Man With A Message

Letitia appeared concerned. “If you keep a close eye on him. He’s eager to help and sometimes…” She was obviously searching for a diplomatic explanation.

Cam understood. “He’ll be right beside me at all times.”

Brian gave him a grateful look.

“All right, then,” Letitia replied. “Brian, I’m counting on you to do exactly as you’re told.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he promised.

“Good.” Cam put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “For safety’s sake, I’m going to turn off the power. With water everywhere, I don’t want anyone touching light switches, even where it’s dry.”

“Right.”

He was about to ask Miss Letty if she had a flashlight to lead the children in the dark house, when she shouted up the attic stairs, “Jessie, bring the camp lanterns down with you, too!”

Cam grabbed the flashlight from his tool kit and, with Brian glued to his side, hurried back downstairs to shut down the power. He handed Brian the flashlight.

“This is so cool!” Brian said. “Nothing exciting ever happens around here.” Then apparently he realized what he’d said and looked sheepish. “I mean, I know it’s all my fault and it’s caused everybody a lot of trouble. And you probably charge a whole lot.”

“Yeah, I do.” With all the circuit breakers flipped, Cam and Brian stood in darkness except for the glow from the flashlight. “And the guys who have to clean up the water cost a bundle, too.”

Brian sighed. “I was going to take everybody to Disneyland for summer vacation if I found the gold.”

Cam turned him toward the stairs and let him lead the way with the light. “You mentioned that before. What gold are you talking about?”

The boy told him a story about a Confederate spy trying to escape to the South with a satchel full of gold. “He was in this building when he was shot, and the Yankees and the Lightfoots who owned the Manor then found the satchel, but not the gold. Everybody knows the story.”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“Mr. Groman told me. He teaches here, you know. Some rebel soldier stole it off a train and hid out with it in the carriage house. When they tiled the bathroom floor, they covered up the blood!”

The kid had a flair for theatrics, Cam thought, and was probably destined for a career in front of a camera.

They climbed the stairs, Brian holding the light to his side for Cam’s benefit. “But if it hasn’t been found in a hundred and fifty years…”

“A hundred and thirty-seven,” Brian corrected him.

“A hundred and thirty-seven,” Cam said obligingly, “why did you suddenly think you’d find it in the bathroom wall?”

They’d reached the main level. Brian waited while Cam closed and locked the basement door. “Because I thought about it. They didn’t find it when they tore up the floor to put down new stuff, so where else could it be?”

“Somewhere in the attic?”

“Looked there.”

“And you probably checked the basement.”

“A couple of times.”

“Maybe this spy had an accomplice and passed it on or something.”

Brian frowned. “I guess that could be. But that’s not in the story.”

They made their way carefully toward the stairway to the second floor. “There’s probably an old newspaper account of the incident,” Cam suggested. “In the library. Old newspapers are scanned into the computer. Or maybe they could help you at the Mirror.”

Brian grinned in the near darkness as they went up the stairs side by side. “Maybe Mariah will take me,” he said hopefully. Then suddenly his expression turned doubtful. “If she can forget that I almost killed her.”

Cam ran a knuckle down his own cheek, remembering her slap, and patted Brian’s shoulder. “I don’t think she was as near death as it seemed. Apologize first, then ask her.”

In the bathroom once again, Cam tore out more tiles to get at the pipe connection while Brian held the flashlight for him.

“About your plans for the gold,” he said. “Aren’t you all going home for the summer?”

“Yeah, but Ashley doesn’t have parents, you know. She just has a guardian and he’s pretty old. She never gets to stay home with him. He sends her on trips with people she doesn’t know and she hates it. They think she doesn’t know, but he’s going to die pretty soon.”

When Cam looked down at him, not sure what to say to that, Brian added with a shrug, “We hear the teachers talking. She’s going to have to go live with somebody else. My mom’s a movie star.”

Cam had difficulty focusing on the plumbing and the conversation. “No kidding?”

“No. She’s very pretty, but she’s always on a movie set somewhere far away and I stay with the housekeeper. Pete and Repeat’s mom and dad are stunt people and they’re working with my mom in a movie right now. In Mongolia.”

“Pete and Repeat?”

“The twins.”

“Ah.”

“They’re really Pete and Philip, but their dad calls ’em ‘Pete and Repeat.’ Now everyone does. Their dad jumps off cliffs and out of airplanes and over waterfalls. Their mom once jumped out of a building on fire! I mean she was on fire. ’Course, the building probably was, too, or she wouldn’t have been. She had a special suit on so she wouldn’t get burned. Cool, huh?”

“I’m not sure I’d want to be on fire, even in a special suit.”

“Jessie and her sisters’ mom wants to take them to New York with her to visit a friend of hers. So they don’t want to go home for the summer, either.”

“Jessie and her sisters are those four dark-haired little girls who all look alike?”

“Yeah, only they get smaller and smaller. Like those toy things that fit into each other. You know?”

Cam had to grin at him. The kid had such an interesting little mind. “Yeah, I know. But what’s wrong with meeting their mom’s friend? New York’s a very exciting place.”

“He’s a guy.”

“Well, so are we. Is that bad?”

Brian seemed to like being considered a guy. Cam had to remind him to hold up the light.

“It’s because their mom likes him and they don’t want another dad.”

“What happened to the first one?”