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

by Jack Flanagan

  “Shut up!” commanded Dolan, who rushed up to Kyle.

  “Sheriff, it would be wise for you not to speak unless spoken to. Do you understand?” Smith said.

  My brother didn’t answer because by then he was staring intently down a gun barrel, just a hand’s width away from his nose. Instead, he nervously nodded his fat head signaling his compliance with the request.

  “Good, that’s settled then,” said Smith.

  With obvious confidence, Smith walked about in the room and addressed the assembled group as if he were a coach cautioning a team about foreseeable errors for an upcoming game. “And that is good advice for all of you here. Don’t speak unless one of us three asks you to speak. We don’t want anyone to get unnecessarily hurt. Don’t talk to us or to each other unless instructed otherwise. Just sit where you are and do nothing. Is that so difficult?”

  Not thinking, Peterson piped up, “Well, if that is the way you want it; that is — ” The deputy’s garrulous nature awarded him a powerful swipe from Dolan’s gun laden hand.

  The blow knocked the poor guy careening into me, which in turn, sent us both onto our backs. My head hit the floor with a loud thud, I recall. The impact set off shock waves surging through my brain. Oddly, I didn’t feel any pain; instead, a sense of dizzying calm took hold of me. I remember, as I lay on my back, people gasping, folks calling my name, and shouting from miles away. But I heeded not the distancing din. I was momentarily obsessed and amused in observing the lobby's ceiling change its color from a stark white to a striking deep blue, and ultimately, I watched it disappear into nothingness.

  I think that I can say, with some degree of certitude, that it is not a good thing to be thumped into unconsciousness, never mind being thumped into unconsciousness twice in one day. Add to that a visitation from your dead mother while you are dead to the world makes for a very unpleasant situation.

  “Here again?” said my mother as she peered over her reading glasses at me. When I was a boy coming home from school, it was not unusual to find my mother in our living room sitting in a recliner with her feet up, of course, finishing off that morning paper’s crossword. Her presence may have been comforting for me back in the day, but during my brief absence from the realm of consciousness, it annoyed me. One visitation a day was quite enough. Before I could say that I didn’t want to be, wherever it was I was, she told me, “Sit down, Richard. You are making me nervous.”

  Quicker than a thought, I sat down next to her. She folded the paper and put it on her lap, removed her glasses, letting them dangle from a beaded chain that hung from her neck. She gave me her scowl of disappointment and said, “Get a grip, Richard. Don’t play so rough with your brother or somebody will get hurt.”

  “What? Kyle dragged me into this mess. I’m the one who got whacked in the head. I may even have a concussion.”

  “Oh, really? Are you telling me that your wife had nothing to do with this?”

  I had no reply.

  For a moment, my mother’s maternal instinct took over her. “Let me see.” She grabbed my face between her hands and looked into my eyes as if she were exploring the rear a grocer’s shelf in a quest for a cheaper can of stewed tomatoes. “You’ll live. Don’t be a crybaby. Besides, you love being fussed over by your girlfriends.”

  “Morgana is not my girlfriend, Mom. She’s my wife.”

  “I don’t understand why people even like you, Richard, but they do. You are so anti-social and irritable at times. Even children gravitate toward you, God only knows why. People always make a fuss over you. This is in spite of the fact that you irritated me and everyone around you since you were three years old. Maybe it’s because your father and I only knew masochistic people. I really don’t know.”

  “Mom — ”

  “— And me carrying you for nine months wasn’t a walk in the park for me, I may add. Your brother, on the other hand, was a pleasure to carry, figuratively speaking, compared to you. I was in labor for three whole days with you because you refused to get into the proper birthing position. You were determined to come out just above my right hip.”

  “Mother, I— ”

  “ — You never liked old people, did you?”

  “What!”.

  “You never really liked me or any of your grandparents.”

  “Not true!”

  “Well, don’t underestimate old folks, Richard. Remember, they weren’t always old. They had lives before they met you, you know.”

  My head suddenly found its way onto my mother’s lap and I felt her hand gently glide across my forehead. Her mature, dispassionate voice had acquired a warm more youthful quality to it as she said my name.

  “Richard . . . Richard.”

  “Mom,” I said, but with some difficulty.

  “Guess again, Old Sport,” was the reply.

  I opened my eyes and saw Bo kneeling next to me and giving me that finger test again.

  “Serena?”

  “Stop blacking out on us, Richard,” petitioned Morgana in a hushed voice who leaned forward into my line of sight. I was on her lap. I attempted to turn about to see her more clearly.

  ”Don’t move,” gently ordered Morgana.

  I tire to sit up.

  “Stop squirming, Richard,“ commanded Morgana, now in a firmer tone than before.

  As I lay upon Morgana’s lap, I scanned the room again. The staff avoided eye contact with me, their attention was elsewhere. I saw what I recognized as Foley’s luggage which was then on the floor near the sofa. His carry-all had been opened and its contents dumped and strewn about. Were these clowns looking for something of Foley’s?

  I watched Dolan cuffing Kyle and Peterson hands together, and when he had finished, he then stepped toward me.

  “How’s the screamer doing?” said Dolan with contempt. “Pitching that bloody howl of yours across to the other side of the cellar scared the crap out of me.“

  “You . . . you nearly killed him,“ said Morgana.

  “Well, it wasn’t that I didn’t try,” Dolan snapped back.

  My brave but naive wife held me firm on her leg with one hand and with the other struck out wildly at my tormentor.

  Groggy and helpless as I was, I could only but watch Dolan raise his arm for another backhanded roundhouse swipe, but this time the intended target was to be Morgana.

  “Enough!” barked Smith. The command checked Dolan in mid-swing. “We can’t waste time on this. Just cuff Boswell to the chef.”

  With a snarl, Dolan told the chef to get off the sofa and to sit on the floor. The thug then grabbed Bo by her hair and ordered her to get up and move over to the chef. Coerced by the presence of Dolan’s gun, no doubt, Bo sat down next to Babak, and the two of them were promptly handcuffed together.

  Smith addressed us again with a cold, steely look in his eye. “Well, now that we are all here nice and comfy–”

  An image flashed in my brain — Mrs. Prosper. She wasn’t in the room.

  “ — I must ask for everyone’s patience and cooperation. There was some property that was in the procession of my friend, the late Mr. Foley, that has gone missing. And I must have it.”

  Peterson, who apparently didn’t learn his lesson about not speaking unless spoken to, said, “Why don’t you ask the guy who killed your friend?” Dolan took a few steps toward Peterson. The deputy snapped his mouth shut and looked at his feet.

  “Because,” said Smith, “the person whom we thought killed Foley didn’t have it.”

  “You thought the guy by the wood pile killed your friend?” asked Kyle.

  As soon as Kyle opened his mouth, I knew our bad situation was only going to get worse. Dolan gave Kyle a swift quick kick to his stomach for his infraction of the no talking rule. My brother contorted and gasped.

  “An interesting question, but that is not as important to me as to the item that is missing. You, all have just twenty minutes in which to return the item to me. Talk now among yourselves but make sure that I get it,”
announced Smith. “Otherwise, when people from the outside finally get here, they will discover, to their horror, more than just three dead bodies. I hope you get my meaning.”

  There was a definite low chorus of gasps and muted cries from my fellow captives. It was a blood-curdling announcement, but not unexpected. What was unexpected was his mentioning three dead bodies. I thought to myself, “Was I out for that long, that one of us was knocked off without me knowing it?” I was confused. There was Foley and Arezoo’s brother, but who was the third? The answer fell on me like a large wave breaking on an unwary sunbather — Mrs. Proper!

  “Please, I mean no disrespect,” a very nervous Hograve spoke up, “but if we only knew what you wanted, we can help you look for it. One of us may have seen it. There is no need to . . . ah, threaten us.”

  “No offense was taken, Mr. Hograve. But sadly, I find myself in an awkward situation. If I told you what this particular item is, I most assuredly would have to kill you and anyone else that heard, whether we found the item in question or not.”

  There was that catch phrase again, almost exactly what Bo said when she, Kyle, Peterson, and I were rummaging through Foley’s room. I couldn’t help but to wonder whether everyone with a gun was required to say, “If I told you, I would have to kill you,” as a matter of course.

  Smith looked down in the direction of my brother. “This item is too important to lose or to be misplaced by anyone who knew what it was. It could be ignored or overlooked, however, by anyone who didn’t know what it was. So I assume that it must have been taken by someone who knew what the item was.” Smith stood up straight. His words became cadenced. “Since no one can leave under the present circumstances, and everyone at this inn is present here, the person who took the item in question is among us,” Smith concluded with a half grin and a slight shrug of his shoulders.

  “Or it could have just been thrown out.” My thoughtless speculation just sailed out of my mouth before I knew it. Immediately, in the wake of my comment, Smith turned and pointed his gun down at me.

  “What do you mean by that?” snapped Smith with more than a trace irritation in his voice.

  The abruptness, of acquiring Smith’s attention, swept all thoughts out from my mind. Any ideas, remembrances, thoughts, or notions that I may have had, fled from me like rats on a sinking ship.

  “Huh?” was the only lucid response I could muster up.

  Morgana raised her hand between me and Smith’s gun as if she could deflect an incoming round. “Leave him alone! Haven’t you people hurt him enough,” she said in a loud quivering voice that was more pleading than demanding.

  Smith asked me again, “What did you mean by being thrown out?”

  My wife’s futile, but brave, intercession on my behalf had given me enough time for me to collect what wits I had left and the ability to form a cogent reply.

  “Eh, if a person found the item that you speak of and that person did not know its intrinsic value, might that person drop the thing off at the lost and found? For that matter, he could have just put it in the trash.”

  When I mentioned the word “trash” Smith, who was of fair complexion to begin with, quickly acquired the pallor of a cadaver.

  “After all,” I continued, “you said that an unknowledgeable person wouldn’t suspect what this item really was. If this thing was lying around and appeared to be somewhat insignificant to the casual observer, would it be not a logical for an unwary person to chuck it away following the general rules of cleanliness?” When I finished, I wondered whether I got lost in my words and made any sense.

  For several heartbeats, I waited for Smith to reply, but nothing was forthcoming. So out of an old habit, I proceeded as if I were teaching a class and led my listeners to the answer. “When in doubt, throw it — ”

  “ — throw it out,” responded Peterson, proudly finishing my sentence and earning himself a swift hard kick from Dolan.

  With his attention fixated on me and his gun aimed at my head, Smith asked, “Mr. Hograve, do you have a Lost and Found?”

  “Yes, we do. We have two to be exact,” said the poor fellow whose fingers were twitching something fierce at the time. “One is for large things, like travel luggage and clothes. That one is upstairs in one of the closets in the utility room. The other Lost and Found is the bottom drawer of a locking file cabinet located under the front desk. That Lost and Found is for small things left behind by guests, such as wallets, purses, envelopes, books. You know, things that can be easily carried, put down, dropped and forgotten about.” Hograve’s voice drifted off into silence when he saw Smith shake his head with disapproval.

  “I don’t have time to waste. This particular item could not be put down and forgotten about,” declared Smith.

  “Being inadvertently thrown away is still a logical alternative to your ‘someone stole my stuff’ theory,” I said, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the wisest thing for me to say at that time.

  “One of you go upstairs and check the closet,“ commanded Smith, who was then revealing some signs of nervousness himself. His eyes were flitting about the room and checking his wristwatch as if he were expecting guests.

  Smith’s underlings exchanged glances and had non-verbally reached a decision. “Right, I’ll go upstairs,” said Williams, then quickly bounded the staircase to disappear somewhere on the second floor.

  William’s departure from our company became Dolan’s cue to proceed to the Lost and Found file cabinet under the desk. Smith kept his weapon trained on us as his cohorts went on their scavenger hunt. Having my head on Morgana’s lap, I looked up into my wife’s eyes and saw fear. God only knew what she saw in mine.

  The tension in the lobby snapped. Two shots echoed from the floor above us. Each one of us in the room jumped out of his skin. Hograve threw himself to the floor. The staff women huddled together and joined in a short communal scream. My brother just sat upright on the lobby floor and looked bewildered. Peterson, who was cuffed to Kyle, awkwardly ducked behind my brother as if Kyle were a large boulder that could stop a bullet. Bo and her hand cuffbuddy went onto their backs. Morgan leaned over me, holding me close to her. I saw Smith quickly crouch down and aim his gun toward the staircase and Dolan disappear behind the front desk.

  “That was me,” shouted Williams from somewhere above us. “The closet was locked; so I shot it off.”

  “Damn! You almost gave me a heart attack,” Smith shouted loudly in reply, staring at the ceiling as he regained his feet. “Did you find it?”

  “Not yet. Give me a minute or two.”

  Dolan now stood up from behind the desk. “The file cabinet is lock too.”

  I could see Dolan taking aim at what I assumed was the lock on the file cabinet.

  “Stop!” cried Hograve. “I have the key.”

  The terrified innkeeper fiddled with the keychain that was hooked onto his belt and cautiously brought the dozen or so keys to Dolan.

  Williams called from upstairs. “No, it’s not here. But I now know where the Sheriff gets his outfits from.”

  “That old lady's room was next to Foley’s,” Smith yelled back. “Give a thorough look-see in her room on the off chance that the — ” the head thug caught himself in time before he actually said what the object of the search was. “ That what we are looking for may have found its way in there. Then go through Foley’s room again. But make it quick. We are running out of time.”

  “Send up another pair of eyes, and it will go quicker,” shouted Williams.

  Smith paused, then turned in our direction, and focused on Morgana and me. “Do you think that you can separate yourself from your patient?” Smith asked in a manner that would send a chill even down an Eskimo’s back.

  Morgana looked down at me and stammered, “I don't think I should leave.”

  “You’re not leaving, my deary, he is. You, Mr. Sleepy Head, get up.” Smith aimed his gun a mere inch or two from Morgana’s head.

  “He's not fit to move abo
ut,” protested Morgana. “Why just by walking across the room could kill him in his present condition.”

  That gave me pause.

  Morgana held onto me with both her arms. She continued to argue about the inevitable. Smith put the final touches on his request by poking his gun into Morgana’s left temple. “If you don’t want to see your wife with a new part in her hair, get upstairs and help my colleague, now.”

  What could we do? I did what he asked. With a little help from Morgana, I got to my feet and made my way to the staircase.

  “The sheriff’s brother is on his way up to help,” Smith yelled to Williams. “And you needn’t worry about him not cooperating. We have double insurance on him. We have his wife, and he is in no condition to give you any trouble.”

  I was halfway to the stairs when Dolan snarled at me from behind the lobby desk and called to his friend who was waiting upstairs for me. “Don’t forget to strip search the old lady’s body.Your assistant can do it if you are too squeamish.”

  Again, my mouth broke away from the reins of self-restraint. Stupidly, I barked at Dolan, “You bastard. You killed Mrs. Prosper — ”

  “It wasn’t me, old chum,” said Dolan with a self-satisfied grin on his face and raising his gun at me.

  “It was Williams,” called out Bo, “the guy upstairs who is waiting for you.” Her eyes left my gaze and sought comfort from looking at the plank floor beneath her feet. “I saw what happened.”

  Bo's reportage struck me hard and had me wondering about how long was I was unconscious.

  “Move it!” Smith ordered. He quickly grabbed Morgana by her hair and nestled his gun against the top of her head.

  And so I moved up those creaky steps like the condemned approaching the gallows. What else could I do? Surely, my ascent was not as fast as my captors would have liked, but it was definitely faster than I had desired. Still wobbly, I held onto the banister for security, like a child does with his blanket, and made my way up. I had no idea what was in store for me in the dark at the top of the stairs, nor did I want to find out.