Walking the Labyrinth (5 page)

“Molly?” someone said. “It is you! Hey, Molly!”

She looked up. A woman pushing a baby stroller came toward her. “Christine?” Molly said.

“Hi! What are you doing in this dumpy old town? I thought you went to Alaska.”

“I did, for a while. Then I moved to California.”

“Sunny California. I wish I could go there.” A strong wind blew down the street, rattling the bare branches of the trees.

Christine looked into her stroller. Molly followed her gaze, as she knew she was meant to. “Hey, cute. A girl, right?”

“Yeah. I ended up marrying Billy Foreman. You remember him, don’t you?”

Christine had to be kidding. Everyone remembered Billy Foreman. He had been the most popular boy in school, tall and blond, a football quarterback who had his own sports car.

“Sure,” Molly said. “Congratulations. What’s he doing now?”

“Joined his dad’s business. We closed on a house two weeks ago, up in Oak Knolls.” Oak Knolls was the most expensive area in town. “Just another month and we’ll be out of this dump. What brings you here? Visiting your aunt?”

“Yeah.”

“Does she still have that spooky old black car?” Christine asked, though from where she stood she could no doubt see the car in the garage. “And that weird housekeeper? What was her name—Lily, something like that? Do you remember the Halloween when Billy and I soaped the car windows?”

“I didn’t know that was you, actually.”

“Oh, come on. It was all anyone talked about the next day.”

“No one said anything to me.”

“Don’t tell me you’re still mad. It was just a joke.”

“A joke is ‘Two guys walk into a bar.’ What you did was vandalism.”

“Oh, come on. You always were so serious about things. What are you doing these days?”

“Me? I’m a private investigator out in California.”

Christine narrowed her eyes; for the first time Molly thought the other woman envied her. It was as good an exit line as any. “Gotta go. See you later.”

“Yeah,” Christine said, a little subdued. “ ’Bye.”

Molly continued down the sidewalk. The streets seemed smaller than she remembered, the houses shabbier. Naked oak trees, their branches ending in knobs like skulls or fists, lined the sidewalk, their roots buckling the pavement.

Without thinking about it she headed toward the high school. Even it looked less impressive, the paint peeling, the grass in front giving way to patches of weeds. A sign on the fence warned away drug dealers. Molly felt a little shocked to see it, though the drugs had been there in her day.

She looked through the fence, remembering how intense everything had felt back then, how certain she had been about things. Now the place seemed insignificant, a stopping point on the way to the rest of her life. She grinned, thinking of the conversation she had had with Christine. Christine was no doubt unused to envy.

By the time she returned to Fentrice’s house the bridge group was leaving. “Good-bye,” one of the sisters said. “So nice to see you, Molly,” said the other.

Estelle’s head jerked upward in surprise. “Molly!” she said. “I didn’t recognize you. Look how you’ve grown!”

The rest of the visit went quickly, and a few days later Fentrice and Lila took Molly to the airport. Once on the plane Molly stared out the window, wondering why she had ever moved to the West Coast, why she felt compelled to change her address, her job, her life, every few years. The midwestern winters, of course, but there was more to it than that.

“What is the answer?” Gertrude Stein had asked on her deathbed, and then, receiving no answer, had said, “Well, then, what is the question?” Molly had heard that about Stein, an Oakland native, since moving to Oakland.
At least you learn things when you move around a lot
, she thought.
Useless trivia, most of it, but it keeps you going
.

She took out the family tree she and her aunt had drawn and studied it. All those names she had never known—Verey and Edwina, Neesa and Harry. She whistled softly. Harry. Lord Harrison Sanderson, Master of the Order of the Labyrinth. Could they have been the same person? Fentrice’s grandfather, and her—she counted it out on her fingers—great-great-grandfather? Was that why her aunt had saved the pamphlet? But then who was Lydia, Harrison’s wife in the pamphlet? Was that Neesa, the old woman who played pool?

“The Order of the Labyrinth,”
she wrote on the back of the article.
“OotL.”
She had started to think of it as Ootle.

How could she find something like that out? Her aunt had forgotten most of it, or so she claimed. Maybe she could hire a private investigator. And hey—she even knew one, John Stow. She just didn’t like him very much.

THREE

A Sheep in Capricorn

O
n her lunch break a few days later Molly stopped into Tangled Tales, a used bookstore near work with a large occult and metaphysical section. The store was dim, the bookshelves high, with books piled sideways two and even three deep. She picked her way through the narrow aisles, stepping around the leaning stacks of books on the floor. Dust covered everything. A white cat jumped soundlessly from a shelf to the floor.

A man stood behind the counter at the back of the store adding up a column of figures on a yellow legal pad. He wore a white turban, though with his fair skin he probably wasn’t Indian.

“Excuse me,” Molly said. The clerk continued to study his numbers. “I’d like some help, please.” Silence from the clerk. “Listen—could you tell me if you have any books on the Order of the Labyrinth?”

The clerk looked up, blinking. The eyes under the turban were blue. “The Order of the Labyrinth? Where on earth did you hear about them?” he asked.

“I saw a pamphlet.”

“Ah. Lady Westingate’s lecture.”

“How did you know?”

“That’s the only piece of writing that’s ever come down from the Order. Other people have written about them, of course, mostly rumors and attacks from rival groups.” He paused. “The thing about the Order of the Labyrinth is that several eyewitnesses claim to have seen them work, well, magic.…”

“Do you have any books about the Order?”

The man shrugged. “There aren’t any, other than bits and pieces in general histories of the occult. No one knows what happened to them. They seem to have vanished around the turn of the century.”

“What about the lecture, the pamphlet? Do you have that?”

“It’s fairly rare. The last time I saw one was, oh, three-four years ago. If you’re looking to sell yours …”

“It isn’t mine.”

“Ah. Well, I can take your name and phone number and give you a call if I find one, but like I said I don’t get them too often. It’ll run you something like—oh, I couldn’t let it go for under a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars!”

“People are intrigued by them. An order that worked real magic …”

Molly hesitated. She didn’t want to give this odd man her phone number, and she didn’t have a hundred dollars. The visit to her aunt had taken all her savings. Well, it was John Stow’s problem, after all. Let his mysterious client pay for the pamphlet. She opened her purse and took out the card he had given her.

“Here’s the person who’s interested,” she said. “Let him know if you find a copy.”

The clerk looked at the card. “Private investigator,” he said. “May I ask what … ah …”

Molly wished the man would finish a thought, complete a sentence. “I have no idea, really,” she said, and turned to go. Tonight she would give Stow a call, bring him up to date. If he found anything out he could let her know.

After she left another man stepped out of the back room of the store. “The Order of the Labyrinth!” he said, sounding impressed. He wore a flat racing cap. “I thought we knew everyone who was interested in the Order.”

“I guess we don’t,” the bookstore clerk said. His pale blue eyes were still looking toward the door, though Molly was nowhere to be seen. He held the card Molly had given him out to the other man. “Follow him, would you, Joseph? See what he wants, if he knows anything.”

When Molly got home there was a message from Robin Ann on her machine. “Hi, Molly,” Robin Ann said. Her voice sounded flat and uninvolved, and that, Molly knew, was almost always a sign of trouble. “Look, I’m going crazy here. They gave me some weird medication that’s making my heart stop—I swear, I have to think about it all the time to keep it going. I know I’m not going to sleep tonight, and I think they’re getting ready to fire me at work. Can I come over?”

Molly called her friend. Five minutes later the doorbell rang.
That was quick,
Molly thought, and buzzed to open the downstairs door.

A minute later she heard a knock. “Listen,” the person on the other side of her apartment door said. The voice was deep, a man’s voice.

“Who is it?” Molly asked.

“John Stow.”

“Dammit,” she said. She opened the door. Stow stood there, looking angry. “Dammit, dammit, dammit. Why don’t you leave me alone? I was expecting someone else.”

“Why are you following me?”

“What?”

“Someone’s been following me all afternoon. A small foreign car, a Fiat or something. Stayed on my tail all the way home.”

“Well, it wasn’t me. I don’t have a Fiat. Why the hell would I follow you?”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

The buzzer sounded. Molly pressed the button to open the front door and a moment later saw Robin Ann coming up the stairs. “You’ve got some nerve, assuming it was me,” Molly said. “Don’t you have any other cases?”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, I don’t.” Stow didn’t look at all abashed. “Things’ve been slow lately.”

I shouldn’t wonder,
Molly thought. “I wasn’t following you,” she said again.

Robin Ann looked from Molly to Stow. “Not my friend,” Molly mouthed to her behind John’s back. “John, Robin Ann,” she said. “Robin Ann, John. John was just leaving.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” John said.

“Oh, please,” Molly said.

She and Robin Ann went into Molly’s apartment. “Was that the detective?” Robin Ann asked.

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it. What about your medication?”

“My doctor prescribed something for my heart, but you know what it turned out to be? Nitroglycerin. Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, nitroglycerin—I’d feel like I could blow up at any moment.”

“The bookstore!” Molly said. “That’s who’s been following him!”

“What?”

Molly ran down the stairs. “Mr. Stow!” she said. “John!”

The investigator was letting himself out of the building. He turned. “Listen,” Molly said, running up to him.

She told him about the pamphlet, Tangled Tales, the business card she’d given the clerk. John took a small spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket. “The Order of what?” he asked.

“The Labyrinth.”

“What were the names in the pamphlet?” he asked, writing. “Do you remember?”

“Lady Westingate. Lord Harrison Sanderson and his wife Lydia.”

“And it was published when?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. Sometime in the 1800s.”

John pocketed the notebook. “I’ll get back to you,” he said.

“Okay,” Molly said. She watched him leave, then went back upstairs to her apartment.

John called her at work a few days later. “Here’s the thing,” he said, once again without preamble. “Lord Albert Westingate was a very wealthy man who died in 1878 of tuberculosis. He was thirty-two. After he died his wife, Lady Dorothy Westingate, built herself this incredible house in Applebury, England, called Tantilly. She referred to it as a retreat, but people who visited called it a mansion, a castle. She didn’t go outside for five years. She had everything delivered—neighbors said there was a steady stream of grocers and dressmakers. Tutors for her son—she wouldn’t let him leave the house either. And plasterers and bricklayers and stained-glass artists, because she kept working on the house. Then somehow she discovered the Order of the Labyrinth, or they discovered her, and she started going out to their meetings. One of the sources I read said she was hoping to contact her dead husband through them—there was a craze for spiritualism in those days. Anyway, a few years after she started going to their meetings she began to have financial problems, which got worse and worse and finally ended in her having to sell the house in 1912. This same source thinks she donated money to the Order, and ended up making over her entire fortune to them. They made her an adept in return—I suppose it was the least they could do.” He paused. “Hello?”

“I’m still here,” Molly said. “I’m impressed. What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. The Order of the Labyrinth broke up into different groups and factions—I didn’t have time to research them all. Lady Westingate died in 1919. Spanish influenza.”

“Where did you find all that out?”

“At the library. Books on the occult, on strange houses, on the British peerage. The question now is, what do we do with all of it? Where does it lead us?”

Us?
Molly thought. “Well,” she said. “I think this Harrison Sanderson was a relative of mine. Fentrice’s grandfather. She said her grandfather’s name was Harry, and that they changed their last name when they came to the United States. Hey. Do you think this has to do with the inheritance? Was Sanderson rich?”

“I don’t know. Not as rich as Lady Westingate, that’s for sure. All the books I read go into loving detail about her fortune.”

“Did she lose it all?”
And to who?
Molly wondered.
To Lord Harridon Sanderdon, Master of the Order of the Labyrinth? What am I going to learn about my family?

“I think so,” John said. “The house is still there, though. I guess that’s where I should go next.”

“To England?”

“Sure. Why not? My expenses are all paid.”

“Your client must be as rich as Lady Westingate.”

He laughed. “Not nearly. Listen—do you want to come with me? You’re the expert on the family history, after all.”

“I can’t afford a trip to England.”

“No, no, my client will pay for it. I’ll call you my assistant or something.”

Should she go? She didn’t trust him, was annoyed by the outrageous accusations he had made about her family. And what about Peter? He hadn’t called once since she had come back from the Midwest.