by Mary Frame
“That sounds like him.”
“Here’s the boxes from the 1960s.” Jared stops in the middle of one of the aisles. He pulls a box from the shelf and hands it to me. “We can take a few at a time over to the side room over there.” He gestures to a small room with better lighting and a long table. A wide window overlooks the storage area, and there are no windows to the outside world. It’s like working in a cave.
I nod, take the box, and head in that direction. The room is sparsely furnished. Just one table, a few chairs and a computer in the corner that is bigger than a microwave and probably hasn’t been used since 1986.
I set the box on the table and open it up, riffling through the contents before pulling out the first stack of files.
Jared brings in his own box and we spend the next couple of hours going through old case files, only stopping to go to the bathroom and when Jared calls in some sandwiches for lunch.
It takes a while, but eventually we find something.
“Here.” I hold up an old newspaper clipping, thin and fragile with age. “This says a few teens were held for questioning about a series of pranks that happened in 1962. They mention a secret club called the Knights and Ladies of the Red Baron.”
Jared rolls his chair over next to me and peers at the article over my shoulder while I skim it.
“There was some sort of ritualistic rite of passage that the teens had to do in order to get into the club. One of them was caught trying to complete the fourth and final step, which was walking the plank at the Castle Cove ruins. Walking the plank?” I turn my head toward him.
“Oh, yeah. That was something we did, too. There’s this old, thick, wooden board up at the castle set between the two columns that are still standing.”
I nod, remembering our night out at the bluffs.
He continues, “Walking the plank is just walking across it without falling to your death.”
“Seriously?”
He turns his head toward me and my breath catches in my throat at his nearness. His lips can’t be more than a few inches from mine.
“Yeah.” His eyes flicker down to my mouth. “But it’s not dangerous when the tide is in. There’s enough water that if you fell, you’d just have to swim to the shore. Plus, you know how it is when you’re young and reckless.” He pulls back from me, sliding back in his chair a couple of feet. “Does it say anything about the first three steps?”
He’s looking away from me and my eyes are drawn to his strong jawline, his neck, his shoulders. I want to drag my lips over all those things.
But now his gaze is on me and the glint in his eyes is telling me he’s all too aware of his effect on me.
I clear my throat and force my attention back to the article in front of me, gently turning to the next page. I pause on the picture accompanying the article. “No. But it does mention a former prominent member. This article was printed after she left the club, but she was active when she went to Castle Cove High.”
“Who?”
I turn the black-and-white picture toward him. The woman has dark hair instead of white hair, and significantly fewer wrinkles, but she’s wearing a sweater with a cat on it, and I would recognize her determined expression anywhere.
“Mrs. Olsen.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jared makes some phone calls to track down our suspect. Mrs. Olsen is volunteering at the nursing home.
“What can you tell us about the Knights and Ladies of the Red Baron?” Jared asks.
We’re outside of the activities room at the nursing home, where they have a guest teaching the residents how to salsa.
The pulsing music beats through the door into the hallway while we question Mrs. Olsen. She’s wearing a tight-fitting, bright-yellow leotard covered in pink cats and a colorful skirt that flares around her hips. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that getup but for some reason, on Mrs. Olsen, it almost looks normal.
“Did you say the Red Baron?” Mrs. Olsen laughs. “That brings back some memories.”
“You were a member?” I ask.
“Me? I was the president.”
Jared and I exchange a glance.
“What were the first three tasks that had to be completed to get into the club?” I ask.
“Oh, I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?” Jared asks.
“I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
Jared sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Mrs. Olsen, this is in regards to an ongoing case. If you don’t cooperate, you could be charged for impeding an investigation.”
“That is bull honkey.” She slaps him gently on the shoulder and laughs. “You wouldn’t arrest me, Jared, I’ve changed your diapers.”
He presses his lips together and I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed or holding back laughter. “That was a long time ago, Mrs. Olsen, and I would really appreciate your assistance on this case.”
“I don’t break my promises, young man. But maybe I can tell you about someone who wasn’t sworn to secrecy like I was. He was a member sometime after me.”
“That would be helpful,” he says.
She looks at me and then Jared, clearly enjoying this whole conversation a little too much, if the sly grin on her face and twinkle in her eyes are any indication.
“Mr. James Bingel.”
I can’t imagine Mr. Bingel being a part of something like this, but Mrs. Olsen has no reason to lie, since she knows we’ll be questioning him.
Mr. Bingel is at home when we stop by. He’s helping the boys with their homework. He brings us to see them before we get down to business. They’re sitting at a small circular table in the kitchen.
“Ruby!” Gary runs up and throws his arms around me. “Where have you been?” he asks, his little eyebrows drawn together.
“Paige and I have been staying with Jared for a little bit.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
“Ha ha . . . haaa,” the laughter leaves my mouth forced and stilted, my face heating with embarrassment. I don’t look back at Jared. I can’t. “We aren’t getting married,” I tell Gary. “We’re here to talk to Mr. Bingel if it’s okay with you guys.”
We leave them in the kitchen with their work, and Mr. Bingel takes us into his study.
“How can I help you today?”
“We have some questions about a secret society you were a member of back in the day,” Jared says.
At Mr. Bingel’s confused expression, I offer, “The Knights and Ladies of the Red Baron?”
“Oh, yes.” He chuckles. “That was fun.”
“Do you remember if there were any tasks or steps you had to take to enter the society?”
“Well let’s see now. I remember we had to walk the plank at the end.” He squints his eyes, thinking. “That was the weirdest part. The walking of the plank could only be performed under the full moon. And you had to be in your birthday suit.” His brows lift and he nods at us. “They still do that, I think, but now it’s more of a dare and they wear their clothes. But back in the day . . .” His lips purse while he thinks. “There were some kind of pranks, moving things around people’s houses, toilet-papering a yard, breaking chalk in the classrooms, that sort of thing.”
Bingo.
I glance over at Jared and find him watching me. We smile and then turn back toward Mr. Bingel.
“Did you have to break into people’s houses to perform these pranks?” I ask.
“Of course not. No one locked their doors back then. Not until the pranks became more widespread, at least. Once people started locking up at night, we moved on to targeting friends or family, people we already had keys for. We never did anything illegal. Just harmless jokes.”
“How did you pick the people you would target?” Jared asks.
Mr. Bingel shrugs, pushing his glasses up on his nose to peer at Jared. “I don’t really remember. As I said, they were always friends or family of people already in the club. That way we had a way in.”
“Have
you heard anything about the incidents recently, like at Ruby’s?”
Mr. Bingel purses his lips. “You think these recent crimes are connected to something that happened fifty years ago?”
“We don’t know.” Jared says.
“I guess you could be onto something. The club disbanded right after I graduated. There were quite a few people who didn’t get an invitation, and they were always rather bitter about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they resurrected the old ways just for fun.”
“Do you know of anyone still around who might want to recreate old times?”
He shrugs. “I barely remember what I ate for dinner last night.”
“What if we give you a list of names? Do you think you could point out anyone connected to the club?”
“I could try.”
Jared pulls our list of the people who’ve attended the mocktail parties out of his pocket. He hands it over to Mr. Bingel with his pen. “If you could make a check next to the ones you think that might been in or wanted to be in the club.”
Jared and I wait in silence while Mr. Bingel hems and haws and makes some marks on the paper.
“There.” He hands the paper back. “I can’t guarantee that’s accurate, but it’s to the best of my knowledge.”
Jared stands and I follow. “Thank you for your help,” he says.
We say goodbye to the boys and then head out to the patrol car.
“Well,” I tell Jared, “I think we should see if our victims have given out any spare keys.”
He makes the calls from the patrol car.
“Only Paige and I have a spare,” I tell him about our house keys.
And the real Ruby. And her accountant. But that’s it, and neither of them could be the culprit.
As Jared calls each victim, he tells me every time he hangs up who has a spare key for each household. And every time, it’s the same name.
“Mrs. Olsen,” he says when he hangs up with Sheila Newsome.
“We keep coming back to her, don’t we?”
“I guess we’re going back to the nursing home.”
Salsa class is over and Mrs. Olsen is in the front office helping with files, still in her leotard and skirt.
“Did Mr. Bingel tell you guys what you needed to know?” She picks up a file folder and slides it into a drawer.
“Actually he did,” Jared says. “And we have another question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why didn’t you ever mention that you have a spare key to nearly every house that was broken into?”
Her head tilts. “But I don’t.”
“Everyone that’s had a break-in, except Ruby, has given you a spare key to their house at one time or another.”
“Well, they did, but I don’t have them anymore.” She turns her back to us, searching through some of the files. Or pretending to.
“What happened to them?” I ask.
“Hmmm? Oh, I stored the keys in the safest place I could think of, but then they got stolen.”
“Stolen? When?”
“I’m not really sure . . .” She sidesteps away, down a couple rows of cabinets.
“Where were you keeping them?” Jared asks.
She fidgets with her multicolored skirt and finally faces us. “I was keeping them with Miss Viola. You see, she has these little pockets on her wheelchair she never uses.”
I groan. This sounds so familiar. Miss Viola also had all the bags from the old Greek restaurant that were used the last time I helped with an investigation. The boys swiped them while Miss Viola was sleeping.
“Miss Viola’s wheelchair probably isn’t the best place to keep things. She’s not exactly a good sentinel,” I say.
“When was the last time you saw the keys?” Jared asks.
“I housesat for the Newsomes when they went on one of those cruises to Mexico. I’ve never gone on a cruise. I’ve heard people get food sickness, you know, and then the motion sickness and there are pirates—”
“Mrs. Olsen, please answer the question.”
“Right, well that was about six months ago.”
“So sometime in the last six months,” I repeat. That doesn’t give us anything to go on. “What did the keys look like? Did they have any identifying marks?”
Now Mrs. Olsen looks embarrassed. “They all kind of looked the same, and I have a really bad memory.”
Jared’s eyes fall shut and he groans. “Please don’t tell me . . .”
“I wrote their names on them,” she says with a small, guilty smile.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That was a giant dead end,” Jared says.
We’re back at his house. Paige is doing homework and we’re in the kitchen discussing the case after cleaning up after dinner.
“At least now we know how someone is getting into their houses,” I say. “They took the keys right off Miss V’s wheelchair. And it’s got to be either someone that was in the Red Baron club or someone who tried to get in. Where’s Mr. Bingel’s list?”
We have a bunch of stuff spread out on the island in the kitchen. The map showing the locations of the incidents, some pictures of the items left behind and damage occurring during the pranks, witness statements, and Jared’s notes from our interviews.
He pulls the list from his notebook and sets it in front of me.
“A lot of correlation here,” I say.
He moves around the island and stands behind me, peering over my shoulder so he can see. He sighs. “Yep.”
“It’s got to be someone who goes to the mocktail party night.”
“We’re back to that, huh?”
“Well. We know now what we need to do.”
He nods. “We need a plan for mocktail night.”
We make a list of potential suspects, using the data we have. There are a few people we discount immediately—mostly because they’re either wheelchair- or walker-bound and there’s no way they could be slipping in and out of people’s houses undetected. What we’re left with is Mrs. Olsen, Mrs. Hale, and nearly a dozen other geriatrics whose names I recognize but haven’t spent much time with. There are too many people for just the two of us to keep track of. Maybe we can have someone stake out the bar area to make sure no one is spiking the punch. And someone else set up outside the senior center to track our suspects as they leave.
“We need reinforcements,” Jared says.
“Let’s call in the troops.”
The next night, Troy and Tabby come over for dinner. Ben couldn’t make it because of work, or he couldn’t face Tabby, or maybe a combination of both.
“We need new clothes,” Tabby tells me over drinks before dinner.
We’re reclining on the padded loungers in our bathing suits while Troy and Jared cook dinner.
Paige swims around in the pool, some new goggles Jared got her making her eyes buggy.
It didn’t take long to hash out the details for mocktail night. Tabby will help Ben keep an eye on the bar to make sure no one is trying to inebriate the elders. Troy and Jared divvyed up the list of suspects to keep an eye on and decided to have Anderson patrol the area around the senior center that night. And me? I will be trying to get a read on anything out of the ordinary. With my abilities. You know, the nonexistent ones.
“Why do we need new clothes?” I ask her.
She looks at me over the rim of her giant black sunglasses. “For the party. Everyone gets dressed up. Do you have any prom dresses?”
She knows that I don’t. “Um. No.”
“Exactly. It will be so much fun, we can go to Roseburg on Thursday and get lunch and try on all the dresses. Maybe get our hair done before the party.”
“I don’t know, Tabby.” It seems wasteful. I’ve gotten a couple small checks from the sheriff’s office, and I’ve made a bit more off of readings that I stuffed into my hidey-hole, but we’ll probably still need more when we leave.
“You should totally go,” Paige chimes in. She’s hanging on to the side of the
pool, listening to our conversation. “You never get to do that kind of stuff.” She gives me a meaningful look that says, and you probably won’t ever again.
“Maybe.” I can always return the clothes later.
Tabby smacks my leg with her hand. “So then it’s settled, I’ll pick you up Thursday morning at nine. Jared!” she yells suddenly.
He’s over at the grill with Troy and he turns toward us, his brow furrowed.
“I’m stealing Ruby on Thursday. You don’t need her, right?”
He shrugs and continues whatever he was saying to Troy.
“We are going to have so much fun.” She leans back in the lounge chair next to me and lets out a contented sigh. “This backyard is to die for. We should have weekly dinner here instead of my little place.”
“You talk like you haven’t been here before.”
“Because I haven’t, not in a couple of years.”
I turn my head toward her, shading the sun from my face. “What? No way.”
“Way. After Jared’s parents died, he didn’t invite anyone over. Not until you.” She bats her eyes and holds her hands against her face coyly.
I laugh and smack her hands down. “That’s . . . super weird.”
“Not really. He was sad. He wanted to be alone most of the time and it was hard having people here. His parents had parties and stuff all the time, too many memories. But now he’s not so sad and he’s more social.”
“He doesn’t really talk about his parents much.” I look over at the grill where he’s standing with Troy. He made Troy wear the apron with the curvy figure on it, so he’s in his swim trunks and a T-shirt. He makes the simplest things look so good.
“Now let’s talk about what we’re going to buy on Thursday. We should get you a yellow dress. You are totally a spring.”
~*~
After Tabby and Troy leave, I decide it’s time to show Paige my new secret.
Jared and I are sitting on the patio talking, and Paige has been in the pool—again. After we ate she wanted to go right back in.
“There’s something I want to show you,” I tell her.
