by Madelyn Alt
“What is it, Maggie?” Liss called from where she and Eli still stood. “What do you see?”
I couldn’t speak. My throat was still full of the strangeness emanating from the tree.
Liss and Eli came up behind me before I found the strength of will to turn away. Liss put her hand on my shoulder as she gazed up.
“Why, what is that doing here?” she asked, her voice full of wonder.
“Any idea what it’s for?” I asked through clenched teeth. It was the only way I could keep them from chattering.
Liss squinted at it, considering, then shook her head. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the symbolism.”
“I touched it.”
Liss did as well, her fingers twitching as they made contact. “It’s magical, that much is sure.”
Eli did not reach out. He backed away and said nothing, a frown pinching his brows together.
Someone had placed it here. But why?
Chapter 6
“Oh, my God.”
Tom’s mouth dropped open as he stared at the strange sign, glowing stark white in the waning late afternoon sun. He had finally caught up with me after I picked up Christine from Enchantments and started for home. Although I knew he’d be angry that I had visited the crime scene again, no matter how briefly, I knew I couldn’t not tell him about the strange sign we had come across.
“Oh, my God,” he repeated. “Was this here last night? What the hell is it supposed to be?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I thought I should tell you.”
“Damn right, you should.” He squeezed my hand to soften the brusqueness of the words. “Listen, Maggie, go back to the road. Carefully. Watch where you step, and don’t touch anything.”
While he ran back to the squad car, I did as he asked, gladly, taking care with each step to look for footprints impressed upon the ground. Not that that would have meant anything at this late hour—Liss and Eli and I could easily have trampled any evidence in the grass earlier without realizing it.
“You stay there,” he said as he passed me, a digital camera in one hand and a messenger-style pouch over his shoulder. “I’m going to take a few pictures.”
I wished then that I had thought to do the same, but technology had never been foremost in my mind. I’d forgotten until just that moment about the camera feature on my cell phone. And now, I was standing on the edge of the road, too far away and at too much of an angle to get a clear shot. I took my cell phone from my pocket and looked down at it in my hand, considering. If I waited until Tom was busy taking his own pics, maybe I could slip a teensy bit closer to get one of my own…
“Don’t even think about it,” Tom growled, catching me off guard.
I was getting pretty darned tired of people reading my thoughts. Was I that transparent? Couldn’t a girl get a little privacy every once in a while?
In a huff, I tucked the slim phone back in my pocket, but that didn’t stop me from gazing back at the symbol and trying to memorize as many details as I could. It also didn’t stop me from employing more Stone Age resources. In addition to my phone I had found a scrap of paper and a ballpoint pen in my pocket. With my back toward Tom, I started to sketch the design from memory, pausing for a quick sidelong glance when I needed to fill in bits of detail. When I was satisfied with my artistic endeavors, I tucked the sketch back into my pocket.
Tom was taking longer than I had thought he would, photographing from all angles and scouting the trees. As the sun sank lower in the sky, the chill air was starting to seep through my jeans and creep up under the hem of my leather jacket. Spring was upon us, true, but we were a whole long way from summer. I balled my hands up in my front pockets and began to pace along the crumbling edge of the road in an effort to get my blood flowing again. Back and forth, back and forth.
Finally Tom joined me on the side of the road.
“So, what do you think? Do you have any theories about the symbols on the tree?” I asked him, deciding the direct approach was the only way to go.
He avoided my eyes and shrugged. “Theories, but I’d like to do a bit of research before I lay them out on the table.”
“And how do these theories blend with your previous thoughts on the other attacks on Amish?”
He chucked me under the chin and looked me square in the eye. “I’ll let you know.”
“Come on, Tom.”
“You know I really can’t tell you.”
“But you wouldn’t know about any of this without me,” I protested, feeling a pout coming on. I hated that. Pouts were for little girls, not grown women trying like hell to believe in themselves. I lifted my chin and summoned my best bid for respect. “I didn’t have to tell you, you know. But I thought that perhaps you thought enough of me by now to know that I’m not asking you to betray your police confidences. Generalizations are fine. More than fine; a generalization would be great.”
“Maggie.”
“Perfect, even.”
“Maggie.”
“Because the last thing in the world I would want you to do would be to betray—”
My words got caught in the updraft caused when he seized me by the shoulders and pulled me into a kiss so sudden and hard that my head tipped back beneath the pressure of his lips. My mouth opened in surprise, and immediately he took advantage of the offered opportunity. Our reason for being out there was lost in the intensity of the moment. Heat, pure and primal, poured through my veins. Had I been cold a moment ago? I couldn’t remember now. The only thing that was important was this moment, this man, and this wonderful, fluid warmth.
When he lifted his head at last, it was only by increments, as though he, too, was reluctant to break the peace of the moment.
“Not fair,” I whispered, not really caring one way or another.
“All is fair in love and war,” he whispered back, plucking at my lower lip with his as though playing the strings of a harp. Oh, yes, he knew how to play me, all right.
I closed my eyes, fighting against the feelings rushing through me. “What were we talking about?”
“How pretty you look out here, shivering away. You have a really nice—”
“Tom!” I swatted at him, laughing.
“—way of shivering,” he finished. “Warmer now?”
I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. “Infinitely.”
“Good.” He dropped his arms away from me and stepped back. The loss of his heat made the cool air seem even more chill.
He went silent for a moment as he tucked the bagged evidence more securely into the messenger bag and fastened the flap. “Maggie.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t know what you were doing out here—”
“Nothing, honest.”
“—and I don’t want to know. But I was hoping you’d remember your promise to me to stay out of things. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and this”—he waved a hand toward the sign—“makes me even more nervous.”
I tried to make light of it. “I’ll be sure to watch out for people carrying paint and paintbrushes.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m not male, I’m not Amish, I have nothing for anyone to take, and I’m not likely to be found alone on a county road. Today notwithstanding. I don’t think I’m at that much of a risk.”
“I just…these things that have been happening lately. All the vandalism, the fights, the domestic shit hitting the fan. The murders. Things are just not right, Maggie. The town’s not right.”
Tom didn’t know the half of it.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he went on. “And I don’t want you to be…I…damn!” He frowned, clamping his lips together. “Sorry. I’m not very good with words.”
He was trying to protect me. The knowledge sparkled in my heart like fairy dust in sunlight, and with it came hope. “I think you’re doing fine. Really fine.”
He caught my eye, and the corner of his mouth
twitched in a wry smile that felt like much more. I was half hoping for another kiss, but he turned away.
“We’d better get going. It’ll be getting dark soon.”
I started, realizing what he said was true. The sun had been slowly sinking, our shadows stretching long behind us to the east. I wasn’t too keen on being caught by the approaching night right smack on top of the place where Luc had lost his life.
“Did you get everything you needed?” I asked him.
Tom nodded. “We’ll send a crew out later to expand the search radius. If there’s anything more out there, we’ll find it. But it will have to wait until tomorrow, when we have light again.”
He escorted me back to the squad car, his fingers lightly curved around my upper arm. I paused before getting in. “Do you have to work tonight?”
“Yeah. Grossman called in sick, so I told Chief that I’d fill in.” His eyes traveled from my eyes to my mouth, then dipped lower. “But I’m starting to wish I hadn’t said yes.”
I sighed. Another night alone for me with nothing but Graham Thomas, my worn-out but faithful teddy bear, and maybe a rerun of Magnum, P.I. if I was lucky. “Too bad. I guess I’ll just have to come up with a way to make you jealous.”
He moved in, leaning on the door. “Alone, of course?”
“Story of my life.” I smiled to soften the words, but I knew the truth of it. If Tom and I ever did manage to make a real go of things, I would have to come to terms with the fact that I would have a rival for Tom’s time and affection, one that claimed so much of him that there was little left over for me. Worse still, it was a rival I had no right to fight. I was the usurper there, the new factor to be shoehorned in. Either I would need to find a way to play nice when it came to the realities of his demanding job, or I was going to have to find another playground.
I would cross that bridge if or when I came to it.
Tom came around and got in the driver’s side. I gazed with interest at all of the different appliances and buttons on the console while he set us into motion. How one man, who was also responsible for steering the vehicle, could also be required to run all of these gizmos, widgets, and thingamabobs boggled my mind. “You don’t ever have to use these while you’re driving, do you?”
“Only during a high-speed chase.” He laughed when I stuck out my tongue. “Well, not usually. But you do get used to what you have where.” He reached out and turned up the sound on the police scanner. The sound of mechanical voices, squelches, and occasional feedback filled the background.
Tom took my hand and held it, running his thumb in circles against my palm as he drove us back to town. We had just hit the outer limits when a call came for him over the radio. He spoke into the mouthpiece in the terse parlance unique to police officers, then signed off.
“What’s up?” I asked when he sighed as he replaced the mouthpiece.
“The usual. Carnage and chaos out near the old juvie home. It’s a decent neighborhood—old, but nicely kept—and the little bastards are just taking it over. Rampaging, partying in the woods, vandalizing the neighborhood, petty theft. Drugs are a big reason; they usually are. Most of the kids are in and out of Blackhawk on a regular basis. It’s a crying shame, really.”
“But if they’re there because they’ve been getting into trouble, don’t they have supervision? Curfews? Lockdowns and the like?”
“They’re supposed to, but you know how tight funding is for anything and everything these days. The salaries are low, benefits are nonexistent, and it’s a high stress, thankless job. The staff turnover rate is astronomical, so guess who ends up running the show.”
“The kids. Nice.”
“Not. Chief wants more of a presence out that way and at all the other hotspots in town, starting tonight.”
“Lucky you.”
“Yeah. At least it will keep the residents happy. One of ’em had her yard completely trashed a week or so back. Beer bottles and drug paraphernalia and toilet paper everywhere. Forked her, too, and it’s a bitch on the back pulling all of those plastic forks out of your lawn. Poor woman was fit to be tied. Guess she’d ratted ’em out one time too many.”
Trial by intimidation.
I was silent a moment, processing everything I’d seen and heard that weekend. Tom had told me to mind my own business, but I couldn’t help wondering. “And…Tom…the other attacks on Amish…what happened to Luc…”
He gripped my hand a little harder, reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Maggie. We’ll find out what happened, and we’ll make it right. We already have feelers out.”
“You said that the other two Amish men who were attacked, were robbed. Was Luc?”
“His wallet was missing.”
“So it could have been robbery.”
“Or he could have forgotten it. Listen, Maggie, leave it alone. The truth is out there. Someone will crack, eventually. I promise you that. And when they do, we’ll have him.”
But did we have time to wait? Or was it possible that if we waited too long, another attack could be imminent?
What if we were too late?
Chapter 7
Tom received another call as he pulled up outside my apartment in the house on Willow Street
. I felt lucky that I got a quick kiss curbside before he took off, leaving me to make my own way through the semidarkness to the sunken entrance. After my break-in scare in December, my father had insisted on installing a security light, complete with motion sensor, above my door. The light blinked on instantly as I began the descent, momentarily blinding me.
Somehow it was almost as creepy to be in the seeing eye of this security light as it was walking down the stairs in the dark.
Yes, I am a coward. Most people are, in the dark of night. I just happen to be one who admits it.
There was a note on my door from Steff, my best friend, who lives on the upper floor of the aging Victorian house-turned-apartment building. I read it beneath the glow of the security light.
Hey, girlfriend!
Won’t be able to make it for our usual tonight—I’m going to have to go in to work. We’ve had three people quit in the last two weeks on my floor alone. Don’t know what’s going on in this old place. Sorry! I left something for you, though, that I hope will make up for it, just a little bit. Something to scoop you off to a faraway land…like Hawaii, perhaps? In the meantime…pity me. Pity me.
Lots of love,
Bemused, I opened the screen door. Just inside was a sparkly little pink gift bag, adorned with frothy feathers, fake jewels, curling ribbons, and misty, ethereal photos of angels. Girly to the max, just like Steff.
Inside? A bottle of scented shower gel that was supposed to make a girl’s skin gleam like gold and smell of coconut and hibiscus, and a blue candle studded with tiny starfish and shells and rubbed with sand and glitter.
Hmmm…it did make a girl think.
Thomas Magnum, P.I.? Come on down, honey, and let’s test the water.
I unlocked the door and let myself in, setting my things on the chair inside the door and bending to scoop up the bits of dried leaves that always seemed to swirl in from the sunken entrance. I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I grabbed the bag of goodies and made my way to the bedroom. Within minutes my clothes lay flung across the floor with wild abandon, the candle was burning invitingly on the bathroom shelf, and hot, thundering water was steaming the stress from my muscles and the fog from my brain.
That didn’t, of course, dislodge tropical island fantasies, complete with a blue-eyed devil with a mustache that teased and tickled as he bent me back over the rushing surf. His arms were strong, his body bronze in the fading sunset, and his kisses as intoxicating as the fantasy itself. Dreamtime Tom (Fielding, that is) butted in, and I even let him, so long as he promised to go with the fantasy flow and appear in either a swimsuit or a birthday suit, and not a police uniform.
Hey, it was my fantasy. I could switch guys mid-surf if I wanted to.
Except once Tom ap
peared on my fantasy island, I couldn’t help wishing he was here for real. About that time the island drifted away like so many bubbles down the drain.
Another good fantasy wasted.
Sighing with disappointment and wistfulness, I turned off the water, bent at the waist to wrap a towel turban-style around my hair, and another around my body. Since the fantasy was pretty much a loss, I decided a little bit of self-indulgence might be called for. Some scented body oil, a pumice stone, and a pedicure later, I was feeling spa-refreshed and ready for a little bit of surfing. TV surfing, that is. I slipped on an extra-long T-shirt, a robe, and my fuzzy bunny slippers, grabbed a fleece throw blanket to cover my legs beneath my robe, and settled into my favorite wingback chair with a cold Diet Coke in one hand and the remote in the other.
Time for a little bit of Magnum ogling. Maybe I could get that daydream back…
I barely had a chance to enjoy the theme music when my cell phone began blaring again. “I havegot to remember to program in another ring tone,” I grumbled as I struggled out from under the blanket over to my purse.
“Hello?”
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Marcus!” My heart thumped wickedly. I bit my lip, but it didn’t stop the happy glow from spreading through my veins. “What a surprise. What are you up to this weekend?”
“Well, I was thinking about going down to the library to do a little ghostly surveillance for Aunt Marion.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Tonight? It’s awfully late, isn’t it?”
“Maggie, it’s seven o’clock.”
“My point exactly. The library is closed.”
“Well, it does make it easier to do an investigation without mundanes to get in the way. And you know spirit activity is higher after sundown. No time like the present.” Until six months ago,I had been what he called a mundane, a person oblivious to the spirit world around her. “I, ahem, was hoping to convince you to join me.”
I glanced down at myself. I was dressed for comfort, not company. “Um—”
“Come on, Maggie…it won’t take long. I just wanted to check Marion’s camera setup and do a walk-through. Maybe take an EVP or two while we’re there. Nothing in an official capacity. Just you, me, and old Bertie. And Aunt Marion, of course. What do you say?”
