You Decide

A bolt of lightning flashed, reflecting in Emerson’s forbidding green eyes.  “Put it back.”  

Chess darted his eyes from Emerson to the heirloom between his fingers and back again.  “But I—it’s not what you—”  His earnest denial wouldn’t form.  

“Marisol!  We’ve caught him red-handed.”  

Chess’s sister approached the lighted doorway and stood beside her older brother, looking into the dark library at Chess’s guilty demeanor.  

“Mari—I wasn’t—I was just—” 

“Oh, Chess.  How could you?”  Marisol’s head drooped and Chess could hear her sigh of disappointment.  

“But I didn’t—” 

Emerson held out his hand.  “Bring it to me, Chess.”  

There was no talking himself out of this one.  Even Chess knew he looked guilty.  He drooped his head, too, and walked slowly toward his siblings.  He laid the twenty-four karat gold, antique pocket watch and chain in his brother’s hand.  “I was only putting it back.”  

“To cover your tracks.”  

“No!”  

Marisol’s eyes filled with hope as she stared at Emerson.  

He was unwavering.  “And we’re supposed to believe that?”  

Chess squared up to him and noticed the hurt now in Marisol’s expression.  He took in a deep breath.  “I’d hoped you would be able to trust your own family, Emerson.  You’re all too eager to accuse me—” 

            “The inspector’s downstairs.  Let’s go.”  Emerson motioned for Chess to lead the way.  

            Marisol moved from the doorway.  “Emerson, do you really think that’s necessary.  I mean, if it is Chess who’s been stealing the valuables—I mean, he is family.  They’re kind of his anyway.”  

            Emerson didn’t respond as they walked down the hall toward the grand staircase.   

            Chess looked around the foyer as they descended.  He could never take anything from this house.  It was too full of memories.  If only Grenadine could have waited.  He would have inherited enough of a portion of the estate to make her happy twice over.  But she was selfish and stubborn.  Facing the shame and pity that would come from his beloved sister Marisol, he realized now that his fiancé was too devious and conniving for his good.  But he was in love with her.  Desperately.  What could he do but take the heat for what she’d done when he’d been caught in so precarious a position.  

            He remembered the first time he saw her.  He was descending the staircase just like he was now, and she was coming through the front doors of his family’s mansion.  His parents had long passed, and the grandfather that had raised Chess and his siblings had thrown his elaborate annual Christmas party.  His first sight of her gave him chills like a cold winter wind.  He’d been recently heartbroken, and she was just the vixen to mend him.  

She didn’t seem interested in him at first, until she found out his family name.  He knew she only agreed to marry him for his money, but he was too hypnotized by her beauty and pretension to care.  She was devastated when she found out that his inheritance from his grandfather would only be a fraction of what she’d originally assumed.  But she stayed around, hinting about the value of the jewelry and antiques all the while.  

When Chess’s grandfather passed a few days ago, she took advantage of the first opportunity to snatch his grandmother’s pearl necklace from the jewelry box in the master bedroom.  Next, the set of fine silver went missing from the butler’s pantry.  Then it was the Ming vase, the diamond brooch, and now the gold pocket watch.  

“Inspector!”  Emerson called as they neared the bottom of the grand staircase.  

In an instant he emerged from the front parlor, gazing over his reading glasses, with his pen and pad in his hands.  

            Grenadine followed him with her usual expression of disdain.  

            “We’ve got your man.  It’s been Chess all along.”  Emerson pushed him down the last few steps and Chess barely kept his feet under himself.  

            Grenadine hurried around the barrel-chested inspector.  Though Emerson was a few steps above her, she had the gift of looking down on anyone she chose, and Emerson was no exception at this moment.  “How dare you make such an accusation!”  

            “He was caught red-handed, Grenadine.  It’s no accusation.  It’s cold, hard fact.”  He held the watch forward for them to see.  “I saw him sneaking around in the dark library, trying to put this back in its place in the curio.”  

            Marisol stood beside Grenadine.  “Maybe—maybe you didn’t see it quite like that.  Maybe—maybe he was doing something else.  Putting it back, like he said.”  

            Emerson glared at them.  “Why would he have needed to put it back if he hadn’t taken it in the first place, Mari?”  

            Chess finally spoke, unable to look directly at either of them as he began.  “I know you both think I’m a bit of a bum.  That I haven’t really made a life for myself outside the family home.  That I’ve been waiting on my inheritance to get me started in life.  And maybe you’re right to a degree.”  He looked Emerson square in the eyes now.  “But I haven’t stolen a thing.”  

            Emerson rolled his eyes.  

            “I would never steal from this place!  I love it too much.”  

            “Then maybe—maybe you can tell us just what you were doing in the dark library with the watch, dear?”  Marisol brought her hands together in front of her chest.  She yearned to believe her little brother’s excuse, whatever it may be.  

            Chess looked at her and then at Grenadine.  She mustered a subtle but threatening eyebrow raise in his direction.  She played the stoic yet intoxicating Scarlett O’Hara all too well.  Chess looked again at Emerson.  “I found it in a drawer in grandfather’s study.  I can’t account for the other missing things, but this one was just misplaced, that’s all.”  

            “Then why didn’t you come tell us?”  Emerson took the last two steps quickly.  

            Chess shrugged.  “I don’t know, I just didn’t.”  

            Emerson grabbed Chess brusquely by the arm.  “And why were you sneaking around to put it back in the dark?”  

            “I don’t know.  I just didn’t turn the lights on.  I didn’t need them.”  He jerked his arm away from his brother.  “I know my way around.”  

            The inspector sighed.  “Well, I can’t make much of a case based on your word against his.” 

            “Marisol was there.  She saw him, too.”  

            No one but Chess saw Grenadine’s eyes widen and shift in fear.  

            Marisol took a step back from them.  “Well, I didn’t exactly see it.  You called me after you saw him with it.”  

            Emerson glared again.  

            “I didn’t exactly see what you saw, Em.”  

            Emerson rolled his eyes and scoffed.  He turned on his heel and stomped up the stairs.  

            The four remaining in the grand foyer heard his bedroom door close heavily.  

            “Uh, Grenadine,” Marisol fidgeted nervously.  “Why don’t you take Inspector Jenkins and find Cook.  She’s probably in the kitchen.  I’m sure he could use a snack after being here so long.”  

            Grenadine nodded quizzically.  “All right.”  

            When they were safely out of ear shot, Marisol grabbed hold of Chess’s forearm.  “Chess Duncan Radford, you tell me what’s going on this instant!”  Her voice was hushed, but her tone was urgent.  

            “I’m enslaved, Mari.  That’s all I can tell you.”  He gently removed her hand from his arm and walked toward the back of the house.  

            She followed him.  “You know that answer won’t satisfy me.  What does it even mean?”  

            Chess ignored her.  

            She darted ahead of him and stood in his path.  “Chess, it’s me.”  She shrugged one shoulder.  “If you can’t be honest with me—” 

            “It’s not a question of honesty, Mari.  It’s a question of loyalty.”  

            “Exactly!  And who can you possibly be more loyal to than your own—” her eyes wandered into the middle distance as a lightbulb flickered on in her mind.  Her eyes fell shut.  “Oh, Chess.”  She opened them.  “Don’t tell me.”  

            “Okay, then.  I won’t.”  He gently moved her out of his way and continued into the cloak room. 

            Marisol trailed him again.  “What are you doing?”  She observed as he dug through the pockets of a woman’s fur coat hanging on a rack near the back wall.  “Whose coat is that?”  When she received no answer, she asked again.  “What are you looking for?”  

            A moment of silent rummaging passed before he held up a small key triumphantly.  “Marisol, have you ever been in love?”  

            She raised an eyebrow in his direction.  

            “Truly.  Whole-heartedly.  Have you?” 

            She huffed a strand of hair off her right eyelashes.  “You know I haven’t.”  

            He parted two other coats along the back wall to reveal a short and narrow doorway.  He stepped into the coats, holding them apart as he wriggled the small key into the keyhole and unlocked the secret passage.  He dropped the key securely into his vest pocket.  “Then you couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on, even if I explained it to you in the simplest of terms.”  

            Marisol’s eyes were as round as dinner plates, but she regained enough composure to answer her baby brother.  She focused a sarcastic glare at him and crossed her arms.  “Try me.”    

            “Mari, you’re my only sister, so I’ll let you in on a little secret, but it’s a one time deal.  If you choose to know, there’s no going back.” 

            “Chess, you’re insane.  Do you know that?  You aren’t even making sense.”  

            “Follow me down this secret passageway and find out for yourself.”  He held out his hand to help her step over the threshold.  

            “What’s back there?”  

            He only tilted his head in the direction of the opening. 

            Footsteps approached.  

            “Chess, someone’s coming!” She whispered.  

            “Come on!”  He grabbed her arm.  

            “I haven’t made up my mind yet!”  

            “You don’t have a choice now!”  

            In an instant they were concealed from the intruder within the narrow tunnel inside the walls of the house where they grew up.  

            Chess leaned his ear up against the practically seamless crack of the doorway.  He heard Emerson’s voice.  

            “Chess?  Chess?  Mari?  Marisol?”  

            Eventually, Chess heard the cloak room door close.  He locked the secret doorway from the inside, turned around, took his sister by the hand, and no one ever saw Chess or Marisol Radford ever again.