“Come in,” I said. Had I truly been so distracted I hadn’t locked my door? How dumb was that?
Vinnie walked in holding a straggly green plant in a pot. “We wish to thank you for taking good care of Pookie and Splinters.” She bowed her head slightly, then handed me the pot. “We are so grateful.”
“Oh, how pretty.” I took the plant and bowed before I could stop myself. “But I didn’t… ”
Was I really going to confess to neglecting her beloved felines? Um, no.
“You didn’t need to do this,” I said feebly. “The cats were great. No problem at all.”
“It meant so much that you cared for them,” she said. “They are our children. Suzie worried all weekend.”
The door opened and Suzie sauntered in. “Yo, hey, Brooks.”
“Hey, Suzie.”
She thrust out her knuckles and I bumped mine against hers. She was such a guy. She wore tight jeans and a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off to reveal a tattoo on her upper arm of a snake wound around a woman’s curvy leg. Her bleached hair was chopped and spiked and she had a dozen tiny steel hoops hanging from each ear. Vinnie gazed at her in adoration.
Suzie jerked her thumb toward the plant. “Thing needs some CPR. It was trapped in the car for five hours. Just water it. It’ll come back.”
Vinnie beamed. “Yes, it will be so pretty, we promise. It is a stargazer lily. It already has a few buds ready to flower. You will be pleased, I think.”
“I’ll take good care of it,” I promised.
“Come on, babe,” Suzie said, grabbing Vinnie’s arm. “Thanks again, pal.”
“Anytime,” I said. I carefully locked the door behind them, then stared at the lily and sighed. It would be dead within forty-eight hours. I might not be great with pets, but I was even worse with plants. No matter what I did or how much care I gave it, it would die. Really, I was only safe around books. Books I could take care of. Living things, not so much.
I left my house at seven thirty Monday morning, determined to get an early start at the Covington.
It was hard to keep my eyes open and my mind on the road because I was exhausted. I’d spent Sunday evening skimming Abraham’s journals but had found absolutely nothing enlightening or instructive anywhere. Well, except for the fact that he didn’t like the Winslows. There were notations on almost every page indicating their ignorance of art and process.
I’d winced as I read a few passages. Abraham had become obsessed with the Winslows, possibly to the detriment of his work. There was almost nothing written about the Faust. Not one reference to the secret panel he’d found behind the endpapers covering the front board. No slip of aged paper clipped to any of the pages with a stickie attached that said “This is the secret document you’ve been looking for.” Nothing.
Needless to say, I hadn’t slept well. The shocking confrontation with Annie, then the news of the inheritance, then that weird moment on the road Saturday night when I thought some SUV driver was going to kill me, all weighed heavily on me. Then at some point during the night, I realized I’d lost track of Derek Stone up in Dharma. Maybe he’d joined Mary Ellen’s Church of the True Blood of Ogun. I would miss him but he’d obviously found his true calling.
By midmorning, I was shaking. I couldn’t concentrate on the Faust. When I wasn’t wondering about Derek, I was thinking about Abraham. And Annie. And six million dollars. And some missing link that might reveal Abraham’s killer. Abraham’s dying words continued to haunt my thoughts and I wondered whether the devil he’d been referring to was a part of the book’s text.
It made me crazy that all these distractions were interrupting my work since I had only this week to complete the restoration. To concentrate, I grabbed a 3 Musketeers bar from my bag, unwrapped it and took a big bite. It helped, as always, and I hunkered down to work.
I’d already unsealed the black leather cover from the boards and separated the text block. I’d dissolved the glue and carefully pulled the threads out, separating the signatures in order to clean and repair those that needed attention.
I spent some time examining the pages with the worst wear, then tried to read the text for some clue to the genius that was Goethe. Unfortunately, I didn’t know enough German to understand all the words, and it didn’t help that the text itself was written in an Old English-style font.
The book was written in the form of a play, with the characters’ names written out before their speeches. As I studied the page, one short exchange jumped out at me.
MEPHISTOPHELES: Ich bin’s.
FAUST: Herein!
The words alarmed me. Even my rudimentary knowledge of German was enough to know that with one word, the arrogant Faust had doomed himself to an eternity in hell.
It is I, the devil says.
Enter, says Faust.
“Yes, do come in,” I muttered. “Take my soul in exchange for immortality and destroy everything I’ve ever loved.”
That was the devil’s plan all along, wasn’t it?