Tangled Ashes (10 page)

He closed the door only partway, just far enough for it to catch again, then waited—wondering if whatever was out there would come out of hiding, thinking he had gone. But long seconds ticked by without any movement or sound. “You’re losin’ it, Becker,” he finally mumbled to himself, pulling the door all the way and latching it shut. He walked back to the office, stretching his arms above his head and yawning so loudly that he startled himself.

Beck was scoring the wood on the staircase the next morning, still planning for its elaborate restoration, when a tall, elegant woman walked in. He looked up from his work, expecting a laborer. But she
was most certainly not blue-collar. She walked with practiced grace on stylish heels—the type of shoes Gary might have appreciated—and though her clothes were cut with extra fabric to accommodate her swelling belly, they were nonetheless chic and sophisticated. Becker put down his tools and descended the stairs. He wiped his hands on the rag he took from his back pocket and stepped forward to shake her hand. This was the boss’s wife, after all, and he was all about keeping his employers happy.

“Sylvia Fallon,” she said in a perfectly modulated voice.

“Marshall Becker.” Her hand was soft and firm in his, her gaze direct.

“So,” she said, turning her attention to the staircase, “what are we doing here?”

“I’m just scoring the wood,” he said, a little nervously. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed, but he’d been taken slightly off guard by the unexpected guest. He stepped back and pointed to the marks he’d made. “We’ll be taking out this entire section, from here to here,” he explained, outlining the five-foot portion that had been so severely damaged by flames that there were empty gaps in the elaborate design, “and we’ll replace it with wood that’s been cut and carved to match the pattern of the rest.”

“You’re cutting out part of the staircase?” she asked, some concern in her voice. “Aren’t these stairs at least two hundred years old?”

Beck braced himself. What was it with women and their desire to preserve old lumber? “Actually,” he explained, “it’s the only way to repair the damage and not lose any of the original look.”

“Explain,” she said, her forehead furrowed in thought. From anyone else, the one-word statement would have sounded like an order, but she had managed to make it sound calm and inviting.

“All right,” Becker said, putting his immediate plans on hold for this impromptu carpentry lesson. “You can see where the worst of the damage happened.” He used his pencil to point at various segments
of the staircase. “The railing’s burned away here, but even where there’s still some left, most of the roundness of its original shape is gone. You can’t just bulk up something that’s been mostly destroyed by fire.” Sylvia nodded, paying close attention. “And then there’s all the decorative carving underneath.” He pointed at the beautifully executed woodwork that extended from the railing to the base of the stairs. “It’s been reduced to ashes for at least three feet, and what’s left in the remaining foot on either side is too damaged to save.”

“So you cut all that out . . . ,” Sylvia mused.

“We cut out as little as possible, but the cuts have to be made in healthy wood.”

She nodded. “And then . . . where do you find wood that perfectly matches this? And someone to carve those swirly bits?”

“Actually,” Beck said, “I’ve already found some lumber that will be suitable once it’s stained and treated to match the older portions. It’s nearly impossible to get a perfect match out of woods that have a several-hundred-year age gap, but this will probably come close. As for the swirly bits,” he quoted, smiling at the decidedly untechnical term, “that’s my job.”

Sylvia leaned in for a closer look at the design of curved lines and graceful forms. “How will you reproduce this? It’s much too delicate for jigsaws and such, isn’t it?”

Beck nodded. “Where I can use a router, I will, but it looks like I’m going to have to do the bulk of it by hand.”

Sylvia stepped back, appraising him. “So you’re a sculptor, too, are you?”

Beck was about to explain his expertise when Fallon came gusting through the front doors, dressed impeccably in a cashmere coat and a plaid scarf. With his brown tasseled loafers, expensive leather gloves, and felt fedora, he looked the epitome of the rich British gentleman. On anyone else, the attire might have appeared pompous, but on Fallon, it was merely part of the persona.

“Beck, my lad,” he bellowed, stopping only briefly to shut the front door before he hurried over to Beck and shook his hand as if they were fast friends. “Tell me about our progress!” He looked around the entryway at the still-graffitied walls, still-dull floors, and still-burned staircase, and added, “Doesn’t look like much of anything has gone on during my absence!”

“Well, you know what they say about when the cat’s away.”

“This particular cat has a million quid invested in this property, and he’d like to assume that the mice are aware of that!” He guffawed and smacked Beck on the back. He seemed to suddenly become aware of Sylvia’s presence at his side. “By the way,” he quickly said, lowering his voice a notch, “this is my lovely bride, Sylvia.” His eyes danced as he added conspiratorially, “And that extra little bulge you’re trying so hard not to look at is a Fallon-to-be.”

Beck wasn’t sure what to say. The only human beings who made him more uncomfortable than children were not-yet-born children.

“You’ll understand, Mr. Becker,” Sylvia said, looping an arm through her husband’s, “that my husband’s greatest pride is his progeny. And I—lucky me—get to be the human incubator of his children. It’s a job I enjoyed a little more six years ago, when my body was younger, but it’s a small price to pay for living in the lap of luxury!”

Again, her words, spoken by anyone else, would have sounded self-important and cynical, but she had uttered them with so much good humor and self-deprecation that Beck couldn’t help but smirk. He was beginning to understand why Fallon was willing to move heaven and earth to see that his wife’s birthday wishes would come true.

The three of them spent the better part of the next hour walking through the castle. Beck explained in detail what work had been
done during the past week and answered each of Sylvia’s questions as simply and thoroughly as he could. Fallon seemed pleased with the progress upstairs, particularly when Beck explained that the electrical work was actually a day ahead of schedule. He greeted the workers with typical joviality and asked questions of them to which Beck suspected he already knew the answers. If likability were an Olympic sport, Fallon would be working on a gold medal. Having walked through all three floors of the castle, they climbed down the small staircase at the far end of the north wing and finished the tour in the kitchen. When the kids saw their mother appear, they jumped up from the table, leaving half-finished tongue-depressor houses behind, and ran to wrap their arms around her waist.

“Three hours apart and you’d think she’d been gone for a week,” Fallon said as he and Beck watched the happy reunion. “Do you have any children, lad?” he asked. He cocked his head to the side. “It strikes me that I really know very little of you at all.”

Beck shook his head and cast a glance at Jade. She sat at the table with a nearly finished tongue-depressor house in front of her, but her eyes were on Sylvia and the children, something melancholy in her gaze. “Nope. No children,” Beck said. Jade lowered her eyes back to her task.

With the whole family there, it was impossible for Beck to excuse himself to eat lunch in his office. They sat around the large table with room to spare, and though Beck and Jade said little, the conversation never waned. The children were animated and loud, and their parents reveled in the precocious entertainers’ antics. While the Fallon family enjoyed a rare lunch together, Beck focused on the roast chicken and potatoes on his plate, and Jade kept herself busy by keeping everyone else supplied with food and drinks.

“Oh, go outside and run around for a while,” Sylvia finally exclaimed. The twins had been bombarding her with an unending list of toys they wanted for their birthday, and their pitch had grown
so shrill that Beck wanted to clap his hands over his ears—or their mouths.

“Yay!” the kids shrieked together, dashing for the door.

“Put on your coats!” Jade called after them, snatching their coats off the hooks and following them out. By the sound of the complaining, she must have caught them right outside the door.

Sylvia rose and began clearing the table. Her ease in performing so domestic a task surprised Beck. He had somehow expected her to leave such a menial duty to Jade. He rose to take his own plate to the sink.

“And how are your accommodations?” Fallon asked, gathering the children’s plates and cutlery and stacking them in front of him. “Jade mentioned that you resolved the urine issue with a handsaw.”

At the sink, where she was rinsing dishes, Sylvia said, “Gavin . . .” and wrinkled her nose.

“You know, when that partner of yours mentioned that you wanted to live on-site,” Fallon said, “I put up a fairly decent fight. There are some very nice, very convenient hotels in town that wouldn’t have had the bonus smells you’ve had to contend with, but he seemed adamant. He said you functioned best if you were near your work site.”

“I do,” Beck said, adding, “I don’t sleep very much anyway, and once I get into carving and designing, my best hours are after midnight.”

“But when do you sleep, Mr. Becker?” Sylvia asked from the sink, drying her hands on a towel. “If you supervise the project all day and carve all night . . .”

Beck shrugged, leaning back against the counter. “I sleep enough.”

She leaned in, conspiratorial. “You need a mother.” She winked and got back to rinsing dishes.

“Oh, I’ve got a mother,” Beck said, shaking his head. “She’s a
cross between a mama bear and a pit bull, and I assure you we’ve had the sleep conversation a few times!”

“Clearly to no avail,” Fallon said, depositing a stack of dishes on the drainboard of the sink.

“She learned long ago that I’m not easily persuaded.” Beck smiled. On a whim, he asked the question that had been trotting around in his head since he’d heard the late-night noises around the patio: “Just out of curiosity, have you ever gotten reports about prowlers on the castle grounds?”

The Fallons looked at each other and shook their heads. “Just Jojo, on occasion. There were the vandals several years ago, of course,” Sylvia said. “The ones who did so much spray-paint damage in the entryway. But I don’t think there have been any problems since then.”

“Why do you ask, lad?” Fallon moved to the counter where Beck stood, reaching for the carafe of coffee Jade had prepared during the meal.

“It’s probably nothing,” Beck said, sorry he’d broached the subject. “I’ve just . . . heard and seen a couple things since I’ve been here that had me wondering.”

“Sylvia, my dear,” Fallon said dramatically, “we might have ourselves a mystery.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward Becker. “Tell me, lad, what have you seen?”

Feeling more than a little foolish, Becker waved it away and filled a cup with coffee. “Nothing. I’m sure I’m just imagining things.”

A
S SOON AS
the Fallons left, Becker wandered out the back door and strolled over to the small patio where he had heard the noises the night before. He looked around for anything that seemed out of place but saw nothing. All the windows were closed, the shutters fastened securely. He took a couple paces back to get a broader look at the area and noticed, just off to the right of the steps, a small opening that led under the patio. At some point it had been sealed with red brick and cement, but there was a hole in the makeshift wall and bits of broken brick lying near it on the grass.

Getting down on his hands and knees, he peered inside, but he couldn’t see a thing. In a matter of minutes, he’d gone around the château to the front entrance, retrieved a flashlight, a crowbar, and a hammer from his toolbox, and returned to the opening. It was fairly small—maybe two feet by three feet. Beck made quick work of the remainder of the bricks, using his hands to pull them out after
he’d loosened the cement that held them. When he was finished, he dropped to his knees again and shone the flashlight around the dank, dark space that ran the entire length of the patio. There were some old pipes, a discarded tire, and, in the far corner, something well hidden that sounded an awful lot like a family of rats. Beck was about to switch off his flashlight and get back to work when the beam glanced across something smooth and rounded.

He hesitated. The animal sounds coming from the rear corner nearly deterred Beck’s sleuthing ambitions, but, if he was seeing right, his find would be worth the close proximity to rodents. “Come on, Beck,” he urged himself on. “Just a few little critters. You stay out of their space, they’ll stay out of yours. . . .” He got down on his stomach and crawled into the dark and musty shadows. The space became a little taller once he got through the arched opening. He only had to go a few feet on hands and knees before he reached the object of interest. He prodded it with his flashlight and rolled it over on its side.

Beck’s eyes widened. It had deteriorated substantially in the time it had spent under the patio. Most of the leather elements were gone and all that was left was the metallic shell, its paint flaked off in many places, but the faded decal on its side was unmistakable. Two lightning bolts in a white shield. He was staring at a World War II helmet, one that had belonged to a Nazi soldier.

Beck backed out of the space with the helmet, feet first, and emerged to find two bemused children and a slightly annoyed adult staring down at him.

“Do you know how often I’ve had to order the twins
not
to venture into places like that?” Jade asked.

Becker squinted up at her. “A lot?”

She shook her head and looked skyward, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. When she looked back down at Becker,
it was with a little less annoyance. “What on earth were you looking for?”

“Did you find a giant snail?” Philippe demanded, eyeing the treasure Beck held.

“No, but I think I found a family of rats.”

Eva squealed and hid behind Jade’s legs, and Philippe’s eyes got so big that Beck feared for their safety. Jade smirked.

“That’s one hole you’ll never have to tell them to stay out of again,” he said, standing and trying to brush some of the stains from his knees and elbows. “Ever found anything like this on the grounds before?” he asked, holding out the helmet.

“Probably World War II,” Jade said. “May I?”

Beck handed her the helmet, and she took it carefully, turning it to observe it from all angles. “This castle was a Kommandantur—a Nazi headquarters—during the war, you know. I’m sure this belonged to one of Hitler’s prized Wehrmacht warriors.” There was disdain in her voice as she handed the metallic shell back to him.

“Wehrmacht?”

“The Nazi military. This area is the horse capital of France, so they made Lamorlaye and Chantilly their cavalry’s home base.”

Beck shook his head, bemused and amazed. “I crawled into a hole and found a Nazi helmet.” Something stirred in him that reminded him of childhood treasure hunts. He held the helmet up and turned it, taking in the decal, the chipped paint, and the remnant of a leather strap still attached to a rivet inside the shell. He tried not to sound too eager when he said, “You think I can keep it?”

Jade smiled sweetly and, he suspected, condescendingly, clearly lacking the enthusiasm the helmet had elicited in him. “I’m sure you can keep it, Mr. Becker,” she said. The twinkle in her eye somewhat softened the sarcasm in her voice. “But helmets like these, in this part of the world? They’re really not that rare. Now—” Jade glanced down at his soiled clothing—“you’ll need those washed,”
she said, turning her mind back to business. “There’s a machine in the laundry room at the back of the kitchen. Anytime you need anything done, just leave it on the washer and I’ll take care of it.”

“I can do my own laundry,” Beck said, oddly disgruntled by her offer. He rotated the helmet in his hands again.

“Suit yourself, Mr. Becker.” She turned toward the kitchen. “Come on, kids. I promised you a video after lunch, and the DVD player is set up in the office.”

“My office?”

“It has a couch in it. Do you mind?”

How could he say no when his was the only space in the château that held any comfortable furniture? As they were traipsing away, Philippe twisting in Jade’s grasp to look over his shoulder at the strange grown-up who had crawled into a rat’s dark hole, Beck shouted, “You can call me Beck, you know! Or Becker!”

Jade stopped and turned, smiling a little more kindly than she had of late. “Becker it is, then,” she said. “Why don’t you come inside and have another cup of coffee, Becker? You must have gotten chilled crawling around under the castle on your treasure hunt.”

“So . . . you have lunch with your employers,” Jade said a few minutes later, her lilting voice enigmatic, “and then, rather than, say, repair a dilapidated château, you decide to crawl under its patio. Is that about the gist of things?”

Beck poured himself a mug of coffee and reached for the cream. “I’m going back to work right now,” he said. “No need to tattle on me to the boss.” The excitement of his find had begun to wear off, and embarrassment at his temporary lapse had set in. He opened three drawers before he found the spoons.

“Why exactly did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Why did you go spelunking?”

“I needed a change of scenery.”

Beck hadn’t been prepared for her laugh. Her frustration? Yes. Her dismissal? Absolutely. But her laugh? It froze him midbreath. It also made him want to say something else—and fast—to prevent her from laughing again. There was a strange kind of power in that sound. It made him feel less bulletproof. He didn’t like it.

“I thought I heard . . . something . . . last night,” he explained, focusing on answering her question. “It came from that part of the castle, so . . .”

“Something?”

He shook his head. “It was probably nothing. My imagination.” He remembered the figure he’d seen moving through the fog nights before and wondered if he’d conjured that, too.

“Well, I know that Jojo sometimes wanders around at night, but I’m not sure he’d be noisy about it.”

She had his attention. “You know Jojo?”

Jade shrugged out of the jacket she’d been wearing outside and went to hang it by the door. “Mostly I know
of
him. The people in town talk about him, you know, and if you live around here long enough, you hear all the stories.”

“What kind?”

She paused, looking at him as if she were gauging his sincerity. “He’s old,” she said, coming back to sit at the table. “Nobody knows how old, of course. He’s a bit of a mythical creature in these parts. The story goes that he turned up in the gatehouse decades ago. All of a sudden, he was just living there one day, as if he’d always been there. The castle was abandoned at the time, so no one really cared.”

“Does anyone ever see him?”

“He isn’t Boo Radley, Mr. Becker.” She smiled, then caught herself. “Becker. Just Becker.”

Beck took a slug of his coffee, a little embarrassed by his fascination for the urban legend that was Jojo. “So . . . you’ve seen him?”

“Quite regularly. There’s a gap in the wall out there,” she said, pointing to the carport outside the kitchen. “Monsieur Legentil owns the stables on the other side of the wall, and Jojo helps out with caring for the horses. You’ll see him going through the gap a couple times a day. Nights, too—especially when there’s a sick horse that needs tending.”

“So he’s a stable hand?”

“Not officially. I think he just likes horses.”

Beck mulled over the information. It really raised more questions than it answered.

“Has he ever hurt anyone? Scared anyone?”

“Mr. Becker . . .” Jade caught herself again. “Becker. He’s barely had the courage to speak to anyone since I’ve known of him, so scaring them or hurting them would be a little out of character, don’t you think?”

“I just think it’s strange,” Becker said, heading toward the archway with his coffee cup. “A guy who appears out of nowhere and installs himself on private property—pretty much mute, from what you’ve said. No friends, no job, up at all hours of the night . . .”

“How do you know that?”

Becker turned. “I’ve seen the light on at his place—a candle, I think.”

She smiled innocently. “So you were up too.”

“Yes, but I don’t prowl.”

“You only crawl.”

Becker heard himself chuckle as he was making his exit. The sound perplexed him. He was on his way to the entrance hall when he stopped. If Jade was surprised to see him back in the kitchen moments later, she didn’t mention it.

“About the drinking thing . . .”

She didn’t speak but merely waited for him to continue.

“I won’t mention it in front of the kids again.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Becker stood there for a while longer, his cooling coffee in his hand.

“Is there anything else?” Jade asked after a long moment of silence had passed.

He remembered the anger in her eyes, the revulsion on her face, the threat in her voice. He wanted—somehow—to address those, too. But he didn’t have the words. So he turned instead and walked away, leaving Jade sitting at the table, shaking her head.

It was the music that first alerted Beck that this was another dream. He was sitting in a circle of men. There were at least six of them. Maybe seven. He kept squinting, trying to make out their faces, but he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze up past their chests. There was murmuring—something that bordered on chanting. In the background, he could hear the strains of a Barry Manilow hit being sung by a child.
“I can’t live without you, can’t smile without you. . . .”
He’d always hated the song. But she’d loved it. On this occasion, however, there was something desperately wrong with the recording. The infant voice warbled as it reached his ears. It was as if the song were being played too slowly and from a warped LP.
“I can’t laugh and I can’t sing. . . .”

The man on Beck’s right was wearing a blue suit. That much he could tell. He was speaking loudly into Beck’s ear, trying to outdo the music, but all Beck could hear were fractions of sentences. “No point being a hero. . . . Take one for the Gipper. . . . The view from the bottom ain’t bad. . . .”