by Jamie Blair
"Brutus had potential," Ben said. "Gus...maybe. Those other two, forget it."
Gus was a Newfoundland, a gentle giant of a dog who was goofy and loving and thought he was as small as Liam. The other two were my twin terrier tanks, Colby and Jack. Mixes of who knew what and all barking, jumping, hyperactive canine craziness. They kept it interesting around here. Isobel was an elderly Shepard who I rescued and then she adopted my sister as her owner. Seeing as how Monica was the only one she didn't growl at, she moved with Monica into her new house.
"Anyway," he said, "Johnna said the only reason she was next door was because you sent her there to search for old diaries to search for evidence. I take it this has to do with the body?"
"Not if you're going to tell me to stay out of it."
"Honestly, I can use the help this time. There's only so much Reins and I can do with a case this cold. Pamela's getting DNA samples, so we might be able to do something with that, but in the meantime, I'm at a standstill."
"You haven't found any missing people from that far back?"
"I don't have anywhere to look for those records. The files from back then have been gone for a long time. A few were sent to the library, but those didn't give me any clues. I saw Anna and Logan there by the way."
"I take it you were gone before Johnna got herself kicked out of there?"
He let out a loud chuckle. "I hope I have half as much spunk left when I'm her age."
"Me, too."
"You have more than you need. Speaking of which, I got some heavy-duty screening bolted to the outside of the attic vent. I'd like to see those furry little buggers get in there now."
Ellsworth meowed. "He agrees," I said. "Thanks for doing that. I'll get up there tomorrow and see what kind of a mess they left."
"You take it easy until your back is back to normal."
"I'm fine. Just a little twinge now and then." An idea struck, and I added, "But to be sure, maybe I'll sleep on the couch tonight. You can be a little rowdy when you sleep."
"Rowdy?"
"Rolling around and kicking, pulling the covers, that sort of thing."
"That's fine. I have Ellsworth to keep me company. We'll have a brother's sleep over, won't we, Ells?"
Good gravy, a brother's sleepover. The way he snuggled that cat, if I didn't watch him, Ben would have our house filled with as many cats as dogs!
9
I sent Anna and Logan a text message with the plan for the break in and had them relay the message to Roy, and they were not to breathe a word to Johnna. We needed her locked up tight in bed for the night.
Ben was asleep. I could hear the reverberations from his snores all the way down on the couch. Mia was still awake, which could present a problem. She was in her bedroom, but having trouble sleeping. She'd have to go to sleep soon, though. It was a school night after all. Not that the Sandman always cooperated or had a sense of time.
Her bedroom door opened, and her footsteps headed from her bedroom to the bathroom overhead. A glance at my phone showed I had thirty minutes until our master plan went into effect.
There was only one thing I could do. Find a stand in.
I dialed Monica's number. "I need your help. It involves the bones. I need to sneak out. Can you come over?"
I explained the details and had her promise to park two doors down in front of Grandma's Cookie Cutter and come to our back door. While I waited, I put on my sneakers and a navy blue hoodie with my black leggings. Dark clothes--check. Roy said he'd bring the tools to open the back window of the train depot. Breaking and entering equipment--check. After a handful of minutes there was a faint knock on the patio door. Body double--check.
"You better not end up in jail tonight," Monica said, whisking in the door and taking my place under the blanket on the couch. "Mia knows the difference between you and I, and I'm pretty sure I won't fool Ben either."
"Lay there and pretend you're sleeping. I'll be back before you know it."
I dashed out the back door and around the house, down the street beside the canal, avoiding light and keeping to the shadows. As I crossed the bridge, Anna and Logan strolled in front of the grist mill, holding hands. I pretended I didn't see them and went as fast as I could by the horse stalls where the horses were kept that pull the canal boat. When I eased alongside the train depot in darkness, I let out a sigh of relief.
Almost to the back of the depot, a yowl rent the air followed by Roy shouting. "Mangy tom! You scared the devil out of me!"
Spook hightailed it around the corner, his tail a full bottle brush, his ears back, and darted into a bush.
I rounded to the back of the depot and spotted Roy below the window, hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. "That cat is a bigger menace than those coons."
"I think you scared him as much as he scared you. Anna and Logan are almost in place. I hope they don't crack if someone comes along."
"Nah," Roy stood up straight and wiped his brow with a ratty hanky. "If anyone comes along they can pretend they're out here canoodling."
"Why would they be outside canoodling at almost midnight?"
"Well, Cameron Cripps Hayman, it's more romantic out here under the moon beside the water, now, isn't it?"
"I guess it is." Who knew Roy had his finger on the pulse of romance? It was a strange and somewhat scary thought. "Let's get this show on the road," I said.
Roy pulled a thin metal file out of his pocket and slid it between the two window panes up where the lock sat between them. "Wiggle it a little," he whispered to himself. "It should give... just slide it to the side...and... bingo." He pulled the file out and shoved the window up.
"I don't now if I should be horrified or impressed by that, Roy."
"Either is a compliment." He laced his fingers together and bent, holding his hands out, palms open. "Step up. I'll boost you in."
Something told me this wouldn't end well, but lacking a step stool or a ladder--and I was done with ladders--I put my foot in Roy's hands and my hands on the window sill. "One, two-- I didn't say three!"
He'd lifted my foot before I was ready, and I scrambled against the wall with my other foot, gripping on to the window sill for all I was worth.
"Use your upper body strength," Roy said, wheezing holding my weight.
"I'm trying."
"You're like a sack of wet sand."
"Not helping, Roy."
I grunted and groaned and pulled myself up, as Roy pushed and cursed and grumped.
Finally, my hips were at sill level, and I propped myself on my forearms. Roy let go, and my legs hung along the brick outer wall. Before I knew what happened, my ankles were grabbed and with one great shove from Roy, I went flying like a javelin in the window head first.
The model train table was coming at me fast. There would be no hiding this break in or my involvement in it if I destroyed the miniature town of Metamora with my face like Godzilla tearing through Tokyo.
I needn't have feared though, as, like Roy suggested, I was like a sack of wet sand. My forward momentum quickly changed to dropping like a rock. I hit the ground, crushing my arms underneath me and whacking my chin on the floor, rattling my teeth in my head.
"All right in there?" Roy called.
"Wonderful," I answered, circling my bottom jaw to make sure it wasn't broken. "Never better."
"Flashlight," he called, and tossed a keychain sized one in the window. It landed on my back.
"Thanks."
I rolled over and got on my hands and knees, feeling for the flashlight. Along the back wall, I'd only missed landing on a low bookshelf that ran underneath the window. I flicked on the flashlight and perused the contents.
"I hear talkin'," Roy whispered in the window. Then his feet scuffled off into the distance to hide.
I shut off the flashlight and sat still, barely daring to breathe. In the front of the building, I could faintly hear Anna's voice. Then I heard Roy again, out the window in the distance. "Echinacea! Elderberry! Robituss
in! What's the blasted code word?"
The code word? We had one a long time ago, but I didn't remember it either. It would've been a good idea to have one tonight. Hindsight...
"It's Ben," Roy whisper-yelled. "Sayonara."
For the love of all things good and holy. Ben? Here? Now? Would he arrest me and haul me off to the Brookville jail? Would he bail me out or leave me in there to rot?
10
"Hello, Cam," Ben said, the top of his head showing through the window. "Nice weather tonight. I can see why you decided to go for a stroll. I can't figure out how you ended up inside there, but I'm sure you'll tell me the story."
My stomach dropped. Calm and disappointed Ben was worse than screaming and yelling, red-faced, angry Ben. "How did you know?" I asked.
"Mia tried to wake you up to get some cold medicine. Low and behold, it wasn't you."
"And she told you?" I figured Mia would at least give me an hour's head start.
"No, she didn't. She and I are going to have a chat about that later. She was in the kitchen when I went downstairs to check on you, to make sure you had the heating pad and the Tylenol and some water close by. She kept trying to distract me and said she'd make sure you had everything. Then when I told you goodnight, Monica laughed when I kissed her forehead. If she hadn't of, I would've never known."
"Can't blame her for that, I guess."
"No, I don't suppose you can. I'm lucky I went for the forehead. That could've gotten weird quick."
I stood up and leaned over the bookcase to the window. "I can explain. There are diaries in here that I think might tell us who the bones belong to, but there's no way Fiona will let me borrow them."
"If she knew why she would," he said.
"Not if I told her I suspected she dumped the bones and the diaries would help prove it."
"What? You think Fiona did it? Why?"
I explained about the family pride angle and the pool being dug in the Stein's back yard. "So it makes sense that the body is tied to her somehow and she wanted to get rid of it to save face."
Ben drummed his fingers on the window sill. "It does sound like a motive. A made up motive, but more than I have to go on with any other lead." He shook his head. "Grab the diaries. I'll watch for anyone to come along. Be quick."
"Ben! This is against the law."
"It's getting evidence in a case. There's a difference."
"Good gravy, you really are desperate."
"Hurry," he said, shooing me away from the window.
I stepped back and clicked the flashlight back on. This was insane. I'd never in a million years expect Ben to be my co-conspirator in a break in. At least it was just the old, one-room train depot building and not a home, and it wasn't like we were robbing the place. I was borrowing diaries from a hundred years ago. Nobody would even know they were gone, and I'd get them back inside on their shelf one way or another.
A tan, leather volume about half the size of the books on either side of it, sat on the bottom shelf. It were thin and small, like a memo book. I pulled it out and flipped it open. The pages were brown and brittle with faded writing in pencil. Some pages were in ink and more legible. The front cover read, Journal of Estelle Brooks, 1929.
Paul Brooks was one of the founders of Metamora and Fiona's ancestor. I'd hit pay dirt. "Got it!" I said to Ben.
"Good. Come out the front. Give me a minute to get up there. I'll knock on the outside of the door if it's clear. Shut the window."
Ben hustled around the corner of the building and I saw Roy pop into view out from behind a pine tree. He gave me the thumbs up sign and took off toward Johnna's house on the far end of the canal. Too bad I couldn't keep Anna and Logan from being implicated. It was a good thing Ben put himself right in the middle of our plan, or he wouldn't have been happy with me for involving them. He probably wasn't anyway.
The knock on the front door sounded.
I tucked the diary in my hoodie, tugged the window down and locked it, and hot-footed it to the front door and made my exit.
Despite it being the middle of the night and dark out, the large light above the door lit up most of the area in front of the depot all the way to the canal. Anna and Logan were gone and nobody else was in sight. Well, other than Metamora Mike with his head buried under his wing sitting in a pile of hay in the horse stall.
"I don't know what you'd do if we lived in a town that bothered with alarm systems," Ben said.
"It's not like I go breaking into places all the time," I said. "This was a special circumstance."
"Speaking of special circumstances, let's take a walk by Longo's tent. If anyone saw us out I can say we were up and I wanted to make sure it was secure for the night."
"That is a good excuse. You make a good criminal." I squeezed his hand to lighten the mood. Even though he knew I was joking, the word criminal probably had his brain in a bunch.
It was a clear night and although it was a dozen or so degrees above freezing, it was still frigid. Our breath puffed out in white clouds in front of us. Every sound seemed to be amplified in the cold still night air. Our feet crunching on the gravel seemed like a wake up call to the whole town, but the metallic bang that came from behind the Soapy Savant made me jump nearly out of my skin.
"What on earth was that?" I asked, holding my hand over my pounding heart.
"Sounded like the lid to the dumpster back there. Let's go see who's around."
"Why would we announce our presence out here in the middle of the night?"
"Because I have a reason to be out here--checking the tent--whoever's banging around in the dumpster better have a reason to be getting rid of things in the middle of the night if you know what I mean."
"You think it's the person who dumped the body?"
"It's a possibility. Stay close."
I knew Ben didn't have a weapon on him. He'd be lucky to have his badge leaving the house in a rush to find me like he did. But I stuck to his side like glue anyway.
We skirted the front of the business and approached from the side. The tall, wrought iron fence running around the property didn't hide anything going on, so when we got to the back, the dumpster was in full view. Soapy was swinging bulging black trash bags up over the side.
"Another night owl!" Ben called to him.
Soapy startled and dropped a bag on the ground.
"Oh, hello," he said. "What are you two doing out and about at this hour?"
"Cam's got a stiff back," Ben said, "so we're going for a walk to stretch it out. I figured I'd check on Steve's setup over there while we're out. What are you doing?"
"Cleaning out the shed. When you run a business it's work, work, work, then there are the mayoral duties. Things like this have to be done when you'd rather be sleeping."
"Those bags look heavy, want a hand?"
"No, no. I've got this. Living and working in the same place, things get piled up. Theresa hoards old junk like a dragon hoards gold. It'll be nice to have some room in there."
"Theresa has a good eye for antiques. Are you sure there's nothing in there that Will would want to buy from you?"
"I'm not sure at all. I didn't take the time to sort through most of it," he said. "I went by the rule that if I didn't know what was in a box or a bag, it got tossed and we wouldn't miss it."
I gasped. "Until you do! I have time, Soapy. Why don't you leave that by the back door and I'll start sorting through it tomorrow for you?"
"No, no, I'm certain there's nothing valuable in here. She keeps all her treasures in the house where I won't accidentally throw them away when I get a bee in my bonnet like tonight."
Ben nudged me and jerked his head to the side, indicating that we should go. "Well, we'll leave you to it then," he said.
"Have a good night, you two," Soapy said, waving us off.
"You, too," I called.
We paced back along the side of the shop. I happened to look up and noticed a light on in an upstairs bedroom. The curtains ruffled as they
were shoved into place, but not before I caught a glimpse of Theresa glancing out at us.
"That's strange," I muttered.
"It was very strange," Ben said, talking about Soapy.
"No, I mean Theresa was looking out the window at us a second ago, but she tried to hide when I saw her."
"Maybe she didn't want you to see her in her night clothes."
"No. It's unlike her. She didn't wave or anything, just ducked out of the window."
"It seems like they're up to something," Ben said, "but it's not illegal to clean out your shed at quarter till two in the morning."
"Everyone in this town is up to something."
"That's true. All we need to do is figure out which one is responsible for the bones, then who the bones are--or were--and who killed him. Nothing like mission impossible."
"It's not impossible. It only seems impossible." I wouldn't let the lack of information get me down. The answers were somewhere and we'd dig them up eventually.
"Now we have a Soapy and Theresa suspicion to go along with our Fiona and Jim suspicion. Breaking into the Soapy Savant is a hard line I won't cross," he said. "Plus, it's their home. I'll be forced to arrest you if I catch you sneaking in their window."
"I would never!" I did want to go through those trash bags though. My mind was already sifting through the scenarios that would get those bags to my house. Mostly, they relied on those trash men Roy knew at the Cornerstone. If they could get the bags and drop them at my house, I could go through them and make sure there were no more human bones and rescue Soapy from the suspect pool.
Fiona and Jim, on the other hand, were sinking fast in the pool of their own making. I couldn't wait to get home and start reading Estelle Brooks's journal.
11
Daylight broke the next morning before I'd shut my eyes and slept even one minute. I'd been in the same spot on the couch reading Fiona's ancestor's diary since we got home from our late night stroll around town.