The first person to notice us was Primrose. She raised a beer mug in our direction. “Over here, Lee. Come on and join us.”
“That’s Primrose,” I whispered. “And it looks like the rest of the gang is here, too.”
Thom was behind the bar, along with Joe Greene. Kelly, balancing a tray full of glasses, waved with her free hand. Sammy and Duke were huddled around the flashing numbers of a keno game, and Therese, looking darling in designer jeans and a pink velvet hoodie, sat beside Primrose.
A smiling Thom placed two Budweiser coasters in front of us. “What’ll it be, folks? Hi, Ms. Barrett.”
“Hi, Thom. Meet my friend Pete Mondello. Pete, Thom is one of my students.”
The men shook hands, and Pete and I each ordered a light beer. I introduced Pete to Primrose and Therese, and Joe Greene came over to welcome us to his tavern. Within a few minutes Sammy and Duke joined us, and Kelly paused in her serving duties to say hi.
I watched and listened as Pete interacted with each person. Everyone received a smile and a handshake, and each one was also asked a question. Sometimes two. The questions were framed so politely, so casually, that they seemed exactly like normal tavern small talk.
“Where are you from originally?” “What kind of work did you do before you came to Salem?” “Do you like it here? Have family in the area?”
I wonder if he does this automatically because he’s used to interrogating people. Or is he really digging for something? And doesn’t he sometimes question me in the same way?
CHAPTER 15
I didn’t pay attention just to Pete’s words that night at Greene’s Tavern. The answers to his questions were pretty darned interesting, too. I discovered a lot about some of my students in just those few snippets of conversation.
Kelly stopped to speak with us occasionally as she moved between the bar and the tables. In those brief moments, through Pete’s gentle questioning, I found out that her mother had left her when she was a baby to be raised by her dad and his grandmother. “I’ve never even met my ma,” Kelly said without a trace of bitterness. “Have no idea where she went.”
Joe Greene was charitable when he spoke of the woman. “She wasn’t ready to take care of a baby. I wasn’t surprised when she took off. Life around the coal mines isn’t easy for a girl. My own mother died too young.” He looked fondly in his daughter’s direction. “But me and Mamaw did a good job with the kid, don’t you think?”
They certainly had. Joe also had kind words for his handsome bartender. “That Thom is a good kid, too,” he said. “Learns fast. Works hard.” He laughed. “Money hungry, though. The boy’s gonna make it to New York in record time.”
Pete turned his attention to Thom. “That what you want to do? Go to New York? What for?”
“Modeling. TV. Movies. Who knows?” Thom gazed past us, watching his own reflection in the mirrored wall. “But you have to move fast in the face business. Looks don’t last. The best place to get discovered, to get the big agents, is New York. So as soon as I get enough money, I’m gone.” He made a taking-off motion with his hands. “See ya later.”
“Burn green candles, Thom.” Therese spoke softly.
“Huh?” several people said in unison.
“Green candles,” she repeated more firmly. “To attract money. I read it in one of the spell books. It’s a witch thing.”
There were smiles and head shakes all around, but Thom said seriously, “Thanks, Therese. I’ll try it. The sooner I can get to New York, the better.”
Primrose had been uncharacteristically quiet, slowly sipping the same beer she’d been holding since we came in. “What about you, Pete?” she asked. “We know you’re with the Salem police. Are you working on whatever’s happening underneath the Tabby?”
Pete didn’t change his expression or his tone of voice. “Oh yeah. I’ve been down there a couple of times. Cold, dark, and damp. What about you, Miss McDonald? Are you planning to head for the big city, too?”
“New York? Nope. Not me. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and gave it to Goodwill.” She tossed back the beer remaining in her mug. “You can drop the Miss McDonald. Call me Primrose. I’m sort of liking it here, Pete. I may stick around Salem for a while.”
“Primrose,” Pete said. “That’s an unusual name.”
“My mother likes flowers.”
“So does mine.” He turned to Sammy. “Sammy Trout. Name’s familiar. Sports pages, I think. Right?”
I raised an eyebrow.
You already know he’s been snooping around the basement. And I’ll bet Chief Whaley ordered a complete background check this morning. You know all about Sammy Trout. Duke Martin too.
Sammy put his elbows on the bar, supporting his chin on both fists, looking at Pete. “Used to be a jockey. Pretty good one. Took a bad fall a while back and had to quit racing.”
“Tough luck,” Pete said. “That must have been hard to take. When was that, exactly?”
“Oh, a few years ago.” Sammy looked down, breaking eye contact. “It was a pretty bad time. But now I’m thinking about sports broadcasting. Lee here is helping with that.” He looked up, aiming a weak smile in my direction.
I nodded my acknowledgment of the compliment and returned the smile. But I hadn’t realized that Sammy’s accident was “a few years ago.” He’d given the impression that it had been recent. I wondered how long ago “a few years” might be and what he’d been doing since then.
My puzzle was getting more complicated. I’d started out visualizing one of those picture puzzles kids have, with a few big, easy to handle shapes. Now it was beginning to look more like the gazillion-piece kind that take up the whole top of a card table.
Pete motioned to Thom and ordered a round for the group. “Looks like your cowboy friend took a powder,” Pete whispered. “Ducked out the door when I was talking to Sammy.”
I’d been so interested in the answers to Pete’s questions, I hadn’t even noticed that Duke was missing. “Maybe he just went out for a cigarette,” I said.
“Hmm. Maybe.” Pete looked doubtful.
Joe Greene came out from behind the bar, removed his apron, and took the seat next to Pete.
“Did you say you used to work in the coal mines?” Pete asked.
“Just like my daddy before me,” Joe said. “And his daddy before that.” He looked at Kelly with pride in his eyes. “Makes me glad I didn’t have no boys.”
“I’ve never been to that part of the country,” Pete admitted. “Seems like damned hard work.”
“You get used to it, like anything else, I guess.” Joe shrugged. “It’s good money, but the stuff gets in your lungs after a while, you know? Makes you cough all the time. Didn’t get sick enough to get the big pension, though, so I have to keep on workin’.”
“You feel better living here?”
“Oh, sure. Good salt air. I feel great. Me and Kelly stayed there until my grandmother passed, and then we sold everything and moved up here.”
“You’ve certainly made this into an attractive place, Joe,” I said. “It has an old New England look.”
“Always wanted to live near the ocean,” he said.
Kelly came up behind her father and threw an arm around his neck in an impulsive hug. “This is the perfect place for us, huh, Pa?”
“Right, honey,” Joe said. “We’re just where we belong.”
Primrose stood and pulled on a black leather jacket. “Well, it’s time for Therese and Sammy and me to head for the dorm. Looks like Duke has ditched us. Thanks for the drinks, Pete. See you at school, Lee.”
“We’ll be right behind you, Primrose,” Pete said. “Nice to meet you all. Ready to go, Lee?”
We said good night to Joe and Kelly. Pete left a generous tip for Thom, and we headed outside. I watched Primrose’s Camry leave the parking lot. Within a few seconds another car pulled out from behind the building and followed hers onto the darkened street.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Pete
said. “Did you see that?”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “But I’m not sure exactly what I saw.”
“Looks like somebody’s put a tail on Primrose. Or else on one of the other two.”
The taillights of the car behind Primrose’s black Camry twinkled in the distance as we drove along the curving shore road.
“Are we following them?”
There was a smile in Pete’s voice. “Why? Do you want to?”
“Yes, please!”
“I think we will,” Pete said, “just to be sure they get home okay.”
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
“No. Not really. But we’ll catch up with the tail and run the plate through the DMV.”
We sped up, and in minutes our headlights illuminated the Massachusetts plate on the late-model black Lincoln ahead of us. We dropped back a bit as Pete tapped the numbers into the notebook-size computer mounted between our seats.
“Hmm. That’s strange,” he said.
I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I leaned closer and peered at the screen. He swiveled it away from me, but not before I’d glimpsed a Boston address.
“Come on,” I said. “You have to tell me who’s following them. After all, they’re kind of my responsibility.”
“Can’t do it, babe,” he said. “But I promise you, they aren’t bad guys. Your students are all safe.” The car ahead drove straight on Derby Street, while we turned right onto Hawthorne Boulevard and toward home.
“Don’t you want to make sure they make it back to the dorm okay?” I asked. “What if they decide to stop someplace else?”
“I’ll call the guard on duty at the school and tell him to call me as soon as they come in.”
“Okay. That makes me feel better.”
Pete was still on the phone when the guard reported that the three had already entered the school.
“Thanks, Pete. Technically, they’re all adults. I don’t know why I worry about them.”
“That’s the second time tonight I’ve been reminded that your students are all over twenty-one,” he said.
“It is?”
“Joe Greene made a point of telling me he’d checked all their IDs.”
“Maybe he thought that was why you were there. To see if he was selling alcohol to underage kids,” I said.
“He thinks I was there for something other than an evening out with my girlfriend, that’s for sure.” He frowned. “Makes me wonder what that something is.”
“Were we there for something else?”
“Hell, no. You said you’d like to go there sometime, so we did.”
“But you think that he thinks . . . what?”
We made the turn onto Winter Street. “I don’t know,” he said. “But now I’m curious.”
“You asked everybody so many questions tonight,” I said, “I thought you were looking for something, too.”
He seemed surprised. “Hey, I didn’t even know they were all going to be there. I admit I wanted to hear what Sammy had to say, on account of what happened this morning,” he said. “And I probably would have had a few questions for Duke, too, if he hadn’t sneaked out, but I didn’t mean to grill anybody. Was I that obvious?”
“Maybe Primrose noticed. She always seems to know how to dodge questions.”
“She does, doesn’t she?”
We’d stopped in front of the house, and I was sorry our evening together had ended. Lights shone from both the upstairs and downstairs windows, so I was sure Aunt Ibby had kept her promise to wait up for me.
We leaned toward one another across the computer and bumped heads, then laughed through an awkward good-night kiss. Pete walked with me to the front door, where O’Ryan peeked from a side window.
“That cat must like looking out that window. He’s there every time I come over,” Pete said.
“Actually, he goes to the front hall only when he knows someone is coming,” I admitted. “He figures it out somehow before they even turn the corner of the street.”
“Come on. You’re trying to tell me O’Ryan has some kind of ESP?”
“I guess you might call it that. It’s just something he’s done ever since we got him. We’re used to it.” I unlocked the door and patted the waiting cat. “Want to come in for a while?”
“Can’t. On duty early tomorrow. Want to do something Saturday?”
“Love to. Maybe we can go car shopping.”
“So you’re serious about buying a car. Any idea what you want? I know most of the car dealers in town.”
The image of a sharp-looking blue roadster formed in my mind. “Um . . . maybe a convertible,” I said. “A blue one.”
“I’m sure we can find something you’ll like,” Pete said, making it sound as though I was a kid who’d just asked for a pony. “See you Saturday. Don’t forget to give River my number.”
“I’ll remember.”
Aunt Ibby called to me from the den as soon as I closed the door. “Maralee?” O’Ryan scampered ahead, to where she sat on the couch. She hit the mute button on the TV remote and patted the cushion beside her while the cat climbed onto her lap. “Come, sit down. I can hardly wait to hear about Tabitha’s room.”
“And I can hardly wait to hear more about the Trumbulls’ shady history,” I told her. “Also, I’ve come up with a theory on how someone might have been able to buy four bikes with twenty dollars back in the eighties.”
“How’s that? Don’t tell me the Trumbulls were dealing in hot bicycles!”
I laughed. “No. Nothing like that. But what if the gifts to the captain’s wife were twenty-dollar gold pieces?”
“Why, Maralee, I think that would explain it. But where would that old woman, locked in an attic, get gold coins?”
“I don’t know. But the Trumbulls were wealthy. Maybe she’d just saved them.”
“Yes, they had plenty of money, no doubt. Was her room nice?”
I thought about that. “The furniture was good quality, but nothing ostentatious, if you know what I mean.”
“Tell me.”
I described the single bed, the rocking chair, the sturdy armoire, the sheer curtains. “There’s a dresser with a mirror, too,” I said. “And the player piano is there. The one you told me about from the store, and the armoire is chock-full of piano rolls. And there’s a big picture of President Roosevelt.”
“Teddy? Or Franklin?”
“Franklin. It’s a big framed photo, hanging right over the headboard of her bed.”
She nodded, with that wise look she gets sometimes. “Roosevelt. Gold coins. Uh-huh.”
“Uh-huh what? There’s some kind of connection?”
“Maybe. Let me think about it. What else did you see on the top floor? Were the other rooms furnished ?”
“No, not really. A piece here and there. Except for one room with furniture piled to the ceiling. That was a little creepy,” I said.
“Do you expect to go back?” my aunt asked as O’Ryan stretched, stood, and moved from her lap to mine. “Sounds a bit scary.”
Not as scary as what I saw in the shoe.
“Sure. We’ll go back. But now it’s your turn,” I said, scratching behind the cat’s ears. “O’Ryan wants to hear about the Trumbulls, both naughty and nice.” I decided now wasn’t the time to tell her about the vision and the keys.
O’Ryan looked up and locked eyes with me. I tried not to blink. He won.
Okay. I’ll tell her tonight.
“The vertical files contain all kinds of bits and pieces,” Aunt Ibby began. “Newspaper clippings, photos, diaries, ledgers, old greeting cards, deeds, mostly paper memorabilia. The Trumbull family’s collection takes up several files.”
“Primary source material,” I said. “The real documents. Not just copies.”
“Right. Of course, the most important stuff has been preserved on microfilm, paper being so fragile, but I wanted to be sure we have access to everything. I even found Tabitha’s old recipe cards.” She look
ed pensive. “You know, someone should put those into a book.”
“You could do it,” I said. “In your spare time.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Maybe I will. After I finish remodeling the upstairs.”
“Go on,” I said, encouraging her. “Tell me about the Trumbull bad seeds.”
“It goes back to the Smiths, actually. Tabitha’s folks. They had the money, you know.”
“Yes. River told me that.”
“Tabitha’s grandfather had a little brush with the law back near the turn of the century. I found one old yellow newspaper clipping that said he’d been accused and found innocent of opium trafficking.”
“Opium?”
“Oh, sure. It was apparently the drug of choice back in the late eighteen hundreds. You could even order small quantities of it from the Sears catalog. Anyway, the old man was accused of smuggling opium from China on his merchant ships and running an opium den. They never proved it, though. No evidence.”
“Maybe that’s what they were doing. Bringing opium to an underground opium den inside the tunnel,” I said, recalling Megan’s story.
“The tunnel?” She leaned forward. O’Ryan sat up straight. “What about the tunnel?”
I repeated, as well as I could, River’s story of the two little girls and the men who went back and forth into the tunnel and allowed them to play underground. I told her, too, about the locked playhouse and the locked toy chest that Tabitha’s grandfather had given them.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve never heard about any such thing,” she said, sounding a bit miffed by the omission. “That’s a great story. I wonder if it’s true. You say Megan is still alive?”
“Yes. She’s over a hundred, and River says she’s still sharp. Pete’s interested in the story, too. He wants to see if Megan can remember exactly where that tunnel entrance was. It might save them some time in exploring down there. It’s not a nice place.”
Tails, You Lose (A Witch City Mystery Book 2) Page 12