And Then They Were Doomed

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  He followed.

  Zoe stretched her lips into a tight smile and said nothing. There were dim cars lights off through the trees.

  “Still no phone service or internet.” He threw his arms wide. “Those kids today somehow got on the internet. Why can’t we? I don’t understand, do you? Why didn’t that Brent woman warn us this place was so isolated and that we were in danger of being stranded? I really think I will be telling others to skip any programs planned at this place.”

  “Emily and Mary couldn’t have predicted floods.” She didn’t want to listen to much more of him. The headlights, through the trees again, were brighter.

  She tootled down the drive, away from Aaron.

  He followed easily at her speed.

  “That’s my friends. I’m sure of it. I’ve been waiting to see them.” She pointed to the lights.

  “Really? Certainly not for drinks or dinner, I hope. Are they coming to tonight’s film? Did you ask first?” He kept pace with her, forcing her to slow to get her breath.

  “I would think the first thing you’d do is ask permission. Even asking your friends to try to get across the sunken bridge … who knows what danger you’ve put them in? Rather a reckless thing to do, Zoe.”

  Zoe stopped abruptly. That was enough. She’d reached a brittle edge here with this man. Never intimidated by a tall, skinny man with bad breath, she got up close and lifted a finger to poke his stomach. She poked again, making him bend, then pushed until he took a step back, complaining.

  “I beg your—”

  “May I warn you, sir.” Her words were bitten into small chunks. “I may be small, but I am probably as intelligent—no, I’d say more intelligent—than you will ever be. And can run my life without help from …”

  Her words trailed away as the lights she’d been watching made the last turn toward the front of the lodge, then stopped beside Zoe. Two women threw open the doors and rushed to hug her.

  Aaron Kennedy faded away, off toward the path around the lodge, as the three of them hugged.

  On the porch they stopped to huddle again. Jenny and Lisa had a story to tell, a story Zoe was happy to hear.

  “So, I left the funeral notices in your car after all?” Zoe was relieved. “I was looking for them. Early this morning, outside my window, someone was talking about getting into my room. I thought it was for those notices. Something they didn’t want me to find in them. But I found something else—”

  “We took them into Copper Harbor with us,” Lisa interrupted.

  “We hoped we could look up some of those addresses on the backs of the envelopes. Get you the names of who sent them,” Lisa said. “You know, a reverse address lookup.”

  “And did you?”

  “Couldn’t find a place where we could get on Wi-Fi, but the owner of a restaurant let us use his phone. Pretty strong signal.”

  “And?”

  “We called Tony.”

  Zoe looked hard at Jenny, seeing nothing unusual in her face.

  “And?” Zoe pushed.

  “We gave him some of those addresses to see if he could find names to go with them.”

  “And?” Zoe demanded.

  “Not so fast,” Lisa said. “He’s looking them up. He says he’ll get them to us here, at Netherworld, as quick as he can.”

  “We can’t get anything here. He won’t be able —.”

  “Don’t discount Tony, Zoe. He’s got lots of ways to get things done. Remember, he used to be a cop.”

  Zoe watched Jenny’s face. Not a hint of irony.

  Inside, Emily Brent was the first to greet them. “Thought I heard noise out there. Who the devil are you two?” She frowned at Jenny and Lisa. “Oh, you’re the one brought Zoe Zola, aren’t you?”

  “How’d you get here?” Mary Reid asked. “Boat?”

  “Jeep,” Lisa said. “Not easy. Hope we can get back out. That bridge isn’t too stable.”

  “Can we get out soon, do you think?” Aaron Kennedy, back now, called.

  Zoe led them toward the stairs. She wanted to hear the news they brought with them. She wanted to tell them things she’d discovered, but the other guests stopped them with questions.

  Did they know if the rain was over?

  How were the roads to Netherworld? Were they passable?

  Everyone asked questions, looking for good news but getting none.

  It was only a few minutes before the outside door opened again, and a state trooper stepped in, looking around.

  “Yes?” Emily Brent hurried to greet him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the officer said. “I wasn’t sure who to ask for. I’ve got this.”

  They talked awhile by the open door. Zoe was sure she saw the officer hand something to Emily. Something she stuck in her pocket.

  He touched the brim of his hat and was gone.

  Nigel leaned in close to assure everyone. “A welfare check,” he said and nodded as he spoke.

  “Good to know they’re aware we’re here.” Pileser gave a small, superior laugh. “You never know if the people in places like this are even competent.”

  “I was almost tempted to ask him to take me back to civilization with him,” Aaron said. “This whole thing is turning into a disaster, if you ask me.”

  Pileser frowned. “I would hope we’re all professional enough to wade through minor adversity. The show must go on, you know. We have a webinar to do. Have to fulfill our literary duties to the masses.”

  “You’re not thinking about the five thousand you’ve been promised, eh?” Aaron laughed at him.

  Nigel sputtered.

  “Would you really leave, Professor Kennedy?” Gewel Sharp reached a hand behind her to take Anthony’s.

  “I suppose not,” Kennedy said. “At least, now that I know we’re not stranded. Only four more days of this misery to get through.”

  The others looked pleased and were soon back upstairs to their rooms or comfortably seated on chairs in the reception room, some napping, others reading. Gewel and Anthony, still held hands, and talked, heads together.

  Zoe excused herself. She wanted to talk to Emily Brent, whom she found in the kitchen, alone.

  “I was expecting a letter. Did that police officer have anything for me?”

  Emily gave her a strange look. “Unless it’s coming by drone, I don’t know how you expect to get it.”

  “But, he gave you something—”

  “A list of emergency numbers to call,” Mary interrupted.

  “Maybe my message is inside.”

  Mary almost rolled her eyes. “No message, Zoe. Sorry.”

  She leaned down as close as she could get to Zoe. “You realize that Emily’s upset you’ve allowed your friends to simply drop by. Food might get short soon. I hear deliveries to some of the stores in town aren’t getting through. Emily’s set everything up for the number we have here and says that’s all she can take on. If your friends don’t make it back over that bridge, I don’t know what we’ll do with them. Not even a room left.”

  “What about Leon Armstrong’s?”

  “Who do you think has time now to clean it?”

  Disgusted, Zoe turned away. “They won’t be staying,” she promised.

  Chapter 30

  Up in her room, where she was beginning to feel a little bit at home, Zoe offered Jenny and Lisa the bed, the single chair at the desk, or the reading chair she hadn’t used yet.

  They squatted on the bed together and talked about the box of funeral cards.

  “So, you called Tony?” Zoe asked Jenny, who nodded, chin out, daring Zoe to say another word.

  “Was he surprised to hear from you?” She didn’t take well to dares.

  Jenny sniffed and looked away. “I only asked him to help because we couldn’t get enough band width to do the search ourselves. Lost the call to him twice, as it was. He said he’d send a copy of what he found.”

  “I have to tell you something.” Jenny leaned close. “That Emily Brent—I don’t t
hink that’s her real name.”

  “I figured that out the first day. Must’ve thought it was cute …”

  “No. She’s an actress. She was in The Mousetrap. Right here in Calumet. At that theater we saw. Anyway, her name isn’t Emily Brent. Not at all. It’s Susan Winton.”

  Zoe felt the blood drain from her face. That name. Her stomach turned. She had to reach out behind her, to the headboard, for support.

  “That’s who she is?” was all she could get out.

  “Wasn’t Jokela your mom’s name?” Jenny asked. “And two others in the cast were named Lamb. I don’t know if that means anything …”

  Zoe could only nod and think harder, then harder, until she almost couldn’t think at all.

  “She’s Susan Jokela, my mother’s sister. I guess Winton’s her married name. She was someone Mom thought still liked her. She thought Susan was a friend. And she’s here.”

  “You were right, Zoe. You’re here because of your family. Terrible.” Jenny climbed off the bed. “You’re going to leave with us today. Something’s going on, just the way you thought. We’ll help you pack.”

  Zoe looked away. She slid to the floor. The other name: Lamb.

  “I’ve got something to show you. I didn’t think that much of it …” She got up and went to the closet for the box of photos.

  It wasn’t where she’d left it, pushed in next to her suitcase. She moved the suitcase. Nothing.

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  “What’s gone?” the women asked together

  “A box of photos. They were here when I arrived. I took these.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the photos she’d hidden there. She held one up and pointed to Leon Armstrong. “That man was here yesterday. Supposedly a professor. He left during the night. They said he was sick, but he arrived here drunk and stayed that way.”

  “But since he was sick …” Lisa said, taking a deep breath, “maybe he wanted his photographs and those people didn’t want to bother you.”

  “So, they had to sneak in today to get them?”

  Lisa shrugged. She took the photo of the man and child from Zoe.

  “His name is Leon Armstrong,” Zoe said. “A professor at a college in New York. I don’t remember which one, but it’s on our schedule.”

  Zoe rummaged in her briefcase and brought out the sheets she was looking for. “Ralston College. Upper Fairmont.”

  “Maybe we could call there … check on him.”

  “But it doesn’t say Leon Armstrong on the photo. It says Angela and Harley Lamb.”

  There was silence in the room.

  “Lamb?” Jenny and Lisa asked at the same time.

  Zoe nodded.

  Lisa pulled the playbill from her purse. “Look at this. That’s what I wanted to show you.”

  She first pointed to the cover photo.

  “That’s her, right? She’s Emily Brent,” Lisa said.

  Zoe took the brochure and stared hard at it. All she could do was nod.

  Jenny stuck her finger on Emily Brent’s face. “Listed as Susan Jokela Winton. Look at the cast list inside.”

  Zoe wasn’t listening; the words in her head were “But Susan’s a good person, Zoe. Someday she might look you up.”

  She finally paid attention when Jenny pointed to an inside page. She saw the name, Harley Lamb, but he was Leon Armstrong.

  Zoe nodded. She couldn’t clear her head enough to think. Little pieces, like shards of glass, spun inside of her. There were names and letters behind her eyes, but she couldn’t get them to hold still.

  “Your photo’s of Angela Lamb and Harley Lamb,” Jenny said.

  “Look at them yourself.” Zoe pushed the photo at her. “That’s the man who disappeared last night. He was drunk the whole time he was here. No surprise he’s gone.”

  “The people in this photo are named Lamb. Two people in the play are named Lamb. One played Mollie Ralston. She’s … uh … listed as Mary Lamb.”

  Zoe stared at Mary Reid’s face. Made up to look older, but definitely Mary Reid.

  “And this one …” She pointed to the man with red hair and a bushy red mustache. “He’s our Leon Armstrong.”

  Leon Armstrong. Detective Sergeant Trotter in Christie’s play.

  And Evelyn’s beloved sister “Susan.” Emily Brent. Her aunt.

  What else connected them to her?

  Only Anas Jokela—her grandmother. The cruel woman who hated her own daughter.

  “Three of them.” Zoe stared at the picture. “Three connected to me. Three of the people who killed my mother. They’re here.”

  “Maybe a—” Lisa started to say.

  “You think this isn’t about me?” Zoe interrupted.

  Lisa closed her eyes.

  “But,” Zoe said after a minute of quiet between them, “who is Angela Lamb? And Harley Lamb? You think he’s Mary’s husband? Probably. Then Angela must be his daughter.”

  “Let’s get out of here now,” Lisa whispered close to Zoe’s ear.

  Zoe didn’t take time to think about escaping. She thought about Evelyn and how she’d suffered at the hands of these people lined up in a play brochure.

  Zoe shook her head and whispered, “I’ll stay. They started this. Not me.”

  * * *

  The movie that evening was Witness for the Prosecution. Zoe’d seen it ten times and, when Lisa and Jenny were gone, she went to bed instead.

  Part 4

  Monday

  Chapter 31

  The Finnish women set off at eleven, driving down dirt roads from their hidden town as the clouds turned from gray to bright silver.

  They drove in a line of battered cars, Jenny and Lisa following behind them, out to Highway 41 and then to the sign pointing to Cliff Cemetery, where they parked beside the road and piled out, babies in their arms or children running around their legs. They trooped down the muddy side of the hill, walking to where the old cemetery lay hidden back among the trees.

  Lisa and Jenny walked among them. Janne, camera slung over his shoulder, walked behind. They were going to film the women among the gravestones of their dead as they told the stories of these people who first came from Finland. The women were excited, having an important goal and whispering among themselves, asking one another what to say and how much truth to tell. How could they make their ancestors look better than they were?

  “Sometimes, ya know, Uncle Asmo was known ta start a fight. How would that look on this documentary thing?”

  The older women had walking sticks they’d brought with them to help on the uneven ground; they sometimes lost them in the mud and would laugh as they stumbled on down the hill.

  The group formed a line as they came over a rise, Inka yelling to Lisa that it was just ahead. “We’ll all be quiet, ya know. We’ll whisper our stories fer yer camera.”

  Lisa motioned that she understood, then turned to Janne with a finger at her lips. He stopped where he was, letting the women pass him by, but then grabbed his camera and ran on ahead. They heard loud cries, and a wave of shock passed through the group.

  “Aw, no, fer God’s sake!” Leena, in front of the others, was bent in half, wide hands at her knees. “Jist look at what’s happened here, would you?”

  She crossed her arms over her body, hugging herself as if in terrible pain. The others crowded around her. There were cries and gasps at the sight of a forest of trees knocked to the ground, jagged trunks sticking dead white shards up into the air. And not a tombstone in sight. Nothing but blinding light and dying trees.

  Behind her, Inka moaned, the red scar blooming up her cheek. “That’s what I heard da storm did over here. I hated ta say it.”

  “I heard, but I thought they was exaggerating the thing,” Leena said. “Ah, not this bad. I thought, A few trees, dat’s okay. But not … dis.”

  The women cried and mourned together, holding one another, then letting go and standing straight, a slight cry coming from first one and then another until th
e cries became sighs.

  Around them, the silence of the place was terrible—or not silence so much as noises that shouldn’t be: the creaking of fallen trees and fluttering of leaves down among the hogweed.

  Cliff Cemetery was destroyed. It wasn’t there. Not the place they’d fondly described to Jenny and Lisa. Not a huddle of old tombstones, some fenced off from the others—as people everywhere did—by ornate iron fences.

  Each to their own plot, as always—the family all together.

  “Ah, never mind.” Leena’s disgust filled her voice. “We’ll fix it, as we do everything. It’ll be fine. You just listen. There …” She pointed here and there. “Ay, you, Kirsten. That a tombstone? There! No, over there. Go see, will ya’? Find one and we’ll find ’em all.”

  “Everyone o’ them.” Marya stood beside Jenny, hugging her baby against her body, rocking him as tears wet his bald head. “Ah, how am I goin’ ta find my mother? Dear Lord, didn’t she have enough to put up with while she lived? And what about our Angela? Can we find her, ya think? I don’t want to be the one to tell Mary. Dear Lord above. We’ve got to find her grave.”

  Within fifteen minutes, the women were drawn away by a shout from the farthest end of the cemetery.

  “Found her!” One of the women was shouting. The others went running.

  * * *

  The mourning, like the shock, didn’t last long. Nor the blame. The women worked together, pulling limbs from places where the family stones might be, helping one another, calling out to one another, directing, suggesting, lifting trees four times their size, and soon too busy to weep. Soon only their own noise surrounded them.

  “I found my mother.” Marya held her baby off to one side, making him grunt as she pulled the last broken branches from a crooked stone. “Ah, at last.”

  She fell to her knees, bent forward around her baby, and kissed the stone.

  Her face, when she looked up at the women, beamed.

  Lisa and Jenny and Janne, when he stopped filming the disaster, worked with the rest of them, pulling branches away, joining in to push trees too big for just a few women to move. Some shouted as they found another stone or tripped over one of the old iron fences.