Сергей Редькин – Hide-and-Seek (страница 5)
“I’ll have them and a guest room ready for you tomorrow morning.”
“Could you do it tonight, just in case, if it’s possible?”
“Certainly, sir,” he said without a hint of surprise.
“Thank you, Harry,” I said and rang off.
I placed my head on the back of the seat, not worrying too much about the cleanliness of it, and closed my eyes. I needed a few moments to understand what had just happened back in the pub and the possible ramifications of whatever was going to happen tomorrow.
“My mom told me what happened when we were on the way to the States,” he said, nurturing the glass in his hand. “Later, she told me that you guys had left the house. I know it might sound strange to ask this now, but was it properly searched?”
It did sound a bit odd, but I kept my poker face. “Well, we and the police searched everywhere the next day. A hundred people were looking for him in the park and nearby villages night and day for a month.”
“I see. I don’t know why, but I just thought of something Charlie told me about.”
I noticed Jared’s phone–that he had put down on the table–was blinking with incoming messages, but he did not check it. I was sure that he was going to tell me whatever it was, so I just looked at him, waiting for another flashback to surface.
“He told me about this eerie chest your family kept in the attic,” he said. “If I remember correctly, it was a pirate's chest filled with cursed treasure, and if you took anything from it, the pirates' ghosts would hunt you forever.”
“Yes, there were actually two. One was in the attic and ‘his identical brother’ was in my dad’s study. The one in the attic was ‘cursed,’ and I was the one who told him that story. It’s kind of a thing that gets passed from one generation to the next to scare the bejesus out of the younger kids in the house so that the older kids can hide their stuff in it. A family tradition, as it were.”
I didn’t need to tell Jared that this was the place where I kept my product. I had to reinvent a few scary stories to make sure Charlie never got closer to that chest. There was some powerful weed, and it smelled so strong that I had to double bag it and keep it inside so that no one knew.
“Were they really pirate chests?” Jared sounded intrigued.
“Well, the legend has it that the first Montague, Ezekiel, wasn’t a savory character. He travelled a lot and was involved in some shady trading business somewhere close to the end or right after “the golden age of piracy”.
“When was that?”
“I imagine it was in the early or mid-1800s. In any case, for some reason, he got to keep what he ‘traded,’ I think he was pardoned, and invested it in railways. Later, he was smart enough to pull his money plus interest out before the railway mania and the revolution in France… the last one, I think. Anyway, he bought the land and built the house in 1862. The chests were among his possessions when he moved in. It was said that he got them from some Chinese sailors in Asia. My grandfather used to say that the chests were filled with gold coins that helped the family through some challenging times, but I haven’t seen any of that alleged pirate loot.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah,” I said, twisting the glass in my hand and looking at my drink.
As a little boy, I had been fascinated by the story myself and kept asking my father to tell it to me again and again. Unfortunately, it had been a rare treat because my father had usually been too busy for this sort of things.
“All the kids in the family, including Charlie and I, were trying to find those coins. Alas, the chests were filled with everything but.” I shrugged.
Jared smiled. “I remember wanting to look at that thing and being scared at the same time. I also remember Charlie thought that it was an ideal place to hide from everyone.”
“He was a bit afraid of the attic and the chest. Plus, the lid was too heavy for him to open anyway,” I said, massaging my belly which had started to feel strange. It wasn’t a “nature call” type of strange, but a feeling as if my mind was trying to tell me something and it chose my gut to send me the message.
I recalled the events of that day in more detail, which wasn’t difficult. When I found out that my parents had called the police, I had the chest moved down to the cellar the next day. I didn’t want the police and their dog anywhere near it. I had no desire to be questioned about where I’d got the money to buy that batch.
“Why did you mention the chest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. As a kid, every time I watched a pirate movie I would think about that chest,” Jared said and had another sip from his glass. “In any case, I’m sure you did everything you could to find him.”
Chapter 6
Back in the taxi, I was thinking about that chest. Did we check it before it was moved down to the cellar? Of course, we didn’t. I was too worried about the police, and it never occurred to me that someone could’ve been hiding in it. Besides, I was not
I arrived at the train station on time and gave a generous tip to my indifferent taxi driver. I got on the train and threw myself into the seat. Now I could think a bit.
“Alex?”
I turned my head and saw my old university friend James Harding. His family were our neighbors.
The Hardings had lived in the area where our estate was situated long before Ezekiel Montague arrived, but they had lost most of their land piece by piece over the years. They had been land-rich but cash-poor and had to make many compromises to stay afloat. They still owned their Baroque-style manor house, Wintersmith Hall, which was built in the late 1600s, but it was mostly uninhabitable due to a lack of proper maintenance and funding. James’s family had been occupying one wing and using the former stables for their needs for as long as I could remember.
Our fathers had been friends until James’s dad passed away seven years ago, but our great-grandfathers had not been. I remembered my father telling me that when I became the head of the family, I would have to ensure the Hardings were always welcome in the house.
I used to see James and his family at the parties my parents organized, but we had never been especially close. Perhaps the closeness of our fathers was the reason James and I attended the same boarding school and later the same university, which technically made us close enough to call each other friends. He studied history while I took business courses. After graduation, we didn’t stay in touch much, though we occasionally saw each other at various events in town.
I had always thought of him as a sloppy nerd with his head perpetually in the clouds. He was a bit shorter than me and paid little attention to either the cleanliness or tidiness of his wardrobe and hair. I remembered once, when I went to his dorm room to pick him up for some event during our university days, marveling at the chaos that cluttered his living space. He pulled a white dress shirt from beneath a pile of shoes, put it on, and declared himself ready to go.
James had started hiding his weak chin beneath a dark beard long before it became fashionable, though food crumbs often got stuck in it like little hostages. His lean body, which rarely saw the inside of a gym, was never particularly attractive to women. After his father passed away, James returned home to help his formidable mother with what remained of their estate, which, as far as I could remember, had never made them much money. After that, I hadn’t seen him much—until today.
“It’s been years,” he said. “How the heck have you been?”
It felt unexpectedly good to see him. I could see a few greasy spots, sauce from burgers no doubt, on his jacket.
“James” I said, “I haven’t seen you since …” I squinted my eyes, trying to remember when it was the last time we’d seen each other.
“Since forever would be the right estimation.” I laughed.
“Come, man,” I said pointing to the seat next to me.
He sat down.
“How’s your back?” he asked.
I’d had a nasty car accident a few years ago when my car’s brakes malfunctioned, and I crashed into a brick wall. I hurt my back, spent some time in hospital and went through an unpleasant recovery therapy after that. I had my car, a Firenze red Range Rover, fixed because it was new at the time and a real chick magnet but had been driving it rarely ever since.
“It’s all right as long as I don’t need to stand for a long time,” I said.
“So, what brings you to this neck of the woods anyway?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I should tell him the reason why I was on the train, but I had a feeling that I needed to share what was on my mind to feel better. Well, at least sharing some of it couldn’t hurt.
“I had a business meeting with Jared Shannon.”
“As in Jared Shannon, the founder of QC Solutions?”
“That’s the one. Trying to get some investors for this project that I have.”
I was trying to be as vague as possible yet attempting to make it important at the same time. It was futile because James didn’t have that much money nor did he have any good connections that could’ve been useful to me, but I couldn’t help it.