Boo Who (41 page)

“The key?” Wolfe asked, taking the chain out and holding it up for her to see.

She looked at it, then at him. “The key …,” she whispered.

“I found it. In the book you gave me.”

Her eyes grew wide. With labored breath, she said, “Then … then … you found the …” A hefty cough delayed her next words.

“The
X?
Yes, we found it.” He cleared his throat. “How did you know to put it in a book?”

She spoke with great effort. “I knew a writer could never throw away his own book.”

He looked at Martin, who’d casually moved up beside him. But Missy’s sole focus was on Wolfe. Something passed through her eyes, a mysterious acknowledgment of some sort. Then she closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep.

Wolfe rubbed his forehead furiously and turned to Martin, guiding him away from the bed. “That was bizarre,” Wolfe said. “But now we know. This key goes to whatever was in that hole. I wish I’d had the chance to ask what was in that hole, though.”

Martin shook his head. “Who else would know something is there? And why would they take it?”

“Whatever is in there is important,” Wolfe said. He looked over at her, now in a restful slumber. “And she wanted me to find it.”

“Then she had to have known you’d seen the map,” Martin said.

“I don’t know how. But she also wanted you to know about the map. You found it.”

“That woman knows a lot of things. She always has. And nobody ever asked why. I guess everyone assumed it was her business to know.”

Wolfe fingered the key. “Maybe it is.”

Then Martin said, “I’ve got an idea.”

The woman could wail. And she did. Ainsley tried her best to comfort Melb, but to no avail. The deputies that had accompanied her father to Oliver’s house were getting a little irritated by this, and had finally thrown up their hands and told Sheriff Parker all they’d gotten out of her is that Oliver was missing.

Sheriff Parker walked across the room and addressed Melb. “Ms. Cornforth.” She looked up at his voice, blotting her tears. “You’re going to have to get yourself together, ma’am, if you want to help Oliver.”

She nodded, an emotional gurgle causing her to choke. The sheriff
glanced at Ainsley. “I knew something was wrong,” Melb said, drying her cheeks with a tissue. “When he didn’t come to church. I knew it. I should’ve gone to check on him earlier.”

“Let’s focus on where he might be,” the sheriff said. “Did he make any unusual comments, or tell you he was going somewhere? Maybe you’ve forgotten?”

“No. I saw him last night. He said he’d see me at church.”

He jotted down notes. Deputy Kinard came over and said, “Sheriff, we’ve located his car on Main Street near the road to the junkyard. Nothing unusual about it. Locked up. Doesn’t look like any foul play.”

“Okay,” the sheriff said. He then looked at Melb. “He probably got distracted somewhere. The fact that his car is still in town is a good sign. I’ll have a couple of my guys roam around, see if we can’t locate him, okay? I’m sure he’s fine.”

This brought a small smile to Melb’s worn features.

“By the way, do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Oliver?”

The smile dropped into a line of dread across her face. “Hurt him?

“For any reason?”

She burst into tears and Ainsley rubbed her back, looking at her dad and shooing him away with her hand. He sighed and left the house.

“There, there,” Ainsley said, and prayed her father would find Oliver soon.

Dr. Hass found himself whisked out of his house and down the front steps by these two rambling men: Martin Blarty, the town treasurer who’d brought the mayor in for a psychological examination, and Wolfe Boone, famous novelist who couldn’t accept his fiancée’s new plans. Both were babbling on about an old woman in a hospital who held the key to the town’s crisis.

On the way there, at a West Coast pace of eighty miles an hour, the two were explaining that Missy Peeple, a Skary resident, seemed to
know more about this town than she had previously said. But now she was in this mildly demented state and not making much sense.

“At one point she said, ‘May the Lord safely keep and restore you,’” Martin said, glancing in his rearview mirror at Dr. Hass, waiting for a reaction, so Dr. Hass stuck out his bottom lip as if examining the statement carefully. How was he supposed to know what an old woman’s chattering was about? Maybe she was just trying to be nice on her deathbed.

“Do you think you’ll be able to tell whether she’s coherent or not?” Wolfe asked.

Dr. Hass rubbed his chin in a delicate manner. “Hard to say.” Wolfe glanced back at him. “But I’ll give it my best shot.” Dr. Hass looked at the two men in the front seat, half contemplating whether he should jump from the car and make a run for it. Then he said, “What does this woman know?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Martin said.

“The town depends on it?” he asked.

They exchanged glances before looking at him. “You’re on a need-to-know basis,” Martin finally said.

Oliver did not have an appetite for the pizza this man had offered him and was now gobbling down. He’d never seen a man so skinny consume a large pizza that fast. His mind raced with possible escape scenarios, but at the end of all that thinking, he really didn’t have a plan, except to hope that Martin would find out he was missing and put two and two together. He was, after all, the only person who knew of Oliver’s plan to nab one of the clones.

Oliver raised his eyes, ever so carefully, to study Douglas, as he called himself. So much of it made sense. Of course he was a clone. Skinny, probably had digestive problems due to the cloning. Strength that was really inhuman. How Oliver had ended up tied to a water pump he was not sure. All he knew was that this Douglass face turned bright
red and the next thing he knew, the rope that had been
in
his hands was now
around
his hands.

Maybe the poor guy had no clue he was a clone. How would he know if no one told him? Oliver tried to think back on all the signs that Garth Twyne was involved in this. Really, there weren’t any, except Miss Peeple’s years of insistence that he’d cloned pigs. Why didn’t anybody listen? Now here he was, staring at a clone in the flesh and blood.

Still, it was so hard to believe Garth Twyne the vet was smart enough for all this. The dumb lad had spent most of his time courting a woman he would never have, and then scheming to try to get her anyway. So, Oliver concluded, this Dr. Hass must be involved somehow. Oliver admitted that he did have a strange feeling around the man, as though there was something not quite right.

But enough of that. Oliver’s immediate problem was how to get out of this predicament. And as he thought of this, an even more sickening thought overwhelmed him. Maybe Douglas was not planning on killing him. Maybe he was planning on
cloning
him!

“Ah!” Oliver shouted.

Douglas looked up, in the middle of licking all his fingers. “You okay?”

“I’m … uh … Can you please tell me what you’re planning on doing with me?”

Douglas stood, throwing the napkin he hadn’t bothered using into the pizza box that sat on the bed. “Well, why don’t you tell me what you were planning on doing with me?”

Oliver bit his lip. How much should he say? Would it cause him to be in more danger?

“Earlier,” Douglas said, “you mentioned my ‘owner.’ What in the world did you mean by that?”

Oliver swallowed. “Nothing.”

Douglas took a step closer to him, his small eyes narrow with determination. “Oh yeah? You want to reconsider that answer?”

“Okay, okay,” Oliver blurted. “It’s exactly what I said. Your owner told me he’d pay me a hundred and fifty dollars to bring you to him.”

“What owner?! You’re acting like I’m a dog!”

Oliver formed his words carefully. “What exactly are you?”

Douglas put his hands on his hips. “What exactly do I look like?”

Oliver said, “Out of curiosity, do you look exactly like the one you came from?”

Douglas shook his head. “What in the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise are you talking about?”

“You don’t know, do you?” Oliver said sadly.

“Know what?”

Oliver sighed and realized the only way of potentially getting out of this was to tell the guy the truth. He gathered his thoughts before speaking. “There is one before you.”

“One before me?”

“Maybe more. But I suspect one.”

“One what?”

“Man. The man you came from.”

“My father?”

“Oh, is that what they call it? Is that what they told you? He’s your father? You poor fool,” Oliver sighed.

Douglas laughed, shaking his head and staring at the ceiling. “You know, I have to say, this is the most wacked-out, dripping-with-crazy town I have ever seen in my whole life. I mean, you travel cross-country, you go through these small towns, and you think, What kind of people could live in such a small town? And now I know. Crazies! Crazy lunatics!”

“I’m sure they brainwashed you,” Oliver said calmly. He didn’t want to upset the guy any more. “But take a look at yourself. I mean, ask some hard questions, sir.”

“Hard questions?” Douglas asked, amusement lighting up his features. “Like what hard questions?”

“Well, I mean, have you noticed that the other people in this town don’t suddenly scream for no reason? Just out of the blue. Look, I don’t hold that against you. It’s probably just a glitch from the cloning process—”

“Cloning process?!” Douglas laughed, yet his eyes registered nothing but bewilderment.

“And why do you wander around the woods at night? Looking like the walking dead? You see, it’s not your fault, I’m not blaming you, but these are simply not normal, everyday behaviors of a human being.”

Douglas stared at Oliver, laughed, stared some more, and then his laugh faded. “What exactly are you saying here?”

Oliver lifted his head with courage. “Douglas, I don’t know how else to tell you this, but you’re a clone.”

“I’m a clone.”

“Yes. And we’re not a prejudiced town, you should know that, but I just don’t think we’re a good fit for you. You and your buddies might try someplace like New Orleans. You’d fit right in.”

Douglas was laughing hard. “You think I’m a clone?”

“It’s okay, I know this is going to take a while to sink in. I should’ve known Dr. Hass didn’t tell you.”

Douglas stopped laughing. “Dr. Hass?”

“Yes, your owner. Dr. Hass.”

“My owner?” Douglas shook his head. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I think there’s been a big, big, big misunderstanding here.”

Oliver tried not to look disappointed. He supposed if he were a clone, it would be hard to accept. Douglas had a very serious look on his face.

“You okay?” Oliver asked, trying to be sensitive.

“You said that Dr. Hass paid you to kidnap me?”

Oliver nodded. “We sort of had a deal. If I kidnapped you, he’d make sure you wouldn’t return to this town.”

And then Oliver’s heart stopped. Because Douglas’s face was turning bright red.