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It was like stepping into a Faberge egg. It was not a large room, but it seemed to D'Agosta jewel-like--filled with treasures that glowed with internal brilliance. The windows had been boarded over and nailed with canvas, leaving the interior almost hermetically preserved, every surface so lovingly polished that even a decade of abandonment could not dull the luster. Paintings covered every square inch of wall space, and the interior was crowded with gorgeous handmade furniture and sculptures, the floor spread with dazzling rugs, sparkling jewelry laid out on pieces of black velvet.
In the middle of the room stood a single divan, covered in richly ta
D'Agosta walked through the room in an astonished silence, hardly able to focus his attention on any one thing before some fresh marvel drew it away. On one table stood a collection of small, handmade books in elegant leather bindings with gold tooling. D'Agosta picked one up and thumbed through it, finding it full of poems handwritten in a beautiful script, signed and dated by Karen Doane. The loom-woven rugs formed several layers on the floor, and they displayed geometric designs so colorful and striking that they dazzled the eye. He flashed the light around the walls, marveling at the oil paintings, landscapes lustrous with life, of the forest glades around the house, old cemeteries, vivid still lifes, and ever-more-fantastical landscapes and dreamscapes. D'Agosta approached the closest one and squinted, playing the light over it--observing that it was signed M. DOANE along the bottom margin.
Pendergast came up beside him, a silent presence. "Melissa Doane," he murmured. "The novelist's wife. It would appear that these paintings are hers."
"All of them?" D'Agosta played the beam over the other walls of the little room. There was no painting in a black frame, no painting, in fact, not signed M. DOANE.
"I'm afraid it's not here."
Slowly, D'Agosta let his flashlight drop to his side. He realized he was breathing fast, and that his heart was racing. It was bizarre--beyond bizarre. "What the hell is this place? And how has it stayed like this without being robbed?"
"The town protects its secrets well." Pendergast's silvery eyes darted about, taking everything in, an expression of intense concentration on his face. Slowly, once again, he paced the room, finally stopping at the table of handmade books. He quickly sorted through them, flipping the pages and putting them back. He left the room, and D'Agosta followed him down the hall as he entered the daughter's room. D'Agosta caught up as he was examining the shelf of identical red-bound volumes. His spidery hand reached out and plucked the last one down. He riffled through the pages; every one was blank. Pendergast put it back and drew out the penultimate volume. This one was full of nothing but horizontal lines, made apparently with a ruler, so densely drawn that each page was almost black with them.
Pendergast selected the next book, flipped through it, finding more dense lines and some crude, stick-like, childish sketches in the begi
Pendergast began to read out loud, at random, prose written in poetic stanzas.I ca
Pendergast flipped a few pages. The ravings continued until they seemed to dissolve into disjointed words and illegible scratchings. More thoughtfully, he put the book back and drew out another, much earlier in the set, opening it in the middle. D'Agosta saw lines of strong and even writing, evidently that of a girl, with doodles of flowers and fu
Pendergast read off the date.
D'Agosta did a quick mental calculation. "That would be about six months before Helen's visit," he said.
"Yes. When the Doanes were still new to Sunflower." Pendergast paged through the entries, sca
"Typical high-school girl," said D'Agosta, frowning.
"Perhaps a bit more incisive than most." The agent continued flipping forward through the volume. He stopped abruptly at an entry made some three months later. "Ah!" he exclaimed, sudden interest in his voice, and began to read. When I got home from school I saw Mom and Dad in the kitchen hovering over something on the counter. Guess what it was? A parrot! It was gray and fat, with a stumpy red tail and a big fat metal band around its leg with a number but no name. It was tame and would perch right on your arm. It kept cocking its head at me and peering into my eyes, like it was checking me out. Dad looked it up in the encyclopedia and said it was an African Grey. He said it had to be somebody's pet, it was too tame for anything else. It just showed up around noon, sitting in the peach tree next to the back door, making noise to a
"A parrot," D'Agosta muttered. "Now, what are the chances of that?"
Pendergast began flipping pages, more slowly now, until he reached the end of the book. He took down the next volume and began methodically examining the dates of the entries--until he came to one. D'Agosta heard a small intake of breath.
"Vincent, here is the entry she wrote on February ninth--the day Helen paid them a visit."The worst day of my life!!! After lunch a lady came and knocked on our front door. She was driving a red sports car and was all dressed up with fashionable leather gloves. She said she'd heard we had a parrot and wanted to know if she could see it. Dad showed Muffin to her (still inside her cage) and she asked how we got it. She asked a lot of questions about the bird, when we got it, where it came from, if it was tame, if it let us handle it, who played with it the most. Stuff like that. She spent all sorts of time looking at it and asking questions. The woman wanted to see the band up close but my father asked her first if she was the bird's owner. She said yes and wanted the parrot back. My dad was suspicious. He asked if she could name the number on the parrot's bracelet. She couldn't. And she wasn't able to show us any kind of proof that she owned it, either, but told us a story that she was a scientist and it had escaped from her lab. Dad looked like he didn't believe a word of it and said firmly that when she brought back some proof he'd be glad to give up the bird, but until then Muffin would stay with us. The lady didn't seem too surprised and then she looked at me with a sad expression on her face. "Is Muffin your pet?" I said yes. She seemed to think for a while. Then she asked if Dad could recommend a good hotel in town. He said there was only one, and that he'd get her the number. He walked back into the kitchen for the phone book. No sooner had he gone than the woman grabbed Muffin's cage, stuffed it into a black garbage bag she took from her purse, ran out the door, threw the bag in her car, and took off down the driveway! Muffin was screeching loudly the whole time. I ran outside screaming and Dad came ru