What Lies Beneath the Graves, page 18
part #5 of Spookie Town Mystery Series
After she’d said hello to Glinda, Abigail provided him with a condensed version of where they’d been and why.
“Oh, so you met Silas Smith and his wife, huh?” Frank had brought his sandwich to the table and sat down. “I’m glad you two helped that old gentleman. Rumor is he used to be a college professor. English, I think. I don’t know where he taught, but all you have to do is speak with him and you realize he’s very educated. It’s a shame his and his wife’s lives are so troubled in their golden years. I’ll go visit him myself now I know where he lives and that he won’t chase me off.”
Abigail settled down at the table on Glinda’s left side. Myrtle was rummaging through the cabinets, probably foraging for sweets. She never could get enough. “So...give Myrtle and I a rundown on how you found and arrested those kidnappers in Chicago. I want to hear everything.”
Frank described the series of events he, Glinda and Sam Cato had gone through once they’d gotten to Chicago and how the authorities now suspected the brothers had been stealing and killing young girls all across the country for many years.
“So they’re serial killers and they’re in jail now?” she spoke when he was finished.
“They are serial killers. They’re vicious, cruel and heartless. But about them both being behind bars, now there’s a strange twist to their incarceration. Sam told me this morning when we were at the station, that one of the brothers, Arthur Addy, had a fatal heart attack last night. He died. So we only have the other brother, Wesley, to prosecute.”
“Ha! God stepped in and punished him, that’s what happened,” Myrtle piped up. Now also at the table, she’d found a candy bar and was munching on it. “Good riddance. One less murderer the state has to spend our money on and has to send to the gas chamber.”
Abigail couldn’t help but comment. “Well, if that heart attack was God’s justice, then why didn’t both brothers have them and die? They’re equally guilty.”
“God wants the other one to confess to all the atrocities and murders him and his evil brother did,” Myrtle said. “There are most likely many parents who would like to stop agonizing over what happened to their missing children. That other brother will soon be singing like a bird. He’ll confess to the police who and where the bodies are and give those poor parents closure.”
Abigail exchanged an incredulous glance with her husband but knew better than to contradict the woman. Over the years Abigail had learned Myrtle had countless strange notions about many things and it was best to merely nod or shake one’s head and let it go. But she was right about the victims’ family and friends wanting closure if their loved ones had been missing for a long time and, in reality, had been murdered. Abigail understood that need for closure completely. Not knowing what had happened to her own husband for two years had been agony and finally discovering he’d been murdered, dead for the two years, had been heart-breaking but it had also been a relief in some ways.
“Leastways,” Glinda inserted into the conversation, “the killers were caught, they won’t be committing any more atrocious crimes, and now Laura and her classmates no longer have to be afraid. Evil has been stopped. Justice has been and will be done.”
“Yeah,” Myrtle concluded, “chalk one up for the good guys. You two did well.”
“So,” Frank had finished his sandwich, reclining in his chair and was grinning at Myrtle, “have you found Masterson’s lost treasure yet?”
Myrtle threw her wadded up candy bar wrapper at him. He ducked and it missed him.
Snowball was suddenly there attacking the wrapper on the floor, batting it with her paws across the room. Everyone laughed.
“Don’t you worry, Frank my boy, I will find that treasure. Ask Glinda. She’s seen it in my cards.”
Frank addressed the psychic. “You’ve seen it in her cards? Really?”
Glinda inhaled thoughtfully. “Well, not exactly that my aunt will find it, but I know the treasure existed from my dreams of Masterson and the last time I read the tarot cards there was a promise of riches all over them. Someone is going to find something. Myrtle just happens to think it will be her. I also believe Masterson isn’t done with me. He has more to show me.”
“What! It might not be me who finds the treasure? No way, Niece. I’m going to find that treasure.” Myrtle tapped her chest. “Me.”
The others in the room kept quiet as the cat meowed.
Chapter 15
GLINDA HAD BEEN HOME for hours and night had come. It felt good being home again with her animals and her house all around her. She felt safe in Spookie. Chicago had been a difficult experience. It was always hard to be around evil. Those two brothers and the cruelties and murders they’d perpetrated over the many years of their senseless killing spree had been of the darkest evil and their crimes made her skin crawl. She’d looked at the two siblings and had seen far too much in their narrowed eyes. The future if they wouldn’t have been caught...and thank God they had been caught and stopped. She’d seen things in her mind, what could have been, she’d have a hard time forgetting. When the brothers had attempted to escape from their burning car, they’d been too close to her and she’d felt their malevolence. Her head had begun to hurt so much, she could barely concentrate on what her gift was telling her...that the kidnapped girls were also near. Then she spied the shed. They found and saved the young women and she was grateful for that.
She was only glad it was over. The surprising turn of events that the one brother had died of a heart attack in jail had been an unexpected bonus. She was sure he’d been the worse of the two siblings. He’d been the one to actually do the murders her inner voice whispered to her and he’d put Alice Wood into that grave. He’d deserved to die, it was only a pity he hadn’t suffered more; suffered as his victims over the years had suffered. But God had his reasons for what He did so she didn’t question the man’s death. It was God’s will.
She went to bed and before she fell asleep Amadeus climbed in beside her. As she slipped into dreamland the other cats also surrounded her. They must have missed her. There were always cats sneaking into her bed. She didn’t mind. Their purring let her know she was home.
The long night passed without her having a dream or a vision. She woke up as dawn was stealing into her bedroom. All the cats, even Amadeus, were gone. They were probably waiting in the kitchen to have their breakfast and then to be let outside. Dawn. Too early to get up, she mused, and closing her eyes, drifted away again. That’s when she had the dream.
MASTERSON WAS TRAVELING by train across a beautiful countryside. He sat and stared out the window, beside him on the extra seat there was a battered chest his arm rested upon. She knew the treasure was inside that chest, or what was left of the treasure. He was no longer a young man, more middle-aged, or perhaps his experiences, his ship journeys, his brother’s violent death and his long lonely island exile had prematurely aged him. His hair was gray and his wrinkled face slack. His eyes were dull. He muttered to himself as the train chugged along its tracks. “I must find them. Is she still alive? Did she have the child she was carrying when I left her? I never meant to be gone so long. I only went to find my fortune...for them. I promised her I’d return and marry her, be a father to my child. She was sure she was having a girl. Please let me find them...my lost love and my daughter. It is all I care about. Finding them will return the happiness and peace of mind I lost so long ago. Finding them will fix everything wrong in my lonely life. Nothing must stop me.”
Glinda somehow understood Masterson was returning to the last place he’d lived with his beloved Darcy. In a small town called Spookie deep in the foggy woods. The two of them had resided in a ramshackle cabin they hadn’t owned, just squatted in. Always cautious that no one knew they lived there.
In her dream she observed Masterson leave the train and drag his chest to the only traveler’s lodging there was, not much more than a humble boarding house, on Main Street. He booked a room and locked the chest inside it. And after he had dinner in a tiny diner called Roadside he walked the streets of Spookie. Glinda barely recognized the Spookie of over eighty years ago. The shops, far fewer than in the present town, were simpler and had different names above their doors. There were no sidewalks, or streetlights and the roads, even Main Street, were dirt. It was the quaint small town she had come to love but it wasn’t. There were no townspeople mulling around self-absorbed, heads down, intent on texting or talking on their cell phones.
By the cars and the way the citizens were dressed she guessed it had to be around the nineteen forties or so. Masterson wandered down the streets, shoulders hunched, head down, and avoided looking at or speaking to any of the townsfolks he passed. They, in turn, ignored him. It was not a good way to try to be accepted into a community. The night ended as the fog closed in and concealed the man and the town. And she had the feeling a great amount of time passed.
The subsequent scene in her dream was Masterson building his house...Evelyn’s house...now her house. Ah, the structure was splendid as it was originally built, fresh and strong with beautiful gardens and flowers everywhere around it. Masterson was on the work site barking orders to a gang of sullen unfriendly workers. The laborers grumbled and made faces at him behind his back. What had Masterson done to make the laborers dislike him so? She caught snatches of the men’s secret conversations:
“The boss says he liquidated gold coins to get the cash for all this...imagine that? But he’s so tight with his money and he’s an uppity fellow. Look at this fancy house he’s building. He’s no better than we are. My father said Masterson lived here before with his lover out on the edge of town in a shack, poor as a church mouse both of them. It is only because he came into money somehow that he can lord it over us. And he does lord it over us. They say....”
“Fancy clothes and an up turned nose does not a gentleman make....”
“Rumor is he found a great treasure while sailing the oceans....”
“And he’s hid it somewhere on this land of his so no one will ever take it....”
“That’s what they say....”
“We ought to find it and grab our share. It would serve him right. He never worked for that gold. Just found it somewhere and ran off with it. We could come out here at night and look....”
“That’s stealing, Benedict.”
“Well, didn’t he steal it also? It was never his to keep so why shouldn’t we claim it if we also find it?”
“You got a point there.”
“We should look for that treasure....”
The house was rising before her eyes, in fast-forward time. Glinda wasn’t sure how much time had passed since his arrival in town but Masterson himself had changed. There was more gray in his long hair, he’d grown an unkempt beard, and he moved with a pronounced limp, using a cane; there was pain on his scarred face. As he supervised the construction the days and weeks also sped by in fast time and eventually the house was finished and the ex-sailor was an even older man behind an elaborately carved desk in a richly decorated and furnished room, a study perhaps, speaking to a fashionably dressed individual in city clothes. Something told Glinda the city man was a private detective. Something about his authoritarian manner. A stout man in a suit and vest, his hair was short-cropped and he had a stern clean-shaven face, sharp eyes and clipped speech. There was a hat on his head which again reminded her of the nineteen forties.
“Find her and my daughter, Dudley, and I’ll pay you three times your normal fee,” Masterson was saying to the private detective. “Do it before I die.”
“You say it’s been ten years you have been searching for them?” Dudley questioned.
“It’s been longer. But I know they are out there somewhere and you will not give up until you find them. Have you learned anything of importance yet?”
“Other than those two townsmen who claim the woman you are searching for, Darcy Stevens, as she was known by at the time she lived here, had left the town for an unknown destination a year after you boarded your ship and sailed, no sir. But I have many more leads to follow.”
“Then go follow them.” Masterson’s face was gaunt, his eyes haunted. If it had been a decade since he’d come to Spookie he had unbelievably aged. Glinda felt sorry for him. It was clear to see he was a man with a broken spirit and heart.
The detective excused himself and took his leave.
That’s when Glinda watched Masterson open a safe behind the desk and pull out a simple wooden box...with a pile of golden coins and a few pieces of expensive looking jewelry in it. It wasn’t a big box, about a foot or so in length and less in width and depth. He took an exquisite ruby ring and a diamond necklace from the box and as they lay in his hand, he twisted them so they glittered all colors of the rainbow. He then counted out the coins into a messy stack on his desk, as if he were admiring them, and the gold gleamed in the soft lights of the room as the dream shattered and dispersed again. She could hear the winds of time soughing through the air around her. Again years, a kaleidoscope, were speeding by.
And suddenly Glinda was no longer sleeping in her bed. She was plodding through a muddy field and an old man was dragging his crippled body before her. Shabbily dressed, his clothes were so worn they could have passed for rags. He had a heavy coat on but by the trees and foliage around them Glinda estimated it was early spring and it was not all that cold. The man in front of her stopped, cocked his head a bit to the right, and in the fading light of the day she saw the old man was Masterson. In his arms he cradled a box similar to the one she’d seen him take out of his safe years before. The box with the gold coins and jewelry in it. She followed him away from his home as he thrashed through the wild overgrowth and deep into the woods. It was getting dark and she wondered where he was going. Was he going to bury what was left of his treasure? Would she now have the answer Myrtle was so anxious to have?
There was the cemetery before them, neater and less overgrown with weeds and rocks than she knew it, the tombstones whole, but Masterson was passing it by as the dream again came to an abrupt, but this time a final close.
GLINDA OPENED HER EYES. She was on the ground, leaning up against a tree across from the cemetery. It was still morning, but well after dawn, and there were birds singing above her in the tree limbs. She was in her nightgown and shivered, crossing her arms around her. It might be May but the morning was too cool for her sheer nightgown. She lifted herself from the wet earth, the back of her gown damp, and looked out over the present day cemetery. Well, well, her aunt had wasted days searching for that buried treasure in the cemetery to no avail. Masterson hadn’t buried it there at all. Glinda was dismayed, though, that the dream had ended before she’d seen where he had hidden it. Perhaps eventually he would show her.
She scurried home not wanting anyone to catch her wandering around in the morning mist in her night clothes. When she got to the house she took a shower, dressed, fed the cats, let them outside and sat down to toast with apricot preserves and a cup of hot tea.
She was getting ready to call her aunt so she could tell her about the dream when the old woman knocked on her door. Glinda knew immediately it was Myrtle by her distinctive knock. It was as if a giant was banging at her door, it was so loud.
“Good morning, Niece,” her aunt said with a big crafty smile on her face. “I come bearing gifts.” She held up a bundle of newspapers. “Hot off the press, so to speak. Chicago newspapers. The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Daily Herald. You and Frank are big time front page celebrities since you caught those two murderous degenerates and saved those girls. I got online yesterday, located the articles you two were in, and had those newspapers delivered right to my door. Lordy, I love the Internet. I ordered extra copies for me, you and Frank for our scrapbooks. I dropped Frank’s copies off before I came here. Ah, but don’t worry, they didn’t print your name, just that you were a psychic who’d helped on the case. They didn’t even mention Frank’s name, only said a retired homicide detective also assisted in solving it. But I know who they were talking about.”
Glinda and Frank had both insisted on anonymity and Sam Cato had obliged them. Good. She didn’t want her name spread all over the country. The news media and a herd of people would be staked out in her yard wanting one thing or another. Frank had felt the same way.
“Getting extra copies for Frank and I was considerate of you. Just put my copies on the coffee table there. I’ll look at them later.” Not that Glinda cared about the articles. Frank and Sam would keep her apprised of any further developments with the Addy case and, beyond that, she didn’t care. She was home and all she wanted to do was forget what she’d seen and felt on that awful land with the grave, the house which had sheltered the two human monsters, and the shed. She was pleased she’d helped save two innocent lives, and possibly many more over time, but it was behind her. She was going forward. It was the only direction she could go.
“Have you had your breakfast yet?” she asked her aunt.
“I was hoping you’d ask that and invite me to have it with you.”
Glinda shook her head in mock exasperation. “Come on in the kitchen and you can have what I’m having. Apricot preserves on toast and...you can have coffee.”
“Hot dogs! I love your homemade preserves, dearie. I’ll have breakfast with you, to give me strength, and then I’ll continue my treasure hunt. My metal detector is on the porch waiting for me.”
Glinda considered telling Myrtle about her dream and the cemetery not ever having been the hiding place for the buried booty, but decided not to. What purpose would it serve other than to make her aunt feel bad? She’d already searched the graveyard and was moving on. Best to keep that little secret to herself.
“Auntie, I think you should search the grounds past the cemetery, not the yard around the house. I remember you saying yesterday the yard around the house was next.”
