Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (23 page)

“I know
what you’re thinking,” she said, the smile returning.

Mike chuckled.
“I imagine you do,” he said. “It’s the same thing I’m thinking every time I see
you in that nightie.”

She playfully
swatted him on the arm. “I mean I know what you’re thinking about the whole
1858 thing.”

“Is
that so?” he challenged. “Let’s find out. Give it your best shot, sweetheart.”

She locked
eyes with him, smiling playfully but speaking confidently. “You’re thinking
about the condition of the rotted wooden furniture in that underground room
next to the Ridge Runner. You’re trying to figure out if there’s a connection
somehow, if it’s possible that furniture has been down there – along with
those human remains – for the last one hundred and fifty-five years.
That’s what you’re thinking.”

Mike
laughed out loud despite his exhaustion and the disappointments of the day.
“Why do I ever doubt you?” he asked. “I wish I knew how the hell you do that.”

She
blew him a raspberry. “You’re not that hard to figure out, dude.”

“Really?”
he countered, reaching out and encircling her waist with his arm. He pulled her
down to the bed next to him and she snuggled close. “And what am I thinking
now?’

“The
same thing I’m thinking.”

And
then the phone rang.

***

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” the
voice on the other end of the line said. “But you said I should call at any
time if I remembered something.”

“Of
course, Rose,” Sharon said. “It’s not a problem. You’re not bothering me at
all, I was just…getting ready for bed.”

“Oh
Lord,” the older woman exclaimed. “Just forget I called, and we can talk about
this tomorrow.”

“No, I
insist. It’s really no bother. What can I do for you?”

“Well,”
Rose Pellerin said. “You remember I told you my attacker was convinced the year
was 1858?”

“Yes,”
Sharon said with a chuckle. “That’s not something I’m likely to forget.”

“Well, as
you might imagine, after you left it was all I could think about. Something about
his mention of that particular year bothered me. I couldn’t quite put my finger
on what it was, but it was niggling around in my brain. So I did a little
research and I finally figured it out.”

“Okay…”
Sharon said, waiting for her to continue.

“Well,
this isn’t the sort of thing we can really do over the phone,” Rose said. “I think
you might want to come out here and see for yourself.”

Sharon
thought about Mike’s exhaustion, and how she was nearly as tired as he, but
when she glanced over at him, he returned her look with an alert stare. “Alright,”
she said. “We’ll be right over.”

“Thank
you so much,” Rose replied. “But I’m not at home. Come see me at
Needful Things.”

23

The roads of Paskagankee were even
quieter than usual at this time of night, and Mike and Sharon made good time
getting from Sharon’s house on the outskirts of town into the small strip mall
housing
Needful Things.
Rose
Pellerin’s curio shop was located on the south end of the concrete block
structure next to a pizza/sub shop that had closed its doors for the evening by
the time their car rolled into the lot.

In
fact, all of the storefronts were dark with the exception of Rose’s. The
interior of
Needful Things
was
brightly lit, although the proprietor was nowhere to be seen through the plate-glass
window.

As they
stepped out of the vehicle Sharon murmured, “I hope to hell she didn’t leave
the place unlocked for us. I told her to be extra careful this afternoon.”

They
crossed the lot and Mike tried the door, Sharon nodding with satisfaction when
it refused to budge. There was no bell, so he rapped his knuckles sharply on
the glass, and a moment later Rose came bustling around a corner at the rear of
the store. She moved carefully around rows of greeting cards, knickknacks,
stuffed animals and scented candles before unlocking the door and throwing it
open.

“Thank
you so much for coming,” she said with a bright smile. “Again, I’m very sorry
for calling you at such a late hour.”

Mike
shook Rose’s hand and said, “Put any worries out of your mind. If you’ve got
any
information that can help us get to
the bottom of whatever is going on here, this will be time very well spent,
believe me.”

Rose’s
smile flickered uncertainly and she said, “Well, I’m not sure that what I have
to show you will be of any use whatsoever. In fact, it might serve to muddy the
waters further. But I thought you should see it, anyway, and make up your own
minds about what it may or may not mean.”

“Fair
enough,” Mike said. “So, what do you have for us?”

“It’s
in the back storage room,” Rose said, turning toward the rear of the shop and
the small doorway she had walked through upon their arrival.

They
followed her as she retraced her steps around all of the display merchandise. Sharon
said, “Rose, you look so much livelier than when I saw you this afternoon. Are
you feeling better?”

“Oh,
yes dear, much better. I took a short nap and although I doubted I would be
able to fall asleep with the thought of that young man lurking outside my house
somewhere, I slept like a baby and when I awoke, I felt like a new woman. Also,
the idea that I’m helping in some small way to get to the bottom of this
mystery gives me a tremendous boost. I hate feeling helpless, do you know what
I mean?”

Sharon smiled
and nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. Doing something to fight back is
enough to make most crime victims feel immensely better.”

By now
they had reached the back wall of the shop, where Rose stepped through a small
opening leading to a short hallway. At the end of the hallway was another door,
which she opened and walked through. Sharon entered behind her, with Mike
bringing up the rear.

The
storage room was much bigger than Mike would have expected, and more chaotic as
well. Sturdy cardboard boxes, some sealed and some opened, were stacked haphazardly
in one corner. Mike assumed they were filled with merchandise that had yet to
be inventoried and stocked. Shelves lined the walls, mostly covered with
delicate-looking collectible figurines. He tried to recall whether he had seen
any of the collectibles on the sales floor and could not.

Along the
far wall a long table had been set up and was apparently being used as a
makeshift workspace. A computer and laser printer held down one end of the
table, with boxes of supplies – computer paper, printer ink, toner, etc. –
placed on the floor directly beneath. To the left of the office equipment,
stacked neatly, lay a small pile of yellowed newspapers.

Rose
walked to the newspapers and gestured at them like a television game-show model
introducing the prize behind Door Number One.

The
papers looked dried-out and brittle, and Mike imagined them breaking apart and
turning to dust if they were opened. They were clearly very old, and he glanced
between Rose and the newspapers and said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What am I looking
at?”

“A few
years ago,” Rose said, “the Portland Public Library was forced to dispose of
many older items they had been storing in the basement. The library underwent
extensive renovations, and the city fathers determined it would be too expensive
to put those items in rented storage for an extended period of time, only to
return them to the basement upon the building’s reopening.”

“So you
attended an auction, or something similar, and purchased these newspapers,”
Sharon said, gesturing at the pile on the table.

“Among
other things, yes,” Rose said, nodding. “I bought decades worth of old
Portland Journal
newspapers, not having
any idea what in the world I was going to do with them. I just knew I couldn’t
sit by and see them thrown into a furnace like common trash.”

Mike
stroked his chin. “You mean the city was just going to dump all of this? What
about the historical value?”

“All of
these newspapers have been scanned into the library’s computer network,” Rose
said, “so the information contained in them is readily available to anyone who
visits the Portland Public Library. But, still, the thought of these beautiful
old relics being disposed of without so much as a second thought was more than
I could bear. So I bought them.”

Sharon
said, “I don’t come into
Needful Things
very
often, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen any of these items on display in the
store. Have you ever tried to sell them?”

The
elderly woman shook her head. “These aren’t the sorts of things my customers
would be interested in. I didn’t buy them to resell; it was really more of a
sentimental purchase. I had the cartons stacked in here when I bought them, and
this is where they’ve stayed ever since.”

“Until
now,” Mike said.

“Yes,
until now,” Rose agreed. “I mentioned to Officer Dupont on the phone that the
man who attacked me is quite convinced he is living in the year 1858.”

Mike
nodded. “So she said.”

“Well,
I’ve been fascinated with local history for as long as I can remember, which is
one reason why I was so reluctant to let those old copies of the
Portland Journal
be destroyed. When my
attacker mentioned that particular year, it rang a bell in my head. I seemed to
recall that something quite significant had happened in our little town in 1858;
I just couldn’t put my finger on what it might have been.”

“So you
came down to your shop and looked it up,” Sharon said with a smile.

“Yes,”
Rose said. “It seemed like the thing to do, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Absolutely,”
Mike said. “And the fact that you called us down here means you found something.
What was it?”

Rose
picked up the top newspaper and turned it over for their inspection. It didn’t
break apart and turn to dust as Mike had feared would happen, it simply flattened
out on the surface of the table.

A bold banner
headline ran in faded black newsprint under the
Portland Journal
logo, proclaiming, PASKAGANKEE TAVERN BURNS TO
GROUND. Underneath the headline, in slightly smaller print, a second headline
proclaimed, ONE DEAD, TWO MISSING AS AUTHORITIES SEEK ANSWERS.

Mike
leaned closer and checked the newspaper’s publication date. The print was even
more faded than the headline copy, but remained legible:
June 20, 1858.
He shared a glance with Sharon and then turned to
Rose. “The Paskagankee Tavern. I don’t suppose that would be…”

She
began nodding and answered before he could even finish the question. “Yes,” she
said. “The Paskagankee Tavern was the precursor to the modern-day Ridge Runner,
which as you know is now owned by my brother, Bo. The structure that burned to
the ground in 1858 was eventually rebuilt using the existing granite-block foundation,
which survived the fire with virtually no damage.

“Now,”
she continued, “I’m going to go make you folks a cup of tea. You read the story
and I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She turned and retraced her steps out of
the storage room.

Mike
and Sharon leaned over the table, moving in almost perfect synchronization,
straining to read the story:

In an intense blaze, thus far of unknown
origin, the Paskagankee Tavern burned to the ground sometime in the overnight
hours of June 18-19. Nothing but smoking embers remain of the popular drinking
establishment, the only one located in this isolated village just south of the
Canadian border.

A search of the ruined tavern –
delayed for nearly a full day as investigators were forced to wait for the
embers to cool enough to enter – revealed the remains of a single victim,
whose body was found in the basement and is believed to be the building’s
owner, Lucas Crosby, age 33.

Still missing are Crosby’s wife, Sarah,
age 28, and liquor distributor Matthew Fulton, age 39. Authorities have thus
far refused to speculate on the cause of the blaze, and have as well refused to
rule out the possibility of foul play in the death of Mr. Crosby.

Anyone with information regarding the
Paskagankee Tavern fire, or the whereabouts of Mr. Fulton and Mrs. Crosby, is
strongly encouraged to contact the Sheriff’s Department at the earliest possible
convenience. More details as they become available.

Mike
picked up the paper gingerly and turned the page, looking for any related
stories, but found none. He stood up straight, stretching his back, and ran a
hand through his hair absently. He could feel Sharon staring at him with those
laser-beam eyes, and she said, “Well? What are you thinking?”

“I’m
thinking about coincidences,” he said, “and how little stock I put in them. We
have a bizarre underground room uncovered next to the Ridge Runner, where two
sets of human remains are uncovered. We have the guy who dug up the room
swearing there was a third body present, a body that up and disappeared into
thin air when no one was looking.