Page 16 of Boats, Moats, & Root Beer Floats

The tins didn’t move.

“Sir?” I tried again.

The tin shifted, but only a fraction of before.

Moving slowly I took a pen, ripped a clean page free from my notebook, and placed them on the bench opposite. To demonstrate with the pen, just in case it wasn’t clear and that Polty—the damn name seemed intent on sticking—I made a swirl on the page leaving a splotch of ink, and wrote my name. Then I placed the pen down and stepped back, and waited.

And waited.

But no matter how long I stood back, my hands slid into my pockets, neither the pen nor the tins moved again.

Letting out a sigh I slipped from the room, leaving everything where it was, and headed downstairs. Polty seemed determined to remain evasive, and I’d had my head stuck in the histories I’d set myself to unravel.

Unfortunately the dead didn’t usually speak, at least, not the more recently dead as I suspect Polty came from a different century than the one I researched.

“Lindy?” I rapped my knuckles on the kitchen door frame before I stepped into the room, not wanting to create a repeat of this morning’s smoke filled debacle that ended in a messy ceiling that took me over an hour to clean up and a pan full of cremated omelets that still soaked in the sink.

What greeted me wasn’t a scarf wrapped artist but a swath of Christmas shopping and an excess of garlands and other decorations that spilled out of their bags and across the entire wooden kitchen table that sat in the center of the room. It looked like she had come in, dumped everything, and left again.

I picked at the corner of a crumpled garland that just kept on coming like a clown’s scarf trick when I pulled it out of the bag. Nearly fourteen impossible feet later times four I straightenedthe garlands spread across the table, and read the slip that said more would be delivered this afternoon.

Had the woman emptied her bank account in an attempt to decorate the castle? If she wanted to do that, she could have asked. I would have happily pitched in. It took all of a second’s decision to call the number on the delivery slip, reverse the credit charges and adjust the order.

Hanging up I checked the fridge. A bowl of cold meaty stew sat on the top shelf along with a bag of rolls that weren’t nuclear survival grade. I heated that up and ate at the table, listening for her but the castle was too big, the walls too heavy for any sound of her to travel through too easily.

“Lindy?” I called as I wandered the halls like a specter afterward. “The soup was great.” I found a wing of the castle I hadn’t bothered with and took a left, then a few rights and stopped counting after that. Lindy seemed like the sort to get herself well and truly lost. It made logical sense that to find her, I needed to be lost, too. “Lindy?”

I pushed open a door that stood ajar, and knew instantly this wasn’t a room she—or anyone—had been in for a long time. A generation, perhaps. Maybe I had wandered too far from the beaten track and become what she accused me of being, the Dustman.

White sheets hung over every ornament in the cluttered junk room. Some portraits and mirrors on the walls were covered; others had slipped their concealment and stared out at the world that left them in isolation.

Baleful, fading eyes accused while others looked sad, or lost. I stopped before the portrait of a young man who couldn’t have been more than his late twenties. A cravat was tied in an intricate knot at his throat, his clothes overly fancy, even for his era, all lace collar and cuffs and decorated waistcoat. Everything was tasteful and colored, except for his face.

That remained pale, wane, like he had lost something.

An interest in life, perhaps.

A small plaque, tarnished but not unreadable, held an etched name at the bottom of his gilded frame.

“Aloysius Benedict Rupert Lesley III,” I read in a soft voice. “1766-1792. Ah. Was it a war, old chap?” I stared up at the drawn, gentle face of the young man and hoped to God that no cannon ever met with him.

The frame rattled, ever so slightly.

“Tell me it wasn’t a war, Al,” I murmured, my heart panging for a man born some two hundred years before me I’d never meet.

Not in the conventional manner, in any case.

The frame stayed still.

I nodded. “I am glad.”

The frame banged not so gently. Apparently Aloysius was not.

“There is a story to be told,” I whispered. “Is it yours I was meant to find here?”

Neither the portrait nor its ghostly occupant gave me the answer I sought.

“I didn’t take you for the romantic type, Dustman.”

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