The Key

Carly Moore was 35
, l
ived alone
,
and led a very ordinary life
working at her local radio station in Beacon
G
lade
as a newsreader
.

Then she met a
mysterious
stranger
, Ian Bradley,
who gave her a gift that would change her life and the lives of others forever.

What seemed like an ordinary CD disk would turn out to give Carly the power to change the past through her dreams.

Carly Moore is the “Dream Traveler
In
Time”.

..
ooOoo
..

Whilst it is not necessary to read the first book in the series before this book, you may wish to do so for
background and
completeness. You can catch
up on the full story
below:

The Gift: Dream Traveler
In
Time (Episode 1)

“News just in; police have confirmed that they have found the remains of Tracey Dawn Jackson who went missing back in 1979. Tracey vanished after leaving her local library in Harvest Spring Junction and was never seen again. No witnesses came forward and the case has remained open ever since.”

Carly stared at the screen, as she watched the newscaster fiddling with his earpiece. He continued. “I’ve just been told that the police are trying to trace the owner of a key found close to the body. Viewers can find an image of the key on the Crime Stoppers website. Police are also appealing for locksmith’s to contact them if they know where the key might have been used.”

Carly was eager to learn everything she could about the girl she had just seen in the news broadcast.

Tracey Dawn Jackson was dead
;
that was a fact that Carly could not change. Ian Bradley
had told her
, in no uncertain terms, that she could never prevent someone from dying
when she time-traveled
. However, she could perhaps find a way to bring Tracey’s killer to justice.

Carly hurried into her bedroom and opened the closet door.

Where did I put those old
note
pads
, Carly puzzled as she rummaged through the
large
cardboard box on the floor of the closet.
The box had been there for ages. She never had found the time to put things where they belonged, even though she had moved into her flat over 5 years ago.

Lifting the
sagging
box onto
her
bed, she
prized open the lid,
blew the dust from the mounds of files and papers,
then coughed and
sneezed
violently
as the dust
penetrated
deeply into her mouth and nose
.

“I really must clean out this closet,” she
berated
herself out loud as she sneezed once again. Carly was the first to admit that she was no domestic goddess
;
it was her mess and thankfully no one got to see it except her.
N
evertheless, she knew that a good clean out was long overdue
, but for now there were more important things
that needed to be done
.

Retrieving two thick
note
pads from the cardboard box, Carly headed back to the living room, curled up on to the sofa and began making notes.

It was important to get down as many details as possible before anything could distract her. The
n
she could watch future bulletins for updates on the story.
She also need
ed
to
work out a plan of action
.

“Name… Tracey Dawn Jackson.
Place…
Harvest Spring Junction
.
”
Carly began recalling out loud everything she could remember from the broadcast
as she jotted it down
.

Then she made a note about the key that had been found near the body.

CHECK CRIME
STOPPERS WEBSITE, she wrote in capital letters. She’d find a picture of the key there and probably a good deal more information too.

There was a
kind
of excite
ment
tinged with guilt
building up in Carly as she began on her first real project of solving a crime. She’d always loved those fictional murder mysteries and here she was embarking
on a real life murder case with a real victim.

If I’m going to venture into this
, she thought,
I’m going to be meticulous and do the best that I can
…
a
s long as I don’
t
have to
start wearing tweed twin-
sets, brogues and a silly hat like Miss Marple
of course
.

As she vividly pictured the elderly sleuth, an inane grin spread across Carly’s face
. It didn’t last long, though. T
hat
vacuous
look soon
turned
to
one of
a drooling child as she looked across the room and saw her favorite
commercial on
the
TV
. She never could resist the
sight of
bacon cooking in a hot
frying
pan.
Sizzling fat and grease spraying everywhere.
She could even smell it cooking!

“
That’s it!
Can’t solve a crime on an empty stomach,” Carly told herself as she
steered herself towards
the refrigerator
, salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs
.
Thirty five year old women should
n’t
act like this
, she giggled to herself.

Carly’s heart sank! The refrigerator yielded nothing but
a
past-its-sell-by-date
tomato, a
n
empty
jar
of mayonnaise and a small piece of
moldy
cheese.
Damn
!
The meager contents served as proof that she was as
conscientious
about grocery shopping as she was about housework.
Everything got assigned to
the
garbage bin.

Well, toast it is then
,
Carly
snarled
as she let out a heavy sigh of disappointment.

Soon she was back on the sofa; toast in one hand pen in the other. In no time at all the page was full
of things to do,
and she was turning over a new leaf.

Carly wasn’t naive enough to think that she could just
put on her
CD,
drop
off to sleep, then catch a murderer red handed. She’d have to use the details she knew for certain and do her best to
get to the right place
,
at the right time. If she did spot the murderer
,
she’d have to find a foolproof way to lead the police to him or her. “Hey Mr.
Policeman
, I
just travelled back in time in a dream and solved a murder
for you
,” was clearly not a credible option.

The rest of the day was spent on the internet,
re
searching the case of Tracey Dawn Jackson’s disappearance.
This sort of work cam
e easy to Carly
; after all, she researched news stories for a living. She had access to many sources of information that were not available to the average Joe or Jane
Bloggs
, and she therefore had the ability to wade through an abundance of useful information documented shortly after Tracey’s disappearance.

Photographs of Tracey’s home, family, friends, college, and the library where she went missing, all helped to build up a picture in Carly’s mind. She needed to feel as though she knew the people and places she was going to visit, before she embarked on her journey.

Carly noted that
Tracey’s family had continued appealing for information over the years, and every year on the anniversary of her disappearance they would make a fresh appeal. Initially it was ‘hot news’ and everyone wanted a piece of it, so there were countless TV, radio, and magazine interviews. But as time passed by, Tracey became old news, and the family found the media had lost interest.

By early evening
she figured there was
enough information to get started. With any luck
,
by morning she would be a step closer to
finding the killer and
helping bring closure to the Jackson family
.
Mister or Missus Murderer pro
bably thought they had gotten away with it after all this time,
but they
are
wrong
, Carly nodded to herself.
I’ll get
ya
.