Saxon & Hampstead Investigations, Ltd. Casebook 1
The Mystery of Cranewood Manor
Smashwords Edition by Theresa M. Moore
Copyright 2010-2012 Theresa M. Moore, all rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Requests to make copies or quotations from any part of this work should be addressed by electronic mail to: tmoore@theresammoore.com. Any resemblence to any dramatic character or personality, living or dead, or geographical locations, is purely coincidental except within historical context without libelous intent. Not intended for readers under the age of 16.
Published by Antellus, Los Angeles, California USA
http://www.theresammoore.com
Antellus cat. no. 10640801
Other fiction books by Theresa M. Moore:
Destiny’s Forge, To Taste The Dragon’s Blood, NAGRASANTI, Red Dragon, The Queen’s Marksman, A Pirate’s Daughter – Truth and The Dragon’s Blood – Written In Blood – Swords of The Dragon’s Blood
FOREWORD
In 1966 a soap opera premiered on ABC called Dark Shadows. It was controversial for the day because most soap operas were primarily focused on family life, tragedy, domestic adventure and/or romance. I never found an interest in seeing them, but for some reason Dark Shadows caught my notice after reading the description in TV Guide.
The series started out as a ghost story about a governess named Victoria Winter (Alexandra Moltke), who comes to a mansion called Collinwood to attend Daniel Collins (David Hennesy), the young son of a family which had roots in the very fabric of colonial life of early New England. Through her eyes we explored Collinwood's long history, and watched all sorts of monsters come out of the woodwork in the process. But the series was threatened with cancelation after the first season. It seemed that nobody was interested in ghosts, haunted mansions, or the travails of a desperate family trying to preserve their legacy by pinning all their hopes on a neurotic young boy.
It was not until 1967 that a vampire named Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) arrived on the scene, and he became an immediate success. His story was of deceit and survival, aided by a servant named Willie Loomis. It was his character which saved the series from cancelation no matter how badly written and acted the scripts were, and the show lasted for three years.
The plot jumped back and forth among three timelines: 1798, 1897, and the contemporary 1960's. There was a long period of romance and angst in which we quietly tore Barnabas apart bit by bit as he tried to keep his identity as a vampire a secret from the rest of the family; fueled in part by his obsession with a beautiful new governess named Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott), who was supposed to be the reincarnation of his long lost Josette du Prés, to whom he had become engaged in the 18th century. This was coupled with a brief dissent á trois with his brother Jeremiah, who was his rival for Josette's affection.
Add a werewolf, Quentin Collins, and a conniving witch called Angelique (Lara Parker), and you had a recipe for a myriad of mythic delights containing all the same characteristics as a standard soap opera. Slowly, more strange and tortured characters emerged, like a phoenix (a chimera with human characteristics), two malevalent ghosts, a wizard, a voodoo priest, and a band of gypsies claiming ancestry among the Collinses.
During that time my high school social life revolved around getting home by four o'clock Monday through Friday so I would not miss a single episode. My friends were of the opinion that I had grown obsessed with the series, but I was not the only one, judging by the flood of fan mail which filled the mailbox at Dan Curtis Productions every day. I tried to study the interactions among the characters as part of my quest to understand the human adventure as it unfolded before me, so that I could write better fiction with a slant toward creating credible characters and revealing the scientific truth in the background. It was the beginning of a long love affair with the historical and unusual in science fiction, fantasy, history, mythology and paranormal studies. It also signaled the beginning of my writing career, such as it was, and I set to work learning the craft with the same proberty as any other profession.
I finally lost interest in the show during an alternate universe sequence, once I discovered that the writers had exhausted their creative juices. By that time the series had trouble attracting enough ratings to survive and Dan Curtis wisely retired into the realm of the motion picture scene, producing two films which were much better than the series: House of Dark Shadows (1970), and Night of Dark Shadows (1971). Both had relatively low ratings, but at least the acting was much better due to the slower pace of motion picture production values. The series could have been better if it were not for the mountain of script Jonathan Frid had to shoulder every week, leading to gaffs and misutterances which only served to disrupt the smooth flow of the scenes. Having been bitten by the acting bug, and as a result of several courses in drama and stagecraft, I understood what he was going through, so I soldiered on in my love of the series regardless.
In 1982 a new television series premiered called Remington Steele, about a seasoned private investigator (Stephanie Zimbalist) who worked for an agency but could never get past the glass ceiling. She used a suave and sartorial male image to found her own, and a repentent jewel thief (Pierce Brosnan) took advantage of this to worm his way into her life. This led to a series of interesting wars between the sexes where he was always trying to get into her pants but she never trusted him enough to let him. Aside from being attracted to each other, they needed one another to make the whole enterprise work, which resulted in episodic mystery and high adventure covered with a thick layer of romance. At the end of the series Remington turns out to be heir of an Irish fortune and a castle, and he marries his partner in true romantic mythic style, even carrying her up the stairs into the second floor like Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind.
The stories never quite approached fantasy, but alluded to a fantasy element in each. There were never any of the usual monsters. During and after the series ended, a whole genre was born around it and was written by fans of these and other shows. There were "pure" episodes written by frustrated scriptwriters, crossovers involving characters in two or more series, and even original fiction inspired by them, lovingly collated and sold to fellow fans for the cost of printing alone.
In this tradition, The Mystery of Cranewood Manor is based on a short story I wrote for the first issue of XENOS!, a mystery/espionage fanzine I published in 1985, called "House of Steele Shadows". At that time I blended the premises of both series into an original adventure, the elements of which form the basis for this book as its skeleton. It the first of a series of novels which integrate elements of fantasy and urban legend into the hard-edged universe of true crime and detective fiction. The true challenge will be in sorting out which is which. - - Theresa M. Moore
This book is dedicated to Francis Lederer, an actor who never realized true fame until he took on the mantle of the vampire in the 1958 cult classic film, “The Return of Dracula”.
PROLOGUE
The thunderstorm lashed out, sending a gale force wind howling across the treetops, while ice cold rain came down in thickly orchestrated sheets. Lightning volleyed and thundered among the dark broiling clouds to counterpoint the erratic rhythm of the swaying trees.
A young woman ran through the fog and rain, her course aimless and desperate. She was lightly clad in jeans and a light blouse, which she clutched to her shivering body for warmth. Her dark blonde hair clung to her scalp in wet, dripping strands. Her labored breathing came out white puffs in the chill air and her throat ached. She glanced behind her as she went. The darkness around her concealed the nameless terror she fled from. Every tree looked like every other tree and their twisted trunks formed grotesque, monstrous shapes and shadows.
The woman stopped to catch her breath in the shadow of a massive oak, leaning her tired body against it for support. She closed her eyes, heart pounding violently in her chest. Please, I must rest, just for a moment, she thought. No! Keep moving! pushed her back to her feet. She hauled herself upright, swaying as her knees trembled and threatened to give out.
A noise to her left caught her attention. All the terror resurfacing at once, she left the tree at a dead run, and was stopped by an exposed root that caught her foot and sent her sprawling among the wet leaves and mud. A small cry of pain escaped her lips. She stayed there for a long time, immobilized by the shock of her twisted ankle, hardly aware of the cold rain pounding without mercy on her back.
She stirred and dragged herself to a sitting position against the cold wet bark of the offending tree. By now the rain had dwindled to a fine drizzle, a shroud of undulating, pearlescent grey, making the forest dreamlike and ethereal.
A twig snapped. The woman looked up suddenly and saw a monstrous shadow descending upon her, shutting out the night, the storm, everything. She did not even have time to scream.
ONE
Laura Hampstead breezed into the reception area with an air of flustered haste, toting her briefcase with her. She was medium tall and pretty, with large brown hazel eyes and brown hair parted in the middle and worn down below her shoulder blades. She wore pale pink lipstick and dark mascara, but no eye shadow. She was dressed as she always did in a slimming brown pantsuit and a pearl pink blouse with a maroon scarf tie. Her shoes were sensibly flat. The only jewelry she wore was a string of pearls and button earrings. Her sensible professional look matched the expression on her face.
Sarah Chissom, her secretary and receptionist, was chocolate brown with fine features and black eyes, with black hair tied back into a bun. She wore a red and black dress with large hoop earrings. She looked up from sorting the morning mail and smiled. "Good morning, Miss Hampstead," she said.
"Good morning, Sarah" Laura replied. "I'd swear there was a conspiracy to keep me from getting here on time. The expressway turned into a parking lot about halfway between Melrose and Wilshire. Did any calls for me come in?"
"No," Sarah replied. "There is a new client waiting in Mister Saxon's office, though. He was already here when I opened up the office. His name is Cadogan." She picked up a white embossed card from her message holder and handed it over.
Laura looked toward the closed door with mild surprise, then down at the card. "Not that Charles Cadogan, of Cadogan Industries?"
Sarah leaned forward and whispered, "the very same. He was very upset Not angry, exactly. More like...distracted. He didn't have an appointment, and insisted on seeing Mister Saxon right away. By the way... where is the boss?"
"I have no idea, but when he comes in let him know where I am, will you?" Laura replied. The tone in her voice betrayed her annoyance. Laura was a stickler for promptness, and her partner's proclivity for wandering in late chafed at her. By now they were very close friends but there were some things about his life that he refused to share with her, and that made her all the more curious about him.
As a man Valiant Saxon was hard to resist: tall and slim, a well-toned body that all women went for; a head of unruly dark hair and grey-blue eyes, a straight nose and generous lips. But even that did not excuse his habit of disappearing sometimes for days, which played havoc with the smooth management of their cases and clients.
Being late only emphasized the secret life he led. He seemed to prefer admitting that he was lazier than a hound lounging in the midsummer's heat to revealing the truth. At times he came in dressed to the nines, at others unkempt and unwashed, looking like he had been through World War III. When asked, his only comment was that he did not want to talk about it, and changed the subject any time he could.
Her only conclusion was that he was engaged in government work of some kind and was sworn to secrecy. She did not dare entertain the notion that he had resumed his underworld activities. Val had always insisted that this was not the case.
But now is not the time to think about it, she said to herself. He is just going to have to explain himself if and when he comes in.
Laura entered his office. Its décor was distinctly masculine, tricked out in wood, beige, black and toned red; her own idea of what a man's office should look like. The mahogany desk which dominated the room was set in front of a bank of picture windows. As with all the tall buildings built after the end of the seventies, the thick panes of tempered glass masked out the sound of traffic below and were tinted to cut the force of the sunlight. The tan drapes had been pulled back to reveal the peaks and ravines of a grand Los Angeles downtown bathed in morning sunlight, with a view of the old city hall standing downhill and to the left.
Every time Laura looked out the window at it she was reminded of something Val had said about tripod machines with laser beams blasting the bejeezus out of the gold clad pyramid capping the old landmark. She had never actually seen the movie he talked about, but for some reason she could not get the image out of her mind from then on. She shook herself free of it and focused on the present.
A man in his late fifties, heavy set and balding, sat in one of the plush leather visiting chairs close to the desk. He wore a suit of modest cut with a matching tie, and kept his raincoat draped over his arm. He appeared to need a shave, and his brown eyes were rimmed with red, probably from lack of sleep. He appeared to be suffering from a great deal of pent up stress, manifest in the way he kept fiddling with his tie and rubbing at his broad forehead with an expression of pain on his face.
Laura approached and held out her hand toward him. "Mister Cadogan, I'm pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm Laura Hampstead, Mister Saxon's associate. I am afraid he is running a little late. May I lend some assistance?"
Cadogan rose and returned her handshake with a cool but uncertain hand. As he spoke his voice betrayed a distinct southern drawl. South Carolina, or possibly Georgia. "I would prefer to discuss my problem with Mister Saxon directly, but..." His voice trailed off. "Forgive me for falling back on an outdated habit. It is no reflection on your ability as a private investigator. I need your help. I've tried other people but they have turned up nothing. Nothing!" He paused to draw a ragged breath. "I am at my wit's end, Miss Hampstead. I had heard of Valiant Saxon from a friend who used his services once before. He assured me that your agency has a reputation for swift and discreet results."
Laura sensed that he was a man used to dealing with the upper echelons wherever he went, but now he looked like a little boy who had lost something. "May I offer you something to drink? Tea? or coffee?"
"Nothing, thank you," Cadogan replied.
She slipped into the large armchair behind the desk and folded her hands on the blotter, all attention. "Please, Mister Cadogan. Begin at the beginning," she said.
Cadogan collapsed back into his chair. "My daughter Elizabeth has disappeared. She is my only child, and the image of her mother, God rest her soul." He drew out a billfold from his coat pocket, extracted a wallet-sized photograph and handed it to Laura.
She saw a young woman, about twenty years of age, with dark blonde hair and brown eyes. She looked intelligent and personable with a mature look in her eyes, and her smile looked genuinely friendly. "She is lovely," Laura said. "May I keep this for identification purposes?"
Cadogan nodded, then continued, "I've exhausted all the usual channels. I went to the police but they said they could do nothing because she was over twenty one. I have notified the FBI, and so far they have not been able to trace her activities after the last month. Her credit cards have not been used since she has gone, and there have been no ransom demands of any kind. It's as if she simply vanished from the face of the earth."
"Perhaps she simply ran away from home," Laura suggested. "Was there something in your relationship which would cause her to do that?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "She's always been an independent, headstrong girl, prone to run off and follow one fascination or another - "
"Men?" Laura asked with a professional tone.
"Among other things. But she would never do something so irresponsible as that. If she had an issue with me she never hestitated to let me have it between the eyes. Her mother taught her to be strong and assertive, as a Cadogan should be. And she had me wrapped around her little finger. Perhaps a little too much."
"Then it's a good thing you came to us. We specialize in difficult or unsolvable cases," Laura said. "Tell me the whole story. Leave nothing out. Every detail may be important."
Cadogan moistened his lips, then said, "you see, a few months ago Elizabeth fell in with a strange crowd while at college in Boston. She became hopelessly infatuated with a man she met there, some sort of mystical guru named Darius Crane. She told me he was from an old family in Maine that had been influential in the area but had fallen on hard times, and that he had recently come into some money. She said he collected antiques and was remodeling the family mansion. But there was something about the man himself that I didn't like."
"What gave you that impression? Did you meet him?"
"No, not at first. She showed me a photograph of him, and there was a strange look in his eyes. Not hostile, exactly. More like... deranged. I told Elizabeth what I thought, and she claimed I was reading more into his image than his behavior asked for, that he was sweet and charming and could not hurt a fly. I thought she was a better judge of character than that, but I had not met the man in person so I had to hope she was right."
Laura nodded. "I see. Please, go on."
Cadogan continued. "The last time she called me, she said she was going to quit school and marry Crane. She had been studying for her master's degree in architecture, but she never said what his studies were in. It was quite a surprise to me. She could not have known him long enough to tell what kind of man he was."
"How long ago did she call you?"
"About three weeks. We argued. I'll admit I was a little upset about her association with Crane in the first place, and I didn't try to see it her way at the time. I told Elizabeth she was making a dreadful mistake, and she insisted that she was going to marry him with or without my blessing. Then she hung up. After a few days I thought better of what I had said, but when I tried calling her back, she did not answer her phone and my call went to voicemail. After I left several messages, her phone went dead. I thought she had left her calling area or was in a dead zone. That is the last time I tried to contact her by phone. Later, I went to the college and asked her friends where she might have gone but no one knew anything but her room mate, who said she had seen Elizabeth leave with Crane. She told me they seemed quite happy together, so she thought things were fine between them."
"It sounds to me like she had made up her mind," Laura said.
Cadogan held up his hand. "Wait, there is more to the story. A week later, I went to Maine to talk to Darius Crane, hoping that Elizabeth was there. Even if she was married to him I wanted to make sure she was safe, and wanted to get to know him better. He did have an estate called Cranewood Manor, a huge sprawling castle at the end of a dirt road. At least that much was true. When I asked him about Elizabeth, however, he said that she had mysteriously broken their engagement, and left without saying goodbye. He was not upset that she was gone. Far from it. In fact, he seemed glad to be rid of her."
"Perhaps she made the decision for both of them. Maybe that was why he was so cold about it," Laura replied.
"At the time I thought so, and that Elizabeth was still angry with me for trying to stop her and was too embarassed by the whole affair to admit she was wrong, but I didn't care about that. I always told her that no matter what she did the door to home would be open. She could have come home and nothing more would have been said about it. But, when I did not hear from her for a week after that was when I thought she had come to harm."
"If they argued over something important enough to change her affection for him, that in itself could be grounds for suspicion of foul play," Laura said. "But that is all speculation for now. What did you do next, after you saw Crane?"
"I went down into the village to ask if anyone had seen Elizabeth, and no one had. In fact some of the people I met refused to answer my questions or to have anything to do with the affair."
"What's the name of this village?" Laura asked. She reached for a pad and pen from the desk and started to write a few notes.
"It's called Crane Hollow, about thirty miles south of Bangor, Maine. On the coast. It was hard to find, too, not on most of the local maps. I nearly got lost until a couple of kids on bikes pointed the way out for me. The sheriff there, a man named Ryder, was friendly enough to furnish me with most of the information I needed about Crane."
"Which, I take it, was not very much," Laura surmised.
Cadogan replied, "quite the opposite. I was told that Crane was hated and feared by the whole town. Growing up he had been a strange kid. Cold, arrogant, social only when he wanted something. That confirmed my suspicions about him, but still no news about my daughter. Ryder suggested that I was not the only father who'd come looking. Apparently, Crane is something of a party animal. He has a bunch of young people around him from the college on the weekends, from the group he used to lead on campus."
"Do you know what his group did?"
"Elizabeth only mentioned it once in passing, and did not go into detail. I learned later that it was a group devoted to mysticism and the occult, based on a sociology course, I think."
"Were drugs involved?" Laura asked.
Cadogan gave her a helpless shrug. "I don't know. I don't think so. Most of the students I talked to did not want to talk about it, and when I checked the directory of student groups Crane's was not on it. It may have been an off-campus group that only held its meetings there. I talked to a graduate monitor who said the student members were social misfits who were into the goth scene, and they mostly talked about things associated with that. He also hinted at devil worship, but said that no one was ever harmed and the sessions were mostly benign."
"What was it called?" Laura asked.
"The Dark Initiative."
"That does sound ominous," she suggested lightly. "But not unusual."
Cadogan made a strange noise in his throat. "I am an open-minded man, Miss Hampstead, but I am inclined now to think it a deviant cult than a group of kids who pretend to dabble for the social atmosphere. I don't know what made Elizabeth cleave to such a dangerous idealogy, but it was not like her. She is made of more sensible stuff than that."
"Did Elizabeth give any indication to you that she believed in it?"
"No, but now I am thinking that this Darius Crane was using it to lure unsuspecting innocents into danger, and that she was one of them, or that her fixation on him was solely from some other motivation. He was not what I expected, certainly." As he spoke, he drew out a checkbook and flipped it open, placed it on the desk, then began writing out a check in a swift fluid hand. Then he tore it out and handed it to Laura. "I'll spare no expense to find out what happened to her, Miss Hampstead. Restore her to me, or find out if she is dead, but I must have closure." His eyes were tired and pleading, close to tears.
Laura stared at the figure on the check, her mouth suddenly dry. "Uh... I can't guarantee that we will find her, under the circumstances you have described, but we will do our best," she replied. "I will take it up with Mister Saxon as soon as he arrives. What you have told me so far is a good basis to begin a full investigation."
"That will be satisfactory," Cadogan said, rising again. He offered her another business card. "Please call me as soon as you have news at any time, day or night."
When he had said his goodbyes and left the office, Laura's resolve to attack a real blood and thunder mystery was bolstered by the notion that it had been entirely too quiet around the agency lately. And as the senior partner of the firm she was entitled to make decisions about their cases with or without Saxon's input. It'll beat installing yet another security system, she thought. Our pencils are becoming dull with the routine.
The errant partner finally arrived several minutes later, armed with his usual aplomb and an armful of long stemmed roses, which he divided equally between Laura and Sarah. Laura took her share, sniffed the fragrance of one blossom and then declared, "you're late, as usual."
Saxon rocked back on his heels as if he had been struck, his eyebrows creeping upward. "Well, of course I'm late," he replied, in a sexy middle baritone voice which was tinged with a British accent. "I stopped by the florist on my way. I could not resist picking out a dozen or two for my favorite people." He said it in the way of a man who had bought something expensive on the company card and was trying to bribe his way out before Laura saw the bill.
But by now she knew his game all too well. She smiled up at him. "Would you care to step into my office, Mister Saxon?" she asked as she offered him her other arm.
Saxon gave her a calculating glance and then took it at once. "With pleasure, Miss Hampstead," he replied. "You have something to tell me?"
"I do indeed," Laura replied. "But it's not what you think." She waved the check under his nose and drew him with her into her office. As the door closed, Sarah heard him utter a long whistle, took a quick sniff at a rose, then sat down quickly and answered the persistant phone.
TWO
Early the next morning Laura and Val took a plane to New York, and from there to Bangor. By late afternoon they were on the road south into the Maine countryside in a rented car. Industrial parks and farms gave way gradually to wild uncharted forest as they drove along the rugged coastline. The road narrowed to two lanes until it forked in two. The signpost at the junction was positively ancient, indicating the route to several villages with sagging hand carved wooden arms, but Crane Hollow was not one of them. Towering above that was a more modern stand with a green highway sign pointing to the beach.
Laura peered closely at the signpost, and then turned to Saxon, who had a large road map spread open in his lap. "Well, what does the map say?" she asked.
Val examined the lines and squiggles with a magnifying glass and made a rueful noise. He traced a route on the paper with his finger, then slapped it down. "Ah... ha. It's not here."
"Are you saying we're lost?" Laura asked.
"No, I'm saying it's not here," Val replied. "Cadogan was right. It is hard to find. You would have to live in the area to know where it is. What does the sign say?"
"Nothing," Laura said. "No Crane Hollow. He did say it was close to the coast. We have only two choices. This way, or that way."
Saxon licked at his index finger, then held it up in the air. "It works for the Boy Scouts," he explained with a shrug, and then pointed toward the shoreline. "That way."
Laura took the lead and turned the car in that direction, leaving the modern world behind. The road turned into a carriage lane with a little asphalt on it, bumpy and uneven in spots, and the occasional pothole threatened the rear suspension.
While she drove, Saxon leaned his head back against the headrest of his seat, closed his eyes, and sniffed deeply at the cool air, while an occasional burst of ocean breeze plucked at his dark duck jacket and ruffled his luxurious hair. "Ah, Laura, feel that," he announced after a moment. "Smell it. Fresh and cool, unpolluted, the scent of autumn leaves and wood fires. I feel transported back in time to a simpler age."
He glanced at Laura, who drove resolutely with her eyes fixed on the road ahead. As they endured an unscheduled bump she glanced sideways at him with a cynical expression. "It is a bit off the beaten path, Mister Saxon," she replied. "I'm too much of a city girl. I mean, what if we run out of gas or get a flat tire? What if we end up at a dead end? This is the middle of nowhere."
Saxon flicked an insect from his jacket lapel and squinted into the setting sunlight, then turned away quickly, blinking. "It has a certain rustic ambience and old world charm that I am not too citified to appreciate," he replied with a patient tone
"When I hear the words 'rustic ambience' I am reminded of trolling for antiques at a swap meet." Laura waited until she negotiated a sharp curve, nearly miring the car in the mud along the shoulder. "Don't let it go to your head. We're here to do a job, remember? And a very lucrative one at that."
"Greed, Laura? I hardly believe you capable of it," he chuckled. "By the way, when are you going to drop the 'Mister Saxon' bit and start calling me by my first name? It's Val, remember?"
"When you stop coming in late and not confiding in me," Laura replied. "You never tell me what you do at night that keeps you from showing up on time or vanishing who knows where. Are you moonlighting? Parking cars? What!? When do you find the time to sleep?"
Val squirmed in his seat. "Laura, you know that I can't talk about it. Not yet. I would tell you if I could, but... I just can't."
"I wouldn't mind if you took a second job to cover those cards you keep maxing out, but I feel a little left out of the whole equation," she said. "Why don't you want to tell me? I'm your partner but you don't trust me."
"It's... it's complicated," he insisted. Then, to change the subject he drew a dog-eared paperback from the inner pocket of his jacket and deliberately began to read.
She glanced at the cover and groaned. "Are you reading Agatha Christie again?"
Val spared her a shy glance. "Yes. Why do you ask?"
"It's not good to fall into the trap of reading mystery novels and then trying to apply them to the real world. I know I did at one time, but I stopped when I realized that some solutions could not be sewn up into neat little packages. And all those movies you keep quoting from. Is there one that you have not seen?"
"Of course," Val replied. "I have also solved some of our cases using what I've learned. You just choose not to notice that." He snuggled closer to her. "You gotta loosen up a little, Laura. Life is too short."
"I'm trying," she replied. "I just don't trust you enough yet. And I can't until you loosen up and learn to trust me."
Val looked down at the book in his hands, then said, "well. Now I am thoroughly disappointed." With that, he flung the book into the weeds racing by. Laura brought the car to a screeching, bouncing halt and stared at him in uncomprehending shock, making him pitch forward in his seat. "What on earth did you do that for?" she asked.
Val shrugged sullenly. "Effect." He crossed his arms and sat silent
She frowned. "Oh, I get it. You're sulking because I took this case without consulting with you first."
"I think I have a right to," he replied with a serious tone. "I thought we had an agreement, Laura. I know I've been nothing but a gadfly to you since we first met, but you must admit that my storefront image has brought you - us - more prosperity than could be expected in this business. Sometimes I feel more like a dimestore mannequin than an operational part of the company. You just don't take my participation seriously enough."
His blue-grey eyes looked away into the woods as he spoke. His face was absolutely and miserably gorgeous, with a boyish expression that made him all the more handsome, and when he finished he drew a deep breath of quiet desperation. In that instant Laura's heart melted, and she placed her hand on his cheek.
"I don't want to fight about this. I feel useless too, every time a client would rather see you than me, or us. Maybe I have been too hard on you. Val, I'm sorry." Then she leaned over and kissed him.
Val's body relaxed as he responded. It was a chaste little kiss, over almost too quickly. He tried to follow her lips as she pulled away but she was already moving the car off the shoulder.
Laura said, "this case looks like it will be a lot of legwork and dead ends. Are you ready for this? You won't disappear into the night without telling me first?"
"I promise. Scout's honor," he said, crossing his chest. "We can do two things. We can talk to this Sheriff Ryder Cadogan mentioned, or we can go directly to Darius Crane and leave the law out of it."
"I'm more inclined to rely on the law," Laura said. "Ryder is a native, which means he knows more about Crane's character than anyone. If we talk to Crane without that, we're shooting blanks in the dark."
THREE
They arrived in Crane Hollow when the sun touched the mountains beneath a bank of low clouds. The golden twilight revealed a sleepy little fishing village of about five hundred people, according to the welcome sign. t had a fairly well populated harbor where the fishing boats crowded the docks from one end of the town to the other, and a spectacular view of the Maine shoreline above a deep indigo sea. A long jetty stretched out toward the breakers of a sea barrier half a mile out. To the north, a lighthouse stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and its light swept around above the bank of fog coming in to shore.
Small and isolated, the town looked a little rundown, and there was a notable absence of cranes. A pair of pelicans passed by overhead, and a cloud of gulls among the docked fishing boats, but no cranes. Val made a verbal note of this observation, to which Laura replied, "it's named after the family, not the bird."
"Oh," he said. "I knew that," he assured her.
The main street was lined with small, delapidated shops; a hardware store, a gas station, and two taverns. The two story hotel was the tallest building in the area. The civic center was a small park with a circular gazebo in its center flanked by a colonial style courthouse with a clocktower and a library next door. The sheriff's department sat next to the firehouse across the way. From there, all roads led away from the center toward the woods and the ocean.
Laura parked the rental car expertly in a public parking space in front of the sheriff's station and called, "we're here. All out."
Val stirred slowly and climbed out of the small car as if all his bones had fused together. He stretched and twisted to work out the kinks in his spine, yawning as he did so. "Quaint little town," he mumbled as he glanced around. Laura merely threw him a pointed look to record her opinion and led the way into the station.
The interior was surprisingly modern. Everything was clean lines, plastic and chrome, lit by the harsh glare of compact flourescent bulbs. The place was virtually empty, a sure indication that crime was something more talked about in Crane Hollow than experienced.
The sheriff was a tough looking, leathery individual with a friendly John Wayne face and a big boned body. He regarded Val and Laura with curious wonder as they entered, straightened from his slouch over the water cooler to toss a quick gulp of water from the small paper cup in his hamlike fist, then crumpled it and lobbed it accurately into a corner wastebasket. His voice came out warm and rough as he asked, "need some help, folks?"
Laura took the lead. "Yes. We're looking for a friend of ours. Her name is Elizabeth Cadogan."
The sheriff said, "I can't help you there. Already been six of her dad's agents here, sniffing all over the place." Then his eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't be pee eyes too, would ya?"
Their identities busted, Val leaned forward and proferred a small tan embossed card to him. "Valiant Saxon. Call me Val. This is my partner in crime, Laura Hampstead. Miss Cadogan's father hired us especially, so anything you can share with us would be most helpful."
The sheriff took the card and peered closely at it, then slid it into his shirt pocket. "I knew you two looked too slick to be anything else," he replied slyly. "Come on into my office and we'll talk." He led them toward the door and paused as he turned back to look at the dispatcher. "Sophie!" he yelled, ignoring the phone completely. "Hold all my calls, will ya, unless it's a code red!"
He waited for them to pass in, then closed the door behind them. He dropped into a large swiveling armchair behind his desk, which was cluttered with papers and file folders. Half a sandwich crowned a neat stack of books while a multiline telephone with banks of blinking lights took the corner next to a computer tower and monitor.
Val and Laura were forced to share a brown leatherette two-seater in front of the desk. Judging by the presence of a blanket piled onto one of the arms, the sheriff slept there on occasion, revealing that he often did not have time to go home and change. Or maybe he simply lived there.
Ryder's friendly demeanor drew down into a serious expression as he studied them. "Elizabeth Cadogan isn't the only one to disappear in this area," he began in a soft New England cadence. "Sure, we've had a coupla runaways in the last few years. A small town like ours hasn't got much going for it since the cannery shut down ten years ago. But two more young'uns dropped out of sight just last month, and another one last week. And all of 'em since Darius Crane moved back into Cranewood Manor three months ago."
"Do you have any evidence that makes Darius Crane the prime suspect?" Laura asked.
"Nothing solid. Rumors and gossip don't make good evidence. I've got to preserve standard operating procedure, y'see, and my own feelings about Crane don't enter into it. See, I've known him since we were kids. I thought he would grow out of it, but he hasn't changed a bit."
"Has anyone from outside the community disappeared?" Val asked. "Tourists, salesmen...?"
"We don't get that many tourists, but... wait a minute," Ryder paused to fish among the folders for a file. He found it and opened it, reading along as he passed it on to Saxon. "This report is a vehicular impound from about three weeks ago. A man from New York came into town looking for a gallon of gas. He said he took a wrong turn off the interstate and got lost, and his car broke down on the road about five miles north of here. But then he vanished too, and we found his car abandoned on the road. It was out of gas, sure enough, but there was no sign of him."
"Didn't you think that unusual, Sheriff Ryder?" Val asked as he examined the file. His gaze roved over the data like a searchlight before he passed it to Laura.
"We thought he caught a ride back to Bangor and gave up on the car. It's happened before. People use the road as a junkyard from time to time. One day we found an old refrigerator sitting in the middle of the road."
"This town is not exactly on the beaten path. You do know that it's not on any of the latest maps," Val remarked.
The lawman shrugged. "Can't be helped. We applied for a spot with the county but there's nothing to see here. The lighthouse on the top of the hill has only been here since nineteen fifty seven, and we've no real museums or other landmarks to speak of. The library was rebuilt since it burned down four years ago."
Laura filed that under "for further exploration" in her mind and said, "tell us what you know about Darius Crane. From what we hear, he is a little eccentric."
"A little? Yeah, I guess you could call him that. He's a cousin of the original Crane family who owned the cannery. When the business died they all moved away, and the bank took Cranewood Manor over. I heard he bought it back from the bank in January with hard cold cash."
"Who else has lived in that house?" Val asked.
"No one. Not for a long time. The bank tried to sell it several times. An artist used to come out to rent the gardener's cottage in the summer months, but the house has stood empty until Crane moved in. They say it's haunted but he doesn't appear to mind."
Laura leaned forward, her interest piqued. "Why do people think it's haunted?"
Ryder leaned back in response and grinned. "They would rather believe that than the truth, which is it costs too much to keep up. The dust in there was an inch thick, the electricity barely worked and cut out at weird times, things like that. Crane works on restoring the house between his trips out of town. It's an expensive hobby, and on weekends he invites all his rich friends to come out and party. We don't know what all goes on there because there have been no complaints. The house is miles from anywhere."
"We understand that Elizabeth Cadogan attended the same college he did, and that he's interested in the occult."
"Yeah, he's a weird one. Always has been. He kept to himself, never talked unless he had to, never talked about his social life or his family, and he was only friendly to a point. He watched the girls like a hawk. Not like he liked 'em, mind you, but like he didn't. At the time I didn't think that much of it since we were all into cars and planes then. Girls didn't get important for us until later on."
Val nodded. "But the two of you did get along together, true?"
"As near as I guess two boys would. But he always held everybody at arm's length, never let 'em get close enough to make a friend. Now we've got ... an understanding."
"An understanding?" Val echoed.
"We're on mutually unfriendly terms," the sheriff replied. "He won't talk to many other people in this town. You could say I'm the only friend he's got here. He's... what's the word? Spooky."
"But then he must have changed his mind about girls."