Among the Barons (13 page)

to help him. Not just Nina, but They and Joel and John. Mr. Hendricks had not sent him off to the Grants’ and forgotten about him. For the first time that night Luke felt like beaming.

One of the round cheese balls or sausage balls or whatever they were rolled off Nina’s tray She bent down to pick it up, then glared up at Luke. Luke got the message. He fell to his knees as well and pretended to reach for the food. Nina leaned over and whispered in his ear, “Be careful. Most of the servants are on Oscar’s side. And you better believe it’s killing me to call you ‘sir.’”

‘That’s good to know,” Luke murmured solemnly

Above him Mrs. Grant swooped in out of nowhere.

“Lee!” she hissed. “Let the servant get that! My son should not be crawling around on the floor during my party!”

“Yes, Mom,” Luke said obediently and stood up.

Mrs. Grant sniffed and steered him over to meet someone whose hand he’d somehow missed shaking.

While he was smiling and nodding and trying to act polite, he caught a glimpse of They opening and shutting the door to admit more guests. He saw John stacking dirty plates on a tray and whisking them away And he saw Oscar, with narrowed eyes, talking to one of the president’s guards.

The party Luke realized, was a battlefield. The sides were being drawn in the midst of the women in their glittering dresses, the men in tuxedos holding elegant champagne glasses, the servants arranging tiny cakes in neat rows on doilies. Luke could guess at the alliances of every person in the room.

Except Smits.

The younger boy was slumped on a sofa, not even looking at the guests talking around him. Luke wondered how the younger boy felt, sitting there ignored, while Mrs. Grant crowed over Luke, “And Lee, you have to meet..

Luke wished he’d been able to tell Smits, just once, how sorry he was that Smits had lost his brother.

But would Smits have believed him?

CHAPTER 28

By the time the first guests started leaving, hours later, Luke felt like he’d shaken hundreds of hands, said “sir” and “ma’am” thousands of times, nodded and smiled so much that the muscles in his face ached and the inside of his lips were raw from rubbing on the braces. He’d gone glassy-eyed from forcing himself to stare directly into the faces of total strangers. And his right arm ached from the vise grip Mrs. Grant kept on it, guiding him from guest to guest

‘The president is about to leave,” she hissed in his ear. “We must go outside and bid him farewell. It’s protocol.”

Smits came, too, this time. The three Grants and Luke walked outside and lined up as a chauffeur drove the presidential car around to the front. Mr. and Mrs. Grant stood practically shoulder to shoulder, with Smits on Mrs. Grant’s right and Luke on Mr. Grant’s left. A cool breeze blew through Luke’s hair, and he heard a faint tinkling overhead. He looked up—right at the enormous chandelier he’d been amazed by when he’d first arrived at the Grants’ house.

Luke shivered. The blazing lights seemed to blur as he fought back panic.
Watch out for chandeliers....
It was all he could do not to bolt immediately. But all the guests were watching him.
The Grants won’t
fry
to fake my death
~f
they’re standing under the chandelier with me,
he thought
And Oscar won’t try to fake Smits’s death
~f
I’m here, too.
He forced himself to stand still and straight and tall, an arrogant Grant just like Smits and his parents. But out of the corner of his eye he kept track -of where his friends were—They just behind him, off to the left, and Nina and Joel and John in a clump of servants watching through a side door as the president departed. And he noted that Oscar was just behind Smits.
Oscar’s not going to endanger himself
Luke told himself.

The president stepped out of the house. His chauffeur opened the door of his limousine and stood waiting as the president slowly moved toward the Grants. He shook each of their hands in turn and gave Mrs. Grant a kiss on each cheek.

“Marvelous party as usual, Sarinia,” the president said. And then, as the chauffeur was helping the president into his car, Luke heard Nina scream behind him.

“Watch out!”

Instinctively Luke looked up. The chandelier was shaking, swaying ominously back and forth. Luke had time to move, but he couldn’t suddenly—his muscles seemed frozen in fear. And then, just as the chandelier began

plunging toward him, Luke felt someone knock him off his feet.

It was They. They had tackled him.

They landed safely off to the side just as the chandelier smashed down in a huge explosion of breaking glass. The blazing lights were extinguished instantly. Luke felt shards spray out against his bare hand, practically the only part of his body that wasn’t sheltered by They. The braces bit into his lip and he tasted blood in his mouth. Somebody screamed, and then there was silence. Luke was scared to look back at the chandelier, but he glanced up at the circle of guests and servants around him, silhouetted in the dimmer lights from the windows. Everyone stood frozen in horror.

“That’s what you get for teaching me how to play football,” Trey said in Luke’s ear.

“You saved my life,” Luke muttered back “You’re the hero tonight.”

“Yeah,” They said, sounding amazed. “I guess I am.”

And then he inched away gingerly, being careful not to touch any of the broken glass. His cheeks and hands were already bleeding.

Luke didn’t get up yet, but he gathered the nerve to turn his head to the side, toward the fallen chandelier. Incredibly, Smits was standing out of the way, totally unscathed. But he was staring at the heap of shattered glass with an unearthly look on his face.

“Dead,” he wailed. “They’re all dead! My brother is dead! My parents are dead! Oh, my... brother.., is
...
dead!”

Luke scrambled to his feet so quickly that he accidentally drove more slivers of glass into his hands. He didn’t bother to brush them away He stood looking across the ruined chandelier at the younger boy.

“I’m alive, Smits,” he said. “As long as I’m alive, you have a brother.”

If he’d just wanted to keep up the charade of being Lee, he would have spoken differently But he was too shocked to think about charades or pretenses or lies that had to be told. He was just trying to comfort Smits.

“I’m your brother, Smits,” he said. And Smits looked past all the shattered glass and nodded.

CHAPTER 29

The other people seemed to awaken from their trance after that The president’s chauffeur slammed the door behind the president, scurried into the front seat of the car, and zoomed away, leaving behind dozens of guards. The guards began screaming into mouthpieces, ‘Alert! Alert! Someone tried to assassinate the president!” They yelled at the horrified guests, ~This residence is locked down immediately! Nobody shall leave until we discover who perpetrated this heinous crime!”

Luke looked around. He saw the fear in the faces of Nina and Trey, Joel and John. If they were subjected to lengthy interrogations, would they be able to tell the lies they were supposed to tell? For that matter, could he? And what would Oscar say?

Luke stepped forward. He tried to swagger every bit as much as Smits had when he’d first arrived at Hendricks. He tried to sound every bit as pompous and powerful as Mr. Grant.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to the man who appeared to be the head guard. “Nobody was trying to assassinate the president. He didn’t get so much as a scratch. It was my parents who died, and my brother and I who barely escaped with our lives, in this tragic accident. And it had to have been an accident. Who could have planned to have an eight-hundred-pound chandelier topple at the exact right moment? And you want to hold an investigation now, here, at the site of my parents’ tragic death? When they’re still, um, buried there?” He pointed toward the broken chandelier. He was trying to sound grief stricken and horrified, like a boy who had just seen his parents killed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard. “I—my brother and I— we are the heirs to the Grant family fortune. And we say to you—you are no longer welcome on our property Leave! Now!”

The head guard stared back at Luke. His eyes said, very clearly,
You’re just a punk kid. I don’t have to do a thing you say. How do I know you weren’t the one who set this up just to get your parents’ fortune?
But then he stepped back and seemed to be taking in the mood of the crowd. People were beginning to mutter, “He’s right. How can you be so cruel to those poor orphans?” and “I’m a Baron. You’re not going to interrogate
me.”
And then Luke saw fear in the guard’s eyes, too.

‘All right,” the guard said. “We’ll just take everyone’s names and conduct the investigation later, as we see fit.”

The guests began to slip away then, the women somehow

managing to rush on their tottering high heels, the men so eager to leave that they drove off through the grass or squealed their tires on the pavement. Luke noticed that no matter how warmly the guests had talked to the Grants only moments earlier, no one bothered to stop and console Smits and Luke, no one hesitated even long enough to say, “I’m really going to miss my friends. I’m so sorry that they’re dead.”

Everyone was scared.

Finally all the guards and guests were gone. Luke had been standing numbly, watching the dozens of taillights depart. Reluctantly he turned around and found a hundred eyes staring straight at him. The servants were waiting for their orders. And now, improbably, he had become their boss.

Luke wanted to ask, “Who did this? And why?” But he knew he’d hear nothing but lies in response. He wanted to shout out, “Why are you looking at me? Can’t someone else take care of this? Can’t somebody call Mr. Talbot or Mr. Hendricks?” But there were those special codes blocking all the phones. Nobody else could take charge. Luke swallowed hard, swallowing blood, and began pointing at servants, mostly at random. “You, clean up this mess. You, take care of my parents; um, bodies. You, you, you, and you—clean up from the party.”

And all the servants scrambled to do his bidding.

Luke remembered a quote from one of his history books: “The king is dead, long live the king.” He’d always

thought it was funny before, nonsensical even. But now it made perfect sense. The king and queen of the estate—Mr. and Mrs. Grant—were dead, and now Luke was in charge and everyone wanted to believe that he’d do a good job.

Luke turned around, and out of the blue Oscar was suddenly hugging him.

“You’re a good kid, even if you aren’t ready to work with me yet,” he said in Luke’s ear, barely loud enough for Luke to hear. “We were aiming for the president, but we held off so we didn’t hit you. You owe me now.”

Somehow Luke couldn’t believe that. It didn’t make sense. He would have been dead if Trey hadn’t saved him. Oscar was just trying to manipulate Luke again, trying to turn a mistake into an obligation.

“And I owe you for sending the guards away,” Oscar said. “Here’s my thanks.”

Luke felt something fall into his pant pocket But it wasn’t until Oscar had released him and walked away that Luke could gather his wits enough to reach in and find out what it was.

His fingers brushed smooth metal, then teeth. It was a key

Luke knew instantly what the key unlocked.

“Smits, come with me,” Luke said. “Nina, Trey—you, too. And Joel and John—you two are in charge while I’m away”

He gave them some quick instructions. Joel and John nodded numbly This was a lot more important than leaving

them in charge of the nightly games at Hendricks School, and they hadn’t seemed confident enough to handle that. But it couldn’t be helped.

Luke led Smits, They and Nina through a maze of rooms that almost seemed familiar now. In front of the secret room he didn’t even bother to look around to see who might be watching. He just thrust the key in—yes, it was the right key—and let his friends into the dark room. Luke began to fumble with the controls on the wall, but Smits took over, punching the right sequence to turn on the lights and seal the door.

“Lee and I,” he said. “We used to come here sometimes, to hide. To make secret plans. Silly things like dropping water balloons on the cooks. Putting sneezing powder in our beds for the maids when they cleaned our rooms. We had so much fun before—before he died.”

He looked around dazedly as if he’d forgotten that he was speaking aloud.

“Oh, sorry I didn’t know there were servants here. You can’t believe a word I say” he told They and Nina. “I’m crazy Everyone thinks so.”

“No, you’re not,” Luke said. “And it’s okay to tell the truth now. They and Nina are my friends.”

“Oh. Yes. Trey I remember you. What are you doing here?”

“Helping out,” They said. Smits’s stunned expression didn’t change.

“I think he’s in shock,” Nina whispered to Luke. But Smits heard her.

“No,” he said. “I think I was in shock for the past six months. But now I’m—am I free now? Is Oscar gone?”

Luke remembered the way Oscar had hugged him, the way he’d slipped off into the darkness.

“I think so,” Luke said.

Smits eased down into one of the chairs and stared bleakly at the wall.

“I didn’t think he would kill
them,”
Smits said, almost as if he was talking to himself. “He said he would destroy you. Slowly he raised his head until his empty gaze was fixed on Luke.

“M-me?” Luke stammered.

“He wanted me to help,” Smits said without emotion. “Because you weren’t Lee. Because you’d taken his name. Because you weren’t a Baron. Oscar was a Baron, did you know that? He was just pretending to be a servant. To get revenge.~~

Luke’s jaw dropped. What? Oscar wasn’t a Baron! He hated Barons!”

Smits didn’t seem to hear Luke.

“I wouldn’t help him,” Smits said. “Not when it mattered. I helped you, just to make him mad. Is that.., is that why Oscar killed them? Because I wouldn’t do what he said?~

Tears began to flow down his face. He brushed them away leaving smears of blood on his cheeks. His hands must have been bleeding, and none of them had noticed.

“Oscar was trying to kill the president,” Luke said. “Not your parents. He just.., missed.”