writing an incoherent short story that haphazardly jumps from setting to setting and is laden with mispellings, grammatical errors and typos.
The door opens principal’s office and out steps…
[:smack: Correction. The last sentence should read:]
“The door opens to the principal’s office and out steps…”
[Carry on.]
…Wierd Al Yankovik. “Hey,” he says cheerfully, “I hear that your english teacher wasn’t impressed with your surreal continuing story. We’re gonna have to punish you. Step this way, please (He points down the hall.) You too, Alice.”
Alice and I walk down the hallway with Wierd Al following behind us. It is a very spooky hallway. There are no electric lights, only torches in brackets which cast dim illumination on dirty stone walls. The walls are decorated with chains, axes, and swords smeared with (hopefully) fake blood. As we pass by certain doors, we hear screaming and pleading coming from within. Not helping matters is the fact that Wierd Al is playing a funeral dirge n his accordion.
Finally Al says to stop. We have come to a large, heavy steel door. Al opens it, and inside we find…
…The office of the building inspector. As luck would have it, no one else is present; according to the posted hours nobody will be in the office today, or tomorrow. “And it’s a public office,” Alice comments. “We should have full access to the files.”
We start looking through the microfiche file for the Terwilliger inspecion. We find it and put it under the viewer. Then my cell phone rings. “Al,” I ask, “Would you hold this equipment? I need both hands free… Just leave me the pad and pen.”
“Sure,” he says.
“Hello?”
“This is the sound engineer. We have those recordings you made. And tell Alice Terwilliger that her two sets of prints are also here. We’re at 477 Nostalgia Lane. We’ll be open 'til late this evening.”
“Thanks,” I say, and hang up.
Meanwhile Alice and Al have located the Terwilliger file.
“Nothing unusual here–at least for now,” Alice notes. “Just the same, let’s copy the whole file and take it with us.”
Weird Al has a booking so he can’t come along. We gather our data, return the microfiche to its file, sign out, and head for the engineer’s shop.
The engineer is Casey Jones. 
He gives me the sound recordings and Alice the sets of prints.
We drive back to her place and listen to the recordings, and compare the photos. Alice snapped a view with the Minolta and the same view with the infrared camera.
Alice hears an odd moan from her car, which is parked outside.
“I think you left that old CD player on. That’s the sound we heard on the road.”
We go through the evidence thoroughly, and put together the pieces we have gathered.
The treadles Lemoyne planted between the Terwilliger house and the utility shed, connected to a signal box adjoining the gnome room.
Various signs of life indicated in the infrared shots.
Voices–not familiar to either of us–on the recordings usually beginning with a low-pitched beep, followed by "
Someone’s coming!" and some clumping and rustling sounds.
I made a thorough inspection of the treadles and the alarm apparatus inside the shed. Everywhere the serial number 2323232323 appeared–always the number 23 repeated 5 times. This may be the basis for Alice’s numerology theory.
There’s a knock on the door. It’s Professor Fields, along with a deputy district attorney.
He comes in and tells us what his detectives had found and furnishes a thorough file of evidence:
1: Rita Waterford is, and has been for years, a member of V. A. Lemoyne’s secretarial pool.
2: Professor John McGowan had wom a scholarship furinished through an endowment by Lemoyne, and in fact had done research for the company–unusual for a young English professor.
3: Various students on the campus were in fact part-time employees of Lemoyne’s company. Some were not listed on the payroll but the gumshoes had located secret records. Without exception the names Fields gave Alice she recognized as classmates, none of them close to her. Fields suggested they were trying to gather information on her.
"They also spied on your parents and brothers. Now, however, we have enough evidence against Lemoyne and his minions to press charges of invasion of privacy, trespassing, deadly assault, conspiracy–and a great many other charges. All the two of you need to do is sign the criminal complaint and the D. A.‘s office will issue an arrest warrant for Lemoyne and his co-conspirators. They’ll be out of action for a long time.
"Absolutely!’ Alice and I say and sign without hesitation. Fields and the prosecutor leave. Alice and I high-five each other; she also breaks down and cries, an emotional release expressing a tremendous burden lifted from her shoulders.
We cool our heels a little while. With the rest of the evening to ourselves, we find some real old movies on DVD. Also, after Fields and the prosecutor left Alice had, as I noticed, been gradually loosening her clothing; halfway f]through the first movie, Casablanca, she looked me straight in the eye and suggested that I do the same. I accepted. We left Bogie and Bergman, swhitching the TV and DVD player off, and repaired to Alice’s room. I could see her big pupils, again despite her dark eyes; I could feel how hot she was, and holding her hand I could feel her pulse racing. I figured she had a heart as strong as a Diesel engine.
So in her room, we…
put our arms around one another. I rest my hands down on her waist and Alice wraps her arms up around my neck. She’s wearing a mischievous smile on her face. Her blouse is unbuttoned and I can see her black bra underneath.
Alice chuckles a little and says with the full force of her British accent, “Well, we’ve got plenty of time. How do you want to fill it?”
“How about some Yahtzee?” I suggest.
“Sure, why not?” Alice replies with a giggle. “But there’s something I want to take care of first.” As she says this, Alice runs her fingers down my chest.
Alice graps the front of my shirt and leads me across her room. I don’t offer much resistance. I’m under her spell.
However, as Alice pulls me across her room, I notice something’s different about it: it seems A LOT bigger. The length from the door to her bed is about as long as a football field. It just goes on and on.
Finally, we reach her bed. Alice quickly turns me around and, with a Cheshire Cat smile, playfully pushes me down on the mattress. She soon follows and we then begin to deeply kiss one another.
For a few timeless moments, we’re lost in one another. Then, just as I’m closing in on third base, Alice stops and bolts upright. She looks disturbed.
“Alice?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
Alice stares silently into space for a few seconds.
“____,” she says barely holding back her fear. “Take a look.”
I sit up and look in the same direction Alice is–out her window. For a second, I feel my heart stop. Outside, we see…
Lemoyne!
“Good God! He doesn’t know when to quit, does he?”
“Well, I don’t know why he would come out here…we covered the treadles up…”
“And you locked the utility shed and the tower up, didn’t you?”
“Sure I did. The only way he could get in is if he blew a hole in the wall with a cannon. And I don’t see him dragging one.”
“Well, then, he could be trying to spy on us–but that would be hard with this screen over the windowpane.”
Alice gets an idea. She walks over to a keybad on the near wall; I am mesmerized by the sexy bobbing of her buttocks and breasts as she walks. She pushes a few buttons. She returns to the bed and our passion increases afresh.
A moment later, Lemoyne is overcome with fright as an angled cellar door opens and out comes…
a pissed-off bobcat. The bad-tempered feline snarls and attacks Lemoyne’s ankles as he turns to run away. After a short struggle, Lemoyne breaks away from the botcat and dashes out of the yard–having the courtesy to close the gate behind him. I then hear what I assume to be the engine of Lemoyne’s car start and its wheels peel out.
By this time, Alice and I had taken a break in our activities to watch the whole confrontation between Lemoyne and the beast.
“Where did you get the bobcat?” I asked.
“It got into one of my father’s traps the other day,” said Alice. “We were keeping in the cellar until the people from animal control came by tomorrow morning to pick it up so it could be released in the forest. I figured it would be good way to scare Lemoyne off the property.”
“Well, your plan certainly worked but how are we going to get the bobcat back in the cellar before it decides to climb over the fence and terrorize the neighborhood?”
“Good question. Let me think about it.”
Alice is silent in thought for a few minutes. As she figures out what to do next, I put my clothes back on; the bobcat is our first priority right now.
“Go see what’s in the refrigerator,” she says. “I think there might be a cut of steak inside. We’ll use it to lure the bobcat back into the cellar.”
I quickly head downstairs into the the kitchen. I open the refrigerator door and look in the meat cabinet.
“We’re in luck,” I yell to Alice upstairs. “There’s a pound of New York cut here.”
“Good,” says Alice as she walks into the kitchen a her black blouse on. “Now comes the difficult part.”
We walk out the back door into the yard and try to spot the bobcat. After a few minutes of scanning around, we spot the critter lying on its back in a lazy pose. At least it was no longer angry.
“We’re going to need a long pole to stick the steak on,” I said. “Do you know where we can find one?”
“There’s a long pole with a net that Dad sometimes uses to catch skunks,” Alice says. “It’s right over by the back window.”
Keeping an eye on the bobcat, Alice runs along the outside of the house over to where the pole is, grabs it, and runs back to me. All the while, the wild feline remains lethargically on its back.
I put the steak in the net. Slowly and carefully, we walk over toward the bobcat and extend the pole until its just barely over its nose.
The bobcat twitches its whiskers a little but otherwise remains motionless and shows no interest in the meat. Either its already full or its a particularly rare breed of vegetarian bobcat.
“It’s not working,” I say. “What else can we do?”
“Give it some time,” says Alice. “It’s bound to get hungry.”
“But when? We can’t stay out here all night.”
“We may have to,” says Alice with a slightly annoyed tone. I don’t know if she’s annoyed with me or the bobcat.
Finally, the bobcat begins to notice what’s being dangled above him. It pokes its nose upward and starts to get off its back. However, I see that there’s some loose threads hanging from the net. That might be what’s getting the bobcat’s attention rather than the meat.
“There it goes,” says Alice. The bobcat tries to bat at the net with its front paw. We barely keep it out its grasp.
We slowly begin to move the pole over toward the open cellar door. The bobcat follows. When it reaches the entrance, we throw the pole down into the cellar to make sure the bobcat will go all the way in, which it does.
Alice and I then rush over to the cellar door and slam it shut. We sigh in relief. The situation is under control.
“If anybody asks about the steak,” Alice says. “I’ll just tell them we ate it. Although that might be a little difficult since I told my family that I was swearing off red meat. Now, how about that game of Yahtzee?”
Alice and I head back inside through the back door. However, when we do, we notice that…
…a light in a nearby room is on. I ask, “Are your parents still out of town?”
“I’m positive they are. In fact, they want me to come and pick them up in the morning. The taxis are dreadfully undependable in this vicinity.”
“What about Arthur and Daniel?”
“Well, Daniel is still away, too–I spoke to him late this afternoon on my cell phone before we got back here. As for Arthur, I don’t know.”
“Is someone calling me?”
Arthur appears. fortunately for Alice and me, we are fully dressed. We show a little wear from the tussle with the bobcat, but we wern’t cut or anything, nor are our clothes disheveled or torn.
Alice asks, slightly irritated, “Arthur, you should knock! We were worried!”
Arthur, a smart cookie in his own right, apologizes, then says, “I think I know what happened. That guy Victor Lemoyne was here, and the bobcat chased him. Well, I found out about the treadles. If he tries to make any case against us we can pursue a cross-complaint against him. And I think–I hear a siren–that won’t be long in coming…”
“Especially since there’s an arrest warrant out for him,” adds Alice. Then she says, “Are you going to stay the night?”
“No, I have to pick up some papers for a case I’m pleading out of state. I have to be in Milwaukee tomorrow at 11 a.m. Say hi to Mum and Dad for me.” He may suspect that Alice and I have been bumping bellies but if he does he shows no concern about it. Alice has always been her own person.
“Arthur’s a lawyer?” I ask.
“Well, he’s getting started. I think he wants to split his time between the law office and his garage. But he’s already gone to court. Who knows–maybe Lemoyne is afraid of us because of him.”
“Possibly. How about the Yahtzee?” I remember the game nostalgically because my sister and I played it when I was in my late teens.
Then we hear a van pull up. Expensive and fancy, as is the woman at the wheel. She stays in the car but two other women step out and come to the front door. They knock.
We open the door. It’s the tall buxom Jane Bradley and her old friend Louise Brown! Louise says, “We’d like to ask directions to a local address…” Her voice slows down during the last word as she sees Alice–who looks almost exactly like her. Louise is nearly 40 and her glasses have squarish lenses, but nothing else is different–the short stature; the hourglass figure; the big brown eyes; the quiet manner. They even wear the same kind of shoes–here, blue Nike sneakers!
As the astonishment wears off Louise Brown is the first to speak:
…“Alice! How’s my daughter doing!”
“No!” Alice stammers, “You’re not my mother! My mom is on vacation with my dad!”
Louise sighs heavily and looks Alice in the eyes. “Honey, your ‘mom’ is a transsexual whose birth name was George. I’m tellin’ ya’ that I’m your momma!”
“Your REAL momma, that is”
“That’s not possible,” an incredulous Alice explains. “I’m around 30 and you look to be about 40. If you’re correct–which I am sure you’re not–you would’ve had me when you were about ten!”
I step into the fray. “What kind of joke is this Louise?” I say with irritation. “Because it’s certainly not a funny one.”
“Well look at her and look at me,” Louise says with a slight slur. I smell a whiff of alcohol coming from her breath. “Is there any way our resemblance could be any closer without our being related? (Although my bust is bigger than her’s.)”
With that last tacky remark by Louise, my anger rises.
“Yes,” I answer. “You two just happened to hit nearly the same genetic lottery number. The odds of doing this were small but it wasn’t impossible. Besides, what about the ten year age difference? I MIGHT have given your claim of relation some credibility if you had said Alice was your long-lost sister instead.”
“She IS my sister!” Louise strongly asserts.
By now I am livid by all the apparent bullshit that Louise is throwing around. I step right in front of her and yell, “I want answers!”
“She’s my daughter!”
That’s it. My self-control is gone. I slap Louise.
“She’s my sister!”
I slap her again.
“She’s my daughter AND my sis----”
“Excuse me,” a man interrupts. We all turn and see a middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit and holding a briefcase. He hands me his business card. It’s for a Los Angeles law firm.
"I represent Paramount Pictures, Robert Evans–the producer of the movie “Chinatown,” and Robert Towne–the screenwriter of the movie “Chinatown,” the man says. "On behalf of my clients, I want to call to your attention that your story and dialogue is an unauthorized appropriation of the story and dialogue of the 1974 movie “Chinatown. You are potentially in violation of their copyright. Thus, I’m urging all of you to cease and desist with your plagiarism immediately or else you will face legal consequences.”
“Couldn’t this be ‘fair use’?” I ask. “What about parody rights?”
“That might be your reason for your unauthorized appropriation,” the attorney says. “But my clients don’t agree. Now, if you want to go ahead with your ‘parody’ and try to explain the legal reasons for your action in court, that’s fine with us. Just remember that my clients are prepared to fully litigate this matter in court if necessary.”
I stop and think about my options. For a few half-assed jokes on a message board, it’s not worth it.
“Okay,” I say to the lawyer. “We’ll try something else.”
“Good,” he says. “I’ll notify my clients immediately.” The attorney then takes his cell phone out of his coat pocket and starts to walk away.
“Good bye,” says the corporate counsel. “If we see each other again, let’s hope it’s under better circumstances.” He then starts dialing his phone. I’m assuming this little dispute is now over.
I turn and look at everyone. They all have a puzzled expression on their faces.
“Well,” I say. “What do we do now?”
“How about some Yahtzee?” suggests Alice.
“I hate Yahtzee,” say Louise.
“Why don’t just wait a second?” says Jane Bradley. “Something is bound to happen.”
“Sure,” I say lackadaisically. “Why not?”
To all of us, that sounds as good a suggestion as any. We all stand silently a few moments. Sure enough, we all turn toward the house and see…
…clear evidence that Louise, who may be a little tipsy–and she ordinarily doesn’t touch alcohol–was really putting us on. Her own three teenage sons, Arthur (!), Brian, and Charles, appear; they came in a small Hyundai, trying to catch up with their mother. Although their hair and eyes are the color of that of their father’s (I have met Stan Brown several times), they have a physiognomy unquestionably close to Louise’s. And now their facial expressions show an obvious though slight deference to the short, bespectacled woman who has arrived ahead of them. And, interestingly enough, the boys are carrying Yahtzee equipment.
“Hi, Mom,” says Artie. “We knew you and Ms. Bradley were coming this way in Ms. Sharp’s van and we had to get your cell phone and billfold to you. We just stopped at the game store and Dad met us there, and asked us to get this stuff to you.” He hands his mother her billfold and cell phone. He’s also holding the games Scruples, Life, Monopoly, and Pit, along with a deck of cards, score pads, and a box of poker chips.
Even Alice would notice that the accent Artie speaks in, matches that of Mrs. Brown. Alice asks, “Ms. Brown, if you don’t mind me asking…what is your maiden name?”
“O’Hara,” she says.
Alice is satisfied. She tells me, “It must be a coincidence. I have not a smidgen of Irish blood in me.”
Now is the teenage boys’ turn to notice the resemblance betwen their mother and Alice. Artie, the oldest, is 17; Brian, 15; Charles, 13. They compliment Alice on her looks–and she and their mother look down, in becoming modesty. At this reaction I grip Alice’s hand snugly; her understated emotions and self-appraisal have been a particularly endearing quality about her. She stands closer to me, as we’re side by side.
"Come on in, asks Alice. “We have plenty of time for board games and such. And ask your friend in the van to come in too.”
Jane waves to Eloise to come in. As usual, Eloise, mother of 15 kids, is wearing expensive clothes, but is quite good-humored and unlike most rich folk. Despite these quite attractive women, and Louise’s three talkative sons, I have my attention riveted on Alice. 
And we enter the house. As we open the small swinging doors to the den, we see…
that the floor is littered with books. While we were all outside, someone came in looking for a book and, in his or her haste, scattered the contents of the bookshelves all over the den floor.
“Oh no,” says Alice in a hushed voice as she looks at the room. Her white porcelain face is now somehow even more pale with fear.
I stare at the den, the books on the foor, and the almost empty bookshelves, and Alice. She immediately begins picking up the books. However, she picks them up not just to put them back in the shelves but apparently also to check to see what books are missing.
“I had a sense something like this would happen,” Alice says. “Intuition.”
“You don’t think your brother Arthur did this?” I say while helping clean up the mess. “He might’ve been looking for a book and in too much of a hurry to be neat about it.”
“Arthur didn’t do this,” she says with firm conviction. “He’s never messy and he’d never want any of the books in this room anyway. All the books in here belong to me.”
I take a stack of books by E.M. Forster and put them on a shelf. Alice seems to have his life’s work.
“Do you want these in any type of order?” I ask.
“Don’t bother,” responds Alice. “I’ll just re-organize them later. And before you put the books back on the shelf, show them to me. I’m pretty sure whoever was in here stole a couple of my books.”
“What books? Maybe I’ve already put it away.”
“One was that numerology book I showed you a while back and … um … there was this other book.”
Alice pauses as though she’s about to bring up a subject she’s uncomfortable with.
“I really can’t explain here and now what the book’s title is and what it’s about,” she explains. She then draws closer to me and whispers,“I will tell you that it’s not like other books.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s a book-inside-a-book,” she continues to whisper. “I can’t really say anything else right now. Just keep your eyes peeled for a text book titled ‘Advanced Coptic Language Studies’.”
We continue cleaning up the den and searching for the two books. The numerology book is missing and presumed stolen. However, underneath a copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”, I find “Advanced Coptic Language Studies” which I promptly hand to Alice. Alice opens the cover and I discover that it’s a shell: the
middle contents have been removed to fit a smaller book inside. That smaller book is the one Alice was concerned about. That smaller book is also missing.
“I knew it,” sighs Alice. “Whoever was in here knew what look for and where to find it.”
“Maybe it slipped out and it’s somewhere in the pile?” I suggested. It was a lame suggestion: by now we had picked up almost all of the books.
“No,” she says. “It’s gone.”
“Let’s call the police then,” I say. “If a valuable book’s been stolen, they should know about it.”
“No,” Alice abruptly states. “We can’t involve the police in this. Besides, this involves stuff they’d never believe anyway.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t explain it to you now. We’re going to have to tell everybody to leave. We can’t play any games.”
Alice and I then go out to talk to Eloise, Jane, and everybody else who are all wondering what’s going on. We tell them that the house was burgled and that we have look around to see what’s been taken. I also say that Alice is feeling extremely upset about the incident and needs to rest. I apologize to everyone for the sudden change in plans and they all leave.
When Alice and I see the last car drive down the road, she leads me over to the utility shed.
“We need to go down the elevator again,” Alice says as we go inside. “I should tell you that the network of passages down there is even bigger than you think.”
We enter the closet. Alice reaches into the Pipecleaners box again, pushes some buttons, and down we go.
“I’ll explain to you what’s going on and why that hidden book is so important,” she says as we go down the shaft. “In the meantime, be sure to stay close to me. It’s very easy to get lost in these passages.”
The elevator touches bottom and we emerge into a passageway. Alice says to go left and follow her. Surprisingly, the passageway is lit with motion-sensitive lights that go on as you approach them and go out after you’ve passed.
“Since we know each other well enough, it’s about time I told you some things about me,” says Alice.
“Like what?” I say.
Alice stops, turns to me, and says…
"For one thing, I come from a long line of engineers. My dad was a building engineer in London before the Blitz. Our family left London because we detested Winston Churchill as a civilian Chief Executive, and most of my family voted for Liberal MP’s in English elections.
"You know of course my major is teaching and administration. I’d like to be President of our college someday. Lorna is similarly inclined.
“Jock, Lorna’s boyfriend, was a constable in the Scottish region of the Outer Hebrides before he came to the states. When he’s fully recovered from his leg injury he plans to join a local police academy. Arthur and Daniel are married to policewomen.
“I have been an amateur criminologist for several years. That’s one reason for this seriers of catacombs. The less anyone outside our family and coterie who knows about it, the better.
I’d like to meet those people who were here this evening again, but this is surely not the time for it. I first need to gather data on the house that we will need to have to track down the person who stole that little book.”
Now we reach a small room which she unlocks–with a simple skeleton key. Inside is a wealth of computer hardware. She switches a PC on and fills me in on more facts about herself and her family while it boots up; but I’ll get to that in a few minutes.
She pops a Zip disk into its drive. She pokes at the keyboard, and, after a few more keystrokes, she gets a printout of the library, which includes a blueprint (from which the library was originally constructed), a history of the house that looks like Steve Thomas and Norm Abram could have prepared it, and, of course, a list of all the books in that library and which bookcase they are in, along with such fields as date of purchase, subject, color, and the impression of Alice or whoever in the family read the book first.
She clicks on a link for “detection,” and a screen with a fingerprint background appears. Another link clicked and she gets a screen offering various procedures for lifting fingerprints. She prints this out, then unboots and switches the computer off. Satisfied that she has the printouts she wants, she slips them into a portfolio and we leave the room, Alice carefully switching the lights off and locking the door. Then we head back toward the tower.
But she stops at the very next room down the corridor. With a seductive grin she opens another door, with a different key that almost looks like a Phi Beta Kappa key. Inside is a modest bedroom; she switches on the light on a night stand.
“We need to take some time out again,” she says with a wink. I admit that meeting with Louise Brown was a bit unnerving.”
We spend our passion and continue to the end of the hall, back up the elevator, and across the yard and into the house. Alice continues telling me the story behind the Terwilligers and how much more there is about her that I could never have known. I listen carefully, and it’s clear to me that in no way is Alice telling me she and I cannot continue together. In fact she seems to imply she needs me more than ever now.
She continues to elaborate on the saga of the Terwilliger family, before and after crossing the Pond…
quite a few members of her family were involved in doing intelligence work for both Britain and the U.S.
“We did a lot during the Cold War,” explained Alice as she put away the Portishead CD that she wanted to play during our “time-out” in her secret bedroom. “And also a lot during WWII. In fact, there have been Terwilligers involved in espionage going back hundreds of years–many belonging to secret elite organizations. That’s two things our family seems to produce a lot of: engineers and spies.”
“Judging from your database, it seems as though at least one of family traditions has rubbed off on you as well,” I say.
“I couldn’t begin to tell you how much it has,” Alice smiles and says. “By the time I was 30, I knew more secrets about what is really going on in world than Oliver Stone and the entire writing staff of ‘The X-Files’ could collectively imagine in ten lifetimes.”
“Since you’ve told me this, I guess this means you’re going to have to kill me,” I say flippantly.
“Oh no,” Alice says. “I like you too much. But if you ever get on my bad side, I might make things a little uncomfortable for you.” Alice has a coy expression on her face when she says this.
With that I almost say, “You mean like McGowan?” However, after seeing how good things are going and not wanting to upset Alice, I just stop short of uttering it.
“So,” I suddenly say in place of my “McGowan” comment. “What kind of things do you know about that the rest of general public doesn’t know?”
“Oh, there’s so much I could tell you,” she answers. Then, with a wistful sigh, she quotes Thomas Hardy, “‘Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.’”
“So why not tell me something?” I suggest. “Unless, of course, there’s some chance that if you blab about it, you’ll end up buried in some building foundation downtown.”
“Well,” she says. "Since it’s related to that stolen book I kept in hiding, I will tell you this…
“I’ve found connections between Lemoyne and organized crime. the evidence we have could put him behind bars for good. He doesn’t know about the catacombs but he suspects the computer data–but it’s OK. The computer it’s on doesn’t have a modem, and he never goes near books.”
Alice had planted a tracking transmitter in the little book’s spine, so she wasn’t unduly worried when the book first disappeared. We later get help from Eloise Sharp’s youngest son, 13-year-old Owen, to use the tracking console; this doesn’t require that he know why. We trace the book to the college library, where supposedly it would be unnoticed. We go there with portable equipment and retrieve it.
She pays Owen for his work and he leaves. In two hours she’ll leave to pick up her parents at the train station. We sit and cuddle on the couch, all the while discussing the importance of the book. Alice is more relaxed and peaceful that I’ve ever seen her and she certainly seems attached to me, even allowing me to put my arms around her torso under her sweater. So far we’ve had quite a few sexual encounters and she clearly doesn’t want to give that up–nor do I.
With maybe an hour before I’ll have to leave for the night, Alice, still naked, fills me in on the nature, content, and value of the book…
…is an egg.
Alice continues: “Seriously, this book deals with political, military, and economic intelligence that few civilians ever muster, let alone publish.”
“Someone in your family is a publisher?” I ask. Alice has started to put her clothes back on, as have I.
“My Mum’s brother Philip Greenwood. He was an intelligence officer in World War II and he comes from a long line of military strategists. He even had kin with Scotland Yard and in the House of Lords.”
“Do you think perhaps someone British has come out here after the book? Or it this something we came blame solely on Victor Lemoyne?”
“Well, he did a lot of manufacturing for the British military years ago. Maybe he still has some questionable connections in the royal Army and Navy. I can’t rule that out.”
Now she gives me a detailed explanation on the book’s content and value.
“But there’s more to the book than what I’ve told you about so far,” Alice says. “There’s information in there that could prove to be valuable to a person–if he knew how to use it. Information that you don’t want to fall into the hands of the wrong people.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Military secrets that could be sold to a hostile nation or terrorist group? Data that can be used for insider trading or market manipulation? Is there stuff in there that could be used to blackmail people?”
“That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg,” says Alice as she ties her dark hair up into a pony-tail. “You see the book, in addition to containing the usual confidential government and military information, ties everything together with an undercurrent of mysticism–a real arcane and complicated kind of mysticism. The kind people spend entire lifetimes trying to fully understand. I, myself, only grasp a little more than half of it. That book is almost incomprehensible by itself. That’s why whoever took it also took the numerology book as a companion piece.”
“Is Lemoyne into this sort of thing?” I suggest while sensing that the whole subject matter of this conversation is about to get way over my head.
“Lemoyne?” Alice says with a smile indicating that she thought the idea laughable. “His brain would pop after reading the first page.”
“How about your Uncle Philip?”
“He wouldn’t be the type. Philip was never into the whole mystic aspect. If he is involved, his interest would be strictly monetary. But, I don’t think he is. He’s into enjoying his retirement now.”
Alice pauses in thought for a second and continues:“Of course he might’ve said something to somebody about the book and that person might’ve said something to somebody else. Philip is overly found of gin and tonics and has a tendency to run his mouth after he’s had a few.”
“Well, that kind of narrows the list of suspects to few thousand,” I say.
“Oh I wouldn’t say it’s THAT high,” corrects Alice. “The number of people in the world who could fully understand how to use the information in that book is extremely small. Barely double figures.”
“That should make our seach a little easier.”
“Were still going to need help. I going to have to contact some people, tell them the book’s been stolen, and see if they have any leads.”
Alice then looks at her watch.
“My parents’ train will be here soon,” she states. “Come with me in the car. I’ll explain more to you on the way down to the station. However, when my parents in the car, try not to bring up the subject. I don’t want to upset them on their first night back.”
We leave the house and go out to Alice’s car. After pulling out of the driveway, she tells me that…
…she has contacts in countless places throughout the English-speaking world–and even in places like China, Israel, Nigeria, Uruguay, and Van Nuys. Many retired military officers, attorneys, newspaper publishers and columnists, and so on. She often sends them, in fact, a sort of newsletter through her e-mail. To none of these people, however, does she let on about “the whole story”–what she knows, and her parents and brothers (and sisters-in-law, the English women who are now with a local polioce department) also know.
“Still,” I comment, "The mystic aspect would narrow it down even more. I have no interest in mysticism myself, so I like to think I could approach the matter in a thoroughly objective manner.
“You don’t care for it yourself?”
“Well, I don’t use Ouija boards, crystal balls, incantations–”
“I think what I’m dealing with goes deeper than that. And don’t worry–this isn’t Satan worship or Santeria or some of those wackier things! For example,” she continues, “remember those infrared pictures I took in Daniel’s gnome room–along with the standard Minolta shots?”
“What about them?”
“Remember, we had 171 gnomes the inspector noted by Daniel didn’t even know about. He doesn’t take inventory each time he goes in there, you know.”
She keeps her mind on her driving, and motions for me to open a large black tote bag on the rear seat. I get it and open it, and I open two big zip-lock bags labeled “Gnome room, Minolta” and “gnome room, infrared camera.” I note she has numbered the shots so that No. 1 with the Minolta is the same view as #1 with the infrared camera, and so on. I go through the thirty-six shots she took in each stack, and some of the views with the infrared camera almost make my skin turn white.
Alice senses my shock. She holds the wheel with her left hand and genlty clasps my left wrist with her right hand as if to say, Don’t be so scared–I’ll explain the pictures. Then she says out loud, “Just tell me the number of each and I’ll explain what is in the shots.”
The first five are rather ordinary with both cameras. Infrared No. 6, has nearly made my heart stand still. I say, “No. 6,” and Alice explains what is so frightening about the shot: