Floodlight

by Reba Birmingham

  Ekk tilted his head sideways, like my childhood collie used to do, and said, “Little Miss Panda. It’s pretty low-voltage magic, filling in holes. I could tell you really needed a hand. What’s on your mind?”

  So there I was, sitting on my back porch, spilling my guts to an elf. “I don’t know. Everything seemed fine when I was trying to find Mitzi, moment by dangerous moment. Now Puddle’s here, Mitzi has lumps on her shoulders, and I’m not sure what our life is going to be like.” A tear came to my eye.

  “Are you crying?” He was way more sensitive than I’d given him credit for.

  “No,” I said and cleared my throat, “it’s allergies. They got stirred up with the dust.” He let that alone.

  We sat in silence, and a raven landed on the table between us. Ekk and the bird had a small conversation, and it flew away.

  “See what I mean? What was that?”

  Ekk said, “I’m not going to lie to you. Things are always as they have been, just there are more layers. Ehren wants to speak with Mitzi. A message will be coming soon.”

  I sighed and stared at the trees. “It’s never going to be over, is it?” I looked down at my white legs peeking out of shorts. At least I’d lost some weight with all the dashing around.

  “Woe is me, the Quoon has Sweened!” Then he laughed.

  My head jerked up. “What?” My pity party had been interrupted.

  “That’s what drama people do in the movies.”

  My look remained puzzled.

  “Buster Keaton, 1930?” I was just beginning to learn about Ekk’s fondness for old, human movies.

  At that, we both chuckled, and I got more real. “What about the tax practice?”

  “You go in Monday, and I help you. Next?”

  “What about Mitzi? She has wings, you know.”

  “Yes, and they’ll stay dormant unless an extreme circumstance makes it necessary to deploy them. Then you’ll be glad she has them. Next.”

  “What kind of extreme circumstance?” I started to cry again.

  Ekk put down his lemonade and held both of my hands. He stood in front of me, so small, but his presence was large. “Stop, Panda. Stop.”

  “And what about my parents? Puddle seems to think she can find them. I know you said it was a trick, but I saw them when we did the ritual at the museum. I saw them.”

  Ekk looked sad. “You saw a reflection, from when I don’t know. You said you saw your old dog, right?”

  I sniffed, “Yes.”

  “How long has he been dead, Panda?”

  I got his point. “So they’re dead?”

  “Who knows? When you were so open, the evil forces used what they could to distract you. The answer is”—he adopted a strange imitation of someone—“I don’t know, sweetheart. Above my pay grade.”

  That last bit, probably learned from a TV show, made me smile. We sat in silence. The yard was calming. I caught a whiff of a trumpet flower’s perfume.

  Something inside me shifted, and I sighed, realizing that acceptance was the only course. “So when do we get this message?” I wiped my eyes with the clean part of the back of my hand.

  Ekk looked up, and we saw a bundle drop from the sky onto the lawn. “I’d say, right about now.”

  The tiny bundle fell with a thud on the dirt.

  I was out of my chair in an instant and tripped over my feet when I looked up to see more of who dropped it. I landed eye to eye with the bundle, which was wrapped in the same green substance the Hercynian Garden was constructed with. Ekk hopped down from his chair and over to where I lay. “Are you okay?”

  “Fabulous.” This day was just getting better and better.

  He snatched the pouch and opened the seamless green substance with a wave of his hand. In it was a tiny crystal.

  I sat up. “Jewelry?”

  “No, it’s how we store the holograph message like the one you saw of Heloisa at the tax office.”

  “Open it up!” I reached for it.

  “It must be played in Mitzi’s presence.”

  “How do you know?”

  He just looked at me.

  I shook my head, got to my feet, and dusted off my legs. “Never mind.” We went inside to await her return.

  DOWN AT THE library, Mitzi was frustrated. The only references to griffins were in fairy tales, hardly helpful. The library in the center of town was large and old, and she always felt comfortable there. This had been such a strange time of discovery; she was disappointed her go-to haven didn’t have all the answers. Even though she gave up the search for information on the magical world she now knew existed, she still wasn’t ready to go home.

  Thinking back to the conversation around the kitchen table this morning, she asked to see microfiche of the museum property, to see if she could find out who owned it. The librarian, an eightyish woman in comfortable clothes, was ecstatic someone was asking how to use the microfiche.

  “What with the advent of the Internet, most folks just come in to do Google searches or look for books to help with a research paper.”

  “Mmm hmm.” Mitzi didn’t want to be rude, but she needed to see what was on those reels. After more chatter and a couple of misses, she found the following in an old article from the Merryville Bee.

  August 12, 1922. Josiah Windingle, builder of the Merryville Museum of Art, today joined city fathers to dedicate the newly built complex to future generations. The project was met with cheers, but it has not been without controversy. The land was once owned by a Spanish family who still claimed ownership of the prized parcel. The family was granted the land and has family ancestors buried there. An agreement between the two factions was resolved just in time for the ground breaking.

  Mitzi wondered if there wasn’t more to discover. Returning to the chatty librarian, she asked for other ways to dig into the old controversy. “Sure, there’s another newspaper, The Merida Times. It stopped publishing shortly after the turn of the century, only ninety-something years ago, really not all that long in the scheme of things.” Mitzi loved to research and was like Brutus chasing a mouse, single-minded and focused.

  AFTER LUNCH, JUNIPER went back to the museum. She still had her key and went to the main gallery. The Fiona Castlebaum exhibit on homeless and feral cats was, of course, gone. In its place, Dick Mortimer, in his last installation to curate, had placed a very safe but completely out-of-touch “Founding Fathers” exhibit. It was clear to her trained eyes the installation had been hastily cobbled together from stock photos in the storage basement. Juniper was sure that the current “City Fathers,” such as Mayor Tom Reed, gave Dick his marching orders, in order to rehabilitate their reputations after the day her life changed so dramatically with the Floodlight installation. That seemed light-years ago.

  She walked from the beginning, as if a visitor to the museum. There were pictures in black and white of the original dig and a piece on the Windingle family. She scanned the stories of how oil changed this beach town from a marshy backwater, and the Windingles’ role in building a town from a getaway for Hollywood stars into a sprawling metropolis. There were stories about fundraising for local charities and the new no-kill shelter that actually killed quite a lot of animals. The exhibit was unchallenging and boring and was very selective of which truth to tell.

  Now Dick Mortimer was dead.

  As she had done before when puzzled by a piece, Juniper sat alone on a cube in the center of the museum, in the enormous space, and let her muses speak to her. She didn’t know where they would take her, but she knew the current exhibit had to go, or at least be turned on its dull head. The tinkling sound of her cell phone shook her from her reverie. When she answered, the muses gave her a very excited Mitzi Fowler. She sat in the semi-dark, and a smile slowly spread as she listened to an amazing tale that had yet to be told to a modern audience.

  Across town...

  ALEXANDRA STEPHANOVSKY STRAIGHTENED her purple derby hat and went through three different scarves in her blazer pocket before a
nnouncing one perfect. She took her private elevator down to the secure front door and checked for messages at the front desk. “Just one,” the clerk said, handing over an envelope with spidery writing. She looked at what appeared to be an invitation, then she chucked it in her bag and headed out to meet Charlie Potts for that drink.

  She took an Uber to Denny’s, on the corner of Briar and Obispo.

  DETECTIVE POTTS ARRIVED at their agreed-upon location, a place at which Alex had said neither of their friends would ever show, not knowing he ate there at least once a week. He played with the mat in front of him, straightened it out several times, and checked his watch again. He knew it wasn’t a real date but couldn’t help but look forward to seeing her again.

  The waitress brought another pot of coffee over, but he said no, hoping his bladder wouldn’t burst before she even arrived. He was distracted and didn’t notice a uniformed colleague until he eased into the booth. The officer was about five-feet, six-inches tall, with brown eyes and wavy black hair. His name tag had a piece of black electrical tape over it. “I was hoping I could find you here.”

  “Wow, maybe you should put in for detective.”

  The younger man said, “I won’t stay long. Just need to deliver a message.”

  He looked like a cop—short, trimmed mustache—but his eyes were off somehow.

  “So deliver.”

  “Stay away from the museum, and don’t turn on your brothers.”

  “Says who? Who is sending this mysterious message? If you have nothing to hide, why worry?”

  “I’m giving you some friendly advice. Next time we won’t use words.”

  Potts was up and out of the booth in a nanosecond, blood boiling, “Who’s this ‘we’ business? I’ll have your badge, you pipsqueak. You’ve already crossed the line by threatening me.” He reached across to rip off the tape.

  The young man stood up and evaded his moves. “You need to retire, old man. Haven’t you embarrassed the department enough?” Just then Alexandra burst through the door, impossible to miss. The young cop looked at her, then back at Potts. “Apparently not.”

  A mom with her crying toddler in tow moved in front of him, making a beeline to the bathroom. The stranger was out the door in a flash and disappeared around the corner.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Alex said, apparently reading the situation. Potts threw a ten on the table and followed her out. She looked over her shoulder and batted her eyes. “Got a car? Let me guess, that old decommissioned Crown Vic.”

  Charlie felt pretty low. He was so easy to read. “Sure, outdated, just like me.”

  “Let’s change it.”

  “What?”

  “What kind of car do you like, not just what car you accept.” They got into the car, with her trying not to touch the insides. He grinned.

  “Sure, gimme a Porsche Carrera.” He backed the old car out and headed for the Pacific Coast Highway.

  “Seriously, what do you make? Seventy-eighty grand a year?”

  He pulled his head back into his neck, making the frown that says, “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s nunya. None of your business. Where’s this going?”

  She sighed. “Sometimes you just have to stir things up a bit, Charlie, to get a fresh perspective.”

  The feeling of being the center of her attention was uncomfortable but in a good way. “What are you, my fairy godmother?”

  She smiled and her eyes looked up and to the left.

  He had worries about what had just happened and about the case, and he hated being in the dark, but really enjoyed the presence of the dapper little defense attorney. What the hell. “Where to?”

  “Let’s go to the Auto Square.” She put her hands together in her lap, obviously pleased.

  “What?”

  “We need to swap out cars. If we go to the Mercedes dealer, they have donuts and cappuccino.”

  “You’re crazy.” He was smiling, driving like a cop does, eyes constantly roving, edging the car in traffic toward the freeway leaving for Los Angeles County.

  “Probably. Just drive. Indulge me. Now, what just happened in there? Who was that cop?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure he was a cop. He had tape over his name.”

  She was all business now. “You know everybody in the precinct?”

  He didn’t answer and checked the rearview mirror. He patted his pocket for cigarettes. “Not the new recruits necessarily.”

  She fingered her pearls then opened her purse and shook out one of her Virginia Slims. “It looked like you two were going to start throwing punches.” They drove in silence.

  He lit the skinny cig and took a long drag, finally saying, “Sounds like you think we’re being followed, or are going to be followed. Why?”

  “Sit tight. I’m going to tell you a story.” Alex proceeded to tell him about her involvement in the case, from the initial call from Fiona to represent Valerie to the present time, and just who she believed was pulling the strings. She brought a manila folder out of her satchel and, when they hit the red light, showed him photos that sealed the deal. Potts listened, and even though a bit past his shelf life, he was a good detective. He began to see a larger picture that, until now, had been obscured.

  It only took twenty minutes or so to get to the Auto Square, just like the commercials promised, but in that time Charlie heard so much his head spun. “We’ve got to take this to the mayor. If someone at the precinct is involved, I want our butts covered.”

  “Are you sure we can trust him?”

  They got out of the old Crown Vic, and he went around to open Alex’s car door. “You should talk. Why should I believe you? Defense attorneys are paid to spin tall tales.”

  She fixed him with her serious face, but it softened, and she said, “Because I’m working for good and against evil, nothing less.” She left him in a swirl of her soft perfume and walked toward the tall, glass-and-chrome entrance to the fanciest car dealer Charlie had ever been to, except one time when he had to question a witness. “All-righty then.”

  At the Mercedes dealer, they acted like regular shoppers, checking out all the new and used cars. Charlie was drawn to a Chrysler 300 that looked like a Bentley, as Alex tried to convince him of the many charms of a German automobile. Potts started to think it was time to update his ride and said he’d had enough of Germany. When they returned from a test drive, he put the car in park, looked straight at Alex, and said, “You sure about all of this? Cuz if you’re wrong...” He pawed his pocket but decided not to light up and ruin the new-car smell.

  After what he’d seen at Babs and Henry’s with that Elsa, his mind was open to possibilities.

  “I don’t have every single piece of the puzzle yet,” Alex said, “but, yeah, I’m sure.”

  He playfully rested his cheek on his fist and said, “When you said we were gonna have a drink, I thought you meant a drink.” His thumb and pinky mimicked tipping a beer. He was smiling now.

  “There are all sorts of drinks, right? I like caffeine. If I’m right about a few things, we’re going to be up awhile.” The young hipster salesman came over to them and gave them a quote on taking the old Crown Vic as a down payment on the impressive-looking Chrysler 300.

  BACK AT THE house, Ekk and I waited for Mitzi, but Puddle made it home first, both hands full of department store bags. “Hey, Panda Bear. Hey, little man.” Ekk was heading to the kitchen, and I could see him cringe. He didn’t like being called that.

  I put aside my own worries and was glad to see her. “How did your shopping go?”

  “Fabu, but ohmygosh things have gotten so expensive! In India, I could have spent a fraction for the same things.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Honestly, I was ready for some American R. E. I.,” referring to the sports store. She loved to spell things out. “Sometimes I do miss California.”

  “But you’re taking off again.”

  “Let’s not talk about tha
t.” She flung herself down on the couch, and a wave of patchouli drifted by. “Where’s Mitz?”

  I sat down in the overstuffed chair near her. “She should be home any minute from the library.”

  As if on cue, Mitzi’s keys turned in the door. She came in very excited and talking. I nearly tripped over Brutus as Puddle and I raced Ekk for the door. Mitzi fell into my arms. After all we had been through, our romance had definitely kicked up a notch. After a kiss, I said, “How was your research quest?”

  Her blue eyes shimmered with excitement, “I found a piece to the puzzle...actually a couple of pieces.”

  Ekk, who’d been waiting patiently, said, “We have a message from Ehrenhardt.” He turned to Puddle and said, “Mitzi’s true father.”

  Puddle beamed. “I love this.” She pawed through her bags.

  Mitzi sat on the arm of my chair, and I took my place in it. Ekk made sure the blinds were closed and then touched the new stone on his tiny dagger. As before, a hologram about the size of a Barbie doll took form, but this time, the king of Hercynian Garden, Ehren, the proud griffin, appeared, dragging his broken wing.

  Puddle stopped crinkling her bags and turned to me. “This is awesome, sis, better than a movie.” I shushed her.

  Ehren spoke, his voice strong and commanding as usual. “Darling daughter, and my new daughter, Panda, we at the Hercynian Garden owe you a debt. You are both worthy and brave. Word has come to me that, for now, the evil of the Wolf-Raven coalition has been halved. The ravens are now neutral and have been a great help in this endeavor. It is an uneasy truce at times, but the world is more in balance than it was when I first sent Heloisa to you.”

  Puddle started to ask a question but was shushed by everyone. Ekk whispered, “It’s a recording that only plays once.”