There was a high-pitched yelp of something that might have been laughter from the old man, then he sucked on his cheroot. The smoke drifted from his lips like a ghostly speech balloon. “Your mother had something to say about that,” he said. Then he said, “We don’t have long, Charlie. You want to spend the time we got left fighting?”
Fat Charlie shook his head. “Guess not.”
They had reached the end of the bridge. “Now,” said his father. “When you see your brother. I want you to give him something from me.”
“What?”
His father reached up a hand, pulled Fat Charlie’s head down. Then he kissed him, gently, on the forehead. “That,” he said.
Fat Charlie straightened up. His father was looking up at him with an expression that, if he had seen it in anyone else’s face, he would have thought of as pride. “Let me see the feather,” said his father.
Fat Charlie reached into his pocket. The feather was there, looking even more crumpled and dilapidated than it looked before.
His father made a “tch” noise and held the feather up to the light. “This is a beautiful feather,” said his father. “You don’t want it to get all manky. She won’t take it back if it’s messed up.” Mr. Nancy ran his hand over the feather, and it was perfect. He frowned at it. “Now, you’ll just get it messed up again.” He breathed on his fingernails, polished them against his jacket. Then he seemed to have arrived at a decision. He removed his fedora and slipped the feather into the hatband. “Here. You could do with a natty hat anyway.” He put the hat onto Fat Charlie’s head. “It suits you,” he said.
Fat Charlie sighed. “Dad. I don’t wear hats. It’ll look stupid. I’ll look a complete tit. Why do you always try to embarrass me?”
In the fading light, the old man looked at his son. “You think I’d lie to you? Son, all you need to wear a hat is attitude. And you got that. You think I’d tell you you looked good if you didn’t? You look real sharp. You don’t believe me?”
Fat Charlie said, “Not really.”
“Look,” said his father. He pointed over the side of the bridge. The water beneath them was still and smooth as a mirror, and the man looking up at him from the water looked real sharp in his new green hat.
Fat Charlie looked up to tell his father that maybe he had been wrong, but the old man was gone.
He stepped off the bridge into the dusk.
“RIGHT. I WANT TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE HE IS. WHERE DID he go? What have you done to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. Lord, child,” said Mrs. Higgler. “This never happened the last time.”
“It looked like he was beamed up to the mothership,” said Benjamin. “Cool. Real-life special effects.”
“I want you to bring him back,” said Daisy, fiercely. “I want him back now.”
“I don’t even know where he is,” said Mrs. Higgler. “And I didn’t send him there. He do that himself.”
“Anyway,” said Clarissa. “What if he’s off doing what he’s doing and we make him come back? We could ruin it all.”
“Exactly,” said Benjamin. “Like beaming the landing party back, halfway through their mission.”
Daisy thought about this and was irritated to realize that it made sense—as much as anything made sense these days, anyway.
“If nothing else is happening,” said Clarissa, “I ought to go back to the restaurant. Make sure everything’s all right.”
Mrs. Higgler sipped her coffee. “Nothin‘ happenin’ here,” she agreed.
Daisy slammed her hand down on the table. “Excuse me. We’ve got a killer out there. And now Fat Charlie’s beamed up to the mastership.”
“Mothership,” said Benjamin.
Mrs. Higgler blinked. “Okay,” she said. “We should do something. What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Daisy and she hated herself for saying it. “Kill time, I suppose.” She picked up the copy of the Williamstown Courier that Mrs. Higgler had been reading and began to flip through it.
The story about the missing tourists, the women who hadn’t gone back to their cruise ship was a column on page three. The two at the house, said Grahame Coats in her head. Did you think I’d believe they were from the ship?
At the end o