The Mountain's Shadow

by Cecilia Dominic

  “Are you sure? You look like hell.” The pale tint under her olive skin made her look slightly green.

  “I’m fine.”

  “All right. But at least let me come with you.”

  “Sure. It might help to have a second set of ears.”

  The wobbly way she walked up the stairs to change shoes made me wonder if she needed an extra set of legs, too.

  The mayor of Piney Mountain, now Crystal Pines, lived in one of the newer houses of the subdivision. We arrived just after ten a.m.

  “He certainly didn’t suffer a drop in the standard of his living.” I looked around after we rang the doorbell. The house had been built to look like a large 1920s-style bungalow. I remembered that before Crystal Pines, this neighborhood had been a park.

  “No doubt.” Lonna gave a low whistle as a uniformed maid answered the door. “You don’t even have one of those.”

  “Yet,” I whispered as we were shown into the living room. She smirked.

  “Gabriel might have some competition.”

  “I doubt that. I’m not into maids.”

  For a moment, everything felt like it was right between us again. Then Peter Bowman walked in.

  Lonna took a quick breath, and I felt what my grandfather used to call the “Stony Joanie” look cross my face. He said when I got uncomfortable, I would retreat behind a mask, and it was impossible to tell what I was feeling or thinking. When I grew into adulthood, others found it to be quite intimidating. Now I hoped it covered the rage I felt at Peter’s threats from two very long days ago as well as the anger and frustration from the erosion of my friendship with Lonna, which I blamed him for.

  “Ms. Marconi, Doctor Fisher, please have a seat. Mayor Franz will be with you shortly.”

  “And why does he feel the need to have a lawyer present?” I asked as I settled into a plush armchair and crossed my legs. “Is he feeling guilty today?”

  A condescending smile curled the left corner of Peter’s patrician mouth. “I was here working with the mayor on some paperwork for the new town hall.”

  “What’s wrong with the one you’ve got?”

  “It has termites, mold and structural issues. There are documents currently stored in it that are irreplaceable, so we’re working on building a new place for them before we tear that old wreck down.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Tear down the Town Hall? I remembered walking by it with my grandfather and eating picnic lunches on the front steps. How could they take away another one of my memories? I blinked to keep the tears from forming in my eyes.

  “What kind of documents?”

  “The birth, death and marriage records for the town, for one thing. Some of them are so old they can’t be moved too often.”

  “What about bringing in trained document restoration experts?” asked Lonna. “Surely the town would be invested enough in its history to pay someone to come out and take care of its records, especially since genealogy is now such a popular hobby.”

  “It would cost too much to do it right now, and the town council doesn’t want to send the records away.”

  “Yet they can afford a whole new building?”

  “They can justify the expense if it’s for more than one purpose. It will be Crystal Pines’ first multi-use facility with the Town Hall, Library and administrative offices.” Peter shrugged. “That’s how government works, ladies.”

  “So you’re tearing down the library, too?”

  “It’s been closed for a few years now due to moisture and mold problems, and the books are in storage.”

  “It doesn’t seem that Mayor Franz is hurting too much.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

  “I was well-compensated for my land when Crystal Pines came in. I’m Lee Franz,” said the tall man with sandy red hair and freckles. He held out his hand and shook mine with a firm, confident grip. He looked to be in his fifties, and his blue eyes sparkled like those of someone who shared an inside joke with the world. He wore an impeccably tailored white shirt and gray trousers.

  “Joanie Fisher,” I introduced myself, my cheeks hot.

  “Ah, yes, the town heiress. We sorely miss your grandfather. He kept up with a lot of the town history for us.”

  “This is my friend Lonna, a social worker from Little Rock.”

  “I assume you weren’t here to talk to Mayor Franz about family records?” asked Peter, now in full lawyer mode. Lee Franz sat on the leather sofa, and Lonna and I reclaimed our seats in the armchairs.

  “Yes, er, no,” said Lonna. “We’re here to talk about the missing children.”

  “I get telephone calls every day about that from worried townspeople,” Lee told her. “I wish I knew something that could help them. And you.”

  “Natives of Piney Mountain, right?” I asked. “Not the Crystal Pines newcomers.”

  He rubbed his temples. “They think the new development has stirred up an evil mountain spirit that wants to take revenge for being disturbed.”

  “An evil mountain spirit?” The hair on the back of my neck pricked just thinking about the cry I’d heard the night before.

  “The Ozarks have several legendary monsters. One of them, the Gowrow, was supposedly common up here in the 1800s.”

  “What’s a Gowrow?”

  “A twenty-foot-long lizard with tusks. It liked riverbeds and caves.”

  “And what do you think about this monster, or at least the possibility that it’s the one snatching your children?”

  “We can’t seem to find any other explanation.”

  “What about wolves?” I asked, my heart beating fast.

  “The Arkansas red wolf and the coyote are probably too small to carry off a child of nine or ten. Besides, we’d at least have something left to find. They wouldn’t just vanish.”

  I shivered at the gruesome thought, and the memory of Louise, battered and burned, came into my head.

  “So no one has reported a large black wolf roaming around?”

  “Why?” asked Peter, alarmed. “Have you seen one?”

  I looked at him and realized he didn’t know about his brother and cousin. Neither did the mayor, and now that I thought about it, Lonna didn’t, either. I hadn’t had the chance to tell her yet. Gabriel and I were the only ones who knew there were real, honest-to-God werewolves running around.

  I decided to evade the question. “It was something that someone told me.”

  “There are a lot of, shall we say, eccentric people in these parts, Doctor Fisher.” The mayor dismissed them with a wave of his hand. ”I would take what they say with a large grain of salt.”

  “I see.”

  “If you don’t have any more questions for the mayor,” Peter said, but his cell phone rang. He frowned at the screen, then answered it. “Marguerite, I told you not to call me this morning. I’m in a meeting with the mayor.”

  He walked into the hallway, but even from there, we could hear hysterical crying on the other end. “What? That’s impossible! From his room? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  Peter came back in, his face pale. “Lance is missing.”

  “Your son?” asked Lonna.

  “Taken from his room. Last night. Marguerite thought he woke up early and might have wandered off, but she can’t find him anywhere, and the front door was unlocked.”

  “Go,” said the mayor. “I can handle things from here.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Lonna said. I looked at her, speechless. “If they have to search the woods, they need as many feet as they can find.”

  “Fine. We can follow you,” I told Peter.

  “Thank you.” He clasped Lonna’s hand. “That means the world to me.”

  I bit my tongue over my sharp retort and followed them out.

  Peter and his family lived in a large Tudor-style brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Their front yard was small, as with most modern subdivisions, and their back lawn sloped gently to the woods. Right now both front lawn and back teem
ed with uniformed men who inspected every blade of grass and every inch of driveway.

  Peter drove in immediately before us, and he was greeted by a petite woman with blonde curls and a cute snub nose. He took her into his arms and held her stiffly as she sobbed into his tailored suit jacket.

  “That must be Marguerite.”

  Lonna just watched the scene with guarded eyes. I knew how she felt. I’d met Robert’s wife the first time at a company party, and it had been extremely awkward. I remembered doing the point-by-point comparison—my hair was not as stylish, but I was thinner; her breasts were bigger, but mine didn’t sag; she’d obviously had some work done, and I was in the bloom of youth. But in the end, it didn’t matter. He’d gone back to her. Not that I blamed him, at least not in my rational moments. He’d built a life with her. I was just a pleasant diversion to make work more interesting.

  And Lonna was just a pleasant diversion for a man who had a weakness for beautiful women.

  “It’s not easy to realize you’re an attractive distraction,” I said softly as I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Let’s go.” Her voice broke, but she smiled slightly.

  We turned to go, but we heard him call after us, “Lonna, Joanie, this is my wife, Marguerite.”

  We turned to meet the woman’s suspicious gaze. I couldn’t blame her. She must know what kind of man her husband was. She immediately turned her brown eyes on Lonna, and I could see the point-by-point occurring in both their heads. I couldn’t tell who won. Well, Marguerite, obviously—she was married to the cad, after all.

  “What time did you notice Lance was missing?” Lonna straightened her spine. I could see by the angle of her chin that she wouldn’t back out of the situation.

  Marguerite looked at Peter, who said, “The police don’t know it, but Lonna is a private investigator who’s also working on the missing-children case. She may be able to help.”

  Marguerite’s shoulders slumped. “At seven.” She spoke with a French accent. “I went to wake him for his breakfast, and he was gone.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I thought he was playing a joke on his Mama.” She accented the second syllable of Mama. “So I looked for him everywhere in the house. Then I saw the front door open.”

  “What time was that?” I admired Lonna for her gentle tone. She did very well hiding the emotions that must have been roiling beneath her professional demeanor.

  “About eight. We have a big house with many places for a little boy to hide.”

  I counted the windows. They did have a mansion. Lance would never have gotten lost in the small houses that had originally stood on the land.

  “Then what did you do?”

  Tears trickled down her cheeks. “I have already told the police this. Why do I have to live it again?”

  “Marguerite, honey, it’s okay. Just tell Lonna what you did then.”

  “I went outside and yelled for Lance. I looked in the pool. In the woods, but the brush is too thick. Then I called the police and Peter.”

  “Where are Ron and Leo?” I asked. “They live with you, right?”

  “They were out all night. I haven’t seen them.”

  Peter’s jaw tightened. “They never came in?”

  “No. For all I know, they went to the city to party.”

  I remembered Leo talking about his nephew and knew he couldn’t have had anything to do with the boy’s disappearance. I hoped.

  A police car drove up, lights flashing and siren blaring. For the third time that day, I saw Sheriff Bud Knowles.

  “Well, Doctor, you’ve just got your finger in all sorts of pies today, don’t ya?”

  “Sheriff Knowles, how good to see you again,” Lonna said as she held out her hand. “We were meeting with Counselor Bowman and the mayor when he got the telephone call about his son.”

  “It’s amazing how y’all always end up in just the right place at the right time.”

  “Amazing or unlucky,” I muttered. I didn’t care to stand there breathing in Knowles’s bacon breath or hearing the poor woman have to talk about her missing son in front of her husband’s newest girlfriend, so I wandered around to the side of the house. The ground was slightly damp, the grass struggling to grow in the shade of an oak tree. Something in the mud caught my eye: a large animal footprint.

  I looked over my shoulder, and sure that all the others were either engrossed in the conversation with Knowles or searching other parts of the yard, I knelt down. It was a wolf print. I hadn’t ever seen one, but I could tell. It must have come through the side yard before snatching the child.

  I shivered. Did I think the black wolf had something to do with it? Louise had warned me about it, but I didn’t know what it all meant—just that now one of the “aristocrats” had disappeared, and my newfound research subjects were in that much more danger. Or were they the danger? Either way, I needed to know where they were.

  “Can you believe this? That poor woman.” Lonna’s voice startled me out of my mental calculations as to where Ron and Leo were and how far they could have gone. I hastily straightened up and stepped on the paw print with my left foot, which obliterated it. The last thing the guys needed was a mob of wolf hunters to descend on the woods.

  “I thought she was the enemy?”

  “C’mon, Joanie, she’s just misplaced her son. We must take care of her bruised ego and coddle her.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you. Neither does jealousy,” I said. “But she probably could use some tea. Or something a little stronger.”

  “If Peter actually invites us in, I’ll offer.”

  “How big of you.”

  “Now who’s sarcastic?”

  As we walked toward the door, Marguerite looked up, and her eyes met mine. I felt guilty even though I hadn’t done anything. This time. Still, the whole situation had a sense of déjà vu. I could feel Lonna squirm under Marguerite’s gaze. I knew from painful experience that it would be best for Lonna not to set foot in the Bowman house.

  One weekend I’d needed to drop by Robert’s house to work on a manuscript. The office wasn’t an option because the company, in an attempt to save power, wasn’t running the air-conditioning on weekends, and it was a hot, muggy Memphis summer day. Robert met me at the door wearing a crisp short-sleeved white button-up shirt and khakis. The outfit set off his tanned face, neck, arms and legs, and his dark hair was still damp from his shower. He didn’t smile, though. His expression was so somber he could have been opening the door to his doom.

  “Sarah is in the kitchen. Are you okay with this?”

  “Yes.” I choked on my heart, which felt like it beat in my throat. I was afraid that if she saw me, she’d know something was up between us beyond the mentor/junior researcher relationship. We hadn’t actually slept together at that point—we had only flirted, but the way the emotional attachment was going was abundantly clear to both of us. And we had an invited article submission deadline, so the domestic gods had to be placated that day.

  “I brought this,” I told him and held out a bottle of red wine. “I, um, thought you and your wife could share it later.”

  “Sarah doesn’t drink, but I’ll enjoy it.” He looked me over from head to toe. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to look at. I had dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Trying to look the nonthreatening student?”

  “Why would I be threatening?” Gads, why was I flirting with the man with his wife in the house?

  He smiled, that dazzling, perfect-teeth-in-a-tanned-face, boyish, impish smile that made my heart skip a beat. “Why, indeed?”

  “Rob?” A woman’s voice called from inside the house.

  “Yes, dear?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Is that your assistant?”

  “Yes, we’ll be right in.” He gestured for me to follow him. “She’s made cookies.”

  “Do they have alcohol in them?” I muttered as I walked inside through a two-story foyer and straight back
to a large white kitchen with an island. It smelled heavenly, like gingerbread. Why anyone would bake on a day like that was beyond me, but apparently the Cannons didn’t worry about high air-conditioning bills.

  Sarah Cannon was tall, willowy, and the perfect match for her husband. Beside her I felt small and plain. Her opinion, too, apparently, as her eyes flicked from my face to my casual attire. I could see the verdict: no worries here, just another plain female scientist working with the husband. I doubted she remembered me from the company picnic.

  She smiled. “Welcome. I’m so glad you and Robert are able to work here today.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It smells great in here.”

  “Sarah is working from home today, too,” Robert explained. “She’s the head recipe tester for the Memphis Gazette.”

  “Our AC in the office is out, so it was bake at home or not at all, and there are always deadlines. At least this way I can write that it works well in a home kitchen.”

  I put on my friendliest smile. “And she gets to write that her husband liked it as well.” And his “assistant”. My stomach growled.

  “Precisely,” said Robert. “Well, speaking of deadlines, we should get started. The office is downstairs.”

  When we emerged after three hours of manuscript drafting and editing as well as stolen looks, caresses and kisses, Sarah was gone on some errand.

  “Did she leave the cookies?” I looked around, hungry after smelling them for so many hours.

  “I don’t know.”

  We searched the kitchen, but there was no sign of them. I ended up leaving earlier than I’d planned because I was faint with hunger, and they didn’t seem to have anything easy to fix for snacks. Doubt crawled into the back of my mind that maybe Sarah had sensed or seen something. You could never tell with some women.

  I could tell with Marguerite. Lonna seemed oblivious, but I saw the looks Peter’s wife gave her. The woman may be distressed about her missing son, but she knew what had been going on. In spite of the warmth of the morning, a chill went down my spine.

  Chapter Ten