How many people can say they owe their life to a sparrow?
He chirped in acknowledgment and flitted off to join the others in the trees.
I helped Brooke get Josiah into the house and coaxed him to take a dose of diazepam. We got him settled on the couch in the living room, and Reedy agreed to stay there and look after him for a while.
Brooke met us in the hall as Reedy and his oxygen were making their way into the room.
“Josiah’s asleep. He’ll probably be upset when he wakes up and I’m not here. But you should be okay.” She gave Reedy a small smile. “I hid the gun.”
“Peachy.”
• • •
Brooke and I climbed into Bluebell. We’d barely made it out of the drive when she turned to me and asked, “How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“That thing with the birds.”
I lifted a shoulder. “It’s something I learned how to do when I was a kid.”
Not a lie. But I wasn’t keen on telling Brooke the truth. I knew she wouldn’t believe me and the tenuous trust we had developed would weaken.
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“Well, it’s all you’re going to get.”
She let out a dramatic sigh, punctuating it with a grumpy “Whatever.”
“Forget about the birds,” I told her. “How did you end up out here with Josiah?”
I glanced over and she shrugged.
When it became obvious she wasn’t going to answer, I tried prompting her with: “I talked to the guy who owns Billy’s Feed and Seed, what’s his name?”
“Doc Riggins?”
“That’s it—Doc. He said Josiah was in the store the same time you were, but you didn’t talk.”
“I didn’t even really notice him. But he followed me.”
“Why?”
“I was upset. Crying, you know, and I think Josiah, well, you saw how he is. He started to think I was his sister, Abby.”
“He wanted to protect you.”
“Yeah.”
It made sense except for one thing. Boris hadn’t seen a protective brotherly figure offer Brooke help—he’d seen her being taken.
“I don’t understand. You were on the other side of the fence. Right where the . . .” I trailed off as understanding dawned. “It was you. You were the one who cut the hole in the chain-link. That’s what you were doing,” I said, looking over at her.
She glanced at me sharply. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were,” I stated. “Why would you cut a hole in the fence?”
Brooke didn’t answer. She sat and stared out the windshield, her lips pressed tightly together. A perfect example of the term clammed up. Once you disturb a clam or, more apropos, an oyster, its single adductor muscle flexes, clamping the shell closed like a vise. You can’t force it open. You just have to wait.
Unless, of course, you have an oyster knife and you know how to use it.
What tool could I use to make her open up?
I thought about this as we rumbled along. Waiting Brooke out didn’t appeal to me. I’d spent the last week looking for this girl. I’d risked my neck, my friendships, and—thanks to my aunt Marabelle’s gold lamé—a good portion of my dignity. But Brooke didn’t know any of that.
I had a feeling that a do-you-know-what-I’ve-been-through-to-find-you lecture would roll off her like water off a duck’s back. If I wanted answers—and I very much did—I was going to have to try a different tactic.
A sudden and surprising thought hit me.
She’d asked about what I’d done with the sparrows. What if I told her the truth? I weighed the options and was a bit shocked to discover that a part of me actually wanted to share.
Everything I’d learned about Brooke—her devotion to the animals she helped care for, even her stubbornness—made me think of her as somewhat of a kindred spirit. To gain her trust, I had to get her to view me in the same way.
“Listen, I know you don’t want to open up to me. I get it. You don’t trust people. Believe me, I understand. More than you know.” I paused, then added, “But I also know it’s not easy keeping secrets.”
“Yeah,” Brooke said sarcastically. “Like you have so much to hide.”
“You might be surprised. How about this. I’ll make you a deal—a secret for a secret. You wanted to know about the birds, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell you how I did the trick with the birds if you promise to answer some questions.”
“And you’ll teach me how to do it?” she asked, her eagerness trumping her wariness.
“I didn’t say that. It’s not really something I can teach.” I could feel her eyeing me as she considered, but I kept my focus on the road.
“Okay, deal. But you have to tell me first.”
“You’ll probably think I’m crazy.”
“Crazy?” she scoffed. “I know crazy and I’m not talking about Josiah. You met Mancini, right? That guy is completely whacked. As far as I can tell, you’re not.”
We’d see about that. “I have the ability to communicate with animals. It’s something I was born with. I don’t know exactly how it works or why but that’s how I knew you’d been taken at the fence. Boris saw what happened and when he went after Hugh—Dr. Murray—he showed me a snippet of that memory.”
“Seriously?”
I couldn’t tell by her tone if she was being sarcastic or not.
I glanced over at her. “He says you smell like peppermint.”
Her eyes widened and a smile spread slowly across her face.
“Oh, wow. That is seriously the most awesome thing I have ever heard.”
“It can be a real pain in the ass, actually.”
“Come on. It’s got to be so sweet to be able to talk to animals.”
“It has its moments.”
“Can you like, talk to everything? I mean, birds, obviously. But can you talk to fish? What about beetles?”
“Beetles don’t have a lot going on in the brain department.”
“This is so awesome. What happens? You said Boris showed you a memory; is it like a movie? Or do you hear voices?”
I raised my hand to stop the onslaught of questions. She was worse than Kai.
“Enough. Now it’s my turn. I want to know what happened. Boris was sure you’d been taken, as in kidnapped. He was afraid for you. Afraid and angry.”
“I guess it’s because of the way it all went down. Josiah came up behind me and grabbed my arm. I almost screamed but he put his hand over my mouth. Totally freaked me out. But then I saw why. There was someone else in the woods.”
“Who?”
“Mancini.”
“What was Mancini doing in the woods? Looking for you, obviously, but how did he know where you were?”
“I don’t know. I guess he saw me when I stopped on the back road.”
“The one that runs behind Happy Asses?”
“Right.”
“Why did you stop?”
“I needed to mark the way through the woods. So I took a bag of birdseed and left a trail.”
“A trail? I walked all over those woods. I didn’t see—” Then I remembered. “The storms. All the seed would have washed into the ditch.”
“Probably got eaten, too—that’s why I used birdseed. I just needed to find my way on one night. After that, it didn’t matter.”
“So you did cut the hole in the fence. Why?”
She hesitated for a long moment.
Finally, she said, “I needed to get inside after hours.”
Not a very complete answer, but I let it go for the moment.
“Why cut the fence? Ozeal told me you have the gate code.”
“I couldn’t use it. An alarm goes off at her place when the gate is opened.”
“Okay,” I said, piecing together with some difficulty what I’d learned. “Josiah sees you at the feed and seed. He follows you. You stop to lay your birdie bread crumbs and
cut the hole in the fence. Then what? Ozeal’s truck didn’t go missing. You had to have gone back to work.”
“I did.”
“But you went back into the woods.”
“When I cut the fence, it kind of pulled the chain-link apart, like a curtain. It wouldn’t stay together.”
“So you went to close it with a brass clip. Like the one Ozeal uses for her keys.”
“Yeah. That’s when Josiah grabbed me. Once I saw Mancini, I knew I had to get out of there, so I went with Josiah. He told me he saw Mancini watching me. I don’t know when or where. It’s hard to understand Josiah when he gets upset sometimes.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s not like he’s stupid,” she said defensively. “He was smart enough to know Mancini was bad news.”
“Even a beetle is smart enough to pick up on that.” I smiled at my own joke, and glanced at Brooke. She glared at me.
“What?”
“You don’t have to make fun of him.”
“I wasn’t,” I said, confused. Weren’t we just talking about beetle brains?
“He can’t help it.”
“I know that.” People rarely got my sense of humor, which was why I usually didn’t employ it. “I was talking about Mancini’s creepiness, not Josiah’s intellect.”
“Well, anyway, I think Josiah saw Mancini go into the woods where I left the trail, and followed him.”
I mulled it over as we drove down the long, two-lane road. “Maybe . . .” I said as my thoughts came together. “There’s a restaurant, Cooper’s or whatever it’s called. It’s right down the road. Mancini could have been headed there and spotted you.”
“Cooper’s Catch?”
“That’s it.”
“I forgot it was down that way. It’s one of my dad’s places. He used to take me there for fried catfish when I was little. He said I was a picky eater, but I loved the stuff at Cooper’s Catch.”
The emotion in her voice became more palpable the longer she talked about her father. Whatever kind of criminal enterprise he ran, she loved him.
“I didn’t get a chance to try the food when I was there.”
“They have banana splits, too. I haven’t been there since . . .” She trailed off.
I glanced at Brooke. From the way her voice had grown soft and thick, I expected to see tears, but she’d kept them at bay. Practice makes perfect.
“What are they after? Mancini and Ferretto,” I asked, to steer the subject into less sentimental waters.
“Why do you want to know so bad?”
“Because whatever it is, I got mugged because they thought I had it.”
“Mugged?”
“At gunpoint,” I added. “And the jerk threatened to shoot my dog.”
“What?” she asked, anger coloring her voice.
“Yeah, so, I deserve to know.”
“It’s a key.”
“A key? To what, a car?”
“To a safety deposit box. My mom gave it to me. She told me my dad would want me to have what’s in the box for my sixteenth birthday. She said when he got out of jail, we could go together and open it.”
Out of nowhere, understanding hit me. “You wanted to hide the key. That’s why you cut the hole in the fence.”
“I put it in Boris’s enclosure.”
“Which you could only get into after he’d been put in his house for the night.” I nodded, impressed. It was pretty smart. Who would think to look in the tiger cage?
“What would Ferretto want with a sweet-sixteen gift?” I asked. “Do you know what’s in the box?”
She shook her head.
I didn’t believe Charles Sartori would endanger his daughter by giving her something his enemies would kill for. It didn’t make sense. And no one other than Sartori would have been able to gain access to the box anyway. Nothing was adding up.
“Are you sure they were after the key?” I asked.
“I can’t think of anything else.”
“It doesn’t matter, the police will sort everything out. We’ve just got to get you—”
“Police? You can’t take me to the cops.”
“Brooke, these guys are after you. You need to be in protective custody. I have a friend—”
“No. You don’t understand. Frank has snitches everywhere—even with the cops.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her. She was going to the JSO whether she liked it or not. My resolve must have been clear because she unbuckled her seat belt and started to open the door.
I slammed on the brakes. A horn blared behind us and I had to hit the gas.
“Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m not going to the cops.”
“So you jump out of a moving car? We’re going sixty miles an hour! You’d be roadkill.”
“You take me to the cops, and I’ll be just as dead.” She inched the door open.
“Okay! I won’t take you to the cops. Close the door! And put your seat belt back on,” I added.
She complied but said, “I know where the sheriff’s office is; I’ve been there enough times. If you go anywhere near it, I’ll get out and run.”
“I said I wouldn’t take you to the police and I meant it.”
“So, where are we going?”
“To the only other person I know who’s capable of protecting you.”
CHAPTER 22
“Emma?” I called out my sister’s name as I opened the door to the condo. “We have company.”
“Who’s Emma?”
“My sister.”
Moss trotted into the foyer to welcome me home and assess our visitor.
As expected, Brooke was impressed with my dog.
“Whoa, you have a wolf?”
“He’s a hybrid. Moss, this is Brooke. Brooke, Moss.”
I said my introductions as I walked past them, tossed my keys on the foyer table, and went into the kitchen.
“Hi, Moss.” I could hear Brooke cooing from the entryway. “You’re beautiful, aren’t you?”
Smug satisfaction radiated from my dog. Moss loved to be told he was pretty.
Handsome. Moss.
I rolled my eyes.
Okay, everyone knows you’re the best-looking mutt around.
Handsome.
Without compare, I agreed. Then decided to change the subject before he got too carried away. Where’s Emma?
Beach.
I checked for a note on the counter and found one that said she was headed for a run.
I opened the fridge to grab something to drink. The sound spurred Moss to abandon his new admirer for the prospect of food.
“Emma went for a run without you,” I told him as he trotted into the kitchen.
Bad Emma.
“Well, she probably thought you would be a brat and yank her around like you did the last time.”
Dinner.
“She didn’t feed you, either?”
Bad Emma.
I went to fill his bowl and noticed Brooke standing at the entrance to the kitchen staring at me.
“What?”
“Are you . . . like, talking to him?”
“Yes. Can’t you hear me talking to him?”
“I mean—is he, like, talking back?”
I knew what she’d meant but I didn’t feel comfortable with the odd look on her face. It occurred to me that I might have made a mistake telling her the truth. What were the chances a sixteen-year-old would be able to keep my secret?
Yes, I had revealed my ability to more people in the last few months than I had in the last ten years. But I didn’t want to put it on a billboard.
I handed Brooke a can of soda and said, “Listen, I was being straight with you earlier when I told you that my ability is a secret. Actually, you’re one of maybe ten people in the world who know what I can do. And I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Why? What you do is awesome. It’s like a superpower or something.”
“Maybe. But t
he truth is, out of those few people I’ve told, one wanted to arrest me and another thought I was a freak and never spoke to me again. Those aren’t very good odds.”
“A freak? Come on. Whoever said that was a hater.”
“Yeah, well, at the time, I thought he was pretty important and believed he felt the same about me. So . . .”
Brooke looked down at the can and fiddled with the tab. Finally, she popped the top and took a sip.
“You don’t want me to talk about it,” she said.
“That would be best.”
I could tell she was disappointed. She’d probably envisioned all the ways I could save the world by chatting up chipmunks.
“You mean I can’t ever talk to you about it?” She fiddled with the tab on her drink some more, pushing it left and right with her index finger. “Like, even if there isn’t anyone else around?”
“We can talk about it privately.”
“Okay.” She pulled her gaze away from the can and looked at me. “Was Boris really upset when I left?”
“Yes. He missed you a lot.”
“I would have come and visited him if I had known.” She paused, then asked, “Is that why you were looking for me? Because of Boris?”
“And because no one else was looking. The police couldn’t help because you hadn’t been reported missing.”
“So my mom . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Never mind. Bob wouldn’t have let her talk to the cops even if she wanted to. He—” Brooke’s face darkened and Moss went over to lean against her leg, offering comfort. Brooke automatically reached out and curled her fingers into his ruff.
“You don’t have to explain. I know how Ligner treated your mom.”
“You do?”
“I talked to Felix.”
Her lips curled up slightly at that. I hated to take away even such a tenuous smile but I knew it was time to tell her about her mother.
“Listen, there’s something I need to tell you.”
I explained what I’d learned from Jake and at the hospital.
“So my mom’s a druggie? Great.”
“I heard one of the nurses say she’s going into rehab. So she’s going to get help.”
“This is so messed up,” Brooke said. “My mom used to be, like, a real mom.”
A Tiger's Tale (A Call of the Wilde Mystery) Page 27