Chapter Nine
Floyd and Andy looked at each other as they quietly entered the telephone switchboard office. Floyd looked at his watch and nodded. They heard the ring from the sheriff's office, and it being put through. Quietly they stepped closer. Andy aimed the video camera at the switchboard and caught her taking notes as she listened in on the conversation. He saw her pale and then after disconnecting the call, hurriedly reached for another plug and made the connection.
Floyd stepped forward and placed the muzzle against her temple as they heard Megs voice on the other line: "Hello?"
Floyd pulled the plug and hand cuffed her as he recited, "You have the right to remain silent…" Andy used tweezers and gloves as he picked through the trash. In it he found references to conversations dealing with Nightshade that she had overheard. Floyd
shook his head and clicked his tongue.
Jessica regarded Seth as he poured coffee for both of them. "Why on earth would he have you come here at this hour? What is going on, Seth?"
Seth handed the cup to her. "He was very cryptic but he said that he had to get something first, and then he would be right over… Jess, I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"Doubting you in the first place. I should have listened to you and so should have Mort, and then all of this wouldn't have happened."
Jessica went to her dearest friend and said softly, "Seth, you are the one friend in a thousand ..." she began. She was interrupted by the knock on the door. Mort, Taylor and a young man standing in the shadows were there.
"Doc, Mrs. F. we need your help."
"Of course Mort, anything," said Seth.
Mort breathed a sigh of relief. "Good I'll swear you in on the way."
Gabriel said from the shadows, "I have two others that I will bring and meet you there."
Mort looked at him, "Do they need to be sworn in too?"
Gabriel shook his head and stepped back into the street. The three of them stepped into the police cruiser as Mort swore them in to be temporary deputies for the state of Maine.
Tipper had dozed off after coming home from the de- quilling on her bent bamboo sofa. The sharp wrap of knuckles on the door windowpane interrupted her dreams. She saw the familiar hat and tossing aside the covers went to her side door. With Mort were Taylor, Jessica and Seth.
Tipper opened the door. Taylor said softly to her "It ends tonight. Will you help us?"
"You betcha." Tipper flew around the house grabbing her windbreaker, her Red Sox baseball cap, and her tranquilizer rifle while Mort briefly swore her in as a temporary deputy. There was a joyful little yip as she stepped outside, and looking down she saw Sydney straining at the end of her leash, her tail wagging with the speed of a boat propeller.
"This must be Sydney," she said to Taylor. "Let me guess – she's been trained to sniff for narcotics, right?" She had meant it as a joke, but no one laughed.
"Yeah, actually," Mort answered. "It's a long story. Look, we'd better get going."
Tipper followed Mort, Seth, Jessica, and Taylor back toward the waiting patrol cruisers, where Floyd and Andy were waiting. She took one glance back at her house, checking to make sure she'd left the porch light on, and saw a tall, fair-haired young man standing in the pool of light cast by the low-wattage bulb. As she watched, he beckoned to someone standing in the shadows, who nodded and set off in another direction, across her yard. As he passed under a street lamp, Tipper recognized him as the gentleman afflicted with the
barbecue sauce that she'd seen hanging around Jessica's house.
Tipper tapped Taylor on the shoulder. "Hey, who is that guy, anyway?" she asked.
Taylor glanced back. "Him? That's Gabriel, he's my adjunct."
"No, I mean the other guy."
"What other guy?"
Tipper looked back; the other man had disappeared. "Nothing," she said.
It was late; the Nightshade shop was closed up and dark, with no signs of life inside. A "closed" sign hung crookedly in the front window; padlocked chains looped through the door handles to hold them locked shut. Mort nodded to Floyd, who came forward with a pair of hefty metal cutters. He snipped through the chains, which Mort caught in his hands before they could clatter noisily to the ground.
"Okay, this is the plan," he said to the others. "I'm going in with Mrs. F and the dog to look for the drugs. I want the rest of you to cover all the exits. Seth, you're at the back door with Andy. Gabriel will take the side door, Taylor, you're to keep an eye on this front door with Floyd. Tipper, there's a fire escape with an exit off the second floor, if you wouldn't mind climbing up there?"
"Sure," Tipper said. She slung the tranquilizer gun across her back by the strap, and began to climb the wooden steps on the side of the building.
"Great. That just leaves the basement exit." He peered into the darkness, and found Gabriel standing outside of the light of the nearby street lamp. "Hey Gabriel, where's that other person you promised me?"
"Already in place, with one other person I drafted along the way," Gabriel replied.
"Fine. Are we all set, then? Good. Come on, Mrs. F, you and I are going in." Mort took Sydney's leash from Taylor. Sydney gave Mort a questioning gaze as if to ask "Do you know what your doing?" before glancing back to her. Taylor gave Sydney a hand signal to go with him. It was hard standing outside while they entered, but the fewer people inside to contaminate evidence, the better. He and Jessica stepped inside quietly.
The interior of the cluttered store was dark, the atmosphere made all the more black for the heavy sweet smell that seemed to thicken the air in the room. Mort took a cautious sniff. "Is that the incense smell you and Taylor were telling me about?" he asked.
"No," said Jessica. "It's similar, but not quite the same. Probably they've taken to burning a perfectly harmless incense to cover the traces of the drug since the trouble began."
Mort took an extra flashlight out of his pocket and handed it to Jessica. "You lead the way," he said.
She switched on the flashlight and aimed its focused beam around the interior of the shop. "The office was in the back," she said as she picked her way among racks of tie-dyed clothing and shelves stocked with gargoyle figures of various sizes. "But I think there is another room in back of that – I got the impression, from my first visit here, that it was a secret; the door had been fairly well concealed."
The office was cluttered with papers, most of which seemed to be invoices for the delivery of legitimate merchandise. A piece of curled up fax paper caught Jessica's eye, lying on the floor next to the wastebasket. "Mort, look," she said.
The fax was of the front page of a Los Angeles newspaper. Picking it up, Mort read the headline aloud: "'Nightshade investigation moves forward despite D.A.'s murder.'" He looked at Jessica. "Looks like you were right, Mrs. F."
At that moment Sydney let out a single high-pitched yip, and scrabbled at an oriental rug draped across the back wall of the office.
"The hidden door," Jessica said. "Someone's behind it."
Mort pulled the excited Sydney back and handed her leash to Jessica. Drawing his gun, he positioned himself next to the door. "Stand back, Mrs. F," he said, and kicked it open.
A flight of stairs led down into blackness. Sydney strained at her leash, whining frantically and scrabbling at the top step. "I guess we go down," Mort said.
Jessica nodded mutely, and let Sydney lead the way. At the bottom of the steps the found themselves in a basement, cluttered with scarred furniture and stacked from floor to ceiling with rows of crates and boxes. Sydney pulled them over to one particular stack of crates, each locked with a padlock, and increased the intensity of her sniffing, then sat back and barked, very well pleased with herself...
Mort indicated to Jessica to point the beam of the flashlight to a lock on a crate. He extracted a pair of cutters from his belt, used the bolt cutters to open the crate and examined the labels on the containers.
"Narcotics and opiates," he said grimly. "All of them. There's enough of the stuff here to get the entire Midcoast addicted. Good work, Sydney."
"That's what I was afraid of. We could have stopped this before Mort, if …"
"I know, and Seth and I should have listened. Come on; let's get back upstairs and …"
He got no farther before someone pushed Jessica aside and grabbed the sheriff from behind, holding a cloth soaked in the insidious drug over his face with one hand and twisting the flashlight out of his grip with the other. It clattered to the floor and rolled out of reach, throwing the area where Mort struggled with his attacker in the dark. Jessica heard a crash of boxes, and then a grunt as Mort went down. Sydney, with the leash released, avoided the struggle, then darted to Mort's attacker and began to worry the pant leg with a deep growl coming from her tiny body. The attacker shook her off and stepped back. Jessica hurried over to where he lay very still. Sydney placed her body between the attacker and Jessica, snarling and barking in a threatening manner.
"Mort!" Jessica cried softly, falling to her knees at his side to look for a pulse. At that moment a second torch was switched on, and brilliant light hit her full in the face. Shielding her eyes, she slowly got to her feet and faced the mastermind of the Nightshade
organization.
At her post outside of the front door of the Nightshade shop, Taylor, all her senses strained to the breaking point, heard her dog's faint bark from inside. The bark became more insistent. "Sydney's found something," she said to Floyd. "I'm going in." Before Floyd could say anything to stop her, she disappeared inside.
Trying to remember the layout of the store, she made her way back to the office and down the stairs into the basement, where she saw Mort slumped unconscious on the floor and Jessica confronting a man she thought she recognized. Then she remembered where she had seen his face before – a photograph in a folder on Anthony's desk, a curiously
familiar Nightshade employee that she spotted before the drug in the incense had overcome her. It was the missing star witness from the State of California vs. Nightshade, Inc.
Blinded by the light of the man's high-powered torch, Jessica seemed rooted where she stood.
"My name is Kent Fordham," he said. "Welcome to my lair." He had the business end of a 45 pointed directly at Jessica's head.
"Your efforts to enslave this town with your drugs have failed," Jessica said. "Despite everything you have done to divert attention from yourself and to keep me safely shut away at home, you've been found out. It's over."
"Is it?" Fordham said mockingly. "Your Sheriff has been overpowered, the Orange County D.A. is dead, and you are here alone, in my power."
"Not alone," said Jessica. "Tell me, did you kill Bartholomew Dixon?"
Fordham gave a short laugh. "Not directly," he said. "That was handled by someone else. But yes, we all follow the orders, even to kill... He'd outlived his usefulness, and in this business when you no longer need a tool, you throw it away."
As he spoke, Taylor, from her perspective, could see a figure creeping up behind Jessica. It was a woman, and in her hands was a piece of metal pipe, which she slowly raised to strike. Taylor tried to cry out a warning, but the words stuck in her throat. She knew that if she warned Jessica, Kent would fire on both of them. Something was so familiar about the murky shadow of the woman; Taylor's concentration was diverted into identifying her.
Her attention riveted by Fordham, Jessica was unaware of the danger she was in. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, she heard a voice speak softly in her ear:
"Duck, Jess, now!"
She recognized the voice instantly, and in amazement she spun around to look behind her … but there was no one there. But the action probably saved her life, because as the woman swung her makeshift club at her head, it dealt her a glancing blow instead of a killing one. But a glancing blow was enough; Jessica joined Mort and landed stunned on the ground.
"You IDIOT!" the woman hissed from the shadows. "The one place that we could have cleaned up on, and you had to attract attention by attacking her in the first place. The Gathering cannot be postponed! Too many are coming here to turn them away from this chosen ground. Looks like it's a job for our watch dog to deal with these two… Go on - get out before others come… Give me that gun, you can't get caught with that one, its one they would know was from this location." She glared down at Sydney who was lunging with snaps to her ankles. Sydney dodged the well-placed kick in her direction, and held her position, defending Mort and Jessica with her snarls.
Fordham regarded her. Mabel stood glaring at him with all the anger in her heart. "All that you see here is only a small part of the plan. Do not assume that your way is one that is the truth, or why this is necessary.' For a moment he stood breathing hard , then took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat from the cellar exit. The woman strode forward toward the two figures on the ground. Sydney bravely sunk her teeth into the pants material of the woman and began to worry the fabric with her sharp teeth. She raised the pipe over Jessica again, apparently intent on finishing what she had started.
"No!" Taylor yelled, and flew at the woman, tackling her from behind. It sent both of them sprawling on the floor. But her opponent was strong, young and agile. She would not be subdued so easily, even in the face of all of Taylor's fury. She fought back, and in the struggle Taylor banged her head hard against a table leg, dazing her momentarily and allowing the other woman to gain the advantage. When the stars cleared from her eyes, she found herself pinned to the floor, staring up into the face of the woman who had attacked Jessica, a face she now recognized all too well.
Suddenly everything became horribly clear to Taylor Andrews. "Mabel!" she said darkly in cold fury. Her hand reached up, grasped a shank of Mabel's hair, and gave it a vicious yank trying to throw off her balance. Mabel shrieked in pain and indignation.
Perched on the metal balcony of the second story fire escape Tipper fingered her tranquilizer rifle nervously. A chill wind was whispering in off the Sea, making her shiver; she wished she had grabbed a heavier jacket. So far nothing was happening, and with each passing minute her anxiety was growing. To calm herself, she started reciting the names of the cranial nerves: "Olfactory, Optic, Oculomotor, Trochlear …"
Was that a noise from inside? Shouting? A dog's howl? Could such a noise come from a dog so small? Tipper was suddenly on full alert. "Steady now," she told herself. "Trigeminal, Abducent, Facial … hello, what's this?"
Before she could name Cranial Nerve VIII, a moving shadow caught her attention. Sure enough, someone was sneaking around from the back of the building. The figure came into her full view, and Tipper recognized Meg trying to beat a silent retreat from the sinking ship. In an instant she had raised her tranquilizer gun to her shoulder, targeted Meg in the crosshairs of her sights, and fired. Meg let out a cry and grabbed at her shoulder, pulling out the red feathered tranquilizer dart but not before enough of the powerful sedative had entered her system to bring her down. As she sank to the ground she looked up at the veterinarian, her lips soundlessly mouthing a phrase.
"Same to you," Tipper growled. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, and leapt down the rickety wooded stairs to join the fray.
"You BITCH!" Taylor snarled. "You killed him! It wasn't enough to undermine everything he did, you had to kill him!"
"Of course I killed him," Mabel said, not relaxing her grip on her, trying to gain the upper hand. The two women rolled on the dusty floor, each trying to gain the advantage. "I was losing control, and every time I turned around, there you were, you and your little rat-faced dog, getting in the way, spying on me, and usurping the trust that Anthony used to place in me!"
Taylor managed to free herself from Mabel's grasp and push herself out of arms reach. Mabel pulled a gun and pointed it at Taylor as the flashlight illuminated Mabel. "So you were the one who sabotaged my vacation!"
"Yes, I did all that. I thought I was taking you out of the picture. How was I to know you'd stumble right into the middle of the whole Nightshade scheme?"
"Whose idea was it to frame me?"
"Meg's," said Mabel. "She already her some of the key players in town under her thumb – the hotel manager, the telephone operator, others - so it was easy to arrange."
"And the car bomb," Taylor said. "I suppose you arranged that too."
"Enough of this," Mabel said. "You've been a thorn in my side ever since Anthony met you! You should have died a long time ago, and after what s going to happen, your going to wish you were dead anyway… Ta Ta!" She pointed the gun – Taylor recognized it from the Decorative Weapons display in the store, but as she raised her arm, someone caught her by the wrist and jerked her to her feet. Mabel dropped the gun and spun around with a shriek that was abruptly cut off when Taylor's rescuer knocked the secretary out cold with a well-placed fist across her jaw that sent her to the floor in a heap. Slightly dazed by what had happened, Taylor scrambled to her feet to see who had saved her. She recognized him instantly despite the bandage wrapped around his forehead.
"Anthony!" she cried, and flew into his arms. Sydney, yapping joyfully, danced around their feet.
"Hello, sweetheart," Anthony Thomas said as he smoothed her hair. "Not quite the Maine coast vacation I had envisioned for us, but I did promise I'd catch up with you here, didn't I?"
Taylor held onto him and said softly "When I heard that Donald was with you, I knew that he was capable of hiding you in plain sight, it felt as if someone had cut out my heart. I thought by not marrying you I could spare you from the pain when…But even not married – it hurt…"
"Shhhh dearest. That's a long way away… "
Tipper reached the outside cellar entrance just as the Barbecue Sauce man was emerging. Gabriel was standing outside waiting for him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. "You did well," he said. The stranger nodded silently, then turned and walked away, disappearing into the gathering fog blowing in off the harbor. Tipper never saw him again.
At that point Seth, Andy and Floyd joined them.
"Meg's unconscious by the north end of the building," Tipper said. "I nailed her with a tranq dart."
"Good shooting," Gabriel said. "I'll go see to her; the rest of you can go down and help with the mopping up. Kent's waiting for you at the front entrance, he's a bit tied up at the moment other wise, he would be back here..." With that, he turned and vanished into the shadows. The four of them hurried into the building and down to the basement. Taylor winced at the sudden bright over head lights.
"Jess!" gasped Seth as he hurried down to the two injured ones. He carefully raised her shoulders and held her in his arms until the ambulance came for them.
Sydney sat curled on Anthony's lap as Tipper and Taylor prepared tea for the group that had gathered in Jessica's living room. Both Jess and Mort had a few scuff marks from the event, but were no worse for the ware. Seth and Gabriel were deep in discussion about the benefits of herbal remedies off to the side of the living room. Tipper studied Anthony for a moment and then asked Taylor quietly, "Have you told him? Does he know?"
"What?"
"Look, a guy like him doesn't come around every day, or even every year. Marry him. I would."
Taylor just shrugged. "I have an important decision to make first, and then he and I have to talk…"
Gabriel entered the kitchen and picked up the serving tray with the teacups on it just as the whistle to the kettle began to sing. The three of them went into the living room.
"… And I can't see any benefit to this – shunning," said Jessica. "No matter if I am here, or someplace else something happens. It wasn't job burnout at all!"
Tipper chuckled. "You can't say you followed the rules for the shunning, Jessica! You had that guy with you every time I saw you."
All heads turned to her. "What guy?" asked Seth, his eyebrow arched upward.
"Some man in the closet that you haven't told us about Mrs. F?"
"That guy, with the barbecue sauce on his jacket… You saw him Taylor, that second day that you were here…" Taylor looked a bit puzzled shaking her head slowly. "A natty looking guy about 6 foot something, grey hair, thin build…dark eyebrows…" Her eyes fell on a small photo on Jessica's mantle. "That's HIM!"
Jessica looked at the photo shaking her head for a second then fled the room. "Excuse me."
Tipper saw the exasperated looks on Seth and Mort's faces. Gabriel followed Jessica out of the living room, outside to her back porch.
"What? What did I say wrong? What's going on? That's the guy that I saw…"
Seth said softly, "Tipper, that man is Preston Giles. He was Jessica's first publisher, from Sutton House publishers Sutton house became Coventry, and, well, the two of them fell in love …"
Anthony tilted his head and said puzzled. "Sutton House is the parent company of Nightshade!"
Jessica could hear the voices in the living room telling Tipper about Preston. She felt tightness in her chest, then a soft gentle hand on her shoulder, one that she remembered from the garden. She turned and saw Gabriel.
"I know you… I've seen you before. You were the one with Frank when he died." Was it - did Preston really come back? I heard his voice in the cellar…"
Gabriel cupped her cheek with his hand "You are never alone Jessica."
Taylor and Anthony walked hand in hand down the streets of Cabot Cove with Sydney tucked in her coat pocket. Around them the falling leaves swirled and the nip of the sea was in the air. They were off to Ye Old Tavern for dinner.
"Do you think it's over now? Mabel said something about a Gathering, that we couldn't stop…Something worse than death awaits this town. Anthony, we can't let that happen," said Taylor, clearly worried.
Anthony took a deep breath and looked around before saying, "It IS a beautiful little town…"
"No crime, not normally and housing here is very inexpensive," said Taylor softly.
"Housing? It gets VERY cold here in the winter…" laughed Anthony.
Taylor shrugged. "Better than earthquakes. Even with the threat of this – Gathering, I feel its safe here." She fell silent. Anthony stopped them just at the corner of the shops. He turned her to face him and pulled her off out of the sidewalk into an area out of the traffic's way.
"It sounds like you want to stay here…" Anthony saw the struggle on her face.
"Well, I don't have a job to go back to. Gabriel wants me to have Donald fight it. Once the home office heard that I had a criminal record, and it's STILL in the computers, that was it. My credit reports shot and I really don't want to go back to that smog… The only thing that I love about LA is you. And I do love you enough to go back, but I ask if you love me enough to stay here, with me?"
"Oh Taylor…" he said. He looked over her shoulder and returned a wave.
"Who?" He indicated the shops. "Just Tipper. Well, I know that here Seth and Jessica would take you care of, and it seems as if you made friends with Tipper. Sydney likes her too… Sweetheart, I have another year on my term as D.A. I have to finish that before I
could join you here…Is this a yes, to marriage?"
"It's an 'I don't know' to marriage, but I want to be with you for the rest of my life, no matter how long that may be… The voters think you died, Anthony. You don't need to go back…"
She is interrupted by a shriek behind them and the clatter of food items hitting the pavement.
"Oh no …" said Anthony. He started towards the sound. Taylor turned and saw Tipper on top of a thin young girl with reddish brown hair. She caught the unmistakable British accent cursing in the Queen's English.
She held Anthony back as Tipper helped the woman sit up. "Omigosh! Omigosh, I am so sorry, are you all right?"
"Quite, if you could get your package off of me?"
"Oh! Yes … Are you all right? I'm Tipper…"
"Aptly named. I'm Samantha…"
Taylor looks to Anthony "Tipper strikes again…"
He chuckled and slipped his arm about her waist, drawing her near. "Let's get some of that Maine lobstahh that Seth was saying I should try…It's a good ending to the days work."
Taylor turned her head to answer and saw from the corner of her eye something sketched in the dusty window pane of a back door to a shop, something that hadn't been there the day before. She stopped and regarded the small triangle and the infinity symbol within traced on the inside of the glass.
"Ya think?" she asked, a bit distracted.
