She was over eighty years old now and had spent her life without what most people would consider necessaries—no electricity, a hand pump attached to the well over the kitchen sink, but no hot water, no heat except a stone fireplace and an ancient wood stove, and a detached privy commonly called "an outhouse."
Even in the world of old-fashioned, Aunt Cinda was an extreme case. Stepping into her cabin was a time-warp to the previous century. With the exception of a small, carefully nurtured garden spot, the isolated cabin site was, steep, rocky and heavily wooded which made life-style upgrades impractical, if not impossible. The soil was too shallow and too rocky to support a septic field. It was also too isolated for sewer lines, electric service or telephone landlines. High ridges and steep, narrow valleys created natural barriers that no cell tower or communication satellite could penetrate. Aunt Cinda lived exactly as her mother had in the early nineteen hundreds.
"It's good you came home to rest and that's just fine," her great-aunt said, breaking the silence. Her voice jerked Sarah's thoughts back to the present. "But, now, you have to see this stranger. It's important."
A shiver of apprehension crawled along Sarah's spine. This time there would be no hiding, no pretense. This time, when the man's eyes probed hers, he would know who she was, but she still wouldn't know the reason he was looking for her. By the time she found out it might be too late.
"Do you read this stranger, Aunt Cinda? Why is he asking about me? Why is he so important?"
"I don't rightly know why jus' yet, but he is important. You know it, too. If I knew who he was, maybe I could see more."
"How did you know he was looking for me?"
"I knowed that the same way you did, child. I don't reckon we needed any special help this time. The whole valley's buzzing with the news. You have to talk to him, Sarah. Best find out where he's staying."
Sarah laughed ruefully. "That shouldn't be hard. His name isn't a common one—not around here, anyway. He'll be in one of the fishing camps along the lake."
The old woman went still. "You know his name?" Aunt Cinda frowned. "You've already seen him." This last was a statement, not a question.
"Jimmy Joe and I talked with him at the lake," Sarah admitted, "but he didn't know who I was. His name is Matthias, Jordan Matthias. At least that's what he said."
There was a sudden light in her aunt's eyes as she turned toward Sarah. "He is comely, this Matthias?"
Although it was phrased as a question, Sarah recognized its rhetorical quality. "He's all that, Aunt Cinda," she said softly, as the image of his compelling face and his leashed strength again sent a rush of blood to her face.
"And young?"
"Mid-thirties, I'd say."
The old lady nodded. "He's a lone one. No hearth," she said, almost to herself. "Now I'm beginning to understand."
Sarah was puzzled. Her great-aunt had chosen to remain isolated all her life. She monitored the joys and burdens of kith and kin throughout the valley, but seldom read outsiders, particularly not ones she'd never touched or spoken to. So how did she know? Unless she was reading him through her great-niece.
"Do you know him, Aunt Cinda? Do you know what he wants?"
"Yes. Now I know what he wants. Even he doesn't know that. Not yet. There be other reasons for him being here." She lapsed into silence again.
Sarah waited expectantly. It would do no good to prompt the old woman. She'd say only what she wanted to say. And only when she wanted to say it.
When Aunt Cinda broke her silence, her voice was quiet, almost detached. "Do you like him, Sarah Jane?"
Did she like him? It was a question she'd avoided thinking about. "I don't know. I think I might have, if I hadn't been so afraid. He was good with Jimmy Joe. Jimmy Joe liked him."
"Youngsters have a way of seeing the truth. They don't let other things get in the way. They learn from yesterday, but they don't drag it around with them. It's time you let go of some things, too."
"I know, Aunt Cinda. I tell myself the same thing every day. It's why I made myself take that job in St. Louis. But it's hard."
The old lady nodded, sympathy evident in every line of her face. "You did right. Can't let what's gone tell us what's going to be. Just remember, times come when you don't know. That's when you have to take a chance and don't go worrying about it. Just listen to your own self."
She paused a moment, then abruptly changed the subject. "He's got no roots, this Matthias. And he's looking for Monte Ne."
"Monte Ne?" Sarah couldn't keep the surprise from her voice. Why had a stranger come looking for Monte Ne? "Monte Ne was buried over fifty years ago," she said.
"Yes, but that might be the reason he looks for you. That may be part of the past you're worrying about."
"I still don't understand, Aunt Cinda."
"He looks for Monte Ne, Sarah. Who owns Monte Ne?"
Sarah shook her head. "I do," she admitted. "At least I own some of the land above the lake's high water mark where Monte Ne once stood."
Her great-aunt nodded. "You own enough. Go see him, Sarah."
The image of the stranger's face swam before Sarah's eyes, so real that she clenched her fists to keep from reaching up and placing her finger in the deep cleft of his chin. She blinked and released a shuddering breath.
"All right, Aunt Cinda," she agreed, struggling to keep her voice from wavering. "If you think it's so important, I'll see him."
"When?"
"Thursday. I'll see him Thursday."
* * *
Once again Jordan Matthias's eyes intently searched the area around the town square. He could see one old farmer dressed in overalls leaning against an antique hitching post in front of the town hall. That was all. No sign of anyone who might be Sarah Wilson.
He'd found the note last night. After all this time and effort, it looked as if he was about to meet Miss Sarah Wilson. Today was the day—if the whole thing wasn't a joke. He doubted anyone in town would play that kind of joke on him, though. True, a lot of people knew he was asking questions about the woman, but not one of them had ever heard of her. At least, he always received that answer—until last night when someone pushed that note under his door at the fishing camp.
He checked his watch. The note was specific. "If you wish to speak with Sarah Wilson, be in the second booth of the Mountain Springs Café at three o'clock." That was all. No signature. No indication of where the note came from or who delivered it.
Jordan opened the screen door and stepped inside the café. Despite the heat of the Arkansas summer, there was no air conditioning. An old-fashioned blade fan hanging from the high ceiling turned lazily, its efforts only slightly disturbing the humid air infused with the odors of frying onions and fresh apple pie.
He looked anxiously toward the row of booths along one wall and then relaxed. Whoever had written the note obviously knew the café. Several of the tables, those most directly in front of the screened front door, were occupied, but the side booths were empty. All three of them. Easy enough to find the second. He slipped into the middle booth.
Jordan glanced at his watch again. Exactly three o'clock. Well, he could afford to wait a few minutes on the off chance that Sarah Wilson, or at least someone who knew her, would show up. She'd certainly led him on a wild-goose chase thus far.
A young dark-haired girl approached the booth from behind the counter, pad and pencil in hand.
"Only iced tea for now," he told her. "I'm supposed to meet someone here."
The girl nodded, slipped the pad and pencil into the pocket of her apron and turned back toward the counter. She returned in a moment with a tall glass of iced tea and set it in front of him.
He sipped his tea and waited, letting his mind drift back over the details of his search for Sarah Wilson. He'd first heard of her while visiting a former army buddy, now a police detective in Saint Louis. At the time, the police had been busy searching for a missing boy. During his visit, Hoyston had taken a telephone call on his persona
l cell phone from a woman named Sarah.
He'd assumed the call was personal because all department calls were routed through the switchboard and was surprised when he heard his buddy's voice become gruff, almost antagonistic. He was even more puzzled when Hoyston, with his head tilted to hold the cell phone against his ear, began scribbling notes from the conversation.
For not the first time, Jordan was grateful that years ago an after-school job in a local print shop had taught him to read upside down and backwards. The skill often came in handy. It had that day. Sitting across the desk from Hoyston made it dead easy for him to read his friend's notes, even as Hoyston wrote them.
The woman seemed to be describing a boy, even including information that his red T-shirt was torn. She was talked about an old house with boarded-up windows, an old-fashion peony garden, country scenery, city sounds and the smell of old burned wood. She'd said the boy was alone, but would be in danger when the sun's rays began shining through the cracks between the boards covering the west windows of the house.
A psychic? Jordan tried to hide his excitement, but Hoyston knew him too well. "Don't say a word," his friend had growled as he terminated the call. "You didn't hear anything. You didn't see anything. You aren't even here. Get out. Right now. I'll talk to you later."
Jordan knew Hoyston, knew, too, when his friend was serious. So he left, depending on the detective to make good on his promise to talk to him later.
Even as a boy, Jordan was intrigued by the unusual—magicians, the supernatural and the unexplained. Houdini was an early hero. As he grew older, he accepted it was only show business. The boy wanted to believe in magic. The man knew it didn't exist, although one small part of him still hoped. He was still looking for the magic.
In his travels, he'd uncovered several truly remarkable stories, but none of them had stood up to close examination. Even the most promising had been frauds. And it had all started with his investigation of a Wall Street soothsayer.
Jordan had turned up evidence, not only of fraud but of misuse of insider information, and that had led to criminal changes and the conviction of the major participants. His coverage of that story attracted the attention of the editor of a major news magazine.
Although Jordan declined the offer to join the organization, the editor kept him busy, often using him as a free-lance correspondent in remote places where the magazine did not maintain offices. In the last few years, his investigative articles had been international in scope, and far removed from the realm of crystal-ball gazers and fortune-tellers.
However, the subject still fascinated him. Each time a lead for a psychic story came his way he investigated it. Would this be the one he couldn't explain away?
His investigations were his recreation, his way of taking a vacation following a rough assignment. This time, the timing was perfect. After eighteen months in the jungles of South America, he was ready for a vacation. Investigating Hoyston's psychic connection seemed the perfect way to spend it.
The day following his visit with Hoyston, the news was full of the abduction story. The police discovered the child in the attic room of a decaying old mansion—once one of St Louis's most prestigious homes and now a half-burned shell isolated on a five-acre plot. There'd been no mention of a tip to the police from a psychic.
"Next to me, you're the last person in the world I would expect to be tied up with a soothsayer," Jordan told Hoyston when they made contact again. "Have you turned believer on me?"
Hoyston had been silent for a moment. "I don't know anymore," he admitted. "My head tells me it's a bunch of garbage, but— Look, Jordan, I've talked to the lady exactly three times. The first time was sort of a get-acquainted talk. The next one was business. You were here when I got the last one. Both times, she knew exactly what she was talking about. The first time I thought she was probably involved. She wasn't. Believe me, I checked her out every way from Sunday. There is no earthly way that woman could have known what she knew. This time, either. You read the papers. We found the boy where she said we would."
"The papers didn't mention her."
"No. That's one of her conditions," Hoyston said. "Nobody is to know who she is. No one is to know she's involved."
"Well, that's unusual," Jordan said. "Most of the time, at least in the cases I've investigated, they can't wait to get their names in the paper. The more publicity the better."
"Not according to her." Hoyston said. "She claims people with her gifts are natural targets for notoriety and that the serious ones don't encourage publicity. Claims it interferes."
Jordan had never been more intrigued. Every psychic he'd investigated had relished publicity and was happy to cooperate with him—at least until he managed to expose the fraud. This woman sounded different.
"How do you make contact with her? Why did she pick you, of all people?"
"I worked on a case with the sheriff from her hometown a couple of years back. He called me. Said he had a friend moving here to teach school and wanted me to talk to her. Made me promise I'd listen to her, then give her one chance to prove herself. One chance, he said. He didn't tell me what she'd be proving, or I would probably have laughed in his face. But I gave him my word. So when she called, I had to follow through."
"Do you think she's genuine?"
"I told you, I don't know what to think."
"What's her name? What's she look like?"
"I can't tell you that, Jordan. Geez. We have an agreement."
"Come on Hoyston. Give. You know you can trust me. Tell me her name. How am I going to find out if she's on the level if I don't know who she is?"
"Now look," his friend had protested, "I made a sort of agreement with the lady. She helps me and I protect her identity. I don't know how she gets it, but it's good information. I don't want to blow the connection."
"And what if your first instinct was right? What if she is involved somehow?"
"You're not getting around me that way, Jordan. I know you use words until black sounds like white. But the lady's on the right side. Otherwise she wouldn't be feeding me the information she does."
"The other time she helped—was it a kidnapping, too?"
"Hoyston shook his head. "Hell, no. A mugging. A plain, everyday mugging. The victim was an old man. He didn't have anything but his pension check worth stealing. If it hadn't been for the lady's information, the report would have joined hundreds of others in the inactive, unsolved files. Thanks to her, we not only found the mugger with the check still on him, we also stumbled over a fencing operation that cleared over a dozen commercial robberies. It was a good bust."
"Any links between the fencing operation and the kidnappers?"
"Not that we know of. 'Course, we haven't caught the dudes yet, but it doesn't seem likely.
"But you don't know," Jordan said, pressing home his argument. "You probably didn't round up the entire fencing ring. And you don't know who kidnapped the boy. There has to be a connection between them. There are no coincidences. You just don't want to admit it. One woman squealed on both operations."
"I told you, I checked her out," Hoyston protested. "She wasn't involved."
"Maybe," Jordan had said, "and maybe not. What harm would it do to run a double check? You won't even have to use department hours. I'll do it."
"I know you too well, Jordan. You're not interested in the fencing operation, or the kidnapping. Just the woman and a story. I thought you'd finished chasing crystal-ball readers. Moved on to bigger and better things."
Jordan had grinned. "This one interests me. Besides, I'm between assignments. Nothing better to do."
In the end, Jordan had been unable to wear down his friend's resistance. Knowing her first name, that she was a schoolteacher and probably was new to St. Louis, gave him a place to start. He was an investigative reporter, after all.
St. Louis had three new schoolteachers named Sarah, but only one who was not a native of the city. By the time he'd identified the one who he thought was H
oyston's most likely candidate, she'd left Missouri for summer vacation.
He paid a final visit to Hoyston. "Just stopped by to say good-bye for a while," he told his old friend? .
"So," Hoyston said, "where're you heading now?"
"Down into the Northwest Arkansas area. Suppose to be good bass fishing in Beaver Lake."
Hoyston gave him a suspicious look. "Didn't know you were a fisherman."
It's been a while, but it's like riding a bike," Jordon told him. "Once you learn, you don't forget."
"You fished there before?" Hoyston asked.
"Nope," he said. "Tried the Lake of the Cherokee in Northeast Oklahoma once. Both lakes are in the Ozark Mountains but they're on different rivers and the Beaver is only half the size of Cherokee. So, you know anyone down there you want me to say 'hello' to?"
Hoyston hesitated for a moment. "Only one man I know in that area," he finally said. "Name's Sam Bascomb, and he's a sheriff in one of those counties around Beaver Lake. But I'd advise you not to say hello, or anything else to him."
Jordan grinned. "I take it he's not too fond of you," he said
"We get along fine," Hoyston told him. "Course, I'm not invading his territory, and I'm not what he calls one of those 'blood-sucking reporters' sticking his nose into someone else's business, either".
"Ouch. Sounds like he's had an unpleasant experience."
"Or several," Hoyston said. "Now listen, Jordan. I don't know why you've decided to go fishing down there, and I don't want to know. But for a reporter, I know you're a decent man and we're friends. I want to warn you that Bascomb is one tough cookie. He runs a tight ship and can get real mean if he thinks he or any or his people are being threatened. So, if you do happen to run across him, I'd just as soon you forget to mention that you know me. He's real good at adding one plus one, even when they don't equal two. So you be careful."
Jordan took his friend's advice seriously. He created his fishing vacation as a cover story, took a lease on a cabin in one of the area fishing camps, collected his fishing gear from the St. Louis apartment he rented but rarely occupied, then planned his invasion into what he believed was Sarah Wilson's home territory.
Stranger on the Shore Page 3
