The Jewel and the Key (20 page)

“He was worried he'd be shot if the police caught him.” Addie paused. “Are you really writing an article about the men in prison?”

He hesitated. “Well, yes,” he said after a moment, and sat up straighter. “I know what you're going to say, but there's no way so many of them can be guilty, no matter what you think of their ideas. Someone shot and killed two deputies—no one's talking about who shot first, but the prosecutors and the press aren't too particular. They just want the whole pack of them convicted. It isn't right.”

“You think Peterson's telling the truth?”

“Actually, I do. But I need to talk to some other witnesses. Some of the men in jail—I think I've got an in there.” He grinned fleetingly. “For Gods sake, don't mention that to my mother.”

Addie met his eyes, smiled, and shook her head. For a strange, silent moment, they just sat there, side by side, as if waiting for something, until the creak of the floorboards broke the spell.

Detective Bryant stepped through the curtain.

“What's this?” he demanded, pointing at the crates. Addie's mouth went dry.

Reg looked puzzled and annoyed at the same time. “Prop boxes,” he said.

“I'll have a look then, if you don't mind.”

“Help yourself.” Reg pushed himself off the box and stood aside. “But we don't usually keep fugitives in them.”

“Reg!” Addie said. The cop shot a look at her, and she put on an ingratiating smile. “He's so silly sometimes.”

“Stand up,” Bryant said.

“What?”

“Stand up, miss.”

Addie realized she was clutching the sides of Banquo's and Macbeth's box. Flustered, she let go and got to her feet.

Bryant tipped it open, and daggers, walking sticks, and swords cascaded to the floor. Addie couldn't help jerking her head as the pistol hit the ground, half expecting it to fire on impact.

Reg's gaze flickered across her face and away again.

“What the—” Detective Bryant exclaimed. He hadn't noticed the pistol yet, but that didn't make Addie's heart beat any slower. “What's this? City arsenal?”

A shaft of light fell across the confusion of props as someone opened the stage door.

To Addie's relief, it was Mrs. Powell, flanked by a flushed and indignant Meg Turner.

“What's all this hardware for?” Bryant demanded.

“It's for
Macbeth,
a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Perhaps you've heard of it?” Meg Turner snapped. “And what do you mean by upending our props? I thought you were looking for a fugitive! What do you think your commissioner will say about this if we make a complaint?”

Bryant was down on his hands and knees, searching among the clutter. Addie's heart thumped against her ribs as he spotted the pistol and lifted it up for all to see.
“Recommend me for a promotion, prob'ly,” he said. He smiled sardonically at Meg Turner. ‘And I do, as it happens, know the story of
Macbeth.
For one thing, I know there's no call for any of the characters to be handling a 1911 Colt semiautomatic hot off the pawnbroker's shelf.”

Emma Mae stared at the pistol. “But—I've never seen that before in my life.”

Meg bristled at the detective. “You put it there yourself!”

“Hush, Meg! What a ridiculous thing to say!”

“Well, Emma, what am I supposed to think? Are they so desperate to convict that—what a surprise!—a pistol conveniently turns up at my theater?” She looked about to explode.

“
My
theater, Meg,” Mrs. Powell corrected.

Reg looked studiously innocent. Emma Mae's gaze lit on him and sharpened with suspicion.
Oh,
Addie thought. He hadn't told his mother about Peterson.

“Whose is this?” the detective demanded.

“Well,
I
don't know,” Meg said. Emma Mae shook her head in bewilderment. Reg just shrugged.

“So none of you have the faintest idea how a loaded gun got into this theater?” Bryant looked incredulously from one of them to the other. “What if I go downstairs and get that little cook of yours? Peterson's daughter?” A sadistic gleam lit up his eyes. “I have a feeling that, with a little persuasion, she might decide to help us after all.”

Addie regarded him with loathing. He really was a bully. “I know how the pistol got here,” she said with sudden decision.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“It's my friend Whaley's.”

“Who?” Reg asked.

“Whaley. I told you about him.” She hadn't, but it didn't matter. Reg wasn't going to contradict her. “He lives with my family. I stole it from him this morning,” she continued with all the conviction she could muster. “He's always liked shooting and now he's all raring to get out and fight in the war and I can't stand it, so I just took his gun.” An image of Whaley standing on the curb outside the recruitment center flashed in her head. If only it were that easy! She talked faster. “And when you asked me to do props, Mrs. Turner, I thought what a great place to dump the stupid thing—in the prop box.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Bryant said, “interfering with our men-at-arms.” But he looked disappointed. Addie hung her head to conceal her flash of triumph.

“Good job, Miss McNeal.” Meg Turner chuckled. “I'll sign you up for the anti-militarismunion.”

But Mrs. Powell was livid. “Don't you realize how dangerous this is? I can't have firearms lying about! What if one of the actors picked it up and it went off?”

“I know. I'm sorry.” She was right, Addie thought unhappily. It was pretty irresponsible.

“They're not
stupid,
Mother,” Reg said.

“I beg to differ.” Meg sniffed.

“Don't know how to shoot, more likely.” Detective Bryant sneered, and his mustache nearly disappeared up his nose. “All right, miss, tell your friend he can collect this at the Twelfth Street Precinct, if he can confirm your story. And no more nonsense. You should be proud of him.” He looked at Meg and said dryly, “Parting is such sweet sorrow. I'm done here, if my colleague is.”

“I'm done.” Sergeant Price emerged from the wing with Frida in tow. She looked all right, so Addie guessed that the interrogation hadn't been too awful. “Miss Peterson has been very forthcoming,” Price added firmly. “I think we can leave her alone for a while.”

Bryant considered this. “Maybe. But don't be going anywhere, will you, Miss Peterson?”

Frida opened her mouth, and then, with a glance at Price, shut it again. “No. No, I won't.”

The police officers left, and when their steps grew fainter on the stairs, Addie dug the key to the janitor's closet out of her pocket and handed it to Frida. The girl slipped it back into her apron with a guilty look at Emma Mae. “Mrs. Powell,” she said, “I swear, I didn't mean to—”

Emma Mae stared at her. “Mean to do what?” she cried. “I don't understand anything!”

Reg put his hand on his mother's shoulder. “It's not her fault, Ma. It's mine.”

“What now, Reg?” his mother said in despair. “You've mixed yourself up in something, haven't you? Again?”

Reg looked slightly abashed. “He's here, Ma. Frida's dad. We can explain, but I guess you'd better come and meet him for yourself. You want to make the introductions, Frida?”

The girl nodded and rushed off toward her father's hiding place. Emma Mae put a hand on her chest, as if to slow her heart, and followed her without a word.

Reg caught Addie's eye, and she could tell he was ashamed of not telling Emma Mae but also sort of proud of what he'd done. It was just a quick look, but she felt as if she'd had a whole conversation with him. It was the way she felt with Whaley a lot of the time. But different, too.

Meg Turner watched them all go. “So
that's
what's been going on,” she said thoughtfully. Then she turned to Addie. ‘And you, Miss McNeal, are a fast thinker. You're welcome to work with me anytime. But right now, you look as peaked as that poor idiot Janie. Go splash your face and comb your hair. Emma's apartment is open. Make us a pot of tea and come running back. I'll gather the troops. We've got a long night ahead of us.”

“All right.” She
did
want to splash her face and collect her thoughts.

“And—Addie, is it? May I call you that?” Addie nodded. Meg Turner's voice was unexpectedly kind. “I was serious when I said I could use a new assistant. If you're at liberty to work, that is.”

“Oh,” Addie said, surprised. No—stunned. If she'd been in her own time, it would have been a dream come true, but now...“Thanks,” she mumbled, and turned away.

By the time she pushed open the door to the apartment, she felt cold to the bone, despite the heat still radiating from the big iron stove.

“I know when this is,” she said to herself. “And I know how I got here.” She went to the large sink and turned the spigot. Cold water gushed out, spattering as it hit the ceramic. “I just don't know why.”

She scooped the water into her hands and drenched her face.

Suddenly she was shaking. Shaking, with the water dripping off her nose—the water that wasn't hooked up yet to run through those pipes, that hadn't been hooked up for years.

Two sheets of reality crashed together, like tectonic plates. Fear rippled through her the way the seismic wave had rippled the floorboards in her room.

Hurriedly, she pulled the silver mirror out of her pocket and focused her gaze in the glass. She had to get home.

She stared and stared. But nothing felt different. Her face in the glass was pale and splotchy. She could feel this other time, the time that wasn't her own, all around her still. It wasn't working.

Perhaps she was too drawn to it. Too pulled toward all of them. Too in love with the Jewel as it was long ago. Perhaps she had to try harder to break away.

She kept looking, focusing until her own face nearly disappeared.... Hoping, wishing...

Then, in the corner of the glass, she saw the door creak open behind her.

“Hey, girl!” It was Whaley.

Addie nearly jumped out of her skin.

It was all she could do not to drop the mirror. She slid it back into her pocket and swung around, steadying herself with a hand on the lip of the sink.

He was carrying a jug of bleach in one hand and a sponge in the other, wrinkling his nose. “I think something may have died in that refrigerator.”

“Is that what the bleach is for?” she asked faintly.

Whaley shrugged. “You asked me to come. You were going to look for photos and stuff, right? I thought I'd get rid of some of the mold while you're busy with that. Now that I think of it, maybe I'd better run around the corner and buy one of those five-gallon jugs of water.” He frowned. “What are you doing in this old apartment anyway?”

“Making tea,” Addie said, and then wondered why she had told him that. Because of course, there were no packets of tea to be seen. No sacks of flour on the shelves, no bowls of cherries on the counter. The window that had been covered with pale muslin was boarded up, and only thin rays of grayish light filtered through the chinks.

“How are you going to make tea without water? Didn't that guy Hank say the pipes were cracked?”

“Yeah,” Addie said faintly. “I guess so.”

But her face was still damp.

Mrs. Powell's off ice was piled high with the clothes and books and photos Addie had pulled out of the crates, and she sat on the floor, sifting through them bit by bit. She was trying to be organized and systematic, as if throwing herself into the work would force time to become logical and unified on one plane again, not layered and permeable.

It was a vain hope. Sorting through those old objects, stored away so long, only led her back and forth between the two different planes on which she was living. Again and again she would pause, putting down this pair of shoes, that old magazine, to gaze off into space, and the wonder and terror of what had happened would flood through her. Then she'd try to shake it off and force herself to return to her task.

Whaley had brought a radio and was listening to a news program out in the corridor as he scrubbed down the walls. She was glad for the noise. It helped distract her from what had just happened.

Words drifted in: ‘An American bomb has leveled a hospital and surrounding buildings in a remote village....”

Addie put down a pair of cracked leather boots and listened more closely.

“Fifty-eight are confirmed dead. More than one hundred injured. An air force spokeswoman stated that the intended target was an insurgent training camp....”

A small rural hospital? Addie could almost see the wards full of patients, some getting better, preparing to go home, mothers having babies.... All that hope and struggle, only for a misfired explosive to rip away their lives.

She'd ignored a lot of news about the old war—the one the country had been fighting for so long that she couldn't even remember when it started—and even about the buildup to this new one. But now that Whaley might enlist, that world across the ocean was suddenly real. Though it was still foggier to her than the world of the Jewel, nearly a hundred years ago.

Out in the hallway, the radio continued to report the story, and a horrible thought struck her. If a trained pilot could mistake a hospital for a military target, what about Whaley? Would he be able to tell civilians from enemy combatants? The soldiers they were fighting didn't wear uniforms, she knew that. She'd been worried about Whaley getting hurt. But what if
he
hurt an innocent person? What if he killed a civilian? It wasn't like he was known for being careful or anything.

She was glad she'd stolen his enlistment papers.

They were still in her pocket. She had to get rid of them.