by Sharon Pape
I estimated that I was halfway down when the spill of light from the anteroom petered out. It was slow going after that since I had no idea how many steps actually lay ahead of me. I made a deal with myself. If I reached the basement floor and found another switch wired to a working light bulb, I’d go on. Otherwise, I’d head back upstairs.
I came off the steps and did another Braille search for light. Once again the switch I found proved worthless. I was disappointed, but a deal was a deal. Besides, what if my soft spot for Rusty was a combination of nostalgia and poor judgment? He could have left the door open, figuring it was just a matter of time before I came snooping around. He could have removed those light bulbs too, putting me at a serious disadvantage in an unfamiliar place in the dark.
When I turned to start the climb back up, I heard the squish and squeak of a man’s rubber soles in the anteroom above me. My heart skipped a beat or two, stealing my breath and rocketing my brain into overdrive. I had to find a place to hide. But with no light, no knowledge of the layout, and time rapidly running out, only one possibility came to mind. There might be space beneath the staircase.
I felt my way along the wall to where that space would be if it wasn’t a walled-off dead end. Finally luck was with me. But my relief was short-lived. The man descending the stairs turned on a flashlight. Rusty. Who else would know the lights weren’t working? I huddled in the darkest shadows at the back of the stairs, willing him not to look in my direction when he reached the basement floor. I knew the spell of invisibility and had used it with limited success in my last investigation. But it required such complete focus that it was difficult under the best conditions, useless with the anxiety and fear already filling my core.
The man moved away from the stairs. I dared to take a quick peek at him as he moved toward a hallway and in the backwash from his flashlight I could see he was roughly Rusty’s size. I couldn’t remain where I was, or he was bound to see me when he returned and was facing the staircase. I had an idea. If it worked, I might get out of there safely. I would wait until he was far enough away from the staircase to give me a decent lead, then I would race back up. I was young and quick on my feet. Rusty had grown slow with age. He will not catch me. Do you hear me, universe? He will not catch me.
My heart pounding in my ears, I monitored his progress by the glow of the flashlight. When he was far enough away, I came out from the underside of the staircase and sprinted for the steps. I grabbed the hand rail and swung myself in a tight arc onto the bottom step. I was a third of the way up when he shouted, “Don’t move!”
I froze. It wasn’t Rusty’s voice. I held onto the banister to steady myself as I turned into the glare of the flashlight.
“What in hell are you doing here, Ms. Wilde?”
“I can explain, Detective,” I said, hoping I could come up with a reason that would appease him.
“I can hardly wait to hear it,” Duggan replied. “Here’s how we’re going to play this. You’re going to take yourself down to the precinct, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m finished here. If you’re not there when I arrive, I’ll find you and drag you down in handcuffs. Maybe even throw you in jail, so you’ll have time to reflect on the benefits of life on the right side of the law.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, refusing to let him intimidate me, “but I haven’t done anything wrong.” The school had given me permission to walk the grounds. It wasn’t my fault if the door was unlocked and there was no sign warning people not to enter. No one in the office had said I couldn’t go in. Of course no one had said I could, either. My innocent plea needed some work.
Chapter 26
I called Travis on my way to the precinct to tell him not to wait for me at The Soda Jerk. “I was wondering what was taking you this long,” he said after hearing a condensed version of my misadventure. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, though I suspect when Duggan gets there, he’s going to do his best to make things unpleasant for me.”
“I’ll be right there. He’ll think twice about using the thumbscrews with a reporter present.”
Travis was probably right. The New Camel station house was so small that even in the waiting area, he’d be able to hear everything that went on between Duggan and me. I also liked the idea that Duggan wouldn’t be expecting an audience other than Curtis or Hobart, not that I actually expected to be tortured, but a verbal thrashing wasn’t on my bucket list either.
I arrived at the station two minutes later and was happy to find Paul Curtis behind the desk. It never hurts to have as many allies as possible when it comes to legal matters. He seemed happy to see me too, but I was pretty sure it was for a different reason.
“I’m glad you found your cat,” he said after we helloed.
Thank goodness I’d remembered to call and let him know that the missing feline was waiting at the door of my shop when I returned. Imaginary animals can be so accommodating. If I’d let him continue to search for her, this would have been a much more uncomfortable conversation.
“What brings you in today?” he asked.
“Detective Duggan and I had a little misunderstanding. He asked me to wait for him here to discuss it.”
A gross exaggeration, but I didn’t want to answer a lot of questions. He’d be treated to the whole sorry tale soon enough. He offered me a seat in the chair across the desk from him, the same one I occupied during my missing-cat report. It was beginning to feel like my seat. Before we could continue our conversation, Travis walked in. He was wearing his journalistic I’ll-get-to-the-bottom-of-this face. He introduced himself to Curtis and said he was there as an interested party and to provide support for me. While Curtis was trying to assess exactly what that meant, Travis came to stand behind my chair. He put his hands on my shoulders in a sweet, protective way. I watched Curtis take in this little tableau and register the fact that Travis and I were “together.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Anderson,” he said, “you’ll have to wait in the designated area.” The designated area was a grand-sounding name for a small space near the door with a bench that could seat three, cheek to jowl.
I saw the way the two men were sizing each other up. In a bygone era, they might have resorted to dueling over me as if I were chattel and didn’t have any say in the matter.
“No problem, Officer,” Travis said. He gave my shoulders a squeeze before walking the ten feet back to the waiting area.
For the next five minutes, the three of us sat in an increasingly awkward silence to the point where I was almost relieved when Duggan arrived. He came through a back entrance and, a man on a mission, strode into the room where Curtis and I were sitting. Travis stood, at the ready to do battle for me. Given all the rampant testosterone in the building, I wondered if I might have fared better on my own.
Curtis vacated the padded chair behind the desk and stepped back, deferring to his superior. Without any acknowledgment, Duggan grabbed the arm of the chair and dropped into it at a peculiar angle and with such force that it tipped backward. There were a frenetic couple of seconds as he readjusted his position and wrestled the chair back down onto the floor. An unexpected giggle raced up my throat before I could abort it. I clamped my mouth shut and pretended the resulting noise was a cough. I would have paid good money to see him go tail over teakettle, as my grandmother used to say.
The embarrassing incident didn’t help Duggan’s mood. He spent a good thirty minutes questioning every why and wherefore of my visit to the school. When he was done, the interview had lasted three times longer than my sojourn there. I answered him truthfully since nothing short of the truth could explain my presence in the basement of the school. He threatened me with a charge of obstructing justice and made it clear that the next time he found me meddling in a police investigation, he’d “arrest my ass,” as he put it. He tilted his head toward Travis, who was toeing the invisible line between the waiting
area and the rest of the station house. “Your reporter boyfriend there is a witness. I gave you fair warning.”
* * * *
“Let me take you to dinner,” Travis said as we walked to our cars in the precinct lot. “Some wine, a good meal, a decadent dessert?”
“Are you planning to lecture me about ad-libbing when I was only supposed to be looking for a door? Because I have to tell you, it would not be well received.”
Travis laughed. “How can I reproach you when I would have done the same thing?”
“Thank you. I really needed to hear that.”
“So, is that a yes to dinner?”
I glanced at my watch. “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize how late it is. I left Sashkatu in my shop. I have to pick him up and feed them all. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.” I opened my car door and started to climb in.
“Chinese then? Tell me what you like, and I’ll bring dinner to you.”
“It’s a deal.”
* * * *
“What did we tell you?” my mother said brightly, her energy cloud popping up between me and the television screen. She was all white and fluffy, which I’d come to think of as a smile. My grandmother was also cheerful when she joined us a second later. I reached around them with the remote to pause the show I was watching.
“Excuse me?” I asked, completely lost.
“We told you to be patient with Travis,” Bronwen said.
“Because he’s a keeper,” Morgana added.
“You may be right,” I admitted since they seemed to be expecting an acknowledgment from me. My mother always loved a good I-told-you-so, except when she was the recipient.
“Let’s not forget the other reason we stopped by,” Bronwen said.
“I haven’t. I simply didn’t get to it yet.” There was a slight dash of pique in Morgana’s tone as though she’d been working on her relationship issues with Bronwen but hadn’t nailed it yet.
“Sorry for jumping the gun,” Bronwen responded, her words sounding like they were coming through a clenched jaw.
I wondered if their progress was being monitored. If they couldn’t fool me, they didn’t stand a chance of fooling whoever was evaluating them. Or maybe they didn’t care if they failed. Maybe they weren’t ready to close that final door and leave Tilly and me on our own.
“Kailyn,” my mother said, “we’ve noticed that you’re having difficulty teleporting objects to a safe landing, and we have a suggestion.”
“I’ll try anything.” I’d already smashed half a dozen objects, although fortunately not on anyone else’s head.
“There may be a solution to the problem right in our family scrolls,” Bronwen said. “We were never able to properly decipher the sections written in Old English, but I’ll bet Merlin can. He can be your Rosetta Stone.”
I took the scrolls from their hiding place under the area rug and beneath the hardwood floor in the living room. They were rolled into dozens of protective tubes, a project Bronwen had undertaken in an effort to better conserve them. My grandmother was determined to pass them on to future generations of Wildes without entrusting them to “the cold clutches of a computer.” She’d explained to me, “The contraption might succeed in preserving the words, but it could never capture the spirit of the women who wrote them.” It’s hard to argue with emotion, so I didn’t try. I did, however, have a secret plan to transcribe them into my computer, just in case.
I told my aunt Tilly I was bringing the scrolls to her and why. At first she said it was a dandy idea, but by the time I loaded up my car and drove there, I found my aunt in calamity baking mode. She’d whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, because the prospect of being responsible for such a treasure had made her a fidgety bundle of nerves. And the prospect of monitoring how Merlin used them had rendered her nearly apoplectic.
I did my best to address her concerns while she went on bustling about the kitchen. “We make Merlin wear cotton gloves when he reads the scrolls,” I said. “We make him promise not to go near them unless you or I are in the room. We don’t allow him to eat or drink in the room where they’re being kept. And we threaten to send him out into the cold, cruel world on his own the very first time he breaks any of the rules.” Not that we would, of course, but we needed some kind of leverage to make sure he complied. What else could we use against a legendary wizard who could, on one of his better days, turn us into maggots if he chose to?
The timer for the cookies rang, and I suggested she make tea for all of us. It was a measure of her anxiety that she didn’t think to make it herself. We planned to sit in her cozy kitchen, soothed by the aroma of warm cookies, while I explained the mission and the rules to Merlin. If he had any objections, the chocolate chip cookies should help to sweeten the deal.
Chapter 27
The Waverly Corporation didn’t waste any time breaking ground. The ink was barely dry on the revised zoning laws and the state and federal permits when they brought in heavy equipment to drain the marsh so construction could begin. The site attracted a lot of attention, slowing traffic in and out of New Camel to a crawl. Tour buses, businesspeople, and anyone who had an appointment to keep were outspoken in their disgust over the situation. Those who were in favor of the hotel, including the mayor, wisely kept their own counsel, avoiding the topic at all cost. More than once, I saw Tompkins cross to the other side of the street to avoid certain constituents.
Regardless of their feelings about the hotel, everyone appeared to be interested in what was happening at the marsh. I was no better than anyone else. I took advantage of the snail’s pace crawl by the site to check things out. I’d never seen equipment of the kind being used there. According to the Watkins Glen Journal, one of the strange amphibious vehicles was a Marsh Buggy and the other, somewhat more conventional one, a Marsh Excavator. But nothing prepared me for the headline the next day, screaming that a body was found at the bottom of the marsh.
Work was halted while dredging equipment was brought in to look for evidence and other bodies. If traffic suffered before this discovery, it was at a virtual standstill now. Police were dispatched to keep things moving, but they met with only limited success. We were in for a long siege. There was, however, a silver lining in the situation, at least for me. Travis was spending nearly all his time in the area as point man on the evolving story. Once again the nation’s eyes were focused on New Camel. Two murders in small-town America made for good copy “from sea to shining sea.”
Without information to fuel the rumor mill, conjecture filled the vacuum. When someone speculated about the identity of the body, by the next morning the grapevine had turned it into fact. Gossip in our town was nothing new, but it now galloped from mouth to ear in record time. For that reason, I was super-careful about what I said and to whom I said it. My dear aunt Tilly didn’t even make the cut because she often didn’t think before she spoke. Although her intent was never malicious, she’d ruined a number of surprise parties over the years. Morgana and Bronwen had finally solved the problem by keeping her as much in the dark as the celebrant. That’s why only two people on planet Earth made it onto my list: Elise and Travis. I didn’t believe anything I heard, unless it came from Travis. And if he told me something on the QT, I didn’t repeat it to Elise, much as I trusted her. It wasn’t my decision to make.
My opinion was that the body in the marsh was one Dwayne Davies. He was a perfect candidate because he had gone missing so suddenly. In my scenario, Fletcher paid him to eliminate Amanda. After the deed was done, Dwayne was too much of a liability for Fletcher to let him live. So it was good-bye Dwayne as well.
In a press conference less than twenty-four hours after the body was discovered, Detective Duggan announced that no ID was found on the victim. “However,” he said, “with the help of a sketch artist and computer technology, we now have an image we believe to be a reasonable representation of our John Doe. We’re a
sking for the public’s help in identifying him. Please take a good look at the picture and call us if you recognize this man. You have my personal assurance that you will remain anonymous.”
The image that filled the TV screen was not, by any stretch of the imagination, Dwayne Davies. At least not the Dwayne Davies in his mother’s photographs. I was enormously relieved for Jane Davies but disappointed in my instincts as a sleuth.
“Do you know how long the body was in the marsh?” a reporter called out as Duggan turned away from the microphone. He kept right on going, descending the podium without a backward glance.
I turned off the TV and reached for the phone.Too many unnecessary words. I stopped halfway through punching in Travis’s number. Given the circumstances, I shouldn’t be bothering him. He was probably up to his neck in work. Five minutes later he called me.
Forgoing hello, he asked, “Were you watching?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“On my way back to New Camel,” he said. “I had the day off, and I was taking care of some personal stuff in the city. I just saw the picture on my phone. Do you recognize the guy?”
“No, that would have made things too easy,” I said. We hadn’t yet solved Amanda’s death, and now we had another. “If John Doe isn’t from around here, his death might not even be connected to the new hotel. If this keeps up, New Camel’s claim to fame will be as the murder capital of the country.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll have more to go on after the autopsy is completed. Here’s a thought. Maybe the guy was following directions from his navigation system or his cell phone. He wouldn’t be the first one who wound up in water.”
“Nice try, except they didn’t find a car in the marsh.”
* * * *
It was hard to believe that five days had passed since Travis suggested I call the woman from the EPA to check out the rest of Patrick’s story. So much had been happening that my head felt like it was in a perpetual spin. I couldn’t let it go any longer. The next morning, as soon as the clock struck nine, I placed a call to the closest branch of the EPA. After doing battle with the automated system, I was routed to a person by the name of Devon. Instead of getting into a lengthy explanation, I told him I attended a wonderful EPA-sponsored program at New Camel high school and wanted to speak to Melanie Sharpe, the woman who conducted it.