Skeleton Key (5 page)

Erika drove Logan to school earlier in the morning and was waiting nervously for the arrival of Clay Thomas. She knew Clay from Haslett, Michigan, where she went to high school before moving to Durand her senior year. After twenty-five years, he certainly would have changed, but she couldn’t keep herself from being excited to see him. Marshall Mortonson would pick up Logan after early season basketball practice at school. He would take her son to get something to eat and then drop him off at Dan Duncan’s when his shift ended, where they would play video games and watch some college basketball. Erika was grateful for help from her friends because she was unwilling to leave Logan home alone. His depression was such a concern that she worried he might do something desperate.

Clay was a few minutes late, so she gathered her gear in a pile and then headed for the bathroom to touch up her makeup again. As she was perfecting her blue eye shadow, the doorbell rang and her pulse started racing. She walked to the doorway as casually as she could and excitedly opened the door. Clay Thomas had barely changed from high school. “Hi, I’m Clay. Sorry I’m a few minutes late, but I was stopped by a train.” Same grin. Same smiling eyes. Erika was a year older than Clay, which meant he was forty-one years old, yet he was as fit looking as ever. His brown hair showed no signs of graying or balding. His dark brown eyes were just as she remembered. He was tall and athletic looking, but what she remembered most about him was that he was nice—somewhat shy, but always nice.

“
Happens all the time around here. I’m Erika,” she replied politely, nervous that he might not remember her as fondly as she remembered him.

Clay’s smiling eyes turned curious, and then he recalled how he knew Erika from his past. “Erika? Erika Baring…Payne? Baring-Payne? Now there’s an interesting married name.”

“
Great…I haven’t seen you for twenty-five years and the first thing you do is make fun of my name? I’ve heard it before, Clay.” She smiled.

Clay thought it was a wonderful smile. She was just as beautiful as he remembered her from high school. The smile was the same; the gorgeous blue eyes sparkled just the same; the good humor was just as evident. Her hair was shorter and not quite as curly, but it was the same deep, nearly white blond that captured his attention in school. She was stunning, and it made Clay instantly sad. Erika noticed the sadness immediately, but she knew they had a twelve-hour round trip to get reacquainted. Her goal was to help him along his road to recovery from the loss of his wife and to help him snap out of the “doldrums” that Lydia Frauss expressed. She reverted to small talk as they loaded Clay’s car with her gear and she closed up her house for the day. It was going to be an interesting trip.

***

Logan Payne’s first hour class was the only class he actually enjoyed and it was probably the only reason that his mother was able to get him out of bed in the morning. It was a woodshop class. Logan’s latest project was a small storage chest. He was attaching the hinges when his teacher, Mr. Jorgenson, stopped to look at his work. Mr. Jorgenson’s jaw dropped as he looked at the cover that was lying on Logan’s worktable. On it was a remarkable carving of a horse. The detail was exquisite. The horse was lying on the ground next to some railroad tracks, apparently lifeless but nonetheless beautiful. “You did this?” he asked in amazement.

“
Yes.” That was all that Logan said while he continued to work.

“
How? When?”

“
Knife. Home.”

“
You’re kidding. You carved it with your jackknife?”

“
Yes.” Logan was well known for his monosyllabic answers.

“
This is amazing. Do you have other carvings?”

“
Yes.”

“
Could I see them?”

Shrug of the shoulders.

“
Well, if you don’t mind, I’d love to see some of them. You’re really talented, Logan.”

Another shrug of the shoulders. His hair was hanging over his eyes and he never even gave his favorite teacher any eye contact. “Thanks.”

***

After Erika meticulously checked her supplies and loaded the car, the two old friends drove off and did a little catching up. Erika’s father took a job at J & R Machinery Engineers and moved the family to Durand for her senior year. When he retired, her parents moved to Tampa, Florida. After high school, Erika headed off to Michigan State University to be a cheerleader. First she got mono, and then she had an emergency appendectomy. She managed to catch up on one semester, but dropped out and headed home during semester two. She never finished college and eventually married Adrian Payne, who was on a fast track, no pun intended, to success in the train business. His best friend, Marshall Mortonson, and Adrian partnered to take over the Durand Depot and Railway. It wasn’t long and he’d finagled business contracts with various shipping companies, putting a local trucking company out of business.

“
Maybe this is too much information, but he was a terrible husband and a worse father. When he disappeared after the train wreck in 2003, my life improved drastically, simply because he wasn’t in it.” After she explained about the train wreck and her husband’s mysterious disappearance, she went on to explain that Adrian and Mortonson had a partnership contract. The partners had voting shares in the company that did not pass to heirs upon a death of a partner. The heirs would be able to own part of the business, but they’d have no say in how it was run. So even if Adrian was declared dead, which he had never been because there had never been any evidence of his passing, she would have no control over the business. Their partnership agreement
did
stipulate, however, that if a partner passed away or decided to sell, the other partner either had to purchase his partner’s shares or agree to sell as well. Because Adrian wasn’t declared dead, Mortonson kept the company and had complete control of it as well. Erika was left out in the cold, except that Marshall Mortonson hired her as an employee and she’d earned small capital gains over the years. She had no other work experience, education, or training. Her son, Logan, was only ten years old when the accident occurred. Erika was trapped in Durand with no other real options, as far as she could see.

Eventually Clay explained that after high school, he attended Eastern Michigan University on a football scholarship, but after being red-shirted his freshman year and only making the playing field a handful of times his sophomore year, he quit the football team, got a teaching degree, and began a teaching and coaching career. “About eight years ago, I took a job at Mott Community College, teaching math and coaching the varsity baseball team.” He then explained how he had met his wife, Jessie, got married, and had one son, Tanner. He outlined briefly how his wife had been murdered about eleven months before. He finished by telling that Tanner was at the University of Michigan on a basketball scholarship and that he’d been hired as the head coach of the Michigan baseball team but that he’d been unable to sell his house, so he was living alone in Flint.

Both stories seemed kind of tragic, and there was a long pause in the conversation, neither person knowing what to say next, but both knowing exactly what they wanted to talk about. Finally it was Erika that broke the silence. “I had a huge crush on you in high school.”

“
I had a crush on you too.”

“
I don’t know why I broke up with you.”

Before Clay could stop himself he blurted out, “I told you too.”

“
No, you didn’t. The way I remember it, I was totally acting like a fool and then all of a sudden, I decided that I just wanted to be friends.”

Clay had been hiding his powers of mind-control his entire life and it made him an unhappy person. His dishonesty, he believed, played a major role in his wife’s death, and he was determined to be honest with people, so he took a deep breath and explained to Erika what had actually happened. “You might not believe what I’m about to say, but I have a medical condition which gives me the ability to control minds. When I look into people’s eyes, I can influence their thoughts as well as their memories. I was a sophomore. You were the cutest, nicest girl in the school—everyone wanted to go out with you. I told you to like me, and you did—except you went a little overboard. You were smothering me with affection, and I knew that the only reason you were doing it was because I told you to. After the first few days when everyone thought I was ‘the man,’ I realized it was just a farce. I had taken away your choice and I got no pleasure from that, so I got back in your head and told you to tell me that you just wanted to be friends. You broke up with me, and that was that. It was the right thing for me to do because I had taken away your choice. I’m sorry, Erika. Please forgive me.”

Erika looked somewhat confused. “I honestly don’t understand what you mean by ‘mind-control,’ but before you explain, do you remember when I was in eighth grade and you were in seventh and we had a drama class together?”

“
Yeah, Mrs. Jackson hated me. Always gave me embarrassing things to do, and the class was filled with popular eighth grade girls. It was humiliating.”

“
No, Mrs. Jackson didn’t hate you. She thought you were just as cute as the rest of us. Practically every girl in the class had a crush on you, but most of them got over it once they got into high school. I never got over it. I always liked you.”

“
But in tenth grade, I told you to like me.”

“
Well, if that mind-control is real, that explains my obsessive behavior my junior year. But the way I saw it, it was the first time you actually paid any attention to
me
. Telling you that I just wanted to be friends has haunted me my whole life. I’m sorry that I said that to you because it wasn’t what I wanted. And, Clay, I’ve always been a very affectionate person. My affection was genuine.”

Clay’s mind was whirling. It seemed to him that every time he controlled someone’s mind, he made a complete mess of things. Clay proceeded to tell Erika about how he messed with a rival in high school, bringing chaos to his life, and how his powers affected his relationship with his wife and son. He told how he hid his powers and vowed to not use them, but nearly every time he
did
use them, it came back to haunt him. He told about how Tanner began developing his own powers, and then he told about how unhappy and lonely he was that he couldn’t have a proper relationship with his wife or son. It led to the murder of his wife, and he felt responsible. When Erika suggested that he was gifted, he responded that he felt it was more of a curse than some sort of blessing. Erika listened intently. She knew that she was supposed to be helping Clay, and she was trying to determine what it was that he really needed—what it was that was his
real
problem. Clay was talking about it; that was a first step in a faith lesson. He was trusting her with his pain and his secrets. But once they reached the cave, the real lessons would begin.

***

With Erika gone for the day, Marshall Mortonson, walked to the ‘attic’ door at the end of the upstairs hallway of the Depot. Mortonson had taken to occasionally pulling out his old account books and reminiscing about his past as he spent more and more time, of late, thinking about his future. It was actually an unfinished storage room—the actual attic was above the second floor—but the real attic was rarely accessed and the storage room became known as the attic, mostly because that is exactly what it looked like. The historical building had managed to keep its original design even after over a hundred years of wear and restorations. The door to the storage room attic was no exception and was still unlocked by one of two skeleton keys that Mortonson carried. Marshall kept his account books locked inside a Sentry fireproof safe inside the attic. The electronic keypad was long since inoperable, but the safe could be opened via a backup system by using a skeleton key. Marshall Mortonson was the only person who had copies of each key.

Marshall was a numbers geek. He’d always kept the books for the business while Adrian Payne took care of sales. Approximately four years into the partnership, the Durand Depot was turning a tidy profit and looked to be on the verge of an even brighter future. Adrian had worked a deal with the shipping industry, which would soon put a profitable local trucking company out of business. Marshall wasn’t too thrilled about how the backdoor deal was negotiated, but it was to be a very profitable enterprise. With dollar signs in his eyes, Marshall was persuaded to invest money that he didn’t have in a real estate deal in Palm Springs, Florida. It would be his vacation home until retirement. So Mortonson embezzled twenty thousand of the business’s dollars for the initial investment. His plan was to keep the books secret from Adrian until he figured out a way to pay the money back or “cook” the books to make the transaction disappear. However, Marshall Mortonson eventually learned that his money was stolen in a scam. He had lost the entire twenty grand, and then Adrian discovered his partner’s financial ledger. One day, Marshall entered his office to find Adrian sitting in his desk chair. Desk and file drawers were opened and papers were scattered all over the desk and floor. It looked like the office had been ransacked. Adrian’s face was red with anger.