Bunny Elder Adventure Series: Four Complete Novels: Hollow, Vain Pursuits, Seadrift, ...and Something Blue

by J. B. Hawker

  She looked at the rental ads, but there were no Bannoch listings in The Oregonian. She bought a copy of the local weekly when she paid for her meal and took it out to a bench in the mall.

  Those annoying men were just coming out of the Sea Captain’s Sweet Shoppe across from the Boatworks. Bunny held the newspaper in front of her face to avoid making eye contact with them. For some reason they made her feel uncomfortable. After they passed her bench she folded up the newspaper and hurried home. She would check for rentals in the privacy of her room.

  When Bunny arrived home, Rosamund was just printing up the church newsletters. She asked Bunny to help fold them and affix the address labels, so it was late morning before she was able to get back to her house hunting.

  She circled two promising possibilities: an apartment and a townhouse. Bunny called and made appointments to see them that afternoon, then concentrated all her energies on coming up with exciting descriptions of the assembly and use of the Little Wonder Hedge Trimmer.

  At lunch, Scott asked Bunny about her plans for the afternoon. Learning of her appointments, he offered to take her around, since she was still so new to the area.

  “Thank you, Scott. That would be a big help. My first appointment is for one-thirty at the address written here,” she showed him a scrap of newsprint torn from the classifieds.

  “That’s about fifteen minutes from here, so we’d better go, now.”

  “Don’t bother to help me with all these dishes, you two. I can take care of it by myself. We wouldn’t want Bunny to miss a chance to find a place,” Rosamund offered, a bit sarcastically.

  “Oh, don’t be a martyr, Rosie! Just leave the dishes and I’ll help wash up tonight. Three salad plates won’t make much of a difference,” Scott responded to his sister.

  Bunny hoped one of the places they were seeing would be suitable. She couldn’t get moved out too soon and it was obvious that Rosamund shared that sentiment.

  The apartment they visited first was pretty dismal. The building had peeling pink paint and the neighborhood was very run down.

  They climbed the exterior stairs to enter the third floor apartment and were greeted by a nearly overpowering smell of mold and neglect. Bunny was discouraged to see that this was the sort of place in her price range.

  The appliances were a mismatched assemblage of avocado green and harvest gold from the seventies, and were dirty besides. Still, she supposed, if they worked, they might be suitable after some arduous scrubbing.

  There was nasty carpeting of an indeterminate color in all the rooms, except the kitchen and bath. Those rooms had multiple layers of decaying linoleum.

  The view through the streaky windows was of the back of a set of apartments in a similar state of disrepair. Still, it was four walls and a roof over her head and she would have to consider it, if nothing more suitable turned up, soon.

  “Bunny, let’s go. You can’t live here,” Scott whispered to her as the apartment manager led the way back to the dining area.

  “I guess you’re right. Let’s go look at the other place.”

  Bunny thanked the manager for showing her the apartment and promised to let him know that evening if she was still interested, and then left as quickly as possible.

  It was a relief to get out into the fresh air.

  “Let’s hope the next place is nothing like that dump. How can they take a person’s money for a place like that?” Scott was indignant as they trotted down the rickety stairs to the parking lot below.

  Bunny smiled at his reaction. Apparently he had only limited exposure to some of the awful housing available for rent these days. However, a couple of the parsonages she’d shared with Eustace had been only slightly nicer than the apartment they’d just viewed, and she had managed, somehow. She was beginning to think it was unreasonable to expect to find anything nicer on her budget.

  When Scott pulled his car up to the curb outside the townhouse, Bunny was relieved to see that it appeared to be in good condition. She was afraid to get her hopes up, though. The inside might be awful.

  The property manager was waiting for them, so they went right in and began to look around.

  “This is more like it, Bunny, don’t you agree?” Scott asked as they stepped onto the south facing balcony that opened off the upstairs bedroom.

  Bunny leaned on the railing to enjoy a view that overlooked the town and sea to the west and the foothills and mountains rising in the east. She could visualize herself enjoying sunsets in this very spot, wrapped in her cozy red velour robe and sipping chilled white Zinfandel. She was getting excited, in spite of herself.

  “The price is right, too, Scott. Oh, I hope my lease application is accepted! Free-lance writers aren’t always considered good credit risks, I have discovered.”

  “I will be happy to give you a good reference, if you think it might help. I would much rather see you in this environment than in that other place.”

  Bunny completed the rental application in the townhouse kitchen while standing at the island/bar that separated the work area from the dining room nook. Although the appliances were provided, this was not a furnished unit.

  Bunny was willing to sleep on the floor for a few weeks, if necessary, to live on this charming street winding its way up into the hills east of the town. Even with no furnishings this place felt like home, already. She knew she would be devastated if her application was turned down.

  The deposit would decimate her checking account until another paycheck arrived, but she was not willing to wait and take a chance of missing out on this home, now that she had found it.

  On the drive back to Scott’s place Bunny was already mentally decorating her little nest. Waiting for the landlord’s decision was going to be agony.

  

  Khu Khu and Htoo were shifting about trying to find a comfortable position on the straw covered floor of the strange crowded room where they had been taken.

  About a dozen frightened young women in their late teens or early twenties and an equal number of children, including four small boys, were milling about in the enclosed semi-darkness.

  When Khu Khu had first been thrust inside, the noise was horrible, with wails and moans echoing off the metal walls and ceiling. Once the door had clanged shut, the captives gave up all hope of release. Now there were only occasional sobs and hesitant whispers breaking the stillness.

  Khu Khu and Htoo had been hauled abruptly from their previous cage, with heads covered and hands bound, then roughly carried to this new prison, where their bonds had been removed.

  No one had spoken a word of explanation, but Khu Khu knew they were simply being taken to a lower level of hell.

  A large engine fired up nearby, she felt a jerk, and the room began to move, rocking and swaying as though lifted into the air. Those inside began to shriek and cry out once more. As they remained suspended a few became sick to their stomachs and the sounds of retching joined the cacophony.

  After an eternity of anxiety their container came to rest with a jarring thud, throwing its occupants about like ball bearings in a can.

  Chains rattled, and all was still once more. The journey had begun.

  Chapter Eight

  The secret things belong to the Lord our God – Deuteronomy 28.57

  Dinner at the Davidson’s the night after Bunny found her townhouse was a quiet affair.

  Bunny could think of nothing but her new home and whether she would be allowed to move in. Visions of life in that pleasant setting were an antidote to the unpleasantness that had caused her removal from the cabin.

  Scott was preoccupied with his sermon for the following Sunday.

  After several futile attempts to get a conversation going, Rosamund gave up in exasperation and concentrated on eating her dinner.

  Bunny and Scott made good on their pledge to do the washing up and then Bunny went to her room.

  She took the sea chest from the closet to finish cleaning it out, so she could take photos to post on
the Internet sales sites.

  The items she had first looked through when Jack unlocked the box were taken out again and examined more closely. She discarded the handkerchief and set most of the other things aside to put into her tool box when she finally unpacked in her new home.

  The knife was a bit of a problem. She had never had such a vicious-looking implement, but wasn’t sure just how to dispose of it. She thought she might see if she could sell it at the local pawn shop. She’d seen knives displayed in the cases in the window. She wrapped tissues around it and carefully slipped it into the zipper compartment in her handbag to take with her the next time she went to town.

  With the chest empty she was able to see the details of its construction more clearly.

  The pine box was tightly and solidly crafted to keep out the damp. The inside had a lift-lid till with a single drawer underneath. The dovetailed drawer had a nicely molded front with the ogee theme continued on the interior edge of the two sides.

  Bunny thought that was an especially nice touch. It was plain to see that a seasoned craftsman had built the case with care and skill.

  The lid had leather strap hinges attached with rose head nails and the inside was marked “Walter Croft West Dublin NS” which told Bunny that it had been made in Nova Scotia.

  She made a note to add that detail to her romance novel, telling the tale of the chest’s fictional travels from the northern Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest.

  The till divisions were now empty, but when she tried to open the drawer beneath, it stuck. Something inside seemed to have jammed it. Bunny did not want to damage the piece any more than the ocean had already done, so she got an old bar of lavender soap from the bathroom along with the knife from her purse and worked the soap around and into the edges of the drawer very carefully, using the knife’s slender blade.

  It took a good half hour of patient wriggling and rubbing before the drawer popped loose and pulled clear out of the chest.

  Bunny saw that there was something in the back of the slot where the drawer had been. She poked the knife tip into the space and prodded the obstruction out into the box.

  What she discovered in the ancient chest was an anachronistic piece of the modern world: a USB flash drive for a computer.

  Without giving a moment’s thought to the possibility of computer virus infection, she inserted the device into the USB port on her laptop and tried to open it, but the drive was password protected.

  Not really expecting any results, Bunny entered a series of her own passwords, followed by words and phrases having to do with life at sea.

  Nothing worked, naturally enough, until she typed in the maker’s name from the lid of the chest; “waltercroft” granted her instant access.

  Bunny was so surprised she almost let out a whoop, but caught herself in time to avoid causing a commotion in the quiet house. Still, she couldn’t help celebrating her success with a little sitting victory dance.

  There were several files on the drive. Bunny clicked on one and it opened, revealing lines of gibberish…it was encrypted data.

  Darn!

  There was no way Bunny’s serendipitous luck was going to enable her to decipher the file.

  Oh well, it’s probably something boring and none of my business, anyway.

  Bunny clicked on a few other files with the same results, shrugged and removed the USB drive. As she considered what to do with the useless device she thought of her grandniece, Ellery.

  Linda’s granddaughter was some sort of technology major at Seattle University. Bunny remembered Linda saying that Ellery was learning to become a decryption expert.

  Why not send the drive to Ellery?

  It would be good practice for the girl, whether there was anything interesting on the drive or not.

  Once that was decided, Bunny felt the need to get some exercise and offered to take Reacher for a run on the beach…Reacher would run, that is, Bunny would walk.

  Many of Bunny’s best writing ideas came to her when walking in the fresh air. She supposed exercise must increase the blood flow to her brain, and she welcomed anything that might clear her tangled thoughts these days.

  Once at the shore she unhooked the dog’s leash and Reacher immediately dashed into the surf. Bunny watched his antics with amusement while strolling along and felt the tension leaving her shoulders.

  Bunny had sort of hoped to find something in the files on that drive she could use in her seafaring romance novel. She’d briefly fantasized it might hold a captain’s log from some long-ago sea voyage…until it dawned upon her just how silly that thought was…how could a long-ago sailor have written his log on a USB drive? Bunny didn’t write science fiction, after all.

  So, a modern device meant this was no long-lost artifact and that her little sea chest had belonged to a modern seaman, who might well be looking for it, even now.

  Bunny had picked up the little box from the beach without thinking, as if it were a piece of driftwood or a pretty shell. She didn’t like to think that she had taken someone’s property, but how could she ever find its owner?

  Although she resisted prying into anyone’s private writing, it was even more necessary to decode the files on the drive, since they could hold a clue to the identity of the chest’s rightful owner. She wouldn’t feel comfortable about selling it until she’d exhausted every effort to return it.

  She wondered if the chest could have come from the same wreck as the precious little girl whose body washed up on the beach. In that case, the owner might well be dead, but she needed to at least try to find out where the chest came from and return it, if she could.

  When Bunny and Reacher returned from the beach, both were damp, sandy and happier than when they left the house. Even so, Bunny was still struggling with guilt feelings about the chest.

  Before retiring, Bunny read her nightly chapter in My Utmost for His Highest, the Christian devotional book written by Oswald Chambers.

  She found that reading and re-reading this classic kept her centered, no matter what daily life threw at her.

  That evening’s entry was about intercessory prayer. Bunny decided to pray for the owner of the sea chest; that God’s perfect will might be done in that unknown person’s life. She softly whispered her petitions as she prepared for bed, knowing that God doesn’t require us to assume a kneeling position in order to hear our heartfelt prayers.

  Praying eased her conscience and turned her thoughts as she slid between the pleasantly dry sheets to musing about all the people who may have possessed the box before her.

  Speculations and plot turnings faded into dreams only moments after her head touched the pillow.

  Chapter Nine

  Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging (woman).

  -Proverbs 21:19

  Out of habit, Bunny had made a copy of the USB drive before preparing to send the original to Ellery in Seattle.

  She hadn’t seen her grandniece since leaving Idaho several months before and decided, on a whim, to drive to Seattle and deliver the drive in person, rather than mailing it. That way they would have a nice visit and she could explore a bit of the city.

  Ellery grew up in Australia, so there hadn’t been much chance for her grandmother or great-aunts to get to know her. After she and her parents relocated to Idaho, Bunny and Ellery had clicked immediately and developed a strong bond of affection.

  Being childless, Bunny wanted to maintain a close relationship with her niece. The three-hour drive to Seattle was a small price to pay to keep connected.

  The landlord of the townhouse had promised to get back to Bunny with his decision within the week. She was hesitant to leave town before learning whether her application had been accepted, so she decided to wait until she heard from him before making a date with Ellery.

  In the meantime, she buckled down to finish up her current writing assignment.

  Bunny finished around lunchtime, emailed the work to her client and went out for a walk
.

  She wanted to walk the streets from the townhouse to the beach, just to see what that route was like and how long it took. She knew she shouldn’t be getting her hopes up, but her heart was already set on this move.

  She walked to the beach first, then east to the townhouse. After arriving outside her dream home, she strolled along the adjacent streets soaking in the atmosphere and getting a feel for what she hoped would be her new neighborhood.

  Beginning to feel a bit peckish, as the heroine of her favorite British mystery series would say, Bunny decided to go home for lunch. She turned back to make her way to the parsonage and noticed a familiar car. It looked almost like Scott’s, but was a bit boxier and had tinted windows.

  She had been seeing this same dark green SUV on several streets during her meandering. It gave her a sinking feeling to think the car might contain house-hunters competing for “her” townhouse.

  She took a more direct path back to the Davidsons’ house, preoccupied with the hope that the landlord had called while she was out and left word that the place was hers. She was so distracted by her anxiety that she failed to notice the SUV keeping pace with her just a block back.

  “Don’t get too close, Grgur! She might see us.”

  “Back off! I know what I’m doing! You just pay attention to your own business, Ljuto. You got no room telling me what to do. You, and your friggin’ ideas. As if putting an ad in the paper would have her just handing the thing over to us! Stupid! A waste of money and time. If I had gone after the box before, we would have it by now. I would never have let a little old watch dog scare me away.”

  “That was no little old dog. It was a vicious attack dog as big as a wolf. You would have run away, too. I almost shot him, but he took a chunk out of my arm and threw off my aim. The ER doctor in Tillamook put in almost 100 stitches, remember? If I hadn’t run away I might have bled to death! Then you could try to retrieve the stupid box on your own, if you’re so masterful.”