Forbidden Entry

by Sylvia Nobel

  The answer to my question came in the form of huge drops splattering on my head. Great. Round two of the storm system. By the time I made it back to the Jeep, we were in the middle of another cloudburst. I turned the ignition key and switched on the wipers full speed while a hard knot of frustration gathered in my chest. Well, crap on a cracker. I glanced up at the gray curtain of rain and decided once again that venturing into the forest to try and hunt down the elusive miner would be sheer folly. I had no desire to be stranded out in the boonies overnight in the rain with no cell service, especially considering the caliber of people skulking about. “Okay, let’s go to your place,” I said to Daisy, exhaling a sigh of pure exasperation.

  “Goody, goody, goody!” She clapped her hands with glee, and as I negotiated the slushy road it occurred to me that if the rain continued at this rate, I might not be able to get out of here at all, even with four-wheel drive. Common sense told me I should leave pronto, but now that I’d made Daisy a promise it seemed cruel to disappoint her. “I can only stay a few minutes,” I informed her. “If it keeps raining like this, I won’t be able to get back down the road.”

  She turned those amazing, fathomless eyes on me. “I can show you a shortcut! A shortcut through the woods.” She put one finger to her lips. “Shhhhhh! It’s a secret. We’re not supposed to go there. No, not supposed to. No. Not ever.”

  Was she referring to the road Darcy had mentioned? “You mean the one that leads to the McCracken Ranch? The one that was closed several years ago?”

  She nodded and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Some people still use it. They don’t know it, but I see them. I see them go through the gate.”

  “Really?”

  “I have pictures,” she announced, patting her camera. “But I won’t go there. Never, never, never.”

  “Why not?”

  A troubled frown creased her sun-freckled forehead. “Because of the skeleton head. I’m scared of the head. Big scary head,” she added, spreading her arms wide.

  Uncomprehending, I just stared at her and then thought, okay, O’Dell, you’re an idiot. Why are you wasting one second of your time trying to make sense of this woman’s gibberish? Look who you’re dealing with here. She was probably on the intellectual level of a three-year-old. A very slow-witted three-year-old. I grinned at her. “Why don’t you show me the sugar gliders now.”

  Rocking along the slushy road once again, I glanced at the satisfied smile pasted on Daisy’s lips. She appeared to be immensely enjoying the ride when she suddenly pointed to the right. “That’s old Suzie’s house.”

  I looked over at an unpainted, ramshackle house almost hidden among the trees. “Is there something special about her?”

  “She’s a witch.”

  Why not humor her? I grinned. “Does she mix up potions, cast spells and keep a black cat?”

  Daisy turned to me wide-eyed, her jaw sagging open. “You know about her?”

  “Lucky guess,” I murmured, pulling into her driveway. My theory about eccentric people hiding away in these isolated communities held true. I realized that I’d never eaten my sandwich and I badly needed to make a pit stop before hitting the road again. We jumped out into the driving rain and bolted for the front door of her mobile home. Unlike yesterday, there wasn’t an animal in sight. At least they had the good sense to take cover from the rain, I thought ruefully, splashing through deep puddles before rushing up the stairs to the porch. Daisy threw open the unlocked door and a chorus of barking met us when we stepped inside, shed our wet coats and removed our muddy boots. After I’d greeted three small dogs and four friendly cats, I looked around the modestly furnished rooms with interest. The place was bigger than it looked. I hadn’t realized it was a doublewide and wondered how on earth had they gotten the thing up that narrow, twisting road.

  “Come to my room! Come on!” Daisy shouted with gusto, gesturing for me to follow her down the narrow hallway.

  “I’m going to stop here for a minute,” I said, pointing to the bathroom. Once inside the small, but tidy room, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the sign hanging behind the toilet. JIGGLE HANDLE AFTER FLUSHING OR DON’T COME BACK! After I’d tended to business and washed the dirt off my hands, I used a towel to pat some of the rain off my sodden hair. The steady drum of the raindrops on the metal roof diminished and it appeared the deluge was tapering off for now. A quick glance out the small, smudged window revealed a still-overcast sky. Best get out of here soon. When I stepped into the hallway, Daisy, holding the ragged stuffed bunny, stood waiting and led me to her bedroom. Holy cow! I’d never seen such an assortment of items outside of a yard sale. Every nook and cranny was filled with stacks of plastic bins, bric-a-brac, clothing, dolls, shoes, games, puzzles and just plain junk, leaving barely enough room for the bed, desk, chest of drawers and a tall wire cage wedged in one corner. Had she innocently collected this enormous pile of stuff on her scavenger hunts or was Darcy right about her sister being a kleptomaniac? “Daisy, where did you get all these things?”

  A shadow of remorse crossed her face and she ducked her chin, glancing up at me furtively. “Are you mad? Are you mad at me like Darcy?”

  She looked so pitiful, my heart melted with compassion. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “I don’t mean to take things. Sometimes, I just…borrow them.” She chewed nervously on a fingernail then her eyes lit up. “I can take it all back! I will! You can help me!” Excitedly, she ran over to a wall shelf, grabbed a handful of books and shoved them at me. “Here! Here! We can take them back!”

  “No! No, Daisy. That’s all right.” The pile of books tipped forward and landed on the floor with a thud. “Let’s put them all away, shall we?” I knelt to gather the books, absently reading the titles as I handed them back to her one by one. Quite a variety—Alice in Wonderland, a biography of George Washington, The Beginner’s Guide to Trout Fishing, Easy Meal Planner and Final Departure, Assisted Suicide for the Dying. The last one caught my eye and I pulled it back. A curious subject matter for Daisy to have in her collection. I opened the front cover and drew back when I saw the inscription. Billie Carr. How interesting. “Where did you get this?” I asked gently, not wanting to spook her. “Did you know Billie Carr?”

  “She’s gone to Heaven,” she said simply.

  “Did she give this to you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you take this from her house?”

  Her furtive gaze shifted away. “Maybe.” She stared blankly into the distance for a few seconds and then disconnected from the conversation. Humming happily to herself, she crossed the room and began to replace the books on the shelf. At that second, it occurred to me that Daisy had probably accompanied Darcy when she had gone to care for the dying woman and helped herself to the book or books while there. I leafed through several chapter headings that outlined the numerous ways patients could take their own lives—starvation, various combinations of drugs, poisons, and the proper use of plastic bags to smother the patient. Pretty grim stuff. It was doubtful Daisy had read any of it. She’d most likely just taken it…just because she felt compelled to take something.

  “Come see them now!” Daisy pleaded, beckoning me as she opened the cage door and reached inside to pull out a small, multi-colored, possum-like creature with bulbous black eyes. “This is Henry,” she announced, beaming. “And that one is Lolita,” she said pointing to a second, smaller one hanging by its tail from the top of the cage. Daisy set the sugar glider on my shoulder and I stroked its soft fur as we sized each other up eyeball-to-eyeball. “Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing,” I whispered. I’d never seen anything quite like them before. “Where did you come from, little one?”

  “Australia!” Daisy exclaimed. “They have big, big eyes to hunt at night.” She studied my face. “Do you like him?”

  “He’s adorable.” I glanced inside the cage and pointed at little bags hanging f
rom the top of the cage. “What are those for?”

  “For sleeping,” she announced with pride in her voice. “They sleep in the little bags and run on those little wheels.”

  “How fun.” I pulled my phone out and handed it to Daisy. “Take a picture. Just tap the button at the bottom.”

  She tapped away and then picked up her camera and took several shots. “You can take him home. You can take both of them,” she announced with wide-eyed eagerness. “I can’t keep them. No, I can’t keep them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Darcy says they cost too much. They eat too much!”

  “What kinds of things do they eat?” I asked, marveling at the unique creature.

  “Look! Look at these,” she said grabbing two small containers from the floor and screwing the lid off one of them. “Meal worms! And wax worms! They eat lots of these and fruit and vegetables. Avocados! They eat avocados and eggs too.”

  “That’s a lot of food.”

  Her lips gathered in a forlorn pout. “It costs too much. And Darcy says it costs too much to keep them warm. They take too much work. That’s what she says,” Daisy complained despondently. “Too much work. That’s what Darcy says. Yeah. Too much work.”

  “Well, I’ll sure ask around when I get back home,” I promised her as the energetic creature leaped, or should I say flew like a flying squirrel from my shoulder to the top of her bureau. It actually looked like it had wings, and at that moment it dawned on me why they were called gliders. “Well, this has been quite educational,” I said, noting the time, “but I have to go now.”

  Disappointment clouded her face as she picked up the unique creature and gently placed him on a perch in the cage. “You don’t want to take them?”

  “I’m sorry…I just can’t.” I turned and headed for the door when I heard her say softly, “The pretty girl said she would take them.”

  I whirled around to stare at her. “What?”

  “The pretty girl. In the picture.”

  My heart stilled. “You mean Jenessa?”

  “She never came back. She never came back and now she’s in Heaven. Yes, in Heaven,” she murmured to herself then fixed me with a questioning look. “Is she there with Billie Carr?”

  “I’m sure she is,” I answered, her surprising revelation kicking up my pulse rate. Very interesting. I now knew at least one of the reasons that she and Nathan had returned to Raven Creek. “Daisy, do you remember what day Jenessa was supposed to come back to get the sugar gliders?”

  Another blank look and then her eyes brightened. “I do! I do! I wrote it down,” she said breathlessly, rushing to the cluttered desk to scoop up a notebook depicting several kittens cavorting on the cover. Tongue clenched firmly between her irregular teeth, she leafed through it and then shoved the page so close to my eyes everything blurred. “Right here! Right here! See? I wrote it down on my calendar.”

  I pushed the notebook away, focused on the date and my heart faltered. If this entry was correct, Jenessa had intended to pick them up last Tuesday—the same day she’d been expected to return home. And then the memory of the strange notation on the calendar I’d seen in her room jumped to mind. Of course! Pick up SG had to mean sugar gliders. “Daisy, can you show me exactly which day she came to see you?”

  Daisy tilted her head sideways and pointed to a small x she had marked on Tuesday of the previous week. “See here? See this x? She said, “I will come back in one week.” She held up one stubby finger. “One week. That’s what she said. Exactly.”

  If Daisy was right, that meant only three days elapsed between the day they were here and the day they died. If I recalled correctly, the big snowstorm had indeed blown in on that Friday. “Did Jenessa say anything to you about where she and Nathan were going or what they planned to do before they returned?”

  She chewed on her thumbnail, her face a mask of intense concentration. After an extended silence she finally said, “In the morning. She said they would go in the morning to Crown King to rent the…the little car things.”

  “You mean an ATV?”

  She nodded affirmatively. “ATVs. Yes, ATVs!”

  “Did she say anything else? Did she say where they were going on the ATVs?”

  She pursed her lips. “Mmmmmmm. Riding on the mountain. I think…to Horse Thief Basin and look for old mines and camp and hike! Hike in the moonlight. Moonlight hiking, she said!”

  Hiking around on this rugged mountain terrain in daylight looked to be daunting enough, but attempting it solely by the light of the moon seemed dicey to me. Remembering Nathan’s penchant for extreme sports, no doubt meant he would relish the challenge and the risk involved. But why drag Jenessa along on such a perilous journey? I made a note in my phone to find out what date they’d returned the ATVs. But as I tapped the reminder out something occurred to me. If they had planned to be gone for another week, why had they returned the ATVs after only two days? I’d have to double check with Marshall, but I didn’t remember him saying they’d found ATVs on the closed road. Just the camper. And if they’d been coming back to Raven Creek, it made no logical sense for them to drive in the opposite direction. The list of questions without answers grew larger by the day. Yeah, I definitely had my work cut out for me. “Daisy, I really have to go now.”

  “No! Don’t go yet!” she implored. “Stay longer. Just a little longer. I can show you more pictures!” She rushed to the stack of plastic tubs and began to excitedly pile them on the bed. “I have a hundred thousand million pictures to show you! A hundred million!” Her face aglow, she pulled photo after photo out, spreading them out on the bed. Her childlike enthusiasm was contagious, but I had to say gently, “I’d love to look at them another time, but right now I have a lot of things I need to do, okay?”

  Her face crumpled in disappointment. “Oh. Darcy says I have too many. Too many pictures. A hundred million zillion is too many, she says.”

  She seemed lonely and I felt bad, but time was getting away from me. “Thank you, Daisy.” When I reached the front door to pull on my boots and coat, I added, “You’ve been a really big help today.”

  Expectant blue eyes sparkling with pride, her whole persona seemed to light up. “I can be a good helper! A good, good helper!”

  “You certainly can be.” I had the impression that Darcy probably never praised her for anything and that was sad. And then something occurred to me. “Daisy, do you have any more pictures of Jenessa? I know her mother would like to see them.”

  She stared at me with a searching look for long seconds and then clapped her hands together. “I do! I do have some! Do you want to see them?”

  “You bet! Are they on your camera?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I have real pictures too! Darcy makes me pictures on her…on her…” She paused and her eyes went blank.

  “Her printer?” I filled in hopefully.

  Her face lit up. “Yes! The printer! The printer! I have lots and lots to show you!” Again like a child, she skipped back to her bedroom and I watched while she rummaged through the plastic tubs, humming a little tune. How she managed to find them so quickly from among the thousands of photos, I’ll never know, but within five minutes she exclaimed happily, “Here! Here she is!”

  I sifted through at least a dozen photos of a smiling Jenessa holding the sugar gliders and several others of her posing with some of the dogs and cats. I dug out my phone again and recorded them. With a twinge of sadness, it occurred to me that these were probably the last pictures ever taken of her while she was alive. “These are really special,” I remarked, smiling at Daisy. “Thank you.”

  “I have more! Bunches and bunches more!” She pulled out handfuls of photos and spread them out on the bed. “Do you want to see pictures of the nice boy too?” she announced in an eager-to-please tone as she continued to rummage through the tub.

  “You mean Nathan?
”

  “Yes. Yes. Nathan. The boy Nathan.”

  “I would like to see them,” I answered, thinking it was strange that I was actually becoming accustomed to her odd repetitive sentence structure.

  While she hunted, I sat on the edge of the bed absently fingering through the pile, looking at pictures of plants, flowers, animals, bugs, structures and a lot of people I didn’t recognize, but deduced that most of them were probably residents of Raven Creek. There were also images of things that I had no idea what they were or where they were taken. She had a sizeable number of photos of Percy Cross’s vintage cars, photographed from every conceivable angle, including several of him delivering mail in his hearse. But my breath caught in surprise when I noticed one in particular. I held it closer. There was Percy in his hearse parked beside a familiar black pickup truck. Really? What reason would the Hinkle brothers have to be in Raven Creek? “Daisy, do you know the men who own this truck?” I held up the picture and her round face crinkled with concern. “Oh! Darcy says those are bad, bad boys. I don’t like them. No. Don’t like them. They are mean. Mean, mean boys.”

  Of that, I had no doubt. “I’m not too crazy about them myself. Do they come here often? Who do they visit?”

  Preoccupied still searching for photos, she answered vaguely, “Mmmmm. Mostly to see the doctor.”

  “Doctor Gartiner?”

  “I think they are sick a lot. Darcy says he’s a good doctor. Good doctor. Good.” She picked up another photo, stared at it and then let out a sheepish giggle. “He didn’t know I took this. He would be mad. Real, real mad.”

  “Who? Nathan?”

  “No. Mr. Stilts. He told me to never take his picture. Never, never.”

  “Let’s see.” She handed it to me and just for the hell of it, I took a photo of the print, thanked her again and headed for the door. She trotted along behind me. “Will you come back again to see me?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, shouldering my purse. “And, thank you, Daisy. You really were more help than you can imagine. See you later.” I patted her spongy shoulder and stepped outside. The air smelled amazing, saturated with the musky scents of wet earth, leaves and pines. That part was nice, but I could not help but bemoan the fact that my plans to find Harvel Brickhouse, the person I most wanted to interview, continued to be thwarted by inclement weather. Trudging towards the Jeep, a twinge of surprise zinged through me at the sight of Burton Carr’s pickup cruising by the mouth of the driveway. He waved and shouted, “Just checking to see if you were okay. We’re going to get slammed by this next storm front. Want me to follow you down the hill?”