Lucien Moriarty owned this one.
Araminta shook her head as if to clear it. “I never heard this story,” she said quietly.
“There was nothing we could do,” Watson continued. Though the police—and Lucien Moriarty—were desperately hunting us down, Watson had risked a message to his father. Get Shelby out. And he had gone to rescue her, Leander by his side. The drive from New York City was four hours; they had made it in two.
They’d argued the whole way about the plan. James Watson had wanted to go in with proverbial guns blazing (Shelby was his daughter; emotions tended to cloud one’s judgment), while Leander, true to form, had argued for a more subtle approach. They would be state inspectors on an emergency call. They would be electricians, plumbers. They would call the local police and a judge friend of Leander’s and get Shelby out the legal way.
None of it was enough for James Watson. I want my daughter. And then, when we ride out of there, I want that place burning down behind me.
You sound like a cowboy, Leander had scoffed, and it was then, as they’d crossed the state line, that they hit on a plan that appealed to the both of them.
“Horse thieves,” Watson said, with some satisfaction. Araminta coughed in the driver’s seat, but offered no commentary.
Leander had grown up taking riding lessons; James had insisted he’d worked as a trail guide in college. (“He had not,” Watson said, “worked as a trail guide in college.”) They’d stopped at a twenty-four-hour Walmart and changed from their formal wear into flannel shirts and Carhartts and hats to hide their faces. They bought bolt cutters, shovels, fertilizer, two long-handled lighters, and three twenty-five-packs of Saturn Missile Extremely Loud Fireworks.
They’d paid for it all in cash.
After parking the car in the woods, they’d approached the facility on foot. The “school” was protected by a twelve-foot-high fence crowned with barbed wire. Luckily, it wasn’t electrified; less luckily, it was surrounded by cameras. They chose a spot close enough to the stables for their purposes.
Then James chose a spot a mile farther along, laid down both bags of fertilizer, and started a massive fire.
At the same time, Leander cut a hole in the fence big enough for a palomino, ducked through, and set off his pack of fireworks. They sang like missiles into the sky as he made his way to the stables. James Watson went for his daughter.
In short order, the school was surrounded by fire engines and police cars. Those horses that hadn’t escaped through the fence were panicked, whinnying, galloping to the far corners of the enclosure, and as Leander watched from the woods, he saw something he hadn’t counted on—students, at first a slow trickle of them, then a flood. Stealing out of their dorms and through the hole cut in the fence. Backpacks on their shoulders, escaping into the woods to try their luck anyplace else than the prison they’d been kept.
During the mass confusion, James Watson had broken into the infirmary—Shelby’s last known whereabouts—and found her there alone, left handcuffed to a wooden desk chair. She’d been hacking away at it with a paperweight when her father found her. They’re coming back, she’d said, through tears of rage, he said he was coming right back, and they’re putting me into the Isolation Pit—
He didn’t wait to find out what that was. The two of them hacked away at the wood until it gave, and then James Watson, his daughter, and the chair arm still handcuffed to her wrist disappeared into the forest, never to be seen again.
“Until they met Leander by his rented Saturn in the woods,” Watson said wryly. “Though my dad likes to end the story before that.”
“Leander—” My aunt gave me a look. “Uncle Leander made some calls in the morning. The ones he wanted to in the beginning—the police, the judge, his lawyer. It took some time, and finesse, and a few massive fines for setting fires near a national park—among other things—but in the end, the facility shut down. I think what finally did it in was one of their board members getting arrested for attempted murder of a child.”
“And that, kids, is why you don’t let a Moriarty buy your school,” Watson said.
“That’s quite the story,” Araminta said, turning off onto a gravel lane, our tires kicking up dust and rocks behind us.
“Well, it ends there. That was the last time James and Leander saw each other.” Watson peered out the windshield. “Other than Holmes’s hospital room, that is. My father is too busy fucking up his life. Is this—is this where we’re going to dinner?”
Araminta had kept him talking for the full half hour it had taken us to arrive at our destination. We’d driven past a full-to-bursting parking lot into the circle drive of a manor house. In the waning light, I had the impression of flowers. Pots of them around the entrance, an arch over the entrance to the garden.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said, handing the keys to a silent valet. “I thought you two deserved a treat. Come, our table’s on the terrace. You don’t mind dining al fresco?”
Our table was bedecked in candles. The waiters brought duck eggs, carpaccio with capers and artichoke hearts, a risotto with salmon and beetroot, a sea bass the width of my arms wrapped in a delicate, fragrant leaf. We didn’t talk much about the program; Araminta didn’t press me on the classes I wasn’t attending, and Watson was loath to discuss a story when he was in the middle of writing it. Instead, I told her more about our case—the mysterious entrance into the theater, the missing girl. The conversation between Theo and George Wilkes.
“It isn’t Theo after all,” Watson said, spearing an asparagus, and I agreed, and I didn’t agree, but I didn’t offer my opinion aloud. Not yet. Araminta had her head cocked, almost as though she was listening for something, and then she came back to herself all at once, calling the waiter over for more wine.
As we waited for the dessert cart, I saw that Watson’s eyes had fallen half-shut, whether from the wine or the food or the long day, I couldn’t tell, and he settled back in his chair to look out over the grounds. Couples were playing lawn games, sipping cocktails. Tail flagged high, a spaniel ran loose through the croquet wickets, and a girl gave chase, laughing, a leash in her hands.
The shadows began to lengthen across our table. Araminta talked about her bees, the new young queen. As the evening cooled, Watson took my hand between our chairs and let them slowly swing back and forth, a pendulum, and I was happy.
I was happy.
But it had been some time since we’d seen our waiter, and Araminta was toying with her wineglass. “Lottie,” she said at length. “Would you pop into the bar and order me a decaf coffee? Here, take my card. Jamie, would you like anything?”
“No,” he said with a yawn. “I’m fading out. But thank you so much for dinner, Araminta. Aunt Araminta . . . ?”
She grinned. “Cheeky monkey. You can call me aunt.”
“Aunt. You didn’t have to do all this. I think it’s wasted on me.”
“Experience is never wasted,” Araminta said. “And you’re welcome.”
It took me a few moments to pick my way through the tables to the door back into the hotel, and as I reached out for the handle, I found myself turning back to our table. I didn’t know why. Watson was telling a story with his hands.