“Oh, you saw him!” Joe chortled. “Yeah, that’s the third or fourth time I’ve given him a ride. Almost didn’t recognize the fellow just now! ’Course, the other times it was past midnight and he was … er …”
“Drunk?” Peter suggested.
The man snorted. “I’ll put it this way: Let’s hope so.”
No one said anything for an extended moment. Peter debated whether to ask the impolite question running through his head—what did the vice president’s son do? But really, it didn’t matter. Only a morbid curiosity made him wonder.
“Well, here you are,” Joe said, pulling up at Union Station, deciding the matter. No time left for gossip.
Peter handed over the fare. The cabbie handed back a notebook. “Mind putting your John Hancocks here so I can prove I really did give you folks a ride?”
Peter signed his name on the empty page. Beatrix signed hers below it. Then she flipped back and stared at the last signature on the previous page, the spiky handwriting of a man who raped and almost killed his own sister.
He slipped the notebook from her hands, snapped it shut and thrust it back at the cabbie, skin crawling. Who woulddothat? And what sort of father would think the proper reaction was to protect the son instead of the daughter?
On the train ride home, Beatrix sitting silently beside him, he considered Marbella Draden with pity for the first time. Not that he excused what she had done: People drew terrible lots in life all the time without attempting mass murder. But her behavior to him earlier in their acquaintance now seemed wholly understandable. Restrained, even. The way she suddenly snapped—perhaps Beatrix was right. Perhaps using magic without an exterior source of fuel damaged the brain or overrode normal judgment.
But if it had had that effect on Beatrix, it did not appear permanent. And it certainly was never so extreme in her case. For all they knew, Miss Draden had been biding her time since the moment she learned about the weapon, waiting for the right opportunity, her mind wholly her own.
He shuddered as he followed Beatrix up the stairs to their bedroom. Where was Miss Draden? What was she planning?
Beatrix bespelled the room and turned to him, expression troubled.
“I don’t think that was Frederick Draden in the cab,” she said. “I think it was Ella.”
CHAPTER 22
She’d shocked him, she could see that. But as she laid out her evidence, she realized how thin it sounded.
The signature in the cabbie’s autograph book reminded her of Ella’s, lines long and spiky—but Ella and her brother could well have had the same teacher in elementary school, which was how she and Peter ended up with such similar handwriting. Draden had behaved quite differently today than he had in their earlier chance meeting—but men did that when they were sober instead of sloshed. He was sick before and well today—but people routinely recovered from illnesses. He’d blurted out “my regards,” exactly what Ella had joked that men in Washington reflexively said (usually while having none for the person they were saying it to)—but then, Draden was a man in Washington.
She didn’t offer up the counter-arguments as they came to mind. Instead, she trailed off, her second guesses overcoming her, as Peter slumped onto their bed with a groan.
“Just to be clear,” he said, “you’re suggesting she—what, killed her brother and took his place?”
She hesitated. Then she lay beside him, shaking her head. “What I’m saying doesn’t prove it, I know that. And it sounds crazy to boot.”
“Well, she walked in here looking so much like you that she fooled me. I don’t think we can afford to dismiss the idea outright. Let’s think this through: Could she trick her father? Could shesoundlike her brother, first off? I realize he doesn’t have a deep voice, but …” He shrugged.
“I—I think she could. She’s good at imitating voices. And she can play a wizard quite convincingly.”
“How would you know—oh.”
She looked away. “I’m sorry about Plan B,” she whispered. “Desperately sorry.”
He put an arm around her. “If we’re on the topic of things we’re desperately sorry about …”
With a sigh, she said, “Here’s the thing: There’s surely a great deal of difference between what she already did, fooling strangers for brief periods and you for—how long, ten minutes?—vs. an ongoing con on her own father.”
He gave a thoughtful frown. “She didn’t have to trick me for very long, that’s true—she drugged me as soon as I sat down at the kitchen table with her. And before it took hold, the hangover I had surely helped her. But Frederick Dradendoesn’t seem to have spent much time with his father in recent years. If Miss Draden doesn’t quite nail the voice or the eye color or other small details, would he really notice?”
Beatrix shivered as she considered the implications. “There’s just one reason I can think of to explain why she would willingly move back in with her father.”
“Vice presidents are very well guarded, even in their own homes. I don’t think she could easily attack him.”
“No, not that.” She swallowed, throat raw. “She wants another crack at the weapon.”
A few seconds of suffocating silence followed.
