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“What’s going on?” Will whispered to Audra.
“It’s Patrick,” she replied. “He’s missing.”
Chapter 36
Patrick had managed to live in Los Angeles for ten years without ever making it out to Venice Beach. He’d pictured some kind of postcard version of the place: bodybuilders working out on the boardwalk, supermodels on in-line skates, hippies with stands selling crystals and tie-dye. Easy magic. As he followed the GPS directions to the home of Ellie Hoffman, what he found instead was a place that looked like it had been forgotten, left to be taken by the tide and the weeds like a crumbling castle from a fairy tale.
Ellie Hoffman’s residence was no different. Patrick passed through the open front gate onto her short driveway and pulled up outside a Spanish-style bungalow half consumed by climbing vines. Wind chimes and dream catchers dangled from any surface that jutted out far enough, and when Patrick exited the car, an enormous orange cat immediately emerged from one of the bushes next to the porch and padded over to wedge itself clumsily between his ankles.
“Caliban, leave the poor man alone!” came a voice from the front door, the same voice Patrick had heard on his voicemail yesterday. Ellie Hoffman looked more or less exactly how he might have expected her to, given the witch’s cottage where she lived. Henna-red hair floated in a frizzy halo around crab apple cheeks and twinkling eyes. An off-white, sack-like tunic covered most of her sturdy frame in a way that could have made her look like an ascetic nun, had her fingers not glinted with silver and turquoise rings, and Barbie-pink toenails not been poking out from beneath her blue jeans. She could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy.
“Welcome,” Ellie said, smiling brightly and beckoning Patrick inside. “I made lemonade.”
Patrick followed Ellie inside, down a short hallway and into the living room.
“Should I take off my shoes?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said. “I dropped an earring somewhere in here yesterday and haven’t found it yet. Wouldn’t want to have to take a movie star to the hospital for a tetanus shot if you stepped on it. Why don’t you take a seat over there”—she gestured to a threadbare sofa draped in an afghan—“and I’ll be right back. Just give Caliban a good shove if he crowds your personal space. I love the beast, but he isn’t for everyone.”
Ellie vanished, leaving him to sit awkwardly perched on the end of the couch, wondering if he had made a huge mistake. Encountering the occasional weirdo was par for the course in his line of work, but he didn’t make a habit of entering their homes. What if Ellie Hoffman came out of that room wielding an axe, claiming to be his number one fan? Would he feel comfortable physically fighting a woman old enough to be his mother?
Caliban did not approach Patrick, but simply watched him intently from under the coffee table while Patrick glanced around the living room at the various Turkish lamps, blue glass evil eyes dangling from door frames, the menorah and Buddha bookending a small stack of dog-eared paperbacks, the trio of silver urns on the mantel, the vase full of bright pink flowers that looked freshly trimmed from the bushes outside, and framed photographs covering almost every inch of the wall. Ellie was present in many of them, surrounded by people who looked like her children.
Some of the older pictures, faded or in black and white, featured a handsome couple. The man had a broad, pleasing smile in many of them, while the woman, pursed lips and arched brow, had the air of somebody about to say something witty or devastating. A smaller number of photos included a pretty, laughing young woman with a snub nose.
“Your parents?” Patrick asked as Ellie returned, carrying two cardboard boxes. He gestured to a picture of the first woman in a modest dress holding a bouquet, the man standing solemnly next to her.
“Yes,” she said, placing the boxes down on the coffee table with great care. “They’re the reason I contacted you, Mr. Lake.” She removed the lid from the first box, revealing a meticulously stacked assortment of papers, some of which were emblazoned, Patrick could see, with the Kismet insignia.
“They were collectors?” he asked.
“Not especially,” said Ellie.
“They certainly seemed to be admirers of Captain Kismet,” said Patrick, reverently picking up what he instantly knew to be an original issue of Wonder Magazine.
“In a way, I suppose,” Ellie said. “They created him.”
Patrick frowned.
“Walter Haywood created Captain Kismet,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”
“All anybody knows is the story that Walter Haywood told them,” said Ellie, her lip curling up as she said the man’s name. Patrick got the impression that in this house, the Haywood name was mud.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Haywood founded Wonder Magazine and all of its proprietary characters.”
“The magazine was his”—Ellie nodded—“but everything else? All my parents. Haywood liked to say that he came up with the characters himself, and hired writers and artists to help with the work of telling those stories, that they were all his intellectual property.” She pointed to the box. “Go ahead. Take a look. It’s all right here.”
As slowly and fastidiously as possible, Patrick went through the contents of the first box. Early character sketches for Captain Kismet, Axel, Sura, Penny, Omega. Typed pages of Kismet’s adventures, covered in annotations, half the words crossed out and rewritten in the margins. And finally, at the bottom of the box, a series of loose pages punched and tied together in the corner with string:
The Adventures of Captain Kismet, #12.
“The Omega Issue,” Patrick breathed.
“You sit there and read,” said Ellie. “I’ll fetch that lemonade.”
Patrick tried to read with intention and care, but found himself flipping through the pages like a child devouring their first comic book, unable to believe the story unfolding before him: Penny’s hubris, so rarely explored in the fifty years since; Sura’s angelic return; and the operatic romance of Kismet cradling Axel in his arms, kissing him back to life.
“It’s so…gay,” he said moments later, sipping lemonade, the issue safely back in its cardboard tomb.
