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

  Fedora relaxed — slightly. “Oh. Oh. I see. You think you’re funny.” Shot a look at Moose. “I hate this place! I want to go home.”

  Moose was stoically calm. “We’re going to find Ginny.” That’s all.

  I looked at him. His face was serene in the moonlight. That’s what comes of knowing what to do. See, the only real problem in life, as I like to point out every chance I get, is ambivalence. That’s right. Once you’ve decided what to do, and you really mean it, there’s no problem. You just do it. That’s why all your finer existential thinkers will tell you to go ahead and make a decision — any decision — and commit to it. They’d also like to tell you there’s no such thing as wrong or right, there’s only action. Action is the solution to any problem — and any action will do. Me? I’m not so convinced of that part. I’d agree that right and wrong has a lot to do with interpretation of phenomena, but then there’s the Taoist in me that would have me believe there was also such a thing as the right path. Plus the Buddhist in me would have a word or two to say about right action, right motive, right speech, and so forth. But I digress. I was only thinking at that moment that Moose had found his heart, and was about to follow it with a good dose of action. Which made him, in that particular instance, the man to admire.

  And in that moment of reflection I had a small occurrence. It wasn’t a shock wave, it wasn’t an avalanche — like it sometimes is. A piece of the puzzle just drifted into place, like a single snowflake dancing down after the storm was over. I saw something, clear as moonlight, that made sense. I had an answer.

  I smiled over at Moose. “Okay, pal. Let’s go get her.”

  He turned slowly in my direction. “You know where she is?”

  I looked at Dally. “Well, as a matter of fact, I do have an idea.”

  She squinted. “Something in the thing, the dream?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Such as?”

  I looked out across the snow. “You know how — in the thing — there were, both times — ghosts?”

  She nodded. “Casper the Friendly, and … what else?”

  “Dickens.”

  “Huh?”

  “The lost souls from Christmas Carol”

  She remembered. “Oh, yeah.” She cocked her head. “What about that?”

  I smiled. “Both times they were leading the Little Lost Girl to a door in the ground.”

  She was still trying to focus on the memory of what I’d told her about the trance thing. “Yeah … I sort of remember that.” She looked at me. “Kind of a Dali image, door in the ground. I just kind of thought it was, you know, one of those dream images that don’t —”

  I finished. “— quite make sense. Me too. Until just now.”

  “What’s different now?”

  “Satori. I’ve had a minor revelation.”

  “Oh, really. We got time for that?” She looked at the two boys, very droll. “Stand back, he’s had a minor revelation.”

  They were both looking at me like I was on fire. Maybe I had a funny look on my face. I get that sometimes, with a satori.

  She nudged. “So it’s not a Dali image, this door in the ground?”

  I shook my head and started out in the direction of the abandoned farm. “Nope. It’s a storm cellar.”

  *

  We were nearly to the site of the old Rayburn place before I felt like talking again. The others were following, Dally was right by my side.

  I turned to her. “This is, see, a textbook example of how this thing works.”

  Her eyelids were heavy. “Are you writing a textbook on the subject?”

  I ignored. “I must have seen a storm cellar door in the ruins, but I wasn’t completely conscious of it. That’s what the dream-thing does, it points out what I know but I don’t know I know.”

  The moon was all over the joint, what with the snow reflecting and the night so clear. Looked like stage lighting.

  Everybody was looking at me, under the impression I had some perfect idea about what to do next. Not entirely willing to disappoint, I hauled myself down to the site of the Rayburn-family conflagration.

  Now, what determines whether it’s late winter or early spring, you’d imagine, is largely a matter of perception and interpretation, as I had been reflecting on only moments before. But most would agree that snow on the ground and the general brooding ambience of the scene made it late in the winter, when the year is just about as old as it’s going to get, weather-wise; life-cycle speaking.

  I stood in the ancient ashes and rubble, lightly kicking at the snow and the wood, wandering more or less aimlessly, which is the only way to wander, let me tell you.

  Then there it was — a door in the ground. I could only see the faintest outline — but it was there all right.

  I motioned the others over. I wanted witnesses for the unveiling, the resurrection, the rolling back of the stone.

  As I grabbed the handle and started to pull, I could hear little noises from inside.

  The door pulled back, and it flopped on the ground, revealing the stairway down to the storm cellar. There was a faint odor of burning oil. Some-body’d just blown out an oil lamp. I knelt down.

  “Hey, Ginny. Remember me? The guy with the funny name? Flap?”

  A little rustle, almost like a mouse.

  “I’ve got Sissy’s cousin up here with me. Want to meet her?”

  All of a sudden I realized that also beside me were the two guys on earth she was most afraid of, and maybe with good cause. I gave them a look like a bazooka, and they backed up quick. Dally moved in so maybe the little kid could see what Sissy’s cousin looked like.

  Beat. Silver silence. Silver snow. Silver moonlight.

  Then a wee voice from down in the darkness. “You’re Sissy’s cousin?”

  Dally smiled. “Yup. And I take it you’re Ginny McDonner. We been looking for you.”

  Ginny, the new lost little girl, moved into a small spot of moonlight. “I’ve been here all the time.” Like it ought to have been obvious.

  Dally nodded. “You’re just smarter than most.”

  The kid shot a look my direction. “That’s what he said.”

  “He was right.”

  She just shrugged.

  I looked down at her. “Coming up?”

  “Who else is up there with you?”

  I saw absolutely no point in messing with the tyke any further. “Those two guys. The two mean men who nipped you on the side of the road the other night. They’re here. But you’ve got to believe me, they’re just as worried about you as we are.”

  She shrugged. “I know. They were nice, I guess. The big guy’s dumb as a brick, but it was like being with another kid, sort of.”

  “Yeah.” I looked over at Moose. “I know what you mean.”

  “So, is the game over?”

  I took a gander at Dally.

  She answered. “That’s right, sugar. We got the sign. It’s okay to come home now.”

  She was skeptical. “Mr. Wicher gave you the sign?”

  I jumped in. “Uh, no … we just happened to see it … in the tree hut.”

  She nodded. “Oh.” She started up the ladder. Then she stopped. “Hey, wait — I was just over there a while ago, and it wasn’t there.” She locked me in a very suspicious gaze indeed. “What was the sign?”

  Now, this was one of those moments when you just had to go skating. If the ice was too thin, you dropped, you froze, you were gone. On the other hand, if you were slick enough, light enough, fast enough, you got to the other side. So, I skated. Didn’t even really think. I just blurted. Sometimes blurting is good.

  “It was a cartoon.”

  She sighed. “Okay.” And she started up the ladder again.

  Dally gave me a look she usually reserved for expensive meals and gifts.

  I nodded. Sometimes the magic works. Really. Not to mention that the entire tree hut had practically been papered with cartoons and kids’ drawings. I mean, I was good — but ult
imately it was just a clever parlor trick.

  I caught hold of Ginny’s arm to help her out the last few steps. “There you go, sugar.”

  She got her bearings, then nodded at Moose and Fedora. “Hey.”

  You wouldn’t have thought it possible for a guy like Moose to have what they call a beatific look, but he did. Fedora was by no means a piker in the adoration department either.

  Moose’s eyes were glistening. “We was so worried about yous.”

  She was a kid. “I was fine.” She looked at me with a withering, long-suffering number. “Honestly.” Big shaking of the head.

  I peered down in the storm cellar. “Nice hiding place.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Dally looked in too. “Well stocked.”

  Ginny nodded. “Yeah. Christy put all that stuff there.”

  “Really?” I looked at Dally.

  Dally blew out a little breath. “Christy — the Lost Girl?”

  I sort of leaned over Ginny. “We talked about this, right? Christy hasn’t been around for, like, fifty years. And most of that stuff down there looks new. I don’t think they had, for example, Coke in cans that far back.”

  Ginny reached into her pocket and pulled out the little wooden doll, the one she’d showed me before. She held it out to us. “No. I mean, this Christy told me.”

  Dally wouldn’t take it. “How?”

  Ginny lowered the doll a little, like she was tired of playing a game. “Well, it was Mr. Wicher, really. He made the doll, you know, and he’d put it up to his ear and … I mean, it was all a sort of a joke, but, then, when everything that happened was like the doll said … I didn’t know what to think.”

  “Mr. Wicher put the doll to his ear, and the doll told him what to do?” Dally asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Dally and I exchanged a look.

  Ginny went on. “That’s how we knew the storm cellar was here.” She lowered her voice. “That’s how I knew my parents might get hurt.”

  I looked at Dally hard, and whispered, “So this makes Wicher …?”

  She nodded, whispering back. “… nuts? In on some bad deal? The weirdest guy in town?”

  I shrugged. “All three?”

  Moose couldn’t hold back anymore. “Hey, sweetie.”

  She smiled. “Hi.”

  He lowered his head. “You know we din’t hurt your folks. We would never.”

  She didn’t know for sure. “Well …”

  He insisted. “And we didn’t have nothin’ to do wit that guy gettin’ drilled …”

  But Dally quickly intervened, pulling at her coat. “Are you warm enough, sweetheart? Are you hungry?”

  She nodded, looked around at all of us. Then she wrinkled her forehead. “Could I finally … just go home now?”

  24. Lightning

  Before anybody could answer, there was a low thunder in the bushes at the edge of the wood where the road was, and the hunting party emerged brandishing all manner of rifles. Their voices were still hushed.

  “Hey, they did find ’er!”

  “There she is.”

  “Hey, Ginny. Come over here, darlin’.”

  Ginny sidled up right against me, for some reason. Before I knew what was happening, she’d slipped her little hand in mine and tried to hide behind me. Ever held a little kid’s hand in yours? Quite the feeling. Suddenly the storm cellar wasn’t a sepulcher at all. It was a cave, and I was feeling some sort of primal parental thing all over me.

  I spoke very clearly. “You just stay right here, sugar.”

  Dally flanked me and we both stared at the posse.

  Then Moose made his move. He smeared his gun out of his jacket like he was wiping water from a window and leveled it at the group.

  Fedora was more subtle. He removed his pistol from the holster like he was going to pay for dinner — held out his little silver weapon like a credit card.

  And of all people, Moose cast himself in the role of spokesmodel. “Let’s all just behave. You don’ want to shoot me, and I don’ want to get shot. The tyke stays wit us. Yous vamoose.”

  Silence.

  I was pretty sure the boys hadn’t understood a word Moose had said. I was about to translate when lightning erupted from the rifles, and bullets sliced up the night.

  I tossed Ginny and Dalliance into the snow and made for what was left of the old chimney, the only cover close to me.

  I looked back at Dally. “Tree hut!”

  She and the kid were up and running toward the woods away from the rifle gang before I had the t in hut out of my mouth.

  The shooting was ripping up the air.

  I slipped a half brick out of the chimney rubble and hefted it. I used to chuck rocks at rats in the county dump back home when I was a kid. I could snap one at fifty paces.

  I heaved my brick through the air and it beaned one guy good. He went down. The others set off more gunfire and beat it into the relative cover of the bushes whence they’d come.

  I looked over at my boys. Moose was down. There was blood.

  Fedora was calling out to me. “Hey, pal! Give me a hand, will you?”

  I looked at the woods. “Okay.”

  He emptied his pistol in the direction of the hunters. In the moment it took before they could fire back, I had made it to our fallen hero.

  Moose was smiling. “I been shot lots worse’n dis.” Then the smile took an exit. “But now I got to eat that crummy hospital food again.”

  I nodded. “Tell you what. You get yourself to the hospital, and I’ll get to Miss Nina’s and pick you up some decent grub.”

  Fedora made a face. “That slop?”

  Moose closed his eyes. “I like it. What’s that crunchy stuff that tastes like popcorn?”

  I took a guess. “Fried okra. It’s battered in corn-meal and salt.”

  He nodded, eyes still closed. “It’s good.”

  Fedora was gauging distances. “Think we could get him to the church? We got our car there.”

  I only had to think about it for a second. “We can’t drag him all the way to the church. Not with those guys shooting at us.”

  He peered into the shadows where they were hiding. “Yeah. Guess not.” Then he took Moose’s gun out of the big guy’s hand and leveled it at the riflemen with a very ominous look of resignation. “Well, then.”

  And he opened fire. The thing sounded like a battleship.

  The rifles answered right away.

  Then, just like you sometimes see in the movies, a bullet zipped right by us, knocking off Fedora’s fedora. Now what was I going to call him?

  I was having a quick review of the highlights in the events of my life, what with the bullets zipping all about my ears, when something slogged around in the back of my subconscious just enough to pop up to the surface for one second. It was a simple question: What was Miss Nina doing in my dream-thing, and why was she the only real person in it?

  Before I could get any farther in my thinking, a truly heroic form burst onto the scene. In the best tradition of the Lone Ranger and the last-minute rescue, Officer Cedar Duffie suddenly flew into the chaos, hollering, shooting off a signal flare in each hand, and kicking up snow like it was shattered glass. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Even the night air seemed shocked into silence. In the sudden quiet I saw, just behind him, Dalliance and Ginny. They were standing side by side at the edge of what must have been, a long time ago, the beginning of the yard of the old Rayburn farm.

  He looked in the direction of the bushes. “You boys get out here, now!”

  They stumbled into the open, muttering:

  “They started it.”

  “Hey, Cedar.”

  “Look: Ginny! Hey, Ginny.”

  They smiled and waved at the kid. She dodged behind Dally.

  Cedar was more interested in my direction. “Who’s down?”

  I stood up. “The big guy. Your boys shot him.”

  “How bad?”


  “Needs an ambulance now, if you ask me.”

  Cedar unhooked something from his belt, talked into it, then snapped it back.

  “On the way. Now let’s talk about how you knew where Ginny was hiding.” He took a step in my direction. “And what you’re doing here with her kidnappers.”

  I was steady. “Yeah, they nabbed the kid, but they lost her again right away. There was somebody else keeping her from going home. These guys, they were just lost.”

  “Somebody else?”

  I nodded. “Wicher.”

  He actually laughed. He was having quite a night, what with cursing and laughing all within the same five minutes. “Wicher? We already dispensed with that idea, remember?”

  I smiled big. “Yeah. But he was a second stringer, after the out-of-towners. See, this way, you an’ me, we both get to be right.” I looked down at Moose and fedoraless Fedora. “And by the way, I don’t think these two had anything to do with what’s happened to Wicher either.”

  Cedar looked down at the snow. “Well, I found some more information in his house that seems pretty strange in that regard.”

  “Like what?”

  He glanced over at Ginny, then shook his head. I understood.

  He went on. “Plus, we already got the results back from the lab about the other item” — then another glance in the kid’s direction — “at the stone-altar place.”

  He was talking about the skull. “Oh?”

  He nodded. “It’s absolutely not Christy Rayburn.”

  I looked at Ginny. “Wouldn’t be a monkey skull, would it?”

  She opened her mouth. She got it. I could see the look on her face. She looked at the cop.

  He squinted at me. “Monkey skull. Where would you get an idea like that?”

  I looked down. “Could be a monkey skull.”

  He was confused. “It’s not.”

  “What is it, then?”

  He shuffled a little. “I’d rather not say just at the moment.” He looked around. “I believe we have quite a bit to discuss.”

  I agreed. “Right. For example, I’m telling you we still don’t know who’s behind the kidnapping exactly. I think that Hainey guy, from BarnDoor — he’s got something to do with it.”

  “Hainey?” Cedar raised his eyebrows. “I guess that could be.”