Trick or Treachery (6 page)

“Ayuh,” he said, Maine-speak for yes. “Pretty much so. Got one drunk back in a cell still sleepin’ it off and looks like we might have a laundry bandit on the loose. Mrs. Johnson reported a missin’ shirt, and Aggie Taylor complained someone walked off with a pair of skivvies she left dryin’ on the porch. Other than that, and the Lerners’ concerns, everything’s pretty quiet.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, raising my mug.

Our moment of celebratory reverie was shattered when one of Mort’s deputies, Wendell Watson, barged through the door. “Got a nine-one-one, Sheriff,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Out to Paul Marshall’s place. Kid missing from one of the cottages.”

“Missing kid? What kid?”

“Don’t know. Marie says the woman’s hysterical. Name’s Wandowski.”

“Robert and Lauren Wandowski rent one of Paul’s cottages,” I said. “They have a little girl.”

Mort jumped up and grabbed his tan Stetson from where it hung from a set of moose antlers, then headed for the door.

“Mind if I tag along?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t matter if I did. Come on.”

 

When we pulled up in front of the Wandowski cottage, the parents of the child were waiting in front of a compact car, the motor running. Mort and Wendell got out and approached them. I remained in the squad car with the window down.

“Afternoon,” Mort said. “What’s goin’ on, folks? Got a report says your youngster is missin’. Fill me in.”

Bob and Lauren started talking at once.

Mort held up his hand. “Easy, now,” he said. “One at a time.”

The father spoke. “Julie is gone. That’s our daughter, she’s eight. My wife called me at work. I just got here. School let out early today. Kids had just a couple ’a hours this morning.”

“A teacher conference,” Lauren said.

“Julie never made it home,” Bob said. “She’s disappeared. She’s been kidnapped.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Mort said, reaching in the window and turning off the engine of the compact. “Might be she decided to stop off someplace, see a friend.” He handed the keys to the father.

“Julie wouldn’t do that without telling me,” Lauren said, glancing at her husband.

“She knows better,” Bob Wandowski added sternly.

“Well, then,” Mort said, “let’s take a walk, backtrack along the route your daughter always takes to school, and see if we can learn anything. One of you stay here in case she comes back or calls.”

A teary Lauren Wandowski agreed to remain behind as Mort, Wendell and Bob set off on foot. I got out of the car and joined them. The trail we took passed through a small spruce grove. When we emerged into a clearing, the Rose Cottage came into view, a hundred yards ahead. A black car was parked alongside it. A five-foot-high wall curved toward the cottage, the remnants of summer roses clinging to its red-brick facade. Artie Sack, the gardener, was spreading mulch at the base of the rose bushes in preparation for a cold winter. I waved, and he waved back. A black cat—probably the same scary animal I’d seen in the back of Matilda Swift’s car—was curled up atop the brick wall, its yellow eyes following Artie’s labors.

“How are you, Artie?” I called.

“Doin’ good, doin’ good,” he replied. The cat jumped onto his shoulders as I approached.

“Ooh! Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked, watching the cat dig its paws into him.

“This little guy? This little guy?” Artie Sack had a habit of saying things twice. He pulled the cat into his arms and stroked the black head, scratching behind the cat’s ears, eliciting a loud purr. “He couldn’t hurt anyone, even if he wanted to. This is a nice cat, nice cat, not like them barn cats.”

“What are we doing here?” Bob growled, drawing my attention away from Artie.

“That’s Ms. Swift’s home,” I said, pointing to the Rose Cottage and moving back to our little group. “Maybe she’s seen your daughter.”

“That witch!” Bob muttered.

“Witch?” I said.

“Just ask around. Nothing but trouble in town since she came,” he spat. “We’ve been thinking of leaving for some time now. Cabot Cove isn’t what it used to be. Too many upstarts and weirdos moving in—like her.”

The venom in his voice took me aback. I was about to ask whether he had a reason for his obvious hatred of Matilda Swift, a tangible problem to cause him to speak so ill of her, when the door to the cottage opened. The woman in question stepped outside, followed by a little girl eating a large cookie.

“Julie!” her father shouted, breaking into a run toward them. The girl came around from behind Matilda and waved. “Hi, Daddy,” she chirped, running to him. He scooped her up in his arms, grabbing the cookie and flinging it to the ground.

“ ’Morning, Ms. Swift,” Mort said, tipping his hat.

Wandowski lowered his daughter, keeping a hand on her shoulder, and glared at Matilda. The woman wore an ankle-length white gauze dress and a large pendant with a bronze cat’s face against a circular black background. Her expression was quizzical.

“What the hell are you doing with my daughter?” Wandowski snarled.

“Why, we were baking cookies,” Matilda said, frowning in response to his angry tone.

“Are you all right?” Wandowski leaned down to his daughter.

“I’m fine, Daddy. Mrs. Swift asked if I wanted to help them and I—”

“Go home,” her father roared. “Now!”

The child looked as though she might cry, but managed to hold back the tears as she ran away from us in the direction of the spruce grove.

Wandowski turned on Matilda. “How dare you kidnap my daughter!”

“I didn’t kidnap her,” Matilda said quietly. “She’s such a nice little girl and I was baking cookies and thought—”

“I want her arrested for kidnapping and child endangerment,” Wandowski shouted at Mort.

“Well, now, Mr. Wandowski, I don’t think that’s warranted. Looks like no harm was done here.”

“You refuse to arrest her?” Wandowski was growing red in the face.

“I suppose you could say that. Now calm down. Your daughter looked happy and healthy enough. Didn’t appear she was bein’ held against her will. Don’t blame you for bein’ upset with her for not goin’ straight home from school, but that’s about the only thing here I can see needs addressing.”

Wandowski turned again to Matilda. “You come near my daughter again—you come within a hundred yards of her—and I’ll take care of you myself.”

“Careful with that sort a’ threat, Mr. Wandowski,” Mort said. “I don’t like that brand of talk.”

Wandowski’s nostrils flared, and he seemed poised to say something else. Instead, he stalked away, mumbling under his breath.

When he was gone, Mort said to Matilda, “I’m sure you didn’t mean nothin’ wrong havin’ the girl come in to bake cookies, Ms. Swift, but it might be a good idea to give that whole family a wide berth for a while.”

“Thank you for your advice,” she replied coolly. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my baking now. Can’t believe such a ruckus over baking cookies. There’s something wrong with that man, you know.” The intensity in her icy blue eyes conflicted with what I considered false sweetness in her voice.

“I’m sure he was just upset and worried about his child. He’ll probably be embarrassed about this scene by tomorrow,” I said, not entirely sure that would be the case.

Matilda stared at me; I felt as though she’d physically penetrated my body. “Not that one,” she said, the sweetness of tone now gone. She stepped back inside the cottage.

Mort, Wendell and I returned to where Mort’s official car was parked. Robert Wandowski’s car was gone.

“You get the feelin’, Mrs. F, that this won’t be the last trouble we see with Ms. Swift?”

“I don’t know about that, Mort, but I do wonder what the girl meant when she said that Mrs. Swift asked if she wanted to help
them.
”

“She said that?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t pick up on that. Good thing Julie’s father didn’t know there was someone else in the cottage,” Mort added, starting the engine.

“Yes, you’re right. I wonder who it was.”

“Doesn’t really matter, Mrs. F. Important thing is that the little girl is safe and sound. Comin’ back to headquarters with me?”

“No, I have some errands to run. I’d appreciate it if you’d drop me off at Beth and Peter’s floral shop.”

“Shall do.”

“And thanks for the coffee, Mort. It’s getting better all the time.”

“Learned from the master,” he said, grinning.

 

The school auditorium was packed that night for the children’s Halloween pageant. The production went smoothly, the only interruption coming when the same little boy who had to be excused from rehearsal to go to the restroom, expressed—loudly—the same request in the middle of the play, much to the delight of the audience.

After the show, I joined friends in the lobby, including flower shop owners Beth and Peter Mullin, the Lerners and Seth Hazlitt.

“Wasn’t that adorable when the boy announced he had to go to the bathroom?” Joan said, laughing.

“Cute little fella,” Seth said.

Ed Lerner looked past me and frowned. I turned to see what had caused his reaction. Lucas Tremaine stood at the other end of the lobby, talking with two women, one of whom I know, Brenda Brody. She works as copy editor at our monthly magazine, the
Cabot Cove Insider.

Joan, too, saw Tremaine and wrapped her arms about herself. “Gives me the creeps,” she said, “having someone like that come to a children’s pageant.”

“Show’s open to the public,” Seth said.

“I know, I know,” said Joan, “but there is something unsavory about him.”

My eyes went to the lobby’s opposite corner, where Matilda Swift, dressed in her black duster and wearing her cat pendant, came from the auditorium, navigating knots of people, and was about to leave the school. Suddenly she stopped and cast a hard look in Tremaine’s direction. I turned to him. He’d seen Matilda and glared back at her. Matilda’s face was an angry mask; if her eyes were weapons, Tremaine would have been shot to death. She left the school, and Tremaine resumed his conversation with Brenda Brody and the other woman.

The feelings of apprehension I’d been experiencing lately, which I’d expressed to Matt Miller in my letter to him, returned. I suppose my face reflected it because Seth asked if I was feeling well.

“What?” I said.

“I asked if you were feeling all right.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I feel fine.”

We were joined by others and went out for coffee. I forced myself to take part in the easy banter, but couldn’t shake the vague, free-floating anxiety that had taken over. The group broke up at eleven, and Seth dropped me at my house.

“Lookin’ forward to tomorrow night?” he asked as I was about to get out of the car.

“Paul’s party? Sure.”

“You don’t look like you’re in much of a party mood,” he said.

“Don’t be silly. Paul’s annual Halloween party is always fun. I can’t wait.”

His skeptical expression said he didn’t quite believe me, but he didn’t press. I kissed his cheek. “Thanks for the lift, Seth. See you tomorrow in all your military finery.”

“Seth, you look wonderful, so . . . so . . . so authentic.”

He beamed at the compliment on his costume from a party guest.

“Much obliged,” he said. “I have Jessica to thank for it.”

“And you, Jessica, are absolutely scary. I can’t believe you chose to come to the party as The Legend. What a great idea.”

“Thank you,” I said, not adding that I almost decided earlier that evening to abandon the getup and find a last-minute substitute.

It had taken me almost an hour to create the costume based upon the legend of Hepzibah Cabot. I wore a flowing white floor-length gauzy dress, and had gathered the ends of a long matching stole in front of me. I applied greenish white makeup that gave me the distinct look of a cadaver, and pulled on a long gray wig to which I’d attached strands of green crepe paper to achieve the effect of seaweed. The resulting image was, as my admirer later said, “absolutely scary,” even to me when I looked in the mirror. My blue eyes deepened in intensity when contrasted with my now bleached skin, and the billowy white dress floated around my legs with each step I took, creating the impression of an ethereal figure not subject to gravity.

As I had studied my reflection, I’d experienced an overwhelming sense of apprehension. I put my hands up to cover the “seaweed.” The woman looking back at me in the mirror bore a strong resemblance, I realized, to Matilda Swift.

An eerie feeling had again crept over me. I chided myself as I slipped my eyeglasses into one pocket, and patted the other into which I’d tucked a comb and lipstick, as if they were talismans, reminders of who I really was. Fortunately, I didn’t have time to dwell on macabre thoughts because the phone rang, startling me out of my doom-and-gloom funk.

“Jessica, it’s Maureen,” Sheriff Metzger’s wife said when I picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Maureen. Or should I call you Cher? All costumed up for the party?”

“Sure am. You?”

“I, ah . . . yes, I’m all set. Does Mort like the Revolutionary War costume he got from the theater?”

“He changed his mind. He’s going as Davy Crockett instead. Marcia had this wonderful coonskin cap—not real fur, of course—and suede pants and shirt with fringe—just like the old TV show. Now he’s complaining it makes him look fat.” She giggled. “I think he’s kind of cute in it. I’m just so grateful he won’t be wearing his sheriff’s uniform. I wanted to thank you for suggesting the theater costume department.”

“You’re more than welcome. I’m sure you’ll be the talk of the party. See you there.”

 

Paul Marshall viewed Halloween as a very special day to be celebrated. Other people treasured Thanksgiving as their favorite holiday, or Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanza. But Marshall had always lavished special attention on the day of witches and goblins and other ghostly creatures.