Midsummer Night's Mischief

by Jennifer D. Hesse

  Luckily, Mrs. St. John had seen a car door slam on a dark vehicle in front of my place. The car had sped off, tires squealing, and had been gone before she could notice any kind of detail.

  Still, I’d been relieved that Mrs. St. John had seen the vandal leave. At least then I had felt relatively safe from any further disturbances. I had tried to tell my neighbors that it really wasn’t necessary to call the police, as there was nothing they could do. But they wouldn’t listen to me. Mrs. St. John kept telling me I was in shock and trying to make me stay seated on the couch. Then she told the others about the prowler she had scared off in the morning, so I had to relent.

  Farrah arrived right after the police did. In the immediate aftermath, when everyone was talking at once and my heart was still racing, I had called her up for moral support. She had gotten home from Katie’s house and instantly said she would come right over. She was both surprised and not surprised to find that Jake had come to talk to me. When I told her about it, a look passed over her face that was an odd mixture of affection and perturbation. I knew she would have a long talk with him later. For now, she was more interested in the rock the police were bagging up, and the letters that were scratched into it.

  Now I turned off the shower, toweled off, and dressed in comfy shorts and a T-shirt. Then I went out to the living room to take another look at my damaged window. In the light of day, the whole incident didn’t seem quite as scary as it had the night before. Still, I shuddered as I recalled finding the rock halfway across the room.

  It was oblong, about three and a half inches long and two inches wide, with sharp edges. Whoever had thrown it had lobbed it hard, ensuring that it would break through the window. I shuddered to imagine what would have happened if it had hit me. I wondered if the perpetrator had thought about that or if they had even cared. One thing was for sure: They had a message for me, and they were going to make sure I got that message.

  Before the police arrived, I had turned the rock over in my hands and had read the crudely scratched letters. MYOB. There was only one thing it could stand for.

  Mind your own business.

  Farrah had pulled me aside after the police left. “Do you realize what this means? Somebody is getting nervous. This means we’re on the right track. The Shakespeare thief has to be somebody you’ve questioned. Or at least somebody who knows you’ve been asking questions. This is great!”

  “I don’t know if ‘great’ is quite the word I would use,” I’d said, glancing at the jagged hole in my window. “I’ve just been told to back off. If the thief feels the need to threaten me . . .” I had trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought. Just what was the threat? What would this person do if I didn’t back off?

  “Do you want me to stay here tonight?” asked Farrah. “Better yet, why don’t you come home with me?”

  “No, that’s okay. My neighbors are on alert now, and, anyway, I’m sure the creep won’t come back tonight.” I squeezed Farrah’s arm and gave her a tired smile. “Besides, you need to go home and call Jake. Poor guy. Go easy on him, okay?”

  Farrah rolled her eyes and sighed. “Right.” Then she went to shuffle my neighbors back to their homes, while I got a broom to sweep up broken glass and soil from an overturned plant and found a board to cover the hole for the night.

  After Farrah left, I burned a sprig of dried sage in a ceramic bowl on my coffee table. Then I walked around, sprinkling consecrated salt water on all my windows and doors, all the while murmuring a protection spell. This made me feel safer and allowed me to feel comfortable going to bed. Finally.

  Now, in the early afternoon hours, which still felt like morning, I went into the kitchen to make myself some warm lemon water with a sprinkle of cayenne. It was just the thing I craved to cleanse my system. After that, I planned to make myself a great big brunch for one, but first I needed to call somebody about fixing the window.

  While on the phone with a repair service, I walked over to remove the board and describe the damage. It was then that I noticed the envelope on the floor, next to the front door. Someone must have slid it underneath while I slept. The thought was alarming. Was it another warning?

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I picked up the envelope and opened it warily. Then I breathed a sigh of relief. It was from my neighbor Larabeth. There was a single sheet of paper folded over a postcard:

  Keli,

  In all the excitement last night, I forgot to tell you, this was mistakenly delivered to our mailbox. I didn’t know it was your birthday yesterday! Happy belated b-day!

  Larabeth

  I looked at the postcard and smiled, even as unexpected tears sprang to my eyes.

  She was alive. She had remembered my birthday. And her timing was perfect.

  Standing in my living room, I cradled the postcard in my palms like a priceless treasure as I read and reread the short lines. The front simply said Birthday Greetings over a picture of a candle-studded birthday cake. The back, however, was amazing. Like a voice from the beyond, Aunt Josephine’s words spoke straight to my heart:

  To my beautiful niece and kindred spirit, as lovely and strong on the inside as on the out. Carpe diem et sequere somnia tua.

  Aunt Josephine. Or Josie, as my mom sometimes called her. She would be sixty now. I always imagined her with waist-length hair, wearing a Bohemian skirt and Birkenstocks, still a hippie after all these years. Or maybe she was a gray-haired recluse, proud, eccentric, and set in her ways. But she would be kind and bighearted. Definitely bighearted.

  * * *

  It was about 5:30 in the evening when I picked up Farrah to set out for the Loose. Again. We were going to put our heads together, compare notes, analyze the mystery from all angles. I would grill Jimi some more if I could manage it. Plus there was my ever-present wish that I would bump into Wes again.

  “Why don’t you call the guy?” asked Farrah as we drove out of her parking lot.

  “I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to do it. I feel kind of awkward about the whole thing.” I sighed as I slowed to a stop at a red light. “I mean, I know I should. And maybe I will after . . .”

  “After what?”

  “Um.” I lost my train of thought. Leaning forward, I peered through the windshield at a man leaving a check-cashing business in the next block. “Farrah, look at the guy across the street, the one getting in the black SUV.”

  “Whoa,” said Farrah. “Bouncer, boxer, or hit man. What do you think?”

  “He’s the guy from the casino I told you about. Scarface.”

  “Oh! Right. No wonder Rob was running scared. Not to judge a book by its cover, but there’s a thug if I ever saw one.”

  The SUV pulled away from the curb as the light changed and I entered the intersection.

  “Follow him!” said Farrah.

  “What? Really?”

  “Yeah! Why not? We’re supposed to be detectives, right? Maybe he’ll lead us to a clue.”

  I could think of a few reasons why not. But I also believed things happened for a reason. This opportunity had to be a gift from the Goddess. Nodding at Farrah, I lowered my sunglasses, slid down in my seat, and pressed on the accelerator just in time to avoid being stopped at the next light.

  We drove through town, trying to stay back far enough to avoid suspicion while still keeping the black vehicle in sight. Farrah bounced in the seat next to me, calling out instructions and location updates.

  “Oh, change lanes. He’s turning!” Then, “Speed up. He’s losing us!” Then, a minute later, “Fall back. We’re too close!”

  I white-knuckled it, doing my best to keep up the chase while hoping to Goddess we wouldn’t actually catch the dude. Originally, I had thought he might be going to the riverboat, but then he turned in the opposite direction. Pretty soon it became apparent that we were heading out of town, as we found ourselves on the same country road I had driven with Wes a few days earlier. Letting up on the gas, I allowed a greater distance between us and Scarface. After a f
ew miles, he turned onto another hilly, winding road, and I followed, now more reluctantly.

  “What do you think? How far should we go?” I said.

  “Let’s keep following for a few more minutes. This is so exciting!”

  I glanced at Farrah and laughed. “You know, you’re acting more and more like your namesake every day. Next thing you know, you’ll be joining the police academy.”

  “Oh, please,” said Farrah, waving off my comment. “As if... Oh, wait. He’s slowing down!”

  I hit the brakes, holding back while the SUV made a right turn off the country road. Alongside us, I could see a whitewashed rail fence lining the road and a bucolic pasture on the other side. As we came to the point where the SUV had left the road, we looked up at the arched Western-style gateway marking the entrance to a private tree-lined lane. Elegant lettering on the arch named the place Dogwood Ranch.

  “I don’t think we should follow him in,” I said.

  “No. It would be too obvious. Just keep going and then find a place to pull over.”

  Less than a mile farther down the road, we spotted a tractor path in a wheat field. I pulled over and turned off the car. “Now what?”

  “Let’s walk back and follow that lane. There were a lot of trees. We should be able to stay more or less hidden.”

  “It’s the less part I’m worried about,” I murmured as I got out of the car to join Farrah on the edge of the road.

  We trekked along, trying not to scratch up our bare legs too badly on the weeds and brambles. When we arrived at the private lane, we crossed under the black steel archway and slunk behind the tall oaks lining the driveway. At least, I felt like we were slinking. As we picked our way cautiously farther onto this private property, I kept imagining what I would say if we were caught.

  “Check out the spread,” Farrah whispered beside me.

  I peeked through the trees to see an expansive, beautifully landscaped front yard with manicured shrubbery and a dozen deep-green dogwood trees. In the center of it all stood a large brick colonial, complete with imposing white pillars. An ornate hanging sign on a tall oak post declared the owner of the estate: Harrison.

  As in Edgar Harrison: investor, landowner, prominent citizen of Edindale. And important client to Olsen, Sykes, and Rafferty.

  Farrah and I looked at one another; then Farrah snapped her fingers. “Of course! Edgar Harrison owns the casino. There’s the connection.”

  “He does? I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah, it was in the news years ago, before you moved here. There was some opposition to the riverboat, as there always is with gambling. But Harrison pulled strings or greased palms or whatever, and the city approved his plans.”

  “So Scarface must work for him, then.” I looked back at the house as the front door opened. “Oh, speak of the devil. Back up. Here he comes!”

  From behind the trees, we watched as the thuggish figure jogged down the front steps and circled toward the rear of the house. Creeping forward, we saw a mammoth four-car garage at the end of the driveway and farther back a stable attached to a horse corral and a grazing area. Scarface headed toward the stable.

  I was about to suggest to Farrah that we retreat while we had a chance when I heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel lane behind us. Just then the front door of the house opened again, and a middle-aged woman came outside to greet the approaching car. Without a second to lose, Farrah and I darted around the corner of the garage.

  “Ooh. Close call,” said Farrah, exhaling.

  “No kidding.”

  Cautiously, I peered around the edge of the garage and observed a young family of four pour out of both sides of the car, which had parked behind the black SUV. The youngest child yelled, “Grandma!” and ran into the open arms of the woman from the house. Then two more cars rumbled up the driveway.

  “Oh, man,” I breathed. “This doesn’t look good.”

  From out of the second car emerged a young couple carrying a bocce ball set, which they proceeded to set up in the front yard. The third car held another family, this one bearing bags of food. A kid from that car ran back toward the stables, shouting, “Can I see the horses?”

  “This is really not good,” I repeated, nervously tapping my knuckles on my mouth.

  As we crouched behind the garage, feeling like trapped animals, the smell of lighter fluid and wood smoke drifted from the direction of the backyard. “Guess they’re having a barbecue,” said Farrah. “Maybe we could act like we were invited?”

  I shook my head. “The party’s not big enough to pull that off. I think they’d notice we’re not members of their family.”

  “What about Scarface? We could say we work for the casino, too.”

  “I don’t think so, Farrah. They would know we’re lying. We have to find a way to get out of here.”

  I looked around for a possible escape, cringing as I heard another vehicle come up the lane. Clearly, we couldn’t go back the way we came. For one thing, there were too many gaps between the oak trees, and behind the line of trees was an open field with nowhere to hide. An even bigger challenge would be coming out from behind the garage without being seen.

  However, looking in the other direction, behind the garage, I noticed that the open field abutted a thicket of woods. And the woods appeared to fan out into a forest for who knew how many miles. To get to the woods, we would have to climb over a barbed-wire fence and escape the notice of anyone who happened to be behind the stable. Glancing that way, I could see a brown horse grazing along the edge of the corral. Children’s laughter filled the air, followed by a shrill whistle. The horse looked up and trotted toward the sound.

  “We’ve got to get to the woods,” I whispered, my heart thumping a rapid cadence in my chest. “Fast.”

  Farrah nodded. “You know that will take us away from your car, right?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll find a way back. We’ll exit the woods someplace else, far away from here.”

  We backed away from the garage, and the farther we strayed from its shelter, the more anxious I became. When we reached the barbed-wire fence, a rusty, mean-looking obstacle, we hesitated, trying to figure out how we would get over the thing without suffering great bodily harm. Finally, after some tricky stepping, holding, and squeezing, we were halfway over the fence. And then my shorts caught on a barb.

  “Ouch!” Farrah made it to the other side, but not without a long scratch on the side of her leg. “Ooh, that stings!” Ignoring the trickle of blood on her leg, Farrah tried to help me free my shorts from the sharp barb. Suddenly, we both jumped at the sound of a deep, resonant bark of a big, big dog.

  CHAPTER 20

  I jerked my head toward the corral and saw the brown horse again, this time with a rider on its back. The horseman, dressed in designer denim and plaid, was a silver-haired man whom I’d met once or twice before, and whose picture often graced the pages of the Edindale Gazette. It was the gentleman of the gentleman’s ranch, the master of his domain, the wheeler-dealer powerhouse that was Edgar Harrison. And he stared right at me. As I stood there, caught on the barbed-wire fence in an awkward straddle, part of me prayed he wouldn’t recognize me as one of the lawyers at Olsen, Sykes, and Rafferty. The other part realized I had even bigger problems right now.

  Edgar yelled something I couldn’t understand, and then another man walked around the stable, the barking dog at his heels. It was Scarface, looking none too happy to find us guilty-looking interlopers. Striding over quickly, he opened the gate of the corral and let out the zealous watchdog—which turned out to be a Doberman pinscher. Perfect.

  I didn’t know if I was more scared of Scarface or the Doberman, but I ripped my shorts from the fence and took off headlong for the woods in a heartbeat, Farrah right beside me. We were both experienced runners, but I didn’t think we had ever pounded the ground like this before. Flying over the earth, our legs and arms pumping, we reached the woods in seconds and kept going. Hurdling over fal
len limbs and twisty roots, slapped by insects and branches, but never looking back, we drove ourselves deeper and deeper into the forest.

  At first, we followed a well-worn bridle path, then a dry gully, until finally we found ourselves with no trail to follow at all. When we reached a small clearing with no obvious path out, we stopped running and instead walked in circles as we gathered our bearings. The only sound to be heard was our own panting and wheezing.

  After a minute, we looked at one another, taking in the scratches, the flushed skin, the leaves in our hair—and burst out laughing. Farrah doubled over, then winced at a pain but kept laughing. I drew my fingers through my shredded shorts, giggling at the absurdity of it all, and hobbled over to sit on a fallen tree trunk.

  “Oh, God,” Farrah gasped through her laughter. “Were they even chasing us?”

  I shook my head and tried to pull myself together. “I don’t know. Maybe at first?”

  “Where are we?” asked Farrah, looking around again as her giggles subsided. “Got a GPS app on your phone?”

  I pulled the phone out of my mini–sling purse and frowned. “No signal out here.”

  “Figures.” Farrah reached out to touch the mossy back of a nearby tree. “What’s that saying? Moss grows toward what direction?”

  “I think the sun is more reliable,” I said, looking up at the sky. “So . . . setting sun in the west. We parked west of the ranch. So let’s walk that way for a while and then cut south.” I pointed with my straightened arm toward the lowering sun and realized we had maybe an hour of daylight left at most.

  “We better get a move on,” Farrah said, evidently having the same thought.

  I pushed myself to my feet, and together we picked our way through the brambles and underbrush in a more or less westerly direction. As my body cooled down, the air on my damp skin started to make me feel chilly, and I shivered in spite of myself.

  “I once thought trail running sounded kind of fun,” Farrah remarked, stepping over a large, snaky root. “Not anymore.”