“Whoa, wait a second here.” I held up my hands. “This is too much right now. I can’t just break my lease, pick up, and go.”
“I understand.” He reached across the table and patted my hand. “You need a little while to absorb all of this. But I assure you, it is imperative you move up there and take possession of the property.”
My eyes blurred with tears. “I don’t even know how my grandfather died.”
Galbraith rubbed his temples. “I was afraid you would ask.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know, either.”
When I arrived at Bistro, a little French place in West Little Rock, my head was still spinning. The key to Wolfsbane Manor was nestled in my purse between my cell phone and my wallet on a keychain that read in bright pink letters, “So NOT a morning person”. I had handed over the apartment keys to Galbraith, who assured me he would take care of everything and I could expect my belongings in a few days’ time. I’d tried to argue the hastiness of the move, but I may as well have been talking to the stone lions outside the manor’s door.
Lonna, my best friend, had arrived before me and sat in a booth along the wall. When she saw me, she waved with one of her long, tanned arms, which looked particularly dark in the white sleeveless top she wore.
“Somebody’s been to the tanning booth,” I teased as we hugged. I only came up to her shoulder, but I smelled the orange and coconut conditioner she used in her long, dark hair.
“It’s my guilty indulgence. I figure, with this job, it’ll be a miracle if skin cancer kills me first.” Even though she meant it as a joke, there was something serious in her topaz-colored eyes. A private-investigator-turned-social worker with the Department of Family and Child Services, she didn’t have an easy job to begin with.
I slid into the booth across from her and picked up a menu. “What’s going on over there?”
“Just the typical bureaucratic bullshit. Not all that interesting, so you go first. You said earlier you had big news.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she interrupted me.
“Oh, and how’s Robert? You guys haven’t come over in a while.”
“We’re not together anymore.” It hurt to remember our little road trips from Memphis to recruit research participants from the Little Rock pediatricians’ offices.
“Did his wife find out?”
“Worse. I got fired, so no more excuses to see each other.”
“Ouch! When?”
“I got the letter today. I kept hoping there would be some sort of appeal or something, but no dice. I didn’t want to tell you until it became official.” The fact Robert hadn’t even stood up for me hurt the most.
“I wish I could understand you, Joanie. How could you not tell me?”
“You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to understand.”
She didn’t fall for the guilt trip. “So was that the big news?”
“No, I also found out today I inherited my grandfather’s estate, so I’ve got the dinner check.”
“Congratulations, but not so fast there, Fisher.” She gave me a stern look over the menu. “Let’s tackle one thing at a time. You got fired. Tell me more.”
“It was after the lab caught fire. They still don’t know what started it.” For a second I thought I could feel the heat and smell the smoke from the blaze. Sweat jumped to my forehead, and I had to take a sip of water. This was why I hadn’t spoken to her about it in detail before—the memory made me panic.
“I’m sorry, Joanie.” She reached across the table and put a hand on my arm. “You don’t really have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I smiled at her implied question. “But details are important? You’re such a private detective.”
She grinned. “How else are you going to figure out what exactly happened?”
“Good point, although it’s not like it matters much now.” I took a deep breath. “One night about a month ago, I was compiling data, pediatric charts, in our statistical spreadsheet…” Just talking about it brought me back there. “I had been sitting on a stool checking to make sure the information in the files had converted into the correct columns in the spreadsheet when I heard my car alarm go off. I jumped down, really annoyed because I was on the cusp of running the first analysis, and my lab coat caught on the stool. Really caught. Like the corner of it had somehow gotten stuck in the middle joint where you adjust the height and then twisted in there. I turned to free it and was just giving it a last tug when the smoke alarm went off. When I opened the lab door, the hallway was in flames. I panicked. I shut the door and tried to go out the back way, but the door wouldn’t open. It was getting hotter and hotter, and I started coughing from the smoke. Finally I took the damn stool and threw it through a window, I don’t know how.”
“You’re a tough little thing.” Lonna rested her chin on her hands. “Even if you don’t look it.”
Caught in the story, I had to keep going. “So I jumped through and got scraped up a little.” I rolled up the sleeve of my T-shirt and showed her my left shoulder, which had a long, thin, barely healed cut. “That one was the deepest. Fifteen stitches.”
She traced it with a cool finger. “Wow,” she murmured. “So you got out?”
“I thought that was it. I started heading to my car to shut off the damn alarm and get to a hospital, but then I heard something behind me.”
The waiter approached, and I jumped. “
Lonna didn’t even look at him, just gave the order for our appetizer and wine. “
“
“Go on,” she told me.
We were getting into the realm of nightmares. “Honestly, I’m not sure whether to believe it myself.” I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “I would rather not say here.”
“Oh? It’s not fair to keep me hanging, Joanie.”
“I’ll tell you later, at your place, I promise.”
The waiter brought our wine in tulip-shaped glasses—hers blue, mine red— with green stems.
“So anyway,” I said after taking a sip. “Hmm, a good Oaky California. You can tell every time. You’d think they’d have French here.”
“So?” she prompted.
“No lab equals no work. No work equals no job. And that’s it.”
“How can that be it? You were top in your field.”
“I don’t know. Maybe someone found out about me and Robert. Or maybe they blamed me for the fire, but I suspect it’s more about money. They just got bought, and mergers mean layoffs. But enough about that. What’s going on with your work?”
Lonna sighed. “There’s been this string of kids disappearing in this little community in the Ozarks north of Mountain View. I’ve got to go up there tomorrow and talk with the local social worker. As hard as I’ve tried to get out of the private-eye business, you’d think they’d leave me alone.”
“Oh, gads, that’s rough.” Hearing about stuff like that made my stomach twist. It reminded me too much of Andrew.
“Sorry, I know you don’t like to hear about the kids.”
“I just don’t know how you do what you do, that’s all. What’s this little place called?”
“Crystal Pines.”
I set my glass down a little too hard, and the wine spilled.
“What’s with you?” Lonna arched an eyebrow.
“Wolfsbane Manor, my grandfather’s estate, is up there. Crystal Pines—it used to be called Piney Mountain— is at the base of the hill, the manor at the top.”
“That’s really odd.” She swirled the wine around in her glass. “From the files I’ve gotten from the case worker who lives up near there, the locals—y’know, the ones who were there first before the yuppies moved in—are associating the ‘old gentleman’s house’ with the kids going missing.”
A shiver climbed up my spine. “How?”
“That’s the weird part. No human footprints or anything. The kids just…disappear. When they call the
