Tuesday Mooney Wore Black by Kate Racculia

Author:Kate Racculia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-09-04T17:00:00+00:00

10

TAKEOUT AND DELIVERY

Edgar Allan Arches Junior, comfortable in the knowledge that the deliveryman wouldn’t arrive for at least thirty minutes, stretched out across Vince’s black velvet sectional sofa and reviewed his notes.

They were not conclusive. They were mostly lists of plans he had to perpetually cross out and rethink. He collected them in a small reporter’s notebook; Archie had a deep appreciation for the act of writing something down instead of typing. A love of paper goods and pens. It was a predilection – some might call it an affectation, to which Archie would say, Have you met my family? – that he’d had since childhood. But he had fully committed to leaving only a paper trail for the past six years, years he had spent avoiding most humans, in person and online, making plans and crossing them out, pretending his life had any direction or purpose beyond disappear completely.

That plan had changed only recently, and it wasn’t going great. He flipped back to the first page.

Talk to Vince @ 4 Seasons auction for hope

He knew about the auction. It happened every year. He knew his family, because they were always invited to these kinds of things, would be on the guest list but highly unlikely to attend. And he knew Vincent Pryce, because he was always invited to these kinds of things, would be on the guest list and highly likely to attend. Approaching Vince, after so many years gone, seemed a far less terrifying prospect than approaching his sister. Or his mother.

Or his brother.

He didn’t have the heart to cross Talk to Vince out.

Archie couldn’t afford to think about it. The guilt would suffocate him. Instead, he flipped to the next page, where he had written:

—Tall girl

—Researcher @ hospital

—Intel on Nat?

He hadn’t had to write it down, because he would never forget, but his fourth bullet would have been Nice feet. He pictured her bare feet, long and slim, against the swirling maroon and gold carpet of the ballroom at the Four Seasons. Dark red shining toes curling into the plush pile.

Archie stared at the portrait over the gray marble fireplace, of Vince in a canary-yellow cravat and smoking jacket the color of old blood, staring vaguely into the middle distance. I’m sorry, he thought; I am so, so sorry. Then he flipped his reporter’s notebook closed, laid it on his chest, and drummed his fingers on the cardboard cover. His stomach gurgled. He was hungry.

It was Friday. All week, Tuesday hadn’t called. Or texted. Neither had Dex, but Tuesday’s silence was louder, especially since there had been very serious developments. Someone found the code on a wall and posted it to Facebook; it went viral. Other people found the underground theater. Just yesterday, when Archie walked down Boylston Street, the Dunks-jonesing security guard and a cop had been supervising a crowd lined up to get into the Steinert building, though all the envelopes were (reportedly) gone. The Globe began profiling players and teams who self-identified, had even printed the decoded rules of the game.

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