by Alex Archer
Annja tipped her face up to the sun, which was shining bright now between gaps in the thinning clouds. “There’s no way I can talk you into tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
“Monday?”
“Nope. Persistent, aren’t you? Or maybe you just didn’t hear me the first two times. Annja, if there was a way I could swing it, I would. I love going with an experienced diver. But I’m booked. Thursday, like I said. Unless I get another cancellation. You’re welcome to find someone else.”
“No.” She’d keep the Thursday slot with him, but she would absolutely find some equipment and come back on her own. Tomorrow. No way was she letting go of this. Somewhere, at the bottom of Rock Lake, was the reason Edgar had been killed. She felt certain of it.
“Gold medallions,” she said as they neared the docks. “Did you find any gold coins...circles...on one of your dives? Edgar had some.”
“Nope.” Bobby grinned. “That would’ve been something, huh? Gold in the lake. Now, that would start a diving frenzy again. All I found were rocks. Rocks and that old car windshield. One of these times I ought to pull that thing up. Doesn’t belong down there, you know?”
Annja would find something else, beyond rocks and car remnants, and along with it, she would find Edgar’s murderer.
Chapter 17
Annja thought her stomach was trying to claw its way out of her body, given how much growling it was doing. She’d had a light breakfast, figuring that would be better for hours of diving. And now she was famished. Three in the afternoon, a perfect time for “linner,” and thinking of Rembert’s term made her think of him. She called him after saying goodbye to Bobby; it went right to voice mail. Maybe he had gone back to New York.
She walked down South Main and into a restaurant called Blue Moon. The window advertised Creole-style food. Annja had been raised in an orphanage in New Orleans and had learned to love the flavors of all the restaurants on Bourbon Street. A cute kid, she’d been able to get samples from the cooks with a smile and a thank-you. She sat by the window and opened a menu, scanned it and waved for the waitress, who was reading a fashion magazine at the cash register.
“Lemonade,” Annja started. “Pink if you have it. Deep-fried mushrooms for an appetizer, a Caesar salad, the Cajun chicken-breast sandwich and waffle fries.”
The waitress wrote it down. “Anything else?”
“Pie of some kind, but I’ll decide on that later.”
Annja closed her eyes and pictured the stones she’d seen under the lake. Bobby said Edgar was looking for something different than those mounds—which were impressive and which she intended to research another time, if only through the internet. Real pyramids—supposedly that was what Edgar told Bobby he wanted to find.
Was Edgar chasing phantoms in his old age? And was Peter going to chase them, too? She frowned. Peter was keeping something from her, bare minimum his interest in Edgar’s wild goose. Was he keeping anything else? Priors. That word continued to bob in her mind like the buoys on Rock Lake.
Peter had prior arrests.
She hadn’t taken the time to search the internet and pull up the arrest reports—those were public, and she knew how to get them. She’d been so intent on Edgar’s quest. Maybe she didn’t want to know about Peter’s past. Maybe it was none of her business. She did believe that Peter hadn’t killed Edgar, and that might be enough.
But it might not.
Edgar had been a good friend, very good, just like she’d told Detective Rizzo over and over. And she owed it to Edgar to find out who killed him.
And why.
The why part, she owed that to herself. Annja couldn’t let a mystery go unsolved. The who...she needed that, too. Even before she inherited Joan of Arc’s sword, she had an ingrained sense of justice.
Four women wearing various shades of purple came in and took the long table in the back. Two were wearing red ball caps.
“The usual!” the oldest of them hollered to the waitress.
Annja’s lemonade was neither pink nor freshly squeezed, but it quenched her thirst. The mushrooms were on the greasy side—but weren’t they always—and the Caesar salad was more of a mixed-greens assortment with overly large cucumber slices. But the Cajun chicken was so good that Annja ordered a second and passed on dessert.
“You a tourist?” the waitress asked when she slapped the bill onto the table. “Haven’t seen you here before.”
“Sightseeing,” Annja said, which was the truth. “Diving the lake, looking around. Lovely downtown.”
The waitress wrinkled her nose. “Lovely? I suppose. A bit of a tourist trap, if you ask me. I go into Madison to shop, once in a while to Brookfield Square in Milwaukee.” She paused. “There’s a carnival in town, way down at the end of the business district...well, what’s left of the business district. Turn left at the lot of the grocery store that’s closed. A couple of streets are blocked off for the rides. That’d be something for you to do.”
“Thanks. I might stop if they’ve got a Tilt-A-Whirl.” Annja left her a generous tip and strolled down the sidewalk, drinking in the small-town atmosphere. She caught site of the top of a Ferris wheel a few blocks away. It was so very different than her New York City home, this place. She hadn’t heard a siren all day. In New York, the sirens were ever present.
People smiled at her and sauntered in the way she’d expect them to in a quaint town like this. Annja peeked in shop windows, one an old-time drugstore that had a rack of comic books in front and a long, polished counter with an ice-cream fountain behind it. Maybe she’d stop there on her way back to where she’d parked her motorcycle. A strawberry sundae sounded good. There was a barbershop, but it was closed, only posting hours three days a week. A shoe repair shop, a dollar store—were they everywhere?—a tavern, a pizza place, a yarn shop that advertised knitting lessons and a wonderful big pale brick building on the corner. The sign read Fine Art Pottery. She stopped and looked up at a display arranged behind a high beveled glass window.
Intricately painted lady’s slipper orchids appeared to grow up the sides of fluted vases. Annja thought she might buy a couple and have them shipped to her apartment; they would make lovely gifts. She liked to have gifts on hand for special occasions that would pop up...a wedding here, a birthday there. A funeral. Could she possibly get Edgar out of her mind for a few minutes?
An amazing vase with crackle glaze stood out; it was called Indian Summer. Annja thought she might buy that one for herself. A squat vase was called Garland of Wild Berries. It appeared that every piece had a name.
Annja went up the steps and wandered around inside, studying the shelves. She purchased an urn called Fall Rhapsody, a pair of ginkgo-leaf-shaped candle holders, a vase with a breathtaking whooping crane stretched along its length, a small bowl with a cat on it and another with a dragonfly. The pieces ran between one hundred and three hundred dollars each. Annja didn’t bat an eye at that—the workmanship was impressive, and they would have cost her much more in New York, in any large city, for that matter. There was a massive bowl that almost made it onto her list, but it was seven hundred, and given what she’d already spent—on the pots, the motorcycle and on the dive—she reined herself in. She made arrangements to have her selections shipped home.
She was about to leave when a thin pitcher with an odd curved handle caught her attention. On its side was a half man, half jaguar, the tail of the beast forming the handle. Above it, on the highest shelf, was a bowl. She stepped back and tipped her head so she could better see it. Her breath caught. On the side was a stylized elk with a man’s head. The image was identical to the one on the gold circle from Edgar’s folder.
“That,” she said, pointing straight at it. “I’d like to see that, and the pitcher beneath it.”
The woman nodded. “Those are pieces from Joe, my favorite potter.” She got a ladder and brought them down and sat them on the counter. “One of a kind, these two pieces.”
Annja leaned in to look at them careful
ly, but made sure she touched nothing. The colors were beautiful. “The design, what... Does Joe like abstract art?”
“He did.”
“Did. I take it he doesn’t work here anymore. Retired? Is he still in town?”
The woman took in a sharp breath and shook her head. “Our dear Joe died early last fall. These are his last two pieces. Everything else of his has sold, though all of us here kept one. For remembering, you know. Now that I think about it, he didn’t do abstracts. He liked Indian art, said this was Indian art. Excuse me, Native American. I keep forgetting to say Native American, politically correct and all. Came up with the designs himself. Said he saw them on some stones and wanted to put them on his pottery.”
It was Annja’s turn to inhale sharply. “He saw these designs?”
The woman tilted her head. “That’s what he said. Joe pulled all of his designs from things he saw around here. Those dragonflies.” She tapped the shelf behind her, indicating a row of vases. “Those are his designs, too. Not his pots, but his designs. The crane. Joe was responsible for a lot of the designs. Even the bats. Only made a few of these odd pieces, his man-beast pots. We never saved these designs, just let them be one of a kind.”
“I’ll take both.” Annja didn’t even look at the prices. So much for reining herself in. “You said he died?”
The woman looked pale. “Oh, yes. It was horrible. Found his body down at the beach. Some tourist had knifed him. Never did solve the murder. Not to this day.”
Annja sucked in her lower lip. “Joseph Stever.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The name had appeared in one of the newspaper clippings from Edgar’s folder, one of the unsolved murders, the most recent one. She hadn’t read the article, just the headline, date and the caption under the accompanying head shot; she didn’t know one of the victims was from right here in town. The rest had all been “from the area.”
Was there a curse involving the lake?
Annja paid for the pottery with her credit card, the memory of the teenage girl with the knife surfacing. Could the mysterious teen have killed the potter? “Please, tell me about Joe.”
The woman grimaced. “I’d rather not. Makes me sad, and there’s enough sadness in the world, young lady. Be happy that you have the last two of his odd pots, as I call them.”
“Please,” Annja implored. “I just need—”
“Sorry, no.” She shook her head firmly. “If you want to know more about Joe, you go to the other side of the street and talk to his cousin Sully. He’ll tell you...though you’ll probably have to buy something to get his lips to move. And that’s provided he’s sober.”
Annja thanked her and left.
Everything’s connected, right? Annja thought. The lake, the unsolved murders, the two men who tried to run her and Manny off the road, Peter Chiapont, and Edgar, and Papa and Mrs. Hapgood, and Garin. Well, maybe not everything was connected.... She didn’t think Garin had anything to do with Edgar and his maybe-not-so-wild-goose chase. And what about the girl with the knife? Annja rubbed her temples and envisioned puzzle pieces floating on the surface of Rock Lake.
How did everything fit together?
Her sword appeared in the back of her mind, and she imagined it like a baseball bat, striking at each piece and forcing it into the proper order. The sword spun and...
A car honked and tires squealed. Annja turned to see that she’d stopped in the middle of the street and had nearly been run over. The bumper of a green Lexus was inches from her.
“Get out of the way!” the driver shouted. “You crazy, lady? Move your—”
Annja dashed across the rest of the way, the sword and the puzzle pieces vanishing from her thoughts. She jumped up onto the curb and stopped in front of a run-down storefront. The paint was gray, thick and peeling, curling and making the wood around the front window look like the scales of a fish that had been left to dry in the sun. A jumble of objects was displayed in the window...more like tossed into the window. Dolls sat crookedly atop stacks of books. Trains without wheels propped up trays of beads from a festival. Dishes, knitting needles, shot glasses, fishing lures and reels, faded baseball hats, dingy Christmas ornaments and more warred for her attention.
A sign painted on the glass read Sully’s What-Nots. A piece of cardboard with oPeN printed in red marker hung on the front door.
She stepped toward it but was intercepted before she could go inside.
“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod!” The girl in front of Annja took out her cell phone and snapped a picture. “OhmyGodohmyGod!”
A teenage boy was with the girl, and he stared, dumbfounded. “What?” he said. “What, Keesh?”
“She’s Annja Creed,” the girl gushed. “The Annja Creed!”
Annja smiled politely.
The boy shifted impatiently and muttered, “Big whoop. Who’s Annja Creed? Aren’t we going to the lake?”
“Take my picture with her.” The girl thrust the phone at the boy, then covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. Can Mitch take our picture? Would that be okay? I watch your program all the time. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, no one’s going to believe that the Annja Creed is in this hellhole of a town.” She scrunched her face into an uncomfortable-looking expression. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say hell. Would it be okay to have a picture with you? Please?”
Annja smiled and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. The girl was tall and thin and she shook with excitement. “I would love to have my picture taken with you—”
“Keesha,” she said. “My name is Keesha Marie Donaldson.”
“Nice to meet you, Keesha Marie.”
The girl’s shaking became even more pronounced. “T-t-t-take the picture, Mitch. Take a bunch of pictures. I gotta post these.”
“Sure. Whatever. Stand still, Keesh.” He held up the phone to take the picture. “Still don’t know who the heck is Annja Creed.”
He handed the phone back to the girl when he was done. The girl, Keesha, was now rooting through her purse. “Here!” She handed Annja a small notebook and delved again, likely for something to write with. “Could you sign this? Could I get your autograph? Could you write To Keesha on it? OhmyGodohmyGod.”
Annja obliged her, finding an empty page. She noticed that the other pages had sketches: an eye of Horus, an Egyptian-stylized bird, a crude rendering of King Tut’s death mask. “You like archaeology, Keesha?”
“Like it? I love it. I live it. I’m going to be an archaeologist. I want to be just like you. I’ve seen every one of your episodes, and I have the DVD sets, too, the ones with the behind-the-scenes sections. OhmyGod.”
“She’s on TV?” This came from the boy, who suddenly seemed more interested in Annja.
“I’ve watched everything I could find on mummies, too. Egypt is going to be my specialty, the Karnak temples.” She babbled on for several minutes, and Annja listened attentively.
Annja had learned to never be rude to fans, particularly ones with a real interest in archaeology. Every time she thought her Chasing History’s Monsters was too sensational and not serious enough, something like this happened...someone showed her that the program made a difference or meant something to someone.
“And I’ve loved everything you’ve done on the Nile Delta and Kufu and—” Keesha came up for air. “I’m going to be a sophomore at Lakeside High, and we don’t have much chance to study archaeology. But our library has a good selection, and the Milwaukee museum is wonderful. They had a King Tut exhibit and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, they weren’t really the scrolls—they were reproductions. The real scrolls will never be put on display like that or let out of the country. But these looked amazing, and the tour was great, and some people thought it was horrible when they discovered they’d paid a separate fee to see the exhibit when it wasn’t the ‘real’ scrolls. But they did have a real section of a scroll. A real piece of it. I went twice.” She took another breath.
“So you’re on TV?” the boy asked.
“Is it one of those reality shows? Maybe I should have my picture taken with her.”
Keesha just glared at him. “Are you on Facebook? I didn’t think to look you up on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, do you think I could—”
“Of course you can ‘friend’ me,” Annja said.
“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.”
Annja chatted with the girl for several more minutes, asking about her studies and recommending books. The girl soaked it in.
“So, why are you here?” Keesha asked. “In Lakeside? Are you trying to find the big snake? ’Cause I can tell you it doesn’t exist. You’d be wasting your time.” She nodded toward the shop Annja had been about to enter. “As silly as crop circles. You’re not here for that, are you?”
“No, actually, I came to Madison for the Great Lakes States Archaeological Conference, and—”
“There’s an archaeological convention in Madison?” Keesha squealed. “How did...? I didn’t know... Where was it publicized? Can I get in? Is it expensive? I don’t have a lot of—”
“Here.” It was Annja’s turn to reach into her purse. She pulled out her badge. “Use mine.” She opened the plastic and stripped off the label that had Annja Creed printed on it. “Just write your name on it and see if it will work.” The conference was quite expensive, likely out of the teenager’s reach. If Annja wanted to get back in, she could buy another pass. But she suspected the conference was over for her. “I happen to know that there are two programs tomorrow on Egypt and the ruins they’re finding under residential areas.” Fortunately neither happened to be Peter’s seminars, and so they were still scheduled, last she’d heard.
The girl covered her mouth again. “OhmyGod. I’ve read about that, homes collapsing because tomb robbers are tunneling underneath them.” She looked at the badge. “I can go? Really?”
“It’s downtown at the Madison Arms Hotel. Hopefully, the badge will work for you. Well, you’ll have to find a way to Madison, but—”
