A Will to Survive (7 page)

“Hi there. Kate Mulhare, Channel Eight news,” she said. “I caught the flash on the emergency band and came right over. More trouble, huh? Tell me, is there a jinx on this place?”

“Certainly not!” Tanya said stiffly. “I must ask—”

“A skunk inside the museum,” Mulhare said. “Furniture moving around mysteriously. And wasn't there a report of prowlers early this morning? When you add to that the eccentric reputation of Walter Parent—”

“—You get nothing that makes a news story,” Tanya said firmly.

One of the camera crew came over and fastened a tiny mike to the collar of Mulhare's blouse. He turned to Frank and said, “Would you mind moving? You're in the frame.”

“I'm sorry, you'll have to leave,” Tanya said to the cameraman. Her face reddened.

“A fire at an important institution like this is breaking news,” Mulhare insisted. “Do you want half a million viewers to watch you try to kick us out?”

A firefighter with pairs of silver bars on the collar of his shirt walked up to Tanya. “We'll be on our way,” he said. “I'd keep an eye out if I were you. Somebody around here has a nasty sense of humor. The chief will have to decide if we investigate further.”

Mulhare gestured to her camera operator, then said, “A nasty sense of humor? What do you mean by that, Captain?”

The fire captain glanced at Tanya, then at the camera, before answering. “Somebody lit a smudge pot inside the building,” he said. “Maybe it was meant as a prank, but it could have led to a very serious situation. The person who did it was literally playing with fire.”

He nodded to Tanya and walked to the fire truck.

“Look, Ms. Mulhare,” Tanya began. Frank heard a note of desperation in her voice.

“Please, call me Kate,” the newscaster said with a sugary smile.

“Kate,” Tanya said through clenched teeth. “We are very, very busy right now. It is already past opening time. If I agree to an interview—say, tomorrow morning—will you please go now and leave us to our duties?”

The sugar in the smile dissolved into triumph. “Why, sure, Tanya,” Mulhare said. “Eleven o'clock okay? That'll give us plenty of time to put the story together before we air it.”

The camera crew packed up their equipment. The van and the red sports car drove off. Tanya watched them go, then wordlessly went into the building.

Joe joined Frank and Callie. “What was all that?” he asked.

Frank filled him in. Then he said, “We have to find out where that smudge pot came from.”

Joe gave him a smug look. “How about the storage shed near the old apple orchard?”

“Is that a wild guess?” Frank asked.

“Last week there were half a dozen of them in the shed,” Joe replied. “Sal just told me. He and Rahsaan noticed them. They were looking for baling wire to repair a break in a fence.
And
Sal says they mentioned seeing the smudge pots that night at dinner.”

“Hey, that's right!” Callie exclaimed. “I remember!”

Frank felt his spirits sink. He had hoped that discovering the source of the smudge pot would narrow the list of suspects. But it was no help. All the interns had heard about the smudge pots in the shed. And of course Carl, the caretaker,
must
have known about them. Who did that leave? Only Bruce and Tanya, Frank thought glumly, and they could easily have known about them, too.

Joe broke into Frank's thoughts. “I'll go look around the shed right now. If that is where the smudge pot came from, the culprit may have left some clues.”

“I think we should try to find out where everybody was right before the smudge pot went off,” Callie said. “If two or three people were together, none of them could have lit it, right? How about I ask around?”

“Good idea,” Frank said. “And I'll try to track down that skunk scent. I hope Tanya doesn't mind my using her phone.”

Callie shook her head. “You saw the state Tanya was in after dealing with that TV reporter. I doubt if she'd mind
anything
that might get her out of this mess.”

• • •

Tanya put Frank at a table in her office with a telephone and two volumes of Yellow Pages. He started calling each of the companies listed under “Novelties.” The first one offered to imprint his
name and message on ballpoint pens. The second specialized in helium-filled party balloons. A woman at the third company didn't sell skunk scent, but for a very reasonable price she could have a picture of a skunk embroidered on baseball caps.

Frank dialed the next number on his list and explained what he was after.

“Skunks?” the man on the other end repeated. “How about stink bombs? Those I have. First class, too. They'll clear everybody out of a room in ten seconds flat.”

“How do they work?” Frank asked.

“They're little balls of thin glass,” the man explained. “You throw one on the floor and get away fast.”

“Do they smell like skunk?” Frank pursued.

“They stink, that's all I know,” the man said. “Really, really bad. I'm talking sickening. What is it with skunks, anyway? You're the second customer this week who wants skunks.”

Frank sat up straighter. “Oh, that must have been my sister, Pamela, who called before,” he said.

“Nope, it was a man,” the dealer said, taking the bait. “I told him to leave his number and I'd see what I could do. No dice. He hung up on me.”

Frank reached the end of the listings. No shop in either directory had skunk scent. One used to carry it but stopped because it didn't sell well.

“Around here, we smell skunk often enough just driving around,” the shop's owner told him. “You
might try New York City. People there probably think the smell of skunk is exotic.”

Good advice, Frank thought. He went to the bookcase for the Manhattan Yellow Pages. While he was thumbing through it, the phone rang. Tanya answered. After a minute or two of conversation, she waved Frank over and switched to the speaker phone.

“ . . . your problems,” a deep voice was saying. “I sympathize. But my offer won't last forever. It can't. From what I hear, the Shorewood Nature Center won't last forever, either. What you decide in the next few days will be critical to its survival.”

“We have a splendid reputation,” Tanya said proudly. “We're known throughout the East.”

“Of course,” the man said. “That's why I want to work with you. I want to help you, give you the resources you need to develop properly. My plan is best for Shorewood. I urge you, accept it now, while you still can. Otherwise, I take no responsibility for what happens. The center may be damaged beyond repair.”

Tanya brought the call to an end. For a moment she leaned her head against her hand, with the palm shading her eyes. Then she sat up straight and took a deep breath.

Looking at Frank, she asked, “What impression do you have from what you just heard?”

“In one word? Menace,” Frank replied.

“I see we agree,” Tanya said. “That is some small comfort.”

“Who was that?” Frank asked her.

Tanya picked up her pen and doodled on her desk pad. “A man named Douglas Cleland,” she told him.

Frank thought he recognized the name. “The big developer?”

“Exactly,” Tanya said with a nod. “The project he is most interested in at this moment is a new
gated community of very expensive waterfront homes . . . to be built on the bay frontage of the Shorewood Nature Center.”

Frank snapped his fingers. “You got a call about this the day we arrived. From somebody named Roger.”

“That was Roger Mainwaring, the attorney for Shorewood,” Tanya said. “Cleland approached him first. When we rejected his offer, he began calling me. The conversation you just heard is typical.”

Puzzled, Frank said, “I don't get it. Why would the center sell its waterfront? And even if you wanted to, isn't there anything in Parent's will to stop you?”

“No. The trustees have the power to dispose of assets as they see fit,” Tanya told him. “As for why, that is all too simple. Shorewood badly needs money. The land Cleland wants to buy is enormously valuable.”

“Didn't you say that giving up that land would harm the center's program?” Frank asked.

“Yes, very much,” Tanya said. She rotated her chair to face the window. “But if the board has to choose between selling the waterfront and closing the center . . .”

Frank was shocked. “Is the situation really
that
bad?”

Tanya turned back and met his eyes. “Doug Cleland is right,” she said. “The choices we make in the next week or ten days will determine if
Shorewood survives. And if this harassment is not stopped at once, we may not even have a choice.”

Frank's eyes widened. What Tanya was saying fit perfectly with the deadline Walter Parent had given in his letter. But what was the connection?

“Could Cleland somehow be behind this harassment?” Frank asked. “He may think the more trouble the center is in, the more likely you'll be forced to accept his offer.”

“The idea occurred to me,” Tanya said. She sounded tired. “So I asked a couple of people who've dealt with him. They both say he will gladly take advantage of our problems, but that he is much too concerned about his reputation to get involved in anything shady.”

“Hmm.” Frank was not convinced. He made a mental note to look into the Cleland angle. For now, however, he was nagged by a feeling that he had let some important fact slip by. What was it, though? Frowning, he played back the past few minutes in his mind.

“The center's lawyer,” he began.

“Roger?” Tanya said. “Yes, what about him?”

“Did you say his name is Mainwaring?” Frank continued. “Any relation to Jack?”

“Why, yes, of course,” Tanya replied, sounding surprised. “He is Jack's father.”

“That's quite a coincidence,” Frank observed.

“Not at all,” Tanya said. “We just inaugurated the internship program this year. There hasn't been time for word about it to spread very far. So
naturally most of our interns have some prior connection to Shorewood.”

“The others, too, you mean?” Frank asked. “Wendy?”

“Her mother was one of Walter Parent's doctors,” Tanya said.

“What about Rahsaan?” Frank continued.

Tanya nodded. “He was encouraged to apply by his biology teacher, who has been helping us design our school outreach program.”

“And Joe and I uncovered Sal's connection. So the only person here who
doesn't
have a link to Parent or the center is Callie,” Frank concluded.

“I suppose you're right,” Tanya said. “I never thought of it quite that way. But what difference does it make?”

Frank shook his head. “It makes it a lot harder to figure out the prankster's motive. What if one of the interns is trying to wreck the center? The reason may go deep into the past . . . and not even his or her own past!”

Frank asked Tanya for a list of the trustees. Then he went down the list with her, asking questions about each of the names. He listened for something—anything—that might be a clue to a grudge against the center. Nothing struck him. Finally he went off to look for Joe and Callie.

They were in the dining room having coffee and freshly baked doughnuts. Frank snagged a doughnut off Joe's plate on his way to the coffee urn.

When he returned, Joe said, “So, a smudge pot is
missing from the storage shed. From the marks on the floor, all of them were shifted recently. I'd say someone used the others to top off the tank on the one that had the most oil.”

“No lock on the shed?” Frank mumbled, through a mouthful of doughnut.

Joe shook his head. “There's a hasp, but no padlock. Just a piece of wood stuck through it to keep the door from swinging open. I asked Carl about it. He told me the area is off-limits to the public, and nothing in the shed is worth stealing. So it's easier to leave it unlocked. Moral? A five-year-old could have made off with that smudge pot.”

Callie leaned forward. “Okay,” she said. “But what about getting it here? You wouldn't want anyone to see you. And it's too big to tuck under your shirt.”

Frank and Joe looked at each other. “Darkness,” Joe said.

“Right,” Frank said. “But you'd have to leave it somewhere between last night and this morning.”

Frank finished his coffee and added, “How 'bout we go hunting for oil stains?”

As they started up the stairs, they met Bruce coming down. He gave them a steely look.

“Don't you three have anything to do?” he demanded. “I know we had a fire, but we can't allow that to throw off our whole schedule.”

“Tanya asked us to work on a new project,” Callie said. “We're gathering notes for a history of Shorewood.
Can I talk to you sometime today? I need to ask a bunch of questions about Mr. Parent.”

Bruce glanced at his watch. “I can spare you a quarter hour. Be in my office in five minutes.”

“Thanks,” Callie started to say, but Bruce was already disappearing through the dining-room door.

“Well!” Callie gave a short laugh. “I'd better grab that guy while I have the chance. You'll have to search for oil stains without me. Oh—don't forget to check the service stairs. There's a door to them at the back of the entrance hall.”

“Near where the smudge pot was?” Joe asked.

A startled look crossed Callie's face. “I didn't think of that,” she said.
“Very
near!”

“Let's try there first,” Frank suggested.

They climbed together to the main floor. Callie pointed out the service door, then went to her appointment with Bruce.

Frank looked around. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. Carl had tried to wash the wall and ceiling, but it was easy to see where the smudge pot had been. The door to the service stairs was just a few feet away, set into the paneling.