A Timely Vision

It was well past midnight, not a time I’m used to being out and about. Traffic on Duck Road had slowed to only a few cars. There was the faint sound of music coming from some of the bars and restaurants. A few crickets chirped, and the breezes rushed through the bushes around me. I looked at the dark shadow of Mary Lou’s house and felt a terrible chill.

What if I was wrong? What if Mary Lou had nothing to do with what happened to Miss Elizabeth and I was only too eager to pin it on anyone to save Miss Mildred? What if I ended up convincing Mary Lou that she’d done something wrong when she hadn’t?

“What are you doing out there, Mayor?”

The voice was coming from the earpiece I was wearing. It was Agent Walker, who was waiting in a surveillance van not even half a block away. Kevin had convinced me (though I’m not sure how) that we needed help. He’d told Agent Walker my plan to get a confession from Mary Lou, and surprisingly, he’d agreed.

“You have to go into the house,” he said. “I don’t think you can scare a confession out of her from the backyard.”

I didn’t want to respond to his prodding. I had a bad case of cold feet. Making Mary Lou believe I was Miss Elizabeth’s ghost had seemed like a good idea when I suggested it on the beach yesterday. But that was before I actually had to do it. “Maybe we should wait,” I whispered.

“The auction is only a few hours away,” he reminded me. “This was your idea. Are you saying now you don’t think Mary Lou had anything to do with what happened to Mrs. Simpson?”

I had been amazed that Kevin and Agent Walker thought scaring Mary Lou into a confession was a good idea. I was still amazed that they even considered she could be involved. Agent Walker had confessed, when Kevin and I told him a few hours ago, that he’d felt through the whole investigation that something wasn’t right.

Of course, I felt completely guilty that I hadn’t told the chief and asked for his help. Tim’s reaction had surprised me yesterday. I was afraid the chief would feel the same way, and the truth, whatever it was, would never come out. More than a small part of me wished I had told the chief and he’d talked me out of the whole thing.

I wasn’t too pleased to be standing in Mary Lou’s backyard in the middle of the night. I was wearing the black dress with the little pink hearts—sort of. I’d had to cut out the back to fit into it (who knew Mary Lou was so much smaller than me?) and then pin it on over my bathing suit to keep it from falling off. I’d put on some white makeup from last Halloween and arranged the gray wig on my head so she couldn’t see my hair.

I’d felt the first twinge of doubt when I looked at myself in the mirror at my house. Would this getup scare Mary Lou to death? Would she admit to killing someone because she was terrified? The whole thing had suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

I would’ve backed out. Really, I didn’t have the backbone that Agent Walker assured me I had. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. And I didn’t like to think how Gramps was going to feel when he found out I’d done this. Whether Mary Lou was guilty or not, I knew he’d find out.

“Are you ready to move in? We can’t sit here all night. We only have this van for a few hours,” Agent Walker’s voice prodded from my ear.

“I’m going. I can’t talk anymore.”

It was really Kevin who’d convinced me (again) to go through with it. When he pinned the small microphone and receiver on my dress, he looked into my eyes and told me, emphatically, “You can do this, Dae. You might be the only one who can.”

That, and that funny fluttery feeling I got around him, sent me out the van door and into the warm, humid night. But that was as far as it had gotten me. Now, I was standing under the bushes, watching Mary Lou’s house, wondering again whether I was doing the right thing.

Then I thought about Miss Mildred and Miss Elizabeth and Wild Johnny Simpson. All of their lives had been built on mistakes and misunderstandings. I had to make sure this wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t allow myself to be scared. I had to find out the truth.

I walked up to the old house, jumping a little when an owl hooted and flew down close at me to take a look. “I’m too big to be a mouse,” I whispered.

“What was that?” Agent Walker asked from the van.

“Nothing. Just talking to the owl.”

He didn’t remark on that. I moved steadily across the sandy ground, carefully skirting the rose bushes and gravel that might give me away. I half hoped the back door might be locked. There wouldn’t be anything to do about that but go home. Too bad. Nice try.

But the back door was unlocked, even slightly open. I crept across the dark porch, trying not to step on buckets and shovels left there from the turtle rescue project.

I pushed open the door to the house and walked into the kitchen. I navigated carefully around the table and chairs, glanced at a nightlight glowing from the bathroom. The house was so quiet. No sound from the friendly owl outside, not even traffic sounds from the road.

I wondered, as I approached her bedroom door, if Mary Lou had noticed that the dress and wig were gone. Even with the mess, she might’ve been able to tell the difference. If she’d noticed, would she have thought of me and Tim?

I could hear her snoring softly from the bed. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. I had a silly image of myself holding a flashlight under my chin, like we used to do when we told ghost stories around the campfire. I walked closer, wondering if I should make some scary sound, booing or something, then I tripped over a pile of clothes in the middle of the bedroom floor.

That was enough to startle Mary Lou out of her sound sleep. I stood completely still, not even daring to breathe, as she turned on a flashlight and pinned me with the beam. “I knew it was you, Lizzie. Come for me, have you? Well, you can’t make me feel any worse than I have for the past two weeks since I accidentally killed you. Go ahead. Take your revenge.”

Chapter 19

“Get her to talk about it, Dae,” Agent Walker said in my ear. “We need as much as we can get.”

Wasn’t it enough already? Mary Lou had confessed to killing Miss Elizabeth. How much more was there? I didn’t move, couldn’t speak. I stood still, the flashlight beam shining in my face.

“Aren’t you going to say anything, Lizzie?” Mary Lou asked. She had slipped her legs out of bed. I could she was wearing the same short brown pants she’d been wearing at the beach. “I don’t blame you for being angry. I made a bad mistake. I’m sorry I tried to blame it on Millie. It was wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I realized at that moment that I couldn’t go on with the charade. We knew now that Miss Mildred wasn’t responsible for killing her sister. Surely Mary Lou deserved a lawyer now before she said anything else. It was an accident. Agent Walker didn’t need to know more.

I started to walk out of the bedroom. Mary Lou followed me. “Where are you going, Lizzie? Please take me with you. I don’t want to live with all this guilt. Someone else will take care of the turtles. Let me go with you, please.”

“Keep her talking,” Agent Walker advised in my ear.

I walked out of the house into the dark yard, hoping she’d stay inside and have a cup of coffee or something. I couldn’t warn her off any more than I could get her to confess anything else. It was over, as far as I was concerned. We had what we needed to set things right.

“Lizzie! Why won’t you talk to me? Where are you going?” Mary Lou stayed one step behind me.

Between Agent Walker’s proddings and Mary Lou’s plaintive calls, my ears were ringing. I kept hoping she’d give up or I’d find a big bush to hide behind. I couldn’t believe she’d confessed to killing Miss Elizabeth. I’d suspected her and helped catch her, but knowing for certain was different. It was like trading one friend, one piece of my life, for another.

I wished Agent Walker would stop talking. I wanted time to absorb all of this and grieve for another loss.