Don't Slay the Dragon (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 1) (30 page)

  
 
Chapter Fifty-Seven

Before I realized it, Logan and I were jumping up and down, shouting as loud as we could, trying to get the driver’s attention. I couldn’t tell if he was just intent on the job before him, couldn’t hear us over the piercing roar of the engine, or was just plain ignoring us. Since nothing we were doing was stopping him and the bulldozer was rapidly moving further into the center of the trailer, Logan decided to take matters into his own hands.

He jumped
up onto the step of the machine and flashed his police badge right in the driver’s face, still trying to yell over the roaring engine. The stunned driver gaped at it for a moment then shifted gears until the motion of the bulldozer stopped.

“Cut the engines!” Logan yelled again. It took a few minutes for the driver to process the demand. He stopped the engine with a quick jolt. The sudden silence was almost as shocking as the loud noise had been.

I stood frozen in place until I saw Logan jump off the bulldozer and head towards me.

“Where should we start?” It wasn’t until he placed both hands on my arms that it jarred me out of my immobile state.

I looked past him to what was left of the trailer. Almost half of it was gone, reduced to little more than twisted metal and splinters. What if it was too late? What if what we were looking for had already been destroyed? Desperation started to take over, hope mingled with dread. What were we really looking for?

“Start looking underneath the trailer,” I broke away from his grip and headed for the crumbling trailer on leaden feet.
“See if the bulldozer dug up anything.”

He didn’t need to be asked twice. He borrowed a set of work gloves from one of the city workers and headed towards the front of the trailer, where the damage was the worst. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him digging through the rubble, throwing wood and metal aside in his determined search.

Those in the small crowd must have thought we had both lost our minds.

The once locked front door was now dangling on its hinges. I moved it open wider to get inside
. I had to pull myself up into the opening since the stairs had been removed. Gingerly, I tried to walk across the partially collapsed floor, keeping an eye out for debris still falling all around me. I tried to sift through the jagged tears in the old linoleum. Here and there broken pieces of wood slashed the surface. All around me was faded pink insulation and bits and pieces of a forgotten life.

“Be careful!”  Logan shouted from outside. “This thing is really unstable.”

“I will,” I shouted back. “You be careful too.”

I couldn’t see much through the fractured mess. Maybe I should concentrate in the area of the trailer that was still intact.

I looked though what was left of the kitchen, carefully searching the floor for anything out of the ordinary. There was a large enough hole in the front of area of the trailer that I had good light at least. What was I looking for anyway? I was here the night a full team of forensic experts had poured over every inch on this trailer. I wouldn’t have thought they could be more thorough than they were. What could I find that they couldn’t?

There were no odd seams on the floor, nothing that might hide a secret compartment
or a hiding place. 

I worked my way down the tiny, cramped hall, almost on my hands and knees, not wanting to miss the smallest clue. I could hear Logan outside, calling for a few of the workers to help him clear away some of the debris.
Every few minutes the structure shook as they pulled away thin aluminum siding and musty wood.

Inside the small bathroom, I looked as carefully as possible, running my hands along the seams of the brownish-pink linoleum. This was where they had found the other secret compartment, the one where Barbara had hidden all the medications. Would she hide something else in here too?  I searched every inch of it twice, but the floor still seemed so solid.

Back out in the hallway I continued my search, down to Barbara’s room. It wasn’t until I walked inside that it hit me just how stripped the trailer now was.  I had been so intent on searching the floor that I hadn’t noticed that everything was so bare. No wallpaper or wood paneling covered the walls, in many places all you could see was a bare, yellowed walls, streaked with years of use. There were no furnishings, everything was gone. The closet doors were missing and even her small bed was gone.

With everything so sparse, it made searching the floor easier. I remembered there had once been a speckled brown shag carpet on the floor in her room, but it was missing now, along with the padding.  Nothing was left but the warped pressed wood beneath.

I was so intent on my search that I lost track of time, I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, only that I had to find
something
.

I was down on my knees searching every corner and crevice when I heard Logan coming down the hall.

“Any luck?” He called.

“No,” I let out the breath it seemed I had been holding since I had entered the trailer.
“You?”

“None,” he walked over and held a hand out to me to help me to my feet. I stood with reluctance, wondering if I should search harder. I continued to walk the perimeter on the small room,
willing some clue, some hint to jump out at me.

“
Cait,” Logan’s voice was soft and he grabbed my arm to stop my pacing. He had never used that tone with me before. I stopped and looked up at him. His expression was kind yet resigned.  “What if there is no hiding place? What if there is no metal box?”  I was about to protest. There had to be. There had to be something here. “What if this is all just a wild goose chase?”

Was he right? Was this all just some crazy
nonsense from an insane woman who had set her daughter up for her own death? Who had killed herself, stabbing herself thirteen times? Were we both so caught up in this crazy mess that we would believe anything at his point?

“Why go to all the effort, Logan?” I pressed, struggling to think it though.  “Why go through all that painstaking effort to paint that picture and hide all the words just under the surface for someone to find, if nothing is here
?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders in frustration.

“Who’s to say?” He reached over to put an arm around me. “Maybe it’s all just the confused ramblings of a desperate madwoman. We’ll never know the state of mind Barbara was in when she killed herself.”

“You’re right,” I had to concede.
I nudged a tiny ball of dust with my foot, not wanting to give up just yet. “We may never be able to understand why Barbara did what she did. It just seems like there has to be something more.”

I allowed Logan to guide me back through the empty shell of a trailer. He held the crooked door open enough that I could pass back through it then lifted me down onto the concrete.

“It’s just so hard to give up, Logan,” I admitted stubbornly.

“I know,” he answered.

Once we were safely outside, I noticed the workers and the crowd watching us. The crowd had grown slightly, neighbors and passersby’s probably drawn by the noise and commotion. If they thought we were crazy before, we must have confirmed it with the way we looked. We were both covered in dust and dirt, our clothes sprinkled with small debris. Logan even had a small piece of insulation in his dark hair. I couldn’t resist the impulse to brush it away for him.

“Maybe the insanity is contagious,” I tried to joke, looking at the two of us and what a mess we were.

Logan smiled at my attempt of humor. The driver of the bulldozer had noticed that we had come out of the trailer and he walked over to Logan, apparently waiting to see what he should do next. Logan seemed reluctant to tell him to continue with the demolition, but what else could we do?

I looked at the gnarled heap of scrap at the front of the trailer, wondering to myself. What if some important thing was still there, destroyed with the rest of the refuge? I’d probably never get to the real truth. I’d probably never understand what Barbara was trying to tell us.

Was it really that important? If there really was something that vital to her life, wouldn’t she have made it easier to find?

I walked around the edge of the trailer, past the crooked door to the part of the trailer still left intact. The back portion was almost entirely whole. The shape was still the same. The white picket lattice work was still
framing the bottom of the trailer, tired-looking, peeling, but still there. I was surprised that it was still in one piece.

One small slat had broken away from the rest. Even though the front half of the trailer was demolished, there was still a small part of me that wanted to push that wooden slat back into place, to help the fractured structure become whole again.
Without realizing it, a small tear ran down my cheek at the sadness of it all. What a waste.

I
wiped the tear away with one grimy hand and was just about to shake off such foolish thoughts when something caught my eye.

Next to the broken slat, no more than a few inches high, there was a tiny shape that looked as though it was carved into the painted white wood. I would never have noticed it at a distance, it was so small, but up close, if you looked just right, it almost looked like…..

“Logan,” I called in a weak voice. He was busy giving directions to the city workers.

I knelt down next to the lattice fence, my finger tracing the tiny carving. It looked like a serpentine head attached to an arched neck.
I could almost see the sharp teeth and the billowing fire.

“Logan,” I called a bit louder. He glanced over at me. At first he didn’t take his attention from the workers then he noticed I was kneeling next to the wooden fencing.

Before he could walk over to join me, I reached out to test the strength of the slat with the carving on it. For some reason, I didn’t want to see this one thing destroyed with the rest. I gave it a small tug and it came away easily in my hands, the wood old and frail.

It wasn’t until I had the piece of wood in my hands, looking at the small carving, that the bright morning sun caught the small reflection of something shiny
and metal-like behind the wooden lattice work, something directly beneath Barbara’s room.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

The lattice work broke away easily in my mad scramble to
get underneath the trailer. The concrete the trailer was sitting on was old and cracked. It was just a tiny crawl space beneath the back part of the trailer, littered with dirt, stones and dead leaves. I crawled on my hands and knees through years of filth, searching for that shiny object that had reflected the morning sun and caught my eye. It was hard to see it at first. I had to look at it at just the right angle to be able see the quick flash of reflection from the sun.

There is was, half buried by brown and gray leaves, a light dusting of dirt covering it.
It didn’t seem to be as dirty as the ground around it, as though it had been placed here more recently.

I reached out for it, only then realizing that Logan was there with me, his big body cramped beside me in the small space.
We were all but bumping shoulders with each other. My hands grasped the small metal box as though it was the most precious of treasures. I carefully brushed off the grime to get a better look at it.

“I don’t see anything else, do you?”  He asked
, looking around at the underbelly of the old trailer, seeing the electrical wiring and sewage connections. There wasn’t a lot of spare room under here. I could tell he was anxious for us both to get out of the tight area. After the partial demolition of the front part of the trailer, it was hard to know just how stable this back part might be.

He
nudged around at the rest of the area, moving aside debris with my hands, making sure there was nothing else here out of the ordinary.

“I think this is it,” I agreed.

I wrapped one arm around the box as Logan took the other and tried to help me out from beneath the trailer. The bulky object in my arms made it harder to keep my balance as I tried to get back out.

Once I was back on my feet, I was eager to get a better look at the box.
I didn’t have the chance to see much more of it before Logan nudged me with his arm. I looked up in question and saw him nodding towards the crowd of onlookers. They were all staring, spellbound, wondering what had caused us to dive underneath the trailer as we had, wondering why we had stopped the bulldozer. We had much more attention and focus than either of us wanted.

Even the rookie reporter seemed to smell a fresh story and was easing her way towards us. I felt a hot wave of panic co
me over me, not ready to share my small discovery with anyone at his moment except for Logan.

Thankfully, he was always quick-thinking. He stepped in front of me while at the same time shrugging off his jacket. He wrapped it
securely around the box while still in my hands, the warmth of his body still on the material, clashing with the cold metal of the box. He leaned over to whisper in my ear, so no one else could hear.

“Let’s find a more private place to look at this,” he suggested quietly.

I nodded silently and followed him as he tried to walk around the crowd towards the street. A few people seemed to step closer to get a better look at what we might have. He kept his badge handy when anyone got too close and that seemed to discourage most of the people there from getting too curious.

“Can I get a comment?” The young
female reporter made a half-hearted attempt.

Logan adamantly shook his head at her and that seemed to be enough to keep her from asking for more.

I quietly followed him down the street to where his car was parked, my small package held closely in my arms, wrapped again in his jacket. As I had carried it out, I noticed that it wasn’t very heavy.  It was quite light in fact. So light I wondered if it might be empty after all.

Wouldn’t that be joke on all of us, to go through all this only to find an empty box? Well, if there was anything inside, it couldn’t be much
.

We weren’t entirely out of the view of the crowd, but at least we had a slight degree of privacy. He walked over to the far side of his car then turned towards me so that the box was between us. His broad shoulders shielded what we had between us from the view of just about anyone who might want to look. He gently removed the jacket.  Only the two of us could see the box.

It was about the size of a shoe box but more square. As I started to brush away the dirt, looking for a way to open it, memories started to flood me.

I was thrown back to those young, innocent years. I remembered Lisbeth bringing me into her room one fall day, excited to show me her latest surprise. With Lisbeth, you never knew what it could be. She reached under her bed and pulled out a bright, shiny metal box, eager to show me her latest project.

She’s found the plain metal box at a local yard sale, cleaned it up, and decorated it herself. It was carefully painted on all sides and on the lid. Vivid green leaves and vines snaked their way around the curves of the box, tiny fairies could be glimpsed hiding behind the leaves, peeking through. She had used the silver metal surface to her advantage, making the background look like a silver pond.
Plastic, blue jewels adorned the corners, looking like dewdrops.

She was making it for Barbara for her birthday and was so excited to show it to her.
I hadn’t been there when she had given it to her mother, but I did remember later seeing it in Barbara’s room, sitting on her dresser. She had used it for a jewelry box, keeping all her favorite costume jewelry in it.

I hadn’t realized it was missing when I had gone through the trailer with Logan, looking for any new evidence.
  

“Lisbeth made this for Barbara for her birthday one year,” I explained
quietly to Logan.

I glanced down at the now familiar box. It had intricate latch on it too. I didn’t know what the original latch
had looked like, but Lisbeth had used wire and paste jewels to form a pair of fairy wings over the latch. You had to squeeze the wings together just right while pressing down on the lid just a bit in order to get it to spring open.

I tried the trick to get it open but it wouldn’t budge.
I tried again, but it was still securely shut.

“I don’t understand,” I looked up at Logan in question. “It used to open just fine when you squeezed it like this.” I demonstrated the action again.

He leaned over to look at it more closely.

“It’s rusted shut,” he answered, running his finger along the closure. He tried tugging at the wings the same way I did.

“Do think we should take it down to the forensics lab?” I asked in hesitation. “What if there’s some kind of evidence in here? We could be contaminating it.”

“You’re probably right,” he agreed, “I’m usually much more careful. I should have just…”

He stopped mid-sentence when the latch sprung open and the lid popped up, startling us both.

The first thing we saw was a folded piece of paper, good quality writing paper. With all thought of waiting for the forensics lab pushed aside at the moment, I reached inside to take it out. Carefully, I unfolded it to see the somewhat familiar handwriting.

“Please forgive me for what I’ve done. I had no other choice.”