Chapter 19 #2
“I wonder if you might mind waiting just a few moments,” Mr. Splint asked, ignoring his sister, but nevertheless looking slightly wilted.
“There’s a place just here that you can—” At this moment, he caught sight of Sister Agatha, a looming living shadow that had floated inside behind them.
The cats had snuck in after her, without his notice, and continued to hide behind her billowing cloak.
“Um, and who might you, er, be?” Mr. Splint sneezed demurely into a handkerchief and wiped his glasses.
He looked up again at her through watery eyes. Sister Agatha said nothing.
“Oh, she is with us,” said Mrs. Chrysler.
“And we are very glad indeed that your sister is here. We would like to speak with both of you.” Before Angelo Splint could do anything to stop her, Mrs. Chrysler pushed her way past him and into the back office, trailed by her party. The cats dove under the desk.
“This is unacceptable,” Ms. Angela Splint said coldly as they entered. “Brother, turn them out.”
“Sister, please,” Angelo Splint said, shutting the office door behind him and holding out his hands in a placating gesture.
He twitched the blinds to be sure the curious clerks could not see.
The attentive woman worker, who Katherine now recalled had called Angelo “honey” the other day, was standing bolt upright in her cubicle, watching with grave concern.
“First you send me this absurd message about meeting you here,” Ms. Angela went on, “and now you’re associating with these people?
What is wrong with you, you nincompoop?” She helped herself to his desk chair, tauntingly pushed his nameplate facedown, and leaned forward coolly over steepled fingers.
“I told you, I didn’t send you a message this morning.”
“Memory loss can be a lingering side effect of an Atlantean spider bite,” Mrs. Chrysler clucked pitifully. Mr. Splint’s face drained. He sneezed again. “Don’t worry, it should wear off before long,” she said. “At any rate, as I said, we’re glad to find you both here.”
Ms. Angela groaned. “What is she talking about, Angelo?”
Sister Agatha cleared her throat, and Ms. Angela’s gaze focused on the spectral nun for the first time. If she was shaken, Katherine couldn’t tell. No twitching, yet. Although her eyes were growing a bit red and watery. Probably the cats.
“I’m sorry,” the harried Angelo interrupted, putting himself behind the desk, where he likely felt most in control. “These women are going to sell us some property, sister. I think we ought to table our misunderstanding, and let them proceed, don’t you?”
“Now, you listen here—”
“Actually,” Katherine interjected in her most authoritative tone. “We’re here to see you about another matter today. This is our associate, Sister Agatha of Saint Percival’s Home for Moribund Old People.” Angelo shrank a bit, just as much as his sister seemed to swell with indignation.
“We’ve cleared up our little misunderstanding from the other day,” Mrs. Chrysler told Ms. Angela before she could say anything.
Mrs. Chrysler leaned forward over the desk, planting her hands squarely on the blotter, to get closer to the woman’s sneering face.
“I told you we would. Like a candle being lit over our heads, like a chandelier all bright and sparkly, the way it just occurred to us. Like falling asleep, it was that easy.” She paused as Ms. Angela’s disdainful expression failed to change.
“Don’t make me spell it out for you, dearie,” she continued, “unless you want all those clerks outside to hear.”
“Or our companion’s family,” Katherine added, putting her hand on Ruben’s arm. “They’d be here in a heartbeat, I’m sure,” she bluffed, “and absolutely riveted to hear about your methods.”
Twitch, twitch. Aha, Katherine thought, there it is.
“What is going on?” Angelo Splint asked suspiciously.
“Well, it is so very much for you, isn’t it, running all of these places?” Mrs. Chrysler continued with mock sympathy, standing upright again. “But the forty-year lease is up, conveniently enough. So, we’re just here to settle things for Sister Agatha.”
“Settle… what?”
“Well, here you go, see for yourself.” Mrs. Chrysler pulled the old, yellowed contract out of her bag, and folded it so that its freshly inked last page was sitting on top.
“As you can see, Ms. Angela’s already agreed, and Sister Agatha has signed too, so everything seems to be in order, doesn’t it?
All we need is for you to sign too, dear. ”
Angelo Splint’s lips moved slowly as he read over the proffered document, and his sister craned to look at it from her seat at the desk. “What is this? What are you holding?” She moved to snatch it from him, but he stepped away from her.
“A forty-year lease on the Eagle Heights Active Adult Living Community property?” he said, perplexed. “I think I would know about that… Angela, what—”
“Well, that is the original document,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “You can tell by the paper. You really should read things all the way through, you know.”
“Why, you—” Ms. Angela began, rising from her seat.
“Ms. Angela knows all about it,” Mrs. Chrysler said airily. “Should be glad to be rid of the hassle, I’d think. After all, who needs the trouble?”
Katherine picked up the thread. “That’s right. Managing a secret mine and dealing with ornery old people… and their families? Gods! Dabbling in magic, even. Tricky stuff.”
“Magic? What is she talking about, Angela?”
“That is your signature, isn’t it, dearie?” Mrs. Chrysler inquired sweetly, turning to the woman with mile-high hair fuming beside her.
Ms. Angela clenched her fists tightly against her sides, and Katherine could see her knuckles whitening.
“Angela, really? What magic? We’re selling the land back? What about the… the…”
“The plop?” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Angelo’s mouth fell open.
“And, no, you’re not selling the land back,” Katherine clarified. “Your lease is ending. You owe Sister Agatha the balance.”
“Angela, I don’t understand any of this. What is going on?”
Emotions churned across the angular woman’s increasingly flushed face. “It’s none of your business, Angelo. Just let me handle these people. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine. Come on, you—let’s go settle this outside.”
“We’re not going anywhere!” Ruben fumed, rattling his cane against the drawn blinds. Angelo started, clearly mortified to have the commotion visible to his workers, and the old man turned the cane on him. “This young man doesn’t know what you’ve been up to, does he?”
“Know what?” Angelo asked, and his sister gave a great huff of annoyance.
A harried knock sounded at the door and the concerned voice of the sandwich-coupon worker came muffled through the wood: “Is everything all right in there, Angie?”
Angelo Splint jumped. “I’m fine, Roberta,” he called back tremulously.
“Are you sure?” Understandably, she didn’t sound convinced. “Mr. Splint?”
“I’m fine,” Angelo said, more steadily this time. “We’re all fine.”
“All right,” came her begrudging voice. “But I’m right outside if you need me.”
“Thank you, Roberta,” Angelo Splint said weakly, then turned to his sister. “Know what, Angela?” he asked again, wide-eyed. Ms. Angela bridled, obviously irritated by his feebleness.
“You have a lady friend?” she taunted, arching a brow. The corners of her mouth drew up mirthlessly. “Someone to protect you from the big, bad world?”
“Know what, Angela?” he repeated.
“How I run things at the mine,” she said, collapsing her mock grin.
“But you don’t need to know. Daddy chose me.
Not you. Me! To run the businesses. To run them the way…
I. See. Fit.” She rapped the desk with a sharp fingernail to punctuate each clipped word.
“Because you were too caught up in apron strings. And you still have no money sense. How you’re able to keep a lady friend, I have no idea. Have any of your bets paid out lately?”
Angelo gulped hard. “Betting on the races makes me feel alive.”
“At my expense,” Angela replied levelly. Katherine felt invisible, like the woman had forgotten they were even there. “And so I am constantly bailing you out of debts. Which means you don’t get a say in the way I do things.”
A tense hush fell over the office. Mrs. Chrysler reasserted herself. “Go on,” she told Angelo, almost in a whisper. “Ask her what she’s done.”
Angelo’s head shook slightly as he locked eyes with his sister, apparently unable to speak or look away, like a mouse paralyzed by the predatory, unblinking stare of a hungry snake.
Katherine decided to play the mongoose. She prodded, “Ask her about the magic.”
Ms. Angela rounded on her. “It shouldn’t have been so hard to keep old folks in line.
” Her braided hair began to shift and unravel in her agitation.
“Daddy made it look easy. He enjoyed running that front he built for the mine. I never wanted to deal with all those people. I just wanted—” She broke off.
“The power?” Ruben snapped. “The money?” All eyes in the room turned to him, even the cats’.
He ploughed on, his own wrinkled face growing pink with rage.
“Your father only got that property in the first place because I helped him. Me! And it’s gone on long enough!
” With that, he slammed his cane down on the desk and snatched Angelo’s fountain pen, producing it unexpectedly at the younger man’s throat, tip first. “Your sister has been magicking the old folks into a stupor, young man. For three years, and now we’ve got you both over a barrel.
So—” He glared at Ms. Angela. “Give the property back to her,” he growled, jerking his head in the nun’s direction.
Katherine could have been knocked over by a feather, she was so surprised. “Well done, Ruben,” she said quietly. Mrs. Chrysler nodded approvingly.
Angelo Splint’s eyes widened, his gaze rotating toward the nun. “You’re Ernestina Jinglebottom?” he managed weakly.