Chapter 36
It took three police officers to haul Octavius off from the horse and wrangle him inside.
Fola watched them drag her unhinged brother back into the drawing room before two more officers, accompanied by a butler and the stable groom, went into the gardens to deal with the horse and the alarm system while Henry contacted an emergency vet.
The room was silent. All eyes were concentrated on Octavius, who was now on the ground laughing and shivering from the cold as well as, Fola suspected, his injuries. He had a trail of blood running down the side of his face.
What a disaster, Fola thought as she watched her brother rock back and forth, coming down from the high of yet another self-destructive incident.
She felt the stares of everyone in the room, heard some of their whispers too.
“I’d never have thought that one of his kids could act in such an uncivilized manner,” one voice said, followed by another.
“Who knows what else that kid is capable of?” Fola turned sharply, her face screwed up as she tried to identify the voices.
But all she could see was a sea of eyes.
Very few were looking at them with pity, like Anwar, who was watching with genuine concern, but most of the eyes were filled with obvious contempt.
“I’m going to take him to his room to get cleaned up,” Fola said to Henry once he was off the phone. She reached out to pull Octavius into a standing position, shrugging off the loud stares. A part of her just wanted to no longer be down here in this room with these judgmental know-it-alls.
“Good idea, thank you, Fola,” Henry replied, his gaze focused on the shattered glass doors of the gardens where the weaselly journalist, Jesse Philips, was taking the entire scene in.
Fola needed to get them away before Mr. Philips sank his sharp vulture claws into her brother and tried to coax any truths out of him.
“It is a good idea,” another voice chimed in. Fola looked up to find Chief Waxler staring down at them with his hands behind his back and his face pulled into a tight smile. “I will accompany you both, of course, in case you need any assistance.”
“I think we’ll be fine, but thank you so much for offering your help, Chief,” Fola replied with her own false friendliness, as she reached down to gather up the mess that was her brother.
“It wasn’t a question, Miss Button,” Waxler said, his smile stretching more.
“We have noticed your brothers leaving the vicinity on more than one occasion today and, given Octavius’s display just now, we would like to keep a close eye on things.
Especially as we begin to wrap up our investigation,” he continued, ignoring Octavius low humming.
“We don’t need any more factors distracting us from our main goal, which is of course to ensure your father’s killer is caught.
I’m sure you understand. I’ll happily wait outside the room to give you two privacy. ”
Fola was gripping onto Octavius’s arm now, a lot tighter than she meant to, as she nodded and smiled wider at the chief of police. “Thank you, Chief Waxler. I really appreciate that. We all want nothing more than justice for our father.”
Octavius snorted then and Fola felt the urge to hit him.
“I’m glad we are on the same page, Folake.” Chief Waxler said her full name with a sense of overfamiliarity she didn’t like. No one really called her that and it was a personal choice of hers. Folake was the person she got to be when she was alone and unmasked; she was Fola to everyone else.
“Let’s get going, then,” Chief Waxler said, and then gestured toward the foyer. “Please lead the way.”
She could feel the curious looks following them out of the room as she begrudgingly dragged the laughing, unhinged Octavius with her.
On the way out, she saw Perdita was standing by one of the sofas with her arms crossed, watching the three of them with that same look of worry she’d had in the garden and at the will hearing.
After learning the truth, Fola wasn’t as angry at her sister but she still couldn’t quite look her in the eye.
She wasn’t sure why, but it hurt a lot. She shifted her gaze to Romeo, who was on a cushion in the corner holding knitting needles and looking at them with concern too.
When they stepped over the threshold into the foyer, Bilal was there staring at them with a vexed look on his face.
As Octavius weighed heavily on her shoulders, Fola looked back into the drawing room, past the wall that was Waxler trailing closely behind them, and saw Mr. Philips attempting to enter the garden, but almost immediately he tripped and fell into something that looked suspiciously like horse manure.
Octavius groaned, and slumped further into her arms.
Getting to his room on the second floor was going to be an experience.
Fola tried to keep her composure as they climbed the spiral staircase.
She kept her eyes trained on the dark wooden steps beneath her, and on the Fibonacci sequence etched into the wood.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 … It helped to focus on the numbers instead of the sound of Waxler’s heavy footsteps behind them and the threat they posed.
It felt like one hundred years later, when they finally reached Octavius’s bedroom.
As promised, Waxler did not enter with them. Instead, he stood guard outside. “I’ll give you two some privacy, but remember we are in the middle of an investigation and time is of the essence,” he said.
“We’ll be quick!” Fola replied even though she couldn’t guarantee that in Octavius’s current state.
She was relieved when the door closed behind them, and Waxler was finally out of view.
Even though she knew he was just outside, at least she could drop her shoulders now that they were in the privacy of Octavius’s bedroom.
Aside from fetching her brother before the will reading, Fola hadn’t properly been inside this room in a long while—probably not in years at this point—and was immediately taken aback by the decor.
Everything in here was race car themed, from Octavius’s race car bed to the miniature vintage car shelf displays he had all over the room; there was even a trail of model cars on the lid of his grand piano.
Most disturbing, though, were the several posters Octavius had on his walls of his first celebrity crush—Lightning McQueen, the red car from the Cars movie.
If Octavius hadn’t been a music prodigy, she imagined an alternate universe where he’d become a greasy car mechanic holed up in some small-town garage, having the time of his life.
“I forgot how much of an automobile fanatic you are,” she muttered in a tone much too low for Octavius to hear, which was good given what she planned to do next.
Remembering that Octavius’s room was somewhat soundproof, Fola marched over to her brother’s grand piano, picked up a model Porsche, and used it to whack him on the shoulder, hard.
“Ow!” Octavius yelled, holding his arm now with a shocked expression. “What’s wrong with you? What in the world was that for?” He asked in such a serious way that Fola knew he had zero awareness of his own behavior.
“What is wrong with me?” Fola began in a loud whisper, not wanting to risk Waxler somehow hearing them.
“I’m not the one who just broke into the stables and rode a horse into the drawing room full of suspects and prying eyes!
Nor am I the one who is currently drunk during a murder investigation.
Our father’s murder investigation. I don’t know why you’re behaving like this—”
Octavius snorted loudly. “Behaving like what?”
Fola folded her arms. “Since I picked you up yesterday morning, you’ve been acting like a mess, wandering around in those stupid glasses, looking pretentious—”
“Well, first of all, these are prescription,” he said, pushing the designer shades up to rest on his head, and revealing his eyes.
She gasped, shocked to see how much the glasses had been hiding. She could now see the purpling of a newly developing bruise, and how red rimmed his eyes were, as though he had recently been crying behind his plastic eye armor.
“And second of all?” she asked, instead of addressing his appearance just yet, though her heart sank at the sight of the dried blood on the sides of his face.
He looked confused. “That’s it. I don’t have anything else to say.”
He looked so ridiculous standing there in his bright clothes.
At some point it seemed that he’d removed much of the stolen layers he had been wearing before, but his current look was somehow even worse.
She longed for the time in the early afternoon when he simply looked like a clown.
Now he was still wearing Bilal’s bright orange tracksuit bottoms and a butterfly tank top she was almost certain belonged to Perdita—his entire midriff on show to the world (or rather the police officers and twenty or so odd “guests” in the Manor).
It was clear, and had been clear even when she’d rescued him from Grand Central Station yesterday morning, that her brother was having some kind of quarter-life crisis. She needed to try a more sympathetic approach.
She sighed. “Tavi, I get that this has been a difficult time for you. If it’s the breakup making you act out, then I’d understand but—”
He looked up at her sharply then, giving her a disarming sort of glare. One that had all of the world’s truths carved into the shimmering surface of his eyeballs. “You know it’s not the breakup, Fola,” Octavius suddenly said, his voice gravelly, his eyes shining.
Fola’s heart squeezed in her chest, not liking the way he was looking at her now in an ironically sober fashion.
“But yesterday morning you said—” she began.
“I know what I said, but things changed, didn’t they?
Things got worse.” He rubbed his already-red-rimmed eyes harshly, and she could see now how he’d probably acquired those bruises around his eyes in the first place.
“And now our father is d-dead,” he continued, and Fola flinched at the word dead.
“This whole thing is so fucked, Fols,” he said louder than she would have liked.
“I … I don’t want to do this anymore,” he continued, saying the last part in a choked-up way that broke her heart.
She didn’t know what to say. She was usually the one with all the answers, but for the first time in a long time, Fola was completely at a loss for words.
She hadn’t been paying enough attention, too caught up in her grief and her strategizing.
Her brother smelled so strongly of spirits, like he had this morning, and yesterday morning, and like he had months ago when she’d visited him at his boarding school.
He looked sick, he was sick, she should have realized sooner.
He had been fighting personal demons this entire time. Ones she did not know about.
“Tavi …,” she began softly, reaching out to place her hand on his shoulder.
He shook his head. “Fola, I think it’s too late, I think—”
Loud banging interrupted him. “Is everything okay in there?” The police chief’s muffled voice made them jump. And then in an instant, Octavius was doubling over.
“Tavi?” Fola said again, then a silent question. What did you do?
But it was one that would go unanswered. Because one minute Octavius looked like he was about to pass out, then the next he was throwing up.
All over the front of her clothes and his racetrack-themed rug.