Wicked is the night

by Catherine Mulvany

  “It’s not my property,” she said. “I just work for the owner. Nevada White.” She leaned forward, extending her hand across the boulder.

  He took her chilly fingers into his warm grasp. “Ethan Faraday,” he said. “And believe it or not, I’m working, too. Came to Midas Lake to pursue a story. I’m a reporter for the Inquisitor—you’ve heard of the Inquisitor?”

  “The supermarket tabloid?”

  “That’s the one.” He grinned again. “Thought there might be a story here when I heard about the two mauling deaths, the truck driver and the waitress. You know what happened, right?”

  She nodded warily. “Read about it in the paper. Terrible trag [ Teo;

  He shot her a quizzical look. “And yet here you are out in the sticks all by yourself, practically begging to be attacked. I’d think you’d be more cautious.”

  “Both attacks happened at night,” she said. “I suspect it’s safe enough in the daytime. Besides, I’m not really alone. Number one, you’re here. And number two”—she squinted out across the water—“I’m in plain sight of at least four boaters.”

  “And number three,” Marcello said, emerging from the trees to glare at Ethan Faraday, “the house is a mere fifty meters up the hill.” He shifted his attention to her. “Is this gentleman bothering you, Nevada?”

  Nevada shrugged. Yes sounded too harsh, and no would be a lie.

  “You must be Marcello Bellini,” Faraday said, extending his hand. “Britt told me all about you. I’m Ethan Faraday, a guest at the lodge.”

  Marcello ignored him. “Lunch is ready,” he told Nevada. “You should go eat before it gets cold.”

  “I’m investigating the two wild animal attacks,” Faraday said. “I’d like to do a story for the Inquisitor if I can find an angle.”

  “Inquisitor?” Marcello asked.

  “One of those cheesy newspapers they sell in grocery stores,” she said, “the ones with headlines like ‘Aliens Visit Kremlin for Secret Meeting with Putin’ or ‘Dog-Faced Boy Catches Rabies.’”

  “Ah.” Marcello nodded. “A tabloid. So this ‘angle’ you are seeking,”—his voice was heavy with irony—“that would be the rabid dog-faced boy?”

  Faraday laughed. “Not bad. Is there any evidence to suggest such a thing? I was thinking maybe wild dogs, figuring something like that would be pretty easy to tweak into a possible werewolf attack.”

  “Werewolf?” Marcello asked.

  “Imaginary creatures,” Nevada explained. “Men who change into wolves when the moon is full.” She paused. “Come to think of it, the moon was full that night.”

  Marcello stared at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  She shrugged. “I’m just saying…”

  Faraday flashed his grin. “Werewolf, it is then.”

  “Though, come to think of it,” Nevada said, “Trick mentioned vampires.”

  This time both men stared.

  “He was joking,” she said.

  “I do not trust that Ethan Faraday.” Marcello stood at the kitchen window, staring in the direction of the lodge.

  Not that he could actually see the lodge through all the trees, but maybe, Trick thought, it wasn’t the lo [rsqwiddge he was trying to see. Maybe it was Britt. Britt and her new guest.

  Marcello scowled. “Faraday is no more a reporter than I am.”

  But he was handsome in a rugged cowboy sort of way. Britt had brought him over for a short visit after lunch, not short enough to suit Marcello apparently. Though maybe it wasn’t the visit that had bothered him as much as the fact that Britt had seemed to hang on the cowboy’s every word. Not that Britt was prone to hang on Marcello’s every word even when there was no competition, but Trick had always suspected their constant wrangling masked an underlying mutual attraction.

  “If Faraday’s not a reporter, then why did he say he was?” Trick asked.

  “To give himself an excuse to poke and pry and ask impertinent questions.”

  “Questions like ‘Britt, would you like to go out to dinner tonight?”’ Trick suggested just to see what sort of response he’d get.

  Marcello’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing, just did some more scowling out the window.

  “Do you think he’s working with the men pursuing Nevada?” Trick asked.

  Marcello frowned uncertainly. “No,” he said slowly.

  “Then…?”

  Marcello shrugged. “I wish I knew. He smiles with his mouth, but not with his eyes. He is hiding something. I am certain of it.”

  Marcello had dropped Nevada off at the historical society at five thirty. Trick had tried to talk her into waiting until after dinner, but that really wasn’t an option since the Midas Lake Historical Society closed its doors promptly at seven. She figured she could scrounge for leftovers later if she got hungry. Some things were more important than food.

  She looked enough like Blanche Smith to be her sister. She’d had—until recently—an antique amulet that appeared to be identical to Blanche’s. There must be a connection, a connection that might eventually lead to her more immediate past. To her family.

  Nevada tried to imagine her family—father, mother, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—but her efforts failed. What sort of family would place a teenager in a hellhole like the Institute and promptly forget she’d ever existed?

  One of her pursuers had claimed she’d killed her father. She’d dismissed his words at the time. She didn’t feel like a murderer. The idea of taking another’s life, let alone her father’s life, revolted her. But she had to face facts. Anything was possible. She didn’t remember life before the Institute. Maybe she was a monster and just didn’t know it.

  Trick had claimed these first weeks of May were part of the off-season, but the picturesque boardwalks of downtown Midas Lake were full of tourists. The visitors moved from shop to shop, museum to museum, restaurant to restaurant, seemingly determined not to miss a thing. A line of people waiting for an underground tour of the original Midas Touch gold mine stretched for half a block. A second line had formed acro [ad ingss the street at the train depot, where every hour on the hour the Midas Express departed for a leisurely tour of the surrounding countryside on the same narrow-gauge track once used to haul ore from the outlying mines.

  None of the tourists seemed to be interested in the Midas Lake Historical Society, though. Bells jangled above the door as Nevada entered, but the place appeared deserted aside from a gray-muzzled black lab snoozing on a rug in front of the wood stove at the far end of the long, narrow room.

  “Hello? Anyone here?”

  A thin little old man with sharp black eyes and a shock of unruly white hair popped out from behind a freestanding bookcase. The pink and purple feather duster he flourished in one hand contrasted sharply with his conservative tweeds.

  Nevada stifled an exclamation. “You startled me,” she said.

  “Sorry.” A smile twitched at the corners of the little man’s mouth. “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for information about a young woman who lived here in Midas Lake during the gold rush. Blanche Smith.”

  “Common name, Smith.”

  “Yes, I know, but Midas Lake isn’t very big.”

  “Not now,” the man said, “but back in the day, it had a population of almost thirty thousand.”

  “Maybe the census records?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m Jonathan Calhoun, by the way. And you are?”

  “Nevada White.”

  “You’re not a local.”

  “No,” she said.

  He studied her closely. “And you’re not a tourist. Tourists never come in here. Probably because we don’t give out coupons for free sarsaparilla or ten percent off on a tour of the Midas Touch,” he added, his voice edged with sarcasm.

  “I accepted a short-term job here in Midas Lake,” she told him, hoping he’d leave it at that.

  But of course, he didn’t. “Where? One of the hote
ls?”

  “No, I’m working for a private party, cleaning a house that’s been empty for a while.”

  “Ah, yes.” He nodded. “The Granger mansion.” Again, he eyed her closely. “The house is rumored to be haunted. Not that I believe in such things.”

  “Nonsense,” she agreed.

  “Out of curiosity, though, may I ask if you’ve noticed anything…unusual?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry. Not a thing.”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding inordinately disappointed for a self-avowed disbeliever.

  “Census records,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, of course.” Jonathan set down his feather duster and made [ustiv his way to a computer humming away in the back. “We have most of the information online these days. Saves wear and tear on our original source material. What was that name again?”

  “Blanche Smith. She…worked…for Silas Granger.”

  “Ah,” Jonathan said. “A whore. Back in those days, whores accounted for about ninety-eight percent of Midas Lake’s female population, you know.”

  “I didn’t, actually.”

  He nodded. “Conditions were primitive—law and order pretty lax. In 1853, the saloon-to-church ratio in Midas Lake was something like fifty to one.” He slotted himself into the black leather computer chair and started punching keys like someone who knew his way around an online data bank.

  “Find anything?” she asked, when he suddenly stopped typing.

  “Old newspaper article,” he said. “Have a look.” He swiveled the monitor around so she could see.

  Someone had scanned in the original article—yellowed paper, rips, tears, and all. Nevada skimmed the text. Blanche, it seemed, wasn’t the only person to die in the brothel under suspicious circumstances. A week after Blanche had been found stabbed to death in her third-floor room, Miss Opal Hinkley, the madam Silas Granger had employed to see to the day-to-day running of the brothel, was discovered dead in her sitting room, an apparent suicide. She’d died of a bullet wound to the head. The murder weapon, Miss Opal’s own derringer, had been lying on the floor next to her chair. Though the police had not suspected foul play, the writer of the article, one Harold Hawley Brewster, had obviously disagreed.

  He took pains to relate an eyewitness account from someone identified only as Midget Molly. In it, Midget Molly described a heated confrontation between Silas and Opal, a “bitter and acrimonious” dispute that took place the day after Blanche’s death. Was Silas Granger responsible for Blanche’s vicious murder? Miss Opal’s “suicide”? Midget Molly seemed to think so, and Harold Hawley Brewster apparently agreed.

  “If Silas murdered Blanche,” Nevada speculated out loud, “and Miss Opal somehow found out, she might have threatened to expose him.”

  “Yes,” agreed Jonathan, getting into the spirit. “So he murdered Opal to shut her up.”

  “Where’s Nevada?” Trick asked Marcello. “It’s almost eight. Didn’t she say the Midas Lake Historical Society closed at seven?”

  Marcello glanced up from his laptop. “Perhaps she decided to go shopping. Most of the stores are open until nine.” He paused, not sure how to broach the topic he needed to discuss. “Trick? I did that research you asked me to do.”

  “Yes?” Trick said.

  “I checked a few other things as well.” Because he did not believe in coincidences.

  “And?” Trick shot him an impatient look.

  “Some people…rational people…believe vampi [;bet lres exist.”

  Trick stared at him. “Vampires? You’ve been researching vampires? Why the hell…?”

  “You gave me the idea,” Marcello said, trying—but failing—to keep the defensiveness out of his voice.

  “I gave you the…? Oh, right. With my off-the-wall comment the morning after the trucker and the waitress had their throats ripped out. But you can’t seriously think that was the work of vampires.” Trick gave an incredulous laugh.

  “In Europe, many people believe—”

  “Uneducated peasants maybe.” Trick raised an eyebrow. “But you are neither uneducated nor a peasant.”

  “Some educated people believe. Dr. Hiram Appleton, for example, holds a doctorate from Harvard.”

  “Who the hell is Dr. Hiram Appleton? Dr. Poison Apple?”

  Marcello nodded. “I think so, yes. And educated as the man undoubtedly is, he still gives credence to all sorts of seemingly unlikely theories. His facility, the Appleton Institute, is dedicated to researching paranormal phenomena.”

  “Like vampires.” Trick eyed him skeptically.

  “I found no mention of vampires, per se,” Marcello admitted, “but—”

  “But what?”

  “Yelena, the woman you told me had been killed in a recent home invasion…”

  “You found her, too?”

  “It would seem so. A woman named Yelena Petrov worked at the Appleton Institute.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “She was not, however, murdered in a typical home invasion,” Marcello told him.

  “No?”

  “Someone—or something—gnawed at her neck.” Marcello paused. “Gnawed at her neck and drained all her blood.”

  Trick wasn’t buying Marcello’s ridiculous vampire theory, but he still didn’t like the idea of Nevada wandering around alone after dark. He waited until eight thirty. When she hadn’t returned by then, he set off to look for her.

  The looking part was easy; the finding part was the challenge. He’d dragged himself in and out of every store on Sutter Street, Midas Lake’s main thoroughfare, then checked out half the restaurants before he finally spotted her sitting at the counter in Aunt Bettie’s Ice Cream Parlor.

  Two teenage girls were leaving as he approached the entrance. Trick swung the door wide, holding it for them. They mumbled their thanks in between fluttering eyelashes and nervous giggles.

  Nevada didn’t turn around. She was too busy talking to the man on the stool next to hers. No, Trick corrected himself. Not just an anonymous man. A specific man. Ethan Faraday, the oversexed cowboy who was staying at Bri [stack tt’s.

  Faraday said something in that low drawl of his, something Trick couldn’t quite hear, but something charmingly witty, judging by the way Nevada laughed.

  Trick muttered imprecations under his breath.

  Or maybe not quite as far under his breath as he’d thought. Nevada whipped around, a spoonful of hot fudge sundae suspended halfway to her mouth. “Trick,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Faraday.” He nodded an acknowledgment at the other man.

  “Granger.” Faraday looked as if he were teetering on the edge of a smirk.

  “What are you doing here?” Nevada asked again, a little warily this time, as if she’d picked up on the discordant vibes between him and Faraday.

  “I thought you might like a ride home.”

  “How thoughtful!” she said. “But Ethan already offered…” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

  “A neighborly gesture.” Trick realized he was gripping his cane tightly enough to snap off the head. He forced himself to relax.

  “I was going in that direction anyway.” Faraday shrugged.

  “As I said, a neighborly gesture. But unnecessary,” Trick told him, “now that I’m here.” He turned to Nevada. “Have you had dinner?”

  She held up her sundae. “Does this count?”

  “Calorie-wise, yes. Nutrition-wise? That’s another question.” He took a seat on the stool next to Nevada. “But it does look good. Maybe I should have one.”

  “Hot fudge sundae for the gentleman, Cindy,” Faraday called to the girl behind the counter.

  “You’ve been here…what? Two whole days? And already you know the waitress’s name?”

  Faraday gave a smug smile. “What can I say? I’m a friendly guy.”

  Right. Friendly. Trick glowered at him. “Dig up anything interesting yet?” he asked, more to prevent himself from saying something he�
�d regret than because he gave a rat’s ass.

  Faraday smirked, as if he knew exactly what was running through Trick’s head. “Depends on your definition of interesting. Seems a couple of men in suits and sunglasses were spotted hanging around the truck stop the night the waitress and the truck driver were mauled to death.”

  “And you suspect they have some connection to the maulings?”

  Faraday shrugged. “I didn’t say that, but it’s odd, don’t you think, that two men in suits and sunglasses would be hanging around a truck stop in the middle of the night?”

  “Lots of strange people hang around truck stops in the middle of the night,” Nevada pointed out.

  “Strange, yes,” Faraday agreed as the waitress set a sundae in front of Trick. “Teenagers amped up on hor [mpe&ldmones. Truck drivers zoned out on caffeine. Maybe even a hooker or two. But men in suits and sunglasses? Not so common. The night manager at the truck stop told me the two men in question monopolized one of his waitresses that night, the same waitress who was later found dead behind the Dumpster. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

  “Where does the truck driver fit in?” Trick asked. He picked the cherry off the top of his sundae and dropped it onto the paper doily under his sundae dish.

  “Who knows?” Faraday gave another careless shrug. “Maybe he saw what was happening to the waitress and tried to intervene.”

  “It’s a nice theory, but where’s the proof?” Trick demanded. “According to the newspaper account I read, both the waitress and the truck driver died as a result of animal attacks. Their throats were ripped out. You’re telling me the two men in suits were responsible?”

  “I talked to one of the cooks on duty that night. She told me when she slipped outside for a smoke sometime between four thirty and a quarter to five, she heard growling sounds coming from the direction of the Dumpster, thought it was stray dogs fighting over scraps. Then a few minutes later, she saw two men emerge from the shadows along the back of the building and head across the parking lot.” He tilted his head to one side, his expression cocky. “You do the math.”