Page 61 of The Bad Weather Friend

The physician looked from Harper to Spike to Benny. “You’re all the children of Dr. Bradbury-Smith?”

“Baneberry,” Benny corrected. “She’s our mother, but we’re all adopted. Mother suffered a terrible laboratory accident back in the day, when she was earning her master’s degree, and she’s unable to have children of her own. If you’d ever met her, you’d know how sad that is, because she loves children even more than doing science and winning Nobels. Children are immediately charmed when they meet her, as though she’s Mary Poppins.”

“She sings as well as Julie Andrews did in the movie,” said Harper, apparently taking advantage of the opportunity to hone the skills of deceit that she would require to be an effective private investigator. “She could have had a career in music, but with the world-class scientific research and raising us as a single mom and writing her series of children’s books, wherever would she have found the time? God, I love her so much.”

Alistair Pinch was beginning to look bewildered, though not suspicious. “The thing is, I take the Hippocratic oath seriously, not in a dogmatic sense, but pretty darn seriously. ‘First do no harm.’ Being Upton’s personal physician, on call at all times, can be challenging, considering the things he wants, but I’m grateful for the opportunity. ‘First do no harm.’ I want to be sure that I never do him any harm.”

As he had done in the kitchen at Handy Duroc’s house when he’d sidelined Jill Swift, Spike thrust one arm toward the doctor in a talk-to-the-hand gesture and spoke words in some ancient language. Pulses of amber light issued from his palm, washed over Pinch’s face, and whirlpooled into his eyes.

“Was that necessary?” Harper wondered. “I think he was about to drive off and leave us to it.”

Spike raised one eyebrow in an expression that was by now as familiar as its message was unmistakable. “The two of you made our fictional mother so interesting that Dr. Pinch would have googled her at his first opportunity and discovered she didn’t exist. Police would have been swarming through this place in minutes.”

Keenly annoyed by her failure, Harper drove her right fist into the open palm of her left hand. “Yes, you’re right. Bob always says the best lie is a simple one. I just got carried away listening to Benny, his power of invention.”

“Bob would be Fat Bob Jericho?” Spike asked as he opened the back door of Alistair Pinch’s Mercedes.

“Robert Jericho, yes. Bob. Bob Jericho.”

Even in these circumstances, Benny could not help but notice that Harper managed to look deeply chagrinned without appearing any less cute than before. Already, hardly more than thirty-six hours since Jill Swift had dumped him, Benny could not get a clear picture of his former fiancée in his mind’s eye, or understand what about her had enchanted him. He wondered what his fascination with Jill said about his character, if it said anything other than that he had been gullible and had taken far too long to add the wordsand wiseto the wordnicein his résumé.

Spike returned to the sidelined—and stiff—physician, picked him up as if he were a papier-mâché figure, carried him to the Mercedes, and slid him onto the back seat. Closing the door, he said, “I’ll wake him when we leave.”

When they were all in the Explorer once more, Harper said, “‘Baneberry-Smith.’ How did you come up with such a name?”

Benny could have said:I needed a name that sounded kind of like a scientist. Mrs. Baneberry-Smith was a real person, the only scientist I’ve ever known, mad or otherwise. She’s been dead for some years, accidently blew herself up along with several boarding-school boys, which probably saved the world from being enslaved by the weird science of an evil extraterrestrial race.However, if he had said as much, they would have demanded an explanation that would have kept him talking until dawn. Because they needed to get to F. Upton Theron in a timely manner, Benny said only, “There was this girl I knew once, when I was thirteen.”

“So you had a thing for her?”

“No, I didn’t have a thing for her.”

Perhaps practicing her interrogation skills, Harper said, “You had a thing for her, all right, if after all this time her name popped into your mind just like that.”

Benny said, “Shewas the one who had a thing, not a thing for me, just a thing. You wouldn’t have wanted to see it.” He decided to shut up.

As they cruised toward the immense house, Spike said, “Although he didn’t realize it, Dr. Pinch told us everything we need to know to avoid Theron’s trap and keep you two alive.”

Puzzled, Benny said, “What trap?”

Leaning forward in the back seat, Harper said, “The catheter-in-the-left-arm-Arabella-safe-in-the-master-bedroom trap.”

“Oh, that trap,” Benny said knowingly, because he didn’t want Harper to think he had one oar too few to row his boat and could only go endlessly in a circle.

Glancing at the rearview mirror, Spike said, “You know what you need to do?”

Harper said, “You two find Theron. I find the bunny rabbit as quick as I can and bring it to you.”

“You’ve got what it takes, little lady.”

“Right back at you,” she said.

An unworthy ember of jealousy abruptly glowed bright in Benny. He almost said,Yeah, he has what it takes except for genitals, but he didn’t say it because that would have been unkind and crude.

Spike parked in front of the mansion. They got out of the Ford and gathered at the foot of the limestone steps that led to a broad receiving terrace.

The many windows of the great house featured panes with beveled edges and in some cases exquisite, leaded designs thatglowed along every polished facet like assemblages of jewels. Every room sent a warm resplendence into the night, which should have been a charming, inviting spectacle, but was not. In this age when powerful forces were determined to destroy the energy industry and impoverish their enemies, consolidating economic and political power in an oligarchy, this extravagance of light was the equivalent of presenting a stiff middle finger to the masses.

The front door stood open wide, but the effect of this gesture seemed more like a threat than a welcome. Inset above the entrance, a limestone panel artfully bore a carved image of a rabbit, and even this playful detail loomed ominous.

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