The Mountain's Shadow

by Cecilia Dominic

Marguerite’s anger, disappointment and hurt showed on her face when she looked at Peter. Her expression said she needed his comfort, not that of two strangers, one of whom may have slept with her husband.

  Sheriff Knowles and the other policemen conferred, then put their equipment away. “We’ll be in touch, Mrs. Bowman,” he said. He didn’t—couldn’t?—meet her eyes. I wondered if he’d done this so many times by now he couldn’t face one more parent in pain.

  A tear trickled down her cheek. Peter waved to them and snapped his cell phone shut.

  “I just tried Ron’s and Leo’s cell phones. Neither of them are answering. Dammit, they should have been here! They should be out there earning their keep and searching for Lance.”

  Marguerite turned to him and crumpled into his arms. He had to drop his cell phone to catch her.

  “Here, let us help you,” I said, and together we got Marguerite inside to the sitting room. Peter held her somewhat stiffly.

  “I’ll make some tea,” offered Lonna.

  “No. I mean, that is not necessary, Ms. Marconi.” Marguerite raised her tear-stained face. “I would rather go lay down. It has been an exhausting morning.”

  “We understand, and we’ll leave you alone now,” I said and tugged on Lonna’s arm. I led her to the car.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “Are you insane?” I turned the key in the ignition, perhaps a little too hard because the engine protested. “That woman has just lost her son, and she probably wants to kill you. Jealousy and loss don’t make a good combination.”

  “You’re probably right.” She drummed her fingers on one leg. “But I want to be there to comfort him.”

  “That’s his wife’s job. If he lets her.”

  “He’ll comfort her, but there’s not much coming the other way. He told me yesterday the marriage has been cold since the son was born. Two years, and hardly any sex. I think that’s why he was so quick to jump into bed with me.”

  I bit my tongue over any words concerning her motives. It would be a lesson she’d have to learn on her own: married men didn’t need to be rescued from bad marriages, only from themselves.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Better now that I’ve been moving around. I think I just have some sort of bug. Maybe this mountain air isn’t really that healthy for me.”

  “I think we need to find Ron and Leo and tell them. I have a bad feeling about what Peter might do.”

  We drove into town. Tabitha’s was open for lunch, so we inquired as to whether Ron was working that day. He wasn’t. Leo was also nowhere to be seen.

  I had the horrible feeling that whatever it was, it had gotten them. The bollywog or whatever it was the mayor had told us about. That it had slithered out of its cave or bog and had snatched the guys, maybe one, and then the other had jumped in to defend his pack-mate and had gotten swallowed as well. And then the hideous creature, which grew in my imagination, had gone to Peter Bowman’s house. With a whistle or croon, it enticed the child down the stairs, out the front door, and into its massive, fang-lined craw.

  “Joanie? Joanna? Attention Doctor Fisher?” Lonna shook me by the shoulder. “You were off in your head again.”

  “I just wish we could find them.”

  “Let’s go back to the house. It’s lunchtime anyway. Then maybe we can look more this afternoon.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t you have an investigation to follow up on?”

  “I need to review my notes and see where to go next. Which parents to interview first and so on. Besides,” she added with a grin. “It’s good to see you falling in love again.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got that look in your eyes. You’re on the hunt.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Or did I? As much as I didn’t like to admit it, I was fascinated by these werewolf-men and their primal charm. The question was, which one could I possibly be falling for? Did I have to pick just one?

  With a little grin, I drove out of the town and turned the car toward Wolfsbane Manor. If anyone could help find a werewolf, it would be Gabriel.

  He’d found them, or they’d found him, and they were all sipping beers on the back balcony when we arrived. Gabriel leapt up when we walked out, but the concern on his face quickly melted into a smile. The tension of the previous day wasn’t there, and I wondered what could have reconciled the werewolves.

  “Madam, these gentlemen have some news about a strange wolf, perhaps even about your friend who died this morning.”

  “We followed it through the woods until we reached a stream near Highway 14,” Leo said. “Then we lost the scent.”

  “So we traced it the other direction to see where it had come from,” Ron picked up the thread, “and ended up here.”

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Lonna. “And what do you mean, ‘lost the scent?’ Do you have a dog?”

  “They were tracking an unfamiliar wolf.” Gabriel held the door open. “I have lunch ready for you, ladies, if you’d like to move into the dining room.”

  Introductions were quickly made since they’d gotten a glimpse of Lonna the night before, but when she shook hands with Leo, he and Ron shared a look. It was fleeting, but I was watching their eyes to see how they reacted to her, so I caught it. They spoke to her with interest, but it was more polite than lustful.

  “Did you see anything last night?” asked Leo. I glanced at Gabriel, who put a finger to his lips. He hadn’t told them. He went into the kitchen and brought out plates of cut fruit with crackers and chicken salad.

  “I. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought I saw something outside the kitchen window, but I’m not sure. I fainted.” It pained me to show that weakness to them. Part of me screamed that they were predators and I shouldn’t give them any opportunity to attack me. But we were all in it together now.

  “Did you ladies find anything interesting out from the Mayor?” asked Gabriel.

  “Just the same old line.” Lonna speared a pineapple slice with her fork. “But Peter Bowman was there.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Leo. “He’s sort of the town lawyer.”

  I took a deep breath. It seemed as good a time to tell him as any. “Leo, Lance is missing.”

  “What?” His reaction, so genuinely panic-stricken, proved his innocence more than any protestations. I filled the guys in on the events of the morning.

  “And Peter’s looking for you with thunder in his eyes,” Lonna finished.

  “I’m sure he is. I’ll bet he’s ready to blame his little brother for this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then Marguerite can’t blame him,” said Ron. “Things are rocky between them, as you well know.”

  Lonna blushed.

  “It’s not your fault, Ms. Marconi,” Ron told her. “I know how charming he can be. And how deceitful.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. When I first came to Little Rock for residency, he invited me into his home. I later found out he had done it, not out of cousinly love, but in order to gain access to the hospital.”

  “For what?” asked Lonna.

  “Fertility drugs. And the female residents. To get Marguerite pregnant and keep himself entertained.”

  “Did you ever report him?”

  “No. By the time I figured out what had happened, my credibility was shot, and the girls were too intimidated by that time to say anything about him.”

  “Excuse me,” Lonna said and pushed back from the table. “I don’t feel well.”

  “That’s usually how those relationships go,” Leo said as she ran from the room. “Better she find out now.”

  “Since she’s gone…” I told them about the wolf paw print in the side yard. “I stepped on it to hide it. I didn’t want either of you to get bl
amed.”

  “Thanks,” said Ron. “Although I don’t think Peter knows about the true nature of CLS. He just thinks it makes us impulsive and crazy.”

  “I don’t think anyone in the outside world realizes what it does.”

  “But you do,” Ron said. He looked at me with his piercing blue eyes. “And your grandfather did. I think he found something out.”

  “I don’t know, honestly.”

  “Do you think you could pick up where he left off?” asked Leo. “You’re the only one who can.”

  I met his eyes. I had vowed not to enter the research world again, but this was the perfect opportunity to regain my status and credibility. And maybe Robert.

  My heart skipped a beat. Robert was the only one who had ever understood me. If I could figure out a cure for CLS, or at least a way to control it, I could re-enter the field in triumph, and then he would have to respect me. And maybe even take me back.

  Lonna had been right. I was back on the hunt, but it was for the same old quarry.

  “Gentlemen, feel free to stay here this afternoon if you like, but I have work to do.”

  Leo and Ron exchanged glances. “We should probably head back to Peter’s house,” Leo said. “I’m sure he has a few things he’d like to say to us, so we might as well get it over with.” He made a rude noise. “Like we could go out partying even if we wanted to. We’ll go back through the woods and see if we can find any clues as to what happened to Lance.”

  “Good luck.” I meant it.

  I went up the stairs to Lonna’s room, my heart pounding with the thrill of my resolution to pick up where my grandfather had left off, but when I got there, she was asleep, snoring softly. I didn’t know Lonna to be a napper, but maybe it was the after-effects of the previous night’s sleeping pills. Or the shame of being taken in by Peter Bowman’s charm and manipulation. With a sigh, I returned to the office, ready to start working again.

  I looked at the box. The charred edges curled slightly, water stains blotched the outer layer, and it still smelled faintly of smoke. Even so, I had never seen a more beautiful sight. With shaking fingers, I lifted the top and was comforted by the neat row of charts. I didn’t know how this box had escaped unscathed, but there it was. I only hoped it had enough data in it for me to find my answer.

  I sat at my grandfather’s desk in the study. The drawer to my right still held the books he had earmarked. He had figured out something and had possibly been killed for it. For the first time, my mind made the leap and wondered whether his disappearance and the fire at my lab were connected. I hoped whoever had set the fire hadn’t realized some of the data had been saved. I also wondered who had saved it. That went on the list of questions to ask Gabriel.

  The charts held the notes I had seen countless times before. There had to be something beyond what I had been looking for. Rather than the usual columns in my database, I decided to go the brute-force route and document everything, even down to the minutest detail of objective evidence. That way my mind could look for patterns as my fingers typed.

  A knock on my door startled me when I was halfway through my second chart.

  “Yes?”

  “Teatime, Doctor.” Gabriel came in with a laden tray. “Your grandfather mentioned you like to have tea and biscotti at four o’clock.”

  “It’s four already?” I stretched my shoulders. The first two charts had been particularly thick, and my database stretched to over a hundred columns.

  “You must be working hard.” He poured the tea out of an antique silver pot into my favorite childhood mug, white with the picture of a black cat, its tail the handle.

  “Where did you find that?”

  “There’s a storeroom downstairs off the ballroom. Your grandfather mentioned he had saved several things for you down there.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I only found exactly where it was this afternoon, and I didn’t want to disturb you. Every time I thought to ask you previously, you were out of the house. And chaos seems to follow you home.”

  “I wonder what else is down there.”

  “The room gets the afternoon sun, so it would be a good time to look. If you’re not making progress?” He inclined his head toward my computer screen.

  “I am, but it’s slow. It’s progress by brute force, not finesse. I’d rather see if he left me anything of his own research to help give me a jump-start.”

  “I understand.”

  “Help me drink this tea, then, and we’ll see what we can find.”

  The main entrance to the ballroom was down the steps that curved to the left of the front hall stairs. I had almost forgotten it existed, but when I was a child, my grandfather and I would go down there and have teatime—or he would have tea, and I would have milk and cookies. We’d sit in the middle of the big, dusty floor and look at the murals illuminated by the afternoon light. It made sense that his laboratory and whatever he left for me would be down there.

  Gabriel had opened the heavy red velvet drapes, faded on the window side from years of sun exposure, and I caught my breath as I descended the stairs and saw the familiar floor. The butler’s footsteps marked a trail through the dust, as mine soon would. The marble had been cut and laid so as to mimic the pattern of light on the forest floor. Above me the domed ceiling with its chandelier that tinkled as I walked also displayed years of neglect, the paint and gold leaf from the night sky replete with stars starting to flake. Even so, it showed no evidence of moisture or mold. The walls of the ballroom by the stairs were covered in paintings of trees to give the impression of a forest. My grandfather had wanted to put new creatures in every year. He had done all the painting work himself and contracted the gold-leaf labor, and he had only made one addition. A black wolf peered at me from behind an oak tree, its golden eyes glowing in the afternoon light. It was so lifelike I caught my breath for a moment.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Gabriel’s voice made me jump even though I knew he was right behind me. “I found the room by following your grandfather’s footprints.”

  “He never let it get this dusty. He’d always have someone from the village come in and clean it once a year.”

  “It sounds like he was distracted for a bit.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. When he was on the hunt, especially for knowledge, there was no turning him back.”

  “What of your grandmother?”

  “Died before I was born.”

  “Ah.”

  The door to the supposed storeroom was by the wolf, its handle concealed as a tree knot. The only time the outline of the door itself would be visible was now, in the late afternoon, as the sun shone directly into the room. By candlelight or chandelier it would blend into the forest painting. I turned the handle, my heartbeat loud in my ears.

  The storeroom was lined with metal shelves like one would find in a lab, but no table stood in the middle. It was illuminated by a single bulb on a chain. The shelves were lined with a few boxes, but mostly with objects I fondly remembered from my childhood, toys and cups and even some of the old kitchen equipment like the cast-iron skillets he had taught me to make cornbread in. The boxes held old letters from me to my grandfather from during my school years. I would write to him and give him news about me and Andrew since my brother didn’t like to write as much as I did. Something tickled at the back of my brain, but I decided not to chase it and just let it lie dormant until I could tease it out with intuition.

  In spite of the dustiness of the ballroom, this room seemed less dirty. Even the old toys showed no evidence of the dust and dinginess that should have accumulated over the course of twenty or so years. My grandfather must have moved them down here recently.

  “Find anything?” This time Gabriel’s voice seemed an intrusion.

  “Lots of things, but I’m not sure you’d find it interesting. Old toys and stuff, mostly. Did you take anything else out?”

  “Only a cat statuette I thought would look charming on the kitc
hen windowsill.”

  “A cat statuette? What did it look like?”

  “It was a little angel cat with your name on it. I was going to show it to you this evening.”

  A little angel cat? I didn’t remember one, but my grandfather had pointed my way to important volumes upstairs with statuettes like it. “Do you remember where it was?”

  “I believe it was on the pile of boxes in the back, on top of the box with letters.”

  Indeed, the back wall held only one set of shelves, the rest of it file boxes piled high. An angel cat. I had found the four terrestrial elements, but to balance them, one needed the fifth element of spirit.

  “I think whatever I’m doing down here will bore you, Gabriel. Why don’t you go upstairs and continue doing what you were doing? And maybe Lonna would like some tea or coffee.”

  “Yes, Madam.” I heard resentment in his tone, but this was something I wanted to handle alone. I opened the storeroom door all the way back on its hinges to let the light in the little room. Indeed, the back wall held a door set into the wall so closely that again, it required the sun to see it. I moved the boxes away from it, careful to keep them together in case they, too, held clues to this path my grandfather wanted me to follow. I also had to feel around for the handle to the door—the metal type that needed to be pulled out, then turned—but it moved easily and silently once I found it, and the heavy door opened back and into the laboratory I had only dreamed of.

  The room took up the entire rest of the first floor of the house. It had formerly been the entertaining kitchen with two sinks, a long wooden prep table with marble top, and marble counters along all the walls. The basic equipment was still there, but now every surface was littered with different paraphernalia. I could only guess at the purpose of some of it. Row after row of long wooden test-tube racks with various substances, burners, and even a large piece of equipment that looked like something from a genetics lab crowded the room. I knew my grandfather had been very intelligent and had almost unlimited financial resources, but this was beyond anything I had ever expected to find at Wolfsbane Manor.