Magic

“Aunt Roberta!”

Roberta stood in the center of the room, her green eyes wide, her hair literally standing on end. “Oh, my stars, Bryan! I am so glad you’re here! I can’t tell you. I just can’t tell you!”

Bryan flipped off the alarm, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, heaving a weary sigh. Aunt Roberta had always demonstrated an amazing talent for setting off his machines.

“I came down to fix myself a little snack,” Roberta said, pulling a bent cigarette and a lighter out of the pocket of her ratty blue robe. She paused to suck a gallon of smoke into her lungs. “This place is a maze. A maze. I’ve never seen the like, have you, Regina?” she asked Rachel, smoke billowing out of her nostrils. She patted Bryan on the arm. “I don’t know why you’d want such a big place, honey. These old houses are a beast to heat, you know. An absolute b-”

“What happened?” Bryan asked, his normally generous patience wearing thin. He could have been upstairs in the throes of bliss if it hadn’t been for his batty aunt.

“I got lost. Lost.” Roberta said, waving her cigarette at him. Ash sprinkled to the floor. “So, I’m wandering down the hall, and I decide to ask that pale, thin fellow how to get to the kitchen.” She turned to Rachel again, shaking her head. “I hope he’s not your boyfriend, Renita. He is one ugly dude. Ugly. My gosh, he’s ugly.”

Bryan perked up. “A thin man with sunken eyes and white, white skin?”

“White as a ghost. As a ghost! All dressed in white. Pale as death. I guess I startled him. Kind of a flighty guy, isn’t he? Well, I followed him in here and all hell broke loose with these crazy machines going off. Just about gave me a heart attack. A heart attack!” She shook her head and crossed herself reverently with her cigarette. “My gosh.”

“What did the man do?” Bryan asked as he rewound the film in his camera.

“Grabbed a stack of books off the shelf and ran out that way.” She waved her cigarette in the general direction of the French doors which stood open. “Strange time of the day to be going to the library, don’t you think? Very strange.”

While Bryan went to investigate, Rachel introduced her mother to their new guest. “Mother, this is Bryan’s Aunt Roberta. Roberta, my mother, Addie Lindquist.”

Addie stared at the woman, obviously confused. “Who is she? The maid? Of course I knew that, Rachel. You needn’t introduce me to the maid.”

“A little off her rocker, eh?” Roberta whispered behind her hand to Rachel, nodding knowingly. “That’s all right, Renee. I understand.”

Rachel looked from one to the other helplessly. She honestly didn’t know what to say. She felt like Alice must have in Wonderland.

“Great hair, Adelle,” Roberta rasped, blowing out a jet stream of smoke. She reached out to fluff Addie’s pinking-shears special, taking another deep drag on her cigarette. “Did you get it done around here? My gosh, I really like that. I do.”

“Well, there’s no sign of him now,” Bryan said, coming back into the room. “I suggest we all go back to bed.”

The two older women wandered off together, talking beauty secrets.

Rachel stood in the doorway, hugging her robe around her, watching as Bryan stood on a chair and carefully removed the cassette from the video camera he had mounted in the corner above the door.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope for to think they might be having identical hallucinations.”

“It’s unlikely,” Bryan said. He rattled the video cassette. “Just as it’s unlikely that a ghost could pull an iron railing loose or track mud into the house or step through rotted wood. I believe we’ll have all the proof we need right here to show that Rat is our mystery man.”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t understand why Rasmussen and Porchind would try to drive us out. They know I’m interested in selling the place.”

“They also know Addie doesn’t want to move,” Bryan pointed out. “In any case, they could be trying to frighten you into dropping the price, make you so desperate to leave that you’ll practically give the place to them rather than put it on the market and let someone else have a chance at it.”

He went very still, staring past Rachel, his eyes clear and intense. “Don’t let anyone else have a chance at it,” he repeated. “Yes.”

Rachel ignored his odd trance. She was getting used to such behavior, much to her surprise. “What about Addie’s whimsy? Are you finally giving up that ridiculous belief in ghosts?”

“Not at all. I haven’t figured out where Wimsey fits in yet, but I will.”

Bryan smiled brightly, happy as a clam with his evidence. One mystery was well on its way to being solved. The whole thing would come to a head soon. He could sense it.

Rachel stepped out into the hall. “I’ll see you upstairs. I’m going to go make sure Mother and Roberta aren’t giving each other crew cuts.”

“I’ll be right up,” Bryan promised.

He reset his equipment on the off chance of a return appearance by their ghoulish visitor, then poured himself a drink from the bottle that still resided in the desk drawer. He had told Rachel he would purchase the desk himself, but he needn’t have worried. For some odd reason the study had remained virtually untouched throughout the tag sale. People had avoided the room. He had a strong feeling he knew why.

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