An Unhappy Medium

by Dawn Eastman

  No, I had gotten myself into a mess by coming over here alone. I had completely discounted Theo. I was so busy suspecting Tatiana, or Aaron, and so sure that I had her under surveillance that I had been incredibly stupid. If I ever did get out of here, Mac would be absolutely justified in any reaction he chose. Mostly I feared his disappointment. We had been such a great team recently. Except for the fiasco with Roy. How would he ever trust me again even if I did get out of this?

  All of my ruminating had given me extra energy and I finally pulled the nail free with a loud creak and a broken fingernail.

  I went to work on the duct tape. I poked holes along the tape that attached me to the bench and then poked holes between those until I was able to rip free of the bench leg. It happened suddenly and I fell, knocking the bench over with a giant thud. I sat very still, listening. If Theo had heard, he’d be up here in an instant and all my work would be negated.

  I waited through twenty breaths. Then forty. I didn’t hear any footsteps thundering toward me. I awkwardly stood and placed the bench gently back on its feet. I sat and began working on cutting my ankles apart the same way I had just cut through the other tape. It was laborious and I think he had wrapped it at least three more times than he’d used to tie me to the bench, because it took a long time to make each hole. My fingers were slick with sweat and the nail kept slipping.

  Finally, I pulled the tape off my ankles. I tried to stand, but my feet had the pins and needles of inactivity and odd positioning. I rubbed the feeling back into my ankles and feet and listened again for any sound from downstairs.

  I stood carefully and waited for the tingling to pass. There was one small window in the attic with a broken windowpane. That must be the bat family’s front door. I stood on tiptoe and rubbed the grime off the glass to look out.

  The window faced the backyard, which was surrounded by a high privacy fence. I would have to stand on the bench to see if there was a ledge, or a gutter to use to get to the roof of the back sunporch. What I did know was that the ground was very far away. Just thinking about it made me dizzy.

  It wouldn’t be safe to try to escape through the house. I was pretty sure Theo and Tatiana were still there, probably plotting my demise. If I were a criminal, I wouldn’t leave the house with a hostage inside. The only way out was through the window.

  I picked up the bench and placed it carefully under the window. I stepped up onto it and peeked out the window again. There was a small ledge there and I might be able to get to the rain gutter by edging along the narrow overhang. The point of the roof appeared to be about ten feet below the window. I’d have to hang from the gutter and drop onto the steeply pitched roof of the porch. If I didn’t fall off at that point, I’d have to figure out how to climb the rest of the way down without slipping or raising the alarm.

  I looked at my watch again. Three hours since I had seen Mac. They must have come home by now. Were they already looking for me? Had they texted and Theo responded, so they thought I was safe and on an innocuous errand? I didn’t have time to wait to be rescued, I would have to pull myself together and climb onto the roof. The last time I had been up this high I had almost passed out from the panic that set in. I’d keep my eyes straight ahead. I would not look down.

  I wrestled with the latch and, with a loud protest, it unlocked the window. The sash was stuck. I pushed and prodded, but didn’t want to pound on it or make any noise. I climbed down and searched for a cloth. I’d have to break the glass and climb out through the small and ragged frame.

  I didn’t see a cloth, but I did find a heavy vase in a box of old junk. I tapped on the glass, thinking it would be less noisy. I managed to crack the glass and then I slipped out of my T-shirt and wrapped my hand in the cloth to clear the shards. I repeated the process with the three remaining panes. Finally, in an all-or-nothing gesture, I swung the vase at the remaining slats. The wood splintered and cracked and I began breaking off the rest of it to make an opening big enough to crawl through. I heard thundering steps from below. Theo shouted something.

  I used the vase again to clear the rest of the frame, pulled my shirt back over my head, and tried to hoist my foot up onto the sill. No good—the window was too high. I heard Theo on the landing just below the trapdoor.

  “Theo, stop,” Tatiana said. “What are you going to do?”

  “She’s up to something,” he said. “You heard the crash.”

  I didn’t have any more time.

  “She lives with a policeman,” Tatiana said. “Don’t hurt her.”

  I heard the squeak of the ladder unfolding.

  “I can handle it,” he said.

  I jumped up and wiggled the front of my torso onto the sill. I looked down even though I had promised myself I wouldn’t. I am eminently untrustable. It was so far down that I’d have to be much more agile and much less dizzy from the height to avoid breaking my neck. I decided to face Theo and see if I could talk him down. I tried to pull myself back into the attic, but I was stuck. Like Winnie-the-Pooh in the stories I used to read to Seth and Sophie, half of me was in and half was out.

  I waited for the worst. What was taking Theo so long? I figured he’d have dragged me back inside by now. Then I heard the most wonderful sound in the world. Sirens. And there were flashing lights in the street below. I twisted to try to look behind me. I heard shouting and a loud thump through the open trapdoor.

  “Clyde!” Mac shouted.

  “I’m here!”

  I felt hands on my hips, lifting me back into the room. I felt the bench beneath my feet and turned to hug Mac. I had never been so glad to see him.

  37

  Safe at home, I sat on the couch with Baxter’s large head pushing down on my legs as if he was trying to keep me from going anywhere. Diana and Alex had come over immediately after I called them to say I was safe. My family arrived with food and questions.

  Mom and Vi bustled through the living room passing out cookies, tea, and lemonade. Mac was still across the street giving a statement to the police. They had agreed to let me come to the station later that afternoon.

  When Mac had seen me, covered in dust, with bleeding fingers, red welts on my face from the duct tape, and my shirt inside out, he’d ushered me quickly out of the house. I’d heard Tatiana explaining she knew nothing about me being in the attic until Mac had broken down the front door. Theo cast a menacing look at me from between two police officers, but he wasn’t speaking at all.

  The front door opened and Mac stepped through and closed it behind him.

  “Well,” Vi said, “what’s the news?”

  “They’re taking Theo and Tatiana in for questioning.” Mac started to push Baxter out of the way and then decided to squeeze next to me on the other side. He took my hand.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Mac,” Dad said. “Seth won’t tell us a thing.”

  Mac raised his eyebrows at Seth. Seth shrugged and looked at the carpet.

  “Seth, Sophie, and I went to the alpaca farm with my mom,” Mac said. “I got a weird text from Diana asking if Clyde was okay. Seth and I both texted Clyde, but she didn’t answer right away and when she did, it didn’t sound right. By then, we were already on our way home.” Mac held his hand out toward Seth. “You should tell this part.”

  Seth sighed and seemed to shrink into himself. “Baxter was very worked up when we walked in,” Seth said. He glanced at my parents and then at Vi. “I tried to calm him down but he was very clear that we needed to go get Clyde from across the street.”

  Mom gasped and grabbed her amulet.

  “I knew it!” Vi said. “You can hear them. Just like me!”

  Mom wiped a tear off her cheek. “Oh, Seth, we’re so proud of you.”

  Vi crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “So just how long has this been going on?”

  “Vi, let him tell his story and you can interrogate
him later,” I said. I still hadn’t heard how they figured out so quickly that I was across the street.

  “Baxter showed me that he had watched out the window with Clyde for a while in the morning. I saw lots of birds and squirrels, but I knew Clyde was probably not looking at them. Then Baxter said she was across the street and had been most of the morning.”

  I petted Baxter’s head and he looked at me almost as adoringly as Tuffy looked at Seth. Baxter was the hero once again.

  “I didn’t know about Seth’s . . . ability, but I was worried enough about Clyde that I decided to go check,” Mac said. “Tatiana answered the door and she acted so nervous I got very suspicious. So I called Tom and Charla and told them I needed backup because I thought Clyde was being held against her will.”

  “They believed you?” I asked.

  Mac shrugged. “They didn’t even question it.”

  Mac gave my family a sterilized version of finding me in the attic, leaving out the fight with Theo at the base of the ladder and the fact that I was stuck in the window. For my mother’s sake, he also left out any mention of bats.

  My parents and Vi lingered for about an hour more, mostly questioning Seth on his abilities. Alex and Diana left, promising to return later with dinner.

  Charla called Mac to fill him in. Tatiana was talking nonstop and Theo had not said a word. Fortunately, he’d told Tatiana enough that they were able to piece together the story.

  Derek and Theo had been friends since grade school, with Theo acting as the sidekick to Derek’s exploits. Derek thought nothing of stealing girlfriends, taking credit for Theo’s successes, and generally walking all over him. Why Theo put up with it was a mystery. But, once Derek left town, Theo was able to start his own very successful career with Vaughn Jewelry. He wove himself into the Vaughn family and felt as if he were another son to Richard.

  Then Derek returned. Theo caught him making a pass at Tatiana during the pre-run party at Tatiana’s store. Theo was not going to let Derek take anything else away from him, so he lured Derek into the woods and stabbed him. Mac said that he might have been able to claim a crime of passion except for the fact that he had stolen the knife from Tatiana’s shop when they all left for the run. When Theo found the diamonds in Derek’s pocket, he remembered Aaron and Derek’s fight at Tatiana’s shop. Theo decided to try to frame Aaron by hiding the diamonds in his son’s cubby and in his office. Hiring me to find the diamonds had been Theo’s idea. He hoped I would tell the police and implicate Aaron in the theft and the murder.

  “But what about the mobsters?” Sophie asked. “Are they still going to follow us around?”

  “They’ve left town already, Sophie,” Mac said. “They were also after the diamonds. Derek had promised to turn them over at the zombie run, but Theo got to him first. They didn’t know who had killed Derek, so they were keeping an eye on anyone they thought might be involved.”

  “How did you find all that out?” I asked.

  “I ran into them in town and we had a nice, quiet conversation,” Mac said.

  “So who left that ‘threat’ on the car for Grace and Paul?” Mom asked.

  Mac smiled. “That was Tatiana. She got tired of hearing Theo talk about how wonderful Grace was and how close they had been.”

  “Does that mean Mom and Dad can come back?” Seth asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Your parents were worried even before those guys showed up, and they had obviously been planning their disappearance for a long time. I’m not sure how long they will be gone, but you and Sophie will be safe here with Mac and me.”

  “Do you think we can find Miranda and let her know?” Sophie asked. “She’ll be worried about me if I don’t come back.”

  “I already have somebody working on that,” Mac said. “We’ll find her and you can talk to her on the phone.”

  Sophie wiped her cheek and smiled at Mac.

  38

  A few days later, Vi and I sat in our new shop. I read the Grand Rapids newspaper report about Derek’s death while Vi pounded on a calculator and muttered to herself.

  We had just swept out the last bit of fringe that had been left behind by Tatiana. She’d left town shortly after being released by the police. If I had liked her more, I would have told her that her new notoriety would only help the business. As it was, I was glad to see her go.

  The Vaughns had paid the finder’s fee on all thirty of the diamonds. I admitted to Aaron that I had seen him sneak into Tatiana’s house and had followed him. He’d been there at her request; she’d asked him to appraise some of her jewelry. She said she had wanted to sell some of it and trade in her car, but didn’t want Theo to know. She claimed Theo was overprotective and would have tried to buy her a car on his own. He had stopped at the animal shelter to drop off some food and other items for the dogs. It turned out Aaron never would have found the small velvet bag hidden in his office.

  With their money, Vi and I were able to rent the small shop next to Diana that Tatiana had vacated. I was surprised at how thrilled I was to see our sign go up out front: FORTUNE SEEKERS.

  Sophie had started school and by the second day had met her best friend. I only hoped for her sake that it would work out as well for her as it had for me when I met Diana.

  Vi slid her glasses off and let them hang from their beaded chain. She pushed her old-fashioned ledger away and sat back in her chair.

  “We’re in the black and can even afford some new furniture and a small advertising campaign,” she said. “How about we get Seth to paint the walls light gray and we buy a plum-colored velvet couch for the front? Your mom can make us some bright pink and orange throw pillows.”

  I was only half listening because someone had just slipped a letter through the mail slot. The mail never came so early in the day. I got up from my desk chair and bent to pick up the envelope.

  It was addressed to me. There was no stamp or postmark and no return address. I slit the top open with my thumb and pulled out the folded, yellowed piece of paper.

  My hand shook as I unfolded it.

  A childish rendering of the Eiffel Tower had been drawn on light blue construction paper. It was fragile and had already ripped at the creases. White fluffy clouds and a smiling sun filled the sky. I had drawn this for Grace when I was about Sophie’s age. I couldn’t believe she had kept it all these years. It could only be from her.

  I turned the paper over and read the message.

  Thank you.

  It was unsigned.

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