Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(30)

“Did he say that?”

Cadan was so relieved that his father was finally speaking that he said, “Who? Say what?”

“Did Jago say Madlyn went mental?”

Cadan thought about this, not so much whether Jago Reeth had actually said that about his sister but rather why his father was asking that of all possible questions. It seemed such an unlikely choice of queries that Cadan said, “You were looking for her, right? I mean that’s what I told Ione. Like I said, she was here with the girls. Pizza.”

“Ione,” Lew said. “I’d forgotten the pizza. I expect she left in a state.”

“She tried to ring you. Your mobile…?”

“I didn’t have it on.”

The milk steamed on the cooker. Lew got his Newquay mug and spooned Ovaltine into it. He used a generous amount, then he handed the jar over to Cadan who’d got his own mug down from the shelf above the sink.

“I’ll ring her now,” Lew said.

“It’s after midnight,” Cadan told him unnecessarily.

“Believe me, better late than tomorrow.”

Lew left the kitchen and went to his room. Cadan felt an urgent need to know what was going on. This was part curiosity and part a search for a reasonable means of calming himself without questioning why he needed calming. So he climbed the stairs in his father’s wake.

His intention was to listen at Lew’s door, but he found that wasn’t going to be necessary. He’d barely reached the top step when he heard Lew’s voice raise and could tell the conversation was going badly. Lew’s end consisted mostly of, “Ione…Please listen to me…So much on my mind…Overloaded with work…Completely forgot…Because I’m in the middle of shaping a board, Ione, with nearly two dozen more…Yes, yes. I am sorry, but you didn’t actually tell me…Ione…”

That was it. Then silence. Cadan went to the doorway of his father’s room. Lew was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had one hand on the phone’s receiver, which he’d just replaced in its cradle. He glanced at Cadan, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he got up and went for his jacket, which he’d thrown over the seat of a ladder-back chair in the corner of the room. He began to put it on. Apparently, he was going out again.

Cadan said, “What’s happening?”

Lew didn’t look at him as he replied with, “She’s had enough. She’s finished.”

He sounded…Cadan thought about this. Regretful? Tired? Heavyhearted? Accepting of the fact that as long as one remained unchanged, the past would accurately predict the future? Cadan said philosophically, “Well, you cocked things up. Forgetting her and everything.”

Lew patted his pockets as if looking for something. “Yes. Right. Well. She didn’t want to listen.”

“To what?”

“It was a pizza dinner, Cade. That’s all. Pizza. I could hardly be expected to remember a pizza dinner.”

“That’s cold, isn’t it,” Cadan said.

“It’s also none of your business,” Lew told him.

Cadan felt his belly grow tight and hot. He said, “Right. Well, I guess it isn’t. But when you want me to entertain your girlfriend while you’re out…out doing whatever…then it is my business.”

Lew dropped his hand from the search of his pockets. He said, “Christ. I’m…I’m sorry, Cade. I’m on edge. So much is going on. I don’t know how to explain myself to you.”

But that was just it, Cadan thought. What was going on? True, they’d heard from Will Mendick that Santo Kerne was dead?and yeah that was unfortunate, wasn’t it??but why would the news throw their lives into chaos if chaos was indeed where they were?

THE EQUIPMENT ROOM OF Adventures Unlimited had been constructed in a former dining hall and the former dining hall had itself once been a tea-dancing pavilion in the heyday of the Promontory King George Hotel, a heyday that had occurred between the two world wars. Often when he found himself in the equipment room, Ben Kerne tried to imagine what it had been like when the parquet floor wore a gloss, the ceiling glittered with chandeliers, and women in frothy summer frocks floated in the arms of men wearing linen suits. They’d danced with a blissful lack of awareness then, believing that the war to end all wars had actually ended all wars. They’d learned otherwise, and far too soon, but the thought of them had always been soothing, as was the music Ben imagined he heard: the orchestra playing as white-gloved waiters passed finger sandwiches on silver trays. He considered the dancers?nearly saw their ghosts?and felt a poignancy about times that had passed. But at the same moment he always felt comfort. People came and went from the Promontory King George, and life continued.

In the equipment room now, however, the tea dancers of 1933 didn’t enter Ben Kerne’s mind. He stood in front of a row of cabinets, one of which he’d unlocked. Inside this cabinet, climbing equipment hung from hooks, lay neatly in plastic containers, and coiled on shelves. Ropes, harnesses, slings, belay and camming devices, chock stones, carabiners…everything. His own equipment he stored elsewhere because he didn’t like the inconvenience of coming down here to sort out what he wanted to take with him if he had a free afternoon for a climb. But Santo’s kit had a prominent place, and above it Ben himself had proudly fixed a sign that said “Do Not Take From This.” Instructors and students alike were to know those pieces of gear were sacrosanct, the accumulation of three Christmases and four birthday celebrations.