Necessary Evil (32 page)

Having the key phrase and decoding the message
were two entirely different things.

I explained to Gregory that I had to
attend the work party, but that I could work with him until it started - a
resentful offer of assistance. I half expected him to throw me out, but he
didn’t; instead, he cleared a chair for me to sit on and we worked in close,
somewhat uncomfortable proximity for the next forty-five minutes.

Conversation, oddly enough, was not a
problem: we focused on the puzzle at hand and avoided personal comments as much
as possible, and only once did I look up to find Gregory gazing at me in the
haggard manner of the night before. As soon as he saw me looking, the
expression disappeared and he threw himself into the puzzle with renewed vigor.

I tried not to wonder how the process took
so long. For all our eagerness, the decoding process went in a slow, methodical
manner that was only just efficient enough to exonerate both of us from any
suspicion that we were deliberately slowing things down. At least, I told
myself that wasn’t what
I
was doing. I knew that the sooner Gregory
left, the sooner my life would settle. In theory, I should have been working as
fast as I could to find the treasure and speed his departure.

That was the theory, anyway.

We tried a combination of words first,
using the first three words:
The fear of,
then
the fear of the Lord
,
and then the whole phrase, and then single words:
fear, Lord,
and
beginning. 
We were still working on
beginning
when Aunt Susanna and the class
came in for the promised Farewell Party. The noise of their chatter and giggles
gained in volume until Gregory dropped his pen, exasperated.

“So hard to concentrate with that racket,”
he complained.

My phone vibrated then and I absently
pulled it out.

Dinner tonight?

Just a glance at Joe’s name was enough to
diminish the temporary comfort Gregory and I had discovered in the past
forty-five minutes. I could feel my face flush and, when I glanced up, I saw
Gregory was looking away with tightened lips.

I felt overwhelmed with the urge to run
from the room.

I forced myself to answer the text and to
answer it honestly:

Love to, but am working late tonight for
last night of camp. Tomorrow night?

He answered immediately:
It’s a date.
Don’t work too hard.

My stomach fluttered.

Then he texted again:
How’s Trusty?

I resisted the urge to show Gregory the
thoughtful message. Instead, I replied that Trusty was fine and would be
returning tomorrow. I slipped the phone back into my pocket, aware of Gregory’s
gaze.

Then, as the girls grew noisier in the kitchen,
I rose and gestured to the kitchen.

“I’ll go quiet them,” I said.

The girls cheered when I came in. They
were happy, flushed with the triumph of a successful week. Their four teachers
- Lindsay, Jacob, Aunt Susanna, and Darlene - looked as happy and as exhausted
as the rest.

It was a nice night, so I ushered everyone
outside, and we served the treats on the back porch. The girls clustered around
the food tables, chattering and laughing. Darlene worked the grill while
Lindsay and Jacob scooped ice cream, and Aunt Susanna and I filled in
where-ever necessary.

For some reason, I was very popular that
night. The students clustered around me to gush about their riding camp, brag
about their achievements, or show me one of the simple trophies they’d won over
the course of the week. I was glad for the distraction, something to keep me
out of the office, even as I was consumed with curiosity – how was Gregory
getting on?

One by one, mothers and nannies turned up
to collect their charges for home and most of them were persuaded to stay a few
minutes for ice cream. The night stretched on. Eventually the party dwindled
and ended. Jacob took Lindsay home, and I shooed Aunt Susanna and Darlene into
the living room to drink wine and chat so that I could be alone with my
discomfort.

I cleaned the porch, filling a trash bag
with plates, cake, and forgotten souvenirs, and wiping down the table, grateful
to have something to work out my restless energy on.

Then I went inside and started the kettle.
I stood, watching it warm, absolutely miserable. I thought about Joe and his
kind inquiry about Trusty, seethed about the conversation in the kitchen this
morning. That, and the phrase,
We do tend to believe the ones we’re in love
with
, was whirling through my head when I heard the office door burst open
behind me.

I turned, but Greg was already in the
room, waving a piece of paper, his face alight with excitement. He was in front
of me in a second, grabbing my shoulders in delight, his eyes dancing.

“I’ve got it, Maddie, I’ve cracked it!”

“What!” I gasped. “
What
?”

He was so excited he was chuckling,
practically dancing. He released my arms and waved the page. “Right here – read
this! Read it, read it!”

I snatched the paper from him and tried to
focus. His handwriting began carefully, then turned to scrawling, but I was
still able to make out what he’d written:

Code: YAAPSBLOJTNFMDJ

Key:  KNOWLEDGEKNOWLE

Message: INOLDFOUNDATION

I read it three times.

This was it.

This was really it. Here, in my hands, was
irrefutable proof that Alexander Chase was a thief -
that
he’d stolen from the McInnis family, and left the loot here for his mother to
find. Here was proof that I had been wrong, that Joe had been wrong, that the
treasure hunters had been right all along: there was something buried here, and
the old stories were true.

Here, too, was proof that Uncle Michael
had been as wrong as he had been right. He knew that there was more to the
story than historians would allow him to believe; but he had always insisted
that Alexander Chase had been maligned - that he was a scamp, but not a thief.
It was something that would have disappointed him, something I would have
spared him if I could have; but I knew that he would have persisted until he
found the answer anyway. I knew then, sure as I was standing there with Gregory
Randall hovering over me, that Uncle Michael would have allowed the truth to be
made public, no matter how disappointed he might have been. He never would have
condoned the forged letter, no matter whose idea it was.

Unexpected tears stabbed at my eyes and I
squeezed them shut, trying to shove away the sudden longing to see Uncle
Michael just one more time. He’d died in pursuit of this information. How
unfair was it that he never got to see the conclusion.

But I was glad that he never had to know
about my lies, or seen how I’d betrayed his trust. Of everything that had
happened to us over the past years, what I’d done to Uncle Michael had been the
hardest to bear. It poisoned everything, altered my relationships, and made the
one man I admired most a laughing stock. This clue, this direction, made my
betrayal impossible to put aside any longer - and for the first time in years,
I longed to see the inside of a confessional.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned – I
have betrayed the man who’d offered me a home, a legacy, belonging. I made a
mockery of the man who gave me everything I ever cared about.

Forgive me, Uncle Michael.

“Forgive me…” I breathed raggedly.

“Madeleine?”

Gregory’s voice was distant, but tender.
It was a tone that put me on guard. I opened my eyes and found him regarding me
with concern, and I turned away abruptly.

He shouldn’t look at me like that.

“We have to tell Aunt Susanna.” As I said
it, it occurred to me that we were actually going to see the treasure. My heart
started pounding. “Oh my… It’s really
real
. You were right. It’s
actually real!”

My voice rose into a squeak, and Gregory
smiled at me.

“It is,” he said gently. “And we found
it.”

There
is
no
we
.

I shook my head. “Old foundation - what
old foundation? What is he talking about?
Our
foundation? This
foundation?”

“Think, Madeleine. This house – when was
it built?”

I looked up at him, blinking. “The
original building was built in, um, the 1830s? The new addition was put on in
1845.”

His grip tightened. “They didn’t move the
house? Or renovate the basement?”

“The
basement
?”

The words caught in my chest. I gaped at
him. But he’d never seen the basement. Even I hardly ever went down there.

“The
basement?
But if it’s there…
It can’t be there – not here the whole time.”

“There’s only one way to find out. Show it
to me.”

It was an order and I remembered,
Silly
little fool…

I bristled.

And then something occurred to me and I
said, “But…”

“Come on, Madeleine!” he said, striding
over to the basement door. “There’s no time to lose!”

It was no good trying to get him to stop.
I shook my head and followed him as he charged down the wooden steps.

“You’re in for a disappointment,” I called
after him.

I was correct. He stopped short at the
bottom of the stairs, and his face fell as he gazed about in dismay.

The basement hadn’t changed all that much
since the house was built. It was low, dug out as a root cellar rather than the
modern idea of a basement, and the succeeding generations hadn’t seen fit to
improve upon it. After all, there was plenty of room upstairs and our lifestyle
kept us outside. But Uncle Michael’s father had done one, significant thing to
modernize it, way back before I was born.

“It’s cemented!” he exclaimed as I
approached. He turned from one wall to the next, then looked at the floor,
running his hands through his hair. “It’s cemented, Madeleine! We can’t get at
the old foundation!”

“I know,” I said. “They covered the old
walls and floor in the sixties. I tried to tell you…”

“But did they – did they change anything?”
He looked around, then strode over to me impatiently. “Think, Madeleine. Did
they dig out the walls or the floor? Did they find anything? Did they push
anything out? Think, Madeleine.”

He was standing inches away from me, and I
stepped back, scowling.

“I don’t have to think. I
know
,” I
snapped. “They did this in the sixties. As far as I know, all they did was put up
cement over the existing walls. And if they found anything, don’t you think one
of us would have mentioned it by now?”

He didn’t notice my sarcasm. He was back
at the walls, checking the cracks, glaring at them, stalking around as though
he’d be able to see the treasure just by pacing. He shook his head in
annoyance, almost condemnation, and my irritation grew.

“It’s behind here,” he said, as he struck
the wall with his fist. “It’s behind one of these walls, and we can’t get to
it. Not without metal detectors and jack hammers. We’re going to have to bore
through them just to take a look! We’re so
close
! So
close
and we
run into bloody
cement!
”

He struck the wall again, then turned on
his heel and returned to me, shaking his head. “What a mess! Whose bright idea
was it to put up cement here in the first place?”

“I think,” I said dryly, “that it was my
grandfather’s.”

Something in my tone brought him up short,
but not short enough. He sighed and looked around the basement.

“I was hoping to have something to show
you tonight,” he said, and his tone was almost wistful. “I thought it would be
so easy. Now we’re going to have to get in detectors and excavators. We could
be looking at another few weeks of work in here.”

“Oh, terrific,” I said. “More confusion,
more disruption, and we’re going to start tearing apart the house while we’re
at it. And all of this is dependent on the idea that the cement pourers didn’t
actually discover the treasure first and steal it. Marvelous.”

He looked at me in confusion, a confusion
that I ignored as I continued, “And before you bring in the jackhammers, you
will
think to ask Aunt Susanna first, won’t you? She might not be so keen to bore
into the walls at random, especially since we are the ones that are going to
have to pay for the repair and the cleanup.”

He caught my arm as I turned to leave.
“Madeleine, don’t worry about the expense. We’ll work something out, the two of
us.”

I threw his arm off, all the pent up
frustrations of the day exploding at last.

“The two of us?” I spat back at him. “The
two
of us? There
is
no us
,
Professor Randall, there is me and there
is you, and that’s it. Do you understand me? That’s it, and that’s all, and
that’s all there ever
was
.”