It’s as if the Vandenberg cousins already know this dance. It’s as if they’ve danced it at a thousand balls before this one. Jude leads with quiet authority. And I quickly realize …
The Waltz of the Hollow might be modest, but somehow, it’s more arousing than anything I’ve seen on our high school dance floor. It’s a study of anticipation and longing. The rush of coming together, only to be separated much too soon. Brief touches that are never enough, stirring up a cauldron of warmth that could drive a person insane. And all thewhile, Miss Applewhite insists uponeye contact, eye contact, eye contact! By the time the rehearsal ends, I feel as though Jude has seen into my soul, and there’s a fire in my cheeks I’m not sure will ever go away.
“Dress rehearsal will be on Thursday,” Miss Applewhite announces. “Please make sure your attire is finalized. Mrs. Tibbs has informed me that she is very busy with parade costumes, so if you plan to use her for alterations, do be considerate and contact her sooner rather than later.”
It occurs to me that I don’t have any attire at all. I’ve been preoccupied with other things.
Everyone breaks.
I expect Rafe to linger, to say something cryptic. Instead, he makes a hasty exit with Lainey.
I watch them go with narrowed eyes.
If only we knew what he was up to.
34
HIDDEN SCANDAL
After float building, Jude and I head to the family archives only to be chased away by a team from the FHPS. We retreat to the study, a private room behind the library, accessible via a paneled door that blends into the wall like part of the wainscoting.
I sit at the commanding desk of Amos Vandenberg, which we’ve already checked for keyholes. I imagine him here in quiet retreat, the stone fireplace crackling behind him, the tall windows before him offering a view of the hedge maze and part of the orchard as he dips his feather quill into a silver inkwell to draft his mostly boring letters.
Outside, the orchard is nearly unrecognizable. Rows of trees with thinned branches, now pruned and shaped, boast a few stubborn apples and pears. The grass between is neatly trimmed butscattered with leaves, a mixture of russet and buttery yellow. Early evening sunlight pours through the windows, casting Jude in an angelic glow. He sits on one of two leather armchairs with a chess table in between, tinkering with the gold-plated pocket compass.
“I don’t know what business they have in the library,” he says. “We’re opening the east wing to the public, not the west.”
“Does it bother you—the changes she’s making to the estate?” Which is, in actuality,his. Held in trust by Isabel until Jude turns twenty-one, or twenty-five, or thirty. I don’t really understand the particulars of his inheritance. Only that it will be released to him in stages upon his twenty-first birthday.
He shrugs and sets the opened compass on the chess table. “If it keeps her occupied and away from me, I don’t particularly care.”
I pull the chain of a green glass banker’s lamp and a warm pool of light spills over the items on the desk. An elegant fountain pen in a carved wooden stand. A tarnished, antique inkwell. And a glass ashtray without cigarettes or residue, as if Tulane cleaned it after John Vandenberg vanished.
“This compass spins like it’s drunk,” Jude says.
“Given the readings we got last night, I’m not sure it’s the compass.”
“I tried it at the fairgrounds. It didn’t work there, either.”
I open the desk drawers and find nothingrevelatory. Paperwork mostly—mortgage statements, tax receipts, a property survey from 1991, timesheets for the former groundskeeper and the housekeeping staff. There’s a Foggy Hollow phone directory, circa 1994. Estate letterhead. And a leather rolodex. I flip through the handwritten contacts. Landscapers, home repairs, pest control, a family physician, a list of lawyers, and interestingly,Walter Jensen, reporter.
“So, are you brave enough to survive Hollow Screen Horror Night tonight?” It’s finally here, and the forecast looks perfect. “There’s nothing quite likePoltergeistoutside in the fog.”
“Isn’t that something you and Twig do together?”
“It is, but you’re welcome to join. Ten bucks will get you three movies and a full tub of popcorn.”
He frowns.
“Do you have something against popcorn?”
“I have something against third wheels.” He turns the compass one hundred eighty degrees. “And since I’m already taking you away from him for the ball, maybe I should let him have this one.”
Let him have this one.
It’s an interesting turn of phrase.
“You know we’re just friends, right?”
