But not with my name on it. As soon as Harris read the title and author, I ran over and took it from him, forgetting about the gloves. Little Ded by Willow—not Willy—Tate. I flipped pages, saw that half were cartoon drawings—not mine, but a poor imitation of my style. And the storyline was nothing I’d have written in a million years. Or drawn. The woman pictured had my features, short curly hair, with blue eyes colored with the same marker pen. The dog looked like a fluffy Pomeranian, only twenty times bigger than Little Red, and empty-eyed, like a zombie dog. And they were—
“Oh, my God.”
I hadn’t noticed Susan behind me. Harris tried to lead her away. Matt took the pages from me, again without latex gloves. “She’s crazy. No one will let her publish this filth.”
Lou and Uncle Henry had the loose pages by now, the rubber band carefully placed in a clear evidence bag. In the light I could see Uncle Henry’s face turning as pink as my hair.
Lou kept grunting as he flipped pages. “She’s not crazy. She’s a pervert. This is nothing but pornography. We can get her put away for decades, if we find her. And we’ll send out an alert to block any new mention of your name across the web. Anyone who puts this up’ll be hit by a lawsuit so fast they won’t know what hit them. Then we’ll trace the sender and shut down the servers. We’ll get her.”
“Russ can take care of it, Willy. He’s already working with your computer,” the chief reminded me. “He can destroy any program that publishes this filth.”
Yes, but my reputation would already be ruined. My books would be pulled from libraries, from bookstore shelves, from classrooms. I’d never publish a story again. Or hold my head up. My publisher could be destroyed. And Matt, Matt who kept his hand on my shoulder, would be tarred by the same horrible, hateful brush.
A man in a wool overcoat was studying the pages now. I didn’t recognize him, so I went to grab the manuscript out of his hands, not wanting anyone else to see the disgusting images, but he held me off, with rubber gloves. “You know, I don’t think a girl did this. It’s really more a young male’s style.”
Lou introduced me. “Special Agent Krause here’s a profiler. He’s usually at Quantico helping the FBI, that’s why you never saw him before. That’s why he’s dressed for winter, too. His blood thinned, hanging with the Feebies. I thought he’d be a help on this case.”
I felt better knowing that Lou believed how serious the situation was, that he called in a Federal profiler. Until Krause said he was in town visiting his mother anyway. He read through the pages and said the writer was definitely a male. Twenties, middle class background, some drug use, most likely dropped out of college.
Okay, maybe the messenger who’d knocked over Mrs. Abbottini was the writer and Deni the illustrator. Or vice versa. “I know I heard a female voice on the phone messages.”
“Voices can be disguised,” Krause said. “Your senses can be fooled. My senses can’t.”
Oh, that kind of profiler.
Lou nodded. “He’s one of ours.”
“Wait a minute.” I whipped out my cell phone and punched in my father’s number. He answered at the first ring for once. “What did she say?”
“I haven’t talked to her yet. We have a situation here. Dad, you know that Irish tenor you keep hearing?”
Uncle Henry groaned. “Not another one of Tate’s blasted riddles, Willy. We’ve got enough to think about already.”
I ignored him. “Dad, what song is he singing?”
“Damn, Willy, what do you think? The song every Irish tenor sings, endlessly. ‘Danny Boy.’”
Of course. I thanked him and hung up. So maybe Deni was Denis or Danny, not Denise. Either way, the person was deranged and dangerous. And determined. He or she knew where I lived, knew what was important to me. “What did I ever do to deserve this piece of slime?”
Krause answered. “You’re a success while he’s a failure. And you’re pretty and smart and so far above his touch that he wants to destroy you, or be you. He worshiped you like an idol, but you rejected his love when you rejected his advances, his creative work. Now you represent everything wrong with his life, including his sex life. And he’s afraid you’ll write about him, telling the world what a loser he is.”
“What about the maimed animals?” Lou wanted to know.
“A lot of perversions first evidence themselves that way. Nothing unusual there. The fact that the guy tries to write graphic novels is. I’ll check the sex crimes lists to see if anyone fits the pattern, but from the eyewitness physical descriptions, your guy might be too young to be registered. Or just starting out.”
Not a good prospect.
“So what can I do?”
“You write back. You have email addresses for him, don’t you?”
“That’s what Russell’s working on.”
“Well, write back. Act humble. He’ll like that, thinking he’s won. Say you are sorry you didn’t help him, but you were caught up in your own work. Now you’d look at his book, not this one, of course, but another. Maybe give him some hints. You could even tempt him to lay off spreading this one around by offering to ask your agent about representing him, or showing his manuscript to your editor.”
“I would never—”
“He does not know that. He’ll write back or call. He wants your reaction. He’ll make a mistake. He’ll do something to lead us right to him. With DUE on it, we can get better traces, quicker IDs.”
Which meant they’d go outside regular channels. I didn’t care as long as they got this dirtbag away from me. I hated the thought of encouraging a monster, but both Lou and the chief agreed that the more contact I had with Deni, the sooner we’d find him.
Krause brought one of the pages over to the light. “I think he’s already made an error. Artists like to sign their work, right?”
I nodded. He called for a magnifying glass. Lou sent him Colin instead. Colin’s esper eyes had found the symbols on my pendant. Now they found a tiny, nearly invisible autograph tucked in the dog’s fur, DF. “It’s a start.”
Lou got on the phone. Krause got on the phone. The chief got on the phone. I went to free the dogs from the pen. “We’re not staying here, guys.”
So everyone gave their opinion about where we should go. Susan’s father had arrived and insisted we both come to his house. They lived almost across the street, just down the dirt road. Harris didn’t like it, which meant my intuition about Susan and the DUE agent was working fine. I agreed with Uncle George that Susan, at least, should go home.
Lou wanted everyone at Rosehill, where the entire place was wired and filled with guards. He’d be staying there, too, now that Doc Lassiter was at my grandmother’s. So I was wrong about a threesome. Win some, lose some.
Matt still had his hand on my shoulder. “Willy stays with me.”
Win some.
We still had the sacks from the drugstore. I didn’t know about him, but I had no urge to use them, after seeing those drawings. Lose some.
“She’ll be safe with me,” Matt said. He gave a hand signal to Moses, who came and sat on my foot. “Guard, Mo.”
The big dog growled so low in his throat I could feel it vibrate in my toes. Not to be upstaged, I said “Guard, Red.” The Pom in my arms growled louder than Moses and showed his teeth. No one had to know I’d pinched his tail.
“Listen, we can’t take any chances with Willy, especially now that this sand thing is going on,” Uncle Henry said. “Why do you think she’d do better at your place than where we can have a score of guards around her?”
Matt pulled me closer. “Because to you she’s a key that opens doors, or shuts them. If you find a better key, you don’t need her. I’ll always need her with me, safe and happy, because I love her.”
Susan clapped. I blushed. Someone else shouted out, “This one’s a keeper
, Willy.”
I already knew I’d hit the jackpot. “I am staying with Matt as long as he’ll have me.”
Now he blushed, but no one disputed my right to choose my own fortune, which had always been my goal all along. That and spending the night with Matt. Harris had to stay at my house with his surveillance equipment in case Deni came there. He’d be the best one to confront the stalker anyway.
“But what about the old dogs?” I could leave them here with Harris, but they could never go out in the yard, not when a maniac animal abuser could be lurking.
Lou said, “The boys and I will take them to Rosehill. It’s all fenced in, and electrified. They’ll be good for Jimmie. He still misses that damned parrot.”
Lily wouldn’t be happy, but Dobbin and Buddy were no trouble, and she did have that smaller fenced-in area where the previous renter had kept his poodles. “What about Monteith? He’ll hate having them there.”
Lou grinned, something he seldom did. “He sure will.”
We all laughed for the first time in hours. It felt good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I had to tell my mother where her dogs were. And where her husband had been.
Oh, boy.
By the time I got the dogs packed up, food, bowls, meds, beds, and schedules, plus more clothes for me, my drawing supplies, my super high-res scanner and printer so I didn’t have to return here while Deni was loose, we were in a hurry to leave. No time to call my mother. Whew.
I’d see Grandma Eve at the council meeting in the morning and ask her to do it. Maybe Doc Lassiter’s calming influence could work over the phone. If not, maybe it’d work on Grandma Eve after the bound-to-be explosive conversation.
I decided to ask Carinne to the meeting, to let everyone see her at once and get it over with, so she could walk down Main Street without people gawking at her. Jimmie ought to come, too, because he knew as much about the Andanstans as I did, which wasn’t nearly enough to develop a plan to reclaim our beaches.
Matt couldn’t go with me to the meeting. He had too many patients waiting too long and the new receptionist to train, but he’d have Harris pick me up and bring me back to the vet clinic. We could have lunch together if no emergencies showed up. He made me promise not to strike out on my own, unprotected by anything bigger than a six-pound ankle-biter.
I wasn’t worried about Deni, now that I was out of my mother’s house. I had a lot of questions, like how he knew I left Manhattan, if he’d respond to the emails Special Agent Krause helped me write, and if I’d have nightmares about the story he’d sent. But worried about him showing up in Paumanok Harbor? Not much. Strangers stuck out in the village, especially at this time of year with fewer tourists around, and people would be on the alert for a suspicious looking young man. I’d bring the sketch of Deni I’d drawn from Mrs. Abbottini’s description to the meeting and hand out copies, along with the picture I’d done of the Andanstans. I didn’t know if anyone would ever see them but me and Jimmie, maybe Matt, but I was the Visualizer, wasn’t I? And the picture was all I had, other than a half-assed theory about them stealing the sand.
That was tomorrow. Tonight we drove fifteen minutes to Amagansett and picked up Chinese takeout. I stayed in the car with Moses and Little Red. The Pom wore the doggie jacket I’d bought him in the city, with the hood up so he didn’t look so fluffy or so fox-colored. We were both in disguise. I wore a baseball cap.
Moses drooled the whole way back to the Harbor, salivating at the smell of the food. He’d have eaten it, too, except Matt put it on the floor at my feet. I found the noodles and shared with everyone.
Matt’s house was like him, attractive without being pretentious. The classic saltbox cottage had two small bedrooms with exposed beams under the slanted roof, a small home office, one and a half baths, a narrow deck out back and a tiny unfinished attic room Matt couldn’t stand up in, but I could. It had a window and an old stuffed chair and a card table. I put my work things there.
The living/dining area had big, comfortable furniture, but not much of it, so Moses had enough open space to sprawl in.
Of course he sat on my feet during dinner. “You can tell him to stop guarding me now.”
“He’s guarding those vegetable dumplings.”
We didn’t talk much over dinner, until time for the fortune cookies. Mine read: Trust your instincts.
Matt’s read: Trust her instincts.
Weird. What were the chances of those two fortunes appearing together out of the bin of cookies? Next to zero, I’d guess. Unless you lived in Paumanok Harbor.
After supper Matt offered to change the sheets in the guest room for me. He made a point of saying that Marion had slept there.
“I know.”
“So you do trust me?”
“That, too, but I know that if she’d slept with you, she never would have left.”
“That good, huh?” He smiled.
“From what I remember . . .”
“We better refresh your memory, then.”
We would have started new memories to replace the sickening images still in my mind, but my damned nose started bleeding and my lip instantly started itching again. So did Matt’s cat scratches. He found me ice cubes and towels and the cream my grandmother had made up for the townspeople. “That’s pretty odd, both our rashes coming back, like the matching fortune cookies. Unless we’re allergic to each other. Do you think that’s possible?”
No, I thought the Andanstans were sending a message, a reminder of their presence. I don’t know how I knew, but I just did. I saw it laid out, like a maze, one step leading to another. Everyone’s hives started clearing up as soon as I planned to return to the Harbor. All the rashes diminished more or disappeared as soon as we went searching the beaches. Now, with my mind on other things, like Matt and sex, and everyone else concerned with Deni and Carinne, the itch was back. I tried not to scratch. I even tried Grandma Eve’s lotion.
Trust your instincts. Mine said run in the opposite direction, but that wouldn’t help. Chances were, I’d bleed to death from a nosebleed and Paumanok Harbor would be swallowed by the sea.
“Does that make sense?” I asked Matt.
“I trust your instincts. You see the connections. So let’s go deal with the Andanstans.”
We both knew we couldn’t enjoy the evening with that council meeting looming. We couldn’t think about the bag from the drugstore, the king-size bed in Matt’s room, the big soft sofa, not while knowing we should be looking for possibly hostile beings, ones who could determine the fate of the whole little town.
Even the rocky road ice cream Matt scooped out didn’t taste as good as usual, but my nose stopped bleeding.
We went.
I saw them. Matt didn’t. I think maybe he tried too hard, or was too empirical by nature. I mean, a sick dog has symptoms, things you can see or test for. Or maybe he kept thinking of me instead. I’d like to think so.
He didn’t hear them either, not that I had any idea what they were saying. They weren’t talking to me, but shouting at each other, just the way I’d drawn them, the way I saw them in my head.
I used to think the characters in my books—the sea serpents and trolls and magic horses—were just that, figments of my imagination that existed only in my mind. Then they turned out to be real beings, just not of my real world. Did I dream them up, call them here, or did they intrude on my thoughts, tickling my creative impulses, suggesting themes for my stories, heroes, and villains?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I did not know. This time, though, the idea for the Andanstans didn’t come from me. They were in Professor Jimmie Harmon’s notes. I just drew them. Or brought them to life. Or brought them here. Who knew which? Not I.
We’d gone to the beach near my mother’s house and Grandma Eve’s farm, with sle
eping bags and firewood, as Matt promised. First, we dug a shallow pit. I kept apologizing for disturbing the sand. “Sorry, sorry.” Then we lined it with rocks. “Sorry if this hurts.” And piled logs and kindling on top. “I promise we’ll clean up.” We carried a bucket of water back from the tide line, too, like good little campers, just in case.
We gave up on the marshmallows because we’d forgotten sticks and couldn’t find any in the dark. Neither of us wanted to go searching among the beach grass and underbrush at the landward edge, not with ticks rampant and poison ivy possible, to say nothing of creepy crawlies who lived at the shore. I ate the marshmallows out of the bag. Matt had pretzels. I ate a handful of them, too, blaming the Chinese food for my appetite. Matt just smiled and handed me the bag again.
By now the fire caught, and I shifted my sleeping bag—“Sorry”— so the smoke didn’t blow in my face. I crawled in for its warmth and because I didn’t trust my concentration if I shared Matt’s body heat instead. I rolled onto my stomach, leaning on my elbows, and I drew.
I used broad marker pens, so I could see what I was doing without the flashlights we’d brought. This time I didn’t try to focus my thoughts on the alien sand-nappers, sending out images to them, trying to communicate. I used all my intensity creating a story I could tell to YA kids. I worked like I usually did, making it up as I went along, sketching in some of the action, a word or two here and there to indicate what had to come next, or should be put in sooner. Soon I had a storyboard, boxes of drawings and text, none finished or complete, but a tale of jealousy in a love triangle, made of grains of sand.
I didn’t love it. So I flipped the page and drew three siblings, fighting for their father’s crown. No, three banditos, falling out over the division of the loot. Three contentious neighbors, arguing about property lines and how loud this one’s pool filter sounded, how that one’s dog barked too much, how the third one threw wild parties and didn’t invite the neighbors.
Matt fell asleep, but I had a great time, inventing petty wars among half-inch-high folk who fell apart when wounded, only to regroup later, ready for revenge. I loved playing with the ideas, feeling that rush of possibilities, that euphoric high of creativity.
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