Ravenous

by HELEN HARDT

“That’s my first instinct as well. You ever thought about becoming a cop, Marj?”

  I chuckled. “The cooking cop? No, not for me.”

  “There are a lot of people with the initials CM,” Ruby said. “Not a lot of people hanging around schoolyards with gold cufflinks, though. So yeah, probably a plant.” She placed the trinket in another zippered bag and sifted through the dirt again.

  “This reminds me of something,” I said. “When Mills and Johnson were searching Jade’s room after that rose got left in there, they found one of Colin’s business cards shoved under the wall-to-wall carpeting. Obviously a plant.”

  “If this belongs to Colin, someone out there wants him involved in this. But why?”

  “I guess that’s what we have to find out. I can ask Colin if this is his, if you want.”

  “I want to keep it, but you can certainly ask him if he’s lost an initialed cufflink. That would help.”

  “Will do.”

  Ruby searched the ground for a few more minutes.

  “I don’t see anything else,” I said.

  Dale turned to me. “I do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Bryce

  Nothing like sneaking out with the boss on your second day of work. Joe and I arrived at my father’s cabin complete with shovels…and armed.

  He followed me to the bedroom we used to share, the place where Marj and I had found my mother’s jewels along with the firearms and file folders.

  “There could be more,” I said. “We’ll have to pull up all the floorboards.”

  “Why would he put this stuff in the room we used to sleep in?” Joe asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to hide them in a place only he goes into?”

  “Like his room?” I nodded. “I had that same thought, which probably means…” The remaining words clogged my throat.

  “…what’s in his room is worse,” Joe finished for me.

  I nodded. “Yup.”

  “You want to start there?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t want to start anywhere, but we don’t have a choice.”

  “We have a choice,” he said. “We can leave right now and hire someone to do this.”

  “Then we have to put our trust in someone else.”

  “True, and I’m not overly comfortable with that.”

  “Neither am I,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  “It’s odd that the Feds didn’t already dig this stuff up. This was your dad’s cabin, after all.”

  “Except that it’s owned by the Tamajor Corporation, and we still have no idea what that’s about.”

  “The PIs are on it. Surely the Feds checked this place out,” Joe said.

  “They might have, but they probably didn’t pull up floorboards. Obviously they didn’t, or they’d have found this stuff already.”

  “Maybe they didn’t come here,” Joe said. “When was the last time your father used it?”

  “I have no idea. He kept Colin at that Fleming Corp house.”

  “Maybe this place didn’t appear anywhere in your dad’s papers. Maybe the Tamajor Corporation was something he kept entirely to himself.”

  “There has to be a person behind every corporation.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be your dad.”

  “True. I’ll have to ask my mom if she mentioned the cabin to the Feds when they talked to her. I never mentioned it. Honestly, I never even thought about it.”

  “All this stuff was so long ago,” Joe said, his voice echoing of memory.

  “It was.” I cleared my throat. “Let’s look in my father’s room. We’ll have to face it eventually. I’d just as soon get it over with.”

  “I hear you.” Joe followed me out of the small bedroom and into the larger one where my father had slept during our many camping trips.

  It looked the same.

  An eerie feeling of unease swept over me. Ghosts lived here. My father’s presence was unmistakable in this room. No, I didn’t believe in ghosts, but this room reeked of Tom Simpson. I inhaled. It even smelled like him. Cigar smoke, sweat, and woodsy cologne. My mother hated cigars, and when we were at the cabin without her, my father had never failed to indulge.

  Years and years had passed, and my father still existed in this room.

  “You okay?” Joe asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You looked a little off for a minute. Like you were somewhere else.”

  “I was. I can smell him here, Joe. It’s like it was all yesterday.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Maybe. You didn’t live with him twenty-four-seven. I did. I know his scent. I know the feeling of being around him. I’m feeling that now.”

  Joe didn’t reply. He no doubt thought I was crazy, and perhaps I was. As far as I knew, my father hadn’t been here in years, and definitely not recently since he was dead.

  Still…

  Joe pulled the area rug off the wooden floor. “I don’t see anything that indicates a loose board. I guess we just pull it all up?”

  “Maybe it’s under the bed,” I said. “If there’s something huge to hide, he’d probably have put it there.”

  “Let’s check.”

  We moved the bed, the sound of it sliding across the wood like fingernails on a chalkboard. It shouldn’t have been, but it was.

  “I still don’t see anything that looks out of place,” I said.

  “I guess we pull everything up, then,” Joe said. “Leave no stone unturned.”

  I nodded, slipping the crowbar under a board.

  Nothing.

  Three hours of moving all the furniture out of the cabin and then prying up every board in the bedroom…

  And nothing.

  “Okay,” Joe said. “That was a dead end.”

  “Why in our bedroom? Why not in his? We could have found that stuff at any time. Little boys are curious creatures.”

  “We’re not thinking like your father,” Joe said.

  “That’s a good thing, from where I’m standing.”

  “I agree.”

  “You’re right, though. My father hid in plain sight all those years. He hid behind his career as a lawyer and then mayor of Snow Creek. He was a pillar of the community, and no one suspected anything. He went out of town? There was always a reason.” I let out a sarcastic chuckle and shook my head. “We just played right into his game.”

  “We did. Any logical person would assume he’d hide stuff in his bedroom. Maybe we’ve already uncovered everything there is.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I doubt it. If he hides in plain sight, what’s more in plain sight than our bedroom?”

  “The living area. The kitchen.”

  “Right. No stone unturned.” I grabbed the tools and walked out of my father’s bedroom.

  Joe followed me.

  “Let’s finish our bedroom first,” I said. “We’re already halfway there.”

  He nodded. We each took a side of the first bed, hoisted it up, and carried it out of the cabin.

  “Looks like we’re setting up house out here,” Joe commented.

  My father’s bed, nightstand, and dresser sat on the ground, as though waiting for some fairy folk to make it home.

  I didn’t reply to Joe. I didn’t want to think about anything other than the task at hand. If I allowed my mind to wander—even to fairy folk, which I didn’t believe in, of course—I might think about all the horrible things we could uncover.

  I didn’t need the help of imagination. The horror would make itself known soon enough. I could only hope it would be less evil than my mind was already assuming it would be.

  Once all the furniture was hauled out, we tackled the remaining floor in the second bedroom. We uncovered some more of my mother’s jewels and more manila files. No more guns, at least not that we found.

  More and more boards, until we were walking over joists. Nothing more…until—

  “Got something,” Joe said, holding up a small wooden box.
r />   “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. You want to open it, or should I?”

  “Go for it.” I had no desire to be the one who unearthed more of my father’s horrors.

  Joe slowly lifted the lid. “It’s a gold cufflink.”

  “A gold cufflink? My father never wore cufflinks.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Joe said. “Remember? Talon recalled seeing a cufflink with the initials TS at the place where he was kept?”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Didn’t I? It came up in one of his guided hypnosis sessions with Melanie.”

  “All I can say is I don’t remember ever seeing my dad wearing cufflinks.”

  “No one wears cufflinks,” Joe said, “but a lot of men own them. Did he have any?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think this is the cufflink Talon saw?”

  “I don’t know. There’s only one here.” Joe lifted it out of the box and examined it. “Except the initials aren’t TS. They’re CM.”

  Chapter Forty

  Marjorie

  “What do you see?” Ruby asked.

  Dale picked up a rock. “This,” he said. “It doesn’t belong here.”

  A polished stone of some sort. It had clearly been through a rock tumbler. It was black and white and easily blended in with the other stones and dark dirt of the ground.

  “May I see?” Ruby asked.

  Dale handed her the stone.

  “Wow, good eye, Dale,” she said. “You’re right. It doesn’t belong here.”

  “Wait,” Dale said. “Let me see it again.”

  Ruby handed it back to him.

  “Sometimes people carry stones for good luck. That’s what my mom used to tell me when I collected them.” He turned the stone over.

  “You collected rocks?” I asked.

  “I used to. I don’t know what happened to my collection.” He examined the rock more closely. “This is obsidian. Snowflake obsidian.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I had one just like it.”

  I dropped my mouth open, and Ruby glanced at me, shaking her head ever so slightly. I understood. We had to keep him calm so he’d continue to talk. So far, he hadn’t freaked at finding something that reminded him of his past.

  “What happened to your rock collection, Dale?” Ruby asked, her voice even.

  “I don’t know. I assume it’s back in my house.” He swallowed. “My old house.”

  Words wanted to tumble off my tongue, but I took Ruby’s advice to stay quiet. I didn’t want to upset Dale. Talon and Jade had packed up everything from the boys’ room at the house they’d lived in with their mother, along with anything else of value they might want someday. No rock collection had been among those things, as far as I knew. Dale had never mentioned them until now. Clearly he’d had a lot more on his mind.

  What had happened to Dale’s rock collection? And why would a similar rock be here, where he allegedly saw a strange man he thought he recognized?

  Ruby put the rock in a zippered bag and smiled. “May I keep this? Just for now. I’ll give it back to you soon if you’d like.”

  He nodded.

  “Thank you. You’ll make a good detective someday, Dale,” she said. “Seeing things that don’t belong is a big part of it.”

  Dale smiled.

  A big smile.

  Which made me smile.

  Had I ever seen him smile like that before? No, I hadn’t.

  The rock might turn out to be nothing. But he had found it. He had helped Ruby. He had helped himself.

  This was huge.

  Huger, though, was the fact that Dale’s rock collection was missing, and a similar piece was here. Why would anyone want a little boy’s collection? And why would someone leave a polished rock here?

  Ruby knelt again. “Just want to give this one more look. After all, sometimes things hide in plain sight.” She moved her gloved hands over the dirt. “Nothing that I can see. Let’s walk around a little. If there was a slight breeze, something could have blown away.”

  Dale and I followed her as she scanned the area. Every other step or so, she’d stop and look at something. I had no idea what she was looking at, but she was the expert. Finally she zeroed in on what appeared to be a small piece of paper. She knelt down and picked it up, staring.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A baseball card,” she replied. “I don’t follow baseball. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you, Dale?”

  “Not really. I like it and all, but I don’t know the players.”

  Ruby sealed the card in a zippered bag. “Could be nothing again, but I want to cover everything.” She continued walking around the area. Finally, after about fifteen more minutes, she stopped. “I think we’ve seen everything there is here. The cops would have stopped a half hour ago.”

  “What are you going to do with that stuff?” I asked.

  “Take it to a friend of mine for analysis. It’s a long shot, but you never know.”

  A cigarette butt, a gold cufflink that was probably planted, a polished piece of snowflake obsidian, and a baseball card.

  Not a lot to go on, but more than we had before.

  I ushered Dale back to class.

  He was still smiling.

  “I don’t know what you did, Marj, but Dale has been more animated today than he’s ever been,” Jade said in the kitchen while I prepared dinner.

  “All because he found that stone,” I said. “I think that’s the thing. He found it. He took some initiative in his own healing.”

  “Because he found a rock?”

  “Well…yeah. He found it and saw that it didn’t belong there. Of course anyone could have dropped a piece of obsidian on the ground, and it’s probably nothing. But Dale found it. He took action. He helped Ruby, and that made him feel like less of a victim.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jade nodded. “He was helping.”

  “Helping yourself goes a long way,” I said, echoing words I’d heard from Mel more than once. “It doesn’t matter that it’s probably nothing. What matters is he found it and saw that it was out of place.”

  Jade smiled. “I can’t get over the smile on his face. All because of a rock.”

  “Did you know Dale used to collect rocks?” I said.

  “No. He never mentioned it. Then again, he never mentions much of anything.”

  “Apparently he had quite a collection, but they didn’t make their way from his old house to here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you and Tal brought everything from their room.”

  “We did. There wasn’t a collection of rocks.”

  “That’s strange. Maybe Dale kept it hidden.”

  “Maybe… If it meant that much to him, would he have—” She shook her head. “No, he probably wouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t say anything at all until now.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t think…” Jade bit her lip.

  “Think what?”

  “That you actually found one of Dale’s rocks? That someone took his collection because they’re after him?”

  “Why would anyone steal worthless rocks?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Whoever this guy is has spooked Dale more than once now. I don’t like it.”

  “None of us do, Jade.”

  “I’ll talk to Dale. See if he left the rocks somewhere hidden.”

  “Okay.” I finished up the chicken breasts I was frying. “Call in the boys for dinner. It’s ready.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Bryce

  CM? Colin Morse? He was Marj’s age. Why would he have cufflinks, and why—

  “This is Colin’s,” I said. “It has to be.”

  “But you said your father didn’t come here after we grew up.”

  “That I knew of. But who else could it belong to?”

  “Well…anyone with the initials CM. There’s
probably more than one.”

  “He held Colin captive,” I said.

  “Not here,” Joe retorted.

  “Does that matter? He kept this cufflink for some reason. Put it in a wooden box and hid it. There has to be a reason.”

  “Does there? Maybe the cufflink is part of the stuff your mom inherited.”

  “The jewelry belonged to an aunt, not an uncle.”

  “So?”

  “Would you quit disagreeing with everything I say? If there’s one thing I’ve come to terms with about my father, it’s that he had a reason for everything he did. He wasn’t stupid. How did he get away with it for so long? Because he covered his tracks by hiding in plain sight. No one ever suspected that the esteemed mayor of Snow Creek could ever do anything wrong. He was calculating and manipulative. So if he kept this cufflink, he had a reason.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. What reason would he have for keeping a cufflink belonging to one of his victims? If it indeed belonged to one of them.”

  “Colin was his last victim,” I said, “that we know of. It’s probably a trophy.”

  Joe nodded. “Then he most likely kept trophies of other victims as well. Which means there’s a lot to dig up here.”

  I was afraid of that. I didn’t want to do any more digging. But that was why we’d come here.

  “There’s the living room,” Joe said, “and the kitchen.”

  “And outside. A lot could be buried outside.”

  Joe looked at his watch. “It’s getting toward dinnertime. Melanie will be expecting me. You want to meet here later? Around eight?”

  “We need light to dig.”

  “No, we don’t. We can search inside the cabin during the day, but we’re safer working outside under the veil of night. It was a warm day. The ground won’t be too hard.”

  He had a point. “Eight o’clock, then.”

  I’d jammed my shovel into the ground outside the cabin, ready to step on it and push it farther down, when my skin chilled. Headlights glared in the distance. Someone was coming up the narrow driveway.