Easy as One Two Three (A Flap Tucker Mystery) Read online

He looked down at his own food. “It is easy to get turned around up there. As many times as I’ve been hiking up there in those woods, I almost always get lost for a span. It’s like you never see anything that looks familiar — then there you are, back on the road, or right by the abandoned farm, or out at the church.”

  I blinked. “Church. Is there a graveyard up there, by the church?”

  He nodded. “That whole mountain’s a graveyard.”

  Ominous enough. I went on. “But there’s a churchyard?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “It’s on up the mountain a little farther behind the church building. In some pines.”

  I finished my greens. I was eating too fast. “I’d like to look up there too.”

  “Why?”

  Dally answered. “He likes old boneyards.”

  David wasn’t satisfied with that. “I see, but —”

  I stopped him. “— But why now? Because I think it’s got something to do with all this, somehow. Also” — I turned to Cedar — “now I’d like to see if we couldn’t get that skull we were just talking about and run a few little tests on it.”

  He was irritated with that. “What for?”

  I looked up. “Because I believe it may be the last remains of Christy Rayburn, the little ghost of Lost Pines.”

  *

  Roughly an hour later we’d found the stone altar, and Cedar had the little skull packed, according to his perception of proper procedure, in bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts in a box. It seemed smaller in the daylight, like it was too small to be a ten-year-old’s. But what do I know about baby skulls? Maybe it shrank.

  Cedar was grave, if that’s not a poor choice of words under the circumstances. “This’ll be back to us in less than forty-eight hours. Then we’ll know a lot more.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but I got the impression he had something to match the skull with so that he’d know something about it. He wasn’t willing to share, and I was willing, at least as far as it went for the moment, to trust him.

  Dally and David volunteered to take the package back to the police station. Somebody there was going to zoom it away. I think Dally just wanted a nap. We said we’d meet back at Miss Nina’s — where else?

  Cedar and I were more interested in poking around there in the daylight. I kicked around in the rubble of what was left of the old place for a while, but there was really nothing there — except a powerful feeling of sadness.

  Cedar took the stone altar apart, piece by piece, thinking there might be more remains underneath, but all he found was the same sort of feeling, as far as I could tell.

  It wasn’t any warmer, but the air didn’t feel as mean as it had. The new buds and stems didn’t seem that much the worse for the sudden rudeness of snow. Maybe spring would have a chance after all.

  Nothing in particular impelled me toward the tree hut again, except, I guess, the same Providence that had gotten me there in the first place, the previous night. I just suddenly, after what seemed like idle wandering, found myself there.

  Lots more of the climbing slats were popped off the tree. Somebody had tried to climb up after we’d left. That was clear. They’d done a good job of wrecking the ladder. I didn’t see how anybody could climb it now, but I wanted to go up and see.

  “Hey! Cedar? You hear me?”

  It didn’t exactly echo, but my voice was very crisp in the clear air.

  From a good ways off: “What now?”

  “Got a rope?”

  “A what?”

  “A rope. Somebody’s been messing with the tree hut again.”

  I started toward the sound of his voice. He must have been doing the same with mine. We met near the top of a little ridge.

  He spoke first. “Rope?”

  “Somebody wrecked the ladder to the tree hut. Somebody was up there after we left last night. I want to check it out.”

  He looked away in the direction of the thing. “Yeah. Guess I do too.”

  He shot back to his Jeep for a good length of nylon rope. I played babysitter for the place itself. In the few minutes he was gone, a wind came up and it made the whole tree sway and creak. In that movement I thought I heard something heavy clunking around up there.

  When I saw him over the ridge, I started for him. Couldn’t stand still. “Come on. There’s something up there.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want to go up and find out.” I practically grabbed the rope out of his hands.

  We were both at the base of the tree in the next second. I was tossing the rope up to secure it over the big limb that the hut was built on — and failing fairly miserably.

  Finally Cedar grabbed the rope back, fiddled with it for a second, and with one heave tossed it perfectly over and around the limb in question. He had a hold of one end while the other end fell neatly at my feet.

  “Show-off.”

  Before he could respond, I snatched both ends again and flung myself at the trunk. I was grunting and groaning halfway up before I got to the first remaining good rung of the ladder. It held. I made the rest of my way up with relative ease.

  I saw right away the real reason I must have been so interested in coming up there — the vision reason.

  Before I was even securely settled on the big limb, I called down to Officer Duffie. “Well, this is something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think you’d better come up.”

  “What is it?”

  I poked my head into the hut just to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. “It’s pretty much like a dead body.”

  He exploded. “What?”

  I poked my head back out and looked down at him. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure we got us a stiff up here.” I looked at the thing again. It was kind of dark in the dimly lit, windowless playhouse. I didn’t see the point in mentioning the carpenter’s belt just at that moment, but it was clear who was dead in the tree hut. “Seems to be the body of Sydney Wicher.”

  19. Drill

  It didn’t take long for Cedar to get up the trunk and onto the big limb with me, even holding his flashlight in his teeth by a loop — like a pirate. Felt kind of silly, two big old guys bent over in a tree hut — three if you counted Wicher, who was lying there wearing some sort of carpenter’s belt.

  Cedar commented first. “Looks like our boy here’s been fixing up the place.”

  “It’ll take even more fixing,” I nodded, “if the three of us stay up here very long. I’d say we equal the weight of ten kids.” I stared. “You said … or somebody said this place had been fixed up recently. Think Mr. Wicher was making more wooden toys for Ginny?”

  He looked at the dead body. “Maybe. Can’t tell if I feel like it’s a kindly gesture from a lonely old man or a creepy motive from a strange one.” He looked at me. “This may put a further crimp in my theory of Wicher as kidnapper.”

  I shrugged. “Boo Radley.”

  “Huh?”

  “The guy’s like Boo Radley — in To Kill a Mockingbird. A kind of spooky guardian angel.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Anyhow …” And he turned on his flashlight and started looking around for something.

  I looked too. “Scanning for a murder weapon?”

  He gave me the sideways. “What do you think killed Mr. Wicher?”

  “Could we turn him over?”

  He thought about it for a second, then shined his flashlight in the hut, caught a red puddle underneath the man. “I guess that would be all right.”

  “Think he might have fallen on something?”

  Another shrug. “Could be.”

  “Maybe even one of his own tools.”

  He sighed. “Are you saying this could just be an accident?”

  “I’m saying he might have one of his tools stuck in him. How it got there, I’m not saying.”

  We rolled him over. He was a mess. He’d been lying on a Makita, a cordless,
battery-operated drill. It looked like the drill bit was right in his heart. His hand was on the handle. His finger was on the trigger.

  I blew out a little breath. “Takes quite a conviction to drill yourself to death.”

  Cedar nodded, very grimly. “Especially in the heart.”

  “Think anybody really expected us to believe this was a suicide?”

  He looked away. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  I sat back as best I could. “What do we do now?”

  He considered. “I think we have to leave this just like it is, now. Bring back some of the boys, get prints … so forth.”

  “I guess.” I made a face. “Some people believe in science. Some people believe in faith healing. Surprising as it may be, coming from an urban sophisticate such as myself, put me down on the faith-healing side.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you play science with the boys from the lab. I have other ideas more founded in my own peculiar faith.”

  “Such as?”

  I started down the ladder. “Such as prying into the concept that we were both wrong about Sydney here.” I got a good hold of the rope and slung one leg down the side of the tree. “I think he might be a hero in this story, not a villain. I think he might even have saved Ginny McDonner’s life.”

  “How in the world would he have done that?”

  I looked up at him. “For one thing, he built this tree house, didn’t he?”

  “Did he?”

  I was in no mood to hover. I let myself down. “You don’t really think that this thing has been here for fifty years. I mean, take a look at it. Some of the wood still has the yellow Osmose sticker stapled to the end of it. And he’s up here with a Makita doing repairs? Just a guess, but I think he’s the architect.”

  He looked at the place. “I guess it’s possible.”

  “It’s not fifty years old.”

  He sighed big. “No. It’s not. So who drilled him?”

  I was on the ground. “The people who really tried to kidnap Ginny?”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Just guessing, once again, but I believe the culprits to be a couple of cartoon characters.”

  “A couple of what?”

  I headed for the logging road. “I’m going to repeat my journey of yestereve — only in the bright light of day. I’ll see you back in town.”

  He shouted. “Where are you going? What’s that about cartoons?”

  “Nothing.” I didn’t care about what he thought at that moment. I just cared that some little girl was now on day three in absentia and I really wanted her home with her family, such as it was. Why I wanted that so badly was a mystery I was willing to let be. Got no kids of my own, not likely to ever have any. Still, the parent trap, it gets you one way or the other. I was thinking that Dally’s new little niece might be the closest I’d ever get to actually being a father, and I’d have to admit that’s a pretty far stretch. So the feeling of helping find this lost kid … it was doing something to me I couldn’t explain. Where do they come from, those parent juices? Why does a guy like me get them?

  With all manner of thoughts of that sort, I trundled down the old log road. I made it to the place where I thought we’d found the hat. Hard to tell in the light — and to confuse me further, there were plenty of pine branches just like the one I’d cleverly used to mark the spot. But I was pretty sure I’d gotten the general area right, and started up the hill from the road, the same hill Moose and Fedora had come tumbling down the night before.

  Once on top of that particular ridge, I got a little tingle of something. The ridge overlooked the cemetery behind David’s church. I thought about what he’d said. The whole mountain was a graveyard. I also thought about the spooks in my dream trance — which by the way did I mention was weirder than science and I was hoping to have another crack at a more normal experience of same, if such a thing as normal exists in that sort of experiential realm. But I was digressing. I guess I was thinking that the experience I’d had in David’s church was a teaser. A trailer, like coming attractions in the movie game. I was still waiting for the feature attraction, when I could get off to myself and really concentrate.

  But as I stared down at the graveyard, all my random musing was shoved aside by a darting figure in the snow and afternoon light. It looked very much like a little girl.

  “Ginny?”

  I practically fell down the hill toward the vanishing phantom. By the time I was down among the tombstones, there was no motion anywhere.

  I tried again. “Ginny? Don’t be scared. I’m …”

  Right. Just who exactly was I that a scared little kid was going to come running to? Put yourself in her place. You’ve already scotched a couple of kidnappers, avoided a very strange home life, and wandered around cold and hungry for a couple of days — are you really going to run into the waiting arms of some strange man swooping down from the hillside after you? Well, regardless of what anybody else would have done, Ginny — if that’s who I’d seen — was in no mood for oddballs. She’d taken the well-known powder.

  What was I going to say, anyway? “I’m a friend of the family?” Not really accurate. “I’m a policeman?” An outright fabrication. “I’m a loony from Atlanta and I had a dream about you?” Closest to the truth, and yet far from confidence-inspiring.

  So in the end I opted for something familiar — i.e., having to do with the family. “Your parents sent me.”

  No dice. Maybe it wasn’t even Ginny. Could even have been one of the kids from the church service earlier, up visiting Grandpa Walton’s grave or some such. I guess it could even have been my imagination. I probably hadn’t seen anything at all but a little dart of wishful thinking.

  The boneyard was interesting enough. Some of the graves were old; plenty were from the Civil War. I spent a few minutes looking around, trying to calm myself and collect my thoughts — sort of hoping the phantom might return.

  The church was empty. The road in front of it was vacant. The air was very still. I had the sensation that I was wandering around lost again, even though I knew right where I was.

  I decided to take advantage of the situation and slip back into the church. It was quiet. Nobody was around. I thought maybe I just might be able to really break into the old subconscious vault and see what hidden treasure might be there. Who could say? Maybe there was even some residual juju left from my mini-experience, the one I’d had earlier, during David’s odd service.

  I took an aisle seat, settled back, and started the routine from the top, the way I’d always done it since I was a kid. Breathe in, breathe out. The sound of the breath was the only sound. The movement of the air was the only motion. The feel of the breath was the only sensation. In my mind there were miles of blank white snow. Everything was still. Everything was calm. Everything was white. White upon white upon white. I could hear the rushing of the blood, feel the breath kissing the capillaries, see the white light on the white snow from the white clouds. I was dancing with the quarks. I was elemental. I was everything.

  Into such a void the images came gliding, like a glittering magic lantern show. Rocky and Bullwinkle were demonstrating how to spruce up your home with attractive vinyl siding. The house they were fixing up was in the trees and belonged to a wolf that looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place the face. Carol Anne was playing the part of Little Red Riding Hood; none other than our Miss Nina — still the only real live human being in the group — was featured as the kindly old granny. And there was Sydney Wicher, this time in the part of the woodsman who chopped up the wicked wolf. Carol Anne split the scene as he went to work. The otherworldly visitors were Casper the Friendly Ghost and his cohorts this time, not the Dickens gang, and they were gathering around the lost girl in a very protective manner. They were ushering her into a door in the ground, only it was a little like Alice going into Wonderland. They were speeding her away from the woodsman-wolf sparring match, which then got a little out of hand. First it was
just a bunch of cartoon punching, but then the woodsman started using his ax and the whole act went Grand Guignol. Blood everywhere, and some very nasty special effects. Suddenly it was a splatter film, and I was very much not enjoying myself. At the height of the action Wicher somehow managed to cut his own head off with a chain saw. I remember thinking I was glad the little kid had gotten away and wasn’t seeing all this.

  Just when I was thinking that, I heard the little voice of the very kid in question. “Mister?”

  I turned, and the turning snapped my head and cracked my neck and popped me right out of the trance and back to the little one-room church.

  There, in the aisle beside me, was a little girl.

  20. Magic Act

  “Mister? You okay?”

  I blinked. I was afraid to move. I wasn’t certain she was really there. Could have been part of the vision. Could have been — but wasn’t.

  “Ginny? Are you Ginny McDonner?”

  She squinted at me. “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not.”

  I had to smile. “Good answer. You don’t know me from Adam.”

  She shook her head. “Sure I do. Adam’s dead. You’re not.”

  I turned ever so slightly. “Got me again. My name’s Flap.”

  “Flap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it a nickname?”

  “Naw, my parents were just that mean.”

  She smiled. “Uh-huh.”

  “So are you Ginny McDonner or not?”

  “What if I am?”

  “If you are, I’m very happy to meet you indeed, because I’ve been looking for you awhile. You’re lost, you know.”

  “Not me.”

  You had to love this kid. “Yeah, but people think you’re lost.”

  She squeezed her lips tight. “Maybe that’s what I want ’em to think.”

  I nodded. “I see.”

  She gave me a very convincing once-over. “You’re not from around here.”

  “Me? Nope. Atlanta.”

  “Wow.”

  “Uh-huh. And would you mind if I congratulate you on your diction and whatnot? You seem to be a lot more well-spoken than your parents … if you’re Ginny McDonner.”