The Hellfire Club, Part Two

Two weeks later I was cramming the last of my shirts into boxes. The movers were coming. Rachel was already packed. She was in my kitchen, pulling plates and pans from my cupboards. “Come on! They’ll be here any minute!”

            I staggered out into my living room. The stacked cardboard boxes looked like the walls of Troy. Rachel carried a box out of the kitchen and laid on top of the dining room table. Then she grabbed a water bottle. “We’re done.”

            She was in shorts and a T-shirt, sweating all over. I liked the look.

            “Everything okay upstairs?” I staggered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Empty, except for half a six-pack of Coke. I popped one.

            “I finished two days ago. I was in a sleeping bag last night.” She sank into a chair.

            “You could have come down here.” My bare mattress was still on the bed.

            Rachel sighed. “I’ve lived there for six years. I needed one more night alone.”

            This place had been my home for a long time too. “I know the feeling.”

            The buzzer at my door rang. I put down my Coke and threaded my way between the boxes. “Yeah?”

            “RT Movers.”

            I looked back. My living room seemed gutted. I closed my eyes, trying to remember it the way it used to be. Then I hit the button. “Come on up.”

            They started with my apartment—three guys with husky biceps and an assortment of carts. Boxes went into the freight elevator in back. I wondered how I’d accumulated so much stuff over the years.

            They were just starting on Rachel’s apartment when my phone buzzed.

 Linda Niles. “Did you get my check?”

I hadn’t heard from her since I’d sent my report two weeks ago. She’d asked for an invoice for the little work I’d done. I’d emailed a receipt—but it was nice of her to ask, especially under the circumstances. “Yes, thank you. What can I do for you?”

“Tomorrow night’s the—” She coughed. “The meeting. I thought maybe you could go.”

I looked at Rachel, telling the movers to be careful with her boxes. “I’m not sure how I can get in—”

“I found a ring.” She coughed again. “In a box next to the bed. It’ll identify you as a member of the club.”

Okay. What? “How do you know that?”

“Mickey Bering. He was Roger’s friend. He talked to me. After . . . everything was over? I was calling everyone. He was the only one.”

“Okay.” I leaned down. “I’ll need to talk to hIm. And get that ring. Then . . . I’ll see what I can do.”

We hung up.

“What was that?” Rachel slugged my arm. “Are you working? Hey, don’t let that fall!” she shouted at one of the movers.

“The club case.” I slipped my phone into my back pocket. “Tomorrow night. So I can spend all day today and tonight and tomorrow unpacking.”

She rubbed my shoulder. “Okay. Sorry.”

Rachel apologizing for hitting me was new and different. I squeezed her hand. “Let’s make this work.”

So the next morning, between boxes, I called Mickey Bering.

            Rachel was in the kitchen, still unpacking plates and pans. I sat on the couch we’d brought from my apartment, my laptop on my knees, a mug of coffee on the small table she’d insisted on keeping. Boxes lined the room.

            I felt disoriented, like my first day in college, living in a strange dorm room. But the coffee, and Rachel nearby, gave me a grip on reality.

            “Hello?” Mickey Bering sounded frazzled. “If you’re calling to offer me a great new rate on my electric bill—”

            “No, my name’s Tom Jurgen. I’m working for Linda Niles. I told her I’d be calling you.”

            “Oh. Right. The private detective?” He took a breath. “Look, I don’t know what I should be telling you.”

            “Linda Niles said you could give me information about the club that Roger Mathis was going to.” I paused. “Will you be going there tonight?”

            “No.” He was silent for a moment. “Not for a few months now.”

            “What’s the club all about?”

            Another long silence. “It’s a Hellfire club. They’re all over. New York, California, Canada, London . . .”

            Okay. “What kind of club did you say?”

            “Look it up. They—we—meet to do . . . things. Magic. Conjuring. And other stuff.” His voice shuddered, “I can’t talk about it. I can’t . . . It was fun, all right? Until it wasn’t.” He gulped. “I can’t talk anymore.”

            Bering hung up.

            Okay. I sipped some coffee. Rachel marched through the kitchen door. “Done in here. You going to help with these—wait, are you working? We’ve got more boxes!”

            She wore cutoffs and a sportsbra. I wanted to throw my laptop to the floor and . . . forget my case. But I forced myself to focus, tapping on my keyboard. “Do you know what a Hellfire Club is? Because apparently I have to go to one tomorrow.”

            Rachel punched my shoulder. “Not before you unload some of these books.” She went back into the kitchen.

            Empty bookcases lined the living room walls. I started unpacking, sorting and shelving. Most of the books in boxes were mine—journalism textbooks from college, books about vampires and devils, and, okay, a few bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code and the latest Bourne Identity novels. Rachel’s boxes were mostly vegetarian cookbooks and a few graphic novels: V for Vendetta, Watchmen, and some I didn’t recognize. Plus a few books of Wicca history. I didn’t ask her about that.

            When I finished I snuck a Google search for “Hellfire Club.”

            Oh boy.

            Rachel came out, wiping her hands. “I should have known . . . wait, you got those in the right order! Your books, my books—good job!” She leaned down to kiss me. “This is going to work out.”

            I only hoped living together was going to be this easy.

I tapped my computer.  “Look at this. In the 18^h century, various groups of so-called ‘gentlemen’ joined up in clubs around London. They dabbled in blasphemy, paganism, and Satanism. Plus, orgies.”

“Oh wow.” Rachel sat down next to me and gazed at the pictures. Mostly woodcuts, but a few primitive black-and-white photographs. “I mean . . . yuck.”

“Yeah.” I clicked on a few more links. “They mostly disappeared from sight in the 19^th century, but there are stories about them over the years, even up to the 20^th century. A lot of them look like fictional Victorian porn, but some of them seem contemporaneous—diaries and stuff.”

“Yeah.” She leaned down to read one of the diary entries. “Wow. Is this for real? I thought I did some weird stuff, but—”

“Please don’t ever explain that.” I rubbed my eyes. My muscles ached, and I was drenched with sweat. “Most of it’s probably fake, but it looks like the concept sort of—permeated the culture.”

“Permeated? Mmm . . . I love it when you use big academic words.” She rubbed my shoulder. “But I don’t like it if it means you’re going to one of these clubs tonight.”

I’d nailed my Mickey Mouse clock on the wall over the bookcases. It was 11:30. “I’m not sure I am. I have to go pick something up.” I’d told her about the ring last night.

“Okay.” She stood and stretched. “You do that. I’ll start breaking down these boxes—what? What are you looking at?”

I grinned. “You. See you later.”

Linda Niles wasn’t home. Her brother Jeremy was. “She’s in the hospital. She said to give you this.”

            He held out a plastic bag with something wrapped in tissue.

I was afraid to touch it, but I pinched it between two fingers and shoved it into the pocket of my windbreaker. “What happened?”

Jeremy shook his head. He had long hair that dangled over his face. “I don’t know. She just got sick. The doctors say it’s some kind of infection. Maybe she got it from Roger?” He shrugged. “My mom’s with her at the hospital right now.”

“Are you feeling okay?” I rubbed my hands on my jeans.

He laughed. “I’m rubbing disinfectant gel all over my body and gargling with rubbing alcohol. I hope.”

Back at my apartment—our apartment now—I dropped my jacket on the floor, ran to the kitchen, and washed my hands for five minutes under scalding water. Rachel was asleep on the couch.

            She walked in when I was using dishwashing gloves to open the plastic bag. “Uhh . . . what’s that?”

            “The ring. My client’s in the hospital. Like her boyfriend.” I dropped the bag on a pile of paper towels, next to a coffee mug full of hand sanitzer. “I was going to ask you . . . but now I can’t.”

            “To check it out?” Rachel sat up. “Wait, what? She’s dying?”

            “I don’t know that.” I’d asked Jeremy to call with any news. “And I don’t know if this ring has anything to do with it.”

            She swigged from a bottle of water. “Maybe I can . . . use those gloves. It depends on how strong it is.”

            I peeled them off my hands. They were brand-new, from a box next to the sink. “Be careful.”

            Rachel pulled the gloves on. “Ready for surgery.” She giggled. Then she put one hand on the mug. Then the other.

            She pulled the ring from the mug and  held it in one fist. After a moment she shook her head. “There’s something there. Not much. It feels drained somehow. Like the smell of coffee in an empty cup.”

“Could it have made Linda Niles sick? And her boyfriend”

            “How should I know? Maybe she got the flu. Maybe . . .” She slugged my arm. “You’re going there tonight, aren’t you?”

            I used the glove to pick up the ring. Silver, with a mounting that displayed a black snake swallowing its own tail on a red background.  “I don’t know.”

            Rachel punched me again. “I know that look. You’re going. Our first day living together, and you’re going to go off and get yourself killed.”

            “I’m not going to . . .” But Rachel was right. This was a bad idea in many ways. I threw the gloves in the garbage. “Let’s have lunch.”

At 3:30 we were almost finished stacking the broken-down boxes in a corner. Tomorrow we’d go back to our apartments and pick up what was left, and call the Salvation Army to haul away everything else. Moving was exhausting.

            We were dozing on the couch when my phone buzzed.

            It was Jeremy Niles. “She’s, uh—she died.”

            I shot up, pushing Rachel away. “What? How could she—I mean . . .” My voice trailed off.

            “A couple of hours ago. The doctors still don’t know what it was. I had to call some other people first.”

            “Of course.” I was stunned he’d thought to call me at all. “I’m so sorry.”

            “Look, whatever my sister owes you, send us an invoice to, uh, I guess her email address and we’ll pay it. I really don’t know what was going on. She told me part of it, but it doesn’t make sense. Some kind of club?”

            “Yeah.” I looked at the ring on the table. “There won’t be another bill. Like I said, I’m sorry for your loss.” It sounded lame. It always does.

            “Yeah, thanks.”

            Rachel lurched up. “What happened?”

            “My client died.” I picked up the ring.

            “Oh, no.”

“Yeah.” My hand shook.

She slapped my arm. “Wait, is this where you go on a vengeance quest to find her killer? Because that’s sort of a cliché.”

            “It was another infection.” I dropped the ring on the table. “I can’t exactly go on the warpath against something like that. But I can find out what’s happening inside that club.”

            “How? You’ve got a ring. How are you going to convince them to let you inside?”

            They’re all over. New York, California, Canada, London . . . “Mickey Bering told me there are others. I’ll pretend I’m from Canada.”

            Rachel snorted. “Yeah, that’ll work. How’s your accent, eh?”

            I glared. “Fine, I’ll be from California, looking for some sweet Hellfire action.” But I picked up my phone. “Let me get some info.” I hit Bering’s number.

            “Fine.” Rachel stood and stretched. “I need to take a shower. If you get finished soon . . .”

            “Right.” I watched her walk toward the bedroom. Maybe I could make this quick.