by BV Lawson
Drayco flipped through the other articles. “Anything on Freaky’s later arrest?”
Reece found it for him and handed it over. “Here ’tis. He spent ten months in jail for assault on Arnold. This was ten years after the pipe bomb spectacle. I guess he carried a blazing torch for Mrs. Sterling, pun intended. You’ll notice once again, Sterling didn’t want to press charges. The constabulary did, due to the history there.”
Drayco said, “Mighty forgiving of Sterling. Or at some level deep down, he knew he wasn’t good for her.”
Reece pointed to another article. “There were plenty of Arnold news scraps through the years. I didn’t want to bore you. Copied this one because it mentions some other folks you may find interesting.”
Drayco read aloud, “Cole Harston, Ferguson Farland, and Arnold Sterling were among those charged with misdemeanor illegal gambling following a long sting operation. Fined five hundred dollars.” He scanned the rest of the article. “A sports betting pool. As if Caleb Quintier would stoop to such a common racket as that.”
“They had public defenders because they were poor slobs. Unlike our friend Quintier.” Reece held up another one of the articles that he turned to face Drayco. “Whose high-powered attorney got him off this particular racketeering charge here due to a legal loophole.”
“Proving what Sheriff Sailor said about Quintier manipulating the system. So did you find any articles mentioning Beth winning a lottery?”
“Nope. You said to look back fifteen years or so. The Virginia lottery was only a few years old at that time. Would have made front page news if someone won a sizeable jackpot around here.”
“I don’t suppose you came across anything concerning embezzlement from a children’s charity?”
“Zip and nada.”
“I appreciate your checking on this. A-plus.”
“I’ll take it. My report cards tended to have nasty notes on them. Attitude problems. And lots of tardies. I was not a model student.”
“You, Reece? Then how did you rise to the crème de la Historical Society crème?”
“Nobody else wanted the job.” Reece leaned back in the booth and took another swig of the pungent chili beer. “Is this like garlic? Maybe it will ward off evil spirits.”
“And everyone else nearby.”
“If it works, we can make a fortune selling it as a talisman to guard against all manner of criminals. Might put you out of business.”
“It would be worth it.”
Reece clinked his beer glass against Drayco’s. “I’ll drink to that.” He took a long sip, then licked at the froth on top. “So, seen much of Darcie Squier?”
“Why? Are you trying to set me up?”
“Lord no. The opposite. I’m telling you to run in the opposite direction as fast as possible. She’s not right for you. You’re the latest in a long line of catnip treats. Or make that tuna treats. A lot smellier.” He held his nose.
Drayco took the chilled mug and rubbed it on his arm. He hadn’t played piano much lately, and the Brahms was taking a toll. No telling how the arm would react to practicing a Prokofiev concerto like the third. He’d had a few offers through the years to perform with orchestras, despite the injury. But he never did. Maybe it was better to bask in the memory of the days when he practiced eight hours without pain and hardly broke a sweat.
Reece peered at Drayco as he used the mug as an icepack. “Those scars of yours giving you trouble?”
“I’m fine.”
Reece took a few more swigs of beer. “That new deputy, Nelia Tyler, comes from a musical family. You should make friends with her.”
“She’s married, Reece.”
“I didn’t mean friends with benefits. Someone with common interests.”
“Have you met her husband?”
“No. Must be difficult having a commuter marriage like that.”
“Haven’t had a chance to chat with her much. Mostly shop talk.”
“You should. She seems like real people.”
“Not like Darcie.”
“Darcie’s real, all right, real unstable.” Reece drained the last drop of the chili concoction. “Say—while we’re dissecting newspaper samples, I saw an article in the Washington Post about a well-connected poobah having a perplexing case solved with the help of quote-unquote crime consultant Scott Drayco.”
That made Drayco wince. “I don’t like my name in the papers. I had plenty of that during my piano days.”
“Don’t be shy. I need more fodder for my Scott Drayco folder at the Historical Society.”
“Why don’t you focus on the Opera House instead. It’s been around for over a hundred years and will be here long after I’m gone. Provided the next owner doesn’t bulldoze it down.”
“Horrors, no. All right then, I’ll combine the two and call my new exhibit, Scott Drayco: Reluctant Savior of a Cape Unity Icon.”
“Reece, you really must try harder. Your titles are terrible.”
“Okay mister know-it-all, you come up with one.”
“Right now I’d settle for something like ‘Beth Sterling Avenged As Lucy and Virginia Harston Live Happily Ever After.’ How’s that?”
Reece reached out to shake Drayco’s hand. “You win.”
Wednesday 15 July
After calling it an early night yesterday to fully recover from the food poisoning, Drayco spent most of the morning buried in courthouse records. But he found what he was seeking—the deed to the small cottage Beth’s grandfather gave her. The property was still in Beth’s name and hadn’t been sold, as Trent Sterling thought.
It was worse than a wild goose chase, more like a snipe hunt. Nonetheless, Drayco drove down a winding sandy road toward the back end of nowhere. It was amazing how the coastal peninsula looked a lot like Kansas. You could put a level on the ground at any spot within a ten-mile radius and get the same pancake reading. At times, there was a whiff of salt air, but no palm trees. Plenty of oaks, pines, and poplars.
The road felt endless. Not a single house anywhere within the first mile. Then, he came upon a lone building nestled in a thicket of trees the right distance down the road for the property he found in the records. And it matched the GPS. No house number, but it had to be the right one.
Standing out as like a sore thumb, it wasn’t easy to miss, but forgettable. No wonder Beth wasn’t able to get rid of it. What price could you put on a pile of boards held up by sheer force of will, as substantial as meringue with a rusty roof topping?
No need for a key since the door was ajar and falling off its hinges. He was surprised to find furniture if you could call it that. A rocking chair and one cot with a moth-eaten blanket in the front room, a desk and one chair in the back room. Was this the “back” Beth meant?
He concentrated on the desk first. The one drawer held yellowed blank notepads and some dried-up pens, with thick layers of dust coating everything. No one, even Beth, was here in some time.
Disappointed, he prowled around the room. Walls the thickness of a deck of cards meant little space for hiding places. Except the tiny bathroom. It didn’t take long to remove the rusted medicine chest. Bingo. He wrested a ledger book sealed in a blue plastic bag out of a hole in the wall.
The sound of an approaching car outside the house caught his attention, but then it roared on past. Either someone did live out here, or a lost tourist was way off course. Maida said that happened all the time to her inn guests.
He carried the book to the desk and began to read the entries penned in the same handwriting as on the ledger in Beth’s office. According to her notes, Beth was busy early in her career. There was a decade’s worth of names of female patients meticulously entered into the first column.
The second column held dates, not for prenatal care or deliveries, according to the descriptive text in the third column. Every entry was for an abortion. Since Beth wasn’t an RN or MD and didn’t practice at a hospital that meant they were likely illegal abortions.
Her no
tes were as much a record of the woeful underside of recent Cape Unity history as they were youthful indiscretions. How would those names in the book feel knowing there was a record of what they’d done? Including intimate details such as who Beth thought the father was and notes like “retarded, can’t take care of a child” or “has to work to support her six brothers and sisters.” Saint Beth’s halo was slipping.
In a few cases, Beth wrote, “incest.” Drayco counted three of those, including one Iris Nealy. Iris Quintier’s maiden name was Nealy. Iris was sixteen at the time, only six years younger than Beth, and one of Beth’s first patients. Beth’s entry for Iris said, “Drunken stepfather raped her at knifepoint.”
For Iris and the other women—girls, really, average age of sixteen—in the book, the money collected by Beth was never more than a hundred dollars. Often much less.
There was another item which interested him, the only non-abortion. He scanned the accompanying text and got a shock. It was Lucy Harston’s stillborn child. Virginia’s twin brother, whom Beth spirited away without telling Lucy.
Lucy said she didn’t remember much of the birth so it would have been easy to do. Why do it at all? Fear of malpractice? Fear that Lucy was too emotionally fragile? Whatever the reason, it would remain forever hidden, because this was the one entry in the entire book Beth left empty of notes.
If Beth continued to perform abortions, she stopped entering them in the ledger over a decade ago. Perhaps she’d tired of putting her job in jeopardy and getting arrested. Or perhaps she’d had a change of heart, for the fourth and last column in the book was poignant. Beth gave names to each and every fetus including Virginia’s brother, whom she called Jeremy.
There was a four-character code after each name, beginning with combinations of W, E, N, and S followed by numbers. In flipping through the ledger, he found a diagram on the inside back cover corresponding to the code system. What could it mean?
He rested his head in one hand and tried to clear the blurriness left over from lack of sleep.
Trying to refocus on the diagram, it took a few seconds for the board creaking behind him to register. He saw the outline of an arm swinging in his direction, and then he was on the floor looking up at a blurry ceiling. He didn’t have time to react before a cold substance was sprayed in his face, and the light and the sounds around him faded away.
33
The first thought that came to mind as Drayco clawed his way back to consciousness was someone must be getting ready for a barbecue. As his senses came back online, he was aware of a telltale crackling and hissing. Along with the acrid smell of roasting rotted wood topped with hints of gasoline, it jolted him fully alert. His hands were tied behind his back. And he was in the middle of a blazing fire in Beth Sterling’s tinderbox shack.
He coughed as he stumbled to his feet and headed toward where he hoped the front door was—only to find the doorway completely engulfed. Not much time to get out before the whole building collapsed, so when a corner of the house fell in and created an opening, he raced toward it and hurtled himself through to the world outside.
He lay on the grass, taking deep breaths of fresh air. Spying a piece of jagged, rusty metal, he maneuvered into a kneeling position, grabbed the piece of metal from behind, and rubbed it over his bonds until they snapped. He was free.
Able to step back and take in his surroundings, he saw his car was untouched. He tried the cellphone. No signal, big surprise. He’d have to high-tail it closer to town until he was able to call Sheriff Sailor. With any luck, the whole drought-starved countryside wouldn’t be engulfed by the flames.
As he floored the car down the same sandy road as before, he called up the mental snapshot he took of the room after he regained consciousness. The ledger was nowhere to be seen. Not burned, because the desk was still standing. Whoever attacked him must have swiped it.
He also remembered that while cutting the ropes on his wrists, he was pointed toward a spot behind the house with large rocks at four points like north, south, east, and west. Within the border they formed, smaller rocks lay dotted in neat rows. If his hypothesis was correct, Beth not only named those fetuses and the stillborn Jeremy, she buried them in a private graveyard.
A few miles later, he got a signal and called the sheriff who dispatched the volunteer fire department and a couple of deputies to the scene. Then he commanded Drayco to stop by the office for details.
After taking a whiff of the traces of the liquid still on Drayco’s collar, Sailor handed him a wet cloth to rub his face. Sailor said, “Has a slight sweet smell.”
“Possibly sevoflurane inhalation liquid. It was part of a case while I was at the Bureau.”
“What’s it normally used for?”
“Knocking people out, basically. It’s from the same family as diethyl ether. Whoever my attacker was, he came prepared. A bludgeon, for the blow to the back of my head, plus the drug.”
“Ether, ay? The same kind of ether they use in starting fluid? As in automobiles?”
“You’re thinking Barry or Freaky? It’s a different type of ether altogether. Plus, their names weren’t on that ledger.”
“And you’re sure the ledger was gone, not burned?” Sailor asked after Drayco sank into his favorite swivel-seat chair in Sailor’s office.
Drayco rubbed his wrists, still sore from the rope, then gratefully took a cup of ice water from Sailor. “It was on the desk before I was attacked. The desk was still intact when I awoke, but the ledger was gone. So, yes, I’d say it was stolen.”
Drayco let the ice chips melt on his tongue and trickle down his throat. He hadn’t checked a mirror yet and rubbed a finger above his eyes. Eyebrows were still there, but a bit singed. “Damn fool rookie mistake,” he grumbled. “This may not be the big city, but I should never let my guard down.”
Sailor tipped back in his squeaky chair. “You can make up for it. Back in March, you mentioned something about having a photographic—”
He held up a hand when Drayco opened his mouth to correct him, “Make that eidetic, memory that came in handy learning those piano scores. Think you could reconstruct that ledger?”
Drayco grabbed a legal pad on the sheriff’s desk and started writing. “I’ll give it my best shot.” The two times he was put under anesthesia for a procedure, he bounced back in record time with no post-op delirium. His memory felt normal right now. This was one way to find out for sure.
He paused in his writing, to add, “On the surface, the lone connection from the ledger to the case we’ve investigated is Iris Quintier—and I’m not sure a three-decade-old incident involving incest would be involved. And I guess Virginia Harston’s twin brother.”
“There is that. Can’t see how a stillborn child would tie in with an attempt twelve years later to harm the surviving twin.”
“Makes me feel like ‘Alex’ in Wonderland.”
“Speaking of falling down rabbit holes. You’ve unnerved someone enough to follow you. And try to kill you or warn you, depending.”
“Three cheers for that.” Drayco continued writing names and dates. “All these entries about young mothers and pregnancies reminds me. Find anything on Quintier and that children’s charity embezzlement scheme?”
“Nothing concrete.” Sailor scanned Drayco’s face. “You sure you’re feeling all right, Doc? Concussions aren’t anything to be taken lightly. You know the drill—if you get dizzy, nauseous, start sounding drunk—”
Drayco paused from his frenetic scribbling to reply, “Then I’ll go the Fiddler’s Green Tavern and get truly and soundly soused. Wouldn’t want the pain without the pleasure to go along with it.”
Sailor snorted. “You never get rattled, do you?”
“Comes from walking out in front of a couple thousand people who’ve paid money to hear you play.”
“Never catch me doing anything that insane. Which makes it less likely I can tell when you’re acting strangely, Drayco. You’re already nuts.”
It
took him the better part of an hour, but he thought he wrote down everything from the missing book. It turned out to be twenty-six names in all, an average of under two per year for Beth. He handed the notes to Sailor, who asked, “You still planning on attending the shindig tonight? Maybe you should take it easy instead.”
“I promised Virginia I’d go.”
Sailor scrunched up his nose. “Damn fool idea, if you ask me. I’m surprised uber-mother Lucy would allow it. That woman is full of surprises. Tyler and Giles will be there. If things get hairy ...”
Drayco answered, “I know who to call.” He had to admit that after a night of food poisoning followed by near immolation and a lungful of smoke, he’d just as soon take a pass and call it a day. But it was Virginia’s first major outing after her attack, and it happened to be at the same location as the attack. With any luck, there’d be a happier outcome this time.
34
Drayco watched as Lucy’s hands stayed glued to the handlebars of Virginia’s wheelchair. The sheriff hadn’t quite gotten it right. Lucy most definitely did not want Virginia to come, not so soon after the incident at the Fourth of July picnic. It was Virginia’s doing, countering every one of her mother’s objections with time-tested kid logic, followed by her standard refrain, “Mom, I’m not a baby. Besides, it was an accident, remember? I don’t wanna be a hermit.”
The Cape Unity town council tried their best to pump up tourism, the latest scheme being Wednesdays on the Water. Starting at five, the pier morphed into a nautical Mardi Gras, with clowns and face painting for kids, live music and dancing for the adults, and rides aboard decorated boats on parade. Lucy said the lighted boats at dusk were like Christmas in July.
The crowds grew larger as summer progressed until walking along the pier and docks meant being shoulder to shoulder. That made Lucy more nervous. She’d gratefully accepted an offer from Reece to tag along, a little less grateful for Drayco’s presence. Even with them nearby, she held onto the handles of Virginia’s wheelchair like a vise.