Tea, Anyone

by S. R. Mallery

  “I’m tired of your––your unorthodox methods. I’m sick and tired of going against all my instincts and giving you second chances. No more.” He paused and squinted at her. “You bring me something soon or not only is your insane, psychic kicked out of here, you can go with her. You’ll just have to do your research from your house. The way I’m feeling right now, I don’t want you anywhere near the station.”

  “But Chief Bruner, your computers have a software that I don’t have at home. If you could just––”

  He rose up full height, his face red enough to signify an imminent heart attack. “Get out.”

  An hour later, Larry phoned her. “Brooksy, you’ve gotta press Abby more. They did a polygraph, and apparently, Simon passed. Not by a large margin, but good enough, they said. He claims that shovel I told you about was stolen, and he doesn’t know who took it. He did start to talk about Wynnie and Cathy’s brother, Michael, but his lawyer showed up and shut him up real fast. Meanwhile, Tony and I are going to check out Michael Whitman and Novak’s ex-husband, Peter, who may actually have ties to some pretty unsavory guys. You can help us with that.”

  “Larry, I can only do so much on my computer. You know that.”

  There was a long pause. “I’ll come by tonight. If you got something to show me,” he said.

  I get it. We need a warrant to get into private emails, so I better prove I’ve got a reason for him to get one.

  “All right, Larry. You don’t have to come––yet.”

  Abby’s apartment was far messier than Brooke and Henry’s, but it was at least comfortable. And with its kitchen window open nearby, metal wind chimes outside lent a calming atmosphere.

  Until Abby saw Brooke at her back door. When she let her in, Abby let loose a litany of apologies. “I’m going back really soon. I do feel we’re getting closer and closer. But I promise to go back tomorrow, if not sooner” were her last words.

  * *

  Right after Chief Bruner had made his directives crystal clear, the extra two murders hit Brooke, Larry, and Tony differently. For Tony, it tapped into his detective’s solve-it-at-any-cost doggedness. Over lunch with Larry, he even likened this attitude to his Italian roots.

  “I think I’ve got some cosa nostra in my blood,” he admitted.

  Larry laughed. “Come on, man, we’re detectives. We’ve all got some of that in us.”

  “No, you have to understand. I don’t just get determined. It’s like I practically hear The Godfather music theme running through my head.”

  Larry sat back after that and looked thoughtful. “For me, it’s a matter of success versus failure. Growing up, because I was kind of a cut-up in class and more interested in making kids laugh than doing any hard studying, I earned the teachers’ title of lightweight. That hurt. And when I tried not making any more jokes, I got flak from my friends, who told me I was just sucking up to the teachers.”

  “Kids can be cruel, no matter what,” Tony said.

  “Yeah, but in a way, it helped me be a detective. A beat cop wasn’t successful enough. Nope. I had to reach higher, you know?”

  Nodding, Tony asked, “So, what’s Brooke’s outlook on all this?”

  Larry sighed. “You’ll have to ask her. That’s her story to tell.”

  “Maybe I will…sometime.”

  Brooke was worried. Not just about the additional murders. That was bad enough. Worse, her old nightmares had recurred. A lot of them. Only this time, her grandfather wasn’t the main character. Her dead parents and brother were.

  When the car accident had first happened, Grandma Martha had shielded Brooke well. No local news was turned on in the house, and visitors were given strict orders: No discussion of the crash was allowed. Although well intentioned, Martha’s regime accomplished something not so good. Brooke learned to shove down all her feelings.

  Years later, when Henry came on the scene, Brooke found out firsthand, the damage done by her grandmother. One day, after Henry had found several articles about the car accident on microfiche, he figured Brooke would appreciate having them as a memento. So, he got permission to copy two of them and brought them home.

  Big, big mistake. At the time, she thanked him for his gesture, but after reading the articles, all those details hit her like a hundred-pound mallet. In reality, it seemed tough Brooke wasn’t so strong. Nightmares plagued her for several months after that. Nightmares filled with her parents and brother.

  So why have these same nightmares returned?

  * *

  Usually an ultra-organized surface, the desk’s top now almost disappeared under all the crushed papers, files, pens, and empty Styrofoam coffee cups strewn across it. Still, it served its purpose well enough. Its owner managed to take out a nearby journal and sweeping several of the cups aside, wrote a single entry in it.

  REVENGE

  Gleeful, Happy, Pleased, Thrilled

  I think gleeful says it best. But then again, I’m finally happy to get my

  message out. I’m so pleased that life will go on without certain people.

  In fact, I’m thrilled that the past has caught up with them.

  In the end, you just can’t knock revenge.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  This time, seated in the Packard, Abby had little to no control over her mind. Images of a pet store rat she had once seen scrambling frantically in a hamster wheel not only made her ruminating worse, she had a sudden urge for at least two cans of Chablis spritzers. Brooke’s influence? Abby shook her head. If she drank the stuff, it sure might calm her down––until she threw up.

  Stop stalling. Get on with it.

  She placed her small tray and deck of Tarot cards onto her lap then sat still, thinking. Instinctively, Abby knew she had to try something different because her last visit fetched more info when she stepped out of her Tarot comfort zone and risked putting the cards upside down. So here goes.

  Again, she chose Major Arcana cards, except now she simply placed them in a simple straight line. On the left sat the Hierophant, for hypocrisy and corruption. Next came the Lovers, for imbalance and another dose of corruption. The third card, the Chariot, symbolized aggression and a loss of control.

  Boy, can I relate to that.

  And on the right side of the lineup, Justice represented a lack of accountability. “Forget time travel, this describes my family to a T,” she said, her voice echoing through the antique car.

  She had barely closed her eyes and fingered each card when she flashed on the time she was five years old, sitting next to her father as he introduced her to his intended wife Dolores. And how, as she had stared at her soon to be new stepmother, she’d realized something important. For all the overdone makeup, the flashy clothing, and tinkling laughter, there was not a speck of kindness in her.

  One of those things was addressed right after the wedding, when the Bennett females took Dolores aside and explained the few Bennett rules they actually cared about: Muted colors and expensive clothes were her only options from then on. Kindness was never mentioned.

  Sighing, Abby forced herself back to the present. Stroke-stroke, she began, her fingers lightly covering each card for a couple of seconds. Then she waited. There was no violent bucking this time, just a gentle sway of her body, softly at first, then so far in each direction, she felt a little seasick.

  I don’t think this is working. Maybe I should…

  Still swaying, she suddenly found herself back in her tiny Green Dragon Tavern room, hovering over her cot. Then plop! She was flat on her back with Simon nowhere in sight. Down the hall came a swell of men’s voices, yelling and laughing. She lay there, wondering what her next step should be. There was Captain Goddard’s journal, of course, but with that page torn out of it, it probably was a dead end. Obviously, someone on the ship had torn it out and stolen it.

  One thing was certain. Time was running out. Another two murders of people they knew, Brooke had said. Abby needed to return to the tavern’s main room and let the jo
urney continue. Maybe Simon would have some ideas and together they could investigate.

  Another flashback to her childhood flitted through her brain. Again, it starred Dolores, and Dolores alone. At the time, her father was out, and Abby was stuck with her stepmother in the house. A woman who, confident of her new husband’s affections, showed a sense of power. No, show wasn’t accurate. It oozed out of every pore was more like it.

  It was seven o’clock at night. Abby was quietly playing with her favorite doll by the fireplace as Dolores held up a mirror and applied more packed powder. Suddenly, she turned to her new stepdaughter.

  “You know, your father doesn’t love you anymore. He loves only me now.”

  Even though those words were spoken so long ago, just conjuring them up now, Abby still felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach––hard.

  “Yes,” Dolores went on. “Maybe if you were smart or beautiful like me, he’d love you, but you’re neither, so just live with it.”

  At the time she told her father, but he had no response. So, Abby did live with it. Until she turned eighteen years old––and left their house forever.

  Insecurity washed over her. What was I thinking? I’ll never get anything for Brooke, and she’ll hate me for it. I’m going to give away my Tarot cards and sell the Packard. I’ll––

  An eerie, magnetic force suddenly lured her eyes across to Simon’s identical cot, with a single blanket. Nothing seemed different from before. But then she spotted it. Under his bed, the edge of a piece of paper stuck up between two wide floorboards.

  What the––? She stood up, took two steps, and knelt down next to it. Yep. It was a piece of paper, all right. Gingerly, she pulled at it. A little more of it came out, but then it stuck. Wiggling one of the floorboards, nothing happened. But when she jiggled the other floorboard that also edged the paper, and she was able to extract twelve inches of plank, revealing some sort of shallow hole just beneath the floor. A hole which housed a bag of coins, a gold watch, and a piece of paper with a ragged edge––one that looked as if it had been torn out of a book.

  Her pulse pinged. Turning the paper over carefully, she began to read what lay on it. After the first sentence, it was obvious who had written it.

  A Note to Myself

  As soon as we return to London, I feel I am obliged to inform the authorities about my first mate, Wallace Lansbury, on my ship, the Eleanor. It has come to my attention that not only has he been involved with thievery aboard, he very well may have caused bodily harm to several of my crewmembers, who have since mysteriously disappeared.

  However, of late, two witnesses have come forward to inform me that on three separate occasions, they observed said Lansbury throwing overboard the bodies of each of these good, able men.

  Furthermore, another sailor has come forward to lodge a complaint against my first mate. According to this third man, who shall not be named, Lansbury was suspected of two murders in London just before we embarked on our voyage, yet somehow, he managed to escape prosecution. Beyond that, I also have it on good authority that this said Wallace Lansbury comes from a family who not only possesses a certain degree of madness, according to this same source, they have also performed various evil deeds.

  Instantly, Abby folded then shoved Captain Goddard’s note under her vest. When she replaced the floorboard, her hands shook so badly it took great concentration not to loudly drop the plank back into the floor. That concentration took twice as long as the job should have taken, and she was no sooner finished with it when she heard footsteps coming down the hall. It sounded like Simon.

  I’m so not cut out for this clock-and-dagger stuff.

  Slam! Abby landed so hard onto the Packard seat, she wondered if she had damaged her tailbone. Dizzy, head still swirling, she gripped the steering wheel. “No-no-no, I’m not finished. Send me back!” she cried.

  Nothing. Nada. Niet. Closing her eyes, her mind raced.

  Calm down. She just needed a plan. First off, she would avoid Brooke and Henry for now. No going over to their place, head down, giving them a full confession. No, not this time. She would attack the Tarot cards again, very soon. Like tomorrow.

  Then she remembered. The captain’s journal page! In a flash, she searched through her back-to-hippie clothing for it. Then drew a huge sigh of relief. There it was, hidden in her hoodie’s right pocket.

  * *

  While Abby was time-traveling that morning, Collin pulled the covers over his head the instant his phone rang. No way was he going into work. Not now. Maybe not ever. His lawyer told him not to worry. But that guy didn’t know the half of it. He smirked.

  Maybe I should just leave town. Now.

  Eyeing his bedside table, he studied the open-ended airline ticket he had purchased the day before to Micronesia, where he could hide out on one of its islands. With no worries about being extradited, he could live a life free of accusations–and free from the Whitman family who, along with the shyster lawyer, Novak, had done him in. Yeah. I’m so out of here.

  * *

  As for Michael Whitman, he was more than happy with his lawyer, Peter Novak, Esq. After being dismissed his entire life by his father, the Great Joseph Whitman, as well as his two older sisters––Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber, he called them––he was finally free of them all. And now rich as all get out. I guess things do work out sometimes.

  He knew he shouldn’t be gloating. After all, they were his sisters, for goodness sake. But just knowing he’d never have to see their smug faces ever again was enough to celebrate. Every day. No, sir. He was never going to feel bad about himself, ever again.

  And Novak? A gem of a lawyer. If he had convinced his client Whitman to sign that special trust to accelerate inheritances even faster than normal, then he was the most amazing lawyer in the world.

  Ain’t life grand?

  * *

  Speaking of Peter Novak, he was still stunned by the two Whitman deaths. And now his ex-wife? What was going on? To make things worse, the day before, when he had met up once again with his client, Michael Whitman, had he detected a slight euphoria from Michael regarding his sisters’ deaths? Or was it simply Peter’s imagination because he, himself, was getting creeped out by the number of bodies accumulating?

  As for his ex-wife’s, Ruth, and her murder, his emotions ran the gamut––from horror to sadness to guilt. Should he go to the police? No, his lawyer sensibility and know-how refused to do that. With what evidence? He’d have to give them something other than Michael’s possible motive. But what?

  Oh, God. Poor Ruth.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning Abby hurried into her garage. No, wait. Charged into it was more like it. Plopping down into the Packard, she grabbed her tray, yanked out four Tarot cards and fanned them into a line, using the same four and formation as the last time. She took a long, deep breath.

  Here I come…Please make this work.

  No jolts, no sways, no astral projections, just five seconds of staying on the pristine leather car seat. But that didn’t last. She was hurled back to the same Green Dragon Tavern room, patting the journal page under her vest and close to her heart.

  Simon burst through the door. His face was flushed with obvious excitement. “Robbie, I have fine news. It appears that not only was the Boston Tea Party seen as the very height of success by Bostonian colonists, the Sons of Liberty are finally being listened to by the British Parliament itself. What say you on that sweet fact?”

  Again, Abby’s American history class reared its educated head. She remembered reading about how the Tea Party incident in Boston, although itself pretty tame, turned out to have incited the British government to even harsher acts, thus catapulting the two countries toward their eventual war.

  Just goes to show how dumb people can be in the midst of their own history.

  But she had other things to hide besides history. Unconsciously, she placed her hand over her vest. “That’s grand, Simon. Yes, we accomplished a g
ood thing in Boston last night.”

  He cocked his head. “You seem to make light of all of this, lad. Something is perhaps amiss? What is the matter?”

  Give him a smile for goodness sake! Tell a big one. “I fear the leftover lamb stew I had this morning did not rest well. But I know I shall feel better later. I’m sure of it.”

  “Not so hale and hearty, eh? Do take care, Robbie.” Simon sank down onto his cot and removed his vest. Instantly, she thought of the paper she was carrying and wondered again if he hid the page because he wanted to go to the authorities himself? And if so, why was he being so secretive about it?

  “Let us rest for a little while,” he said. “Tonight might prove important again, so we will need all of our energies.”

  “Oh? What, pray tell, is going on?”

  He eyed her for a couple of seconds. Then he gave the hint of a wink. “Perhaps we shall see some more happenings.”

  Another protest? Boy, according to Mama, this would be like living in the 1960s.

  Simon sat up, his eyes flashing. “I will tell you this, because I trust you, Robbie. I’ve heard tell the Sons of Liberty are beginning to roust out spies. If they catch them, they will send them to the American authorities, not the British ones.”

  What? What does this have to do with Captain Goddard’s journal page? Puzzled, she would have to simply go with the flow. But she could feel her heartbeat picking up. This trip must produce something, otherwise forget about helping Brooke, Henry, Larry, and Tony ever again.

  Two heavy pounds sounded against the door, and they both jumped.

  “Simon, Robbie, you are both needed in the main room. Now!” The tavern owner shouted.

  At the bar, Abby was ordered to first mop up floors, then take the garbage out. Simon was sent on an errand across town to order special food “for another basement meeting, two nights hence.”

  Since the floors were so filthy, her task seemed to take forever. It also didn’t help to be repeatedly pulled away to mop up vomit that spilled out of men’s throats every twenty minutes or so on the main floor. Boy, these guys are such drunks!