“There’s a cousin, Jane Wickersham.” Obviously prepared for our visit, he pulled a slip of paper from under his blotter. “I don’t know if this address is current.”
I glanced at it and slipped it into my shoulder bag. Holly’s cousin had once lived in Maple Creek which was closer to us than Maple Falls. I hoped she was still there.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” he asked.
Realizing it was too early for ghost talk, I said, “Were you and Holly good friends?”
“Fairly good.”
“You must know how she died then.”
“No one does for sure,” he said, “but it was assumed she died in the tornado.”
“Tornado?”
Grim memories of my own experience in the Oakpoint tornado rolled over me. The darkness, the siren, the terrifying sound of a hundred trains barreling down on me, holding fast to Halley while the giant poplar tree in my backyard crashed into my house.
A puzzle piece slipped smoothly into place: Lucy’s sensation of spinning around in the air with the furniture. She had been caught up in a remembered funnel.
“Foxglove Corners took a direct hit,” he said. “In the aftermath, Holly went missing. They thought she was away from home when the siren went off. They never found her body,” he added, “and they never found her.”
I hadn’t known that Foxglove Corners had experienced a tornado. With an effort, I found my voice. “Was Holly declared legally dead?”
“Possibly. I don’t know for certain.”
“Then she could still be alive,” Annica said.
Micah stared at Annica. “It’s hardly likely. Nobody ever saw her or heard from her after that day. Her dog disappeared too. Two other people were killed.”
“She had a dog?” I asked.
“A collie. She gave him a fancy name. Something medieval sounding. Oh, yes. Tristan.”
Something of the collie, Tristan, lived on in the fish pond. It had stared up at Misty as she’d looked down into the water. But I didn’t want to bring the phantom dog into an already difficult conversation.
I said, “Didn’t anyone search for her?”
“Of course. The police investigated. They had an idea that she might have met with foul play.”
Foul play covering a multitude of violent acts, perhaps committed with the knowledge that the storm could easily take the blame for a random murder.
“Why did they think that?” I asked.
“It was Jane Wickersham’s insane idea totally based on the plot of one of Holly’s books. They took it seriously.”
“Which book?”
“I don’t remember. The idea was way out in left field, anyway, something about a murder that took place during a tornado. They said I was the last person to see Holly alive, and there was that incriminating book, so I was questioned.
“Did they think you killed her?” Annica asked.
“I was exonerated,” Micah said, “and you can understand why I don’t care to relive those days. Don’t let this story go any further.”
“This is for my own information,” I assured him.
But at the time there must have been stories about a missing woman in the newspapers and almost certainly news about possible suspects. I could see myself spending more time on research.
“Now you know where to inquire about Holly’s belongings,” he said.
“Huh? Oh, yes.”
He started to rise. “Well, if that’s all…”
It wasn’t. Remembering the mysteries that swirled around the house on Loosestrife Lane, I said, “No,” too quickly, too forcefully.
He frowned. “Is there something else?”
“Some people think Holly’s spirit haunts the house,” I said. “That she never left it. Or that she came back.”
He suppressed a laugh. “Holly Wickersham a ghost? That’s pure nonsense.”
“That’s Foxglove Corners,” Annica said.
“What?”
“Our little town has an occasional ghost story associated with it,” I said.
“We call it Halloween Town,” Annica added.
“Holly wrote about ghosts, but she was a hundred percent down-to-earth. Did someone actually see her floating around in a white sheet?”
I smiled at his naïve image of a haunting spirit. “Not that I know of.”
It was easier to say that than to explain about Lucy’s trauma on the landing or the unnerving scratching sound. Or the phantom collie in the pond, whose name I now knew.
“But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility,” I said.
Micah did rise this time and walked to the door, not bothering to mask his amusement. “I think we’re finished here, Mrs. Ferguson. Have a safe trip home to your Halloween town.”
All we could do was thank him for his time and leave.
Twenty-eight
“He seemed nice,” I said.
Annica nodded. “Not bad looking for an old man.”
“But I don’t like him. That condescending jab about Halloween Town. I’m not sure he’s trustworthy.”
“Because of that?”
“No, because I have a feeling he was holding something back. What if he did kill Holly?”
“Then he wouldn’t have told us how she died or that the police questioned him. He wouldn’t have agreed to talk to us at all.”
“I’m not sure. It was a good way to throw us off the trail. If we investigated, we’d find out the police didn’t think he was guilty.”
I turned on the air conditioning and drove away from Frost’s store. We had decided to stop for a late lunch before embarking on the long drive home.
“I wish I’d asked him why they thought he killed Holly,” I said.
“Ah yes, the motive. It’s missing. Why would a man kill his girlfriend? I can think of lots of reasons.”
“He didn’t say she was his girlfriend,” I pointed out.
“I noticed that.”
I spied a small picturesque restaurant ahead and slowed down. Open 24 Hours, proclaimed a sign.
“Let’s stop here,” Annica said. “I’m starving.”
I was hungry, too, and I didn't have to make dinner tonight. Crane was bringing a pizza home, and Camille had promised us one of her fresh peach pies. Hurrying inside, we found a booth and ordered fried perch with French fries and iced tea. Annica selected a cloverleaf roll from the breadbox to nibble on, and we returned to discussing our visit with Micah Frost.
“I can’t wait to read the book Micah talked about,” I said. “I hope it’s one of the two I have.”
If it wasn’t, I’d have to search for it and hope a copy existed somewhere.
“I think it’s too much of a coincidence that Holly wrote about something that ended up happening to her in real life,” Annica said.
“They say life imitates art. Or is it art imitates life?” I shook my head, attempting to dislodge the mental block, deciding it wasn’t important. “I agree, unless she wrote the book to leave a clue.”
“What author does that? And why? She’d have to have anticipated her murder and known her killer.”
“I guess it isn’t possible, unless she planned to disappear in the tornado.”
That also seemed unlikely. Would anyone wait on a tornado warning to drop out of sight?
“We have all sorts of additions to our mystery,” I said, “along with another person to find, the cousin who believed Holly was murdered. I’m glad we came here today.”
Our lunch arrived, and we fell quiet, enjoying our first full meal of the day. As I ate, bits and pieces of our conversation with Micah Frost replayed in my mind, occasionally overshadowed by images of the tornado I’d survived.
I thought about Lucy, affected by the emotions that lived on in the walls of Brent’s house and imagined Holly, alerted to worsening weather, frozen in terror on the landing, looking through the stained glass window as the tornado swirled closer on its path of death and destruction.
What could s
he see through the rainbow explosion of color? Would she make it to the basement before the tornado touched down? And where was her collie?
I finished eating before Annica, not looking forward to being on the road again, yet longing for home.
East, west, home is best, I thought.
~ * ~
Home was Crane waiting for me in our green Victorian farmhouse, a pizza staying warm in the oven, and seven collies falling over themselves to welcome me back to the fold.
I’d dropped Annica off and barely kept my eyes open as I drove the last miles to Jonquil Lane. A dose of fresh air and being home revived me.
The dogs had a grievance to air. I’d been gone too long. So long they were afraid I wasn’t coming back. They converged on me in an extravaganza of wagging tails, playful nips
And yips. At one point Candy backed into me, sending me into Crane’s arms. That was fine with me. I stayed there for a few extra minutes.
“Did you have a successful trip?” Crane asked when our greetings were completed.
“An interesting one. I learned how Holly Wickersham died and found out the name of her cousin. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Are you hungry?”
“A little.” Our late lunch at the restaurant was hours away. Crane took the pizza out of the oven. The table was already set, and I spied Camille’s peach pie set far back on the counter out of the collies’ reach. He brought two bottles out of the refrigerator. I bit into the pizza, trying to ignore the seven pairs of collie eyes fixed on my dinner.
“I watched Kate-in-Your-Corner for you tonight,” Crane said.
I looked up, pizza momentarily forgotten. “What did I miss?”
“One of the missing dogs is home. A man who’s been following the story saw a picture of his new German shepherd on TV and contacted Kate. The dog was supposed to have gone to a man in Florida, but after this trouble, the owner changed his mind. O’Meara sold the dog for fifteen hundred dollars with a fake registration and collected nine hundred for his transport.”
“So that’s O’Meara’s game. He gets paid to transport a dog, then sells the dog to someone else and collects more money. Did they catch him?”
“He’s lying low.”
“There’s hope for all the missing dogs then. Helena may have her Arden back.”
“O’Meara picked up and sold the shepherd to a man in Michigan. Maybe Arden is closer than we thought.”
I’d have to call Helena in case she hadn’t watched the segment. Helena… I glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall in my view. “Oh, darn, darn, darn!”
“What?”
“The meeting tomorrow at Helena’s. I forgot all about it.”
“Well, it wasn’t tonight.”
“Thank heavens for that. I’d be extremely unpopular if I missed it. Oh, and I promised to bake cookies.”
“I don’t see what the problem is,” he said.
“Just that I wanted to do some research on Holly Wickersham tomorrow.”
While I finished my pizza, I told Crane about the Foxglove Corners tornado and the suspicions surrounding Holly’s disappearance.
“And I have to track down one of her books that may contain a lead. It’s out of print, so it may not be easy. Apparently the plot was provocative enough to convince Holly’s cousin, Jane Wickersham, that she had been murdered.”
“You’ll do it all,” Crane said. “I have faith in you.” He covered my hand with his. “Just do it from home. We all missed you.”
“If possible. I won’t go up to Maple Falls again, but Holly’s cousin lived in Maple Creek. That’s closer to home.”
I set about tearing crust off the uneaten pizza. The dogs moved even closer to me. This was what they had been waiting for.
Crane said, “This man you saw in Maple Falls, Micah Frost, do you think he’s a killer?”
“There’s a chance he could be. The police didn’t think so. No one knows for sure if Holly is dead or alive.”
“Nothing is more dangerous than a man who’s gotten away with murder for years. He won’t like you and Annica raking up the past.”
I sensed that Crane was on the verge of warning me to be careful, or perhaps of suggesting that I abandon the mystery of Holly Wickersham. Quickly, I said, “We won’t see him again. The only danger might be for Lucy reliving an old traumatic experience that wasn’t even hers, and I don’t think she’ll go to Brent’s house again.”
That wasn’t the whole story, of course, but why borrow trouble? It was counter-productive to worry about something that might never happen. In the meantime, we had a bona fide villain to apprehend.
Twenty-nine
Everyone at the meeting had heard the story of the recovered German shepherd. Because of this development, the others were hopeful of finding their own lost dogs. Lyle’s anger had increased ten-fold.
“I’ve been looking all over town for that no-good varmint who stole my animals,” he announced, as I added two dozen oatmeal cookies to the impressive display on Helena’s buffet.
“I’m curious,” I said, taking a chair next to the fireplace. “Where are you looking?”
“In bars mostly,” he said. “I heard about a place he goes in Rochester. One day I’ll see him there and all hell will break loose.”
Recalling his previous threats and his fondness for carrying concealed weapons, I knew how Lyle planned to accomplish this. Naturally I was hoping for a more civil outcome.
Helena set a large coffee pot on the table. “Let’s leave O’Meara to Kate and the police. We’re getting close to a solution. I feel sure of it.”
“Well, I don’t,” Harold Camden said. “Kate is getting nowhere fast. How long do we have to wait before we find out what happened to our dogs?”
“You may have to be patient a little longer,” Sue Appleton suggested.
The group was in no mood to hear this. Lyle, the hothead, took particular exception to Sue’s call for patience.
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a dog missing.”
“But I have in the past,” Sue said. “I know how helpless you all feel.”
I wished I could contribute something positive to the discussion, some clue or even a rumor. But O’Meara and his partner remained elusive. I could hardly go bar hopping in pursuit of him. In any event, I wouldn’t want to.
As I didn’t have anything to say at the moment, I gazed at the oil painting centered above the sofa. A slightly younger Helena rested her arm on the neck of a silky black horse. Helena’s eyes shone with pride and I detected a glint of mischief in the horse’s bright eyes. The pair reminded me of a favorite childhood book, Black Beauty, and my own love of horses.
I imagined a companion painting hanging on the wall. Helena and her tricolor collie, finally found.
“What’s the name of this bar?” Harold asked. “I could go there on different nights at different times. One of us is bound to run into him.”
“It’s called Chances,” Lyle said.
His wife, Marguerite, spoke up, which was a rare occurrence for her. “I agree with Helena and Sue. We can wait—”
“I don’t wait,” Lyle countered. “You know that.”
Harold topped off his coffee and plunked three of my oatmeal cookies in a paper plate. “You gals sure know how to bake.”
Gals?
Helena smiled, blushing faintly as she thanked Harold for the compliment. It seemed she liked the man in spite of his roughhewn appearance and that long ginger beard. Or perhaps because of them. Well, to each her own.
“So,” Lyle said. “What else are we going to do to? Does anybody have any bright ideas?”
All of a sudden I remembered the plan I’d suggested at our last meeting.
“Everyone was going to contact one of the transport services with a request to relocate Rover. What happened with that?”
“Rover?” Harold said. “Rover who?”
“A make-believe dog.”
“I talked to a company named Roa
dways,” Helena said. “They gave me a quote of six hundred dollars to drive a dog down to Kentucky, but they couldn’t give me an appointment for two weeks. The next service I called apparently had gone out of business.”
“Anyone else?”
Silence.
“I forgot,” Harold admitted.
“I don’t have time to play games,” Lyle said. “I’m a man of action.”
Action-—in a bar?
“It isn’t a game,” I said. “It’s called sleuthing.”
“How’s that going to bring our dogs home and land that O’Meara scum in jail?”
He sounded sincere, genuinely puzzled. I bit back a sarcastic retort and tried to explain.
“Our purpose was to check out all the transport services we could find and try to separate the legitimate ones from the scammers.”
“In the meantime our dogs are getting used to other owners,” Harold said.
Again, Sue attempted to soothe the turbulent waters. “Your dogs won’t forget you, no matter how long they’re in other homes. They’ll be overjoyed to be reunited with you. Wait and see.”
“Does anyone know how to contact the shepherd’s owner?” I asked.
No one did.
“Kate Brennan should know,” Sue said. “Why?”
“I think Harold will feel better if he can talk to him.”
“I’d like to meet him and compare notes,” Harold said. “Maybe he noticed something about O’Meara we all missed.”
“For those of you who didn’t watch the news yesterday, Kate showed pictures of all the missing dogs,” Sue told us.
Helena said, “Maybe at this very moment somebody is looking at her new tri collie and wondering if it’s Arden. Maybe she’s already called Kate.”
“Keep dreaming,” Lyle said.
Although I was sympathetic with his plight, I found his negativity disheartening. His comment had erased the spark of hope from Helena’s countenance.
“If any of you want to know what we can do, I suggest continuing the Rover Project. Find out what services Helena called and contact the rest.”
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