McClatchey saw them, too, and started to panic. First he shoved the box full of letters back into a cardboard box in the closet. Then he pulled as hard at the door as he could; it was all I could do to keep it shut until I heard police officers coming in through the still-unlocked back doors and announcing themselves.
“I’m in here!” McClatchey called out, apparently deciding to try to bluff his way through. “I’m locked in the second bedroom.”
At that point I let go of the knob and stepped out of the way.
An officer, a blonde woman, opened the door easily and sighted McClatchey down the barrel of her gun. “Step out of the room, sir,” she said.
“I’m Rick McClatchey’s brother,” Jeffrey said. “He asked me to check in on the place. And look”-- he gestured around the room--“clearly someone’s been in here.”
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to put your hands on your head and step out of the room.”
“But can’t you see? Someone’s ripped the place apart.”
“Sir, I’m only going to ask you this one more time. Put your hands on your head and step out of the room.”
By now, another officer had joined her in the doorway. He put his gun away and stepped into the room, cuffs in hand. “This is an active crime scene, sir,” he said. “Did you not see the crime scene tape on the door?”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t do this.”
“You can’t be here,” the second officer said, pulling McClatchey’s arms behind his back and handcuffing him.
I figured I could leave them to it at this point. McClatchey didn’t have a chance. So I slid out through the wall of the office and into the front yard, and then went in search of Ashara and Stephen.
I found them a block away, watching the flashing police lights in front of the McClatchey house.
“That was fun,” I said, slipping into the back seat.
“For you, maybe,” Ashara said. “It scared me about half to death.”
“I have to admit, I had an uncomfortable minute or two there, too,” said Stephen.
“But we got in, we got what we needed, and we got back out again,” I said. “Mission accomplished. So we can all relax.”
“Thank God,” said Ashara.
“Except that we need to go back in,” I said.
“What?” Ashara practically screeched.
“McClatchey found what he was looking for, but he shoved it back into place before the cops came in,” I said. I described the box full of letters.
“We’ll go back in and get it when the cops are gone,” Stephen said. “But right now, you look like you could use some rest.” I glanced down at myself. I was see-through again.
“I guess that took more out of me than I expected,” I said. “Maybe you’d better take me back to Miss Adelaide’s. Or somewhere.” I put my hand to my head. “I’m feeling a little dizzy right now.”
Stephen got me to Maw-Maw’s before I floated out of consciousness, but just barely. The last thing I remembered was sinking into the bed in the guest bedroom.
* * * *
I didn’t come to until mid-afternoon the next day. I was learning to loathe the fact that the only way I could deal with physical objects was to expend so much energy that I went all transparent and then passed out.
When I floated into the living room, Maw-Maw was the only one there.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Ashara said she was going to work,” Maw-Maw said. “And I don’t know about that new white boyfriend of hers. I ain’t talked to him since last night.”
“He does have a name, you know,” I said.
Maw-Maw cackled. “Yeah, but it sure do irritate little Miss Ashara when I take to calling him her white boyfriend.”
I had to laugh at that.
“Did he have anything important to say when you talked to him last night?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Only that we wasn’t going to Atlanta today ‘cause y’all done found the birth certificate you was looking for.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’m going to go check in with them,” I said.
Maw-Maw waved her hand. “Get on with it then,” she said, “and quit interrupting my stories.” She turned back to the television. I got the feeling that she was more than a little disappointed that the trip to Atlanta had been canceled.
“Hey, Miss Adelaide?” I said.
“Yes?” She turned back to face me again.
“When this is all over, I think we should make Stephen drive us to Atlanta anyway. Go do something fun for the day.”
She looked at me for a moment, and then smiled.
“Might be you’re right, child,” she said, her voice softer. Then she turned back to face the television once again and waved me off. “Now you go on and solve this big ol’ crime of yours. We gots to get on with things around here, and we can’t do that until them men are in jail.”
Ashara was in her usual spot in the drive-through teller’s window booth.
“Hey,” I said, coming up behind her. “Did you and Stephen go back and get the letters?”
She didn’t answer me, but she shook her head.
“What? You didn’t? What if the police let him go? What if he goes back and gets them?”
“Hey, Ann,” she said. “I’m going to go take a quick bathroom break, okay?”
“No problem. I’ve got it covered here.”
I followed Ashara to the women’s restroom.
“Why didn’t you go back and get them?” I demanded again once we were safely locked inside.
“Because,” Ashara hissed at me, “the police were there until almost midnight. And I had to get up to go to work today.”
“So why didn’t Stephen go?”
“Because he thought the cops might still be watching the place.”
“Dammit, Ashara, those letters are clearly important.”
“So is my job. So is my life. So is not going to jail, as far as I’m concerned.” She was still hissing, an angry whisper. “I didn’t have anything to do with this until you dragged me into it, and now I’ve got some crazy killer man out to get me, I’m breaking into houses late at night and almost getting caught by the crazy killer’s partner, and none of this is my problem!” By the end of the sentence, she was almost yelling.
“Are you okay in there?” someone asked from outside the door.
“Just fine,” Ashara said, sounding anything but.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’m sorry I pulled you into it. I didn’t know then how bad it was going to get. But now that we’re in the middle of it, we’ve got to see it through. If we don’t, you’ll be jumping at shadows for the rest of your life. Or worse, someday you’ll wake up dead somewhere like me, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t follow through.”
Ashara grinned a wry grin at that point and rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Okay. Fine. We’ll go get the letters after I get off work. Just go talk to Stephen about it.”
I nodded and left the bank before she could change her mind.
Stephen wasn’t in his apartment.
I found him in the workshop at Rick’s store, sitting at his bench smoothing out a dent in a trombone.
“That looks like somebody stomped on it,” I said.
He had been engrossed in the work and jumped a little when he saw me. He put the trombone down on his work bench and stood up. Stretching and yawning, he turned to his coworkers. “I’m going to take a break,” he said.
“Fine,” said the woman at the bench next to him, waving at him without looking up.
Once again, we strolled around the downtown square, this time stopping in front of a shop with lots of cute purses in the window. For a moment, I was sad about the fact that I would never have another cute purse again. I would be the eternal window shopper, but never get to buy anything.
I shook off the feeling and got down to business.
“We need to go back into Rick’s house and get
those letters,” I said.
“I agree,” said Stephen.
“So why are you at work instead of at Rick’s?”
“Because Margaret called me this morning to tell me that we’d gotten a huge repair order in from the junior high school. I want to get Rick out of this, but I also want to make sure that he has some kind of life”--he paused and shook his head--“or at least a business to come back to once he gets out of jail.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. Has Jeffrey McClatchey come in to work today?”
Stephen shook his head. “Margaret says she wasn’t able to get hold of him this morning.”
“You think that might mean the police still have him in custody?”
He shrugged. “Either that, or he’s sleeping off a long night of questioning.”
“Or he went back and got those letters.”
This time Stephen lifted only one shoulder. “That’s a possibility, too, I guess. We won’t know until we get back into Rick’s place.”
A woman in her fifties pulled up into a parking space behind us and got out. We both stood silent, staring at the window display, until she had gone into the store.
“Let’s walk,” Stephen suggested. “I’ve got to get back to work anyway.”
“Will you go back to Rick’s tonight?” I asked.
“Yes. Of course.” We got to the front entrance of Rick’s shop. “In the meantime,” said Stephen, his hand on the door handle, “why don’t you go back over there and see if you can tell if the letters are even still there.”
I nodded. “Okay. Meet us at Miss Adelaide’s when you’re through here?”
“Sure. But it might be a little late. We’ve got a big job here and not much time to finish it. It’s worth a lot of money to Rick. And it’ll keep our paychecks coming, too, since Margaret has access to the business account.”
“She does?” I asked, surprised.
“She’s also the business manager here,” Rick said. He pulled open the door and went inside, giving me the tiniest of waves as he headed back to the workroom.
Stephen was right. I needed to see if the letters were still at Rick’s. And if they were, I fully intended to find and then follow Jeffrey McClatchey around all day long, just to make sure he didn’t go back to his brother’s house. And if he did, I was going to make sure he didn’t get his hands on those letters.
Rick McClatchey’s house was empty. I moved back to the home office, and with a great deal of effort, managed to get the lid off the cardboard box Jeffrey had shoved the wooden box into.
The wooden box was still there.
With a sigh of relief, I sped over to Jeffrey’s house. He wasn’t there. I spent much of the afternoon running back and forth between the two McClatchey brothers’ homes; stopping in each one only long enough to make sure Jeffrey wasn’t there.
Eventually, I got the bright idea of checking the local jail.
It didn’t take me long to search. Abramsville’s jail is tiny. But one of the drunks in one of the cells saw me flit through the bars and check the place over. I think he thought it must be part of the DTs, though, because he covered his eyes with his hands and started moaning “no, oh no,” over and over again. I decided to leave him in peace, so I left as quickly as I could.
At 4:00, I went back by the bank.
“Okay, Ashara,” I said. “The box of letters is still at Rick’s. I’m going over to guard it. Stephen’s going to meet you at your grandmother’s as soon as he gets off work. I’ll unlock the back door for you again. Come over as soon as Stephen comes to get you.”
Ashara nodded slightly.
“Are you okay with this?” I asked.
She shook her head, and then shrugged.
“Is that a no?” I asked.
She shrugged again.
Time to play Dead Chick Twenty Questions again, I thought with a sigh.
“Is it a yes?”
She shrugged.
“Is it a maybe?”
She shook her head.
“Is it a qualified yes?”
She nodded.
“Qualified how?”
She looked up at me balefully.
“Sorry. Forgot for a minute that you couldn’t answer. Um. Is it a qualified yes because you don’t want to do it?”
She shrugged.
“Are you okay?” Ann asked from the next seat over.
“I’ve just got a little bit of a crick in my neck and shoulders,” said Ashara. “Just trying to work it out.” She stretched a little to demonstrate. “I’ll be fine.”
Ann nodded and went back to work.
“Nicely done,” I said admiringly. “You’re getting pretty good at hiding the fact that you’re talking to an invisible person.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
“Okay,” I said, continuing the line of questioning. “Is it a qualified yes because you’re scared?”
She nodded.
“But you’re still willing to do it?”
She nodded.
I blew out a huge non-breath in a sigh of relief.
“Okay. Good,” I said. “I’ll see you over at Rick McClatchey’s as soon as Stephen picks you up.”
She nodded again.
“And be very, very careful going to your grandmother’s after work. Take some weird route. Howard knows where you work and what you drive. He might be watching you. Be sure he’s not following you, okay? And keep your phone out. Be ready to call 911 in case he tries to run you down again.”
She stared at me, her eyes huge.
“I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to get you to be safe. Will you do that?”
She nodded.
“Good. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
I spent those hours camped out in Rick McClatchey’s living room. Every so often I would go back to the office to make sure the box was still there. I’ve always been a little obsessive. I guess death didn’t change that.
I waited until after it got dark. Finally, at almost 8:00 that evening, Stephen and Ashara came slinking up to the back deck and through the back door, once again ducking under the crime scene tape crisscrossing it.
“It’s about time,” I said.
“I told you it would be late,” Stephen said.
“Where’s this box?” Ashara said. “I want to get it and get out of here. This whole thing is freaking me out.”
“It’s in the office in the closet. It’s sitting on top of the stuff in the cardboard box,” I said.
Stephen headed to the back. Ashara waited in the living room, shifting from foot to foot.
“Did you find Jeffrey McClatchey today?” she asked. She didn’t look at me when she asked the question; her eyes shifted around the room and out the back door and back around the room again.
“No,” I said.
Ashara’s eyes jerked to my face. “You didn’t?” she asked in a horrified tone.
“No. He wasn’t at work, at his house, at this house, or in the jail,” I said. “And those were pretty much all the places I could think of to look.”
“What about Howard’s place?” Ashara asked anxiously.
“I can’t go out there without your grandmother,” I reminded her. “Your grandmother can’t go out there without someone to drive her. And since you and Stephen both decided that it was more important to go to work today than it was to catch the killer on the loose in your hometown, I had no choice but to just wait here so that I could try to guard the letters if he came back.” My voice had gone from very patient to syrupy sweet by the end of the sentence. And for anyone who doesn’t know it, that tone is a big Southern “fuck you”--at least among Southern women.
Ashara, of course, recognized it for what it was.
“There’s no need to get all tetchy,” she said defensively. “I was just asking.”
“Well, now you know,” I said.
“Fine.”
Stephen came back down the hallway, wooden box in hand. “This it?” he asked.
“Is it full of old letters tied with a blue ribbon?” I asked.
He flipped it open. “Yep.”
“Then that’s what we came for,” I said.
“Good,” said Ashara. “Let’s get out of here now.”
Stephen and Ashara moved out the back door.
“Shut it,” I said. “I’m going to try to lock it again.”
Stephen handed the box of letters to Ashara and pulled the door shut. I concentrated and gave a twist. The lock turned. We all headed toward the back gate in the fence, the one that led into the alley. Stephen had again parked on the block behind Rick’s house. Stephen went through the gate first, and then held it open for Ashara.
At that moment, we heard an inarticulate shout from the house. Then a flashlight beam hit Ashara dead-on, illuminating her and the box she held in her hand. Ashara put her hand up to her eyes. She probably couldn’t see anything, but I was off to one side of the direct aim of the beam and could tell it was Jeffrey McClatchey. He’d finally come back from wherever he’d been so that he could collect the letters.
“Run!” I yelled at Ashara.
“Hey!” yelled Jeffrey as Ashara took off through the gate. Jeffrey jumped off the deck where he’d been preparing to enter his brother’s house and landed in a crouch in the grass, then straightened up to run after Ashara.
The gate was swinging slowly closed. I figured that at the speed he was running, McClatchey would have just enough time to get through it before it shut completely; he wouldn’t even have to slow down to open it.
So I waited until he was almost to the gate and with a little concentrated effort, slammed it shut.
He ran straight into it at full running speed. He ran kind of like a little kid, arms pumping, and head far out in front of the rest of his body.
The impact knocked him flat. When he dragged himself back up from the ground, he was reeling. But he managed to get the gate open and start back out after Ashara.
But by the time he got to the street past the houses on the other side of the alley, Stephen’s car was just pulling around a corner. I hoped McClatchey was too shaken up to take notice of anything like the license plate or make or model of the car. Or recognize it as belonging to his co-worker.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, rubbing his head. A big red knot was already starting to swell up on it. Good, I thought. I hope he has a concussion.
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