The Deception Dance (21 page)

A foot crunches glass making us spin. Nicholas halts in the doorway
with Dina peeking out from behind him. Nicholas speaks fast, “Where
is she?”

I stare at him, “Who?”

Linnie half cries, half calls, “Chauncey!”

I grab for her but she runs over the mirror remains yelling
Chauncey’s name.

“What happened?” I make my way over the glass chards to
Nicholas and Dina.

Dina steps out from behind Nicholas leaning against the door frame.
The only thing betraying that she’s not calm are her widened
eyelids and darting gaze. “I heard a shattering sound half an
hour ago. I came to see if anyone was hurt and I almost got hit by a
flying vase. I tried to stop that girl, but she almost attacked me,
so I ran. She had already smashed all the mirrors, a few vases and a
window in the back. She was screaming,” Dina touches her neck
and shudders. “I found Albert and we were going to call the
police, but...” She gestures to Nicholas, “you drove up.”

“Are you okay?” Nicholas touches my shoulder.

I blink a couple times, “I’m fine. We should find
Chauncey.” As I turn to the destroyed hall I whisper, “This
is my fault.”

One peek into the room I share with Linnie is enough to see it’s
destroyed. The large oval cheval mirror lies broken and smashed on
the floor.

Linnie storms out of Chauncey’s room with a piece of paper and
black lines of mascara streaking her cheeks. She shoves the piece of
paper at Nicholas pointing to it, “Tell me what this means.”
Her finger again points to the bottom of the paper when he takes the
note from her to read. Linnie yells, “I want to know. What does
‘tell Nicholas he gets what he wants’ mean?”

He breathes in a shaky breath and holds it. When he exhales, he meets
Linnie’s glare. “It means she’s gone.”

She sobs, “What?”

Nicholas starts, “I...”

“What did you tell her? What do you mean? Gone? Gone where?
What happened? Tell me!” Linnie’s sobbing makes her words
hard to decipher.

Nicholas says, “Linnie...”

“How could you? What gave you the right to...?”

“She couldn’t have gotten far, Linnie. I promise I’ll
find her.” Nicholas squeezes past Dina and runs toward the main
house.

Linnie wipes her face. “I’m going.”

Dina steps out of the way to let Linnie and I pass. Nicholas is
already charging down the driveway toward the front gate.

Stephen walks out the main house's front door. He slings an arm
around Linnie and holds her through a few sobs. To me he says,
“Albert’s rounding up all our help to comb the grounds.
Could you ladies check everywhere in the guest house just in case
she’s just hiding?”

I nod.

Stephen pats Linnie’s back. “Have you tried to call her?”

“I have her phone,” Linnie says, sniffling.

The moon is conspicuously absent and only several darting beams of
light, presumably from the mansions staff searching, interrupt the
darkness of the grounds.

“Wait, Stephen,” I say, “since people scan their
thumbprint to enter or exit the grounds can’t you track who has
left?”

Linnie steps away and looks at Stephen with wide hopeful eyes. “Are
there cameras?”

Stephen adjusts his weight from one foot to the other, he looks
uncomfortable. “The security system,” he pauses to give
me an apologetic smile and slight shake of the head, “is not
something I can talk about. I wish I could tell you...”

“What? Why?” Linnie demands.

“I can’t...” he cuts off, gaze roaming around the
parking lot, settling on a flashlight wielding maid, then he shakes
his head. “I will go and do everything I can to find your
friend.” He pats Linnie on the arm while heading toward the
gentlemen’s club. With a jump in his step Stephen disappears
through the door.

“Linnie,” I say wrapping my arm around her as we walk
toward the guest house, “when we leave tomorrow...”

“We can’t leave!” She spins and yells, “You’re
kidding, right? What if Chauncey comes back? She doesn’t have a
phone or anything. We need to be here!”

I swallow, “Okay.” Linnie hasn't yelled at me like this
in years. She thinks that I’m selfish, that I’m not
worried about Chauncey. What if she knows it’s my fault that
Chauncey disappeared? This trip couldn’t get any worse.

Linnie, Dina and I search every space big enough to hide a person,
and a few not. I pass Nelly grumbling and sweeping up the mess as I
repeatedly cross the hall. We even rummage around the locked basement
which looks like a room from a futuristic spaceship with florescent
lights and sterile blue plastic crates stacked from floor to ceiling
in even rows.

After a thorough and unsuccessful search and a few frantic phone
calls, Linnie and I change out of our gowns and into sleepwear. I
sigh as I hang the beautiful dress on its hanger; there is no way
this can be returned to the store.

We slump onto my freshly made bed. I stroke Linnie’s hair as
she stares at the spot where our cheval mirror used to stand. Linnie
doesn’t flinch as I pick out the bobby-pins restraining her
brown hair.

We don’t look up when Nicholas enters the room, but he steps
into my view. He looks nervous. I wonder if this is the first time
he’s been in the guest rooms. I bet it’s the first time
he’s been in here with unmarried women.

He clears his throat. “We just reached one of our gardeners on
the phone. Apparently, Chauncey was waiting in the garage and asked
him for a ride a few minutes before we got back. He drove her to his
house in Malmo.” His cheeks pink in the low light. “He
thought that they were going to...” he clears his throat again,
“…well, she ran off the moment he stopped his car.”

I ask, “Malmo?”

“About an hour and a half drive south from here.”

I peer at Linnie’s head on my lap, surprised she hasn’t
leapt to her feet, but she’s asleep.

I whisper to Nicholas, “What is the plan?”

“Stephen is on his way to Malmo now. Stephen has a talent for
finding people.” He pauses, “I don’t think there is
much else we can do as exhausted as we are, you should let Linnie
sleep. Did you call Chauncey’s parents?”

“Unsuccessfully,” I say then sigh, “but we’ll
try again tomorrow.”

“Well, good night then, Raven.” He walks to the door.

“Nicholas,” I say stopping him, “can I have the
note?”

He hesitates at the door then turns back. From his tuxedo pants
pocket Nicholas extracts a folded piece of paper. He places the small
rectangle into my hand, nods and leaves without another word.

I let the paper sit in my outstretched palm for a minute, unfolding
of its own accord. I take my other hand off Linnie’s head and
unfold the letter.

I read:

“Linnie, Linnie, Linnie.

I’m slipping Linnie, slipping through the stone.

As my foot slides through, the flames lick my toes.

My skin is ablaze and it festers.

In every glass the monstrous faces watch me burn.

And they’re screaming, screaming; I can’t stop screaming.

Lies, lies, lies.

The bird that promised I could fly released his talons.

And I’m falling, flailing, diving to my disastrous end.

Tell Raven that she has everything I crave.

Tell Nicholas he gets what he wants.

And I, so unloved and misunderstood, am entombed by fire.

Hide Linnie, the inferno’s closing in.”

“So poetic,” I murmur with a quavering voice. I clench my
hands into fists to still them, but they won’t stop trembling.
The image of monstrous faces watching from every glass makes my whole
body shiver; I concentrate on breathing to calm my nerves. No wonder
she broke all the mirrors.

“Do you think she’s crazy?” Linnie asks with her
eyes still closed. Has she been awake this whole time?

A few minutes pass before I find my voice, “No.” I reread
the line about her blazing festering skin. “It’s her
tattoo; she has a bad infection on her arm. I’m pretty sure
that infections, really bad ones, can spread into people’s
blood and make them hallucinate. She needs to get to a hospital.”

“Why do you think Nicholas told her to leave?”

I’m about to say, ‘because of how she treated me,’
but I stop. Andras’s words surface in my mind, ‘they will
do everything in their power to make sure you stay’.

Nicholas is too kind for that; it’s ridiculous to even consider
he would torment an obviously distraught girl to trick us into
staying. I swallow down a sour taste in my mouth. Since I need to say
something, I respond, “I’m not sure why.”

She whispers, “I don’t trust him.”

“Linnie,” I say, stroking her hair, “you’re
the only person this side of the Atlantic that I trust.”

We fall asleep hugging like we did when we were little and scared of
the branches that used to scrape our window.

What feels like a moment later, I wake to the sound of Linnie
shouting into her cell phone. My eyes are still bleary and hard to
open but I can make out her figure pacing in our little room.

“No, I need to speak to him directly. Please, this is urgent.”
She pauses for a long moment then continues, “Could you give me
a number for him in Hong Kong?” Another pause, “No, I
already called her mom. She...” She shakes her head, “Isn’t
going to help. Please!” Longer pause, “Will you call me
when you get a hold of him?”

I sit up.

Linnie clenches her teeth while she asks, “Well, then, may I
call you?” Substantial drops of water drip down Linnie’s
face, she wipes them away with jerky swipes. “Don’t tell
me to calm down. I’m talking about his daughter’s safety,
she’s in danger.” Linnie’s eyes widen. “I’m
not being overly dramatic. Her wrist...” Linnie peers at the
phone in her hand. “Hello?” Linnie whimpers, makes a
sound like, ‘Ugh!’ then throws her phone across the room.
She stomps and yells more frustrated sounds, then slumps to sit on
her bed laying her head in her hands.

I retrieve Linnie’s phone, but keep it. “What happened
when you called Chauncey’s mom?”

Linnie doesn’t look up to answer. “She thought I was
Chauncey. She didn’t understand what I was saying and it was
hard to understand her...” she huffs out a heavy breath,
“slurring.”

“Doesn’t Chauncey’s cell phone have the number for
her dad’s direct line?”

Linnie shakes her head, “I don’t think they talk much.”

“But Chauncey said...”

“I know... Chauncey pretends that they’re close, even to
me, but I can tell they’re not. She arranged this whole trip
with her dad’s personal assistant; I overheard their phone
conversations. It’s possible her dad doesn’t even know or
care that she’s here.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

Linnie looks up. “Not everyone is as lucky as we are, Raven, to
have a parent that cares so much about us.”

The word ‘lucky’ feels like a slap, the backhanded kind.
Isn’t ‘lucky’ what Chauncey kept calling me? For
lack of a better response, I whisper, “I guess.”

Linnie spends the morning and afternoon, late-afternoon
and
evening, trying to reach anyone who will help us, but like the
secretary, the Swedish Police and Interpol and the American embassy
tell her she’s overreacting. One night missing, is not a
missing person. She finally ends her calling search when she chucks
the phone across the room with our father's voice still buzzing
through the phone’s speaker.

I reach down, pick up the phone and walk into the hall. "Hey
dad," I say.

"Linnie?" he says, shock in his voice.

"No, Raven."

"Oh," he says; from the sound of his voice, I can picture
him: slumped forward, head in his hands, squeezing his eyes closed.
He says, "What's your sister doing?”

"Pacing and freaking out. So, you're going to call Brian
O’Connell and Chauncey's dad?" I got this much from
Linnie's end of the conversation.

"Birdie, I'll call, but truly... there's not much that Brian can
do." Sheriff Brian O’Connell is my father’s good
friend and bowling buddy. "I'll try to reach Chancey’s
father, and let's hope he's not as indifferent as Linnie's been
painting him out to be."

"Thanks dad. I should get back to Linnie...”

"Wait...” he says, "This is off subject, but, I know
you really wanted to know about Mrs. Trandle...”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, I talked to Mrs. Trandle's real-estate agent; she said
that Mrs. Trandle moved to
Sweden
, of all places. Crazy
coincidence, huh? I guess her grandson is handling her entire move
and selling her house from Sweden."

"Sweden? Are you serious? Did the agent say what her grandson
looks like?"

"I met him, actually. Remember? I told you: I helped him move a
couple boxes. He was a good looking, nice young man; the only thing
was he had a...” he clears his throat, "he did have a scar
that ran across his entire face.”

I drop the phone. It cracks in two and scatters across the floor. My
feet somehow manage to walk into the other room and I sit on my bed.

Linnie paces back and forth in front of me. “You know what that
man said to me? He said that Chauncey is an adult and I’m not
her ‘keeper’!” She spits the last word as if it’s
a curse. She grumbles, “I need to go to Malmo, tonight.”

The same argument again, but I somehow can't find words to fight with
her any more.

She doesn't notice, or try to leave.

After a short forever has passed I manage to mechanically say, “It’s
seven-thirty Linnie, you should wait until tomorrow.”

This is the plan we decided after Nicholas visited us at noon. He
came to inform us that Stephen had already left Malmo and was heading
to Copenhagen.

Linnie, hadn’t acknowledged Nicholas, she was suddenly riveted
with her cell phone (which had been serenading her with hold-music
for an hour).

I examined Nicholas’s expression before he left for a trace of
repentance for chasing Chauncey off. He gave me a tight smile; he
didn’t look pleased, but not guilty either.