The Keeper of Lost Things

by Jamie Campbell

  OF COURSE.

  “You probably never guessed what a messed up family you were getting involved with when you first talked to me,” I said, remembering the first time Frankie had spoken to me. He shouldn’t have walked away from me then, he should have run.

  “Everyone has weirdness in their families,” Frankie replied. “It just varies in degrees.”

  “Come on, you have the most normal family in the world.”

  “That’s so not true. I have an uncle in jail, an aunt in the Amazon jungle researching worms, and one of my grandmothers has been on the TV show Extreme Hoarders. Not just Hoarders, but Extreme Hoarders.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Really?” My eyebrows both arched in disbelief but he really was telling the truth.

  Huh.

  I guess what was the point of having skeletons in your closet if they didn’t dance a little and have some fun?

  “Oh, and Mary? My sister that answered the door? She has to see a therapist once a month because she thinks she can remember a past life where she was a cat.”

  “Now you’re joking.”

  “Nope.” He was trying to keep the smile from his face but I got the feeling he was again speaking only the truth. His family looked so picture perfect on the outside. I guess anything could be interpreted from the outside in.

  I pushed him playfully. “Wow, Frankie. You make my family seem normal. Thanks for that. I feel so much better now. You’ve saved me a lifetime’s worth of therapy.”

  “Glad I could help.” He chuckled back and I felt good for the first time all day. What I was going through really sucked but Frankie made it bearable. I couldn’t even imagine what I would have done if I’d had to deal with it all alone.

  Being a basket case sprung to mind.

  We caught our breath again before we continued the conversation. Frankie placed his arm around me and pulled me close. “Remember, Em, our families don’t define who we are. No matter what happens, we are still our own people. You’re still going to be awesome no matter what your dad does.”

  He pulled me into a hug and it was the best place in the world to be. I could have snuggled up against his chest for the rest of my life. Breathing in his scent, listening to his steady heartbeat, feeling the strength of his arms.

  It would never have been my choice to leave his embrace.

  But I had to.

  Because there was movement at number forty-nine.

  Chapter 25

  The steel grey gate opened first. It pulled back on itself and allowed a sleek black BMW to pass through. The car pulled onto the street and moved slowly down the road, barely making a noise in the quiet neighborhood.

  We instantly moved.

  Frankie was on his bike and I was on the handlebars so quickly we were blurred like in a cartoon. The poor guy peddled so fast I thought he was going to give himself a coronary heart attack.

  The BMW had to stop at several red lights, allowing us to catch up with it every time. The traffic was still pretty bad from rush hour while people were still making their way home from work for the day. The darkness of the night made it seem like later than it actually was.

  I hung on the bike so hard my knuckles turned white. I trusted Frankie with my life but we had to be going forty kilometers an hour and neither of us had any protective gear on. Some knee pads or helmets wouldn’t have gone astray. As much as I liked to live life on the edge, this was a bit close to the cusp for my comfort.

  The black BMW went around a corner in the distance and we lost sight of it. By the time we rounded the same bend, it was completely gone. Frankie refused to give up, he peddled faster. His poor legs had to be killing him by now.

  “Frankie, it’s okay,” I said. The air was rushing against my face as we raced along the sidewalk. I risked gripping my hair in one hand so it didn’t flick in his face and cause some sight issues. It made my balance a bit more vicarious. “He’s probably not going anywhere exciting anyway.”

  Frankie spoke through gritted teeth. “We’ve come this far. He’s not getting away.”

  His breaths were short and gasping, his limbs burning, I’m sure. Still, Frankie did not give up. He peddled that bicycle like his life depended on it and there was a million dollars at the end of our journey.

  We went around another corner.

  The black BMW was there.

  He had slowed down to pull into a driveway. Frankie had to slow his pace so we didn’t run straight into the side of it. We came to a halt about a hundred meters away and waited for the BMW to make the next move.

  The car slid into the driveway and we could then see the signage on the other side of the drive. It was Pack, Stack, & Store, a storage facility for the long and short term customers. For a weekly or monthly fee, they could purchase a storage locker and dump all their junk there.

  As the car went deeper into the row of lockers, we walked up to the gate to get a better look. The darkness of the evening was shielding us pretty well. Plus, we faced each other so it looked like we were having a conversation instead of loitering and watching the storage facility.

  Which, of course, we were.

  The BMW stopped about a third of the way down. The headlights went off before the driver stepped out. Judging by the silhouette, it was a man with the beginnings of a pot belly. He unlocked a padlock on the storage locker door and then heaved it open.

  We moved positions to the other side of the driveway so we could get a better view inside the locker. It was still hard to see but if I stood on my tiptoes I could get a glimpse inside when the guy moved to the side.

  I wasn’t sure if I was seeing right.

  “Do you see what I see?” I asked. It was a stupid question but my brain wasn’t really functioning correctly by that stage. It felt like I was seeing things and now I didn’t know anything.

  “I think I see a lot of money,” Frankie replied. So it wasn’t just me then.

  The man rifled around in the storage locker for a few minutes. He moved thick wads of money from one shelf to another as if it was in his way. I mean, if it was really that much of a hassle to him I’m sure there were plenty of people willing to help him out with that particular problem.

  You didn’t hear people complaining too often of having too much money to store.

  Hadn’t he ever heard of a place called a bank? It was a really handy place, they looked after all your money for you. All you had to do was use a little plastic card instead of carrying around all that burdensome cash.

  Behind the dough was the white stuff.

  And then it all made sense.

  Drugs.

  The money was still in cash form because it came from the sale of illegal drugs. I was no substance expert but I would put my money on it being heroin or cocaine or something similar. It was white and it looked powdery.

  Every little piece I had tried to put together to form a picture suddenly fell into place. They fell into a pattern like little mosaic tiles, floating onto the ground and forming the most intricate of patterns I had ever seen.

  It was beautiful, really.

  The way they all worked together. It was like they were snowing around me. Falling together and locking as if the facts and details always belonged with one another.

  I wished Frankie could see them. I wished everyone could see them like I did. All around me the whispery pieces spoke the words I had tried to form into a story all along but couldn’t get to work.

  Now they spoke.

  And the story they told wasn’t one I liked.

  But I did know what happened.

  The realization made me stumble backwards as I fell off my tiptoes. I also fell right into the snowflakes of facts where I felt certain I would be able to make angels out of the details.

  “We need to go back to Samantha’s house,” I said as I started walking. To make sure Frankie followed I took his bike with me. He wouldn’t stay there without it.

  It took
a few moments for him to catch up to me.

  I was walking that fast.

  “Why? What’s there?” he asked. His confusion was written in every wrinkle on his wonderful face. “Did you see all the drugs and money in that storage locker? These people are dangerous. We should go to the police and tell them what we saw. We need to report them.”

  “We need to go to Samantha’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to be sure.”

  “Of what?” He took the bike from my hands and stopped, like he was going to be fueled by answers and wouldn’t go any further without any.

  He deserved them but there was no time. I needed answers of my own and I would have more to share after I had been to Samantha’s and saw what I needed to see.

  “I promise I will explain everything once I’m there,” I offered. It was all I had. If Frankie was even a fraction of the boy I thought he was it would be enough for him.

  We had a standoff that was only seconds long but seemed to stretch out into hours when measured in the heartbeats echoing frantically in my chest.

  They thudded in warped speed.

  Frankie nodded as he came to a decision in his head. He climbed onto his bike and patted the handlebars. “You’d better get on if we’re going to hurry. The Bolero Express is about to leave the station.”

  His smile lit up the night.

  It was my beacon of hope.

  I jumped on and gripped the cold steel of his bike as if my life depended on it.

  Because someone’s did.

  Chapter 26

  Samantha was in a messy state when I roused her from in front of the television. She was already in her pajamas even though it was only seven o’clock.

  April was already in bed, sent earlier so Mommy could have some alone time because she was tired. The news of our father’s so-called death had not reached her young ears yet, apparently.

  All that information was given to me in one long stream of information about two seconds after I was through the front door. I swore to Samantha I was only going to be there for a minute and no longer, I wasn’t there to cause her any problems. I just wanted to see a photo.

  “A photo? What for?” she asked. Frankie’s ears perked up too, wanting to know the answer just as eagerly at my side. He was still puffing from his heroic cycling efforts. Getting us across Lakeside in record time was like preparing for the Olympics.

  “I don’t have time to explain right now, I just need to see it. Please?” I said. It wasn’t true, of course. There was no real urgency and all the time in the world.

  It was only my father’s life at stake.

  He may still have been alive or he may have been killed already.

  A few minutes of explanation could have been factored into the time budget. But, still, why risk it?

  While Samantha still buzzed with confusion, I pushed past her and went to the photograph in question. It was a habit I had learned over my life, I scanned locations. Normally it was to look for lost things. However it also came in handy to really see my surroundings.

  When I looked at things, I actually saw things.

  The shoddy paint job my father probably did one weekend himself instead of hiring a professional, the skirting board that had been replaced in one area where the paint work didn’t quite match up, the piece of Lego hidden underneath the drawers, the fact there wasn’t one piece of dust on the countertop, and the perfectly aligned photographs that all pointed frontwards in a row.

  In one of those pictures was my father. He was standing outside a log cabin with a man. They were shaking hands and smiling, rugged up and surrounded by snow. The lake in the background was frozen over and it was obviously taken in the middle of winter.

  It had taken me a while to place the man. At first I had no idea who he was because I’d never seen him before.

  Then I met him.

  It took a few days after that for me to place him as the man in the picture.

  It happened tonight.

  He lived at number forty-nine Twiningdale Drive.

  His name was Derrick Bowden.

  And he had a stash of drugs and money in a storage locker.

  I picked up the photograph and traced my father’s face with my finger, wishing I could reach inside and ask him what had happened between them. Were they really friends? Were they still, even now?

  At least there was one person in the room that still might be able to provide an answer. I held the photograph up to Samantha so she could see it clearly. “Do you know the man in this picture?”

  She took it from me and replaced it on the counter, making sure it was perfectly straight once more. My stepmother had a touch of OCD in her. “Yes, he’s a friend of your father’s. Or, at least, was.”

  “They’re not friends anymore?”

  “I mean, while he was alive.”

  “That man is still alive,” I pointed out, remembering how he was living and breathing only minutes earlier. I had seen him with my own two eyes.

  “I was referring to your father,” Samantha said sadly with a whimper. I wanted to kick myself. I had to remember that she thought Marshall Gabrielle was dead. She didn’t share my thoughts and I wasn’t about to convince her otherwise without any proof.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s going to take a while for the news to sink in. I still don’t know how I’m going to tell April.” Fresh tears started to prick her red eyes and I felt like the worst person on the planet for putting her through this.

  I forced myself to continue on before I chickened out. This was for the greater good. The end had to justify the means, I would make sure of it.

  “The other man,” I started again, “they were good friends?”

  The tiniest of smiles graced her lips as she recalled a memory. “Very good friends. They went on a fishing trip every winter. Derrick would insist on Marshall staying at his cabin in the woods for the week. They’d have their male bonding time and come home smelling like fish. Marshall loved it.”

  “Where is this cabin?” I asked.

  Samantha shrugged, staring at the photograph with misty eyes. “Marshall said it was out on Highway Eleven, just past the turnoff with the Hanging Tree. We drove past it a few times on our way to my mother’s house. It’s so isolated out there, always kind of gave me the creeps, if I was being honest. But Marshall loved it. Men.” She laughed a little under her breath but it was a half-sob at the same time.

  I gave her an awkward hug in goodbye. “Thanks, Samantha. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? Try to get some sleep.”

  “That’s all you want to know?”

  “That’s all for now.”

  She still looked confused when she closed the door on us.

  The moment we were outside, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and pulled up the bus schedule. Frankie hovered around me, a thousand questions just burning on the tip of his tongue.

  Surprisingly, the first thing he said wasn’t one of them. “You think this Derrick guy has your father in the cabin, don’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you going to tell me who he is?”

  “I am going to tell you everything. Just as soon as I figure out a way to get to Highway Eleven using the Lakeside Bus Service.” I searched with lightning speed through all the different routes. Throughout my sixteen years I thought I’d just about mastered the system but there were places even I’d learned were black holes of the system.

  Frankie sighed and pulled out his cell phone, tapping on the screen before giving up and calling information instead. While he waited on hold, I continued to search and scroll through all the various routes.

  The best I could do was get to the roadhouse that was still twenty miles from the highway. I would still have to hitch a ride from there to the cabin and I wasn’t prepared to make myself into a victim in the process. I valued my life, I didn’t want to end up as a True Crime Story in the process.

  Frankie thank
ed the operator and ended the call. “Well?” I asked eagerly, hoping he’d had more luck speaking with a real person.

  “She laughed at me. Told me good luck,” he said, ruining all my optimism.

  “Damn it.”

  “I could ask my parents but they’re going to want a full explanation about what’s going on.”

  “No. I don’t want them dragged into this. It could be dangerous out there,” I said. There was absolutely no way the good Bolero family was going to get wrapped up in this mess.

  No freaking way.

  I had three options.

  Steal a car and learn how to drive.

  Walk.

  Beg and plead with Uncle Marvin, and by some sheer miracle, he agreed to take me out there.

  Each seemed just as unlikely as the previous option. But only one seemed like the quickest option. I was going to have to go home and speak to my nearest and dearest.

  “I have to get Uncle Marvin to take me,” I said.

  “Do you think he will?”

  “Crazier things have happened.”

  “True that,” Frankie said. And just like that, I burst out laughing. Because, surely, Frankie going gangster was much crazier than anything else that was going to happen that night.

  Suddenly my chances with Uncle Marvin didn’t seem so bad.

  We made the pilgrimage back home with an urgency that didn’t seem misplaced. I had nothing but a hunch but I felt closer to my father than I had in ten years. He was out there somewhere and for the first time it was quite possible I knew where.

  It seemed ridiculous that it took a kidnapping for me to finally work out where he was. I’d wasted so many seconds, minutes, hours, days, and even months of my life wondering where he was and now I knew. All I had to do was convince an overweight, cynical, and oftentimes grumpy man to take me to him.

  Simple.

  Not.

  Frankie was very quiet as he peddled the bicycle like a boss all the way across Lakeside. He was puffed by the time the brakes squealed to a stop outside the door to our house but he never complained once.

  Even though his legs had to be hurting.