Chapter 20
Dorcas has been banned from bringing any leftovers to rehearsal, so we decide to have dinner early.
Hannah brought a pan of baked ziti, Gabe brought a salad, and Addie brought her composition book. She’s next to Emma, who of course brought her clipboard. Huddled over their notes, the two of them look like a very small regulatory agency having a working lunch.
Lily brought a rock.
“Are we eating?” Bandit says, through the screen.
“We are eating,” Addie says. “You already have a bowl.”
“The bowl is outside.”
“You’re outside.”
“Is that fair?” Bandit. Nobody answers, so he settles down on the porch.
Gabe runs a line at the table without meaning to, muttering “if it were done when ’tis done” into his ziti.
“Better,” Englebert says, from the head of the table.
Maude, who has been posted up under the table waiting wherever he thinks someone might be most likely to drop something, lets out a delighted meow when he procures a meatball he definitely wasn’t intentionally given.
During a lull in conversation, Lily announces abruptly that she’s taught Bandit about death.
“You did what now?” Hannah says.
“We’re doing a play. Our own play.”
“That’s nice, Lil.”
“It’s a whole show,” Lily says. “Bandit does it under the porch at the Community Center and I’m the only one who can watch because I’m the only one who can fit.”
“So that’s where you’ve been going,” Emma says.
“He does dying. He does dying really good. He falls over sideways and then he does it again.”
“For someone so adamant he’s not a rodent,” Engelbert says, “that sounds like possum behavior.”
“Possums aren’t rodents,” I say. “We went over this last month.”
“Either way. Neither are raccoons.”
“He has a sword,” Lily says.
Hannah reaches over and presses Lily’s fork into her hand. “Eat.”
“He holds it in both hands like this and he goes” —Lily stabs the air twice— “and then he dies and then he gets back up and does the whole thing again. He was being Macbeth.”
“Lily Archer,” Englebert says, rising to his full height. “THE NAME. IN THIS HOUSE. Out. Turn thrice, spit—”
“This isn’t the theater, Englebert,” Gabe says.
“Also, she’s six,” says Hannah.
“Justice is ageless.”
“We don’t even have any hedges.”
“We have a lilac bush,” Englebert says, “and it will serve.”
Gabe stifles a laugh.
“I haven’t seen Bandit do any show,” Emma says.
“Me neither,” Addie confirms.
“Lily may reaching the age where lying begins to get ambitious,” Hannah says.
I’m halfway through agreeing with her when I think about what Lily said again.
“Wait a second, Lily. What kind of sword?”
“A little one.”
“How little?”
She holds her hands apart… dagger-width.
“Wooden?” Emma says, catching on. “Or the rubber one?”
“Wooden. It’s painted.” Lily looks around at all of us, confused about the attention she’s accidentally acquired, but seemingly decides she likes it. “It’s got the shiny stuff on the end.”
“That’s the metallic varnish,” Hannah says.
Emma flips the pages on her clipboard to ‘VANISHINGS’.
Everyone at the table looks at the screen door, but the porch is empty save for an empty bowl that formerly contained ziti.
* * *
Addie finds him. She goes out the back and stands on the lawn in the last of the evening light. She doesn’t have to say anything. Standing there with her arms folded is enough. Bandit comes out from under the forsythia and sits down a few feet away.
Whatever passes between them takes a while. It ends with Addie walking back to the porch with her hands in her pockets and Bandit following several steps behind.
“He wants to say it inside,” Addie announces. “Just like everyone else did. And he wants everybody to know he’s confessing voluntarily.”
Bandit comes into the dining room. He’s been begging to do this for months, but doesn’t seem to be in a position to enjoy the victory. He climbs onto an empty chair by the window and sits very upright.
“I want to start,” he says, “by saying that none of it was stealing.”
“Here we go,” says Englebert.
“I was just finding. Someone puts something down. I pick it up. I find it. It’s found. That’s the rule.”
“Whose rule?” Gabe asks.
“That is not a rule,” Englebert says.
“It’s an old rule.”
“It is not a rule,” Englebert says. “It has never been a rule. This has never once been a rule.”
“Finders keepers,” Lily nods. “That is a rule.”
“Where’s the dagger, Bandit?” I ask, before the three of them can get any further.
“Under the porch,” he says. “At the Community Center. There’s a gap by the third post where the lattice is broken.”
“And the rest of it?” Englebert says.
“What do you mean? There isn’t a rest of it.”
“Bandit.”
“There’s a small rest of it.”
* * *
We get there right before seven, which means the parking lot is already filling, and this means we’ll have to conduct our investigation with an audience.
Hannah lies flat on the grass with a flashlight and puts her arm into the gap. She passes things out one at a time. Emma receives each item and records it on the clipboard.
The wooden dagger. A brass candlestick from the props table, the mate of one that has been standing alone for weeks. Three hairpins. A saltshaker from the Community Center kitchen, still full of salt. A small bottle, stoppered, dark glass, about half-full.
“Don’t touch that one too much,” Addie says when the bottle comes out. She’s crouched next to Hannah with her hands on her knees.
“Why?”
“It’s a potion. I can smell it. Ms. Annabel says if I find a bottle and I don’t know what’s in it, I don’t pick it up, I don’t open it, I don’t smell it close, and I go get a grown-up.”
“What kind of potion is it?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” She sits back on her heels. “It smells sweet, but also sour. And sort of like mud, but that might just be the mud.”
“Where’d you get it?” Hannah asks Bandit.
“A bag.”
“Whose bag?”
“A bag,” he says. “It was open. It was on a chair. There were a bunch of bags on a bunch of chairs.”
* * *
Vivian looks at the collection of items, then at the raccoon.
“So, there’s no thief,” she says.
“There’s a thief,” Englebert says. “He’s sitting right here.”
“I told you. I just found this stuff.”
“The thief is being modest.”
“More importantly,” Dana says. “There’s no curse.”
Englebert inspects each recovered item, stopping at the dagger.
“You took the blade,” he says, “from a production, in its final fortnight.”
“It was shiny.”
“It was a prop.”
“Everything’s a prop to you,” Bandit says.
I take Addie’s shoulder and steer her back a step, partially because Englebert has begun to describe, in some detail, what the theatre does to those who interfere with its instruments, and partially because I want to ask her something.
“Did you know?” I ask, quietly. “About the stash?”
“No.” She’s watching him talk. “He’s been weird since July.”
“Weird how?”
“He follows me to the shop and then he sits outside and doesn’t say anything. He says he’s fine. But I can tell something is wrong.”
“I can hear you,” Bandit says.
“I know,” Addie says.
“I’m not lonely.”
“I didn’t say you were lonely.”
“I’m bored. There’s a difference.”
“Okay,” Addie says, and goes and crouches next to him.
* * *
Vivian gets the company inside, only twenty or so minutes late. The dagger goes back in its outline on the props table, the candlestick rejoins its mate, and the saltshaker returns to the kitchen. The hairpins go up on the call board with a note, and by the end of the night two of them are claimed.
The bottle goes to Annabel.
We don’t make it until after after ten. The shop is closed and the front room is dark, but there are five of us in the back — me, Annabel, Gabe, Addie, and Bandit, perched on the workbench. Annabel permitted his presence on grounds that despite being a criminal, he’s also a witness.
“It’s a heart philter,” she says, analyzing the bottle. Commercial. Their house blend.”
“Glamoury?” I say.
“Glamoury. It’s the same floor as Tiffany’s croak tonic. That’s the sourness Addie caught. The sweet on top of it is rose and honey, and under the honey there’s the copper.”
“Flowers that are also pennies,” Addie recalls.
Gabe has his arms folded. “And is it in Damien?”
“It could be,” Annabel says. “I read him this morning with Tiffany’s bottle for comparison and I could hear the Glamoury floor under everything. Usually I can spot a heart philter no problem, but the base threw me off. Now that I have this for reference, I can go back and pick it out.”
Bandit clears his throat.
“Do you want the rest of it,” he says, “or not?”
“The rest of what?” I ask.
“The rest of what I know, of course.”
Annabel turns to face him. “Go ahead?”
“First, context.” He sits up. “The Carters have the best garbage in town. That’s not an opinion. Ms. Carter throws out entire loaves of bread. Entire loaves, wrapped, uncut.”
“Bandit—”
“I’m establishing why I was there,” he says. “That’s how it’s done. You have to establish the witness.”
“Why were you at the Carter place?” Annabel asks.
“I go most mornings. Like I said. Good trash. But anyway. I saw her there. The blonde one. She sits in the car.” He mimes it, badly, with both front paws.
“She takes the top off a green bottle, then adds four drops from another. She counts them out loud, actually. She puts the top back on, she shakes it up, and she puts it in the bag. Then the next one.”
“She does this often?”
“Yeah. Like every day. Same little bottle every time, till it got low, and then a different same little bottle.” Bandit scratches behind his ear. “And the last few times, more.”
“More?”
“More drops. She stopped counting out loud and started just tipping it. I noticed because it took longer and I was waiting for her to leave so I could get at the bin.” He looks around at the four of us. “Is that a bad thing? That sounds like a bad thing. Everyone’s making a face.”
“So there’s our answer,” Gabe says. “Whatever tonics he bought himself, and then a philter somebody else was pouring into him every morning.”
“Oh, Skye,” Annabel says. “No wonder she’s been so flustered. She wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was trying to keep him.”
“Is she going to be in trouble?” Addie says.
Gabe and I look at each other, but Annabel takes the question.
“Yes,” she says. “Even though she didn’t want to hurt him. Because you don’t do that to a person, and it doesn’t matter why. You remember what I told you about heart philters?”
“That nobody has any business giving one to anybody, ever.”
“Exactly,” Annabel says. “She’s a kid, and she’s lovesick and scared, but that doesn’t matter. You still don’t get to do something like that. You can’t give a person a potion without their consent, no matter what it does.”
Addie writes this down in her book.