Burned to a Crisp

by K A Miltimore

  The front door bell tinkled and Hedy rose from the table to greet the customer. “I think we should go. If nothing else, maybe the officials will have some good news about the missing people.” The others nodded in agreement and Hedy popped back behind the counter to box up some blackbird pies.

  ✽✽✽

  The City Hall Council chamber was filled to capacity, a raucous noise bouncing around the walls as everyone speculated on the source of the fires. Hedy had found spots for them in the crowd near the back wall. Behind them, unnoticed, Lyssa had also slipped into the crowd.

  “If I could have your attention please, thank you.” The police chief waved his arms and tried to quiet down the crowd. Slowly the voices trickled down to silence.

  “The purpose of tonight’s meeting is to let you know where things stand with the two fires that happened this week, and to ask you all to be vigilant and report anything you see that looks suspicious. At this time, we do not have a suspect for the fires, both of which have been ruled as arson.” The crowd murmured, with several voices heard to say “I knew it”.

  “What about Gretchen? What are you doing about finding her and Shannon?” The voice that called out was Gretchen’s mother, who was seated near the front of the room. Hedy heard the rapid fire clicking of a camera near her; the Courier-Herald had a reporter there to capture the event.

  “We are doing everything we can to find the missing women and we are working with the FBI. At this time, we have no evidence of kidnapping or foul play. The missing women are simply that, missing - we don’t know if they left on their own accord or were taken.” The crowd did not like that comment and their voices rose in unison. Chief Dixon raised his hands again for quiet.

  “But at this time, we are treating this like a kidnapping situation for both Shannon and Gretchen. We are asking anyone with information to come forward, no matter how small it might seem. We currently have no suspects identified.”

  “Have you talked with those weirdos that live on the commune, over by Buckley? Socialist freaks, all of them.” A man in the front row, wearing a tee-shirt with a large US flag on the back, shouted toward the Chief. The crowd erupted.

  “Let’s keep this civil, alright. We are talking to anyone who might be of interest in either of these cases.”

  A woman shouted from the crowd, “I’m sorry the gals are missing, but good riddance to both of those places, eyesores in my opinion. Who needs a coffee stand with girls in bikinis? It’s not decent. And that yoga place, practicing some heathen religion in there.”

  “Hey, shut up, OK? Why do you think it is OK to say crap like that?” A young woman shouted from the back of room. She was standing next to Lyssa, who had just slipped away from the room.

  “Nobody asked you anything, so you shut up.” Flag man stood up and shouted back toward her. The crowd began to get loud again, with people taking up sides.

  “People, enough. There is no point going on like this. Let’s quit pointing fingers and…” The Chief’s words were drowned out by the crowd noise.

  “This town used to be family friendly until people like you moved in.” The man pointed back toward the woman, wagging his finger in the air. “Why don’t you move back to Seattle or wherever the hell you come from. We don’t want your kind here.”

  “My kind? You mean someone who doesn’t breathe through their mouth or drag their knuckles like you? Fuck off, man.”

  “Aren’t you a classy lady. Nice mouth on you. Someone ought to teach you a lesson.” Flag man nearly spat as he spoke, snapping the back of his hand in the air.

  “Hey jerk, that’s enough. You take a swing at her, you will deal with me.” A man a few seats away from the woman stood up and started to press toward Flag man. The crowd could sense a fight was coming and it started to egg them on. Things were getting ugly and out of hand.

  “Come on, we should go.” Hedy tried to push toward the door but people were blocking the way.

  “Oh, I’ll deal with you, junior. Me and my Smith & Wesson.” Half the crowd laughed and the other half gave a sharp gasp.

  “Enough!” The Chief had reached Flag man and he bellowed out to the crowd. “This meeting is over. Everybody out. We have enough going on without everyone acting up. Tempers are high so go home and cool off, and remember what I said about reporting anything suspicious.”

  Hedy and the group made their way slowly toward the exit, shuffling behind some people who were visibly disappointed that the fight had been prevented. Everyone poured out of the building into the chilly night air. Pockets of people were scattered on the sidewalk and as the group walked, they heard various phrases of “shoulda smacked that bitch” or “redneck asshole” depending on which side of the debate they were on. All along the path toward the car, there were trees with crows perched, as if they were watching the people below. There must have been two dozen of them watching with keen attention.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Mel took Ana by the hand and they hurriedly walked toward the car, with Bren keeping to the rear, just in case anyone started something behind them. A cacophony of caws filled the cold air.

  “Is this town always like this, Mel?” Ana slid into the backseat with Mel as Hedy fired up the Corvair.

  “No, I’ve never seen it like this. Sure, there are people who are really conservative and then you have people moving in who come from more liberal places, but the most you ever see are yard signs during elections getting vandalized, or maybe you hear about a bar fight if someone does something stupid. I’ve never seen people just go at it like that in public, like it is OK to say those things.”

  “Some of it is the times we live in, and some of it is the fear from the fires, but there is also something else, something new.” Hedy was watching the road but seeing the angry face of the Flag man in her vision as she drove.

  “Well, it's not like we just met the goddess of rage and madness, right?” said Ana and they all understood. It did feel like some kind of madness had settled on to people.

  “I’m not quite ready to believe in a legendary goddess yet, because it is too unbelievable to consider, but it certainly does seem like people have lost their damn minds.” Mel pulled her sweater around herself tightly.

  “Mel, to paraphrase a famous quote, things are real whether you believe in them or not. What do you think Maurice would say to that?” Hedy chuckled as she thought of Mel’s recent conversation with the chinchilla. “Strange things are happening all the time whether you know about them or not.”

  The Corvair pulled into the driveway and Hedy knew immediately that something was very wrong. The front door was wide open, with light spilling out onto the front porch.

  “Mel, Anahita, you stay in the car.” Hedy jumped out and headed up to the porch, with Bren right behind her.

  Hedy was inside the entry before Bren could stop her. The hallway had smashed glass running from one end to the other. The damage was haphazard, with some items left alone and others seemingly smashed to pieces.

  “I’ll check the shop and the kitchen.” Bren darted into the shop but almost immediately called out, “Everything looks fine.” Hedy was crouching in front of the remnants of the monkey’s paw, torn in half like it was a piece of paper. The tall glass curio cabinet had been toppled over and the contents scattered all over the carpet. The glass shelves appeared to have been smashed with the axe head that once belonging to Lizzie Borden lying next to the shards on the carpet.

  Bren returned from the kitchen. “Nothing is moved. What about upstairs?” They both glanced at the thicket gate at the foot of the stairs, still in place.

  “No, whoever did this was looking for something here in the hallway. I would guess they didn’t find it because nothing looks missing, just smashed up.”

  “Any ideas what that might have been?” Bren helped Hedy as she stood up and walked back toward the porch. She waved to Mel and Anahita to signal the all-clear.

  “No. If they wanted something valuable, there were several rare p
ieces they left untouched. If they wanted to just smash, why would they have selected some things and not hit everything? I don’t know but I’m guessing it has something to do with Lyssa.”

  Mel and Anahita came up the stairs and peered into the entry, gasping at the damage. Hedy came back inside and slipped out of her jacket. It would be a long night cleaning up this mess.

  “Bren, will you do me a favor and drive Mel home? I don’t want her walking this late. Anahita, if you’ll go along and keep her company, that would be nice. I’m going to look for Zelda or Maurice to see if they saw anything.”

  “I’d rather not leave you alone. Why don’t you come with us and we will help you clean up when we get back.” Bren said as he took the car keys from Hedy’s hand.

  “I’d rather start straightening up my house, if you don’t mind. Plus, I might cry a little for the things destroyed and I’d rather do that on my own. Thanks, though.” She gave Bren’s hand a squeeze and she watched them leave the porch toward the car. She closed the door and leaned heavily against it.

  “What the hell is happening around here?” She said to no one in particular, though in this house, she might have received an answer from several inhabitants. But the ghost, the cat and the chinchilla were nowhere to be seen.

  Hedy walked toward the kitchen to get the broom and look for the menagerie. She had no doubt they were safe; she was sure that whoever had done this wasn’t interested in them.

  “Alice, have you seen Zelda or Maurice? We’ve had an intruder.” Alice was on her perch, looking for all the world unaware of the ruckus.

  “I just came in, Hedy. The house has been quiet and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of either Zelda or Maurice. I assumed they were upstairs or somewhere about.” The magpie looked as startled as one could look with no eyebrows.

  “I hope they are upstairs, maybe even sleeping through all this. Someone came in and smashed up the entry, there is glass everywhere.” Hedy grabbed the broom and dustpan from the wall hook, along with several paper sacks from the grocery store.

  “Oh Hedy, I am so sorry to hear it. I would help you but not much I can do with these.” Alice flapped her wings as if to shrug.

  “That’s alright, Alice. You can do me a favor though and go upstairs and look for the other two? Let them know there is glass all over and to tread carefully.” Alice nodded and she took off from her perch.

  Back in the entry, Hedy began lightly sweeping the large pieces of glass into a pile so she could carefully place them into the bags. She hadn’t lied when she said she might cry; tears came quickly to her eyes as she saw her treasures smashed amongst the shards.

  “What were you looking for?” Hedy muttered, wiping her eye with her sleeve to avoid touching her face in case she had any glass on her fingertips. Almost all the pieces in her collection were there in the hall. She had a few items tucked away in a chest on the third floor, and one or two large items boxed up in the garage. She tried to take a quick mental inventory as to what might have been out of sight of the intruder.

  “There are the Houdini items from auction,” Hedy murmured. They were the handcuffs and leg irons from the Chinese water torture trick, and she had them boxed up in the garage. She had picked those up in London at an auction in 2013.

  “There is the taxidermy Dali octopus.” Another auction acquisition, it was the dead octopus that Dali had used to paint part of Triumph of the Sea. She had a print of the work on the wall in the entry but the octopus was a bit too worn to display. No one would want to steal that.

  “Oh, the box from Crete.” Hedy stopped mid-sweep as she remembered the wooden box she had brought back from her summer in Crete several years ago. The box itself was nothing special - it actually had been used to store jars of olives, but the contents were some artifacts from all over Greece.

  “What happened here?” Both Zelda and Maurice had squeezed through the thicket gate and were standing far away from the mayhem on the last stair step.

  “You didn’t hear anything?” They each shook their heads.

  “I was out in the yard, doing a bit of vole hunting, and Maurice was up dozing on the windowsill by the library. He’s practically deaf anyway.” Zelda gave Maurice an accusatory look, as if he could have prevented the destruction around them.

  “Well, someone was looking for something and it seems they wanted to smash things up in the process. You two better stay clear of here until I get all this glass cleaned up.”

  “Well, at least they didn’t smash the Winchester spiderweb, that is my favorite.” Maurice said and Hedy had been relieved to see that as well.

  “But since they tore up the monkey’s paw, do you mind if I have it?” Zelda had already spied the two halves of the paw, stuffing sprouting from both sides.

  “Perhaps a proper burial would be better, Zelda. As fond as I am of the story, I think the paw itself has been through enough trauma before becoming a cat’s plaything.” Zelda sniffed slightly but didn’t press the issue. Clearly now was not the time to get snippy with Hedy. Besides, she could always dig it up later.

  “What do you think the intruder wanted, Hedy?” Maurice stayed perched on the step to avoid any glass shards. His face was a mask of unsaid “I told you so”.

  “I don’t know, Maurice. Whatever it was, I don’t think they found it.”

  “Yet” said the chinchilla and he squeezed back through the bramble gate to the safety of the stairs.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bren and Ana returned to find the entry in much better shape than when they left. The broken glass was gone and the curio cabinet was upright, if still broken and empty. The artifacts were gathered up and sitting on two of the tables in the shop. Hedy herself was sitting at Mel’s table with a wooden box in front of her.

  “Thank you for taking Mel home. I must apologize for how your stay has been going. I really have never had such an experience but nonetheless, as your host, I feel responsible.” Ana and Bren both shook their heads.

  “Nonsense, Hedy. None of this is your fault. We can handle what is happening.” Bren came over and gave her a small pat on the shoulder.

  “What’s in the box?” Ana sat down across from her, watching as Hedy began to pry open the top of the crate with a small bar.

  “I can’t be certain but it might be what the intruder was looking for.” Hedy used the edge of the bar to lift the nailed edge of the lid. The slight scent of olives wafted out.

  Inside the box was a nest of shaved and coiled wood, cushioning the objects inside. Hedy took out a tiny figurine, wrapped in lengths of linen. She unwrapped it to show a pale white figure of a Minoan snake goddess, no bigger than her thumb. She placed it carefully on the pile of beige linen. Next to it in the box was a single arrowhead, obviously very old; it looked like it was bronze with a dull green patina and four sharp looking edges to it. She carefully took it out and also placed it on the linen. The last item was a small terracotta bottle, which was missing its stopper.

  “What is all that?” Bren carefully picked up the arrowhead, twirling it slowly in his fingers.

  “A few items that I bought off a peddler in Crete. He claimed they were rare pieces but given the low price, I had my doubts. He had some wild stories about the items, which is why I bought them. The most valuable thing would probably be the snake goddess figure. The terracotta bottle is a perfume bottle, and then there is the old arrowhead.” Ana picked up the terracotta bottle and gave a slight sniff.

  “Marjoram.” Ana looked amazed that something that old could still have a bit of fragrance. “What were the stories?”

  “As I recall, the snake goddess figure came from the palace of King Minos, of the Minotaur fame. The bottle supposedly belonged to the Oracle of Delphi, and the arrowhead was found near the summit of Mount Olympus. The storyteller was so entertaining, I bought the items on a whim. Not my best purchase, to be sure. There may have been more than a few glasses of ouzo involved.”

  “Why would the intruder want any of these? I
mean, not to be rude, but you have far nicer things in your collection than these items.” Bren put the arrowhead back on the linen. He didn’t like the way it felt in his hand.

  “Oh, I agree. I had these stored in my room upstairs because they aren’t that appealing, frankly, and because I’m limited on space. But if the intruder didn’t find what they were looking for in the entry, these are one of the few things that I didn’t have on display.”

  “I assume we are operating under the theory that this was Lyssa, yes?” Ana placed the terracotta bottle down and picked up the little snake goddess. Something so tiny had amazing detail. She ran her thumb along the smooth alabaster surface.

  “I don’t know who else it might have been.” Hedy gathered up the arrowhead and nestled it back into the wood shavings. Ana handed her back the figurine to wrap in linen.

  “Well, if indeed Lyssa is who we think she is, then I suppose it makes sense she is after a Greek artifact. But I really can’t see what these trinkets would mean to her.” Ana placed the perfume bottle into the wood and Hedy placed the lid back on the box.

  “Until we know the answer to that question, I think we better keep this box under lock and key.” Hedy said.

  “What about hiding it in the old fruit cellar? I found the door when I was raking and you could stash it away down there and no one would be the wiser. We can keep an eye on it there.” Bren offered. Hedy had forgotten she even had a fruit cellar; it was the last place she would think to store anything of value.

  “That sounds like a good idea. Tomorrow, I’ll brave the spiders and find a good spot for this. For tonight, I’ll keep it under my bed.” Hedy stood up, exhausted suddenly. It had been a long stressful day and all she wanted to do was crawl into her bed and sleep.

  “I am going to retire for the night. It’s been a rather tiring day.” She gave them both a weak smile and picked up the box.

  “Sleep well, Hedy.” Ana gave her a smile as Hedy walked slowly toward the entry, and she gave them both a small wave as she turned the corner.