Walking the Labyrinth (22 page)

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I just wonder what happened to Lanty’s children, to the rest of the family. They might all be living together. I just don’t know where.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to tell you.”

She studied him a minute. “You don’t know, do you?” she asked.

John said nothing.

“Samuel gave you a phone number but no address, right?” she said.

“Look,” he said. “Gwen’s left me. I’ve been on the phone to her all morning, I’m neglecting my work, but she won’t come back. She says that the night you came over she started to realize I was mistreating her. You can understand why I’m not exactly delighted to see you this morning.”

“Just give me Samuel’s phone number and I’ll go away.”

“I can’t do that. It’s privileged information.”

“Is it? Aren’t we working together on this?”

“Not anymore we aren’t. I don’t need you coming in and ruining my life.”

“I didn’t do anything to your life. If you’d paid a little more attention to Gwen she wouldn’t have left you. Sooner or later she would have realized how much you ignore her. I just happened to be there when she did.”

“Just go away.”

“What about the case?”

“I’ll let you know when I have something.”

Molly walked back to her car and sat behind the wheel.
What now?
she thought. Someone in a late-model Buick drove up to John’s house and got out of his car. Samuel.

She ducked down, nearly certain he hadn’t seen her.
Fine,
she thought.
If John doesn’t want my help I’ll do it myself
.

Samuel stayed in John’s apartment for fifteen minutes and then left. When he pulled away from the curb Molly started her car and moved in a few lengths behind him.

He headed for the freeway and went west, toward the San Francisco Bay. The morning commute had just ended, and traffic at the entrance to the Bay Bridge moved smoothly. She dug a dollar out of her purse while driving and stopped at the tollbooth to hand it over.

She let Samuel stay a little ahead of her on the bridge. When he got to San Francisco she followed him south, taking 101 to 280 to 1. Highway 1 soon left the city behind; they topped a hill and Molly saw the Pacific Ocean on her right. A long way out the blue-gray water blurred into the blue-gray of the horizon; a huge tanker seemed stopped there, suspended between water and sky. Three large rocks stood like sentinels at the mouth of the bay. Spreading pine grew by the highway, squat and low to withstand the wind.

She had never taken this road before, was amazed at how abruptly the city ended. They passed through a small town of four stoplights and then Highway 1 narrowed down to two lanes and began to twist back and forth. Mountains reared up on one side; on the other the land fell away sharply to the sea.

They were driving faster than she liked now; her old Honda Civic began to rattle in protest. She downshifted to take a curve and then went back into fourth, nearly standing on the gas pedal to keep up with Samuel’s Buick.

Ahead of her Samuel rounded another bend and she downshifted again. The Honda fishtailed; she had to struggle to get it back on the road. When she came out of the turn the Buick was nowhere to be seen.

She braked quickly and pulled into a turnout overlooking the ocean. The road ran straight in front of her, completely empty. As she watched a few cars drove up from the south.

There was a small hollow between the mountains to her left. Was that a trail? It seemed to resolve itself as she looked at it: an entrance trellised with roses, a dirt road barely wide enough for one car.

She waited until the traffic cleared, then swung across Highway 1 and drove through the entrance. A gate stood there, wide open. She went past it and down the unpaved road.

Almost immediately her car hit a pothole. Something underneath it scraped loudly, something else pulled it sharply to the right. She fought with it, cursing.

Trees appeared to the right and left, tall eucalyptus at first and then leafy oak and shadowy pine. Flowers grew among them, dots of color, white Queen Anne’s lace and purple irises. The road narrowed; the trees seemed to close in. Branches scratched the car on both sides.

The path ended. A large wooden house stood ahead of her among the trees. Nothing led up to it; there was no middle ground between forest and house. It was as if someone had cleared away just enough land to set a house on and no more. She parked the car and walked toward it.

The front door stood open. The doorknob was brass, fashioned to look like a smiling sun. The door knocker, a brass alligator fastened to the door by its tail, stared down at her superciliously, its nostrils wide.

The front room was large, its length at least double its width. Windows running along one side looked out over a garden. She went inside.

At first the room seemed too cluttered for her to take it all in. Chairs with lions’ paws for feet and lions’ heads growing out of the arms; tables like rooted trees; the fireplace poker, shovel, and brush disguised as forest animals, a fox, a ferret, an owl. The coat rack was another tree, intricately carved down to the green leaves on its branches, and a woman’s head peered down at her from above the fireplace, her hair brushing the mantel. The light fixture was another smiling sun. Even the light switch had undergone a magical transformation, the switch itself a long pointed nose, the screws on the plate eyes and a round open mouth. She almost expected everything around her to start dancing, like in an old cartoon.

“Hello?” she said. “Is anyone here?”

No one answered. She ventured farther into the room. “Hello!” she called. “Anyone home?”

Samuel put his head around a doorway. “Hello, Molly,” he said. “Glad you could make it.”

“You—you knew I was following you—”

“Of course I knew,” Samuel said. “I brought you here, didn’t I?”

“What do you mean, here? What is this place?”

“What do you think of it?” Samuel asked.

She turned, trying to take it all in. “It’s all designed to look like something else,” she said.

He nodded. He seemed a little disappointed in her response, and she wondered just what he had expected her to say.

His head disappeared; Molly heard him walking away. She hurried after him. She found herself in a hallway; here too the light switches had been fashioned to look like people, plants, animals. Doors opened out on either side, and a flight of stairs led to a second story. A large carved cat sat at the end of the banister.

Samuel stopped at one of the rooms and looked in. A kitchen, Molly saw. The faucet in the sink was a swan, the hot- and cold-water knobs its wings. Branching metal ivy grew up the refrigerator door and the kitchen cabinets. A short muscular man stood with his back to them, mixing something on the stove.

He turned. He was balding, and coarse gray hair sprouted from his ears. “You’ve brought her, then,” he said. He smiled, showing gapped teeth. “Hello, Molly.”

“Hello,” she said automatically. Who was he? One of the family, of course, but she had seen him, or at least his picture, somewhere before. “Is it—Callan?”

“It is.”

“You’re not dead.”

“Neither are you.”

“Sorry—I didn’t mean that. I mean my aunt told me you’d died.”

“And what have you learned?”

Verey’s question, she thought. They changed people’s lives, she had said to Peter. Performance art. But it was different when it was
your
life being changed, when you were the one they had caught up in their act.

Callan went to one of the cabinets and opened it, using the ivy as a handle. “I guess I learned not to believe everything I hear,” Molly said slowly. “That things aren’t always what they seem.”

Samuel and Callan said nothing. Callan didn’t even turn around but poured something from the cabinet into his concoction on the stove. Molly smelled trout and rich spices.

She felt as if she had failed some sort of test, without even knowing what the test had been. “Well, what the hell do you want me to say?” she asked angrily. “Why didn’t you ever get in touch with me? Would it have been so hard to call or write?”

“We didn’t know you existed,” Samuel said. “Your mother Joan left us—I never knew where she went, or that she’d had a child.”

“But John told you about me weeks ago. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“That’s not the way the family works,” Callan said. He seemed about to say more, but just then the swan-faucet lifted itself off the kitchen sink and flew heavily to his shoulder. “Corrig,” Callan said without looking around him.

Molly turned. A young man with curly reddish-blond hair stood in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the doorjamb. But this couldn’t be Corrig, Lanty’s son. Corrig would be as old as Callan by now.

“Show Molly to her room, would you, Corrig?” Samuel asked.

Corrig nodded and beckoned to her. She didn’t want to leave the kitchen—she had a thousand more questions to ask—but somehow she found herself following him.

They went up the flight of stairs and Corrig showed her to a room. “You can’t be the original Corrig,” she said. “Are you his son? Lanty’s grandson?”

Corrig put his finger to his lips, then pointed into the room, then looked at her quizzically.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t like pink, but it’ll have to do.”

Corrig grinned. When she looked back at the room the bedspread had turned blue, the curtains purple, the carpet light green. Trees grew from the four bedposts, shading the bed with green leaves. Corrig waved, and a red banner unfurled from the ceiling. She went closer to see what it said. It was blank.

When she turned around Corrig had gone.

TEN

The House in the Trees

S
he left her coat and purse in the room and went back downstairs. The kitchen was filled with people now, all of them talking loudly and carrying plates of savory-smelling food into the dining room. “Take these out to the table, would you, Molly?” someone said, handing her a set of salt and pepper shakers. One was an alligator woman, bright green, wearing a red hat and clutching a red purse, the other an alligator man dressed in blue overalls.

In the dining room someone was lighting a green and gold candle shaped like an avocado. More people crowded into the room and began to sit down. Molly took a seat next to a young man with a mustache.

“Hi, I’m Molly,” she said to him. “What’s your name?”

“Alex. You must be the long-lost cousin Samuel’s been talking about—it’s good to meet you. Listen up, everyone, it’s Molly.”

She’d been wondering if these people had any manners, if anyone would ever introduce her. Now she thought she would never be able to remember any of them. “My brother Matt,” Alex said. “We’re Lanty’s great-grandchildren. My mother and father. My cousin Jeremy, and his parents—Lanty was his great-grandmother too. Samuel and Elizabeth, and their kids, Kate and Elizabeth. You’ve already met Callan, I guess. And Corrig.”

“Alex—Allalie?”

“Endicott.”

“The magic show!” Molly said.

“We do a magic show, that’s right,” Alex said. “The Endicott Family.”

Molly shook her head. “No, I—I know some people who met each other at your show. The Westingates. Charles and Kathy—he’s from England. A lord.”

If the name Westingate was familiar no one in the family admitted it. Molly went on. “They said you called them up to the stage. You were trying to make amends to Lady Dorothy’s descendants, weren’t you? Introducing Charles to Kathy, so he could afford to buy the manor house back?”

“I don’t remember them,” Alex said. “It must have been before my time.”

Molly looked down the table at Callan. “That was your doing, wasn’t it?” she asked him. “Introducing them?”

Callan said nothing. Corrig passed her a platter, the trout she had smelled earlier.
One of these fish is going to wink now,
Molly thought, remembering Callan’s account of their trip to England. She braced herself. But nothing happened as she took the platter from Corrig, served herself, and then handed it down the table.

“Could you pass the salt?” Alex asked.

The green alligator woman began to walk down the length of the table, her red handbag swinging. Molly backed a little in her chair. Alex took the ceramic figure and then passed it to her. “Salt?” he asked.

No one was watching her; no one said anything. Still, she knew somehow that this was a test. She reached out as calmly as she could and took it. “Do any of you know anything about Thorne?” she asked, looking down the table.

“She’s Callan’s sister, isn’t she?” Kate said.

“But what happened to her?” Molly asked. “Does she ever come here?”

“Thorne?” Alex said. It was as if she had asked about someone in a history book, an obscure president or poet of the last century. “I’ve never met her, have you?”

Kate and a few of the others shook their heads. The talk turned to other things, plans for an upcoming tour, the music Callan wanted to use for the opening. Callan sang while Corrig beat his knife and fork together to keep the time. One of the cousins offered his own song, which Callan turned into counterpoint. It was only when Molly went back to her room after dinner that she realized that almost none of her questions had been answered.

She tried Callan again the next day, when he was in the kitchen cooking. “Do you know what happened to Thorne?” she asked.

“Thorne? Up until a few weeks ago I didn’t even know what happened to Fentrice.”

“That’s not really an answer, you know.”

“It wasn’t meant to be. Is it my job to provide answers?”

Corrig came into the kitchen. He took three oranges in one hand and began to juggle them. They circled slower and slower around him, leaving arcing trails of gold, until finally one hung suspended in midair.

“How about you?” Molly asked. “Do you know where Thorne is?”

Corrig shrugged.

“Callan said in his diary that you might be the strongest of the family,” Molly said. “Why do you spend your time on these tricks?”

He shrugged again.

“Why do I get the feeling you could tell me everything if you wanted to?” Molly said.