Piercing the Darkness (71 page)

She gave Tom the address and telephone number, then closed her notebook. If she hurried, she could get the letter photocopied and mailed.

But first, there was one more letter to write. She flipped to a fresh page in her notebook—she’d used up the pages in two notebooks by now, and was starting into her third—and began her first and last letter to Bernice Krueger, c/o the
Ashton Clarion.
She wrote hurriedly, saying only what was essential.

The young clerk at the Post Office was just bagging up the mail for the evening pickup when a lady in jeans and a blue jacket came to the counter with some more. He was in a hurry; the truck was coming any minute. He took care of her quickly, applied the necessary postage, and threw the rest of the mail into the mailbag.

There was the truck! He grabbed the bag and headed for the back door.

The lady went out the front door, glad she’d made it in time.

In the rush, one letter fell from the mailbag to the floor under the front counter and lay there facedown.

It was addressed to Bernice Krueger, c/o the
Ashton Clarion.

CHAPTER 38

ON MONDAY MORNING,
without prior warning and totally unexpected, the fax machine in the
Ashton Clarion
office warbled its electronic ring and was barely heard over the prepublication bedlam that usually marked Monday mornings. Bernice didn’t hear it at all; she was in Marshall’s glassed-in office trying to convince Eddy’s Bakery to buy just two more column inches so she wouldn’t have to keep filling in that space with stupid one-liners.

“Hey listen,” she said, “we’ll make the donut bigger, and then make the coffee mug bigger, you know, show more steam coming out or something. The readers will grab right onto it. Sure they will!”

“Bernice!” Cheryl called through the glass. “You’re getting a fax!”

Bernice looked up at Cheryl. “What?”

Cheryl said something back, and all Bernice could hear through the glass was the word fax. The rest was meant for lipreaders.

A fax? From who? So far she was drawing a blank.

The phone squawked in her ear. She had to give a reply. “Oh, yeah. Well, think about it, will you, Eddy? I’ll give you a deal on it. Well, let
me
think about
that.
Okay, good-bye.”

Cheryl knocked at the door lightly, cracked it open, and tossed the sheet of paper in, hot off the fax machine.

Bernice grabbed it before it floated to the floor and gave it a once-over.

Oh! This was from Cliff Bingham, her contact in Washington, D.C.! She’d forgotten all about him. Well, well! He’d found the
Finding the Real Me
curriculum for fourth-graders at the Library of Congress and sent her the title page with a note scribbled at the top: “Bernice, is this the one you’re after?—Cliff.”

She smiled.
Well, Cliff, you did all right, but Marshall’s seen the curriculum already; you’re too late. Thanks anyway.

She went to her Rolodex to find Cliff’s number, found it, and picked up the telephone. She punched in the number, and looked over the title page again as she waited for the ring and the answer.

Then she saw it. She slammed the phone down. She scanned the page again to make sure. She checked the publication date.

She picked up the phone and pounded out the number for the Cole residence in Bacon’s Corner.

“Hello?” It was Bev Cole.

“Hello, Bev. This is Bernice Krueger in Ashton.”

“Oh, hi! What do you know?”

“I’ve got to talk to Marshall right away!”

“Hooo, well he isn’t here, and I don’t know where he is.”

“I’ve got to—oh, nuts! Did he say when he’d be back?”

“No, he runs around so much I never know where he is, he and Ben.”

“Bev, listen, I’m going to fax him something. He should be able to pick it up at Judy’s, right?”

“Oh yeah, if she’s open.”

“I’m going to fax it to Judy’s Secretarial Service right now, and you tell him to get over there right away and pick it up, all right?”

“Okay, I’ll tell him. Hey, you sound excited.”

“Oh, I’m a little excitedseeyoulatergood-bye!”

She scrambled out of the office and made a beeline for the fax machine.

Marshall, where are you?

Lucy Brandon was going through the morning mail, sorting it, slipping it into all the Post Office boxes and assigning it to the four different carrier routes. She was ill, nervous, overwrought, and exhausted, and now she was beginning to hate her job, especially when letters came in from “S. B. Roe.”

Like this one, fresh out of the bag, no sooner thought of than in her hand! How many did this make? It had to be more than thirty. Thirty-plus envelopes, all stuffed with several thicknesses of the same lined notebook paper, all written in the same, fluid handwriting just visible through the envelope, and all addressed to Tom Harris.

So I guess when I forward this one, I’ll be violating federal law over thirty times. What a thought. What if I just delivered it to Tom Harris? What if I slipped it into his carrier’s box, just one of these letters, just once?

“Good morning, Lucy!”

She literally jumped, dropping the letter to the floor.

Sergeant Harold Mulligan!

“Sergeant! What are you doing back here? You scared me to death!”

He stooped and picked up the letter from the floor. “Ah, another one, eh?”

She tried to take it from him. “Yes, thank you kindly—”

He wouldn’t let go. “Naw, now just hold on, Lucy. I’ve got orders regarding any further mail from Miss You-know-who.”

She didn’t care. “I’ll take that letter back, sergeant! It’s United States mail!”

What? He actually grabbed her arm with painful force and pushed her against the wall! He hurt her, and she just couldn’t believe it!

He spoke to her in a low, threatening voice she’d never heard from him before. “And just what do you think you’re gonna do with it, huh, Lucy? Are you thinking you just might mail it where it’s supposed to go? Huh?”

“You let go of me!”

“You listen to me, little lady! Any more mail from Roe, you put it right in my hand, right here, see? You don’t mess with it, you don’t even think about it, or you are gonna have one big, ugly pack of troubles!”

She was getting scared. “I’m doing what I’m told, Harold, you know that. Please let go of me!”

“Just wanna make sure we’re clear on this—”

“Excuse me,” came a voice from the front.

It was Marshall Hogan.

Oh man, how much of this did he see?
Mulligan immediately turned his aggressive posture into a teasing one and let Lucy go. “Okay, Lucy, take care!”

He went out the back way with the letter in his pocket.

Debbie stepped up to the counter to help the big, red-haired man. Lucy hurried forward. “I’ll take care of him.”

Debbie backed away, but could see Lucy was in no condition to help anyone. Too late, though. They couldn’t talk about such a thing in front of a customer. She went back to her sorting, but kept an eye on her boss.

“I’d like a book of stamps,” said Marshall gently.

She reached into the drawer under the counter. Her hands were visibly shaking, and she couldn’t look up.

“Are you in trouble?” Marshall asked.

“Please, I can’t talk to you,” she said on the verge of tears.

“Just sell me some stamps then,” he said. “Do that first.”

She finally found a book of stamps and set them on the counter.

He had something else on the counter as well. “This is County Coroner Joey Parnell’s report on the woman who committed suicide, supposedly Sally Beth Roe. See the description? Black hair, in her twenties. Here . . . look at this.” He set a photograph in front of her and continued to talk in quiet, gentle tones. “This is a police mug shot of her. She had a criminal record. Now I know you know what the real Sally Roe looks like; you identified a picture of her at your deposition. But this is the woman who was found dead. She was a member of a secret coven of witches who call themselves Broken Birch, and when she tried to kill Sally Roe, she was working for someone—she was carrying ten thousand dollars.”

Lucy looked down at the picture, still shaking but listening.

Marshall continued, “Now that cop who just roughed you up back there has done all he can to cover this up and make it look like a suicide, and we think we know why: he belongs to that coven; he’s in on the whole thing. As a matter of fact, that coven lays claim to some pretty big wheels in LifeCircle—some of your own friends, including Claire Johanson and Jon Schmidt.”

Marshall waited just a moment for that to sink in, and then concluded, “As for Sally Roe, we have good evidence that she’s still alive somewhere, probably hiding for her life. So the question I’d like you to consider is this: Why would the same friends who are helping you in this lawsuit want Sally Roe killed?”

Lucy didn’t say a word. She could only stand there stone-still, staring at the photographs as tears filled her eyes.

Marshall got his answer from her face. He took back the coroner’s report and photos and slipped a piece of paper to her. “This is where you can reach me, at Ben and Bev Cole’s house. Call me anytime.”

He paid for the book of stamps and walked out. Lucy still didn’t move, even as Marshall’s money for the stamps sat on the counter in front of her.

Debbie saw the whole thing. Now she was finished with just watching. She was going to do something.

THE MAIL . . .
I forgot the mail!

Bernice got into her Volkswagen Beetle and zipped over to the Ashton Post Office a little late this morning. In all the excitement, her daily mail pickup had slipped her mind.

She went into the lobby, said hello to Lou, the young mail clerk, and opened the
Ashton Clarion
’s Post Office box.

KRIONI STOOD BESIDE
her, as interested in the morning mail as she was. He was looking for an important letter from Sally Roe.

BERNICE FLIPPED THROUGH
the junk flyers, the bills, the letters to the editor . . . Ah, here were some checks in payment of advertising and want ads; those were always nice.

Nothing unusual, everything routine. She dropped all the mail into her large plastic shopping bag and headed out the door.