Loonies (7 page)

Brian sat up in his seat as he saw a quartet of firefighters carrying something out of what remained of the mansion’s front entryway. He got out of his car and approached the group that was beginning to gather near the front steps. The county medical examiner who had been at Brian’s house just last night was there, as well as Steem, Wickwire, Fire Chief Shives, and Assistant Fire Chief Runck, and of course Noah Treece. The firefighters set something down that was covered by a blanket.

Brian inched closer, trying to get a look past the bodies blocking his view. The medical examiner crouched and pulled the blanket away. The head revealed resembled a charcoal briquette after a day of grilling on the barbecue, but the singed wiry hair surrounding the faceless lump gave no doubt to the identity of the corpse: the late Dr. Milton Wymbs.

Faceless?

The body didn’t appear to have a face.

The medical examiner withdrew a pair of tweezers from his front pocket and reached toward the top of the head. He plucked the edge of what looked like a flake of skin and pulled back some kind of cloth that had been covering the face. Once it had been removed, even from his distance Brian could see the doctor’s open eyes. Whatever had been covering his face was placed in a plastic bag.

The group of men began discussing something, and now Steem appeared to be giving orders, gesturing with his right hand, his voice raised but not enough for Brian to make out any words. Steem began talking to the firefighters. Brian was growing impatient. It had been a long night. Too long, but he couldn’t leave now. He walked toward the group of men, but Steem must have spotted him out of the corner of his eye and immediately turned and put his hand out, palm up.

“Stay back,” he barked, and the curled lip and narrowed eyes stopped Brian cold.

Helpless, he could only watch as the state policemen and the fire chiefs entered the rubble. There were shouts and hollering from the various firefighters and law enforcement personnel, and then everyone filed out of the debris. Steem barked more orders, and Wickwire went to the State Police vehicle and got on its radio.

Brian wanted to get Noah’s attention, but Steem had corralled him and there was nothing to do but wait. Steem did all the talking and Noah nodded appropriately. Several of the out-of-town firefighters headed to their trucks and started their engines. It looked like most of them would be heading home, no longer needed now that the fire was out and the mansion just a smoky hull.

It looked like Steem was done with Treece, since the young chief turned and walked away. Brian intercepted him.

“What’s up?” Brian asked.

It had been a long night for Noah, too, but his grave, ashen face was new. The chief met Brian’s gaze, his lips not spreading in his usual smile, and shook his head.

“Man,” he said, looking back at the Mustard House. “It’s weird.”

“What?” Brian asked, heartbeat picking up again. “Are they going to bring out the rest of the bodies?”

Noah looked at him. “That’s what’s weird. There are no bodies.”

“What do you mean?”

“They found Dr. Wymbs, but nobody else. No staff, no patients. There are no bodies. There was nobody else in the place.” He gazed at the smoky remains, shook his head again, and walked to his patrol car.

Brian stood dumbfounded, not sure what to think. He got his camera out and took one last picture of what was left of the Mustard House and walked back toward his own car. Before getting in he stopped and looked down the ridge at the town of Smoky Hollow, a light mist settling around storefronts getting ready to open for business as usual.

But this was anything but usual, he thought. It was crazy. And that was followed by another thought.

Where had all the crazies gone?

Brian sat at his desk in his office holding a strange envelope.

It hadn’t come in the mail. There was neither stamp nor address on it. It must have been slipped through the mail slot in the building’s front door sometime before Beverly Crump arrived to open. Scrawled in black ink on the front were two words: “Mr. Editor.” Black marks stained the envelope where the ink had smudged.

Brian flipped the envelope over and back before deciding to work his thumb under the flap and rip it open. A sheet of simple white note paper was inside, with two lines written in the middle of the paper in the same handwriting:

Do you know the secret of Smokey Hollow?

The Silhouette

Brian stared at the question, wondering what it meant but more importantly who or what The Silhouette was. He figured it had something to do with the trunk. It had to. And maybe even the fire at the Mustard House. He thought about calling Chief Treece, but if this was someone who could be a valuable newspaper source, he needed to protect the identity in case the person came forward.

But the letter wasn’t much help, posing a question Brian had no way of answering. Did the letter writer know the answer? Brian’s gut said yes. So why the tease? Why not just come right out and tell him. Someone liked a mystery, it appeared.

He tossed the letter into his top center drawer. There was really not much else he could do with it. Brian began downloading pictures of the fire from his camera onto his computer.

After he had gotten home from the Mustard House, he had collapsed onto the couch, not wanting to go upstairs to bed and disturb Darcie. Even though he had been jittery from the night’s event, he had managed to drop off to sleep for a bit until his wife came down in the morning. He had felt obliged to talk with her briefly, telling her all about the excitement of the night and the mystery it held.

But he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d be back at the office, even though it was almost a week before the next edition was scheduled. He wanted to jot down descriptions of the scene while they were fresh in his mind, and he wanted to look at the pictures. He was surprised by how few photographs he took. He remembered being so mesmerized by the blaze that he had found himself just observing it, forgetting that he wasn’t a spectator.

A call to Fire Chief Shives confirmed what he had already suspected. The state fire marshal had determined the blaze to be arson. Evidence of an accelerant had been found—a couple empty gasoline cans. No real attempt to hide them. They had been outside the back of the mansion.

Brian brought up the crowd scene and stared at it, scanning the faces of the spectators. He remembered how often fire marshals told him that arsonists liked to watch the fires they set. Was the culprit in this crowd shot? Many of the people had been at Rolfe Krimmer’s Boston Post Cane ceremony, so none of them could have been involved. But there were plenty of others in the picture, such as the priest and the nun.

He remembered the gray-haired woman standing by herself. He zoomed in on her, though the picture’s clarity weakened as the picture got closer. Her eyes looked wide and round, her lips clamped tight. It wasn’t quite the look of amazement that the other onlookers had, it was more…what? Shock? Fright?

His attention returned to the crowd as something caught his eye—a woman near the back. He hadn’t noticed her before because she was mostly obscured by other bystanders. But he noticed her now and recognized her: Wymbs’ housekeeper. He hadn’t seen her at the scene, but there she was, watching with the others. Brian remembered her getting off duty earlier that night. He also remembered how he wished he had gotten her name. If only he had noticed her at the fire.

Brian looked through the glass window of his office at Beverly, at her desk in the reception area, typing press releases.

“Bev,” he called, looking back at the picture on the computer screen. “Come here.”

The diminutive round woman pushed herself out of her chair and strolled to the open door.

“Yes,” she said, removing her cat’s-eye glasses and letting them hang from the chain around her neck.

“You know everyone in town,” he said, looking at her—she was so short it really was like looking at eye level. “Look at this picture.”

She waddled around his desk to peer over his shoulder, raising her glasses and setting them on the end of her nose. Brian pointed at the screen at the housekeeper.

“Do you know this woman?”

Beverly bent forward and then immediately straightened. “Don’t recognize her.”

“Damn,” he said. “It’s Dr. Wymbs’ housekeeper, but I didn’t get her name when I went up there earlier in the day. I’d love to be able to talk to her.” He leaned back in his chair, dejected.

“Oh, my gosh!” Bev squealed.

Brian bolted upright in his seat. “What?”

“That’s her!” She pointed to the edge of the picture, to the gray-haired woman off to the side.

“Who?” He was confused.

“The woman you were looking for. Ruth Snethen. The one who owned your house.”

Brian looked at her in amazement. “Really?” He couldn’t believe it, and excitement rose in his chest again. “That’s Ruth Snethen?”

“I’d recognize her anywhere.”

He looked back at the screen. “Wow.” She was there, at the scene of her former place of employment where her former employer met his death. What was she doing there? Concern? Or something more?

“The State Police haven’t found her yet?” Beverly asked.

“No,” Brian said, laughing at the thought she was right there under their noses and Steem and Wickwire hadn’t even known it. They must not know what she looks like, or they were so preoccupied with the blaze that they didn’t pay attention. He wanted to call Noah and was reaching for his phone as Beverly was heading out of his office. She stopped at the doorway and turned to face him.

“How long are you going to be here?”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” Her expression told him she knew something he didn’t. She often did.

He put the phone down and racked his brain. Nothing came to mind. He looked at her and shrugged.

“Today’s the Women’s Garden Club tour. Remember.” It was as if she were scolding him.

“Oh shit,” he said, banging his fist on the table. He looked at the clock on his desk, and then at the picture on his computer.

“You’re not going to blow this off again are you?”

He thought about it for a second, then rose from his chair, looking through the papers on his desk for the tour schedule. “No,” he said. “Dammit.” He ruffled more of the papers but couldn’t come up with anything.

“Would you like this?” Beverly asked, fanning herself with a small flier that she seemed to pull out of thin air like a magician, which he was learning pretty quickly she practically was.

Brian grabbed his camera and notepad and plucked the schedule out of her hand as he whisked by. He would call Noah from the road to tell him about Ruth Snethen. But first he had to get in the good graces of Mrs. Picklesmeir.

He stepped out of the news office into the warm afternoon sun, the Garden Club flier in his hand. He wore khaki pants and a jersey on an early summer day that could call for shorts, but Brian felt those were less than professional. No one takes a reporter seriously who’s wearing shorts. He was about to head to his car when he glanced across Main Street. Wibbels Real Estate and Fruit Market caught his eye and a thought popped into his head. He glanced at the flier in his hand and thought, in a few minutes, one stop first.

He shoved the flier into his back pocket with his notepad and secured his cameral strap over his shoulder before darting across Main Street.  Not much traffic on a Saturday afternoon, of course. Once on the other side he looked up at the marquee for the abandoned cinema. The movie theater was closed when he and Darcie moved to Smokey Hollow, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been since it last operated. He remembered Rolfe Krimmer telling him his last job was as a projectionist for the cinema, and he told him he was in his eighties when he worked there. There were still two letters up on the marquee, a “Y” and a “C,” the remains of the last movie the theater had shown. The “Y” was loose and dangled at an odd angle. It wouldn’t be long before it would break free of the marquee, like some autumn leaf clinging to the branch of a tree, and drift down to the sidewalk.

Past the cinema Brian walked by the taxidermist shop, whose front window boasted a menagerie of stuffed wildlife: a fox, beaver, raccoon, several deer heads, and even a bear up on its hind legs, arms raised in a menacing gesture. In the center of the window display, a wooden tiered rack contained several rows of glass eyes in a variety of sizes and colors.

Brian glanced back as he passed the shop and the eyes seemed to be watching him walk by. He looked away with a shiver.

After passing an empty storefront, its windows soaped over, Brian went by Wigland. Its window display contained multiple mannequin heads adorned with long flowing locks of women’s tresses: blondes, brunettes, redheads. If the plastic heads had the eyes from the taxidermist shop, it really would have freaked him out.

The bell over the door tinkled as Brian pushed his way into Wibbels. A citrus odor engulfed him, and goose bumps erupted on his bare arms in the cool interior of the shop. Bins of fruits formed two rows in the center of the market. A big wooden pickle barrel was planted near the front, exuding a vinegary odor through its round cover. The priest and the nun from the local church were picking through bins of fruit. Behind the counter on the right, an older man in an apron smiled at him. He was short, with a thinning dome and thick black glasses. There was something familiar about him.

“Mr. Wibbels around?” Brian asked.

“Out back,” the clerk said.

Through a doorway at the back of the market was Leo Wibbels’ real estate office. Brian and Darcie had sat in there not long ago, pouring through listings of homes. He thought about how deciding on Ruth Snethen’s home on Ash Street had set in motion the odd series of events that followed. What if they had picked some other house? Would the steamer trunk be still locked in the attic, keeping its grisly secret?