The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints - M. V. Carey [16]
Eloise Dobson sat down and began to cry, and Aunt Mathilda angrily ran water into a kettle and set about making a heartening cup of tea. Aunt Mathilda believed there were few crises in life which could not be eased by a good hot cup of tea.
The police departed for headquarters. Tom and Jupiter went quietly out into the big front yard and sat on the steps between the two huge urns.
“I’m almost ready to think Hans was right,” said Tom. “Suppose my grandfather is dead, and …”
“I do not believe in ghosts,” said Jupiter firmly. “What’s more, I don’t think you believe in them, either. And The Potter made great preparations for your visit. Why should he return and frighten your mother that way?”
“I’m scared, too,” Tom admitted, “and if my grandfather isn’t dead, where is he?”
“The last we knew, he was up in the hills,” said Jupiter.
“But why?” demanded Tom.
“That may depend on a great many things,” Jupiter said. “How much do you really know about your grandfather?”
“Not much,” admitted young Tom. “Just what I’ve heard my mother say. And she doesn’t know much herself. One thing, his name wasn’t always Potter.”
“Oh?” said Jupiter. “I have always wondered about that. It seemed too coincidental.”
“He came to the United States a long time ago,” Tom said. “About 1931 or so. He was a Ukrainian and he had a name that was so full of c’s and z’s that nobody could pronounce it. He was taking ceramics at a night school in New York when he met my grandmother, and she didn’t want to be Mrs … Mrs … well, whatever it was, so he changed his name to Potter.”
“Your grandmother was a New Yorker?” asked Jupiter.
“Not really,” said Tom. “She was born in Belleview, just like us. She went to New York to design clothes or something. Then she met this Alexander Whosis and she married him. I don’t suppose he wore a long white robe in those days. She wouldn’t have gone for that. She was pretty square.”
“You remember her?”
“A little. She died a long time ago. I was only a kid. Pneumonia. From what I’ve heard, in the family you know, she and my grandfather didn’t hit it off from the beginning. He was real good at ceramics, and he had a little shop, but she said he was awfully nervous, and had three locks on every door. And she said she could not stand the continual smell of wet clay. So when my mother was going to be born, she came back to Belleview, and she stayed.”
“She never returned to her husband?”
“Nope. I think he came to see her once, when my mother was a baby, but she never went back to him.”
Jupiter pulled at his lip and thought of The Potter, so alone in his house by the sea.
“He never gave up on her,” said young Tom. “He sent money every month — for my mother, you know. And when my folks were married, he sent them a terrific tea set. And he never stopped writing. Even after my grandmother died, he wrote to my mother. Still does.”
“And your father?” asked Jupiter.
“Oh, he’s a great guy,” said Tom happily. “He runs the hardware store in Belleview. He didn’t exactly go into fits of joy when Mum decided to come out here and see Grandfather, but she argued him round to it.”
“I don’t suppose you know why your grandfather came to California,” said Jupiter.
“The weather, I suppose,” said Tom. “Isn’t that why most people come?”
“There are other reasons,” Jupiter told him. His eyes were on the path to the beach. The two dark-clad men came floundering up the path, crossed the main road, and started to walk up the lane to Hilltop House.
Jupiter stood up and leaned against one of the urns, tracing the pattern of the screaming scarlet eagles with a forefinger. “An interesting series of puzzles,” he remarked. “First, why did The Potter choose to disappear? Second, who searched his office yesterday? Also, who, or what, caused those flaming footprints in the kitchen?
And why? And isn’t it curious that no one in Rocky Beach even knew you existed?”
“But if he was a hermit?” said young Tom. “I mean, a guy who only has one chair in his house isn’t exactly running a social club.”
“Hermit or no hermit,” said Jupiter Jones, “he was also a grandfather.