Vanished (14 page)

“We'll do our best to oblige you,” Michael said as Molly fled first into the corridor, then out of the building.

They paused on the steps, looking up and down Walnut Grove Street, catching their breath. As maddening as the inspector was, he was right. She and Michael
were
caught between a rock and a hard place—how to prove Dylan's innocence while not getting hurt themselves.

Daisy hadn't been trying to prove Dylan's innocence, but she'd gotten hurt anyway.

At the sound of “Move Along,” Michael pulled out his phone. “Dylan, how's… What? Yes, yes, of course, we'll be right there.”

Molly almost asked, “What is it now?” but she didn't want to sound like Paddington.

“Dylan says Naomi has something to show us.” Michael's large, warm, reassuring hand in the small of her back urged her down the street and toward the bicycle shop.

Within moments, Molly and Michael were walking up the stairs and into the living room of the Stewarts' small flat. The room was shabby but tidy, Molly noted, decorated with posters of such masterworks as
The Scream
and
The Kiss.
Naomi huddled on the couch, a cup and saucer rattling between her trembling hands.

Molly sat down beside her and placed a steadying hand on her forearm. “What's happened, Naomi?”

“Someone tried the doors and windows of the shop in the wee hours this morning. And I swear a man followed us when we ran up to Coffey's for milk and bacon.” Naomi's eyes darted around the room, the smudged makeup above them as dark as the circles below.

“There are loads of folk in town,” Dylan told her. “Maybe some drunk was trying the doors. How're you sure there was a bloke?”

“I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck,” Naomi insisted. “Every time I looked 'round, someone ran into a shop or an alley.”

“But why?” asked Dylan.

“Gold,” Michael stated.

Molly said the same thing in more words. “Everyone
on the planet knows that Willie found gold and thinks more is free for the taking, finders keepers.”

“Yeah. It's all about money,” Naomi said. “I made that plain enough myself, didn't I, Dylan?” She crashed the cup and saucer down on a nearby table, and picked up a spiral notebook. “I don't know if there's anything here that will help, but you're welcome to it. Take it to the police. Do whatever needs doing. Daisy Coffey was murdered because she was connected to Willie and I don't want to be next.”

Molly remembered seeing Naomi drawing in the churchyard. She also remembered the loose sheets of paper lying on the desk in Willie's flat. As Michael sat down and picked up the book, Molly leaned in closer. Yes, Naomi's notebook held the same kind of paper—thick, quality leaves with a high rag content.

Slowly, he turned the pages, revealing sketches of tomb stones, the church, the Crowe mausoleum, the lighthouse and the black-and-white front of Betsy Sewell's Curio Shop. Two pages showed early drafts of the map of Blackpool, this time with expertly rendered caricatures of some of its citizens. Paddington looked like a teddy bear with a moustache, Fotherby like a badger, Betsy herself like a cat crossed with a sphinx. And there was Alice Coffey, a dried-up bat in a witch's hat.

“You've got some skill with a pencil,” Molly said.

“The map you did for Betsy is quite nice,” added Michael.

“Map?” Dylan asked from behind the couch.

“I did a map of the town,” Naomi explained. “Temperance, she wanted none of it. Willie thought I did good work. He took it to Betsy and she bought it, made copies to sell.”

Dylan nodded. “Oh. Well. That's good. If you'd told me about it, I'd have found some way to help.”

“Right,” Naomi said, but her voice held more contriteness than sarcasm.

If all this ever blew over, Molly started, and quickly corrected her thought to
when
it all blew over, she'd bypass Temperance and use her connections to set Naomi up with a dealer in Newcastle or even London. The caricatures were very nicely done, and so was the map. Molly's eyebrows puckered. The map reminded her of something….

Michael turned another page. There, arranged diagonally across the paper, lay Willie's coins. Naomi had used a fine pencil for the details, the stamped lion, the letters of
Transalpina.
A charcoal pencil added shadows, so that the drawings looked almost like photographs. “These are great, Naomi.”

“Thanks.”

And Dylan repeated, a little more heartily than was really necessary, “Really great.”

“I could use some drawings in my new pirate game,” Michael told her. “A treasure map, with X marks the spot or a message in antique handwriting.”

Molly nodded. “Good idea. How about a witch, or a gypsy or even Holly McKenna's Mademoiselle Fate. Maybe you could do a Tomb Raider character based on yourself.”

A flash from Michael's blue eyes said, don't overdo it. He reached the back cover of the notebook, closed it and returned it to Naomi. “Thank you, but…”

“There's more.” From the knitted bag hanging on the arm of the couch, she brought out several pages of drawing paper, folded and blotched with dirt. “Would it help if you had a map of where Willie discovered the coins?”

“Yes,” Michael stated.

Dylan leaned over the back of the couch while Naomi unfolded the papers, revealing several crudely drawn maps. “Willie made these,” Naomi said. “Used my paper without asking, but that's the way he was. Thought he was entitled—that if he didn't get what he wanted, then he was being cheated.” Her purple fingernail, the polish chipped, pointed at the smudged pencil lines winding in and out like the ancient streets in London's City. “These are the tunnels, right? And these dots and squares are entry and exit points.”

Michael tilted his head first this way, then that. “I'm not sure I recognize any… Wait. There. That triangle might be the entrance from the old toy shop—it's the only one I know of with a peaked lintel. But there's a square just there, close by. Hmm. If that's a tunnel leading from the book shop, it's a new one on me. I wonder if Willie ever did any work for Olivia?”

“Is that why someone was watching our shop?” Dylan asked. “Wanting to get into the tunnels through my cellar?”

“Or maybe,” Naomi said, her voice quavering slightly, “they assumed I knew where Willie found the coins and that I'd show them—with the right kind of persuasion.”

Dylan's hands settled on her shoulders, perhaps less as support than to keep her from jumping up and running away.

“But I never went into the tunnels with him. He went exploring on his own, save the time he had Robbie Glennison do a bit of digging. And wasn't that a big mistake, he said. Robbie kept insisting on a share of the gold.
He
killed Willie, I reckon.”

“I reckon not,” said Michael. “He's been cleared and left town. And he was in jail when Daisy was murdered.”

Dylan sagged. “Paddington's still after me, then. I was alone when Daisy was killed, repairing a mountain bike downstairs.”

“And I was here, watching the telly.” Naomi sighed from the depths of her soul. “Take the maps, Michael. You and Rohan, you find where Willie struck lucky, and then no one will be after me, eh? Like they were after Daisy. She was a snoop and a gossip, but there was no call murdering her. And Paddington badgering poor Dylan here. It's a scandal.”

Well, yes, it was, Molly thought.

“If you uncover more gold, we could share it out among us,” Naomi added, a faint glow in her eyes.

“The treasure might be priceless, but I'm not sure it's worth this cost.”

“We'll be all right, lass.” Dylan tightened his grasp of his wife's shoulders and she slumped back against him, closing her eyes wearily. “We'll find some way of getting your work in the right places. There's no sense in worrying about the bleeding gold when we've not got it.”

“That's the cleverest thing I've heard in days,” Michael remarked. Folding the maps, he tucked them into his pocket. Then he landed a reassuring punch on Dylan's massive bicep. “I'll be in touch.”

“Take care,” Molly told them both. As soon as she and Michael were back on the street, she said, “Great, Paddington threw Robbie out of town before anyone knew to ask him where Willie had him dig. He'll be impossible to trace now.”

“These maps give us something to go on.” Michael pulled out his phone and touched Rohan's icon. “Seems Willie opened up new parts of the tunnel system. That was either brave or foolish, depending on where those parts are. Rohan? I need you to have a look at Olivia
Tarlton's back room—there may be an entrance there. I'll be along as soon as I collect my gear.”

Michael snapped his phone back into his pocket, settled his sunglasses on his nose and turned to Molly with a grin. “Off we go, then!”

“Off
you
go,” she replied. “I'll meet up with you at the toy shop, okay? Eleven-thirty?”

“Okay,” he said, and with a kiss on the tip of her nose, headed for the car park.

M
OLLY WAVED UNTIL
Michael vanished into the throng filling Dockside Avenue, then let her hand fall to her side. She shouldn't worry about him exploring the tunnels. It was her own claustrophobia getting to her, that was all. Much better to stiffen her upper lip and keep busy than to cling to him.

The vendors were looking harried, not expecting to still have so much business even though it was a holiday Monday. With the crowds of crime-watchers and gold-seekers, Blackpoolers were proving there was more than one way to uncover treasure. Like fishing charters, Molly thought, spotting Geoffrey Crookshank leaving Rebecca's stall with a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane. She moved to intercept. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Geoffrey's eyes were even redder than they'd been yesterday, and the bags beneath them darker. If he hadn't been up all night, then he'd been having nightmares.

“How's business?” Molly asked. “My husband and I saw you with some customers last night. He was admiring your new gaff.”

The battered eyes didn't blink. “Yeah, I bought me a new gaff, the old one's rusted away. I got to make Michelle and me a living. Especially now, with the little one to look after. Just came from the hospital—my grandson was born this mornin'. Six pound five ounces, he is. Bright
little chap with dark hair. Came into this world just as the sun was rising. Sorry, can't stop any longer.” Geoffrey's wizened form disappeared into the mob scene.

“Good luck,” Molly called after the new grandfather, but he didn't seem to hear.

Paddington had one thing right: Michelle wasn't going anywhere, and neither was her father. The postmortem report on Willie didn't completely exonerate Geoffrey, and Daisy might not have been killed with the same weapon. Still, Molly told herself, there was no need for her to twist herself into a pretzel to come up with some off-the-wall solution involving Geoffrey and his gaff. A straight line is often the best throughline, as Michael said about his games.

Except in the tunnels, of course.

A man and woman pedaled by on two of Dylan's rental bicycles. Several young men wearing backpacks the size of steamer trunks walked past, each holding what had to be one of Naomi's maps. Where
had
she seen one of those? Molly asked herself.

In front of the
Black Sea Pearl
stood Fred Purnell, Tim Jenkins and a couple of camera people. In front of them stood Aleister Crowe, in his dark suit looking like his namesake bird. People were gathering, and the railing of the
Pearl
was lined with gawkers, including Martin Dunhill. A flicker of shadow and light in one of the port-holes might be Trevor. Molly slipped closer.

“Think you're playing at?” Aleister demanded, his voice quiet but menacing.

Fred stood his ground. “I'm reporting the news.”

“Rubbish! You're legitimizing rumor and innuendo about my family. ‘Crowe treasure' indeed! Gypsies and gold coins and other lies.” Aleister leaned casually on his cane, but his shoulders were poised, like those of a raptor
about to swoop down on its prey. “Newspapers go out of business for spreading rumors about the wrong people. You would be wise to print a retraction, Mr. Purnell. Now.”

“Well, dear me,” said Fred, looking around vaguely, “I don't seem to have a printing press on me at the moment.”

Aleister rolled his eyes. His voice dropped even further, into a cold purr. “Take care, or my solicitor will be filing a suit for libel. As for you and your cameras, Mr. Jenkins…”

“Mr. Crowe,” said Tim, “as members of the press, we're within our rights to ask questions.”

Aleister emitted a short, humorless laugh. “I beg to differ.”

“Be my guest. It's a free country. In the meantime, have you a statement to make about Willie Myners's murder? What about Daisy Coffey's?”

“No,” said Aleister. “I have nothing to add.”

“Can I quote you on that?” Tim asked.

For a long, breathless moment, Aleister stared at Tim and at Fred as well, his face impassive, frozen as an iceberg. Then he turned and strode away, swinging his cane.

Fred and Tim exchanged satisfied grins. Molly was surprised they didn't high-five each other. But no, Fred strolled off toward Willie's boat, Tim's team trailing behind him like ducklings behind their mother.

Aleister bore down on her. “Mrs. Graham. Where is your spouse? Is it wise to leave you alone? Don't you feel exposed, what with a killer on the loose?”

Molly stared into Aleister's cold eyes. Yes, she had probably spoken with a killer in the last couple of days. She assumed she was not speaking with one now, but
then, with Aleister, it was never safe to make assumptions. He knew way too much about who was doing what and when. Maybe he even knew that there
was
a treasure, and where it was hidden.

“For someone who wants to quell those rumors,” she said, “you're sure trying to call attention to them. Have you ever thought of just ignoring them?”

“Rumors about gold won't simply fade away. Give my regards to your husband.” Aleister strolled away, not into a dark alley but toward the ITV team.

Turning her back on him, Molly directed her steps toward the old toy shop—and found herself within hailing distance of Holly and Liam McKenna, who were handing out flyers.

Even without his black tricorn hat, Liam would've fit right in as one of Blackbeard's crew. His beard bristled, his earrings flashed and his bald skull gleamed. Beside him Holly tossed her head, making her long ebony hair shimmy like a belly dancer. When a couple of male passersby stopped to admire her, she pounced. “How about a tour, lads? The true stories of Blackpool, the ones the Council and the civic leaders don't want you to hear.”

Liam chimed in. “Witchcraft, secret passageways, wreckers luring ships onto the rocks, rich men cheating their way into a fortune—it's all here, folks! There you are, next tour's at noon.” He handed a flyer to a plump middle-aged woman, then spotted Molly. “Hullo, luv. On your own?”

“For the moment,” Molly replied. “How's business?”

“Brilliant,” said Liam, with a smile that revealed uneven yellow teeth. “Can I interest you in a seance? You're sure to have some extinct relation reaching out to you from beyond the grave.”

“What about extinct Blackpoolers like Charles Crowe?
Where do you and Holly get the stories you tell on your tours?”

“Where don't we get 'em? They're in the air, luv. In the ground, in the water. Old James Norton, he's got the goods going back generations. And Daisy Coffey had a tongue on her could kill a horse. There's nothing in this town she or one of her pack didn't know. A drop of the barley, or a stiff G and T, and Bob's your uncle—all the scandal you'd ever want to hear. Or pass on, for money. I reckon that's what got Daisy killed—her tongue.”

Molly nodded. At least she and Michael didn't have Daisy's reputation as a busybody. Not yet, anyway. “Were you aware of the Crowe legend before you came here to Blackpool? That's just the sort of story you hear from the Romany.”

Liam cocked his head to the side. “Just 'cause there's gypsies in the story doesn't mean it's a gypsy story. Everyone's got tales of curses and treasures, not just them.”

Liam said “them” instead of “us,” but that didn't prove a thing. “You live in the Oceanview, don't you? Just downstairs from the two murder victims? There's new material for you.”

“But it's the same old story. Poor sod, Willie. There he was, rabbiting on about getting what's coming to him, and by gawd, so he did! Charles Crowe's curse laid him low!”

“Getting what…” Molly repeated.

“Said his ship was coming in loaded with gold. Holly and I didn't give a toss—he was always sounding off about something. But when we got home Saturday night, here's Daisy bleating about you and Stewart and Fotherby making off with a bag of gold. Clever, ain't you, luv?” Liam's bright black eyes narrowed calculatingly.

Molly imagined his tattooed arm lobbing a stone
through Thorne-Shower's front window. “It was only four coins. Fotherby took them and locked them up at the police station.”

“Ah, that's a shame.” Liam's shoulders rose and fell—easy come, easy go.

Holly wafted by, her dark eyes considering Molly, dismissing her, then pouncing on a set of backpackers. “How about a tour, lads? Behind the scenes in haunted Blackpool!”

Molly decided to try one of Michael's straight lines. “Did you know Willie was dealing drugs?”

“Couldn't miss it, could we? Even without the folk ‘visiting' at all hours, carrying their little bags of pills, there's the smell. We burn incense, but Willie, he was burning something else.”

“Did you hear Willie arguing with a woman not long before he was killed?”

“He was always quarreling with someone. Michelle Crookshank, Naomi Stewart, Douglas Fotherby—”

“Fotherby?”

“Reckon we've got a cop on the take, eh? Why else hang about the Oceanview and ignore Willie's dealing? But then, Luann Krebs is no stranger, either, keeping her finger in the pie.” Smiling, Liam patted the side of his nose with his forefinger. “No business of mine, though. My work's on another plane of existence. Speaking of which, I'd better be getting to it. You like ghost stories, sonny?” Liam extended a flyer toward a little boy. The child's father snatched him away.

“Thanks,” Molly told Liam, but he was already out of earshot.

Like a shark, Molly supposed, he had to keep moving. He and Holly were con artists, but they were highly entertaining ones, even if Liam was too cagey to reveal
anything outright. That bit about P.C. Krebs, for example, didn't give her anything new. The Grahams had already seen her outside the Oceanview. Catching Willie in the act would have helped make her reputation, but it was too late now.

Her phone sounded from her purse and she whisked it to her ear. “Michael?”

“Never mind the toy shop, love. Rohan's found an entrance in Olivia's bookstore.”

“I'm on my way.”

Mulling over clues and suspects, trying not to spin her wheels with worry, Molly headed up Pelican Lane. The Turn the Page Book Shop occupied part of an old building that had once been Olivia Tarlton's grandmother's house. The upper story was cantilevered out over the skinny strip of sidewalk, as were those of several nearby buildings, making Pelican Lane into a canyon. But the overhanging eaves were ideal for suspending large baskets of flowers and vines. Olivia's spilled over with geraniums, and the ones hanging from the B and B next door were heavy with nasturtiums.

The ground-floor windows of the book shop displayed stacks of bestsellers, history books, classic novels, and, front and center, an array of Iris's historical romances. Olivia herself waited in the doorway, her hair held back from her face by a red scarf like a seaman's neckerchief. “There you are,” she said to Molly. “Michael's just arrived.”

 

M
ICHAEL COULD TELL BY
a certain stiffness in Molly's expression that she didn't want him to go into the tunnels. But it wasn't as though tunnel-ratting was any more dangerous than rock climbing or scuba diving, not if you kept your wits about you. She said nothing about her
qualms, though, simply filled him in on her encounters with Aleister and Liam while Olivia led them to the scene of the action. Michael could only shake his head in irritation at both men.

They found Rohan's denim-clad bottom framed by a low, square opening in the wainscoting of Olivia's back parlor. A dusty panel lay propped to one side, below an expanse of wallpaper in a faded cabbage rose pattern. A print of Queen Mary and King George V still hung on the wall. Their Majesties' faces looked sternly down as Rohan eased out of the aperture. Dusting his hands, he said, “You'll have to stoop, Michael. The ceiling's low, but this tunnel heads right for the one behind the toy shop. I phoned the Abercrombies and the Nortons, and Connor and Grace are on their way.”

“No worries.” Michael reached into his rucksack for his hard hat, settled it on his head, then shrugged the rucksack itself onto his back. The clammy, wet-dog odor emanating from the tunnel was perfume to him, but Molly wrinkled her nose.

Connor and Grace pushed into the room. At fourteen, tomboy Grace's short hair and slender body could have been that of either a boy or a girl. So could the grin on her elfin face as she donned a hard hat, switched on her torch, and brandished a garden spade. “I'm ready!”

Seventeen-year-old Connor's hazel eyes and dark hair reminded Michael of his mother Charlotte's, save that Connor was a foot taller and six inches thinner. He was wearing his own battered rucksack and hard hat, and carried a small pickax.

“I can't believe Willie found a secret door behind the wainscoting,” Olivia said, “though, now that I think about it, Granny always claimed the room was haunted, that she'd hear voices in the distance and feel a cold draft.”

“Wait for me!” Lydia Crowe catapulted through the doorway. Her workmanlike coveralls, boots and the hard hat flattening her pinned-up blond hair made her look like a completely different person from the giggling girl who'd dragged him into a dance Saturday afternoon, Michael thought. “You weren't going to go without me, were you? Just because of all that rubbish about old Charles Crowe stealing gold from Dracula? Who cares after all these years?”

“Aleister does,” said Molly.

Lydia's lower lip protruded. “Tell me! I've been hearing nothing else from Aleister. He had us into the Tea Shop after church yesterday for another lecture on preserving the family heritage. It's not my fault I'm a Crowe.”

“Um…” Michael glanced at Molly. Her eyebrows rose and fell in a shrug. Rohan looked from Connor to Grace and back to Michael. “Not at all,” Michael told Lydia. “Let's get on, then.”