by Lourey, Jess
“Got it!” Mrs. Berns claimed triumphantly when it hit the ground.
I helped her down, rubbing at the spot where the key had hit. My noggin was taking a beating lately.
She scooped up the key, and we turned to consider the house. It seemed to be staring right back at us.
“Eerie, isn’t it?” Mrs. Berns asked. “Those two windows up there look like eyes, and the back door is right between and below them, like a mouth.”
I recalled the little girl’s face in the attic window last Saturday, the heart-shaped face I had filed away as Elizabeth Offerdahl’s ghost. Or my imagination. I punched Mrs. Berns lightly on the arm. “Shut up. I’m already scared enough.”
“Better git your big girl pants on, because we’re doing this.” Unexpectedly, she took off across the driveway separating the shed from the Prospect House, slamming her back against the wood siding when she reached the house. I was surprised she hadn’t attempted a full-body roll on the way over. I wanted to make fun of her, but even more than that, I didn’t want to get caught. I copied her moves.
“Suave,” she said as we stood with our backs against the house, glancing to the right and left for any sign of movement. Only she pronounced it to rhyme with wave because that’s how cool we were.
Instead of responding, I crouched, staying low to the ground until I reached the door. The key fit in the lock like a hot knife in butter, and we were standing inside the kitchen in seconds. We caught our breath and let our eyes adjust to the light. I was aware of the clutter, and the shadow-smell of coffee brewed several hours earlier. The silence in the house was so intense that it almost became a sound itself. I’d snooped around and broken into four, maybe five places in the past eight months, all in the name of solving a mystery, but it never felt comfortable. The hyperawareness of knowing you were in a place you weren’t supposed to be looking for stuff that people didn’t want you to find was both exhilarating and terrifying. It gave me an intense urge to pee or giggle.
I clicked on the flashlight and directed the narrow beam to the stairs leading to the basement. “The Civil War stuff is down there.”
“You first.”
I tiptoed to the top of the stairs and shone the flashlight down the steps. The dusty yellow light landed in a lonely circle at the bottom, something about it suggesting ghost fingers and lurking zombies, waiting for someone stupid enough to enter.
“Tell me about your husband,” I whispered. I needed something to distract me.
“What?”
“You heard me.” I took the first step. Little warning feelers shot like electric bolts down my legs and arms.
“What do you want to know?”
“Did you love him?” I took the second step. Mrs. Berns was so near that I could feel her breath on my neck.
“Sure. Didn’t matter back then, though. He put food on the table. He paid the bills. He didn’t hit me. But he didn’t live life, he worked it. And he drank too much.”
“Your whole marriage?” We were now in the middle of the stairs, halfway between escape and the dungeon. The air felt heavier in front of us.
“You know how when a tree has a good year, lots of water and sunlight, and you can see huge growth when you look at its rings? It’s the opposite with people. We grow more in our bad years. I grew a lot married to Harold.”
Harold. Harold Berns. I took another step. Fear crawled across my skin like newly hatched spiders. Any number of horrors awaited us below, among the dusty relics of long-dead soldiers. Maybe, just maybe, something that would also help Taunita was down there, too. “Do you miss him?”
“I paid my dues. That was the past. Now, I live in the moment. It’s the only way to be.” She coughed, and I jumped.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“What?”
I stopped. Behind her cough, I thought I’d heard a moan. It must have been the wind, yet I couldn’t stop the chilly sweat gathering at the base of my spine. We were now at the bottom of the stairs, large tables standing sentry on each side of the landing. It felt like we were being watched by a hundred leering eyes. I risked panning the room with a flashlight so we could get our bearings. It lit across uniforms in glass, bayonets, guns, and—
Could it be?
I brought the light back to what had grabbed my attention, my heartbeat thick and terrified.
It was.
On the far side of the room, a little girl, staring solemnly at Mrs. Berns and me.
I screamed and dropped the flashlight.
Forty-Two
“What?”
“I saw a face! We’re not alone.” I fought the urge to charge back up the stairs only because Mrs. Berns was blocking my exit. I snatched the flashlight from the floor, brandishing it like a weapon. That’s when I noticed the face was also pointing a flashlight back at me.
It was a mirror.
“Holy crap,” I said, gathering my heart from my throat. “I thought it was a ghost. It’s just my reflection.”
Mrs. Berns cackled and took the flashlight from me. “I don’t think you are equipped to handle this dangerous tool. Now where’s the damn gun? This place gives me the willies.”
We held hands and shuffled over to the table where Carter had shown me the musket. I was relieved to discover it lying exactly where he’d set it down. I glanced over my shoulder, still nervous about the mirror, but the space behind us was a dull blank surface.
“Shine the light in its barrel.”
Mrs. Berns complied. “I see it! It looks like rolled-up paper.”
“Grab me that poker,” I said, pointing at a thin metal pole behind her. With its cool metal in my hand, I began fishing inside the barrel of the gun, but my efforts just pushed the paper farther away from us. This wasn’t going to work. “Dangit. We have to take this gun apart.”
“Don’t look at me. I fire ’em, I don’t build ’em.”
I held the butt with my left hand and cradled the barrel in the nook of my right arm. “Well then, it looks like it’s coming with us. We’ll find someone who knows guns, have them help us remove the paper without hurting it, and return it before Carter even knows it’s missing.” That’s what I hoped, anyhow.
Rather than question my illegal and ethically murky executive decision, Mrs. Berns led the way toward the stairs, flashing the light in a steady stream. I kept my eyes trained away from the mirror, and we moved as a single shuffling beast. We were nearly to the base of the stairs when something caught her eye. She stepped over to a table to the left of the stairwell.
“Look at these!” She took her mittens off and set them on a nearby counter.
“Keep your mittens on! We don’t want to leave fingerprints.”
She snorted. “This is Otter Tail County, not the Big Apple. Besides, there’s got to be a million fingerprints around here.” She held up a brilliant blue teardrop necklace. The direct beam of the flashlight made it sparkle like a thousand sapphires.
“Do you think it’s real?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. The main teardrop was the size of a dime, and the chain of the necklace was dripping with pearl-sized blue beads. “Probably crystal,” I said, hypnotized. “I wonder what it’s doing in the basement with the Civil War stuff?
A scraping sound drew our attention, a low, quiet noise on the floor above. It was short, happening so quickly that it might not have happened at all.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered hoarsely.
Mrs. Berns placed the necklace back on the table, clicked off the flashlight, and grabbed my elbow. “Sounded like a one-legged, worm-eyed pirate come to steal our souls.”
If my hands were free, I would have hit her. “Let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t need to tell her twice. We speed-shuffled toward where we thought the steps were, and took them quickly, moving toward the lighter patch
of darkness that outlined the ground floor landing above. Even our hair was on high alert, quivering, as we strained to hear any more sounds. We tried to be as quiet as we could, but fear made us clumsy. Mrs. Berns dropped the flashlight, and then I bumped the gun against the wall trying to help her find it. Finally, though, we reached the top of the stairs. We didn’t dare turn the flashlight back on. We’d already made enough noise.
Despite our bumbling, we made it to the back door and locked it behind us, breathing in deep, fresh gulps of winter air. I let my heartbeat slow to a steady pace, infinitely grateful to be out of the house and to have the musket in hand. I tiptoed across the packed snow to return the key to its hidey spot, Mrs. Berns right behind me.
“I didn’t know Carter had dolls in his collection,” Mrs. Berns said, breaking the silence marked only by our feet crunching in the snow. My ears were attuned to the potential sound of cars passing.
We reached the shed. “I don’t think he does.” I grunted as I reached up to tuck the key.
She hitched her thumb toward the house. “Didn’t you see that girl doll on the island in the middle of the kitchen on our way out? Looked like she was floating in the moonlight. Creepy. Why people want big old dolls is beyond me.”
My blood froze. “There was no doll on the island when we went in.”
We swiveled our heads to stare at each other, our faces a perfect replica of fear. When our eyes locked, we squealed and ran, not slowing until we reached my car.
Forty-Three
Before we parted ways, Mrs. Berns reminded me that Johnny’s band was playing that night. I knew she wanted to ask if I’d spoken with him since I’d spent the night at Bad Brad’s, but she was friend enough not to plant a direct question on me. I told her I’d think about Johnny tomorrow. In the meantime, I needed to get this gun to the one person on the outside who could help me dismantle it without destroying it: Curtis Poling. He was still in the hospital, though. I would visit him first thing in the morning, hoping for his sake and mine that he was awake.
Taunita and the babies were up when I returned home, so I kept the gun stowed in my car. I didn’t want to raise her hopes unnecessarily, so I didn’t tell her about our Prospect House break-in. Instead, we chatted about the day while I helped her to bathe Timothy and Alessa. The three of them had checked out the address where Maurice had stayed with his grandma in the summers of his youth. Their retreat had been on Silver Lake, though whatever modest structure had originally been there had since been replaced by a modern A-frame.
When I asked, she allowed that it was odd that his family of limited means would vacation on a lake so far from home, friends, and family. She said Maurice had never questioned it as a kid but as he got older, wondered about the connection between Orpheus and the area.
It was about the time she put Alessa and Timothy to bed that I noticed my house was spotless. Even the plant leaves had been dusted. The air smelled fresh and lemony, and the countertops gleamed. Taunita had been busy. I wanted to thank Taunita, but the door to the spare bedroom was already closed. I crashed shortly afterward, the post-adrenaline let-down hitting me like a cement truck. My plan was to get up at seven so I could make the hospital’s eight o’clock visiting hour.
I slept on my mattress.
Ron Sims, editor and owner of the Battle Lake Recall, beat my alarm clock the next morning. “James.”
He’d never been what you’d call loquacious. His wife was the voice of the operation, both their marriage and the Recall offices. They were a decent enough couple except that if you caught them in a room together, they’d inevitably start making out like two walruses with a limited mating season and only one chance to save the species. It meant a lot of people didn’t visit the Recall offices, myself included, unless absolutely necessary.
I scratched absently at my arm, standing in the middle of my kitchen and squinting against the promise of sunlight filtering through my blinds. I wondered if I should take the phone off the hook so I could finally land a decent night’s sleep. That, or put a line in my bedroom. “Morning, Ron. What’s the news today?”
“Need someone to cover last night’s break-in at the Prospect House. You in?”
I perked up like a gopher, the punch of his words knocking the air and sleep out of me. “Whoof.” I actually said that, out loud. It was all I could manage.
“James?”
I sucked in a bit of air. Ron knew the Prospect House had been tossed last night, which meant the police knew. “Yeah. Someone broke into the Prospect House?” My voice squeaked.
“Someone who was not very smart.”
Crap. Was he giving me a chance to confess?
“They left their mittens behind,” he continued.
The vision was so clear I could have stepped into it. The flashlight catching the glint of the graceful blue teardrop necklace, Mrs. Berns pausing to remove her mittens and never putting them back on.
“What’d they take?”
He grunted. “Impossible to know. It’d be like stealing from a church garage sale. Carter called it in this morning. Said last night he thought he heard noises coming from the house—he and Libby live in the carriage house on the next lot—and he went to check. Found the house sealed tight, everything normal except for the mittens in the basement that hadn’t been there when he’d locked up earlier. Plus, footprints leading into the woods.”
For the love of Betsy. Had he also spotted the little pee trails we’d probably left after the ghost scared us out of there? And since when was everyone a detective? Whatever happened to people minding their own business? I was going to jail.
“James?”
“Yeah, I’ll cover it. I need to run to Fergus to check on Curtis this morning, but I can stop at the House over my lunch break.” If I’m not incarcerated.
“Probably just kids being kids. I’ll expect news by the end of the day.” Click.
It was now that much more urgent that I reach Curtis to see what was inside the gun barrel. If I returned it before Carter noticed that it was missing, I stood a chance of keeping me and Mrs. Berns out of the pokey. I speed-showered, told a sleepy Taunita that I’d be back that night, and was almost out the door before I realized I couldn’t exactly tote a Civil War musket into a hospital without drawing some unwanted attention. I hurried back to my bedroom closet but couldn’t find anything large enough. I ducked into Sunny’s office, where she had piled most of her belongings before leaving for Alaska, and dug through boxes until I uncovered an old hockey stick duffel bag. Perfect. Maybe today wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Maybe everything would fall into place.
Maybe pigs were right now flying through a frozen-over hell.
Forty-Four
“Curtis Poling.” It was the third time I’d said the name, but still the flustered woman at the information counter couldn’t seem to locate him. The heavy black hockey stick duffel lay on the floor next to me like a neon sign.
“Is that with a C or a P?”
“Is what with a C or a P?”
“His name.”
I wanted to tap on her head to see if her melon was ripe. “First or last name?”
“Last name,” she said, as if it were obvious.
“It starts with a P. P-O-L—”
A deep voice behind me interrupted my recitation. “He’s in stable condition. Woke up last night, ate solid food. Still can’t have visitors.”
I turned so slowly that I could hear my neck creak. No way Gary Wohnt was standing behind me, right? Stolen Civil War musket in a hockey stick bag much?
“Gary! How’re you feeling?”
He was not in uniform. Instead, he was wearing denim jeans that fit him like a friend, a crisp blue oxford, and a green and gold patterned tie. He was leaning heavily on a cane, but somehow it made him look even more capable.
He aimed one pointed glance at the duff
el bag.
I in turn stared at his cane, my eyebrow raised. It was meaningless, but he didn’t know that.
“What’s in the bag?”
Maybe he did know that.
“Curtis’s favorite hockey stick. I knew he’d want it.” Because what old guy doesn’t want a piece of wood when they’re recovering from a beating? “You said he’s alert?”
Gary let the silence fill the air between us. It did exactly that, sniffing around our heads, and it judged me lacking, and then it started pointing at me as if I were guilty. So I killed it. “I’m really worried about Curtis. Can you please tell me more?” I didn’t have to fake the pleading in my voice.
It did the trick. “He’s going to be okay.”
“Did he say anything more beyond the tattoo and the animal noise comment?”
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “What else do you know?”
“That’s it. I promise.” I raised my hand in what I assumed was Girl Scout’s honor. There’s nothing like squatting on a bag of lies to make you righteous about a single truth. “The nurse told me the other night that Curtis had asked about Mrs. Berns and me, and that he’d mentioned the tattoo and the same noise I’d heard when Mrs. Berns and I were harassed in the alley. I told Victor when I called the station the other day.”
Gary only nodded.
“Are you questioning anyone in Curtis’s attack?”
