No one responded to this at first. Everyone waited for Nora to explain. But all she did was start to fall apart again.
“Actually,” Dex said, “I think he called me a Mason. I thought he said ‘Jason.’ Was that who your father was going to tell everyone was responsible for—for everything? In the auditorium?”
Nora nodded.
“Well, he’s not right about that,” Daphna said, trying not to sound harsh now. “We told you how the plague started.”
This seemed to help.
“Who are the Freemasons?” Dex gently prodded. “Do you know anything specific?”
Nora nodded. Then she surprised everyone with a burst of information.
“They go back to the Pyramids,” she said. “No one knows exactly how they originated, but they have Lodges in just about every major city in the world and thousands of members. Mozart was a Mason. So was Ben Franklin and Harry Houdini. George Washington was sworn in on a Freemason Bible. A bunch of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons. President Roosevelt, President Ford, the first President Bush—they were all Masons.
“Tons of Supreme Court justices were Masons. So were the Wright Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many of the men who started Hollywood. Also Ty Cobb, Benedict Arnold, Paul Revere, Arnold Palmer, Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut, and tons more.
“My father says they have shadow governments poised to take over countries all over the world—when they finally get the chance to, anyway. Supposedly the members don’t even know who each other are because they wear masks and disguise their voices. Though obviously it gets out who some of them are.”
“Ahhh,” Dex said. “Are you serious?” Far be it from him to doubt the existence of secret mask-wearing organizations, but one with that many members? And members like those? He couldn’t help but consider the possibility that Nora was as big a loon as her father. The looks on Daphna’s and Quinn’s faces told him they were pretty sure she was.
“The layout of Washington DC,” Nora continued, “depicts a Masonic symbol, a—”
“Wait a minute,” Quinn interrupted. “You’re talking about the group in all the books and movies?”
“Yes,” Nora said.
“Then,” he challenged, voicing Dexter’s thoughts exactly, “if everyone knows about them, how is it some big secret?”
“The group isn’t a secret,” Nora explained. “What they really want is the secret—Well, that’s only partly a secret. Everyone knows they want the Key to Power, something to let them step out of the shadows and rule openly. But no one knows what that is or how they go about searching for it. That’s why all the stories.”
Everyone took this in. It was somewhat more reasonable now.
“How do you know all this?” Daphna asked, her tone still mostly skeptical.
“My father is an international expert on the Masons,” Nora told her. “The international expert. Only,” she added, “no one listens to him anymore. They think he’s crazy because he says the Masons are responsible for everything bad in the world. He says they’ve assassinated Presidents and that they blew up the space shuttle. He says they blew up the Twin Towers. It’s why our church forced him to retire.”
“Is that why Mr. Haslam looked so nervous when he started speaking?”
Nora nodded. “Yes. Dad promised he wouldn’t say anything about the Masons. He was going to, though. He just didn’t get the chance. He says they infiltrated our church, and that’s why they retired him. He wanted to tell everyone that Masons have been all over the neighborhood for weeks. He thinks you two are Masons, or infected by them to spread the plague.”
“Sure, why not?” Daphna said.
“But they have been around,” Quinn confirmed, “since I called the cops. So I wasn’t paranoid after all. And neither is your dad.”
Everyone processed this for a moment. Then Daphna said, “Does your father know what they want? This Key to Power?”
Nora shook her head. “No, he’s never been able to figure it out. He says Stalin was a Mason, and he was after it. And Hitler, too.”
Dex and Daphna looked at each other, now taking this in. As was so often the case, they had the same thought. Dexter expressed it by asking, “Do you know of any other connections between the Masons and the Jews?”
After a moment of thought, Nora nodded.
“Well,” she said, “my father says the Masons invented anti-Semitism, that they invented all forms of bigotry and racism and hate. Oh, and if you draw a Jewish Star using the pyramid as one of the triangles on the back of the dollar bill, the six points touch the letters M-A-S-O-N. I don’t know what that means, though. I think my father once said it means they want something from the Jews, and that it’s some kind of coded threat.”
Daphna pulled a dollar out of her back pocket, grabbed a pen that was resting against the laptop, and drew the star. Though some of what she’d heard so far had given her pause, she wanted to show how silly this oddball was and to get rid of her once and for all. But lo and behold, the star pointed to the letters exactly as Nora said it would.
“It’s true!” Daphna admitted holding the bill up for Quinn and Dex. “Look—”
“That’s—that’s amazing,” Quinn said. Dex didn’t try to look, but he had no doubt it was true.
The skepticism in the room slowly drained away. It was replaced by pure anxiety.
“Do you know anything more?” Daphna asked, her tone now entirely converted.
“No,” Nora admitted. “I don’t think so. But my father has, well, a lot of books on the Masons. He collects book by Masons, too. Both identified and secret.”
“We need to get a look at your father’s books,” Daphna declared. “Do you think he’s home? Oh, my gosh! Dr. Fludd!” she suddenly cried. “I forgot all about her!” Daphna scrambled her phone out again and clicked the number. A moment later, she lowered it and said, “That does it. I’m calling OHSU.”
“What’s going on?” Quinn asked as Daphna searched for the number.
“Not sure,” Dex said. “We—”
“Hello, this is Daphna Wax,” Daphna said. “Yes, yes—may I please talk to Dr. Fludd? She isn’t answering her—She what? Not at all? Okay, thank you. No, no—just a miscommunication is all.” Daphna hung up, paling.
“What?” Dex asked.
“She never came in to work, Dex!”
“Did something happen to her?” Quinn asked. “Did the assassins—?”
“She left the house in the middle of the night,” Daphna explained. “We thought she went to the hospital because she works 24/7. We found a note near the garage this morning, but her car was still—”
Quinn turned gray. “The black Cadillac SUV?” he croaked.
“Oh, my God.” Daphna knew. She already knew.
“What?” Dex asked. “What?” But then he got it. “She was coming back in to leave the note! You killed her!”
“I—I—” Quinn spluttered.
There was no plan of attack. Dexter just flew at Quinn, bowling into him with a lowered shoulder. Quinn stumbled backwards and fell over the box of books Daphna had pulled out from under the table. The box tumbled over, spilling its contents. Quinn went over too, but he grabbled hold of Dexter. Together they crashed to the floor.
“Dexter!” Daphna screamed. She leapt over and grabbed his arm before his fist could fly. “Dexter! He saved our lives!” But her heart—the same heart that nearly burst when Quinn kissed her—was going cold and sinking like a stone.
“I—I—” Quinn kept stuttering, trying to get out from under Dexter, who was trying to wrench his arm free from Daphna. “I got there after midnight, after I finally got someone at the hospital to tell me you’d gone there and tracked down the address on-line. And I—when I got there, someone got out of the SUV. And they—it was dark. I thought they were trying to break in! I thought it was someone else trying to kill you! It will be okay!”
“Dexter!” Daphna screamed again, pulling on his arm. She wasn’t about to pretend there was anything good about the situation, but she could recognize that they didn’t know exactly what the situation was. “We don’t know for sure she’s dead! We don’t even know what the book is! We need to find out, and we need to find out as soon as poss—! There’s something wrong with Nora!”
Dex stopped struggling and looked. Nora was standing there, gone again inside herself, muttering, looking fully mad. Ashamed, Dex got off Quinn and approached her.
“It’s okay,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m not really like that.”
Slowly, she came back.
“What—what are you doing when you do that?” Dex asked, trying to recover his wind.
“Praying,” Nora said.
“Oh.”
The thunder boomed outside. Deafening.
“That thunder is doing something to us,” Nora said. “It won’t let us get along.”
Quinn was back on his feet now, but he looked nonetheless nearly out on them.
“Not all of us,” he said, struggling to right his breathing. “I’ve been noticing. You seem to be okay with Nora, Dex. And me and Daphna are okay.”
Now Daphna wanted to punch Quinn, too. Punch and punch and punch him. And kiss—
“I don’t know why,” Quinn added, “but we must have some kind of conn—”
Dex charged again, but this time Daphna stepped in front of him.
“Dexter!” she snapped. “Stop acting like an idiot! Quinn is right! I don’t know why, but he is, and there’s no point in denying it. We need to look into this Freemansons thing.” She paused, trying to get herself back together, bearing up against the fact that yet another chance at a family might be lost. And the thing was, it wasn’t that hard this time. Maybe she was getting used to it. No, Daphna knew that wasn’t true. It was because she wasn’t sure about Dr. Fludd yet.
“And we have to get that book back from the cops,” she added, “or from whoever they gave it to.”
“Mason,” Quinn corrected. “Freemason.”
It took everything Dex had not to smash him in the face.
“Right,” Daphna said. “And we need to figure out what Mr. G is all about, especially if he got the book. There’s way too much for all of us to do at once, and—and—” She was reluctantly getting to the hard part of the idea Quinn had just given her. She took a breath, looked her brother in the eye, and then came out with it.
“I think we should split up.”