by R M Wild
I tried to remind myself that exhaustion often masquerades as hunger and I didn’t really need to eat any more chocolate, but my emotions called BS on that. Logical reasoning always took a backseat to comfort.
Facing the reality of dwindling guests, I had turned down the heat to save a few pennies and now the house was cold enough to make my teeth chatter. I didn’t have the drive to start a fire, so I went upstairs, yanked the comforter off my bed, and dragged it downstairs, not caring about whatever filth it swept up along the way.
I plopped into the armchair, dangled my legs over the side, and wrapped myself up in the comforter. Finally, while comfort eating chocolate and burying myself in a comforter, I turned to greatest comfort I could think of: escapism.
I opened up a dog-eared copy of The Great Gatsby.
It didn’t work.
Every time I pictured Gatsby’s yellow roadster, it suddenly burst into flames. I tossed it aside and tried reading The Grapes of Wrath, but all the jalopies caught on fire too.
For some reason, my subconscious was equating Phyllis’s death with vehicle fires. Maybe it was because I still couldn’t compute the fact that every time I had driven her Apache on an errand, I had never realized that it was the very same vehicle in which my father, my real father, had picked me up after Eldritch’s hearing.
I finished gnawing on the ear of chocolate and licked my fingernails. With no guests, I needed something else to distract me, something more cerebral. I grabbed a legal pad from under the chair and tried to do some writing. After all, my business was sinking faster than the Hindenburg—Lord, another vehicle that went up in flames—and I needed to figure what kind of a business proposal I was going to make to Peter Hardgrave.
I stared at the dark, fire-less fireplace.
Dear Dad…
I crossed it out.
Hi Peter…
I didn’t even know what I was supposed to call him.
My phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Are you busy?”
I stared at the scribbles on my legal pad. Then I tore out the page and balled it up and tossed it into the fireplace. The ball of paper rebounded off the blackened bricks, bounced around, and landed in a pile of ash.
“Not really,” I said. “What’s happening?”
“Can you come and get me?” Mettle said. “I don’t have a car. It’s still at your place.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the barracks.”
“They’re letting you go?”
“Yeah. I had a long chat with the chief. He settled the charges by taking disciplinary action. I got suspended. One month. No pay. No badge. No gun.”
“And Herrick agreed?”
“Apparently.”
I made a victory fist. Kendall had come through.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that, Matt. It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I would do it again in a heartbeat. It felt good to slug that thug.”
“Maybe next time, you should be a little less punchy.”
“Nope. If I were to change anything, I would break Herrick’s teeth so he had to speak to the judge with a lisp. That would have been pretty funny. My biggest worry is that I won’t have access to the gym. How am I gonna feed the pythons?”
“I could use some help around the house.”
“No way,” he said. “They don’t make aprons in my size.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You coming to get me or what?”
“Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Oh, and Casket? I need you to take the cruiser. I’m not supposed to drive it. They took my keys.”
“Then how—”
“Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through it. Besides, having that thing sit in your driveway isn’t going to be good for attracting any customers. Not unless they think breakfast is a big bag of donuts.”
He was right. A cop car sitting in my driveway might have slowed the traffic, but it sure as heck didn’t entice anyone to stay for the night.
“Open the driver’s side door,” Mettle said, still on the phone. “I always leave it unlocked to improve my response time.”
“That doesn’t sound like procedure.”
“The best cops improvise. As we say, if ain’t directly stated, then the state don’t care.”
“That sounds like a recipe for suspension,” I said.
“When you’re suspended, you don’t have to follow the rules.”
I wasn’t sure I bought that logic. “No, but you still have to obey the law.”
“Stop stalling,” he said.
“I’m nervous.”
“Don’t be. I’ll guide you through it.”
I switched my phone to speaker and lay it on the front seat. Given what I was about to do, I had an urge to go back inside and grab a ski mask.
“Isn’t this cruiser the property of the state?”
“You are trying my patience, Casket. Nobody else is going to drive this car while I’m suspended. That’s like wearing another man’s jock strap. If we’re gonna make any headway on your sister’s disappearance, we’re gonna need a lot more horsepower than your crappy import.”
“Fine, what do I do?”
“You got the drill?”
“Yes,” I said. I had found a box of tools in the shed. I had no idea what Phyllis had used them for.
“How big is the bit?”
“The what?”
“What is the diameter of the metal shaft with the corkscrew grooves that sticks out of the head of the drill?”
“A little smaller than a pencil.”
“Good. Go to the ignition—”
“Is that where you put the key?”
“Yes. You need to drill the lock pins.”
“Through the metal?”
“Yes. The drill should be fine. Make sure you push hard. Position the drill about two-thirds up the slot and drill in about the length of the key.”
My stomach was rebelling. If I screwed it up, I’d destroy the car. “I don’t understand what the point of this is. It would be so much easier if I drove my Honda.”
“Just do it, Casket. They suspended me for crying out loud. If anything, this is payback. Besides, carjacking is an important life skill.”
Whoever said there was a fine line between cops and crooks wasn’t joking.
“Get going, will you? Before somebody sees you.”
I made sure the drill’s battery was snug and then touched the tip of the drill bit to the ignition, squeezed the trigger, and pushed as hard as I could. The drill whirred, the bit inside the hole emitted an ungodly screech, and it screwed out metal shavings.
“It went in, but it’s stuck,” I said.
“There’s a button above the trigger. Reverse the drill and pull it out.”
I did. It whirred and came back out. I was suddenly overcome by a strange elation, one far stronger than when I had graduated from college, and said, “I got it!” Other than cleaning the house, I had never really worked with my hands before. It was incredibly satisfying. “Now what?”
“You got a screwdriver?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, put a screwdriver in the hole you made.”
“Which one? A flatty or a crossy?”
“Geez, Casket. They’re called flatheads or Phillips heads. How do you get any of your house maintenance done?”
“Eldritch helps me when I need it.”
I could practically hear him roll his eyes over the phone. “Grab the flat screwdriver, stick it into the hole you just drilled, and turn it, just like you would turn a key.”
I stuck the screwdriver into the hole and turned it. The engine started and the siren blipped.
I panicked. “It knows I stole it!”
“No, it doesn’t,” Mettle said. “It’s just a dumb car. Turn off the siren. The switch is under the radio.”
I switched it off. “Okay, it’s quie
t.”
“Congratulations,” Mettle said. “You’ve now committed grand theft auto.”
“What?! You said—“
“I’m joking. I’ll see you in a little bit. Try to drive the speed limit.”
The whole drive, I slumped low in the driver’s seat and hid behind the steering wheel. I peeked over the curve of the wheel like a sneaky gremlin, afraid that any motorists would see a timid Ron Weasley driving the cruiser and call the real cops.
I kept my speed well below the limit. All the traffic slowed around me and drove five MPH slower than I did. Everywhere I went, the traffic trembled in my wake. I felt like a traveling black hole that warped space and time around it.
I wanted to wave the traffic on, to make them speed up, but I didn’t want to call attention to myself. Nobody had the guts to pass me, nor to honk. Even when I pulled up to the four-way intersection in town, all the other cars just sat there and waited for me to go first.
To be honest, I can’t say I didn’t get a little tingle from the power. I tapped the gas pedal and the supercharged engine kicked in and shot away from the intersection, spitting gravel at all the normal cars behind me.
No wonder so many cops took advantage of their position. Just sitting in this thing made me feel powerful, like I could do anything in society I wanted. It gave me a new appreciation for all the times that Matt Mettle didn’t bust into someone’s house without a warrant.
Eventually, I pulled off the highway and parked on the shoulder. Mettle didn’t want anyone on the force seeing him get into the cruiser, so he had told me to park at least a mile from the police barracks.
After a few minutes, I saw his muscular form strutting down the highway to meet me.
He opened the driver’s door. “What took you so long?”
“Traffic,” I said. “Everyone slowed down.”
He waved me out of the driver’s seat and I climbed over the center console to the passenger side.
“That’s why you have to use your lights if you want to get anywhere fast,” he said. He leaned over to inspect my work with the screwdriver. “Not bad. For a girl.”
“Your instructions were surprisingly succinct,” I said. “For a meathead.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Now that your business has tanked and I don’t have any bad guys to bust, what do you say we finally go out to dinner?”
Was that was this was all about? “I thought you needed the car to help me get to the bottom of this mess.”
“We will, we will, but not on an empty stomach, duh.”
“I can’t afford to eat out.”
“My treat,” he said.
“You’re suspended.”
“I’ll tap my trust fund.”
“You have a trust fund?”
“Yeah, I’ve got an uncle I trust. He’s been sending me protein money each month in the hopes I’ll pay him back when I win Mr. Universe.”
I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t want protein shakes for dinner. “I’ve got a better idea,” I said, thinking my best bet at this point was to find Peter Hardgrave. “Let’s eat a chocolate cottontail and then go down the rabbit hole.”
14
As expected, there were no guests waiting for me back at the inn. The social media smear campaign had done its job and left a flaming pile of feces all over my virtual step.
We parked the cruiser in the weeds on the side of the house. From the trunk, Mettle retrieved his big police flashlight, as big as a billy club, and followed me into the woods. The sky had grayed for the afternoon and the trees with their twisted branches looked like something out of a Tim Burton film, but I had tromped the trail to the lighthouse so often, I knew it as intimately as I knew The Great Gatsby and could walk the path with my eyes closed if it got too scary.
Behind me, Mettle stomped on a large branch as if to put it out of its mercy. The crunching sounded like a giant stepping on a pile of bones.
“I didn’t bring my swimming boxers,” he said.
“You don’t need them.”
“So we’re going skinny-dipping? It’s a bit cold for that. High tide, too. Otherwise, I’m in.”
“No. There’s an alternate entrance.”
The crunching stopped. “A what?”
“The harbor isn’t the only entrance to the cave,” I said.
“Since when?”
“Since six thousand years ago. Or millions, depending on your version of history.”
“I meant, since when did you know about this?”
“Eldritch showed me. It’s how I found Chrissy’s bracelet.”
“When was this?”
“A few months ago. Before the trial.”
“Hold up,” he said.
I stopped. The harbor breeze was chilling me to the marrow and I wanted to keep moving. “What’s the matter?”
“When were you planning on telling me all this?”
From a tree, I broke off a branch that looked suspiciously like Eldritch’s arthritic fingers and used it to scratch my chin.
“Now, I think. Yes, I think this was the plan all along. I like to keep my friends in the dark.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Rosie. This is serious. You’re telling me that Eldritch kept this entrance hidden from us?”
“Not me. I knew.”
“Even when we brought him down to the station and grilled him, he didn’t say a word.”
“He kept it hidden from everyone. He didn’t want the leaf peepers transforming into cave peepers and swarming the place and making his life miserable. I swore I’d keep it a secret, but seeing how our best lead went up in flames, I don’t where else to look. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.”
“Anything else you’d like to divulge, Ms. Arnold?”
“Who?”
“Bennydick Arnold. The traitor?”
“You mean Benedict?”
“Yeah, the guy who the eggs were named after.”
“I don’t think they used Canadian bacon during the American Revolution.”
“Whatever,” Mettle said.
I whipped the branch off the cliff. It nicked a tree on the way, flew over the edge, and then disappeared. A moment later, there was a faint crash as the wind blew it against the rocks.
“The entrance I’m going to show you is the one that Peter Hardgrave used to try to sneak Chrissy out of Dark Haven.”
“So why is that important?”
“Because there are two other passageways down there. And right now, Peter Hardgrave is missing.”
“And…why would you care if he’s missing? The guy’s a pervert.”
I didn’t want to tell him that Phyllis Martin died right after she revealed Hardgrave’s true identity. Somehow, the events were linked. I knew they were. I could feel their linkage crawling up my arms as tangibly as the harbor breeze. “How is exactly is Peter Hardgrave a pervert?”
“Whoa, a bit defensive here.”
“I am not.”
“Says the defensive one.”
“He’s not a pervert, Matt.”
“Fine. A degenerate. Same thing.”
“Not the same thing. They are different words and they have different meanings,” I said.
“Spare me the English lesson.”
“You think Hardgrave’s a bum, yet you were all too willing to steal all his rum and share it with your cop buddies. That’s like busting someone for illegal pornography and then getting off on it.”
Even in the darkness, I could tell he had turned red. “The thug supposedly escaped from prison, Rosie. He’s a wanted man. The very fact that he made it through that trial without getting shipped back to Leavenworth is either a miracle or an example of how incompetent our courts have become.”
“Or my foster father is a brilliant lawyer.”
Mettle shook his head. “Why do you care so much about this Hard-on fellow all of a sudden?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Hard-GRAVE. Let’s just say he’s more important to this whole mess…and me…than I realize
d.”
We finally emerged in the clearing and circled the electric lighthouse. The ground was still torn up from all the utility work and it felt like we were traversing a section of farmland after the plows had come through and churned up the earth.
“It looks like they held a monster truck rally here,” Mettle said.
Or that. “Maybe the town wanted to plant some strawberries,” I said, trying to stay upbeat.
I grabbed his shoulder to keep from twisting my ankle and he paused and looked at my hand.
I blushed, twice as pink in the revolving light, and removed it.
“Feel free to use me as a crutch anytime you’d like, Casket.”
“I’m not using you as a crutch.”
“Then why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me about this alternate entrance?”
“Because at the time I found it, you were head over balls in love with Bella Donley. Remember her?”
He narrowed his eyebrows. “Is that why this date keeps getting postponed? You’re still jealous of a dead woman?”
“We’re going for a nice walk along the deadly cliff, Matt. Don’t ruin it.”
He shook his head and turned to the lighthouse. Now outfitted with a giant electric bulb and painted with a spiraling red stripe, it looked more like a barber’s pole than a beacon that had saved lives in the harbor for over a century.
“It looks like a giant candy cane.”
“Or a dildo,” Mettle mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The keeper’s house, where Eldritch used to live, was still undergoing renovations to turn it into a mini museum, a place where leaf peepers could eventually come and hide from the cold and pick up a brochure and a map of Dark Haven’s historic properties—if there were any left after the mysterious “private entity” who wanted my house seized them all.
“I can’t believe Eldritch used to live that dump,” Mettle said.
“Me neither.”
With only his meager pension and the few dollars in tips he had picked up from telling stories at my inn, most of the real estate in Dark Haven, cheap as it was, was out of Eldritch’s price range. After the old man moved out of the keeper’s house, Mettle had directed him toward a tiny studio apartment over the Trading Post, a small pawn and consignment shop on the edge of town, the same one in which my alleged sister Lori used to live.