All the best,
Sydney
As the fax finished sending, Wesley walked in the door. I called out, “Hey, stranger.”
I finished the fax and put the papers in a manila folder for Mike.
Wesley was in his usual three-piece suit, looking dapper as always. He adjusted his cuff links. “Afternoon, Sydney. I saw your car here and figured I’d stop in to apologize for last night. I was worried about you.”
It had been awkward when Wesley showed up just as Mike and I were getting hot and heavy, but he had always been concerned for me, especially after Vickie had disappeared. I had been so frustrated I didn’t get my orgasm that I’d been a little cold, but I couldn’t fault my friend for being concerned. I waved off his apology. “No problem. I get that you were looking out for me.”
“Old habits die hard. And you’ve never had a boyfriend while in Salem. Again, I apologize. I wasn’t thinking.”
That was a true statement. “Let’s forget about it. Oh, do you want to see the plans for the expansion? I worked on them a little bit and wanted your thoughts. I might get your builder friend to take a look at them if the offer still stands. I do want to start in the spring. I don’t want the corporate competition to put me out of business.”
“Of course. All you have to do is ask.”
I pulled out the plans and we looked them over. Wesley had several good suggestions about how to use the space more “economically,” as he put it.
Once we’d gone over the plans, he checked his watch. “I better head out. I’m taking Leslie to dinner tonight.”
Leslie was a workaholic who rivaled my best friend in that area. “Are things serious between you guys?”
“They are heading that way. We shall see if things go according to plan.”
Of course he had a plan. I was happy for my friend and hoped someday I’d experience that same happiness. “Congrats. I’m so happy for you. Have fun. Tell her I said hi. We’ll have to do the double date thing again some time.”
If Leslie was going to be in Wesley’s life, I wanted to establish a friendship with her.
“That would be nice. I don’t think I’ve made a great impression on Mike. Considering he’s a cop and I’m a lawyer, it doesn’t necessarily put us on the same side every time.” He walked toward the door. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll have Andy give you a call about a quote for the expansion.”
So, my guess had been right. The animosity I’d sensed between them had to do with work. They were big boys; they’d sort it out. “Perfect. See ya, Wesley.”
“Bye, Sydney.”
The fax machine came to life again, and I picked up the letter.
Dear Sydney,
Have a great evening with Mike. I am headed to the Cheesecake Factory and then stopping by a friend’s house to play some cards. Tonight, I believe I’m going to get the s’mores cheesecake.
I think I figured out where my ex-wife has hidden the cameras. I should be able to fool her tonight.
Best regards,
Dex Murphy
Mike’s mom is having her ex-husband followed? That made me pause for a second. As I was contemplating this concept, the door opened.
“What are you smiling at?”
I held the piece of paper up. “Your dad.”
His eyebrows pinched in confusion. “What?”
I suppressed a laugh. “He’s been faxing me. Well, he searched for the vet clinic after your mother mentioned me. At first, he thought I was Grandpa since his name is Sydney Virgil Burch. Then when I explained I was his granddaughter, he said that explained why your mother squealed.”
“You’re kidding.” Mike shook his head. “I can’t believe my father is faxing you.”
“He’s so adorable. Here are the faxes. There’s a letter to you as well as a list of historical sites he would like to visit. I’m going to be his tour guide.”
Mike scanned through the letters. “They’re coming the weekend after next?”
“Oh, you didn’t know?”
“No. They were supposed to come in a few weeks. All I can say is you cannot judge me by their crazy behavior.”
From the faxes, I already knew I was going to love them. “I do have a question. Why does your dad think your mom has a camera on him or is following him? That seems… odd.”
Mike burst out laughing. “So Dad got a new phone, and my sister and my mother made sure his location service is activated on the phone. So, they’re tracking him through some app, and he doesn’t know.”
I gasped. “No! Oh my gosh! I am now in love with your mom.” My earlier pause was gone. She seemed as crazy as I was. I imagined the family was quite the handful, but I loved it. I missed the feeling of loving chaos that came with a family. “Well, if you don’t mind, your dad invited me to hang out some.”
“I’d love that.”
I was excited. Until you had no one, it was hard to understand the lonely feeling. “I hope my lack of filter doesn’t scare them off.”
Mike grabbed my hand as we walked toward the door. “Trust me, my mother can rival anyone. She’s very vocal and let’s say tenacious when she makes up her mind about something. They’re going to love you.”
That sounded fun. Putting us together was going to be interesting and most likely hilarious. “I hope so.”
As long as I kept thoughts of Mike’s zucchini to myself, all should be fine.
Sydney
A half hour later, Mike and I walked into Salem’s unofficial welcome center. All the locals called it the Welcome Center because Beatrice knew more than the people hired at the official one. Many years ago, Beatrice had converted a private home into a place that held all sorts of historical information about Salem.
I waved at the older lady behind the counter. She was busy reading something, the glasses perched on her nose connected to a chain around her neck, and she looked every bit like the historian she was. Beatrice had been a friend of the family for as long as I could remember. Mike kept his hand on my lower back, which I loved.
I called, “Hey, Beatrice.”
The sweet lady looked up and gave me a huge smile. “Oh my, my, Sydney. You came to visit me. I was hoping I’d get to see you soon. I have missed you.”
I went around the counter and gave her a hug. “It’s so good to see you. Sorry it’s taken me a bit to get over here. It’s been a little hectic getting settled after Grandpa died.”
Beatrice held me closer. “I know, punkin pie. We miss him so much. He was such a special man.”
“Yes, he was. Thank you. It’s so good to see you.” That was all I could get out before I started to get a little choked up. So far, I had been doing fairly well dealing with Grandpa’s death. Moments like this made it hard.
She pushed me back as if to get a good look at me. “It’s so good to see you, too. I saw Peggy and Gladys and Patricia Nelson when we were meeting about to plan our Red Hat Society luncheon this weekend.” She leaned in close to me and loudly whispered, “I heard about your admirer. He’s quite the looker.”
Of course, Mike heard every word and gave me a wink. I whispered back, “Hopefully good things.”
“They were, dear.” She turned to Mike and spoke normally. “Officer Murphy, I’ve heard some rumors about you from Lou. I hear you’re sweet on our girl.”
Mike smiled as I walked back around the corner. He put his arm around me and said, “Sometimes, rumors are true.”
My heart skipped a few beats in my chest. He’s sweet on me.
“Well, what can I do for the sweet couple?”
I felt the heat in my cheeks. Don’t say something stupid. No word vomit. Focus. We’re here to see if Beatrice has answers. “Well, I was curious if you’d ever heard of the word alchemist in relation to the witch trials.”
Beatrice’s face went pale. “What word was that?”
“Alchemist.”
She shook her head. “That was the word I couldn’t remember. That was the word.”
; The way she said it was concerning. Mike raised his eyebrow as he watched Beatrice. I asked, “Why couldn’t you remember that word?”
Her eyes became unfocused as if she’d gotten lost in a memory. “The night Vickie disappeared. She’d come in here asking me basically the same thing—if I knew about a secret society named the Alchemists. There was a man she mentioned. Let me think… it was Sala something. I told Doug she’d asked about a secret society and that name, but I was never able to remember that word—alchemist.”
Soloman. Oh my gosh.
Vickie.
For a second, I couldn’t move. Vickie. She’d been here talking about the Alchemists on the night she disappeared. A knot formed in my stomach. And she had asked about the name Soloman. I’d never heard Vickie mention the name. My muscles tightened. Mike touched my lower back, signifying he’d caught it, too. I felt like I had a mouth full of cotton, unable to speak. Mike picked up where I left off as my thoughts kept shifting to Vickie.
“What did you tell her?”
Beatrice gave a sad sigh, obviously lost in her own memories of being the last one to see Vickie alive. “I hadn’t heard of them. So I took her back to the special books I keep. Three hours later, I went to check on her and she was gone.”
Gone. Just vanished.
She’d disappeared without a trace, and no clues had ever been found.
My gut twisted as I remembered the moment Grandpa had called to tell me Vickie had vanished. I’d been due to visit three weeks later. I didn’t have the opportunity to say good-bye, just like when Grandpa died.
I missed my best friend.
“Was there anything else you can remember about that day?”
“I told the cops everything I can remember, Officer Murphy. It’s been so long. Vickie had said she was researching some stuff for a paper. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that day, and I never saw a stranger in my welcome center. What are you searching for an alhemmy for? What was that word again?”
That wasn’t much help, and I wasn’t sure what to say. Mike leaned in closer and smiled at Beatrice. “I was brushing up on my history of Salem and found it in the museum. I’d never heard the word before. The witch trials have been interesting to learn about.”
“Oh dear, be careful you don’t disturb Elizabeth. If you’d like, you can take a peek at my books to see if you can find anything.”
Mike pressed his lips together, not saying anything about the ghost of Salem. I wasn’t necessarily a believer, but unexplainable things had happened. When you grew up around it, sometimes the only explanation for the unexplainable was a ghost.
I answered, “That would be amazing. Thanks, Beatrice.”
She grabbed her cane and walked to the back of the room. “It’s a bit dusty back here. But this is the section about the witch trials.”
“Thanks,” Mike and I said in unison.
“Anytime, dears. Let me see here… Oh yes. There’s the book Vickie was interested in. I showed Doug, but they weren’t able to find a thing in it.” Beatrice pointed to it with her cane, and Mike took it off the shelf. “Do you need anything else?”
“We’re good. Thank you so much for letting us back here.”
“Of course. Anything you need. I should really get my duster out.” When she was almost at the door, Beatrice checked the time. “Oh, dear, dear. I have to go get my hair styled at Deanna’s Twist and Curl Salon. I’ll be gone for a few hours. You okay to stay here and lock up?”
That was one of the nice things about living in a smaller town. “Of course. Thanks for letting us stay.”
“Oh dear, of course. I’ve known you since you were knee high to a grasshopper. Give Deanna a buzz if you run into any trouble.”
“We will.”
She leaned on her cane as she walked, and I followed her, remembering my manners even as I was trying to process the news about Vickie. “Beatrice, can I give you a ride to the Twist and Curl?”
Giving me a wink, she pointed to the car parked outside the welcome center. “Nah, Oliver is doing that. Just goes to show this girl still has a little magic in these hips.”
Oh my, well… At least she was still having fun. I thought it was cute that she hadn’t lost her spark. “Shake it, girl.”
“You know I will. Might want to take your own advice with that cutie patootie you got in there.”
I laughed. “I’ll try.”
I locked the door and went back to the room where Mike was thumbing through the book Vickie had been looking at before she disappeared. “Anything?”
“Not yet. It’s about the Salem witch trials.”
What were you doing here, Vickie? And why were you asking questions about the Alchemists.
I sat next to Mike as we read the pages together. It was more of a book of notes, observations, and thoughts about the area. He put his arm around me. “How are you doing? I know this must be difficult.”
Mike knew about Vickie since he worked for Doug. I never expected she’d been questioning the same thing I was.
“It’s a little weird knowing this was what Vickie had been looking at before she vanished. When I came home for the funeral, I never asked any questions. I mean, I knew Beatrice had been the last to see her, but that was it. I don’t know. Why was she looking for the Alchemists?”
“Hopefully, we’ll find the answers.” Mike had a questioning look as he was deep in thought. “Was Beatrice ever questioned?”
I remembered her crying in Grandpa’s living room. “Yeah, it tore her up. She’d been Vickie’s nanny growing up. There were people in the place to confirm that Vickie had come back into this room. Another group of people confirmed Beatrice walked back to check on Vickie and she’d been gone. It was tragic. It put a little bit of a black cloud over Beatrice for a while. Grandpa made sure to keep inviting her to everything. After a year or two, the town came around.”
“I could see Virg doing that. He was a good man.”
“The best.”
Why did Grandpa give me the coin and letter? It made no sense. This seemed more than a scavenger hunt. I wondered if he wanted me to solve the mystery of Vickie’s disappearance?
Mike flipped another page to find an underlined passage. “Wait, it says that the witch trials were believed to be a cover-up. People started to build hidden rooms in their homes to hide their daughters in fear of them being taken and accused of witchcraft. It was something families continued to do for years in fear of more witch trials. Some homeowners also built secret compartments to hide important documents that were only to be shared with other Truth-seekers.”
“Truth-seekers? Who are they? What were the witch trials covering up?”
Mike read some more. “It doesn’t say. It goes on to say how even Judge Hathorne believed the trials were wrong.” We already knew that from Quinn’s letters. Mike pointed to a drawing in the book. “Look at this symbol. It says this is how you recognize the wrongdoers from the Truth-seekers.”
“Truth-seekers? Are those the Alchemists?” I studied the symbol. It was made up of three rays leading up to a high point of three dots surrounded by three circles. I grabbed my phone and searched Truth-seekers symbols. The search returned an image that matched the one from the book. “Mike, look. This is the Awen symbol of truth.”
“Is that symbol anywhere on the coin?”
I took the coin out of my pocket and inspected it. “No. Maybe it was the Alchemists against the Truth-seekers? Or maybe they’re not related.”
Or maybe we’re making more out of this than it is.
We finished thumbing through the tattered book with no further insights. I stretched and walked around the room.
Truth-seekers. Alchemists. Vickie.
What’s going on?
I stepped around the shelves to find a little sitting area that hadn’t been used in quite some time. Against the wall was a fireplace. It was dusty and full of cobwebs. At some point, I needed to help Beatrice tidy up the place. The front area where the tourists came wa
s clean, but I wanted to help preserve our town’s history.
I studied the fireplace for a second. Is there a chance… Maybe? I kept staring at it, wondering if I was going insane.
I heard Mike before I felt him behind me. “What are you doing?”
I pointed to the fireplace. “Do you think that might have a trap door. This building is old enough to have been around during the trials.”
“The chances are slim.”
I knew this, but I hoped there was some sort of explanation to Vickie’s disappearance. Mike walked over to the fireplace and inspected it. I loved that he indulged me as we looked around at the old masonry to find a sign of something, anything. “If there’s a lever, it will be small—like the little notch on the bookshelves.”
There was nothing on the old stone. Mike leaned under the fireplace and peered around using his phone’s flashlight. This would be a great place to hide a secret room. With a fire burning, people would keep their distance.
“Holy shit, Syd, look here.”
Inside the fireplace toward the front, there was a Truth-seekers symbol. “Mike, look! There’s a symbol on the lever.”
He blew some of the dust away. “Maybe if I pull hard enough it will move.”
After a few seconds of pulling, Mike let out a frustrated sigh.
“What if you pushed up?” I asked, peering up at the lever.
Mike looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Up? Why would it push up?” The second he pushed up, we heard a loud crack come from beside the fireplace.
Mike looked at me with a shocked expression, and I smiled. The back of the wall moved, exposing a dark tunnel. An old, musty smell wafted into the room. It was like one of those creepy horror movies and had me leaning a little closer to Mike. But we had found something. And from the cobwebs when Mike shone his flashlight down the wood staircase, we could tell no one had been in there for years.
“Oh my word! Oh my word! Mike, we found a secret staircase.”
I jumped into his arms, and he spun me around. “We did. I need to get my gun and two flashlights from the car.”
My face fell. “Wait. What? A gun?”
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