by A J Maybe
“Jimmy, c’mon. You’re being dramatic. Calm down.”
You know that doesn’t ever help to soothe an agitated person? Telling them to calm down. Jimmy’s coughing began to be punctuated by wheezes. Still, I was sure his symptoms were psychosomatic.
“Great, now” —wheeze— “it’s triggered my asthma! I need my inhaler!” He snapped open the glove box and dug around furiously, but came up with nothing. “I gotta go,” he said, shaking his head like a dog in the midst of a hornet swarm. “I can’t” —wheeze— “believe you, Mars!”
Oh dear. “Are you gonna die?” I called, as I approached the truck. “I can drive you! Or call an ambulance?”
Jimmy waved me off as he run-shuffled around his truck, slammed the door, and performed the fastest three-point turn I’ve ever seen, spitting gravel as he went.
“Oops.”
I returned to the bottles, to see if I’d accidentally smudged Jimmy’s noseprint on one. I couldn’t see anything, but figured the police would be able to pull some fingerprints off the bottles either way, and the traces of smoked cinnamon would surely lead right to Jarvis.
I cast an evil eye to the Seshman’s bottles. That snake of a man chose them specifically to show me that he knew everything about me, somehow including things that happened after the show was cancelled. He guessed that the threat of exposing my accident would scare me more than a threat on my life, and he was right. It wasn’t the potential jail time. It was the stigma, the shame.
But I’d changed. I was about to come clean, so that Jarvis could be caught. I’d have to tell the police nearly everything for them to understand the connection between Jarvis and I, and I was prepared to do it.
“Time to make a call,” I told Leo. I went back inside, googled the phone number for the detachment, lifted the phone receiver to my ear, and poked one finger into the rotary dialer.
That’s as far as I got, because there was no dial tone. I jiggled the phone base, and even clunked the receiver into it a few times, suspecting a loose wire in the ancient machine. I replaced the receiver to my ear.
Still nothing.
I retrieved my cell and checked for bars of signal, knowing what it would tell me: also nothing.
20
A Call
“Huh,” I said, trying to stay brave. This was a rural area, after all. These things happened all the time, right? “What now, Leo?” Again, I wished she was still in her former bear-like state.
The dog approached with the guileless grin typical of a Golden Retriever, nuzzled my hip, and floomphed down into napping position by my feet. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” I said, feeling the effects of the restless night in my bones. “But I could probably email the cops, right? Or send a Private Message on their social accounts.”
That seemed more appealing. My break from social media wasn’t supposed to be over yet, but this warranted an exception, right? Surely I’d get quicker responses from a chat window than through email. I opened the app that locked me out of my social media accounts, entered about 50 passwords, and re-entered the world of Likes and Upvotes. I promised myself that I would ONLY go straight to the OPP’s profiles and have a quick chat with them.
My heart swelled at the heap of notifications I’d missed — or, rather, my brain swelled as the dopamine rushed in — but I managed to ignore them and focus on the business at hand.
A quick search showed me that police hadn’t posted anything to their accounts in close to two years, and had never responded to a comment. “Email it is,” I said. Leo sighed, annoyed that I kept interrupting her rest.
I drafted the email in my head. What was I going to say, exactly?
I have a bottle that smells like cinnamon. A murderer left it for me, as a warning, when I was about to start up a vigilante investigation. Pls send help.
They wouldn’t like the vigilantism, but it wasn’t specifically illegal, was it? I decided to ask google about that and word my email accordingly. I was going to end up confessing my less-than-stellar past, but there was no reason to admit to an actual crime, right? It would only take a second to check.
Boo-doo-boo-da-bing.
I stared at the screen. A brand new notification.
Boo-doo-boo-da-bing. You have a video chat request from The Cinna-m…
The little pop-up didn’t have room to show me the full name. “Ignore it, Piper. That’s not the police. That’s not what we’re here for.”
It could be, said a familiar voice in my head.
That didn’t really make sense, but I clicked “Accept”. Chat requests are nearly impossible to ignore.
A new window opened, black for a moment, and then I saw my own face in the top left corner. Even in tiny, digitized format, I groaned at the state of my hair. Then a grainy video feed appeared and I felt sick.
My vision clouded briefly and I had to grip the table to stay upright. The username was “The Cinna-man” but on the screen a pixelated image of Robin Jarvis smiled at me.
21
Showdown
I put on a defiant face. “What are you, on a boat?” The grainy video feed showed me a background of wooden slats, radiating from behind Jarvis’ head like a pine sunrise.
“A boat? Not a bad guess, but you’re a little off the mark.”
“Well then...to what do I owe the pleasure, Jarvis? I should tell you: I’ve abandoned my investigation. Message received, okay? So you can just leave me alone.”
Jarvis leaned back, shaking his head in a disappointed way. The feed stuttered as the rural internet struggled to keep up. “Ah, that’s all well and good, but if you’ve told me that, then you know who left the message for you. Which means you have a pretty good idea about what happened to Rex Bales, which means I can’t simply leave you alone, right?”
My heart raced. “I won’t tell!” I lied. “And you’ve already dropped off the grid, it looks like. Can’t you just lay low awhile? The cops think LT did it. They’re totally off your scent, and I won’t correct them, ok?”
I didn’t know how far away Jarvis was, but I knew he was a powerful enough man that he could find me if he wanted to. He only chuckled at my promise, and waited in silence.
“How did you even know?” I said, finally.
“About the spill at Seshman’s?”
“That too.”
“Oh, that you were hunting for me? It only makes sense, right? You wanted that truck cleared from any connection to Rex’s incident. LT was nice to you, physically knocked your competition out of the auction, and had a connection to the truck, so you’d be eager to find another suspect,” Jarvis explained. “But, moreover, I’ve been able to access your laptop since you signed up for Hoarder Redemption. It was our standard procedure to plant a little bug in the computers of all applicants. Sometimes people get upset about how they’re portrayed on the show, or they get the idea that they’ve been ‘abused’ by my methods. So it becomes necessary to keep people quiet, and letting them know that you’ve seen their search history is usually enough.
“If you’d changed your password anytime in the last five years, I wouldn’t have been able to read all your emails, but you haven’t, so here we are.”
My cheeks flushed hot and red starbursts bloomed across my vision. How dare you?! My mind flashed across all the private, personal, soul-baring emails I’d exchanged with Brennan, and I felt sick as I pictured this snake reading them.
“Relax,” he said. “I only poked around for the details I needed. I have neither the time nor the interest to go digging through every entry in your diary, little girl. But I do know what secrets you keep. Hence the bottles.”
As he talked, a plan formed in my head. I minimized the chat window and looked through my program list, trying to find the one that would record my screen.
“We all have this one perfect story that we’re trying to tell the world, and I knew what would bring your story crashing down, if people were to know about it.”
He sure likes to hear his own
voice, I reflected, grateful to have the time to get the screen recorder running.
“One perfect story,” I repeated. “And that was the problem, right? Barry was a high profile client, and you couldn’t fix him. Instead, he swallowed more and more pills every day, and fell down the stairs. Rex was going to spill the details, right? And wreck your story?”
I realized this would probably count as ‘leading the witness’ in court, but I wasn’t a lawyer. I was doing my best here.
With the screen recorder running in the background, I brought the chat window back to full size as Jarvis tented his fingers. “You’re close. Barry was a failed case, that’s true. And only Rex and Jimmy Kiss knew about it. But an occasional failure, after all the years of success stories? My reputation could survive that. But Rex knew something Jimmy didn’t: Barry didn’t fall down the stairs. You’re familiar with my philosophy of ‘tough love’, aren’t you, Ms. Mars?”
I swore. I knew what he was driving at. “You pushed him! You pushed an old man down the stairs!” Tears welled in my eyes as I mourned a man I’d never met.
“Well, he brought it upon himself. The problem is that Rex, concerned as he was for Barry’s recovery, had moved into the house as well, and inadvertently witnessed the incident. I paid him handsomely for his silence, but, as it turns out, Rex Bales wasn’t only motivated by money. He threatened to break our deal, and then we had a real problem.”
“So you found him at the park, half drunk, and clubbed him in the head?”
Jarvis pressed his hand to his chest as if insulted. “Goodness no! Nothing so crude as that. He was a big man, you know, as is the case with all the Bales men. To level the playing field, I cajoled him, taunted him, said that he was the bigger man but I was the tougher man. I challenged him to do the Cinnamon Challenge with me, and the fool did it. Once he started coughing and wheezing, I slapped that childish mask over his head and waited for panic to take over.
“It did, better than I could have hoped, and he slipped as he tried to get water from the wishing well, cracking his head in the fall. All I had to do was turn him over and walk away.”
“Honestly, I figured the scene would be interpreted as a drunken accident, much like Barry’s death was interpreted as a drug-induced accident.”
“You’re a monster,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady.
Jarvis shrugged. “Things got out of hand. It wasn’t my intention for Barry to die, but I do admit that I knew some harm would come to him. I felt it was a fair trade for a psychological wake-up call I could not replicate any other way.”
“Psychology?! You’re citing ‘psychology’?” I shrieked. “You charlatan! You fake! You don’t have a credential to save your life, you—”
“Ms. Mars,” he interrupted. “Try to stay focused. You’ve now gotten not just one confession, but two. Congratulations. That was your plan, wasn’t it? But you know the problem with getting a confession, don’t you? It’s the traditional problem: now, of course, I have to kill you.”
“Go ahead!” I dared him. “Come find me! I’ve been recording this whole thing, and the cops will be looking for you, all across the country! And they’ll be here waiting for you, if you’re dumb enough to try to get to me.”
Jarvis looked stricken, just like he was supposed to. Then he laughed, long and hard. “Oh, Ms. Mars! You think I didn’t realize you were recording this conversation? Of course you were. But you’ll find it hard to phone the police, won’t you? Have you tried yet? And you can email them, sure. Attach the video, and it’ll take thirty, maybe forty-five minutes to upload on this turtle-speed internet. Then they’ll check their email within 10 minutes or so, and send the nearest cruiser, which will take at least another 10.”
Oh dear. Jarvis had cut the phone line. I felt foolish for not making that connection sooner.
“So all that will take an hour, easily,” he said. “And the problem, Ms. Mars, is that you don’t have an hour. I’ll see you much, much sooner than that.”
My stomach lurched, and I fought to keep from panicking. I still had a head start: I could just email the police, no video. That would only take a few minutes. Then I could run off into the woods before Jarvis arrived, hiding behind thick elm trunks while the police hopefully checked their email and sent the nearest car. Maybe a bear, not long out of hibernation, would waltz by and munch Jarvis up before they arrived.
That’s optimistic, Piper. Mighty optimistic.
Jarvis was gone from the screen, but the video feed played on. Two windows, shaped like the eyes of a jack o’lantern, stared at me. A click-click sounded, and light flooded the on-screen room. The image flooded white for a moment while the camera auto-adjusted, then came back into focus.
That’s when I recognized the windows. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. Those were the windows of a vintage Airstream travel trailer.
So that’s what he meant when he said “this” internet was slow. He was talking about the connection that we were both using. Robin Jarvis was in the yard. My head start was now about 5 seconds long.
22
A Leap
Now was not the time to freeze. It wasn’t the time to fight, either. I fled, bolting for the front door. I slammed the trunk full of blankets aside, leapt to the grass below, and rolled across the ground to absorb the impact.
My axe head pendant smacked me in the teeth. Some protection rune.
“C’mon, Leo!” I shouted, but she’d clued in to the threat at the back door. Her canine intuition knew Jarvis’ footsteps on the deck were heavy with malice and she snarled, then stomped her own feet down, with hackles raised and a low growl building in her belly, powered by some instinctive sense of justice.
“LEO! Forget it. COME. ON!” I shouted from the lawn, reaching up to catch the bottom of the door before it swung closed.
I pictured what Jarvis, who ruthlessly threw an old man down the basement stairs, would do to a dog who was, snarls and hackles aside, basically a teddy bear with a tail. “LEO!” Why couldn’t we be on the same page about this ‘fight or flight’ thing?
I wasn’t about to leave her, so I reached up to the doorsill and tried to launch myself back into the living room. I silently cursed Brennan for leaving the stair project unfinished. Even coursing with adrenaline, my body couldn’t make the two-metre ledge. I’d have to go around.
This is stupid. Just run through the woods! said one of the less heroic voices in my head. The rest of me knew I couldn’t leave Leo behind. I charged around the corner of the house with no real plan in mind.
The airstream came into view, and my dented little Nissan, and I scanned the scene for a weapon.
Instead, the most blessed sight I’ve ever seen thundered down the driveway. Kasper’s dusty red truck skidded across the stones and came to a stop not three feet from the back steps.
The cavalry had arrived, and it consisted of an eighty-five-year-old-man and a kitchen witch. Even better than that, I saw that LT was scrunched into the middle of the bench seat. Praise be, some muscle on the team!
The three of them bailed out. “Front door, front door!” I shouted, thinking Jarvis would either take Leo hostage or try to escape the same way I had. Instead, the slimy Youtuber backed out onto the deck with his hands up in a pleading, defensive gesture and his face full of fear.
“Lion!” Jarvis spluttered, and tripped over backward. Kasper darted up the stairs and snatched the fallen man’s ankle. He intertwined both arms with the leg and kneeled on Jarvis’ back, a determined grimace on the old man’s face.
“Got him!” he chortled.
“Is that a toe hold?” I said.
Sherry nodded. “Yep.”
“Haaa, sure is. And the cops are on the way,” added LT, holding up his cell phone.
23
Toe Hold
Sherry stalked over to Jarvis’ writhing, whimpering form and stood over him. Instead of giving him a well-deserved boot, she reached into her pocket, muttered a few words, and stuck a sprig of parsley i
n his sock.
“We can’t cook him, you know!”
My mentor grinned. “A little something to help him forget what he saw in the kitchen there.”
I felt like I was flying, and at the same time I wanted to collapse. “So how did you even…”
“Know to come save your butt? A witch’s intuition,” Sherry said with a simple shrug.
“Shh!” I said, proud to already be reflexively protecting the magical secrets we shared.
“The parsley will keep anything unusual from sticking to his brain,” Kasper assured me, crunching his bodyweight into the toe hold for emphasis. “And witchy intuition is fine, but the Intuit only visited after Jimmy called us on his cell phone. Remarkable invention, that cell phone. You should try one.”
I laughed, feeling delirious. “I have one! It’s just a little useless, is all.” I guessed that LT must know about witchy stuff too, since she’d just said ‘witch’s intuition’ in front of him.
LT bounded up the steps. “C’mon Leo!” The dog padded out, shaking impossibly long golden strands off her back.
“She grew a mane!” I said. The mane shed as quickly as I said it, falling to the deck boards in clumps. “Leo turned into a real lion for a second! Didn’t she? Sherry, those donuts, they worked: I did it!”
Sherry shook her head, chuckling. “Sorry to say it, Piper, but—”
“I turned her into a morphing mutt!”
“Haaa! Leo’s always been a shifter,” LT laughed. “That’s what drew the two of us together: I’m a shifter too. We both have the mark.” He stuck out his tongue to show off the constellation of black dots there, just like Leo’s. I noticed that the chunk of pewter hanging from his neck had a definite lion-ish shape at the moment.
