“I’m here!” the voice came from the doorway.
Jesus, just listen to that foghorn, I thought, as I landed, face-first, back on terra firma.
“Hello?”
Stunned, I stared at the whale of a woman before me. “Lady, people in South Carolina heard you.”
I cursed Trevor for agreeing to leave me alone in the office. Putting on my best airs, I looked at the white-haired heavy weight in our doorway and asked, “Who are you?” I’m real quick witted that way.
“I’m Gertrude,” she answered. “But my friends call me Gertie.”
“Hello Gertrude,” I replied.
The woman stepped forward and extended a mitt that was almost as big as mine. We shook hands and I reminded myself to check for fractures later.
“What can I do you for?” I asked.
“Gertie,” she said. “You might as well call me Gertie, since we’re going to be working together.”
“Come again?”
“Well, I don’t know if Betty told you,” she said, “but I’ll be filling in for her when she can’t make it.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
She shook her head sadly. “For a peeper, you sure are slow on the uptake aren’t you?”
“Please, enlighten me,” I said.
She sighed. “I’m Betty’s mother, Gertrude Polanski.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Polanski, but I was sort of expecting Betty.”
“She had to go shopping this morning.”
“Shopping?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she said. “School starts soon and she can’t just show up at work looking like a bug-eyed Betty.”
“I guess not,” I managed.
“You’re such a dear, Mr. Barnes!” she said, beaming. “We need the dough so bad to pay for books, tuition and groceries... I promise you won’t regret this for one minute. You really are such a dear and understanding man!”
Maybe so, but Trevor certainly wouldn’t share that sentiment, not when he laid eyes on this chunk of lead. Hopefully Betty would be in by the time he showed up tomorrow, just so I could let him down easy.
Deciding I should make the best of it, I directed Mrs. Polanski to the outer office and instructed her to organize matters as she saw fit.
“Just buzz me if any clients arrive and then send them in when I give you the word.”
“What word would that be?” she asked.
“‘Send them in’,” I answered.
“There’s a mouthful,” she squawked.
God help us, I silently prayed.
I forced another knowing, lopsided grin at her and hurried back to my inner sanctum to have another go at the bottle of Old Sea Dog.
Trevor was going to have a field day with this.
The sky was clear blue, all the way from its zenith down to the horizon. It was a dome of pale cobalt that promised a day of clear weather. The sea, a pure Egyptian blue hue, rolled off toward that horizon in gentle waves, licking back at the shore where the children frolicked and the grown-ups roamed.
The beach was absolutely bustling. I sat beside a gorgeous dame whose dark pink swimming costume hinted at the gentle slope of her curves.
By all accounts, this should have been a perfect day.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed over the jagged lines of scar tissue crisscrossing my chest and sliding down my left leg. These were my souvenirs from the Great War, things that were as familiar to me as my face in the mirror. Even though my swimsuit concealed the worst of it, I couldn’t help but feel like they might be one hell of a turn-off.
Her skin was flawless, lightly tanned perfection. She’d been my girl for two weeks now and looked like she wouldn’t have had me any other way.
Not that it helped any.
Sun and sand were fine; I could handle waves too, on a good day. But when it came to the ocean—hell, when it came to any large body of water—I got the jitters something fierce. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s a fear of the unknown or maybe my Dad just diddled me when I was in the crib.
Who am I kidding? My dad was a saint. Now, my mother...
Thankfully oblivious to my existential crisis, Kate sunned herself beside me with her long red hair splayed out across our beach towel. It stood out as a halo of dark gold against the white terrycloth, putting the glimmering sand around it to shame.
She was a joy to behold but I just sat there watching everyone else come and go, like some two-bit weirdo. Sneaking glances at her, I kept checking if she was ready to hit the road.
No such luck; she looked about as happy as a cat before a warm fireplace with a bellyful of tuna. When she finally caught me sneaking glances at her, she just smiled.
She rolled around to face me, pushing her thick black sunglasses up the gentle slope of her nose. I took a whiff of her and glory be, she smelled good enough to eat.
Her lips made a tempting proposition as she spoke in a lazy, mellow tone.
“You fancy taking a dip, hon?”
I shook my head, saying, “Too crowded for my taste. Besides, I like the view.”
This seemed to satisfy her and she lay back on the towel, stretching provocatively. She raised her knees and tucked her legs back, giving me a full view of her perfect calves.
She said, in her low, husky voice, “You can get an even closer look if you join me for a dip....”
If she’d asked me to put my hand over an open flame, punch a bull straight in the jaw, hell if she’d asked me to eat a brick for her, I’d have done it, but not that. Never that.
The magic was dispelled as someone started screaming. Kate sat up, tilted her sunglasses up onto her forehead and squinted her green eyes to the source of the noise.
I turned to look and my jaw nearly dropped.
“What the hell is that?” I said, climbing to my feet for a better look. I could see a girl in the water, struggling against the waves, not twenty feet from the shore.
Kate was quick by my side. “A shark; it’s gotta be.”
I began running towards the girl with absolutely no idea of what to do next.
A few people had already stopped dead in their tracks to gawp at the drowning girl. Falling into the drill sergeant routing, I took control of the situation.
“Shark!” I shouted, waving my arms as I ran past a couple and their kids.
The man turned to me saying, “You a lifeguard?”
“You wish,” I replied then added, “just a concerned citizen.”
I turned from him to look at the girl. I was two steps from the water when she was pulled under the waves.
Everyone began to scramble out of the sea, running around like chickens. A teen-aged boy, thinking he’d go ahead and be a hero, headed right back in. I ran at him and grabbed him by the short hairs before he did something stupid.
He skidded to a halt and turned to look at me, his freckled face flushed with determination. I knocked him back down to earth.
“Kid. If you want to help, go up to the café and call the coast guard.”
He gawped at me before doing as he was told, heading for the cafeteria on the raised area of grassland behind the beach.
I took a deep breath, realizing I’d drawn in a crowd. The few dozen people on the beach were now gathered around me, speaking in hushed tones. Some of the smaller children had run to their parents, bawling their eyes out.
I felt Kate’s hand slip into mine and I turned to look at her; sure enough, she had been rattled. I couldn’t blame her.
Probably everyone on the beach was worse off than she was. And the waves just kept lapping at the coarse sand, without a care in the world.
Some of us kept our eyes out for a sign of the shark. Maybe a fin, or a flash of teeth or the sight of some severed limb in the flotsam. Suddenly, the hushed tones around me were shattered by someone’s frantic yell from my left hand side.
The beach was enclosed on either side by two rocky outcroppings leading up to green-topped cliffs. I turned to see
a lanky, gray-haired man dressed in a cream shirt and matching shorts, running toward us. He had a bulky pair of binoculars hanging from his pencil neck that swung wildly as he ran.
The man skittered to a stop near the center of our group. He looked around frantically before darting for the water. I was on him in an instant, grabbing him by the shoulders to keep him from making the dive.
“What the hell is your problem, huh?” I said, looking at the back of his twitching head.
A child behind me said, “You can’t go in there, mister. There’s a shark!”
“No shark. Can’t have been,” he howled. He shook in my grasp and I held onto him for dear life. “I was watching from the rocks,” he continued, “it looked human… almost human.”
Someone sniggered at the old man. I glared at the crowd before turning to face him.
“Just what the hell were you doing up there mister?” I asked. “What were you looking out for?”
“Jen, the girl in the water.” he said, fighting back tears. “She’s my daughter. Massachusetts state swimming finalist. Top of her class.”
Very gently, I relaxed my grip. Just enough to keep him from panicking, so he wouldn’t try and plunge back into the water.
“Sea monsters? Christ.” some mug behind me said.
I glared at him but he looked too scared to notice.
“No such thing,” I said. “Probably a Great White. Gotta be.”
I then said, “All of you, keep out of the water, you hear?”
A dark, muscle-bound man, his arm wrapped around a little blonde dame, said, “We’re not too far from Innsmouth, you know.”
Everyone took another step away from the water at that.
Turning back to the girl’s father, I said, “My name’s Trevor Towers and I’m a PI. Now, how about we take it easy, okay?” I let go of his shoulders and was thankful that he stayed in place. The poor fella looked exhausted and terrified and about to keel over.
Kate said, almost reading my mind, “Mister, let’s get you away from here.” She had our beach towel in her hands, which she draped around the man’s quaking shoulders.
We led him away from the scene, towards the embankment. The cafeteria patrons had gathered around for the show. Bad news travels fast, especially when there’s blood involved. The freckled kid was with them, waving his arms wildly, obviously reveling in the attention he was receiving. The beach crowd began to break away, as if they were following my lead.
The coastguard and an ambulance would be here soon enough. By my count, they’d probably be too late for Jen, if a shark was involved.
I entered the office to begin another red-letter day in the life of Mother Barnes’s little slugger. I took off my hat and glanced at the receptionist’s desk, pleased to see that Betty Polanski had finally showed for work. She scrambled for an apology and I told her to “Forget about it.”
She just gave me a killer smile that all but brought me to my knees. “I hope Mother wasn’t too much of a handful yesterday.”
“Barnes and Towers have gone through worse,” I said, though I doubted that Trevor would survive this. “Still, it’s all well that ends well.”
I gave her the three-cent orientation on greeting prospective johns and then retreated to my inner sanctum. After taking my place behind the desk, I lit a gasper and mulled over Trevor’s phone call the night before. There had apparently been some nasty business at the beach after a girl disappeared, possibly snatched by a shark. Trevor had talked to her distraught old man who had the wild notion that his daughter had been abducted by something stripped straight out of Doctor Caligari. I guess the man did what he could to cope.
I puffed my gasper down to the butt, shuffling through a stack of mail that was either bills or some type of dough-grabbing scam. If it were up to me, these people would have been booted to Antarctica by now. I sighed and chucked most of the envelopes, bills and all, into the metal wastebasket.
I was snubbing out my smoke and reaching for another when the intercom buzzed shrilly. “Hot damn!” I said, almost shooting out of my seat. “Now there’s a crooner.”
My fingers twisted the volume control to a more tolerable level and then said, in my best big-shot impression:
“Yes?”
“Mr. Barnes, there’s a gentleman here to see you.”
“Send him in, Betty,” I grinned.
“Right away, sir,” she replied.
I swear, if it wasn’t for her Momma, that girl would have had us all looking classier than Pinkerton.
A tall gawky fellow with gray hair opened the door, and looked around as if lost. “You Detective Barnes?” he asked.
“Private Investigator, more like. Not affiliated with the Police Department.”
“Good,” he said. “Bunch of knuckle-draggers, if you ask me.”
“Sir, you’re preaching to the choir,” I said. “Have a seat and tell me what’s bothering you.”
He pulled up a chair and said, without further ado, “My name’s Abernacky. I need you to find my daughter.”
Christ! I thought. That’s the crazy Towers told me about.
“We excel at finding folks,” I said. “But how come you haven’t turned to the police?”
“Why should I?” he barked. “’So they can laugh at me through their hats and call me crazy? I know what I saw, damn it, and now I got a note that proves it!”
I shrugged and decided to humor the man. After all, how crazy could this whole mess be, after what Trevor and I had been through?
“Let’s begin at the beginning,” I said. “Why would the police think you’re crazy in the first place?”
“Did you hear what happened at the beach yesterday?” he asked.
“I understand that a girl drowned,” I said.
“That’s what the police would have you believe.”
“And you have reason to think differently?” I asked.
“Damn right I do,” he barked. “That girl, she was my daughter and she didn’t drown, goddamn it.”
I was about to ask how he could be sure when the intercom buzzed.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Mr. Towers is here,” said Betty.
“Send him in,” I replied, then turned to the man. “My partner should be here presently.”
Towers stepped inside, positively beaming after he’d seen Betty Polanski for himself.
“Trevor,” I said. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Abernacky.”
Abernacky turned to Trevor and said, “I kept the card you gave me. Decided to take a chance.”
“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Trevor commiserated.
“Let’s hope you’re wrong on that count,” Abernacky said.
Towers raised his eyebrows. “That’s a hell of way of looking at it.”
“What was that about a note, Mister Abernacky?” I prompted.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket. He took it out and tossed it onto the desk.
I picked up the crumpled piece of paper and read the plainly printed words.
Your daughter is in Innsmouth. The Marsh clan has her. Act soon or you will never see her again.
“Did you show this to the police?” I asked.
“They just thought it was some sicko’s idea of a prank.”
Trevor looked at me and shrugged. “Mr. Abernacky did mention a... creature... carrying off his daughter. Unfortunately, there weren’t any witnesses from his vantage point so you can imagine why the cops are reluctant to take the note seriously.”
“What did you see, Trevor?” I asked.
“Not much until after the fact,” he replied.
“I know what I saw!” Abernacky exclaimed.
I looked at Towers but said nothing. He returned my gaze and said, “I can’t be sure that a sea monster was involved but this note is worth checking out. I’ve had my fair share of looking into twisted pranks, but I’ll go by my gut and say that it’s legitimate.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “Did
n’t you get anything else? Like a ransom demand?”
“Just the note,” Abernacky replied.
Towers looked at him and asked, “You’re sure this is a monster? Couldn’t this have been just some weirdo in diving gear?”
“’No. Can’t have been.”
Abernacky sighed and then continued. “I told you the police tried to write it off as a sick prank. Maybe it is so, but you saw those people at the beach, how spooked they got when someone mentioned Innsmouth.”
I looked at my partner and said, “What do you think?”
Towers was a hard man but he would never settle with leaving a desperate old man on his own. Neither would I. Towers looked at Abernacky and said, “I think my partner and I should take a trip to Innsmouth.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you!” Abernacky said, looking almost relieved.
I decided to be as honest as possible. “We can’t promise that your daughter is okay. But if she’s there, we’ll find her and bring her back.”
Towers was clenching his fists, probably going over his own recent loss. He took a deep breath and said, “You can bank on it.”
Abernacky left us with a flimsy lead to go by. Barnes was poring over the note for a good few minutes before he finally placed it into one of the desk drawers.
He looked at me and said, “What do you know about Innsmouth? Besides the fact that it’s probably swarming with kidnapping, inbred hicks?”
“Not much,” I replied. Then it came to me. “Let me make a call. I might know someone that can shed a little light on the situation.”
Barnes got out of his seat and headed to the other side of the desk. I plopped myself right in his seat, making myself comfortable.
As I picked up the phone, he said, “Who’s your source, Trevor?”
“Justin Geoffrey.” I said.
“Jesus Christ, not that fruit again,” he groaned, leaning back to plant his heels on the desk.
I put the phone to my ear and said, “It’ll be over in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. You’ll see.”
Barnes snorted and put his hands behind his head. “I don’t know. Is the lamb a spastic junkhead?” I silently agreed with him and dialed the number by heart.
Arkham Nights Page 12
