Wicked Fix (52 page)

Victor, I mean, really needed Sam around to help

him--to assist him in the task of acclimating himself to

downeast Maine culture, was the way he put it, and if

Sam wanted to go to school could he please find a way

to do it and stay here in town? Two minutes later, it

was decided."

"Huh," Ellie said. "You know, that's the truly annoying

part about Victor. Which is he? Blackhearted,

or heart of gold?"

We turned back toward home. "Neither," I said as

we passed Peavy Library and began climbing Key

Street, beneath the bare-branched maples looming

spectral under the streetlamps. "Victor's heart, I have

decided, is a two-tone model."

At my house, the workshop on the top floor of the

storeroom ell was occupied, Wade's shape moving behind

the window shades. He was reconditioning the

storm windows, as he'd promised; he'd done the rest of

the weatherstripping, too, while I recuperated.

A little help from my friends: so hard to ask for.

But it was getting easier to take.

Inside we found there'd been a visitor in our absence:

some books lay on the kitchen table, and a note

from Paddy. It seemed he'd found them in an old

strongbox in the rubble of the studio: sheet music, and

ancient leather-bound volumes, all handwritten.

"Thought you might like to see these," the note

from Paddy finished. "Off to Portland--fingers

crossed."

The first piece of music, written in ink that was

faded but still legible, was titled "The Pirate's Revenge,"

and like the frontispiece of each old diary volume

it was signed: Jared Hayes.

The fiddler who had lived in our house all those

years ago, and had vanished from it ...

"Why would these things be at the cannery?" Ellie

asked.

"I have no idea," I replied, paging carefully

through the fragile old sheets of music.

Sam's voice: "Mom? Can you come and look at

this, please?"

"Just a second." I scanned part of a diary: dates

and places where Jared Hayes had played. Notes about

what he'd eaten, music he was working on, a violin he

expected to receive. Very special, he wrote, a wonderful

instrument, lovely and fine.

"Jake," Ellie said quietly, peering over my shoulder.

"He quit writing."

In the workshop, Wade was listening to his favorite

Chet Atkins CD. "Cosmic Square Dance" rang out,

ending in its weirdly jubilant, minor-keyed violin solo.

"I know," I said, distracted, still staring at the

name on the diary page: Stradivarius. "He vanished,

remember?"

It would have been a fine instrument, all right. So

how had a downeast Maine fiddler ever dreamed of

having one? For that matter, how had he managed to

live in this house, which at the time had been a luxurious

dwelling, on an excellent piece of property? Jared

Hayes had been a musician, not a ship's captain or a

prosperous trader.

"No," said Ellie, frowning at the pages. "I mean he

stopped in the middle of a sentence. The ink trails off,

as if ... Have you had any more manifestations

lately?"

Flickering lights, she meant, or the faint, sad perfume

of camellias. Music playing when no one in the

house was playing any music.

A cold spot, there on the stairs and gone.

"No," I said, realizing there hadn't been. "It's been

quiet as ..."

As the grave, I'd meant to say, but decided not to.

Monday looked up from her dog bed in the corner,

listened intently.

"Mom?" Sam's voice, from the dining room. "It

did it again."

"What?" I called, distracted.

"Maybe," Ellie said, "we should look into the disappearance

of Jared Hayes."

A breeze came in, riffling the pages of the fiddle

tunes on the table. I went over, meaning to close the

kitchen window. But it was already closed.

Outside, the moon had risen, glazing the pointed

fir trees with a rime of silver. High in the sky, Canadian

geese arrowed southward and were gone.

"Look at this," Sam said quietly. "Really, I mean

it."

Only a single lamp shone dimly in the corner of the

dining room, our shadows moving hugely in the

wreathed acorns-and-oak-leaves pattern of the high tin

ceiling.

The Ouija board lay on the table. "I didn't touch

it," Sam insisted. "But it kept pushing against me. Like

Tommy was pushing it for a joke. Only, he's not here.

So finally I got up to come and get you two. And then,

when I wasn't touching it at all ..."

He waved, mystified, at the smooth wooden board:

the letters and numerals, the black-painted words: Yes

and No.

One in the upper left-hand corner.

And one in the right.

"It moved," Sam insisted. "When I was nowhere

near it. All by itself, it zoomed up into the corner there.

See it?"

The full moon shone brightly through the dining

room window, painting a silver triangle on the board's

surface and lighting the planchette, which just then uncannily

resembled a man's hand.

It was pointing to Yes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

sarah graves lives with her husband in

Eastport, Maine, in the 1823 Federal

style house that helped inspire her books.

She is the author of The Dead Cat

Bounce and Triple Witch, and is currently

working on the next Mainely Murder

Mystery.

Visit Eastport, Maine, on the Web at

www.nemaine.com/eastportcc--or visit

in person! For more information: East

port Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box

254, Eastport, Maine 04631. Phone:

207-853-4644.