Chapter 11
Back at Helshire, I sank into my studies.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings began in Forensic Accounting, staring at dusty chalkboards filled with meticulous tables of figures. As we gazed at them, searching for signs of fraud and embezzlement, Ms. Delicato drifted behind us, whistling aimless tunes.
The ordinary students in the class had a mantra: Follow the money. We legacies had several: Squeeze the system. Hide the outcomes. Know the rules better than the rulers.
One in six FBI agents is an accountant.
Of us Mortons, one in five.
Garrett hadn’t told me the results of my audition yet. All I could do was prepare for adventures in the art world. I started researching freeports.
A freeport is a warehouse, legally outside the borders of any country, crammed with gold bullion, vintage wines, security guards, and art.
Any object stored there can change hands anonymously, without duties or taxation—just do the paperwork—but artworks have the benefit of arbitrary value.
A broken teacup can be worth a million euros, an old bicycle wheel, vastly more. Huge sums move without anyone knowing.
Like having a bank account in fairyland.
I wondered about Hiromi’s place in all this. I’d looked her up. A few sales, not much press. How was she the key to my summer in New York?
The quote I’d given her wasn’t from Martin Luther King, but one of those free-floating sayings credited to Albert Einstein or Dolly Parton. Hiromi must have been amused. Maybe my ignorance would wind up on some mocking piece of granite, stored in tax-haven limbo.
The rest of my classes were going well. My archery remained superb, Abnormal Psych was an easy A, and Behavioral Economics began to explain my hallmates’ fashion choices.
I sat in on Art History 101, memorizing slides and styles and eras.
Impressionism and Expressionism. Ionic and Corinthian. Egg and dart.
In Disruptive Anatomy, Divya Seth finally shattered the old plastic skeleton, trapping its arm between a steam pipe and the wall and giving the torso a violent twist. We spent the rest of the hour gathering sharp slivers from underneath the desks.
“A bold improvisation,” Uncle William said. “But few buildings have heating of this type.”
In those weeks after the midterms, I gained a new little shadow.
He lurked outside the language labs, along my morning runs, at the Hellion Café before Accounting. Constantly in my peripheral vision, waiting to be noticed.
I arranged a meeting.
Deep in the library stacks were a few dusty sections my family used as dead drops.
Mortons exchanged messages among the forgotten books in 598.
418 (swans), and left spare weapons on the shelves of 001.
944 (monsters and related phenomena). Encrypted phones had made passing notes obsolete, but we still taught our incoming freshmen the twists and turns of those stacks.
The antique books smelled like secrets—the perfect place to meet my stalker.
I left for Behavioral Econ at the usual time, but veered into the library. He followed.
I led him down to the subbasement, into a maze of shelves that dead-ends in section 594.58 (krakens). It was easy to slip behind him and block his exit.
“Ashton Peabody Hale,” I said.
He spun around. “Jesus! Don’t sneak up on people!”
“Don’t follow people.”
He looked paralyzed. He’d actually thought I couldn’t see him.
Ashton was a forgettable presence on campus. If he hadn’t been Peter’s roommate, I never would have noticed him.
“You weren’t at the funeral,” I realized.
“My brother told me not to go.”
I wasn’t sure who this brother was. The Hales had sent their children to Helshire for generations, but we’d never managed to incorporate them. Peter had been assigned to Ashton as a chaos strategy, after sensible plans had failed.
“I sent flowers,” Ashton said.
“Thanks. Why are you following me?”
He sighed. “I was trying to figure out where Peter hid his stuff.”
I stared at him.
“He had a secret place,” he went on. “I thought you’d know where it was.”
So this was about some bauble: a tiepin, a cigarette case, one of those old watches in the boxes Uncle Cyrus had shown me.
“What did Peter steal from you?”
“This is all kind of…embarrassing.”
I took a slow step forward.
“He didn’t steal anything!” Ashton squeaked. “I just wanted to pay him back.”
His fists were balled, his knees bent, like he was about to launch a hopeless attack. But he was telling the truth.
“Lower your voice,” I said.
His hands unclenched.
“Explain,” I said.
“I owed Peter money. After he…fell, no one came asking for it. I wanted to pay you back, but my brother said to keep quiet about Peter helping me. Because your family never just helps.”
I was starting to recall a Cormac Hale, classmate of Aunt Arabella.
“I figured you’d lead me to Peter’s stash eventually,” Ashton went on. “I was going to leave it there, anonymously.”
“You have failed at anonymously.”
“Well, it worked, sort of.” He reached into his back pocket and handed me an envelope. Uncirculated money: eight $100 bills and a twenty. “That’s the rest of it.”
I stared at the money in my hand. So my little cousin had begun the work of incorporating Ashton. If Grandmother Elizabeth had known, the order to cull him wouldn’t have come.
“Did Peter have you sign anything?”
“Like an IOU? No.”
“Are you sure? Even a blank piece of paper?”
“Why would he…” He looked confused. “Listen, it was Gallows Night. My dorm had a team, and our effigy was finished except for the head. All the skulls in the Anatomy lab were already taken. But we had this brainwave—”
“A pumpkin, from the farmer’s stand across the highway from the music building. Except the police know about Gallows Night.”
“So you heard.”
I had not. But Ashton was as original as he was stealthy.
“Most of us got away,” he said. “But me and a couple of friends got caught. Peter wasn’t even there.”
That much I’d known. Mortons never pointlessly break the law.
“My parents would’ve freaked, so I called him. He bailed me out the next morning.”
“How much?”
“Two grand.”
That made no sense. Young Mortons don’t really have money. The Trust lends us what we need, and we never pay it back. We’re all tax write-offs, in the end.
“This is the rest of his interest,” Ashton said. “A hundred percent! Took me till now to skim it off my allowance. Are we square?”
I stepped aside. Ashton walked past me to the end of the row, then turned, hesitant. “It’s down here, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Peter’s stash. He came here a lot, especially after he’d been out…borrowing stuff.”
Ashton waited for an answer. I stared back at him with my mother’s gaze—nothing behind the eyes. He shuddered and turned back toward the stairs.
I felt Peter’s ghost again. All these loose ends after his culling, roots crawling through the dirt.
Why had Peter kept this secret, when it could have saved him?
Where had the money gone? He’d already collected over a grand in interest. Uncle Cyrus would’ve asked about that much cash among his things.
I remembered Peter’s favorite dead drop.
On a lonely shelf numbered 001.944 (monsters and related phenomena) was an empty space between two disreputable tomes on Loch Ness, just wide enough to slide a knife.
Hoisting myself up, I reached inside.
Instead of cash, my fingers closed on a ring with two keys on it. One a six-pin Medeco, the other for a padlock.
“Fucking Peter,” I said.