In Good Company (40 page)

Whatever she’d been expecting to see, it had not been finding the children tied to straight-backed chairs, with . . . Mr. Victor and his wife tied right beside them.

“Good heavens, what is going on?” she asked, abandoning any attempt at caution when she noticed the tears streaming down Rose’s face.

“Run, Miss Millie, run,” Elizabeth yelled. “He’ll be back any minute, and you have to get . . .”

Millie felt Everett come right up behind her, but as she glanced over her shoulder, she found him looking furious, and then Lucetta was suddenly thrust forward. Looking past them, she saw a thin man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles right behind Lucetta, carrying not one, but two pistols in his hands and smiling back at her.

“How delightful, more guests. I must say I wasn’t expecting additional company, but . . . into the parlor with you, if you please, and do hurry. I have a vast amount of things on my schedule today, although I think that schedule is going to get completed faster than I thought, now that I have people I can ask questions of instead of searching this house and the barn on my own.”

The man craned his neck and nodded at Mr. Victor. “Imagine my delight when Mr. Victor just happened to bring the children
back to their old home just as I was becoming incredibly frustrated that my search has not been going very well at all. Why, if you ask me, it’s one of those delicious coincidences we’re only fortunate to see once or twice in a lifetime.” The man released a laugh that held a note of clear insanity in it.

Millie soon found herself tied to a chair, Lucetta tied to the chair right next to her, and Everett secured to the leg of a table.

“There, all safe and snug.” The man picked up his pistols and moved away from Everett. He smiled around the room, his gaze lingering on Lucetta.

Lucetta held the man’s gaze for a long moment, before her eyes widened, then closed, then snapped back open. “You’re Mr. Franklin Robinson, aren’t you? The mad inventor who sold my theater faulty electric lights.”

The man presented Lucetta with a bow. “I’ve heard rumors about that ironclad memory of yours, Miss Plum, and do allow me to say I simply adore watching you take the stage.” His smile dimmed. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid you won’t be taking the stage ever again. It’s a shame you recognized me, but don’t fret over that. I wouldn’t have left any of you breathing, even if you hadn’t just told everyone my name.”

He used one of the pistols to scratch his nose. “I’m much too savvy to leave loose ends lying about, which is why I’m back in Boston—to clear up the last of the loose ends.”

“You’re going to . . .” Millie shot a look to the children before she returned her attention Mr. Robinson. “Do away with us?”

“I wish that wasn’t the case, but I have no intention of going to jail, or of being hunted for the rest of my life, so . . . sorry.”

“But . . . why?”

Mr. Robinson shrugged. “Fred Burkhart was supposed to endorse my electric lights. However, the man turned out to be far too curious for his own good and ran numerous experiments
on them. When he discovered the lights weren’t perfect quite yet, given that some of them would burst unexpectedly into flames, he refused to give me additional funds—and was going to go public with his findings. I couldn’t very well allow him to do that, not considering how much money people were throwing my way as they purchased box after box of my lights. So . . . I had to put a stop to him once and for all.”

“I thought he died while testing a new buggy,” Everett said.

“There was nothing wrong with that buggy, although I do feel slightly bad for the inventor of that creation. . . . He’s been under quite a bit of scrutiny since Fred and Violet were found dead in his invention.”

Elizabeth’s face turned completely white. “You killed Daddy and Mommy,” she whispered. “You’re a. . . . monster, a. . . .”

Mr. Robinson sauntered across the room and slapped Elizabeth squarely across the face. “Shut up.”

Millie shot a glance to Everett and found him struggling against the ties that bound him. His eyes were filled with rage, but before she could warn him not to make a scene, especially since Mr. Robinson still had possession of the guns, Mr. Robinson let out a laugh that had the hair standing straight up on the back of Millie’s neck.

“I didn’t
relish
the nasty business I was forced to enact. Although . . . once a person has taken one life—or two, as the case may be—it’s much easier to contemplate further deaths, but back to business.” He strode to the middle of the room and studied the children for a long moment before he swiveled around and arched a brow at Mr. Victor.

“I’ve been here for days, going through all of the ledgers Fred left here, as well as the ones I took from your office, Mr. Victor. I also helped myself to a bit of your mail as well—although that really had nothing to do with me. I was just curious to
see who’d been writing you. However, I have not found the documents I know Fred made up, itemizing the problems with my electric lights. Those documents, I’m sure, are . . . dated. If word gets out I knew there were problems with the lights before that theater Miss Plum works in caught fire, or the other fires that have been caused by my lights, well . . . it won’t be pretty for me. That’s why I’ve returned to Boston and the scene of the crime, so to speak. I need those documents now, before people at Miss Plum’s theater start turning nasty.”

“I never saw a document regarding faulty electric lights,” Mr. Victor said slowly.

Mr. Robinson tapped one of the pistols against his leg. “Hmm . . . I thought Fred was becoming suspicious of you—that suspicion completely my fault since I led him to believe you were fully behind my invention. Perhaps, when Fred started getting the idea someone was out to harm him—those carriages trying to run a person down in the streets more than once can bring those suspicions to mind—he began wondering if you and I just might be . . . in cahoots.”

“That explains why Fred made up a new will,” Everett said.

“I was never in a partnership with this man,” Mr. Victor said, catching Everett’s eye. “If Fred would have only told me of his concerns, I—”

“You would already be dead,” Mr. Robinson interrupted. “I expect his suspicions are what sent you off on that worldwide trip. But . . . the day is growing short, and I’m on a tight schedule. I need to know where that document is.”

Mr. Victor shook his head. “I told you—I never saw a document regarding your lights.”

Mr. Robinson raised a gun, and for a second, Millie thought he was going to shoot Mr. Victor. Instead, to her horror, he turned and leveled the gun on Rose.

“Children, from what I saw, all of you were very close to your father. Which means, he probably told you everything.”

“They’re just children,” Everett said, his voice decidedly lethal. “Leave them alone.”

“Oh, I won’t shoot them—at least not yet—but I have the strangest feeling they, or at least one of them, knows where that document I’m looking for is.” Mr. Robinson nodded to Elizabeth. “Well?”

Shaking her head, Elizabeth blinked back tears, her face bearing a distinct handprint where Mr. Robinson had slapped her. “I don’t know. I never saw Daddy put a document anywhere except in his safe. Did you check there?”

“Of course.” Mr. Robinson turned to Rose, who simply shook her head, apparently too frightened to even speak. Nodding politely to the little girl, he directed his attention to Thaddeus, who was glaring back at him and looking stubborn.

“That leaves you, dear boy. Do you know where your Daddy stashed that pesky document?”

Thaddeus little lips quivered, he opened his mouth, but then he snapped it shut.

“Ah, you do know, don’t you?” Mr. Robinson smiled, moved in front of Thaddeus, ruffled Thaddeus’s hair, then, calm as you please, turned the gun on Rose again and began pulling back the trigger.

“Don’t shoot her!” Thaddeus yelled.

Lowering the gun, Mr. Robinson quirked a brow. “I won’t if you tell me what I want to know. Did you see your daddy hide what I’m looking for in the barn?”

With his face wet with tears, Thaddeus shook his head. “I didn’t see him hide anything in the barn, but he buried a box out in the forest. He told me not to tell anyone unless it was . . . necessary he said, but I didn’t know what that meant.” Thaddeus
rubbed his nose. “Daddy wanted to mail it, but . . . he said something about running out of time. The box is under a big tree that Daddy carved a cross into, clear past my treehouse and straight back into the forest.”

“Wonderful.” Mr. Robinson ruffled Thaddeus’s hair again before he made for the door. “If all of you will excuse me for just a moment, I need to see if young Thaddeus is right and if what I seek is buried out past his treehouse.” With that, Mr. Robinson disappeared from sight.

“I hope Daddy—if he’s watching us right now—isn’t mad at me for telling,” Thaddeus whispered.

“Of course he wouldn’t be mad at you, darling,” Millie said softly. “You’ve been very brave, and now I understand why you buried your pants.”

“Daddy told me it’s what you do when you don’t want anyone to find your things, or when you don’t have time to mail them to someone else.”

“Which is all very enlightening, but we need to figure out how to get out of here,” Mr. Victor said. “He’ll be back, and I think all of us know exactly what he has planned.”

“Which is why it’s a good thing I am proficient at getting untied—as are the children.” Millie exchanged a look with Elizabeth, who was smiling just a bit. As Millie began twisting her hands, Elizabeth began rocking her chair back and forth, using her toes to help her hop her chair right up next to Rose.

“So that’s how you did it,” Millie said, slipping her hands free a second later, as Rose’s binding fell free as well, and Elizabeth grinned. “Ingenuous, you’re simply ingenuous, darling.”

Hurrying across the room, Millie soon had Everett untied, and before many minutes had passed, everyone was free and standing on their feet.

“You and Lucetta get the children to safety, Millie,” Everett
said. “I’ll go deal with Mr. Robinson, although it would be nice if I had a weapon.”

Elizabeth scampered over to him and tugged on his sleeve. “Daddy kept guns in a concealed safe behind a bookshelf in the library.” She smiled. “I know the combination.”

“Of course you do,” Everett said, taking her hand as they rushed out of the room.

“You go with Miss Longfellow and Miss Plum,” Mr. Victor said to his wife, a woman who was looking terrified and had yet to speak a single word. “I’m going with Everett.”

Millie narrowed her eyes on the man. “I hardly trust you to have Everett’s back, given that you stole the children away from him and are responsible for landing those children in this troubling circumstance.”

Mr. Victor exchanged a look with his wife before he shook his head at Millie. “We didn’t steal the children from anyone, Miss Longfellow. Miss Dixon sought me out as I was preparing to leave Newport and told me Everett had had a change of heart. She said, since they were soon to be married, Everett didn’t want the burden of raising three children, so bade me come and fetch them.”

Lucetta let out a snort. “You didn’t think fetching them in the middle of the night from a ball was a little suspicious?”

“Miss Dixon said Everett wanted an opportunity to say a proper good-bye to the children, and wanted to allow them the treat of watching him propose to her during the ball.”

Millie picked up Rose, who was looking close to tears again, and snuggled her close. “Do you honestly believe that Fred would have left these little angels to a man who would carelessly toss them aside?”

Mr. Victor stared at her for a moment. “No, he wouldn’t, and I now believe that Fred left the children to Everett because he knew his friend would guard them carefully.”

“I’ve done a poor job of that.”

Millie looked up as Everett and Elizabeth reentered the room, Everett carrying a pistol in one hand and a rifle in the other.

“There was no possible way you could have known the danger the children were in,” she said softly.

“I know it now.” He moved up to her, and even though she was still holding Rose, bent close and pressed his lips briefly against hers. “You’ll see them safe?”

“Of course.”

Nodding to her before he kissed Rose’s forehead, Everett turned. “I’ll need someone to summon the authorities.”

Mrs. Victor surprised everyone by saying, “I’ll do it—even if I have to knock on every door to find a neighbor who’ll assist me.” She placed her fists on her hips and nodded at Everett. “Duncan’s going with you, and before you argue with me, he can be trusted.”

With her heart in her throat, Millie watched as Everett, followed by Mr. Victor left the room. She headed for the door, motioning Elizabeth and Thaddeus to join her. Lucetta scooped Thaddeus up in her arms, Mrs. Victor took hold of Elizabeth’s hand, and they hurried toward the front of the house, even as Millie prayed Everett would be safe.

“I don’t know if all of you saw this or not,” Elizabeth said. “But Uncle Everett just kissed Miss Millie right on the lips.”

“It was disgusting,” Thaddeus proclaimed.

“Disgusting or not,” Elizabeth continued, “if we get out of this alive, I think Miss Millie might just become our new aunt.”

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