Walking the Labyrinth (20 page)

She called Fentrice the next day. “Hello, Molly,” her aunt said. “What a pleasure.”

“I have to ask you a favor,” Molly said.

“Of course, dear.”

“Do you remember that man I told you about? The private investigator?”

“Oh, dear. Don’t tell me he’s still asking questions.”

“I’m afraid so. And he still wants to visit you. It might not be a bad idea—you can tell him you had nothing to do with Thorne’s disappearance and he’ll go away.”

“I doubt it. That type never does.”

“Look,” Molly said quickly. “We found Callan’s diary. We know that you and Thorne were sisters, and that Thorne ran away with your boyfriend Tom. I know the whole story now. Don’t worry—I’m on your side. I won’t let John badger you.”

Fentrice said nothing. The line was silent for so long that Molly wondered if they’d been disconnected. Finally Fentrice said, “Tom?” She sounded confused, as if the subject had changed too abruptly for her.

“The trumpet player. Callan said you met him on the ship back from England.”

“Tom! Of course I remember Tom.”

“Thorne left the act with him. Remember? And then you disappeared too. You were angry with the whole family. I can’t say that I blame you.”

“You don’t?”

“No, of course not.”

“But I never told you about her. You deserved to know about your family.”

Molly caught her breath. Fentrice was close to admitting that Thorne was her sister; all the lies were coming to an end. She felt a sudden resentment that the deceit had gone on for so long but she pushed it aside, hoping her aunt would continue talking.

“I think you had good reason to be angry with them,” Molly said. “I don’t think they treated you very well.”

“No. Not very well at all. Oh, Molly—you don’t know how guilty I’ve felt all these years, not telling you about the family. I was too stubborn to go back, and then by the time you were born it was too late. I wish I could have introduced you to Callan, at least. You would have liked him.”

“I wish so too,” Molly said. “What about John? Will you let him visit you?”

“Will you come with him?”

“Of course. How about next weekend? I can’t afford to take any time off from my job.”

Silence again. “All right, dear,” Fentrice said finally. “You might as well.”

Molly had told Fentrice not to pick them up from the airport; she and John would rent a car. When they got to Chicago Molly directed him away from the airport and onto the freeway.

It was late when they arrived at the house. Fentrice showed John to the guest bedroom and then she and Molly said good night.

Back in her old bed, in her old bedroom, Molly found she couldn’t sleep. She worried about what Fentrice would think of John, what new revelations she would make. She woke late, confused by jet lag, convinced that she had gotten only two or three hours of sleep. She showered, dressed, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Fentrice and Lila were already there, making breakfast. “Would you like some tea?” Fentrice asked.

“Coffee, please,” Molly said.

“Sit down, dear,” Fentrice said. “I’ll get it.” She turned to the stove. “So that’s your private investigator,” she said, her back still toward Molly. “I can’t say I think very much of him. His eyes are too close together.”

Lila made a strange choking noise. It was a laugh, Molly realized, surprised. She couldn’t remember ever hearing Lila laugh before.

“He’s not my private investigator,” Molly said.

“No,” Fentrice said. “No, I can see that.”

John came downstairs, yawning and running his hand through his curly tangled hair. “Good morning, Miss Allalie,” he said.

“Good morning,” Fentrice said. “We’re making eggs for breakfast. Would you like some?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Molly watched them with interest. She had had very few chances to see her aunt interact with people other than her bridge club. Already she admired the way Fentrice had sidestepped the question of what she would call John, while not correcting his formal “Miss Allalie.”

After breakfast John took out his notebook while Lila cleaned up. “Could you tell me a little about your time in vaudeville?” he asked. “About the Allalie Family? Who was in the act?”

“Oh, dozens of people. It varied from year to year, you know. Dancers, musicians, assistants in the magic act …”

“But the family consisted of …”

“Well, my father, Verey Allalie. And Lanty—that was Verey’s sister, my aunt. If you want to go all the way back there was Grandmother Neesa. She started the act, you know, in 1910.”

John wrote in the notebook. “Yes. And Verey’s children?”

“Lanty’s children? Aunt Lanty had a son named Corrig—that was my cousin, you know. And there were others—oh, what were their names?”

“What about Verey’s children, Miss Allalie? Did you have brothers or sisters?”

“Well, of course. My brother was Callan—’that’s Molly’s grandfather.” Fentrice looked at Molly. She was seeking reassurance, Molly thought, surprised. She wasn’t as confident as she sounded. “And I had a sister,” Fentrice said. “Thorne.”

“Thorne disappeared, didn’t she?”

“We both did.”

“I’ll get to you in a minute, Miss Allalie. But Thorne—”

“Callan would wave his wand and we’d disappear from sight, just like that. The audience loved it.”

“What I mean is, Thorne left the act without telling anyone,” John said. “Didn’t she?”

“That’s right. It was while we were in—was it Los Angeles?”

“Oakland.”

“Well if you know, why are you asking me?”

“Because I don’t know where she went. Or why she left.”

“Well, I certainly can’t tell you. I never saw her again.”

“Didn’t you speculate?”

“Of course I did. The whole family did.”

“Why do you think she left?”

Fentrice hesitated. “I can give you an answer, but it’s not very flattering to me. I had a boyfriend, Tom. Thorne ran off with him. Surely you can understand why I wasn’t anxious to see her again.”

“And then you left the act in Los Angeles. Why was that?”

“I was sick of the whole thing. With Thorne gone I was the oldest of our generation, but no one listened to me. I was supposed to wait until Verey and Lanty retired, and then I could take over the act. I guess I was impatient.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell Molly any of this? Why didn’t you tell her you had a sister?”

“Molly?” Fentrice looked at her again. For the first time she seemed old, as worn out as if John had been questioning her for hours.

“It doesn’t matter, Aunt Fentrice,” Molly said softly.

“It’s all right, Molly. I owe you an explanation. I suppose I hated Thorne for a while, and then when I’d made my peace with the whole thing it was too late. I thought if I brought it up you’d resent me for not telling you earlier, and I don’t think I could have borne to lose you. You’re the only family I have left. I’m sorry, Molly.”

“And Samuel?” Molly asked. “Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

“I don’t know who he is, dear.”

“My uncle. My mother’s brother.”

“Oh my God. Joan had a brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Fentrice said. “Oh, dear. I—I had no idea.”

Fentrice looked a little faint.
Should I not have told her?
But it was too late for secrets. Molly pushed on. “He wants to meet you.”

“Does he?” Fentrice said. “I don’t think I’m up to more revelations at this late date.”

John paged through his notebook. “How did you meet up with Joan?” he asked.

“Now there’s an interesting thing,” Fentrice said. She was on surer ground here, Molly saw. “Lila drove me to town for my doctor’s appointment, and there Joan was at the bus stop. With her husband Bill, and a baby. That was you, Molly, that baby. They had escaped from her father Callan—”

“Escaped?” John asked.

“Oh, you know.”

John shook his head. “No, I don’t, Miss Allalie.”

“We’re a hard family to get along with. Callan wanted her in the act, and she wanted to settle down, raise a family. They’d been hitchhiking since the day before, and someone had dropped them off here that morning.”

“Quite a coincidence,” John said dryly.

Fentrice shook her head. “I don’t think it was. I think they knew somehow to come here, just as I knew immediately who they were. I took them in, of course. Bill was a teacher at the city college, until he died in the crash.”

John wrote something, turned a page. “I guess that’s all,” he said. “Thanks for your help, Miss Allalie. Can I ask you more questions if I think of anything else?”

“No.”

John looked up, surprised.

“My bridge club is coming in fifteen minutes,” Fentrice said. “And you’re leaving tonight, Molly says.”

“Well, maybe I’ll call you.”

“Maybe you will,” Fentrice said. “Did we frost the cake yet, Lila?”

The doorbell rang. “Goodness, that’ll be Estelle,” Fentrice said. “That woman’s always early.”

Lila went to open the door. Estelle followed her into the kitchen, her eyes looking puzzled behind her thick black glasses. She wore the heavy jewelry Molly remembered, chains of necklaces and earrings that pulled at her lobes. “I thought you went back to California, Molly,” she said.

“I did,” Molly said. “I came back again.”

Estelle sat down at the kitchen table, flustered, as if the concept of two separate visits had overwhelmed her. “This is John Stow,” Molly said. “John, this is Estelle. She’s an old friend of my aunt’s.”

“Hello,” John said. “Listen, can I ask you something? Did you know Miss Allalie when she was a magician in vaudeville?”

Estelle looked at her hands, festooned with rings, and said nothing. “No, of course not,” Fentrice said. “All that happened a long time before we met.”

“No,” Estelle said, shaking her head. Her earrings chimed.

“Now you’re going to tell me which parts you didn’t believe,” Molly said when they were on the plane heading home.

“You know, the funny thing is that I do believe her,” John said. “Even the part about how she met Joan. Those kinds of coincidences do happen. I really think she told us everything.”

“So what do we do now? How are we going to find Thorne?”

“I’m out of ideas. This looks a lot like another dead end.”

They were still discussing the case when the plane landed and when they walked into the airport at what the flight attendant had cheerfully informed them was five in the morning, local time.

“Oh, God, it’s Monday,” Molly said. “I’m going to have to call in sick at work, spend the day sleeping. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “I just don’t know where to go from here. It’s hard to believe that all that work we did was for nothing.”

Gwen was waiting for him at the gate. John kissed her and continued his conversation. “The trip to England, all that research,” he said. “That stuff’s got to tie in somehow.”

“Hello, Gwen,” Molly said.

“May be you missed something,” Gwen said. “On the trip to England.”

“What do you mean?” John said, surprised. It was clear that Gwen rarely interfered in his cases.

“When you left for England,” Gwen said, “what day was it?”

“How can this possibly be relevant?” John asked.

“What day was it?” Molly asked Gwen.

“March 16,” Gwen said.

“Why is that important?” Molly asked.

“Ask John,” Gwen said.

John looked toward the ceiling, exasperated. “God, I don’t know. It was—” He stopped. “Shit. It was your birthday, wasn’t it?”

Gwen nodded. Molly put her hand to her mouth and coughed.

“I forgot your birthday,” John said. “No wonder you were angry. Shit. I’m sorry.”

Molly’s coughs had turned to laughter. “What’s so funny?” John asked, irritated.

“The great detective,” she said. “You told me she was mad at you at the airport. And you had no idea why.”

“I was thinking about other things.”

“Obviously. Look—if you’re going to be in a relationship you have to think about the other person once in a while. Remember anniversaries. Take her out on Valentine’s Day.”

“Valentine’s Day? That’s my busiest day all year. Everyone wants to know who’s sneaking off with whom.”

Molly looked at him. “Well, at least tell her if you’re not going to make it for dinner,” she said.

“How did you know—” John asked. “Did she tell you I’d promised to be home for dinner that night you stopped by?”

“John,” Molly said. “There were two plates on the table, and she said something about waiting for you. Hey—maybe I’ll be a detective too. It’s not as hard as it looks.”

John stared at her. “So long,” Molly said. “I’ll take the shuttle back.”

Peter came to town the next day, and for a while Molly forgot about John and the investigation. “When do you have to leave?” she asked him after they had gone to his hotel and made love.

He sat up, scratched his day-old beard, and reached for his glasses on the nightstand. “Actually I think I’ll stay here for a while,” he said. “There’s not much action in New York these days.”

“Great,” Molly said.

Peter frowned. “Whatever happened with that case you were working on?” he asked. “You find out anything more about your family?”

“Not much. I met an uncle I never knew about.”

“Was he involved with the occult too?”

“The occult? Oh, no—that was a couple of generations back. Did I tell you what the family did after they left England?”

Peter shook his head. She hadn’t brought up the case at all, she realized; she had just assumed he wasn’t interested. Now she told him about the family’s vaudeville act, their grueling jumps from town to town, the statues, the tiger. He stopped her a few times to ask questions. Molly had never seen him at work as an interviewer, and she thought how intelligent his questions were, how good he was at his job.

“You know, the Paramount in Oakland is still there,” he said when she had finished. “I think they give tours on weekends. Do you want to go?”

She moved closer to him on the bed. What had happened? He had never expressed so much interest in her life, and he had always spent his weekends working—he’d said that the people he needed to interview were more likely to be home then. Had he finally understood how much she loved him? Would all the waiting, all the pain, turn out to have been worth it after all?