Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) (45 page)

An awkward silence fell, during which I could hear water dripping from the icicles on her gutters in a steady patter. There was
no wind this morning. The sun off the snow was nearly blinding.

“Well, maybe you could call sometime,” Rowena suggested. “Tell me what kind of cases you’re working on that gives you two
black eyes and a fat lip.”

I felt a warm swell of hope. It was something. She was leaving the door open a crack. “Sure. And to be fair, I only have one black eye.”

Rowena shook her head slowly. “Don’t look at yourself in the
mirror much, do you?”

I winked one eye and then the other. Both hurt equally.
Balls.
I closed both tightly, and the ache in my sockets tore an elongated
ooooowwww
from me.

Rowena snorted. “Dork.”

“I’ll call you next week some time,” I promised. “I’d like to check on Mr. Epp, if that doesn’t breach some code of confidentiality or ethics or whatever.”

Rowena let a self-deprecating smile slip. “We’re Baranuiks,” she reminded me, and started walking back to her house, hugging the afghan tighter. “We ain’t got no stinkin’ ethics.”

She hurried and did not look back; I watched her until the door closed with a jingle-bell sound, hinting at holiday decorations inside. The sun felt nice on my cheeks. I glanced up at the sky, feather grey with hints of blue. An artistic hand had painted white and grey clouds with the lightest of brushstrokes across today’s sky. I got back in the idling hearse and sat in the passenger seat, clamping down on the threat of happy tears while Mr. Merritt took his time folding the fat newspaper and then pretended to fine tune something with the dials and buttons on the dash. Finally, he offered me my ski mask. He’d been keeping it warm for me under one of his thighs.

“Tim Horton’s, madam?”

I laughed with relief, turning my face away so he wouldn’t see my eyes well up. First, my sister doesn’t spit in my face, now coffee? This day was coming up Marnie! If the poltergeist didn’t kill me, it might be the best day ever.

Mr. Merritt cruised into the parking lot at the Oh Yeah! Café and I spotted Schenk’s sedan. The lot had been plowed into high piles occupying a couple of the outlying parking spaces, and the sun was making a little headway towards melting some of the dregs and ice that remained on the exposed pavement. I stuffed my sister’s scrying board in my backpack before heading in to see Schenk. I passed Detective Sergeant Malashock on her way out; The Blue Sense stirred
to offer up her confusion, frustration, and disappointment. She
didn’t recognize me with my ski mask on, not even when I threw her my patented flowery salute, complete with finger wiggles.

Schenk, on the other hand, recognized me immediately. He was finishing up some rye toast, wiping it on his plate in egg yolk and hot sauce. “Grab a seat, Cinderblock. Take that thing off, they’re gonna think you’re sticking up the joint.”

“Can’t.” I left the balaclava on, but took my parka off and hung it on the back of the chair before sitting. “It got worse.”

“Twizzler marks?”

I blew hot air out the little nose holes in my mask. “You’re a funny guy.”

“The fat lip?”

“The black eye,” I said, drawing it out to emphasize my
displeasure, leaning across the table as if daring him to push me. “Eyes, plural.”

A twitch of a smirk. “Lemme see.”

“You’re not my friend anymore,” I said sullenly, pulling a laminated menu card closer with one gloved hand. “I’m getting a
new ski mask with a mouth hole so I can stick my tongue out at you.”

“I’ll knit you one, eh?”

“Get right on that, would ya?” I twirled a finger around my masked face to indicate the damage. “This is
all
my mom’s fault, you realize.”

“Your mother hit you?” He said it like he wouldn’t be at all surprised.

“Nope, just in the mood to trash my mother behind her back.”

“I have a feeling she started it.”

“You've met her,” I said, as if this explained everything.

“She seems nice,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“You were probably high,” I said. “You should stop smokin’
reefer on the job, officer. It’s messing with your job performance.”

We happened to glance past the struggling begonias on the
window
ledge to the parking lot at the same time, to see Malashock still
standing by her car, talking on the phone. She began to pace
parallel
to the front bumper, high heeled boots avoiding a snow-filled pot hole. The waitress came by our table, refilled Schenk’s coffee, turned
my cup over, filled it, and put a plate of French toast in front of me. After she went away I frowned down at the plate. “I didn’t order this.”

“I did.” When I tried to pass it to him, he clarified, “For you.”

“How’d you know I was coming?”

“Felt a disturbance in the Force.”

I looked at him steadily; when Dickie Binswanger ordered for
me without asking, I hated it. When Schenk did it, I found it
considerate and endearing. I knew he was going to insist on paying for it. This time, I would let him without a fight.

He shook his head at me, smiling. “Take the damned thing off. Your face can’t be that bad.”

“You won’t vomit?”

“No promises. Sorry.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Longshanks, it hurts to smile.” I pulled
the ski mask off but held onto it, in case my bruises had gotten even worse than when I checked them in the rear view mirror of the
hearse in Rowena’s driveway. I snuck a look at Schenk’s face to check his reaction. He was doing an excellent job of not smiling, but his eyes said he wanted to.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said, eating the last crust of rye. “It’s bad.”

“It could be worse?” I made it a question.

He nixed that with a quick, “Not without cutting something off,” and pulled a folder from his bag. “Did some digging on the Briggs-Adsits.”

“How?”

He paused in the act of shuffling through his papers to give me an
I’m-a-detective-you-simpleton
look. I gave him an answering
okay-duh-but-how
eyebrow lift. It hurt my bruised face, and I touched my fat lip gingerly. “Okay,
where
?” I specified.

“Local museum had some interesting records from the times. Very distinctive folks, the Briggs-Adsits. You were right about the
psychosis,
though nowhere in these notes was syphilis mentioned. A few
months before John Senior’s death, church records show that Mother Adsit – whom they call Elizabeth, Beth, Bess, Betty, and Betsy, depending on
the source – was asked to stop bringing John Junior to church because he was disrupting Mass. After the funeral of her husband,
she stopped coming to church, but had a bug up her ass about the whole thing and began harassing other churchgoers at their homes. The local
sheriff, who was the law here before Niagara Regional Police existed, told her to settle down and knock it off, basically, after which she came at the parishioners with her wooden spoon.” He gave me a
look.

“The Spoon of Doom,” I said, making a little O with my swollen lips and drawing it out all spooky-like. My toast was terrified, so I stabbed it with my fork and put it out of its misery.

“Son dies a few months later, head injuries 'sustained in a fall.' Officially, declared an accident.”

“Right,” I said. “Killer Spoon.”

“She refused to let her son be buried in the church’s cemetery, and there are no records of him being buried anywhere else.”

“Ew?” I munched French toast, doctored my coffee carefully and braced for impact before sipping it. “That’s grody to the max.”

“You’re not old enough to say 'grody to the max.'”

“But you are,” I said. “I’m using the vernacular of your youth.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. It's heinous. Bogus. Gnarly. Whatever the opposite of ‘radical’ was.” He killed the smile that was threatening to appear with a mouthful of coffee.

“Do I want to know what happened to soft-headed John Junior’s body?”

“No idea, but he seems to have ended up in or near Mother Briggs-Adsit's own casket in the original Red Hook cemetery, so explain that
one.”

“A two-bodies-one-box situation?” I suggested. “How many years apart?”

“She lived another twelve years, and was one of the last people buried at the original Red Hook cemetery before the church was torn down in 1879. In 1920, they put the call out for people to move their kin before the overflow pond was installed.”

“But no one was left to move the Briggs-Adsits,” I finished,
“among those hundreds of others.”

He rubbed his face with one large hand. “The coroner is
attending to Nowland’s autopsy today, but I expect the same results as that of
Ms. Wyatt’s; severe hypothermia. Found Nowland’s car by Lock Three. No idea how either he or Britney got up all the locks into the
overflow pond at the Twin Flight Locks, or how they got there without anyone along the way noticing it. I can’t charge a poltergeist with murder, so this may all be moot. What do I do about it?”

“I vote we find this desecrated grave, return the skull and the tear vial, send the soldier’s ghost into the light, exorcise the
poltergeist, and
then hit the nearest donut shop.” I forked a piece of syrup-sodden French toast into my mouth. “After all that, I’m gonna need a Dutchie real bad.”

“Because you don’t get enough sugar, right?”

“Probably, I could never get enough sugar.”

“How about diabetes? Could you get enough of that?”

“I’m a DaySitter,” I said smugly, swirling another hunk of
French toast in syrup. “I can’t get diabetes.”

“But you can get whipped to death by Twizzlers. What an
interesting life you lead.”

“The way I figure it, a truly messy death is inevitable,” I said, “but only for one of us.
You’re
probably gonna be okay.”

“That’s a relief.”

“
I’m
gonna croak, so I might as well enjoy some yummy stuff before I get clonked to death by Mama-Captain’s Super Spoon of Suck.”

“Shit,” Schenk said, looking down at his phone, and then out at the parking lot at Malashock. “Shit.”

The Blue Sense didn’t give any warning before slamming me with Schenk’s upset. “It can’t be Simon,” I said. “Simon’s in prison.”

“Hospital for psych assessment,” Schenk corrected. “Seventy-two hour hold.”

I demanded almost breathlessly, “Ellie?”

He stood, tossing down cash for breakfast. “No. You just chill,
don’t worry about it. Malashock needs me.” He glanced at the
parking lot out the big windows. “Riding with her. Take my car and get home before this storm rolls in. I’ll pick it up later and catch you up.”

“Storm?” I frowned, glancing outside at the blue sky, and then behind me at the flat screen TV on the wall. The sound wasn't turned up loudly enough to be annoying to the patrons, but the red severe weather alert was scrolling across the bottom of the news channel was hard to miss. “Damn, I thought that shit was clearing up.”

“The calm before.” He shrugged into his leather jacket and dug out his car keys. He hesitated before giving them to me. “Listen,
don’t touch the boxes in my trunk. Keep them sealed. Don’t open it, don’t touch it, don't anything. Just... don't.”

“I'm not gonna fondle the junk in your trunk, Thag. Yeah, yeah, chain of custody,” I said, ignoring his glare. “No,
this time
I got it.”

“No more sticky fingers.” He jingled the keys an inch from my gloved hand to make his point. “Behave.”

I snatched the keys with a sigh. “Who do you think you’re
talking to, constable?”

“I’m fairly certain I know who I’m talking to.” He crammed on black leather gloves and adjusted his scarf. “
No touching
. Go straight home as soon as you’re done.”

“Sure thing, Longshanks.” I ignored the punctuating jab of his thick forefinger in the air before he gathered his files in a flurry of papers and hurried out into the drippy morning.

I changed chairs so I could see the TV, and watched the
meteorologist
animatedly explain how the coming storm was the biggest of the season, bigger than the last, bigger than any he’d seen in his career.
He looked like a puppy when the package of Snausages got rustled, bopping
from one side of the screen to the other, pointing out the causes of his excitement. I could practically see his tail wagging. Pictures and
video
of previous storms showed cars buried by drifts, men out pushing
trucks,
wheels spinning on ice, tree branches snapping under the weight,
roof
shingles scattering in the wind. I looked outside again at the blue
sky. Icicles along the gutter dripped in the sun.

I finished my coffee, and the dregs of Schenk’s, and the last bit of my toast. I wondered what kind of cool things I’d find if I snooped
through Schenk’s car. My phone rattled against the table, and I
slipped off a glove to do the swipe-and-pass-code thing.

Schenk’s text read:
Don’t you dare.

I smiled down at my phone, and hoped, wherever he and
Malashock were rushing off to, they’d be safe and successful. My phone buzzed
again, and a little notification dot appeared beside Batten’s name. My heart gave an overeager jolt, and all the blood rushed to my cheeks.

I checked the text.
Binswanger sent flowers.
A second later:
I threw them out.
And:
You’re out of beer
. And then:
Your bed is lumpy and your pillows smell like bubblegum.
Finally:
You have forty pairs of underwear and all but two have frogs on them. Freak.