The Vandemark Mummy (17 page)

Mr. Hall bent down to look more closely at the wound. Without touching the mummy, he held his hand beside the wound, as if imagining. “Maybe. With a small hand? Or long fingers? It would explain why the edges are sort of crushed.”

“I wouldn't want to stick my hand in there,” the detective said.

Phineas could see what might have happened, and the frustration the thief would have felt after taking all that risk—two nights in a row. He guessed the guy must have been angry, with all the disappointment. Angry enough to want to destroy something.

“What puzzles me,” the detective said, “is just what you asked, Althea. Why the feet?”

Althea nodded, her lips pushed tightly together as if they would quiver if she left them alone. She was seriously upset, Phineas thought. He didn't blame her.

“Why not smash the whole thing, if that's the way it happened,” the detective said, musing. “Why call you, to tell you where it was? Why wrap it up so carefully?”

Mr. Hall shrugged. “I suppose we should be grateful,” he said. “And I am.” But he didn't sound it.

Althea turned on her heels, and pushed her way through the curtains. Nobody tried to stop her.

“I am grateful it hasn't been entirely destroyed,” Mr. Hall said. “But it was perfect, and now it's—” The more he said, the more he sounded angry. “The damage is irreversible, irremediable.”

Phineas knew what his father meant. If he'd ever had a dog, and anyone had ever run over it, he'd feel this way. He blinked his eyes.

The mummy's sad face smiled up at the ceiling light, as if she knew what had happened.

“At least, it hasn't been destroyed,” the detective suggested.

“But she was perfect before,” Mr. Hall snapped back. “I get so sick of this century, or this country—'Look on the bright side.' If someone dies, the first thing anyone asks is ‘Are you getting over it?' If a marriage breaks up, the first question is ‘Are you dating anyone?' It does, it makes me sick. It disgusts me. Sorry, I'm just—”

“No, I understand,” the detective said. He was looking at Phineas's father with an alert expression that made Phineas wonder if his father was a chief suspect. “I do, or I think I do. Listen, Sam, I'd like—if you'd like—would you come for dinner some night? With the kids, a family dinner.”

“I'd like that.” Phineas's father was pleased.

“I'll talk to my wife and call you.”

He must not suspect Mr. Hall, Phineas thought. You wouldn't invite someone you suspected of a crime to your house for dinner.

“I'll be seeing you soon anyway, to sign statements. Although, I have to tell you, I don't think we'll ever find the man who did this. Or woman, it could be a woman.”

Unless that was exactly what you'd do, so your suspect would relax his guard.

The mummy lay under the bright light, looking out under her portrait. She didn't know that after more than fifteen hundred years of being perfect she was now ruined. No matter what anyone did, she could never be perfect again.

Phineas minded that. He knew there was nothing to do about it, but he couldn't stop minding.

By the time the mummy had been X-rayed and returned to the collection room in the cellar of the library, it was midafternoon. As soon as they got home, Phineas went to work making sandwiches for his father and himself. His father ate without saying anything, and then sat staring at the wooden tabletop while Phineas cleaned up. “Why don't you go up and take a nap, Dad?” Phineas finally suggested.

His father smiled, but not as if he was about to laugh. “I'm waiting for Mr. Vandemark's phone call. So, Phineas, how do you think we'll like living on the West Coast?”

“Are we going to move?”

“After they fire me.”

“Why should they do that? It's not your fault there was a thief around who wanted to steal the necklace.”

“People like having someone to blame,” his father explained.

“There's no way you could have prevented it. Is there?”

“Sure there is. I could have hired round-the-clock security, or I could have camped out in the room. Especially after the first attempt.”

“Yeah, but the guy would probably have brained you. The way he did the mummy's feet.”

“Can you brain feet?” his father asked. It was pretty feeble, for a joke, but at least it was a try. “Oh, well, I can go back to tending bar.”

“You're a teacher, not a bartender.”

“Don't underestimate me, Phineas. I put myself through school tending bar, and I'm pretty good at it. The difficulty is, when you've been fired, it's hard to get another job. People wonder why you were fired.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Phineas said.

“The world doesn't make sense,” his father said dismally.

“No, I was thinking about the necklace. Who knew about it? I know, anyone who read O'Meara's article—”

“Bless her pointed little heart,” Mr. Hall murmured.

“—but, Dad, he could have looked for it right there, he didn't have to take the mummy out. Why would he kidnap the mummy? And don't tell me you can't kidnap a mummy, okay?” Phineas said, just to get his father to smile again.

A knock on the screen door interrupted them. Mr.
Hall didn't look interested, so Phineas went to answer it. A tall, broad-shouldered man stood there, althletic looking despite his khaki suit, with long legs and narrow hips; he was some kind of businessman, with the tie. For a few seconds, Phineas didn't recognize him.

“Ken?” he said, opening the door. Behind Ken's shoulder, he could see a taxi waiting.

“I just came to say good-bye, and good luck,” Ken said. He stepped into the hallway. “I hope your father is home.”

“In the kitchen.”

Phineas followed Ken down the hall. Something was different. “You shaved your beard,” he realized. He moved around to look at Ken from the front. The skin the beard had covered was paler than the rest of Ken's face. He'd left the mustache, but trimmed, as his hair had been trimmed. “You look—” Phineas couldn't figure out how to say it.

“Better,” Ken suggested with a laugh.

“Let me see,” Mr. Hall asked.

Ken turned around and flexed his muscles, fists raised in the traditional strongman pose. Then he turned his profile, and swung his arms down, one flexed in back, one flexed in front, and posed briefly that way. Then he relaxed and smiled. “I have a lucky feeling about this trip. Although I hate to abandon you when things are such a mess, Sam. I heard about the mummy.”

“It'll sort itself out. At the moment, I'm not feeling too sanguine.”

Ken's face sobered. “I can imagine. But I'll be back in a month, and at your disposal.”

“If I'm still here.”

His father looked small, sitting there, shoulders slumped, small especially compared to Ken. His father looked small and weak. Phineas didn't like seeing his father look that way.

“They can't fire you, Sam. You've got a contract.”

His father smiled. “Life is full of surprises.”

“You'd better be here when I get back,” Ken said. “Whatever happens, don't do anything until I get back. I won't let them fire you. You're too good a teacher.” He looked, as he said it, as if nothing would stand in his way, because he could take care of anything. Phineas was surprised at the difference shaving his beard made in Ken.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Mr. Hall said.

“You know as well as I do there's nothing you could have done,” Ken announced. “But I really have to go. I've got a plane to catch. See you, Phineas.” He shook Phineas's hand. “Sam.” He shook Mr. Hall's hand. “Is Althea around? I'd like to say good-bye to her.”

Phineas went up to get Althea, but she wasn't in her room. Opening the door, he saw the bed—made, of course—and the empty desk, a single light like a spotlight on the papers spread over it. He ran back downstairs. “She's not here.”

“Where is she?” Mr. Hall asked.

“I don't know,” Phineas answered.

“Probably off with some boyfriend,” Ken said. “I wouldn't worry if I were you. When she turns up, tell her I wanted to say good-bye, will you?”

They walked out onto the porch to watch Ken set off.
He turned to wave before he climbed into the taxi. The taxi pulled away.

“What a difference,” Phineas said. “He looks like a businessman, a successful businessman. Doesn't he?”

“Or a successful politician,” Mr. Hall answered. “Althea wasn't in her room?”

Phineas shook his head. “It looked like she had been there, working, because of the papers on her desk. Maybe she heard Ken and didn't want to see him?”

“She's hiding out in the bathroom? I doubt it. Probably, she went to get us something for dinner. Women like to soothe men with food.”

“They do?”

“Your mother does. And it works. Don't underestimate feminine wisdom, Phineas; a lobster would make me feel a whole lot better about the world at this point. Let's hope Althea's gone out to get lobster.”

Phineas opened the drawer where they kept grocery money and counted it. “There's forty dollars. Has she taken money?”

His father was sitting at the table again. He looked up at Phineas, but Phineas didn't feel like he was being looked at. The laugh lines on his father's face looked like worry lines. “I can't remember.”

Phineas sat down to face it. “You're worried too,” he said.

“Of course I am. I'm not even sure there won't be a third attempt.”

“Because it's not like her to just—disappear.”

“I don't know how much blame President Blight will put on me. I don't even know if he's the kind of man
who always blames someone. I don't know anything about him, or anyone up here.”

“And it's been over two hours since we've seen her.”

“Althea?” his father asked. “She's fifteen, Fin, she's smart, it's Maine, not New York. Kids her age love being alone, feeling alone, taking solitary walks.”

Phineas relaxed. His father was right.

By six, neither of them was relaxed, and by eight both of them were moving fitfully around the house, going out to the porch to look up and down the road, sitting on the stairs to be close to the phone. Phineas finally went back up to Althea's room, thinking maybe she'd left them a note up there, maybe he should have looked more carefully the first time he went up. He went straight to the desk.

Pieces of lined papers were sort of scattered around, filled with Greek letters, and some of the awkward sentences that identified them as attempts at translation. “If the leader would have the tents of the (cruel? bad? vengeful?) enemy known . . .” The gooseneck lamp shone like a spotlight on the paper she must have been working on last. But all that was written on it were some mazelike doodles, and words in English. Phineas read his own name, and his heart rose. Phineas, he read, So If Mom Asks Request Divorce.

His heart sank. Underneath, she had written more sloppily Kill Every Noodle, and crossed it out with a single stroke.

It didn't make any sense. Althea didn't want their parents to get divorced, did she? He'd have said she didn't, but he guessed she might. If they did get divorced,
then Althea and Phineas wouldn't have to worry whether they were going to. If they did, then Althea wouldn't have to cope with the question of if there was anything she should do to stop them.

But killing noodles was seriously weird. If that was what came out of her hand when she was doodling, he was going to think that there was something wrong with Althea. You couldn't even kill noodles. They weren't even alive. You couldn't kill anything unless it was alive. He wished Althea would come home, so he could ask her.

Downstairs, his father was talking on the phone, which hadn't rung. Phineas came out of Althea's room, turning off the light, but his father had hung up before Phineas could hear what he'd been saying. Mr. Hall turned around. “I called the police. They're sending someone over.”

The two of them waited in restless silence until a knock at the door announced the arrival of a policewoman with shining blond hair. They hadn't turned on any lights, so Phineas did that while she introduced herself as Officer Gable and said yes, if it was already made she'd like a cup of coffee, with milk and sugar if they had it. She sat down at the table and took out her notebook. Phineas sat next to his father at the round table.

“It's your daughter who's missing?” Officer Gable asked.

They both nodded.

“I am sorry,” she said, and sounded like she meant that. “Often, there's some simple explanation. How long has she been gone?”

“We haven't seen her since about two this afternoon,” Mr. Hall said.

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen.”

“Ah, fifteen,” the officer murmured, as if now things were beginning to make sense. “Did you have a quarrel?”