“No insurance; the co-op went bankrupt. What little we had left, we spent fighting the corporation lawyers.”
He drowned the building momentum in the rest of the drink, and the pathos ceased.
When he spoke again, the words were slower, darker. “Blyton Hills needs your help, kids. (Looking up, two-thirds joking.) Shit, we’re beyond salvation. It all went sideways after you left.”
The girls fell silent. Tim lay down, feeling the depression in the atmosphere. The curtains at the end of the conversation were about to fall.
Nate lingered onstage: “What corporation?”
“RH, from California,” Al said. “The one that used to own the chemical plant.”
“And the gold mines,” Kerri recalled.
Andy spotted the last chance to wedge in and seized it: “Al, we’re reopening the Sleepy Lake case. Remember it? You took us to the mines.”
Al nodded, or his head wobbled. His eyes weren’t closed, but not manifestly open either.
“Remember we came to you after we encountered a monster in the woods? And then you came with us the next day, and we didn’t see the creature, but we found its tracks leading into the abandoned gold mine?”
“Remember the slaughtered deer?” tried Nate.
“I remember a dead deer, yes,” the old man mumbled from under his cap.
“Not just dead, Captain; it was torn open. And the birds had stopped singing.”
An eye glistened audibly. Al raised his head.
“Had they?”
“Yes.” Nate checked Kerri and Andy. “Don’t you remember? When we returned to the lake with him, we tried to find the deer again. I remember Peter saying, ‘Listen,’ and we listened, and then you said”—he pointed at Kerri—“?‘Where are the birds?’?”
Al rose up and reached for the cabinet. He retrieved a cookie tin. Kerri was about to refuse politely when she realized there were no cookies inside. The first item she recognized was a page from the Pennaquick Telegraph.
Al picked up his reading glasses from the sink and scanned through the page.
“Jesus, Al, you keep all this?” Andy had approached the tin box and picked up another item: a hundred-dollar bill. “This is the counterfeit money from the missing accountant case. And…shit, are these the werewolf’s teeth?”
“There’s no mention of the deer here,” Al said, reading.
“Al, they never let us have any of this. The sheriff said it was evidence!”
“I still have some friends,” he answered briefly.
“They never mentioned it ’cause the deer had nothing to do with it,” Kerri said. “How would Wickley hunt it and cut it open?”
“They never mentioned it ’cause it doesn’t fit their version; doesn’t mean it’s not related,” Nate argued.
“It probably isn’t,” Al commented. “For starters, it’s happened again since.”
Andy’s attention snapped back from the tin box. “More slaughtered deer? Near Sleepy Lake?”
“Yes,” Al said, not giving it much importance. “A few years ago. I didn’t see it, but I remember a couple of campers freaking out. Anyway, it’s not the slaughtered ones I worry about.”
Andy, Kerri, and Nate eyed one another, deciding who was going to inquire further.
“Most often, the animals are found dead,” Al expanded. “On the lakeshore, just like that. Not eaten or mauled, just dead.”
“Poisoned,” Andy assumed.
“Not from the chemical plant; it’s way downriver,” Kerri said. “Maybe…I don’t know, toxic gas leaks from the mine vents? Tunnels run beneath that area. It could also explain the birds fleeing.”
“Yeah,” Nate added, “like when miners carry a caged canary into the tunnels to ensure the air is breathable.”
PETER: Hey, I was thinking the same thing.
NATE: (Whispering.) Shut up.
“The vents are sealed now,” Al pointed out. “So is the entrance near the lake. The only access left is a drainage ditch opening onto the river, out of Sentinel Hill.”
“Where we found the footprints,” cued Andy.
“I’m pretty sure those were Wickley’s too,” said Nate.
“Who owned the mines back then?” asked Kerri. “RH Corporation?”
“Yes,” Al answered from the newspaper. “Says here they bought them from the Debo?ns in nineteen forty-nine. More like got them for the loose change in their pockets, really. The family was broke.”
“How come no one suspected RH back in ’seventy-seven?” Kerri wondered. “They seem to be everywhere.”
“People in town weren’t prejudiced against big faceless corporations back then. They hated the Debo?ns best. When rumors of the Sleepy Lake creature rekindled in the sixties and seventies, people blamed it on them. Legend was the lake creature was haunting Debo?n Isle, so somehow it was all the Debo?ns’ fault. I’m sorry to say the official inquiry didn’t do much better.”
“Maybe we should check that,” Andy said, distracted from the box of mementos. “The official inquiry. Deputy Wilson might let us look into the case files.”
“Wilson died in ’eighty-six,” Al commented. “Lung cancer. Copperseed is the new deputy sheriff of Blyton Hills.”
“Wait, Officer Copperseed?” Nate said. “The one who never listened to us?”
“The very same. Police presence in town has been stripped down to him and a couple part-time volunteers. Your old pal Joey Krantz is one of them. Anyway, the case file was nothing more than a collection of creature sighting reports. Most were later connected to Wickley.”
“Most,” Nate underscored.
“Well, the rumors clearly were there before Wickley arrived; they’re what gave him the idea of the costume. Deputy Wilson at least had the good sense not to believe in hocus-pocus, but when it came down to finding a real suspect, he got the wrong one.”
“Dunia Debo?n,” Andy quoted from memory. “The last in the family. Is she alive?”
“Oh yeah. She still lives alone in the same house on Owl Hill. A resilient woman. She’s taken a lot of shit from people around here.”
“We could go see her,” Kerri suggested. “Ask her about RH, how they gained control of the mines. They sound pretty reckless.”
“If you go to Copperseed with that, you’re bound to find an ally,” Al commented. “He hates RH. Been pressing for sealing the mines and dismantling the plant for years.”
“Are you guys sure about this?” Nate polled. “This whole ‘evil corporation polluting the lake’ theme, it’s like we’ve gone from Blyton Summer Detective Club to Captain Planet and the Planeteers.”
“I hate that show,” said Andy.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Yes, it is. The Latin American kid’s got the shittiest ring. I mean, since when is ‘heart’ an element?”
“But that’s the point, they wanted a Latin American Planeteer so bad, they had to create a fifth element for him.”
“Then why did they put two Caucasians, an American and a European? Where do you think white Americans come from—Saturn?”
“Anyway,” Kerri said, steering the conversation off pop reference territory, “it’s a plausible villain. You can’t expect it to be another Wickley. Because…we’re grown-ups now; four of us against one petty criminal wouldn’t be fair. A shady company with an army of lawyers sounds like a worthy opponent.”
Andy considered the argument. “Yeah, well, it’s a start.”