Shadowmaker (2 page)

Mom was caught by surprise. “The investigations I do are perfectly legal!”

The sheriff looked unconvinced. “Legal or not, let’s get one thing straight. I hope you’re not fixin’ to do any of your investigations around Kluney. A number of folks have been wonderin’ just what it is you’re lookin’ for. Whatever it is, they don’t like it.”

Mom actually blushed. “I’m here to write a novel.”

He took a long swig of coffee, then asked, “Yeah? What kind of a novel does a reporter write?”

His question came out like a challenge, and after a moment’s confusion Mom reacted defensively. “What kind? Mainstream, not nonfiction investigative reporting. You do understand the difference?”

I winced, but the sheriff just turned to Mom and said, “As Francis Bacon wrote, ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.’ ”

Mom’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Bacon, Francis Bacon
, I thought.
Wasn’t he some British writer back in the early sixteen hundreds?

“A smart lady like you must have read Francis Bacon, haven’t you?” Sheriff Granger asked.

“Touché,” Mom replied. “I just wasn’t expecting you to quote someone like Francis Bacon.”

“Because I’m a sheriff? Or because I’m small-town?” He shifted a bit and his chair wobbled. “I helped organize the local Classical Reading Society in Kluney.”

Mom’s cheeks flushed even pinker, so I interrupted. “Aren’t you supposed to be questioning us about why we called you?” I asked.

“I’ll be gettin’ around to that,” he said. “Your mama invited me to a cup of coffee first, and there’s no need not to be sociable.” His glance at me intensified, and he asked, “You registered in our high school, Katherine?”

“Yes.”

“Sophomore? Junior?”

“Sophomore.”

He nodded, satisfied. “It’s hard to come to a new school in the middle of the spring semester. Makin’ friends?”

“Sure.” I suddenly became interested in the bottom of my coffee cup. I wondered if he could possibly know that what I’d told him was a lie. It had taken a couple of days to scrub down this house before we could move into it, so I’d only been at Kluney High on Thursday and Friday. During those two days I’d been looked over and talked about—the kids made that obvious—but only a couple of them had said so much as
hello
to me. Lana Jean Willis, a skinny girl with bad skin and dirty blond hair, was the only one who’d tried to be friendly.

“You sure favor your mama with that red hair and blue eyes,” Sheriff Granger told me. “I don’t know of any other redheads in these parts, except for Sally, who’s a waitress in Denny’s over on the highway, but Sally was a blonde before she became a redhead, so I don’t guess we can count her.”

The sheriff bent back his head, draining the coffee from his cup. “Let’s get down to business,” he said, and pulled out a notebook and pencil. Turning each page by licking
his thumb, he finally found an empty page and began to write. “Eve Gillian,” he said to Mom. “Two
l
’s in Gillian?”

“That’s right,” Mom answered. “Now, what happened was—”

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m writin’ down your address. Give me your telephone number too.”

Finally, he raised his head and said, “Okay. Now, according to Doris, our dispatcher, some folks were on the road out beyond your place around one-fifteen this mornin’, and after a few minutes they left.”

“There’s more to it than that!” Mom’s eyes flashed.

“Like what? Did they come onto your property?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. They were at the gate and next to the garage.”

“Any threats? Did they call out? Use obscenities or anything like that?”

“No! They were just … just
there.
”

“You told Doris you’d been asleep. How did you know anybody was there?”

“Because of the dogs in those yards that back onto the road. They woke us with their barking.”

The sheriff smiled. “Yeah. I can see how those three dogs would wake anybody, livin’ or dead, exceptin’ their owners.” He studied his notebook for a moment, then asked, “Were any of the folk you saw out there armed?”

“I don’t know. It was too dark to tell.”

“Too dark? But you said you saw them.”

Mom couldn’t take any more. She rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward, her forehead in the palms of her hands.

I stepped in again. “Their shadows moved. That’s how we knew there was more than one person.”

“Okay,” Sheriff Granger said, and wrote something. “How many people were out there?”

“Uh … at least two.”

“Just two?”

“There might have been more.”

“Male or female?”

“We don’t know.”

“But they didn’t do anything or say anything?”

“They frightened us.”

“How?”

Mom dropped her arms and slapped the table in exasperation. “By just being there!”

Sheriff Granger slowly and deliberately closed his notebook and tucked it away with his pencil. “Miz Gillian,” he said, “that’s a public road. Far as I can see, no one did anything except walk down that road.”

“But the road ends at our gate! No one would have any reason for being there unless they had business with us.”

“Coulda been folks out for a stroll, maybe a young couple lookin’ for a quiet place. There’s nothin’ to show us it was anythin’ more threatenin’ than that.” His lips turned up in a bare suggestion of a smile. “Remember what Sir James Matthew Barrie said? ‘A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently.… Ghosts were created when the first man woke in the night.’ ”

“The Little Minister,”
Mom mumbled, and I almost expected her to add “show off,” but instead she said, “I didn’t call you about a ghost. I called about prowlers.”

His smile stretched to its full width. “I’ve heard that folks in Houston see so much crime they’re always thinkin’ they’ll be next. Well, you don’t have to worry here in Kluney.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” I blurted out. “Crimes take place everywhere, even in small towns.”

“Oh, we got crime, of sorts,” he said, and rubbed his chin. “In fact, lately we’ve had a little more than usual. To my way of thinkin’, the amount of crime depends on who’s stoppin’ off or movin’ through town.”

“Your own citizens are squeaky-clean?” Mom asked.

Sheriff Granger went on as though he hadn’t heard the disbelief in Mom’s voice. “We keep tabs on our own.”

I was too curious to let the subject drop. “What kind of crimes do you get?” I asked.

He shifted his weight, and the chair trembled. I was really getting worried about the fate of that chair. “Shop-liftin’ … burglaries,” he answered. “Earlier this year we had a string of shopliftin’ reports. Started out with some minor stuff, like pocketknives and flashlights, hardly worth botherin’ about; but then stuff like VCRs, camcorders, and such got taken. A motorcycle gang came through town around that time, and there were a couple of other people from out of town we all had our doubts about.”

“You didn’t catch the shoplifters?”

His forehead puckered and grew a little redder. “My jurisdiction extends only so far. I can’t go huntin’ down folks who are long gone afore I get the shopliftin’ reports.”

He shifted toward Mom, but I wanted to know the rest. “You said
burglaries
too. What about them?”

“Yeah … Funny thing about ’em, they started around the time the shopliftin’ stopped and, like the shopliftin’, they didn’t amount to much at first—a few small office supplies, some auto tools, a case of beer. Then some folks got their homes broken into.”

Mom looked interested in spite of herself. “Maybe that’s what was planned for us tonight.”

“I doubt it,” the sheriff said. “Burglars don’t want to be seen or heard. It’d be too hard to burglarize a small house like this while people are in it.”

“Hasn’t anybody been able to identify the burglars?” I asked.

Sheriff Granger shook his head. “You’re thinkin’ of robbery, which is a more serious crime than burglary. Folks tend to get the two mixed up. Robbers are the ones who hold you up with a gun. Burglars come around when you’re gone or when you’re asleep and take what they want and get away fast. Usually, nobody sees burglars.”

A sudden thought seemed to come to the sheriff. His eyes darkened and deepened, drilling into Mom’s eyes, and I realized he wasn’t always the easygoing man he seemed to be. “Let’s get back to your reason for calling me. Is there anything you haven’t mentioned, Miz Gillian? Like maybe a husband somewhere tryin’ to give you a bad time?”

Mom closed her eyes, as though she wanted to shut out both the sheriff and unhappy memories. “My husband died in a car accident six years ago,” she answered.

“Sorry,” he murmured, and his voice softened. “Then let me try a different direction. Anybody tryin’ to repossess your car? Anybody you’re havin’ trouble with?”

I waited for Mom to bring up the Brownsville articles, but I remembered what the sheriff had said about Mom making people upset with her columns. She must have remembered too. She jutted her chin out stubbornly and answered, “No. Nothing like that.”

“Then we’re through here,” Sheriff Granger said. “I’ll be goin’. If anythin’ else worries you, just give me a call. That’s what I’m here for.”

Without answering, Mom led him to the door. The moment he was outside she locked it firmly, then turned and leaned against it.

“It’s weird,” I said. “Sheriff Granger actually looks like he’s playing the part of a small-town sheriff on TV. I couldn’t believe it when he started to quote passages from great literature. Mom, it doesn’t add up.”

“It does seem odd, but as a journalist I’ve learned never to assume I know what a person is going to be like. You’re trying to make him fit into a category,” Mom said. “We’re all guilty at times of categorizing people, even though we know better.”

“But the sheriff has a stomach that laps over his belt, he drops his
g
’s, and he calls you Miz. Is he for real?”

“Why can’t he have a good mind and a love of good literature?” Mom asked.

“It’s still kind of weird,” I mumbled, unwilling to give up easily, “and even if you won’t say it, I know you agree.”

“Tomorrow,” Mom said in a low voice, as she took another look at the door, “I’ll get some dead bolts and window locks at the hardware store, and a couple of bright lights I can string up in the backyard. Those French doorsn
 … I don’t like all that glass. Maybe at the store they can suggest something that will help me secure them.”

“Mom?” I asked, shuddering from the chill that ran up my backbone into my neck. “You think whoever was out there will come back, don’t you? But it’s not connected to Brownsville and the articles, is it?”

She looked surprised for a moment, and I had the strange feeling that she’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, Katie,” she said, and strode across the room to clasp my shoulders, hugging me tightly. “Don’t mind my ramblings. I was just talking to myself, just taking extra precautions. I didn’t mean to frighten you, baby. I don’t know what to think, but I know that we need to be careful.”

I wanted to reassure her that I was all right and no longer a baby to be worried about, but when I opened my mouth a huge, noisy yawn came out.

Mom smiled. “We’re both exhausted. Let’s forget all about this craziness and get to bed. Okay?”

“Okay,” I answered, and walked off toward my room at the back of the house. I held the curtains back so I could stare out the window into the darkness, searching for movement among the shadows, yet terrified that I might see it. I wished Mom had answered my questions. It wasn’t okay.

I
t was misery waking to the alarm clock, and the chill of the bare wood floor stung my toes. At least the floors were clean—scrubbed and waxed and polished until Mom was satisfied—a huge improvement on the way they’d looked when we’d first arrived at the house and stepped inside.

The badly worn boards had been gritty with beach sand and dirt and scuffed with a mixture of bare footprints and the intricate design of whirls and whorls from the imprints of sports shoes. Crushed beer and soft drink cans lay in the mess, and a couple of ashtrays filled with butts decorated the tables.

“I thought we’d find something like this when I discovered the door was unlocked,” Mom had said, making a face
at the room. “It looks like a few beach bums found a free place to flop for the night.”

I immediately looked over my shoulder, and Mom smiled. “Katie, honey,” she said, “they’re long gone. Look at the dust on that table.”

It didn’t look any different to me than the dust lying everywhere. What an awful place to have to live! “Maybe we could get a hose and just wash everything down,” I suggested.

“Better yet,” Mom said, “help me move the furniture out on the porch. Then fill that bucket over there with water and soap, and let’s get to work. This little house is going to look one hundred percent better when we’re through cleaning it.”

I didn’t believe it, but Mom was right. We scrubbed everything, including the walls, threw out the drapes and curtains, and hung new ones Mom had bought for the bedrooms and bathroom. The other windows she left open to the sea.

“What about the attic?” As I stood in the short hallway that joined the two bedrooms with a bath between them, I glanced upward at the rectangle in the ceiling with a short rope dangling from it. I knew that meant folding stairs. “Do we have to clean the attic too?”

“No. We’ve reached the end of our cleaning, thank goodness,” Mom said as she flopped into the nearest kitchen chair. “Uncle Jim wasn’t interested in possessions. He owned very little, and what he didn’t need he gave away. He told me once he only went into the attic when roof
repairs were needed, so we won’t find anything up there except more dust.”

“And maybe mouse droppings and rabid bats,” I’d added.

Mom laughed and threw her cleaning rag at me. “Let’s wash up,” she said, “and cook our first meal in our new house.”

Mom may have been eager to live there, but I wasn’t. For one thing, no matter what we did to it, the house still looked ancient and tired and dried-out, like dead leaves or old paper. It wasn’t anything like our big apartment in Houston.