“You’ve enough to locate her,” Dunnyvale insisted. “She holds the secret to the origins of the phantom, as well as being able to help you to rid it from my keep so that you may then find your friend. You must focus your efforts on reaching her quickly, and you must also be aware that you’re running out of time. I’ve been doing my best to reach her, but she hasn’t listened to me in years.”
That last sentence caught me off guard. “Wait ... what?”
But Dunnyvale refused to explain more. Instead he got up, looked down at me with a meaningful stare, and said, “Act quickly, now. Before it’s too late.”
“Hold on!” I said, leaping to my feet, as he began to turn away. “I need for you to tell me something, and this time, I need the truth.”
He paused then and turned around, the look on his face clearly insulted. “I’ve told you nothing but the truth from the start.”
I took a breath and tipped my chin. “I apologize,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were a liar.”
“What is your question, miss?”
“I need to know if you really did have a treasure hidden away at Dunlow.”
Ranald smiled, but it was filled with melancholy. “Aye,” he said, as if that was a secret he was weary of. “And you’ll find it exactly where I told Jordan to look.”
I gasped. “You spoke to Jordan?”
“Aye,” he repeated. “I visited both him and Alex in their dreams the same way I’m visiting with you. I made the same request to them as well: to rid my castle of the phantom.”
“Where did you tell him to look?”
“I told them what I told my lovely wife, Josephine, on my deathbed,” he said. “That the treasure was hidden within another treasure, that of my heart’s truest love.”
I considered that for a moment. “That’s not much of a clue,” I said honestly.
“It’s a perfect clue, lass,” he told me. “And if you find it, you’ll also find the key to rid the castle of the phantom. But to use that key, you must first learn about it, and that you can only do if you locate Alex. She’s the one living soul who will help you fill in all the rest.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, but the most horrendous scream jolted me awake, out of bed, and onto the floor.
The door of the room crashed open and Heath hurtled in, holding a spike and looking like he fully intended to use it.
In the bed opposite me, Gilley sat frightened and pointing at the TV. “What?” I gasped when no one said anything.
Gilley just continued to point at the screen, and I realized there was a children’s show on with a talking sheep.
“Oh, Jesus, Gilley!” I snapped as I got up and switched off the television.
Gilley immediately calmed down. “You know how I hate that!” he yelled when I turned to glare at him.
“What’s he talking about?” Heath asked me, still holding the spike up defensively.
“He gets freaked-out by talking animals,” I said, moving back to the bed in a huff. “You should have seen him when they did the remake of Charlotte’s Web.”
“It’s not natural!” Gilley insisted with a shudder.
“Grow up!” I yelled, truly pissed off that he was being such a child and that he’d interrupted my important visit with Dunnyvale.
Gilley gave me a scathing look. “You know,” he growled, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, “I don’t have to take that from you, M. J.!” He then threw off the covers, but the cord to his headphones was tangled around him, and as he whipped himself away from the mattress, the camera went flying and crashed into the wall, where it broke into several pieces.
“Shit!” I swore, looking at the mess. “Gil!”
“Stop yelling at me!” he shouted, and began to cry.
Meanwhile, Meg, Kim, and John all hurried into the room. “What’s happened?” asked Meg.
“Gilley’s having a moment,” I said, moving over to the crushed remains of the camera. Now that we’d had our funds cut off, we had only one working camera to help us on our busts.
“So you told him,” John said.
I felt my jaw tighten when I saw Gilley turn to him. “Told me what?”
John looked surprised. “You know. That the three of us are on the first plane out tonight to head back to the States.”
“What?” he gasped. “Why?”
“Because we got fired,” said Meg. “Didn’t you know?”
“You guys got fired?” Gilley cried, staring at me as if I’d withheld that news on purpose. “You poor things!” he went on. “I’m so sorry for you!”
Meg squinted at him. “Yeah, Gil. We all got fired. Including you.”
“WHAT?!”
I stood up with the pieces of the broken camera in my hand, knowing that I should have been the one to tell him, which helped to immediately dissolve my anger. Walking over to him I laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, “It’s okay, buddy. We’ll be all right.”
Gilley’s eyes were the size of saucers, and his breathing was coming in short little pants. “We got fired?! Like, for real?”
“We’ll be fine,” I assured him.
Gil’s breathing started to quicken even more and he sat down on the bed again, holding a hand over his heart. “But ... but ... what about the money? We were being paid so much money!”
“There are other gigs,” Heath said, coming to sit next to Gil.
“Why me, Lord?!” my partner wailed. “Why?!”
It took us half an hour to calm Gilley down. It took us another two hours to convince him to stay with Heath and me and work on finding Gopher. Gil’s not so good under pressure. And he’s not always good at taking one for the team. Which is likely why, in grade school, he was always the last one picked for dodgeball.
Still, eventually we did calm him down in time to see Meg, Kim, and John off. They each gave me a great big hug, and looked terribly guilty as they loaded their luggage into the taxi. I was really going to miss them—especially on this bust, because we could have used the extra help.
After watching their taxi rumble down the road, Gil, Heath, and I turned back to the B&B.
Anya was waiting for us on the front step, holding a slip of paper and what looked like a letter in her hand. “I’m so sorry to trouble, you,” she said to us. “But it’s a matter of the bill, you see.”
“Let me guess,” I told her. “The credit card Gopher had on file has been rejected.”
Anya’s pleasant expression turned down in a frown. “Aye, I’m afraid so.”
“Great,” I muttered, irritated that the network had moved so quickly to cut off our funds.
“I even gave them a bell,” she said. “Rang the credit card company right up, but they’re refusing the charge.”
Heath reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed her his Visa with an apologetic smile. “You can put the tab on there.”
“Gil and I will each pay a third,” I told him.
He smiled gratefully.
Anya took the card and beamed a warm smile. “Thank you for understanding,” she said, turning to go back in. I was about to follow her when she seemed to catch herself and swiveled round again to face me. “Oh, I almost forgot. This came in the post for you. And I’m afraid I opened it before I’d taken note of who it was actually addressed to,” she said, appearing chagrined. “You might want to have a look at it straightaway.” With that, she handed me the letter and moved hastily inside.
I studied the envelope and was surprised to find it was addressed to “the American travelers.”
“Huh,” I said, showing Heath and Gil.
“That’s weird,” said Gilley.
“Open it,” Heath encouraged.
I did and pulled out a simple typewritten letter that read:If you want to see your friend Peter alive again, you’ll stop dallying at the library and rid the castle of the phantom!
All three of us sucked in a breath. “What the hell ...?” Gilley said, snatch
ing the letter from my hands. “Who wrote this?”
I flipped the envelope over. There was no return address, and both the envelope and the letter were typed. I showed it to him and he snatched that out of my hands as well.
Heath’s eyes locked with mine. “What do you think it means?”
I swallowed hard. A terrible feeling was settling into the pit of my stomach. “I’d like to say that someone’s just reminding us that Gopher’s in trouble, but my gut says there’s more at play here.”
“He knows Gopher’s first name,” Gilley said softly. “No one who knows him personally calls him Peter.”
“How do you know it’s a he?” I asked.
Gilley blinked. “I don’t. I just assumed.”
I knew what he meant. There was definitely a masculine edge to the language. “And it’s addressed to ‘the Americans,’ which means whoever sent it is likely a local.”
“But what’s the purpose?” Heath pressed. “I mean, we’re working as fast as we can on this. Why send us a letter to taunt us with Gopher’s disappearance?”
I pulled the letter back out of Gilley’s hands. “I don’t think he’s taunting us. I think he knows where Gopher is, and he’s telling us that we won’t get him back until we deal with the phantom.”
Gilley appeared skeptical of my theory, but Heath nodded. “That’s what my gut said the moment I heard you read it.”
“Hold on,” Gil said. “Gopher’s at the rock. Trapped somewhere in the castle by the phantom, right?”
Again Heath and I locked eyes, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. “We don’t know that for certain, Gil. We only know that the day Gopher went missing, we were at the rock.”
“But where else could he be?” Gilley insisted.
I studied the letter again. “I’ve no idea. And I’m still open to him being at Dunlow, but the past several times Heath and I have been to the rock, we’ve tried to find Gopher’s spirit and we’ve been met with bubkes.”
“That only means he isn’t dead,” Gil insisted.
“Not necessarily,” I reasoned after thinking on it for a moment. “I mean, we all send off energy, both the living and the dead. And when we went looking for Gopher, we didn’t sense his spirit or his ghost, which I took as a really hopeful sign; but now that I think about it, we also didn’t pick up any sense of him at all. Not even a murmur. If I’m reaching out to someone’s energy, I should be able to detect something. Even the smallest trace of his energy should have come to us if we were anywhere within about a quarter mile of him.”
“M. J.’s right,” Heath said, backing me up. “I mean, I remember when I was a little kid, no one would play hide-and-seek with me because I could always tell where my friends were hiding. They gave off a vibe that told me exactly where to find them. It’s the same method I use when I’m looking for spirit energy in the ether, although spooks give off a different vibration than living people. I seem to connect to their energy more easily just because I’ve had so much practice communicating with them.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly,” I said. “That’s exactly how it feels to me too.”
“So, you two are saying that Gopher’s not even at the castle?”
I hesitated before answering, thinking that through. At last I told him what I honestly thought. “No, that’s not quite what we’re saying. What we mean is that when we’ve gone there to try and feel out Gopher’s energy, we haven’t been able to. He could be there, or he might not, but from where we were standing, he wasn’t within our intuitive range.”
“There is a way to find out for sure,” Heath said.
My heart sank. I knew what he was going to suggest, and it filled me with dread.
“What’s that?” asked Gil.
“Now that the backpack M. J. found has given us plenty of magnetically charged spikes, we could storm the castle and see if we can find Gopher.”
Gilley visibly paled. “You mean, you’d go in there and face the phantom head-on?”
“With enough magnets, I don’t know that it’ll be able to come anywhere near us. What do you think, M. J.?”
Truthfully, I thought that I’d rather join John, Kim, and Meg on that plane home, but what I said was, “If we’re both loaded down with enough magnets, then it might keep the phantom at bay, and any other spook, which, in theory, would allow us to only focus on Gopher’s energy.”
Gilley’s face clearly expressed that he wasn’t so into the idea. “You people are crazy!”
“What else would you suggest, Gil? I mean, at this point, I think we’re out of options.”
“You could wait for me to pull more off that recording or find out who this Alex person is!”
“You broke the camera, remember?” I said, a bit frustrated.
Gilley’s eyes narrowed. “I saved the recording on my computer, M. J. I mean, what do you take me for, an amateur?”
I was about to make a snarky reply, but Heath interrupted with a question for Gil. “Were you able to pull anything else off the recording?”
Gilley focused all his attention on Heath. “As a matter of fact, I did. I managed to get the words Amérique du Sud off the recording.”
“America?” I asked. I don’t speak a lick of French.
“South America,” Heath corrected.
Gilley rocked back on his heels. “Exactly.”
I shook my head. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“I have no idea,” said Gilley, “but I know it’s important. I mean, why would Bouvet say the word ‘South America’ when he was talking to his buddy right before the phantom showed up?”
Heath’s brow lifted with a sudden realization. “Hey, M. J., didn’t Mary say that Jordan found Alex living in Peru right before he convinced her to come here?”
I thought back and remembered the conversation quite clearly. “Yeah, but how does that connect to all this?”
No one answered me, but it was clear to each of us that there was in fact a connection.
My attention, however, went back to the letter. Lifting it from Gilley, I said, “I think we need to take this to Constable O’Grady.”
Heath cocked his head. “Why?”
“Because on the off chance that Gopher has actually been kidnapped by a living, breathing person, we need to tell the police.”
Heath nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
“While you guys are informing the authorities, I’ll get back to finding this mysterious Alex from Russia but living in Peru.”
I studied him for a minute before I asked, “How long do you think that will take?” Gilley opened his mouth to answer and I cut him off by adding, “And please don’t lowball it, Gil. Tell me honestly.”
He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Maybe a few days,” he said. “Three at the most.”
I shook my head. “That’s way too long.”
“You guys haven’t given me enough useful information to find her!” he nearly shouted. “Do you know how many Alexandra N-A-R-somethings there are in the world?”
“Which is why we have to go back to the castle and do a thorough search,” I said gently. I eased my arm around his shoulders. Gilley looked like he was about to protest again, but I cut him off by saying, “We’ll be very, very careful. I pinkie swear.”
Gilley wasn’t assured. “But, M. J., if you both get into trouble, who’s going to help you? We’ve lost half our team already! You’d be leaving just me behind to figure all this out!”
“So we won’t get into trouble,” I vowed. “We’ll keep all our magnets exposed, search the castle as quickly as we can, and get out.”
Gilley looked down at his feet and pulled out from under my arm to trudge up the steps. “Well, I don’t like it,” he said moodily. “Not one little bit!”
Chapter 10
After we’d settled on a plan, Heath and I headed to the constable station and found O’Grady right away. “Afternoon to ya!” he said with a warm smile. “Come to tell me you’
ve found your friend, I hope?”
“No,” I said wearily. “Unfortunately not. We do have something we want you to look at, however.” Pulling the envelope out of my back pocket, I handed it to the constable and waited while he read the letter tucked inside.
“What’s this supposed to mean, then?” he asked, lifting his eyes back up to mine.
“We don’t really know,” I said. “But we think by the tone of that letter that maybe someone knows where Peter is, and they’re not going to tell us unless we try to get rid of the phantom.”
O’Grady looked thoroughly puzzled. “But why would they do that?” he asked. “After all, if they knew where to find your friend, they should tell you, now, shouldn’t they?”
“In a perfect world, yes,” said Heath. “But we think that maybe the person who wrote this might have had something to do with our producer’s disappearance.”
Quinn sucked in a breath. “You mean, you believe the letter is referring to a kidnapping?”
I nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”
O’Grady’s reaction surprised me. He actually laughed. “Oh, you Americans!” he said, thoroughly amused. But when he saw our serious expressions, he quickly sobered. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just that here in Dunlee we don’t see much in the way of crime, you know. I think we’re a far more simple folk than you lot from the U.S. Kidnapping is quite out of our league, you see.”
“So, you don’t think that someone could have taken him?”
“No, miss, I truly don’t.”
“Then why would someone write that?” I pressed, pointing back to the letter.
O’Grady read the text again before answering. “What I think you might have here is a bit of mischief from some young lads with nothing better to do than antagonize some poor foreigners,” he said sadly. “And I think I know just the ones to reprimand.”
I thought back to the three boys Mary had caught stealing from the library. I felt embarrassed for having brought the letter in then, as when I looked at it from that perspective, I could clearly see the prank. “Thank you, sir,” I said, motioning for Heath to go. “Sorry to have bothered you with this.”
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