If Onions Could Spring Leeks

by Paige Shelton

  “Hi!” I waved and smiled and then moved along quickly. She seemed okay with the fly-by greeting.

  The barn was old, and had once housed real horses and real buggies that some of the town’s residents had owned, sharing the space and the responsibilities for caring for the animals and the equipment. Jake had explained to me that it had been a unique operation and, according to some records that he’d found, had worked well for about a decade, after which some less-than-enthusiastic participants let things slip too much, so everyone had to go back to caring for only their own horses. The barn had been reinforced over the years and used to store different items. Just when it was about to be torn down for good, Roy jumped in and said he’d fix whatever needed fixing so he could use it for the Triggers.

  The town council had approved, and since it was technically on Bunny’s property she gave her okay, too. Roy had reinforced the structure of the building, and it looked okay, from a distance at least. It was still pretty old.

  The front double doors of the barn could be opened wide, wide enough to allow the Triggers to travel through. The doors were typically swung open because the barn had also become a tourist attraction, bringing a few curious people around Bunny’s as well as down the paths in between the boardwalk buildings to see the goings-on inside. Roy had been a welcoming figure and he’d found a new small bit of fame with his summer role this year.

  But at the moment the doors were closed. A couple reasons for this occurred to me. Maybe Roy had gotten hung up somewhere and hadn’t made it to the barn yet, or maybe he was working on some top-secret addition for the Triggers and he didn’t want to be bothered by curious tourists.

  I pulled on the right door. No, pull was too delicate a word; I heaved the heavy right door open, using both hands and stepping backwards as I moved.

  “Roy?” I called as I walked inside.

  The barn was jam-packed. The three Trigger wagons fit snuggly next to one another, and there were pieces of equipment and worktables everywhere else. A number of coiled ropes hung from long nails that had been pounded into the wood-planked walls. The ropes had been there when Roy took over the barn. I asked him why he hadn’t removed them, but he said there was some Broken Rope superstition about removing those particular ropes from their resting places. I’d never heard the superstition, but I was all for not messing with juju.

  “Roy?” I called again.

  Still no answer. Evidently, he hadn’t arrived yet. But I’d seen him ready the Triggers enough times to know what I needed to do.

  I stepped carefully around the machine at the end, which was Trigger One and the one I drove, and threw my bag into the space below the driver’s side of the bench seat. The machines had brakes, but Roy always placed bricks on each side of the wheels when they were parked. I had a faint memory of him working on some brakes recently, but I couldn’t remember which Trigger had been involved or why. Everything looked fine so I picked up the first two bricks and carried them to a small table against the wall. I did the same with the next two bricks, but when I went back toward Trigger One to pull the bricks from another wheel, I stopped in my tracks. I was frozen solid, just like I’d heard happened to people when they came upon something that wasn’t quite right. The scene before me was not only not right, it was horrifying and sickening.

  After I unfroze myself, I hurried to the body on the ground. I had no thoughts of protecting evidence. I was merely trying to help the person who I quickly determined was beyond help.

  “Derek!” I said as I tried without much success to roll his big body over.

  “Derek!” I said again, but he still didn’t answer.

  There was no mistaking the vacant look in his eyes. He was dead. The side, top, and back of his head were covered in blood, but I couldn’t see any specific wound through all the mess.

  I was about to exclaim his name again, though I understood that he wasn’t going to answer, when stars suddenly circled in front of my own eyes. A second later I realized there was pain to go with the stars. Someone had hit me on the back of my head. Before I passed out, thinking I was headed toward my own death, I managed to do two things: I eliminated Derek from the list of people who might have hit me, and I wondered if I’d maybe see Jerome after I died.

  Chapter 5

  “Isabelle, wake up,” the voice said. It was Jerome’s voice, I was pretty sure.

  “So death’s not all that terrible, then,” I muttered as I tried to lift my eyelids. “Did someone tape these?” I said as I put my fingers on the immovable lids.

  “You’re not dead,” Jerome’s voice said quietly in one ear.

  “Hey, Betts, you’re not dead,” another voice said in the other ear. I was pretty sure this one belonged to Cliff. “You were hit on the head, but you’re going to be okay. Your eyelids are heavy, but they’ll open.”

  I gritted my teeth and willed my eyes to open. It took a second to focus away the fuzzies, but another few seconds later I saw Cliff looking down at me. Only Cliff. The backdrop behind him was made up of ugly fluorescent lights and a white panel ceiling.

  “Oh, hi,” I said as I now blinked double-time.

  “Hi,” he said with a worried but relieved smile.

  “I was hit on the head?” I said as I reached for it and tried to sit up. I was on an exam table, but the back had been raised so that I wasn’t all the way flat. “Oh my, that hurts.” I melted back down.

  “Rest, Betts. You’re going to be fine. No concussion even. You’ll be good as new in no time at all, but you need to take it easy for a day or two,” Cliff said.

  “Where am I?” I said as I looked around the room, quickly realizing I’d been in it before, or at least one very similar to it.

  “You’re in Dr. Callahan’s office. We were going to transport you to a hospital in either Springfield or St. Louis, but you were awake earlier. Doc did a CT scan and your noggin looks okay.”

  “I don’t remember being awake earlier. What day is it? When did this happen? How long have I been out?”

  “It happened just this morning, only about an hour and a half ago. You were conscious when Roy found you, but you were woozy. You were given a sedative when you got here so that might have messed with your memory. Dr. Callahan made sure there was no bleeding in there, no fractures either.”

  Either the sedative was dissipating or I was recovering rapidly now. The moments before I’d been hit came back to me in a giant wave of memory.

  “Derek—I found Derek. Cliff, Derek!” I sat up again even though the movement didn’t seem much easier.

  Cliff nodded. “I know. Roy found him, too. He was in lots worse shape.”

  “He was dead?”

  “Yes, Betts. Hit over the head with a blunt instrument, more than once, and he didn’t fare as well as you did. He was dead.”

  “Oh no, that’s terrible. Did you or Roy catch whoever did this to him—and probably the same person who did this to me?”

  “No, Betts. Roy found only you and Derek,” Cliff said. He swallowed hard.

  I sat up even straighter, hopefully indicating that I was going to be all right.

  “That’s terrible, Cliff. Poor Derek, and poor Lynn. I’m sure she’s a mess,” I said. One of my eyes wanted to close from the surges of pain with every beat of my pulse, but I willed it to stay open just so Cliff was assured that they wouldn’t just close forever.

  I did not see Jerome in the room. I didn’t smell him. But I was certain I heard his voice in my head.

  “Isabelle, you’re trying too hard. You’re only going to give yourself a whopper of a headache. Just rest. You’re going to be fine by tomorrow. Cliff knows that. I’m trying to get to you. I’ll be there when I can.”

  This was new. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the bump on the head was causing auditory hallucinations. I didn’t acknowledge Jerome’s voice, but his words didn’t quite fit. If Cliff kne
w I was going to be okay, why did his face say differently?

  I inspected Cliff closer just to see if it was maybe my vision, maybe the eye that so desperately wanted to close was not seeing correctly. But no, something else wasn’t right.

  “Cliff, what is it? Am I worse off than you want to tell me?”

  “No, not at all, Betts. You’re going to be fine.” Cliff forced a semi-comforting smile.

  “Darlin’, you’ve been muttering my name. That might be what’s bothering him. I have to go. I’ll get there, Isabelle, or I’ll die again trying.” Jerome’s voice faded.

  “Derek was killed, murdered?” I repeated. Of course, I couldn’t respond to Jerome’s disembodied comment.

  “Yes,” Cliff said, turning on his professional side again. “Any chance you saw anything or anyone? Can you remember going into the barn?”

  “Yes, now I can. Clearly, in fact. But I didn’t really see anything. I was surprised that Roy wasn’t there yet, but I thought I could get the Trigger ready without him.” I paused as the scene played in my mind. “My bag. I remember putting it in the front of the Trigger.”

  “No,” Cliff said, “actually, it was on the ground beside you. It’s right here. Your cell phone was in your pants’ pocket.” He reached to a chair behind him against the wall, grabbing my backpack and phone and then handing them to me. “Can you look in your backpack right now? Is there any chance something was taken? If so, that might help us understand motive. Theft, maybe? It’s not much, but it might be something.”

  I ignored the pain in my head. I left the phone on the exam table beside my leg and opened the bag. I didn’t carry all that much with me, so it was easy to take a quick inventory. Brush, elastics for my hair when it had enough of battling the humidity, ChapStick, grocery list for Gram, sunglasses, and my wallet. The twenty-three dollars I remembered having was still there along with a small assortment of change. I had two credit cards and one debit card; all were present and accounted for. My driver’s license—check. Same with my library card.

  There was only one more thing to find. The coin, the one from Jerome’s hidden treasure that I’d been carrying around with me. I’d been keeping it in a pants pocket until a couple months earlier when I thought that tucking it away in my wallet was a better idea. I’d put it into a slot that would normally hold a credit card.

  It was there, but I tried not to look too relieved.

  “Nothing is missing,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Cliff said. “You definitely remember putting the bag into the Trigger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind if I take it? There’s a chance there’s some evidence on it. It’s been touched by a few people since then, but it’s worth a look.”

  “No problem.” I handed him the bag. “No one else is hurt? How’s Roy?”

  “Shook up. Worried about you. Jim’s shut down the Trigger operation until we get things figured out.” Jim was Broken Rope’s police chief.

  “That makes sense. I’ll let Roy know I’m okay. He wasn’t there when I got there. I thought he would be.” It didn’t occur to me that I might be shining the light of suspicion on Roy with that statement, but not surprisingly, Cliff was ahead of me.

  “Right. He had to run some errands. We’re looking into it.”

  “Roy couldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Let’s hope not. What else can I get for you?” Cliff asked.

  “I’d like to go home,” I said. “I just have a headache. I’m fine.”

  As if on cue, the door swung open and a small woman in bright blue scrubs entered. She pulled a small boxy machine on wheels along with her.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  It didn’t sound like a question, but I said, “Yes, I’m feeling okay.”

  “Good. I’m here to check your vitals. Dr. C. should be in shortly.”

  She rolled the machine around Cliff, who then moved to the corner of the small space. I didn’t know her, but I thought I’d seen her around Broken Rope. She must have been somewhere in her mid-to-late forties, petite, with a curly, short brown ponytail and small brown eyes that matched her hair color. Her mouth was pinched tightly, which made me think she was concentrating hard on checking my blood pressure. But at second glance, there was something else. She seemed upset.

  “I’m Betts,” I said, surprisingly curious as to why the nurse had red-rimmed eyes.

  “I know.” She looked at me briefly but didn’t smile.

  “What’s your name? I know I’ve seen you around Broken Rope.”

  “I’m Ridley.” The monitor beeped. She looked at the display on the front and then wrote something, presumably the numbers, on a small pad of paper she carried in her pocket. “Your vitals are perfect. I expect you’ll get to go soon.”

  “That’s good,” I said as the exhaustion I wanted to fight seemed to dig in against me. I was suddenly tired enough not to care about pursuing the reason the nurse was upset. I slunked down and relaxed my head back on the exam table. If my vitals were fine I didn’t think I needed to fake feeling a hundred percent better anymore.

  “Betts Winston,” Dr. Callahan said as he came into the room, making way in the doorway for the nurse and the machine to exit.

  “Hi, Dr. Callahan,” I said.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I was hit in the head, I suppose.”

  “Imagine that.”

  It was always a little surprising to find him dressed in an official white doctor’s coat. He was more known for his emergency after hours’ attire, a plaid robe. He’d been seen in it so many times, tending to the sick or injured when his office was supposed to be closed and he was supposed to be at home, that it had become somewhat legendary.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “Yes, you will. In fact, you don’t even have a concussion. I thought you must but you got really lucky.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Very good.”

  Dr. Callahan went over what I needed to do to heal and feel better. I thought his idea about getting rest was the best idea ever in the history of all ideas. I was tired.

  As he was wrapping up his instructions, someone peered through the partially open doorway.

  “Hi, Jake,” I said.

  “You’re awake? You’re alive? How are you?” Jake said as he came into the room, too. It was getting very crowded.

  “I’m fine.”

  Jake stepped around Dr. Callahan, acknowledging neither him nor Cliff, and put his hand to my forehead. “No fever.”

  “No, no fever.”

  “Holy smokes, what in the world happened?”

  I stayed out of the conversation as Cliff and Dr. Callahan relayed the story to Jake, and when Dr. Callahan told me I could go whenever I wanted I just nodded. Jake told Cliff that he would see that I got home okay. Cliff didn’t want to leave me, but he knew I was in good hands with Jake and I wanted him to hurry and test my bag for evidence. The flurry of activity finally settled and Jake and I were the only ones left in the room.

  I’d swung my legs around so that they were dangling over the side of the exam table. I was sitting fully upright and I wasn’t woozy. I did have strange, multi-directional shooting pains in my head and I was still tired, but had continued to feel better with each passing minute.

  Jake held onto my arm as I stood.

  I remembered that I was planning on finding Jake after my Trigger shift. Now seemed as good a time as any to talk to him. “Hey, I was going to come find you this afternoon. Gram and I have something we’re dealing with.”

  “Ghostly?”

  “Yes, two of them.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Do you know about a Broken Rope resident named Robert Findlay?”

  Jake smiled. “The man who spent every day of the last ten years of
his life at the Broken Rope train station waiting for the woman he had loved to arrive? Yes, I might have heard of him.”

  “I met him. And the woman he was waiting for.”

  Jake’s face lit with a huge smile. “They found each other in death?”

  “No, not quite.”

  We left the doctor’s office and Jake deposited me into the passenger seat of his VW Bug. As we headed toward my small neighborhood, I told him about meeting the two ghosts, about their respective stories and the different stations, and about Gram’s nightmares. He listened with the same focused interest that he gave all the ghost stories.

  “It’s so tragic,” Jake said. “The passed-down story doesn’t mention who Robert’s love was. Over time, she lost her identity or it had taken on so many versions that she became a footnote to the story, perhaps even a figment of Robert’s imagination. He lost his mind, of course, or at least that’s the story. Grief, frustration, just not knowing what happened to her must have been awful.”

  “I didn’t get the impression that he’d lost his mind, but maybe that’s not the version of him I met. I also didn’t know he’d spent so much time waiting for her. Ten years? Wow, that’s a long time.” I squinted and wished for the sunglasses in my bag. Jake noticed and handed me some from the side pocket in his door. They provided immediate relief. “I think we have two places to start. We need to figure out where Grace was, which station. That might tell us a lot, maybe where she was killed. Gram’s convinced she could describe the killers—well somebody’s killers—at this point. It’s worth a shot.”

  “You sound good. You must be feeling okay?”

  “The sunglasses helped.”

  “Keep them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Right down there?” He nodded toward the field as we pulled onto my street.

  “Yep, that’s where I saw them.”