Now and then dc-1

by John Locke

“Knocking ten dollars off the price helped,” Rachel added.

  Beth nodded. “Thanks, guys. You were both great today.” She looked at me. “Any word on that kid they took to the hospital?”

  Rachel surprised me by saying, “His name is D’Augie.”

  “Doggie?”

  “Yeah. But it’s not spelled that way. Anyway, I talked to the doctor. He’s going to be okay. He doesn’t need grafts or anything.”

  “You ever figure out what he was doing in your fire pit?” Beth asked.

  “Not a clue,” I said.

  Beth covered her mouth and tried to suppress a yawn, gave up, and let it run its course without apology. “Okay, I’m done,” she said. “Love you guys.”

  We said our goodnights and waited a few minutes for Beth to settle into her bedroom and close her bathroom door. When we heard the water running in Beth’s sink I handed Rachel the picnic basket and told her to turn it over.

  “You see anything unusual?” I said.

  She passed it back to me. “I’m really tired, Kevin.”

  She started for the staircase.

  “Rachel,” I said. “It’s important.”

  She paused and frowned. “Can we do this tomorrow?”

  “Ten seconds. I swear.”

  “This has been the longest day ever. I hate waiting on people. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”

  I put my finger to my lips, signaling her to quiet her voice. I whispered, “You wanted to know what’s going on with Beth, right? Why she’s acting so weird?”

  Her eyes lit up, and she walked over to me. “She’s got a guy? And what, they went on a picnic?” Rachel cocked her head, putting the pieces together. Her face broke into a wide grin. “Oh my God! Little Miss stick-up-her-ass is getting banged by some local yokel outdoors and passing him off as a sick friend! Who is it, someone we know?”

  I was amazed how her mind worked. I motioned her to follow me back to the kitchen. I gave her the picnic basket and pointed to what I’d originally thought were random scratch marks.

  “Look at these scratches closely,” I said, “and tell me what you see.”

  Rachel gave me a skeptical look, but she squinted to bring the marks into focus. “It’s just a bunch of-wait, it looks like Roman numerals. Fifty-five, right?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “Beth’s boyfriend is fifty-five?”

  I smiled. “Maybe she banged him fifty-five times and wanted to mark the milestone.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “I agree.”

  Rachel frowned. “You’re an asshole.”

  I arched my brows.

  She continued. “You’re standing here, letting me go on and on, but telling me nothing. You know I’m tired and you’re deliberately wasting my time.”

  I nodded. “Let me get right to it. I don’t think the L and V are Roman numerals.”

  “You don’t.”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “But for some reason I’m supposed to give a shit why.”

  “They’re initials.”

  She thought about that a moment, then said, “Beth’s boyfriend?”

  “If it is, it should be easy to find him,” I said. “Not too many people around here with a last name that starts with a V.”

  She eyed me carefully. “But you don’t think it’s her boyfriend.”

  “Nope.”

  “Because?”

  “These initials were scratched by a woman.”

  “Uh, don’t freak when I tell you, but Beth’s a woman.” She saw me grinning and added, “Wait. How do you know these marks were made by a woman?”

  “They were made by a fingernail.”

  “And what, men don’t have fingernails?”

  “Let me continue. This is Beth’s picnic basket. If she were labeling it, she’d have used an ink pen, or a knife or other sharp object.”

  “And she’d have used her own initials.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So maybe she’s got a fuck buddy with the initials LV. They go on a picnic, spread out a big blanket, eat some food, and suddenly he’s all over her. She’s all ‘Oh, LV! LV!’ They have wild monkey sex right in the middle of the day in some deserted area tucked behind a sand dune. It’s their special place. They’re lying on the blanket after doing it, thoroughly spent, and our sanctimonious little Beth is all raptured up ‘cause it’s been a long time, and she gathers up her strength and scratches his initials on the basket.”

  I looked at her as I often did, with complete amazement. “Why is it that all your scenarios involve sex?”

  “Why is it that yours don’t?”

  She had me there. I decided to move along. “Let’s frame it a different way.”

  She shrugged.

  “You still haven’t proven the marks were made by a woman.”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  “You’re just trying to be dramatic. Like some detective in a stupid movie.”

  “It’s my one opportunity.”

  “When you fall asleep tonight I might super glue your dick to your stomach.”

  I looked at her as I often did, with complete horror. I handed her the little sharp piece I’d put in my pocket earlier, just before the kid burned his back in my fire pit. She looked at it and wrinkled her nose, turned her hand and let it fall to the kitchen counter.

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  “But you’ll concede it’s a woman’s fingernail?”

  “Not Beth’s.”

  “Right, not Beth’s. But a woman’s. And suppose she was scratching her own initials into the bottom of the basket, and had to use her fingernail because she didn’t have access to an ink pen, a knife, or any other type of sharp object.”

  “Like what, a prisoner?”

  “Exactly like a prisoner, except that she has a northern accent.”

  “A northern accent.”

  “Yup.”

  “And this you can tell from her fingernail.”

  I smiled, enjoying the moment.

  Rachel abruptly crossed the floor to the cabinet that housed the odds and ends. She pushed a few objects around with her finger and eventually picked up a small tube and held it between her thumb and forefinger so I could see it clearly.

  Super Glue.

  She sighed. “I’m tired, Kevin. Just say it. Who do you think made these scratches in Beth’s picnic basket?”

  “Libby Vail.”

  Chapter 21

  A LONG, LOW rumble woke us up an hour before dawn. Remembering what happened the last time I heard that sound, I jumped out of bed and checked the window, wondering if another hail storm was headed our way. Thankfully, all was calm. Patches of heat lightning lit up the distant sky.

  “You okay?” I said.

  Rachel murmured, “I’m tired. Go back to sleep.”

  “How’d you know the kid’s name?”

  “What kid?” She seemed half asleep as she said it.

  I raised the volume in my voice to a conversational level. “The kid that got burned in the pig pit yesterday, the fire ant kid.”

  She lay still a moment, and then yawned. “I went to check on him in the hospital.”

  “When?”

  “The morning after that thing with the fire ants.”

  She settled back into her breathing rhythm and I thought about that morning and how I’d gone for a long run. I remembered returning to the Inn, and Beth mentioning Rachel had gone somewhere in the car. So that made sense. But Rachel had gone to see the kid before I agreed to help Beth at The Seaside. Which meant there was more to the story.

  “You saw him again, though.”

  She hesitated a moment, then sighed and propped herself up on one elbow.

  “Is this really so important we have to talk about it now?”

  “That depends on your answer to my last question.”

  She thought a minute. “Did I see him again? Yes. Why, you think I’m cheating on you?”

  “No
,” I said, but her comment made me pause to think about the possibility. Rachel was a sexual being, and while I didn’t doubt for a minute that she was capable of cheating, I didn’t think the kid was physically capable of participating. Then again, he seemed awfully resilient.

  Rachel said, “Then what, you think he’s holding that girl captive somewhere?”

  “No, I think that’s a whole different thing.”

  “Then what’s all this about D’Augie?”

  “When you saw him that second time, did you happen to mention I’d taken the job as caretaker and that I was planning to kill the squirrels in the attic?”

  She started to speak, but caught herself. She thought about it. “You think he somehow got up in the attic that day when all the snakes and squirrels got out?”

  “There was a major hole in the plywood, where the stairs are,” I said. “Him falling through it might explain the casts on his arm and leg.”

  “Why on earth would he want to climb up into that smelly old attic?”

  “To kill me.”

  She laughed. ” Kill you? He doesn’t even know you! Kill you for what?”

  I kissed her forehead. “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me wide-eyed. “Are you for real? D’Augie’s sweet. I think he’s just a weird, accident-prone kid.”

  “Remember the knife I found that first night?”

  “Yeah. You didn’t tell me about it at first, though, remember? I found it in the dresser.”

  “Well, he had another one yesterday, in his arm sling.”

  “So?”

  “This knife was just as sharp as the first one.”

  She shook her head. “Kevin, you’re insane.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Every time we see this kid he’s lying helpless on his back in the sand. One day he’s getting bit half to death by fire ants, the next he’s getting burned alive in a pig pit. Not to mention the fact he’s hopping around on a broken leg and has a broken arm. You really think he’s trying to kill you?”

  “I didn’t say he was any good at it.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  I took a seat on the couch and waited until Rachel had fallen into a deep asleep, which didn’t take long, thanks to the sleeping pill I’d given her a few hours earlier. I put on my running shoes and shorts and snuck out of the room and jogged the mile to the little church on Eighth Street. I paused, waiting for the feeling, but nothing was happening. I circled the building, peering through windows, searching for any sign of guards or prisoners, but found nothing.

  Maybe the feel-good power hadn’t come from the church after all. On the chance it was further north, I jogged another quarter mile up A1A, gave up, circled back around to Eighth Street, and stopped about two blocks west of the church.

  Still no feeling.

  Assuming the power could be detected at least a mile from its source, I decided to cover as wide an area as possible on my way back to the B amp;B. The course I chose took me near the hospital on Center Street.

  Which is where I finally felt it.

  I didn’t understand how the feeling could be at the church one day, at the hospital the next, but I knew for certain it was emanating from the hospital this time. Wishing I had a car so I could get there quicker, I tore down the street in a full sprint. As I rounded the last corner, I knew I was too late.

  The feeling was getting progressively weaker.

  I stopped.

  Within a minute it was gone.

  I jogged back to the B amp;B more confused than ever. When I got in the room I fired up my laptop and typed a name into the search engine while Rachel slept. In a half hour the alarm would ring to get us up for kitchen duty. I clicked on one of the search choices and began reading. That article led me to another, and I read a half dozen more before the alarm went off. When it did I turned the computer off and shut the lid.

  Rachel pushed the button on the alarm and felt the empty bed where I was supposed to be. She sat up and looked at the bathroom, then around the room until she saw me.

  “You still worried about D’Augie?”

  “I still think he’s trying to kill me, but that’s not why I stayed up. I was thinking about Libby Vail, and how she wanted to come here to learn about her heritage.”

  “You really think she’s alive and being held captive here?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Okay, whatever. So you were wondering what, exactly?”

  “There are probably a hundred cities and towns along the coast of North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “But Libby wanted to come to St. Alban’s to research her connection to Jack Hawley, the pirate.”

  “So?”

  “So why St. Alban’s? Why not Fernandina Beach, or St. Augustine, or any of the hundred other cities and towns?”

  Rachel thought about it a minute and then frowned. “Kevin, you are so full of shit. I bet you’ve been looking at porn this whole time.”

  I laughed. “Not porn, but I did find something extremely interesting.”

  “Uh huh,” she said, unconvinced.

  “I found a fascinating story about pirates in St. Alban’s, and how a girl named Abby Winter may have saved the town. The story was attributed to Jack Hawley.”

  “Attributed,” Rachel said.

  “You want to hear it?”

  “No. I want to pee.”

  She climbed out of bed and trudged to the bathroom. I turned my thoughts away from pirates and concentrated on the day ahead. The kid Rachel called D’Augie may have sucked at it, but he was definitely trying to kill me, and I intended to find out why. But since he was in the hospital in terrible shape, I decided to put him fourth on my to-do list. First on my list was making breakfast for the departing guests. Second was interviewing the most influential person in town I could find, because if Libby Vail was being held captive, the cover-up had to involve a number of people, including those at the highest level. Third was rescuing Libby Vail, assuming she was being held prisoner. Then I’d deal with this D’Augie kid who was trying to kill me.

  Chapter 22

  I WAS IN no rush to rescue Libby Vail. For one thing, I wasn’t positive where she was. The church was still my best guess, but if she was being held there I’d have to alter my theory that she was connected in some way to the power I’d experienced.

  I knew it was a huge stretch to assume she was locked in a church on a relatively busy corner in St. Alban’s. My reason for having made the connection was flimsy, at best: I’d seen a lady with a picnic basket walking up the church stairs a week before Beth left The Seaside carrying a similar basket. When Beth came back I found a woman’s fingernail and scratch marks on the bottom of the basket that might be L and V.

  So it was a hunch, more than anything.

  Against that hunch, I had to imagine church leaders going along with the kidnapping of a young coed from Pennsylvania and allowing her to be held captive in their tiny building. Since church services are held there, you’d have to wonder how Libby Vail could be rendered quiet enough that none of the church members had ever heard her crying for help. Either that or you’d have to believe the entire congregation was involved. I also had to add the FBI into the equation, since they had set up camp in St. Alban’s after the kidnapping, made a thorough investigation, and came away with nothing.

  If I was right about Libby Vail being held captive at the little church all this time, it would require a conspiracy that started at the very top of local government, including the mayor and chief of police.

  Which is why, at 1:00 pm sharp, I had Rachel drop me off at the court house. I walked up the three stone steps in front of the building, opened the main door, and walked about halfway down the hall until I found the mayor’s office. The door was open, so I entered and passed the empty desk normally occupied by Milly, the mayor’s secretary. This, I deduced by channeling my inner Sherlock
Holmes. To put it another way, Milly’s name plate was sitting atop the empty desk.

  I knocked on the door to the mayor’s office, and opened it.

  “Mr. Creed,” he said, rising to his feet.

  We shook hands. He gestured to one of the chairs in front of his desk and said, “Sit down, sit down.” When I did, he pointed at the length of rope draped over my right shoulder. “What’s that for, you planning to hang me?” He laughed.

  “You know me as a cook, but I’m also the maintenance man.”

  He looked at the rope again and frowned. I couldn’t tell if he was opposed to the rope itself, or the fact I wouldn’t tell him why I had it. He brightened his expression a bit and said, “That corn bread you made was the best thing I ever put in my mouth. I told my wife about it, and she said, ‘Ask him what his secret ingredient is.’”

  “Yogurt.”

  “Well hell, that can’t be true. I hate yogurt.”

  I smiled. According to comments I’d heard from our local breakfast customers, Carl “Curly” Bradford was considered Mayor for Life by the good people of St. Alban’s. He was tall and lanky, mid forties, with sharp facial features and rust-colored hair flecked with gray. He had a stern, professorial air about him. I pointed to the bicycle hooked vertically on the far wall of his office. “You ride to work on that?”

  “It’s my exercise routine,” he said. “I ride every day, rain or shine. Like you, except that you’re a runner.”

  “Small town,” I said.

  “That, plus I’ve seen you running a time or two, out on A1A.”

  We looked at each other a minute without speaking. He seemed uncomfortable with the silence, and showed it by making small talk. “You’re making quite a name for yourself as a cook.”

  “I won’t lie, I enjoy it.”

  “You don’t look like a cook, though.”

  “No?”

  “Is it stressful looking after that old place?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He smiled. “Couple of folks saw your car parked on A1A a few times, thought they might have seen you lying on the sand dunes.”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “Closer to the beach it is. But not where you go, as far as I know.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s dangerous, is what it is,” he said.