The Truth of Yesterday (84 page)

     Micah was the new media darling on the Shore. He'd broken the corruption story and it had turned out to have a bigger ending than even he'd imagined. There were still arrests going on. Some of the wetlands were already lost to development but much of it had been saved in time.

     Perhaps the biggest surprise had come the week before when we were all at the beach house watching a movie on TV. The movie ended and the news came on. We were all talking and not really paying attention when I thought I recognized someone on the screen.

     “Who's that?” I'd asked, snapping to attention.

     “Who's who?” Micah had asked.

     “
Shh
!” I shushed him turning up the volume on the TV set.

     “After the events of the last few weeks, many of us thought we'd seen it all,” the newscaster was saying, “but the latest arrest in the Wetlands Conspiracy has shocked even the most hardened among us.”

     
“A new arrest?”
Micah said sitting up.

     “
Shh
!” I hissed again.

     “The corruption surrounding the illegal sale and development of protected wetlands has reached all the way to the top,” the anchor continued. They flashed a picture of a man I didn't recognize. “State Senator Tom Day was indicted today on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, along with several other less serious charges. Police allege that Senator Day conspired with murdered businessman Fenton Black to kill Henry
Gartland
, a local environmentalist who'd been protesting the development of the wetlands.”

     “Who did you see?” Adam asked me.

     “
Shh
!” Micah and I sibilated together.

     “Day was indicated early on in the official investigation, but police lacked sufficient evidence to charge him.”

     “I didn't know that,” Micah grumbled under his breath, low enough not to warrant another hushing.

     “That needed evidence came from an unlikely source.” The picture changed to the one that had caught my attention in the first place. It was the bird-lady, the woman from Novak's mystery case. “Day's own wife hired a private investigator to look into her husband's business dealings. Justine Sterner spoke with the PI earlier this evening.”

     
The flashed to a close-up of an attractive young woman with close-cropped dark hair and huge doe eyes.
The reporter stared into the camera for a second before she began speaking. “I'm Justine Sterner and I'm here with local private investigator Shane Novak.” My mouth fell open as they camera panned out to show Novak standing stiffly at her side. “Mr. Novak helped police obtain the evidence they needed to bring charges against Senator Day. Mr. Novak, you were hired by Mrs. Day, were you not?”

     “Yes, I was,” he said simply. Adam chuckled at his terse reply.

     “Do you know why Mrs. Day hired you to investigate her own husband?”

     “Yes, I do, but wouldn't that be something you'd be better off asking her?”

     The young reporter looked a little flustered, but she forged bravely onward. “What can you tell us about your investigation?”

     
“Very little.
I'm afraid that's police business now and they'll have to decide what they want to be public knowledge.

     “Is there anything you can tell us about the charges that have been brought against Senator Day?”

     “Well, they're very serious charges. If they stick, I would imagine he'll be locked up for a good long time. I'd say Tom Day's political days are over.”

     “How is Mrs. Day holding up through all this?”

     “She's been a trooper.”

     The reporter waited a moment, and when it became obvious that was all Novak had to say, she turned back to the camera and sent it back to the newsroom. The poor girl looked like a deer caught in headlights. If I hadn't been so shocked over seeing Novak on the news I probably would have been laughing. As it was, Adam was laughing hard enough for both of us.

     Later, I found out from Novak that the poor woman had overheard her husband on the phone while he was planning the murder of the environmentalist. She'd gone to Novak because she didn't have any proof other than what she'd heard, or thought she'd heard. She had been afraid for her own life, terrified he'd somehow find out and have her killed as well. That had been the reason for all the cloak and dagger secrecy.

     Things with Tad were moving slowly. Adam had taken to him as quickly as I'd thought he would and Steve had liked him from the first. Even Kane got along great with him. But there was still something very reserved about him. I guess it was too soon to expect him to have relaxed completely with us. I was still the person he seemed most comfortable with and I made an effort to spend some amount of time with him every day. Adam had been talking to
Ilana
about his situation and she's made some overtures to his father, but so far, he's not responded. There's still a very unsettled feel about the whole situation, too much undecided for anyone to feel comfortable enough to commit themselves entirely.

     I looked over at him now as he watched the workman changing the blade on
a masonry
saw. I'd become so fond of him in the last couple weeks. He reminded me a lot of myself just a few years earlier. I didn't know what would happen to him, but I found myself feeling very protective of him. I was trying not to get too attached in case he had to leave, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

     He looked over at me expectantly.

     “What?” I asked, defensively. I felt guilty, as if he'd heard my thoughts.

     He grinned at me. “I said, I'm still not sure if I buy this whole ghost thing,” he said with exaggerated patience.

     I stuck my tongue out at him. “That because you haven't seen her.”

     “Are you sure you hadn't been hitting the bottle a little too hard that night?”

     “Boys,” Adam said with mock weariness, “do we have to go through this again?”

     Tad and I had been arguing
Amalie's
existence since he'd first learned of her a few days after he'd arrived. Steve had announced his plans to tear down the wall and hopefully put her to rest.
Amalie
had been uncharacteristically quiet, leaving the question in the realm of debate. Now that we were moving towards opening the wall, she seemed to have settled down to wait, or at least that's how my overactive imagination had pictured it.

     Before I could respond to Adam, the contractor spoke up. “Ok folks, we're getting ready to get to business here, you might want to step back and watch your eyes. You really should all be wearing safety goggles but I didn't know I was
gonna
have an audience.”

     “Just tell us if we're in the way, Bob,” Steve said as our small group, made up of Steve, Adam, Judy, Micah, Kane, Tad, and I, obediently moved to the farthest wall away from where he was going to be cutting.

     Bob shrugged. “Hey, it's your house. You're not in my way.” He started the saw and slowly eased it into the wall. The sharp blade cut through the brick with surprisingly little difficulty. We watched in silence while he cut around the outline of the old doorway. The loud roar of the saw would have drowned out any attempt at conversation, but those of us gathered in the basement suddenly found ourselves so tense that no one would have spoken even if we could have. When he'd finished cutting and the cloud of brick dust settled, he picked up a sledgehammer and swung it up behind him.

     “Wait!” I blurted out suddenly; panic squeezing my lungs tight as the heavy hammer started its downswing.  

     The sledgehammer shuddered to a halt in midair as everyone spun around to look at me.

     “What?” Bob asked.

     “You…you can't do it like that.” Odd, disjointed images were shifting across my vision, confusing me. At first, I thought the lights were flickering, but I quickly realized that it was the small room that was flickering - between the current scene and a much darker version, lit only by a single candle in a sconce on the wall. The darker room was empty except for a few wooden barrels against one wall.
Where the bricked-up doorway was in the current room, stood floor-to-ceiling shelves made from rough wooden planks.
The shelves were filled with glass jars of canned fruits and vegetables.

     Just as suddenly as the strange flickering sensation began, it stopped, leaving me blinking owlishly at the concerned faces looking back at me.

     “Killian, are you ok?” Micah asked.

     “Did you see something?” Judy asked.

     I nodded.

     “What did you see?” she asked intensely.

     “What does she mean?” I heard Tad ask nervously.

     “The room was changing; I think I saw how it used to be.
And...
I don't know; I just had this feeling...” I turned to look at Bob, who was staring at me as if I'd lost my mind. “Is there some other way to open the wall?” I asked.

     “Not really. If I had someone on the other side they could push it out, but since I don't, it's gotta go that way.”

     “Can you be gentle?”

     “Gentle? It's a sledgehammer and bricks - how gentle can you be?”

     “Can you just try?” Steve asked politely.

     Bob shook his head as he turned back the wall. He changed his grip on the hammer and began to use the end like a battering ram. The first few bricks tumbled down on the other side with the dull thud of brick hitting bare earth. I'm sure it took a longer to do it this way, but the panicky feeling didn't return. It wasn't too long before he had an opening big enough to see through. He shifted one of the lights he'd brought along so that it shined through the hole and stopped suddenly. He leaned in and peered intensely into the inky blackness beyond the opening.

     “Do you see something?” Steve asked excitedly.

     “
Amalie
,” I muttered under my breath.

     Bob jerked away from the wall. “There's a skeleton in there,” he said shakily. He looked over at me. “Did you know that was in there?”

     “Not before now,” I answered, sounding a lot calmer than I felt.

     Judy wandered closer to the hole as Steve turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “Is it who I think it is?” he asked.

     “It's
Amalie
,” Judy answered with certainty, her voice sounding eerily hollow as she spoke into the aperture.

     “What happened? How'd she get in there?” Adam asked in confusion.

     Judy turned to me.
“Killian?”

     I shook my head.

     “If we want to know what happened, only you can tell us.”

     “I...I can't.”

     “What's going on?” Tad asked with fear in his voice.

     “That's what I want to know,” Bob said, sounding a little angry now. “If you knew there was a body behind this wall, you should have told me up-front. I would've never agreed to do this.”

     “Bob,” Steve said, “why don't you go ahead and leave. I'll pay you for the time we agreed on.”

     “You don't have to tell me twice. This is all too weird for me.” He grabbed up his saw and a few odd pieces of equipment then paused. “I'll get the rest of my stuff later,” he said and made his exit.

     “Can we widen the hole enough to get through,” Judy asked.

     “I'll do it,” Micah said quickly. He picked up the sledge hammer and began to carefully knock away more bricks.