He smiled, and so did she, and he said, “We’re always on the same page, aren’t we?”
“You can close the book on that,” she said.
He closed the book and pointed to the key to everything. “Maybe I should mix up a barrelful of cement right after dinner, sink that gismo in it, and take it out to sea.”
“Bad idea, Dad. We might need it if that Falkirk guy comes around again. Remember?”
“But we’re in way over our heads, Amity. We shouldn’t have this thing.”
Bringing plates to the table, she said, “Have you wondered why Ed gave it to you?”
“I’ve wondered until I’m sick of wondering.”
“He liked you.”
“So he pulls the pin on a hand grenade and gives it to me.”
“The gismo isn’t that dangerous,” she said.
“It’s more dangerous than a grenade.”
“It’s his life’s work.”
“His life’s work will get us killed.”
“He couldn’t bring himself to destroy his life’s work. You can understand that.”
Jeffy looked at her, his life’s work.
Amity said, “So he trusted you to keep it safe.”
“He shouldn’t have trusted me.”
“He shouldn’t have trusted anyone else but you.”
“I’m no hero, sweetheart.”
“True heroes never think they are. I mean, holy guacamole, how many times have we read that story?”
Regarding the key to everything with trepidation, he said, “Maybe with what the bullet did to its face, Good Boy will seem to be just a chimp in a costume, somebody’s creepy pet. Maybe the cops won’t look too close at it. Maybe they won’t think it’s weird enough to call in the feds. Maybe we’ll never see Falkirk again.”
Amity didn’t know what math to use to calculate the probability that all those maybes would be fulfilled.
With her father, in silence, she stared at the so-called key. The darn thing had an aura about it that drew the eye. Even if you didn’t know what it did, you’d have known in your bones that some terrible power coiled in it, evil magic . . . but maybe some good magic, too, if you used it for the right purpose. It seemed to have a sorcerous glimmer akin to that of the One Ring, the Master of all Rings, that had been made in Mordor and which could be destroyed only by returning it to the fire where it was forged.
After a while, she said, “I’ll check on the pizza.”
34
Slender and shapely, Constance Yardley appeared younger than fifty, and Falkirk found her attractive, which was odd
considering that she was an English teacher. She had the attitude of superiority common to all English teachers in his experience, especially the female ones, who thought they were hot stuff just because they knew everything about subordinate adverb clauses and dangling modifiers. The condescension with which their kind regarded him usually made them ugly in his eyes, even repulsive.
In fact, in his experience, a significant percentage of women, not just English teachers, thought they were too special for words. Yardley had such an exalted opinion of herself that she expected you to kiss her ass and thank her for the privilege.
Earlier, she’d sat on the sofa in her book-lined study, acting patient and mannerly, but he had seen through her act. He’d seen her veiled arrogance, her snotty disapproval, the contempt that was as much a part of her as the marrow in her bones.
She reminded him not just of the English teacher that had most tormented and mocked him in boarding school, but also of his hateful stepmother, Katarina, who had gotten her hands on his father’s crank shortly after his mother died. Kat quickly pumped out two brats of her own by the time Falkirk was thirteen and screwed the old man into a massive heart attack. She dispatched her stepson to boarding school and methodically stripped him of his inheritance.