My dreams that night were a continuation of the vision that had nearly toppled me from my ladder, only more vivid. Gowned in plum satin, Colette continued to drive her stylish gig along a winding road. Shooting Star continued to trot along, steady but obviously aware of being part of a stylish turn-out. Neither of them seemed aware that they were travelling through a landscape right out of one of M.C. Escher’s nightmares.
The road along which they traveled split: one becoming two, two four, four eight, eight sixteen, sixteen thirty-two, thirty-two doubtless sixty-four, and sixty-four one hundred and twenty-eight, though by then I had long since lost count. Each road was identical, each route carried its own Colette, its own gig, its own tightly trotting bay mare.
The skies above were no longer pure New Mexico blue, but were the hue of a two-day-old bruise. They were livid, shot through with lightning bolts in neon orange and lime green. The thunder from the lightning’s passage cracked and screamed like breaking glass.
None of the infinitude of Colettes noticed. They drove on, each along their own road, each fanning out farther from the others, their roads slim spokes in an increasingly attenuated wheel. I thought of my earlier image of liminal space as like a spiderweb, and looked to see what spider sat at the center of this web, what stable basis provided the hub.
I expected to see Phineas House, but what I saw instead was emptiness, a dark red void, colored like the afterimages left when you rub your eyes too hard. I stared into that void, certain that something must be concealed beneath the viscous red, but there was nothing but the dull, bloody glow.
When I looked down the spokes again, the Colettes had traveled far enough down their roads that their images were the size of pinpricks, yet these pinpricks were still perfect in every detail, as if the Colettes had lost size and volume rather than moving along, but the images defied this interpretation, for Shooting Star’s legs moved in their steady, rhythmic trot, the rubber-tired wheels spun, and Colette after Colette shook the reins impatiently, and focused on the landscape through a teleidoscope held in an elegantly gloved hand.
I looked in the direction in which she pointed the device, trying to see what she did, but all I saw was a chaotic scream of neon brilliance against that bruised sky. I fell into deeper sleep wondering if Colette had seen anything different.
Mikey did not arrive in time to join me and Domingo for our breakfast in the garden. Although I had genuinely liked the man, I found myself relieved. Mikey himself might be good company, but the stories he had told me had been—to say the least—disquieting.
I filled Domingo in on some of it, and if I emphasized the points where our guesses had been correct or mostly correct, rather than the unsettling evidence that my mother had been the insane conclusion of a family who sought to control time and space for its own benefit, well, can you blame me?
“Do we continue the painting today?” Domingo said. “I did not tell the crew not to come.”
“Continue,” I said, a note of defiance in my voice. “Phineas House may want this paint job, but, you know, so do I. Somehow it’s impossible to be afraid of the House in daylight—especially as it becomes more impossibly gaudy.”
Domingo dropped his hand to accept the stick Blanco had brought him, and tossed it across the yard. It fell at the edge of a patch of squash, and Blanco paused to bark aggressively at something hiding beneath one of the large leaves—probably a toad. The garden’s dampness drew them. Any wise gardener welcomes toads, but Blanco did not share our appreciation.
“Tell me, Mira,” Domingo said in that voice that always seemed soft, even when he was shouting orders up to the painters, “do you fear the House?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “You know that. You gave me a bed one night when I was too scared to go back inside.”
“Sometimes,” he said, and this time his voice was truly soft, “I also fear Phineas House, but long ago I reasoned that there is nothing at all wrong with fear when it is merited.”
I blinked at this, but there was really no need for me to answer. Domingo and I understood each other too well where the House was concerned. In other ways, we might still almost be strangers, but not in this. The phone ringing in the kitchen saved me from the need to shape an unnecessary reply.
“That’s probably Mikey,” I said, running inside. Blanco, who like every dog saw a running human as an invitation to chase, came after me, and I let him inside. Domingo remained outside, sipping coffee and looking thoughtfully at the rosebushes.
“Hello?”
“Mira? This is Mikey Hart. I’m finally awake, but not yet dressed or showered. How about I drop over in say an hour and a half? I’ll eat here at the hotel, and give you a chance to get your morning in order.”
“Fine,” I said. “When you get here, just come in the gate and walk around the side of Phineas House. Someone will tell you where I am, and I might as well do some painting.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “See you in a bit, then.”
I came out and told Domingo the gist of the conversation.
“So,” I concluded, “I’ll have a chance to help paint out the bird poop someone spilled down the side the other day.”
Domingo grinned at me, but shook his finger in an admonition that was only in semi-jest.
“I’ll let you do it,” he said, “but no daydreaming. I will not have my meal-ticket fall off a ladder and break her neck.”
“I promise,” I said, growing suddenly serious. “I think I dreamed enough last night.”
Mikey arrived as I was wiping paint off my fingers with a rag. With the help of Tomás, I had repaired most of the damage caused by my spill, and I thought the House looked quite good.
“Good morning, Mikey,” I said cheerfully. “You look rested and well.”
“I am indeed,” he replied, “and if I thought Phineas House looked impressive in evening light, in full daylight …”
He trailed off in what I chose to take as admiring astonishment. I dropped the paint rag with its fellows, and motioned for Mikey to follow me.
“Let me introduce you to Domingo Navidad. You know of him, of course, but I have the impression you have never met.”
“We have not,” Mikey said, “but I’d be glad to remedy the situation.”
“Good. Then I’ll let him give you the grand exterior tour while I get out of my coveralls. You’ve had breakfast, I know, but can I offer you anything?”
“A glass of iced tea, perhaps,” Mikey said, his gaze still moving over Phineas House’s exterior, resting for a moment on an ornate frieze or window frame, then moving on.
Introductions went smoothly. When I emerged from the House, wearing an olive-green broomstick skirt and an off-white peasant blouse embroidered with wildflowers, most of the paint off my hands, I found the two men discussing the work. I waited until they had finished comparing the very different needs of Minnesota and New Mexico, then motioned for Mikey to come inside.
“The painters like their music while they work,” I explained, “and I don’t feel like competing with guitars and trumpets.”
Domingo gave us both a casual wave as he returned to his ladder. “Perhaps we will talk more later,” he said to Mikey. “I am glad you like the paint job.”
Domingo’s tone told me, as I knew he had intended it to, that he also liked Mikey Hart. I felt unaccountably relieved. It wasn’t like Domingo was the most normal fellow I had ever met, but he seemed a good judge of character.
Mikey huffed slightly as he followed me up the stairs into the kitchen.
“Domingo is a fascinating fellow,” he said. “I’d wondered about him for a long time.”
“He’s done well by Phineas House,” I said.
“Better, maybe, than either you or he know,” Mikey said cryptically, and something in his tone told me I’d be wasting my breath asking for clarification.
Today I invited Mikey to sit with me in the library. For one thing, the family Bible with its odd version of a family tree was there. For another, the chairs were really very comfortable. I had gotten over my childish feeling that the room was “Mother’s office.” Now it was simply another room, one more useful than most.
I offered Mikey a deep leather armchair, and seated myself in its mate. The desk remained untenanted, except by my memories of Colette. Mikey had carried in his own glass of tea, and now he set it on a sandstone coaster on the table beside him.
“Last night,” he said, “I recounted a lot of history. Today, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start by explaining why you were placed with the Fenns, rather than left here.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I hope you’ll also explain something about the extraordinary conditions you placed on the Fenns. I know that Aunt May lived in fear you’d come and take me away.”
“Not too much fear,” Mikey reminded me. “It wasn’t enough to stop her from being nosy.”
“True,” I admitted, “but you have to admit, those were extraordinary conditions.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. We had two reasons for setting those conditions, Mira. Both were intended to protect you.”
“Oh?”
“You heard what I told you last night,” he said, and for the first time since I had met him he seemed impatient. “If the Fenns had investigated your past too closely they would have learned that your mother had done time in a mental hospital. That would certainly have prejudiced them against you. They might even have learned that your grandfather died under rather odd circumstances. Gossip about the less attractive aspects of the Bogatyr family history was at its height for a year or so after Colette’s disappearance, while the investigation was most active.”
I made an apologetic gesture. “I understand. I really do. Before you explain your second reason, I wonder why it was so important for me to be adopted outside of the family. Until I got here, I thought that maybe I didn’t have any family left, but now it seems that I must have had family. If I may be blunt about it, you and the other two trustees were family, if somewhat distantly connected.”
“I think you already know the answer,” Mikey said, “but if it helps, I’ll spell it out. If anyone did make Colette disappear—murdered her, kidnapped her, led her astray in some fashion—then the likelihood was fairly high that whoever did it was family.
“Even your maternal line—your grandmother Chantal’s family—was suspect. Chantal resented not inheriting more of her husband’s estate. That resentment could have been passed down. Once Colette was out of the way, well, you were the only one left. Chantal’s family would have known that your father’s siblings were both dead. Nikolai had alienated himself from his cousins by his resentment of his own daughter, so it wasn’t like there were tremendous Pincas family reunions.
“We had to be uniformly suspicious, even of each other. There’s a reason there have always been three trustees, you know. As Caesar and his buddies knew too well, in a triumvirate it’s harder to violate the basic contract. Anyhow, in the end, we decided that placing you with an unimpeachably neutral family was the best course of action.”
“Thank you,” I said with what simple dignity I could manage. “Both for the explanation, and for doing so well by me. I’m beginning to understand better what you said last night about the time of Colette’s disappearance being one of turmoil. You didn’t just mean on whatever level of all that liminal stuff, you meant within the extended family as well.”
Mikey nodded. “It was a bad time, everyone looking at everyone else sideways, people making snide hints, and trying to shift blame. The thing was, Colette vanished so completely. I know you did some looking into the police side of it. Matters weren’t much better from our end.”
“I can see that,” I said. “Can you bear one more question interrupting your organized presentation?”
Mikey grinned. “That’s the first time anyone has called me organized in a long while. Someday I’ll have to introduce you to my wife, just so you can tell her that. Go on.”
“How did you know Aunt May was nosing around?”
Mikey looked thoughtful. “Frankly, we paid a handful of people here in Las Vegas and in a few other places to let us know if certain circumstances occurred. One of these was a fellow in the post office who sorted the mail. He was asked to look out for letters going to the police, local paper, and a few other places postmarked from Ohio. He was our most useful source—and interested enough in a supplemental income to divert those letters to us.”
“He missed a couple,” I said smugly. “Aunt May got clippings from the
Optic
. What if she had phoned?”
“We’d paid a few people at the police and paper as well,” Mikey said. “Our interest was pure and above suspicion. We were your trustees after all, and had let a few people know in confidence that we feared that whatever had happened to Colette might happen to you as well.”
“Simple,” I said. “So simple.”
“Simpler then than it would be today,” he said, “what with machines sorting the mail, and Internet connections for research. We might never have gotten wind of Maybelle’s interest if she’d been able to read articles on line. If she’d contacted someone, though, we still might have managed to learn what she was doing. Humans remain the eternal weak point in any secure system.”