"This is a strange corner," Frances said, her hands on her hips, hair tousled, as she looked left and right. "It's almost deserted. No one could actually see into this yard, or even see the front door from the sidewalk."
I remained quiet, trying to follow her thought patterns. When she didn't add anything else, I said, "I wonder where Ellie and Peter are. I know they travel a lot, but neither of them mentioned a trip when we were together during the hunt for Oona."
At that moment, we heard a dog bark very nearby. We both turned to see Mary Jo Samuels, pulled along on a leash by a huge black mutt, coming up the sidewalk toward the Smallwoods'.
"Hey." she said pleasantly, her face lighting up. "I'm surprised to see you both, but happy too." She wrapped the leash expertly around the fence post and the dog happily sniffed through the brush at the edge of the walkway. "Are Peter and Ellie home?"
"Have they gone on a trip?" Frances countered.
Mary Jo's freckled nose wrinkled up in bewilderment. "No, that's what's so odd. Nick and I were the ones who went away last week. We were only gone from Sunday to today and we didn't want to take Shug." A nod to the dog cleared up who Shug was. "So Ellie said they'd come and walk her every day and feed her and water her. But for the last two or three days, they didn't do that. Thank goodness Shug drank out of the toilets and pawed her way into the food bag. Otherwise…"
We all looked at Shug, who was snuffling and snorting in the weeds and undergrowth. The bags of fat hanging down from her stomach area swung with her movement, making me think that she probably wouldn't have starved. However, it was still puzzling.
"So, did someone else report it to the police before I did?" Mary Jo asked.
At first I didn't understand the question, but Frances did instantly. "Actually no, Mary Jo. That's not why we're here. But now that you've told me, I'll file a report for sure. Thanks."
It was clearly a dismissal, so Mary Jo untied Shug and started back down John Street toward her place, which I knew was on Lewis. "You'll keep me informed won't you, Officer Petapiece? I'm really worried about them. They love Shug and wouldn't have left her like that. I think something's happened."
"I'll let you know, Mary Jo," Frances said absently. She was distant again, thinking perhaps, or concerned, or mystified, or maybe all three.
I wondered if Frances would call Edgar now. It seemed to me that she was delaying talking to him in order to prove that she could handle it. Standing on the corner waiting for her to decide, I looked off down the street and saw Frieda's house. It was really within a stone's throw, right at the corner of Drummond and Lawrence, and I wondered how well Peter and Ellie knew her.
Impulsively, I said, "Let's go over to Frieda's house. It's right there. We could look around for anything that might give us a clue about the scroll. It seems to be the only thing we have to go on."
"Great idea, Emily. In the meantime, I'll call Edgar and tell him about the Smallwoods."
She talked on the cell phone as we walked down the street in the twilight. I thought of calling Langford too, but knew he would still be painting until the light disappeared entirely. And besides, I knew he would want me to come home and I didn't want him to say it. The sense of excitement and adventure had pumped up my energy, and I simply could not resist carrying through with the mystery. I absolutely had to be in on it. I was afraid Langford's doubts would raise Frances's fears again and she'd force me to go on home.
I realized Frances had been quiet, listening, for quite some time, her eyebrows raised. When she'd ended the call—not, as I expected, with I love you but with "I'll check in later," and a click of the cell—she turned to me and said, "Oona Nabigon is conscious again. She's opened her eyes and is struggling to say something. The doctor wants to give her a sedative, but May is insisting that Oona be allowed to speak. Edgar said they might know everything in a little while, so we could go home."
Before the disappointment could sink in, she added, "But let's still go over to Frieda's. It can't hurt to have a look around her property. Maybe the door will be open again."
We couldn't help it. We both chuckled.
Frieda's house was similar to the Smallwoods' in style and size. However, the brick was all one colour, a sort of reddish brown. Contrasting white door and window frames, a Victorian screen door, and beautiful landscaping made the little home extremely attractive. Lovely evergreen bushes and spreading maple trees surrounded it.
I knew that Frieda had paid a considerable amount of money for this house, even though it had not been refinished inside. She had been planning to have it redecorated. Had even bought the paint and hired Burchill's favourite handyman to do the job. Now I could imagine the paint cans gathering dust in the basement, never to be used. No one was even sure who Frieda's beneficiaries would be. The whole situation made me feel suddenly guilty and sad, as if I had been getting a voyeur's perverse pleasure out of her tragedy.
Frances went up to the front door and looked through the stained glass window. She could see only shadows and edges, so she moved to the picture window on the left side. The inside of the house was dark and deserted. "Well, no open doors I'm afraid," she said, going back to the front and opening the screen.
As she did so, she turned to face me, her hands on her hips, her body leaning on the door. Suddenly, she disappeared from view as she tumbled inward. At first, as I stepped quickly forward, I assumed that the door had been unlocked and ajar and that her leaning had simply propelled her into space. Until, of course, I saw the man with the gun.
The lake shines in its silver
and I am held in its peace.
The solitude of cloud envelops me
and I am its child.
The earth entwines me
and I praise its goodness.
Chapter 38
Light streamed ahead of her as she walked along the pathway. Below her, she could see the rooftops of the little town, could see the roof of the home where her body laid waiting. Ahead, she could hear the voice of the one she needed. She continued to walk, the peetwaniquot, the cloud, gently drifting toward her as she continued along her path.
As she walked, she reached out for the woman shackled to the bed, gently coaxing her heart to beat, her breath to continue, in and out, oxygen flowing throughout her body.
Now she could see him below her and she was pleased. She knew his face was suffused with understanding. Knew that he felt her presence in the breeze and in the sunlight. He would know where to find her.
She returned quickly along the pathway. Allowing herself to drift slowly downward into consciousness, she began to feel the softness of the shawl on her shoulders, the firmness of the floor beneath her body. She heard the voices, frightened and bewildered, but not defeated. She encouraged her energy to surround them, even as her body continued to lie still.
When they stood up, their whispers excited and hopeful, a smile curled around her face even as her eyes remained closed.
Chapter 39
For most people, violence was something they've experienced only on television or in the movies. In my life, I had had first-hand knowledge of that kind of terror far too often. I was not a courageous person. In fact, the moment I saw that gun and the twisted hatred etched in the man's face, my body reacted with a heart pounding flush that raced through every limb in an instant. When I was yanked roughly forward into the house, I was trembling and faint.
All the regrets of the day rushed forward to block my consciousness. I could only see Langford's face and hear his admonitions and his warnings. I wished fervently that I could be back home with him and Angel.
We were divested efficiently and roughly of our cell phones and Frances's gun. Dazed and breathless, I was pushed onto a chair in the near-empty living room, with Frances sitting cross-legged and trussed at my feet, the barrel of that ugly gun just a few inches away from her head.
In my frightened silence, I could hear Frances continuing to talk as she confronted our assailants. It was a shock to my sy
stem to realize just how brave Frances Petapiece really was.
"I am an officer of the law," Frances said to them, her voice affronted but reasonable. "Don't do this. The consequences are not worth whatever it is you plan to achieve. You will be caught. There is absolutely no doubt that when you involve a police officer, you will be hunted until…"
One of the men stepped forward and cut her off with a slap to her face that resounded through the room like a cymbal. "Shut up, Officer Petapiece. Your psychological babble won't work. We have every contingency covered, or we wouldn't have opened the door. Your persistent snooping could have ruined everything, but as it is, we will put the opportunity that has been gifted to us to good use, believe me."
I was staring up at his face, trying to reconcile this violent, angry, sleazy man with the smooth-talking, ever-so-polite, suave suit that Evan Fobert had been when I first met him. His voice was still polished, his jacket unwrinkled and expensive, his blond hair perfectly coiffed. But his face, instead of handsome and unlined, was cruel and unsightly, mirroring the filth that obviously lived inside him.
My head felt as though a huge weight had been placed there—the weight of violence in the past, the weight of guilt, the weight of fear. A huge regret crowded my chest with the beating of my heart. I wanted my husband, I wanted to feel his arms around me, see his face, touch the soft hairs around his neck. I couldn't offer any help to Frances. I knew what could come of this evil and it seemed that she did not. Instead, she sat even straighter, despite being on her rear end on the floor. She appeared to be even more aware of her surroundings, even less fearful. Did I know something she didn't, or was it the other way around?
"Listen, Fobert, why didn't you just go and find some other land where there wasn't as much resistance? Why chase after some phantom scroll to secure ownership? Canada's full of land. Why didn't you go find another spot? Now you're responsible for two deaths, maybe three, and you're contemplating more. Is this really worth it?"
Evan Fobert had stood smiling as she spoke, almost as though he were indulging a child. When Frances had finished, he actually laughed out loud.
"You think I'd do this for an empty piece of land? Really, Officer Petapiece, I thought you were smarter than that." He turned and picked up a leather tube. "And the scroll wasn't a phantom, my dear. Here it is in my hands. Where it will soon disappear. We can't have this turning up in the wrong places, you see." He fingered the tube as though it were a swatch of silk. "That land, my esteemed police agent and school principal, is literally a gold mine. Never before, particularly in this part of the country, has a vein this large been discovered. It is, without exaggeration, worth billions. You thought Victor Reeves was going to desecrate the land with his subdivision? Wait until we begin to scrape the precious stone from under those trees."
The legend, I thought. It was going to come true. I shivered, remembering the section that warned of a great deal of bloodshed.
"And how do you propose to explain our deaths?" Frances demanded.
"Well, we actually have all that worked out, believe it or not, Officer. We are quite the planners, aren't we, boys?" Evan looked at the other two huge men who seemed to fill the small living room."I'm tired of conversation right now boys and we have a few things to do to set the stage. Put them in the room with the others."
Grinning, the big man behind my chair yanked Frances and me to our feet, and a thick black gun pointed in our direction, he walked us down a short hall to a closed door. Shoved from behind, Frances and I stumbled into the room, silenced by shock and the rough push that landed us both in the middle of the room.
This was obviously a bedroom or a den that Frieda would never get around to redecorating. It was empty of furniture. The hardwood was rubbed down to a faint blond colour. The walls were dark beige. Full paint cans and brushes still in the packages were piled in one corner. The window was boarded up. The only light was from the last lingering fingers of today's bright sun poking through the small opening at the top.
In a corner of the empty room, a man sat huddled by a small, prone figure. Neither of the people looked up. They appeared to be frozen into mannequins with shock or fear.
There was an echo as Frances spoke.
"What the hell is going on? Who are you? Who is that?" She pointed past the hunched figure to the body covered in a multi-coloured shawl, grey hair sprouting above the colourful blanket.
The man seemed to collapse in on himself. He landed heavily on the floor beside us, his legs splayed out in front of him, head down. His tall frame looked gaunt and crooked. His blondish, thinning hair was brittle and unkempt. Dark circles under his blue eyes emphasized the lines of his face. He gaped up at us, his visage filled with shame and distress.
Peter Smallwood looked years older than the man who had regaled us with stories of his youth as we tramped through the woods only a few short weeks ago.
"It's Agnes Lake," he finally said, after clearing his throat several times and failing to push the words from his mouth at least twice. "She's…fine, really. She's just weak from the visions. She hasn't been on a quest for this long before."
I could see that Frances did not believe him. She crouched down beside Agnes and gently turned her toward us. The older woman's eyes were clamped shut. She made no movement. Frances leaned over and listened to her chest, then felt for the pulse at her wrist. She nodded involuntarily, looking back at Peter and me.
"She is okay," she said, her tone one of astonishment. "Her heart is beating very strongly and nice and slowly. Peter, why are you here? Tell us what the hell is going on and what these idiots plan to do." The last was said with all the authority of a police officer who knew she had the suspect in captivity.
Once again, Peter had to clear his throat and wait for the words to surface from somewhere deep within his personal torture. When he finally spoke, he did so in a rush as though speech would abandon him before he got the story out.
"They're going to kill us and then blame it all on me." He sounded pathetic and self-pitying, and as if knowing how it sounded, he amended his tone immediately. "And in a way, it is all my fault. It started when Frieda went to Victor Reeves and told him about a secret scroll. The scroll apparently gave ownership of Victor's subdivision land to one of the Original People. Not only that, the land held a gold vein that had never been mined. Frieda told him that she could find out where the scroll was hidden and she promised to sell it to him. Reeves got some expert to come and verify Frieda's claims about the gold and then supplied Frieda with a great deal of money to find that scroll."
"Frieda knew that the scroll had something to do with Oona, but Oona didn't even know anything about it. As soon as Frieda started questioning her, Oona got really suspicious."
"When Oona couldn't get Frieda to tell her where she'd gotten all her money and why she was so interested in the old legends all of a sudden, I guess she decided to become Walking Bear."
"Frieda had been over-trapping too, and with all her new money, she'd been shipping furs out like crazy and making even more money. I don't really know what happened with Oona, but I think she had this idea that she could change Frieda in some way. And I do think it kind of worked."
"The minute Frieda was gone, Evan Fobert came to me. They…somehow they knew about my gambling debts. No one else knew just how desperate I'd become, even poor Ellie. They also knew that I was more familiar with the old legends than most. He convinced me to follow Oona and see what I could find out about the scroll and the ownership of the land."
"I was able to follow Oona to the sacred caves. It seemed to me that she had become…I don't know, almost not caring if anyone saw her. But when I listened in, I knew Oona and Frieda weren't interested in anything to do with the land. They never mentioned the scroll or the gold. They were genuinely making friends again and Frieda was regaining her spirituality. Oh and yeah, I forgot to tell you, Frieda had accidentally walked into a bear trap and injured her leg badly, so Oona and Agnes were healing her."
>
Frances stopped him. "Agnes?"
Peter nodded his head. "While all this was going on, Agnes had entered her vision quest. She came upon Oona in the woods and tried to convince her that this way of changing Frieda was wrong. But Oona would not back down, so Agnes supervised in a way and helped with the healing."
I thought about Legend Twenty, not only about Walking Bear and his mission to isolate the evildoers in order to heal them, but also about the spiritual leader. "You are wrong, Walking Bear," the Spiritual Leader said. "When the people cried out, I answered their prayers. I brought Walking Bear out of his cave. I walked beside you as you healed the Evil spirits. I accompanied you on your patrol of the land. Now I can return to my people, satisfied that my quest has been answered." The fact that Agnes Lake was here, a prisoner and a victim with us, filled me with terror, for it appeared that evil had won.
"Fobert also talked me into becoming Walking Bear too, to keep people frightened and distracted and so I could look around under cover," Peter continued.
"Somewhere along the line, Evan Fobert decided he was going to get rid of Victor Reeves. They'd had some kind of falling out and Reeves threatened to fire him. Fobert was having none of that now that there was a lot of money involved. So his henchmen took Victor out into the woods and—they left him there."
"Poor Oona…she…I think by then, she was in a different space. She seemed to think she really was Walking Bear. She dragged him into the cave too, thinking she was meant to heal him and stop the subdivision." Peter's voice broke again. I could see the tears running down his cheeks.
"In the meantime, you were out there in Bird's bear costume, scaring the villagers and following Oona," I prompted.
The Emily Taylor Mystery Bundle Page 34