by Sharon Short
But then Deputy Rankle got a crackling call over his radio. “Situation clear. But you’ll want to show your witness the contents of the suitcase.”
Follow me, Deputy Rankle said, and I got out of the cruiser and did so, while emergency workers assured the Red Horse guests that the bomb scare was over and that they could go back to their rooms.
Back in my room, the suitcase now lay open on the glass-covered floor. I was still in sock feet and didn’t step into the room, but peered in through the open door as Detective Rankle went in and talked to some more workers. As far as I could see, the suitcase was completely empty.
I frowned at that. Why would someone throw Ginny’s old empty suitcase through my motel window?
“The suitcase was empty?” I asked Deputy Rankle as he came back out of the motel room. I hadn’t told him about the stained overalls or handkerchief that had been in the suitcase—after all, I’d tried several times to be taken seriously at the Paradise Police Department about the stolen bag and its contents, and had been fluffed off.
“Not entirely,” he said. And then I saw that he had donned latex gloves and was holding a note—just a plain piece of notebook paper on which had been written in large block letters:
“Stop asking about Ginny Proffitt or Guy will be hurt!”
I gasped, started shaking.
Someone—one of the emergency workers—led me to one of the benches on the walkway in front of the motel and wrapped a blanket around me. I reckon the worker was afraid I was about to go into shock.
I demanded that I be given a phone to call Stillwater, and then, seeing that the worker didn’t understand, I asked for Deputy Rankle.
A few minutes later, he came back, this time without latex gloves, and sat by me on the bench while I told him everything.
I told him Guy was my cousin and a resident of Stillwater and that I was very worried. He told the emergency worker to call Stillwater to check on Guy for me.
Then I told Deputy Rankle about the first time I’d seen the suitcase, and what it contained, and how it had been stolen from my laundromat sometime after the water main break in Paradise, and how I’d figured out there was blood on the overalls and handkerchief, and how I’d finally turned in the handkerchief to the Paradise Police Department.
Then I gave him some more background: how my boyfriend and I had found Ginny’s body and how I was sure she’d been murdered, and how since then I’d learned about the predictions that had made her leave the psychic fair, and how she was ill and seeking alternate treatment, and how I’d learned she’d once been married to Dru Purcell and about their business, and about seeing her with Dru at the Serpent Mound, and about Max Whitstone seeing her argue with an older woman.
All I left out was the dreams about Mrs. Oglevee.
And unlike Chief Worthy would have done, Deputy Rankle took me seriously, listening, nodding, taking notes, asking for clarification. He told me my statement would be shared with the Paradise Police Department and the suitcase and note would be examined for fingerprints, and that he’d let me know if they found out who had thrown the luggage through the window, and I should let him know if I thought of anything new.
The emergency worker came over, then, and said she’d just talked to Don Richmond at Stillwater, and Guy was fine. There’d been no disturbance at Stillwater at all.
That’s when I finally broke down and started weeping.
22
“Now, you know you can spend the night with us,” Greta said.
I sat in her and Luke’s kitchen, sipping hot tea with lemon and honey, happy to be warm and taken care of.
I smiled at Greta. “Thank you for the tea. And the shoes.” She’d loaned me a pair of navy Keds, a half size too small, but it was better than traipsing around barefoot. I’d been allowed to take my purse and van keys from the room, and that was it. The room was a crime scene—again. “And thanks for not blaming me for upsetting all your guests.”
Greta waved a hand at me. “Pshaw. You did the right thing. You’d have been a foolish girl to open that suitcase up. Now, how about it. Let me make up the couch for you.”
I knew turning down her hospitality would hurt her feelings, but I also saw how tired Greta looked. The weekend had been exciting for her, but it had also really worn her out. And poor Luke was snoozing in his chair, his own hot tea untouched.
“Greta, thanks, but I’m going to go over to my cousin Sally’s,” I said. Sure enough, she looked disappointed. I stood up, took my mug to the sink, rinsed it out.
“You sure?” Greta stood, wincing at a catch in her hip, smiling quickly to hide it.
“I’m sure,” I said.
We hugged. I went out to my van, got in, and just sat for a moment, not even putting my key to the ignition, but staring around at the now quiet Red Horse parking lot. I could see my—and Ginny’s—room, the yellow police tape again across its door glinting in the room’s exterior light.
Okay, I told myself. Guy is okay. You told the sheriff’s deputy everything you know. Just go to Sally’s.
I’d called her from Greta’s. She and Cherry were still awake, as it turned out, and Sally whispered into the phone she’d welcome a break from Cherry’s weeping and wailing about the general misery of her love life.
I started my van, turned out onto the dark country road, and drove toward the Happy Trails Motor Home Court, which was on the northern outskirt of Paradise.
I meant to focus on my driving. I wasn’t tired—the threat to Guy had taken care of that—but still, winding dark country roads can quickly slip your mind into slumber, even when you think you’re wide-awake.
But still my thoughts wandered to the question: who had thrown that suitcase through my window? Someone who didn’t want me to investigate Ginny’s murder. Someone who thought I might be on to something. That could be any of the psychics I suspected, as well as Dru and Missy.
But the note had threatened Guy. Who knew who Guy was, how important he was to me? That would be most anyone in Paradise. Which eliminated the psychics. Who would both know of my devotion to Guy, how deeply the threat would scare me, and would also want me to back off from investigating Ginny’s background and murder?
Dru and Missy Purcell.
The answers all kept coming back to them.
And yet, the answers still didn’t feel right.
I turned onto Sweet Potato Ridge Road. My mind turned to another question: what had Mrs. Oglevee been telling me before my sleep was shattered by the suitcase through the window?
That I needed to look at the message from Ginny, to start at the end and work to the beginning, in more than one way. And Mrs. Oglevee had kept producing dolls dressed in a farm motif—even a cornhusk doll. And she’d been about to pick up the small makeup case that matched the suitcase, the small case I’d only heard Ginny had, that had gone missing . . .
I gasped and jolted to a stop at the next intersection. I sat there, thinking. After all, there was no traffic to hold up.
Start at the end and go to the beginning . . .
Of course. Ginny had been killed at the back corner of the maze, near the end. But what if she’d left a clue at the beginning of the maze. Maybe the small accessories case.
I could go straight, be at Sally’s in five minutes.
Or turn left and be at the Crowleys’ in about the same time.
I turned left.
I pulled my van alongside the road that ran by the Crowleys’ farm, where woods met corn maze and field. I got out my high-powered flashlight, opened up the back of my van for something to dig around with. I settled on a tire jack, then set off down the ditch toward the maze.
The night was quiet and still, except for my steps and a few late autumn insects singing a farewell song. I could make out the Crowleys’ farmhouse across the field. It was dark, of course. No lights except for the one large light that shone over the gravel driveway at the side of the house.
I was trespassing, which made me uncomfortable. And if
my suspicions were true, that Ginny’s note meant to look at the beginning of the maze, that she’d buried the accessories case there and that the case held evidence that would help solve her murder, then I’d have to call the sheriff’s department again. The Crowleys would be rousted from their sleep. I didn’t think they’d press charges for my trespassing, though.
I walked up the slope of the ditch to the field and around to the beginning of the maze, where I trained my flashlight over the rustling cornstalks. I shivered. Out there, with the fields abandoned and all the kids and Hugh and Rebecca in the barn, Ginny could have pled for mercy at her murderer’s hands and never been heard over the cornstalks’ husky whispers. And from the road, a passerby would not have seen what was going on in the maze. The stalks were a good two feet taller than me. From the road, the maze just looked like a stand of corn, the dried husks overlapping to create a wall.
I moved my light to the ground. Could Ginny have buried the accessories case and whatever evidence it contained before meeting her killer? I walked along, looking for signs of digging that could easily have been missed as people worked their way through the maze, focusing on maps and the kids in costume and the ribbons that marked off each section.
I realized that I’d strayed from the beginning to somewhere in the middle of the maze. And I hadn’t seen any upturned earth, any signs that something had been buried along the stalks. Dammit. The ribbon near me was a blue and yellow check. If I remembered correctly, that put me in section five, right behind section two (the middle section at the front of the maze), marked with hot pink ribbon, where I’d entered. I turned around and started following the blue and yellow ribbon, turning right at each intersection, and exhaled in relief when I got back to the hot pink ribbon.
Another fifteen minutes, and I worked my way back out.
I checked my watch. It was 3:30 A.M. I’d been wandering in the front section of the corn maze for nearly forty minutes and hadn’t seen a sign at all of digging.
Dammit, I thought again.
Then what else could start at the end to get to the beginning mean?
It was a riddle as frustrating as my Aunt Clara’s devil riddle, but surely Ginny’s riddle had an answer. She’d given it to me, expecting me to figure it out easily enough, I was sure, so that if anything happened to her, I could get to the truth.
I’d started at the end of her life and worked back to the beginning.
I’d gone to the beginning of the maze, in which she’d been murdered near the end.
What else could she mean? Where else had she been, or what else had she done, that had a specific beginning and end?
I sat down on a stump outside the corn maze and doused my flashlight and tried to think. Never mind end to beginning. Where had she been since the beginning of her visit to Paradise that might fit her riddle?
My laundromat. No specific beginning and end there.
The Red Horse Motel. That was built as four units that made up a square. No specific beginning and end there, either.
The Serpent Mound . . .
Of course. The mound was a snake effigy. It had a tail—that was the end. And a beginning—the head.
What if she’d buried the accessory case somewhere near the snake’s head? She’d met Dru there. What if she’d also taken some evidence there with her that could help her blackmail him? Something to do with the coveralls and the blood on them?
I stood up and started back to my van. It was nearly four in the morning. Most assuredly, the Serpent Mound would be closed until 10:00 A.M. Trespassing on a friend’s farm is one thing. Trespassing on a state memorial and national historic landmark is quite another. I would go to Sally’s, get a few hours sleep, borrow some clothes from her, and go to Serpent Mound as soon as it opened.
I opened my van door and paused. I’d heard the squeak of my van door’s hinges, but had I heard something else? A rustling that came from the woods and not the cornhusks?
I shook my head. I was tired and jumpy. I’d heard a raccoon or other night animal moving about. That was all.
“I still don’t see why you can’t just call the sheriff with your theory. That nice Deputy Rankle you told us about,” Cherry said. “Serpent Mound is in his jurisdiction, right?”
“Right,” I said patiently, turning onto the road that led to Serpent Mound. “But he’s probably off duty now. And after what happened at the Red Horse, with the bomb scare and evacuation, I don’t want to be rousting up any more trouble. For all I know, my theory is cockamamie.”
“Maybe. But tell us again about how Mrs. Oglevee gave you this idea in the first place,” Sally said from behind me. She didn’t even try to hide the amusement in her voice. “I like that part. Mrs. Oglevee dressed up as a cornhusk doll.”
She and Cherry giggled. We were in my van at 9:45 A.M. heading toward Serpent Mound.
When I’d arrived at Sally’s trailer home much earlier, she and Cherry were up and waiting for me. I told them everything. And I mean everything, even about Mrs. Oglevee. So for the first time, someone besides me did know about my Mrs. Oglevee dreams. Two someones—Cherry and Sally. Maybe that hadn’t been so smart. I was sure to hear about it again. And again. And again. They’d found my nightmarish visits from our old, feared junior high teacher supremely amusing.
But I’d had to tell them about the hint I’d gotten in the dream about another way of looking at Ginny’s clue—start at the end and work to the beginning—in order for our visit to Serpent Mound to make sense.
And they’d been very sympathetic and outraged about the threat to Guy.
We’d dozed for maybe two hours, and then Sally had made us a strong pot of coffee. We were fueled by caffeine, adrenaline, and lack of sleep giddiness. Plus a sense of adventure, I’ll admit. In a way, we were looking for buried treasure.
We pulled into the Serpent Mound’s parking lot, which held just one car and one van.
“Not too many visitors this morning,” Sally said.
“Yet,” I pointed out. “We want to see if we can find what we’re looking for before too many people get here. After all, we’re going to go off the paths into restricted areas. And maybe even dig.”
I shuddered. Besides being state owned, this was, more importantly, the hallowed ground of an ancient people. If I was haunted by Mrs. Oglevee just because of, say, the mean things I’d written about her on the junior high girls’ room walls, what kind of haunting would I get if I dug up part of Serpent Mound in search of an accessories case?
“Do you think it’s okay I’m wearing heels?” Cherry asked. “I’d hate to twist an ankle.”
I grinned. Cherry was always great for pulling me back to the here and now.
Twenty minutes later, we stood at what was the head of the serpent, according to the map we’d been given when we’d bought our tickets. We were the only people in sight.
“What now?” Cherry asked impatiently. “This dumb accessories case could be buried anywhere.”
She was right. I looked around, my heart falling. We were standing on the path, looking around at fields that spread out for miles, dotted here and there with small patches of trees.
“No, not really,” said Sally. “Think about it. Ginny would have wanted to put the accessories case somewhere she could re-find easily. And she wouldn’t have had much time to bury it, because she was meeting Dru and because she wouldn’t have wanted to get caught. So she couldn’t have walked far from here. It has to be close, somewhere she could easily remember.”
“One of the patches of trees,” I said, excited again.
“But which one? There are at least seven,” Cherry said.
We fell silent, pondering that question. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. The wind was cold, brisk . . . and somehow urging us on, but to what? I shook my head. It wasn’t like me to think that way. My weariness and the crazy events of the weekend were getting to me. And yet, the sense of being urged, nudged, somehow, by the cold wind, seemed real. . .
“I�
�ve got it!” Cherry exclaimed.
Sally and I looked at her, then at each other, reading surprise in each other’s faces. Cherry never was the one who came up with answers to puzzles.
“Ginny was a psychic, right?” Cherry sounded excited. “And another word for psychic is seer, right? And we’re at the head of the snake and if this earthwork snake really had eyes it would be looking straight ahead—” she pointed to a copse of trees before us, “to there.”
We contemplated the patch of trees.
“Wow. That was amazing, Cherry,” Sally said.
Cherry shook her head, looking befuddled. “I have no idea where that came from.”
“Never mind that,” I said, climbing over the railing that was supposed to keep us away from exactly where we wanted to go. “Let’s go look.”
It didn’t take us long to find where Ginny had buried the accessories case. Just a few feet into the copse, we saw the fresh signs of digging. After all, she’d only dug this hole two days before. It had not rained since then.
We all got down on our hands and knees—even Cherry, though she was wearing a tan suede skirt and tights, despite the fact that Sally and I had told her she should wear jeans like us—and started pulling back dirt with our hands.
A few minutes later, we uncovered the top of the accessories case. I grabbed the handle and pulled.
“My grandma had a case like that,” Cherry whispered.
“So did ours,” Sally said.
“And my Aunt Clara,” I said.
That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in . . . or trying to get out?
The saying flitted through my mind, and at the same time seemed to whisper in the breeze. I shuddered. Then, slowly, I opened the accessories case.
Like the larger matching suitcase, it only held a few items: old newspaper articles. Just three.
We read them quickly, swapping, until we’d read everything, and then we stared at each other in stunned amazement at the truth we’d just learned.
Winnie, for all her good work in tracing Ginny’s past, hadn’t dug quite far enough into Dru’s. These articles were old enough they must not have made it into the online archives.
