Burned to a Crisp

by K A Miltimore

  “OK, fair enough, maybe it was the Lyssa of legend. I don’t think it does much good to be borrowing trouble or making assumptions, but whether you met an old and powerful goddess or just a strange woman, the fact remains there is something happening in this town. Someone is setting fires and taking women.” Bren said and Hedy wondered if he could see the distrust in Ana’s eyes.

  “You are right, Bren. Enough with speculating. Enough with guessing. There is nothing we can do about any of this right now. I am going to focus on what I can change, and that is getting a gardener, and tending the shop, and being a host for travelers. Beyond that, the world is going to have to take care of itself for right now.” Hedy walked away from the counter and into the kitchen, leaving the three of them alone.

  “I don’t know her well but I think Hedy is scared. That didn’t sound like her just then.” Mel spoke up for the first time in a while.

  “Sometimes it is smart to be scared. And these are scary times, especially for someone like Hedy - a person who isn’t like everyone else. She recognizes the danger to herself and others and she likely feels helpless to prevent it.” Bren replied. Ana shook her head.

  “No, I don’t think she feels helpless. I don’t think Hedy would ever feel helpless. She might be scared, she might feel she doesn’t have much control over what is happening, but helpless isn’t something I would say is part of her character. In any event, how about a walk, Mel?” Mel nodded and the two girls left Bren alone in the shop.

  He stood in the shop, peering out the window, looking like someone in deep thought. He was alone; not even Maurice or Zelda were in the room. The temperature suddenly dropped and his breath was visible at his lips.

  “It happens in threes. Another will join them.” The voice of Adelaide whispered in Bren’s ear, freezing the hairs along his neck. “Firewalker, are you the savior or the sinner?” He could practically feel the cold words.

  “What do you want from me?” He managed to whisper. All his muscles seemed to be frozen and he stood rock still.

  “There is danger for this house, for her, it swirls around this place, around you.” Adelaide’s voice trailed off, taking the cold with her. Bren rubbed his arms roughly and he looked to see if Hedy had returned but he was alone, with the words of a ghost.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Darro Raith was on Hedy’s doorstep at the stroke of noon. Bren spotted him standing outside, rather than coming in, and he went to the door to investigate.

  “I was waiting on a Miss Hedy Leckermaul. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it. Darro Raith, the gardener is calling.” His Scottish accent was strong and Bren opened the door wide to invite the rather portly man into the house.

  “Miss Leckermaul is in the shop, please do come in.”

  “If it is all the same to you, I’d prefer to stay outside. Me boots are muddled and I wouldna want to trample her lovely carpets.” Darro instead walked to the wicker chair on the porch and gingerly sat down, testing if it would hold his weight.

  “I’ll let her know you are here.” Bren closed the door and went back into the shop. Hedy was creating black rosettes for a cake ordered for a fortieth birthday party. She never understood the need to make forty seem like the mark of the grave; black roses were gorgeous anytime.

  “Your gardener is here, he is on the porch. Darro Raith?” She looked up from the roses and Bren saw a smudge of black frosting had made its way to her temple. He picked up a napkin and said “May I?” before he carefully wiped it away.

  “Oh good, I’m glad he is here. Thank you.” She put down the piping bag and slipped out of the criss-cross apron. Today she was wearing a brown corduroy jumper and knee-high orange patent leather boots. Not exactly the right attire for stomping in the wet garden, but it would have to do.

  “Mr. Raith. Thank you for coming.” Hedy came out to the porch and Darro stood up, coming no higher than her shoulder. Hedy was tall but he was also quite short.

  “My pleasure, Miss. I’m always keen for more work. I walked your garden when I arrived and we have work to do, haven’t we? Overgrown, I’d say, with rascal weeds choking out everything. You have a foosty looking fir tree that will need to come out afore it topples into the house. That’s a bit beyond my reach, I’m afraid.” He chuckled as he headed down the stairs, leading Hedy toward the side yard to investigate the offending fir tree. Across the large yard, Mr. Jeffries was watching with interest.

  Hedy followed Darro’s quick pace as he pointed out the various sins of her garden, the invasive knotweed and sickly heirloom roses that would have to go. Maybe Jeffries had been a little right about the garden, she thought ruefully.

  They finished their tour of the garden and headed back into the shop, with Hedy insisting that he come inside for a hot cup of coffee. “Since you’re the customer, I canna say no.” He trudged in the front door and found Bren in the shop, holding down the fort.

  “Please sit down, Darro. Would you like a scone to go with your coffee?”

  “Ah thank you, no. No offense, but you Americans don’t know a proper scone. My grandmother, God rest her soul, would be a spinnin’ in her Edinburgh grave in the kirkyard if she caught me eating one. But I wouldn’t mind a bit of that cinnamon cake that looks so fetching.”

  Hedy cut him a large slice and brought it to the table. Bren shook his head when she offered him one as well. “Well, if you have your grandmother’s recipe, I would love to give it a try.” Darro gave her a look as if to say did he look like someone who would have a 100-year-old Scottish scone recipe, but said nothing as his mouth was too full of cinnamon cake.

  “So, will you work on the garden for me?”

  “Aye, I would be glad to. Nothing makes me happier than rustling about in the dirt, making everything good and fine. And as much as I find your cinnamon cake to my liking, I will need to charge you. My nightly weed don’t come cheap.” He smiled broadly at them but Bren looked confused at that.

  “Bren, marijuana is legal here in Washington. I believe Darro is referring to that.”

  “Ah, thank you, now I see.” Bren gave a small smile.

  “You could use a puff or two, friend. You look as if your knickers were in a twist, pardon me saying.” Darro winked at Bren with a smile, clearly meaning no offense.

  “Well, with all the fires in town, I’d say everyone was on edge, wouldn’t you?” Hedy said, watching a bit of cake settle into Darro’s beard.

  “Oh aye, nasty business, that. Me roommate is a fireman and he’s been telling me about it. Dinna find no trace of either lady. Bad business indeed.” The cake was gone and Darro rose to leave. “Is twenty dollars per hour acceptable to you? It might take me several full days to get her into shape but after that, it’ll just be once a week until spring, and then we ramp up again. She’ll be the Queen of the block a’fore I am done.”

  “Yes, that will be fine. Thank you, Darro.” Hedy said and both she and Bren rose to say goodbye to the man.

  “That’s good to hear. I’ll start in the morning, just after sun up. I like to get an early start at me work. Maybe Mr. Skinny Malinky Longlegs here can give me a hand.” He winked again at Bren and Hedy burst out laughing.

  “We will see you tomorrow, Darro, oh and take a cookie for your roommate. It is awful that the fires have been keeping him busy.” Hedy took a large leaf cookie and put it in a cellophane bag. With a quick nod of the head, Darro Raith was gone.

  “What a curious man, wouldn’t you say?” Bren watched him scurry down the stairs and across the yard.

  “He’s charming, in a rumpled sort of way. I bet this is the first time someone has called you Skinny Malinky Longlegs.”

  “Yes, I would say that is true. Maybe I do need to try some of his nightly weed, he seems to enjoy it.”

  “Well, you can ask him about it tomorrow. I personally never touch the stuff. It has no effect on me whatsoever, which I find odd and also a bit disappointing, if I must say so.” Hedy took Darro’s dishes and headed back toward the kitchen. She
had the black birthday cake to finish.

  “Oh, I would say that is because you aren’t like average people who need such things to escape the mundane. There is nothing about you that is mundane, Miss Leckermaul.” She smiled at Bren and did her best imitation of a curtsy.

  “I take that as a compliment, sir. The world needs more, not less, variety. How dull to be mundane.”

  “Hedy, I didn’t mention it before but Adelaide paid me a visit while you were working in the kitchen earlier. She said there is danger for another.” Hedy turned back to look at Bren, who was watching her with an expression that she couldn’t read.

  “How does she know that? I suppose she didn’t say. I wonder if all ghosts are so cryptic or if it is just Adelaide?” Hedy sounded exasperated.

  “I don’t know why she told me. Maybe she thought I could help somehow.” From the clouded expression on his face, Hedy gathered that he might not be telling her everything that Adelaide had said. She hated feeling suspicious like this.

  “Whatever we can do to help, we should do it. Just let me know if you have any ideas.” Hedy turned back toward the counter, hoping her face didn’t betray her doubts.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The girls had returned, hungry and ready for some tomato soup that had been simmering on the stove all morning. Bren had been waiting for them to come back.

  “Do you have a computer in that backpack, Mel?” He asked simply.

  Mel shook her head but she pulled out her smartphone. “I have Internet access on this, what are you looking for?”

  “I’m not really sure, but I’m looking for a pattern of threes. Has there been a history of women or girls going missing in Enumclaw in sets of three?” Mel put down her soup spoon and entered her password.

  “I can look online for reports of missing people from Enumclaw but honestly, I’m not sure all that information will be available. We would likely need access to police records or maybe to news articles at the library. I can show you where the library is located, if that helps.” Mel pinched and swiped at the screen, entering a search for missing persons. She scrolled through the results.

  “Why are you looking for this pattern, Bren?” Anahita asked in a flat voice.

  “Something that Adelaide said while you were gone. She said it comes in threes. It occurred to me that there might be pattern to all this. I thought perhaps Mel could help me.”

  Anahita said nothing to this but Mel spoke up.

  “From the looks of this list, there does seem to be periods with more missing people than others. Without really reviewing the data though, I couldn’t say with certainty.” Mel handed the phone to Bren and picked up her spoon again.

  Bren scrolled the list, gathered by some unknown person for some unknown purpose.

  “Alright, for example, according to this website, about two years ago, there was a murder of a woman, and a disappearance of two other women, all over the course of a month. Then nothing until now. Before that, about five years back, we see three hikers gone missing near Mount Enumclaw. Mel, would you be able to help me review all this data and make sense of it?” Mel nodded in response to his question.

  “What are you all conspiring about?” Hedy lifted the cake platter up for them to see, showing off the gorgeously black cake with the perfect rosettes and chocolate spiderwebs. Hedy was rightfully proud of it; it was especially spectacular.

  “Mel is going to help me do some research, I think I might have spotted a pattern to these disappearances. Can we borrow your car to go to the library?”

  “Certainly. The key is hanging by the back door.”

  The front door bell rang, bringing customers into the shop and an end to their conversation. Mel finished her soup and gathered up her things to head to the library. Bren went upstairs to grab his jacket.

  “I’m going with you, Mel.” Ana reached over and gave Mel’s arm a squeeze. “You know that there is something about Bren that bothers me. I don’t trust him.”

  “Why would he offer to do this if he wasn’t on the up and up?” Ana looked at her quizzically, and Mel rephrased her slang. “If he wasn’t being honest?”

  “What better way to throw suspicion off yourself than to look like you are helping. Remember, he was at the coffee stand before the fire. We don’t know anything about him. For all we know, he could be setting these fires. Until I am sure about him, I am not letting you go anywhere without me.” She squeezed Mel’s arm again, keeping her hand resting against her skin.

  “All set, Mel?” Bren had returned with his jacket and notebook, breaking the moment between them.

  “Yes, we are ready.” Anahita rose, still keeping her hand on Mel’s arm. “Let’s go to the library.” If Bren was surprised that Anahita was also going, he didn’t show it. The three of them headed toward the back door to get the car key.

  Hedy kept busy while they were gone. The customer who had ordered the black birthday cake came by and was so impressed that she insisted on taking a photo of both the cake and Hedy so she could put it on Instagram, which Hedy knew nothing about. She herself would make a striking photo for Instagram, if she had been inclined to self-promotion. She really didn’t understand the idea of social media and she didn't have a computer or smartphone anyway.

  The house hadn’t been dusted in a bit and Hedy took the opportunity of a lag in customers and the absence of travelers to do some tidying up. The entry tended to collect the most dust as it had the most unusual surfaces and objects. Almost all of her findings from her travels were kept in the entry hall, though she was quickly running out of room. Hedy was an avid collector and though she had inherited quite a few of her treasures from her mother and grandmother and previous generations of Leckermauls, some of the items she now dusted had been her own discoveries. The time she had spent in London, prowling the antique stalls on Portobello Road had yielded the rather disgusting looking monkey’s paw in a glass box. The grim item had inspired W.W. Jacobs in 1902 to write his famous short story of the same name. She had considered donating it to a University for their literature department but the consensus was that the students would find far more disgust in the paw, than in the literary value. So, the paw stayed with Hedy. Her feather duster trailed along the glass edges and wood panels, with the task taking on a Zen like quality, soothing her. Everything she dusted had a story, they had a piece of memory for her; mostly they were good memories but there were a few bitter ones as well. Just seeing the objects though, brought her back to where she was and who she was with for everyone one of them. It was a homecoming.

  ✽✽✽

  The threesome, back from the library caught her in her thoughts. “Any luck?” she asked as they filed into the shop and gathered back around Mel’s favorite table.

  “Well, yes and no. We found evidence that this town has had its share of strange disappearances, typically in groupings of three, but I don’t know that we learned much that would help identify who is behind it.” Bren spoke, looking at Mel and Anahita, who both nodded in agreement.

  Mel pulled out a sheet of notebook paper as she said, “We went back to the 1920s, and found Adelaide’s murder in this house was actually one of three that summer. All three girls were strangled with a necklace and their bodies left in their homes. The police never arrested the killer but they had several suspects. After the three murders, there wasn’t another pattern until into the 1930s - that time it was three people who went missing and were never found. The late 40s had another trio of deaths, then there was a lull until 1965, when three people survived an arsonist who tried to burn down their house.” Mel reviewed her notes as she spoke.

  “Was anyone caught in all that time?” Hedy placed a plate of beetle shaped cookies on the table; they were tinted a strange shade of dark iridescent green, much like a real figeater beetle.

  “The 1965 case led to a conviction. It was an old man, who had lived in the town all his life. George J. Wilkenson was his name. He had actually been a suspect in the murders in the 1920s but
there was no evidence to tie him to the crimes. He died in prison in the early 70s.” Mel finished speaking before she bit the head off on of the cookies. They were cardamom flavored, without a hint of bug flavor, or so Mel hoped.

  “So, nothing you found really sheds any light on what is happening now?” Hedy didn’t know what she had expected but she was disappointed nonetheless.

  “The pattern picked up again in the 1990s. Again, always girls or women, usually missing and never found. The newspapers at the time attributed those who went missing as victims of the Green River Killer, who wasn’t caught until 2001. Not all the missing were from Enumclaw, some were from other close areas like Buckley or Black Diamond, but they all seem to occur with a few weeks of each other.” Mel took another big bite of her cookie and offered the plate to Ana, who shook her head politely. She took another from the plate. Sleuthing appeared to have energized Mel’s appetite.

  “Fast forward and things had been quiet for years and then it started up again five years ago. The police have made no arrests.” Mel finished another bite of beetle.

  Anahita piped up for the first time. “If the same person is doing this as the one from the 1990s, then the odds are this person is older. But from what we found, the pattern is different. The fires and missing victims now do not match the events from the 90s or even the last group of missing campers from five years ago. The only things they have in common is the grouping of three. It doesn’t look like the current fires are connected.” She looked quickly at Bren and then back toward Mel.

  “We did find out something useful while we were at the library. There was a sign posted that there is going to be a community meeting at city hall tonight to discuss the fires and what is being done.” Mel said.