The Wizard Of Dark Street Part 13

Oona remembered seeing Grimsbee the day before with the red umbrella on the museum steps. This memory in turn conjured up another image: this one of Isadora Iree kicking over the umbrella stand in the Pendulum House entryway, and a tall red umbrella shooting out and nearly poking Adler Iree in the leg. Oona was about to tell Grimsbee as much, but he cut her off.

"Once the director sees my performance," Grimsbee declared, "he will be forced to hire me in the lead role, and all my fans will flock to the theater for my triumphant return."

"Isn't it a bit dangerous for a blind man to rehea.r.s.e on the stairs?" Oona asked.

"Nonsense!" Grimsbee shouted, making Oona jump. Clearly, the subject was a touchy one, and Oona felt certain that she was on to something. Grimsbee smoothed out the lapel of his jacket and recomposed himself. "I am able to fulfill the role as well as anyone. Even better. I am one of the greatest actors to have ever graced the stage. And why should I need a working set of eyes when my sense of smell is so clearly superior in every way. If that ridiculous director can't see that, then he is just as blind as I am, and deserves another sandbag dropped on his head."

Oona decided to ignore this last comment. "Isn't it true, Mr. Grimsbee, that you were rehearsing for your audition yesterday? Before your appointment at Pendulum House?"

"Why ... uh ... yes," said Grimsbee. "But how could you know that?"

Attempting to hide her excitement, Oona shrugged. "It was only an educated guess. You see, Deacon and I saw you on the steps of the museum. And I'm also guessing that while you were preparing, you had a rather unfortunate accident. Neither I nor Deacon saw it happen, because something distracted us while we were watching you, but I believe that you were practicing for the auditions when you fell down the steps of the museum and hit your head several times along the way."

Grimsbee's ears went red, and his eyes, despite their sightlessness, slitted as if leering at her. His eyebrows drew together, making one lone brow across his forehead. "It ... I ... It was ..." And then, the menace in his face suddenly dropped away. He fell to his knees, nearly falling down the steps as he did so, and folded his hands together as he began to plead: "You must keep your mouth shut about that. It wasn't my fault. The steps ... they were old ... they crumbled. That's why I came here, to the hotel, to rehea.r.s.e today. I can do the part. Really, I can. But the director must not hear that I fell, or I will be ruined."

"So I guessed correctly-you did fall," Oona said. "You tumbled down the steps, hitting your head several times in the process and landing on the sidewalk."

Grimsbee ran his bony fingers across the bandage on his head. "Yes."

Oona turned to Deacon, triumphant. "That is why he disappeared so quickly. Grimsbee didn't go into the museum, Deacon. He fell down the stone steps in the exact instant that you and I heard the scream come from Madame Iree's dress shop. We looked away, Grimsbee fell, and when we looked back, we couldn't see him because he was lying on the sidewalk behind the enormous sculpture of the top hat."

"So that means ..." Deacon trailed off.

"Grimsbee couldn't possibly have stolen the daggers," Oona finished.

Grimsbee stuck his jaw out indignantly. "That is obvious. I was at the doctor's office getting my head wrapped until just before my appointment at Pendulum House. And do you know what the doctor said to me?"

Oona and Deacon shook their heads.

"He said that I was lucky I didn't break my hip," Grimsbee said. "No worse pain, the doctor told me."

Deacon shook his head. "I do wish people would stop saying that." He turned to Oona. "So if Grimsbee couldn't have done it, then who did?"

"Isn't it obvious?" said Grimsbee. "It's that little witch. You can smell it on her."

Oona threw her hands to her hips and shook her head. "You can't smell if someone is a criminal. And besides, that was probably just her pungent facial cream you smelled. It had a very strong ... a very strong ..." Oona trailed off, lost for a moment in thought. Finally, she said: "It had a very strong herbal smell."

"With a hint of cinnamon," said Grimsbee, pus.h.i.+ng himself back up from his knees.

Oona was nodding. With a hint of cinnamon. That was exactly right. But the smell beneath the cinnamon had been herbal. And just now, it occurred to Oona that it had also been a familiar smell. The cinnamon had thrown her senses off, but she thought that she knew now where she had smelled it before.

"Yes, of course," Oona said, her bright green eyes going wide with excitement. "Come, Deacon. We should return to Pendulum House at once."

"What for?" Deacon asked.

"We need to visit the garden." She scratched at her head, but before Deacon could question her any further, she added: "One other thing, Mr. Grimsbee. If you are so intent on being an actor, why did you apply for the position of Wizard's apprentice?"

Grimsbee shrugged. "Something to fall back on, I suppose. But then again, I don't see why I couldn't do both."

The words surprised Oona. Do both? she thought. It was an intriguing thought; one she'd never really considered seriously before. But the idea was interrupted by the sound of the hotel's large golden doors slamming open. Oona glanced up, only to find two enormous men in bright red suits hurrying down the steps. Clearly identical twins, the only difference between the two hulking figures was that one of them wore a bushy mustache in need of a good tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and the other was clean shaven.

They stopped on either side of Grimsbee. Matching badges on their red lapels read: NIGHTSHADE HOTEL SECURITY.

Grimsbee sniffed at the men uncertainly.

In a hushed, throaty voice, the twin with the mustache said: "We've received several complaints, sir, that you are frightening the guests. We're going to have to ask you to leave."

"But...," Grimsbee began.

"Sorry, sir," said the man with no mustache, in a voice identical to his brother's. "No buts."

Faster than Oona would have believed such ma.s.sive men could move, the twins picked Grimsbee up by his bony elbows and tossed him toward the street. Grimsbee howled as he collided with a carriage horse at the curb.

The horse neighed its disapproval, and Grimsbee pushed himself roughly back to his feet. Meanwhile, Oona was staring up at the hulking twins. They stood over her like two nightmarishly tall bulldogs, arms bulging beneath their jacket sleeves, looking as if she might be their next victim.

Deacon rose to his most menacing height, but the security guards appeared unfazed.

"Indeed," Oona said, backing gingerly away, feeling her presence at the hotel was suddenly less than welcome. It was as Oona backed down to the sidewalk that she got the curious feeling she was being watched, and not just by the monstrous twins. As if by instinct, she looked up and spotted a set of eyes leering down at her through the slit in a red-curtained window.

For the simple fact that she was standing in front of the Nightshade Hotel, she had a sneaking suspicion just whose eyes they likely were. She s.h.i.+vered at the thought of the notorious Red Martin himself watching her.

"Samuligan?" she said.

"Yes?" replied the faerie servant. He stood just behind her, holding the box with the toad.

"I think it is time to leave," she said.

Samuligan, who was also looking up at the ominous set of eyes, said: "Most wise."

Twenty minutes later, as she entered the inner courtyard at Pendulum House, Oona could still not shake the awful feeling those eyes had given her.

"What are we doing in the courtyard?" Deacon asked.

"I have a hunch," she replied.

She wound her way past the sprawl of the magnificent gla.s.s tree-which by day projected fantastic prisms of sunlight about the courtyard walls-and stopped at the edge of the soil patch where she had caught Isadora digging the night before. Heedless of her dress getting soiled, she dropped to her knees.

Deacon looked at the sign sticking out of the soil.

"Turlock root?" he said, sounding quite astonished. "But I thought it only grew in Faerie."

This was Deacon's first time in the inner garden, Oona realized. Deacon had been a present for her eleventh birthday, and they had been together for nearly two years, but she had never brought him out here. This had always been her place to be alone, and clearly Deacon had respected the house rules and had never ventured out here on his own.

"Don't forget that Pendulum House is built on Faerie soil," Oona reminded him.

Deacon nodded. "Oh ... yes, of course. That makes sense. But still I had no idea. And why are we here?"

Oona lifted a handful of the dark soil to her nose. It was, of course, the same herbal smell she'd caught a whiff of the night before, when Isadora had smeared the soil across her face. But it was also familiar for another reason. She dug down into the dark soil, feeling around until her hand closed around something slick and smooth. She tugged. A moment later she was holding a bright green root above the ground. She squeezed it lightly in her hand, and a greenish substance oozed out around her fingers. The smell was quite powerful and conjured up an image of Sanora Crone, her face covered in this same slimy goop.

"You might want to wipe that off your fingers," said Samuligan. The faerie servant stood just behind her, holding the box containing the toad in one hand and offering a handkerchief with his other.

Oona dropped the root on the topsoil and received the handkerchief.

"Thank you, Samuligan." She wiped the goopy substance from her hand and then examined it on the cloth. She sniffed it. "It is just as I thought. This is the same substance that Sanora Crone had on her face last night. Witchwhistle Beauty Cream, indeed!"

"Ah, yes," said Samuligan. "I thought I smelled something familiar on her. I could not place it last night. Now that I know what it is, however, it is obvious that she was attempting to mask the smell with cinnamon."

Deacon hopped to the ground beside the root. "Turlock root? But where would Sanora Crone get turlock root? And what does it have to do with the attack on your uncle?"

Oona had already considered both of these questions. Turlock root could only be grown in native Faerie soil. The only place to find Faerie soil other than Pendulum House was in the Land of Faerie itself. It was yet another mystery.

"I don't know where she's getting the root, Deacon," Oona said. "Certainly not from here. But as to your second question, what it means is that Sanora Crone is not what she seems. In fact, she is likely older than she appears to be."

"But why would she make herself so young?" Deacon asked. "To what purpose?"

Oona rose to her feet, letting the handkerchief fall to the ground. "For the answer to that, I think we will need to ask Sanora herself. Come, let us make for Witch Hill immediately."

"Ah, but the entrance is secret," said Samuligan. "Even I, who have lived on Dark Street for nearly five hundred years, do not know how to get inside. It is bewitched."

Oona took the hatbox from Samuligan and cracked open the lid. She peered inside. The toad sat in the center, looking up at her with its wide toady eyes. They were bright green eyes that, the more she looked at them, the more they reminded her of her uncle's. They seemed so unmistakable. Those were the eyes that had looked so disappointed when she'd decided to give up the apprentices.h.i.+p for another life. A life as a detective. And here she was, living that life, yet it was not at all how she had thought it would be. In truth, she had never thought it would be so ... personal.

And then a horrible notion invaded her thoughts. A stabbing sense of doubt. What if she was just seeing the similarity between her uncle's eyes and the toad's because she wanted to believe it? What if this was just some toad that had found its way to the top of that tower? Maybe the tower was infested with toads, and she did not know it. As unlikely as that might seem, the thought still managed to spoil her conviction that the toad and her uncle were one and the same. What if this was not the Wizard, but some long-forgotten faerie that had been imprisoned, like Samuligan, during the Great Faerie War? And that would of course mean that her uncle was, in truth, dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Oona shook her head, wis.h.i.+ng she could stuff cotton b.a.l.l.s in her ears to drown out the sound of her own thoughts.

"Stop it!" she whispered to herself. "This is Uncle Alexander. It only makes sense." She was afraid to open the lid of the box too far, in case the toad should jump out. She might never find him if they lost him out here in the garden. She spoke through the crack: "We'll figure out who did this to you, Uncle," she said. "Don't worry."

But the day was getting on, and if the Wizard did not show up in his human form before midnight ... Red Martin would win.

She could only hope that this new information about Sanora was the break in the case she needed. For some reason Sanora Crone was using turlock root to make herself young. But how old was she really, and what was the purpose?

"Samuligan is correct," Deacon said. "The entrance to Witch Hill was enchanted long ago. No one can see the witches enter or exit the hill. No one knows how many witches are down there, or what they do, and the entrance would be nearly impossible to find."

Oona started back across the courtyard with the box clasped beneath her arm. "Certainly we won't let that stop us."

The ride to the shopping district took a little over twenty-five minutes. Traffic was heavier than it had been earlier that morning, and Oona was feeling quite impatient. Her first course of action when she reached Witch Hill would be to climb to the top of the hill and knock on that old, crooked tree. Maybe the tree was a door of sorts. If that didn't work, she would simply resort to pounding on the ground and shouting Sanora's name until either the girl appeared, or Inspector White showed up to arrest Oona for disturbing the peace.

"Umph!"

Deacon was jostled from Oona's shoulder when the carriage came to a sudden halt. Oona just managed to save the hatbox from tumbling off the seat. She could see the museum just ahead.

"Why the abrupt stop, Samuligan?" Oona called out the window.

"See for yourself," Samuligan said.

Oona poked her head out the window. A carriage was stuck in the middle of the street, and traffic was coming the other way, making it difficult for Samuligan to veer around. The driver of the stuck carriage was attempting to lever the front wheel out of a pothole using a plank of wood.

"Sorry about this, miss," Oona could hear the driver saying to his pa.s.senger. "Got to complain to the street council about these potholes, I do."

"Stay here, and keep an eye on the box for me, Deacon," Oona said. "I'll be right back."

She stepped to the street and made her way toward the stuck carriage. The driver was doing his utmost to pry the wheel out, his face going red with the effort. Oona knelt down, peering into the hole.

"Hey you!" the driver said, clearly startled by her appearance. He stepped back, shaking the plank of wood, and Oona realized that it was the same cabdriver who had gotten stuck in the pothole the day before. The only difference was that today he was on the other side of the street, heading in the opposite direction. "You again?" said the driver. "Who are you, and why do I keep seeing you every time I get stuck in these potholes?"

"Miss Crate!" said a voice, startling both Oona and the driver. Inspector White stepped from behind the giant top hat on the sidewalk. For some reason he was dressed in a ridiculous red-and-black-checkered hunting jacket. He sauntered to the side of the stalled carriage, where he stopped and stared down at Oona with an expression on his face that mimicked his next words: "I might have known."

"Might have known what?" Oona asked.

The inspector folded his lanky arms. "That the culprit would return to the scene of the crime."

"I beg pardon?" Oona said.

"Cobblestone theft," said the inspector.

Oona blinked at him in surprise. "What on earth are you talking about?"

The inspector shook his head as if she were very stupid. "The Cobblestone Thief, my dear. Surely you didn't think I wouldn't find you out. You've been stealing cobblestones from the street for weeks. I may not have any proof yet, but I am a very patient man. One of these days I'll catch those evil little hands of yours at their evil little deeds."

Oona's jaw jutted out in frustration. "First of all, I don't have evil little hands. I have very nice hands. And secondly, I don't know why someone would want to steal cobblestones, but you should probably know that my uncle was not murdered. He has been turned into a toad. I rescued him from the Goblin Tower this morning."

The inspector frowned. "That's ridiculous."

"What is ridiculous is that hideous jacket," said a familiar voice. Both Oona and the inspector looked up to discover Isadora Iree staring out the window of the stalled carriage.

The inspector looked suddenly embarra.s.sed, glancing down at the red-and-black checkerboard jacket. "I did not have my own jacket today, so I borrowed this one from Constable Trout. On his off days, he likes to go hunting in the World of Man."

Isadora rolled her pretty blue eyes all the way up to the whites. "Well, perhaps if you weren't such an incompetent police inspector, then you would remember that you left your own jacket at Pendulum House last night, on top of my shawl! I had to iron the wrinkles out when I got home."

The inspector puffed up his chest indignantly. "I'm quite sure I did nothing of the sort. I took my own jacket to the tailor only yesterday, after tearing a hole in the sleeve." He turned to Oona, jabbing a chalk-white finger in her direction. "A hole that I received when I tripped because of the missing cobblestones that, no doubt, you stole."

Oona shook her head at him. "And, no doubt, you must have forgotten that you picked your jacket back up from the tailor and wore it to Pendulum House last night, because Isadora is right; we all saw your jacket hanging on the coatrack. But that's all right. I suppose it will be just another bit of rubbish for Red Martin to cart away when he has Pendulum House demolished this evening. Now, if you will excuse me, Inspector, I would like to try to stop that from happening."

She turned, as if to head off in the direction of Witch Hill across the street.

"What's this about Red Martin?" the inspector called after her.

Oona lowered her gaze, wondering if it was even worth her time to explain all that she had learned, when something caught her eye. Her breath suddenly hitched in her throat, and she knelt down to get a better look at one of the places where the cobblestones had gone missing. The s.p.a.ce where the stones should have been appeared as black as midnight, which was strange because normally beneath broken-out cobblestones one found hard-packed earth. From what Oona could tell, the s.p.a.ce beneath these missing cobblestones was ... nothing at all ... a void ... like whatever had happened to the missing cobbles had happened to the earth underneath as well.

If someone truly is stealing cobblestones from the street, she thought, and Oona couldn't understand why someone would want to do such a thing, but if they are, then they are taking the ground beneath it, too.

Intrigued, Oona returned her attention to the stuck carriage. The driver had gone back to levering the wheel out of the hole. "Yesterday you boasted to me that you knew every pothole on the street," Oona said to him. "Why is it you keep getting stuck here, in front of the museum?"

The cabdriver put his weight into the plank of wood. "I'd swear there's new holes right here almost every day. And these ones are twice as bad as anywhere else."

"What is the point of this pointless questioning?" the inspector asked.

"Because look," Oona said. "See where the cobblestones are missing?"