The max porter box set, p.13
The Max Porter Box Set, page 13
“A bunch of crazy people into witchcraft pretty much defines the word cult.”
“They’re not crazy people,” Sandra said, barely opening her mouth.
J did not move from the couch. He knew trouble when he saw it, and Max appreciated that he was smart enough to stay quiet.
Max’s mother picked up the book with two fingers as if it might foul her hands otherwise. “My dear, this is a book about people who believe in magic spells and supernatural powers, Satanists who dance naked under the moonlight and perform deviant acts, all in the name of a superstition. That is crazy. And before you say another word, you need to start listening. I’ve been quiet out of respect for your position as my son’s wife, but I can see now that I’ve been quiet too long.”
“Oh, crap,” Drummond said as he backed away from Sandra. “Max, I’m going to go do some research in the Other. If she doesn’t kill your mother, consider yourself lucky.” Max had no way to stop Drummond, and a second later, the ghost disappeared.
Mrs. Porter’s stern posture brought to life all the years of old-school parenting she held within. She wielded it like a broadsword, ready to cut down all obstacles in her path. “It’s one thing for Max to have these foolish notions, but it’s an entirely different matter for you to indulge them. Perhaps your mother didn’t teach you, but it’s your job to hold a family together. Is that why you resist children? So you don’t have to take the responsibility? Doesn’t really matter. This nonsense has to stop. I mean, look at your husband. His got more bruises than a prize fighter, and yet you’ve shown no concern for him.”
“Enough!” Sandra held her tight fists straight at her sides. “You were not invited here — not just this office but to our home. You simply showed up, and then you think it’s okay to criticize every aspect of our lives. But as usual, you’ve got it all wrong. My husband is tougher than you know. He’s great at his job, and he doesn’t need you or me or anybody else to indulge him. He knows what he wants to do, and he’s doing it. As for family — we are a family. The two of us and PB and J and others. We don’t have to have our own kids to be whole. That’s another thing — get it through your head that we are not going to have a child. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but it’s the way it’s going to be. Now, if you want to remain our guest here, then you are going to start showing us some respect. We have a life that we’ve worked unimaginably hard to build here. You don’t get to come here and piss all over it.”
“How dare you talk to me like that.”
“I should’ve said something days ago, but I care about Max enough to put up with you. I won’t have it anymore. All the years you’ve looked down your nose at me. No more. This is my office, too. And you are staying in my home. You want to be here? You want to see your son? Then learn your place.”
Both women breathed heavily, seething at each other. Max cleared his throat. “J, do us all a favor, and take my mother for a walk. Maybe you two can have dinner, too. There’s a bunch of places around here she’d like.”
J didn’t respond, his eyes locked on the confrontation.
“J, please.”
With a jolt, J got to his feet. “Okay, yeah. C’mon Mrs. Porter. Let’s get out of here. Take a few hours to let things chill.”
Though Mrs. Porter did not reply, she did pick up her coat. Keeping her eyes on Sandra, she let J lead the way out of the office. Once the door closed, Sandra dropped to her knees, lowered her head, and cried.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry I did that.”
“It’s okay.” Max slid his sore body down until he sat next to her. He put his arm around her and listened to her sniffles as she shivered against him.
For ten minutes, he held her without another word until at length, Sandra lifted her head. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “No matter what she and I said, one thing is true. You can’t keep getting beaten up. We need to focus on this case and find some way to stop Edward.”
Her wet eyes pleaded with him to help her ignore the fight and pour their energy into the work. She had already said all that needed to be said. Rehashing it now would be pointless. And she was right — they had to stop Edward Wallace because Max’s body wouldn’t handle another assault.
“Then let’s work,” he said.
Chapter 17
AFTER SPENDING A HALF-HOUR STARING at a computer screen, Max wanted to rub his eyes, but he resisted the urge. The pain in his face had dulled, and he didn’t want to aggravate it. Instead, he kicked his feet onto the desk and leaned back causing his chair to squeak.
Sandra stayed focused on her old texts. While he had been at the theater learning about the shape of Edward Wallace’s fists, Sandra had uncovered several spells for breaking other spells, but in each case, she had to know the specifics of the original before it could be broken. She then delved into numerous books boasting a Call to Power spell in their contents, but so far had come up empty with anything that sounded like what Abagail Wallace had used.
Max had spent the time searching for two important pieces of information. First, he wanted to find out the name of the last person whose cursed bones Wallace sought. Second, he needed to find out if Wallace had indeed found that person’s bones.
He started by going through Chester Stanton’s story to see if any of it had been true. Max pulled up newspaper articles from the time, academic papers on the subject, as well as some wonderful primary sources — Tryon’s personal journals and official reports had been preserved as well as several invoices for arms, ammunition, food, and ominously enough, coffins. From these, Max determined that the general idea of what Stanton said was correct but the details tended to be wrong. There were only about eight cannons, not twenty, and while many of the Regulators had come expecting the incident to be another protest, clearly some arrived raring for a fight.
The office door opened. J and Mrs. Porter entered quietly. She carried two take out boxes and placed one on each desk.
J said, “We thought you might be hungry, and I told her that when you guys hit the books, it can go all night. I figured if you were still here when we got back, that’s what you’d be doing.”
Sandra set her pen down. “You know us well.” Her tone straddled a line between complimenting J and jabbing at Max’s mother.
Before an argument could spiral away, Max said, “Thanks. I could definitely eat.”
Mrs. Porter scanned the office. “If it’s okay, I think I’ll do some cleaning in here. I promise I won’t bother your work, but it’ll give me something to do, and the place could use it. No offense.”
Sandra’s fingers dug into her desk, but she forced a smile. “That would nice. Thank you.”
Taking a few awkward steps toward the door, J said, “Y’all seem to have things good here, and I got to get checking on PB. So, unless you need something?”
“Go ahead,” Max said, wanting to chuckle but thinking better of it. “See you in the morning.”
As J left, Max opened the take out box — a turkey sandwich from the coffee shop on the corner. He tucked into the food while Sandra returned to her books. In the silence, Mrs. Porter dug a rag from under the bathroom sink and went to work.
But only a few minutes later, she said, “It’s no wonder you never eat well when both of you bury yourselves in work. You’ve got to take care of each other. It’s no fun when your spouse passes away because you didn’t do the simple things like eat well.”
Neither Max nor Sandra responded, and thankfully, Mrs. Porter returned to cleaning in silence. Another half-hour passed, and Max had yet to come across mention of Chester Stanton, Archibald Henderson, or Jonathan Shoemaker — at least, not the ones he searched for. There were plenty of men with these names scattered throughout the US, but none with any connection to the 1700s. He tried searching for them in some lesser known databases, but again turned up empty. Glancing over at his wife’s furrowed brow, he could tell she had not found success either.
Catching his gaze, she pointed to one of the books. “This is our best chance but it’s in an old German dialect. The Internet’s helping translate some of it, but most of it I have to piece together by cross-referencing similar texts I have in English. It’s a real pain.”
“Keep at it, hon. You can do it.”
“Oh, I’ll get this sucker. I just don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
Max decided to shift gears and focus on Abagail Wallace and the Wallace family. After a few cursory searches, he learned that the Wallace family had stayed out of the news for their entire existence. Not surprising, but he had hoped some basic searches would pull up enough information on the family to be a primer.
Instead, he went by the tried and true methods of researching a family history. He started with the national census. Those searches brought up more than enough to put together a decent family tree — not all the way back to Abagail but all the way back to the start of the census. Of course, many of those listed would belong to other non-family people named Wallace, but by searching the Internet with each name, Max expected the narrowing process to go rather quickly.
It did. But not as he had expected. After two dozen names, he picked up on the pattern — anybody who had any information on their life, whether a newspaper article from 1927 or a Facebook page from 2015, anybody that Max could find did not belong to Abagail Wallace’s clan. Thus, anybody who did not exist beyond an entry in the census did belong to the family. In fact, the only other documents Max could locate for a true Wallace were birth announcements and obituaries, but those were outliers rather than the norm.
Max’s mother let loose a long sigh as she sat on the couch. Max glanced around the office. “Wow, Mom. The place looks great.”
“Oh, no need to thank me. I love taking care of you. It’s important that somebody does.”
Sandra ignored the comment, and Mrs. Porter waved off Max’s rebuttal. It wasn’t a dismissive wave, however, but rather one that said she did not want to argue anymore. That felt like progress.
Max checked his watch. “Another thirty minutes and we’ll go.”
“It’s getting dark.”
“Thirty minutes. I promise.”
For the next twenty minutes, Max’s mother sat quietly with her cell phone. Max tried to focus on his work, but he could hear every annoyed shift of her clothing, every perturbed huff, every sigh. He fought the urge to pack up and go early. This thirty minute wait had become a line in the sand, and if he budged, he would lose.
It had happened before between them.
Growing up, lines like this one formed on most days. Their battle of wills could ignite over anything. As a toddler, when his mother demanded he get ready for kindergarten, he stalled as long as possible, pushing her but always relenting short of getting spanked. As a boy, he refused to eat what she required, frustrating her but always relenting short of getting sent to his room. As a teen, he rejected his chores, angering her but always relenting short of getting grounded.
He could not relent this time. He was an adult, and he had a job to do. This time she had to be the one to give in.
As Max battled this out in his head, his mother meandered around the office. Nine minutes left. He sifted through papers and brought up a few historical websites. Busy work, of course, but at least it looked like work.
She slid a chair over and sat opposite him. He glanced at her. She offered a humble smile.
Not going to work. Eight minutes. I’m staying the full thirty.
He sensed her leaning forward, reading his papers upside-down. And then she made a slight sound. “Huh.”
Max dropped his hands on the table with a loud slap. “We’ll leave in a little over five minutes. Please, let me work.”
Mrs. Porter cocked her head to re-read one of the papers. “Oh, I was only wondering why, back in the 1700s, well, why did they make more coffins than they needed for a hanging?”
“What?”
“That page there says they hanged six men after this battle, right?”
“That’s right.”
“But I thought I saw the order for nine coffins to be made. That’s a lot of work when you already know you only need six.”
Max’s heart jumped a beat before racing away in his chest. He picked up the invoice for the coffins. Sure enough, the order stated nine coffins to be made. With frantic energy, he rifled through his notes.
Sandra lifted her head at the sudden flurry. “You have something?”
Smacking a paper with the back of his hand, he said, “Right here. Thompson and Sons.”
“Which is what?”
He looked from his mother to Sandra. “They made the coffins for the six Regulators hanged after the Battle of Alamance. Only, as my mother pointed out, they made nine of them. And right here is the business register of companies and employees. Tryon needed these lists for taxes. Guess who built those coffins.”
“I’ll go out on a limb and say the name Wallace popped up.”
“Andrew Wallace.”
Sitting straight on the edge of her chair, Mrs. Porter said, “Who’s that? Did I solve the case?”
“No, Mom. But you helped us with a big part of it. Andrew Wallace made three extra coffins so that his wife, Abagail, could use them for a special spell. She planned —” Max froze as his mind pulled several pieces of the puzzle together. “The men that she buried with the cursed bones — they were never Regulators. Or if they were, they didn’t fight in the Battle of Alamance.”
Sandra snapped her fingers. “She used the battle as cover.”
“Exactly. She murdered the three men or had them killed or maybe they sacrificed themselves, but the battle was used to hide their deaths. Just three more in the massacre. That’s why I can’t find their names in anything about the battle. They were never part of it.”
Drummond shot out of the bookcase as if he had sprinted in from far off. “Not quite.”
As Drummond perched near the front door, Max got to his feet. “What do you mean?”
“I know who the third man is, and he did fight in the Battle of Alamance.”
“Do I have to guess?”
Drummond paused long enough to make Max think the answer was yes. But then the old ghost pushed back his hat and said, “Chester Stanton.”
“But —”
“The guy we talked with in your car wasn’t Stanton. That guy’s name was Theo Russett and he lived in the 1950s. Abagail Wallace threatened to curse his living family if he didn’t take on the Stanton role and guide us to the theater.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I’m a detective. And a good one, too. Things weren’t adding up right, and I had a hunch that it all seemed to break down with Stanton. So, I went back to the Other, tracked him down, and got him to tell me the truth.”
“He just blurted it out? Isn’t he worried about his family?”
“I may have made a few promises about what we can do to help him, but that’s for another day. Right now, we’ve got to go talk to the real Stanton.”
“You found him, too?”
“That part was easiest of all. Abagail had targeted Theo Russet for a specific reason — the guy was a historian. Care to guess what time period he specialized in?”
“The American Revolution.”
“That’s the one. Even stuck as a ghost in the Other, Theo couldn’t stop his historian brain. He’d been interviewing those that remained from the 1700s for his own personal satisfaction.”
“He knew exactly where to find Chester Stanton.” Max perked up. “The details he told us — some of them were wrong by a long shot. Was he dropping us hints?”
“I think so. He didn’t put up much resistance when I found him.” Drummond clapped his hands together once. “So, Stanton’s never left the battlefield. Should be easy to find him. Let’s go.”
The adrenaline rush that always came with a major leap forward in a case now flushed through Max’s system. He whirled back to his desk to get his coat. Sandra stood behind her desk, her face ashen as she watched Mrs. Porter.
Max’s mother stared at him with a horrified gasp. “Why are you talking to the wall?”
Chapter 18
MAX’S CHEEKS REDDENED as he faced his mother. He needed a lie, a good one, anything that would make even the slightest bit of sense, but her eyes stopped him. She was scared. Her little boy might be going insane right in front of her.
Sandra burst out a sharp laugh and quickly covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ve told him for years somebody would think he’s nuts. The idea that it’s you is too funny.”
Confused, Mrs. Porter moved her head an inch toward Sandra, but her eyes stayed on Max. “What are you jabbering about?”
“Max isn’t crazy. That’s just the way he does his best thinking. When we were younger, he’d be out mowing the lawn, yapping away at nobody. He’s thinking out loud, that’s all. But I’ve always said to him that our neighbors were going to think he’d lost his mind.”
Max forced a guilty grin. None of that was true — they had never even owned a house with a lawn until moving to Winston-Salem — but he had known people who talked out their thoughts. Maybe Sandra’s lie would work.
“Good thinking,” Drummond said.
But Mrs. Porter shook her head. “I heard him. That was not talking through a problem. That was a conversation. He paused to listen to his imaginary friend talking.” To Max, she said, “Who do you think you were talking with?”
“No, Mom. It’s like Sandra said. I was thinking through our case.”
“You’re not well, dear. I should’ve known when I first got here. I did know. I ignored all the signs. Your constant distraction, the way you were running off all the time on this big case, but it’s not true. None of this is real.” She walked across the room and clasped hands with Sandra. “I see now that you’ve been dealing with this a long time. I had a friend, Ernie Schleffer, very nice man. But he wasn’t right in the head either. Thought he spoke to tiny creatures in the forest. His dear wife, Sylvia, she spent years indulging his fantasies in order to keep him out of an institution.”
