“Mr. Gump said you’d leave. Why are you still here?” he asked with what sounded like curiosity.
Sam sat back on her heels and studied the man. Really, with his balding head and sagging jaws, he almost looked like a basset hound. She was still keyed up and not feeling cooperative. What the hell did Gump, the city man, have to do with anything? “Why do you ask?”
His stooped shoulders lifted in what might have been a shrug. “It’s not safe here. I thought maybe you’d need a better place to stay now that Cass is back.”
That was an odd way of looking at things. Originally, she’d been planning on returning to the university, where her knowledge was at least respected. But now that she knew she wasn’t in danger of starving, she felt as if she had unfinished business in Hillvale. She couldn’t tell if he wanted her to leave or stay.
“I’ll let you know if I need a place,” she said, reluctant to hurt the odd man’s feelings. He seemed like a strangely inarticulate person to hang around self-confident types like Kurt Kennedy and Alan Gump.
Looking worried and confused, he nodded and ambled off across the street. The odd encounter drained some of the tension from her.
Mariah stuck her head out the café door. “If you’re done communing with nature, we need more hands on deck in here.”
She couldn’t rely on her small trust fund to provide a living forever. Brushing off her hands, Sam saluted Mariah and carried her tools back to their storage place.
Wiped, Walker strode into the café carrying Sam’s backpack and hoping to find a gallon of iced water to drown himself in. Half the town was there. Before he could even open his mouth, they bustled out of the kitchen with boxes of plastic-wrapped sandwiches and ice coolers he hoped were filled with drinks.
“The landline at the lodge is dead, and we couldn’t phone to ask if it was safe to bring these to you,” Dinah called as she sliced tomatoes and fed them out on lettuce leaves in an assembly line on the counter. “Want us to send Aaron up while you cool off a bit?”
Walker sought Sam in the crowd but didn’t see her. If he were really fortunate, someone had driven her out of town. But with his luck, Carmel had probably murdered her. The backpack hung like a heavy weight off his shoulder. He needed to return it.
“Much appreciated,” he said with a nod, taking a glass handed to him. “They’re just looking for hot spots now. Send Aaron up. I need to report to the sheriff.”
“Any word on who burned the cross?” Mariah asked from behind the counter. She was wrapping the sandwiches Dinah prepared, while the antique dealer carried the boxes out to his truck.
“They have to wait until it cools, but out there on those rocks, they won’t find much. If anyone saw anything suspicious, you need to let us know.” He glared meaningfully at Mariah, who’d been the last person he’d seen flinging flame around.
“Not us, I swear,” Mariah said, holding out her hand palm up. “Crosses are the last thing we’d burn.”
“Come sit down over here, dear,” Cass called from one of the few booths. “The sheriff allows time to eat.”
Dinah handed him a sandwich and Tullah refilled his water glass. Figuring he’d find out more if he talked to the locals, Walker worked his way through the crowd to the back booth. Only when he got there did he see Sam.
“You’ve got Tullah doing your job?” he asked, then almost bit his tongue. Why the sarcasm? Especially after he’d dragged her off the mountain over his shoulder and then practically thrown her at Carmel. He’d be lucky she didn’t cut him off at the groin.
She took the backpack he handed her and studied him warily. “It got you, too, didn’t it?”
He stood there awkwardly, balancing his sandwich and drink, until Sam relented and scooted over to let him sit. “Got me how?”
“The evil force,” Cass said with cheer. “Sam is finally convinced that evil exists.”
“Negativity,” Sam corrected. “Negativity is not necessarily evil. Saying spiteful things isn’t evil.”
“Will I regret sitting here?” Walker asked, nearly draining his glass before biting into his sandwich. Dinah could even make cheese and tomato taste like heaven.
“You need to stop talking like a Null if you want my aunt to tell you why your father may have been up here,” Sam warned.
Since she was glaring at Cass instead of him, Walker settled down to listen. “And there’s a reason she’s telling me now?”
“I had no reason to know your father died here,” Cass said with dignity. “You deserve to know that it’s my fault.”
Pow, right in the gut. Walker lost his appetite and studied the old woman. She still looked like a university professor, and she didn’t show an ounce of guilt, just regret. “Okay, I’ll bite. What did you do?”
“I reported massive land theft and mortgage fraud. I reported it everywhere, to the FBI, to the banks involved, to the attorney general, to the governor. Occasionally, people listen, especially when one has a little money and influence.”
Walker ripped off half his sandwich with his teeth and chewed while he contemplated this declaration. He figured she’d used more than money to grease wheels. She’d had evidence. He washed the bread down with more water that had miraculously been refilled while he chewed. He glanced up to see Daisy walking around with a water pitcher. He could easily see how one could lose one’s mind up here. Distraction created illusion which led to more distraction. . .
Focus, Walker. “You don’t know which agency sent him?”
Land theft and mortgage fraud—that had to be the Kennedys. Cass had turned on her own family? He’d have one of his men find the files, once he knew where to look.
“No, as I said, I didn’t meet your father. If he was asking questions, he was very discreet about it. All I felt was his spirit when we tried to reach Zach. I’m so very sorry we didn’t try to communicate more. We weren’t quite as attentive back then.”
“You mean you were doing drugs and you heard voices,” Walker said dryly. He knew how that worked. His late wife hadn’t talked to spirits, just the characters in her head—until one of them told her to shoot herself and her family.
He had to let that pain go, keep his mind open. Accusing Cass accomplished nothing.
The old woman let his bitterness slide right off her. “Some of us did drugs, maybe, not all. I’m sorry you don’t believe the spirits are real, but someone suspects we talk with them. That’s why they burned a cross, although they misjudged the solstice in their ignorance. They were warning us.”
Here was a more relevant subject. Walker eyed Sam as he took a more polite bite of his sandwich. Sometimes, it was just easier to let women talk and sift through the rubble later.
“As I understand it, the Lucys performed an exorcism for Juan to speed him from this plane to the next,” Sam said carefully. “That’s what appeared to be the magnesium light you saw the other day. Burning a cross has a different function, one that exorcizes witches.”
Walker’s first response was That’s crazy, but he didn’t say it aloud. “Or they wanted you to think that was the purpose, but their real intent was to hide their crimes or burn out the town.”
“Or all of the above,” Sam agreed, waiting expectantly for his reaction.
As he was learning, the world was full of crazies, but sometimes, they were right. “We need a different word for crazy,” he concluded. “There’s crazy that believes in spirits and there’s a worse kind of crazy that tries to set towns on fire.”
Cass smiled approvingly. “I think you’re starting to understand. We cannot call people crazy just because they think or behave or see things differently. For all I know, burning crosses drives out evil. As Sam says, experimentation is required.”
“A little hard to observe and test a hypothesis of evil.” Walker finished off his water. He didn’t want to leave without further questioning, but it was late, and he needed to get back. “You might have to burn a saint to see if you get a different result.”
Sam laughed. “Well, yes, killing someone is probably the dividing line between crazy and lucid.”
“Whoever burned that cross could just be sending a message to Menendez, which would put the Kennedys right up there as suspects with the Lucys. So unless someone walks in here reeking of kerosene, I think we’re back to scientific evidence.” Just in case he could persuade rationality out of the stubborn woman, he faced down Cass. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me about the massive land fraud?”
She delicately sipped her tea. “It’s old history, dear, over and done. It’s too late to do anything more.”
Yeah, that’s what he figured she’d say. He could still dig into archives. He stood up and left a stack of cash on the table, enough to cover Dinah’s costs for the firemen.
“I’ll tell her Carmen made a donation, shall I?” Sam asked mischievously.
She knew he could afford presidential suites. The rest of the town didn’t need to. “That could go a long way toward mending the rift,” he acknowledged. “Thanks.”
He knew no one would believe her lie, but he liked that she’d muddied the waters.
He needed to get back to cell phone reception so he could call his office. He had experts qualified in hunting down nearly twenty-year-old mortgage fraud cases.
The question remained, what did any of this have to do with Juan’s death and burning crosses?
Chapter 18
Early morning, June 21
* * *
By midnight, only a small crew of firefighters kept an eye out for hotspots on the mountain. Sam’s head ached from the smoke. Her feet ached from standing for hours, feeding those who came through and cleaning up after the café closed. She was too weary to miss Walker’s company. She walked up the hill to the studio, showered, and simply fell into bed.
Only to wake at dawn from a nightmare of dragons and soul-sucking demons and snakes that spoke with forked tongues. Forked tongues, right. Sam wearily wiped her eyes and glared at the clock. The Mexican blanket blocked most of the sun from her bed, but the main room was bright already. No fog today. She would never go back to sleep now.
Deciding to dig up some of the plants she’d located these last days, she got dressed and gulped cereal. She debated whether to take Harvey’s walking stick with her. It was a thing of beauty, but she didn’t see the necessity. Leaving it behind, she headed over to Cass’s gardening shed. Cass had said to use whatever she needed. Sam prayed it wasn’t all covered in rust and spider webs.
The wooden shed doors sagged open as if in welcome when she approached. Sam regarded them warily but decided the doors had probably just blown loose. The wind was strong off the ocean this morning, carrying the stench of wet ash and smoke away from town.
She looked for a latch to see if she would be able to close the shed properly, but there was none. Cass apparently didn’t mind sharing her tools with anyone who passed by.
She’d brought a flashlight to search the interior. The space was larger than she’d realized. Spotting a light shaped like a lantern overhead, she looked around for a switch. As in the house, the light came on when she stepped inside. Motion sensors in a shed actually made sense and were more modern than she’d expected, considering the ancient sagging exterior.
The tools all looked brand new. No self-respecting gardener had shiny tools without a single dent or worn place in the handle. But Cass had known she was coming. . . .
Preferring not to think about how her great-aunt had all but kidnapped her to bring her up here, Sam found a sturdy, long-handled digger, some like-new gloves, and a bucket for water. She didn’t mean to go far. She needed to be at Dinah’s in a few hours.
She liked this side of the valley much better than the resort side. Here, birds sang, and the earth simply felt happy beneath her feet. The breeze was chilly but fresh, unlike the stench of hell around the lodge. Carrying her tools through the cemetery portal, she explored the overgrown weeds around the gravestones before making any choices.
She didn’t think it was sacrilege to take cuttings or divide perennials that would otherwise smother in their own roots. She would leave the graves tended, and the plants would grow better next year.
Wolf had told her the stories of Mother Earth, and she respected the land as his ancestors had. She wasn’t so certain her college-educated father had actually accepted the stories, but to her, the earth had always been a living presence requiring respect.
She was pulling weeds and clearing the ground around lily leaves when she realized she wasn’t alone. She reached for her shovel and glanced over her shoulder.
Xavier, in his faded green jacket, hovered uncertainly near the Kennedy vault. He was watching her, but he looked so nervous, she couldn’t feel afraid, just puzzled at these odd encounters.
“Good morning, Mr. Black,” she called. “Out for a stroll?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, wringing his hands. “The fire should have driven out the ghosts, but I don’t think it did.”
She got up to apply her shovel to the clump of lilies, keeping an eye on him as she did so. “If there are spirits, they must be friendly. I like it here.”
He seemed interested in that notion, glancing around as if hoping to see Casper the Friendly Ghost. “It’s an unhappy place,” he finally decided. “Terrible things happen here. The ghosts are angry.”
“Perhaps you’re a sensitive. I’ve heard that people feel the sorrow and pain of soldiers who died when they stand on a battlefield like Gettysburg. Have you ever been there?”
“Wouldn’t like it,” he said.
Remembering she was supposed to be helping Walker, since he’d helped her, she asked, “How long have you lived here?”
He frowned and shifted from foot to foot. “Don’t know. Long time. Why?”
“My parents used to live here. I was wondering if you knew them. That would have been almost twenty-five years ago.”
He appeared a little curious and his brow wrinkled in thought. “No, don’t think so. Geoff died a few months after I moved here. Does that help?”
He’d known the town when Walker’s father died! But getting anything out of him wouldn’t be easy. Before she could prepare another careful question, he ambled away without a farewell.
Possibly Asperger’s? Being a salesman would be tough, if so.
Happy that she’d added one more piece to her store of knowledge, Sam dug in the dirt and decided on her priorities. She needed to talk to Cass more about her parents. What had driven her mother to give her up and send her far away? Her father hadn’t overdosed until after she was born, according to the genealogy. Her adoption date was immediately after that. It may have been a grieving widow’s decision.
And they still needed a better list of who had been here when Walker’s father died—witnesses, potential killers, anything would help. Cass would know more, as would Carmel, she supposed, but neither woman was inclined to talk. Neither was Xavier Black. Would even the lodge staff be reluctant to recall the past?
She cleared the plot she worked on, then carried the starving lilies back to the house. She’d need some good compost to plant them in.
She cleaned off Cass’s tools and returned them to the shed—again, the doors opened before she could reach for them. Had someone wired doors with a motion detector? Needing to get to Dinah’s, she didn’t have time to inspect them. She rushed back to the studio to shower and dress.
Reluctant to enter the oppressive pall of wet ash in town, Sam decided to explore the lane of cottages where Mariah lived. Half-way down, at a cottage nearly concealed by rambling roses, an older woman with a thick straight salt-and-pepper mane caught in a black ribbon looked up from her overgrown cottage garden. “I see you found the lilies. I used to tend them, but I can’t get up there much these days.”
Knowing she would be late, Sam stopped anyway. “I hope you don’t mind that I divided them. I want to find some manure or compost to feed them. I don’t suppose you know anyone with a stable?”
“I know someone with a compost bin. I’ll have him leave a load next time he’s by. I’m Gladys. You must be Zach and Susanna’s daughter. You look like both your parents.”
Someone besides Cass knew her parents! Here was another name for Walker’s list, and she seemed more talkative than the others. Sam was dying to ask about her parents, but now probably wasn’t the best time.
“I’m Samantha. I can haul the compost if you tell me where to find it. I have to go to work now or Dinah will be swamped. May I bring you up a piece of pie later and we can talk? I’m not familiar with the soil here, but you seem to have a knack.” She gestured at the lush garden growing despite the shade.
“That would be delightful but not necessary, luv. Tell Dinah her mother has passed and is sorry for not understanding.” Gladys picked up her basket and vanished beneath a rose-covered arch at the rear of the yard.
“Way too much weird for one day,” Sam muttered. Almost afraid to pass on the message, she found a shady place in town to store the lilies before entering the busy diner. The rich aroma of coffee replaced the nasty stench lingering outside.
Mariah shoved the carafe at her and indicated the tables by the window. Sam now knew that she had waited tables in high school. Apparently her subconscious had known she could handle the job, even when she couldn’t remember it. She washed and began pouring coffee.
Most of the customers today were locals. The tourists who often stopped in after their weekend visit had already left the mountain, which still smoldered in the distance.
Once breakfast was served, they stopped for a break. Dinah cut cinnamon rolls for tasting. Sam sipped her tea and offered the odd information she’d received. “I had a strange encounter with Gladys this morning. She told me to tell you that your mother has passed and regrets not understanding. Is Gladys a friend of yours?”
Dinah’s eyes got wide, and she sat abruptly on a stool she kept behind the counter. “I better call my brother,” she muttered, looking teary-eyed.
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