The Puzzler's Mansion (17 page)

THEY MUDDLED THEIR WAY
through the complicated board game. Whenever they got to a rule they didn't understand or didn't like, they changed it or ignored it. By the time they were done, the game would have been unrecognizable to whoever invented it, but the three of them had fun for an hour, even if they couldn't figure out who had won.

They came upstairs and heard music. They ran down the hall and found most everyone gathered in the music room. Richard was at the piano, and Kimberly was sitting on a tall stool, her cello leaning against her, the bow sawing gently back and forth across the strings.

Winston had no idea what they were playing but was staggered by how it sounded.

Winston had been to a few classical music concerts over the years, dragged by teachers anxious to expose their students to the arts. Mostly he'd been bored. The music had been nice enough—
beautiful,
as his teachers rapturously described it—but after half an hour, he was done. Unfortunately, the concerts were never that
short. He usually stared off into space and thought of puzzles involving musical instruments.

But this was different! For one thing, the musicians were fifteen feet away from him, not stick figures on a distant stage. He could see Richard's facial muscles tense and relax as he concentrated on a particular passage. He could see that Kimberly kept her eyes closed almost the whole time, and even when she opened them briefly, she looked like somebody having a pleasant dream.

And there was something about there being just two instruments, a piano and a cello. Of
course
a full orchestra with five million instruments is going to make spectacular music. After the first couple of pieces, it doesn't even seem all that impressive anymore. If there are only two instruments, Winston supposed, they had to work a lot harder. Richard and Kimberly didn't appear to be
working
, though—they made it look easy. The music flowing out of their instruments seemed somehow magical. It was crystal clear, like you could see the actual sound waves spreading out into the world. Winston could have sat there all day.

After Richard and Kimberly played their final notes, there was a moment of silence that ended when Mal said in a low voice, “Wow.” His sincere amazement made everyone laugh and turn to see who had spoken. Mal always liked making people laugh, but usually he did it on purpose. This time he hadn't meant to, and he turned bright red.

Richard and Kimberly thanked them all. “Especially you, Mal,” Richard said, with a dry smile. There was more laughter, and then the two musicians launched into another piece, exactly as Winston had hoped. Throughout the entire concert, he didn't think about puzzles at all . . . although a puzzle idea did occur to him later.

*   *   *

Dinner was another team effort. Vera the cook had stocked many jars of her homemade tomato sauce to go over pasta, but that wasn't good enough for Larry Rossdale, who insisted he wanted to make fresh. A chef had recently appeared on his television show and taught him how to prepare a sauce that would make them all die of joy. Everybody was fine with this, so he and Derek Bibb went off to town to buy ingredients. When they returned, volunteers were sought to help with the preparations. “We bought makings for an excellent salad, too,” said Larry. “We're going to need every knife in the house to chop this stuff.”

Winston didn't have anything else to do, so he stepped forward, and so did Mal and Jake. They were put at a large butcher block and given a ton of vegetables to chop. Others stood at the countertops, washing mushrooms or chopping onions. Larry set about slicing individual spinach leaves with the concentration of a surgeon.

Gerard Deburgh wasn't doing much of anything. He spied his daughter standing across the room and said, “Amanda, why don't you entertain everyone while we're working? Play some music for us.” He gestured to the smaller piano in the room off the kitchen.

“Oh, I'd love to hear you play,” said Kimberly Schmidt encouragingly.

Amanda looked horrified. Her mother saw this and came to the rescue. “Gerard, we discussed this before we came—”

“Oh, I know that,” Gerard said, waving his hands and dismissing that long-ago discussion.

“And you agreed she wouldn't have to play for anyone while we're here.”

Gerard shook his head. “Yes, I know what I said. But she's a very good pianist, and we're in the home of Richard Overton.” He looked
at his daughter and said it again, in case she had forgotten where she was. “Richard Overton! Here is your chance to impress one of the great living classical musicians!” The great musician himself was standing at the counter, frowning, chopping tomatoes and trying valiantly to ignore this conversation.

“I don't want to,” said Amanda.

“That's okay,” said Kimberly. “Another time. It's okay.”

It wasn't okay with Amanda's father. “You need to assert yourself, Amanda! Step forward and show off your talent!”

“I just don't want to!” Amanda said again. Her voice had the wobbly quality of someone holding back a great deal of emotion. “And you promised you wouldn't ask!”

“Ahhhh.” Gerard waved his hands again. Maybe he had more to say on the topic, but Amanda brought the conversation to a close by running out of the room. Candice glared at her husband and then followed her daughter.

For a moment the only sound in the kitchen was of people chopping. Gerard stood there looking regretful and confused. He said to the room, “She's really very good. I don't know why she's so shy about it. She certainly didn't get that from me!”

Derek said, “She'll come around in her own time, Gerard. You can't force these things.”

“Her own time? She's been taking piano lessons for ten years! She practices four hours a day!”

Mal slid his chair backward as if that sentence had hit him in the chest. The kids understood this conversation did not involve them, but this was too much. “Four hours a
day
?” Mal asked. “Really?”

Gerard looked at Mal, initially with surprise and then with a teacherly frown. “That's what you have to do,” he said. “If you want
to be
great,
that's what you have to do. Anybody can be
good.
If you want to be the best, that requires a special effort and a special passion.” Winston got the feeling Gerard often said that last bit to his daughter. He said it like he was reading it out of a book.

Larry was very happy walking around the kitchen, giving his team of assistant cooks further instructions. Winston was told to cut the mushrooms into smaller pieces. Gerard was instructed to make himself useful and put a big pot of water on to boil. “Let's put those restaurant skills to work,” Larry said to him. Gerard shrugged and said fine, giving every indication this task was beneath him.

It was sort of fun, working together as a big team, and dinner was as good as Larry said it would be. They all had big platefuls of pasta along with a delicious salad. Winston had never before used the word
delicious
to describe a salad.

As dinner wound down, Richard and Norma excused themselves. “We're going to set up the final puzzle of the evening,” Richard said. “I'll ask you all to stay out of the pool area for the time being.”

“We'll take care of the cleanup here,” Kimberly assured him.

“Of course,” Derek agreed.

Winston and the boys were given the duty of clearing off the dining room table. Mal, who could be counted on to turn a job like this into a circus act, balancing as many dirty dishes as he could on one arm, instead took the job seriously: the plates and bowls were milk-white with gold trim, and Mal didn't need anyone to tell him that they were mega-expensive.

“So, the pool, huh?” said Jake as they worked.

“Hopefully not
in
the pool,” said Candice Deburgh. She too was helping to clear the table, if standing and watching the boys work could be called helping.

“Come on, that'd be fun,” said Mal. “It's a puzzle
and
a contest to see who can hold their breath the longest.”

After some time Norma came back and told them the puzzle was ready. The group filed through the exercise room and down a short hallway to the pool. One by one, they looked around and said, “Oooh!” Beyond the glass walls, the sky was a dark purple-black. Inside, the pool was lit from within, shimmering a magical blue. More lights around the perimeter of the room gave the whole place an otherworldly glow. The eerie beauty was heightened further by a number of silver party balloons, floating about head high. They looked like a bunch of ghosts waiting patiently for introductions. Calm piano music played—jazz this time, not classical.

Richard stepped into a circle of light. “Good evening,” he said. “Welcome to the day's final puzzle. And, not incidentally, dessert and coffee, which you can find on the table right over there. The desserts need no explanation. The puzzle does. Listen closely.”

When he was sure everybody was listening, he said, “Around the room are two dozen balloons. Please do not pop them. Each balloon has a word or a phrase on it. Most of these balloons can be paired up, according to a rule that you must figure out. When you have discovered the rule and matched up each pair of balloons, there will be two balloons left over. The words on these final two balloons can be put together to form a clue to a five-letter word. The first person to tell me that word is, of course, the winner.”

“Mommy, I want a balloon!” said Ryan or Ian loudly. His eyes were huge as he took in the place.

“After the puzzle is done, you can have
all
the balloons,” said Richard. Betty winced, and Winston didn't understand why, but then the other brother shouted, “He can't have all the balloons! I want some balloons, too!” And that one started crying, and then they were both
crying. Betty immediately dragged them out of the room, once again blocked from the festivities by her brats. Winston felt bad for her.

“Are we working together or in pairs or what?” asked Chase Worthington.

“You may do as you please,” Richard said. “But I have only the one prize. If you work in a group, it will be up to you to determine who should receive it.”

Like Derek Bibb, who now owned an oil painting and had waved off the idea of winning anything else, Winston knew he could not accept any more prizes. Indeed, he still felt awkward about those cuff links. He knew there was a good chance his parents would tell him he should not have accepted such an extravagant gift, and heaven knew what crazy prize Richard had waiting for them this time. It could be anything. Winston had a moment where he saw himself going home in a taxi . . . towing Richard's grand piano on a flatbed trailer.

“When do we start?” asked Larry.

“You already have,” Richard replied. He smiled and said, “Good luck,” and sat down to watch the fun.

The guests walked around slowly, looking this way and that, like Alice in a particularly strange part of Wonderland. Winston gazed at the balloons, trying to get a sense of the words on them. It was quite a random assortment. Here was the word ACORN. There was the phrase OPEN SESAME. Here was the word PRINCESS. He didn't see any words that clearly belonged together.

He found himself walking next to Jake. “What do you think?” his friend asked.

“I've got nothing.”

“MONTANA and OREGON have to go together, right?”

Winston hadn't seen either of those words. It was probably time to write things down. “I guess that makes sense,” he said.