Now he raised his glass to whatever presence might have lingered in the room and said, “I don’t know where you fit in yet, Wimsey, but I’m going to find out.” He took a drink, then turned and stared long and hard at the portrait of Arthur Drake. The man was gesturing out toward him with an infuriatingly enigmatic expression on his face. “And I’m going to find out where you fit into this too, Arthur. See if I don’t.”
The videotape showed the back of a man’s head. That was it as far as evidence went. The rest of the show was Aunt Roberta, shouting, screaming, waving her arms. She managed to block the culprit out of the picture entirely. The film in the still camera was no better-mainly photographs of Aunt Roberta getting the bejeepers scared out of her. It was a disappointment, to say the very least.
His call to Shane didn’t exactly improve Bryan’s morning.
“I didn’t turn up anything on either one of them,” Callan said. “Porchind was teaching literature at some two-bit junior college in Oregon until this summer. Rasmussen ran a used-book store. They haven’t had so much as a parking ticket between them. Sorry.”
Bryan managed a smile. Shane apologized as if it would have been infinitely preferable to have discovered the men were notorious serial killers.
“Any clue as to what brought them to Anastasia?” Bryan asked.
“None. But Faith says you should talk to Lorraine at the Allingham Museum on Seventh Avenue. Apparently, she’s lived here forever. She should be able to answer questions concerning the history of the place.”
Bryan pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, located his pencil behind his left ear, and jotted the message down.
“Faith also says to tell you you need a haircut.”
“Thanks,” Bryan said, scowling at his reflection in the hall mirror.
“Anytime. You know where to call if things get exciting.”
Bryan smiled as he bid his friend good-bye. Shane seemed perfectly at ease at Keepsake Inn, working on his music and his poetry. He was a wonderful father and a dutiful, doting husband to Faith, but Bryan sensed Faith hadn’t domesticated the agent completely.
Stuffing his notes back into the pockets of his khaki chinos, Bryan set off in search of Rachel, his mind mulling over what little information Shane had been able to give him. He pictured Miles Porchind in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, spraying the students in the front row of his stuffy classroom with spittle as he read aloud from Chaucer. He imagined Felix Rasmussen creeping around the musty stacks of books in a dark little store on some dingy side street.
Literature. Books. Porchind had come to the tag sale for books. Their late-night visitor had snatched an armload of books on his way out. Was it possible they weren’t after Drake House at all, but something in it?
“Bryan, they’re driving me insane,” Rachel said, coming out of the kitchen, wringing her hands in a dishtowel.
“Who?”
Rachel stared at him as if he had completely lost his head. “Who? Who do you think? Tweedledee and Tweedledum. My mother and your aunt.”
He waved a hand to dismiss the subject. “They’ll be fine once they get to know each other.”
“How can they get to know each other? My mother is perpetually confused, and your aunt never calls anyone by the same name twice. They’re like squirrels chasing each other’s tails!” She did a wickedly accurate imitation of Roberta, substituting a ballpoint pen for the ever-present cigarette. “ ‘My word, Rochelle, you make good eggs!’ Then my mother says, who’s Rochelle? ‘Your daughter, for heaven’s sake, Amelia! Your daughter, Roxanne!’ Then they start the whole thing over again! It’s worse than having breakfast with Abbott and Costello!”
“Honey, relax,” Bryan said with a cheerful smile. He pulled a quarter out of her ear, handed it to her, and patted her cheek. “Buy yourself a cup of coffee. They’ll be all right. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
Rachel stared at him in exasperated disbelief as he turned and headed for the front door. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To get a haircut!” he called, waving at her over his shoulder.
Rachel ground her teeth, Wasn’t that just like him to blithely wander off on some silly errand, leaving her to deal with the problem.
No, she corrected herself as she slumped back against the wall, that was like Terence. Her stomach churned at the thought. Bryan was sweeter than Terence had ever been, and less self-absorbed, but when it came to accepting responsibility, it was looking more and more as if they were peas in a pod, smoothing the rough spots over with platitudes, leaving her to deal with reality while they chased rainbows.
When Bryan returned to Drake House several hours later, he was brimming with barely contained excitement. Unfortunately, Rachel was in neither the mood nor the position to hear his latest theories and the history behind them.
Bryan unfolded himself from behind the wheel of Rachel’s Chevette, staring in stunned disbelief at the scene that greeted him. Addie was hanging out her bedroom window, flinging Rachel’s clothes out onto the lawn one article at a time. Rachel stormed around the yard, gathering up undergarments, pulling her bras off bushes, digging her shoes out of the shrubbery.
“What’s going on?” Bryan asked with a quality of innocence that earned him a scathing glare from Rachel.
“Mother is upset with me because I let a realtor into the house this morning.”
“Traitor!” Addie shouted, and let fly a pair of loafers.
“She’s taken all my things and locked herself in her room.”
“Oh, dear.” Bryan frowned. “Where’s Aunt Roberta?”
“She went scuba-diving with someone named Brutus, an old friend of one of your brothers,” Rachel said, retrieving one of her shoes from the hood of her car. “If you want my frank opinion, the man did not appear to be mentally balanced, but who am I to judge?” She gave a brittle laugh that managed to combine fury and hysteria.
Bryan’s brows shot up in surprise at the news.
“This is all your fault.” Rachel glared at him and shook a loafer under his nose. “You told Mother we wouldn’t have to move. Naturally, she has no trouble remembering that little gem of information. Thanks a lot, Bryan,” she said, smacking him on the arm with the shoe. “You’ve made my job so much easier.”
Bryan winced and rubbed his arm. “But Rachel-”
“You keep saying you want to help me,” she ranted, running under a pair of jeans as they floated to earth. “Then you turn around and undermine my efforts to get Mother to accept the inevitable.”
“But honey, it’s not-”
They both broke off as a brown Ford Galaxy rattled up the drive. The car coughed to a halt and Porchind and Rasmussen emerged from the interior. A rock sailed down from above and richoceted off the grille of the car with a ping! All heads turned to see Addie wielding a bra-turned-slingshot.
“It’s Porky and the Rat!” she shouted, loading a bra cup and letting another stone fly. “Get away from my house!”
“Please excuse my mother, gentlemen,” Rachel said as they all took cover on the porch. “She’s been hallucinating a lot lately.”
“We’ve come to retrieve our books, Miss Lindquist,” Porchind said without preamble, tugging at his brown vest in a vain attempt to get the garment to cover his protruding girth.
“Books,” Rasmussen echoed. He cast a glance at Bryan, his sunken eyes gleaming with restrained temper. Bryan merely smiled at him inanely.
“Oh, yes,” Rachel said, giving Bryan her own fierce look. “I’m so sorry about the mixup. Bryan will get them for you.”
“They’re in the study,” he said, pleasantly unrepentant. Opening the door, he motioned everyone inside. Rachel stomped past him. Porchind and Rasmussen sidled by, reluctant to turn their backs on him. “Wasn’t that funny-those two stacks of books getting switched around that way?”