Walt hung back a moment. “Your friends cleared out pretty fast. They have short attention spans when nothing nefarious is brewing.”
I squeezed his arm in acknowledgment. “Where’s Dwayne? I didn’t see him this morning. It’s not natural for a man to avoid anything pyrotechnic.”
Walt was just full of smiles today. He had to be exhausted from the middle-of-the-night emergency, but it was so encouraging to see this happier, playful side shine through. Maybe it had something to do with our being able to take in more boys.
“I installed him as the de facto foreman at the garage. He’s checking in the contractors and monitoring their progress.” Was that a tick, or was Walt actually winking at me? “He’s taking it very seriously. Clipboard and tape measure, pencil behind his ear, the works. He’s been sleeping at the site. Seemed to think the place needed a night watchman with all the power tools lying around and no functioning locks.”
I couldn’t help grinning back at him, even though this new information fit Clarice’s and my hypothesis about the fleeing figures at the fire. “I need to talk to you about some other things,” I whispered and nodded toward the boys hoisting themselves into his pickup cab, “later.”
“Anytime you want, Nora,” he whispered back. “You know where to find me.”
oOo
I found Clarice in the basement examining the linen stores. As a former poor farm and then nursing home before it was abandoned due to the rising costs of maintenance, Mayfield still had vast supplies of the things necessary to provide room and board for a couple hundred residents.
Need table service for a cafeteria? We had that. Not fancy, but a sturdy stoneware that had resisted breakage for decades. Need wash basins and pitchers for every room in the dormitories? We had those too.
The sheets and towels, however, had seen better days since mice aren’t terribly picky about where they chew, choosing the center of an item just as often as the edge. Clarice probably should have been wearing a gas mask and ventilator for the years of bug and rodent detritus she was sifting through.
“They can come in through the coal room door,” she shouted through the tan-colored dust that choked the air like pollen.
I wiped grit out of my eyes. “Who?”
“Those people — the ones you’re going to find. They can’t exactly waltz through our kitchen door, now can they? Your federal friends will see them for sure unless we’re sneaky. Good thing we stacked what’s left of our cash in the icebox.”
My mind dodged through the obstacle course that was Clarice’s reasoning. She was referring to the cash my friend, Art Williams, had redirected from a charitable contribution I’d arranged for his First Nations women’s and children’s fund and smuggled across the Canadian border under the guise of wood pellet fuel. Clarice and I had shoved those bags down the coal chute under cover of darkness several weeks ago.
But we’d wanted to separate our loot from the wood pellets so Art wouldn’t be implicated should they be discovered, so we’d later moved the cash into an insulated, metal-lined room that was about the size of a generous walk-in closet. The room was also in the basement, located directly below the kitchen and linked by a dumbwaiter system to the floor above, with an access hatch and pulleys situated behind a set of cupboard doors. We called the weird little room the icebox, since that’s what we assumed it had been.
Our money didn’t grow on trees. We just kept it in the defunct fridge.
Which meant that the coal room was usable again, for other secret passage purposes. It was on the side of the mansion that faced toward the burned shed, so it provided an opening for coming and going that direction — not the chute, but a door beside it. I don’t think the FBI had ever seen us use that door, so maybe we’d be able to sneak the family under their radar.
Not that the FBI would object to a homeless family on the property per se, but they’d made no bones about objecting generally to anyone they hadn’t cleared for being near me. Given the family’s flight during the fire, it was a safe guess they weren’t keen on being observed either.
Matt had semi-promised me that my FBI surveillance team would be withdrawn, but I hadn’t seen any proof of the matter. They’d probably gotten tangled up in a snarl of red-tape paperwork and were stuck out here indefinitely. Or maybe the shootout in Tarq’s living room had changed their minds. That would account for some of Violet’s grouchiness this morning — and her speedy response to the unexpected fire.
Clearly, Clarice had been planning our campaign while I stuffed myself with cookies. I nodded appreciatively. “Emmie could come with me. We’ll pretend to be looking for the animals.” I cringed at the idea of misleading Emmie, but I didn’t want to leave her alone in the house. “It would help if we had a diversionary ploy.”
“All over that like a rash,” Clarice hollered. “Been itching to try a couple things. Just let me get these sheets loaded in the washing machine first.”
I was itching too, for other reasons, and backed out of the room. I didn’t dare ask about strategic particulars. I wanted to be able to claim innocence if Clarice’s machinations resulted in catastrophe or, at the very least — or best, depending on how you looked at it — aggrieved vexation on the part of our FBI watchers. She had that glint in her eye that I had long since learned to respect.
A few minutes later, Clarice belted herself into the driver’s seat of her Subaru, dust still silting off her clothes. She’d wiped little peepholes clear in her cat’s eye glasses, and her spiky silver hair stood at attention. She had the demeanor of a football linebacker in a proper cashmere sweater set and Naturalizer loafers.
“Take it easy,” I called, but her response, if any, was drowned out when she revved the engine.
Emmie and I stuffed marshmallows and grapes in our pockets and hightailed it in the other direction.
We scuffed around the periphery of the shed’s charred remains. Carbon. That’s what we all are, when it comes right down to it, if you don’t count our souls. Dust to dust. It was both creepy and sobering to be reminded of that fact while accumulating layers of soot and gray ash on my jeans, socks and boots.
“Wilbur. Orville,” Emmie called gently. “Termie.” She held a squashed marshmallow in each hand, extended, palms out, so the treats were clearly visible. I’d pulled her jacket hood up for warmth, and her face was pale inside.
“They might be dead, Emmie.” I forced the words out. Her young life so far had been so raw that to delude her would be a disservice. She’d suffered at the hands of enough liars already.
“I know,” she whispered back. “Do you think they were afraid?”
“Yes,” I choked.
Emmie spun in a slow circle, then started picking her way toward the leaning tree and rock outcropping that had been the homeless family’s last known location.
The forest floor was a littered, tangled mess of brambles, ferns, pine needles, twigs, and pine cones plus occasional mushrooms and black-spotted banana slugs. Perhaps an experienced tracker would have been able to identify the path the family had fled along, but I couldn’t. Instead, Emmie and I looked for hidey-holes, both high and low, places that were big enough to provide shelter for a person. Truthfully, neither of us was any good at it.
We also made enough noise that we would likely give a herd of elk a collective heart attack. Which was probably a wise safety precaution, come to think of it. I was about to start whacking two sticks together to also ward off bears when a thin figure in a blue knit hat and heavy denim coat popped up in front of me.
I might have screeched a little bit.
He grinned, but also held up a finger in front of his lips.
“Bodie?” I rasped. “What on earth?”
“Found ‘em,” he said.
My mouth fell open. I had so many rushing questions, they jammed up in the opening and nothing came out. Bodie was one of the boys Walt had brought to the fire last night. Although calling him a boy probably wasn’t quite accurate. Without a birth certif
icate, we couldn’t verify, but he had most likely reached the age of majority.
He also must have noticed something while fighting the fire that set him on this quest. He knew all about hiding in the woods since he’d run away from his abusive, survivalist family. If anyone could find our vagrants, it would be him. I should have thought of that sooner.
I finally settled on the most important question. “Do they know you’ve seen them?”
Emmie’s hand crept into mine, and we both watched Bodie anxiously.
He tugged the knit hat down over his cold-pinked ears. “One of them speaks pretty good English.”
“Are they afraid?” Emmie whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut and held her hand even more tightly. Would I ever be able to get Emmie to a point where her default root emotion wasn’t fear?
Bodie knelt in front of her, at eye level, and my heart melted at his sensitivity. He’d left behind younger sisters; maybe he recognized the trepidation in her voice.
“A little,” he said. “But Chet told me they released Wilbur, Orville, and the Terminator before the fire spread through the whole shed. He said they were so hungry, they thought about eating them, but they realized the animals were pets.”
“Chet?” Emmie wrinkled her nose.
Bodie shrugged. “It’s his name.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Down in the ravine.” Bodie rose to standing and gestured toward a wall of brush behind him. I absolutely would have walked right past that hiding spot even though, now that I was concentrating, I could hear the rushing of a small stream at the bottom.
“Do you think you can get them to come to the mansion?” I asked. “Tell them we have lots of food and warm beds.”
“I think so. After dark. I’ll stay with them until then.”
I nodded. “Come in through the coal room. We’ll be ready.”
Bodie paused, then said in a rush. “He knows your name, Nora. Chet — he asked after you specifically. Wanted to know if you were the one in the white dress last night. I think he meant that robe you were wearing.”
I blinked. “The woman in white. It’s my firefighting outfit. The height of fashion,” I muttered to mask my shock. Was Chet a criminal threat? I’d spent all day rationalizing why the homeless family couldn’t possibly be associated with anyone from Skip’s circle of business associates.
“How many?” I blurted.
“Seven.”
“Kids?”
Bodie nodded. “Two. A boy and a girl. They’re sick — runny noses and bad coughs.”
And that settled it. I squeezed Bodie’s shoulder. “Thank you. Bring them as soon as you can.”
CHAPTER 12
We didn’t have much time. Darkness fell early this close to the winter solstice.
I was starting to worry about Clarice. Her absence was stretching longer than I’d anticipated. Although she was probably trying to give us plenty of buffer for our secret operation.
Emmie and I decided that the family might feel uncomfortable at being split up in their new, unfamiliar accommodations, so we made up several beds in a single, large basement room with Clarice’s freshly laundered sheets. The room might originally have been an infirmary of sorts, because a row of cupboards and countertops with several sinks filled one end.
There were some scary-looking implements still in the cupboards, the kinds of things that might constitute a beginner chemistry set — glass beakers, a Bunsen burner, tubes and Petri dishes, needleless syringes and dust-covered bandages. The poor farm had been filled to occupancy in a time when there was not yet a vaccine for polio and tuberculosis and scarlet fever proliferated unchecked. No doubt the later nursing home residents had also had their own conditions that required quarantine.
It was a bleak room with no windows, but it was secluded and safe and big enough for a family of seven. Emmie brought down some of her books — the ones with the most pictures — and arranged them on a bedside table for the children. I cranked the knobs on the radiators, and they started hissing and ticking to life.
Clanging from the end of the hall announced our visitors. Emmie and I trotted to meet them in the coal room.
They were lean and shivering in completely inadequate garments. And they looked terrified. Bodie slammed the door shut, which made everyone jump.
He pointed to a young man. “Chet.” Then at me. “Nora.”
“Ahh.” The lithe man plunged forward and pumped my hand. “Skip told me you would be here.” He pointed at his own upper lip and then at mine. “With the scar. I recognize you. The paintings are in your possession?” His dark eyes darted anxiously over my face.
“That was you? The paintings?” I forgot to breathe for a moment. “All this time?”
I had to pinch myself to get my thoughts running parallel again. But it did make sense and matched up with Skip’s recording. I nodded. “Yes. Safe.” At least as much as could be expected at the Six Shooter Storage Solutions unit.
I had a flood of questions for the slight, unassuming man in front of me, but we had more pressing practical matters to attend to. I glanced at the other sets of apprehensive dark eyes appraising me, not to mention Bodie’s and Emmie’s questioning stares, trying to decide where to start.
“Yooohoooo!” Clarice’s unmistakable ex-smoker’s voice hollered from the other end of the mansion. Then the heavy, rapid clomp of her feet on the stairs, and I was saved — for the moment.
If I was a shock to our visitors’ timid expectations, then the sight of Clarice just about required a defibrillator. All of them except Chet shrank back against the wall, and Chet waffled a bit too, his brown skin turning a more milky shade.
“Huh.” Clarice peered at them and sniffed. Her weathered cheeks were appallingly rosy, as though she’d overdosed on fresh air, and her short hair was unflatteringly mashed. “Scrawny. As I expected. We’ll soon put that to rights.” She turned to glare at me. “I left my knight in shining armor in the kitchen, so watch what you say when you put in an appearance. Dinner’s in half an hour. I’ll arrange room service for our guests.”
I stood staring at her retreating back until Chet coughed nervously.
“It’s all right,” I said automatically. “Yes, she’s always like that, but she has a heart of gold.” I frowned. “That’s an idiom. Do you know what it means?”
Chet chuckled faintly. “Scary, but not sincerely so. More bark than bite?”
I grinned. “Do any of the others speak English?”
He half shrugged. “A few words only. They speak French better.” He pointed to each member of the small band in turn and announced their names. One auntie, one nephew, and the rest seemed to be cousins. They gave us shy nods of their heads in return.
I wondered if they were actually biologically related or if the labels were meant to be polite terms of attachment or respect. Regardless, I wanted them to feel at ease. I released Bodie from his chaperoning duty and showed them down the hall to their room.
As the women examined the accommodations and murmured between themselves, I asked Chet, “Where are you from?”
“Laos.”
“Illegal?”
He dipped his head. “I am now. My visa expired almost a month ago. I came for my sister—”
I laid a hand on his arm and cut him off. “I know some of it because Skip left me instructions, but I do want to hear your whole story — later.” I glanced toward the others. “Do they know?”
“They only know about our missing family members. They tried to help, but what could they do?” Chet gave another small shrug indicating the futility of peons fighting against a monstrous, evil organization, but his eyes were fierce, and I knew why Skip had conscripted him.
I squeezed his hand. “First food. Then we’ll talk. Please wait here, and quietly.”
“Unfortunately, we have become very good at that,” Chet replied.
I collected Emmie from the corner where she and the two children had been sitting together in
companionable but curious silence. “This is our secret,” I whispered to her as we crept down the hall. “Clarice wants us not to say anything in front of whoever is visiting in the kitchen, okay?”
Emmie nodded, and I could have sworn her golden-brown eyes twinkled just a bit behind the pale seriousness of her face. Proof she was my girl in spirit, if not in flesh.
I was bracing myself for another round of fleet-footed fabrications when I followed Emmie through the door to the kitchen. Except it wasn’t Matt or Violet or any other stuffy, law-and-order type assisting Clarice with chopping onions. The enormous, coverall-clad mound with a head that seemed to sprout out of an overabundance of beard was none other than our friend and mechanic and postmaster, Gus O’Malley.
“Ho, ho,” he rumbled at the sight of Emmie, and for a second I thought I’d entered an alternate dimension somewhere near the North Pole.
She grinned back at him. His size intimidates most adults, but she didn’t seem fazed in the least.
Gus is the kind of man you can seriously snuggle, and so I did. Plus, we’ve been through some life-or-death situations together. He’s a rock.
“Hey, punkin.” He patted my back. “Don’t want to get onion juice on you.”
“What’s this about a knight in shining armor?” I asked.
Clarice made a strangled sound, shoved in front of me to reach a jar of paprika, and simultaneously planted a very heavy foot on my own. Stomped, actually.
“Ow.” It came out more as an exhale than an actual word. And that’s when I realized the knight in shining armor bit was exactly the part I had been warned not to discuss. I scowled at Clarice. How am I supposed to understand the code all the time?
“And my trusty steed,” Gus said as he turned back to the chopping board, apparently oblivious to the female ESP bristling through the air. “This fine lady was in distress. Gonna need to special order some parts.”
“Parts?” I bleated.
“Had an incident with the Subaru,” Clarice mumbled.
Hide & Find (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 9