Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set

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Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set Page 18

by Aaron Paul Lazar


  “Thelma!” My feet carried me forward, crunching over pinecones and branches. I checked behind piles of drying firewood, beneath thickets of bushes, and behind every small hill. A nuthatch watched me from a branch overhead, then climbed upside down on the trunk of the tree, seeking bugs.

  “Thelma!” My legs threatened to buckle. My back ached. The wound on my arm stung. And a swarm of mosquitoes found me just as I spotted the Rav4 and Ruby’s cage.

  I trotted to the Rav4, grabbed my backpack and Quinn’s suitcase, and picked up Ruby’s cage.

  “Come on, honey. Let’s get you inside.”

  I wondered if mosquitoes would bite birds and hastened my steps.

  Quinn met me at the back porch. “No sign?”

  I shook my head and set Ruby down. “No. Nothing. You might as well bring the car up. I’m not leaving this place until we find my mother.”

  He didn’t argue or suggest an alternative, but fished the keys out of his pocket and waved over his shoulder. “Be right back.”

  I brought Ruby inside and set her up on the corner table between the loveseat and a rocker. The design of the cabin was appealing, with all rooms opening up into the main living/dining area. My stomach rolled with hunger.

  “Black bird eye mfmp,” Ruby squawked. She repeated it a dozen times, flapping her wings and jumped on and off her perch. As if I was being dense, she took her cage door in her beak and rattled it repeatedly.

  “Black bird eye mfmp,” she said again.

  I leaned toward the cage. “Ruby, I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me?”

  Quinn came in with the bags I’d left on the back porch. “We should call McCann now.” He motioned toward the phone on the table beside Ruby’s cage.

  I nodded absentmindedly. Exhaustion overcame me and I felt like I’d collapse in the slightest breeze. “Of course. Will you do it?”

  I picked up the blanket I’d dropped on the rocker earlier and walked into one of the bedrooms to return it to the bed. While tucking the corners, I noticed something sparkling on the floor between the foot of the bed and the wall.

  I bent down and picked it up.

  “Quinn.”

  He mumbled from the kitchen, where he rummaged in the food cabinet.

  “Quinn!”

  He poked his head in the bedroom. “What?”

  I held out my hand, palm up. “It’s Thelma’s. The coral bracelet we gave her last Christmas.” I dropped onto the bed and studied it.

  He sat beside me and slid his good arm over my shoulders. “Okay. This is good. We know she was here, right? She’s bound to be close by. Maybe even in the next cottage? We didn’t think of that.”

  I nodded, pushing away the blinding fear that kept prodding at me. Had Tiramisu already killed my mother and left her somewhere, like he did with Barski?

  I shook off the thought and answered my husband. “You’re right. Maybe they broke into that place like they did here.”

  Quinn looked into the distance. “You know, I’ll bet either Jaworski or Tiramisu arranged for some kind of accident to happen to the people who rented for this week.”

  My jaw dropped. “My thoughts exactly. I hope they didn’t hurt them. Those poor people.”

  His stomach growled. “Give me your cell so I can get McCann’s number.”

  I got my phone from the backpack and read him the number. He scratched it on a green Post-It pad from the side table and made the call.

  I was grateful he did. From the sounds of it, McCann went ballistic. But when Quinn told him about Jaworski, I could almost hear the stunned silence.

  “Okay, see you in an hour.”

  Quinn hung up and flopped onto the futon. “Phew.”

  “Bad?”

  Quinn rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Oh, yeah. He was boiling mad.”

  “Was he surprised about Jaworski?”

  “Just about knocked him over, I think.” Quinn played with a button on his still damp shirt. “He’s on his way with reinforcements.”

  Chapter 38

  I slumped on one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the ledge, plucking at a piece of duct tape that still stuck to the armrest. My arm throbbed like hell, but the bandaging McCann’s man had done was holding up fine.

  Quinn stood in the driveway, talking to McCann. The last of the search party and reporters had dispersed, after six hours of hunting for my mother on the grounds around the cabin. Tiramisu’s body had been found wedged in a cove downstream. They’d removed all three bodies after hours of protocol, including taking hundreds of photos and grilling me for what seemed like ages.

  Fortunately, McCann had my back. He kept telling me—with admonishing frowns—how incredibly lucky we were to be alive. When the local sheriff wanted to lock us both up, McCann explained the history of the investigation, got him on the phone with one of the head honchos at the FBI, and eventually calmed him down enough to let us alone.

  I realized with great chagrin that the man had been on our side all along. My judgment—if one could even call it that—was seriously flawed. I didn’t trust myself anymore. I’d loved Jaworski and hated McCann. I was an idiot.

  The late afternoon sun shone strong over the mountaintop, but in spite of its warmth, I couldn’t stop shaking. I closed my eyes and listened to the gentle rumble of the river. The sound washed over me, hypnotic and soothing. My clothes had dried, but my jeans felt stiff. I’d kicked off my wet sneakers and hadn’t put them back on. My bare feet rested on pine needles, and I inhaled the strong scent of pine.

  Ruby continued to spout crazy words about a black bird. As if to torture me further, a blue-black starling lit on the fence and cried, making me sit up and open my eyes.

  I looked to the sky. “Thelma. Where are you?”

  Ruby’s voice cackled from the open window in the living room. “Black bird eye mfmp.”

  I went back inside and paced. Back and forth, from the mudroom to the porch. I stopped to stare—unseeing—at the photos and maps on the wall. I stared at a pair of drawings of daffodils and crocuses in blue and white china bowls. A clock ticked on a shelf over Ruby’s cage, set in a miniature lodge design with smooth pebbles embedded in cement beneath a wooden roof. An aromatic bag of balsam needles and cones sat beside it. On the wall was tacked a yellow Post-It with the sheriff’s phone number.

  I wandered some more, trying to make sense of the day, willing my mother to tell me where she was. I flipped through a train calendar tacked to the wall near the stairway, then squinted at a wall thermometer. Seventy-two degrees. I pulled open the drawer on the corner cupboard, but didn’t see the contents.

  “Thelma. Where are you?”

  Ruby repeated her black bird phrase. I was about to strangle her when I stopped dead and felt the blood drain from my face. I ran back to the mudroom and grabbed the map from the wall. Under the light over the dining room table, I studied it, tracing the names of the islands.

  There it was, right in front of me.

  Blackbird Island.

  I shouted for Quinn and carried the map to the porch, studying the layout of the river and its landmasses. Blackbird Island sat upstream—the tree-covered island with the towering pine in the center.

  “Quinn! McCann!”

  I tossed the map on a blue chest by the porch door and sped to the edge of the cliff.

  “Quinn! Blackbird Island!” I pointed to the island, but didn’t wait for either of them. Stumbling down the path, I reached the shore and raced upstream along the round rocks that threatened to twist my ankles. The water was deep where I had to cross. I plunged in and swam, trying to fight the current that pushed me away from the island. Far deeper than downstream where I’d crossed earlier, the current dragged me down.

  Inside my head, I screamed. No!

  I redoubled my efforts and reached land on the southern end of the island.

  Quinn shouted to me from the other side. “Wait!” He jumped into the water, followed by McCann. I couldn’t wait. I headed into t
he trees.

  “Thelma! Mom!”

  I’d noticed the big pine from the start, and felt drawn to the center of the island. With a certainty that now drilled urgency into me, I sprinted forward, following a path probably made by animals. I saw the pine and trained my eyes on it.

  Quinn’s voice followed me. “Marcella!”

  “Over here!” I pushed through a cluster of blackberry thorns, unaware that they tore my flesh, and jogged around a corner, into a small clearing. Soft grass lay matted in places where I imagined the deer had lain overnight. I trod over it in my bare feet, calling my mother’s name. At the edge of the clearing, I tripped. I went down, hard. When I turned my head to get up, I saw a glimpse of blue behind a screen of bushes. I stumbled through them and dropped to my knees beside the big pine tree.

  Before me sat my mother—gagged and bound—with her head slumped to her chest.

  “Is she alive?” McCann yelled.

  “I don’t know,” I said, hiccupping through my tears.

  She leaned against the tree with a dirty rag pulled tight around her mouth and her hands and feet bound behind her. A large loop of nylon rope secured her to the trunk of the pine.

  With shaking fingers, I untied the knot from her gag and knelt beside her to feel for a pulse. Her eyes were closed, swollen and bruised. Her hair lay greasy and untidy across her forehead. Raw marks encircled her ankles and wrists where the ropes had bitten into her flesh. She felt cold.

  McCann knelt on the other side and laid two fingers against Thelma’s neck. Quinn crouched beside me, patting my shoulder.

  “She’s alive,” McCann said. “But barely. We need an ambulance.”

  Quinn stood. “I’ll go.” As he loped away, McCann called to him. “Call 911. Tell them we have a live one this time.”

  Chapter 39

  A week after we found my mother, they released her from the hospital. She’d suffered from bruises and dehydration, and her blood pressure skyrocketed because she hadn’t had her meds since Tiramisu and his thugs kidnapped her. I’d refused to leave her side and had slept beside her on a cot all week like I’d done with Quinn. She’d become cranky within a few days, assuaging my fears. She was going to be just fine.

  Quinn’s arm was recast, and was healing nicely, but he’d be stuck in the cast for at least six more weeks. He’d stayed in the hotel with Ruby until my mother was ready to be released. He and Cromwell had had some serious male bonding time, and when Quinn discovered that the dear man had no family, Cromwell had already agreed to visit us in the fall for Thanksgiving.

  My arm had been stitched up and treated with antibiotics, and was starting to heal. It itched at night, but other than that, I was fully functioning.

  I’d had several more visits with Rita and finally with her grandfather when he came out of the coma. He’d been released the same day as my mother, and both Little Newts had promised to visit us downstate in the fall.

  Ruby no longer spouted phrases from Thelma, nor did Thelma surprise anyone by shouting, “You da man!” Whatever their bizarre psychic link, after my mother was rescued, it faded.

  McCann had visited us in the hospital three times, and had explained that without his knowledge, the FBI had been keeping their eye on Jaworski, hoping she’d lead them to her uncle and the money from the Green Valley heist. But they hadn’t realized how close she was to Tiramisu until it was too late. With cunning, she’d worked her way into the case ten years ago and had become the resident expert. She’d even done her graduate school thesis on it. According to McCann, Jaworski had been unaware they’d been watching her. Although McCann said he’d been “played” by the FBI, he held little resentment and seemed glad it was over. He’d softened in his attitude toward me, and had actually told me I’d done well. He’d called me foolhardy a few times, but told me in no uncertain terms that he’d been proud that I’d found my own mother. He admitted he wasn’t sure that his team would have done the same in time to save her. It blew me away.

  When it was all over, we’d packed our bags, said fond farewells to Cromwell, Amanda, and the staff at For The Birds, and headed home to Honeoye Lake.

  When we’d arrived home early in the afternoon, we shared news with our neighbor, Nina, cried over our ripped up couch in the living room, and had reintroduced Ruby to her mother, Sarafina. With my mother comfortably tucked into her own bed, I finally got a chance to flop on the still intact sofa on the sun porch with Quinn, watching the lake. Aqua and cerulean waves winked in the midday light, reminding me of Monet’s water paintings. I opened all of the screens to catch the cross breeze and smiled at my husband, who’d just hung up the phone.

  “How’s McCann?” I asked.

  Quinn put his feet up on the coffee table. “Frustrated. He said the trail to the money has gone stone cold. He really wants to meet with us again to go over the contents of the box.”

  I patted the shoebox beside me. “Me first. I’ve been anxious to look through this stuff since we found it.”

  “I told him Friday might work. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. By then I will have sifted through it to my heart’s content. I’m going to scan all the photos and everything else, just in case he needs to keep them for evidence. That way I’ll have them forever.”

  Quinn jumped up and penciled the appointment onto the bird calendar hanging on the wall. “Okay. Done.”

  He’d plaited his hair into two thick braids, put on his moccasins and oldest jeans, and wandered inside to clean the kitchen—again. He’d been disinfecting surfaces for two hours since we arrived home. I wondered if it was his own brand of therapy. Could he wipe out the awful memories by scrubbing them away?

  I lifted the lid from the shoebox and took out the first packet of black and white photos. Curled and faded, they depicted life in the forties and fifties. I recognized the styles of my own mother’s youth, and wondered whose pretty white dresses swayed on the clothesline behind the woman with the careworn face. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun and her housedress blew sideways over a wicker basket on the ground beside her. On the back, it simply said, “Mother, 1946.”

  I bolted straight up when I flipped over the next photo of two young girls. On the back was scrawled, “Roberta and Ramona, age seven.” I couldn’t believe we’d missed the names the first time through.

  Both children appeared ready for church—with white gloves, white shoes, and pretty dresses with satin sashes. They wore little white hats with flowers and smiled with gap-toothed grins. Their hair was smooth and black, their skin bronze. I wondered if they’d somehow been related to my stepfather, because each of the girls bore a resemblance to him.

  Could they have been cousins? Is that how my stepfather had known Ramona Mendoza?

  I sifted through more of the same, with both little girls shown in various stages of their youth. I realized that in each photo, there was just one age printed on the back. The girls looked so much alike I figured they had to have been twins.

  High school pictures drew my interest further. The girls wore their hair different at age fifteen. Roberta’s was curled and pretty with ribbons and barrettes. Ramona’s remained in sleek black pigtails or braids. Simple. Classic. And the family resemblance to Raoul Rodriguez was astonishing.

  When I’d finished with the photos, I sorted through the loose papers. Grade school report cards for both girls showed they had been satisfactory students. Mostly Bs and a few Cs. Not bad. Their surnames were scribbled over with black magic marker on each item, and I began to wonder why my stepfather hid their identity so diligently. I thought I made out an “M” as the first letter of the last name on the back of one photo, but couldn’t be sure. He’d never mentioned any family to us except for the very vague and rare mention of an estranged sister who supposedly had once lived up north.

  Raoul’s birth certificate was tucked between a batch of ribbon-wrapped letters he’d received from Thelma. It was impossibly hard, but I controlled my curiosity, and decided to leave them unopene
d. If she wanted to share their contents later, she would. I studied the document with his birth date and place, but was surprised to find no mention of his parents’ names. Instead, there was a little asterisk with a note below that said, “Sealed file, county clerk’s office.” A bumpy official seal was pressed into the parchment. It was official, all right, but I’d never seen a birth certificate like that before.

  Last of all I studied a photo of a woman sitting on a rock in the woods with a pristine lake behind her. She looked to be about Raoul’s age, and also bore a strong resemblance to him. I flipped it over.

  “Roberta Mendoza, 2001. Hope, NY.”

  “Quinn?”

  He answered with a mumble.

  “I think this is one of my father’s relatives. Roberta Mendoza. She was Ramona’s sister.”

  Quinn, who had been staring at cobwebs around the light fixture in the ceiling, slid over beside me. “No way. Show me.”

  I went through the photos and papers with him, then showed him the final picture. “Doesn’t she look like Raoul?”

  “It’s incredible, actually.” He squinted at the corner of the back of the photo. “And weirder than that is the location. My God, Marcella, we just came from Hope. That’s where the cabin was.”

  A chill ran down my spine. “I know. It’s kind of spooky.”

  “More than spooky, it’s too strange to be a coincidence. Do you think Ramona and Roberta could have lived at Tall Pines? Or maybe their family rented it one summer? Maybe that’s how Tiramisu knew about it.”

  “Maybe. But what’s even weirder is that my father had contact with Roberta in 2001. He never mentioned her to me.”

  “Maybe she sent the photo to him in a Christmas card or something.”

  “Maybe.” I stood up and looked toward the placid lake. Two ducks floated by, their wakes rippling in the dusky rose light. “But I’m going to find her. I want to know about Dad’s family. Especially about the link to Ramona.”

 

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