“And give us a report at our next get-together,” Harold said.
~ * ~
The hot spell continued. Research in a cool, quiet library was infinitely more relaxing than sitting through a meeting of O’Meara’s victims. I could understand their frustration, though. Kate Brennan was moving slowly, but at least she was moving. O’Meara couldn’t stay under the radar forever, and fortunately Kate’s reports had likely put him out of business.
I bit into a blueberry doughnut—one of the dozen I’d bought for Miss Eidt and Debbie—and surveyed the folders I’d pulled from the vertical file. I’d already searched the internet and found the same information again: Holly’s sparse biography and a list of her published books. Nothing about her disappearance or death.
It was impossible to know which book contained the tornado-murder plot without examining all of them.
As for Micah Frost, all I found was the ad for Frost’s Outfitters. As a clue, Jane Wickersham had vanished like her cousin. Her address was a new mansion built on the site of a demolished ranch house.
I had spread a trio of promising folders out on the table: Foxglove Corners Crimes of the Last (Twentieth) Century, Natural Disasters, and Local Authors and Artists.
After thirty minutes I concluded that Foxglove Corners was indeed a peaceful place to live. Clippings told of accidental shootings and robberies. In 2000, a jewelry store in Lakeville, long since shuttered, had been robbed of a fortune in jewelry, none of which had ever been recovered. I paid special attention to disappearances, noting several that had happened on the ill-famed Brandemere Road. But nowhere could I find a disappearance connected with a tornado.
The tornado Micah Frost had told us about, however, had done serious damage to several local houses, ripping off roofs, chimneys, and porches, and sending cars far from their driveways.
Local Authors and Artists looked promising. Miss Eidt had saved many articles that featured Lucy Hazen but none about Holly Wickersham.
Miss Eidt opened the door, books in hand. “I found something for you, Jennet. I hope one of these is what you’re looking for.” She laid two dog-eared paperbacks on the table: Ghost in the Gazebo and Peril in the Sky.
“They were in the Gothic Nook,” she said. “I’m afraid they won’t hold up very long.”
Peril in the Sky had a dark and provocative cover. A mansion silhouetted against a purple and threatening clouds. A tornado sky?
I opened the book and frowned at the yellow pages and tiny print. Reading it would take a toll on my eyesight. A paragraph on the back gave the gist of the plot: Did Alicia die in the storm or was she murdered? Linda must find out lest she become the killer’s next victim.
“This one, I think,” I said. “I’ll be careful with it.”
“It cost ninety-five cents when it was new. Amazing.”
“Holly’s cousin accused a man of murder because of a book like this,” I said.
“That must be a powerful story.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“And I’ll let you go back to work,” Miss Eidt said. “I already checked the books out to you.”
I flipped through a few more clippings and finally found what I was looking for on the back of a page dedicated to making sodas and other summer drinks. The article was short, confirming what I already knew. Maple Falls resident, Micah Frost, was questioned and released in the suspected murder of Foxglove Corners author Holly Wickersham.
That was all. With only a cousin to push for justice, the case had languished in perpetual cold storage until Brent purchased the house on Loosestrife Lane where Holly’s tragedy had unfolded.
Quickly I scanned the contents of the last folder, ate another doughnut, stacked the files neatly and left the office. I looked for Miss Eidt but didn’t see her.
I’d done the best I could. If there was nothing more to find, I’d reached the end of the road.
Outside the sky was heavy, laden with the scent of rain. And was it a little darker than it had been when I arrived? Tornado weather?
I wondered what the odds were of a person living through two tornadoes in a lifetime, unless she lived in Tornado Alley. Even if we were only about to have a thunderstorm, I’d better get home and take care of my collies.
Thirty
The storm arrived during the night. It set the room alight with lightning flashes. Thunder crashed overhead, too close for comfort. Crane and Halley slept on, but Misty whimpered softly and padded across the room to sit at my bedside, facing the nightstand.
“Hendrick Hudson and his men are playing a game of nine pins in the sky,” I whispered, my standard comment if one of the collies was fearful of thunder.
Misty shoved her head in the space between the bed and the nightstand. This behavior was unusual for her. What was different about tonight’s storm?
Perhaps she had been dreaming. I remembered fragments of my own dream. Dark images of pond water whipped to a frenzy and a wild sky pressing down on the earth, stealing the air. I was spinning, like Lucy on the landing. Like clothes in a dryer.
Now fully awake, I tried to breathe, to catch my breath, but it went whirling away like autumn leaves in a dream. My thoughts went whirling along with them.
Should I wake Crane? Ask him to call an ambulance?
No. It was only the after effect of that horrible dream still holding onto me.
I stroked Misty, concentrated on calming myself, and finally took a deep breath. Bliss.
Breathing, like walking, isn’t something you should have to think about.
In the lull between rolls of thunder, a familiar sound insinuated itself into the customary nocturnal stillness, a sound of water running. Could one of us have left the faucet on in the bathroom?
Possibly I was hearing rain water dripping from the downspout. But suppose one of the faucets was still turned on. I’d better check.
With a sigh I swung my legs out of bed and walked quietly to the bathroom, trailed by Misty, then Halley who had awakened and wanted to know what was going on.
The house wasn’t quite so silent now. As if my sense of hearing were amplified, I heard every sound the night produced: the ticking of the clock in the bedroom, Misty panting at my side, the click of collie nails on the hardwood floor, a board creaking. But no sound of water. Inside the house, that is. Outside heavy rain struck the windows with angry force.
I glanced in the bathroom. The faucets over the wash basin and the tub were turned off. The sound I’d heard had to have been in my dream.
Wait! I heard it after I woke up.
It was the downspout then, I told myself. And I should still hear it.
But I didn’t. Okay. I didn’t.
Resigned to having one more mystery in my life, I sank back into bed. Halley flopped down in the doorway to guard us from evil spirits that wandered abroad in the night, but Misty lay beside the bed, resting her head between the bed and the nightstand again.
In time the thunder moved on, and I slept.
~ * ~
The next morning I had seven restless collies to entertain. None of them liked to get wet, but all of them wanted their walks, which weren’t going to happen. What was left to do but sulk and sleep and every now and then whine at the window?
It was supposed to rain all day.
I sent Crane on his way with a hearty breakfast and a kiss, then did my day’s baking—apple pies—and settled down in the living room with Holly’s books. I soon discovered that Peril in the Sky wasn’t about a tornado as I’d assumed. The peril was the crash of a small plane in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and a heroine running from a demented husband. The other book had a similar situation in a different locale.
Turning to The Edelweiss Lure, which I’d already begun, I immersed myself in a nerve-wracking tale of a heroine driven to distraction by a cuckoo clock that inexplicably continued to stop and start again of its own accord.
Holly’s heroine, Rowena, believed the clock could somehow transport a person to another
time. She had a boyfriend, Mike Winter, a ski instructor, who thought the clock was simply defective.
Mike Winter/Micah Frost. Was the similarity in names the reason Holly’s cousin’s suspected that Mike was really Micah?
By chapter seven, Rowena suspected that Mike was hiding a secret agenda behind his charming ways. Gradually she began to be afraid of him. Uneasy with a situation she couldn’t understand, she began to distance herself from him.
Petulant whines drifted into the living room from the kitchen. A glance through the bay window told me the rain had stopped, leaving Jonquil Lane a virtual quagmire. We couldn’t go walking until the sun dried the mud, but I let the dogs out. They stayed close to the house.
Now that I was up, I made a sandwich and a fresh pot of tea, let the dogs back inside and handed out biscuits to all.
With the collies settled for afternoon naps, I took a cup of tea into the living room and began a new chapter—in which Rowena lost an entire day, a period coinciding with one of the clock’s silences. She was convinced the clock had supernatural powers. They appeared to be triggered by one of the clock’s songs, Edelweiss.
In the meantime her relationship with Mike deteriorated. In fact, it turned deadly on the day Rowena had a suspicious accident when the brakes in her car failed. She suspected Mike of tampering with them. The pace slowed dramatically, and I began to skim. There were no signs of an impending tornado. She did contemplate escaping into the past but didn’t know how to accomplish it.
I could see why The Edelweiss Lure had faded into obscurity. The best part of the book was the beginning, which she had failed to build on. What I couldn’t see was why Holly’s cousin thought the plot reflected Holly’s relationship with Micah Frost or why the police took her claim seriously.
Should I even bother to finish the book? The answer was easy. Not if I didn’t care what happened to the characters.
As I set the book aside, the dogs alerted me to activity outside the house. Through the bay window I spied a vintage white Plymouth Belvedere with green fins in the driveway. A redheaded man in a forest green jacket strode up the walkway, carrying a large bag from Pluto’s Gourmet Pet Shop. In other words, a happy diversion was on its way. Brent always knew how to brighten a collie’s gloomy day—and mine.
I waded through wagging tails and joyous yelps to the door. As soon as I opened it, Candy jumped on Brent, nudging the bag of treats with her long nose.
“Candy, down!” I grabbed her collar. “They’re wild. It’s been too wet for their exercise.”
“Not all of them,” he said. “Just Candy.”
Misty initiated an endearing play bow, and Sky yawned. Only Candy had forgotten her manners at the prospect of treats from Pluto’s.
“I could use some cheering up,” Brent said.
“What’s wrong?”
“My plans are falling apart.”
“That sounds serious.”
He gave each of the dogs a venison tartlet and settled in the rocker with a heavy sigh.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said.
“I thought I found my perfect caregivers, but it turns out they don’t want to live in Foxglove Corners. They’ll accept the job if I open the house for geriatric collies in another location. How the devil can I do that? I don’t even want to.”
“Didn’t they know the address before the interview?” I asked.
“Sure. I told them everything. I’m thinking that wasn’t the real reason. All that matters is that they don’t want the job.”
“You’ll find someone,” I said. “For the right person, it’s a wonderful opportunity.”
“There’s a little problem with the house, too,” he added.
Actually the house had many problems, none of which could be described as little.
“What now?”
“My contractor started the kitchen renovation, then quit. He said his men were uncomfortable working in the house. Now I have cupboards torn apart and have to find someone else to take over the job.”
“Uncomfortable in what way?”
“He couldn’t give me a reason. Or wouldn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to abandon the project. Whatever it takes, my old collies are going to have a home of their own, and it’s going to be the one I picked out for them.”
“I’ll help you,” I said.
Thirty-one
“Stay for dinner,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”
“I need a working kitchen. That’s the one room that has to be ready.”
They all followed me to the kitchen, Brent and the seven collies. Brent pulled out one of the oak chairs for himself, and the dogs crowded around him, anticipating human refreshments. I opened the refrigerator, contemplating what to cook.
“Do you know of any other contractors?” I asked.
“Not off hand. I can find one, but after this setback, he has to be reliable. I offered them a hefty bonus, but they wouldn’t consider staying.”
“I wish you knew what troubled the men,” I said. “Would they have gone upstairs?”
“To the landing, you mean? They shouldn’t have.”
“If one of them had an experience like Lucy’s…”
He interrupted me. “He’d have to be like Lucy, though, wouldn’t he? Able to pick up…uh…feelings from the walls?” He added, “Lucy doesn’t want to set foot in my house again, but she will if I ask her.”
“That leaves you with me.”
I could have wept for Brent’s beleaguered vision—a spacious house with an acre of land for elderly, tired dogs to explore at their own pace, a cool pond of their own, and the shade of a massive weeping willow tree on a sweltering summer day. I couldn’t let the dream die.
Neither could he. This untoward discouragement wouldn’t last.
I set three steaks on the lower shelf and assembled makings for a salad. That done, I cut a slice of pie for Brent and poured two glasses of iced tea.
“Let’s have a brainstorming session,” I said. “First, here’s what we know that’s off about the house and yard. I saw the face of a collie in the pond before you had it cleaned. I heard a scratching sound inside the house but never found the source. I don’t believe in Annica’s giant rat. There’s Lucy’s reaction to the landing, and one day I heard a siren. Neither you nor Annica were aware of it. Last, your workers’ complaints.”
Brent scooped the orange slice out of his tea. “When you put it all together, it sounds pretty bad. What did I get myself into?”
“That’s easy. A haunted house. I suspect what’s happening is tied to Holly Wickersham in some way.”
It occurred to me that Brent didn’t know about our trip to Maple Falls to talk to Micah Frost, so I told him about it.
“He was questioned in Holly’s disappearance but never charged,” I said. “He isn’t even sure she’s dead.”
“Speaking of dead, that’s a dead end then. What can we do?”
“You can start looking for another contractor right away. At least find someone who can put the cupboards back the way they were and clean up the mess. I want to be able to have coffee and doughnuts in peace the next time I’m at the house.”
“You’ll go back then?”
“Of course. I’m not going to leave a mystery unsolved, and this time I’m bringing Misty.”
Hearing her name, Misty materialized at my side. I stroked her head. “My beautiful psychic collie. We’re going ghost hunting.”
She nudged the bag of treats, which was empty but still held interest for her. I let her pull it off the table.
“It’s for the dogs who don’t have a good home like you do,” Brent told her.
“Misty was with me when I saw the phantom in the pond,” I said. “If he sees her again, maybe he’ll make another appearance.”
~ * ~
When they heard Crane’s Jeep on Jonquil Lane, all seven of the collies made a dash for the door as usual, even Sky, although she lagged behind.
“How do they know he’s ou
t there?” Brent asked.
“Super sharp hearing and intuition. Also, Crane usually comes home around the same time.”
Crane came in, raindrops glistening in his fair hair. He gave the collies individual greetings and me a kiss. Then he locked his gun in its special cabinet.
“I see you come after the dogs, Jennet,” Brent observed.
“I heard that, Fowler.” Crane joined us at the oak table and favored Brent with one of his special glares.
Candy sat and stared at him. Had everyone forgotten the dogs’ walk? To remind him, she tapped his leg smartly with her paw.
Crane fixed his eagle-eyed gaze on Brent. “You don’t look happy, Fowler. What did I miss?”
“My contractor quit,” Brent said. “His crew didn’t like the bad vibes in my house.”
“You’re talking about the house on Loosestrife Lane?”
“Yeah. My haven for old, hard-to-place collies.”
“Your haunted house,” Crane said. “Good luck finding another contractor.”
I poured Crane a glass of tea and added ice and an orange slice.
“I don’t see any dinner on the stove,” he said.
“That’s because you’re grilling steaks tonight. But I baked this morning. We have apple pies.”
He drained the glass. “Thanks, honey. That’s just what I wanted. Did you hear the news about O’Meara?”
I sat forward. “Did they find him?”
“Someone did. That man from Tennessee whose dog he stole. He started a fight with O’Meara in a bar, and it ended up in gunfire.”
“That’s Lyle,” I said. “Don’t stop there. Did he kill O’Meara?
“He’s still alive, but it’s touch and go.”
“Serves O’Meara right,” Brent said.
“And Lyle? Did they arrest him?”
“Not yet. He took off. Maybe all the way to Tennessee. His wife claims he went out and didn’t come home.”
“If O’Meara dies, how will people ever get their dogs back?”
Crane shrugged. “They’ll have to go after the partner.”
“Darn Lyle,” I said. “Why did he have to take the law in his own hands? He’s made everything so much worse.”
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