The Girl in the Maze (5 page)

Bowden broke in. “I don't think I'm alone if I say I never thought Amberleen would see days like these, Sheriff. But I'd like to thank you and your men for your ongoing efforts to control it.”

Morris turned toward the panel. “The elders of Shell Heap, they're good people—”

Bowden held his palm up. “Sheriff, we all appreciate your affinity for some of the long-term residents, which most of us on this panel share.”

“Thank you, Wallace.” Morris nodded somberly and returned to his seat.

After that, Bowden introduced the public comment portion of the evening. The first to the podium was Lydia Dussault, who wore an understated dress and pearls. Her air of aristocracy, hinted at in the office, now seemed unmistakable.

“I don't have fancy videos and laser pointers,” Lydia began, gazing across the roomful of faces. “But what I do have is a sense of tradition and a love for the things that are natural, beautiful, and irreplaceable in our community.” She gestured toward Martha's area of the room. “These people are a living treasure, and I speak tonight on their behalf.

“As all of you know, there is a bill being prepared in the Georgia legislature, a bill that would preserve this area against future development. Currently, the Amberleen Historical Society is working with members of the legislature to provide the information they need to establish the historic value of these communities. We just need a little more time to complete this process. We request that this board delay action on this matter until the full environmental and historic risk can be assessed.”

“Thank you for your input, Lydia,” Bowden said. “I know I speak for the entire panel when I say that we hold you and your family's name in the highest respect and appreciation.”

Lydia turned to face the commissioners. “Look to your consciences. Our ancestors may have been cruel, but let's get it right this time. We can give more people access to this natural and historic resource, but let's respect human rights. Let's keep Shell Heap beautiful.”

There was scattered applause, mostly on Martha's side of the room.

Astrid Humphries stood up. “If there's crime on Shell Heap, as you claim, let's fix that,” she said. “Put a police precinct on Shell Heap, if you have to. But to just steal our land, that has been in our families since slavery—”

Bowden cut in. “No one's going to steal anybody's land, Astrid. Every resident will get fair compensation for their property. We need to follow the rules for public—”

“It's our heritage and way of life that's at stake and you can't put a price on that,” Astrid said. “If you sell our land, it will be like selling our ancestors all over again.”

Bowden exhaled into the microphone, producing a sound like a blast furnace. “Astrid, there's no reason to play on those kinds of emotions. The issue here isn't race; it's about the economic future of this county.”

A procession of other speakers followed Astrid, most registering complaints about the crime surge or the county's economic stagnation. Forty-five minutes later, they reached the end of the stack of speaker slips. “Is there anyone else present who would care to comment on this matter?” Bowden asked wearily.

The young man with the sunglasses and dreadlocks stepped away from the wall and headed to the podium. “Please state your full name, and affiliation,” Bowden said.

“My name is immaterial,” the youth said. But Martha could hear a name being whispered by the people seated around her—Jarred? Jamal?

The young man took off his sunglasses. His eyes were large, dark, and intense. “On behalf of my associates and the rightful owners of the Shell Heap tract, I speak here in protest against this criminal seizure of private property. This so-called ‘evidence' of drug activity is a hoax. The artifacts were planted, and later discovered, as part of an effort to justify an immoral and mendacious landgrab.” He turned toward the commissioners, pointing toward each one of them with a slow sweep of his hand. “Let the public record show that we charge this board of commissioners, and the sheriff of Amberleen County, with criminal conspiracy.”

The audience gasped. “Throw him out!” someone yelled, followed by an “Amen!”

“This will be a civil proceeding,” Bowden said, slamming his gavel. “We want to be sure that all voices are heard, but this kind of inflammatory outburst will not be tolerated.”

“Arrest them, Sheriff,” said a voice from the far side of the room.

Bowden looked toward the secretary. “If all public comment has been heard, the board will entertain motions.”

Commissioner Eunice Shelby, the only woman on the panel, spoke first. “I hereby move that this panel delay action on the Shell Heap tract until a full assessment of its historical value can be completed, in cooperation with the state agencies.”

The room fell silent, except for the sound of the crickets outside and the faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead.

“Motion has failed to receive a second, and therefore will not be considered,” Bowden said. The islanders surrounding Martha hissed and muttered.

Oglesby spoke next. “Due to the blighted nature of this area, I move that this board, acting under Georgia's eminent domain law, Title Twenty-two, condemn the Shell Heap tract.”

“The board has heard a motion that the Shell Heap tract be condemned,” Bowden said. “All in favor—”

Lydia stood up. “Condemned.
Condemned?
”

“Lydia, you're out of turn,” Wallace said.

Lydia strode toward the dais. “Wallace, you used to play in my orchards when you were knee-high to a gnat, and I'll be damned if you're going to tell me now when I'm out of turn. What's going on here is a social injustice, and we're not going to take it lying down.”

“All in favor?” Bowden repeated.

Five men voted “aye,” barely audible amid the rising clamor in the room. Martha recorded the vote in her notepad.

“All opposed?”

Shelby cast the sole dissenting vote.

“The motion is passed,” Bowden said. “The Shell Heap tract is hereby condemned, and ownership is automatically transferred to Amberleen County.”

Lydia pointed her finger at the commission chairman. “Wallace Bowden, I'm going to appeal this action. We're going to fight this decision all the way to the Supreme Court.”

“Keep Japan out of Amberleen!” a voice shouted from somewhere in the room.

“Keep Atlanta out of Amber—”

The comments were cut off by the sound of a piercing scream, then a clatter of chairs, a shout of “Look out!” Martha scrambled out of her chair and turned. The room was now in chaos, alive with motion, people shouting and ducking, chairs falling over.

“A bat! There's a bat in here!” someone yelled.

A tiny, quicksilver shadow darted overhead and spun around the light fixture, then circled the room and swooped over the flags. Martha heard a faint whir of wings as the shadow passed near her.

“This meeting is hereby adjourned!” Bowden shouted, ignored amid the murmurs and gasps. Martha caught a glimpse of a deputy escorting the Japanese executive through a side door. The attorney swung a fistful of manila folders at the winged blur, spilling documents. Bowden banged his gavel. More chairs tipped over and clattered to the floor. The heavyset woman near Martha, the woman in the peacock colors, scrunched down and held her flabby purse overhead like a shield.

In the midst of the furor, Martha noticed that the old man with the cane was still seated. She noticed the box under his chair had shifted slightly, and something leaned against it—
a lid
? He had his fingers laced over his cane, and a gold tooth glinted at the center of a crooked smile.

A few minutes past midnight, Martha lay in bed, once again tossing, sleepless, her thoughts agitated by the events at the commission meeting.

The full moon cast a skein of shadows across the water-stained wallpaper. The shadows suggested eerie faces, or maybe scenes of mayhem.

Martha turned on her bedside lamp, threw off her covers, and got out of bed. She started a pot of water on the hotplate for decaf tea and went to the window. The tide was up, and the marsh grass swayed in the moonlight. She thought of Lady Albertha.
The grass, it whispers.

In the full moon she could make out the smudge of the rickety wooden pier, just where the luminescent river curved away. And beyond that, something else, something that caused her gut to tighten. The orange lights. They floated above the shoreline again, like fireflies. But too large, too steady to be insects. They flickered.

Martha's thoughts again drifted back to the commission meeting, to the things Sheriff Morris had said about the island. Drug traffic. Small motorboats. She squinted at the orbs. They moved together now, advanced as a group. She pressed her nose against the screen, watched the orange cinders disappear into the thickets of cordgrass.

She glanced at her watch. Seventeen past midnight
.
She opened the spiral notebook on the dining table and made an entry in a log she had titled “Curious Incidents Around Amberleen.” She read back over her previous entries:

Monday, July 15, 11:47
P.M.:
First orange lights at riverside, observed from window.

Tuesday, July 16, 12:15
P.M.:
Bug-eyed thing (“Boo Hag?”) observed in limbs of tree on Shell Heap Island.

12:30
P.M.:
Met blind woman, Lady Albertha, on Shell Heap Island: “Devil on a butterfly's wing.” A warning? A prophecy?

Thursday, July 18, 12:11
A.M.
: Orange lights again. Clearer, moving together down the river.

And what about Albertha's knowledge of her illness? How could she know?
Don't accept your perceptions at face value,
Vince had instructed her.
Test your reality
.

I will,
Martha promised.
Starting tomorrow, I will.

The following morning, Martha awakened to the clatter of seabirds, a noisy mob not far from her window. She blinked her eyes in the dim morning light and turned to look at the bedside clock. Seven-twenty, ten minutes before the alarm would sound. She lifted her head and noticed a dark blotch on her pillow in the shape of Australia. Night drool. Another delightful side effect of her drug regimen
.

Martha got out of bed and slipped into her kimono, feeling haggard, and headed for the shower. Something small bolted out of the shadows in the hallway and shot between her legs. It was a kitten, one of the ragtag strays that Mrs. Pritchett allowed to hang around the place.

The kitten was carrying something in its mouth, which it dropped onto the floor and batted with a paw, sending it skittering down the hallway. The dark object hit a baseboard, ricocheted, and disappeared underneath the wrought-iron legs of an antique sewing machine.

Martha paused to watch, amused. The animal crouched, ears bent backward, growling, stalking its prey. The kitten swiped at the thing, then backflipped away. Martha walked to the sewing machine and bent down to get a better look. In the shadow below the table, the thing looked brown and irregular. Maybe a piece of bark or a dried cat turd.

She got piece of toilet paper from the bathroom, picked up the object, took a closer look, and froze. A familiar sensation was rising up inside her, a clammy seizure of doubt. The thing was hard and leathery, perhaps a fossil of some kind. For a brief second she thought it might be a mummified frog. But there was something on the end of it that shouldn't be there. A fingernail.

She gasped, held the side of the sewing table to steady herself, and looked away. She scanned the marbled wallpaper, the wainscoting of the hall, a framed picture of flowers in a vase. She counted slowly to five.
It can't be it can't be
…

She closed the tissue over it and staggered back into the room, chest starting to spasm. She opened a cabinet door, pulled out an orange plastic bowl, and dropped the object into it. It wobbled against the plastic, but she didn't allow herself to look again. She didn't want to know yet, didn't want to ruin her day with a vision of something that probably wasn't really there. She covered the rim of the bowl with her heaviest textbook,
Principles of Investigative Journalism.

“Guess what—they had your kind of tea down at Vernette's.” Stacey stood over a carton of Styrofoam drinking cups, emptying paper sugar packets into each one. “Herbal chamomile, right?”

“Yes, that's it. Thank you.” Martha took the warm white cup, paper tea label hanging from the side.

“Exactly your kind. Can you believe it?”

“What do I owe you?”

“Not a thing…Mrs. Dussault picked up the tab for our morning coffee. One of the little perks around here. Thought I'd get your tea, since you don't like coffee. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. It's really thoughtful.”

“Don't mind it. Just part of being on the team.” Stacey smiled. Her plastic earrings swung like tiny billiard balls. “Hey, I don't know if anyone told you, but some of us get together on Friday nights over at the Buccaneer. Us and people from the
Gazette,
we just get together and shoot the bull. You oughta come. Starts at six o'clock.”

Martha managed a smile. “I'll think about it.”

At her desk, Martha put on her headphones and resumed her transcription, determined to concentrate on her work, to stay competent, to shut out what she thought she had seen that morning at the Pritchett House, what it might imply.
You'll just have to deal with it later. Test your reality.

On the tape, a woman named Sister Patience Peace was saying something about funeral customs. “Wen fewnul pruhcession gits tuh grabeyahd,” the woman said, “dey stops. I ain know wy but dey stops at duh gate, and dey ax leab to com in.”
They stop at the gate and they ask,
Martha typed, and stopped. They ask who to come in? Leab? No…they ask
leave
to come in
….The phone on her desk buzzed. Martha took off her headphones and answered. When she heard the voice on the other end of the line, warmth spread through her chest.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Vince asked. “I thought you were going to call me on Tuesday—”

The call had slipped her mind. She wondered if that was a good sign. “I'm sorry. Everything's fine. I was out on the island one day, and then the next day I got sent to look up some public records. They're keeping me busy.”

“Sounds like it. How's the job?”

“I like it. My co-workers are nice, and the project is fascinating.”

“Good. Are you having any symptoms?”

Martha paused, thought of the strange lights she'd seen from her window, the weird thing she'd found in the hall. But Lenny had been silent for weeks. That was the important thing, wasn't it?

“No, my thoughts are clear.”

“Are you sure?”

Martha sensed a presence in the doorway, glanced up. Lydia was there, nearly filling the height of the door frame.

“Vince, I better go now.”

“Let's talk again next Monday—sooner if you want.”

“Okay.”

“I'm proud of you, Martha.”

She hung up the phone, blinked away the wetness in her eyes, and turned toward Lydia. “I'm sorry, that was a call from Atlanta. It was important.”

“It's all right, but please take a break now,” Lydia said. “I'd like to see you privately.”

Lydia's office was larger than the others, with one wall taken almost entirely by a large picture window with a view of Main Street. Lydia leaned back in her high-back leather chair and gazed across her desk at Martha. “As I'm sure you've gathered, last night's decision by the County Commission dealt us a major setback.”

Martha nodded. “Is there any other way to stop the development?”

“I think we have a few cards left to play. But in the meantime, I'd like to see what else we can pull together for our side.” Lydia lifted a sheet of paper from her cluttered desk. “It says here on your résumé that you took an investigative journalism class….”

“Yes. Two of them—an intro class and the advanced one.”

“And then there was your internship at
The Marietta Tribune
. Did you cover any public meetings?”

“Yes.” Martha felt a spark of excitement. “I covered the water board and the hospital board.”

“Good.” Lydia put down the résumé and folded her arms, a hint of mischief in her face. “Did you learn anything about investigating public officials?”

Martha glanced around the room. One wall bore plaques of appreciation, inscribed to Lydia, for various public services. Another was hung with a framed, decorative quilt. “We didn't do any actual investigations,” Martha said. “Just class exercises.”

“Well, public information is free, right? And you know more about this than the rest of us.”

Martha shrugged.

“I've got a special project for you.” Lydia plopped down a stack of dog-eared manila folders, plump with documents.

“The folders have the names of the commissioners, and also all documents—zoning applications and so forth—that we've collected related to Tidewater and the Hoshima Corporation. I'd like you to go down to the courthouse and see if you can find out if any of our commissioners have any past connection to that company. Or for that matter, this investment group.”

Lydia fished out a sheet of paper from one of the folders and handed it to Martha. “Some outfit called Heron. I can't seem to find out a thing about them myself.”

Martha looked at the sheet. It was beige letterhead, quality stock. At the top was printed
Heron Group, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,
with a drawing of the bird incorporated into the logo.

“Whoever they are, they're investing a boatload of money for this project. Of course, they're going to make a fortune if the deal goes through.”

Lydia turned to look out a side window. She fixed her eyes on some point in the distance. “There's a lot that isn't aboveboard about this whole deal. It's a long shot, but maybe we can dig up something to slow them down, buy us a little more time.” She looked at Martha again. “Think you can handle that assignment?”

Martha took the pile of documents, felt their heft. She tried to hide the sense of doubt nagging from within, the doubt that had pervaded her every waking moment since last November. “I can give it a try. I think I know how to get started, anyway. I could request their financial disclosure statements.”

Lydia smiled. “Good idea. Take the rest of the afternoon—take as much time as you need. At this point, we've got nothing to lose by trying. Maybe you'll turn up a trump card.”

The Amberleen Courthouse was situated on a grassy lot near the center of Chatham Street, three blocks back from the main business district. Martha ascended a short set of concrete steps, entered the foyer, and scanned the directory. Court records, second floor.

The records office clerk, a middle-aged woman wearing glasses on a beaded chain, handed Martha a form for requesting access to the archives. As Martha sat down to complete the form, the door to the hallway opened and a large man poked his head through. Sheriff Morris, from the commission meeting. He held a folded newspaper in one hand, a pencil in the other.

“Say, anybody in here know an eight-letter word for—” He noticed Martha sitting in the chair and extended a large hand. “Oh, hello there. I'm Aubrey Morris.”

Martha stood and Morris took her hand, enfolding it completely.

“I'm Martha Covington.”

Morris opened the door wider. “You look familiar.”

“Do I?”

“Didn't I see you last night at the county meeting?”

Martha remembered the wink and managed a smile. “Yes, I was there. I'm new in town. I'm working here just for the summer, helping out at the Historical Society.”

“Good, good. Welcome to Amberleen, Martha Covington.” He smiled, showing a mouthful of large teeth. “I think you'll find we really do have a friendly community, once you get to know us.”

“Like the sign says.”

“Beg pardon?”

“That sign, by the river—”

“Oh yeah,
that
sign. Once you live in a place long enough, you forget about your own town slogan.
Spacious Oaks, Friendly Folks.
That's us, all right. Nice to meet you, Martha. Hey, my office is right down the corridor. Next time you're in here, why don't you stop by for a chat?”

“Okay, I will.” Martha felt herself blushing again. Morris started to pull his broad frame back out of the doorway, then paused.

“Almost forgot the reason I came in. I'm kinda stumped here. Anybody here know an eight-letter word for ‘someone who drills'?”

The clerks looked at one another and pondered.

“Dentist?” offered a woman sitting behind a desk.

“Nah. Already tried that. Not enough letters.”

“Carpenter?” said another clerk.

Morris squinted at the paper. “Nope. One letter too many.”

Martha turned toward the sheriff. “How about sergeant?”

Morris tapped his pencil eraser against the paper, lips moving silently. “Someone who drills.
Sergeant.
Perfect. Hey, you're pretty good, you know that?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“I love word games. Don't you?”

Morris's smile reminded Martha of a game she'd owned as a child called “Crocodile Dentist.” The door swung shut, and Martha watched his silhouette recede behind the beveled glass.

“That Sheriff Morris is a big ol' sweetie.” The records clerk held open a hinged segment of the counter. “Follow me, I'll show you where the public documents are kept.”

The late afternoon sun glinted through the dark, mossy branches of the live oaks that lined the narrow blacktop of Pearl Street. Martha's satchel was heavier now, full of photocopies of every business transaction she could find with a commissioner's name on it. None of it had looked revealing at first glance, but at least she had generated plenty of material to scour through.

She felt better now, buoyed by a sense of accomplishment, and ready to deal with the reality, or unreality, of what she'd found that morning at the Pritchett House. After all, maybe there was a reasonable explanation for it. Maybe what she thought she saw had been nothing more than a trick of the light. Or somebody's leftover Halloween prank.
Be logical, Martha
, Vince had advised her so many times.
Test your reality.

Eileen Pritchett knelt in a dirt patch at one end of the porch, straw hat bobbing slightly. “Hello, Mrs. Pritchett,” Martha said.

Eileen raised her head above the azaleas. “Be sure to wipe your feet 'fore you go in. There's loose dirt on the walk.”

“Will do.”

She had dinner without ceremony in her room—cold baked beans from a can, two slices of white bread. On the counter below the window, the orange bowl was still covered.
You don't have to look again. You could just dump it in the trash.

She decided to delay action. She took her work downstairs to the empty parlor, arranged the stacks of photocopies on the occasional table, and began to work her way through them, marking items of interest with a yellow highlighter, looking for connections. She lost herself in the work, letting herself forget about the mystery upstairs.

When darkness and quiet had settled around the house like an old quilt, Martha put away her work.
No use postponing the inevitable.
She went up to her room and closed the door. She slid a cardboard box with plastic handles from the armoire, placed it on the bed, and began to rummage through the items inside—her David Bowie and Pink Floyd albums, an old stapler, a box of pushpins, and finally, the object she was looking for—a photographer's magnifying loupe, souvenir of her internship at
The Marietta Tribune
.