by Etta Faire
“At least you haven’t lost your snobbish jerkiness,” I said. “I’d be worried about you if that happened.”
Truth was, I was worried now. But I tried not to show it. Instead, I told him about the gates to the hosts of evil, about how Rosalie and I visited the basement of Chez Louie, and that my breathing seemed to be in time with the thing in the wall.
“So, how do I close the gates? And how do I help you get back to Gate House?”
I glanced over at Mrs. Nebitt. She didn’t look up from her computer so I was pretty sure she hadn’t heard me talking to myself.
“I’m not sure,” he said. He was right up next to my ear now, probably so I could hear him. “My gut feeling says you need to figure things out for Feldman, but you must maintain control throughout the channelings when you do them now. It’s this giving up control that’s energizing him, that’s giving him links to this world, and power over it. It also might be the sapientia formula. Who knows?”
I gasped.
“By spraying it in both Gate House and the speakeasy, you might have given Feldman a way to create a kind of backdoor into channeling there.”
“He’s forcing his way in,” I said. “So if he’s leaving Gate House then you can come back home, right?”
“I have no idea, Carly doll. I think Feldman created the hole at the speakeasy, but I think the stronger entity is the one who takes it over.”
“Either way, I need to figure this out,” I said, watching as my ex-husband faded away.
“Who on earth are you talking to?”
I looked up. Mrs. Nebitt was standing directly over me. She smoothed out her mauve, button-down shirt while she stared at me sideways. Her eyes looked hugely judgmental in her glasses. “You’ve been muttering to yourself for a good five minutes. This isn’t the first time I’ve observed this odd behavior either. The other day, too.”
“I’m stumped by my research,” I lied. “Do you know any authors from the 1920s named Jeremy?”
She studied me for a minute before answering. “Do you have a last name?”
“No.”
“Then no. And good luck,” she said, waddling off again. “Try Google.”
Problem was, I had tried Google.
“And stop mumbling.”
Taking a meditative breath, I looked around for my ex, but I could tell he was no longer there. And he hadn’t told me how to close the gates of hell yet.
I sat at one of the library’s computers and quickly looked up the Kentucky Derby. The Wikipedia page included a list of winners. I started with 1922 and went backwards. But I stopped immediately when I saw the name of the horse that won in 1915. Regret. That was an interesting, and appropriate, name.
I clicked on the link, and a page popped up about the horse, along with a photo of it, a dark filly with a rose garland and a number three tag.
My heart jumped when I saw it. That had to be the one.
Regret.
What was Feldman supposed to regret? Or did the killer regret something?
The note said “You gamble. You lose.” And it had been tucked into a horse named Regret.
I needed to find out from Feldman all the people he had cheated and how. Someone wanted Feldman to regret something. And they wanted to taunt him with it before slicing his throat.
I tried googling Jeremy next. But Mrs. Nebitt was right. Without a last name, it was pointless.
Chapter 24
Task Force
I was doing this for Shelby, I reminded myself. Not for the Donovans or the gym membership. And definitely not for Bobby.
About twenty people stood around a picnic table at the outskirts of Landover Park and Rec where the basketball court met the swingsets. I parked next to Shelby’s beat-up, pink Cadillac that was still pretty cute despite its rusty tail fins and not-quite-white, white-wall tires. And I gulped. What in the hell was I doing here when I had the gates of hell to take care of?
Somehow, I got myself to open my car door and walk over. Parker waved enthusiastically to me, like I might miss the only group of people shivering in the park.
Even though it was mid-morning and the sun was starting to burn off the clouds, a cold wind smacked my face and my boots crunched along stiff, half-frozen grass. Lila was dressed in a long brown sweater over her leggings and boots. Her hair draped her shoulders in perfect blonde waves under a white knit cap as she yelled out orders, like “Search-Party Barbie,” complete with megaphone.
I looked down at my oversized sweatshirt and skinny jeans that I’d deemed “clean enough” even though I’d picked them out of the hamper. I wasn’t even cute enough to be Skipper.
Shelby hugged me as soon as I got to her, making me feel guilty all over again for not going to one of these sooner.
Parker pointed to a spot at the picnic table next to George and a couple I knew as locals who frequented the Spoony River a lot. I sat down and smiled politely as Lila continued talking.
She motioned toward a red oak tree where a group of about ten people stood wearing orange vests. They were Landover’s regular volunteers, the ones who came out for lake clean-ups and lost pets. They were the do-gooders, and judging by their eager expressions and already-opened maps, they knew it.
“Group one will look behind the Home Depot where Bobby and his brothers were last seen on surveillance video and group two will look around the outskirts of the Dead Forest where this item was found by the old drive-in.”
She held up a Ziplock bag with a thick silver chain in it.
She continued. “This might be Bobby’s wallet chain. I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s an eagle’s head on the end. No wallet, though.”
There were only twenty of us in the search party so I wasn’t entirely sure why Lila was bothering with the megaphone. In fact, it kind of made her voice muffled and harder to hear.
Shelby added without the megaphone. “It’s definitely the chain I gave him for Christmas, or one that looks just like it.”
Her shoulders slumped and she looked down at her combat boots when she said that. Christmas was when Bobby’s brothers came to visit and stayed long past their welcome. It was why Shelby had issued Bobby an ultimatum in late January. And it was also why I thought this whole search-party thing was bogus.
Bobby was a ne’er-do-well who left jobs and relationships when they got too hard, and this was probably no different. He would come back to reclaim his taxidermied grouse foot when he was good and ready, but not until he’d blown through every dollar he stole from their mattress bank.
Lila put a hand over my head. It smelled like the perfume counter at Saks. “Like I said, group two over here at the picnic table will head over to the old Bear Rock Drive-In…”
I looked up. Yep, the hand was right over my head. “Nope,” I said. “Group two did not volunteer to go anywhere near the Dead Forest. Did we, group two?” I looked around for confirmation from the people sitting with me at the picnic table.
Nobody nodded back, so I coughed and tried to make my voice as loud as a megaphone. “Group one looks much more equipped to take that particular task on. They’ve already got maps and safety vests…”
“You don’t really believe in rumors,” the woman from the Spoony River said. She laughed like Landover did not have a track record for having creepy rumors come true.
But to make matters creepier, the Bear Rock Drive-In was also where I’d found a dead body last summer. It was right around the time I figured out just how close to the Landover stripper murderer I was in life.
Shelby’s face was paler than anyone else’s. “Y’all, please don’t go inside the forest. That’s not what Lila is saying. We don’t need to test rumors in this city. Just look around the perimeter for clues,” she said. “Sheriff Bowman told me the wallet chain could be anyone’s. We need to link it to Bobby.”
“Parker and I will go with group two, and Shelby will go with group one,” Lila said, through the megaphone. “Remember, don’t touch anything that looks lik
e evidence. Just take a picture of it. Everyone should buddy up.”
“Want to buddy-up and ride together?” Old George asked, like I was actually going. “Patsy couldn’t come. She had to work.”
I stared at my fingernails a second before answering. I was here for Shelby. And Bobby’s wallet chain was a definite sign, no matter how dumb the sheriff was being about it.
“I guess so, but I’ll drive,” I said because George’s Buick looked like a rummage sale on wheels. “Just so you know, we’re not going anywhere near a tree or a path. And you’d better run fast if we see anything weird in the Dead Forest, or I’ll be gone and you’ll have to shift forms and fly away…”
He raised a thick, graying eyebrow at me. “Fly away? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carly Mae.”
“Sure, George. Just know, my Civic waits for no bird.”
Some sort of a mist drifted around the trees and shadows in the Dead Forest when we pulled up alongside the other five cars from group two. I tried not to look at it. My plan was to keep focused on the perimeter. There was no reason to even shift my gaze into the forest.
Old George hopped out of my car and motioned for me to do the same. I was not in the same hurry.
I slowly grabbed the mace from my glove compartment and my Swiss army knife that I was pretty sure was too dull to do any real protecting.
Lila waited by her SUV next to Parker. He smiled when George and I approached. “Sure nice of you both to come out and help Shelby,” he said.
“Shelby’s’ a good person,” George replied, his voice sounding smooth and rehearsed. “She deserves something good in life. She deserves to know what happened to Bobby.”
Oddly, I thought I saw Lila mouthing the words before George said them. My gaze went from her to George and back again. “Yep, what you guys said,” I said, nodding to the both of them.
There was something going on here. I had no idea what, but I kept my finger on the mace in my pocket.
“I’m surprised to see you two out here. Who has your kids?” I asked Parker.
“Shelby’s parents are watching them all. Isn’t that so nice? We’re very fortunate,” Parker replied.
I thought about how sweet the Winehouses genuinely were, a huge difference from the way the family used to be.
Lila no longer had the megaphone, thank goodness. She pointed a gloved hand around the perimeter where the rest of group two was already in action. Most had flashlights and walking sticks. “Stick together when you walk the perimeter, and keep your eyes open.” She handed us a walkie-talkie, a map, a couple of bottled waters, and a walking stick. “The stick’s for turning over rocks and stuff,” Parker said. “Lila and I are gonna stay back here. Radio in if you see anything.”
I looked at the map while George and I hustled to catch up with our group. Most of the people in group two were older, which made sense. I was able to come out on a random Tuesday because I worked retail and had slow days off. Most other people my age held nine-to-five jobs.
I felt a pang of guilt over that one. With two degrees under my belt, I had cost my mother tens of thousands for my education. And she’d done it so that I wouldn’t have to work a minimum-wage job. Yet, there I was. She didn’t even bother to lecture me on it anymore. She’d just throw in a couple sighs of disappointment every once in a while so I’d know her feelings hadn’t changed.
I turned my flashlight on even though it was day time and scanned over the rocks and grass with it, trying not to think about the disappointment sighs, the Dead Forest looming to my left, or the fact I was a 30-year-old with so much time on her hands, she hung out at search parties with senior citizens.
I should’ve been at home writing the novel I told people I was writing, not helping ghosts or looking for people I didn’t think were really missing. None of these seniors knew the truth about Bobby, that he’d taken thousands of dollars in cash before he left a month ago.
My breath hung in front of me in a cold puff that seemed to be mocking me. This was pointless. He was nowhere near here.
The walkie-talkie in George’s hand crackled. A woman’s voice came over it along with some static-like feedback because she was not that far away.
“It’s Meg here. I saw something,” the older woman’s voice said.
My heart jumped into my throat. I was ready to run.
“Roger that,” Lila said through the radio from the warmth of her car. I was pretty sure she had no idea what “Roger that” meant. I didn’t. She continued. “Please confirm, Meg. Is it a piece of evidence?”
The woman talking on the walkie-talkie was near the front of the group, and she pointed into the forest, her oversized dark golfing jacket fell oddly along her wrist, covering everything except the very tip of her finger. “Negative,” she said. “I see eyes and I hear breathing.”
“Do not approach. Come back up here and we’ll call it a day,” Lila said.
I squinted into the forest. The foggy mist obscured my vision. Anything could have been lurking around those bone-looking trees and weird shadows.
“It looks human,” Meg said. She handed the walkie-talkie to her buddy, a man who looked about 75. Reaching into her oversized, “Cat Mom,” cloth bag, she pulled out a revolver. Her hand shook as she approached the forest, revolver out and at the ready.
I screamed as the woman shouted, “I’m going in.”
Her partner spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Meg’s going in. But don’t worry, she’s armed.”
“Meg, for God sakes, put that gun away before you kill someone,” another voice said through the radio.
I tugged on old George’s jacket, surprised by how light and easy he was to pull. “We’re leaving,” I said, pulling him up the hill to our car again as Parker opened the passenger’s door of Lila’s SUV and yelled, “No.”
“We just got here,” George replied.
The growling behind me was louder than anything I’d heard before. Animal, mixed with human, but mostly animal. I turned around to see it, a humungous black bear already straddling the woman who used to have a gun. Her gun was off to the side now. And there was no way she could reach it.
Two of the men charged the bear and it easily hopped off the woman to scurry after them. That’s when everyone took off, including me.
Those seniors darted up the hill like their medicare depended on it. The bear was just at their heels, close but not too close to do actual harm, even though the thing could easily have overtaken them, or eaten Meg. Everyone made it to their vehicles safely.
“And we’re done for today,” Lila said through the radio over the sounds of group two’s ignitions starting. “Meet at the park and rec to regroup.”
“What about my gun?” Meg answered with the black bear not but thirty feet away from us.
Once I was safe in my car, I looked back at the bear who was scurrying away into the forest again. He seemed way too familiar. I’d definitely seen that bear before, and I knew where.
I shoved the door to the police department open as hard as I could when I got there later that afternoon. It was one of those doors that barely moved, so my anger wasn’t noticed.
“Hey Carly Mae,” Christine, the brunette who worked the front desk, said when she saw me come in. She was a woman around 50 with a smile you couldn’t be angry around. She stopped typing and looked up to see my face. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “Boyfriend trouble.”
“Justin!” she yelled into the back room. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Just let me know if you want me to give him extra paperwork. They all hate that worse than losing reception on Super Bowl Sunday.” She winked. “Paperwork’ll take care of him.”
Justin came out just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation.
“Uh-oh. What’d I do to deserve paperwork?” he asked.
“They always pretend not to know,” Christine said from her computer as my bear of a boyfriend pulled me outside so we could talk without anyone else hearing. He l
ooked good in his dark police uniform, mostly because it fit him like a glove. I pretended not to notice.
“Whatever, Justin. I know that was you out at the old Bear Rock Drive-In.”
“What was me? And why were you out at the old drive-in?”
My heart raced and I took a deep breath. “You could’ve been shot and killed. What were you thinking?”
He hunched down so he was the same height as me and leaned in. “Now I’m worried. What are you talking about?”
I looked around. The police department was located on the corner of two of the busiest streets in town, but still everyone avoided it. Not a soul in sight. I lowered my voice as I told him about the task force meeting I went to, the bear, and how Meg brought out a gun.
He sighed heavily. “Look, Carly. I don’t think you should go to those anymore,” he said. “This isn’t a game. This is serious, and if the town wants to form search parties, they should come to the police. And they shouldn’t have weapons. Especially not guns. What was Meg thinking? You are so lucky. So lucky someone did not get hurt…”
My usual “doesn’t say much” boyfriend was letting me have an earful.
He wasn’t finished. “They should also have given us the wallet chain evidence, and Shelby should have given us the grouse foot and told us about the mattress money. Doesn’t anyone trust the police around here?”
I looked down at my feet. I wasn’t sure what to think anymore. “The bear out there today didn’t hurt anyone. Not even the woman with the gun. It was almost like he wanted to scare us away from doing any more task forces.” I realized my voice was raising, so I lowered it again. “That bear looked a lot like you, and you told me once that you sometimes follow me around to protect me.”
“Not this time. That wasn’t me.”
“I don’t know. You keep a lot of secrets.” My voice was a whisper but it was still cracking as I talked. “Just so you know, we’re all getting bear spray before we reconvene this Saturday at the Dead Forest,” I said. “So watch your eyes.”