Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary (24 page)

Officer Borsch calls, “You keep her away from that pig! Sammy? Do you hear me? Stand back from that shaft. Farther! Sammy, help me out here! I've got to get this creep put away and get the investigators out here to dismantle that lab, and I don't have time to baby-sit stubborn women!” I point to myself like, Who? Me? and he yanks Dallas along and calls, “Yes, you!” Then he looks at the others and says, “And you, and you, and you, and you! You headstrong females are going to be the death of me!”

So Officer Borsch and Kevin haul Dallas away, and Dot decides she'll go to the house to wait for the vet and call her mom. Marissa goes with her, which leaves Holly and me with Lucinda, the moon, and a sky full of stars.

At first Lucinda
is
stubborn. She wants to see Penny, and she's not in the mood to wait for someone to haul her out of the cellar. But we make her sit down on a felled tree trunk, and then sit beside her, one on each side.

And at first Lucinda's full of questions. She wants to know everything. But after a little while we find ourselves just sitting there, staring at the ruins, at the stone fireplace poking up from the earth. And Lucinda says, “I never considered myself to be someone who was living in the
past, just appreciative of it.” She gets a faraway look in her eye. “I never thought I'd leave—certainly never thought I'd be forced out. If only we hadn't fallen on such hard times…” She shakes her head and sighs. “Poor Kevin. All this time he's been trying to protect me from how bad things really are.”

Holly whispers, “Does this mean you have to sell?”

Lucinda's eyes are brimming with tears. “Do you know why Kevin was at the Murdocks' today? To tell them no. To tell them they had gone too far, burning down Mary's house, and that he wanted no part in any dealings with them.”

“You mean he didn't know what they were planning?”

She sighs and says, “Last June I was deathly ill, and Kevin saw no sense in continuing the vineyard. He got approached about this development idea and didn't think it would hurt to have a few sketches made, but they took that as permission to go hog wild. I don't blame him for what he did, but it breaks my heart to think of these magnificent oaks being cut down…the thought of sod and golf carts and
condominiums
. It seems so artificial, so
smooth
. There's something about the rugged outdoors that makes you feel a part of the world around you.” She lets out another sigh. “Oh, I don't know. It's a different time, and humans are a different breed. Life's become entertainment where it used to be an experience.”

We're all quiet for a minute, then Holly asks, “So what are you going to do?”

“The truth is I have no choice. We've fallen into debt, and since I can't come up with a better solution, I suppose we'll have to sell the property.”

Holly whispers, “What about Mary? What about the house?”

“The house is gone, but Mary? Mary will never be gone. As long as there's her diary to read, people will know her. And remember her.”

I was about to tell her that that was true. Mary Rose Huntley was not somebody
I
could forget anytime soon. Neither was Lucinda. But before I can, Lucinda says, “Dallas probably discovered that root cellar when he was searching for the gold.”

Holly says, “Hey…do you think
he
found it? Do you think it was hidden down there?”

“Hmmm,” Lucinda says, like she hadn't even considered it. “I rather doubt it. A scoundrel like that wouldn't stick around if he'd discovered it. Besides, it makes no sense against the riddle. The ridge is nowhere near it.”

As I'm listening to Lucinda, looking at the moon shining on the chimney of the fireplace, something in my brain snaps. Hard. And all of a sudden my heart starts beating faster and I'm feeling very strange. I whisper, “The ridge. The
ridge
.”

She says, “It's no use, my dear. I've looked all my life. We've dug up every square foot of land anywhere near the ridge.” She lets out a long, choppy sigh. “The gold was either discovered long ago, or perhaps Mary used it herself.”

Now while she's talking, I'm walking over to the chimney like a zombie saying,
“Where the ridge meets the rock and the rock meets the ground…”

Holly jumps up and follows me. “Where are you going?”

“To where the ridge beam of the roof met the rock of the chimney.” Lucinda shuffles behind us. “The ridge
beam?
Why, I'm sure that's not what she meant…”

I just keep moving, then stand by the fireplace and say, “The ridge beam rested right in that big notch in the rock. See it? The ridge beam meets the rock of the chimney…and the stones go all the way to the ground!”

“Yes, but…”

“And Lucinda! The box! How's that part go?
The box is shallow, black and crowned…?
”

“That's right, but…”

“Lucinda, this is it! It has to be! The
fire
box is not very deep, it's black from soot, and crowned—you know, arched!”

Lucinda had quit arguing. She was right alongside us, saying, “
Not far in, left and high…Gold and silver, warm inside
. Warm from the fire! Oh, girls! After all these years. It's been right here in front of me!”

Holly says, “But
where?
”

Lucinda's all over it. She ducks her head in, facing the left side of the fireplace, and runs her bony fingers over the rocks, shaking them one by one. Suddenly she freezes, then turns to us and whispers, “I believe this one's loose. Girls, come help me lift it out!”

There wasn't room for the three of us, but there was no way Lucinda was leaving. So we worked around her, and sure enough there was a loose stone. We wiggled and tugged, and when we got it to budge, soot and sand dusted into our eyes. We didn't care, though, we just
squinted and tugged until we had the stone pulled free.

Lucinda whispers, “Is there anything back there?”

I wanted to jam my arm in and feel around, but it wasn't right. I said, “Go on, Lucinda. You look.”

She reaches inside, and for a moment she just freezes with her arm inside the wall. Then she pulls out a thick leather satchel about half the size of one of the fireplace stones and holds it to her chest for a moment, her hands shaking. Then she kneels on the ground, pulls open the drawstring, and giggles like a six-year-old. “We found it! We
found
it!”

She loosens the drawstring completely, then pulls out a handful of very old, very gold coins. And when she looks up at us, she's got tears streaming down her face. She says to the sky, “Thank you, Mary,” then smiles at us and whispers, “Thank you, girls.”

And with the moonlight on her face as it's turned up to look at us, she doesn't seem like she's nearly a century old. She looks full of life. Almost young. And even though there's no doubt in my mind that she'll always be the Lucinda I've come to know—she'll still walk her pig and peek in coffins if that's what she has a mind to do— I can tell that from this point on, things are going to be different.

Very different.

It didn't take long for the place to be swarming with cops. And parked in the middle of all those squad cars was one big green delivery truck. The police took our statements, one by one, while Mr. and Mrs. DeVries hung around looking very worried.

Dot asks them, “Where are Anneke and Beppie?”

Mrs. DeVries says, “The boys are looking after them,” and Mr. DeVries adds, “Stan and Troy were very anxious to come along, but we didn't think it would be a good idea if we
all
came. You'll have to tell them about it when we get home,
ja?
”

Dot grins and says, “Sure,” and you can tell she's thinking that no ghost story of theirs could ever top her real-life story.

When we finally do get to the DeVrieses', the rest of us are completely talked out and very hungry. So while Dot holds court with her brothers and sisters, Marissa and Holly help Mr. DeVries whip up a plate of
hamburgers,
of all things, and Mrs. DeVries helps me clean my hurt leg.

Even after she was done patching me up, she kept insisting that I go to a doctor. But Grams wasn't going to be home for another day, and since doctors are expensive and I wasn't sure about our insurance, I didn't know
what to do. Besides, nothing was broken and I didn't
want
to go to one.

So we ate our hamburgers and settled on Hudson's. I told them he was a retired doctor and that he'd patch me up just fine. And who knows? Maybe he is. He had supplies, and when I called, he said I was welcome, and that's all I really cared about.

Then Marissa and Holly confessed that they'd really like to collapse in their own beds, so Dot helped us pack our stuff, and we piled everything in the back of Mr. DeVries' delivery truck.

After we dropped off Marissa, we drove to Cypress Street, and there was Hudson, waiting on the porch. Mr. DeVries carried Hudson's bike up the steps and leaned it against the railing, and after the two of them discussed doctors and dressings and disinfectants for a while, Mr. DeVries set off to deliver Holly.

So there we were, alone on the porch—Hudson, me, and his mangled bike. And really, he didn't say a word about it, but he couldn't help looking at it. I cringed and said, “I'm so sorry, Hudson. I'll buy you a new one.”

He examined it, then said, “
How
did you manage this?”

I started to tell him. About Lucinda and the cabin, and what it had meant to her. About Moustache Mary crossing the plains and the longstanding rivalry between the Huntleys and the Murdocks. And I'm barely getting warmed up when he says, “Whoa! Whoa, young lady!” and for a second there I'm thinking he's going to say, The
bike
…would you tell me about the
bike?
but instead
he grins at me and asks, “Does this story require a cup of cocoa?”

I laugh and say, “Oh, Hudson, it's going to take a whole vat!”

So we go inside and he makes us some hot chocolate, and then we sit down at the kitchen table and I tell him everything. Everything. And when I get to the part about the Briggses' party and the Edge of the World, he's looking worried. Almost angry. And I tell him that the Edge of the World really bothers me because it seems like one day you're over here with your friends and everything's fine…and then suddenly there you are at the Edge of the World. I shake my head and ask him, “How does that
happen?
”

He just nods. Very seriously. And finally he says, “By degrees. It happens by degrees. A little deviation in direction often takes you from where you
wanted
to go right to the Edge of the World.” He nods some more, then says, “And I don't think it's really an edge, because if it were, more people would recognize it and give thought to the steps they're taking. It's more a gradual slope down. An easy path to take. But once you start down, the momentum builds, and you have a difficult time stopping and pulling yourself back up.”

When we get done talking about the Edge of the World, I tell him about the rest of the party. About Casey. About him being Heather's brother. And when Hudson tries to tell me that, really, the fact that Casey is Heather's brother doesn't have to have anything to do with Casey being my friend, I stop him cold and say, “Look at the
Murdocks and the Huntleys! I don't want a life like that! I don't want to worry that Heather's going to come gunning for me, or that she's going to kidnap and torture my children.”

“What?”

I laugh and say, “Never mind. You had to be there.” I take a sip of cocoa and add, “Besides, Casey doesn't see much scary about the Edge—or the Slope, or whatever you want to call it—or that his friends are already on their way down.”

Hudson pulls on an eyebrow and says, “Maybe no one's ever pointed out the terrain to him.”

“Whatever. I'm staying out of it.”

He eyes me and asks, “So what happened with that skateboard of yours? Did you get it back?”

I pout and say, “No. Casey still has it.”

He gives me a little smile and says, “Aaah.” That's all, just “Aaah.”

“Stop that!”

He's still grinning. “More cocoa?”

“No, what I want to do is explain why your bike's a mess so I can go soak my body. I ache all over.”

So I tell him about the root cellar in Moustache Mary's cabin being converted into a drug lab and about the Elephant Truck connection. And then I tell him about trapping Dallas in the pit, and the way he almost killed me trying to get out.

And when I'm all done, Hudson takes a deep breath and says, “The bicycle was certainly a small sacrifice for your well-being.”

“It was stupid.
I
was stupid. I guess I should have known that he'd go berserk, but I didn't. Anyway, I promise, Hudson, I'll get you another bike.”

He winks at me and says, “I knew there were risks when I lent it to you, and I did tell you not to worry about it, so don't. Maybe we'll rebuild it as a project together, but for now, why don't you go take that bath?”

So I went to take a soak, but when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror, I had to take a minute and stare. From the bruise on my forehead to the gouge in my leg, I looked like I'd been through a war. I didn't feel any wonderful sense of victory, though. I was just pummeled. And tired.