As we got closer to the ship Lia led us up to the treetops where we scampered along narrow branches and nearly flew from tree to tree. It was amazing beyond belief, and I didn’t care if I ever became a girl again.
“Don’t stop!” I heard Lia warn in her squirrel chatter which all of us understood in our furry form. “If you stop you’ll become human, and you’ll have to climb down, if these branches will even support your weight.”
The area on the near side of the ship was abandoned, and the fire was just embers now. The far side of the ship was tilted closer to the ground and cast in shadows, so I took the lead and led the group down the trunk of a bent tree right in front of the ship.
Lia and I were the first ones on the ground, and Arthur and the two men were close behind us. Still giddy from our trek as squirrels, we couldn’t help but smile broadly at each other as we became ourselves again the moment our feet settled on the earth. We were still covered in mud from head to toe, just as we were when we left the bluff.
Ginny leapt from five feet up the trunk and planted herself right next to me. “Whew! Let’s do that again!” she said quite loudly, still pumped from the experience.
“Not so loud, Ginny!” I advised. “We’re not home free yet.”
“Guys…help me.” It was Cammy’s voice coming from ten feet above us in the tree. “I guess I slowed down too soon.”
She was more embarrassed than panicked, as she hung upside down from a two-inch thick branch, her legs wrapped around it closest to the trunk and her hands grasping it above her face. We heard a little crack as the branch began to snap.
“Hellllp me!”
“Need a hand?”
We all turned suddenly to see Percival standing behind us dripping wet and wrapped in a threadbare towel. We were all silent and stone-faced as we looked at the large man who would have no problem ripping our heads off if he wanted too.
He smiled. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said taking two steps forward and holding his arms out beneath Cammy as the branch finally yielded to her weight with a loud crack.
Her scream was short-lived as the handsome hulk caught her in his arms. She didn’t waste the opportunity to put her arms around his neck and reward him with a kiss. “Thank you.”
He set her down on her feet, and she did her best to look charming in her mud-covered condition.
“I see you’ve met Lia,” Percival said as the small rodent stood next to him on her hind legs. “She helped me out when I first arrived here too.”
I must have looked a little quizzical.
“Surely you must know that I am not one of these vulgar pirates,” he said.
“So what are you then, Percival? And how did you get here?”
“First, you ladies should get cleaned up in the water. I’ll bring more towels. We haven’t much time to get you home before the angry mob returns. The shadows all turned toward the ship when you headed back, so you won’t be hard to find.”
This time the cold water didn’t bother us at all. Percival returned with an armload of something resembling towels with Lia perched on his shoulder. We dried off as best we could with the small skimpy towels and got back into our clothes and shoes from my bag, which Granny had sent safely next to the makeshift ramp leading to the ship’s deck near our arrival point.
We climbed aboard as the band of savages grew nearer.
“Jessie Delacroix,” Lia said to me in her chattering banter, “you must return here and save the Sanctum of Shadows from these terrible pirates. They have stolen this realm from us, and we need a powerful sorceress like you to save us all.”
“Me? But I am not powerful. Maybe it is my grandmother you want.”
“No, Jessie Delacroix.” There was a twinge of impatient frustration in her voice. “You are the only one who can defeat these savages and return our realm to us. The prophecy has foretold your coming – and your second coming. But we cannot wait long for you to understand and master your abilities.”
I looked at Percival as we headed down the stairs from the main deck into the cargo hold. Maybe he was looking at me all the time because of some prophecy instead of my feminine powers of attraction.
“Percival…”
“Percy,” he said with a smile.
“Percy…Lia says there is a prophecy…”
“Yes. You will return to take on the pirates.”
“But how will I defeat them?”
“The prophecy does not say if you will win or lose; only that you will return. But you will defeat them, Ma…ma’am. If you don’t, their whole army of dead pirates will come through the portal and burn Whispering Pines to the ground. No one will survive.”
That’s way too much pressure. I felt ill. “But, what about you? Will you be here when I return?”
“My work here among these fools is not yet done, so I must stay for now. You’ll be back soon, and I’ll still be here. Then, when my work here is done I will return to my place in a future a little more distant than your own – about 30 years ahead of yours.”
“This is the place of my arrival!” shouted the red-haired man, who had opened a trap door in the floor beneath us.
Ginny helped him down onto the pile of grain below, and his necklace got caught on her sleeve. The pendant had the letters “TV” etched into it.
“What’s the TV for?” Ginny asked. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t have television in 1699.” She snorted loudly twice.
“My Virginia gave it to me,” he said. “It’s my initials. I’m Thaddeus Vandersnoop.”
Ginny nearly fell down into the grain hold with him. “I…I’m… You’re Thaddeus Vandersnoop? I’m Ginny Vandersnoop, and Thaddeus is the name of my grandpappy thirteen generations removed. They both teared up. “My time is more than 300 years after your own.”
“You’ve got to go, Thaddeus,” Percival said. “The pirates will be boarding in just a few minutes.”
“Grandpappy,” Ginny said, “I wish we had more time, but if I don’t let you get back, my family will never be born!”
“I’ll tell the story of how the Wenches of the Swamp saved me from Captain Olivant and the alligators, Ginny – and ya know that bent tree we climbed down right in front of the ship’s bow?”
Ginny nodded tearfully.
“I’ll bury a piece of Olivant’s treasure there for ya on the north side of it.”
“Go now!” I insisted as we heard the pirates’ voices getting very close.
He and Ginny blew kisses to each other, and he scooted through a small porthole, back into 1699.
“I don’t know where our portal is!” I was frantic now as I heard the pirates climbing the ladder on the other side of the ship. “Phineas – where did you come out when the pirates grabbed you from your own ship?”
He shrugged and shook his head as he looked around aimlessly.
“Follow me,” Percy said, opening a door to another stairway.
“That’s the odor I remember,” Bandersnatch said. “We must be getting close.”
“That’s the stench from the meat hold before they ran out of meat,” Percy said. “Look for something original from this ship that you used in your replica, Doctor. That’s likely to be the portal.”
We could hear the pirates clamoring up the aside of the ship now.
“There!” Phineas said, pointing to a tattered door with a slanted top that led to a cupboard beneath the stairs. “Olivia found that door intact, and we used it on a small stateroom. They had me stand right in front of it with my head covered as they hoisted some poor soul to the top of the mast with a noose around his neck. I heard the whole horrible thing.”
The pirates were swarming aboard now, running to every corner of the ship in search of us girls and the two missing prisoners.
“Find them, or I’ll have to feed the lot o’ ya to the gators in their place!” The Captain was loud and furious.
“Go now!” Percy whispered to all of us.
The others began to file thr
ough the door, and Percival put his hand on my shoulder. “How old are you now?”
I thought it was an odd question. “25…almost 26.” I gave him a curious look.
“Me too.” He seemed to find that extremely funny. “So…you’ve met that cowboy at the ranch not far from you?”
I was in too big a hurry to be shocked. “Travis?”
He nodded as Arthur barked quietly for me to hurry up.
“I’m having dinner with him on Wednesday. It’s our first…”
“Date.”
“Yeah, I guess. At the…”
“Swamp Fox. Try the sweet potato fries…you’re going to like them – a lot. And give that cowboy a chance, will you? He’s a pretty great guy.” Percy winked and pushed me through the portal. “See you soon…”
•
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•
•
Chapter Thirteen
Exhaustion filled every cell of our bodies, as we immediately began to feel the immense fatigue from our long and treacherous adventure. It was after midnight by the time we finally made our way back to the Inn. Phineas agreed that, for now at least, he would claim to have no recollection of where he had been or of meeting us in the Sanctum of Shadows. Amnesia would be more believable than our little visit with a band of dead pirates in a realm where time and space seemed to converge in inexplicable ways.
I walked Phineas upstairs to the penthouse suite and tapped very gently on the door, where a telltale light emanating from beneath it indicated that Olivia was still awake. She opened the door cautiously, just far enough to see my face, and I turned my head to direct her eyes toward the man next to me. Her jaw dropped when she saw Phineas, tired and weary with a weak smile on his soiled face. She looked back at me incredulously and opened the door for us to come in. I guided Phineas in with my hand on his back but did not enter.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” I whispered. “Late morning!”
She put her hand behind her fiancé’s neck and stood on her toes to give him a gentle kiss as she took him inside and closed the door with a nod and a grateful smile.
The other girls were both sitting on the bench in the lobby, waiting for me. Moondance was on Ginny’s lap purring, and Arthur was fast asleep in Cammy’s arms. Granny was already sitting on the front desk with Mom, telling her the whole story. They both blew me a kiss as I headed back to the carriage house with the two most amazing women and dearest friends in the world – and one tired puppy.
Cammy and I settled for hot showers, and we let Ginny soak in her first-ever bubble bath. She earned it with those birdcalls that saved our lives.
“Ready or not, I’m coming in, Jessie.” Cammy stepped into the shower with me, which was a little crowded with two people. But I had no intention of getting out for a while, so I couldn’t blame her. It felt really good to have some modern conveniences again, like hot water and a shower.
“Oop, you still have some mud in your hair, Jess. I’ll get it for you.”
Cammy started massaging the back of my scalp, and it felt amazing.
“If you ever lose your day job, you could have a career in massage, Cammy Jo. Don’t stop.”
“Nice tattoo,” she said, rubbing her thumb up the back of my neck.
“What? Oh…that’s just a birthmark. Those four ugly blue blobs?”
“These are no birthmarks, Jessie. You’ve got a crescent of shooting stars starting here…” She pressed her thumb against the middle of the left side of my neck. “…to here.” Then she rubbed a spot on the right side just above my hairline. “And they’re perfectly-shaped five-pointed stars…the first one would fit on the tip of my pinkie, and the top one is about the size of a quarter. And there are five of them, not four.”
I figured she was just kidding around and took one more total rinse before I let Cammy have the whole shower to her self. I put on my favorite footie velour pajamas and laid out a pair for the other girls too. Scarcely another word was spoken, and after a much-needed snack of oatmeal with brown sugar and apple slices, we all huddled together under the covers of my bed and immediately faded off into a deep slumber, with Arthur at our feet.
Even Arthur slept until almost 9 o’clock in the morning, but Ginny had gotten up early and was already cooking breakfast for the Tea Room guests when we got there. Word of Bandersnatch’s return had apparently made its way to the Sheriff’s office, as Muldoon and Kyle were questioning him in the corner booth with Olivia, Audrey, and a deputy also present. Muldoon motioned for me to come over as soon as Cammy and I walked in, but I pointed Cammy towards a small table near the window and signaled to him that I had to run into the kitchen first.
Ginny was full of energy, whistling and setting delicious-smelling omelets in the window for Lexi and Ashley.
“We are the Wenches of the Swamp, Jessie!” That seemed to fill her with joy for some reason, and she cracked three eggs into a bowl with one hand and started to whisk them. “Ain’t that just a bowl o’ cherries? I’ve heard tell of that legend my whole life, and now it turns out it was me and you and Cammy the whole time! Ol’ Thaddeus musta made it back okay and married his sweetheart, ’cause I’m still kicking.”
“That is really something, Ginny – but let’s just keep it under our hats for the time being.”
“Oh, sure. I know people are gonna think we’re plumb loco if we start tellin’ ’em about our adventure with Captain Olivant 300 years ago. I wonder what grandpappy Thaddeus buried for me by that tree.”
“I guess we’ll have to look later on. I just wanted to make sure that you were feeling okay. I can have Lexi cook, or call I’ll Carlo in early if you need more rest, Gin.”
“Not me. Too excited to sleep anyway.”
Zach had already sat down with Cammy Jo at the small table, so I joined Kyle, the Sheriff, and the others in the corner booth where Ashley had a large mug of black coffee waiting for me. Everybody stopped talking when I sat.
I blew on my hot coffee and took a sip during the long awkward silence. “Is it my breath, or were you talking about me?”
Sheriff Muldoon smiled. “We weren’t talking about you. Miss Delacroix.”
So it is my breath…?
“We just wanted to let you get settled before we get you up to speed.” He passed two 8x10 crime scene photos of two dead men – presumably the two men hanged alongside Lawrence Pettigrew. “Any idea who these men are, Miss Delacroix?”
I recognized them at once. They were two of the more vile pirates we encountered in the Sanctum of Shadows – including the fat one who wanted to strip us.
I shook my head. “No. No, I’ve never seen either of them before. Who are they?”
“Well,” Kyle said, slipping the photos back into a manila folder, “you can probably tell from the nooses that they’re two of the men we found hanging from the ship’s yardarm the other night.”
“Okay. So…am I up to speed now?”
“Jessie, both of these men disappeared from the morgue in Stony Point last night. Probably sometime around 8 o’clock.” The Sheriff had a serious and concerned look. “It just doesn’t make any sense. No one went in or out of the place. It’s not like they could have just gotten up and walked out of the place, right through the walls, with nobody seeing them.”
That was probably exactly what happened.
He put his hand on Audrey’s. “I got the best forensic team in the business, but we’ve got nothing to go on here. Well…tell us how you ran into Dr. Bandersnatch last night.”
I looked at Phineas. “Uh…Arthur – my pup – was a little rambunctious, so I thought I would take him for a little walk before bed. Well, we were in the lobby by his food and water when the doctor came in the front door…”
“Doc…” Muldoon said, “…I thought you said that you were in the lobby when Miss Delacroix came in.”
“Uh…” Phineas looked at me.
“”Yeah, that’s right,” I said, taking a long sip from my mug. “I haven’t had my minimum da
ily requirement of caffeine yet. I came in the front to get Arthur a midnight snack, and there was Phineas, looking lost and disoriented. He didn’t seem to know where he had been or where he was going, so I walked him upstairs to the suite and handed him off to Olivia.”
“Yes.” Olivia put both of her hands on Bandersnatch’s arm and looked in his eyes. “She brought him up to me sometime after midnight. I ran a warm bath for him, and then he wanted to go right to sleep.”
Muldoon nodded and stood up, nearly hitting his hat on the ceiling fan. He extended his hand to Audrey and escorted her to a nearby table where three treasure hunters had just sat down.
“Jess…” Cammy Jo came over to the booth with Zach, and they slid into the spots the Sheriff and Audrey had vacated. “Come with us to Savannah this afternoon. I have to get back – work tomorrow, you know – and Zach has to pick up the rest of his things for his move to Whispering Pines.”
Zach nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I found a nice room in a house not far from Kyle’s place. It’s upstairs at Happy Doyle’s – the guy who runs the antique car shop.”
That should work out well for Zach and the plump 40-something local bachelor too. Maybe Zach will get him out once in a while – and maybe teach him how to dress and some better personal hygiene too.
Cammy continued with her appeal for me to come with them. “We’ll stop by the University and the museum to see if we can pick up any clues.”
“I’m not sure you’ll find anything useful there, but I’ll message my staff to give you their full cooperation.” Bandersnatch still looked very weary as he spoke.
“I will too,” added Olivia, “and I’ll give you directions to the boat launch on Raccoon Key. You’ll have to rent a boat on Green Island to get there. Cammy, I think your hours should be charged to the museum, since you’ll be investigating Lawrence Pettigrew’s death.”
Jessie Delacroix and the Sanctum of Shadows (Whispering Pines Mystery Series Book 2) Page 10