Chapter 14
Having been declared hex-free by Miss Price and ambulatory by Bob, Elizabeth was permitted to join the others for dinner down in the kitchen. She bundled up in flannel pajamas and her Cookie Monster robe. Since her slippers had been sucked into the sand pit to Hell, Alice loaned her a pair of pink satin mules which clashed with her other garments and lent a slither to her walk. Somehow she made it down the back stairs without falling and, taking the privilege of an invalid, parked herself in one of the red-and-white vinyl chairs at the kitchen table while the others bustled around her.
Groggy from sleeping all day, Elizabeth stared absently down at the cracked ice pattern in the red Formica and traced the seam along the boomerang-shaped white inlay with her thumbnail. Because they were a large group that night, Bob and Dirk had pulled out the extension to the dinette. The extension had an inlay shaped like a daisy. The table was set with mismatched dishes and silverware, and an old Underwood typewriter sat at the head of the table.
The four housemates were joined by Miss Price, Joe, and Penrose, who had assisted Miss Price with the warding of the sand room. Dirk and Alice stood at the stove and fried pancakes and sausages, both tofu and pork varieties. Miss Price buttered the pancakes as they came off the griddles and stacked them into perilous towers on a platter to be kept warm in the oven. Over in a corner, Penrose sat on the counter and kicked his heels lightly against the cabinet. He was looking rather faded after helping Miss Price ward the sinkhole. Elizabeth wondered if much effort had been involved, or if Miss Price really did have that effect on people.
In contrast, Miss Price was as chipper as ever and chattered about how she had spent the day straightening out the non-payment of rent issues with her landlord. "It turns out that he had all of his financial records on a laptop which got stolen and he was unable to reconstruct them from his backups. I managed to find all of my receipts and check stubs, and he got some copies of his bank statements. We matched up the check stubs with his statements and got everything straightened out. Honestly, you'd think that he would have remembered. It's not like he has that many properties to keep track of. And he didn't look like he'd been tampered with by Marla."
Once the last of the batter had been fried up, they all sat down and started passing pancakes, sausages, and juice. Miss Price insisted that Penrose take a seat too. "Go ahead and sit at table. It's annoying to have you hovering around on the counter."
Penrose sat down in the empty chair in front of the typewriter at the head of the table and fiddled with the keys. Joe who was sitting at that end, shifted his chair away and closer to Alice.
Miss Price took a sausage from the platter that was being passed around. She went on, "Anyway, between that and getting the sand room warded, I feel like it's been quite a successful day. And those wards should hold really well, if I do say so myself, especially without that velvet Elvis drawing out the denizens of the underworld."
Dirk shot a guilty look at Miss Price and quickly changed the subject. "Can anyone explain what Marla and her gang were trying to do by wrecking the house?"
Elizabeth said, "They wanted power, immortality, and a bigger shoe store. And to bring about the Apocalypse. I'm not really sure how the shoe store fit into their plans. I would have thought they had pretty well saturated the market for uncomfortable shoes already."
"Perhaps Marla thought an impending apocalypse might increase her market by encouraging people to engage in penitential self-flagellation through footwear," Penrose said.
Elizabeth grinned. "That's one explanation."
Joe looked uneasily between Elizabeth and the empty chair. He hunched his shoulders and focused on his plate.
Miss Price relayed Penrose's words to the others. Throughout the rest of the meal, she and Elizabeth traded off this task (which will not be mentioned again, unless necessary to the narrative).
"In any event, I'm glad we've got everything resolved," Miss Price said. She sipped her orange juice.
"Not quite," said Elizabeth. "We've still got some problems to deal with here." She explained about the tax records and the suspected funny business with the trust.
Once apprised of the situation, Miss Price jumped into problem-solving mode with both feet. "If you need some paperwork to get disappeared from City Hall, then Barbara, you know her as Flamingo, is the person to talk to. She's an administrator there. All we have to do is ask her to look for the records. They'll vanish completely."
"Can she take care of computer records too?" Elizabeth asked.
Dirk shook his head. "She was blacklisted over the computers, she's not allowed to go near them. At her last job, at the power company, she was getting trained on the billing system and somehow she managed to take down the grid for the city and three counties for over forty-eight hours."
"So she's one of those people? She puts a serious bow wave in the ether when she walks around," Penrose commented.
"What is it that you need to do with the computer records?" Bob asked.
Alice explained about the tax record modified by the mysterious Edward Baggott user account.
"No problem," said Bob. "The mother of one of my ex-housemates works for the city and she has something on everyone. If she can't get the record changed, she'll get you what you need to change it yourself. I've got some free time on Monday, so I can go in and see her. She always liked me."
"Excellent!" Alice rapidly explained what she'd need him to get if she had to hack in and do it herself.
Joe cast sidelong glances towards her. He was starting to show the look of dawning realization that Elizabeth had seen on the faces of so many of Alice's boyfriends.
Penrose was pleased. "All that's left is the problem of the trust, and I think I know how to resolve it, or at least make a start. We need to lure Mr. Unthank back to the house with those papers he was in such a hurry to have me sign. Once we get a look at them, we will be able figure out what he's been up to."
"Joe, you can help us set up a sting operation," Alice exclaimed.
"A sting operation? What do I look like, honey, the FBI?"
"No, but you'll do for now. One of us will pretend to be Penrose. Since Mr. Unthank saw all of you guys, he'll know it's a trick if he recognizes you. But I could get into male drag and wear a wire! Can you get me a wire?" Alice asked Joe.
"Say no," Bob told him.
"You can't pass anyway," said Dirk. "We can get someone else."
"We could get Trip, if you can do that same mind control thing on him that Titania did," Elizabeth said to Penrose. "He owes us anyway for breaking in and trashing the house."
"Mind control? Is it like the Vulcan mind meld?" Alice's eyes widened.
Penrose winced. "Ye.No. Sort of, but without the terrible theatrics."
"That might work," said Bob. "Especially if you can make him forget about it afterwards, but remember that he broke in and we all know it."
"Not a problem. All you have to do is get him over here." Penrose looked delighted at the prospect.
"Surely you have a better alternative," Miss Price said faintly.
"Even if Mr. Unthank has seen you all, one of you could at least try a disguise and pretend to be Mr. Penrose. You don't need to involve Trip at all."
"We want revenge," said Dirk. "You didn't see what he did to the place."
"He was probably the one who trashed the bookstore too," Elizabeth added.
"Oh, well, in that case. But even so, you're straying rather too far into the area of dark magic. Even the fact that you're using your power for good, arguably, won't protect you if you get carried away."
Elizabeth could not tell if she was addressing Alice or Penrose, both of whom looked like they were up to no good.
Joe sat behind the portiere curtains that hung in the doorway between the living room and the music room. He was messing with a clunky tape recorder that looked as though it had been abandoned in the bottom of a closet since the early nineties. It did not look like police equipment. Elizabeth believed he had only brought it over to humor Alice. She didn't think that a recording of anything incriminating Mr. Unthank might say would be admissible in court anyhow, assuming that things went that far.
Through the living-room windows, Elizabeth saw Bob's green Chevette park beneath the rotten tree outside. He entered the house with a broad smile and was energetically cracking his knuckles.
"Hey, Alice," he called. "I think everything's straightened out, but Baggott gave me a hard time, so you'd better check. My ex-housemate's mom sort of blackmailed him into talking with me. I showed him Penrose's papers and got him to change the record, but he could always change it back. It turns out that Becky is his daughter and she'd been on his case about getting hold of this house. For months. He wasn't very receptive to hearing the same sort of stuff from a non-relative."
Alice left Joe and the tape recorder and went over to Bob. He produced a folded piece of yellow paper from his pocket and showed her what he had written down.
"So you got me privileges too?"
Bob said, "Well, my ex-housemate's mom set this up for you. I don't know how long it'll all remain valid; the IT administrator might clean out non-employee accounts periodically."
"That's okay. I'll check on the tax record for the house and make the most of these account privileges while they last," she said in a low voice with a backward glance at Joe and tucked the paper into her own pocket.
Penrose wandered forward from the library and asked Elizabeth how things had gone. She repeated what Bob had said and then conveyed Penrose's thanks to Bob.
"How are things shaping up here?" Bob asked.