Chapter 16
Theodore’s advice came in handy much sooner than Arthur expected.
“Are you sure this is wise?” Arthur asked as Sal poked his head around the back gate of Dr. Young’s home.
The silver truck wasn’t in the driveway and none of the lights were on, but still Arthur approached with caution.
“Dr. Young wasn’t exactly brimming with hospitality the last time I visited, and his display in the coffee shop…
If he’s home, he might just shoot us on sight. ”
“Unless he’s loaded his gun with miniature wooden stakes, I think we’ll be okay. Besides, he’ll be at the ER all night.” Salvatore’s bright mood dimmed for a moment. “Too busy taking care of his mortally wounded son to worry about trespassers.”
“True enough,” Arthur said, but the lightness in his tone didn’t match the anguish of his insides. “What are we going to do about the threshold issue? We’re not exactly on texting terms with Dr. Young, so I doubt the trick you pulled with Theodore will work twice.”
“Not to worry!” Sal leaped over the flower beds, beheading a tulip on his way to the door. Even in the dark, the flowers Arthur had tended to earlier in the day were looking better, their previously drooping stalks perkier.
Arthur followed more slowly, but when he reached the porch, the source of Sal’s confidence became abundantly clear.
“No. It can’t be that easy.”
Sal grinned, pointing at the faded doormat, helpfully displaying in curly cursive letters the word Welcome.
“You and I both know he doesn’t want us here, and this is merely an anachronistic gesture—”
“Of what, the 1960s?” Sal clasped the doorknob.
“Curses like ours are always letter of the law rather than spirit. Why should we suffer because the stuffy old fae who originated our kind didn’t think to consider the existence of welcome mats?
Anyway, I’m about ninety-five percent sure some modern rebel fae are the ones who invented them in the first place, just to mix things up, so of course we should use them. ”
Arthur flexed his fingers nervously. “Oh, I don’t know, Sal. It just doesn’t seem right—”
“If you’d like, we can go back and ask Theo. As a lawyer, I’m sure he’d be able to elucidate the issue for us.”
“Fine, fine,” Arthur grumbled, shooing Sal forward. “I trust you.”
Salvatore tried the door, but it was locked. Fortunately, Trident Falls was the kind of place that invited lax security measures.
“Welcome mats really do have so many uses,” Sal said, flipping it up to reveal a spare key, which he used to unlock the deadbolt before replacing it.
“Good thing, too.” Arthur wasn’t sure he could stomach bending fae law and picking a lock in the same night. It was all a bit too exciting.
Salvatore eased the door open and they slipped inside.
He held his phone up, shedding a narrow sliver of dim light ahead of them as they crept through the sparsely decorated living room.
At a glance, the space looked purposefully minimalist, but as Arthur made his way toward the stairs, he noticed a dusty vase full of dried flowers and a rogue nail protruding from the wall, where, perhaps, a family picture might have hung.
There was an air of loss to the downstairs—a faded brown sofa looked as though it hadn’t been used for anything but decoration in years, and a stack of CDs on the coffee table had collected so much dust Arthur couldn’t read the titles—like a perfectly preserved time capsule, left behind as a relic of some memory by people who could neither bring themselves to remember nor bring themselves to forget.
Arthur sped up, accidentally stepping on the backs of Sal’s loafers in his rush to leave behind the eerie space.
“Ow!” Sal yelped.
“Shh.” Arthur pressed a finger to his lips, but he needn’t have bothered. The upstairs was as deserted as the down, quiet in a way that wasn’t entirely comforting.
Once they reached the landing, it was easy to tell which was Brody’s room.
The door was half-open, clothes strewn across part of the floor.
A laptop sat on a desk, behind which the wall was covered in Polaroids of graffiti and murals, ticket stubs for concerts, Post-its, and dried flowers pressed into homemade paper.
An electric guitar and an amp sat in one corner and a duct-taped skateboard with only three wheels was discarded beside it.
“That explains why he borrowed the truck,” Arthur muttered, jotting down mention of the broken board in his notebook.
“Guess I’ll start here.” Salvatore took a seat at the desk and booted up the laptop. When the password screen appeared, Sal deftly typed Graffiti1s4rt, which was written on one of the Post-its stuck to the wall. “You can check the closet for skeletons.”
“And to think you promised me I’d never have to go back in the closet again.”
“All in the name of solving an attempted murder, my dear.” Salvatore fell silent as he zeroed in on the computer.
Arthur turned his attention to the haphazard mess inside the closet.
Only a few dress shirts and a black suit that looked several sizes too small were hung up, though the floor was covered in T-shirts and jeans that may or may not have been clean.
Arthur gingerly stepped over a pile of rumpled bedsheets to peer farther, but found nothing more enlightening than a stack of yearbooks and an overflowing hamper.
A line of orphaned socks led under the bed like a breadcrumb trail of teenage depression.
There, he spotted a shoebox behind a scattering of guitar picks, loose change, and other detritus that had fallen beneath the bed to be forgotten. He pulled the box out.
“Should I open this, do you think?” Arthur asked, eyeing it with trepidation. It seemed the sort of box that might house contents he couldn’t unsee.
Salvatore glanced at him. “Why not? Could have some answers. What if someone was writing him threatening letters?”
“What if it’s…you know. Private.”
“If you’re worried about pornography, I’m far likelier to stumble upon it on the laptop.
Kids don’t hide Playboys under their beds anymore.
” Salvatore turned back to the laptop. “Really, this generation doesn’t know how lucky they are.
In my day, it was all erotic poetry—the entire reason I learned how to read, to be honest.”
“To think, we have poetry to thank for your literacy.” Arthur chuckled and returned to the box. Sal was probably right, so he tipped the lid up and looked inside.
A rubber band collected a stack of envelopes of varying colors, all addressed to Brody and dated periodically over the last few years. The return address was a simple PO box, but the same spiky handwriting penned each one.
Arthur slipped the first letter from its envelope, the seal already broken, and skimmed to find its signatory—and there it was, at the bottom of the letter. A single word that said everything Arthur needed to know.
Mom.
A pit opened up in Arthur’s stomach. He knew Brody’s mother wasn’t present in his life.
Dr. Young had said as much, mentioning that his wife had left years ago.
Arthur had assumed she’d cut all contact, since Brody didn’t seem to spend any time away from Trident Falls, but here was evidence she hadn’t exited her son’s life quite so cleanly as Dr. Young would have people believe.
Each letter Arthur skimmed painted an altogether different picture of the woman who’d left her family behind.
She asked after Brody’s life, posing questions about his hobbies and hopes for the future.
She asked about his painting—Arthur gathered Brody’s artistic inclinations had shifted toward graffiti more recently—and his music.
She sent him stickers and dried flowers, names of songs she thought he’d like. She told him how much she missed him.
Arthur frowned. He supposed if she didn’t want to miss her son so much, she might have visited.
Each letter ended with his mother’s hope that he might write her back, but there was no mention of any reply.
Perhaps Brody resented his mother as much as Dr. Young seemed to.
The walls of Brody’s bedroom told a different story, however.
There, tacked and taped to the wall, were the dried flowers she’d mentioned in one letter, and several concert ticket stubs were for the band she’d suggested to him.
Arthur’s mind worked quickly, piecing things together.
If Brody resented his mother, the collage on his wall didn’t show it, and there was nothing in the letters that supported the theory of a rift between them.
Maybe it wasn’t what was in them but what wasn’t…
Dr. Young was never mentioned. Not once.
“Oh, Arthur, darling. I’ve found some good gossip,” Salvatore said, jarring Arthur out of his thoughts.
“We’re not here for gossip.” Arthur frowned.
“Oh, right, you detective types call them clues.” Salvatore waved him over. “There’s a fair bit of drama among his friends’ text messages.”
“You’ve got his phone?” Arthur asked, surprised. Surely a sixteen-year-old would’ve had it with him while out, and it would now be at the hospital.
“You simply must get with the times, my dear. One can access one’s texts via computer these days. I’ve skimmed Brody’s, but there’s nothing too salacious, more’s the pity.”
“I’ll remind you these are teenagers we’re investigating, Sal. I’d be more concerned if there was anything salacious in there.”
“Just because you were a boring teenager doesn’t mean the rest of them aren’t still the pinnacle of drama.”
“That’s rich, coming from the drama king of Trident Falls.”
“Drama king?” Salvatore raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “I’ll expect a crown delivery shortly. Anyway, looks like he had a bit of a tiff with his friends a few weeks ago.”