Wary, he continued into the village. The full moon illuminated shanties huddled on the lakeshore. But no people. No barking dogs. No smoke coiling from the chimneys.
Finally, scenting smoke, he found a dying fire, a blackening stew in its embers. He raced from house to house, yanking aside their caribou skin door flaps, but the village had been abandoned. Food lay half-eaten on tables. Half-mended clothing was discarded with needle and thread still inside. None of the supplies had been taken from the fish storehouse.
He searched for tracks indicating where the villagers had gone, but found none. It was as if they had simply vanished into thin air.
Rather than spend the night in the eerie village, LaBelle continued on to a telegraph office, miles away. There, half-frozen, he sent a message to the nearest Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Convinced the villagers had disappeared due to supernatural forces, it took hours before LaBelle was able to calm himself and tell his story coherently.
The RCMP investigated. Its officers reported seeing strange, blue lights over the village, lights that did not look like auroras. Even more disturbing, the village cemetery had been emptied. In spite of the Mounties’ investigations, the Anjikuni mass disappearance remains one of Canada’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
Or does it?
The mystery was first reported in “Le Pas, Manitoba” on November 28, 1930 and then the next day in “The Hallifax Herald.” After a flurry of speculative articles, interest in the story died and was not revived until 1959, when author Frank Edwards resurrected the tale in his book, “Stranger Than Science.” The RCMP later accused Edwards of fabricating the entire tale. But if it was a fabrication, it was nearly thirty years in the making.
Uneasy, I checked the cover of the magazine. It was five years old. Had Mike found it after the disappearance of the Bell and Thistle? Or was this something he’d collected before, noticing our own pattern of disappearances? The Anjikuni tale wasn’t exactly like the Bell and Thistle. The Inuit village had been left behind and only its people had vanished. But there were parallels. The proximity to bodies of water – Anjikuni beside a lake and Doyle surrounded by springs. Stories of dark spirits in the woods.
The blue lights in the sky implied UFOs. Stories of alien abductions and fairy abductions contained striking similarities, right down to the probing, tall figures, and weird lights. And stories of UFOs abounded in the Doyle region. We’d always assumed the tales were due to the saucer-shaped clouds that appeared over the mountains. What if there was more to it than that? What if the UFO abductions really were fairy abductions?
What if all of Doyle was doomed to disappear?
My scalp prickled, and I licked my lips. I couldn’t discount the coincidences anymore. Mike’s interest in the Bell and Thistle, his rare books on the occult, and now this article, filed within easy reach beside a folder on the Historical Association.
Mike had known. Or he’d suspected.
And Mike had died.
I shook my head. Everything we knew about our enemy told us she didn’t act directly. She worked through influence. But the doctor had been suspiciously quick on the scene when I’d found Mike.
My stomach growled, and I checked my cell phone. It was eight o’clock.
Stunned, I stared, shook the phone. It blinked, unaffected and unbothered. Eight o’clock? At night? The day had passed since I’d been in here. How was it possible…?
I sucked in a breath.
I’d lost time.
No. No! I jerked to my feet. There was nothing alien or fairy about me getting lost in research. I was paranoid and tired, but I was not crazy.
I had to get out of here.
I unlatched the door, and the bookcase swung backward. Movements jerky, I walked into the library and closed the case behind me and fumbled for the light switch. The chandelier flicked on.
Something flickered in the corner of my vision, and I whipped my head toward the movement.
The turkey vulture perched atop the central, arched window. The bird’s wrinkled, fleshy neck blended into the burgundy walls, making it appear decapitated. Ivy rustled against the glass.
I drew away, wanting to run.
But I couldn’t. Not from my calling. The vulture was a messenger. A really ugly and creepy messenger, but it was a helping spirit.
“You again,” I said, my voice flat. Feet leaden, I forced myself to approach the windows. “Please,” I said. “No more people I care about. Just tell me what—”
Outside, Alba shouted something unintelligible. But she’d never been particularly intelligible, even on her good days.
I peered through a wide gap in the ivy. I couldn’t see Alba, only her two-story house, its gabled roof silhouetted against the darkening sky. Lights streamed from the first floor windows, illuminating the home’s peeling paint, dilapidated condition.
A woman shrieked. The sound cut off abruptly.
Silence rippled outward from her house.
Shocked, I took a step backward.
The quiet pressed in on me, a dull, thick, oppression.
I bent toward the glass.
Alba burst through her second floor window.
I felt, rather than heard, the thud of her body striking the ground, and I screamed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
For a moment, I stood frozen at the window. And then I was running. Out the front door, down the steps, slamming through the gate, racing down the sidewalk.
A woman in shorts and a faded blue t-shirt stood amidst the weeds in Alba’s garden, her hands covering her mouth.
“Carol!” Heart thundering in my chest, I raced into Alba’s yard, dried weeds clawing my bare legs. The woman was one of Mike’s neighbors, a reader of women’s fiction and nineteenth-century gothics.
Married and middle-aged and soft around the middle, she turned toward me, her graying hair windblown. “Oh, my God. I was on the sidewalk. I saw her jump. She’s killed herself!”
A chord sounded within me, faint and out of key. “Then she’s–”
“Dead.”
I saw Alba now, on her back, arms outstretched. Her dead eyes gazed at the stars emerging in the darkening sky. Her tank top twisted sideways, exposing her bra. Pity slowed my heartbeat, tightened my throat.
Hand shaking, I pulled my cell phone from the pockets of my linen shorts.
“I’ve already called,” Carol said. “I can’t...” She gulped. “I knew she was crazy, but I never imagined...”
A black-and-white SUV pulled up to the sidewalk. A deputy I didn’t know stepped from the car and strode up the overgrown walk.
“I saw it all,” Carol gabbled at him. “She jumped out that window.” She pointed to the broken teeth of glass. “I came to see if I could help, but she was dead. And then Lenore arrived.”
The grizzled sheriff’s deputy knelt, pressing two fingers to Alba’s neck. He shook his head and looked up at me. “Did you see anything?”
And for a moment, I wanted to deny it, stay out of it. I knew what would come next – this was the third body I’d found. I struggled for the right words. “I was in the house next door.” I pointed to Mike’s Victorian. “I heard shouting and came to the window. And then there was a silence – I don’t know how long, maybe a minute or two. And then...” I motioned to Alba’s broken body.
“What time was this?” he asked, rising.
“I called straight away,” Carol said, checking her cell phone. “Eight-oh-six.”
“She didn’t kill herself,” I said.
They stared at me.
I turned to Carol. “Don’t you remember? She was shouting, as if she was arguing with someone–”
“I didn’t hear anyone else.” Carol darted a nervous look to the deputy.
“And then she screamed,” I said, “and then everything was quiet. And then, a minute or two later, she came flying out that window. Remember?”
She scratched her fleshy cheek. “I don’t... It all happened so fast.” She turned to the
deputy. “Honestly, I was trying to ignore the yelling. Alba’s always shouting.”
I stared at Alba, at the odd turn of her neck. “Her neck’s broken, isn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me after a fall,” the deputy said.
“But that man – Heath Van Oss – his neck was broken too, and...” I swayed, horrified. Mike. Mike’s head had been at an odd angle. So the same person had murdered them all. But of course she had.
“Is everything all right?” a woman called from the sidewalk.
We turned.
Doctor Toeller rested one hand on Alba’s gate and held a black doctor’s bag in the other.
*****
“Toeller!” Jayce stepped aside for a mother pushing a stroller. “What was she doing there?” Behind Main Street’s false fronts, the sun glittered off the mountain peaks, still covered in snow. American flags fluttered from the wood and stone buildings. An electric saw whirred, and the thud of hammers echoed down the street.
“What do you think?” I asked bitterly.
“But what did she say?” Jayce asked.
“She said she was making a house call on Steve Woodley’s aunt.” I tugged on my purse strap, chafing my bare shoulder. Our footsteps clunked hollowly on the wooden walkway.
Jayce shook her head. Her hair cascaded over the shoulders of her short-sleeved, blue Henley. Her tanned legs moved smoothly beneath her matching blue shorts. “So she was right on the scene after Alba and Mike died.”
“That’s not the only coincidence. Alba’s neck looked broken, and I realize now so did Mike’s.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I told the sheriff. She thought I was as crazy as Alba.”
“Are you sure her neck was broken?” Jayce asked.
An aproned business owner set a dog bowl filled with water outside her open, blue-painted door.
“Of course not,” I said, miserable. “It’s not like I’m an expert, but it was definitely at an unnatural angle. So was Mike’s.”
“I thought he died from a blow to his head?”
The construction sounds grew louder. A breeze stirred my cream-colored tunic dress.
“I did too,” I said. “But it’s not like anyone’s given me autopsy results. I don’t know if there’s even been an autopsy yet. Connor told me it could take weeks.”
“I’m surprised the police didn’t haul you into the station.”
“Thank God Carol saw Alba’s fall. She was able to confirm I ran out of Mike’s house afterward.” Connor hadn’t been happy to find me there. Thin-lipped, he’d arrived later with Sheriff McCourt and hadn’t said a word to me. It shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did.
I scanned the street now, looking for him in vain.
“Then what happened?” she asked.
“More police. Steve Woodley turned up. Gretel–”
“Gretel? What was she doing there?”
“She said she was going for a walk and saw the police lights by Mike’s house.”
Jayce snorted. “Sure she was.”
We came to a halt in front of Jayce’s coffee shop. Brown paper covered the inside of the windows. The red-painted door stood open, and I smelled freshly-cut wood. Men’s voices shouted over the roar of the saw and bang of the hammers.
Jayce frowned. “I really need to be in there today. Are you going to be all right?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Talk to my friend at the hotel where Van Oss was killed. Maybe she saw something.”
Jayce looked like she was going to object, then she smiled. “You know what you’re doing. Call if you need any help.”
“Thanks.” I continued down the sidewalk, the morning air cool on my legs. Jayce’s faith in me was touching, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I only knew I had to do it.
The iron door coverings were hooked open against the hotel’s painted, stone wall, and the wooden doors stood open. I walked beneath the American flag bunting and to the reception desk.
To my relief, Erica stood behind the window again. But this time when she looked up, her brown eyes were somber.
“Hi, Lenore.” Beneath her tan, her slim face looked sickly.
“Erica, are you all right?”
She raked her hand through her caramel-colored hair. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s the end of a long shift. How can I help you?” she asked formally.
I hesitated. “Were you working the night Mr. Van Oss was killed?” I’d assumed he’d been killed at night, but for all I knew, it could have been the morning.
She glanced past me, making sure the blue-carpeted reception area was clear. “I must have been the last person to see him alive. I gave him his key. I feel terrible.”
“Because you gave him his key?”
“Because I thought he was such a jerk, and now he’s dead.”
“Jerk? What did he do?”
“He treated the staff like they were his feudal serfs,” she said. “A real attitude. I hope that isn’t what got him killed.”
“You don’t think one of the staff did it?”
“No, of course not.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think.”
“What time did he come in that night? Do you remember? Was he alone?”
“Around nine, I think, and yes, he was alone. Why?”
“I think the same person who killed Van Oss also killed Mike,” I said, feeling reckless. A real detective would have kept her theories to herself. But I wasn’t a detective, and I didn’t care. The more people who knew what I thought, the better – the safer? – I was.
Erica’s eyes widened, and she sucked in her breath. “I thought that was an accident. Why would someone want to kill Mike?”
“Mike owned some valuable books. Van Oss was a rare bookdealer.”
Her mouth slackened. “Rare? And you think...? Do the police know?”
“I’ve told them everything, but I don’t think they’re taking me seriously. I admit, it’s a wild story for Doyle.” I paused at that. Actually, it was a pretty boring story for Doyle. “But now Alba’s dead, and it looked like her neck was broken–”
“Hold it.” She braced her elbows on the counter. “You saw Alba?”
“I saw her fall. I think she was killed too. I was next door, at Mike’s house. I heard her scream. And then everything went quiet. A few minutes later, she came flying out the window. I ran out of the house, but by the time I’d got there, it was too late, she was already dead.”
“And you think someone… What? Threw her out the window?”
“I think someone broke her neck and then tossed her from the second floor to make it look like a suicide.” The fall alone might not have killed her. She’d landed on soft ground.
“She was here, at the hotel, that night,” Erica whispered.
A couple walked down the carpeted steps, their suitcases banging against the wall.
“Just a sec,” she said.
I stood aside and tried not to dance an impatient jig while the couple checked out, asked about nearby wineries, gushed an ode to the beauties of Doyle. Finally, they left, their suitcases bumping out the open front doors.
“Sorry about that,” Erica said in a low voice. “What were we saying?”
“Alba.”
“Right. She was here. She followed some tourists inside, haranguing them about Britney Spears and government conspiracies and evil corporations. I tried to get her out, but instead of leaving, she went into the dining room.” She made a face, as if she’d smelled something bad. “Fortunately, we’d finished with dinner, and no customers were inside for her to harass. I thought I’d have to call the police to remove her, but suddenly she just… left.”
“Was that before or after Van Oss returned?”
Her brow furrowed. “It must have been after. The dining room closes at nine, but you know how it is. People come in at eight-thirty, and then they don’t leave until nine-thirty or ten. It drives the wait staff nuts.”
“Yeah, I remember how relieved I felt about that. The doors were open. The owner insists on always keeping them open, something to do with the fire code. But I’d put out the brass stand with the CLOSED sign and remember there was a couple still inside, eating dessert.” She angled her head toward the door. “So it had to be at least nine-thirty when Alba came in.”
“Do you remember anyone else? Anything unusual?”
“No. But...” She glanced around the empty reception area. “The police asked me the same questions. They kept asking about the period between nine and eleven p.m. That must be when they think he died.”
“Did Van Oss say anything to you when you gave him his key?”
“No. Oh, wait. Yeah, he asked what time we locked the back door.” She looked past my left shoulder.
Involuntarily, I tracked her gaze. On one side of the stairwell was a short hallway with an EXIT sign above it.
“Locked?” I asked.
“We lock that door at ten. Only people with a room key can get in through there after that time. It’s a security thing.”
“What did Van Oss say when you told him?”
“He nodded and said something like, ‘That’s okay then.’ And then he went upstairs.”
I puzzled over that. It sounded as if Van Oss had been expecting someone – someone who preferred coming in through the rear door. But even if they had, they still risked being seen by someone at the reception desk as they made their way around the corner to the stairs. It wasn’t a huge risk though. Reception was behind a wall. Unless Erica had been standing at the window and looking out, she might not have noticed anyone. And she’d been distracted in the dining room with Alba. My stomach turned. But if Alba had seen someone...
“Did you see anyone come in that way?” I asked, pointing to the rear entrance.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“Do you have security footage of the back door?”
She made a face. “No, and none in the parking lot either. The cops asked the same thing.”
“Asked what?” Connor said from behind me.
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