Final Call

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  “You don’t look surprised.”

  “There was an imprint on something her brother brought me that said she’d received a threatening note. But I thought it’d be a little more detailed. You think it’s from the boyfriend?”

  He nodded. “Probably. We’ll see if his prints are on it.”

  “I might be able to tell you right now.”

  He hesitated. “Okay, but be careful. It’d be a shame if you smeared the only print.”

  I hadn’t expected that he’d let me taint the evidence this way. Guess I was no longer the last resort. Smiling inside, I reached in the bag and, bending my finger, placed a knuckle in the middle of the writing.

  Anger came in a rush, filled every part of me until I didn’t know what to do with the emotion. How dare she take the part! New York has always been our thing, but now she’s only thinking about herself. Then another, more poignant emotion. Maybe Rosemary wasn’t just leaving the company. Maybe she wanted to leave me. Well, she’ll be sorry.

  The imprint vanished as fast as it had appeared. Nothing more followed, and I grabbed back my hand as it began to repeat. Feeling dizzy, I sat abruptly on the bed and took a deep breath. Shannon took a step toward me and then stopped himself. He gave me a moment.

  “I’m pretty sure it was him,” I said. “It felt like him. When she decided to leave her old theater company and take a part in the Portland Players, he saw it as her abandoning him, too.”

  “You think he did something to her?”

  I shrugged. “He was angry enough. But there was no solid plan or anything in his mind, just anger.”

  “Sometimes that’s all that drives them. We’ll have to look into him very carefully. Hopefully, he left a fingerprint or two on the note as well.”

  “It’s likely, seeing as he was so anxious to get it back. Is that all they bagged from here?”

  “That was it. They took a few fingerprints and got her toothbrush for DNA.”

  My dizziness had passed, so I arose, noting that I’d left a smear of mud on Rosemary’s bedspread. With resignation, I held my hands over the objects on her desk and the nearby shelf, touching those that radiated a slight buzz.

  Rosemary’s imprints showed her to be a kind, strong, determined person who’d had little encouragement in her short twenty-one years of life. It was amazing she’d come as far as she had. Despite the lack of support, she was loving, fun, and full of life, instead of bitter and obsessed. She was the kind of person who did nice things for others just to see them smile. Rosemary was definitely a person I’d like to get to know, if I ever had the chance. I suspected we’d be friends.

  Most of her imprints had to do with her work, her hopes, and her dreams. She had a tendency to buy objects that represented her acting roles, and she would often hold them as she practiced her lines. Besides these, I found the music box Liam had tried to steal from my shop, and on it the strong loyalty and love they shared was clear. She had kept a few letters from him inside the box, but the imprints on them weren’t strong, as though she hadn’t been able to bear reading them more than once because she missed him so much.

  I’d finished almost everything before I touched the rock. It was an ordinary small stone, with a childish happy face painted on it, and I love you in awkward writing on the back. As I held the rock, the urge to throw it was strong and very recent. Last Thursday recent, the day Rosemary had disappeared.

  He’s always demeaned my dreams. Why did I think this would be any different?

  “Sorry,” my/her father said, standing with clenched fists in the middle of the women’s dressing room at the theater. “If you come back and show some sense, maybe we can do something. But what you do now is an embarrassment to us.” His expression was frightening. I’d made a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t have asked him to come. He’d never, ever bend. I had to get out of here.

  I started for the door to the hallway, only to be yanked painfully back by my hair. “Don’t you dare leave while I’m talking to you! Show some respect for once in your life—or I’ll make you show it!”

  The imprint faded, and another one from years earlier took its place. The same rock sat on a little girl’s opened hand. “Here, Daddy,” she/I said. “Look.”

  “Oh, what is it?”

  “A princess. She’s the one in the play we saw at school. I’m going to be her when I grow up. I mean in the play. It was magic.”

  “No, sweetie. That’s only fake life, not a real job. You need to do something of value. You’re good at English and science. You should think about something like that. In our family, we don’t do acting. That’s low class. Look, I have to go to back to work. Make sure you have your homework finished before I get home.”

  Sadness as he left both her and the rock. “But I made it for you, Daddy,” she/I said softly. Except he wouldn’t want it. He didn’t believe in princesses—or magic.

  I set the rock down, filled with a child’s keen disappointment. That she’d kept it all these years said something, but I wasn’t sure what. “We might have another suspect,” I said. “Someone she argued with on Thursday afternoon at the theater. He was angry, maybe even violent.”

  “Who?”

  I sighed. “Her father.”

  Chapter 8

  I wanted nothing but to go home. I didn’t feel like explaining the imprint in detail or discussing the case with Shannon. I didn’t want him to find anything else for me to touch. I turned and left the room.

  “Autumn!” Shannon hurried after me, but I didn’t stop. On the porch I found that someone had put my muddy coat in a huge plastic sack. I wasn’t about to put on my boots, so I shoved them inside with the coat. I shouldn’t freeze just driving home.

  I felt something warm go around my shoulders, and I turned to see Shannon, who was now coatless. “You can return it later,” he said. “I have a regulation one in the car I’ll use.”

  It smelled like him, turning my stomach upside down. Or was it inside out? “Thanks,” I said.

  “You going to be okay?” His eyes burned into mine. I hated the way he did that.

  “I’m tired. But I’ll be fine.” I felt somewhat of a failure, though. I mean, what use was a gift like mine if I couldn’t find a friend’s sister who might be lying unconscious somewhere bleeding? I’d wanted solid evidence about someone she went to see, or someone who confronted her—not to witness a fight with her father.

  “We have the boyfriend. I’ll interview him. He might know where she is.”

  I managed a smile. “You’re getting pretty good at that.”

  “At what?”

  “Reading my mind.”

  “I don’t have to read your mind. Your face tells everything.”

  I hope it wasn’t telling him I wanted to curl up in his warm arms and feel safe. But I knew what he meant. Living with hippie parents where almost anything was okay, I’d never learned to be good at any kind of fabrication. I’d never needed the skill. On the other hand, Tawnia, raised in an environment with strict, overzealous parents who’d banned or limited almost every activity, had developed all those skills. Not that I was condoning my upbringing by any means. It had come with more dangers than I cared to admit, and for the most part, I’d simply been lucky. Tawnia had survived as well. She loved her parents and claimed she owed her career to them. Still, she was aiming for a more happy medium with Destiny.

  “Good night,” I said, aware of other eyes upon us. I couldn’t tell if the detectives and officers were wondering what I’d found, or if they were curious because they suspected Shannon had a thing for me.

  My feet froze on the wet sidewalk, but it was better than the muddy alternative. My soul sang with joy at feeling the connection of the solid ground without barriers. Even so, I hurried to my car, praying once again that it would start. Sometimes I think I prayed more about the car
than anything else. Thankfully, the car roared to life, reminding me that I should get the muffler checked before someone at the precinct gave me a ticket for noise pollution.

  Shannon was still watching me from the porch as he talked with several colleagues. I could tell, though there was no way to really know he watched me for sure.

  I had it bad.

  What about Jake?

  I pushed the thought away. What I needed was rest, and then I’d be able to figure out what to do next in my search for Rosemary. There had to be something I was missing.

  I drove home without thinking, letting myself into the lobby and my ground floor apartment. The place greeted me with its familiar array of antiques I couldn’t bear to part with. I thrived on both the clutter and the positive feelings left from the former owners. Normally I’d get something to eat and cuddle under the afghan Summer had made before she died, but I was too tired even for food, and the mud was a deterrent because I couldn’t wash the afghan and risk obliterating the imprints. I didn’t have many from my mother.

  Heading for the bathroom, I shed Shannon’s coat and my clothes and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water push the cold from my veins and the numbness from my toes. The remaining mud slithered down the drain. I stepped into my robe to dry off, coated my cheek with comfrey ointment, and fell into bed.

  After the rotten evening, you’d think I’d have had terrible dreams or at least dream about the case. I didn’t. My sleep was disturbed only by the fact that it was so deep and undisturbed, almost like passing out. I awoke only once in the middle of the night, feeling a craving so deep for protein that I almost climbed from bed, but sleep claimed me once again before I could make the decision to get up.

  Time passed in sweet oblivion.

  “Autumn! Autumn! How come you didn’t answer the door?” My sister’s voice came to me through a fog. “Did you forget I was coming? Good thing I brought your extra key, or I’d have had to drive all the way back home.”

  I managed to pry open one eye. “You could always get one from the neighbors.” I went through more spare keys than anyone I knew. Though I’d finally begun locking my apartment, I shared my parents’ philosophy: If a person needed something bad enough to steal it from me, maybe he needed it more than I did. Tawnia told me that was ridiculous, that there were plenty of people who would steal me blind for no reason at all.

  “What’s with the trail of clothes?” She set Destiny down, still in her car seat. “And all that mud?”

  I moaned as last night came rushing back. No wonder my body felt bruised all over.

  “You look terrible,” Tawnia added. “Worse than terrible. Your face is all bruised and cut. And why aren’t you dressed? Is that a robe?”

  I tried opening the other eye, but it wouldn’t open and neither would the first. “I’m just tired.”

  She was silent a long moment. “You were reading imprints, weren’t you?”

  My brain had been too sluggish to make the connection. “Yes.”

  “Autumn, you have to be careful. Now where’s that picture I drew for you? The second one.”

  The second because I’d ruined the first by jumping into the Willamette to save what I thought was a child trapped in a trunk. I knew the copy she’d made of the first photograph we’d taken together was in my pants pocket from Friday, as I’d forgotten to transfer it to the clothes I wore yesterday, but I couldn’t make my lips move again. I wanted to tell her to leave me alone and let me sleep.

  With an exasperated sigh, Tawnia began searching. She was thorough, so I knew she’d find it. I drifted off to sleep, thinking of a huge steak lying next to a side of organic baby potatoes slathered with a ton of real butter.

  Love filled me. My sister’s love. I felt it all around me, filling up the gaps left by the horrors of the night before. Blotting out the unnatural glee felt by the person who’d murdered not one but possibly three people with poison. Dimming the thrill of power brought by slamming a hammer down on an unsuspecting person who had done me wrong. Soothing the jealousy of whoever had written the threatening note and the fear and disappointment Rosemary felt in regard to her father. All of it was pushed to the back of my mind, still memories but containable and logically recognizable as not mine, though I’d lived the experiences.

  I opened both eyes and gazed into my sister’s face. Tawnia had found the small drawing and had sandwiched it between my hands, holding them together for good measure. I could feel the love she put into each stroke of color as she’d held down the edges of the drawing. I believed the imprint was so powerful because of her own strange gift, but we didn’t talk about that. I’d used the drawing for months, and it never seemed to fade.

  Strength rushed through me as my mind cleared. “Thanks,” I said.

  “You need food.” She squeezed my hand. “You got this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute. Emma and I will make you something to eat.” Tawnia picked up the car seat and left the room.

  I lay there and let the imprint warm me. Tears came to my eyes, knowing that while Tawnia and I had spent our growing up years apart, we would never voluntarily be separated again. Come husbands and children and jobs, we would be there for each other.

  I was sitting up when she returned, carrying a plate loaded with food. I grinned. Only my sister, who shared my appetite, could know how much that appealed to me now.

  “You’re looking better already. Hurry and eat. I’m dying to hear about the mud.”

  The way she said it was strange. “You drew it, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Eat.” She waved at me to shut up. “I’m going to get Emma.”

  “Destiny, you mean.”

  She laughed. “Eat.”

  I did. There were at least half a dozen eggs and bacon loaded with wonderful fat, all naturally produced on a farm and something even my sister knew how to cook. Three pieces of whole wheat toast layered with organic raspberry jam. The hash browns were a little undercooked, but that was better than her normal burned ones. The full glass of whole milk from a grass-fed cow topped everything off nicely.

  “I would have made you baking powder biscuits since you like them so much,” Tawnia said, setting Destiny, sleeping in her car seat, beside my bed, “but you know how they turned out the last time.”

  Yeah, like pioneer hardtack, of which I wasn’t particularly fond, but I wouldn’t say it aloud. “Thanks.” I sighed and set my empty plate aside.

  “More?” she asked.

  “Maybe after I get dressed.”

  “We’ll have to hurry if we’re going to make it back in time for church at one. That is, if we’re still going to Hayesville.”

  The clock barely read nine, but she was right. “What did you draw?” I asked.

  “What’s with the mud? And that’s not your coat I hung up.”

  “It’s Shannon’s.”

  “So he was there while you were in the mud?”

  There was nothing for it but to tell her. I wouldn’t be able to keep it from her anyway, and if I tried, she’d just go to Shannon and Jake herself.

  She scowled at me when I was finished. “I can’t believe you let me think you were on a date with Jake. And both of them should know better than to let you read so many imprints. What would have happened if I hadn’t come over today, huh?”

  “I would have slept it off and then got up and eaten something.” I felt a chill as I said it because I didn’t know if it was true. What if I hadn’t been able to wake up?

  “You know the drill. You eat before you sleep. Lots of protein.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anyway, I didn’t want to drag you and Destiny into it.”

  “Well, I am in it.” She reached for her large bag, which was next to the car seat. She carried everything a person could ever want
in that bag. If I was half as prepared as she was, I would never get myself into such trouble.

  She pulled out a drawing pad. “I was trying to think about Kendall last night. You know, where she might have lived, where her mother might be now, and this is what I drew.” She slapped it down on the bed, open to the first picture.

  “Cheyenne,” I said. Not just Cheyenne but Cheyenne in the closet as I’d found her. The second drawing was of two people on the ground, one atop the other. Their faces were unrecognizable, but I knew it was me and Rosemary’s boyfriend, Grady Mullins, as we struggled in the mud. My coat was the same, as were the boots. It was a wonder Tawnia hadn’t come breaking down my door last night.

  The third picture brought me up short, a coldness seeping over me. A figure of a woman lying on a floor, her face partially obscured by long dark hair. Even in the drawing she was too still. Something matted in her hair. Since the drawing was in pencil, I couldn’t be sure it was blood.

  “Do you think it’s Rosemary?” she asked.

  “Or whoever else was hit by the hammer.”

  “It could have been you.”

  “No, Grady was too inept.”

  “Grady?”

  “Rosemary’s boyfriend. I think it was him in the theater prop room, too. I think he was trying to retrieve his threatening note.”

  Tawnia’s face wrinkled. “Why would he go there to find it before he checked out her apartment? That doesn’t make sense.”

  She was right. Rosemary had been at that theater only a day or two. There was no reason for her to take the threatening note there. Who else, then, was looking for something? Was it the poisoner searching for the glass?

  I’d have to think about it. I’d halfway decided that the poisoner had to be connected with the theater, and whoever it was must have washed out the glass and put it through the dishwasher. But if that was the case, what did the black-dressed figure want?

  “Let’s talk about it on the way,” Tawnia said, throwing me a blue shirt and my multicolored, sleeveless broomstick dress. “You’ll have to do something with your hair, too. It dried funny.”