"You two are wifty. I'm going to find her, then I'm going to find out what happened."
"All right," said Antony, "Whatever you say, Boss."
Schell looked over at me. I nodded. "I have to know," I said.
"Our first order of business is for me to anonymously tip off the police to where the body is. Then I'll call Barnes and tell him we found her. I'm going to beg him not to tell the cops that we were involved. That way we can hopefully avoid trouble and stay in his confidence. We're going to need to talk to him again, I'm sure." Schell stood up and took a deep breath. "This'll be rough," he said.
"Don't forget, you've only got a couple minutes before they can trace the call," said Antony.
"Yeah, I know," said Schell. "Come with me. I need you to give me the directions to the body."
Antony stood and headed out of the room. He stopped midway to the hall entrance, turned, and said, "Sorry you had to find her, kid."
"I'm better," I said.
After they left, I didn't want to be alone and thought of following, but a great weariness came over me. I thought, I'll just rest my eyes for a second and then go listen in. I woke hours later, surprised in a dream by the appearance of Charlotte Barnes. The room was dark. I heard a voice.
"Are you okay?" asked Schell.
"Just had a dream," I said.
My eyes adjusted, and I saw him sitting by my feet at the end of the couch. I wondered how long he'd been there.
"Did you talk to Barnes?" I asked.
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"He wept," said Schell and patted my shin. "Go back to sleep. It's late. Everything's fine."
The next morning I woke to find the nausea gone, replaced by a subtle sense of dread. I took a bath and changed my clothes, and got ready to lie low. That was the directive from Schell. We had to wait a few days for the furor to die down before we could dive back into the investigation. Antony had gone out early and picked up the newspaper. Pictures of the shack and partial shots of the body were all over the front page. "Barnes Girl Found Dead" was the headline. I passed on reading it, wanting to keep my breakfast down. It wasn't that the newspaper photos were so explicit, but I was afraid they'd awaken the image of her that, for the time being, slept in my memory.
I returned to my studies. Mrs. Hendrickson would be arriving in two days to discuss Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and it would get pretty unpleasant if I didn't know what I was talking about. Since we'd begun looking for Charlotte Barnes, I'd done no book work. I went to my room to get my notes and the huge copy of Chaucer. In the bookcase I saw another book I hadn't opened in years. I took it, instead, off the shelf and opened it. Very old and somewhat tattered, it was one of the first books that Schell had read to me from-Fabulous Tales from Around the World. On the title page, a previous owner, one Luciere Londell, had inscribed her name. I paged through until I found the illustration for "The Snow Queen," a woman who, in her paleness, could have passed for Miss Hush.
I turned back to the beginning of the tale and read the first few paragraphs. It had been many years since I'd read about the demon who had created a mirror, the special nature of which reflected all of the true and good things in the world so that they seemed distorted, absurd, frightening. When the demon tried to take his mirror to heaven to show the angels their warped reflections, he dropped it and it fell back to earth, shattering into a million tiny particles. The wind blew these infinitesimal shards of evil into the eyes of two children who loved each other, and their views of the world and each other turned dark and disturbing. The image in my mind's eye of Charlotte's corpse was a shard from that demonic mirror.
BLESSING THE MANSION
The more I tried not to think of Charlotte Barnes, and the more I thought of Lydia Hush, the more desperate I became to again see Isabel. I had no means of contacting her to set up another rendezvous on the beach or to even let her know I was thinking of her. I lived in hope that she might call, but when the phone rang and I'd go to answer it with a feeling of nervousness in my stomach I'd be met by the voice of Sal, or the fake signature bark of Hal Izzle, or Vonda, the Rubber Lady, calling for Antony. It was frustrating, to say the least, and I began to plot, which was a perfect diversion from recent events.
As Schell had taught me, "a con starts when there is something you want and you are blocked from attaining it by certain obstacles. The good con artist elicits the assistance of those who mean to stand in the way of one's attainment by appealing to their vanity, pride, jealousy, ignorance, or fear. One must first throw into a pile the expected rules of engagement, morality, society, and thought, set them on fire, and then proceed. Think big, have confidence." I did just that.
I knew Schell had the list of all the visitors to the Barnes estate in the months leading up to the disappearance of the girl. I was also aware that Parks was on that list. Schell wanted very much for us to pay another visit to Katie at the newspaper office to research the biographies and associations of the people in question. He was prevented from doing this by his own cautionary rule that we should lie low for a period, have nothing to do with our investigation until the hubbub died down and the reporters and police had somewhat withdrawn from the scene. With this in mind, I went to see him in the Bugatorium.
He'd been doing some reading about one of his blue butterflies and wanted to tell me about what he'd read. "Were you aware of the fact that when this specimen is in its caterpillar state, it's protected from predatory wasps and generally tended to by ants?"
Of course I didn't know that, but I sat and heard the whole lecture out, nodding in the appropriate places, affecting a look of great interest. I learned that these servile ants perform their duties to the exclusion of just about all else because the caterpillar exudes a chemical known as "honeydew," which the ants are mad for. Schell went on for nearly twenty minutes, and when his enthusiasm had finally run its course, I tried to change the subject.
"It's kind of frustrating just waiting around for things to blow over," I said.
"I know," he said, standing. He moved toward the large work table at the rear of the Bugatorium. I followed.
"When you get around to looking into the people on that list Barnes gave you, who are you going to start with?"
He bent over and peered into the screen cages he used to house caterpillars in their molting stages. "I'll start with the gentlemen, although that might be shortsighted on my part. I suppose any one of the women could be as culpable. You just don't hear many stories of women kidnapping children to whatever end. I'll play the odds on this one."
"Isn't Parks on that list?" I asked.
"Yes, but as of now I don't really suspect him. From what we found, he and Barnes are old college chums."
"He might know the other fellows, though," I said.
"Good point," said Schell.
"Maybe we should pay him a surprise visit. The police wouldn't have to catch wind of it, and we might be able to get a jump on the information we need from Parks. He's been a cinch for you to manipulate so far," I said and then stood very still, as if to make the slightest move might give away my hidden agenda.
Schell straightened up, having seen that all was in order with his tiny charges. When he turned to me, he said. "Not a bad idea. I'll go out there this afternoon."
"Perhaps I should go with you," I said.
"Don't worry, it won't be necessary. I know you have to catch up on your studying."
My mind was racing quickly to find a rejoinder that might make him reconsider. I was so frantically scheming I didn't, at first, notice the smile on his face. It wasn't his business smile, but a broad grin. When I finally noticed it, I gave up and laughed.