“…that there are fingerprints that don’t match mine or either of yours.”
She adds that Paul and Eda had given Hermione and Arthur’s wife Winifred, also a policewoman, permission to search the main house from top to bottom. The procedure, of course, was not the same as would be followed in the case of the residents themselves being suspects.
Nonetheless, since Alice is involved in this, Hermione and Winifred examined various pieces of paper in Alice’s room–and Alice, apprised of this, has no objections. In fact, if it will turn up leads on who may be involved, including Sikes-Potter, the little man, and anyone else, Alice is all for it.
They used ninhydrant spraying, magnesium powder, and other processes to turn up fingerprints. Other than Alice’s or her family’s–with those of Professor Fields, Lorna, Jock, Phoebe Atwood, and the Sharps included for elimination process, Hermione and Winifred found unknown fingerprints on:
A few ATM receipts Alice had.
The Spring 2003 schedule Alice received in the mail for the college.
An autographed picture of Alice, which she intended to give me, wearing the skimpiest of underwear and signed, “With all my love–and nothing to hide–Alice 
"
Two Archie Comics digests of mine.
A prescription slip Alice had received from her ophthalmologist, to arrange for ordering new glasses.
An unused, unopened AOL 8.0 CD-ROM.
A copy of Triumph of the Straight Dope.
And, of course, the paper bag with the “stick” in it.
Hermione says she’ll have the results on the fingerprints in two days.
Professor Fields says we were wise to have prepared, as we did, at his office, for the testimony against Lemoyne–People of California v. Victor Lemyone & Company. He will testify too; the prosecutors, whio will give him and Alice and me direct examination, are Jerome Goldberg, a bluff older man looking much like Robert Morley, and Hannah Johnson, a tall, slender, dignified black woman with several years’ experience in the D. A.'s office. The cross-examination will be provided by Lemoyne’s cousin Paul Newsome, and Erika Thallwood, propably the biggest scatterbrain ever to pass the California bar. 
We thank Fieldls and Hermione. We see them drive off, and, when we’re sure nobody else can see us, I slip my shirt down, and Alice and I take wing. No canoodling now–we have work to do.
The following morning we arrive on time at the courthouse. We’re met by Professor Fields, along with a muber of others hitherto mentioned.
In the courtoom we hear:
"People of California v. Victor Lemoyne and Company, 03-0117. The honorable Judge Bolivar Shagnasty presiding. All rise…”
The trial begins with…
a stirring rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” sung by Norah Jones. Judge Shagnasty than seats himself on the bench. He’s looks surprisingly young for a judge–no more than 28–and has a rather informal wardrobe. When he walks up to the bench I notice he’s wearing faded and threadbare blue jeans underneath his robe and some beat-up red Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars for shoes. His hair looks like he just rolled out of bed and has a spiky bleached quality to it. As I look at him slouch in his chair, I get a growing sense he’ll be addressing everyone as “dude” during the trial. However, that fear is dispelled when he opens his mouth.
“I’d like to first thank Ms. Jones for taking time out of her busy schedule to sing the national anthem,” Judge Shagnasty says with a formal and educated tone. “What a trouper. Let’s give her a big hand.”
The courtroom erupts into applause. Norah Jones smiles in appreciation and says an inaudible “thank you.”
“And congratulations on the Grammy noms,” Judge Shagnasty says after the applause dies down. “If you win maybe it will make up for the one they gave Milli Vanilli.”
His voice now seems less formal and has kind of a show biz schooze feel to it.
“Okay baliff, what have we got here?” the judge says looking over the file. "Oh, before we begin here, there’s something you should all know…
:smack: Error: that should be “show biz shmooze” rather than “show biz schooze.”
Carry on.
"Oh, before we begin here, there’s something you should all know…"
“…Mr. Lemoyne has reached an agreement with the District Attorney. He will plead guilty to one count of Disturbing the Peace in exchange for all other charges being dropped.”
WHAT??? :eek:
Alice, Professor Fields, and I are stunned. The assistant D.A.'s mentioned above give us an apologetic look (as if to say, “Sorry, but we’ve got our orders”) before schlepping out of the courtroom.
Judge Shagnasty sentences Mr. Lemoyne to pay a $5000 fine. Pocket change for a guy like him.
Lemoyne shakes hands with his lawyers and walks out of the courtroom smiling.
Alice and I stand in shocked silence for several minutes. I’m vaugely aware of Professor Fields saying something about a “damned crooked asshole D.A.” before saying goodbye and leaving. Finally, I take Alice’s hand and we walk outside…
…Just as Samantha drives up. Or rather, Mary Blonda is at the wheel.
We tell Samantha what has just transpired in the courtroom.
“I’m really not surprised,” she comments. “But remember, you have thirty days to file a petition with the Appellate Court to quash Judge Shagnasty’s ruling and petition the appellate court for a writ of mandamus.”
“What’s that?” Alice asks.
“That will overrule the District Attorney’s office. Whatever influence Lemoyne may have had won’t pass muster in the Appellate Court–which is in the district that ordered the shutdown of his business. The California Appellate Courts, and the State Supreme Court, have not condoned such lame plea-bargaining.” Samantha writes out a note to Professor Fields, and Hannah Johnson, one of the prosecutors.
Immediately, I call Professor Fields; he groans at what I tell him but says Samantha is right about filing a petition with the Appellate Court. “And the presiding justice there is Old Vinegar Joe Hale. He was Lemoyne’s DI in the Marines in Korea!” :eek:
We arrange an appointment with Fields and Samantha’s dad–another magnate with a bone to pick with Lemoyne–to get the Appellate Court filings prepared.
There’s something else I wanted to tell you, about that London magnate Henry Sikes-Porter, who now seems to be the overlord."
“What’s that?”
“He died about two hours ago.”
Alice and I say nothing. We know nothing about Sikes-Potter’s character. Samantha tells us further, that suffered a mysterious electric shock. “That’s all I know now,” she adds.
We say so long for now and she gets in the car; Mary and Samantha drive away.
Alice and I are still irritated about the anti-climactic results in the courtroom, despite what we know we can do to quash it.
Now we look and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around–unusual for the exit to a courthouse in the early afternoon.
Alice listens. “Not exactly,” she says. “Lemoyne is approaching from behind us.”
“That butface! I have an idea.” I speak sotto voce to Alice. She lowers her dress top and I remove my coat and dress shirt. We take wing, with only Lemoyne to see us. He emits a shocked scream and falls to the grass.
It was a drastic measure–but at the moment I can think of nothing else to do.
He lies there, apparently unconscious. We fly far out of sight, and take field glasses to watch, from midair; just long enough to see court attendants haul him in; and paramedics come in a few minutes.
“So he tells someone we have wings. Whom can he bribe to believe it? They’ll all be sure he’s nuts. And he won’t dare tell a cop or a doctor about the wings, either.”
Now we concentrate, for the moment, on the books, the warehouse, and Laurance Rudolph versus Grover and Yates—who may not know about the death of Sikes-Potter…
Alice calls Laurance Rudolph. Good news: he has the stolen book. It was being used to prop up the short leg of the table in the employees’ break room.
Laurance reports that, after talking to Grover and Yates over several dozen games of chess, he doesn’t think that that either of them were involved in the theft. In fact, the book was found outside near the dumpster a few days ago, and someone brought it inside.
It’s nice that Alice has her book back, but of course whoever stole it had plenty of time to photocopy whatever information he/she wanted.
Later in the afternoon, Fields calls. They’ve filed the petition for a writ of mandamus, but the Appeals Court’s schedule is packed, and it’ll be several months before the petition is ruled on. Such is the pace of justice. Hopefully, Lemoyne will stay out of our hair in the mean time.
The Terwilligers invite me to stay for dinner. Nothing fancy; they order Chinese from a place down the street. After dinner, Alice and I decide to go out and check out the Gnome Shed. I look inside, and am surprised to see…
Gwen Berry fluttering around the room just a few inches above the gnomes heads.
“Hello, Alice,” Gwen says as she flies toward us from the back of the room. “Hello _____. I heard about what happened with Lemoyne this morning in court. Just a $5,000 fine? Man, if you’re rich in this country, you can buy yourself out of anything.”
Gwen’s voice remains flat and emotionless when she says this thereby eliminating any indication of either outrage or sarcasm.
“I bet you’re upset about it,” Alice responds in a tone that, in contrast, unambiguously indicates sarcasm. “Oh, and this is the second time since your arrest that you’ve trespassed onto my property. Whoever posted your bail probably wouldn’t be too happy with your serial breaking and entering.”
“Hey, I wanted to see Lemoyne nailed every bit as much as you did,” Gwen explains as lands on the floor next to Alice. I immediately notice that Gwen and Alice are about the same height and share the same petite frame.
“Well, don’t worry,” Alice replies with slightly less sarcasm. “We’ve filed a Writ of Mandamus with the Appellate Court. I’m sure that they’ll do what the lower court didn’t. Now, explain yourself or I’m going to call the police.”
“I want to help you,” Gwen says with a voice that does seem to have a little bit of sincerity in it. “I was not the one who put the poison in that envelope for you. I only passed it on because I was ordered to. I’m only a pawn here.”
“Why should we believe you?” I ask Gwen. “We’ve talked to Lorna McManus and she tells us that you’ve got a nasty habit of giving poisoned envelopes to people.”
Gwen looks as though she’s about to cry. “I was just a pawn there too,” she pleads. “Because I work at R. Kane’s and know everything about every book that’s there, I’m in a rather unique position. Strange people come to me all the time and try to pick my brain about weird stuff. I usually blow them off. But sometimes there are people who won’t back down. People who will resort to any means to force me to help them. That’s what happened with the envelopes. That’s also why my life is in danger and I have to hide.”
“How do we know you’re not shitting us?” I skeptically ask. “That this isn’t some half-assed attempt to wring sympathy from us so you can get in our good graces and then screw us again?”
“I know Henry Sikes-Potter,” Gwen responds earnestly. With that statement, Alice and I stop still.
“I know who he is,” Gwen continues. “I know what he’s up to. I know why he’s doing it. I know how and why that scumbag Lemoyne is connected with him. I know why he was behind the poisoned envelopes. I know why he wants Alice out of the way. And, I know that he supposedly died earlier today from electric shock.”
“Tell us more,” Alice requests.
Gwen, now seated with us at a bench and with her wings retracted and covered, tells us that there are others who do, or did, want the Terwilligers’ property. Besides, there seems to be an undefined something–perhaps an ancient sentiment, of enmity, rather than greed or malice, between the Terwilligers and some faction in England, going back to the time of Henry VIII.
“The enmity was stalled during the 20th Century, because of the common cause between the Terwilligers, and That Faction, as it’s called. There were service people from both sides in the Great War and World War II who served well and assisted each other in earnest–lives saved, secrets protected, and so on. It’s actually a situation to make Sikes-Potter, Lemoyne, Tigner, and others small potatoes.”
More and more I sense that Gwen’s protestations are sincere and that, despite Lorna’s angry tirade, Gwen is truthful about her role.
“As for Lemoyne, remember–his business is down the tubes. He’s proably not complaining, with his personal fortune, but he’s also not getting any younger. He’s 68 and any emotional jolt will probably sent him downhill.”
“What do you have in mind?” Alice asks.
“He doesn’t know me. I’d like to play up to him—act as if I’m his private floozy–and then I’ll let him down hard. He has been married and divorced eight times, and each wife reached the limit of her patience with his two-timing. He can’t buy his way out of a failed romance, and that shyster Paul Newsome can’t help him, either.”
I discuss this sotto voce with Alice; she agrees and we suggest a time and place, the bookstore perhaps, for Gwen to start enticing Lemoyne.
Alice, going back to the earlier topic, notes that the Terwilligers have had a great many ministers, Catholic priests, and other religious people all the way back to Henry VIII. “The family has had little tolerance for witches and mystics,” Alice adds, “and that probably jibes with your comments.”
Emotionally, Alice and I still hold Gwen at arm’s length. Alice, furthermore, doesn’t want Gwen to appear unannounced on the Terwilligers’ property any more, and urges her not to return without invitation. Gwen agrees and leaves–not on the wing, but walking out of the shed and getting into her little Ford Escort and driving away.
Alice and I sit on the bench and cuddle, happy that we’ve made some headway here. We’re like that for a little while when Officer Winifred Lingley Terwilliger, Arthur’s wife, brings us some information.
She tells us that:
Henry Sikes-Potter has indeed died and a coroner’s report was made with the D. A.‘s office in San Francisco.
The fingerprint results are in. Lemoyne’s fingerprints were not found anywhere on the Terwilligers’ property. Of the unknowns, there was indeed a dwarf named Pula Kinlai, born in Poland; CPO Sparr; a plumber named Bill Topp, whom Paul and Eda had admitted into Alice’s room to fix some pipes leading to the adjoining bathroom; and the Sharps’ grandson, Jack Sharp II.
“What was he doing there?” I ask.
Alice laughs. “Jack and Eloise visited with him. Andrew’s little boy. He picked up some papers that fell off my dressing table and landed on the floor when my door was open. Jack said that at school little Jack II told the class, ‘I wanna have a lot of kids like Grandpa and Grandma.’ Then he scared the little girls when he looked straight at them.” I can’t help smirkng and tittering at this.
Alice grips my hand firmly and looks me straight in the eye; her pupils are big again. “How’d you like to make like Jack and Eloise?”
I smile. We go over to a heavy mat on the floor in the shed. We’re not likely to be disturbed–Paul and Eda are watching a soccer game on TV, and Arthur is cleaning his guns on the back porch. Alice and I slip each other’s clothes off and do it hot and heavy on the mat, squealing and sighing with delight. Then we just lie there and slip a blanket over us, and nod off.
About an hour later there is a light knock at the shed door. Eda calls out to Alice, “There’s a phone call for you…”
“Alright. Be there in a minute.”
Grudgingly, we get dressed and go inside. Alice picks up the phone, listens for a moment, and then quickly hits the button for Speaker Phone. We hear a woman’s voice. She sounds like she’s middle-aged, maybe at the older end of middle-aged. She sounds very pleased with herself:
“There were some setbacks after the untimely death of Mr. Tilden, but now the Sikes-Potter Reality Altering Device is fully operational again. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that the Terwilliger family has been selected to win the Grand Prize.”
“Let me guess,” Alice says sarcastically, “Ed MacMahon will be showing up with the huge check?”
The woman on the phone laughs. “Good one, Miss Terwilliger. You’ll need that sense of humor where you and your family are going. Goodbye.”
Not two seconds after the woman hangs up, a tear in reality hits us. Suddenly…
…Alice and I, fully dressed, with wings retracted, are out in the valley area, tied to stakes. We don’t know who the weird personage facing us is; perhaps Lemoyne after a visit to a makeup-college dropout, perhaps a resuscitated Sikes-Potter, perhaps a mystic with a 500-year-old grudge against the Terwilligers.
The shadowy figure does not speak. It seems clear he intends to dispatch Alice and me; and we are too terrified to speak.
But in the distance, I see something really different. A shiny black hearse–which perhaps we will ride 
--is parked nearby. But there is the Salbert skeleton, leaning against a large upright mass of stone. And I squint, and make out a message:
“You are about to solve the mystery of the mirrored circle.”
“This is it–” croaks Alice, as the mystic begins making a gesture suggesting he is about to hit us with a fatal spell.
In fact he speaks. “Paul, Eda, Arthur, Winifred, Daniel, Hermione, and you will now face the revenge of That Faction! The ‘whammy’ I am about to hit you with will do away with all of the Terwilligers!”
Suddenly–in the distance–we hear a loud blast. Apparently the stolen ordnance near the old house has finally been detonated.
Since Alice and I are tied to stakes, we don’t move much. The mystic, however, loses his balance, and his whammy strikes the face of the mirror—and reflects right back to him! He screams in agony and disintegrates to dust right then and there.
Then the Salbert skeleton approaches and unties us. As we sit on the ground, catching our breath, Salbert returns to normal form, looking much like the “Sagebrush” prospector character from Cracked Mazagine, including old-style Western clothes.
Alice thanks him for releasing us. I ask, just curious, “Why didn’t you do anything sooner?”
“Because I only appeared with the hearse and the sign just before you two gained consciousness of your surroundings. Besides, I wanted to keep that mystic from attacking me as well. I wasn’t about to let you wind up as desert dust.”
We heartily thank Salbert again. He smiles with a “Ghis revido!” and drives off in the hearse.
We stand up–and embrace tearfully. Once again Alice senses a huge burden removed from her shoulders. “It may be that That Faction cannot harry us any more,” she says hopefully.
I embrace her closely. We look around, and the stakes, the mystic dust, the house, the Starbuck’s, the mound over the cache of weaponry, all are gone. Nothing remains but us, the giant mirrored circle–intact–and the awesome desert scenery; and, of course, our cliff and exitway. It seems the chapter of That Faction vs. the Terwilligers has at long last concluded.
We strip to the waist and fly back up to the port in the cliff. Inside we go to the secret bedroom–at Alice’s urging.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask blandly.
“Remember, the semester starts in about ten days,” she answers. And we have yet another situation to deal with…" She opens a thick catalog-like book and finds a reference. “This is the next matter we’ll have to deal with, until Gwen begins her ‘Sugardaddy’ ruse with Lemoyne.”
Alice’s book, which goes into more detail about her physical similarity to Gwen…
is some sort of reference guide. Tucked inside the covers are loose pieces of paper that Alice pulls out and reviews. However, one question quickly comes to my mind.
“Why is there a section about your physical similarity to Gwen?” I ask Alice. “While it’s true you’re about the same height and build, it’s not like you two are identical twins. Gwen’s face is rounder and more egg-shaped than your’s. Your eyebrows are darker and your jawline is more angled. Gwen’s also looks like she’s skinnier than you–she actually needs to gain about ten pounds or so.”
“I’ll get to that,” she answers. "But there’s more you should know before we attend to this next matter…
"…when I was growing up, Gwen’s family lived near ours. The Berrys’ house caught fire one night, when I was about 12 and Gwen was 5. The living room, the kitchen, the garage were destroyed. Much of their stuff was intact but the firemen wouldn’t let the Berrys back into the house for weeks. Dad and Mum took them in.
"At that time Gwen was physically similar to the way I had been at her age. Of course, around the age of 13 I started to fill out. Gwen never really did–as you noted, she’s quite lithe.
"Even after the Berrys returned to their rebuilt home they were close to us for years. We sensed some of their needs and I gave Gwen all my older clothes–‘hand-me-downs,’ as you might call them.
“And a few years ago we took a gym class in the college. Gwen was 18, I was 26. We were all grouped by stature for such things as running, gymnastics, group games. Gwen also had a lively sense of humour and loaned me some clothes, joking that my ‘attributes’ would show better under a slimmer girl’s clothes.” But Alice is not smiling, in fact she is quite glum.
“So what happened to her family?”
Alice breaks down. “Some drunk in a stolen car killed her parents. Ran them down and then crashed into a light pole.” She breaks into racking sobs. I hold her close–and I am hard put not to break down too.
She regains her composure. “The drunk survived,” she says bitterly. “The saving grace is that this bastard tried plea-bargaining–and the sheriff was hard put to keep a mob from lynching the D.A.”
“Who was the D. A. in that incident?”
“I don’t know. But I remember the date of the accident: May 6, 1996. About 9:40 in the evening.”
I allow Alice time to pull herself completely together. Well, sometimes I think I’ve heard it all…:mad: When Alice feels up to it, we go over to her computer setup. I use it this time, and pull up the newspaper story of when the drunk was arraigned, the following June 27. Word got out about the attempt to plea-bargain, and there was hell to pay. The prosecutor’s name: Jerome Goldberg!
“The same one who sucked up to Lemoyne!” Alice says in astonishment.
“That’s why I talked to Professor Fields. Under California law, even under the most favorable of circumstances, such procedure is followed at an arraignment. By the time of trial it’s too late. Hence the contact with the Appellate Court: The days should be numbered for Judge Shagnasty and Jerome Goldberg.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” Alice answers. I’ve finished with the computer, and I sit on a large bench just inside the computer room, with Alice on my lap. I’ve tried to dry her tears…
I continue, “Tell me more about the catalog, the clippings you have in it, and your contact with Gwen before I met you.”
Alice describes a rather mundane situation:
“Well, Gwen had musical aspirations for a time,” Alice begins. “In fact, she still might but she’s mostly put them on hold for now. Like me, she plays the piano and is also quite competent on guitar.”
Alice reaches for her book, searches for a page, and continues talking.
“A few times, Gwen and I performed together as a part of a quartet at a few coffeehouses around the university. We did mostly covers of folk and alternative songs. I have a picture of us taken at one of these performances. Gwen is the one with the guitar and I’m at the piano—”
Just as Alice opens the book to the page where the photo she’s describing is, a big moth colored a fluorescent blue, red, and green flies out of it. Momentarily distracted by the strange insect, we follow it as it flutters around the room not sure whether to catch it or let it out. Finally, it lands on the computer desk and I put a glass over it to prevent it from flying away while we decide what to do with it.
“Have you seen a moth like this before?” I ask Alice.
“Never,” she answers. "But I think we should…
…take it to a lepidopterist to check it out."
“I know one,” I say. “Mary Blonda–the driver when Samantha met us at the courthouse.”
I call Mary and the next day we go out to the Blondas’ house in a quiet suburban area several miles away. It’s on a Saturday morning; Mary and her family will be there. We pull up in front of the house; Mary’s husband Bob is pruning roses and their two preadolescent sons, Bobby and George, are tossing a football back and forth. We greet Bob, a rather ordinary-looking man, and he says, “Mary will be right out.” We wait at the front porch.
Mary comes out. As I have noted before, she is rather a clone of Dolly Parton, but several inches taller. Bob blushes as she approaches, and no wonder. For a 36-year-old mother of three–including her 14-year-old daughter April, who is on a date–she is extremely shapely, and is dressed as usual–ill-fitting white blouse and faded blue jeans, and house slippers. And she goes braless. She greets us; she is rather a mercurial sort, but we get down to business. We have the moth in a large jar, with holes punched in a rubbery material stretched over the top as a lid. The jar is partially opaque because of the moth’s noctural lifestyle.
“Looks sort of like the Microsoft butterfly. Where did you get it?”
“It came out of a thick book like a Sears catalog, and was flitting around, inside a basement room–yes, where I have computer equipment,” Alice answers. She doesn’t want to tell Mary about the catacombs.
Mary notes that moths were in fact an early problem with computer equipment. “In fact that’s where the word ‘bug’ came from, as used in electronic surveillance.”
We’re standing beneath the porch overhang, as to keep the moth out of bright sunlight.
Mary continues, “Ordinarily moths don’t go below ground. I believe this species does, though. It doesn’t fly around trees, and like pigeons and rats has adapted fully to humans’ urbanized surroundings. I don’t know the genus or species name offhand, but we’ll check it in my books.”
Mary is not a professional entomologist, but she does biological research. As is often the case with women–particularly attractive ones–she has encountered frequent difficulty in her work, by male scientists who won’t take her seriously. But she has been admired for her dedication and tenacity and rarely has trouble getting what she wants. We go into a room in the house where she keeps live insect specimens–an impressive array of such critters. Goliath beetles, butterflies, katydids, praying mantises–etcetera. She deftly puts the colorful moth into a large container it can survive in, and labels the container “Unidentified moth–Alice Terwilliger–1-11-03.” She says she’ll call us in a few days; if the moth is in fact of a hitherto unnamed species Alice may have the privilege of naming it.
Before we get back to the car we stop; Alice has a comment for Mary. “I notice that your husband blushes when you approach–and your boys act similarly.”
Mary smiles slightly. “My boys are of the age when they start to notice girls. When Bob first met me we were both about 11–and he has always reacted the same to me. He has been a wonderful man, and Bobby and George are growing up just fine.”
We leave, and Alice gets a call on her cell phone, which rings with the first two or three bars of “Rule, Britannia.”
“Hello? …oh, hello, Mum…who?” she appears delighted. “Oh, I understand…when? Very well…We went to a friend’s home near the college…just some research, Mum. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Luv you. Bye.” She slips the phone back into her large tote bag.
“We’re going to get a visit from Dad’s uncle in England! All Mum would say is that he heard about a man named Sikes-Potter who died, and Uncle Matthew wants to speak to us directly.”
I sense that this may be further ramifications of the bizarre mirror-and-whammy incident out in our desert tableau. No surprise, really, if the mystic’s statements have any vestige of truth to them.
“And she didn’t say what he’s coming about. But he’s a rector–Dr. Matthew Lucas Terwilliger. He visited last time when I was five. Calls me ‘Lissie.’” From her expression and tone of voice she doesn’t care much one way or the other about her great-uncle’s nickname for her.
We return to the Terwilligers’ house and note in a progress log Alice keeps in her room, of our meeting with Mary. Daniel is there, and the three of us play Yahtzee and tell funny stories for a while; then Alice goes to her piano in the den and plays a variety of songs. Daniel sings, and has a pleasant tenor.
After dinner we return to the catalog. Alice tells me more about her encounters with Gwen…
“Of the four members of our group, Gwen was the most serious about pursuing a music career,” Alice continues. “I just saw it as a sidelight to my real plans–a way to earn extra money while doing something I liked. So did the other two girls in the group.”
“What did you call your group?” I ask.
“Prester John’s Aunt,” she answers. “Like I said, we mainly did covers but Gwen also wrote some songs for the group.”
As Alice says this, I look at a picture of the group in the book. Despite their thrift shop threads, I can easily identify Gwen and Alice. The other two, however, I don’t know. The bass player is a tall, full-figured brunette with a purple streak in her hair while the drummer is a bleach blonde with short spiky hair and an overbite.
“Who are the other members?” I ask.
“The girl on bass is Amy Dolan,” Alice answers. “After she graduated, she went to law school and is now an attorney in St. Paul, Minnesota. And, no, she doesn’t still have that purple streak in her hair. The drummer is Lena Martinez. She’s now a school teacher in Las Vegas.”
“So what happened with Prester John’s Aunt?”
“Well, the group slowly drifted apart and Gwen started doing gigs on her own. She also dropped out of school and started devoting most of her efforts to her music career. It was during this time, by the way, that Gwen started working at R. Kane’s so she could stay afloat financially.”
“Do you think Gwen is any good?”
“Gwen has talent. I don’t doubt that. She can certainly write songs better than I can. Other people in the music industry also thought so. Several record companies even sent out representatives to contact her.”
“So what happened with her music career?”
Alice stops for a moment as if trying to find a way to properly word her answer.
"What happened was…
…she was in the English class taught by that bastard John McGowan." Alice scowls darkly. “I don’t know that there was any connection, but Gwen developed tinnitus in her left ear about halfway through the semester. She recovered from that, but around the end of that semester she lost her sense of pitch and, besides, she had a shaking in her left hand and couldn’t play the guitar–at least, to make a career out of it. Hence she left school. So far as I know, she never pursued a complaint against that jerk and for the time being she stopped playing music–except for her own enjoyment, I suppose, and to keep from getting rusty. About a year later she did take Timothy McGowan’s [the older professor] class and focused on literature. She’s read all the Great Books, Shakespeare, Milton, Shaw, and so on. But that was years ago and Gwen soon recovered her sense of music–and the problem with her hand was long gone by the time the record companies contacted her.”
“Amy Dolan…I think I remember her. Biggest cut-up in school. Told jokes like Milton Berle or Steve Wright and must have had an I. Q. of Infiinty.”
“You knew her?”
“Well…only peripherally. I used to date a statuesque blonde named Jeanette Strong. Amy’s cousin. She was a guitar player herself. You name the style, she played it–folk, rock, folk rock, rockabilly, classical…Six feet tall, shapely–well, almost like Sally Mears. I broke up with her because she started smoking–cigars! She joined with three guys and formed The Cigar Band.”
“The Cigar Band? I think I’ve heard of them. All really good musicians. Who were the others in the group?”
“Phil Ramirez, a left-handed bass player; Johnny Goss, a skinny guy who sang and managed; and Jeremy Britton, a pudgy balding guy who played the drums.”
Alice seethes slightly when I mention Britton.
"And you knew him?"
“I think I went to high school with him. Smart-aleck. Good sense of rhythm, but that’s about it. He hardly ever used any of his intelligence. I bet he and Jeanette slept together.”
“Oh yes. Amy told me she did. Jeanette lived across the street from me. On stage Jeanette would wear a long gray flannel dress–ankle-length–silver pumps, a heavy chain around her neck with a silver skull on it, a 60s-style headband, and nothing else. Amy said Jeanette had the morals of a trout.”
Alice smirks and says, “Did you find that out?”
“Not me! When I was dating her her older brother spied on is. Between that and her smoking cigars–that’s why we broke up. After that her brother moved away. Amy said I was wrong, but I couldn’t take the guy’s threats and her cigar smoke.”
“So she slept with Britton–and what about Goss and Ramirez?”
“She sleeps with Goss, too. Ramirez was, and is, married. Jeanette spent a night with him and it damn near ended the marriage. His wife went straight through the roof when she found out. Good God, Phil was chastened. He never tried that with Jeanette again. Amy always admired Jeanette’s music, but not her promiscuity or cigar smoking.”
By the time this conversation is over we’ve reached Alice’s home again. We go inside, and Eda tells us Dr. Terwilliger will be here tomorrow around noon, coming in a taxi fron the airport.
With our tasks for the day completed, we return to Alice’s bedroom. We just sit in a large chair continuing our conversation over Earl Gray tea…but we soon turn our attention to much more personal matters, if you know what I mean… 
Alice puts on her Portishead CD and you can guess what happens next.
A few hours later, Alice and I get a phonecall from Mary Blonda. She still hasn’t identified the moth but wants to do some more research before she’s sure it’s an unidentified species. However, that’s not the reason why she called: it seems as though the moth has been giving off a luminous glow for the last few hours and is furiously flying around its container in a sideways-eight pattern (i.e., the sign for infinity).
“Mary wants to know if you or I saw the moth do any of those things before we brought it in,” Alice asks me while momentarily turning her head away from the phone receiver and toward me.
“I didn’t see anything like THAT,” I tell her. “The color and size of that thing were weird enough for me.”
Alice goes back to her conversation with Mary and tells her that neither of us saw the moth behave that way. After a short while, she hangs up the phone.
“Mary will observe the moth a bit more and call us back tomorrow,” Alice informs me. “However, before then, she wants me to take a closer look at the place where we found the moth and see if there’s anything unusual.”
“You mean your secret bedroom?” I ask. “You want to go back there now?”
“Sure,” she responds as she heads out the door. “I think we have time for it. My uncle will be here tomorrow and that probably won’t leave us with a lot of time to do it then.”
I follow Alice into the shed, down the elevator, into the catacombs, and into her secret room. There, we closely examine it but don’t see anything we didn’t see there before.
“The moth flew out of your book,” I point out to Alice (who obviously knows this). “Where did you keep the book?”
“In a small shelf in that small closet near the entrance,” she answers. “But we’ve already look in there.”
“Let’s do it again,” I say while opening the closet door. “What harm is there?”
I look at the contents of Alice’s closet. Nothing in there but some clothes and some books on subjects Alice knows more about than I do. On the floor of the closet, there’s a blue and green checkered piece of carpet. I look closely. The carpet look frayed and worn.
“What’s this carpet in the closet made of?” I ask Alice.
“I’m pretty sure it some type of acrylic,” Alice answers. “I don’t think any moth would be interested in that.”
As she says this, I pull on the carpet and part of it lifts up off the floor.
“Why did you do that?” Alice peevishly asks. “Closely looking at a room doesn’t mean vandalizing it.”
I don’t answer. I see an iron button in the concrete floor that had been previously covered up by the carpet and am instantly overwhelmed by curiosity.
“Alice, look at this,” I say. “What’s this button for?”
She looks at it silently. I don’t think she knows.
“I’ve never seen it before in my life,” Alice responds.
I push the button. We both hear a rumbling sound from the hallway and rush out of the room to see what it is. There, to the left of the bedroom, a passage has opened up.
“This place is getting to be more like a funhouse all the time,” I comment. “Want to see where this leads?”
“After you,” Alice says. She’s still curious but a bit more cautious.
We head down the dark passage for what seems like 100 feet (fortunately, we remembered to bring along flashlights). At its end, we come up what looks like a rail track. On the track is a two seated rail car–the type of car you see for a roller coaster or some other type of amusement park ride. Alice and I get in and the car, which must be motion-activated, starts moving through a tunnel.
“Where do you think this car will take us?” I shout at Alice while trying to be heard over the din of the car on the track.
“I don’t know,” she yells back. “But we’ll find out soon.”
After about 15 minutes, the car passes through the tunnel and…
"I don’t know
:smack: Note: scratch that last “I don’t know.” The posting should end with:
“After about 15 minutes, the car passes through the tunnel and…”
…We get out of this “doom buggy.” We’re out in the open–across the street from the Terwilligers’ property.
“I guess this is some kind of subway,” I comment.
Alice pauses. “I think it is. When this street was opened the local authorities posted signs prohibiting crossing on foot, for about five miles in each direction. It’s not that severe now, but they suggested several ideas for crossing safely.”
It does appear as if this is some kind of private subway. Then I see a handwritten sign which has fallen from screws on the concrete wall. Interestingly, it gives names like “Paul Terwilliger,” “Walter Berry,” “business district,” “college access,” “civic center.”
“This suggests something my Dad proposed. He and his friends built the catacomb system but never used it himself. And the rooms I use for the computer, and my bedroom, and the elevator system.”
We’ve been walking and approach a house, which appears abandoned. One-level, old-fashioned frame house, similar to the Terwilligers’. It shows obvious signs of remodeling.
“This was the Berrys’ house. You can see where part of it was rebuilt after the fire.” Alice continues. “After the death of Gwen’s parents, her family sold the house; we offered to take Gwen in–she was 14 then–but her aunt and uncle wanted her to live with them. Until she joined us to form Prester John’s Aunt, and started working in the bookstore, she lived on the proceeds of the sale.”
Slightly curious, I ask, “Who bought the house?”
“Some construction company. They planned to raze it and put up a high-rise. Six months after they closed the sale and paid off Gwen’s family the company went bankrupt. The company that owns it now isn’t interested in building. For all I know they’ll just let it collapse.” I wonder just who bought the abandoned house and why…but right now we have other fish to fry. :rolleyes:
We return to the “subway” and in fact hear a car rumbling toward us, from the other direction. It stops and the doors open, much like the (L. A.) Metro Blue Line. And in fact it looks a lot like a Blue Line car inside. We return to the “Paul Terwilliger” station and alight. Then we hear a clicking sound and two pieces of paper fall out of a slot in the wall. We pick them up and return to the exit from this odd “subway station,” back into the catacombs, which I have only partly explored. Alice and I still have our flashlights, not that we need them with the overhead lights. And, of course, I still pack my Magnum and she carries Arthur’s shotgun.
The papers are: a slapdash “schedule” for what I now call The Terwilliger Subway; and–to our surprise–a nude picture of Gwen, as if printed in a newspaper. :eek:
I chuckle and say, “I didn’t know she went in for this sort of thing!”
Alice has been reading the other side more carefully. Text neatly printed in newspaper-story type, several paragraphs. Alice is fascinated more and more as she reads. She ignores my comment about Gwen and says, utterly astonished, "Listen to this!"
She reads one paragraph:
"VICTORIAN HOUSE DISAPPEARS
Members of the City Police and Fire Departments are at a loss to explain the seemingly overnight disappearance of a Victorian mansion located on the south 23rd block of Knight Street in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. The house, which was built in 1886, had been unoccupied for the last six years and was owned H. Espee Limited–a British corporation. The lot where the house was indicates no trace of fire or demolition–just a bare patch of ground where the structure used to be. Neighbors claim that there was no unusual activity around the house in the days before its disappearance but–for about three weeks preceding the disappearance–there was an infestation of unidentified moths that were colored blue, red, and green."
“How old is that article?” I ask as a chill of uneasiness goes up my spine.
“It looks as though it’s from the last few years,” Alice replies. “It seems to be from an ‘alternative’ news publication.”
“Are you sure it’s not a tabloid?” I say. “I don’t think a reputable publication would have nude pictures and an outlandish story like that.”
“Tabloids usually don’t have music reviews,” Alice replies after glancing at the opposite side with Gwen’s picture. “There’s the beginning of a review of a local bar band right next to Gwen’s photo. Besides, Gwen’s nude photo seems to be of an artistic nature rather than T&A.”
“Especially considering Gwen doesn’t have much ‘T’,” I respond after Alice hands the paper back to me. “Do you see how emaciated she looks? I mean, she’s Lara Flynn Boyle thin. I thought you were skinny but she makes you look buxom. I hope she doesn’t have an eating disorder.”
“Gwen’s been really thin for awhile,” Alice explains while taking back the piece of paper (and giving me a reproving look for my ‘Gwen doesn’t have much T’ comment). “She became a vegan when she was a teenager and lost about a fair amount of weight as a result. Also, all the stress in her life probably hasn’t helped much either.”
“But what about the house that disappeared and weird moths?” I ask Alice. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes,” she says and reads on: