Tami Hoag - Magic

Rachel reined in her temper and her own feelings of guilt. She hated to have it come down to a competency hearing. She had the ominous feeling that all hope of a reconciliation with Addie would be utterly destroyed by that. But the situation was getting desperate. Their funds were dwindling, and the IRS was breathing down their necks. She could see no way out other than her original plan of selling the house and going on to her new job in San Francisco. Her emotions were only complicated by Bryan’s unreasonable opposition. She felt as if he were betraying her.

“And there is the little matter of my contract with Mrs. Lindquist,” he continued. With a tremendous effort of will he ignored the fury rolling off Rachel in waves and resurrected his foolish grin. He turned to the gentlemen and began juggling a trio of red foam balls he had produced from thin air. “I’ve been hired to find the ghost.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Mr. Hennessy,” Porchind said as if he were admonishing a ten-year-old.

Immediately both he and Rasmussen gave a little squeal of surprise and leapt forward a bit on the love seat. Their heads swiveled simultaneously, looking behind them as if they expected to see daggers protruding from the back of the chair. Everyone then glared accusingly at Bryan, who went on happily juggling, ignoring their unspoken accusation that he was somehow to blame.

“Sure there is,” he said enthusiastically. “This one’s name is Archibald Wimsey. He was staying here in 1931 as a guest of Arthur Drake. Mysteriously disappeared. I’m quite convinced that his spirit inhabits Drake House to this day.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Porchind said severely.

“Absurd,” Rasmussen reiterated.

Together they popped up from the love seat, their eyes and mouths round O’s of surprise, their hands going to their backsides.

Rachel sent Bryan a withering glare, then stepped forward to console her guests. “The springs must be going in that old thing. No wonder no one wanted to buy it yesterday.”

She walked the men to the front door, promising them she and her mother would come to a definite decision about the house very soon. When she returned to the study, she gave free rein to the fury that had been building inside her all day.

“Of all the childish, infantile tricks!” she shouted, standing toe to toe with Bryan. “Booby-trapping that chair with your magic gizmos. Isn’t that just like you!”

“Well, yes,” Bryan admitted grudgingly. “But I didn’t do it.”

“Oh, sure,” Rachel said with a sneer. She turned and began pacing back and forth in front of him in an effort to burn off some of her anger before she exploded. “What do I have to do to get through to you, Bryan? I have got to sell this house.”

“No, you don’t,” he said. Suddenly he was grinning again with almost boyish excitement. “I think I’ve found out why Porky and the Rat want it.”

“I don’t care why they want it. I don’t care if they want to set up a nudist colony for the terminally strange.”

Bryan grimaced. “There’s an ugly thought.”

Rachel’s eyes flashed. “It’s nothing compared to what I’m thinking about you at the moment.”

That was true. The signals he was intercepting were more than a little hostile. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and took the plunge.

“I think they’re after gold.”

Rachel halted her pacing and stared at him in disbelief. “What?”

“Porchind’s late relative, Pig Porchind, was a bigtime bootlegger back in the days of Prohibition,” he explained, visibly warming to his topic. “According to the gossip of the time, he had a fortune in gold stashed somewhere around Anastasia.”

“What has that got to do with Drake House?” she asked impatiently.

“At that same time in history there was a notorious cat burglar on the loose around here. His targets were the homes of wealthy lumber barons and shipping magnates. There were rumors about the theft of an enormous amount of gold from old Pig. It was apparently never found. Neither was Archibald Wimsey, an old British chum of Arthur Drake’s who was visiting during the summer of 1931. By coincidence, all concerned in this story were either dead or gone missing shortly after it all happened, and most everyone forgot about it.”

“That’s a very entertaining story, Bryan,” Rachel said. “Does it have a point?”

“Of course it has a point,” he said irritably. “Wimsey is your mother’s invisible friend, and Porky and the Rat think the stolen gold is stashed somewhere in Drake House.”

“That’s absurd,” Rachel said. “If there were a fortune in gold in this house, don’t you think someone would have found it by now? It’s been more than sixty years since Prohibition.”

“And almost that long since these rumors were in circulation. Why would anyone look for something they didn’t know was there?” he asked reasonably.

“Why would anyone look for something that doesn’t exist?” Rachel countered. “Did you find any mention of this legend in that journal?”

“Uh-no,” he admitted, “not precisely.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “This whole tale is so farfetched, I can’t believe you’re telling it to me. Who gave you all this golden information anyway?”

“Lorraine Clement Carthage, who was a debutante at the time and is mentioned-er, fondly in the diary.”

“And who is now, no doubt, as senile as my mother.”

He couldn’t quite meet her eyes after that state ment. Lorraine hadn’t exactly been in step with the world around her, he had to admit, but to his way of thinking the evidence was all adding up very nicety. Lorraine had thought the dashing Wimsey was the thief. Apparently Pig Porchind had thought the same thing and had probably had Wimsey done away with, which explained the restless spirit. The fact that the gold had never been recovered meant it still had to be around someplace, and Drake House appeared the likely spot since attention was being focused on it by the late Pig’s relative.

“Bryan, don’t you see this is all a wild goose chase?” Rachel asked wearily. “All you’ve got are some moldy old rumors and half-baked speculation. It would be wonderful to find a fortune in lost gold. It would be the answer to my prayers. But life doesn’t work that way.”

“Not if you don’t let it,” he muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you have to believe a little.”

Rachel closed her eyes and counted to ten, but the anger was still there afterward, the anger and all the old bitterness. “You think problems can be solved by magic?” she asked. “You think all we have to do is believe in fairy tales and everything will end happily ever after? Magic is for fools and children.”

Bryan’s head snapped back as if she had slapped him. His jaw tightened ominously. “Well, it certainly isn’t for martyrs, is it?” he asked darkly.

Rachel stared at him, her eyes round with hurt.

In a saner moment he would have called himself a bastard, but he had some pent-up pain of his own to vent, and he was only human.

“I think you don’t want to believe there could be a painless solution to your problems because you’re so damned determined to sacrifice yourself to Addie,” he said, leaning over the desk toward her, unconsciously trying to intimidate her with his size. “You’ve got it all mapped out in that pragmatic head of yours how you’re going to make it up to her for wanting a life of your own. You’ve probably got it figured out to the nth degree the exact amount of suffering you’ve got to do to redeem yourself.”

Silence hung between them like the blade of an ax. Bryan stood on one side of the walnut desk, his chest heaving in the aftermath of his outburst. Rachel stood on the other side, her shoulders stiff with pride, her eyes shining with tears she refused to shed.