by Matt Lincoln
“Why even have something here for people to walk past if it isn’t important,” she complained, putting her hands on her hips again. “I mean, come on? Just put some gift shop in front of it or something instead of down there.”
She gestured in the direction of the gift shop down the street with a huff, and I laughed.
“I imagine for this,” I said, pointing at a statue of a smart-looking sailor in the middle of a garden in front of the door. The statue was surrounded by trickling fountains and benches for people to sit and enjoy the flora and the view of the beach down below.
“It does look like a nice little area,” Tessa reasoned, stepping over to the fountain surrounding the statue and holding her hand out to let some water trickle onto her.
“This whole place seems nice,” I said, stepping up beside her and leaning back with my hands on my hips, stretching myself out after a long day of travel.
We stood in silence for some time, enjoying the garden and the view and the steady sounds of the fountain trickling against the backdrop of waves softly pounding against the shore down on the waterfront.
It wasn’t long before I started to get a weird feeling like we weren’t alone. I glanced over at Tessa and could see in her eyes that she was getting a similar feeling.
Then we heard the unmistakable sound of a single footstep.
There was no one else that we had seen in the downtown area since our arrival, just the kids we heard playing on the beach, and they were long gone by then since the sun had finished setting.
I quickly drew my gun and searched the area, with Tessa sticking close behind me the whole time. But we didn’t find anything.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” Tessa suggested with a glance back in the direction of the parking lot once I had scoped out the entire street, to no avail.
“That’s not a bad idea,” I murmured, gesturing for her to move in front of me as we made our way back to our rental car.
11
Ethan
“What do you think that was about?” Tessa asked once we were safely driving to a bed-and-breakfast that I had found on the Internet the night before. “Just nerves from a long day?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head and setting my mouth in a firm line. “But I definitely heard something. You definitely heard something, right?”
“Yeah, I did,” she confirmed with a curt nod and a hard swallow. “And I felt like I was being watched. But that doesn’t mean anything, right? It could’ve just been our minds playing tricks on us.”
“One of us, and I might buy that,” I said, shaking my head again as I rounded a corner and took us out of the downtown area and toward a more residential part of town. “But both of us? No way. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that you should always trust your instincts. Yeah, sometimes they’re wrong. But more often than not, they’re right, and ignoring them could get you in a lot of trouble.”
“I guess you are the expert,” Tessa said warily, and I could tell that she had been hoping for me to give a different answer.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, reaching out and squeezing one of her hands, which was scrunched up into a fist in her lap. “Nothing happened. We’re fine. And no more sneaking around at night, okay?”
“Agreed,” Tessa said darkly, turning to look out the window as I rounded yet another corner and drove along a street that paralleled the ocean. We could see a thin line of water beneath the horizon to our left.
I narrowed my eyes in thought as I redirected my attention forward. I’d reassured Tessa, but I hadn’t exactly managed to reassure myself. What had happened behind the museum may have been nothing. It was true. The strange sound could’ve easily been caused by a squirrel or some other form of wildlife, and the eerie feeling we had both had of being watched could’ve just been a coincidence, or the result of a combination of a long day of travel and our existing concerns about the museum, as Tessa had already suggested.
Still, I was hesitant to write it off as such, especially after the thinly veiled threat the museum director had sent my way that morning. And it was true that my gut was telling me that someone really had been watching us there in the garden, though how they could’ve escaped my detection once I started looking around was beyond me. If there had been anyone else on that street, we would’ve known. And escaping before I started scoping out the place would’ve no doubt alerted us to their attention, as well.
So only one option remained, if my gut was to be believed: someone had been watching us from inside the museum or one of the other shops surrounding it.
I had remembered seeing a few windows on the second floor of the back of the museum, but there hadn’t been any light coming from them, either, and I hadn’t given them much thought until now.
But someone must’ve been inside. I was sure of it, now that I considered the possibility. And as for that sound that we heard? It could’ve come from inside the museum. Perhaps someone opened a window or was coming to spy on us from behind that door. Perhaps they even could’ve opened the door, and we heard them walking toward us as we stood in the garden, but when they realized that we heard them, they scurried back inside before we had a chance to turn around.
I turned this all over in my head until we arrived at the bed-and-breakfast, a tall old house sitting on a quiet little corner in a residential neighborhood, and looking warm and inviting with garden gnomes out front and a deep magenta shade of pink coating the outside.
We parked in the empty driveway and headed up the front walkway.
An older woman greeted us at the door before I even had a chance to knock.
“Hello, young man,” she said, smiling down at me where I stood on the steps. “Are you looking for a place to stay tonight?”
“We were hoping you had an opening, yes,” I said, giving her my best smile and thinking that it was nice to be called ‘young man’ at my age. I supposed I was young compared to the woman, at least.
“Oh, we do,” she said, giving both Tessa and me a toothy grin. “Come on in, come on in!”
I went to retrieve our luggage from the car as Tessa followed the old woman inside. I met them at the front desk area next to a wooden stairwell. The area was carpeted in an ornate magenta rug to match the exterior of the large old house.
“And how long do you think you will be staying?” the woman asked.
I exchanged a look with Tessa.
“A couple of days, at least,” I reasoned. “Maybe a little longer. Why don’t you put us down for three nights for the time being?”
“Of course, of course,” the mousy little woman, who looked to be in her seventies, said, tapping away on an old, boxy computer. “I’m sure we’ll be able to accommodate you if you end up staying longer. One room?”
“Yes,” Tessa confirmed, and I let her take the lead on that one, not wanting to be presumptuous.
“Here you are, Mr. Marston,” the woman said when she had taken my credit card, handing over two sets of keys and a directory of nearby restaurants and attractions. “I’m Paulina. If you need anything during your stay, just let me know. Now, what brings you two to our little neck of the woods all the way from Florida?”
I realized she must’ve seen my address on my payment information.
“Oh, we’re just here for a little getaway,” I said as I took my card back and returned it to its place in my wallet. “We were going to check out the nautical museum tomorrow.”
The old woman perked up at this.
“Ah, my friend Martha is the manager there,” she gushed with a wide smile on her face. “You’ll love it, I’m sure. She’s so thorough. The exhibits are always very educational. They make school trips there all the time, and the university even has its own intern program there.”
I exchanged a bemused look with Tessa.
“You know the manager?” I asked, and Paulina nodded. “You know, I’ve actually been trying to get in touch with her for a while now.”
/> I leaned casually on the front desk, not wanting it to seem like I took this all that seriously.
“Oh, really?” Paulina asked with a worried expression on her face. “She shouldn’t be all that hard to reach if you just call the museum. The number’s right there on their website. Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to find things like that these days? In my time, sometimes it took forever to find it, and by then, you might as well have just gone down in person yourself.”
“Right, I’ve called a few times,” I said, though this was putting it mildly. “Have you seen Martha at all lately?”
“Well, she was at our knitting circle last week,” Paulina said with another smile. “They hold it at the yarn store downtown. You know, while you’re here, you should check them out, too. They’re a nice little place. It would be a great gift for your mothers, I’m sure! The address is right here on my list of attractions downtown.”
She gestured at the pamphlet she had given to Tessa covered in restaurants and other spots to go in Walldale.
“Thanks, we’ll have to check it out,” I said, having no intention of doing so. “Has Martha mentioned anything about the museum lately? Maybe about a missing artifact, or something like that?”
I studied Paulina’s reaction closely, though my gut told me that she had nothing to do with all of this.
“A missing artifact,” she gasped, clutching a hand to her chest. “Why, no, she never said anything about that. And I didn’t read anything about it in the papers, and I’m sure it would’ve been there. No, you must be mistaken, Mr. Marston. It can’t be.”
By the end of this little speech, she seemed to have convinced herself that it was true, working her way from sheer horror at the thought to concern that I had been fed some kind of misinformation.
“Maybe so,” I said, smiling at her. “I hope you’re right. Either way, do you think you could convince Martha to meet with us? She’s been a little hard to reach.”
“I can go down to the museum with you myself in the morning, if you’d like,” Paulina suggested, suddenly excited at the idea of getting out of the house. I got the sense that she didn’t do that a lot.
“That would be greatly appreciated,” I said, taking one of her wrinkled hands between both of my own and squeezing it gently. She seemed to like that, and the smile returned to her face.
“I’m looking forward to it, Mr. Marston,” she said. “Of course, you’ll have breakfast down here with us in the morning, I hope? We make it for all our guests, starting at eight every morning.”
“Of course, we’re looking forward to it, too,” I said, and Tessa nodded in confirmation.
“And what’s your name, dear?” Paulina asked, holding one of her hands out for Tessa to shake.
“Tessa,” she said, smiling and nodding at the woman and shaking her hand softly.
“Such a nice young couple,” the old woman gushed, looking between us, and I could tell that Tessa was stifling a laugh as she looked down at the floor.
“Is there anything else you could tell us about the museum or the town?” Tessa asked her when she’d recovered. “Anything odd going on lately?”
“Odd?” Paulina repeated, shaking her head in confusion. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, I don’t know, nothing seems out of place?” I asked her. “No new people in town, or anything like that?”
As innocent as Paulina seemed, and as much as I thought she wouldn’t be able to help us much, you never knew when a witness could stumble upon some tidbit that might be important, even if they didn’t realize it themselves. Asking around in this way was a big part of how Holm, Muñoz, and I broke the Keys case, after all. Some random guy named Chad was able to tell us something important—crucial even, even though he had no idea what we were doing or what he was talking about.
“Oh, I couldn’t say, dears,” she said apologetically, shaking her head. “I deal with the tourists, not the real estate market. I could ask Martha in the morning, though, when we see her. She keeps better tabs on such things than I do myself.”
“That would be appreciated,” I said, giving her another smile as I went to gather up Tessa and my luggage again. “Now, where is our room?”
“Oh, just upstairs on to the left,” Paulina said, gesturing feebly in that direction. “Yours will be the door against the back wall, not one of the ones along the hallway. You do ask strange questions if you don’t mind me saying, Mr. Marston.”
“Oh, you’ll have to forgive me,” I said, flashing her a half-grin. “My job involves a lot of investigative work, and even when I’m on vacation, I can’t seem to turn that part of my brain off.”
“Ah, I see,” she chuckled, her voice low and crackly, but not unkind. “Don’t forget to write in the guest book while you’re here!”
12
Ethan
It was a nice room, large but cozy if a little stereotypical of a bed-and-breakfast with its flowery curtains and frilly upholstery.
Once the door was tightly shut behind us, Tessa crossed over to a table beneath a mirror across from the bed and opened a large leather-bound book sitting there.
“This must be the guest book,” she laughed, looking through its pages. “Everyone writes about their experience of staying here. Some of these are kind of funny. It looks like a kid wrote in it while his parents weren’t looking and complained they came here instead of Disney World.”
“That sounds about right,” I chuckled. “Though I would’ve preferred to come here over Disney World when I was a kid.”
“Of course you would’ve,” Tessa said dryly, rolling her eyes.
I checked my phone quickly to see that I had a message from Nina Gosse, the FBI agent. Alas, she was out of the state on assignment, so we wouldn’t be able to meet up while I was there. I was disappointed, but not too much, given that I had Tessa with me.
Nina was very cryptic in her message about the Holland case. She said she couldn’t confirm or deny anything but couldn’t tell me anything, either, which seemed to me like a roundabout way of telling me that she was involved with the case somehow, or at least knew about it.
I shot her a quick message back, asking why, if our agencies were working together, she couldn’t share anything with me.
She responded almost immediately, saying that she would be in touch soon, but until then, she would have to keep things under wraps.
“Anything from Holm?” Tessa asked, looking up from the guest book to see me absorbed by my phone.
“No, nothing,” I said, shaking my head as I double-checked to make sure that there was nothing from my partner. “Must’ve been a quiet day after I left. I do have something from that FBI agent we worked with in New Orleans, but she’s cagey about the whole thing.”
“Cagey?” Tessa repeated, arching an eyebrow at this. “Do you think she’s working the same case as you guys?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, frowning down at my phone as I sent Nina a quick text saying that I understood her situation and thanking her for staying in touch with me. “She didn’t say that outright, but I don’t know… it’s kind of like the way she didn’t say it confirmed it if that makes any sense.”
“I know what you mean,” Tessa said, walking over to me and wrapping an arm around my waist. “This has been a long day, hasn’t it?”
She sighed and rested her head around my shoulder as I pocketed my phone and wrapped an arm around her in turn.
“You could say that again,” I murmured into her hair.
We stood there for a few moments, just enjoying each other’s presence there after such a long time apart, and such a stressful time for both of us.
“I really thought that someone was watching us back there,” she said, raising her head from the crook of my neck at long last and beginning to unpack her bag and pile her few belongings into the dresser.
I realized that she had packed real light for someone spending a long time in the Yukon, with just one suitcas
e and her carry-on. She was low maintenance, something I admired a lot about her. She was less concerned with the material things in life and more concerned with chasing the next big story.
“Yeah, so did I,” I said, bending down and beginning to unpack my own sparse possessions, or that is to say one pair of jeans, a couple of shirts, and the fake version of Grendel’s journal.
I pulled the book back from where I’d left it when I tossed it into the bag carelessly back at my houseboat. I was almost a little disappointed that it hadn’t gotten jostled around a bit more during my flight, given how annoyed I’d become with the object in the past few weeks.
I thumbed through the yellowed pages, acting out what had basically become a nervous tick at that point, peering inside at the blackened words as the pages flipped by me.
“Is that what I think it is?” Tessa asked, freezing in her tracks as she was on her way back to the dresser and pointing at the journal, her eyes wide with excitement.
“Don’t get too excited,” I said, handing it over to her and watching almost longingly as she began to look through it.
I wasn’t sure why, but even then, I felt attached to the journal. Annoyed enough with it to want it jostled around, but attached nonetheless. I supposed that I’d had it with me for so long at that point, and it had occupied my mind for even longer, that handing it over to someone else induced a kind of separation anxiety.
It was all irrational, anyway. I wasn’t going to learn anything from that journal. If I was, I would’ve figured it out by now.
“This is so weird,” Tessa breathed as she sunk down on the foot of the bed, her eyes glued to the journal’s pages. “The writing… it gets borderline incoherent at one point. And then everything starts getting blacked out, not that a lot of it wasn’t already.”
“I know,” I said, running a hand wearily through my hair. “I’ve spent hours looking at that thing. Days, even. We’re not going to learn anything from it. It’s just a bad copy with anything resembling something useful redacted from it.”