Incident At Elder Creek Page 13

  Jackie sat fingering the cup in front of her, giving Tucker a look of grave concern. Tucker smiled, but she didn’t telegraph much happiness. Jackie got up to help Leah and returned with a basket of muffins and a plate of the egg concoction. Leah followed with two more plates in hand.

  They shoveled a few bites into their mouths in silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Tucker registered the picture on the television flickering as it changed from announcer to on-the-scene reporter. Lack of sound made it impossible to discern the topic of the news segment.

  Jackie said, “Tucker, you need to get something in your stomach. Eat.”

  Tucker concentrated on her plate and lifted her fork to her mouth.

  After she ate a few more bites, Jackie spoke again. “Okay, Tucker. Give. What’s going on?”

  She spoke haltingly at first. It took every ounce of determination she could muster to keep the tears from falling. She told them about Lily being harassed, the fight with Dunbar, and the jail. When she told them about Lily and Olivia’s plot to rescue her, they both muttered appreciation for the women’s ingenuity but voiced concern about using a gun. Tucker told them it didn’t matter and added the details about the fire.

  When Tucker showed them the red mark across her palm, Leah jumped up from her seat and disappeared into the next room. She returned with the thick, sappy leaf of an aloe plant, cradled Tucker’s hand in hers, and slathered the clear juice over the mark. Tucker felt the cooling effect instantly. The sensitivity dissolved as Leah rubbed the fleshy side of the leaf over the mark a second time. Tucker relaxed.

  Her eyes went to the TV again. The scene changed. On the screen, Tucker registered recognition of the familiar, ominous face. She jumped up from her seat so quickly, the aloe went flying. Leah grabbed at it, trying to catch it, but missed. Jackie sprang up and whisked a roll of paper towels from the counter, tearing off a few to wipe up the slippery mess on the floor.

  Leah asked, urgency in her tone, “Tucker, what is it? What’s going on?”

  Tucker tore her attention away from the screen and pointed to it. Tightness squeezed at her throat as she asked, “Who is that guy?”

  Now Leah and Jackie gave their full attention to the TV. A female reporter, a talking head, held a news sheet in front of her, her lips moving as she read. Behind her, a large, flat image of a man’s face loomed on the screen over her shoulder.

  Leah looked at Tucker, her brow furrowed in confusion. “He’s the missing woman’s boyfriend. The guy from Portero. Noll, maybe? North? No, Notch. I forget his first name.”

  “No,” Tucker growled. The dread filled and surrounded her and made her voice shake. She took in a deep breath before she added, “His name is Dunbar—Nigel Dunbar. And he wants to kill me.” As she said it, she heard the now familiar whisper rattle in her mind...Forget.

  LEAH AND JACKIE stared at Tucker as she watched the silent images on the television change to a commercial. Leah switched the set off.

  “Let’s sit down,” Jackie suggested.

  Once they were seated, Leah spoke first, “Tucker, you’ve never seen Notch before?”

  “I hardly ever watch TV and with all the extra work I’ve been doing for the town project, my writing, and my other distractions, I haven’t caught much news. I have seen a couple of reports, but they never said anything about the boyfriend, and they never showed his picture. I’ve only heard from you two about him.”

  “Well, I never liked him from the first time I saw him on TV,” Jackie said.

  “My impression of him is he’s sort of a strange bird,” Leah added.

  “And the only encounters I’ve experienced were with Dunbar, the bartender at The St. Charles Saloon in 1873. But Dunbar holds some extreme animosity against me. I’ve felt it from the first time I encountered him back there and I have no idea why.

  “And something else has been happening to me. I keep hearing one word over and over again and it’s bothering me a lot. I keep hearing the word ‘forget’ and I have no idea what it means, although now I’m realizing it’s connected to this whole thing, whatever this is.” She waved into the air, suggesting nothing—and everything—at the same time.

  “Okay,” Leah said, “let’s take a deep breath and calm ourselves. Then, let’s try to figure out how Tucker’s Old West encounters, the missing girl, and the connection to this guy are related.”

  Jackie looked down at her half-empty coffee cup and pulled the carafe toward her. “I think I need more coffee.”

  Tucker said, “I think I need something stronger than coffee.”

  Leah walked over to the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. She brought it to the table and dumped an unmeasured amount into the coffee in Tucker’s cup. “This is all you get. You need to be clear-headed to figure this thing out.”

  Tucker picked up the cup and smelled it. It didn’t smell unpleasant like the stuff she got from Dunbar. A fleeting thought wafted through her mind and she wondered if he tried to poison her, but she dismissed it quickly. As Leah stretched to put the bottle away, Tucker touched her arm and took the bottle from her. The label read Bushmills 16.

  Impressive, she thought. How does a librarian afford such expensive and excellent whiskey? She handed the bottle back to Leah without remarking, picked up her cup and took a huge gulp.

  The smooth, spiked coffee calmed Tucker. She felt the gears engage and questions popped into her consciousness like so many helium balloons rising into her line of sight. If she didn’t commit them to memory, they might float away. “I need something to write with. Quick.” She looked at Leah, pleading in her eyes.

  Leah scrambled to the counter and pulled a lined pad and a mechanical pencil from a drawer. As soon as she handed it to Tucker, she started to scribble:

  Nigel Dunbar / Notch

  Leah is Lily

  Jackie is Olivia

  Why does Dunbar want to kill me?

  What does the missing girl have to do with this?

  Start of it all: in front of Charlie —beat up and confused —WHY?

  1873 -why incorrect articles in the newspaper?

  Forget —What? Why?

  Leah watched over Tucker’s shoulder as she wrote, unable to offer any help.

  Jackie took her phone out and looked at the time. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go. I’m opening The Charlie today. It’s Tracey’s day off. I wish I didn’t have to go, but I must.” She met Tucker’s eyes. “I hope you understand.”

  Tucker stopped writing and said, “It’s okay, Jackie, go.”

  Leah said, “No school for me today. It’s a teacher’s work day. I have some research to do. I thought I might go into the school later, but I can do what I need to do from home. I think I should stay with Tucker. I’m not sure how much help I can be, but I can offer moral support.”

  Tucker looked up from the list. “I scheduled a meeting with the mayor today for two o’clock. I’m going to call him and cancel. I think I’m coming down with something.” She fake-coughed a few times and added, “I’d be grateful for your help, Leah, but if you need to take care of business, I’ll understand. You go on, Jackie. We’ll catch up later.” She felt as if things were becoming more stable around her, although more and more questions filled her mind and no answers materialized.

  Jackie gave each one of them a hug and let herself out.

  Once Jackie left, Leah said, “I’m going to put a call in at school in case anyone looks for me.” She left to use the phone in the living room.

  Tucker called the mayor’s office from her cell phone and made her excuses. When she hung up, she sat staring at the list she’d made, a scowl painted across her face. Leah found her still gazing down at it when she came into the kitchen.

  “Having any luck?”

  “None whatsoever,” Tucker said. “It’s so frustrating. I keep thinking I should understand all this. It’s got to be related somehow, but I can’t make any sense of it. I have this feeling there’s something just out of reach, and I can’t find i
t to grab onto it.”

  Leah gave her a sympathetic look.

  Tucker drank the last of her augmented coffee. When she put the cup down, she said, “I don’t suppose I can convince you to pour me some more of your Bushmills, can I?” She poked a thumb in the direction of the cupboard. “Maybe without the coffee this time?”

  Leah blew out a breath. “You’re incorrigible, you know? It’s ten o’clock in the morning, for crying out loud.”

  She walked to the cabinet and removed the bottle and brought it to the table. Tucker noted the level of liquid in the bottle. By her estimation, only the small amount Leah put in her coffee earlier appeared to be missing.

  Tucker looked up at Leah and said, “What’s a nice librarian like you doing with such an expensive—and exquisite, I might add—bottle of whiskey like this?”

  She thought she saw a shadow of something like sorrow pass across Leah’s eyes. It disappeared as fast as it came.

  “A gift,” Leah said.

  When Tucker realized she wouldn’t say any more, she said, “Well, it helped calm my anxiety over all this. Thanks for being willing to share it.”

  “Wait,” Leah said. She picked up the bottle and stared at it as if she might divine its secrets. When she looked back at Tucker, she said, “How much does this stuff cost, anyway?”

  The grin on Tucker’s face appeared slowly. “Promise me when I tell you, you won’t take it away?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Tell me how much.” Leah’s voice carried an insistent tone now.

  “About seventy-five bucks a bottle.”

  Leah stared at the flagon in her hand for a few seconds. Then she placed it carefully on the table and smiled. “I guess you’re worth it, Tucker Stevens.”

  Tucker stretched her hand out toward the bottle, but Leah reacted faster and grabbed it back. “But only one small glass, do you hear me? You need to be clear-headed.”

  Tucker knew she was right. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  Leah deposited the bottle on the table again and walked to the cupboard. Standing on tiptoe, she removed two cut crystal glasses and brought them back to the table. As she put them down, she said, “Seventy-five-dollar whiskey should be served in glasses deserving of it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tucker smiled.

  “Only give me a mouthful. Unlike you, this stuff is not going to clear my head.”

  Tucker poured half a glass for herself and a finger-full for Leah. They lifted the glasses, toasted without words, and drank.

  Leah took a tentative sip and proclaimed, “God, this is good.”

  “Indeed it is.” Their eyes met and Tucker felt a tingle not entirely brought on by the superb quality of the alcohol. “Thanks for sticking with me on this weird journey, Leah. I appreciate it.”

  “What can I say, I’m a sucker for an adventure, and this promises to be a doozy.” They each tipped their glasses to their mouths, making sure they got the last drops from them, then Leah added, “Okay, let’s take a look at this list and see what we can figure out.”

  “HOW CLOSELY HAVE you been following the story of the missing girl? Do you know much about it?” Tucker asked.

  “Only what I’ve seen on television,” Leah replied. “Apparently, her parents reported she went silent several weeks ago. She called them regularly, according to the news reports, but then, the calls stopped and her parents got worried.”

  “So, she lived with this guy? Notch? In Portero?”

  “Well, news reports have been confusing. The first claims said she did, but later they said she didn’t. Then reports said she attended college in Monterey and she only knew Notch as a professional associate, interested in some New Age theories of his. But the last report I heard returned to them possibly being involved in a relationship again. The details have been so muddled, with most of the confusion coming from him, contradicting what the police have to say. But no matter how you look at it, this Notch guy is certainly questionable.”

  Tucker watched as Leah’s eyes widened in surprise or astonishment.

  “Demetrius,” Leah shouted.

  Tucker stared, puzzled.

  Leah added, “His first name. Demetrius Notch. He bills himself as a hypnotist and New Age guru over in Portero. Conducts sessions to cure people of all kinds of things: smoking, weight issues, mental illness.”

  Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Mental illness? I would think a claim like that would get him into trouble with the medical establishment.”

  “He says he’s some kind of doctor. If he is, there’s something fishy about his bedside manner. Anyway, I’m glad I finally remembered his name. It would have driven me crazy until I did.”

  “Speaking of being driven nuts: hearing the word ‘forget’ every time I think about certain things, repeating over and over again, is driving me to the point of thinking I might lose my mind. It’s one of the reasons I thought—”

  “Tucker, you are not losing your mind. Something’s going on in your subconscious and we’ve got to figure out what it is. This guy—this Demetrius Notch—is somehow related to it.”

  Tucker looked down at the list. She picked up the pencil and added the name Demetrius after Notch’s last name.

  She stared at the list, repeating the names over and over to herself.

  Nigel Dunbar / Notch —Demetrius

  At last, she looked up at Leah and said, “It’s the same initials. Nigel Dunbar, ND. Demetrius Notch, DN, ND.” She looked at the list again. Leah Hudson, Lily Hart. Jackie O’Malley, Olivia Justice.

  “They’re all the same initials. Some are reversed, but they’re all the same,” Leah said. “Maybe your brain put us into the wrong context and gave us different names while giving clues to our own names as a means to get your attention.”

  “But what about the newspaper? Why would the newspaper contain information about things from the previous year as if they were happening right then, and report on other things from far into the future, another year or more?”

  “I don’t know. Another attention-getting device?”

  “Maybe, but it might be too easy an explanation. There’s got to be more to all this. The only problem is, how the heck am I going to decipher it all? And what does it have to do with the missing girl?”

  “We should call the police,” Leah said.

  “And tell them what? I’ve been having these strange experiences, these incidents of something in my head, where people I know are in the wrong time and place with names containing the same initials, only different and backwards, and this guy I’ve never seen before is in these visions and I have no idea what it all means?” Sarcasm filled her voice as she added, “But it means something, officer, I’m sure of it.”

  They stared at each other. Then, Leah said, “I guess it’s a bad idea, huh?”

  “At least until we figure out something substantial—until we have something to tell them where I don’t sound like an escapee from a mental institution.”

  Leah opened her mouth to protest.

  Tucker stopped her before she objected. “I know. Yes, I now realize I’m not losing my mind. Unfortunately, until we can figure this out a little more, I’ll still sound crazy to the police.”

  Leah said, “Well, one thing is for sure, Tucker. It’s obvious this has something to do with the missing girl. So let’s start working on this problem so we’ll have something concrete to tell the police soon.”

  “Fine with me, but where do you suggest we start?”

  “Let’s start by looking at all the news reports about the girl we can find online. It’ll help refresh my memory about what I’ve heard and we can both learn anything new to help us.”

  They spent the morning looking at news clips. Portero News reported conflicting information at first. They finally settled on the girl being from Monterey, a college student with an interest in metaphysics. She met Notch at a conference in the nearby town of Seaside, where she went to school. They became friends, the
reports said. She often came to Portero to spend time with him, possibly studying with him.

  With a hint of sarcasm in her voice, Leah remarked, “Yeah, I’ll bet he studied her instead of the other way around.”

  They continued their review of online information. One of the reports they found said Notch and the young woman were in a relationship, but her parents said she told them she wanted to break it off. Shortly after, Notch appeared on TV, crying big crocodile tears, as Jackie described it. He did put on quite a show, pleading for the young woman’s return, saying he cared about her and wanted her back in his life. Shortly after his appearance, another report reiterated the police were still looking at Notch as a person of interest, but a follow-up report, soon after, said the police cleared him.

  As they already knew, news spread of the missing girl’s story. They found news reports from Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, and Los Angeles, but no new information. The girl disappeared without a trace, and the authorities started speculating she was a run-away, in spite of the fact that there was nothing to support the theory. True, she gave the impression of being a little flighty at times, in her parents’ estimation, but she always behaved responsibly in the end. She’d never exhibited any desire to run away. They didn’t like her taking up with an older man, but they tried to be supportive because they didn’t want to alienate her. They didn’t want to do anything to put her in danger because of their actions. Tucker and Leah remarked about the evident remorse and pain on the parents’ faces as they spoke, wracked with guilt over what they may have done differently.

  “Man, what a rotten situation,” Leah said as she closed the last report on the computer screen.

  They sat in silence, letting the information soak in. Leah said, “I keep wondering if we’re missing something—if there’s some kernel of information we aren’t paying attention to. Something might be key and we’re not recognizing it.”