Town in a Maple Madness

by B. B. Haywood

  She circled the cabin, holding her hands to the sides of her face as she peered into a few windows. From what she could see, it was a typical setup. Wood floors covered with area rugs, rustic furniture, a well-used fireplace, a small kitchen with equally small appliances. A couple of bedrooms, each furnished with a set of twin beds covered with bedspreads that looked decades old. Nothing that stood out.

  She turned to face the garage, which looked like it was on its last leg, barely able to stand on its own. Perhaps she’d find something in there.

  She’d just started toward it when she heard a sound that made her jump. A low, steady rumbling echoed through the woods. A few moments later, she realized it was the sound of an engine of some sort. A vehicle, approaching from the west—from the direction of the river road, probably coming along one of the lanes that led to the cabins.

  By the sound of it, the vehicle was coming in her direction.

  Apparently, the owners had arrived. And here she was, standing right out in the open, trespassing on their property.

  She cursed her timing as her head shot back and forth, looking for a place to hide while also watching for the oncoming vehicle. She could see the flash of a chrome grille and a glint of light off the windshield. She had only a few moments to figure out what to do.

  She spotted the old garage nearby. Without further hesitation, she darted toward it. There were two bays, two garage doors, both closed. Neither had windows, so she couldn’t see inside. She thought of trying to open one of the garage doors but decided against it. Not enough time. But she saw a side door on the wall facing her, so she angled toward that. There was a big stainless steel hasp across the door and frame, and a padlock hanging from the metal eye. But it looked like the padlock was open. The door appeared to be unlocked.

  She hurried to it. Indeed, the padlock was not closed. She could get in.

  With a quick glance back over her shoulder, she flipped the hasp to one side, turned the knob, pushed open the door with her shoulder, and slipped inside, just as the vehicle emerged from the dense riverside vegetation and pulled up beside the cabin.

  She closed the door behind her and stood just on the other side, her ear right up against the wood. There was no window in this door either, so she couldn’t see what was going on outside, but she could hear the vehicle’s engine sputter and shut down. It ticked a little as it cooled. Then, silence.

  She kept her back against the door. She could hear only her own breathing in her ears. It sounded too loud, so she tried to slow her breaths. She wondered if she’d been spotted. But in her next thought, she wondered if it mattered. Was she overreacting? For a moment, she considered just opening the door and showing herself, making up some excuse for her presence here. But, instead, she waited.

  And, as she turned her head, she looked. Straight ahead of her, into the garage.

  Two vehicles sat in front of her, close enough for her to touch them.

  It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing, what they were. Their colors were muted in the dim, filtered light, but she could make them out well enough.

  A red truck, and a purple van.

  FORTY-FIVE

  For a moment she didn’t quite believe what she was seeing. It was almost like a mirage, an illusion, something conjured up out of her dreams by a magician. Real, but at the same time, not real. In fact, totally unreal.

  These were the vehicles she’d been searching for over the past two days. And now here they were, right in front of her, in this broken-down building. She knew it instantly. There was no mistake.

  Both vehicles had been backed into the garage and were parked so their headlights faced the garage doors. The red truck was closest to her, about an arm’s length away. It was beat up, its wheel wells encrusted with dried mud, but it looked drivable. The snowplow attachment was hooked up to the front end, its curved steel blade topped by two square spotlights on black stalks. There were no markings on the sides of the truck; Mick had never bothered with that for the plow truck, though his summer landscaping truck displayed his name and number. The driver’s side window was rolled down; the cab looked empty.

  The van was parked on the other side of the red truck. As if drawn by a magnet, Candy moved away from the door and angled around the front of the red truck, steering as far from the eight-foot-wide blade as possible. She crossed in front of the twin garage doors and stopped before the van, directly in the center, with the old grille right in front of her.

  She looked down. RIP DIG, the license plate read.

  There it was, plain as day. This was the van that had tried to run her down yesterday on the back road behind the Milbrights’ place.

  Candy froze as she heard footsteps nearby, on the other side of the garage doors. She could hear the crunch of heavy boots on the gravel, twigs, and scattered leaves.

  She also heard a few barks in the distance.

  Random.

  Whoever was outside must have heard them too, for the person paused, as if listening.

  Candy held her breath.

  Almost immediately, the footsteps started off again, headed back the way they’d come, by the sound of it. They were soon out of earshot.

  The barks stopped as well.

  Candy let out a breath and decided to take the opportunity to shift her position. She felt vulnerable here, in the front, right by the garage doors. It would be better on the other side, behind the vehicles.

  As quickly as possible, she moved away from the garage doors and slinked back between the truck and van, to the shadows at the rear of the building, where she thought she might have a better chance of going undetected. Maybe the owner was leaving. Maybe it had just been a quick trip to pick up something, or to check and make sure the place was locked up.

  Her heartbeat quickened again as she heard the footsteps returning. They were approaching the garage again. This time, it sounded as if they were headed toward the side door. They reached it and stopped there.

  Candy waited, holding her breath. As quietly as possible, she crouched down, so if someone should open the door, she’d be hidden behind the van’s tall back end.

  Just then her phone dinged in her pocket, once, twice, breaking the silence.

  Candy scrunched up her face in disbelief. She’d just received a couple of texts—and possibly given herself away.

  Again she waited, ignoring the phone for now, afraid to move a muscle. She was sure she’d been found out. She expected the door to swing open at any moment.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, she heard a scrape of metal on metal, as if someone had moved the hasp, and a distinctive deep clunk that sounded like the padlock being snapped together.

  She knew what had happened. She’d been locked in.

  Maybe the owner was just making sure the place was locked up properly, as she’d thought earlier. Maybe it was just simple security. Or maybe not. Maybe it was something more deliberate—to trap her inside.

  For a few moments nothing happened. Then she heard a strange sound, like water splashing on the door, as if someone had turned a hose on it. The splattering continued, around the corner of the building and along the bottoms of the garage doors.

  What was going on? Was the owner hosing the place down?

  No, it was something else, she thought. She smelled it now, the noxious yet weirdly aromatic fumes. They made her nose twitch and her blood rush faster through her.

  Fuel. Raw fuel. Like gasoline.

  Or charcoal lighter fluid. Being sprayed around the foundations of the building and around all the doors. The exits.

  The realization rushed through her. In that moment her flight instinct kicked in. She knew she had to get out of here, fast.

  She looked around, head turning back and forth, seeking some alternative avenue of escape—maybe a back door, a window she hadn’t noticed, even a pet door. She searched the wal
ls, her gaze jumping around frantically, lowering and rising. She rose to her feet as well and shifted to her right a few steps, moving along the back of the garage, scanning its rear wall, looking for anything—even a crowbar or an ax she could use to break her way out.

  The black-and-white photo popped into her field of vision out of nowhere. As she swung her gaze along the back wall, it was just there, right before her eyes. It took her a few moments to focus on it and realize what it was—one of a number of old photos attached to the garage’s back wall with small black nails. She looked up and around at the collection, stuck up here as if it were some sort of memory wall. The photos were mostly groups shots, all black-and-white, most eight by ten inches in size, heavily creased and faded, several decades old. Her eyes skipped around the images. Typical scenes you’d see at a riverfront cabin. Kids in shorts playing in the water, or swinging from tire swings, or sitting on a midstream boulder, shirtless, with fishing poles and big smiles.

  Family scenes, she realized. Probably the Pooleys, decades ago.

  She turned her attention back to the one photo directly in front of her, the one she’d first noticed. She knew right away what it was, because she’d seen it before—just yesterday, in fact.

  It was a photo of a high school graduating class. Cape Willington High School, the Class of 1981.

  The exact same photo she’d seen in Jean Rilke’s living room yesterday.

  Once again, she could easily spot Mick in the photo. He stood toward the end of the top riser, young, husky, and mop-topped. And on this photo there were two initials above his head, written with an old ballpoint pen.

  MR.

  That wasn’t the only set of initials on the photo. There were others. Two in particular caught her attention.

  HM.

  VIP.

  The first one she knew. Hutch Milbright, standing next to a young Jean Rilke—though she’d obviously used a maiden name then, which Candy didn’t know.

  But it was the last set of initials that drew her interest. VIP. The letters floated above the head of a young woman standing next to Mick Rilke on the top riser. She wasn’t as tall as he was, but she was taller than most of the other females in the class. She had wispy brown hair and a natural look, probably because she wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  The more Candy looked at that young face, the more familiar it became.

  It all clicked in then, in a shocking second. Her eyes swung between the young man and woman standing next to each other on the top riser, with the initials MR and VIP over their heads. Someone had drawn a small heart between the two of them, at about shoulder height. Obviously they’d been an item in high school. And she recognized the young woman now.

  Ginny Milbright.

  Ginny, short for Virginia.

  Identified in the photo as VIP. Her maiden name, at her high school graduation, before she was married.

  Virginia Pooley.

  That had to be it.

  And it fit. Candy remembered the message on the antique map she’d seen in Mick Rilke’s workshop: VIP 5 DIG.

  VIP—Virginia I. Pooley, now known around town as Ginny Milbright. Candy thought she knew what the message on the map might have meant, or at least part of it. It was a reminder Mick wrote to himself, to meet VIP, probably at five, at the place marked with the X on the map.

  Here. Right here, where she was standing. This garage, this cabin. This is where they’d met—either here, or right downstream at the boathouse, where Mick had died.

  Her head jerked around. She smelled smoke. Whoever was outside must have lit the lighter fluid.

  Moments later, she watched in horror as both garage doors, as well as the side door through which she’d entered, burst into flames with a great whump! and a rush of hot air.

  FORTY-SIX

  Candy panicked as a feeling of claustrophobia washed over her. The flames seemed to have momentarily sucked all the air out of the garage, followed by a backlash of heat and smoke. She started coughing almost instantly, and held the back of her hand to her mouth as she looked around frantically for a way to escape. But she was trapped. She couldn’t go out the way she’d come, through the side door, or through the garage doors at the front. She’d never make it through that wall of flames. It was only a matter of moments—seconds—until the flames made their way across the garage to her. The place would probably go up like a matchbox. No doubt the floor was a sea of oil stains, left behind by all the vehicles parked here over the decades. That would accelerate the flames. She had to find a way out, and fast. But at first glance, there were no options.

  She thought she could hear a vehicle starting up outside. The owner must be leaving, she thought. Leaving her here, to burn with this building, with the truck and van.

  It was an intentional act, she realized in shock. Someone was trying to murder her—and obviously get rid of some of the evidence at the same time. Evidence, and a pesky amateur sleuth, both extinguished in a tragic fire at a deserted cabin along the English River. Very convenient.

  How many secrets would the charred remains of the red truck and purple van give up? Certainly their license plates would still be decipherable. The snowplow would identify Mick Rilke’s truck. But the photos would be gone, along with any fingerprints and hair follicles and other evidence, which might provide clues to the murderer’s identity.

  As for her, nothing much would remain in five minutes or so, unless she could find a way out.

  She crouched down again, to get below the toxic smoke given off by the rapidly burning wood. The flames were licking at the ceiling, probing crosswise like red-hot fingers, almost living things that slithered above, seeking to consume all around her.

  She shouted then, a series of long, loud screams, the pitch as high as she could get it. She kicked madly at the wood panels along the back wall, looking for a weak spot, an opening of any sort. But despite the garage’s rickety nature, the wall appeared solid.

  There was no way out. She couldn’t escape. She was going to die here in this run-down garage by the river, in the company of two worthless old vehicles.

  She turned and pounded at the wall with renewed vigor, using both fists, then turned and attacked the wall with her shoulder as the flames lapped over her head and crept toward her along the side walls. The hot air and smoke stung her eyes and lungs, until she finally sank down to her knees, leaning back against the wall, still striking at it with one of her fists, though the energy was going out of her.

  She thought of making a last-ditch effort, running toward the front of the garage, looking to see if either of the vehicles had keys in them. Maybe she could drive her way out, like something from a Hollywood movie. Straight through the burning doors, maybe in the snowplow truck. She was assessing her chances of survival when she heard scraping sounds low on the other side of the wall. And barks. Loud barks outside, but close by.

  “Random!” she shouted, hope springing back up in her. “Random, I’m in here!” He must have squeezed his way out of the Jeep somehow through the partially opened window and followed her scent to the garage.

  The shaggy dog barked frantically in response, and the scraping and scratching sounds grew more frenzied.

  She realized what he was doing. He was trying to dig his way into the building from the other side. She looked down. The garage had been built on a concrete slab, but over the years the slab had cracked and broken near the back edge. She could see a wedge of dirt where a triangular section of the concrete had broken away. There was a small space, perhaps only a couple of inches tall, between the bottom of the wood panels and the ground, a space once filled by the concrete slab. And she could see thick-taloned paws clawing at the dirt there now.

  It might work, she thought as she watched Random trying to dig his way in, but he needed help.

  She couldn’t do it with her bare hands. She needed something else. Something sharp, lik
e a shovel or an ax.

  A moment later, she knew where she might find one.

  Keeping low to the ground, shielding her face against the heat, she twisted around and crab-walked her way back between the two vehicles, until she reached the passenger-side door of Mick’s red truck. She reached up and pulled at the handle, which felt warm to the touch. She yanked opened the door and peered inside. She checked the ignition first, on just the slightest chance, but no key. Next, she looked behind the passenger seat, and found exactly what she was searching for. No self-respecting landscaper and snowplow driver would go out without an ax or hatchet to break up ice and clear out brush. And in that, Mick was not unique.

  She thanked him mentally as she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the hatchet and made a fast retreat. She’d hoped for something a little larger, but this would do in a pinch. And she was definitely in a pinch.

  She tried not to inhale the smoke as she scrambled back between the vehicles. She made one quick detour, back along the wall to the cluster of black-and-white photos. She reached up and swiped the graduation photo from the wall, folded it together as best she could with one hand, slid it into her back pocket, and crab-walked back to the spot where Random was still digging.

  “Stay back!” she shouted to him through the wall. “I’m coming out!”

  And she rose, gripped the hatchet with two hands, drew it back like she was winding up to hit a baseball, and swung as hard as she could.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  It took her a dozen solid strikes with the honed blade, using all her strength, to break through. The wood splintered slowly at first, but it was old and weathered, and upon repeated hits it finally gave way. She managed to open up a wedge of space about a foot and a half high, roughly triangular in shape. She kicked away a few remaining shards with the toe of her boot and dropped to her hands and knees so she could peer through.