Something Rotten by Alan M. Gratz

Author:Alan M. Gratz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I sat in the dark thinking about Olivia and Hamilton as I waited for headlights to come around the bend. For all of his bluster, I had to agree with Olivia’s father: There was still something between the two of them. Maybe they both still loved each other. But what made Hamilton want to hurt her so badly, and what made her keep coming back for more? And exactly what kind of “intervention” did Claude have in mind?

A car came down the gravel driveway, and I slid lower in my seat. I had gotten the Volvo without asking a valet to bring it around, then driven halfway down the Princes’ long driveway. I was parked where the sweep of someone’s headlights coming around the curve wouldn’t catch me. Most of the servants went home earlier, right after dinner, but a few stayed until eleven o’clock to bring whisky and warm milk to people at the pool. Candy drove by in a beat-up little Mazda convertible with the top down. A bright orange ember glowed at the end of a cigarette bobbing in his mouth.

I waited until he was farther down the driveway, then pulled out with my lights off. The stars were still out, but the moon was just a sliver playing hide-and-seek in the trees. Candy pulled left onto the main road without signaling, and a few moments later I did the same. Olivia would have been so proud. Candy wasn’t breaking any speed limits, though, and I was able to fall back a bit without losing him. His convertible crested a hill, and I flicked on my lights and became just another car going down the same lonely road through Denmark.

When Candy had mentioned that he was going to meet someone after work tonight, I figured this was as good a chance as any to learn something more about him. He was too strange, too odd a figure to be just another servant. He did everything he could to get noticed in a household that expected anonymity from its staff, and if Hamilton was any indication, Candy still managed to be invisible. Or maybe the Princes were all too wrapped up in their own problems to care.

We drove past the drive-thru and the supermarket and stopped at Denmark’s only traffic light. This close, I could see that the Miata had North Carolina plates. Candy had a cell phone in his hand, and he was dialing a number up high on the steering wheel where he could still watch for the light to turn green. He put the phone to his ear, brought it back down to look at it, put it back to his ear, then flipped it closed and tossed it into his seat. The light turned green and he drove on through the intersection, leaving the last puff from his cigarette twirling around in little wisps for me to drive through. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t made me yet, and I hung back again to give him some distance.

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