Boardwalk Cottage Page 13

  "Do you know how heavy this junk is?"

  "But you said there was a block and tackle for getting stuff in and out of the attic."

  "Still looking for the Maltese Falcon?" He shook his head. "You'd have to be a pretty dumb thief to try to steal a broken-down band organ. Any crook with half a brain would be breaking into hotel rooms and stealing tourists' cameras and computers—and those things would be a lot easier to sell at a flea market."

  "I guess," she acknowledged. "But I keep thinking there has to be an explanation for everything that's happened—and a hidden treasure would be a logical place to start."

  Kyle sighed. "I agree. There is a logical explanation. I'm sure there is. And we'll find it. But a few thousand dollars isn't motive for kidnapping or attempted murder."

  "You've never gone hungry."

  He looked startled, then thoughtful. "You're right. I guess I've led a charmed life. Up till now." He looked around. "You know, I don't think we're going to find any clues to the guy who attacked you up here. It's obvious now that he couldn't have used this place as a vantage point—I don't think he'd be able to see downstairs very easily from here."

  She nodded. "I guess so." She sighed. "I'd settle for just one big fat clue."

  "Me too."

  They squeezed their way back to the trap door, and went down the ladder.

  "Look," she said when they got down to the main floor again. "The base of the ladder is resting right on the track. Is there any other trap door?"

  "Nope. This is it."

  "Then he couldn't have been upstairs. The ladder would've gotten knocked down the first time a car came by on the track. And even if he was Spiderman and could get up there without a ladder, he could hardly move around with all that junk in the way."

  "Right." He sighed. "Another dead end."

  Chapter Seven

  When they got back to the rancho Chris was waiting in the driveway. "Any news?" he asked.

  Kyle shook his head.

  Chris handed Kyle the house phone. It was like the passing of the guard. She thought of the people in the missing children's organizations. Some of their children had been missing for years. How did they go on? How would they go on?

  Kyle shifted the phone back and forth in his hands and stared off into the distance. The afternoon wind off the coast picked up a little dust from the driveway and scattered it around them.

  "You ready to give me a ride?" Chris asked Kyle. "I gotta be to work by five."

  Kyle hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

  "Come on," Chris said. "You're not going to start that again."

  Chris turned to her. "You went to the park just now. Nothing happened to you."

  "That's true," she said.

  Kyle cut in. "You weren't wandering around by yourself," he said to her.

  "That's true, too," she said.

  "I'm not going to be by myself," Chris jumped in impatiently. "There'll be thousands of people there. I want to talk to more people about what's going on, not just sit around here doing nothing."

  Hallie touched her throat, and she thought of how quickly she'd gone from investigator to victim the other day. "You'd have to be careful if you went. You don't want anything to happen to you."

  "There's no sense taking the risk," Kyle said.

  Chris set his jaw. "But you said before that the deputies are going to be there all evening. I'll be perfectly safe."

  Kyle shook his head.

  "I promise I'll stay on the main drag and won't wander into any places where there aren't lots of people around." Chris pressed his point home: "And I'll check in with the deputy every hour."

  Kyle nodded slowly. "Every half hour."

  "Every half hour. I promise. And I'll make sure Tom knows where I am all the time, too."

  "You don't need to let Tom know," Kyle said quickly.

  Chris looked confused.

  "No need to bother Tom," Kyle added lamely. "Just keeping in touch with Joe Serrano is enough."

  Chris shrugged. "Oh. Okay. So you'll give me a ride now?"

  Kyle handed Hallie the phone. "Keep an eye on things for me?" he asked.

  She nodded. "I'll hold down the fort."

  He saluted. "I'll be right back, Colonel."

  Hallie watched while Kyle and Chris got into the pickup and Chris rolled down the window. He looked so young and serious sitting there beside Kyle. Hallie put a hand on Chris's arm. "Don't go anywhere by yourself," she said to him. "Not even for a minute."

  "I won't. I promise."

  She watched them drive off down the hill until they were out of sight. She went back into the house. Now what to do? If only they could find some substantial clue; maybe then they'd be able to end this interminable waiting and wondering and get to the bottom of whatever was going on around here.

  She wandered upstairs and found herself standing outside Zac's room. She gingerly pushed open the door.

  The place was a still life of a typical teenage boy's room: the unmade bed, the piles of books and gadgets and clothes stacked on every available surface. The walls were covered in posters—of rock stars she realized she was too old to recognize, of the San Francisco 49ers' upcoming game schedule, of insiders' secrets for playing the latest online games—but also of less predictable subjects: the Spanish missions in California, trails taken by early settlers to the region, the shorebirds of Pajaro Bay.

  Hallie looked at the posters and wondered if Windy and Zac's interest in the history of Pajaro Bay was at the heart of their problem. Okay, Kyle had teased her about her search for the Maltese Falcon, but the strange problems the Madrigal family was having had to have some logical explanation. People didn't just drop off the face of the Earth.

  Everything in the room looked the same as it had before: the posters on the walls, the unmade bed, Zac's favorite sneakers tossed in the corner, ready for him to change into when he got home from work. She pulled open the curtain to let the sunshine in. Where to start?

  She sat down at Zac's small desk. The top was piled with papers. She shuffled through them, not sure what she was looking for. There were notes from classes, a phone number scribbled on a napkin (Jeff, skateboard $35?), a newspaper clipping.

  A newspaper clipping? Was this it?—the clipping Alec O'Keeffe said Zac was looking for in the paper's morgue? She set the phone down on the desk and picked up the article to skim through it: it was about a city council meeting. They were discussing the maintenance of the town's sewage treatment plant. Clipped to the article was a dittoed sheet. "Write a two-page paper on a current local issue before the village council," Hallie read aloud. Her heart sank. She had told Kyle it was ridiculous for her to be involved in this. Her imagination had gotten the better of her. Zac had just been working on a school project when he looked through the newspaper's morgue.

  She went through the rest of the papers on the desktop. Stacked on one side were several library books.

  Hallie lifted up the top book. A page fluttered out and drifted to the floor. She bent over and picked it up, then looked at the book it fell out of: The History of the American Amusement Park, by Jeremiah Smythe.

  It was a heavy book. She flipped through the pages: fine print interspersed with occasional black-and-white-photos, a scholarly text on the subject, not a coffee-table type of book. Why did Zac check this out of the library? She looked in the index for the boardwalk. There were several mentions.

  She began to flip back and forth between the index and the pages cited: on one page the text retold the story Chris and Kyle had told her of their great-grandfather's scheme to open an amusement park on his ranchero along the coast, and of his purchase of state-of-the art rides shipped from the finest East Coast factories: a (for the time) giant roller coaster, a top-of-the-line carousel, the largest Ferris wheel on the West Coast at that time. The page had a picture of the roller coaster against the skyline. It looked odd, she thought, then realized that the view showed only bare hillsides where many
of the town's houses now stood. The next paragraph went on to describe other parks along the West Coast.

  She flipped back to the index and found the next citation—only a short paragraph that described how the fire destroyed half the park: the tragic loss of a classic 1920's Coney Island-style amusement park that was on the national register of historic places—all of the original rides were destroyed except the Big Wave roller coaster and some small buildings. It went on to talk about how, because so many of these amusement parks were built close to coasts, floods, storms and an occasional earthquake or fire had often taken care of what time and neglect left behind.

  Hallie turned the page to a photo of a Coney Island workshop at the turn of the century—blocks of wood being turned into prancing horses for a carousel. She settled down into the chair and began to read. She got immersed in descriptions of the lost art of old-time woodcarvers and her hands ached to pick up a tool and try to imitate the work in the photographs.

  After a while lost in daydreams she looked up. This was pointless. None of this had anything to do with Windy and Zac's disappearance. She sighed and closed the book.

  Outside there was a crunch of wheels on gravel in the driveway, then the slam of a car door. She glanced out the window and saw Kyle go into the barn. Probably going to search the place all over again, she thought. Just like she was doing here.

  The book still lay in front of her on the desk. Nothing she'd read had brought them any closer to finding the kids. Nothing they did seemed to be working. She put her head down on her hands and closed her eyes.

  "Everybody has something they were meant to do," Kyle had said.

  What if Windy and Zac never came back? What if the thing Kyle had devoted his life to was taken away from him? That's what was wrong with starry-eyed dreams—if you don't have any dreams, no one can take them away. She rested her palms on the desk.

  His "mission in life" he called it. But why didn't he see that those kinds of dreams never worked out? If you gave all your heart and soul to something it would burn you every time. Hallie closed her eyes and let the tears come. She was crying for Kyle, for Windy and Zac, for herself, for all the lost dreams that the world had taken away.

  All her life she'd believed in dreams. Even as a little girl, with no one in the world who'd loved her or wanted her, she'd believed that one day she'd find a place where she belonged. Dave Cooper had walked into her empty life and promised to make all her dreams come true. She sat up in the chair and wiped her tears away with her scarred hands. She'd believed in a fairy tale once, and she'd ended up scarred. The worst scars weren't on her hands, they were on her heart, and she knew she'd never be able to really believe in anything again.

  Hallie brushed away the last of her tears. That creep who attacked her was still out there, and somehow the kids were mixed up with him. She had to do something to help.

  She set the amusement park book aside. Underneath it on the desktop was the paper that had fallen out of it, the paper she'd picked up off the floor and laid aside. It was a xerox of a newspaper clipping. Her heart jumped. "This is it," she muttered.

  It was the front page of the local newspaper, dated thirteen years ago. A grainy photograph of two men standing amid smoking wreckage was in the center of the page, with the headline Madrigal Family Mourns. Two Dead in Boardwalk Fire. In the margin next to the photo someone had scribbled See, Zac? It was Windy's handwriting.

  This was it. This was the big fat clue they'd been looking for, but what did it mean? She stared at the photo. Kyle and Tom were the two forlorn figures standing amid blackened ruins. They both looked so young. The caption beneath the photo read: In the aftermath of the devastating fire, family members survey the wreckage of the ruined carousel.

  See, Zac? What did Windy see in this picture? What was so obvious that she assumed Zac would get the clue? This paper had presumably been read by everyone in town at the time of the accident. What was so obvious to them that no one else had noticed about this picture?

  She read the story beneath the headline and photo. Firefighters believed an electrical short had smoldered in the office over the carousel for some time, then suddenly erupted into flames that lit up the night sky over Pajaro Bay. The story went on to say that Tom Robles, associate manager of the park, had rushed to call the fire department while Jonathan and Emma Madrigal, owners of the park, fought to contain the blaze. By the time Tom and the volunteer firemen had returned to the scene, the couple were dead and the fire had engulfed the carousel building and spread to several nearby rides.

  The Madrigals are survived by four children. Kyle Madrigal had no comment about the family's plans for the park. Hallie touched Kyle's name with a fingertip. She felt a stab of sorrow. Even in the grainy photograph, she could make out the signs of grief and worry on his face—she'd seen that grief again recently, when she woke to him slumped in a chair by her bedside this morning. He didn't deserve this pain.

  She turned the page over. There was another article copied on the back. This one was dated several weeks later: No Arson in Boardwalk Fire. The recent fire that resulted in two deaths and 2.3 million dollars in damage at the Pajaro Bay amusement park was the result of faulty electrical wiring, according to a report released today by inspectors brought in from county seat to investigate the recent fire.

  Further down on the page there were some phrases circled in red: death from asphyxiation... the result of breathing toxic fumes... wood, fiberglass, and plastic... no sign of foul play. A large red exclamation point was in the margin.

  Hallie felt a chill run up her spine. No foul play. But Windy had found out something about the fire no one else knew. Something about her parents' deaths. What had Zac said? "Feed Smoky some extra grain." Feed a dead horse? The dead horses—the destroyed carousel horses? She turned the page back over.

  "Come on, guys," she muttered. "Stay with me here. I know how you think. What are you trying to say?" She read over the articles again. Zac and Windy were the kind of dreamy-eyed kids who'd spend hours wrapped up in a book, or exploring a dusty old newspaper office. They were the kind of kid she had been, before fate had taught her to give up idle dreaming. They recognized something in this story that more practical, down-to-earth people skipped right past.

  What had they discovered? She hated to think of what the answer might be, because she was sure it meant more sorrow for Kyle. She looked at the circled phrases: death from breathing toxic fumes. What toxic fumes? Kyle had said the whole place, floor, walls, the rides themselves, was made of wood. That big red exclamation point in the margin glared at her. "No," Hallie whispered. "Could they have been poisoned? Foul play? How could that have been missed?" And the fire was set to cover up the crime? But why? And who would do such a thing?

  In the picture beneath the headline, Tom and Kyle stood amid the wreckage. Tom was the only survivor of the fire. Tom worked for the two people who'd died. Tom's office was over the carousel. Tom didn't want Kyle coming around and examining the books. Tom, Tom, Tom.

  She had to show this to Kyle. She rushed downstairs and out the front door.

  Hallie opened the barn door and stepped inside. The smell of dust and leather and horses greeted her. She thought she could hear the bats rustling in their sleeping place somewhere overhead, and she pulled up the collar of her jacket to cover her neck. It was dark and warm inside, but she could feel a cool breeze coming from an open stall at the other end of the barn. She went closer, and heard the sound of feet crunching on straw. The stall door stood open, and Kyle's plaid flannel shirt was draped over the top, the iPhone next to it on the rail. Hallie peeked through door, then just stood in the shadows and watched.

  There was a second door to the stall, leading to the corral outside, and Poky stood in the corral, stamping her feet, leaning her head over the rail barring the entrance, and watching Kyle. Hallie watched him too.

  The floor was bare, and Kyle had a bale of straw cut open in the middle of the floor. He was spreading the straw in the stall
with a pitchfork. Hallie leaned against the door frame and watched the ripple of muscles across his tanned back. She was struck by the sculptural quality of his body. A vision of Michelangelo's David flashed through her mind. She'd never worked in marble, but oak might do. She envisioned a torso carved of oakwood, rubbed and oiled and polished to bring out the warmth in the wood. The piece could be carved so the woodgrain would emphasize the pattern of musculature radiating out from the spine. She studiously observed the muscles contracting and stretching in rhythm across his back as he pitched the hay. He stopped and leaned against the pitchfork, body glistening with sweat in the dim light.

  She watched him bend over to pick up the water bucket.

  Kyle turned around, bucket in hand. "Oh, hi there," he said. He smiled, then frowned. "What's the matter? You look kind of flushed."

  Hallie straightened up. "Nothing, nothing."

  He smiled and gestured to the stall. "Thought a little manual labor might get my mind off things."

  He stopped in the doorway, bucket in hand. He reached up with his free hand to lightly brush her hair.

  Her fingers tightened around the paper and telephone in her hands. The paper. All of a sudden Hallie remembered why she'd rushed out here.

  "What's the matter?" he asked. He set the bucket down on the straw. Came over, grabbed his shirt and put it on. "Did you get some news?"

  She shook her head. Handed him the paper, then stood by silently while he read it.

  He turned the page over and looked at the back. "See, Zac?" he said softly.

  "You know what it means?" she asked.

  He looked up at her, startled. "I was just quoting. I was just wondering what she meant."

  "That's Windy's writing, isn't it?" she asked.

  Kyle nodded. "Where'd you find this?"

  She explained. "So you agree it's an important clue, don't you?"

  He paused, then shook his head slowly. "I don't know. It could be nothing. We don't even know what it means."