Twenty-one
Jennifer and Francis returned to the castle to a
scene of chaos. Outraged and shaken, Emily told a story of Dimitri
Carvelli attacking Bertha, and of the caretaker spying from behind a
bathroom mirror. Sally was curled up in the bed she shared with Emily
with her arms crisscrossed over her head, refusing to participate in the
onslaught of events.
Jennifer went in search of Bertha and found the girl,
Gabby, and a shattered mirror in their apartment.
“Awesome,” she murmured and stepped through the
broken glass and the shattered wall of glass to the cubicle beyond. The
tiny room of bare wall studs and lathing with rafters slanting down from
overhead was the length of the bathroom and no more than a yard and a half
deep. At one end, a narrow and crudely built staircase went down to a
similar space behind the mirror of the apartment directly beneath.
Jennifer went down to investigate and stood staring
into the dimly lit bathroom of the unused apartment. A reflection in the
medicine cabinet directly across from her showed its own reflection and no
evidence of her presence behind the larger mirror overlooking the bathtub.
“Cool,” she said, but she shook her head with nervous
exasperation.
She went back up to a half-dressed Bertha who paced
the bedroom a few steps at a time, her arms tightly criss-crossed against
her body. Gabby sat on the edge of the bed looking dazed and confused.
“You okay?” Jennifer said, amazed that Bertha could
have escaped an attempt upon her life in a manner so bizarre as this.
Emily stuck her head through the door, looking pale,
but acting calm and collected. “Francis wants to talk to everybody.
Bertha, you’re supposed to make sure Gabby doesn’t run off.”
Bertha knelt before the old man, whispered to him,
and caressed the side of his face. Gabby smiled at the girl in abject
adoration. In her own unique fashion, Bertha had the situation well in
hand.
Bertha stood, gave a curt nod and hurried from the
room with Jennifer in tow. Stationed guard outside of the apartment she
and Francis shared, Emily confronted Bertha. “What’s with you and that
old man? He’s was spying on us, and you were deliberately enticing him.”
“I didn’t know for sure he was.”
“It’s not your place to be thinking for yourself,”
Emily said.
Bertha shook her head in denial of Emily’s logic.
“You would have scared Gabby off, and Gabby would have gone to the police,
so I really didn’t have anyone else to do my thinking for me taking that
all into consideration.”
Emily wasn’t about to deny the possibility. “Yeah,
but I just still don’t understand how you can be so soft on the old
bastard. If he’s got any pictures of me and Sally down here, I damned
well want them back.”
Francis paced her apartment like a robotic,
too-heavily painted manikin wound up way too tight. Sally and Emily sat
together on the couch. Bertha perched herself on a window sill, still
dressed in nothing but a towel. Sally hung back in the shadows as if
trying to hide herself from the world.
Jennifer pulled a chair around, feeling like a
schoolgirl about to be scolded by her teacher. Francis was not going to
appreciate her run-in with the man who had been sent to make sure that she
died.
“I talked to people who will send a mercenary to help
us,” Francis said in a clipped tone of voice. “I don’t know how far we
could trust a man like that, or how well he’d do against experienced
gunmen. I don’t know what else to do.
“Evelyn Haxx will be in tomorrow,” Francis
continued. “She says she wants to be here with us. Everyone else has
gotten off safely. Hopefully, this will have been the last attempt upon
our lives. Dimitri is badly injured. When he’s dead, his father and
friends will have no further quarrel with us.”
Jennifer shot to her feet. “That may not be true,
Francis.”
Francis reeled back, startled by the challenge.
“Child?”
“When Dimitri chased me last night,” Jennifer said,
“I saw a car parked in the trees, the same one I saw earlier at the motel
when I went to pick up Valerie. I went looking for the car after I
dropped you off at the mall. I found it.”
Francis blanched. Emily’s mouth dropped open.
“He was sent here to kill Dimitri after Dimitri
killed me. Now that they think Dimitri is going to fail, they ordered him
to kill us both. He said he refused, and I believe him, but I’m thinking
they might send someone else to take his place. I need to talk to him about it.”
Francis found herself a seat, looking thoroughly
terrified.
“I think we should capture Dimitri while he’s still
alive and try to make a deal with the mob,” Jennifer said. “We have
to capture him before he dies, and keep him from dying. Either they
leave us alone or we turn him over, not to the cops, but to the press.”
Francis’ voice was a harsh whisper. “How could you
put yourself in such danger?”
“I’m not the one who put myself in danger,” Jennifer
said. “Dimitri did that. He’s a complete fruitcake. Maybe he’ll try one
last time to kill me, if he has the chance. We should give him that one
last chance. Just me and Dimitri in this big empty mousetrap.”
“Those horrible mirrors,” Emily said in amazement.
Jennifer ventured a wane smile. “From now on, they
work in our favor.”
