by Anna Castle
Goose bumps rose on the back of my neck. I grabbed the baseball bat I keep under the bed and crept down the hall. I felt like an idiot, but I also felt afraid. Electric afraid, like a fear stick had been applied to my spine.
My room is at the back of the house. The first door on the left in the hall is my bathroom. I checked behind the shower curtain and inside the cupboard, in case the intruder was a dwarf.
Empty.
I proceeded down the hall to the middle bedroom and reached quickly inside the door to flip on the light. Nobody lurked among the stacks of antiques. The bedroom at the front of the house had been Gertie’s room. I banged the door open and switched on the light, stepping briskly forward, ready to swing my bat.
Nothing. No burglars in striped shirts with bags marked Swag; no vampires with dripping fangs. Just a dresser and a bed with a white chenille spread. The closet was uninhabited.
I marched through to the bathroom. The faster I moved, the braver I felt. Rose pink tile on walls and floor; rose pink tub; rose pink toilet and sink. This room always overdosed my sensory system, leaving a pink tinge in my peripheral vision. I was beginning to feel more foolish than fearful. But calmer. Better silly than sorry.
I finished my tour of the house, turning on all the lights as I went. The back door was unlocked. I knew I hadn’t left that open. So somebody had been in here, but they were definitely gone and they hadn’t taken anything. Things looked normal.
Then I noticed that every single one of my CDs was gone.
* * *
The first thing I do when I get to the studio in the morning is make a big pot of coffee. This morning, when I went to fill the carafe at the sink, I found shards of broken glass glinting around the taps. And smack in the middle of my antique porcelain sink was a pair of big muddy footprints. The window pane above the lock had been broken. The burglar had thoughtfully closed the window after climbing in, or back out. One of the prints faced the window.
The footprints bothered me more than the glass. Which is stupid, because glass can cut you and footprints are harmless. But footprints are personal. Glass can be broken by baseballs. Prints can only be left by humans. Now I understood why Greg had been so bent out of shape by the footprints in his sink.
Wait: was that empathy? No empathy for Greg Alexander! Not one drop. Then a bigger thought burst over my scolding like a clap of thunder: my cameras!
I banged through the swinging door into the studio, barely registering the papers and plastic jewel cases strewn across the work table. The door to the storage closet hung open. They’d broken in by the simple trick of unscrewing the latch holding the padlock. I lunged into the closet, eyes darting to the shelf at shoulder level on the left. A cry of relief rushed out of my body, knocking me to my knees. My cameras were all there, all safe. I laid a hand on each one to reassure myself.
They could trash my reputation and burn down my house; as long as I had a camera, I could still be me.
Chapter 33
Tillie and Krystle showed up soon after and helped me clean up the kitchen. They were gratifyingly wigged-out by my dual break-ins. In fact, Tillie was so upset it calmed me all the way down. We were like two ends of an emotional teeter-totter.
We debated whether or not to call the police long enough for me to remember that I had a thousand-dollar deductible on my insurance and far less than a thousand dollars’ worth of removable media. I usually downloaded my software and I backed up my photographs in an online vault and on a hard disk hidden in the linen cupboard at the house. Calling the sheriff would only drag my name back into the middle of whatever they were doing. Krystle said half the county cars were parked outside Greg’s office when she passed it on her way to my place.
Tillie restored the strewn papers while Krystle and I found a scrap of plywood and nailed it over the broken window. Then we figured out how to put a door back on its hinges, which made us feel very proud and capable. Then we made a pot of coffee, got the leftover crumb cake out of the fridge, and gathered around the worktable.
“So, where are we?” I asked my stalwart team. “Do we have anything useful?”
My team shook their heads. Tillie added regretful lip-pursing. Krystle said, “I’ve got those DVDs from Greg’s house, but that’s it.”
“Unless you count knowing half the town is out looking for those files,” Tillie said. “Some people must be really desperate, you know, to break into someone else’s house?”
Krystle and I looked at her with pursed lips.
“We’ve learned a little,” I said. “We know those veterinarians were being blackmailed.”
“The Garricks,” Tillie said. “I don’t know them. They’ve only been here five or ten years. Fake breeding certificates? Is that worth a lot of money?”
I shrugged. Krystle said, “If it’d been bulls instead of dogs, it would’ve been worth a mint. And worth killing for. But dogs, I don’t know. And they sure didn’t sound like people who had just murdered someone, did they?”
“Not at all,” I said. “They were more into blaming each other than anything else. But what does a murderer sound like?”
“I think they laugh a lot,” Krystle said. “Like this.” She treated us to a wicked villain cackle. We were mildly amused, which she took as a fair response. “I can’t believe those files weren’t in his house. They must be on his computers at the office then, in which case the sheriff’s going to find them.”
“And they’ll be all over town the next day,” Tillie said. She sounded a shade too eager.
I drummed my fingers on the table. “I know where the backup copies are.”
“What!” They both gaped at me. Krystle said, “Why did we spend an hour in Greg’s freezing empty house last night if you knew where they were?”
I made an apologetic face. “I know where, or I think I do, but I don’t know how to get at them.” I told them about Greg’s online storage site and how I had logged in to one specific folder to upload the yearbook scans. “But I couldn’t move out of that folder or see any other files.”
“That must be his regular backup storage site,” Tillie said. “Don’t you have any ideas about his password?”
“None.” I told them about my many attempts to get in and about almost asking the interface to email me a link to look up my username.
“We still can’t do that,” Krystle said. “The cops must have somebody looking at his email and his phone records. I think it’s standard procedure.”
Tillie and I shrugged. She bit her lip and shot a glance at me. “Could Ty figure it out?”
“In a minute, probably,” I said. “Or one of his wicked little hackers could. Practically criminals, some of them, he told me, which is why he hires them.”
“So, call him,” Krystle said. “What’s the obstacle?”
I grimaced. “The obstacle is that he’s in mega-crunch mode at work. They have this major, major demo for these gigantic moguls next week. This is the worst possible time for him to have to deal with a relationship crisis.”
Tillie and Krystle grimaced back at me, sharing my quandary. “Still, a crisis,” Krystle said. “If you could schedule them, they wouldn’t be crisises. I think you should call.” She looked at Tillie, who shrugged again.
“I have called,” I said. “Twice. All I get is voicemail and he hasn’t called me back yet.”
This time I got solid frowns. Tillie asked, “Haven’t you spoken to him since Sunday?”
I shook my head. “Normally, he would call after he got home, but since we’d just had our little blow-up, I wasn’t expecting it. Then Monday, I figured he was up to his eyebrows in craziness at work. He said he wouldn’t be able to do anything until Tuesday and it’s only Tuesday morning, so…” I held up my hands in the what do I know pose.
“Do y’all usually talk every day?” Krystle asked.
Another head shake. “Not every every day. Most days. We’re neither of us quite ready to move on to the obligatory daily call stage.”
They both nodded. “That’s a stage, all right,” Krystle said.
“Y’all’ve only been together six weeks,” Tillie said.
“And only weekends at that,” I pointed out. They chorused supportive things like, Oh, well then; That’s nothing; You’re barely past the first-date level.
I appreciated the reality check and the support talk. This is why we have friends. I drummed my fingers some more and then took my phone out of my pocket. “What the hey,” I said, and tapped #4. Ty ranked after my parents and siblings on the speed dial list. Voicemail again. I didn’t leave a message. “That’s a bit worrisome,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
“Not even,” Tillie said. “He probably left his phone in his jacket pocket and left the jacket in the closet. Ben does that all the time. It drives me crazy!”
“Me, too,” I said, “now that you mention it. I mean I do it, too, and that also drives you crazy.” We grinned at each other. “And sometimes I set it on Vibrate Only when I have a client and forget to set it back.”
“One mystery solved,” Krystle said. “But we’re still stuck on Mystery Number One. What are we going to do about the files?”
“We need a plan,” I said. “Something better than sitting around waiting for other people to come tell us what to do.” I could not spend another day scanning or doing chores with the Sword of Damocles hanging over me. I would rather climb up and take the dang sword down.
“We should at least tell people you don’t have those files,” Tillie said, “so they’ll stop breaking into your places.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “Plus, I hate thinking everybody thinks I’m murderer. That is so not the image I’m trying to project in my new hometown.”
“We could make some flyers,” Tillie said.
“Ha!” Krystle stabbed a finger at me. “What did I tell you?”
I slumped in surrender. “Fine, we’ll make flyers.” I couldn’t resist a unified front. “But we can’t just go around the county handing out a flyer with my story on it. For one thing, it would take all week.”
“We don’t have to ask everybody,” Tillie said. “Just the ones who subscribe to Mariposa Internet Services.”
Krystle’s eyes popped open and she gave a little shriek, the merest echo of last night’s super-scream. “I have the list!” She hopped up, grabbed her backpack, and sat back down in one whirling motion. She burrowed inside the bag, came up with a wrinkled sheaf of paper, and waved it at us. “Ta-da!”
“I forgot all about that,” I said.
“Let’s see it.” Tillie started reading down the list with intention. She probably knew the life history of each person and was calculating what sorts of secrets they might have. “Is everybody on here being blackmailed? Even Mrs. Carroll? She’s like a hundred years old.”
“Maybe she has a hundred-year-old secret,” I said.
“We can probably rule out Mrs. Carroll,” Krystle said. “But everyone who participated in last night’s break-in festival must be on there.”
“We have flyers, or we soon will, and we have a list of people to give them to. Good work, team!” Ty had once told me praise was an important management tool. Unfortunately, the minute we solved one problem, another popped up. “Um, one small thing: What are we going to say when we knock on these people’s doors?”
That stumped us. We fell silent while we thought about it. I rolled bits of crumb cake into little balls on my napkin while I worked through the consequences of Greg’s death. Me being the only known suspect for his murder topped the list. Everybody being free of future blackmail demands ran a close second. Third, Lost Hat was now minus one Internet service provider. We’d all have to switch to dial-up; not a happy prospect.
Then an idea leapt into my brain like a twenty-pound pompano. “I’ve got it! With Greg gone, half the town will be bumped off the web. That’s a major calamity.”
Tillie gasped. “Ben will have a fit! He’s totally hooked on streaming episodes of Revolution.” She shrugged. “He works at the electric co-op.”
“I agree about the calamity,” Krystle said. “It’s major. But how does that help us?”
“It gives us an excuse to knock on people’s doors,” I said. “We can say we’re collecting signatures on a petition to the mayor or whoever to keep a local service in Long County, instead of forcing us into the arms of faceless corporate dial-up providers.”
Krystle laughed. “I like the faceless part. Very scary.”
“It sounds very citizenly,” Tillie said. “People will totally go for it. Besides, those other companies’ rates are terrible,” Tillie said. “And they raise them every year. Greg was reasonable, apart from the blackmailing. I’ll sign that petition even if it is just an excuse to knock on doors.”
“I’ll bet everyone who wasn’t being blackmailed will sign,” I said.
“But the ones who were will look at us like we’re crazy,” Krystle said, “which will tell us who they are at a glance. The last thing we victims want is another person who knows us handling our email.”
“Exactly!” I liked this idea better every minute. “And we can ask the ones who don’t sign if they have any specific complaints or suggestions. Like—” I broke off with a fiendish cackle. “Like, if perhaps they ever received any communications from Greg that they considered inappropriate in any way.”
Krystle and Tillie laughed, somewhat fiendishly. Tillie even applauded. “We might find some more allies, too,” Tillie said. “Someone whose secret isn’t too bad to tell the sheriff about, to support Penny’s story.” She shot a sidelong look at Krystle.
“I’m not telling,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
It’s OK.” I waved my hands. “No pressure. But Tillie’s right. There’s bound to be more in the lightweight division, like me. Even a couple more would help. And it’s better than doing nothing.”
“Anything’s better than doing nothing,” Krystle said. “I took the day off work.”
Chapter 34
“What do you think about this?” Tillie showed us a sheet of paper that said, Hi! I’m Penelope Trigg across the top with a clip-art camera at the end of the line. Then, in a large bold font, it said, I don’t have Greg’s list and I don’t know where it is.
The flyer went on to explain that while I had been present when Greg died, I had not killed him. I had no need to kill him, because I had confessed my secret and was thus free of the blackmail. Then came a note in a flowery font explaining that my secret would stay just as secret as everybody else’s because fair was fair. She put a string of oversized question marks at the part about me not knowing where the list was and a cute, friendly clip-art puppy at the end.
“Wow,” I said.
“Excellent,” Krystle said. “Make a hundred.”
Time to get our investigation rolling. Tillie printed up the flyers and stuffed them into a manila envelope. We filled a backpack with bottles of water and piled into the cab of my truck. “Where to?” I started the engine.
“Top of the list is Rolf Ahlstad,” Krystle said.
She and Tillie gave me directions that only occasionally conflicted. We soon found ourselves rattling up a narrow gravel road ending in a well-raked circle in front of a white house. The screens and shutters were painted medium blue; the same color picked out the details of the trim around the front porch.
“This place looks deserted,” Krystle said.
Most homes in rural Texas have at least one pickup truck parked somewhere outside the house. A ranch truck: the unlicensed beater you use to drive around on your own property. This yard held not so much as a tricycle. No tools leaned against the porch, no barrels of this or bales of that stood around the yard. The place looked like it had been squared away for a long absence.
We crunched across the gravel circle and clopped up the steps to the front porch. We sounded like an army. The entrance to this guy’s house seemed to have been designed for maximum noise production. We found a note taped to t
he screen door. Please leave deliveries on the porch. Thank you. Rolf. Another note was folded in half to keep nosy people like us from reading it. The name Oscar was neatly printed across it.
Krystle removed it from the door without tearing the tape and read, “If you come by before I get back from Florida, your tiller is in the barn. Help yourself.”
“I wonder how long he’s been gone,” I said.
We looked around. Oak leaves had drifted onto the porch, pooling around a cardboard box pushed up against the house.
“If Rolf’s been out of town, he’s off the hook for Greg’s murder,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if he was being blackmailed or not.”
“I kind of think he might have been,” Tillie said. She turned the box to show us the label: Victoria’s Secret.
Krystle and I went, “Ha!” simultaneously.
“Do they make clothes for men?” I asked.
“Pretty sure they don’t,” Krystle said, in a suppressed-giggle voice.
“Maybe they’re for his girlfriend?”
“I don’t think he has a girlfriend,” Tillie said. “He’s kind of a loner. He lives alone because his wife died ten years ago and his kids have moved to Dallas. He’s really shy and he doesn’t belong to any clubs or anything except the Pecan Growers’ Association.”
Krystle gaped at her, impressed. “You’re like a database, only cuter. I’m glad you’re on the team.” She didn’t know Tillie like I knew Tillie.
Tillie ducked her head to hide the predictable blush. Then she examined the label more closely. “This was delivered by UPS on Monday.”
“So he was definitely not here,” I said. “We can cross him off the list. Besides, what a man wears under his overalls is nobody’s business but his own.”
We struggled with our inner ten-year-olds and almost won. When the giggling died down, we debated whether or not to leave him a flyer and decided against. Let him think his secret remained safely between him and Victoria.