Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles (8 page)

“Because all the valley tribes are as insane as Haywood Wheatland,” Chicory explained impatiently. That name clicked in the back of his head like he had forgotten something important. Later. He’d remember later. “We’ve no time to lose. We have to attack now while they are still laughing at their trick.” He dragged on the limp arm of Bleeding Heart, a dark pink-and-green fellow who’d crept in from a nearby copse that got felled for new houses. Rosie had made room for him and only him in the tribe. Sixteen Pixies went homeless or broke up their family to
nest elsewhere. Chicory had secreted five of them in the wild stretch among the Dandelions. Rosie never crossed the iron fence.

“We’ve got swords in the hawthorn of our own back corner. We’ve got to arm ourselves and go after the enemy,” Chicory insisted.

“You bore me, Chicory. It’s nearly noon. Every respectable Pixie is either napping or eating,” Rosie declared.

“But the valley Pixies aren’t respectable!”

“And neither are you. You’ve lost your cap. Now go away.”

“No, Rosie. We can’t afford to ignore the valley Pixies. Not now when Mabel is sick and our land is vulnerable. We are open to attack unless we strike first.”

“Snapdragon, be a good boy and throw this noisy stinkbug into the cellar!”

“Not the cellar, Rosie. I’ll die in the cellar.” Chicory gulped nervously. “Pixies are bonded to Earth and Water. If we go underground, we get absorbed. Then we
die!
”

“Just like my Haywood might have died in the horrid old pioneer jail the night of the fire,” Rosie dismissed him.

Snapdragon rose up from his place beside Rosie and latched onto Chicory’s arm with both hands. Dull-yellow Pixie dust cascaded all around. Chicory’s head reeled with the need to obey the big Pixie he’d tried to kill this morning.

Rosie’s new lover towered over him.

“How’d you get so big?” Chicory gulped, wiggling free of the enthrallment. But only his mind worked. His body was still trapped by the more powerful magic of the intruder.

“Family secret, secret, secret,” Snapdragon replied, tightening his grip. His holey, dull yellow-and-red wings flapped hard enough to throw up a strong breeze. Rosie’s flower shook so violently she had to grab hold of the edges of her petal to keep from falling out.

The shape of Snapdragon’s face, the half-rotten scent of his pollen, and the odd fan shape of his wings triggered a memory. “I know you,” he whispered.

“No, you don’t. Don’t, don’t, don’t. And you won’t be around to remind the humans where you’ve seen me. I have
special plans, special plans for you and for them, them, them. We’ll start with the cellar, cellar, cellar.”

The words echoed ominously inside Chicory’s head.

“Cellar!” Snapdragon crowed. With that, he grabbed Chicory by collar and belt and threw him through a small open window into the crushing darkness.

The last thing Chicory heard before passing out was the loud thud of the window slamming shut.

Phelma Jo ran her fingernail idly along the mortar between two bricks on the outside of a building on Main Street.

Mine!
she thought. She’d had a few anxious days last summer when she thought she’d have to take out a second mortgage on this magnificent historical building to make bail for arson. But then Dick Carrick had come to her rescue and testified that Haywood Wheatland had kidnapped her and doused her repeatedly with a date rape drug to guarantee her compliance in his malicious plans to destroy The Ten Acre Wood.

The judge had dropped the arson charges against her. She hadn’t had to come up with exorbitant bail money, but she had to drop out of the election race for mayor and she’d lost three important commercial clients. Otherwise, her financial portfolio and real estate holdings had remained intact. She’d recover from the scandal and run again for mayor in four years.

She loved this building for its charm and grand old elegance that fit the townscape perfectly. In a favorite daydream she had lived here when the building was new. Would her life have been less painful one hundred years ago?

Not with her mother and the string of abusive boyfriends and less-than-loving foster homes. One hundred years ago she wouldn’t have Mabel Gardiner to point her toward opportunities to take control of her life. Hundreds of other teens who fell through the cracks of the legal system would have suffered as well without Mabel.

Wailing sirens right next to her jarred her out of her musing.

She watched a flurry of EMTs exit an ambulance and
dash into the police station behind old City Hall. Probably just another loser of a drunk choking on his own vomit. Like her mother.

“None of my business.” She turned away to examine the bricks and mortar at the corner of the building while she waited for an insurance inspector. Old structures required a lot of maintenance and her insurer made sure Phelma Jo kept the building up to code, the real code, not the variance one she’d bribed the outgoing mayor of Skene Falls to issue her for some other properties. She rented commercial space to eight businesses, and four apartments in this four-story building. The oldest commercial building in a town filled with historical homes and businesses.

“I own you,” she caressed the rough brick. “I won’t let them take you away from me.” Her modern properties didn’t satisfy her the way this old place did. She didn’t even mind the expense of keeping it up. Owning something historic in this town moved her up onto the same social rung as Dick and Dusty Carrick.

“Thinking of the devil!” Dick’s smart red BMW convertible rushed past her. He skewed into a parking space right beside the ambulance and dashed into the station.

“Well, maybe this crisis is my business after all. Dick needs to rescue someone. Now that his sister is engaged to Chase Norton, the town Eagle Scout is at loose ends. I wonder what it will take to divert him…”

“I thought I was the town Eagle Scout,” mused a tall man with flaming red hair and a mask of freckles across his face. His bright green eyes twinkled.

Phelma Jo closed her gaping jaw with a snap. Haywood Wheatland paled in comparison to this drop-dead gorgeous hunk of male.

“And you are?” she asked, standing as tall as she could. Even in sensible two-inch heels, the top of her head barely reached his chin. Unconsciously, she smoothed her glossy dark hair, certain that it had to be bristling.

“Ian McEwen, building inspector for Triple Giant Insurance.” He handed her a business card. “If you are Phelma Jo Nelson, then I think we met one summer when we were kids. Mabel Gardiner is my aunt.”

Phelma Jo inspected the card, rubbing her thumb across the embossed lettering to make sure the ink didn’t smear. It looked authentic. He had a hard hat and industrial length measuring tape attached to his belt, and a clipboard tucked under his arm.

“I know Mabel. She’s never mentioned you.”

“I… um…” He blushed a brilliant shade of red that clashed with his hair. “We lost contact at the end of the last summer I lived with her. She objected to my choice of friends and I objected to… some of her rather strange stories about Pixies.”

Phelma Jo snorted in agreement. “I’ve heard some of her crazy stories. And I am Phelma Jo Nelson. I own the building.” She made a show of checking a note on her smart phone. The name matched the notice she’d received. “What do you need from me to get in and get out as quickly as possible without disrupting my tenants?”

“Access to the roof, the basement, the circuit breakers, heat plant, and a sample of the plumbing. Then I’ll determine what else I need to see based on what I do or do not find.” He flashed a grin. She noticed a twisted front tooth and a bit of an overbite. Not as pronounced as her own.

She smiled back, revealing her own crooked teeth. Unlike Dusty and Dick, neither Phelma Jo’s mother nor a string of foster parents could afford braces for her teeth. Now that she had the means to have them fixed, she flaunted the constant reminder of her humble beginnings.

She felt an instant kinship with Mr. McEwen.

“This way. If you don’t mind, I’ll watch while you work. I don’t allow strangers the run of my buildings.”

“If you insist. But
I
have to insist you wear a hard hat, too. Never know what kinds of bugs, snakes, and low hanging pipes will ambush you.”

“I don’t scare easily, Mr. McEwen. I have my own hardhat at the entrance to the basement boiler room.”

D
USTY ESCAPED TO THE BASEMENT of the museum in the late afternoon. M’Velle, the high school senior who worked after morning classes, had the tours covered. She also knew how to redirect the kids who wanted a preview of the haunted maze through The Ten Acre Wood—either to plan their own ambushes or avoid tricks by other kids. An hour before closing they shouldn’t have more than the odd family or individual paying to see the inside. At this time of day, most stragglers contented themselves with the outdoor exhibits, especially the pioneer jail. Kids loved climbing in and out, marveling at the dirt floor sunk three feet below ground level. She knew they’d be disappointed when it was locked up during the weekend evening festivities.

She carried under her arm the fat legal-sized envelope from Mabel’s desk and the missing child poster of a girl she’d never seen but would keep an eye out for. Why had Mabel insisted that Dusty and Chase read the envelope’s contents today? Surely nothing could be more important than getting Mabel to the hospital. The EMTs had fixed an oxygen mask over her face and ended her repeated demands for Dusty to read these papers.

No one objected when Chase removed them from Mabel’s reception and dispatch desk. The entire police department was in a bit of an uproar, not knowing how to replace the woman who had always been there as dispatcher, information officer, mother hen, and organizer. On top of that, a big accident on the interstate had demanded the attention of every spare officer, including Chase.

“Chase is too busy to handle this. So I guess I have to read and report,” she mumbled. Somehow, Mabel’s urgency and the locked drawer suggested a demand for privacy. Dusty never did see how Chase managed to open the lock without a key. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

She cleared and cleaned a light table of fragile potsherds and bits of iron from an archaeological dig conducted by community college students. Page by page, she laid out the documents without reading any, until she could view them all. This was her work pattern, get an overview of all the artifacts, then examine each one more closely.

The top page acknowledged the property at Mabel Gardiner’s address to be a historical house of significance to the city of Skene Falls and therefore it could not be torn down or the exterior altered in such a way as to detract from the architecture typical of its building date of 1883. The document went on to describe the home as the original carriage house and gatekeeper dwelling for a now derelict mansion on the corner of that block known as the Corbett House.

“That old? I hadn’t realized the foundations dated that far back.” Dusty had reviewed and filled out enough applications for historic designation as part of her Masters degree to recognize that nothing varied from the usual.

She moved on to the next paper. The Last Will and Testament of Mabel Louise Gardiner. Dusty’s gaze riveted on the document. She felt as if she was invading the privacy of a respected elder statesman—er—stateswoman? Still, Mabel had demanded Dusty and Chase read the documents in their entirety.

She checked the date. Two months before, the day of the Masque Ball and the day Chase had proposed to Dusty. She raised her eyebrows in wonder. The old woman—no one in town knew exactly how old—had an agenda more complex than Dusty figured. She wound her way through the legalese, familiar with the format from historical documents. Wills said a lot about people and ways of life in previous eras. So did household inventories, and Mabel had a complete one attached to the will.

“Oh, my!” Dusty gasped as she read the first bequest. “This can’t be.”

She read it again. Then she whipped out her cell phone.

No signal in the basement.

She moved to stand beneath one of the high windows at ground level. Still no signal. Too many clouds.