FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2)

by Jack Flanagan

  “Whatever.” I brusquely said, killing the discussion between the dynamic duo. Refocusing on Bo, I asked, “Why did show your FDA credentials to Mr. Smith? Don’t you think that your FBI identification would be more effective?”

  “I did show him my gun.”

  “Yes, exactly. Why would you think it wiser to show off your gun than to show your FBI credentials?” Bo didn’t say anything, she just folded her arms and looked at me with the ever slightest of grins — so I continued. “The only reason that I can think of, Serena, is that you don’t want to be known as an FBI agent. You are working . . . eh, undercover, as it were.”

  “Well, if you had waited a moment, I was about to tell you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”— I was getting annoyed and just wanted to get out of there.

  “Because, Old Sport, it is so much fun watching you figure things out on your own, even if you are a little slow.”

  “If you excuse me for saying so, Agent Boswell,“ remarked Peterson, “your reason for not informing us, particularly the Sheriff here, seems to me unprofessional.”

  “If that were the sole reason, Deputy, you would be correct. But I find myself in a difficult situation. What I am allowed to tell you about my situation here is . . . ah, restricted. Yet, I need your help since my assignment has now taken an unexpected turn.”

  “When did this happen?” I said with noticeable cynicism.

  “As soon as I saw you with our dead friend on the floor here.” Bo took a couple of steps toward me. “And I want to make it understood right now, by all three of you, that my affiliation with the Bureau is to be confidential, our secret, until I tell you otherwise. Do you understand? Do I have your word on this?”

  Kyle and Peterson immediately agreed.

  Then all eyes in the room turn to me. “Sure, okay. I’ll not say a word.” Bo’s gaze grew in intensity. “Yes,” I reiterated, “I won’t say a word about you and the FBI to Morgana until you say it’s okay.”

  Bo smiled. “Thanks, Old Sport. I knew that I could count on you.”

  “So, what do you know about Foley,” I asked, “or whatever his name is?”

  Bo scanned the three of us as if she tried to read something in our faces before she spoke.

  “Well?” I asked again.

  Bo slowly went over to the Foley, bent down, and pulled the blanket several inches away to reveal his face. She stared into his lifeless eyes. “We kept losing track of him over the years ago. Out of his entire group of international thugs, he was the only one of the bunch that we had any worthwhile information on, and it isn’t much. We could never catch him. It was as if he were protected by a guardian angel or something.”

  “Agent Boswell, what is it that he and his friends were involved in?” asked Peterson.

  “Murder, blackmail, freelance espionage, and such.”

  Before Bo draped the blanket over Foley again, I noticed he had a light brownish stain or mark around on his neck. It was something that I didn’t pay attention to when I was trying to save his life. But upon seeing it again, the mark looked similar to ones I saw a few years before.

  “That brownish line around his neck . . .” I said pointing at it.

  “He was strangled on these dangling ropes, remember.” Bo picked up the dead guy’s right wrist and turned his arm over to exposed its underside. “You see that scar?”

  Kyle and Peterson peered over to see. I gave a quick look and noted that the scar was about three inches long and two or so inches wide on the lower half of the forearm almost to the wrist. It was in the shape of a cross that was partially enclosed by a circle.

  “That, my friends,” said Bo, “makes me think our friend’s death is not just a simple suicide, that with his passport and that very impressive gun I found in his luggage . . . well, let’s leave at that for now.”

  “Besides being a gun, what is particularly interesting about it?” I asked.

  “From what I can tell, the gun is made from a highly sophisticated composite material which would render it invisible to most airport scanners and the like.”

  “What is this guy doing with something like that?” spouted Kyle. “And why is he here with it in Starkshire County?”

  “I can’t say, Kyle. If I had some contact with the outside world, it would be a lot easier for me to find out.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” I quipped.

  “Well, what are we suppose to do now? What’s our plan?” asked Kyle

  “I'm at a loss at what I am allowed to say, and what I am not. But this I can tell you. Our friend Foley was a very dangerous character. And I believe that his buddies are no less dangerous than he was. They may be even worse.”

  “Can you tell me anything more,” asked Kyle.

  “You see, Kyle, that is precisely my problem. I can’t tell you what Foley and his associates are . . . were specifically involved in.”

  “Can’t or won’t tell?” I said with more of an edge than I probably should have.

  “There is a certain delicacy and subtlety to this whole affair, that I thought you would appreciate, Old Sport.”

  “Then let me ask again, when you arrived here at the inn, did you come as FDA agent, or were you actually here on the behalf of the FBI?”

  “To the inn here? . . . Why, I came here as an alumna of Stark Monument College, to attend a fund raising committee meeting.”

  “Bo! . . . Can’t you ever be straight and give a simple answer?”

  I admit it. I was a little grumpy at that moment. Playing cops and robbers with an ex-girlfriend in a hotel room with a dead body on the floor may have had something to do with my growing irritation. But I also cannot deny that some old feelings, which I thought were drowned forever, started to bubble up from the well of forgotten memories. My desire to extract myself from the entire situation quickly turned into an irresistible compulsion.

  “Richard, there is an interesting question of legality involved,” equivocated Bo.

  “Well, I will let you and the Starkshire Sheriff’s department to carry on with this investigation. If you find a misplaced modifier, or a forged hall pass give me a holler. I have had some expertise in that area. Kyle, I leave you in good hands.”

  “Wait, don’t go,” Bo said.

  For a fleeting moment, an old familiar scene flashed across my mind’s eye. A sad scenario that my mind repeated many times during my mid-twenties and thirties. How my life would have changed if I stayed with Bo when she asked me to do, so many years ago, I could only guess.

  “You’ll be able to find me downstairs or in my room if you need my assistance. And don’t worry your secret is safe with me.” I went to the door and I left.

  I heard a few more protestations against my desertion from both Kyle and Bo as I marched down the hallway, but I paid no mind to them. I was about to turn to go down the stairs, when the sound of a familiar voice came up from the very steps that I was about to descend.

  “Milk was only twenty cents a quart back then . . . .”

  “Dear Lord, not her!” I literally said to myself.

  I backed away from the top of the stairway, did an abrupt about-face, and headed toward my room at the double quick. But then I remembered Mr. Hograve had moved my new loquacious friend into a room next to ours. Mrs. Prosper would most assuredly stop by our place for several hours. I was trapped.

  Voices were ascending the steps. Mrs. Prosper was expounding on the fluctuation of current prices and how prices never went up and down when she was a girl, seventy plus years ago. My mind raced. Where could I go for a little piece and quiet? Options for an escape were quickly running out.

  Escape! That was the solution. The back stairway also served as the fire ‘escape’. The infrequently used stairway offered me salvation. Speed-walking as quietly as I could, I dashed down the dimly lit corridor, toward the soft, glowing exit sign of my destination.

  I had just got around the corner and onto the landing of the stairway when I heard Morgana saying, “Ye
s, but — ”

  “Times were easier,” countered Mrs Prosper. “People could get those paper caps off of milk bottles easier than they can remove those plastic tops used nowadays. I remember when I first showed Fred one of those caps. I think we were on vacation . . . .” With the faint sound of a door opening and closing, Prosper’s voice melted away.

  I was safe for the moment. But now what? Do I go downstairs? Do I take a chance to go back to my room? But what room were Mrs. Prosper and Morgana in? I didn’t watch to find out. Or do I retreat back to Mr. Whatever-his-name’s room where Bo will be waiting for me? My indecision let me conclude that, for the moment, it was best to stay put. I sat on the top step and leaned my head against the wall. I shut my eyes, mulled over the events of the day, and wondered how a pleasant getaway vacation went so very wrong.

  #

  CHAPTER 5

  I must have fallen asleep in the dark, at the top of the stairs. I’m sure the two Scotches earlier in the day had something to do with my dozing off — an admission, I might add, that doesn’t come easily. In retrospect, sitting on the top step, probably was not the safest way to take a siesta — a lapse in judgment that Morgana would surely use against my drinking in the morning if she found out.

  I remember, as I sat in the solitary quietude, my mind drifting to the beaches of Puerto Rico where Morgana and I vacationed about a year before. I savored the memories of the rhythms of the pounding surf, the pitchers of Piña Coladas, the scent of coconut lotions, and Morgana sunbathing topless on the beach.

  My mental excursion came to an end when I felt slight tug at the bottom of my pant leg. I reluctantly opened my eyes, and through the sleepy haze, I thought I saw a young girl, about twelve years of age, seated on the stairs a few steps below me.

  Who was this? — I wondered. As my eye's adjusted, my young visitor faded away. Instead, my attention was drawn further down to the bottom of the stairs. By the emergency exit, Arezoo was talking to someone through the partially opened door.

  “No, I can't let you in,” said Arezoo. “If you think that you are all right, then go back to the place.”

  The light from the open door and the dim light from the exit sign above were the sole sources of illumination for the stairwell, leaving my perch unseen by those below me. With nothing else to do and out of the fear of meeting Mrs. Prosper, I was not inclined to move. And so, I became a voyeur in the shadows.

  I heard the man standing outside say something unintelligible to Arezoo, who sharply replied, “Don’t start cursing at me in Farsi. If you feel that way, then you are on your own. You can get yourself out of this mess.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the unseen male.” Will I see you . . . .”

  “Maybe . . . yes . . . I don’t know. You’ve made it more difficult. You were to leave and go to Bennington, not to . . . You could have killed them. You’ll get me into so much trouble. I already regret what I did for you.”

  Arezoo opened the door a little wider and handed over a white plastic grocery store bag that was far from empty. The stranger’s arm, in a wet black slicker, with a large watch upon its wrist, took it.

  “Go quickly,” said Arezoo.

  “Thank you,” said the stranger.

  Arezoo closed the door and disappeared into the interior of the inn.

  I let a minute go by before I descended the stairs. I opened the service door and looked outside. It was still raining and raining hard. Whoever it was that had been talking to Arezoo was gone. I couldn’t help but feel that the outside air had an unusual heaviness or, maybe better said, a penetrating sadness about it. Very strange weather and it complemented an equally strange day . . . very strange day, indeed.

  My eyes searched the muddy ground from the door to the thick woods that edged the inn’s back lawn, a span of about twenty yards. Half way to the woods was the inn’s cache of firewood. The split wood was neatly stacked and formed a wall five feet high and about twelve feet long. It was partially covered with a blue tarp that flapped at one end in the violent winds. Next to firewood was a saw-horse and a large stump with several unsplit logs at its base. A few feet beyond the stump, there was a muddy travelled path through a patch of high grass that led into the forest beyond, only to disappear behind drooping branches and undergrowth. As hard as I tried, I didn’t see the visiting stranger anywhere in the vicinity.

  “Dr. MacKenzie?”

  Startled, I swung around in such a fashion that Moira jumped with an audible gasp.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Moira.” In my relief, I smiled. “You gave me such a start. I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”

  “T’is my fault. I wasn’t sure what you were doing. I thought that I should be quiet if you were observing some of the wildlife that pass by . . . I didn’t want to scare any of them off.”

  “But instead you scared me,” I said.

  “I suppose so,” answered Moira finishing with a reticent smile. “Did you see anything?”

  “See? No, just a lot of rain.”

  “I would like to thank you and your wife for —”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  “Is there anything that I can do for you?”

  “No, not really.” Then I had a thought. “Well yes, maybe you can. Are there any workman about the place?”

  “Workmen? How do you mean?”

  “Ah . . . Does the inn employ any male help?”

  Moira seemed to be lost in my question.

  “You know, ah . . . a grounds keeper, a chef, a maintenance man or crew. . . . The guys who do the heavy lifting around here . . . or who chop wood?”

  I was babbling. Exactly why I spoke in the manner that I did, I haven’t a clue. Maybe I was I still groggy from my nap, or suffering some after effects of an early libation? I don't know. But what I did say, apparently didn’t sit well with Moira.

  “Forgive me, but you aren’t suggesting that a woman can’t do the job of a grounds keeper or chef or — ”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. I mean, yes, definitely, women can do just about anything that men can do.” I attempted to take the high ground. “My wife, is a department chairperson at a college, not me. I only asked about male employees, if somewhat clumsily,” I said, “because my brother, the Sheriff, wanted me to get some information for him. You know . . . concerning the suicide of Mr. Foley.”

  Moira’s demeanor changed. “Mr. Foley?”

  “Yes. I’m helping my brother with some things that he can’t do himself at the moment,” I said with care, “because his clothes are drying.”

  “Information for the Sheriff?”

  “Yes. You can probably guess the questions on those legal forms and documents that my brother has to fill out. Who was first at the scene of death? What is the name and location of the inn? How many people are employed there? Who are they? Male, female?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It was rude of me . . . please forgive me. This whole matter has unnerved me. I must have sounded very ah. . . .”

  “Strong in your beliefs.”

  “I see that you do understand then.”

  “I try. My wife is a strong advocate for women’s equality, and I am an advocate for both her and the cause.” Though what I was saying was true, I was afraid that I was laying it on a bit thick. But Moira bought it; she started to talk.

  “There aren’t many men employed here. Of course, there is Mr. Hograve, the owner. There is Babak, Arezoo’s husband, who is, by the way, a superb chef.”

  “Where is Babak now?”

  “I just left him in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, is there anyone else?”

  “There is Mr. Turner the handyman, who is the gardener and groundskeeper; there is his son Bobby who helps out part-time. Both Mr. Turner and his son left yesterday afternoon and are not scheduled to return until tomorrow.”

  “Do any of these gentlemen have an accent or wear a large gold wrist watch?”

  “To me everyone around here has an accent. But theirs is definitely an O
ld New England one. I don’t remember if any of the Turners wore a large gold watch. Is there someone in particular that you are looking for?”

  “No.” At the moment, I thought it best not to tip my hand about Arezoo’s conversation with Mr. Mysterious, so I tried to give myself some cover. “It’s an old policeman technique, according to my brother, to sometimes mention a particular item or trait of a fictional person to jar the memory of witnesses; it doesn’t always work . . . So, no other men about?”

  “I never thought about it until now, but there are more women here than men. I guess if Mr. Hograve has someone like Consuelo in his employment, the need for a man to do the ‘heavy lifting,’ as you say, is not great.”

  I remembered the size of Consuelo’s arms when she held up the late Mr. Foley to prevent his further strangulation. “Yes, I see what you mean. . . . Eh, Moira, when I was looking outside, I saw a path that went by the wood pile and disappeared into the woods. Where does that go?”

  “I can’t say for sure; I’ve never gone down the path myself. But Mr. Hograve said it leads to a small cabin or shed of some sort. That is where he keeps outdoor furniture and some sports equipment — volley ball nets, horseshoe sets, and things like that. Again, I never went down it. I work in the main building. I never have time to go exploring. I’m too busy working or studying.”

  “Have you seen any . . . eh, strange men about the inn . . . say in the last half hour so?”

  “Strange men?”

  “Yes, new guests? Deliverymen?”

  “Have you forgotten that we are presently standing on an island. We’re cut off from the rest of the world. The last strange men that I’ve seen were the sheriff and his deputy.”

  “Strange would be the word,” I inwardly chuckled, and I thought about my brother’s arrival.

  “Is there anything else? I must get back to work,” Moira asked a little anxiously.

  “No, not really — except do you know if Arezoo is about?”

  “I just saw her in the dining area with Mr. Hograve, the deputy, and Mrs. Prosper. Do you want me to get her?”

  “No, no. It can wait. I’ll go upstairs and see how the sheriff is doing. Have you seen my wife?”