by Margi Preus
“If we get out of here, I’ll show you. But hurry! We’ve got to get this other pin out. She’s gonna come back!”
The pin, however, was stuck. Francie felt around on the closet floor for something—anything—to use as a tool. Ah, a shoe, a shoe with a spike heel.
“Shh!” T.J. hissed. “I hear someone!”
The sound of approaching footsteps made them freeze. Not until the footsteps continued past the door did they breathe again. Then Francie used the heel of the shoe to hammer at the pin.
“Be quiet!” T.J. said. “And hurry!”
“I can’t be quiet and pound at the same time,” Francie whispered.
“Whack!” T.J. said.
Francie banged away at the pin until it finally gave. Together, they jiggled the door loose from its hinges, set it aside, and stepped out of the closet. There at the end of the hall, with his mouth agape, was Nels.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Spying on you. What do you think—I’m going to let you wander around outside when there’s someone trying to kill you?”
“Why didn’t you come in? She was scaring the crap out of me!”
“I thought you’d be furious if I came in while you were talking. I watched through the kitchen window and saw the two of you seeming seminormal. Not weird enough to come busting in. But then she grabbed your arm, not in a friendly way, and you both disappeared. Next thing, I heard the back door slam, and I ran around behind the house and saw her stalking off into the woods. Then I came looking for you.”
“The woods?” Francie said. “She’s probably gone to get the splitting maul. She could be back any time. Let’s get out of here!” She started through the house toward the front door—away from the woods.
“No!” T.J. said. “We have to go after her!”
“No way!” Francie exclaimed. “She’s crazy. She wants to kill us!”
“You people! You don’t understand. This is serious. That lady is going to the site!”
“Site?” Francie asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Ooh,” T.J. groaned. “Just come with me. I’ll show you. We’ve got to stop her! If you won’t come with me, I’ll go myself. I’m serious; I will!”
Francie and Nels looked at each other. Nels grabbed at T.J., but T.J. squirted out of his grasp and started for the back door.
“Okay, T.J., we’ll come with you.” Nels started after him. “Right, Francie?” he said, turning toward her.
“Right,” Francie said. “Sure.”
Nels followed T.J. out the back door.
“I’ll catch up,” Francie called after them. There was something she wanted to do first.
Francie jogged through several rooms, looking for the silver box, but she couldn’t remember which room she’d been in when she’d seen it. After a frantic search, she realized she wasn’t going to find it. And she knew she couldn’t leave T.J. and Nels to face Freddie alone. Nor did she want to face her alone, so she moved quickly toward the back of the house.
In the kitchen, she picked up her flashlight. As she ran past the window, she caught her reflection floating by like a ghost. Or, she wondered as she raced down the long hallway, had there been someone outside, passing by the window? She barged out the back door and smacked headfirst into—
“Sheriff Johnson?” Francie gasped.
“Potter said we might find you here.” She noticed he had several deputies with him. His dog sniffed around at her feet.
Words began to rush out of her: “Oh, good! We’ve got to follow T.J. He knows where she’s gone. We have to hurry! Nels and T.J.—”
But the sheriff was talking right back at her, not listening! “In addition to aiding and abetting—” he was saying.
“You’re not listening to me!” she yelled. She thought she heard the same thing coming from him. “Stop talking!” she cried, waving her arms, which were quickly snatched up and held behind her back by one of the deputies.
“Now, why don’t you tell me where your aunts are?” the sheriff said.
“Why don’t you tell me?” She struggled against the deputy’s grip, although she knew she shouldn’t. “What are you doing? And what do you mean about my aunts? Aren’t they in jail?”
“You know very well they aren’t, and you’re under arrest on suspicion of—”
Behind the sheriff, Francie thought she saw something moving among the trees. She tried to peer past the blinding flashlight beams into the dark woods. Whatever it was—if anything—disappeared among the trees.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t know where your aunts are.”
“I can’t look anybody in the eye with that flashlight beam in my face.”
“’Cuff her, Deputy,” the sheriff said.
“Listen to me!” Francie pleaded while struggling to stay out of the handcuffs. “There’s a madwoman loose. T.J. is out there in harm’s way. She’s dangerous!” She tried to explain while also trying to pay attention to the sheriff. She was pretty sure she heard “resisting arrest” and possibly “impersonating an officer” come out of his mouth.
The sudden ching-ching of multiple sprinklers leaping to their task distracted everyone for a moment, including the dog, who tucked his tail and yelped in surprise. Francie kept her wits and bolted.
No sooner had she ducked behind the nearest shed than she felt a large hand cover her mouth and a strong arm wrap around her waist.
“Stay quiet.” It was Nels.
“Shh! Both of you.” That was T.J.
The sprinklers shut off as unexpectedly as they had started, and the men’s voices rang, bright and metallic, through the sudden stillness.
“This way!” came a nearby shout. Francie stiffened as she heard them clattering toward the shed.
Then, improbably, a yard light switched on in the distance.
“Hey!” somebody yelled. “A motion detector light just went on in the front yard!”
The sounds of the men receded away toward the light while Francie felt herself being swept into the woods. As the voices faded, she heard the sprinklers snap on again.
“Nels,” she whispered over the merry ching-chinging of the sprinklers, “the sheriff said my aunts busted out of jail!”
“I know.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t give me a chance. They came to the cabin after you left. Potter told them where you were. They took their boat, and I raced over here through the woods.”
“The sheriff thinks I was the one who busted them out.”
“I know that, too. That’s what I was going to tell you, that the sheriff was looking for you.”
“Come on!” T.J. whined, pulling on their arms. “Hurry!”
T.J. moved like a little bear cub on a trail only he could see, while Francie and Nels stumbled along behind. There was only a thin fringe of woods separating the Fredericksons’ and the bog, and they soon glimpsed an opening through the trees. They stopped and hid behind a clump of birches and surveyed the clearing.
The veiled moon cast a pale light over the old bog. Here and there, a few scraggly, lopsided tamaracks jutted up into the sky, pointy as witches’ hats, while wisps of mist rose from the wet ground. Except for the occasional tapping of water that dripped from the tamarack needles and the ever-present hum of mosquitoes, it was quiet. The rain had eased up, the wind had backed down, and an ominous stillness had settled over everything.
Breaking the silence, T.J. said, “I don’t think she’s here. Yet.”
They switched on their flashlights and crept into the bog, the beams bouncing off the uneven ground, silvering the pale grasses and flashing up into the distant darkness.
T.J. led them to a spot where the vegetation had been torn away, and Francie shone her light on it, the raw earth like a gaping, open wound. The beam caught the glint of a shovel blade, pale stones, and something slick and shiny that Francie recognized as a plastic tarp.
“What’s unde
r there?” Francie asked.
“See for yourself,” T.J. said.
Nels lifted the edge of the tarp while Francie directed the flashlight beam under it. The beam traveled along the black earth, glancing off small, stray pebbles or shiny bits of stuff, then shone on something—a root? What was that? She swept the light over the ground again, slower this time, and made out the shape of something that sent a creepy chill down her spine.
“Fantastic,” Nels breathed. “Unbelievable!”
“What is it?” Francie asked.
“Mastodon bones,” T.J. said.
Francie was struck silent as she realized she was looking at the bones of an animal that had lived . . . how many thousands of years ago?
After a few moments of silent awe, the implications of this find began to dawn on her. “Ah,” she said. “Ah.”
“‘Ah’ what?” Nels said.
“This is where the road is supposed to go,” Francie explained. “Right here, over these bones. A find like this would bring construction to a standstill for who knows how long? Because who knows how many bones might be around here? They might be scattered all over the place. They’d have to do a big dig, and that would thwart Freddie’s—Mrs. Frederickson’s—plans. She needs the road to build her condominium paradise.” What was it she had said, though? Something about smoke and mirrors? “Or whatever it is she’s got planned back here,” Francie finished.
“Right,” T.J. said. “That’s why she wants to wreck it. She wants to smash it all to pieces. She just gets rid of anything she doesn’t like.”
“Anything that stands in her way,” Francie agreed. “Like she needed to get rid of the old folks and Buck.”
“And Warren,” T.J. piped up.
“Yeah,” Francie said. “Why Warren?”
“Warren was going to go to town to talk to the state archaeologist who was here for a historical society thing. But the wicked witch killed him before he could get there. Warren and me thought it was only us two who knew about the site. And we meant to let the right people know, but then we realized someone else knew, somebody who was making a holy mess out of it every night. I tried to find out who it was.”
“Is that what you were doing out so late at night?”
“Yeah,” T.J. said. “Whoever it was worked late at night.”
“I know who it was,” Francie said.
“But now she’s going to try to wreck everything,” T.J. went on. “That’s what she wants to do. We have to stop her.”
“But what? What’s she going to do?” Nels asked. “These bones are huge, heavy, and embedded in this muck. It’s not like she’s going to dig them up by herself. And even if she did, what would she do with them? Drag them away and hide them under a rug in her house?”
“She’ll think of a way to wreck them. She’s evil!” T.J. wailed.
“How? How can she wreck them? With a shovel? Her bare hands? How?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” T.J. cried.
“Oh, for the love of Pete,” Francie said. “I know how she can do it. She’s got a—” Francie was interrupted by the rumbling thrum of heavy equipment echoing through the stillness, accompanied by sounds of splintering saplings. “Bulldozer,” she finished.
“Holy crap!” Nels said. “She’s got her own dozer?”
“Apparently she just kept it after the house building project. Something about the lake freezing over—” The rumbling of the machine cut her off.
“We have to stop her! Have to!” T.J. wailed.
How, Francie wondered, were the three of them going to stop a bulldozer?
30
The Machine
The beams of the dozer’s lights pierced the darkness as the machine chewed its way through the woods toward them, splintering small trees in its way and crunching over logs, rocks, stumps, everything.
“Come on!” T.J. shouted. “We can intersect her.”
“Intercept,” Francie corrected him. Her inner English teacher would probably be the last part of her to die, she thought.
Frederica Ricard had pushed Francie’s kayak off the island, started a forest fire, tried to drown her, and locked her in a closet with the promise that she wouldn’t live to discover her own talents. So Francie was pretty sure the woman would not only willingly drive a bulldozer over her and her friends if they stood in front of it, she’d probably relish it.
What could they do?
Once again Francie thought of the folktale princess who, in order to make her escape, flung things over her shoulder: a mirror, a comb, mascara, a tube of lip gloss—
“Hey!” she cried, feeling the lumpy plastic bag in her pocket. “I’ve got some kind of fireworks!” She pulled the bag out and showed it to them. “And I’ve got a lighter, too.”
T.J. was impressed. “You’ve got a string of lady fingers and a coupla black snakes and—cool! A mega thunder bomb!”
“What does this mega thunder bomb thing do?”
“It’s like a little bomb.”
“Can it blow up a bulldozer?” Francie asked.
“Not really,” T.J. answered.
“Curses!” Francie said.
Nels, in the meantime, had retrieved a shovel and set off purposefully in the direction of the rumbling sound.
“Where are you going?” Francie called after him.
“I’ve got an idea,” he yelled over his shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got an idea,” she yelled back.
“And your idea is firecrackers?” he called.
“Not just firecrackers. I’ve also got a mega thunder bomb,” she shouted. “And your idea is a shovel?”
“Listen,” Nels stopped and turned back toward her, “I worked one summer on a road crew, so I know at least a little bit about bulldozers. If you can think of a way to make her stop or at least slow down, that’d be helpful.”
“Where’d T.J. go?” Francie asked, realizing he had disappeared.
“I hope he’s well out of the way and hiding. That’s what you should do, too,” Nels pleaded.
The noise grew louder, and suddenly the machine appeared through the trees like some horrible monster, roaring and gnashing its teeth. Its twin yellow headlights bounced wildly off tree trunks as it jounced over the uneven ground.
Nels strode straight toward it while Francie stared after him for a moment. She intended to follow, but the sound of shouting and crashing behind her—a blur of men’s voices and a yelping dog, then the high, pale, distant beams of four or five flashlights—stopped her. The sheriff and his deputies would have to arrive right now. She stood paralyzed for a moment. Should she try to explain to the sheriff one more time, or run after Nels to stop him before he got killed?
She could see him moving toward the oncoming bulldozer, dodging from tree to tree to stay out of sight. As the machine passed under some low-hanging branches, Francie watched as something fluttered down from the tree—something slick and shiny—and draped over the driver.
The dozer slowed as Freddie struggled to remove the tarp from her head. While she was occupied with this, Nels dashed out of the trees toward the bulldozer and rammed the shovel blade into its track. Okay, Francie thought, that was clever. But then she watched as Freddie pulled the tarp away, swiveled her head, and zeroed in on Nels, who was dashing away toward the trees. The woman shouted, then pointed something at him.
“She’s got a gun!” Francie yelled, and before she even knew what she was going to do, Francie bolted from the trees, lighting and throwing sizzling firecrackers at the bulldozer. Whooping and screeching, she ran in a zigzag pattern, aided by the lumpy ground that made running in a straight line impossible anyway. The firecrackers went off in rapid machine-gun-fire pops. When she reached the machine, she tucked herself behind it and, using Freddie’s fancy lighter, took a moment to light the mega thunder bomb, scrambled up the side of the dozer, and popped the little bomb down the smokestack.
31
The Blast
The blast wa
s impressive. For a moment, Francie stood in shocked stillness. When the smoke cleared, there, bright against the dark sky, was the dime-sized moon, and at her feet some bit of glimmer, as if a piece of the moon had broken off and landed there. But it was nothing so romantic as that; it was a handgun. She reached down and picked it up.
Through the misty fog she thought she saw an angel, which was really strange since she did not believe in angels. It was, of course, Freddie, who had climbed down or been blown down from her perch on the dozer and now stood a few feet from her, her wind-blown hair backlit by the headlights, her tattered clothes wafting around her like shredded wings. She was so pale as to be almost translucent and looked so fragile that Francie thought her bones would snap in a stiff breeze.
Freddie glanced at the gun in Francie’s hand; Francie felt the weight of it on her palm, but she didn’t raise it, didn’t level it at the other woman.
Over the years it had occurred to Francie that her mother had been perhaps a very bad person who had done very bad things, and maybe that was why nobody would ever tell Francie anything about her. She had pondered the implications of that. If her mother had been a thief or a murderer, did that mean Francie was doomed to repeat her sins? And was it possible that this person in front of her now, this person who had committed despicable crimes, was, in fact, her mother?
It was remote, but it was possible. Earlier in the evening, there had been a few moments when Francie had even wished it to be true. She and Freddie stared at one another for a long moment. Some kind of recognition passed between them. Francie felt it and shuddered.
She glanced away for a moment, distracted by the yelping dog and a half-dozen flashlight beams, and noticed for the first time the ghostly winking of fireflies along the edge of the forest. That was how fireflies tried to find each other, she remembered, by sending slow, blinking signals in the dark.
When Francie looked back, Freddie was gone.
32
The Silver Box
Francie fell into her aunts’ arms as soon as she entered the cabin. Nels and T.J. were smothered with kisses, too, and hugged to bosoms. “Thank goodness you’re safe!” everybody said to everyone else in an outpouring of giddy relief.