“You? You’re never cold — ” which was true, I never feel the chill in the air as others do.
“I’m cold, Kyle — ” I lied again. “I’m ill. You know that I’m still suffering from a concussion and hypo . . . eh, whatever. I feel cold. So, give me a break and just close the stupid window.”
The window went up, and I turned up the radio.
“Rich, that’s a tad loud.”
I punched his arm as I said,“I can’t hear well, probably, because of the concussion.
“Ow! What the — ” he abruptly glared at me and found my finger to my lips and my free hand tightly fisted ready for another strike. He got the message, he kept quiet — but he had a look on his face as if he got stuck with the bar tab from a St. Patrick’s Day party.
“Who set you up with this vehicle, Kyle?” I said, in the most innocent tone I could muster.
“Your FBI friends; you know that,” Kyle answered as his hand went over to turn down the radio. I gave him another shot to the shoulder. He withdrew his hand.
“Just thought of a joke,” I said.
“Huh?” Kyle answered, rubbing his shoulder.
“Why is it that people should not tell secrets in a cornfield? Think before you speak Kyle. Think,” I said as I moved my hands about the car as if I were a TV game show hostess presenting a grand prize.
For several seconds, Kyle’s upper cheeks scrunched, turning his eyes into a pair of dark slits. It was the type of face he made when he attempted to figure out crosswords and tax forms. He flashed several glances between me and the rutted road that we were traveling on before his eyes widen, and he let loose an affirming, “Ah, hah. Boy, that is an old one, Rich. The answer is a cornfield; it has ears and the cornstalks.”
Kyle pulled our car up in front of the inn and parked it. Before he turned the ignition off, he upped the volume on the radio another notch, leaned to me, and whispered, “You think that the car is bugged?”
“Maybe,” I said, “or we are being watched and listened to by some type of parabolic device — ”
“Or we are being droned,” Kyle said softly, pointing skyward.
That was a scary thought, especially now with all that is associated with drones. “Yeah, that’s possible too,” I said as I scanned the horizon through my window.
“But why?” Kyle asked during the radio’s promo for Mabel’s Maple Market.
“To keep track of us, I suppose. I just have this feeling that — I don’t know — we’re being watched.”
My brother swallowed hard.
“And do you know what the worse part of this feeling is, Kyle? The worse part is that if we are being spied upon, it may not even be by the FBI.”
Kyle’s head went back as if my palm had thumped his forehead. His lips opened.
“Don’t even think about asking me who; I probably said too much,” I warned. “I can’t tell you; I really don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, either. It could be very dangerous for you if I did.”
Kyle’s words quivered in his whisper of protest. “Under the circumstances, maybe we shouldn’t go — ”
“Relax, nothing bad will happen,” I said assuaging my brother’s fears and at the same time, to calm my own. “Nothing is going to happen. Now, let’s conduct our search as planned and don’t forget to watch my back.”
As the two of us were vacating the car, I distinctly heard Kyle mumbling to himself, “Yeah, right, watch your back, but who will watch mine.”
#
CHAPTER 22
Out of the car, I noticed the sky was Dutch Blue and festooned with wisps of lacy white clouds. There still was a dampness in the air, but the warmth of the sunlight that splattered through the half-stripped naked trees, fell on the skin, and it felt good. No gales or gusts of wind assaulted me, stealing my breath away. But instead, gentle zephyrs caressed my cheeks. What a difference a day could make.
As I waited for Kyle to extract the 300 plus pounds of himself from our vehicle, my mind’s eye surfed through the waves of recent events — my finding Foley dying in the ropes, meeting Bo again, getting wacked on the head, volunteering for this job to give this stupid thumb drive to whoever wants it, seeing Bo dripping wet. Soon my thoughts drifted to the first time I saw Morgana taking shower, and the last time I saw Morgana getting out of one. My heart ached.
“Rich.”
Like a lifeguard’s whistle, my brother’s voice beckoned me back to the shores of the here-and-now. “Hum.”
“Okay, what’s your plan?” asked Kyle, who had come to be standing next to me.
“I don’t really have one. I guess, maybe, we should go inside the place.” I really didn’t know what else to do. The plan — if one could call it that — was for me to pretend to find the thumb drive in question and turn the damn thing over to someone who would ask for it. But who would that be, I wondered? There were only Kyle and myself around.
“Yeah, let’s go inside . . . if we can.”
Walking up to the fronts steps, we passed Bo’s car. It still had the large broken maple bough sticking out of its roof. Kyle stopped and remarked, “It was good that your lady friend wasn’t inside her car when this happened, eh?”
“Yeah, and to think that Morgana and I had parked just four spaces over,” I said looking a few yards away to our lonely, almost forgotten car, “we were very lucky.” A small wave of panic came over me. I burrowed my hand into my jacket’s side right pocket and found relief when I grasp my car keys. At least I could drive the car out of there and not have to pay for towing. My thrifty Scottish blood regained its composure.
“Ayuh, that tree limb came down with some force,” remarked Kyle. “The roof and hood are caved in; the front and side windows are smashed to pieces. It’s funny that the impact didn’t break the rear window and, yet, it sprung opened the trunk.” Kyle went to the back of Bo’s car and easily raised its rear hatch with his middle finger. The car trunk was empty except the for the spare tire and its accessories, and a greased stained blanket. And he concluded that the truck must have sprung open recently.
“How do you know that?”
“Because it is pretty dry inside. If it were open during the storm —”
“— It would be wet. Does it close?”
Kyle attempted to slam the trunk lid shut, it closed but refused to lock. He then pushed it down with his full weight. The lid clicked into place.
“Now, I know whom to call when I am packing my suitcases.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing, let’s get go inside.”
We ducked under the strand of yellow plastic tape that barred our way to the inn’s front porch. We timidly walked to the main entrance and found the door unlocked; we entered the lobby. With the bright daylight behind us, we found the lobby’s interior unfamiliarly dark. Kyle hit the light switch, nothing happened. Apparently, as a safety precaution, all power had been turned off.
“Hello?” Kyle called into void.
No answer.
“Hello,” he said again.
“Hey, if anyone were here they would have greeted us at the door, telling us to buzz off. Don’t you think?”
He nodded in agreement, and we cautiously moved on.
“Hey, Rich, do you find the place a little spooky?”
“Spooky? Is spooky a technical term that you have learned during your one year in law enforcement or a personal observation?” I jibed out of some fraternal bad habit that was nurtured when we were young.
Kyle grumbled something and gave me a deserved poke in my shoulder.
Yet, I have to admit that if the inn's ambience didn’t feel spooky, it definitely felt creepy. It was like walking into a room designed by Edgar Allan Poe. The acrid smell of smoke and tear gas still lingered in the air. I could see soot marks, water stains, and some charring along the walls. The carpets squished and crunched beneath our feet, a result of the floor being soaked by the emergency sprinkler system and the smashed windows. Most of the furniture had been
moved haphazardly, toppled over, broken, or any combination of the three.
“Yeah, that was some party the other day,” I joked standing over the remains of the long table that Kyle used as a trampoline. The response I got was another a grunt and grumble from the far side of the lobby. By this time, my eyes had adjusted to the dim light of the room, and I could clearly see the pockmark patterns in the walls from errant bullets. So many shots were fired, I pondered, and so many misses. It truly was a minor miracle that anyone got out of the building alive.
I looked up toward the second floor landing and noted thin dripping streams of dirty water, glistening as they fell behind the front desk. “Kyle,” I said, “I’m going upstairs.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“Ah . . . no. That’s okay,” I said — no wanting to waste those precious minutes with Kyle hauling himself up the stairs.“You would help me better if you just stay down there and police the area.” I chuckled to myself at my unintended word play.
“Okay, Rich, but, still, I’m not sure what I’m doing.”
“You’re helping me to look for the necklace.”
“Right, the necklace.”
I left Kyle wandering about the first floor, as I set out to explore the one above. I walked up the stairs and down the hallway. The remnants of tease gas, and smoke, which was stronger here than downstairs, clung to the air and annoyingly clawed at my nose, eyes, throat, and lungs. I coughed, and I tried not to sniffle. I didn’t want to take in any more of the foul chemical atmosphere than I had to. The image from some old World War I film came to mind. The scene had soldiers peeing on handkerchiefs and using them as an improvised breathing aids. The image just flitted through my mind, but being fussy about such matters, I just let the idea flit right on out again. I figured that if it got too difficult for me to breath up there, I’d just open a window or, better yet, simply go downstairs and leave the building.
I retraced the path of my crawl from the second floor landing to Mrs. Prosper’s room. Before entering the room, a distant crash, echoed behind me from down the hall. The noise sounded that it came from the opposite side of the landing.
“Kyle? Are you okay?” I called.
I heard footsteps approaching the bottom of the stairs. “I’m okay. Are you?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I heard a noise. It sounded like it came from the other end of the building.”
“The place is probably settling, beams creak — ”
“The noise was more of a crash, like something falling over and hitting the floor.”
“Squirrels, or a waterlogged drape breaking lose, maybe?” Kyle answered back.
Then another noise emerged from somewhere on the second floor. It sounded like a creak or muffled thud.
“Kyle, be quiet for a sec.”
I listened.
Silence.
“Yeah, probably nothing,” I concluded. “Keep browsing around downstairs. I’m going to look into the bedrooms.”
“Will do.”
As I went into the Mrs. Prosper’s room, I remembered the last time I had been there. I believed, at the time, that I may not leave the place alive. I noticed that the choking atmosphere in the hall had not made much progress in these quarters. In contrast, the air in the room was clean and crisp with only the tiniest whiff of the mayhem that occurred the previous day. I closed the door behind me and gave the place a more thorough look around. Across the room was the window, half-opened with one pane broken. Its curtains gently waved with the rushes of the invading outdoor air. Though I remembered when the window got smashed, I could not, for the life of me, recall the window being open when Mrs. Prosper and I made our escape.
Out of pure curiosity, I took a step towards the window, and as I did, a gloved hand sprang out from behind me and pressed itself violently over my mouth. Within two beats of a lover’s heart, a cold, blunt object dug into my right temple. Then I heard a click.
In this type of a do-or-die situation, the human body goes on automatic pilot. A brave man offers resistance. A strong man breaks free. A determined man subdues his assailant and a wise man, needless to say, would never find himself in such a predicament in the first place. Not being any of the said men, the manifestation of my fight or flight instinct resulted in me blacking-out. Not that fainting was a conscious choice on my part; it just happened. Doctors have since explained to me that the excessive excitement during that stage of my healing process, from my unfortunate head injury, could have easily brought about a dizzy spell. So, contrary to Kyle’s pseudo-medical opinion, my momentary loss of consciousness was not a weakness of character, but a delayed result of my concussion.
For my unknown assailant, he had the problem of dealing with my increasingly heavy, limp body. His whispered threats ordering me to stand on my feet grew ever distant as I sank down into a rabbit hole of numbing darkness.
I don’t believe I was out for long. When I came to, I was flat on my back on the floor and found Williams on one knee next to me, sticking a pistol only inches from the side of my nose. He hunched over me, saying something to the effect, “What in hell are you doing here?”
His question had such significance for me on so many levels, but at that particular moment, discretion led me to play the naive innocent. “My brother and I came looking for my wife’s aunt’s necklace.”
“Rich, are you okay?” echoed from the floor below us.
Williams’ eyes widened; his head nodded slowly up and down. The gun came closer to my face. “I’m fine,” I shouted back. “I just moved the bed a little.”
“Do you need any help up there?”
Williams now shook his head from side to side.
“No . . . no. I’m doing okay here. You keep looking around downstairs. Try the kitchen if you haven’t looked there yet. Retrace where Morgana was. The necklace has to be around here someplace.”
“The two of you came here for a necklace?” said Williams in a manner that gave me the impression that he wasn’t buying my story. His eyes shrunk into slits, a long deep breath followed. His gun hand stiffened, and I strongly wondered about whose side Williams was actually on — though I knew that it would be very unproductive to dwell on that subject at that particular moment.
Following the MacKenzie family philosophy, which is to assume that things are bad and expect that the bad things will only get worse, my survival skills kicked in. I remembered my real purpose in being at the White Post — give away the disguised computer file. Was Williams the guy to give it to?
I pretended to ignore Williams’ hostile reception and said, “I am so happy the I found you.” I slipped my hand into my pocket and cautiously pulled out the drive file. “This cross thing caught my eye, just now, outside in the hallway. It was lodged between runner rug and floor moulding. I remember Mrs. Prosper holding onto it, when we were leaving the room to get out of the building. She had it when she was praying. She must have dropped it.”
Williams took it from my trembling fingers and carefully examined it, but always keeping a watchful eye on me as he did so. Finally, he tugged at it, separating it into two.
“A thumb drive!” I asserted — hoping that I convincingly feigned ignorance — “Why that must be the thing that you all were looking for.”
“But if she had it, why didn’t she acknowledge that she did when I was with her?”
That was a good question, too good of a question, in fact, to answer without a well-constructed response. “Who is to say? She probably didn’t know that was the thing everyone was searching for.”
Williams eyed me with ruthless suspicion.
“If she knew what that thing actually was — which I doubt — I would guess that she reasoned that as long as you and your friends were running amuck around here, rest of us would be safe. That is, we would be safe as long as you people didn’t have that . . . that thing in your hand. Because once you got it, you would kill everyone in the inn to cover your trail, so to speak.”
Willia
ms still gave me a very cold stare and didn’t say a word.
“For God’s sake, the woman is over eighty years old. She loses track in reciting her ABCs. Have you ever really talked to the woman? No matter what the topic is, it always wends back to herself. She’ll talk about some conversation she had with somebody on some insignificant subject which took place thirty or forty years ago. . . . She’ll tell you what she said at the time, and what she thought. She will tell you what the other person said . . . and, get this, she’ll tell you what the other person was probably thinking at the time. But it doesn’t stop there, oh no. She’ll then explain why that person thought the way they did. And then . . . then she’ll tell you whole damn story over again with all the sidebar information, just in case you missed something!”
Williams looked at me coldly and jammed his gun into my face. I stopped my venting. I took a breath and said flatly, “She must have dropped the thing when we were being smothered in smoke, when we were leaving.”
“Where were you before you came here today?”
“From the medical center, in Bennington.”
“Was Prosper there?”
“Yeah, she was,” I said trying not to reveal any trepidation in my voice.
“Did she say anything to you about this?” Williams held the drive as an angry teacher would hold a piece of chalk.
I didn’t now what to say. I stammered. “I told you — ”
“Nothing else?” said Williams in such a way that suggested to me to agree.
“No.”
I had no idea what Williams was after; his gun in my face didn’t help. I didn’t know which side of the Mason-Dixon Line he was on, either. My banged up, jumbled brain scrambled for an appropriate answer, but it was coming up with nothing.
“How was she?” My assailant gave me a long cold stare.
“She was in a wheelchair,” Williams shook his head from side to side — wrong answer. “I mean . . . I was in a wheelchair when I saw them moved her to the ICU.” Williams nodded his head up and down — right answer.
“And?” William pressed his gun harder into me.
FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2) Page 27
