Something shady, p.1
Something Shady, page 1
part #2 of Stoner McTavish Mystery Series
Something Shady
by Sarah Dreher
New Victoria Publishers
© 1986 New Victoria Publishers Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by New Victoria Publishers Inc. A feminist literary and cultural organization,
Library of Congress Card Number 86-061106 ISBN 978-0-934678-07-0
ePub Edition 2015
Acknowledgements
“I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to all the friends who helped and encouraged me along the way in writing this book, and especially to: Nancy McAvoy and Edwina Trentham for their support, wonderful suggestions, and TACT.
Lis Brook for her constant loving enthusiasm, and for suffering through my emotional ups and downs.
Claudia and Beth of New Victoria, for taking a chance on an unknown writer. And, last but not least, to Nutmeg and Wellington for not complaining about all the walks we didn’t take.”
To Nancy - A loved and loving friend
CHAPTER 1
They were coming for her.
Clawed feet crunched gravel. Stopped.
The sound of sniffing. Whispers. Silence. Sniff, whisper, silence. Sniff.
Silence.
Fog coalesced in amorphous forms, turned back again to fog. Far below, the sea exploded against jagged rocks.
Listen. Listen through the sea.
Something crawled across her bare foot. She looked down. A scorpion, red as fresh blood. It tasted the air.
Don’t move.
Don’t breathe.
Her skin was clammy with salt and fear.
The insect inched forward, paused. Its tail trembled.
Waves of cold flowed up her spine. Her lips were numb.
I have to scream.
They’ll find me if I scream.
She shuddered.
The scorpion froze.
Get it off, get it off, oh God, get it OFF!
If I don’t scream, I’ll go insane.
If I don’t move, I’ll die.
I can’t move.
She closed her eyes…
... and felt its tiny feet like soft hairs brushing her skin.
Breaking, she grabbed for it. It stuck to her foot, to her fingers. She jerked it away, tearing skin, and flung the body into the fog.
The whispering came again, surrounding her, the infinitesimal hiss of rain on dry leaves. She strained to make out words.
“See, see, see, see.”
This is a dream. I can wake myself up.
Wake myself up.
She closed her eyes and willed her mind toward consciousness.
Her bedroom was dark. Rain slid down the window. Beyond the glass, she could make out the flat blue light of sleeping Boston.
I’m awake. Thank God, I’m awake.
Her heartbeat slowed to normal.
Get up. Turn on a light.
She couldn’t move.
From somewhere over her head came a child’s malicious giggle.
The fog closed in tighter, caressed her face with oily tendrils.
Crackle of dried grass.
Footsteps?
Wind?
The air was still as August.
Cold.
Only the fog moved ... and something in the fog.
A wall at her back. A house, rough shingle, chipping paint.
Find the corner. Slip behind the house.
Ancient boards warm from the sun.
But there was no sun. Only the fog, the cold fog.
The wood beneath her hand began to swell.
And fall.
The house was breathing.
She pushed herself away, stared up at it. Monstrous, decaying relic. A shutter hung by a single hinge. White pillars, cracked and splintered. Windowpanes etched with spidery lines. The scent of thyme rose underfoot.
A low, rhythmic thudding shook the ground. She listened for the source. It came from the house.
Engines. Ship’s engines.
Not engines, heartbeats.
The heartbeat of the house.
She backed away and tried to call out. Fog curled against her tongue, slid toward her throat. Her feet touched gravel. Above her, the slate shingle roof began to melt.
She took a step…
... and fell.
“Stoner, dear, you’re having a nightmare.”
What?
“Wake up, Stoner.”
She pulled herself up and rubbed her eyes. “Aunt Hermione?”
The older woman perched on the edge of the bed, drinking tea. Her satin peacock kimono glistened in the gray light. “I have something important to discuss with you.”
“A minute.” She glanced around the room, taking inventory. Oak bureau, desk, bookcase, floor lamp, easy chair, window seat, off-white walls, burgundy drapes, framed photograph of the Tetons. Everything in place.
“How would you like to go to Maine?”
“I can’t go to Maine. I have to go to work.” She reached for her aunt’s teacup, took a sip, and shuddered. “Mate.”
“The South American Indians have been drinking it for centuries.”
“I need something stronger.”
“There’s coffee on your little table, dear.”
And cold. Oh, well. She gulped it. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“A few minutes.”
“Watching me sleep.”
Her aunt stiffened. “Indeed not. Invasion of privacy is a karmic sin, Stoner.”
“Thank God for that.”
“He,” Aunt Hermione snorted, “would have us poke and pry to our hearts’ content, the old busybody.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Stoner muttered, and pushed back the covers. The nightmare clung to her like guilt. Cold coffee hadn’t helped, maybe cold water... She stumbled toward the bathroom.
“Would you like me to pack for you, dear?”
“Pack what?”
“Whatever you say.” Aunt Hermione adjusted a snowy curl. “But if you don’t mind a suggestion…”
Stoner sagged against the bureau.
“Dress warmly. Maine is disgusting in March.”
“Everything’s disgusting in March. I can’t go to Maine.”
Her aunt sighed heavily. “There’s a fine line between tenacity and stubbornness, Stoner. I wish you didn’t cross it so often.”
“March means Spring Break. Spring Break means cruises and flights to the Caribbean. Cruises and flights to the Caribbean mean work. Cancellations. Foul-ups. Lost luggage. Confusion, Aunt Hermione, massive confusion.”
The older woman popped her glasses on and examined Stoner’s book case. “Go to the Caribbean if you like, dear, but it won’t solve our problem. Have you finished the Agatha Christie?”
She looked up sharply. “What problem? Do we have a problem?”
“I don’t know how you can bring yourself to read May Sarton. She’s so up-in-the-head.”
“It was a gift.” She clenched her fists. “Aunt Hermione, what problem?”
“A gift,” Aunt Hermione said, inspecting a battered, original-edition, blue-cover Nancy Drew. “Wonderful. I can tell my friends I have a gifted niece.”
In about thirty-seven seconds you’re going to have a psychotic niece. “Aunt Hermione...”
She turned and peered over her glasses. “Claire Rasmussen.”
“Who’s Claire Rasmussen?”
“Nancy Rasmussen’s sister. I didn’t know you were planning a Caribbean trip. Is Gwen going with you?”
Stoner raked her hands through her hair wildly. “Gwen has to teach.”
“During Spring Break? No wonder the Teacher’s Union is up in arms.”
Something snapped. “I am not going to the Caribbean!” she shrieked. “Other people are going to the Caribbean. I have to get them there.”
“If those people are meant to get to the Caribbean, Stoner, they will get to the Caribbean.”
“Well, I’d like them to get there through Kesselbaum and McTavish, not Crimson Travel.” She pulled fresh underwear from a bureau drawer.
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” her aunt persisted, “Kesselbaum and McTavish is destined to be successful. Not wildly successful, but successful.”
“We still have to work at it.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Aunt Hermione settled herself on the edge of the tub with Agatha Christie. “One must Manifest, mustn’t one?”
“Yes, and one must Manifest on time, so if you don’t mind...” She indicated the door.
“Have a nice shower, dear,” said Aunt Hermione cheerfully. “When you’re in a better mood, we’ll have a cozy little chat about Claire Rasmussen.”
“I don’t know anybody named…”
She found herself talking to the bathroom door.
***
“Claire Rasmussen?”
Aunt Hermione poured herself another cup of mate. “She’s lost. We’ll discuss it after you’ve eaten. You’re always perfectly awful before breakfast.”
“Always?”
“Every morning, for the past sixteen years, you’ve been awful. Were you awful before you left home?”
“Probably.” She buttered a hunk of coffee cake. “Oh, God, I’m so boring.”
“Are you? I’ve always found it comforting. Do you really want to put so much butter on that, Stoner? It’s terribly rich.”
“I need it to get me through the day.”
“You don’t eat enough.” Aunt Hermione surveyed her own plate, barely visible under three eggs, scrambled, toast with marmalade, six slices of bacon, and a small bowl of last night’s leftover coleslaw. “Of course, I eat like a trucker.”
“And never gain an ounce. How do you do it?”
“It’s the work. Some days the Guides suck up energy like an Electrolux. Perhaps I should go back to using a Familiar, but that seems so impersonal.”
“Why bother, as long as you enjoy eating?”
“That’s very inspired,” her aunt said brightly. “You’re always so good with excuses.”
“Mother claimed it was what I do best.”
“My sister is a silly woman. She was a silly child, even by childhood standards. When I think of what she must have been like as a mother ... well, the mind boggles.”
“Yeah,” Stoner said. “It does.”
Aunt Hermione surveyed the kitchen. “We need more chrome.”
“I can pick some up at the drugstore after work, or do you need it right away?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If they don’t have any natural, should I get the fake kind?”
“Stoner, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Chrome, as in vitamins, minerals…”
Her aunt burst into peals of laughter. “Chrome as in napkin holders, sugar bowls. Truck-stop chrome.”
“If I were going to Maine,” Stoner groused, “I’d see what I could find in a flea market.”
Aunt Hermione shrugged. “I wish you well. Maine’s an abandoned carnival between seasons.” She studied the room. “It might be fun to redo the whole kitchen in Truck Stop. We could replace the brocade love seat with barstools...”
“With torn red plastic seats.” She poured another cup of coffee.
“And paint the walls pink. Our stainless steel is a matching set. We’ll have to do something about that.”
“Fuzzy dice instead of wicker birdcages at the windows,” Stoner said, getting into the spirit of the thing.
“We need a back room. Completely dark, except for a red lamp of mysterious purpose. And girlie magazines.”
“Girlie magazines!” She choked on her coffee. “They call them porn mags now, Aunt Hermione.”
The older woman’s eyes grew dreamy. “I once ate in the world’s largest truck stop. Xenia, Ohio, it was. Nineteen fifty-six. On my way to a psychics’ convention at Berea College. Ethel Morrissey was along on that trip. She passed into transition in ‘63.”
“Do you still hear from her?” Stoner asked.
“Not often. She didn’t care much for the material plane. Except the Xenia Truck Stop.”
“Maybe, when we redecorate the kitchen, she’ll drop in once in a while.”
“Why, Stoner,” Aunt Hermione said, “I thought you didn’t believe in spirits.”
“I don’t, but I’m too sleepy to argue.”
“Mark my words, one of these days you’ll have such a revelation...”
“Not in March.”
Aunt Hermione finished off her eggs. “If we go to Truck Stop tacky,” she mused, “do you think I’ll have to give up my ashtray?”
The ashtray, firmly ensconced in the center of the table like the Hub of the Universe, was old, cracked, chipped, and emblazoned with “Put your damn ashes here” in gold.
“I think,” Stoner said, “it’s tacky enough for anything.”
“I won that ashtray,” said Aunt Hermione, “in 1947, in the Penny Arcade at Old Orchard Beach.”
Stoner got up and scrounged through the bread box for more coffee cake.
“Marylou will be scandalized,” her aunt said. “But her mother will go wild for the place. While you’re up, would you get me a little more coleslaw?”
“I really don’t know how you can eat that in the morning,” Stoner said, spooning it out and trying not to breathe.
“Try some. It’s very refreshing.”
“No, thanks.” She gave up on the coffee cake, found a half-eaten cherry pie in the refrigerator, and cut herself a slice.
“Perhaps you’d rather have breakfast alone?”
“Then I’d never get to see you.” She retrieved her coffee and curled up on the love seat.
Aunt Hermione sighed. “I wouldn’t work nights if there were any way around it, you know. But some people don’t believe psychic readings by daylight are valid. Much as I hate it, I do have to pander to the ambivalent.”
“And I wouldn’t work days if I could help it.”
“If you worked nights, when would you see Gwen?”
Stoner frowned into her coffee. “When do I see her now?”
“Poor dear,” Aunt Hermione murmured. “No wonder you’re in a foul mood.”
“I miss her. I understand, but I miss her.”
“Well, that’s the worst of it, understanding. It leaves one quite helpless.”
They sat for a moment in companionable gloom.
“I do wish I were more adept at the Tarot,” Aunt Hermione said at last. “Yesterday’s reading was quite positive, but at my level of expertise it’s hard to be sure.”
“How are your lessons going?” Stoner asked, to change the subject.
“Grace D’Addario is an inspired teacher, but I don’t quite have the feel of it yet. And I’m still not sure where I stand on reversals.”
“Aren’t there rules’?”
“Like everything else in life, the occult has its gray areas.”
Stoner laughed. “It’s all gray areas to me.” She settled back into her chair. “Now will you tell me about Claire Rasmussen?”
Aunt Hermione pulled her napkin through its silver ring. “Are you sure you’re quite yourself?”
“As close as I can come to it.”
“Claire Rasmussen is missing.”
“Yes?”
“I told her sister you might try to find her.”
“Aunt Hermione,” Stoner said evenly, “forgive me for being meticulous...”
“You can’t help it. It’s a Capricorn trait.”
“...but could you begin at the beginning?”
“Claire is Nancy’s sister. Nancy is a client of mine, a nurse. Am I going too fast?”
“That’s fine.”
“Claire, also a nurse, took a position in a private mental hospital somewhere north of Portland. Two weeks ago, Nancy received a brief, rather cryptic phone call from her, and since then there’s been nothing. We’ve been trying to pick up impressions, but all we get is darkness.”
“Ominous,” Stoner said.
“Quite. To top it off, yesterday was Nancy’s birthday. Claire has never missed calling on her birthday, until now.”
“I see.”
“Nancy’s an Aries, and nothing satisfies a worried Aries but great flurries of frantic activity. I told her you might be willing to go to Castleton and have a look around.”
Stoner hesitated. “Maine?”
“I know what you’re thinking, dear. Those dreadful nightmares. Rocky coasts, old sea captains’ houses bursting with ghosts and evil... Still and all, it may be time to confront the horror.”
“You want me to confront something bursting with ghosts and evil?”
“That house has something to say to you, Stoner. I really think it won’t let up until it’s been said.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
Her aunt smiled reassuringly. “Poor Stoner. Psychic phenomena give you the willies, don’t they?”
“I don’t believe in them,” Stoner said firmly. “They’re fine for you, but not for me.”
“I used to feel exactly the same way. My first experience set me to trembling so hard I registered 7.6 on the Richter scale.”
Stoner laughed. “Well, that’s something to look forward to.”
“Now, what should I tell Nancy Rasmussen?”
“I don’t know.” She studied her hands. “I’d like to help, but... if only it weren’t Maine.”
“How about taking someone with you?”
Stoner glanced up hopefully. “You?”
“I’d love to go, but the apprentices are serving at Grace’s Esbat. I’m afraid I’ll have to spend the weekend cooking and attuning.”
“Marylou’s out. She doesn’t like to travel. Cancer rising, you know.”
“Marylou’s missed her calling,” Aunt Hermione said. “A Scorpio with Cancer rising should be running a bawdy house.” She gave Stoner a sly look. “What I had in mind was Gwen.”
