The crowd grew quiet the moment they saw him jogging back down the hill.
“Valdis wanted to commune with her parents,” Aaron called when he came close enough for them to hear.
How the hell did he know that, Walker wondered, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I checked and she’s not at the cemetery,” Aaron continued. “The police have trampled the place, so there’s no sign of her.”
They waited until he caught his breath and gulped from the water Mariah handed him.
“Daisy went to look after the artwork,” Aaron finally said, wiping his mouth.
“What artwork?” Mariah demanded.
Everyone else looked equally mystified.
Chapter 23
Sam stomped her new-old boots to test the amount of give and listened to the Lucys argue over what Aaron felt about what Daisy thought. She had as little understanding of the conversation as Walker. He was frowning, looking at his watch, and glancing up at the sun. At least she understood his concern.
She took his hand and nodded at the burned swathe of mountain above the town. “If they saw Daisy driving toward the burn site, then let’s follow the road,” she murmured. “I’m hoping Valdis is just sleeping on a gravestone, but the burn site is dangerous.”
“Leadership required,” he said with an understanding laugh. He squeezed her hand and loaded bottles of water into his pockets. “I don’t suppose Tullah has backpacks in that magical shop of hers?”
“I didn’t ask and didn’t receive,” Sam said with a frown. “I guess I’m just assuming Daisy can’t get far from her cart. Her knees aren’t strong enough to hold her weight, and the road runs out, doesn’t it?”
Walker nodded. “About a mile up. Okay, let’s go. Let your magic stick lead the way.”
She shoved bottles of water in her camp short pockets. Even knowing Walker was poking fun at her walking stick, she followed its vibrations toward the nearest hiking path up the mountain.
A few moments later, Harvey and Tullah joined them.
Since they gave no explanation, Sam figured it was up to her to draw them out. She needed to find out more about this odd town from which she apparently came. “How did Aaron know Daisy was thinking about artwork?”
“Psychometry,” Harvey offered. “He believes he can capture or read the thoughts and emotions of objects people have touched. Psychologists call it wishful thinking and delusional.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up at this amount of information from the usually taciturn musician and wood carver.
Before she could question, Walker added, “Whatever Aaron does, he’s good at it. His antique store is just a front for hanging out up here. He’s an international art and antique dealer and owns a fortune in old crap he keeps in warehouses around the country.”
Tullah gave an unladylike whistle. “I didn’t know that. He’s a bit of a grouch, but he’s identified some of my finds as belonging to old-time movie stars, even found stills from the films in some cases. I make enough selling them on the internet to keep operating. Wish I could take him with me when I go shopping.”
“If you’re making a profit, why don’t you and Aaron own your own shops?” Sam asked, still torn by the knowledge that her father’s family might heave all these people out of their businesses.
“A few years back, when I started, I was leery of my reception, so leasing made sense. Aaron was probably the same. We’re newcomers, but the old-timers welcomed us with open arms. But now when we want to buy, there’s nothing available.” Tullah sounded sad.
“It would be a shame to lose the community,” Sam said, when no one else did.
“Amber says you can stop that from happening.” Harvey pounded his stick in the ground, then cut away from the road toward the blackened edge of the fire’s path.
Sam could actually feel the vibration he was following. She didn’t know what it was, just that the energy was different in that direction. Maybe she should have taken physics. She knew about tectonic faults and how the earth moved, but no one had told her she might feel an earthquake coming—although animals were said to sense it. Daisy was hardly an earthquake though. And feeling energy wouldn’t save a town.
“Wishful thinking,” Walker said, repeating Harvey’s own words. “Sam was a student a few weeks ago. You can’t lay that kind of burden on her.”
Sam squeezed his arm and nodded downhill. “We have company. Tell us how to start a proper search.”
The Lucys had finally divided up and were ready to follow direction. To Sam’s surprise, the man Mariah had once pointed out as the town mayor, Sam’s Uncle Montgomery, had joined them. He and Walker were the only ones without one of Harvey’s staffs.
Walker waited until they were all within range of hearing to ask, “Does anyone have any notion of where Daisy might go up here?”
“Only thing up here is the old Ingersson farm,” Monty responded.
Sam studied him in the growing darkness. She knew he was only about five years older than she. He had a healthy California bronze look. His light brown hair had sun-touched gold tips, making him seem remotely more approachable than his older brother.
“Would the farm be in that direction?” Sam pointed to the south, away from the lodge and Mendoza land, in the direction Harvey was taking.
Monty narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes, on the other side of that ridge was the farm house. Most of the land we’re standing on right now was part of the farm.”
“Still is,” she asserted, without really knowing the facts. She just felt it. This was reportedly her land. It was an extremely odd feeling.
He didn’t respond. She had a feeling he was a man who didn’t waste time arguing.
“Our staffs are tugging us that way,” she said as boldly as she dared, even though it was an insane declaration. “Walker, can you put me in the same part of the grid as Harvey?”
Harvey was already half way down the hill.
“Your staff is tugging you?” Walker asked skeptically, but he was wearing his shades again, so she couldn’t read his expression. When she merely waited for agreement, he nodded. “Fine, then, you, Harvey, and Monty head that way. I’ll divide up the rest of us. Keep each other in sight and hearing at all times. It will be dark before long, so if you don’t have a flashlight, make sure you’re partnering with someone who does.”
Monty waved his flashlight. Taking a deep breath of resolve, Sam followed her weirdly twitching staff and set off in the direction it led, which seemed to be a rutted lane of sorts.
Harvey was veering off of it, scrambling down a hillside.
“You don’t really believe that stick business, do you?” the mayor asked cynically when they were out of hearing range. “You just wanted to see the farm.”
“Maybe my subconscious guides it, you think?” Sam asked with interest. “Ideomotion? It’s one theory.”
“You’ve already researched Lucy weirdness?” he asked in surprise.
“I’m a scientist. I do not accept anything on faith and looked up divining rods. Google doesn’t explain what I feel. You’ll have to take my word that I had no idea where the farm was. It’s not as if there are directional signs, and I’ve only been here a few days. So the jury is still out on what this stick can do as far as I’m concerned.” She walked along, unconcerned, studying how the fire had skipped patches of scrub and trees, depending on how the wind blew. The firemen had almost had the flames under control by the time it reached this area. The stench of wet ash and smoke was overpowering.
“I understand from Kurt that I’m supposed to welcome you to the family,” her half-uncle said gruffly. “I should have done so sooner.”
“But you had me investigated first,” Sam said in amusement. “I can understand that. I’m still investigating me too.”
Harvey had disappeared. Walker had said they were supposed to keep each other in view, but he’d also said that Harvey was a vampire who walked these hills at night. She had to assume Harvey knew what he was doing.<
br />
“Walker says you’re the real deal, but he’s not telling me everything.” That sounded almost like a mayoral grumble.
“Walker considers everything is on a need-to-know basis,” Sam acknowledged. “I didn’t know all that about Aaron, either. And he probably knows a lot about you that he’s not telling. Walker is a font of undisclosed information, but I trust him.” And she did, even though her circumstances were so weird, she shouldn’t trust anyone. Jade had taught her to be suspicious of other people’s motives, so she wasn’t naïve. There was just something about Hillvale. . .
She crouched down to examine a pine seedling that had survived behind a boulder. The mountain would recover in a few seasons. She wasn’t certain about the lodge or tourism.
“Walker is a professional,” Monty admitted grudgingly. “I don’t want to believe we have a killer in town, but Juan didn’t shoot himself in the back.”
“The police haven’t told you if they found anything?” Sam asked. “I thought for certain all that finger printing would help.”
Monty shrugged. “They searched the family vault and found a gun, but there are multiple sets of prints on it. They’re still testing ballistics to see if it’s the gun that shot Juan. The sheriff seems to think Juan was shot in the security office, but the entire staff has access to it. Even Uncle Lance has been in there to get keys to his studio when he lost his. My mother keeps spare sets of keys there. There are fingerprints all over. With no motive, they have nothing.”
“What about opportunity?”
Monty shrugged. “Shots were reported before midnight. I won’t go into the condition of the body, but the cops figure the time line is about right, a few hours before or after if there were any unreported shots. A lot of people were still up and around, but who goes back to the security area at that hour?”
“That’s about the time we heard the howling ghost. Surely they can make a list of people up and around then. I saw Harvey walking toward the cemetery right about that time.”
Monty frowned. “The cemetery is a couple of miles from the lodge. There were a lot of people closer. Walker reported several of the Lucys, including Valdis, out and about within half an hour of the shots-fired report. He said my uncle was in his studio then. That’s close to the security office, but Lance claims to have seen nothing, which isn’t unusual for him. Alonzo and Bernard were working the night shift and saw my mother’s Escalade go out, although no one saw who was driving. My mother said she was asleep and Francois claimed no knowledge of it. Kurt and I had just had a meeting with Xavier and Gump. And then there’s half the lodge staff and the guests who could have come and gone without anyone really noticing. Everyone had an opportunity.”
“I hope they don’t suspect poor Xavier now. I’m afraid if he held a gun in his hand, he’d put it to his head. He seems to be an unhappy person.”
But Xavier had carried a kerosene can. Would the same person who burned the mountain be the one who shot a man in the back?
“I remember Xavier from when my father was alive,” Monty said thoughtfully. “When he first started coming here, he didn’t pay Kurt or me any attention. But he seemed to change overnight, into a ghost of a man who jumped if we said boo. I assumed he fried his brain on drugs, but he manages the rental office fine. He must have been sharp once. I can’t imagine him shooting Juan for any reason.”
Sam hid her excitement at finding someone actually willing to talk to her. Walker was too professional to reveal police findings, and he hadn’t lived here all those years ago. “Do you think Juan’s death is related to the finding of the skeleton?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid it may be,” he said grimly. “Which will tie it to my family now that Walker’s father has been identified. My mother has suffered enough over all these years. I don’t want her put through that kind of grinder. I hope she stays in Hawaii until this settles. It always relaxes her to get away.”
“She’s sensitive to the negative energy, I suspect,” Sam said aloud, forgetting she was talking to a Null.
Her half-uncle went silent again. Oops. She cast him a look, but he was simply studying the terrain ahead.
“The farmhouse used to be over by that patch of green on the left. Looks like the bluff protected the shrubs. There’s a stone foundation in there. Usually, morning glories cover it, but they won’t be blooming at this hour, if they survived. There aren’t too many hiding places.”
“Where would she hide a golf cart?” Sam studied what must have been her grandparents’ home, but in the twilight, it didn’t look any different than the rest of the mountain. She felt a connection to the land but nothing else.
“Daisy gets her stones from somewhere. I guess this is as good a place as any. She probably has a favorite spot for that ugly lump of metal. Daisy!” Monty shouted as they headed down the hill into the secluded basin.
A few of the bushes appeared to move. Sam hurried in that direction. “Daisy!”
A stick raised up above a sprawling manzanita hedge singed by the fire. The staff swung lazily, so the bearer didn’t seem to have any urgent message.
“Not having cell phones is a real pain,” Sam muttered, hurrying down the rocky, burned out path.
“If she’s hurt, I’ll jog back and find Walker. She may be heavy but she’s not large. We can haul her out easily enough, especially if the cart isn’t out of gas.” Monty strode along with confidence, apparently knowing the land.
Sam wondered if he knew she and Valdis were purportedly heirs to the property. Surely, if he’d been researching property rights, he had a full scale map of every lot. But he wasn’t saying anything. Interesting.
Before they reached the hedge, Sam nearly stumbled over what at first appeared to be a stack of stones. On this side of the bluff, the shadows were long. She took Monty’s flashlight and flashed it over the ground.
Lined up around what appeared to be the farm foundation was a military row of small stone statues similar to the one Daisy had left for Sam last night. These weren’t quite as artistic, consisting mostly of three stones maybe a foot high, wired together with whatever bits of flotsam Daisy could summon from her surroundings. Manzanita arms were the primary decoration. One or two had shiny pebbles as ornaments—decorated generals maybe, Sam thought with amusement.
“What the. . .” Monty bit off the rest of the curse as he examined the line.
Sam’s staff quit pulsating. “Daisy, is it okay for us to cross the line?”
The bushes parted and Daisy’s graying head peered out. Sam breathed in relief.
“Yes, yes, come along.” She disappeared behind the bushes again.
“Are you hurt? Do you need help?” Sam asked anxiously, stepping across the statues.
“I’m fine. Montgomery, go home. You’re useless,” Daisy called, actually sounding coherent for a change.
“You can tell the other searchers to go home,” Sam said, holding back a sigh of exasperation. “I’m sorry you got dragged away from your busy schedule.”
Monty almost chuckled. “Par for the course up here. Valdis is probably engraving stones in the cemetery. But I needed the exercise. It’s good to remember what the mountain is about, and I needed to see how much damage the fire did.”
“I think this part of the land will be fine with a little care,” Sam said cautiously. “I studied controlled burns. There are recommended actions that can be taken.”
He nodded without expression. “I’ll send a few of the women down with flashlights. You’ll all have broken ankles stumbling around in the dark.”
“I’m not hanging around to be found by snakes and cougars,” she said tartly. “But I’ll stay with Daisy until the others decide what they want to do.”
“Glad you understand she won’t be persuaded away until she’s ready.” He handed her the flashlight and stalked back up the way they came.
“Good, he’s gone,” Daisy said from behind the hedge. “We need more lamassu. I should have thought of this sooner. We can’t have bul
ldozers here.”
“Why do we need spirit protection?” Sam asked, pushing through the thick prickly hedges to find Daisy sitting on a part of a stone foundation not covered in branches. She had rolls of rusty wire and piles of stone and several sets of wire cutters scattered across the rocky clearing. She thought she caught a glimmer of metal buried in the manzanita that might be the golf cart.
Sam examined what must have once been the farmhouse where her grandparents had lived. It wasn’t large. Several old square timbers still remained, perhaps from the original cabin. If there had been plaster walls, they’d deteriorated into the general debris. There might have been a concrete floor but there was so much dirt, it was hard to tell. A mud slide may have covered it. The bluff didn’t look particularly stable.
The remains of an old stone chimney were the only real proof that a house had existed.
“Evil drives the bulldozers,” Daisy said. “Here, add this to the line.” From beneath her feather coat, her hand stuck out, holding a new statue. “Not having to get up will save me time.”
“You need to sleep and eat,” Sam remonstrated. “We have lots of time before bulldozers come up here.”
“No, no.” She shook her long hair. “They’ll come in the dark and raze the trees while we’re sleeping. We can’t let them find the art!”
Gazing at the treeless basin, Sam winced. Mariah called Daisy’s irrationality time-walking. It sounded more like hallucinations to her.
She carried the stone figurine out to the line apparently meant to circle the foundation. She set it about the same distance as Daisy had the others. Taking the flashlight, she studied the small army. Even hastily constructed, the stone and stick figures were all tiny works of art, expressing excitement, anger, tension—all the emotions generated by the outdoor meeting. Sam marveled at Daisy’s talent and wondered if the figures could be sold in places like state park gift stores. She needed to call Jade’s gallery owner. She had contacts.
Tullah and Walker appeared at the top of the ridgeline. They’d apparently met up with Harvey, who started down the hill, carrying an armload of sticks. Sam waved. It was still new and exciting to have found a few people who might possibly accept her, even when she talked about shivering sticks. Back at the university, they would have been horrified that she wasn’t sending out her resume. Her friends from high school would have giggled over these diverse people. But Sam sensed only concern and interest as the others strode toward her.
Sapphire Nights: Crystal Magic, Book 1 Page 22
