Even when the houses were in my rearview mirror, the woman in the yellow dress was still standing at the roadside, staring after me. Then we turned a corner, Clara was lost behind the trees, and I let out a sigh of relief.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and placed it on top of the folded copy of the Dearmont Observer on the passenger seat. After pressing the speaker button, I called Felicity. She answered immediately. Unlike me, she had her phone connected to her car’s hands-free system.
“Let’s stop at the parking lot that overlooks the lake,” I said. “I’ll buy you a coffee from that place there. The Coffee Hut.”
“The Coffee Shack,” she corrected me. “And I’ll have tea.”
“Of course you will. We can sit in the car and go over the Deirdre Summers case file. Maybe I’ll get a better feel for the case if I can see the lake where she disappeared.”
“All right,” Felicity said with a teasing note in her voice. “Your car or mine?”
“Mine,” I said. “There’s more room in here than there is in your Mini.”
“I look forward to it,” she said, and ended the call.
When we reached the turnoff for Dearmont Lake, Felicity took it and I followed her to a large parking lot. We parked the cars so they faced the calm expanse of water and I got out of the Caprice while Felicity came over with the Deirdre Summers case file in her hand.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” I said, heading for the dark brown wooden building that was the Coffee Shack. When I got back to the Caprice with the hot drinks, Felicity was sitting in the passenger seat with her window rolled all the way down and the Dearmont Observer open on her lap. I got into the driver’s seat and handed her a cup of tea.
“Anything interesting in there?” I asked, nodding at the newspaper.
She showed me the page she’d been reading. There was a photograph of us standing in North Cemetery with Dennis Jackson, the cemetery manager. The headline read, WHAT IS HAPPENING IN OUR CEMETERY? ALEC HARBINGER, PRETERNATURAL INVESTIGATOR, IS ON THE CASE.
Wesley Jones must have taken the picture when we’d met him at the cemetery after three people, including his father, had crawled out of their graves. It had turned out to be a residual magical leak from the Box of Midnight that had caused the animation of the corpses, and we had sorted it out but the article in the Observer gave the impression that I was working an ongoing case at the cemetery.
Jones said that he had “stumbled upon it” while visiting his father’s grave. He mentioned the disturbed earth and my reluctance to answer his questions. He said he had no idea what I was up to but noted that I’d been inspecting the graves in the cemetery closely.
Apparently, he later visited Dennis Jackson and asked for an interview on the subject but the cemetery manager’s response had been, “No comment”. I smiled when I read that. Dennis Jackson was good people.
The article wasn’t too much of a problem. The cemetery angle was false but it would make the people of Dearmont aware that there was a P.I. in town if they needed my services. But Jones had written something at the end of the piece that made me less happy. “Alec Harbinger has a list of clients that includes Deputy Amy Cantrell of the Sheriff’s Department.”
I jabbed the paper with my finger. “What the hell? Has this guy been watching our office to see who comes and goes?”
“It sounds like it,” Felicity said. She closed the Observer and refolded it before placing it on the dashboard.
“This is all we need, a nosy reporter watching our every move.” I sat back in my seat and took a sip of hot coffee, watching the boats out on the lake in an effort to calm myself. It didn’t work.
“What if he followed us to Clara and writes in the next issue that we’re investigating the church? Not only will Sheriff Cantrell be even more pissed at me than he already is, the story could tip off our enemies. There might be some black magic sorcerer out there who thinks he got away with the Christmas Day Massacre and he’ll read that I’m now on the case. That could be dangerous for the entire town if he comes gunning for me.”
“I’m sure Wesley Jones didn’t follow us to the church,” Felicity said. “He said he owns the game store in town. Surely he’ll be at work. He can’t devote all his time to following you around if he has a store to run.”
Her common sense calmed me a little. Still, it might be a good idea to pay Wesley Jones a visit sometime and warn him that poking his nose into my business wasn’t the healthiest of options. I wasn’t going to threaten him exactly but…okay, yeah, I was going to threaten him.
I picked up the Deirdre Summers file and flicked through it. There wasn’t much in there. With no body, and no evidence of foul play, the police didn’t have much to go on. The file contained interviews with Deirdre’s friends, family, and acquaintances and some photos of the interior of her house. I guessed that Cantrell and his deputies had gone there to find Deirdre and, when they got no response from knocking on her door, forced their way inside.
I passed the interviews to Felicity and inspected the photos. Deirdre’s house looked clean and tidy, the furniture neatly arranged and seemingly in its usual place. There was no indication of a struggle that might have suggested the librarian had been abducted from her home and taken forcibly to the lake.
It was when I got to the photos of Deirdre’s bedroom that I knew what the sheriff and Amy had meant when they’d said there might be a preternatural element to Deirdre’s disappearance.
The bedroom was in the same neat state as the other rooms except for the wall above the bed. There were maybe fifty sheets of paper pinned to the wall. In contrast to the rest of the house, the arrangement of papers was chaotic. Some were hanging on their own on the pale green bedroom wall. Others huddled together, their edges overlapping.
There were drawings on the pieces of paper, scribblings in dark pencil. The photograph I was looking at was a view of the bedroom from the doorway so the drawings were nothing more than indistinguishable dark shapes. I turned the page and discovered that the photographer had obligingly moved closer to the wall and taken close-ups of Deirdre’s homemade wallpaper.
The drawings were crude but good enough that I recognized Dearmont Lake in some of them. The lake was drawn from a place that overlooked a rocky part of the shoreline, the lake stretching across the paper in the background. The small island was visible but it was no more than a dark smudge in the distance.
The rest of the drawings were of a creature emerging from the water. Deirdre was definitely no artist and the creature’s form was indistinguishable from the dark shading that had been used to represent the lake but I could see a pair of bulbous eyes and a frog-like mouth.
I passed the file to Felicity. “What do you think of this?”
She laid the file on her lap and pursed her lips as she examined the drawings. “Do you think there’s a connection between these drawings and what you saw on the windows in the church?”
“I think it’s likely. The windows showed something being summoned from water and Deirdre’s drawings are similar. But the drawings are more specific about the location. They show this lake.”
I looked out at the water shimmering in the sun. Did something lurk in the depths beneath the fishing boats and pleasure craft? Had Deirdre Summers somehow seen the monster that was hinted at in the stained glass windows of the church at Clara?
“I think there’s probably a connection between the two cases,” I told Felicity. “It might be tenuous, considering Deirdre drew those pictures three years ago and the church massacre took place on Christmas Day last year, but we should keep an open mind.”
She pointed at the drawing of the creature rising from the water. “Do you think this thing actually exists or is it a figment of Deirdre Summers’ imagination?”
“Whatever killed those people at the church wasn’t imaginary. Whether or not it was the creature in the drawings and the windows is something we have to find out.”
I took out my phone and flicked through the photos of the
stained glass windows. The eyes in the dark woods and the suggestion of a huge shape lurking beneath the water made me shudder.
Just looking at images that suggested this thing existed made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
So how the hell was I supposed to destroy it?
CHAPTER 4
When we got back to the office, I told Felicity to go ahead inside and that I’d be there soon. I walked down Main Street beneath the blazing midday sun until I reached a store called Dearmont Games. In the window, there was a display of tabletop RPG games, metal miniatures of knights and wizards, and various dice and card games.
I went inside, feeling the store’s AC cool the sweat on my forehead. It was a hot day for monster hunting but at least I had a cool environment in which to warn Wesley Jones away from my business.
The interior of the store was racked out with metal shelving crammed with brightly-colored game boxes, paperback fantasy books, and action figures of fantasy and science fiction characters. Inside a glass-topped display case in the center of the store, two armies of metal miniatures faced each other across a battlefield of fake grass and plastic ruins.
The counter was a long glass cabinet that displayed more figurines, games, and dice. Standing behind it, his nose buried in a Warhammer paperback, was Timothy Ellsworth, a young man who had recently become a werewolf and asked for my help in keeping him restrained during the full moon.
“Hey, Timothy,” I said.
He looked up from the book and his face brightened. “Alec! How are you?” Then he frowned and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What are you doing here? It isn’t the full moon yet.”
“No, I’m not here for that,” I said, taking his cue to drop my voice to a whisper even though there were no customers in the store. “I came to see Wesley Jones. Is he here?”
He hesitated. “Ummm…”
“I know he’s here,” I told him.
Timothy’s eyes widened. “How do you know that? Some sort of magic?”
I grinned and shook my head. “If nobody else is here, then why are we whispering?”
He let out a sigh and pointed to a door at the rear of the store marked Staff Only. “He’s in the alley having a smoke. He sits on the dumpster out there. He told me that if you came by, I was to tell you he wasn’t here.”
So, Wesley had guessed that I’d be paying him a visit after reading his article and now he was in hiding. In a small town like this, how long did he hope to avoid me?
“I was going to tell you he was here, even if you hadn’t deduced it,” Timothy said. “You’re my friend, Alec, and I trust you with my biggest secret.”
“Speaking of which,” I said as I walked toward the rear door, “just make sure your boss never finds out or it’ll be all over the Dearmont Observer.”
“I know that,” he said, giving me a little wave as I opened the door and went out into the alley.
Wesley was sitting on a blue dumpster smoking a cigarette. When he saw me come out of his store and walk toward him, his mouth dropped open and the cigarette fell to the ground, where it sparked for a brief second before dying.
Wesley followed it, sliding off the dumpster with an agility borne of fear, and I thought he was going to run but he stumbled backward and found himself trapped between the dumpster and me. “Before you say anything, the people of Dearmont have a right to know what’s happening in their town,” he said, his eyes wide with fear behind his glasses.
“You’ve been spying on me, Wesley,” I said calmly. I was angry but there was no need to shout. Sometimes, cool detachment is scarier.
“Not spying. I just happened to be at the cemetery at the same time as you and I put two and two together.”
“And came up with five,” I said. “There’s no problem at the cemetery. I’m not investigating anything there.”
“Even after what happened last night?” he asked.
“What happened last night?” I gave nothing away, unsure of how much he knew about the zombies on Main Street. There hadn’t been many witnesses.
Wesley shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure and nobody will officially talk to me about it but there were rumors flying around town this morning that some residents of the old South Cemetery were seen walking through town. That must be connected to you, am I right?”
I said nothing.
“Would you give me an exclusive interview?” he asked hopefully.
“Don’t push it, Wesley.”
“Okay, fine. But I haven’t been spying on you, I swear. I’m just observant.”
“So that’s how you knew Amy Cantrell had been to my office? Because you were being observant?”
“I can see your office from my store window,” he said. “I don’t even have to go out onto the sidewalk. I saw the deputy go to your place and then I ran into you at the cemetery. It was coincidence. I swear it. My spying days are over now.”
I moved closer to him. He was a small guy and I towered over him. He shrank back slightly but the dumpster prevented him from escaping. If it wasn’t there, I was sure he would have fled by now. “What do you mean they’re over now? So you were spying on me before?”
He shook his head so vigorously that his glasses were in danger of flying off his face. “No, no, not you. I never spied on you.”
“Who then?”
He swallowed and looked down at the ground nervously.
“Who were you spying on, Wesley?”
He looked up at me with pleading eyes. “It was a long time ago. Last year. It doesn’t matter now.”
I also put two and two together but, unlike Wesley, I was pretty sure I’d come up with the correct answer. His interest in my work and close proximity to my office made it obvious who he’d been spying on last year. “Sherry Westlake,” I said.
His eyes went even wider and he looked up and down the alley as if expecting my predecessor to be standing there. “Don’t tell her,” he said. “Please.”
“How the hell would I tell her? Sherry Westlake disappeared on Christmas Day.”
“I know that. But you P.I.s are tight, aren’t you? And you all work for the same parent company or something, right? I mean, if anyone knows where she is, it will be you. Am I right?”
“You’re wrong. I have no idea where she is, or even if she’s still alive.”
“Okay,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”
“You seem pretty scared of her,” I said.
“Yeah, well, she had her suspicions that I might be watching her and she told me, in no uncertain terms, to keep away from her.” He rubbed his throat and said, “She pinned me against a wall and held a knife to my throat.”
Way to go, Sherry, I thought. “It sounds like you deserved it, Wesley.”
He shrugged. “I was only taking a few photos and following her around now and then. This town is too quiet to make a living as a reporter. Sure, I have the store but journalism is my true passion. And the only way to get any good stories is to follow you guys around. You always know where the action is.”
“But you didn’t get any stories from following Sherry,” I told him. “I read your articles online. You never wrote about her.”
“I was going to publish a big story,” he said. “An investigation into the life of a preternatural investigator. I was going to ask some hard-hitting questions too, like who are the P.I.s, what company do they work for, and are they needed in a society where nobody believes in the supernatural anymore. It was going to be a great piece and it might have made my name known to some of the big-hitters like the Boston Globe or even the New York Times.”
“But you didn’t publish it,” I said.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t, could I? While I was writing it and…observing…Sherry Westlake, that church thing happened and the feds were suddenly crawling over everything to do with her. They came to town asking questions, wanting to know who had hired her, who visited her office, that kind of thing. When they went to search her office, t
he place was empty, cleaned out like she’d never been there at all. The feds were fuming over that.”
I nodded. The Society would have cleaned the place to prevent Sherry’s notes and computer falling into the wrong hands. “So you were following Sherry just before she disappeared. Did the FBI take your photos and research?”
“No way, I never told them anything. I didn’t want them to think I was involved in any way. That might make me a suspect.”
I considered the implications of what he’d just told me. If he’d been spying on Sherry Westlake just before the church massacre, his photos and records of her movements might contain a clue about what happened in Clara. Sherry must have had some knowledge about the church to be investigating it in the first place. If I looked at Wesley’s material, maybe I could pick up on something second-hand.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I told him. “You’re going to box up everything you have on Sherry Westlake and you’re going to deliver it to my office. Then I’ll forget about you sticking your nose into my business at the cemetery and everyone will be happy.”
He swallowed and nodded. “Okay, I can do that. When do you want me to bring the stuff over?”
“Today. Leave it with my assistant because I don’t think I want to see your face again for a while. Understood?”
“Of course. Can I get back to the store now?”
I stepped back slightly to give him room to get past me. “You can but remember that I want that material today. Don’t make me come back here tomorrow.”
“You’ll get it today,” he promised, scurrying to the door.
“One other thing,” I said, stopping him in his tracks.
He looked at me expectantly.
“Timothy didn’t tell me you were out here,” I said. “I found out by magic.”
“Okay,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow at him as if to say, “Why are you still here?” He opened the door and disappeared inside.
After he was gone, I stood in the alley, feeling a hot tingling sensation rise from the base of my spine, up to my shoulders, and down along my arms. I’d only felt it once before, when I’d sent a lethal blast of magical energy at DuMont in the cemetery.
Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) Page 4
