Calamity Jayne and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Lawn Gnome (10 page)

I winced. Sometimes when you let your heart rule your head, you don't think about unintended consequences. Apparently Mick had bought into my performance as Manny's fictional significant other and was feeling let down by the bogus breakup.

"Sorry 'bout that, Mick. You know how it is. It's been, well, you know, awkward," I hedged. "So how've you been?"

He shrugged. "You know. Busy."

"You're not a senior this year, are you?"

"I wish. Junior."

"You look younger."

"Mick gets that a lot."

I grinned. He'd picked up that weird habit of his cousin Manny's of referring to himself in the third person. It was kind of endearing—in a strange and off-putting way.

"Whatcha doing here?" Mick asked. "Too soon to cover homecoming."

"That's true, but I am here on a story," I said. "Hey. Maybe you can help."

Mick frowned.

"Oh? How so?"

"You've heard about the vandalism going on in the area, right?"

Mick frowned again.

"Guess so. Why?"

"It appears those responsible are likely high school students. I know how things get around in a school, and I thought maybe you might have heard something."

He shook his head.

"Nope. Can't say I have." He leaned forward in his seat. "What makes you think students are involved?"

I parroted what my mum and Taylor had said regarding the timeline of the events and the psychology of the possible perpetrators as demonstrated by the evidence left at the scenes that pointed to juvenile involvement.

"That don't mean GHS students," Mick pointed out. "Could be from any area high school."

"True. We've got Shelby Lynn checking out New Holland High," I said. "Are you aware of any gang activity here at Grandville High?" I asked.

Mick shrugged. "There's always posers."

"What about the girls? Any groups of girls that might be described as having a gang mentality?"

Mick shifted in his seat.

"Blondie thinks a gang of girls is doing this?"

"Like I said, some elements of the criminal activity suggest girls could be involved."

"What elements?"

"The artwork. The colors used."

Playing gnome games.

"You said somethin' 'bout pictures," he said.

"Of the spray paint."

"You have 'em with you?"

"Yes."

"Can I see 'em?"

I hesitated.

"You want Mick here to keep his eyes and ears open," he said. "Mick needs to know what he's looking and listening for. See?"

I considered his request. I was asking for his help. The photographs would be in the next morning's paper for the world to see, so where was the harm in giving him a sneak peek?

I pulled out the photographs and slid them across the table.

He thumbed through them and frowned.

"And you get to girls' gang from these how?"

"Mainly because hot pink tornadoes and rainbow colors hardly scream badass gangbanger," I pointed out.

"Uh hum. Well, well. Tressa Turner, what a surprise!"

I didn't need to look up to know that the guy who loomed over me was my ghost of school days past. My jiggling knees beneath the table confirmed it.

"Oh, hello, Principal Vernon. It's good to see you again." I lied.

"You're not wearing a badge, Miss Turner," he said.

I frowned.

"Badge?"

"A visitor's badge. It's part of the security policy we've implemented. Visitors are required to report to the office to sign in and pick up a visitor's badge."

"Oops," I said.

The principal got that look on his face I get when I've eaten too many free ice cream confections from my Uncle Frank's Dairee Freeze.

"To what do we owe the honor of your presence at GHS?" he asked. "Picking up transcripts again? Or have you located the textbooks you neglected to turn in when you graduated—six years ago?"

I squirmed in my seat.

"I, um, well, you see—"

"Tressa here is doing me a solid, Principal Vernon," Mick spoke up.

"A solid?"

Mick nodded. "T's gonna be my show-and-tell."

"Your…show-and-tell?"

"For career days in Life Skills," Mick elaborated. "We're supposed to bring someone representing a career in to talk to the class."

The principal's face became the color of a walker from zombie TV.

"Oh. I see. Won't that be…fun?" Principal Vernon turned to me. "You will avail yourself of a visitor badge when you visit in the future, won't you, Tressa?"

I nodded.

"Visitor badge. Career Day. Got it!" I babbled.

He sighed and walked away.

"Gee, thanks for covering for me, Mick," I said. "I owe you."

"Dang right you do," Mick said. "You're gonna be my show-and-tell for Career Day."

I winced.

Nice.

Mick turned his attention back to the pictures on the table. His phone vibrated. He picked it up, checked it, and keyed in a text. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a short, dark-haired girl making a beeline for our table. She stopped suddenly, looked down at her phone, looked up at us, pivoted, did a one-eighty, and headed in the opposite direction.

I frowned.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

Mick finished texting and set his phone down, and I began to gather up the pictures.

"No. Why do you ask?"

I shrugged. "Never mind. So, do you think you can help me out by keeping an ear to the ground and letting me know if you hear anything?" I asked.

Mick nodded. "Sure.
If
I hear anything."

"Thanks!" I got to my feet. "I'd better split before I'm given detention."

Loud, feminine "look at me" giggles near one of the doors to the gymnasium got my attention. I looked up. Kari's Brian stood in the doorway, and the girl with the booming laugh smiled up at him.

I frowned.

"Hey Mick. Who's that?" I said, pointing to the gym doors.

"Who?" he asked.

"The hyena talking to Mr. Davenport."

"Hyena?"

"The laughing chippie."

"Oh. That's Miss Banfield, the new Life Skills teacher and cheerleading coach," Mick said.

I watched the interaction, my eyes narrowing to slits when Miss Martina Banfield reached out and touched Brian on the arm.

"Thanks, Mick," I said. "Oh, and don't forget to let me know when your Life Skills Career Day is." I gave Miss Mentee my most formidable evil eye. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

I left the high school and drove to the courthouse to pick up the filings from the clerk's office and the call logs from the sheriff's office. Both offices are located in the ancient, if historic, courthouse. The clerk's office is on the second floor. The sheriff's office is on the first floor, and the jail in the basement. There is a campaign underway to get the taxpayers to sign on to a new jail facility that will also house the sheriff's office and dispatch. Until then, the three- story, aging edifice will have to do.

I started at the second floor. That's also where my sister-in-law, Kimmie, works in the treasurer's office. Whenever I was in the courthouse, I generally stopped by to say "hey" and raid her candy jar. I took the stairs, feeling less winded when I reached the second floor than I had before my million-mile bike ride across the state. Too bad since I'd vowed never, ever to grace the seat of a bicycle again for as long as I lived.

I hurried to the counter where folks could register or renew their vehicle registrations, transfer titles, take driver's exams, or obtain or renew driver's licenses or identification cards with photos you hope to God you never have to pull out and actually show to someone.

I peered over the counter. Kimmie wasn't at her desk.

"Where's Kimmie?" I asked her boss.

"She didn't come in today," Ruth Kramer, Knox County Treasurer, told me.

"Is she sick?"

"I assume so," Ruth said and walked over to the counter.

Assume?

"Oh. Okay. Guess I'll see you then."

"Tressa? Do you have a second?" Ruth looked at the other office mates and motioned me over to the side.

"What's up?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Ruth said. "I probably shouldn't be asking, but is something going on with your sister-in-law?"

"Going on?"

Ruth nodded. "I'm concerned. Kimmie has always been so upbeat, so…perky and together. But lately—" She stopped.

"Yes?"

"Lately she's been snippy and weepy and distracted. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was expecting."

"Expecting what?"

"A baby, of course."

"Oh. Right."

"Well, is she or isn't she?"

I bit my lip.

"I really couldn't say," I said, and it was the truth.

I knew Kimmie was totally committed to becoming a mother, but my brother told her he wasn't ready. (I, of course, was on the record as a yay vote in the baby battle. Unfortunately, as my brother pointed out numerous times, I didn't get a vote.)

I also knew Kimmie was fast losing patience with my stubborn, hardheaded arse of a brother. Last fall Kimmie told me she'd considered withholding sex from my brother until he, as she put it, "gave up his obsession with guns and games and grew up." But I didn't think for a minute, Kimmie would play the accidental pregnancy card on Craig.

Still, if she was as miserable as her boss suggested she was, it didn't bode well for the marital relationship—or my transition from Tressa Jayne Turner, good time girl, to Tressa Jayne Turner, doting aunt.

Rats.

I hit the clerk's office and picked up the filings, then made my way downstairs to the sheriff's office.

"Please! You need to send someone right away to check it out! Something is going on out there! Something…not of this world!"

It was that last part that got my attention. I stared at the diminutive man at the counter—and understood.

It was Dusty Cadwallader—also sadly referred to as "Major Tom," "George Jetson," "E.T.," "Marvin the Martian," "end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it" prognosticator, frequent reporter of strange lights in the woods and UFOs in the sky, and the only other person in Grandville with less credibility with local authorities than yours truly.

"Listen, Mr. Cadwallader," the clearly frustrated female deputy behind the counter said. "I already told you. The sheriff is asking that you fill out this form before he sends a deputy out."

"I see what this is. They've got to you, haven't they?" Dusty said.

"They?"

Dusty pointed at the ceiling.

The deputy shook her head and looked over at me.

"You here for the patrol logs?" she asked, the sour-milk expression not leaving her face.

I nodded.

"Be right back." She shoved a clipboard at Dusty. "And you! Write!" she ordered.

"I'm here to report a possible invasion, and they want paperwork! Fine! For all the good it'll do," Cadwallader grabbed the clipboard and stomped to a table in the corner and sat down. "Nobody believes me," he said to me. "They all think I'm crazy. Well, I'm not. I know what I heard, and I know what I saw!"

"I'm sure you're right," I tried to calm the distraught man.

"Yeah, right. You're just like all the others. Saying the things you think I want to hear. Humoring me. Thinking I'll give up and go away. But I won't. I know what I saw. And I know what I heard. And it was terrifying! Absolutely terrifying! Figures in black, chanting deep in the woods. Building fires and frolicking about."

Frolicking?

"I thought you saw UFOs and strange lights in the sky," I said, tapping my toe and looking at my watch. Where was that deputy?

"Oh, yes. I've had a number of close encounters of the third kind," Dusty said. "But this?" He shook his head. "This is something different. The dark worshippers dance 'round him. I can see him in the firelight."

"Him?"

He nodded his head. "A frightening specter of a woods nymph."

"Nymph?"

He nodded. "You know. Like a leprechaun."

I blinked.

"Leprechaun? You have leprechauns in your woods?"

He shook his head. "Not leprechaun
s
. Leprechaun. A grotesque, hideous one."

"What did this, er, leprechaun, um, look like?" I found myself asking.

"Oh, he's horrible. Just horrible. He has big, pointed ears and a white, grizzly beard, and both of his hands are scrunched up in angry, little fists like this." He made tight fists. "And those eyes of his? They're dark and sinister, and he has this sadistic leer." Dusty shivered.

An image of Cedric popped into my head.

"How close did you get to this, uh, leprechaun?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't dare get all that close. I used my night vision goggles," Dusty explained.

Ah. A "believer" after my own Snoop Dogg Gammy's heart.

I scratched my head.

"The way you describe this, uh, specter, makes him sound like well, like one of those lawn gnomes you see in people's yards."

Dusty yelled and jumped out of his chair with so much force the chair tipped over backwards.

"That's it!" he yelled. "He looks just like a lawn gnome! A lawn gnome from hell!"

I blinked. Now where had I heard that before?

"I've got proof." Dusty said, lowering his voice and moving closer to me.

"Proof?"

His eyes shifted to the door the deputy would be coming back through any second now. "I've seen their mark."

"Their…mark?"

He nodded. "They put their sign on trees so the others will know how to find them."

"The…others?"

"Recruits. Followers. Disciples."

"Oh. I see."

And I did.

No wonder the guy was known around town as Mr. Spacely.

"You don't believe me either, do you?" he said. "I can see it in your face."

Damn my "tell-all" mug.

"You think I'm looney tunes," he said, making circles with a finger near his temple. "Lunar loco, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs crazy, howling at the moon hallucinatin'—"

"Now I didn't say—"

"Oh, I know what folks say about me. It's okay. Why should you be any different?" He went back to the table—his shoulders slumped and head down—and righted the chair.