Treacherous Toys

by Joyce

  But the lady I followed was on her own path. She didn’t seem to mind the holly bushes and kept going. I had to bite my tongue a few times to keep from swearing when the prickly leaves got me. I didn’t remember the bushes being so tall last time. They got me in the neck, face, and shoulders as well as the arms and hands. I hoped they weren’t poisonous. Chase hadn’t said anything about that.

  I continued to follow along the broad base of the old airport control tower turned castle. I couldn’t figure out where she was going. I could see the lights from the parking lot beyond the wall and the trees that shielded the castle.

  Suddenly I knew where she was going. Though the castle was mostly self-sustaining—the castle staff did all the cooking and laundry—the operation still required deliveries. The trucks pulled in to drop off food and other supplies at the opposite end of the castle entrance. The delivery area was separated from the Village and the cobblestone attractions by a high wall so that visitors never had to lose their illusion about the castle.

  I knew there were at least two doors at this end. One was the big loading-dock door. The other was a metal door. Both of them were kept locked, day and night, for fear someone would wander in from the Village and get hurt.

  The keys were closely guarded—which was why I hadn’t thought about her coming this way. Only a few castle residents had copies of them. One of them was Rita. Gus had one. And so did Esmeralda.

  I didn’t want to think that any of those three people I knew so well were involved in killing Chris, but it was beginning to seem that way.

  The black figure before me didn’t have to pause and open anything—the smaller metal door that delivery men used to come in and have their paperwork signed was open. She closed it behind her. I hoped she didn’t lock it. I’d come too far and gone through too much pain from the holly bushes to lose her.

  I waited, counting to ten this time. I didn’t have the patience left to count to one hundred. If she had locked the door, I was dead in the water. It might be possible to search the castle and find the black gown, veil, and gloves, but that wasn’t proof of anything. There might be ten costumes like it in the Village, even though it wasn’t Renaissance garb. I had to catch the woman in the dress to confront her.

  I put my hand on the doorknob and hoped it was regularly maintained so that it didn’t squeak. I closed my eyes, said a little prayer, and slowly turned it.

  To my surprise, the door swung open easily. Thinking back on it, that should have given me a clue right there.

  Quickly, before anyone could spot me sneaking in, I closed the door behind me. With my back against it, I faced the castle supply area.

  Every grocery or toiletry that was used in the castle started out here. There were giant-sized boxes of detergent, bales of toilet paper, freezers of frozen meat, and huge burlap bags of fresh vegetables.

  It was like a storehouse of necessities that made castle life good for royalty and servants alike. This area was closely monitored to protect against thievery. Even so, there were always missing items that couldn’t be accounted for. When I’d worked at the castle, scullery maids and kitchen wenches were frequently accused of stealing everything from food to toiletries.

  The bad thing was—the Lady in Black could be anywhere.

  There was only the barest lighting in this section. I knew there were brighter lights on the ceiling, but I didn’t know where to find the switch. With all the cans and boxes stacked around me, I was an easy target—she could be behind any of them. Or maybe she’d already left the area and gone back to her own room. I was completely convinced now that she lived in the castle.

  Fat lot of good it did me. With no proof of having seen her, what could I say to Detective Almond? I knew Chase believed that I’d seen her earlier in the Village, but he couldn’t do anything to help either.

  I was about to go back outside when I noticed that there were two sets of dewy footprints on the dry concrete floor. Mine were clearly the big ones. They walked all over the smaller prints—but only until I’d reached the huge boxes of macaroni and cheese. Clearly someone in the castle was a fan of that particular side dish.

  I stepped back to see where the small footprints led and then followed them, walking behind them this time, carefully preserving them as a trail. They led around the dry goods and the refrigerators. They circled the large cans of chicken broth and finally stopped at a door.

  It looked like a closet door or maybe the entrance to another pantry. I carefully opened it (pushing my luck, I know) and found a stairway. It was dusty and full of cobwebs, as though it hadn’t been used in many years. But the damp footprints led up the stairs, leaving a trail in the thick dust.

  I thought a minute about following the Lady in Black up the stairs. I had no idea where she was going and no way to let anyone know where I was. I considered writing a note in the inch-thick dust, just in case, but that seemed a little extreme. So far she’d stayed one step ahead of me. I probably wouldn’t catch her now. She probably knew some secret passage back to the main living quarters.

  I was probably safe. I knew she didn’t have a gun—we’d found that—although she could have a knife. Obviously I wasn’t going to eat or drink anything she might offer me. If it came down to it, I could always tackle her. I was bigger, probably stronger, and younger, if it was Alice. I could take her.

  With that cleared up, I crept up the stairs. They were made of wood, so they creaked and groaned with every step. If she was at the top of the stairs, she’d have to know I was coming. But there was no other way up.

  As I reached the top floor, I kept my head down, still hoping I might be able to surprise her. It was almost completely dark, the air thick with dust and that terrible musty smell a place gets when it’s been closed off for a long time.

  I realized that what little illumination there was came from outside, from a window that faced the Village and the large stadium lights. It would’ve been brighter, but the glass was filthy from years of neglect.

  I looked around, suddenly realizing where I was—the only part left of the old Air Force base control tower. I remembered hearing that someone had decided to leave this room intact because it had a bird’s-eye view of everything below. The Village was mostly set on the old runways. This spot would’ve been where the controllers watched for planes and guided them in.

  Clearly, the room had been forgotten. No one had been here in a very long time. Some kind of control board with dials ran under the window. Beside it, there was only empty space where machinery had once been installed. An old microphone sat abandoned on a countertop, covered in cobwebs, and charts illustrating different landing patterns hung on the walls.

  Other than the stairway I’d just come up, I couldn’t see any way out of there—unless the room had access to a secret passageway. I’d heard those existed but had never seen one. This room was in one of the castle’s turrets, though. I didn’t think it connected to anything else.

  In short, I’d walked into a trap.

  Twenty-seven

  I heard her footstep behind me. Where had she been hiding? I stood still, looking out over the sleeping Village.

  My strategy was to pretend I didn’t see her as I picked up a loose tool of some sort that was on the old console. She was blocking a move to the stairs for escape. I had to be ready to possibly fight my way out of there.

  “Lady Jessie Morton.” Her voice was deep with a gravelly edge to it, like she had a cold. It sounded affected to me, as though she was purposely disguising it so I couldn’t recognize her. That told me I knew her.

  I hoped that fact meant she didn’t plan to kill me and wanted to protect her identity because she knew we’d meet again. But she had killed before, maybe twice. Zigzags of fear went up and down my spine like I was watching a scary movie. A scary movie with me in it!

  I started to turn around. Given the dim light, I still wouldn’t be able to see her face unless she’d removed her veil. But I’d read that making an attacker more aware of
you as a person was a good thing. It would probably work for killers, too.

  I put up my hands in the classic sign of surrender but I could feel the old tool against my back. It was close at hand if I needed it. “Okay. You got me. I didn’t even know this place was up here. How did you find it?”

  “Stay where you are,” she warned me.

  I didn’t know a lot about guns, but I heard a click that sounded like the release of the safety. Apparently I was wrong about her not having another gun. I wished I was asleep on the Queen’s Revenge, listening to the pirates snore. Why do I always have to do these things?

  “I don’t know who you are,” I said (trying to make her feel safe and anonymous) in what I thought sounded like a calm voice. “But you won’t get away with killing me any more than you’ll get away with killing Chris.” Oops! Where had that come from?

  “You’re so smart, aren’t you? And you have it all. You think you’re queen of the Village. You have the handsome bailiff, and everyone loves you. That could all change tomorrow. Where would you be then?”

  It was as if the woman had read my mind. I knew she didn’t mean what she said in the way I’d been thinking about me and Chase and my life in the Village, but her thoughts about the future were similar to mine.

  “You mean like when you were queen, Alice?” Again—where was my brain?

  She laughed, a mean and ugly sound. “That’s right. I heard you were researching our history. I suppose you think you have all the answers now, don’t you? But you don’t understand. You’ll never understand.”

  At that point, time seemed to stop or at least slow down. I heard the gun fire and even saw a flash out of the corner of my eye as I turned my head.

  I grabbed the tool behind me but it was too late. She’d anticipated my move or had always planned to shoot me. She laughed and shot at me again. The empty room echoed with the blast. I thought someone had to have heard it and would come running. It was the middle of the night. The castle walls weren’t that thick.

  I knew I was hit. A bullet burned my arm close to the shoulder. It hurt a lot more than I would have expected based on what I’d seen on TV. The impact from it—she was standing so close—pushed me back against the old window.

  At one time, the control tower window might have been shatter resistant. But time and weather had weakened it.

  In a flash, it was like time had caught up with me. I was outside the window on the castle roof. The only thing keeping me from falling was my hand grabbing an iron icon perched there. I thought it was a gargoyle’s head, though I couldn’t be sure. I’d never noticed one up here before, and I couldn’t see it clearly now. It was just a big blur.

  I didn’t know if the Lady in Black was gone or not. I didn’t really have time to think about it. I’d been lucky to catch myself on the gargoyle (or whatever it was), but I knew I couldn’t hold on for more than a few seconds. Already my fingers were slipping.

  The pitch of the castle roof at this point was steep but slanted down to the next floor. Rather than falling from that height to the ground, I took my chances and skidded down the roof, hitting the inside connector of another turret, skinning my arms and legs. This turret was smaller, but I was able to hold on with both arms.

  I tried to pull myself up onto the part of the turret that attached to the castle roof. I thought if I could get there I’d be less likely to lose my grip and fall. It was a steep drop here, straight to the ground. My feet couldn’t find any traction. I realized that my shoes had dropped off and my feet were pushing against the cold, wet roof, trying to find a more secure spot.

  I pushed and pulled, grunted and strained, but finally managed to climb behind the fake turret and grab hold for dear life. I hugged it close and closed my eyes, trying not to look down.

  Of course that never works. I looked down into the Village. I wasn’t above the lake as I’d hoped. I’d considered a drop into the water and a frosty swim to the shore or the pirate ship.

  Instead, I was hanging above the cobblestones on the Village side of the wall that kept visitors from reaching the loading dock—the same wall I’d been so happy to creep inside earlier. That seemed like a long time ago.

  There was nothing up here. The turret was empty. The living quarters were below me. This was all façade to make the castle look big and impressive.

  My arm was in agony—of course, I’d been shot! My shoulder burned like a fiery pit, the pain radiating out into my arm. With that realization of pain came others. I suspected a piece of glass had raked my side as I’d fallen through the window. Something was wrong with one of my ankles, too. I was a mess and trapped on a fake turret with nowhere to go but down.

  I made myself take a few deep breaths. Panic wasn’t going to help. There had to be a way down from here that didn’t involve death or dismemberment. I surveyed the seemingly sheer concrete wall beneath me and tried to locate a second place that I could crawl or jump to.

  At that moment, the maintenance crew turned off the stadium lights. They must have finished cleaning the fountains. Usually it was an all-night job. Not tonight. Lucky me.

  Then I was in blackness but for the small lights in the Village. My search for a safe way down was over.

  I leaned my head back against the rough concrete wall and closed my eyes. I’m not sure how long I sat that way. I hoped some brilliant strategy would come to me. But the wind made me shiver, and snow began shooting out of the castle again, white flakes flying back at me, making my position harder to hold on to.

  I looked up, realizing the loud whirring noise was coming from above. I was about ten feet down from the snowmaking machine that had been installed on the castle roof. It seemed close—maybe I could reach it and somehow manage to get inside from its location. There had to be some way to service it, put it up and take it down, repair it if it was broken. Maybe I’d be able to use that to my advantage.

  I saw a large hose that had to be piping water to the unit to my left. It was bracketed securely to the roof. I might be able to climb it to the snowmaker. From there, I would be home free. I could turn off the unit, then wait until someone came to repair it.

  But the hose might as well have been the moon for as far away as it seemed. My poor body was freezing, covered in icy pellets, and in too much pain to even consider moving. I wasn’t sure I could climb up the hose or even move from behind the turret.

  Could I just wait until morning when someone would surely notice me up here?

  The answer slogged into my brain—if I stayed behind the turret, no one would see me. Even if I yelled for help, I wasn’t sure anyone would hear me. Besides all that, I wasn’t certain I could hold on the rest of the night. If I fell asleep up here, I’d be on the cobblestones. I wasn’t ready for that yet.

  I had to convince my body that this was my only plan. I had to force myself up the big hose and pray that there was somewhere to go when I got to the top.

  The snow sprayed out on the Village in fifteen-minute blasts. I wasn’t sure I could hold on through the snow and the extra wind while I was climbing. I went through two snow cycles before I finally felt geared up enough to take on the climb.

  As soon as a fifteen-minute cycle had finished, I pushed myself up to stand on the narrow ridge behind the turret and grabbed the hose before I could talk myself out of it. I put one foot on one of the brackets holding the hose in place, then swung my other foot and arm to the far side of the hose.

  I knew there was no going back.

  That left me clinging to the cold, damp hose. I reached my right hand, then my left, up to the bracket above me and pulled myself up, advancing about eighteen inches.

  I should’ve been afraid of falling. But I was way past that fear. I was more afraid of being trapped up there. Fortunately, I was so cold, I was numb. Nothing hurt anymore.

  I kept pulling and pushing until I was face-to-face with the huge snowmaker. It was like a big, round fan that faced the Village, ready to spit out more snow at any moment. I wasn’t sur
e how long it had taken me to get there, but I knew the snowmaker could blow me down the roof if it started up again before I was on top of it.

  Two more pushes. I couldn’t feel my bare feet anymore on the frosty metal brackets. I wasn’t sure the machine would hold my weight once I started climbing across it, but I was committed. There was nowhere else to go.

  I stretched one arm up as far as I could and groaned. Maybe I wasn’t as pain free as I’d thought. I grabbed the machine with one hand, then the other, ready to wrestle it, and shoved upward with both legs.

  I could hear the blower getting ready to start again as I reached a precarious perch atop it. The metal was cold, icy, as it prepared to shoot snow into the night.

  There was nothing here. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d hoped for. There was only the roof and bigger brackets holding the snowmaking machine in place. I’d climbed all that way for nothing. If there was someplace up here from which to work on the machine, I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find any switch to turn the snowmaker on or off either. Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe I’d reached the end of my endurance.

  It suddenly came to me that maybe there was something else I could do.

  The blower was maneuverable. The fan part moved from side to side. That’s why the snow kept coming down in different directions. If I could force all the snow into one place, maybe someone would notice.

  But what would be a likely target? Who would still be up and outside to notice they were in a blizzard?

  The pirates.

  The pirates kept a twenty-four-hour watch on the Queen’s Revenge. Someone was always on deck, not just because of their own code of conduct but also for insurance purposes, to keep nonpirates from getting hurt.

  If the snow started zeroing in on the ship, the watch would notice. He’d tell Rafe, who’d call maintenance, and maybe someone would check on the snowmaker and get me off of the roof.

  It was a good plan. The fan started whirring, and I angled it toward the pirate ship. But it was harder to hold the fan in place than I’d thought. I had to wrap my arms and legs around it to keep it where I wanted it to be. It got steadily colder as it worked. The wind still blew the ice crystals back at me. I shut my eyes against the stinging bite of them against my face