Ninth Key

  Which was apparently what Thaddeus “Red” Beaumont had done. He had snatched up one of those mansions, a really, really big one, I saw, when Sleepy finally pulled up in front of it. Such a big one, in fact, that it had a little guardhouse by the enormous spiky gate in front of its long, long driveway, with a guard in it watching TV.

  Sleepy, looking at the gate, went, “Are you sure this is the place?”

  I swallowed. I knew from what CeeCee had said that Mr. Beaumont was rich. But I hadn’t thought he was this rich.

  And just think, his kid had asked me to slow dance!

  “Um,” I said. “Maybe I should just see if he’s home before you take off.”

  Sleepy said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  I got out of the car and went up to the little guardhouse. I don’t mind telling you, I felt like a tool. I had been trying all day to get through to Mr. Beaumont, only to be told he was in a meeting, or on another line. For some reason, I’d imagined a personal touch might work. I don’t know what I’d been thinking, but I believe it had involved ringing the doorbell and then looking winsomely up into his face when he came to the door.

  That, I could see now, wasn’t going to happen.

  “Um, excuse me,” I said, into the little microphone at the guard’s house. Bulletproof glass, I noticed. Either Tad’s dad had some people who didn’t like him, or he was just a little paranoid.

  The guard looked up from his TV. He checked me out. I saw him check me out. I had kept my coat open so he’d be sure to see my plaid skirt and loafers. Then he looked past me, at the Rambler. This was no good. I did not want to be judged by my stepbrother and his crappy car.

  I tapped on the glass again to direct the guard’s attention back to me.

  “Hello,” I said, into the microphone. “My name’s Susannah Simon, and I’m a sophomore at the Mission Academy. I’m doing a story for our school paper on the ten most influential people in Carmel, and I was hoping to be able to interview Mr. Beaumont, but unfortunately, he hasn’t returned any of my calls, and the story is due tomorrow, so I was wondering if he might be home and if he’d see me.”

  The guard looked at me with a stunned expression on his face.

  “I’m a friend,” I said, “of Tad, Tad Beaumont, Mr. Beaumont’s son? He knows me, so if you want him, you know, to check me out on the security camera or whatever, I’m sure he could, you know, ID me. If my ID needs verifying, I mean.”

  The guard continued to stare at me. You would think a guy as rich as Mr. Beaumont could afford smarter guards.

  “But if this is a bad time,” I said, starting to back away, “I guess I could come back.”

  Then the guard did an extraordinary thing. He leaned forward, pressed a button, and said, into the speaker, “Honey, you talk faster than anyone I ever heard in my life. Would you care to repeat all that? Slowly, this time?”

  So I said my little speech again, more slowly this time, while behind me, Sleepy sat at the wheel with the motor running. I could hear the radio blaring inside the car, and Sleepy singing along. He must have thought that his car was soundproof with the windows rolled up.

  Boy, was he ever wrong.

  After I was done giving my speech the second time, the guard, with a kind of smile on his face, said, “Hold on, miss,” and got on this white phone, and started saying a bunch of stuff into it that I couldn’t hear. I stood there wishing I’d worn tights instead of pantyhose since my legs were freezing in the cold wind that was coming in off the ocean, and wondering how I could ever have possibly thought this was a good idea.

  Then the microphone crackled.

  “Okay, miss,” the guard said. “Mr. Beaumont’ll see you.”

  And then, to my astonishment, the big spiky gates began to ease open.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh my God! Thank you! Thanks—”

  Then I realized the guard couldn’t hear me since I wasn’t talking into the microphone. So I ran back to the car and tore open the door.

  Sleepy, in the middle of a pretty involved air guitar session, broke off and looked embarrassed.

  “So?” he said.

  “So,” I said back to him, slamming the passenger door behind me. “We’re in. Just drop me off at the house, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Cinderella.”

  It took like five minutes to get down that driveway. I am not even kidding. It was that long. On either side of it were these big trees that formed sort of an alley. A tree alley. It was kind of cool. I figured in the daytime it was probably really beautiful. Was there anything Tad Beaumont didn’t have? Looks, money, a beautiful place to live…

  All he needed was cute little old me.

  Sleepy pulled the car to a stop in front of this paved entranceway, which was flanked on either side by these enormous palm trees, kind of like the Polynesian Resort at Disney World. In fact, the whole place had kind of a Disney feel to it. You know, really big, and kind of modern and fake. There were all these lights on, and at the end of all the paved stones I could see this giant glass door with somebody hovering behind it.

  I turned to Sleepy and said, “Okay, I’m good. Thanks for the ride.”

  Sleepy looked out at all the lights and palm trees and stuff. “You sure you got a way home?”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Okay.” As I got out of the car, I heard him mutter, “Never delivered a pie here before.”

  I hurried up the paved walkway, conscious, as Sleepy drove away, that I could hear the ocean somewhere, though in the darkness beyond the house, I couldn’t see it. When I got to the door, it swung open before I could look for a bell, and a Japanese man in black pants and a white housecoat-looking thing bowed to me and said, “This way, miss.”

  I had never been in a house where a servant answered the door before—let alone been called miss—so I didn’t know how to act. I followed him into this huge room where the walls were made out of actual rocks from which actual water was dripping in these little rivulets, which I guess were supposed to be waterfalls.

  “May I take your coat?” the Japanese man said, and so I shrugged out of it, though I kept my bag from which my writing tablet was peeking out. I wanted to look the part, you know.

  Then the Japanese man bowed to me again and said, “This way, miss.”

  He led me toward a set of sliding glass doors, which opened out onto a long, open-air courtyard in which there was a huge pool lit up turquoise in the dark. Steam rose from its surface. I guess it was heated. There was a fountain in the middle of it and a rock formation from which water gushed, and all around it were plants and trees and hibiscus bushes. A very nice place, I thought, for me to hang out in after school in my Calvin Klein one-piece and my sarong.

  Then we were inside again in a surprisingly ordinary-looking hallway. It was at this point that my guide bowed to me for a third time and said, “Wait here, please,” then disappeared through one of three doors off the corridor.

  So I did as he said, though I couldn’t help wondering what time it was. I don’t wear a watch since every one I ever owned has ended up getting smashed by some evil spirit. But I hadn’t planned on spending more than a few minutes of my time with this guy. My plan was to get in, deliver the dead lady’s message, and then get out. I’d told my mom I’d be home by nine, and it had to be nearly eight by now.

  Rich people. They just don’t care about other people’s curfews.

  Then the Japanese man reappeared, bowed, and said, “He will see you now.”

  Whoa. I wondered if I should genuflect.

  I restrained myself. Instead, I went through the door—and found myself in an elevator. A tiny little elevator with a chair and an end table in it. There was even a plant on the end table. The Japanese man had shut the door behind me, and now I was alone in a tiny room that was definitely moving. Whether it was going up or down, I had no way of knowing. There were no numbers over the door to indicate the direction the thing was taking. And there was only one button…

  The
room stopped moving. When I reached for the doorknob, it turned. And when I stepped out of the elevator, I found myself in a darkened room with big velvet curtains pulled over the windows, containing only a massive desk, an even more massive aquarium, and a single visitor’s chair, evidently for me, in front of that desk. Behind the desk sat a man. The man, when he saw me, smiled.

  “Ah,” he said. “You must be Miss Simon.”

  Chapter

  Seven

  “Um,” I said. “Yes.”

  It was hard to tell, because it was so dark in the room, but the man behind the desk appeared to be about my stepfather’s age. Forty-five or so. He was wearing a sweater over a button-down collared shirt, sort of like Bill Gates always does. He had brown hair that was obviously thinning. CeeCee was right: It certainly wasn’t red.

  And he wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as his son.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Beaumont said. “Sit down. I’m so delighted to see you. Tad’s told me so much about you.”

  Yeah, right. I wondered what he’d say if I pointed out that Tad didn’t even know my name. But since I was still playing the part of the eager girl reporter, I smiled as I settled into the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk.

  “Would you like anything?” Mr. Beaumont asked. “Tea? Lemonade?”

  “Oh, no thank you,” I said. It was hard not to stare at the aquarium behind him. It was built into the wall, almost filling it up, and was stocked with every color fish imaginable. There were lights built into the sand at the bottom of the tank that cast this weird, watery glow around the room. Mr. Beaumont’s face, with this wavy light on it, looked kind of Grand Moff Tarkin-ish. You know, in the final Death Star battle scene.

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” I said in response to his question about liquid refreshment.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Yoshi can get it for you.” Mr. Beaumont reached for the phone in the center of his giant, Victorian-looking desk. “Shall I ask him to get you anything?”

  “Really,” I said. “I’m fine.” And then I crossed my legs because I was still freezing from when I’d stood outside by the guard’s house.

  “Oh, but you’re cold,” Mr. Beaumont said. “Here, let me light a fire.”

  “No,” I said. “Really. It’s all…right….”

  My voice trailed off. Mr. Beaumont had not, as Andy would have done, stood up, gone to the fireplace, stuffed wadded-up pieces of newspaper under some logs, lit the thing, and then spent the next half hour blowing on it and cursing.

  Instead, he lifted a remote control, hit a button, and all of a sudden this cheerful fire was going in the black marble fireplace. I felt its heat at once.

  “Wow,” I said. “That sure is…convenient.”

  “Isn’t it?” Mr. Beaumont smiled at me. He kept looking, for some reason, at the cross around my neck. “I never was one for building fires. So messy. I was never a very good Boy Scout.”

  “Ha ha,” I said. The only way, I thought to myself, that this could get any weirder would be if it turned out he had that dead lady’s head on ice somewhere in the basement, ready for transplantation onto Cindy Crawford’s body as soon as it becomes available.

  “Well, if I could get straight to the point, Mr. Beaumont—”

  “Of course. Ten most influential people in Carmel, is it? And what number am I? One, I hope.”

  He smiled even harder at me. I smiled back at him. I hate to admit it, but this is always my favorite part. There is definitely something wrong with me.

  “Actually, Mr. Beaumont,” I said, “I’m not really here to do a story on you for my school paper. I’m here because someone asked me to get a message to you, and this is the only way I could think of to do it. You are a very hard person to get a hold of, you know.”

  His smile had not faltered as I’d told him that I was there under false pretenses. He may have hit some secret alarm button under his desk, calling for security, but if he did, I didn’t see it. He folded his fingers beneath his chin and, still staring at my gold cross, said, “Yes?” in this expectant way.

  “The message,” I said, sitting up straight, “is from a woman—sorry, I didn’t get her name—who happens to be dead.”

  There was absolutely no change in his expression. Obviously, I decided, a master at hiding his emotions.

  “She said for me to tell you,” I went on, “that you did not kill her. She doesn’t blame you. And she wants you to stop blaming yourself.”

  That triggered a reaction. He quickly unfolded his fingers, then flattened his hands out across his desk, and stared at me with a look of utter fascination.

  “She said that?” he asked me, eagerly. “A dead woman?”

  I eyed him uneasily. That wasn’t quite the reaction I was used to getting when I delivered messages like the one I’d just given him. Some tears would have been good. A gasp of astonishment. But not this—let’s face it—sick kind of interest.

  “Yeah,” I said, standing up.

  It wasn’t just that Mr. Beaumont and his creepy staring was freaking me out. And it wasn’t that my dad’s warning was ringing in my ears. My mediator instincts were telling me to get out, now. And when my instincts tell me to do something, I usually obey. I have often found it beneficial to my health.

  “Okay,” I said. “Buh-bye.”

  I turned around and headed back for the elevator. But when I tugged on the doorknob, it didn’t budge.

  “Where did you see this woman?” Mr. Beaumont’s voice, behind me, was filled with curiosity. “This dead person?”

  “I had a dream about her, okay?” I said, continuing to tug lamely on the door. “She came to me in a dream. It was really important to her that you knew that she doesn’t hold you responsible for anything. And now I’ve done my duty, so would you mind if I go now? I told my mom I’d be home by nine.”

  But Mr. Beaumont didn’t release the elevator door. Instead, he said in a wondering voice, “You dreamed of her? The dead speak to you in your dreams? Are you a psychic?”

  Damn, I said to myself. I should have known.

  This guy was one of those New Agers. He probably had a sensory deprivation tank in his bedroom and burned aromatherapy candles in his bathroom and had a secret little room dedicated to the study of extraterrestrials somewhere in his house.

  “Yeah,” I said, since I’d already dug the hole. I figured I might just as well climb in now. “Yeah, I’m psychic.”

  Keep him talking, I said to myself. Keep him talking while you find another way out. I began to edge toward one of the windows hidden behind the sweeping velvet curtains.

  “But look, I can’t tell you anything else, okay?” I said. “I just had this one dream. About someone who seems like she might have been a very nice lady. It’s a shame about her being dead, and all. Who was she, anyway? Your, um, wife?”

  On the word wife, I pulled the curtains apart, expecting to find a window I could neatly put my foot through, then jump to safety. No biggie. I’d done it a hundred times before.

  And there was a window there, all right. A ten-foot one with lots of individual panes, set back a foot, at least, in a nicely paneled casement.

  But someone had pulled the shutters—you know, the ones that go on the outside of the house and are mostly just decorative—closed. Tightly closed. Not a ray of sunshine could have penetrated those things.

  “It must be terribly exciting,” Mr. Beaumont was saying behind me as I stared at the shutters, wondering if they’d open if I kicked them hard enough. But then who was to say what kind of drop lay below them? I could be fifty feet up for all I knew. I’ve made some serious leaps in my life, but I usually like to know what I’m leaping into before I go for it. “Being psychic, I mean,” Tad’s dad went on. “I wonder if you would mind getting in touch with other deceased individuals I might know. There are a few people I’ve been longing to talk to.”

  “It doesn’t”—I let go of those curtains and moved to the next window—“
work that way.”

  Same thing. The window was completely shuttered up. Not even a chink where sunlight might spill through. In fact, they looked almost nailed shut.

  But that was ridiculous. Who would nail shutters over their windows? Especially with the kind of sea view I was sure Mr. Beaumont’s house afforded.

  “Oh, but surely, if you really concentrated”—Mr. Beaumont’s pleasant voice followed me as I moved to the next window—“you could communicate with just a few others. I mean, you’ve already succeeded with one. What’s a few more? I’d pay you, of course.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Every single one of the windows was shuttered.

  “Um,” I said as I got to the last window and found it similarly shuttered. “Agoraphobic much?”

  Mr. Beaumont must have finally noticed what I was doing since he said, casually, “Oh, that. Yes. I’m sensitive to sunlight. So bad for the skin.”

  Oh, okay. This guy was certifiable.

  There was only one other door in the room, and that one was behind Mr. Beaumont, next to the aquarium. I didn’t exactly relish the idea of going anywhere near that guy, so I headed back for the door to the elevator.

  “Look, can you please unlock this so I can go home?” I tugged on the knob, trying not to let my fear show. “My mom is really strict, and if I miss my curfew, she…she might beat me.”

  I know this was shoveling it on a bit thick—especially if he ever happened to watch the local news and saw my mother doing one of her reports. She is so not the abusive type. But the thing was, there was something so creepy about him, I really just wanted to get out, and I didn’t care how. I’d have said anything to get out of there.

  “Do you think,” Mr. Beaumont wanted to know, “that if I were very quiet, you might be able to summon this woman’s spirit again so that I could have a word with her?”

  “No,” I said. “Could you please open this door?”

  “Don’t you wonder what she could have meant?” Mr. Beaumont asked me. “I mean, she told you to tell me not to blame myself for her death. As if I, in some way, were responsible for killing her. Didn’t that make you wonder a little, Miss Simon? I mean, about whether or not I might be a—”