Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  As they were about to leave, Clare saw a pile of old letters on the corner of Lexie’s desk. Letters…with Lexie’s writing. That made Clare remember something she’d forgotten long ago.

  She snapped her fingers and tried not to get too excited.

  As soon as she’d left the Claytons’ house, she drove back home and ran up to her room.

  “Clare?” her mother called in surprise from the bottom of the stairs. “Is that you? What’s the excitement? It sounds like you’re tunneling for gold up there.”

  “I am!” she shouted. “Old letters.”

  “You’re not digging all those boxes of things out of your closet, are you, Clare?” her mother said in despair.

  “Yes!”

  “But it took us a week to figure out how to get it all to fit in there and still leave room for your clothes!”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be easier the second time!”

  Lavinia put a hand on the bottom post of the stair rail, preparing to go and join the battle.

  “Can I help, dear?” she called out.

  There was utter silence. And then, a reply.

  “No, Mother. I’ve found what I was looking for,” Clare said, coming to the top of the stairs. She held out an old letter in one hand, and a silver charm bracelet in the other.

  “An old letter and a bracelet?” Lavinia wrinkled her nose, not understanding what all the fuss was about.

  “One’s Lexie Clayton’s,” Clare replied. “The other’s mine.”

  She looked at them and wondered if indeed they could help draw out the man that she and Case were looking for.

  Was she more frightened that they would? Or that they wouldn’t? She went downstairs and picked up the phone to call Case.

  Chapter 15

  It was the Fourth of July.

  Hot as a firecracker.

  The perfect time to flush out a murderer, Case thought.

  He stood at the edge of the courthouse square, watching Clare talk with town officials about the schedule for the day. It was getting hectic now. All the details had to be confirmed. Yes, the high school marching band was lined up and would begin the parade through town on time. The various dignitaries were on the lead cars, ready to file into the hastily erected stands on the square. And the mayor’s speech was printed. A copy was on his person, another was taped to the podium and several others were being held by various people, including Honoria Bonney, just in case disaster struck and they were needed.

  Clare was frazzled. Everyone wanted a piece of her time. As the official town historian, she’d been asked to do a photo journal of the day’s events, and she had to make sure her troops were deployed. Her troops were enthusiastic, but a little on the inexperienced side: high school journalism students, a Boy Scout serving as official photographer as part of getting his eagle badge, a retired library assistant who agreed to conduct impromptu interviews with citizens during the course of the day.

  And the mayor, for some reason, kept asking her to run errands for him.

  Case grinned ruefully. Clare was the one person in the courthouse who could absolutely, positively, without question be counted on to do the errand she was asked, and in time.

  Some of the others tended to get sidetracked, he had noticed.

  She wandered toward him in a daze. “You know,” she said, “I don’t understand how some of these people manage to get dressed in the morning without help.”

  Case laughed and draped an arm over her shoulders affectionately. “Just so you don’t let them recruit you into helping them,” he teased. “If you get an irresistible urge to help someone find his pants and tuck in his shirttail, just come to see me.”

  She gave him an affectionate elbow in the side.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said with a giggle. “Well, the band should be striking up over by Fourth and Seneca right about…” She checked her wristwatch. “Now.”

  They cocked their heads, ears tilted in the direction the band should be. Waited… waited… and then…

  The strains of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” came floating across the hot summer air.

  Case looked down at her and raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  “So far, so good,” he said.

  “Yes. But it’s a long day.” Clare sighed. Then she dragged Case off to sit down on the folding chairs in the reviewing stands.

  “After the parade, we listen to Mayor Bonney’s speech,” she explained.

  “What a treat.”

  “I’m sure we all feel the same,” Clare admitted ruefully. The mayor had said almost the same thing for years. The words shifted around a little bit, but one always had a strong case of deja vu sitting there listening to him. It tended to put people to sleep.

  “Then there are barbecues and picnics. The county men’s clubs and women’s clubs are organizing a raffle in the late afternoon for charity. The lake will be busy with people swimming or boating or picnicking…”

  “Isn’t it too hot for all this activity?” Case teased, leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head. He gave her a sidelong glance. “Now if you could work it into your schedule next year, I have a suggestion of how we could spend it.”

  “Oh?” She looked at him in surprise.

  It was the first he’d mentioned their doing something next summer. Or next month, for that matter. Her heart beat a little faster in anticipation. It had begun to worry her that they weren’t talking about where this relationship was going, and yet, she’d hesitated to be the one to bring it up. Especially since they both wanted to do everything possible to clear Seamus’s name and resolve who had murdered Lexie.

  “Yes,” he drawled. “Do you remember my telling you that I wanted to look into buying the old glass-and-ceramics factory?”

  She nodded. She’d listened to him talking on the phone a couple of times with bankers and underwriters and a lawyer somewhere in Delaware who handled a lot of incorporations from out-of-state people. She’d thought he’d given up on the idea, since he was being fairly closemouthed about any purpose it could be put to.

  He pulled a key out of his pocket. “As of yesterday, it belongs to me.”

  Clare stared at him in disbelief. “What on earth are you going to do with it?” she asked.

  “Well, I have a little business to tend to tonight,” he said vaguely.

  “But the fireworks!”

  “Hopefully, it’ll be done before then. And then I thought I’d sit down with the Crawfordsville town historian and put a proposition to her.”

  Clare’s mouth went dry.

  “What kind of proposition?” she asked.

  “A….long-term one. But you don’t have to decide right away whether you like it or not,” he said, donning a casual attitude.

  “Case, why wait till tonight?” she said. The heat wasn’t helping her remain patient. “If you’re going to ask me…”

  She clutched. She just couldn’t blurt it out. What if he looked at her as if she were out of her mind? What if he didn’t mean…

  The color guard was rounding the corner and everybody was standing up to salute Old Glory. Case put his hand over his heart and rose along with everyone else.

  “I think this town could do better than this,” Case told her softly. “And I don’t mind helping it along. I think I can turn a profit at the same time. And I think you might find an interesting job in this..?”

  Clare looked at him in confusion. “Job?”

  He heard the faint disappointment in her voice and grinned. “Yeah. I’m going to create a museum and living history center here.”

  She gaped at him.

  “You know…a history of Ohio, one of the early cross- roads of the nation… and maybe we can even expand it eventually to do justice to the Native Americans who lived here for thousands of years first. I figured some of the old nineteenth-century buildings could be used as historical spots. And maybe we could even add a nonprofit arm and support a renaissance of local artists and craftspeople.”

>   “But where will we get the money? And how will it support itself?”

  “I know how to find money, Clare.” Case grinned. “I solve problems like this for a living, although usually they involve large-scale industries—you know, some industry is dying in one country, but another is taking it over… Well, when that happens, a lot of individual companies need to be bought and sold, their capital and their goods exchange hands. The skilled people sometimes have to be relocated. New people trained. It involves figuring out exactly what has to happen and then seeing to it that it does.”

  “Sounds like a way to have terminal anxiety attacks,” Clare murmured.

  “It gets easier the more you do it,” he said with a shrug.

  “So my job would be… ?”

  “Whatever position you want.” He handed her the key. “You can be the executive director of the restoration project, if you want. And you can pretty much name your own price. We can work out funding support to come along as gradually or as quickly as you like. I’ve already got a number of sources who’re interested. Some want to support historical preservation. Some just want to make money.” He laughed. “And one guy is sure it’s a financial loser, but he needs a loss over the next five years and wanted to sign up in the hopes that he was right and I was wrong about the money potential.”

  She looked down at the key. “Where will you be while all this is going on?” she asked slowly.

  The band marched in cadence, the drums rolling out a smart staccato rhythm. The lull in the music gave them a moment when what was said could be heard without having to shout.

  “Where do you want me to be, Clare?” he asked softly.

  She looked into his eyes and saw the small glint of uncertainty there. He really wasn’t sure of her, she realized. Even after all the intimacy and lovemaking and worrying and digging into the sins of the people of this little town.

  She touched his cheek with her hand. “I want you to be with…”

  The band struck up the “Stars and Stripes Forever” at that very moment. The crowd roared in approval and all conversation was drowned out in the typhoon of triumphant musical strains and the wildly cheering citizenry of Crawfordsville.

  And then the mayor and the town council and twenty or thirty other civic leaders were climbing into the stands with them, and the conversation had to be left to be finished later.

  Clare sat seething in frustration in the searing heat.

  She’d always liked a Sousa march, but the timing was really off today, she thought in exasperation.

  After that, things went from bad to worse. Every time it got quiet enough to try to talk to Case, someone would come up and strike up a conversation. Or somebody needed to know when they were scheduled to speak at the opening of official picnic activities. And then there was the committee handling the fireworks, chaired by no other than Mrs. Honoria Bonney.

  When Clare spied Honoria swooping down on her with the intent look of an annoyed hawk, Clare knew the rest of her afternoon was probably about to be ruined.

  “What are you doing later tonight, Case?” she asked weakly.

  “Hopefully, holding you in my arms while we sit on a blanket and watch the fireworks,” he said. Giving a dubious look at Honoria, who was now bowing over them like a dragon, he added, “Although, maybe Honoria will have to personally supply the fireworks this year.”

  Honoria rolled her eyes in fury. “No. I will not be providing fireworks this year, Case. However, the company that my committee contracted with to supply the fireworks will…if the fire chief can be assured that they have their forms in order!”

  If looks could kill, Clare thought that both the fireworks technicians and the fire chief would probably have died brutal deaths within the hour.

  “Clare,” Honoria said, zeroing in on her prey. “You’ll have to come down to the lake and talk to them. The mayor’s too busy to do it. The sheriff is handling all the parade-related problems and traffic routing and emergencies. The town council is tied up having their picture taken as a group in front of the charity raffle in the next hour, and since they’re up for election next fall, well, they’re not going to give up a photo opportunity and a benefit support to go argue with the fire marshal and the fireworks people.”

  Honoria Bonney snorted in fury, although she would have been the last person to pull the mayor away from a photo op merely to resolve the success of the annual Fourth of July grand finale.

  Clare glared at her.

  “Why me, Honoria? I’m not an elected official. I’m not the town manager…”

  “He’s in Florida with his family,” Honoria revealed, clearly put out at his desertion in her time of deep need.

  “But…”

  “No.’buts’!” Honoria intoned forcefully, holding up her hand as if she were halting traffic for the president himself. “I insist. You are used to smoothing out these kinds of tangles,” she cajoled.

  Case saw Franklin Bonney walk by the reviewing stands and slide quietly through the crowd. He had a peculiar look on his face. And a small envelope in his hand.

  “Why don’t you see what you can do, Clare?” Case said abruptly. He rose to his feet. “I have something to take care of in the next couple of hours. Maybe by then you’ll have it all settled.”

  Clare looked at him as if he were deserting her sinking ship. “Thanks, Case,” she muttered. “But don’t forget,” she spoke up as he turned to go. “We have a conversation to finish.”

  “We’ll finish it tonight,” he said softly. “I promise.” He bent down, kissed her on the mouth. His eyes gave a promise, too.

  And then he made his way down the reviewing stand and disappeared in the holiday crowd.

  The sounds of revelry could still be heard in the distance. But inside the dilapidated glass-and-ceramics factory, the celebration seemed far away.

  Case had arrived early. He expected company within the hour. Until then, he might as well take another look at his newly acquired property, he thought dryly. Make sure he’d covered his risks as best he could.

  At least there was one risk he thought was pretty much eliminated. That was Clare. The last time he’d caught a glimpse of her, the fire chief was still shaking his head until his jowls flapped, and the two fireworks technicians were looking as if they were preparing to be used as sacrificial Roman candles.

  Case grinned, remembering how Clare had looked in their midst. She was trying to be calm, and she was nodding and looking alternately at each warring camp with the utmost sympathy and understanding. But then she glanced at her watch and he saw the funny little way she made her face go blank. He knew what that meant. If those guys didn’t settle their differences soon, in a way that made sense to her, they all might end up as part of the fireworks display.

  Case slipped his penlight out of his hip pocket and shined it in a few of the corners as he wandered through the large, open rooms with their tables and workbenches, kilns and ovens. Something skittered across the floor to avoid the light. The sound of broken glass cracking into small pieces came from beneath his shoe. The place obviously needed cleaning up.

  He walked over to one dirty glass pane. Through the heavy layer of dirt, he could see the fading of the day. The hot yellow-white light was cooling into orange and mauve. It wouldn’t be long now before twilight settled in.

  And the fireworks would begin.

  Clare jammed the key into the front door of the courthouse and marched inside. Trailing after her were the fire chief, the fireworks technicians, Honoria Bonney, a clerk from the permits office and a. security guard who kept insisting in a very authoritative voice that no one was allowed inside. No one.

  “Open your office, Horace,” Clare told the little balding clerk. She was stern. She was hot. She was not putting up with another second of this bureaucratic bumbling.

  Horace, his hand shaking, glanced nervously at Clare, and did as he was told.

  “You’re sure this isn’t going to get me into any trouble?” Horace asked
anxiously. “I can’t afford to lose my job. I tell you I never got no permit request processed…”

  Clare pushed by him and made a straight line to his in-box, which, as usual, was overflowing. Being a small town somehow did not relieve the mail volume.

  She picked through -the mail at the speed of a motorboat looking to set a new race record.

  “Uh, don’t lose any of that,” Horace pleaded nervously.

  Clare spied the return address of the fireworks company and plucked the envelope triumphantly from the pile. The rest she dropped on Horace’s desk. She gave him a stern look.

  “Horace, you have to get through your mail more than once a month.”

  “But…”

  Clare ripped it open, pulled out the permit request and a copy of their contract with the mayor’s signature approving the event.

  The fire chief, who was not about to be rushed into anything, took his time and looked everything over very carefully.

  “Looks like everything’s in order,” he said slowly. “Licenses, insurance, bonding, guarantees…” He flipped through page after page. Then he handed it to Horace. “It needs an official license with the town seal on it and Horace’s red ink stamp.”

  “But it’s a holiday, that’s not—” Horace began to protest. Then he saw Clare’s face. “Uh, my seal is, uh, over here.” He reached in the drawer and pulled it out.

  The red tape was cut in less than a minute.

  The fire chief beamed. The technicians tore out of the office and ran to their waiting truck to hightail it back to their command post at the lake.

  And Honoria Bonney put her arm around Clare and walked her to her car, which was parked right in front of the courthouse.

  “You were wonderful!” she extolled, beaming.

  “I really have to run, Honoria…”

  “Nonsense, get in the car. I’ll drop you off.”

  Honoria got into the driver’s seat while Clare slid into the passenger’s.

  “I hope the fireworks won’t be out of your way,” Clare said anxiously. She looked at her watch. It would be dark in an hour. Case was expecting her at the entrance to the fairground.