Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (35 page)

Mack had been waiting for
the right time to tell her about Veronica. Now he realized it might never come. “Sarah,” he said, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Is it about Veronica?”

“Yes. She married Ernest a few days ago. I didn’t want to say anything until I got you home.”

Sarah
didn’t respond. Mack tried to think of something to say. Don’t worry? Things are never as bad as they seem? Veronica can take care of herself? All lies, or too silly to qualify as lies, so he went back to the stubborn wall heater and managed to get it fired up. After that he barricaded the front door with a pull down desk and the back door with a dresser. All the while Sarah sat on the couch, smothered in blankets. She looked beat up and hopeless. He went into the kitchen to rustle her up some food.

After a few minutes,
she shuffled in, still wrapped in a blanket, and said, “It’s not too late, Mack, and I won’t give up.” Then she sat down at the kitchen table and said, “Now how about if you show me what a little cowboy cooking looks like.”

A tortured stomach didn’t need more torture, so
Mack’s cowboy cooking consisted of bland scrambled eggs, dry toast, and orange juice. Just the thing, he hoped, to get her system up and running again. She ate like a ranch hand and so did he.

At one point she stopped eating and looked at him. “How did you know where to find me?”

“Your purse. I found it in the flowerbed and found a note from some F. Prince.”

“Oh yes. The mysterious F. Prince…but that didn’t say where to find me.”

“No, it didn’t. It was the name on the note. That same person left me a message that I ignored…until I saw the note in your purse. Then I looked again. That’s how I ended up at the hotel. I still don’t know what to think about it. You got a note and then got kidnapped. I got a message and then got bashed on the head. He’s either out to get us or is really bad at helping people. If it’s all the same, I wouldn’t mind if he dropped us from his rolodex.”

When
the meal didn’t cause any bad side effects, they splurged on stale, waxy chocolate donuts and coffee, after which Sarah stood up tall, dropped the blanket, and proudly said, “See what a little good cooking will do? Better already.”

Unconvinced,
Mack watched as she weaved through the family room and into the hallway. As she reached out with her left hand to open a door, she looked at him and announced, “I’m going to take care of that gash on your head.”

“No
, it’s fine. You take care of yourself first...nurses with shaky hands scare me.”

She laughed and said, “Maybe you’re right. I’ll take a hot bath first.” Then she disappeared
into the bathroom. Two seconds later the door opened and she leaned against the jamb, looking a little sheepish.

“
Mack, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“When you hear me knock on the wall by the bathtub, will you knock on a wall too, so I can hear you?”

“Sure. I’ll do it.”

“Even if it’s fifty times?”

“I’ll knock fifty times. Even a hundred.”

Just like that, as Sarah bathed in one bathroom and Mack showered in another, the old house got a bad case of the knocks. When you threw in the rattling pipes in the wall and the creaky old wall heater, it sounded like a Model T convention.

Mack
showered quickly because he wanted to take a crack at Dorthea’s filing box. Like Sarah said, there had to be a reason she kept it locked away down in the dungeon. He parked himself on the living room floor, next to a wall—his communication line to Sarah—and spread out forty-three envelopes. He quickly zeroed in on only one of them. It contained newspaper clippings and a few handwritten notes. At one point he raised his head and stared intently at nothing. Then he popped to his knees, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out a folded paper. He read it carefully and then dropped back down to his knees and elbows, where he continued to rifle through Dorthea’s papers.

Sarah
knocked. He reached up absentmindedly and rapped his knuckles on the wall. She knocked again, which he answered with four more quick thumps. She immediately knocked again and he wondered just how badly shell shocked she might be. And then he saw her standing in front of him with rosy cheeks and clean clothes. She looked beautiful, wet hair and all.

“Sorry to interrupt your concentration, but I couldn’t resist.”

“Back to being a joker,” he said, as he stood up. “Now I know you’re feeling better.” He took her hand into his. “Now let me see that arm of yours.” After a few moments he looked up and said, “It looks good.”

“What can I say? I’m an easy keeper.”

He grinned at the horse lingo. “Easy? Nothing about you is easy.” He pulled her close. “But you are a keeper.”

She put her finger on his lips. “Before you say anything else, I
have something to say.”

“…Ok.”

“Thank you, Mack.”

“For what? The heroic way I saved you
today?”

“Yes. And for all the other times you
’ve saved me. You just keep on doing it and I never say thank you.”

“You say it all the time
…with your eyes…and your smile—just like right now. Besides, saving the one you love doesn’t count. It’s like saving yourself.”

“The one you love?” she asked.

“Yes.”

He gently pulled her close. Her smile faded, undone, he hoped, by an emotion heavier than mirth or joy or thankfulness
; undone, like him, by love. He kissed her, simply, the only way he knew, and just as a troubled heart feels relieved by lifted troubles, his heart felt relieved as the senseless barriers began to crumble. As they held each other tightly, he knew that mere friendship would never again come between them.

After a while the embrace eased and they looked into each other’s eyes in a way they had never before dared. They looked past the familiar façades, through the guarded courts, into the private chambers, where openness and wonder reside. For Mack, it felt like
he’d finally come home after a long journey.

A
smile began to slowly form on Sarah’s mouth and she said, “I must say Mr. Brimwahl, it sure took you long enough.”

“Me? I
’m not the one who had a ring on my finger.”

“Oh, you should’ve known that was nothing.”

“I did,” he said. “I just had to wait for you to know it too.”

He had her on that one. She pressed her head against his chest. He held her close. It felt like it could last forever, perfect, self-sustaining
…except for the barricaded doors and the bloody clothes and the chaos all around.

Mack
looked down at Dorthea’s envelopes. He had things to tell Sarah, things she deserved to know, but he knew she’d dive in and never turn back. He also knew, painfully, that he had no right to cling to such a flimsy worry; turning back at this point was a mirage, a morning fog that had burned off long ago. She’d lost too much. What did losing a little more, or even everything, really matter? She’d never turn back and he didn’t blame her. This time, though, he planned to stick with her every step of the way.

“The love birds are in
a storm, aren’t they, Mack?”

She had her eyes on the envelopes.

“Yes they are,” he said. And then, after a pause, he continued, “I need to show you some things, Sarah. Look at these. There’s one for every person who ever lived at Sunny Slope Manor, starting with a George Newfield a hundred and fifty years ago all the way up to now. Here’s yours, and Veronica’s, even Perkins and Nanny, each one packed with the details of your lives, no matter how small. It’s all about Sunny Slope Manor and your family. Except this one. This one says ‘Jeb Railer.’”

“
Jeb Railer?”

“Yes. Dorthea’s
father.”

“That’s strange. What does it say?”

“That he got murdered in nineteen-thirty-two.”

She
repeated the date to herself as she looked over at the dining room table and then at the living room couch. “Where’s my purse?” she asked.

“Are you looking for this?” he handed her a slip of paper.

“Yes…1932, that’s the year on this note from F. Prince, but it didn’t make any sense because the receipt on the other side says 1972.”

“
I know, but it has to mean something. Jeb Railer not only got murdered in 1932, but on the exact date written on that note. And guess who witnessed the murder?”

“Dorthea.”

“That’s right.”

Sarah held up the note and read, “
‘Dear Friend, That's good news about your invitation to the party tonight. You are definitely moving up in the world. Get to know some bigwigs, especially the one who will be important tomorrow. This is a date people will read about for years to come. Yours Truly, F. Prince. 8 July, 1932.’” She looked at Mack. “Was there a party on the same day her dad got murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be some connection between this party and her father’s murder. What else does his file say?”

“Not much about him, or the party, but a whole lot about the murder weapon. The police found a bloody club, plastered with
fingerprints, right next to the body. All they had to do was find a match for the prints.”

“What about Dorthea?”

“No help at all. The prints didn’t match, and she changed her story so many times it made her famous. There must be thirty articles about her, about her secret motive, how she planned the whole thing, how she suddenly came into money.”

“Money?” asked
Sarah “What kind of money?”

“The kind that stacks high, the way the newspapers tell it.”

“It’s blackmail, Mack! That’s all it is! Blackmail!” And then her head fell to the side and she got a perturbed, almost disgusted look on her face. “Do you know why we’ve never heard of ‘F. Prince’? Because he doesn’t exist. F. Prince stands for fingerprints. Whoever wrote this note is trying to tell us who she’s blackmailing, who the fingerprints belong to. Listen to this, ‘Get to know some bigwigs, especially the one who will be important tomorrow.’ ‘The one.’ It’s someone at the party, someone important, and someone Dorthea is still blackmailing. Is there a guest list for the party?”

“
Yes…in one of the newspaper clippings.”

They dove to the ground and root
ed through the papers.

“Here it is,” said
Mack, as he unfolded a clipping and handed it to her. She plopped onto the carpet and started reading, out loud at first, but as she worked her way down the list, her voice trailed off. At the end she looked at Mack and said, “I recognize most of the family names, but not many of the first names.”

“That makes sense,” said
Mack. “It was forty years ago. Most of those people are dead…but not all of them. There’s one name on that list that you know, someone in a position of power. You figured it out yourself. It’s got to be there.”

She started reading again. “‘Burchfield, Mortimer and Jennie’
; ‘Comstock, Warren and Beryl and daughter Emily’—that’s the same Emily that married a Stanton and played tennis with my aunt. She played badly but not bad enough to blackmail. ‘Fulkerson, Leland and Ophelia’; ‘Gilbert, Samuel and Abigail’—that’s General Gilbert. Every November 10
th
, the kids on the hill surround his house and wait for him to raise the Marine Corps flag. When it goes up, they charge through the gates, over the walls, and fill their pockets with the half dollars he’s clipped to the trees in his back yard. He was big in the military, and still alive, but he’d shoot Dorthea between the eyes before he’d let her blackmail him. ‘Jensen, Nils and Gunnel’; ‘Kehoe, Everett and Juanita’—Everett Kehoe watered the flowers and drank a glass of Scotch every night at six. Uncle Bill said nobody knew how to water the flowers better than Everett Kehoe. They’re both dead now. ‘Livingston, Edwin and Bernadette’; ‘Osborne, Allaster and Irene and son Thaddeus’—I don’t know a Thaddeus, but everyone knows the Osbornes—in fact their son’s the mayor, but his name is—” Her face froze and her arm fell to her side. “Everyone calls him Sonny…but his name is Thaddeus.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “He was my uncle’s best friend, Mack…and he’s been mayor for thirty years. If you ask anyone who runs Prospect Park, the answer is Mayor Osborne. It’s him.”

Was that it? Dorthea Railer’s deadly power amounted to nothing but dirty blackmail and a small town mayor?
Mack didn’t get much of a chance to think about it because Sarah hustled him into the bathroom, where she dabbed antiseptic onto his head, and then straight into the truck. She said something about cutting off the monster’s head and then gave him directions to the mayor’s house. 

As the
old truck chugged up the hill, he asked, “What are you going to say to him?”

“I don’t know. I have to believe that he never wanted things to get like this, but I don’t know. That’s my big plan.”

They turned onto Sunrise Way. A few blocks past the manor, Sarah pointed to the right and said, “Turn in here.” He pulled into a driveway, stopped at a gold colored wrought iron gate, and reached out his window to push the button on an intercom box.