheeks, but he walked so hard and fast that he soon sweatily removed his coat. She was out there somewhere alone—gone, as his father was and as his mother would be. And that was how the world ended, if you were lucky: with the jottings of your beloved's farewell. Grandma Bluey sure had it right: the world (even that of the living) was nothing but scraps of paper, an album of death notices blown hither and thither by a careless, uncaring wind. Around and around they blew, and where they landed no one knew …

That
was
how the world ended—in a parade of shredded paper raining down. The miserable confetti of Good-bye.

T
he pomegranate, or
Punica granatum
, belongs to a small tree native to Persia, where it still grows wild. Moses assured the wandering Israelites that they would one day find the fruit, along with honey, fig trees and brooks of clear water, in the Promised Land. There is, of course, the famous myth having to do with the abduction of Persephone to the underworld, whereby the winter season is born. Demeter, Hades and six pomegranate seeds play their part—but we'll leave that to various Four Winds mentors (and future professors of Dodd Trotter Middle School), for this book cannot include everything.

It is well known that the pomegranate does not easily give up its seeds and for that reason has never attained the popularity it deserves. But for William (who was not yet Marcus), such was the allure. He had always extolled the exotic fruit, staining his fingers with its scarlet juices at an early age as William Morris had stained his with inks and dyes; unlike Persephone, the suburban boy swallowed seeds in bulk.

Along this theme, another place (that had nothing to do with Mr. Morris's England) had begun to intrude on William's geographical consciousness—a place called the Red Lands. He could remember a woman making grenadine from the fruit, and syrup for cooking, and a kind fellow he thought to be his father showing him how to roll the pomegranate around the sidewalk and pierce its skin with a straw to suck the nectar. William smiled to himself, thinking he'd do the same for Jane Scull; it would make her gleeful, for like a child she was.