Uncle Joe—who’d served as a surrogate dad when Ethan’s real father had been too drunk to handle the job—had been a truck driver for a regional bakery. He’d delivered breads and pastries to supermarkets and restaurants, six days a week, eight hours a day. Most of the time, Joe had held down a second job as a night janitor, three days a week.
In his best five years put together, Uncle Joe hadn’t made enough to equal the cost of this stained-glass dome.
When he’d first begun to earn a policeman’s pay, Ethan had felt rich. Compared to Joe, he had been raking in big dough.
His total income from sixteen years with the LAPD wouldn’t have paid the cost of this one room.
“Should’ve been a movie star,” he said as he entered the library to return Lord Jim to the shelf from which he’d gotten it.
Every volume in the collection had been arranged in alphabetical order, by author. A third were bound in leather; the rest were regular editions. A significant number were rare, and valuable.
The Face had read none of them.
More than two-thirds of the collection had come with the house. At her employer’s instructions, once each month, Mrs. McBee purchased the most talked-about and critically acclaimed current novels and volumes of nonfiction, which were at once catalogued and added to the library.
These new books were acquired for the sole purpose of display. They impressed houseguests, dinner guests, and other visitors with the breadth of Channing Manheim’s intellectual interests.
When asked for his opinion of any book, the Face elicited the visitor’s judgment first, then agreed with it in such a charming fashion that he seemed both erudite and every bit a kindred spirit.
As Ethan slid Lord Jim onto a shelf between two other Conrad titles, a small reedy voice behind him said, “Is there magic in it?”
Turning, he discovered ten-year-old Aelfric Manheim all but swallowed alive by one of the larger armchairs.
According to Laura Moonves, Aelfric (pronounced elf-rick) was an Old English word meaning “elf-ruled” or “ruled by elves,” which had first been used to describe wise and clever actions, but had in time come to refer to those who acted wisely and cleverly.
Aelfric.
The boy’s mother—Fredericka “Freddie” Nielander— a supermodel who had married and divorced the Face all in one year, had read at least three books in her life. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In fact she had read them repeatedly.
She had been prepared to name the boy Frodo. Fortunately, or not, one month before Freddie’s due date, her best girlfriend, an actress, had discovered the name Aelfric in the script for a cheesy fantasy film in which she had agreed to play a three-breasted Amazon alchemist.
If Freddie’s friend had landed a supporting role in The Silence of the Lambs, Aelfric would probably now be Hannibal Manheim.
The boy preferred to be called Fric, and no one but his mother insisted on using his full name. Fortunately, or not, she wasn’t around much to torture him with it.
Reliable scuttlebutt had it that Freddie had not seen Fric in over seventeen months. Even the career of an aging supermodel could be demanding.
“Is there magic in what?” Ethan asked.
“That book you just put away.”
“Magic of a sort, but probably not the kind of magic you mean.”
“This one has a shitload of magic in it,” Fric said, displaying a paperback with dragons and wizards on the cover.
“Is that advisable language for a wise and clever person?” Ethan asked.
“Heck, all my old man’s friends in the biz talk worse stuff than shitload. So does my old man.”
“Not when he knows you’re around.”
Fric cocked his head. “Are you calling my dad a hypocrite?”
“If I ever call your dad such a thing, I’ll cut my tongue out.”
“The evil wizard in this book would use it in a potion. One of his most difficult tasks is to find the tongue of an honest man.”
“What makes you think I’m honest?”
“Get real. You’ve got a triple shitload of honesty.”
“What’re you going to do if Mrs. McBee hears you using words like that?”
“She’s somewhere else.”
“Oh, she is?” Ethan asked, suggesting that he knew something regarding Mrs. McBee’s current whereabouts that would make the boy wish he’d been more discreet.
Unable to repress a guilty expression, Fric sat up straight and surveyed the library.
The boy was small for his age, and thin. At times, glimpsed from a distance as he walked along one of the vast halls or across a room scaled for kings and their entourages, he seemed almost wispy.
“I think she has secret passages,” Fric whispered. “You know, pathways in the walls.”
“Mrs. McBee?”
The boy nodded. “We’ve lived here six years, but she’s been here forever.”
Mrs. McBee and Mr. McBee—both in their middle fifties—had been employed by the previous owner of the property and had stayed on at the request of the Face.
“It’s hard to picture Mrs. McBee skulking about in the walls,” said Ethan. “She’s not exactly a dastardly sort.”
“But if she was dastardly,” Fric said hopefully, “things would be more interesting around here.”
Unlike his father’s golden locks, which with a shake of the head always fell perfectly into place, Fric’s brown mop achieved perpetual disarray. Here was hair that foiled brushes and broke good combs.
Fric might grow into his looks and prove equal to his pedigree, but currently he appeared to be an average ten-year-old boy.
“Why aren’t you in class?” Ethan wondered.
“You an atheist or something? Don’t you know it’s the week before Christmas? Even home-schooled Hollywood brats get a break.”
A cadre of tutors visited five days a week. The private school that Fric attended for a while had not proved to be a suitable environment for him.
With the famous Channing Manheim for a father, with the famous and notorious Freddie Nielander for a mother, Fric became an object of envy and ridicule even among the children of other celebrities. Being the skinny son of a buffed star adored for heroic roles also made him a figure of fun to crueler kids. The severity of his asthma further argued for schooling at home, in a controlled environment.
“Have any idea what you’ll get Christmas morning?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah. I had to submit my list to Mrs. McBee by December fifth. I told her not to bother wrapping the stuff, but she will. She always does. She says it’s not Christmas morning without some mystery.”
“I’d have to agree with that.”
The boy shrugged, and slumped in his chair again.
Although the Face was currently on location for a film, he would return from Florida the day before Christmas.
“It’ll be good to have your dad home for the holidays. You guys have any special plans once he gets back?”
The boy shrugged again, attempting to convey lack of knowledge or indifference, but instead—and unwittingly— revealing a misery that made Ethan feel uncharacteristically helpless.
Fric had inherited luminous green eyes to match his mother’s.