"You can find anything on the Internet, dear, so long"s you know where to look."
"So you see, Emily," Tilly recapped, "it would have been impossible for the Ticklepennys to pa.s.s on their congenital anomaly because, unfortunately, with the death of the children, the entire bloodline was wiped out."
My mind was working at warp speed. "What about his wife? Could she have been the one to carry the gene? Could she have had siblings who pa.s.sed on the condition?"
Nana shook her head. "There wasn"t no good information about her on-line, except that she was the only child a Lord and Lady Pluckrose a County Suss.e.x, England."
"She was an only child?" Drat. So if it wasn"t a Ticklepenny or Pluckrose ancestor who was making the b.l.o.o.d.y footprints in the castle, who was was making them? Why couldn"t I connect any of the dots? Why wasn"t any of this making sense? making them? Why couldn"t I connect any of the dots? Why wasn"t any of this making sense?
As we broke into a near run to catch up with the rest of the group, the terrain grew more dramatic. In the distance, set against the blue of a cloudless sky, a plateau of sheer rock rose hundreds of feet into the air, then sloped toward the sea in uneven terraces that were as jagged as sharks" teeth. Horizontal bands of red rock striated the cliff and looked like open wounds slashed into the stone.
Tilly pointed to the cliff with her walking stick. "You see that bright ochre color in the stone? The rock here has a high iron content. That"s why it"s red. And if you look very closely, you can make out a single column of rock on the first terrace below the plateau. That"s known as the "chimney stack.""
I squinted at the column in question. It looked like another Cromwellian ruin to me.
"If you don"t mind, I"m going to hurry ahead and tell the others. They might not have noticed." Off she went at double-time, leaving us in the dust. I stared after her.
"Is Tilly in your exercise cla.s.s too?"
Nana shook her head. "She gets a real good pension from the university, so she hired a personal trainer."
"And how does she know so much about this place if she"s never been here before?"
Nana unzipped her f.a.n.n.y pack and pulled out a cream-colored pamphlet. "She read the brochure. Maybe you didn"t get one. They were in a plastic dispenser on the wall in the visitors" center. You wanna borrow mine?"
I hesitated as a sound echoed out from behind us. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. Clop-clop. I scooted Nana toward the shoulder of the road and whirled around, expecting to see a horse galloping toward us, but it wasn"t a horse. I scooted Nana toward the shoulder of the road and whirled around, expecting to see a horse galloping toward us, but it wasn"t a horse.
"Wait up!" Jackie ran awkwardly toward us in her wedges with the high wooden heels. "It"s no fun waiting up there all by myself!"
"However do you run in those shoes, dear?" Nana asked when she caught up to us.
Jackie bent over at the waist, clutched her side, and sucked in air. "These are nothing," she gasped. "Good thing I didn"t wear my two-band leather stilettos. Those would have been a real b.i.t.c.h."
We waited long enough for her to catch her breath, then took off down the road again. "We"re really laggin" behind," Nana fretted. "By the time we get to the causeway, it"ll be time to head back. I hope George takes good pictures. That might be the only way I"ll get to see anything."
"How was George able to maneuver his way onto the bus when the rest of you couldn"t?" I inquired.
"The bus driver made a special concession for him "cause of his leg. It was painin" him some today."
I recalled George"s leg aching last year in Switzerland too. "The pain has something to do with barometric conditions, doesn"t it?"
"I suspect it has more to do with all the cloggin" he done last night."
"George was clogging? With his prosthetic leg?"
"He"s very agile and light on his feet, dear, even with the prosthesis. When the dance captain asked for volunteers, George was the first one up there. Him and Bernice. His steel-toed boots worked out real good for cloggin". He mighta danced all night if the power hadn"t went out. He told me later he mighta had a career in compet.i.tive dancin" if his leg hadn"t got blown off in the war. He done real good up there with the pros. And you know, Emily, I never noticed before, but George has one fine heinie on him. All the ladies were commentin". The bubble-b.u.t.ts get all the praise, but I"ll take a tomato-b.u.t.t like George"s any day." She locked her hands about a foot apart in the air. "I like somethin" substantial to grab on to."
Oh, G.o.d. Was this normal? Did other people"s grandmothers discuss men"s heinies with such enthusiasm? Maybe I should check out what she was reading these days. Whatever it was, I bet it wasn"t on the Legion of Mary"s ten hot picks for summer. "So how did Bernice do?" I asked in a quick change of subject.
"She done good until the power failed. She lost her balance in the dark and b.u.t.ted heads with the dance captain. Knocked him out cold. And it didn"t help none that the other dancers ran into each other and accidentally stomped on his face."
Jackie smacked my arm. "You see? I told you that could happen."
"Bernice wasn"t hurt, was she?"
"She"s fine, dear. Bernice"s head is like a rock."
Far ahead of us, at the foot of the great stone plateau, where the rock had eroded to lesser heights, a rugged spit of land knifed into the sea, its choppy terrain visible even from where we were. "That has to be the causeway," I said by pure deduction. Not only did the road terminate at that point, but the blue shuttle bus was parked there and loading up pa.s.sengers.
"You s"pose I could ask you girls" opinion about somethin" before we join the others?" Nana asked somewhat reluctantly.
"I love rendering my opinion," gushed Jackie, abandoning my side to tag along beside Nana. "Fire away."
"It"s about George." Nana sighed. "I think I"m losin" him to Tilly."
"No," I soothed, curling my arm around her shoulders to lend moral support. "What makes you say that?"
"Men like hot babes, Emily. I"m not hot anymore."
"And Tilly is?" I questioned.
Jackie made a pshaw pshaw sound. "Shoot, Mrs. S., you"re a lot hotter than she is. If I were a guy, which, of course, I"m not, but if I sound. "Shoot, Mrs. S., you"re a lot hotter than she is. If I were a guy, which, of course, I"m not, but if I was, was, or ever had been, you"d be the babe for me." or ever had been, you"d be the babe for me."
I shot Jackie a nervous look over Nana"s head. Okay. Other than showcasing the fact that she was pretty rusty with the subjunctive mood, she hadn"t given anything away. Had she?
"Emily"s husband used to call me Mrs. S.," Nana reminisced fondly. "He was such a nice young man. Handsome too. You ever hear from him, Emily? I wonder what he"s doin" these days."
Jackie looped her arm through Nana"s. "You thought he was handsome?" she prodded, seemingly delighted. "How handsome?"
"Real handsome. Emily"s grampa told me he thought Jack Potter was too pretty to be a boy."
Grampa Sippel had always been a bit psychic.
"Really?" Jackie preened, giving me a disgusted look. "I wonder why Emily never bothered to tell that to Jack? An actor"s ego can always use a boost."
I rolled my eyes. "Do you mind? We"re discussing someone else"s problem at the moment. Go ahead, Nana."
Nana"s mouth drooped in discouragement. "It hurts to admit, dear, but when you stack me up against Tilly, I come out lookin" pretty pathetic. She"s everything I wish I was. Taller. Smarter. She"s got her own teeth."
"She is not smarter," I protested.
"She uses bigger words. That makes her sound smarter."
"You could buy a thesaurus," Jackie suggested.
"Tilly looks like Cindy Crawford," Nana sulked. "I look like that singer who lives on Long Island."
Since I hadn"t I clue who that was, I made a wild guess. "Jennifer Lopez?"
Nana shook her head. "I think his name is Billy Joel."
"You do not look like Billy Joel!" I balked. "You look like"--I stared down at her, trying to come up with a complimentary example of another person who sported three chins, Howdy Doody ears, and the hair from h.e.l.l--"like...a Boyd"s Bear. A sweet-faced, huggable Boyd"s Bear."
"Men don"t want their women to look like stuffed animals," Jackie argued. "They want them to look like Barbie dolls."
"In New York, perhaps." I gave Jackie the eye and snarled silently at her. "Men in the Midwest have a different value system."
"What a crock," said Jackie. "Listen to me, Mrs. S. Men are men. If you want to snare this George, there"s only one way to do it."
"Give it to me straight," Nana pleaded. "That"s why I asked."
"Naughty lingerie," Jackie announced. "Parade past him in a satin thong, and he"ll follow you anywhere."
Nana looked crestfallen. "My b.u.m"s not my best feature. It slid down to my knees some years back. You think that"ll be a turnoff?"
"If he has cataracts, he might not notice," Jackie said optimistically.
"He got "em removed."
"Okay, a see-through bra then. Picture this. A nylon cup. Light underwire. Front closure so he doesn"t have to fumble with hooks and eyes at the back. Those can be such a nuisance, especially if a guy is older and has arthritic joints."
This idea seemed to perk Nana up a bit. "I tried on one a them sheer lace bra.s.sieres at the Victoria"s Secret in Ames, but it didn"t give me no support. I need underwire that"s industrial strength. The salesgirl was real sweet, though, and she worked on commission, so I ended up buyin" one a them lacy cleavage-enhancin" Miracle bra.s.sieres with what they call Liquid Lift."
"That"s fabulous," Jackie cooed. "I have one of those, too. George will love it. One small word of caution, though. Avoid contact with sharp objects. I punctured my left cup with a toothpick at a party one night and spent the rest of the evening lopsided. Did you bring along something low and plunging to show off your decolletage?"
"Sure did."
Jackie clapped her hands with excitement. "Tell me what."
"My Minnesota Vikin"s sweatshirt."
Jackie arched an eyebrow. "You might want to think about something a little more daring. A scoop-necked tank top. A V-necked blouse. You need to wear something with a neckline that reveals reveals your a.s.sets." your a.s.sets."
"My sweatshirt reveals enough. When I strap that bra.s.siere on, my a.s.sets get hiked to my chin."
"Would you take a minute to listen to yourselves talk?" I scolded. "Women do not not have to be s.e.x kittens these days to attract a man"s attention." have to be s.e.x kittens these days to attract a man"s attention."
"Maybe not, dear, but it can"t hurt none."
"I can"t believe this!" I fussed. "What happened to the concept that everyone drilled into my head when I was growing up? "If you want to catch a man, just be yourself.""
"Who taught you that, dear?"
"You did!"
Nana looked stunned. "I did? I"m sorry, Emily. That was an awful misguided thing for me to do."
I rolled my eyes so far back into my head I saw the top of my skull.
"Well, would you look at that," Nana marveled as we approached the causeway. The site was a vast boneyard of twelve-inch-wide upright stone columns that were chimney-stacked against each other like patio tiles in a supplier"s warehouse. Some columns had eroded down to nubs, with smooth, flat surfaces. Others were tall as a man, while others reached the height of a two-story house. "I never seen nothin" like it," Nana said. "All these rocks look to have the same shape. They"re all six-sided. How"d that happen?"
"Ashley said it was an anomaly of nature," I answered.
"Ashley"s an anomaly of nature," Jackie wisecracked. "Oh, look. There"s Tom. If you"ll excuse me, ladies, I"m going to wander over and ask him how many old people he had to knock over to get that seat on the shuttle."
Nana staked a claim on a low, squat rock and did a slow three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. "Check out the rocks at three o"clock," she said, pointing to a sprawling cl.u.s.ter of uneven spires. "They look like skysc.r.a.pers in the New York skyline, only smaller. And look at the big clump at high noon. If they was silver, they could pa.s.s for the pipes attached to the organ at Holy Redeemer. And would you look at those behind you. They kinda remind me a the little piles a chips on the c.r.a.ps table at the Meskwaki casino."
"You play c.r.a.ps?"
"Don"t tell your mother. She don"t even like me playin" the one-armed bandits. I don"t know about your mother, Emily. I raised her Catholic, but sometimes I think she"s got a touch a Southern Baptist in her."
"Marion!" Tilly shouted from a higher elevation, waving her walking stick in the air. "Yoo-hoo! Over here!"
"Be right there!" Nana shouted back. She turned to me. "You don"t mind if I abandon you, do you, dear? I gotta make sure Tilly don"t hog George."
"You and Tilly would never come to blows over George, would you?" I asked a little anxiously. These rocks would be the perfect place to put someone out of commission.
"Emily! Tilly and me wouldn"t let no man spoil our friendship. We like each other too much. But just between you and me, I think I got a slight advantage. I seen her underwear. A hundred percent cotton with maximum coverage. She don"t stand a s...o...b..ll"s chance in h.e.l.l with him."
"Watch your footing!" I called after her, as she charged in Tilly"s direction. I spied Ashley not too far from Tilly, rattling off some kind of spiel to a semicircle of listeners from the tour. I saw other members of the group cl.u.s.tered in little pockets, snapping pictures of each other against the rocky backdrop of skysc.r.a.pers, and organ pipes, and casino chips. I shielded my eyes and looked seaward, noting long spines of black rock arched above the surface of the water like huge humpbacked whales. Some outcroppings were farther out to sea. Others were nearer to sh.o.r.e, close enough for a few brave souls to step across a narrow channel of water and scramble onto them, climbing like mountain goats onto their barnacle-encrusted peaks.
The longer I regarded the terrain, the more uneasy I grew, my own recent thoughts ringing in my ears. These rocks would be the perfect place to put someone out of commission. These rocks would be the perfect place to put someone out of commission. Oh, my G.o.d! Where was Gladys Kuppelman? Where was Michael Malooley? Oh, my G.o.d! Where was Gladys Kuppelman? Where was Michael Malooley?
I whirled around to check out the group listening to Ashley. They were clumped too close together for me to distinguish who was there, so I hurried off in that direction, my feet skimming across the rocks as if they were stepping-stones in a brook, my mind racing.
If what Tilly had told me about the Ticklepenny family was true, I was at a huge impa.s.se. No family member could have pa.s.sed on the syndactyly trait because they"d all died. But it was too much of a coincidence that the ghost should leave footprints with the same genetic defect that the Ticklepenny children displayed in the portrait. There had had to be a connection, yet how was that possible if none of Lord Ticklepenny"s children had survived? to be a connection, yet how was that possible if none of Lord Ticklepenny"s children had survived?
I clambered up a ministaircase of ochre-colored stone, arriving at the back of the crowd gathered around Ashley. As I searched for Gladys Kuppelman, Ashley continued talking in her gooiest Georgia-peach drawl. "Legend has it that these columns were placed here by the giant Finn MacCool. He had a ladylove on the island of Staffa in Scotland, so he built this causeway as a way to reach her and not get his feet wet. Interestingly enough, the only other place in the world where y"all will find rock formations like this is on the island of Staffa in Scotland."
I checked out all the heads in the group. No Gladys. No Michael. I headed off in another direction, back toward the road. I"d start there and work my way systematically toward the sh.o.r.eline.
When I reached the road, I eyed a towering stack of columns to my left and a pathway that curved around it, skirting the base of the plateau. These columns were fractured into horizontal chunks that resembled hundreds of ottomans piled on top of each other. I pitied the poor giant who"d had to construct them. He probably wouldn"t have had the energy to visit his ladylove once the causeway was complete, but the idea of a ladylove led me to a sudden, more daring thought.
A man could have many loves in his lifetime, and could father children inside and outside of wedlock. What if Lord Ticklepenny had engaged in an affair with an Irish maid or serving girl while he"d lived in Ireland? Highborn lords did that as a matter of course, didn"t they? What if the girl had become pregnant and given birth to Ticklepenny"s illegitimate child?
A tingling sensation crawled up my spine. Could that be it? If Ticklepenny was the one carrying the syndactyly gene, was that how the birth defect had been pa.s.sed down to the present generation? Not through his official bloodline, but through an illegitimate bloodline? Was it a descendant of that illegitimate heir who was leaving b.l.o.o.d.y footprints at the castle and scaring people to death? That had to be it! Someone was seeking revenge for centuries of being abused, demeaned, and shunned. Someone had his sights on Ballybantry Castle and would apparently do anything to wrest it out of the hands of its present owners in payment for past wrongs. But who was the heir? Ira Kuppelman? Michael Malooley? Could the two of them be related? There was only one sure way to tell. I needed to get their shoes off them; then the truth would be as clear as the little webbed toes on their feet.
"I don"t believe these things just happened," I heard Ethel Minch say as she rounded the corner of the towering columns, heading toward me.
"Ashley said they were a natural phenomenon," Gladys Kuppelman said, strolling beside her.
"They"re too perfect." Ethel rapped her knuckles on the stone, as if checking to see if they were hollow, or made of Styrofoam. "I think some guy built this whole place so he could call it the eighth wonder of the world and charge people an entrance fee. The whole thing"s a scam."
"You don"t know what you"re talking about," Gladys whined at her. "The place is real. It says so in the brochure." Gladys saw me and motioned for me to join them. "These rocks are real, aren"t they, Emily?"
Relieved to see Gladys alive, I jogged over to them. "They sure look real to me." But I thought Cinderella"s castle in Disney"s Magic Kingdom looked real too, so maybe I wasn"t a good judge.
"They"re fake," Ethel reiterated. Then to Gladys she said, "The only reason they look real to you is because you don"t know the difference between what"s real and what"s phony anymore."