“But it’s the only way we’re going to catch the Ord’s gulls,” Grandfather was saying. “They’re too shy to come on their own, but if all the other birds show up for the filming, there’s a good chance they will, too.”
“Meg!”
I wished whoever was calling me would be quiet, just long enough to let me talk Grandfather out of his movie idea. All I needed was—
“Meg!”
“Just a minute,” I said. Mumbled, actually. I opened my eyes, and instead of Grandfather and the circling flocks of starlings, sparrows, swallows, chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, titmice, and maybe even gulls, I saw Cordelia.
“Were you having a nightmare?”
“Yes,” I said. “About Grandfather.”
“That’s understandable.” She looked angry. No, make that upset.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She glanced around. There were a couple of people sitting or standing on the terrace, sipping coffee and enjoying the sunrise. Not nearly as many as usual, though.
“I need to show you something.”
I heaved myself out of the recliner and trailed behind her, back into the building.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as soon as we were out of earshot of anyone.
“You have to see it.”
So I followed her to her office. She unlocked the door, marched in, and then stepped aside and gestured at her desk.
“That was on my desk when I came in this morning.” She pointed to a sheet of paper covered with brightly colored splotches.
“One of Josh’s paintings.” I smiled at the sight. Jamie’s paintings were more precise and detailed, but Josh had a more dramatic flair for color. The combination of a red wagon against green grass with a yellow sun, orange flowers, and a bug-eyed purple monster throwing a blue frisbee to a boy wearing a red Caerphilly Eagles t-shirt—definitely Josh.
“Check the other side. Here.” She handed me a couple of tissues. “Use these to pick it up. My fingerprints are already on it, and I suspect whoever left it was careful to wear gloves, but just in case.”
I took the tissues and used them to pick up the painting. I turned it over and saw words, evidently cut out of a magazine or newspaper and pasted onto the paper: CUTE KIDS. I’D HATE FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN TO THEM.
My stomach clenched with anxiety. And then the anger kicked in.
“They’ve crossed a line,” Cordelia said. “Pranks and minor vandalism’s one thing—threatening children is quite another.”
“I’d have said they crossed the line with the first murder.” I was trying to keep my hand from shaking as I studied the note. “And left it way behind with the second. But yeah. Threatening children. We need to show this to the chief.” I put the paper back down on the desk, art side up.
“Already put in a call.” We exchanged a look. I wondered if my face looked as stern and grim as hers.
There was a tap on the door.
“Cordelia?” The chief.
“Come in,” Cordelia and I said in unison.
The chief studied Josh’s painting for a few moments. She looked up at us, slightly puzzled. And maybe also slightly annoyed—after all, she was still in the midst of two murder investigations, and probably still a little edgy about the possibility that a third murder might turn up after all.
“Does this have something to do with the murders?” she asked.
“Turn it over,” Cordelia said.
The chief reached into her pocket, pulled out a set of plastic gloves, and put them on before doing so. Her face hardened into a stern expression as she scanned the paper.
“You already touched it, I expect.”
“Unfortunately,” Cordelia said. “When I came in, I just thought Josh had brought it to me as a present. And then I turned it over and saw the threat.”
The chief nodded, a little absently, her eyes fixed on the paper. The note seemed to anger her—even more than the murders. I suddenly realized that I knew nothing about the chief’s private life. Was that sudden extra fierceness there because she could imagine how she’d react to a threat pasted to the back of one of her own children’s paintings—if she had children? Or did most police officers feel just a little more angry when the bad guys targeted children?
She pulled out her phone and tapped on it.
“Horace?” she said. “More evidence. Mrs. Mason’s office.”
Either Horace uttered his usual “on my way” very quickly or she didn’t wait to hear it. She hung up, stuck the phone back in her pocket, and turned back to Cordelia.
As she took Cordelia through the predictable questions—when was the last time she had been in her office? Was it locked? Who had keys?—I took deep breaths to calm myself.
I was angry—so angry I was glad I didn’t know who had left the note, because if I had known, I’d want to hunt them down and hurt them. And from the look on Cordelia’s face, I was pretty sure she felt the same way.
And I was scared. They weren’t just threatening Cordelia—they’d involved Josh and Jamie.
But to my surprise, my voice was steady as I answered Chief Heedles’s questions.
“As far as I know, as of last night that painting was hanging on the clothesline in the children’s activity room. Michael and Eric might know for sure.”
“I’ll ask them,” she said. “And I’ll have Horace check this out. You realize, though, that he might not find any evidence to help us determine who left this.”
“I realize that,” I said. “And also that you can’t yet tell whether or not this has anything to do with the murders.”
“Correct,” Chief Heedles said. “Although I’m not a big fan of coincidences. Riverton’s a small town. We don’t get a lot of vandalism, and we just used up this decade’s quota of murders in two nights. I’d be pretty surprised if all these crimes didn’t have something in common.”
She looked a little grim. Stressed.
“You’ll figure it out.” Cordelia patted the chief’s shoulder encouragingly. “But in the meantime, we need to protect the boys.”
Chapter 25
Yes. Protecting the boys was the priority.
“You could send them home,” the chief suggested.
“If we sent them home they wouldn’t have Michael and me to protect them,” I said. “Not to mention Cordelia, and Grandfather and Horace and Rose Noire and Caroline. If we sent them away, we’d need to go with them, and I’m not doing that to Cordelia. We’ll find a way to protect them here. I like our odds better here anyway.”
“I’ll call Stanley.” Cordelia had already taken out her phone. “I’m not sure whether personal protection is one of his talents as a private investigator, but if it isn’t, he’ll know who to call.”
“I’m calling Mother.” I had my phone out as well.
The chief looked mildly puzzled. She’d met Mother, and probably didn’t consider her a particularly useful asset to our mission of protecting the boys. Cordelia, who knew Mother well by now and saw eye to eye with her, nodded in approval.
Just then Horace arrived.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” The chief handed the note to Horace, and the two of them went across the hall to the chief’s temporary office.
Cordelia and I focused on our phones.
“Meg, dear,” Mother said. “You haven’t had another murder have you? I know your father would be excited by it, but really, this is getting out of hand.”
“No new murders.”
“Then is everything all right?”
“No, it’s not all right—not by a long shot. We need your help to fix it. The boys need bodyguards. Who do we know who can do it?”
I explained as succinctly as possible our sudden need for bodyguards. As I expected, Mother didn’t waste much time panicking. A badly decorated room could send her to bed with a cold cloth over her forehead, but a threat to her grandsons brought out the warrior in her. After a brief discussion of the available talent, we came up with a list. Our top
prospects were Cousin Lydia’s son Jason, the Navy SEAL—nearly recovered from being wounded while doing something he wasn’t allowed to talk about, but not yet back on active duty—and Cousin Lance, a career Marine who upon his retirement four years ago had opened up a combination gym and mixed martial arts studio.
“I’ll start with them and work my way down the list,” Mother said. “I’ll call you back shortly.”
I thanked her and hung up just as Cordelia was ending her conversation.
“Stanley’s on his way,” Cordelia reported. “Meg—if you want to take the boys away, you should do it. The craft center’s not worth anyone dying for—especially not them.”
“If we have to, we will.” I wondered if she guessed how close I’d been to doing so, at least for a few moments. “But I think maybe we’re safer here—with proper precautions. After all, up here on the mountain, we have only a few dozen people to keep our eyes on. Caerphilly’s a teeming metropolis by comparison. Someone who’s not supposed to be here will stick out a mile away.”
“Of course, whoever did this probably is supposed to be here,” Cordelia said. “Staff, faculty, or student.”
“Yes,” I said. “But that’s still fewer people than we’d have to watch at home. And with this note on top of the murders, the chief has all the grounds she needs for combing through the background of everyone who’s here.” And if she didn’t we still had Kevin’s cyber skills. “If they have some kind of connection with Jazz Hands or with Smith the developer, or anyone else with a reason to want to hurt Biscuit Mountain, she’ll find it. And besides—I haven’t seen anyone here who could take on Lance or Jason. Much less Lance and Jason.”
“You have a useful sort of family.”
“On both sides.” We exchanged a smile. “And now I have to grab a quick breakfast and get ready to teach my class. I’ll keep you posted.”
Before heading back to class, I let myself into one of the storage rooms so I could call Michael to fill him in.
There was a short silence on the other end of the phone when I’d finished rattling off my hurried explanation.
“Michael? Are you there?”
“Hell and damnation,” he said. “Sorry—I had to move to someplace where the kids couldn’t hear me, because nothing I can think of to say about this is fit for their ears.”
“Should we take them home?”
“And abandon your grandmother? No. We can keep them safe. I like your idea of bodyguards. And I have an idea of my own. When Lance and Jason or whoever your mother recruits gets here—let’s take the boys camping.”
“We kind of already are,” I said. “Or hadn’t you noticed that’s a tent we’re sleeping in?”
“Camping as in someplace away from the center. We pack up some tents and after dinner tonight your father and I can take the boys and the bodyguards up into the mountains—someplace where no one will find us. Everything bad that’s happened so far has been right here in the center, and in the middle of the night. So during that dangerous time, we’ll be far away from whoever’s doing this. And then we’ll come back down in time for classes tomorrow.”
I thought about it. The boys would probably like it. We might even be able to sell it as a special treat rather than scaring them with why we were really doing it.
“Okay.” I felt a little lighter as soon as I’d agreed. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to camping under even more strenuous conditions—”
“Which is why you get to stay behind and sleep indoors for a change. If your dad wants to come along, you can have his room. Always possible he might like to stay here and keep an eye on the murder investigation, in which case you can bunk with Rose Noire or Amanda.”
“I’m not a wimp about camping,” I reminded him.
“But you are the best one to stay here and keep an eye on everyone. To notice if anyone seems overly curious about our whereabouts, or disappears for a long time and comes back covered with cockleburs and mud.”
“Okay. Provided Jason and Lance, or whoever Mother rounds up, agrees with your strategy, I’m in.”
I texted Mother the bare bones of Michael’s scheme, and she texted back “Ted can do that.”
Ted? We were talking Lance and Jason. I knew of several Teds in the family, but none of them were prime bodyguard material. The fiercest of them was an IRS auditor, and while I hoped never to meet him in his professional capacity, I didn’t think his fiscal expertise would do much to discourage whoever had threatened the boys.
“Ted who?” I texted back.
“We not Ted.”
AutoCorrect strikes again. Over the course of the afternoon, she texted me occasional misspelled or completely incomprehensible progress reports. I itched to simply dial her number and talk to her, but that would have been rude to do in the middle of class. Even ruder than looking at my phone every time it dinged.
Luckily by halfway through the morning session, I’d deciphered enough of her texts to know that, yes, Jason and Lance were on their way.
And just as classes were breaking up for lunch, they arrived in a Land Rover only slightly smaller than a semi, the sort of vehicle that could easily climb any mountain they were apt to encounter in the Blue Ridge, or maybe even just snarl and smash through mountains if it grew impatient with climbing them.
Just the sight of them made my anxiety lift a little as I stood at one of the windows in the great room watching their arrival.
Lance, who was driving, brought the Land Rover to a stop right in front of the front porch. Jason hopped out of the rear passenger-side seat and hurried over to open the door for their third passenger—Mother.
Lance raced around to the passenger side to supervise as Jason helped Mother down from the high seat, treating her as if she were made of spun glass. Well, she was getting on, though you’d never guess it from her slender figure, perfect posture, and improbably blond hair.
“Somebody taught those boys manners.” Amanda had come up behind me and was peering over my shoulder. “Isn’t that your mother?”
“Yes.” Had I somehow missed Mother’s announcement that she’d be joining us? “Come up to see how we’re getting along.”
“And to make sure your dad isn’t bothering Chief Heedles too much, I expect.”
“That too.”
Lance had offered Mother his arm and was escorting her up the steps to the porch, leaving Jason to carry her luggage. From a distance, you’d have thought them brothers instead of cousins twenty years apart in age.
“Guess your mother’s planning to stay for a while.”
“Not necessarily.” I had pulled out my cell phone and was texting Cordelia to alert her to Mother’s arrival. “She’s only brought three suitcases.”
“Only?”
Mother was making her entrance, and I hurried over to greet her.
“Meg, dear.” She almost landed a kiss on my left cheek. “So nice of your grandmother to invite me. I’ve missed you all.”
“And we’ve missed you.”
Just then Cordelia sailed in, so I decided to leave her to get Mother settled. I went in search of Michael and the boys.
Although they were pleased to see their grandmother, it was love at first sight when the boys spotted the Land Rover. And when Lance and Jason emerged from the main building, resplendent in various bits of military clothing and gear, I stopped worrying that the boys would balk at our plans.
Evidently Mother had rehearsed Lance and Jason on the way up to Riverton. The cover story was that Mother had recruited Lance to bring her up to Biscuit Mountain to visit us, and he and Jason had decided to go camping while they were here.
“Hey—if you’re not afraid of roughing it, maybe you guys could come along?” Lance made his offer sound remarkably spontaneous. Michael wasn’t the only actor in the family.
“What a great idea!” Michael exclaimed. He turned to the boys. “Guys—you want to go camping with the cousins?”
“Cool!” Josh exclaimed.
&nb
sp; “Awesome!” was Jamie’s verdict.
“I think we can fit you all in the Land Rover.” Clearly Lance had noticed the boys’ fascination with the humongous vehicle.
Over lunch, the expedition evolved beyond what we’d originally planned. Not only was Dad determined to go along, but Grandfather insisted on joining in. Eric pointed out that as the boys’ official babysitter, his place was by their side. Several non-family members showed an inconvenient interest in coming along—inconvenient and maybe even suspicious. I made sure the chief knew about them. But Michael easily vetoed their joining the camping trip by explaining that it was a sort of family tradition.
I made a quick call to Stanley Denton, the PI, to warn him that he’d be passing as Cousin Stanley for the duration.
The one non-family member we made an exception for was Baptiste, who had a great deal to say when he found out Grandfather was coming—most of it in rapid-fire French, so I only caught the occasional word like imbècile and bêtise. Given Baptiste’s long experience in looking after Grandfather, we didn’t think anyone would find it odd that we brought him along.
“And if we find my gulls, he needs to be there,” Grandfather muttered.
“Gulls?” Jason repeated.
A tactical mistake. Grandfather had a new audience for his latest obsession. For the rest of the meal he regaled Jason and Lance with what little we knew about the Ord’s gulls.
“Is this just a cover story?” Jason asked in a low voice as we were dropping our trays and dishes off at the service hatch. “Or does he seriously expect us to split our focus between protecting the boys and chasing after a bunch of missing birds?”
“He’s serious, but don’t worry,” I said. “Once you get him out into the wilderness, Michael and Baptiste will talk some sense into him. Or if they don’t, you have my permission to ignore him. The boys come first.”
“Absolutely.” Jason ambled off for an afternoon of playing watchdog over a flock of six- to nine-year-olds.
Chapter 26
Shortly on the heels of Jason and Lance, three employees from Mutant Wizards, Rob’s company, arrived in an RV packed chock-full of electronic equipment. I immediately set them to work installing the shortwave radios in the bus and in Cordelia’s office. To my relief, recent events had completely overcome Cordelia’s previous objections to installing a security system, and before the shortwave installation was complete she began dragging the techs around the building, pointing out the entrances and exits and trouble spots.
Gone Gull Page 20