Annie’s stomach clenched, and her head dropped to Mike’s shoulder. “I didn’t want to be right about this,” she said.
Chapter 68
After making a deal with Bryant about getting an exclusive, Annie caved in and stayed at home, next to the computer and phone. She slept off and on while lying on the couch, until Sam and Ben got up and her day began with fixing breakfast for her boys. She made pancakes, feeling the need to start the day with a sturdy meal.
When the phone rang, she jumped, but it was Beatrice. When Beatrice heard the news, she called the others. By noon, Annie’s house was filled with food and people. She still had no word from Bryant.
“It seems like there’s something we could be doing,” Sheila said, waving her arms around.
“That’s foolish. You need to leave these matters to the police,” Beatrice said.
“Humph,” Vera said, shoving a spoon of sweet potato baby food into Elizabeth’s mouth. “I don’t know about these Cumberland Creek Police.”
When the phone rang at 2:30, the boys were playing outside. It was unusually warm for November.
“We found her,” Bryant said. “She’s not right, but she’s alive.”
“What do you mean, she’s not right?” Annie asked.
A hush came over Annie’s kitchen. All the women were looking at her, as if they could hear the entire conversation if they stared hard enough.
“She’s either on drugs or has had some kind of mental collapse. Maybe both.” His voice was strained.
“Who did this to her?”
“Zeb McClain.”
“Jesus,” Annie said.
“Look, I promised you an exclusive. I should be back at the station in about twenty minutes. Can you be there? This is going to be one hell of a story.”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” she said.
“They found her. She’s still alive,” Annie announced after hanging up the phone.
“Thank God,” someone said among the sighs of relief.
Annie’s husband wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Annie,” he said. “My Annie.”
She wanted to stay there in his arms forever at that moment.
Beatrice came up behind them and circled her arms around them. Soon Vera, Sheila, DeeAnn, and Paige were surrounding them.
GURU OF JENKINS MOUNTAIN
By Annie Chamovitz
Zeb McClain had a vision. In his vision, a ghostly specter came to him and told him he had been “chosen” to lead his people. He could rebuild the economy of his mountains with the money he’d earn by selling methamphetamines. Only the weak took drugs, and for the “race” to strengthen, drugs were necessary to help “weed” them out.
“The voices came to him only during certain times. Other times he received messages in runic patterns,” said Detective Bryant of the Cumberland Creek police force.
“We often see delusions of grandeur, hear about voices in these cases where a person sets him or herself up as a spiritual leader,” said Dr. Jane Ivan, consulting psychiatrist. “This man also suffers from a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He still relives his parents’ brutal murder.”
Whether as a victim, a misguided spiritual teacher, or simply a drug trafficker, McClain was not stupid. He set up a complicated system of trafficking drugs in and out of Jenkins Mountain and Jenkins Hollow, using cutting-edge technology, such as calcite. Only a few people are actually skilled enough to configure calcite in such a way that it would render their stash and lab invisible. Because of his money, he was able to attract and pay brilliant young scientists—like Luther Vandergrift—to experiment with the calcite, which Jenkins Mountain is filled with.
Invisibility? Isn’t that the stuff of fairy tales and Harry Potter?
Not according to researchers at the University of Birmingham, England. Using a paperweight-size lump of calcite, researchers were able to hide a paper clip or pin from view. The lead researcher, Shuang Zhang, noted that hiding a large dog would be possible with a crystal twenty feet long and around six feet thick.
The basic premise is that calcite is naturally birefringent, which means it sends light waves along different paths depending on their polarizations. Once polarized light is shone on the prism of calcite, the object within becomes invisible to those looking at it from outside.
Take a brilliant but misguided young scientist, like Luther Vandergrift, and now Jenkins Mountain has the largest “invisible” calcite compound in the world.
“Vandergrift’s DNA was all over the crime scenes,” Bryant confirmed. “But so was McClain’s. Vandergrift, of course, confessed to save McClain because he thought he was doing important work as a messenger of God. This is also why he carved messages into the body parts of the women who were killed, and tried to kill a baby, who was a product of one of these women and therefore could not be allowed to live.”
But the child, left to die of exposure, did survive and is now happily with its mother’s parents. Despite the shunning of their daughter, they accepted her baby into their home.
The New Mountain Order (NMO) group had 113 members living in an area just outside what is known as the “Nest” in Jenkins Hollow. They live in a dorm near the compound that housed the calcite and the drug lab. Many of its members claim no knowledge of the methamphetamine lab, the trafficking, or the murders. They claim they have come from far and wide just to learn the spiritual secrets Zeb McClain offered. Of course, the “secrets” McClain offered were in actuality old concepts, dusted off and placed in his own book—a mishmash of Eastern philosophy, Norse paganism, and Mennonite beliefs.
A search on the background of his followers reveals a group of drifters and outcasts. Whether they call themselves artists, healers, or scientists, they believed they found a home on Jenkins Mountain and a leader in Zeb McClain.
Hannah Bowman was a good friend of both of McClain’s earlier victims. Sarah, the mother of his child, had been shunned by her own community because of her association with him. She was adrift, staying with him for a while, then staying at Rebecca’s home. The two of them sometimes chatted with Hannah about NMO and Zeb’s visions and, chillingly enough, about the need for sacrifices.
“The term sacrifice was used like a metaphor—or so I thought. People gave their money to the organization. Women gave themselves to Zeb. All of this was done in the name of sacrifice. His spirit needed to be fed in order to maintain clear contact with God,” Hannah said.
But soon, she explained, the terminology became violent, and the next thing she knew, they were sacrificing animals.
The last time Hannah saw Sarah alive, Sarah was so frightened that she could barely speak. Though Hannah was able to calm her down, she still made no sense, muttering words about seeing Zeb with another woman and something about meth.
“I’m finished,” Sarah said to her. “I’m taking the baby and going to Pennsylvania to stay with my cousin. I want nothing to do with drugs.”
When Hannah read about the body of a red-haired young woman washing ashore in Cumberland Creek, she knew it was Sarah. When Rebecca’s body was found, Hannah grew even more frightened. Who to turn to? Who would believe her?
She knew she was in trouble the day Zeb McClain walked into the bakery with Luther Vandergrift.
“It was just the way they looked at me. I can’t explain it.”
Little did they know, she was expecting them and had already left a note asking for help.
Annie’s editor was pleased with the first article. Their paper was the first to break this story—of national significance because of the cult slant and the millions of dollars in illegal drugs that were found, in a cave in Jenkins Mountain, in a huge crevice that was covered with the “invisible” calcite crystal, which was discovered by complete accident. An officer tripped over it. She promised her editor more interviews and write-ups on this case. But after she was finished, she told him, she wanted to take an extended vacation. What she didn’t tell him was the rest of the story.
Chapter 69
Annie sometimes found herself back at Cookie’s yellow house. Nobody had rented it yet, and it was still wide open. She loved to walk through those empty rooms. It was a place of peace and quiet. Even though it hurt that Cookie left them, Annie still found the place that her friend had called home to be comforting. Strange.
She looked out the huge window at the mountain range—a place of splendid beauty, especially with the first snowfall lying in clumps on the grass and on the trees.
“Pretty, huh?” Someone came up behind her.
She turned around quickly, startled. It was Detective Adam Bryant.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, smiling. “I thought I might find you. Mike said he thought you might be here.”
Mike and Bryant had struck up a friendship. Annie wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“What’s up?” she said and smiled back.
“I wanted to thank you, once again, for not reporting on the FBI involvement and all that,” he said.
“Sometimes, even when you know the truth, it’s best not to write about it. Thanks for telling me everything,” she said.
“You had me cornered.” He laughed, and then his deep-dimpled smile faded quickly. “I’m still pissed about it.”
“C’mon,” she said. “You had no idea.”
“I should’ve known they were setting me up, using me. I should’ve smelled that a mile away. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve outlived my job as a cop. Maybe I’m getting too slow-witted,” he said, his head tilting, brow knitting.
“Funny, I just said the same thing to my husband about reporting,” she said. “But there was no way you could have done anything about it—even if you had known the FBI was setting you up or setting up Cookie. You would have still kept her. You would have still done your job. Even though it came down to this, justice was served.”
“Let’s hope it will be served, that Zeb will get convicted,” he said.
Bryant walked over to the other side of the window, looked out to the mountains. “I didn’t know why they wanted me to keep Cookie. I just knew that I had to. That’s all they told me. Just wanted her out of the way. Me too, evidently. I wanted you to know that. I had orders from them. They were supposed to be working with us. But you know how that goes. FBI comes in and trumps all of us.”
“I hope that she’s okay,” Annie said, suddenly feeling warm and taking off her parka. She sat down on the floor. “I’ve been going over the scenarios.”
He sat down next to her. “You know, me too.”
“I think of that scrapbook she had, full of tarot cards, bits and pieces of hair, crystals, maps.”
He frowned.
“I’m just saying that it felt like she was here for a reason. She researched Cumberland Creek, yeah. But there was more to it than that.”
He shrugged. “What are you thinking?”
“Undercover agent?” she said.
“Witness protection program?”
Their eyes locked as they sat together on the floor, the winter sun streaming in, the sunlight reflecting off the bright snow. Annie felt a sudden rush of heat or embarrassment and felt her face reddening. Was this the flush of attraction? She shrugged it off and thought of her husband immediately. She stood up.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go,” she said.
Could she be friends with or even attracted to this cop? He was infuriating, maddening, and yet . . . Mike was right. He was basically a good guy. She could not write up the story in a way that would make him look like an ass. Yeah, ten years ago, she’d have done it and not flinched. But she was a different person today.
“Oh yeah. Yeah, sure,” he said. “Oh wait, I have something for you. Come out to the car with me.”
She trailed behind him and watched him open the car door.
“Close your eyes,” he told her.
“What? C’mon,” Annie said. “Are you serious?”
This was a side to him she’d never seen. Playful. Who’d have thought?
“Close them,” he said.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Whatever. Get on with it, Bryant!”
“Hold out your hands,” he told her.
She did so.
“We found this when we were traipsing around up on the mountain. It’s a bit torn up in some places. Missing pages. Kind of ragged. But I thought you might want it.”
A heavy item was placed in her hands. Cool. Metallic. She felt a warm wind come over them as she opened her eyes and read what was written in beautiful hand-printed letters: “Cookie Crandall’s Scrapbook of Shadows.”
Chapter 70
Vera had been playing detective, and it resulted in a new scrapbook for Beatrice. She’d been racking her brain for weeks as to why her mom never shared many photos from Paris. Then it came to her one morning while she was feeding Elizabeth scrambled eggs. Her daughter asked for Jon, who made a kick-ass scrambled egg.
It was then that she figured out that Beatrice must have more photos and that Jon was in them or had taken them. So, one evening while Beatrice and Jon were out together, Vera sneaked into her house and her computer, downloaded all the photos. Jon was in many of them. There they were at the Eiffel Tower. Jon’s arm was placed naturally across Beatrice’s shoulders. Beatrice was beaming. She looked twenty years younger. Vera could not deny that her mother had been extremely happy since Jon came to town.
“I’m almost finished with this one,” Annie said. “Wow. I can’t believe Bea was at the Louvre and didn’t mention it.”
“Uncharacteristic,” Vera said, taking the last drink of eggnog. “I think she was trying to come to terms with the whole Jon thing. I mean, he was there. And at some point Paris became all about Jon.”
“I think it’s fantastic for her,” Sheila said, took another sip of eggnog, and burped a little. “Excuse me.”
“She’s going to be shocked when she sees this,” DeeAnn said, reaching for a gingerbread cookie. “What fun.”
“It’s going to be a great Christmas,” Vera said. “Elizabeth, Jon, all of us together. It’s so much fun playing Santa.”
“What about Tony?” Annie asked, dropping her scissors.
“Oh, that’s over,” Vera said in a tone that she hoped let her friends know she really didn’t want to talk about—because she did not. She didn’t know what happened between them, but did know that Tony was not the man for her. Neither was Bill. The surprising truth was that for now she liked being alone with her daughter. She liked her life.
“Too bad,” DeeAnn said, getting up from the table with her empty glass for a refill of the eggnog.
“Careful,” Sheila said, smiling. “Don’t have too much. You know that’s spiked.”
“No kidding,” DeeAnn said and laughed.
“Speaking of things being over,” Paige said, gathering up all the stickers and ribbons from the table. “Are they going to be able to make the charges stick on Zeb?”
“I don’t know why not,” Annie said, handing Vera the last page of the Paris scrapbook.
“You never know. You get lawyers involved, and God knows what they will come up with,” Paige said.
Nods of agreement around the table. Holiday music filled the room.
“I woke up the other night from another strange dream. Not like the one I had before. Just strange. There were several redheads in it,” Vera said after a few minutes. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to get over this.”
“It’s funny. We all thought the red hair had something to do with the murders, and it turns out it didn’t,” Sheila said as she held up a page for Vera to slide a page protector over. “It turns out it was a simple reason. They knew too much. The fact that they both had red hair was happenstance.”
The women gathered in a half circle around Vera and Sheila, checking the completed scrapbook—all in black and white. Stunning. Sheila turned the page to the Eiffel Tower pop-out that she’d worked into the book.
“That’s delightful,” DeeAnn said.
“I
’d never even have tried it if it wasn’t for Cookie’s book. I thought if she could do it, so could I,” Sheila said.
An empty hush came over the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Club. They searched one another’s faces for answers. Where was Cookie? What did it all mean? The book, the dreams, her involvement?
“I’ve been thinking about her scrapbook,” Annie said. “At first, I thought it was just a spiritual journaling exercise. But sometimes when I think about it, that book was full of clues. The mountain. The crystal. The map. We just didn’t know it.”
“Hindsight,” DeeAnn said.
“I also think it was clear that she studied this place. She was here for a reason. So . . . I guess she’s gone for a reason, too,” Annie said, blinking back a tear.
“Have some more eggnog,” DeeAnn said, taking her glass. “I’ll get you more.”
Vera placed a big red velvet bow on the black album. It was edged in silver. The black, the red, the silver, all came together in a classic visual feast. “I’m not going anywhere. I was born here, and I guess I’ll die here.” She pressed down on the bow and looked up at all her friends looking at her. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not planning on dying anytime soon.” She laughed.
“Oh, well,” Sheila said, “that’s good to know.”
Vera looked around the table as the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Club members finished up their holiday treats before strolling down the street with the scrapbook for Beatrice. Vera thought of the past few months and everything.... Hell, they had even been in jail. Oh, but it wasn’t all bad. There were some moments that Vera loved: DeeAnn knocking over the man on the mountain, which still made Vera smile; Paige sitting cross-legged on the jail cell floor and refusing to give her name at first to the police; Sheila wagging her finger in Detective Bryant’s face; and hearing about Annie smacking Zeb across his face in DeeAnn’s Bakery. As Vera looked around the table, she had to wonder what they would get into next.
“Are we ready to go?” Sheila asked. They gathered their coats and bags.
Scrapped Page 25