Arcana
By Athena-Luna
"The Break-In"
The break-in crew ended up short one from the number planned at the previous evening’s meeting. Steven put his foot down and refused to let both of his youngest sisters accompany the team. The ensuing argument threatened to delay them all when Addy realized that Steven planned to take Hillary and not herself.
“Ste-ven!” Addy cried, planting her hands on her hips to emphasize her anger. “Are you insane?!”
“Stop it, Addy,” Steven said quietly. “You know I wouldn’t do this without thinking it through.” He finished stuffing the flashlights and the football into Lindy’s backpack.
“Apparently you would!” She retorted and stomped up to her room. Hillary, who had been waiting for Steven and Angie just outside the back door, heard her sister’s angry comments. When they came out she asked Steven why she was chosen. Steven looked sternly at her.
“Are you sure you wanna know?”
“Yes,” Hillary said, more to the ground than to her brother. Steven sighed and started towards the garage. When they were all inside his car, Steven looked at Hillary in the rear-view mirror.
“It’s actually more important to leave her here than to take you with us. NOW can you figure out why we’re taking you?” Angie had her head turned to the side window but Hillary could tell her oldest sister was laughing. When the truth finally hit her, Hillary laughed softly to herself and laid her head back on the seat, still smiling. Angie threw her head back and laughed out loud.
“I love ya, kid,” Steven said as he backed out of the drive and made his way around the corner onto Pleasant Street. “But you can’t lie for shit! How many times have you gotten each one of us in trouble because you couldn’t keep a secret? If mom and dad come home early or something happens and there’s trouble, I want Addy there to make up the story about what we’re doing!”
“Do you think she’ll figure that out before we get back?” Hillary hoped her sister wouldn’t spend a long evening working herself into a tizzy.
Just as they were passing by the front of the house, Angie grabbed Steven’s arm and told him to stop the car. She rolled down the window and yelled, “What is it?” towards the house. Addy was signaling to them from their parents’ bedroom window, waving wildly.
“Have fun at the movies, guys!” Hillary leaned over to look out the window, just in time to see Addy blowing them kisses.
Angie leaned out the window and waved back with both arms. “Bye-bye, sweetie! We’ll miss you! You finish that report for school now, you hear?”
“Oh, I will, Ang! I’ll get right on it!” Addy shouted, then closed the window, still smiling.
“I think she figured it out,” Steven said, and they drove off to meet the others.
* * * * *
They pulled into the parking lot outside Zigby’s just as Lindy and his boss were coming out. Lindy waved a hand at his boss and got in the backseat next to Hillary. He looked at her a moment then gave a great barking laugh.
“I’ll bet Addy was in rare form when she heard you were going!” He began poking his sister in the arm. Hillary grabbed his finger and tried to wrench it backwards. “We should have left you behind," she grimaced. More tussling ensued until Angie reached over the seat and smacked Lindy’s head with the back of her hand. “Stop it!” She growled. They stopped.
“Should we go over it again?” Lindy ventured after a minute. Angie and Hillary both groaned loudly. Hillary smacked him on the shoulder, threatening to start the tussle once again.
“No, he’s right,” Steven said over the groans. “We’ll wait till we’ve picked up Em, though, so we’re all hearing the same thing.” They continued on down Main Street until the few city lights of Fremont were behind them and there were dark fields of corn on either side of the blacktop.
They were still a few miles from the Schultz home when they passed someone walking towards town on the opposite side of the road. “Hey, that was her!” Angie cried, and Steven stopped with a screech. It took a few seconds for him to turn around and by then Emily had jogged up to the car. Lindy opened his door for her but Angie signaled Emily to go around the car to Hillary’s side. Lindy said, “Bitch,” under his breath, but not too quietly for Angie to hear. She gave him a look and said, “Sleazeball,” just as quietly. Then she turned to Emily, who was now in the car. “I’m glad you were wearing that jacket otherwise I might have missed you!”
“Well, I didn’t want to have to make up something for my parents, so I told them I was going to bed early and snuck out. I hoped you’d see this jacket before you hit me, Stevie!” She was grinning from ear to ear, and her enthusiasm was catching. Soon they were all talking at once.
“Okay, kids!” Steven shouted over the din. “Let’s go over it again.” Hillary’s hand shot up towards the car roof.
“First, you let Lindy and I off at the beginning of the Estate, and we run along the outside of the stone wall until we see the back of the house and the stables!”
“Right,” Steven said. “Then the three of us drive up and pull into the corn field on the other side of the Estate. We come around the opposite wall and Emily goes to the back of the stable...”
“But if we see someone outside,” interrupted Lindy. “We wave her off and meet you back on the road.”
Steven agreed and continued. “She then goes to the stables while the rest of us wait outside the walls.”
“I check out the yard,” Emily said slowly, closing her eyes as if visualizing the plan. “I go around the stables and garage, making sure no one’s there. If someone is there, I act drunk and say I was at a party with Jake and his friends and they thought it would be funny to ditch me at the Beecham Estate.” Steven had driven back through town by this time, and they were once again leaving the city behind and heading into darkness, this time towards the Beecham end of town.
“Okay,” Angie turned to look at her co-conspirators in the back seat. “Once the coast is clear we all meet behind the stables and make our way around the...” She looks up at the car roof for a moment. “...east...side?” Lindy barked his laugh once again, until silenced by a slug from Hillary. “...yeah, east side of the stables to the back of the garage. After that Steven throws his little football into the East Garden to see if the alarm is on.” Steven mimes throwing a ball until the others yell at him to put his hands back on the wheel.
“So I rifle a bullet into the end zone,” Steven bragged, with groans all around. “And then we take one of two courses.” He slowed down and turned left into the empty city park by Beecham Lake. He parked behind a few trees and turned the lights off, but left the car running. “If someone comes outside to check it out we go in through the door he exited after he goes around the house. There shouldn’t be anyone home, but that dimwit Charlie might’ve backed out of the big Dinner at the last minute. I doubt the Beechams would hire a guard, but you never know. If we get lucky and no one comes out, or if the alarm is off, Emily rings the bell at the back door. If no one comes we’re free to use Emily’s key.” Emily jumped at hearing her name and stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets, pulling them out with the key in her right hand. She grinned and held it up for the others to see.
“I still can’t believe mom kept the key to their house!” She exclaimed, allowing Hillary to take it and examine it. Hillary handed it back after looking it over and said, “She probably wanted to go in and sabotage the person they hired to redecorate after her. I mean, they really blew her off, after she’d done all that prep work and everything.” Emily shook her head. “Naw...my mom wouldn’t do that.” She re-pocketed the key. “I think she just liked knowing she’d pulled one over on the Bitch’ems!”
“If the alarm goes off when we go in, we take off for the car,” Steven resumed. “Otherwise, once we’re inside the house we head to the west wing where the offices are. Ang?”
“As far as I can remember, there are a couple offices and a library on the main floor,” Angie said carefully. “But it was a long time ago that Callie and I worked on our project, so I’m going off an old memory, here.”
“That’s okay,” Steven reassured her impatiently. “Go on.”
“The office in front of the house is Thomas’s and it’s huge...two rooms I think, an outer and an inner office. I’d say anything incriminating would be in his inner office. The back office was the old man’s, and I think Elliot uses it now. Callie said no one ever went in there except her uncle, so if Tommy Boy would allow anyone else control over the family secrets we might get lucky in there, too. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the library, since that room is so public.”
“Right.” Steven agreed. “That all makes sense.” He eyed Emily warily. “Em,” he said cautiously. “You won’t feel slighted if we give you the, uh, easy room, will you? You see...” Emily laughed and patted Steven on the arm.
“Don’t worry about it, Stevie! I know I need to be ‘out front’ in case someone is in the house or comes home! It’d be too bad if I had to get my mom in trouble, though. I’m sure she wouldn’t want her keeping this key coming out!” Even in the darkness of the car, his siblings could see Steven blushing at Emily’s touch. And he could almost hear them smiling at him.
“Great,” he said, and Emily took her hand off his arm. “If we get stuck we head upstairs and hide in Callie’s room, using her deck to get outside and onto the lawn again if we have to. Everyone got it?” There were nods all around, so Steven turned the car lights back on and pulled onto the road, heading west.
* * * * *
They did get extremely lucky, finding no alarms at the estate (outside or in) and no one home when Emily rang the bell. As elegantly decorated as the house appeared in daylight, at night the furnishings appeared stark, thowing long shadows over the floor from the harsh outdoor lights. Emily paused at a large vase arrangement of colored ribbons of bamboo, dyed, steamed, and twisted into five-foot tall spirals. “Eww,” she sneered. “My mom would've done a much better job in here!” Angie caught Emily’s elbow as she went by, pulling her along behind the others through the house.
Curtained french doors opened onto Thomas Beecham’s outer office at the front of the house, making Steven feel very powerful as he entered the sacred rooms. The single door to the inner office was open, and Steven could see Thomas’s grandiose rosewood desk and black leather chair. While the others made their way into the outer chamber around him, he briefly imagined himself in that chair, somehow running the Beecham Estate instead of writing for his series. Although the picture he saw in his head didn’t seem right, it wasn’t completely wrong either. “Is that what I’m supposed to do?” He thought to himself. “Become a corporate giant with no heart, no sympathy for people I step on on my way to the top?” Angie interrupted his train of thought when she opened another set of doors to his right and found Elliot’s office.
“I don’t remember it being so close to Tommy Boy’s,” she remarked. “But I guess that makes it easier for us to search.” Another set of doors opposite these appeared to lead to a terrace that was enclosed by shrubbery.
“I’ll go over to the library.” Emily whispered as she took a flashlight from Lindy's bag. She tiptoed across the parlor towards the foyer and still another set of french doors.
“Em,” Lindy said laughingly, his voice growing louder with each word. “There’s nobody else HOME! WHY ARE YOU WHISPERING!!!” He finished with a shout, causing Steven and Angie to hiss at him.
“Dammit, Lindy!” Steven grabbed Lindy’s arm and threw him towards Angie in Elliot’s office. “You still need to keep quiet! What if someone driving by on the road hears you?”
“Whatever,” drawled Lindy. He pulled a flashlight out of his backpack, tossed one to each of his siblings, and walked to the nearest set of bookshelves in the old man’s office. Angie was seated at the desk, pulling open drawers and looking through the files strewn about its surface.
Steven followed Hillary through the heavy wood inner office door, into Thomas’s sanctuary. “Here’s where we’ll find it,” he speculated. “Whatever ‘it’ is.” Hillary went to the file cabinets under the curtained windows and tried the top drawer of the left one. Locked. As were the other three, she soon found. She turned to her brother, now seated behind the desk and staring back through the open door. Hillary could see Emily’s pinpoint of light from the far-off library occasionally flash the wall over his head.
“Earth to Steven,” she said wryly. He jumped slightly in the chair, and, after a quick glance her way, began rifling through the desk drawers. “If you happen to see any keys in there,” Hillary continued. “Let me know. All the cabinets are locked.” She turned to the bookshelves to the right of the doorway and pulled a nearby upright chair against them. She stood on the chair and began on the top left shelf, pulling out the books one by one, flipping through the pages then turning the book over to let any loose papers spill out.
Thomas’s desk appeared very neat and tidy to Steven. Too tidy, he thought, for a man who’d dirtied his hands in so many back alley deals, if local gossip was to be believed. Steven found very little of interest in the desk’s lone file drawer, which seemed to be for city business, holding files titled, “Minutes - City Council”, “Current Zoning Projects”, and “Auditor’s Reports”. This last file he quickly perused, hoping to find something incriminating in the Auditor’s analysis of city finances. No such luck.
“Hey!” Hillary said suddenly. Steven looked up in time to see several sheets of paper floating lazily towards the floor from the book Hillary held by its spine in her left hand. “This book is a biography on industrial giants of the 19th century. That’s a Tommy-Boy Beecham book if I ever saw one!” She stepped off the chair and set her flashlight on it. Crouching near the light, she picked up the smallish sheets and held them up. Steven could see by the feeble beam that they were filled with writing on both sides. “It’s stationary,” Hillary held it close to her face trying to read the signature on the back of the last page. “I think it’s signed by...Charles Beecham! Woo-hoo!” She jumped up and brought the pages to Steven at the desk. They laid out the sheets side by side. By this time Angie and Lindy had joined them from Elliot’s office to see what had been discovered.
There were six sheets of thick vellum in all, unlined, with no name or title on them except for a beech tree design inside a circle embossed in the upper left hand corner. And each sheet was covered, front and back, with tiny, barely legible script in messy black ink. They had a hard time deciding which sheet came first, since the letter began with no other salutation than “Son,” written at the beginning of the first line on the page.
“This must be a letter to Tommy Boy,” Angie said. “But it doesn’t seem to be making much sense, since old Chuck apparently never heard of grammar or punctuation or sentence structure.” She flipped over the first sheet and held it up to her face. “ '...mine enemy is thy enemy and thy enemy is truth as these infidels see it but no consequences come of denying the hoards their pitiful victory no consequences no consequences...’ Um, I can’t read the next few words, but it goes on like that. Man, what crap.”
Lindy picked up another sheet. “ '...yes he is ours as is the woman but they are lost to our way unless you can save them SAVE THEM! Thomas, please, save your...’ Holy crap!” He interjected, and looked up at the others.
“What?!” Hillary begged. “ 'Save your’ what?”
Lindy’s eyes were huge, even in the reflected light off the brittle paper he held. “ '...save your siblings as they do not know us YET they do not know our POWER...' Tommy's got brothers and sisters out there! I heard about his old man, ya know. He'd screw anyth..."
"Just finish it!" Steven said tersely.
"Okay, um, let's see, "...do not know our POWER our gift our righteous will above all others but only YOU can teach them! only YOU can show them our power our gift, SON,’ ” Lindy flipped the page over. Steven stood up, still looking down at the sheets before him. “ ‘...for the inferior Dahl has brought her up ignorant and...’ Oh, god, god...” Lindy closed his eyes. Angie heaved a great sigh and reached to take the sheet from her brother. He pulled it away and shouted at her. “Stop it, Angie! This is...just let me read it to you!” Angie turned with a huff and sat back against the desk, crossing her arms over her chest. While Lindy closed his eyes to compose himself, Hillary crept behind him to read over his shoulder. She gasped after a few seconds and covered her hand with her mouth. Her eyes were nearly as big as Lindy’s had been as she staggered back a few steps. Lindy finally read the entire line.
“’...only YOU can show them our POWER our gift, SON, for the inferior Dahl has brought her up ignorant and the imbecile Dodd will raise him as a fool’!” Lindy fairly shouted his family’s name as he read it, as well as the word 'him'. Each Dodd took a step away from the others, turning inward to come up with the only name that fit the situation described in the letter. Then they all looked at Angie, whose jaw was rigid and whose eyes were squeezed tightly shut. Hillary sat down in the upright chair and covered her face with her hands.
“NO!” Angie croaked at last. “He is NOT a Beecham! He is NOT one of them! He’s my brother! We adopted him fair and square! His mother might’ve been a Stein, but his father was NOT a Beecham! He’s a Dodd! He’s...one of us, for god’s sake!” When she got to the words ‘one of us’ her voice caught, and she finished the sentence in a whisper. The others recognized then what Angie had finally allowed herself to understand.
“If Basil was one of us,” Lindy said quietly, as he laid the sheet back down on the desk. “He’d be here with us now. He’d have tried to help instead of turning against us when we went to Fr. Matthews.” Lindy almost heard Angie’s slap before he felt it, so fast was her hand.
“Franklin Dodd! You are such an ass!” She said through her teeth. She wiped her eyes and strode out of the room. Steven began gathering up the sheets, pausing to touch his brother’s arm briefly as he did. “Yeah, whatever,” Lindy muttered, and left the office.
Angie was standing in the open doorway leading from the outer office to the parlor. Steven and Hillary joined Lindy a few feet behind her.
“You’re right, you know, Ang,” Lindy said to her back. “I am definitely an ass. I am also right, but I am definitely an ass, too.”
“Lindy.” He barely heard Angie say his name.
“What?” He whispered back.
“Where’s Emily?”
* * * * *
Next Chapter --> Emily and Livia
Read also:
From Hubie to Pegs
Steven's Intro
The Library
The Plot
