Wrong Turn

by Mary Mantle

  "Well, when you say it like that, it does sound kind of crazy, but hear me out. The other day I played piano for the residence at the retirement home. She was in a wheelchair, and her running shoes had mud on them. How did the mud get there?"

  "Yeah, that is weird. The evidence of mud on her shoes is not strong enough to indicate that she was walking. There are many plausible explanations as to why the mud could have been there. She could have wheeled herself somewhere, or one of the workers could have pushed her into the garden. To me, this sounds a little far-fetched."

  I sat up straight in my chair.

  "Okay, let's forget about the shoes for a moment. My friend Hannah checked in to the mental hospital because of her severe anxiety. I went to visit, and when I signed in, guess whose name I saw on the signup sheet. Yep, that is right. Sally Hollister. She visited my friend Hannah and scared her. That proves that Sally is capable of walking and that she is lying to the world."

  Chief Smith shuffled some papers on the desk and looked bored.

  "So she had mud on her shoes and visited someone at the mental hospital. For all we know, she went there in her wheelchair. How reliable can your friend that checked herself into the mental hospital be?"

  My temper boiled up, and I felt like a volcano about to explode, but I took a deep breath.

  "Can't you guys investigate it?"

  The Chief rolled his neck.

  "If I took this to the district attorney, he would laugh in my face. Perhaps someone was pretending to be Sally Hollister at the mental hospital. Did you think about that? Right now, it sounds like there's just a few coincidences. For us to go after an 80-year-old lady who lives in a retirement home, we would need some hard evidence."

  "Are you going to let a killer roam free?"

  "Okay, okay. Let's say that Sally Hollister did do it. What is her motivation? Tell me that."

  He had me. I tried to think of a possible motive, but nothing made sense. Why would an 80-year-old lady kill her son and then go after his business partner? Even though it didn't make sense, my gut said she did it.

  I said, "People do some strange things all the time. I have seen some of those old unsolved cases, and people can have strange motivations. Most people are killed by someone they know."

  "Right now, we have Gary's accident listed exactly that way, an accident. I'm not in a hurry to run over there and accuse an 80-year-old lady."

  The volcano explosion was getting close. I had to get out of there before I got in trouble for yelling or even throwing something at the police chief.

  "Thanks for being such a help," I said as I stormed out of the room, not giving him a chance to say anything else.

  I walked as fast as I could out of the police station without looking at anyone. I knew in my heart that a killer was running free and the police weren't doing their job.

  In fairness, I didn't know how the police operated, and I know there are different rules and procedures for them to collect evidence and gather suspects so that a case holds up in the court of law. At the same time, it didn't matter. At that moment, I wanted to break something.

  19

  Confronting Sally

  In my car, I was so mad that I didn't want to go home. Half of me wanted to drive over to the Pacific View Retirement Home and confront Sally, but I thought better. I decided to head south to the sand dunes.

  Millions of years of strong winds coming off the ocean in the summer have created mountains of sand. ATV enthusiasts from all over the West Coast flock there to ride their four-wheelers and motorcycles. Mountains of sand in some areas as far as you can see. Some areas have had beach grass, and pine trees take over the dunes.

  I like to go to the dunes because it is a great spot to yell. No one is around, and you can let loose. Sometimes when I have a terrible day at school, or I'm homesick, I head to the sand dunes. I scream as loud as my lungs let me.

  After 15 minutes of driving, I parked my car beside the road. I walked through some beach grass and dunes until I was down in a valley. All I could see was sand around me; no one was in sight. I yelled and screamed at the top of my lungs until my voice was hoarse. I didn't like keeping emotions bottled up.

  After releasing my emotions in the dunes, I headed back to my car, a new person. My thoughts were calm and collected, and I decided to make that visit to Sally. I texted Tanner my plans.

  The drive to the Pacific View Retirement Home went fast.

  Behind the front desk was a 20-year-old girl. I walked up to her and said, "Hello, I would like to see Sally Hollister."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No, I met Sally today when I was playing the piano here. I was driving by, and wanted to stop by and say hi, see how she is doing."

  "Okay, I'll phone up and double-check that it's okay, then I'll send you up."

  She picked up the phone and punched in a couple of numbers, and a few seconds later, she said, "Hi, Miss Hollister. We have a guest here that would like to visit. She was the piano player from earlier today. Okay, I'll send her up."

  She put the phone down and looked up at me.

  "She's in room 201. Go to the elevator, and once you are on the second floor, it's your first right down the hallway."

  "Thank you."

  I felt tightness in my chest as I walked toward the elevators. It was a short ride up to the second floor, and confronting a possible killer is crazy.

  On the second floor, I walked to room 201 and knocked on the door. I heard a muffled version of, "Come on in."

  I went inside the room. It had a bathroom on the left side. It felt like a hotel suite with a little kitchenette and a sliding glass door leading to a balcony. The view of the Pacific Ocean was beautiful. The sun was setting, and the sky turned a violent red.

  Sally said, "Thank you for coming to say hello. I don't get many visitors."

  "I'm sure you don't."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Why did you go see my friend Hannah?"

  "Me, I didn't go see her," she said as she looked down at her wheelchair. "I don't get around good these days."

  "Sally, let's cut the charades. I know all about your adventures. You went to Cove Mental Health."

  Her eyebrows raised in shock.

  "How did you find out?"

  "The first clue was your muddy shoes. I stumbled on the second clue when I visited my friend Hannah and saw your name on the Cove Mental Health signup sheet. I put two and two together. I don't understand why you wanted to kill your son and Mr. Thompson."

  "How dare you come in here and accuse me of that. I loved my son, dearly. I admit that I can get around better than I let everyone know, but that does not make me a killer."

  "Then why do you pretend?"

  "It makes me feel good that people take care of me. Gary was so busy with work that he didn't have much time for me. I'm getting older, and it's a way to make myself feel younger than I am. If everyone else thinks I can't walk and I still can, it gives me some power."

  "I don't understand why you went to visit my friend Hannah."

  "I'm not sure who your friend Hannah is, but I never visited her. I did visit Cove Mental Health. I went to see one of my friends from here, Darcy. She's the best friend I've had here, and once they took her over there, I had to go see her."

  "Sneaking out of here and going to the hospital seems like a strange thing to do."

  "Like they always say, the truth is stranger than fiction. I'd like to keep my little secret a secret."

  "Well, if you didn't do it, and something happened to Mr. Thompson, and it wasn't you, then who was it?"

  She shook her head as a tear rolled down her face.

  "I don't know. Maybe it was someone that was against the chemical factory, but I have no idea. If you find out, please let me know."

  "Okay," I said as I patted Sally on the shoulder.

  Back to the drawing board, I went. As far as I could tell, Jose didn't do it. Kitty and Mr. Thompson were in the clear. Sally Hollister
didn't do it. Perhaps someone from the anti-ChemCorp group was behind it. I wasn't sure if that was enough motivation, but I didn't have anywhere else to look.

  20

  Dinner with Tanner

  Tanner and I ate dinner in silence. My fork shoveled arugula, avocado, and tomato into my mouth. I wasn't sure what Tanner was thinking about, but my mind was on Gary Hollister. He wasn't a well-liked person in the community, but he was still a person, and it wasn't right for him to get killed.

  I couldn't wrap my head around the entire mystery. Every time I thought someone did it, there was a new discovery. The police weren't doing anything about it, and it seemed like I was the only person that cared. Doubt crept in, and I wondered if I should give up. But I figured I could at least look into the anti-ChemCorp group.

  Chasing the mystery had taken a toll on Tanner. He was worried about me and didn't like my involvement.

  "I guess maybe I should give up," I said.

  "That's what I've been saying since the start. You aren't an investigator, and you should leave it up to the professionals."

  "But they aren't doing anything. They should be doing something."

  "No one even liked Gary Hollister. The world isn't a worse place for it."

  "It's a worse place if a killer is roaming free. Also, someone might have done something to Mr. Thompson. That is what motivates me. It isn't about Gary, even though every person should count, but I don't want a killer walking around the grocery store where I shop."

  "I see your point, and I sort of agree, but chasing down killers is dangerous. People are just like animals, and if they get cornered or caged up, that animal instinct boils to the top."

  Later that night before bed, I used my iPad and searched for the anti-ChemCorp group. To my surprise, Glenda Gunning, the secretary at the Cedar Cove Elementary School, was the president of the group. She was 70 years old, and there was no way she was behind Gary's accident. I had suspected Kitty and Mr. Thompson, but there was love and money involved, and Mr. Thompson is a big strong guy. Once again, it was back to the drawing board.

  Tanner and I didn't talk much before bed. I tried to read a book on positive psychology by Shawn Achor, but I couldn't focus. Barsik purred away at the base of the bed as usual and calmed me down.

  The lights were out, but I couldn't fall asleep. The idea came to me like a bolt of lightning. What if I researched more history on Gary? There could be something in his past that came back to bite him.

  The library and old newspapers would be the best place to start. It would be unlikely that much of his early life would be online, but he has been a fixture in the city his whole life, so there had to be some newspaper articles about him. As luck would have it, the next day was the one Sunday that the library was open that month. Excitement built as I anticipated researching the next day. I've always enjoyed libraries, research, and learning new things. What would I find at the library?

  21

  Library

  Usually, Tanner is the first to wake up, but not when Barsik decides to lick my face. My eyes opened, and Barsik was staring right at me. He wanted breakfast, and I wanted to get to the library, so it worked out perfectly. Tanner was sound asleep, so I didn't disturb him. I left a note that I was going to the library.

  Once I fed Barsik and ate my breakfast of oatmeal and had my mandatory one cup of coffee, I was ready. Barsik was done eating and was on the couch with one leg stuck straight out as he licked himself. Off to the library, I went.

  I parked in front of the Cedar Cove library in downtown. It was a three-story brick building. A short librarian in her 50s that looked like a runner opened the door. She smiled as I walked in. The building was older, but they remodeled it a few years ago, and it had books on all three floors. The furniture, flooring, and the paint job were all new. The first floor had a computer area with about twenty computers for patrons to use. Sprinkled through the library were tables and chairs.

  I didn't know where to start, so I went to the help desk, and the short librarian was there.

  "Hi, how can I help you?"

  "Hello. I would like to access some old newspapers. If that is possible."

  She smiled. "I'm not sure what dates you are looking for, but you will be in luck. It's amazing for or a small-town library with a little newspaper like The Cove Daily, but we have cataloged almost every article. We have one database where you can use keywords, names, et cetera to search for articles. It can save you a lot of time." She beamed with pride at the new system. "In the old days, unless you had an exact date, you had to search microfilm and hope to come across what you were looking for."

  "Wow, that sounds amazing. That will be very helpful. What computer do I use to access that database?"

  The librarian came out from behind the desk, and I followed her to a computer that was against the wall. It had a sign above it that said, reference database.

  "Here is the computer for the database. It is pretty self-explanatory. There is an icon on the desktop. It opens, and you can search."

  I sat down in the chair.

  "Perfect. Thank you."

  "We have some physical copies of the papers, but most are on microfilm, so you might want to make a note of what dates you are looking for; that way, if you need, you can look at everything on microfilm at once. Our print copies only go back for ten years."

  "Thank you. You've been very helpful."

  "You are welcome, and if you need anything, please let me know."

  She left, and I pulled up the search. I typed in Gary Hollister, and many results popped up. He was born in 1960, and the first hit was June 1965. There must have been a hundred results, maybe more. I wrote them all down in my notebook because it had no summaries, so I couldn't tell what the articles were about; I only knew that he was in that issue.

  It took about thirty minutes, but I wrote down all the relevant issues I'd be looking for. Unsure that I'd have time to look at them all at the library, I went back to the librarian.

  "Excuse me. Can I make copies of the physical papers and print off any microfilm articles?"

  "You sure can; it is 10 cents per copy. The printer is over there next to the computer you just used. Downstairs in the microfilm archive, there is a printer next to the microfilm viewer. It is an honor system; you print what you need and come back to me and pay on the way out."

  "Thank you."

  I found the section with newspapers from the last ten years. With a mountain of articles in front of me, I was looking for the needle in the haystack. One by one, I found each article that mentioned Gary. It required finding the newspaper from that day and locating the relevant article. I didn't have time to read all of them, so I decided to copy them all.

  An hour later, and all of the newspapers were back where I found them. I had a stack of photocopies and glanced at a few headlines. Cedar Cove man runs in the Boston Marathon. Local millionaire donates $20,000 for local scholarships. I was only a few hours in, and even though I hadn't read much, I learned new things about Gary.

  Now it was time to head to the microfilm area. The librarian said it was in the basement, and if I can, I like to figure things out for myself. In their remodel, one section got missed—the basement. When I walked downstairs, I left the main floor's well-lit confines for the dark, dingy basement. The blue carpet was old with holes in several areas, and a musty smell filled the air.

  There wasn't much down there, or at least not much of an area accessible to the public. I found the microfilm room and went inside. It had three microfilm viewing machines and a printer; the other walls had tall, metal filing cabinets with the years printed on each drawer.

  It was time to get to work. I sat my notebook and stack of photocopies down on the one table in the room. I started in 1965 and worked my way back to 2009. There was a good chance that any clue to Gary's killer would be hiding in the older articles.

  I put the June 1965 microfilm into the viewer. It took a few minutes to get the hang of how to navigate aro
und the paper and view the different articles. I found Gary's article. He was five years old, and there was a picture of him holding up a big fish. The task was fun but came tiring as time wore on.

  By 1978, he graduated high school and was a star athlete with the cheerleader girlfriend. The '80s came and went. The '90s was a slog. At that point, I read so many headlines my mind was spinning around—finally, the last article.

  Now I had my printouts and photocopies in a giant stack—over a hundred pieces of paper, 124 to be exact. I left the dungeon of the library and headed up. I learned a lot about Gary, but I hadn't dove into the stories' meat and bones. If I spotted the name Gary Hollister, I hit the print button as fast as I could. The longer I was there, the quicker I printed, and the less I read. All that led to the fact that I had a huge stack of articles that needed to be read.

  I stopped at the desk and paid the librarian. It was $12.40 for everything. Both exhausted and excited, I couldn't wait to get home to relax and read some of the articles.

  The second I walked into the front room, I sat the stack of papers on the coffee table. I could smell that Tanner cooked something. He pulled out a pizza from the oven. The hours of research had made me hungry, and my stomach was ready for both the salad and pizza. Barsik slept on the couch.

  "Hey, honeychka. How was the library?" Tanner asked as he cut the pizza.

  "Good."

  "What did you bring back?"

  "I copied a bunch of newspaper articles about Gary. I'm finding out all sorts of useful information. He was the class valedictorian in 1978. It will take me hours to go through all of the articles."

  "You'll need a full stomach for that."

  Dinner was great and gave me the energy to keep going. Tanner went to work on his novel, and I sat on the floor in the front room and started going through the articles. If I read it, I marked the top right corner. If I put an x, that meant it was not relevant. If I put a circle, it might be important. There weren't many of those. The majority got an x. If it was something good, I planned on putting a checkmark, but I hadn't come across one yet.