by Joyce Lavene
“You’re not trying to read me, are you, dear?” Ann asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Trust me—it would be a waste of time. I’ve spent most of my life keeping myself safe from people like you.”
“No. I’m sorry. It just comes and goes.” I sipped my Earl Grey, trying to be a little less eager to rattle off my life story.
“Kevin said there’s a child missing.”
It was one of those “aha” moments. So that’s why you’re here. “Yes.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure. A few days, I think.” I put my cup down. “Why?”
“I thought I might help. That was my expertise before.” She got to her feet in one lithe movement, like a dancer. “The inn practically runs itself. Kevin doesn’t need me to do anything. Not that I’ve ever been domestic. I thought this might be something I could do.”
“I know what you did before.”
She frowned. “I suppose you do. Kevin probably told you everything. He’s got a dear heart, but he likes to talk. Lovers are like that, aren’t they?”
In his defense, I wanted to tell her that I’d had to pry information out of him. It hadn’t been easy. But I smiled and sipped my tea.
“Can you help me?” she asked. “With the police, I mean. They know you.”
I shrugged. “Probably not. They wouldn’t let me help.”
“I see.”
There was a wealth of meaning in those words, hidden nuances in her tone. The kitten kept watch in the box, staring intently at me.
“Do you have any ideas about where the child could be? I know you saw something, Dae.”
The question made me feel like she’d go out looking for Betsy regardless of what the chief said. I realized that I could be doing that too. When did I get to be such a stickler for the rules?
Maybe Ann could help, even if she was doing so out of longing for her past glories rather than out of real concern for Betsy. Kevin said she was the best. I couldn’t let my feelings about her, colored by my relationship with Kevin, keep someone from finding Betsy.
I thought about the dripping water and unrelenting darkness. Not really much to go on. I told Ann the little I knew. “They don’t know who killed her father yet, but that might be a good place to start.”
“What about the mother? Could she be involved?”
“I don’t know. Chief Michaels is finding out what he can right now. He’s not very psychic friendly. He’ll put up with it to get someplace he can’t find on his own, but he doesn’t like it.”
“Many of them never do. I was blessed to have Kevin as a partner all those years with the FBI. Even though he wasn’t exposed to it earlier in life, he just seemed to understand.”
The long moments ticked by. Ann finally put her teacup down on the table. “It was very nice meeting you, Dae. I’m sorry about what happened between you and Kevin. I didn’t guess he’d be somewhere like this—that he’d given up the FBI. But we can make it better again. You’ll see.”
She didn’t say good-bye. Just kind of wandered out of the shop.
It was drifting into late afternoon. There was a town council meeting that night. My suit was a little messed up from my breaking-and-entering project. I decided to call it a day and head home for a shower and change of clothes. That meant introducing Gramps to our guest.
I turned off the lights and got everything situated before I picked up the kitten’s box. A look outside showed some dark storm clouds riding the horizon of the Currituck Sound. I knew I’d better move if I was going to keep the kitten dry.
As I turned back to pull the door closed, I saw Chuck Sparks sitting on the burgundy brocade sofa. “Help her,” he said. “Help her.”
Chapter 10
I stepped back into the shop, closed the door and put down the box. Desperation made me brazen. “It would be a lot more help if you’d stop saying that and tell me where she is. You’re dead. You probably know. Tell me and I’ll go get her.”
He looked at me but didn’t respond.
“You know, Shayla is probably right next door. Maybe she could talk to you. Don’t move!”
I interrupted Shayla’s weekly tarot-card reading with Mr. Davenport, who was looking for his third wife. Shayla had told me that he thought he needed her help to find the perfect mate, since the first two wives had left him.
I dragged her back to Missing Pieces, but it didn’t matter—Chuck was gone.
“I could’ve told you if you’d given me a chance,” she said. “He’s contacting you, not me. Why didn’t you talk to him when you had the chance?”
“I tried. He keeps saying the same thing over and over. There’s no conversation.”
“Maybe that’s all he can say,” she argued. “Did you ever think of that? Not every spirit has an easy time talking to the living. I’m surprised he can say anything to you since you’re not related. Now excuse me while I go back and try to help this poor man find a lady who will make him happy for a while.”
I was sorry I’d bothered her. This time when I was ready to leave the shop, I didn’t look back as I closed the door.
The kitten settled back in the box as we went down the boardwalk. The new kayak shop at the end of the walkway was cutting new stairs that would lead to the sandbar right off the boardwalk. This would allow people to push off from there and into the sound after they’d bought or rented their kayak. It was an ingenious idea.
For as long as I could remember, the town had held parties on the sandbar when the tide was very low. All kinds of bottles and other artifacts from the 1920s and 1930s had been found there. Apparently the hunters who’d visited Duck at that time liked their rye whiskey.
The first raindrops started to fall as the kitten and I reached the golf cart. I was glad I had transportation for once. Usually I liked walking and the cart was a nuisance for the short trip home. Not today since there were two of us, especially since the kitten was terrified once he heard the first raindrop hit the box. He started hissing and tearing at the cardboard.
“It’s okay,” I told him and risked putting my hand in the box again.
This time, he calmed down right away and started staring at me again. His mouth moved but no sound came out. The great green eyes were almost hypnotic. I thought about what Ann had said about people communicating with animals.
“Hi, Dae.” Tim startled me. I hadn’t noticed his police car in the parking lot until then. “Whatcha got in there?”
“A kitten. Want it?”
The kitten started wailing loudly, narrowing his eyes and swishing his tail.
“No thanks. What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m taking care of it for a friend. No word on the cat from Chuck Sparks’s house yet, huh?”
“They probably took it to the shelter at Kill Devil Hills. Who knows if it’s even still alive.”
“Don’t say that. I think this kitten needs its mother.” I looked down at the kitten again, but his agitation had eased and he was sitting back staring at me again.
“Well maybe you won’t have to keep it for long.” He leaned close with his hand on the top of the golf cart, ignoring the raindrops that splattered on his uniform. “I heard they found the girl’s mother.”
“Really? Is she somewhere around here?”
“Nope. We found an address for her in Richmond. There was no working phone, so we couldn’t contact her directly. We contacted the Richmond Police about it instead. The chief didn’t want to drive up all that way to question her. You know how the town council keeps track of how much we spend on gas each month.”
“Good idea. I hope she’s with her mother.”
“Of course she is. Sparks probably only had that girl for visitation. She’s probably up there with her mother right now. Problem solved.”
I wished I thought it was that easy. But if Chuck had her only for short visits, she wouldn’t have been enrolled in Duck Elementary. I didn’t say anything to Tim about my vision of her. I hoped I was wrong about the dark
ness and the dripping water. I didn’t want Betsy to be in that awful place.
I waved good-bye and hurried through some light traffic, trying to keep the kitten dry as the raindrops kept coming from the Atlantic side. With no doors, the golf cart offered limited protection from the elements.
We finally made it home. I pulled the golf cart into the shed and ducked in through the back door. Gramps called out that he was making chili—“You’ll need it tonight at the town meeting. You know Mad Dog will try every way he can to upstage you.”
I was trying to move away and up the stairs to my room as we talked, hoping he wouldn’t notice the box. “I don’t need chili to take care of him, but thanks for making it.”
He laughed. “What have you got in there? It must be one of your treasures that just couldn’t stay at the shop. Let’s see it.”
“I have to clean it up,” I replied. “It’s really dirty. I wouldn’t want anyone to see it this way. That’s why I brought it home. But I’m sure it’s going to be a real treasure.”
At that moment (of course) the kitten started howling and hissing again. There was no way to hide the fact that something alive was in the box.
Gramps’s scowl looked as angry as the gray skies outside. “Is that a cat?”
“A kitten, actually. He belongs to Betsy Sparks. He couldn’t live at that house all alone with nothing to eat. Kevin couldn’t take him. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could take it to the shelter.”
“I didn’t have time. Maybe you’d like to run him down there for me tonight.”
He held up his hands like he was fending off an attacker. “Not me! You can take it tomorrow. You know how I feel about pets, Dae. Remember that time you tried to keep that fish you caught? Pets just don’t work out. They’re smelly, mean and unpredictable.”
“Okay then. Just for tonight. I have to change clothes for the meeting. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“Make sure you lock that critter in your room,” he was saying as he went back into the kitchen. “I don’t want to see it sneaking around trying to steal food all over the kitchen.”
I took the box up to my room and put it on the bed. I was a little angry at Gramps’s attitude, but it wasn’t like he’d changed. He’d always felt that way each time I’d brought home any animal that I’d found somewhere.
The kitten was going to have to stay here for the night. Gramps didn’t really want to throw him out on the street. We could decide what to do in the morning.
“You know, you’re really beautiful,” I told him, running my hand down his thin body. “But you need to eat, don’t you? I’ll find you something. Don’t worry.”
As I looked into his green eyes again, he started purring loudly and rubbing against my palm. I sensed something from him—not a vision like those I experienced when I touched an inanimate object—more like feelings or emotions.
Beautiful!
The word seemed to come back at me from the animal.
I jumped away. This wasn’t happening. I was just stressed and influenced by Ann talking about people who communicated with animals.
I couldn’t waste any more time thinking about it. I stripped off my dirty clothes and jumped in the shower. It wouldn’t help my election bid to be late for a town meeting.
I dried off quickly, thinking about Betsy and Ann, me and Chuck. The whole thing was almost like a bad joke. I hardly knew Chuck, yet here I was with his kitten, looking for his daughter and hoping to solve his murder.
Ann was the wild card, coming out of nowhere into a situation she thought she could understand. I wondered if helping find Betsy would make her feel normal again.
I pulled on a nice blue cotton skirt and found a clean jacket that matched. I couldn’t find a dressy blouse, so I wore a new white Duck T-shirt from the summer. We had new ones made every year.
The outfit looked okay, I decided. Like I was trying to make a statement about Duck and what it meant to me. I hoped that’s how it would look to everyone else.
I combed my hair and slipped my feet into sling backs, grabbed my straw pocketbook and headed back down the stairs—after closing the bedroom door, of course.
Gramps was in a better mood, since I wasn’t dragging the kitten around in the box. He told me all about his fishing excursion on his charter boat, the Eleanore. The man he’d taken out on the sound was a well-to-do investment banker from Raleigh who’d booked another trip for later in the year.
“You should’ve seen this young fella’s face when he pulled in his first fish. He was as happy as a kid at Christmas. You never know how people are going to react.”
“I’m glad it went well for you.”
“Ronnie told me about you and Kevin breaking in over at the Sparks’s place looking for his daughter. I know you know better. Kevin sure knows better. You’re lucky Ronnie didn’t want to cause you any trouble. If you want to be mayor again, honey, you gotta be more careful.”
“Finding this little girl is important to me. I can’t let it go—even if it hurts my chances to be mayor again.”
He hugged me. “I understand. There were too many cases like that for me when I was sheriff. What about you and Kevin?”
I put my bowl in the sink. “There is no Kevin and me anymore.” I started to tell him about my visit from Ann, but there wasn’t enough time. “I have to go.”
“I think you’re wrong about Kevin, honey,” he yelled after me. “A man like him doesn’t go around breaking the law for a woman who’s just a friend. Mark my words.”
Chapter 11
By seven p.m., the town hall meeting room was packed, as always. There might be only 586 full-time residents in Duck, but they were all interested in what went on and wanted to know how and why things happened.
The problem was that town hall was very small—two offices and the meeting room that could hold about a hundred people, and then only if they were squished in like sardines. We needed more room to grow, but money was tight.
I’d sat through a lot of meetings about grants and loans to build a new town hall without breaking our budget. Nothing had materialized yet—but when I saw the twinkle in our town manager’s eyes, I had a feeling that was about to change.
“Good evening, Mayor,” Chris Slayton said to me. He held a large roll of plans under his arm. He was an energetic man in his late thirties who was always coming up with new ideas for Duck. He wasn’t from here, but we were lucky to have him and his experience.
“I think you must have some good news for us,” I said as I took my place behind my nameplate and gavel.
“You’ll have to wait and be surprised.”
I was glad to see he was wearing a Duck T-shirt with his sport coat and pants. We almost looked like twins, with our similar height and our brown hair. It gave the appearance of a conspiracy between us, both of us showing our Duck side.
With people standing in the outer offices, peeking in, I banged my gavel to bring the council meeting to order.
The finance committee, planning and zoning board, and waste management department gave their usual reports. Chief Michaels wasn’t there to present his monthly update on police activities, but Officer Randall did an excellent job filling in. As usual, there’d been a few breakins and thefts of big-ticket items like flat-screen TVs and boats. Most of those incidences had occurred at the houses that sat empty during the off-season while their owners stayed on the mainland.
Officer Randall went quickly through Chuck’s death, only mentioning the homicide in the barest terms. I knew the chief had briefed him. There would be plenty of questions from citizens during the public-comment portion of the meeting. Surprisingly, the audience waited patiently without any outbursts until we got to that part of the agenda.
Just before the line of questioners could begin asking about what had happened to Chuck and where the police were with the investigation, Mad Dog requested a five-minute recess. I’d noticed him looking around as though he were upset about somethi
ng. He’d been suspiciously quiet throughout the beginning of the meeting, then restless during the next part.
“What’s wrong with him?” Nancy whispered. She sat beside me at the council table taping the minutes of the meeting and taking notes for her write-up.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” I muttered back. “I don’t understand most of what he does.”
But a few minutes later, when Mad Dog returned wearing the same Duck T-shirt Chris and I had on, it was easy to understand what had been bothering him tonight. Obviously he’d been upset that Chris and I were wearing the T-shirts. He’d excused himself to put one on in place of his usual shirt and tie.
“Good grief!” Nancy chuckled so just the two of us could hear. “Is he for real?” There was some muttering and a couple of cackles from the audience, then we got on with the rest of the town’s business.
Most of the questions and concerns from our citizen speakers had to do with Chuck’s death and how it affected them. Two people said they didn’t feel safe in Duck anymore and wanted to know what the police were going to do about it. Officer Randall answered their questions the best he could, never showing impatience or irritation with them. The chief wouldn’t have been so calm.
Most of the residents just wanted to have their concerns heard, especially the older residents. Twenty years ago, when I was growing up, there was no such thing as a murder in Duck. There were the occasional thefts and a few fishermen who went missing. But no terrible crime like murder ever happened in Duck. People were proud of that.
I didn’t know what to say—except that growth had a price. The police did their best, but with twenty-five thousand people living here during the summer, bad things could happen. Not that I was sure the person who’d killed Chuck—and probably kidnapped Betsy—had come from outside the town.
Unfortunately, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t just shut down Duck and keep the place to ourselves. We were going to have to find ways to deal with change.
Two older ladies—Mrs. Fitzsimmons and Mrs. Daniels—were concerned that there was no library in Duck. They had to go to Corolla, a few miles up the road, to get books at the library. They wanted to know when Duck was going to get a library.
