Author’s note: For those who have not been following The Long Way Home, or who have not read the other stories recently, a few things need to be mentioned. Firstly, not all of the books have occurred, but people and places from those books may still exist. Mysterious Code and Headless Horseman for example, did not happen, but the Spencers did live at Manor House before the Wheelers and Sleepyside Hollow still exists. The events of Indian Burial Ground, on the other hand, are completely disregarded. (The list of books that apply to this universe can be found on the Timeline Page, along with the list of previous events.) Trixie and Jim are married and live in Rose Cottage, next to Manor House, on the opposite side of it to Crabapple Farm.
This story will eventually draw on some events in the past of this universe, particularly connected to the Henley family, from whom Jim inherited his house. I have tried to make it stand alone as much as possible, but it does contain rather a number of spoilers for earlier stories. (A short description of each previous story may be found on the Reminder Page.)
Part One
September, 1996
Sleepyside
“Don’t go too far,” Helen Belden warned, as her youngest son walked out of the farmhouse door one warm Saturday afternoon. “I want you back here before dark, remember.”
Bobby nodded, but made no verbal reply. He did not turn to see the exasperated look that he knew would be on his mother’s face. He had seen it often enough in the few weeks since he had nearly set Jim and Trixie’s barn on fire and become lost in the dark in the Preserve. Shoulders slumped, he stalked off to the place he had agreed to meet Larry and Terry Lynch and found them waiting for him.
“What do you want to do today?” Terry asked, when the three met. “How about we shoot some hoops?”
Bobby shook his head. “Nah. I don’t want to be that close to the house. My mother is going to drive me insane.”
The twins nodded in unison. Lately, they had expressed the same sentiment on numerous occasions. If anything, their mother was being more demanding than Helen Belden.
“We should find somewhere to hang out,” Larry suggested. “Know any good spots? Maybe there’s somewhere out in the Preserve where no one can find us.”
Bobby shuddered. “I think I had enough of not being able to be found that other time.”
Larry shook his head. “It wasn’t that bad. You’re just scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Bobby replied, demonstrating that he had learned little from the experience. “Okay, then, let’s go.”
“Where, exactly?” Terry wanted to know.
His friend made a vague gesture. “We’ll know when we find it, I guess. Come on.”
Terry hesitated for a moment, then followed along. There was no telling what trouble the other two could get into, and after their last adventure he had assured his parents he would try harder to keep them out of mischief. It was a difficult and thankless task.
Half an hour later, the three had strayed deep into the Preserve and had little idea of where they actually were. As they walked along, they began to argue over whether they were going in the right direction.
“I’m telling you, we should have turned right back there,” Larry insisted. “There’s nothing this way but trees. I don’t think this path is going anywhere. It’ll just stop somewhere and then where will we be?”
“But we don’t want to be near anything,” Bobby argued. “The whole idea was to get away from the parents – and everyone else they keep getting to keep an eye on us. I’m sick of it.”
Larry shrugged agreement to the last statement, but did not let it distract from his point. “Yeah, but no one would build anything way out here. Why should they? There’s nothing here.”
“What about that?” Terry asked, pointing off to one side.
Bobby ignored him. “There might be. You don’t know what people might have built a long time ago. These woods are full of abandoned buildings.”
Terry tried again. “Like that one.”
Larry took no notice. “You’re exaggerating, as usual. I mean, sure, there’s a few, but not really that many.”
“Are you really going to walk right past it?” Terry asked, thumping his twin on the arm. “I’ve been trying to tell you for ages…”
The other two frowned for a moment, and then looked in the direction he indicated.
“Let’s check it out,” Larry suggested, forgetting all about the argument. “I bet no one’s been here for twenty years!”
Terry sighed and followed along as the other two raced ahead. The dilapidated structure stood a little way from the path, its door and single window facing them. A faint trail led up to it.
“What’s inside?” Larry asked, reaching the door and pushing it further ajar. “I bet there’s all kinds of cool stuff in here.”
Bobby entered the shack and started looking around. “Nah,” he answered. “It’s empty. Typical. Just our luck to find somewhere that no one’s been in just about forever and for there to be nothing interesting at all.”
Terry came in after him and looked around, frowning. “I’m pretty sure someone’s been here lately. It’s kind of… clean. Hardly any leaves on the floor, even though the door’s open.”
The other two paid no attention.
“Just look at these old wooden boxes,” Bobby exclaimed. “They look like they’re about a hundred years old.”
Larry tried one out as a seat. “Sturdy enough, though.”
“There’s only two,” Terry complained, having come in third place in the race for seats. “And it’s dark in here. And it smells kind of funny.”
“Ooh! There’s dirt!” Larry’s voice rose into falsetto. “I’m scared!”
Bobby sniggered. “What were you expecting? Manor House?”
Terry shook his head and stalked outside. “I’m going home.”
“Wait!” Larry cried. “We’ll both be in trouble if you do that.”
“So, come with me,” Terry answered, without stopping.
Bobby grunted at the pair of them. “Just wait a minute. We haven’t finished looking around, yet. There might be other things near here.”
Terry paused and glanced around. The undergrowth beyond the shack showed no signs of recent disturbance, but his sharp eyes picked out a shape that did not seem natural.
“Maybe we could look over there,” he suggested, pointing. “I think I see something…”
The other two nodded and led the way. Neither seemed to have paid particular attention to his suggestion, as Bobby turned further to the left and Larry further to the right. Terry headed straight for the object he had noticed, but it was Larry who made the first discovery by the simple expedient of tripping over it.
“Oof!” He half-lay on the ground for a moment before speaking. “That really hurt! What is this thing?”
The other two hurried over and Terry shoved his twin’s legs aside to look. “Uh… I think it’s a… wheel?”
“Nah,” Larry answered. “It’s made of wood.”
“Not off a car, you idiot,” Bobby put in, rolling his eyes. “It’s like a wagon wheel. Or, a bit of one. The middle bit.”
Larry looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but Terry nodded. After a moment, Larry heaved himself off the ground.
“It’s not very interesting,” he grumbled and the other two shrugged vague agreement. “Well, then, let’s keep looking.”
After a few more minutes searching, Bobby had found a pile of old-fashioned bottles, Larry had found part of another cart wheel and Terry had finally reached the spot he had been aiming for all along. He climbed onto a convenient rock to get a better view. A startled gasp escaped his lips.
“Guys! Come here and look at this!”
The other two hurried over, Larry stumbling a little from lack of attention to where he was putting his feet. He joined Terry in looking down from the rock.
“Cool. A ruin. This is a lot more interesting than that old shack,” he noted.
“What’s this we’re standing on?” Bobby asked, looking down at his feet. “Is this part of it?”
Terry nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s a wall or something. I thought at first it was a rock, but it’s too square.”
“How do we get in?” Larry wondered, pushing aside branches to try to get closer. “Here; this way.”
The three clambered over the scant remains of the house, poking here and there. Bobby scaled the highest remaining part and stood, for a minute or two, on what had once been a window ledge. On the furthest side from where they had entered was a pile of rotten boards, presumably once part of the house.
“Hey, Terry, I found you something to sit on,” Larry called, laughing. He picked up a wooden packing case rather like the two they had already seen and tossed it to his twin. “Catch!”
Terry caught it, tested its strength and was satisfied. “I’ll take it back to the shack.”
By the time he had done this, the other two had lost interest in the ruin and were returning.
“I need to go soon,” Bobby admitted, reluctantly. “I kind of promised Moms.”
From the general grumbling the Lynches made in reply, it could be construed that they had made a similar agreement with their own mother. The three set off for home. Three-quarters of an hour later, after a number of wrong turns, they emerged in a different place to that which they had entered the Preserve. The sun was now dipping below the horizon. Bobby gave it a worried glance, waved good-bye to his friends, and hurried home. He hoped that he would not be in any further trouble.
Late October, 1996
Sleepyside
“Do we really want to go out there today?” Terry wondered, as he, Larry and Bobby walked towards the shack. “It’s getting cold.”
Larry shrugged. “You have any better ideas?”
Terry shook his head. “We’d better think of a better idea soon. Once it starts snowing…”
“There’ll be better things to do,” Bobby finished for him. “It’s just this bit that’s cold, but not snowy, that’s the problem.”
The three trudged through the Preserve on a roundabout path to the shack. After their first visit, it had taken them weeks to find it again. They had now learned a route, not realising that it was far from the shortest way there. They arrived and went inside, thumping down onto the now-familiar packing cases.
Terry wrinkled his nose. “Someone’s been here again. It smells different.”
The other two shared a glance.
“Not this again,” Larry grumbled. “Why would anyone come here? Who else is close enough to bother?”
“There are other houses. Ones where we don’t know the people who live there.” Terry tried the same argument he had used the weekend before, when they had first noticed changes in the shack. “There might be a house that’s closer than we think. We don’t know.”
Bobby made a face. “We’d know if there was. We’re miles from anyone.”
Terry shifted his box and examined the floor beneath it. “Whether that’s true or not, someone’s been here. Look!”
Larry and Bobby scowled at the earthen floor, which showed signs of having been dug up recently.
“Animals,” Bobby decided. “No one’s been here. It’s just your imagination.”
“Yeah, right,” Terry grumbled, under his breath.
Late December, 1996
Mead’s Mountain
“How are things in Sleepyside at the moment?” Ginnie wondered. “Brian hasn’t really mentioned anything about it for a long time – not since just after the fire.”
She, Trixie, Jim, Dan and Honey were gathered in one of the rooms to play games on the first night of the Bob-White two-yearly reunion. Di and her eighteen-month-old daughter Imogen had already retired for the night, as had Brian. Mart, having recently moved to Australia, had been excused from attendance.
“We’re almost back to normal at our place,” Jim answered, after taking his turn. “The repairs are all finished and the grass has started to grow back. I’ve had to hold off on a lot of the replanting until the conditions are right. That will be an ongoing thing for quite a while.”
“And you’ve had a willing helper?” Ginnie wondered. “Or is Bobby still hard to handle?”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “He was contrite to begin with, and did what we asked for a few weeks, but I think Moms and Dad have been pretty hard on him. He’s been getting more and more rebellious.”
Dan frowned. “Have you talked to your parents about that?”
Jim sighed. “It doesn’t seem to matter how you treat him; Bobby is determined to be irresponsible. He just wants his own way all the time.”
“I guess that’s just the age he is,” Ginnie mused. “I hope, for your family’s sake, that he’ll grow out of it soon.”
Honey frowned, deep in thought. “I’m trying to remember whether any of the other Beldens were irresponsible about that age. Trixie’s wild stage was a bit earlier than that…”
“And hasn’t finished, yet,” Dan added, earning himself a slap from Trixie.
“Mart and Brian’s were both later,” his girlfriend continued, regardless of the interruption. “And short-lived.”
“Yes, both of my older brothers have gotten old and staid.” Trixie gave her eldest brother’s girlfriend a wink. “Of course, Brian was practically born old and staid.”
Ginnie did not rise to the bait. “It’s a good characteristic for a doctor.”
“Then what are you doing here with us?” Trixie wanted to know. “Maybe you should be tucked up in bed right now, being staid.”
The other woman smiled. “I’ll try harder next time, but for now, I think I’m winning, so I’d better stay.”
“You think you’re winning?” Trixie challenged. “I don’t think so!”
“You’re right,” Ginnie answered. “Actually, I’ve won.”
Trixie threw up her hands in disgust.
Early March, 1997
Sleepyside
“It’s still too cold,” Terry protested, as he trailed after Larry and Bobby. “What are we going to do there, anyway?”
Larry threw a scornful look over his shoulder. “We’re just going to see if the place is all right. We don’t have to stay or anything.”
“And we might have a look around while we’re there,” Bobby added. “Who knows what we might find?”
Terry shook his head and kept walking. They reached the old shack without incident and Larry poked his head inside.
“Ew! What is that smell? It’s horrible!”
Bobby, right behind him, caught a whiff. “I’m not going in there. Something’s gone in there to die.”
Before Terry had reached them, Larry had decided to investigate. “I don’t see anything in here. There’s nothing obvious… Oh! Look at this! I haven’t seen this before. It looks like it’s been here for years and years and someone’s just uncovered it.”
Just as Terry reached the door to the shack, he heard his twin bellow. He was still stunned into immobility when Larry pushed past him, a look of terror and dread on his face. A moment later, he was emptying his stomach into a nearby bush.
“What is it?” Bobby demanded. “What’s in it?”
“What’s in what?” Terry added. “What were you doing?”
Larry shook his head. “A metal box. In the floor.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Bobby grumbled. “What was in it?”
“A dead body!”
“What?” the other two exclaimed together.
“A dead person. In the box. Rotting.” Larry shuddered. “We’ve got to go and get help.”
Terry hesitated. “Wait. I’ve got to see this.”
“You’ve got to what?” Bobby looked at him, incredulous. “Are you insane?”
“Probably,” Terry answered. “I keep hanging out with you two.”
Before either of them could think of a comeback, he had gone inside to look at the gruesome discovery. In a moment, he returned.
“It’s small,” he noted, looking sick. “It must be a little kid.”
“We’ve got to get help,” Larry repeated. “Come on!”
He grabbed each of them by an arm and started staggering back to the path. Soon, they were all fleeing headlong down the trail. After a short time, it became clear that they were not on the right path, but they kept going regardless.
“Where are we?” Larry wondered, looking around wildly, as they emerged onto Glen Road.
Bobby’s face cleared and he pointed. “We’re near Trixie’s place. Let’s go there. She’ll know what to do.”
His friends nodded and complied. They raced up the driveway and around to the kitchen door. Bobby pounded on it and yelled his sister’s name. The door was wrenched open, revealing the silhouette of a man.
Bobby’s face sagged in relief. “Brian! What are you doing here?”
“Visiting,” his brother answered. “What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”
Bobby shook his head.
“What is it, Brian?” Trixie’s voice called from out of view. “Is that Bobby?”
“We found – well, Larry found – a dead body!”
Trixie rushed forward and pulled him into the house, beckoning for the Lynch twins to follow. All three were urged into chairs at the kitchen table. From an adjoining room, Jim and Ginnie came to see what was happening.
“Start at the beginning,” Brian ordered. “Where were you?”
The three shared a glance, then Bobby spoke up. “There’s an old shack in the Preserve where we hang out sometimes. We went out to look at it today, to see how it held up over winter, only it stank. Then, Larry went in and found this metal box-thing kind of buried in the floor, like it had been there for years. It’s just got a dirt floor, you know? And he opened it. And there was this rotting body inside. You could see the skull! It was a person! And it was small, like a little kid!”
“How small?” Brian asked, his face grave. “Can you show me?”
The three teenagers argued for a few minutes, then came to an agreement on size. Brian shared glances with Trixie and Ginnie. The former gave a shrug.
“We should go and have a look,” Trixie suggested. “Before we do anything else.”
Brian hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Where is this shack?”
The three boys began talking and gesticulating at once, creating a babel of conflicting information.
Jim held up his hand. “If you can’t describe where it is, how about what it looks like?”
This suggestion yielded much better information.
“I know it,” Jim told the other adults. “Who wants to come along?”
A short discussion ensued, leading to a decision that Ginnie, Larry and Bobby would stay at the house and the rest would go back to the shack. They set off at once.
“Uh, this isn’t the way there,” Terry objected, as Jim took the lead. “The path is further that way.”
Jim shrugged. “Let’s try this one first. We can always go back if it’s not right.”
Terry nodded and followed along. A short time later he groaned, having seen that Jim was right.
“Is that it?” Jim asked.
Once more, Terry nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“If you continue down that path, you’ll come out on one of the lanes,” Jim explained to Trixie and Brian. “There’s a few houses maybe ten minutes’ walk from here in that direction.”
“I remember,” Trixie answered. “I thought this was the place they were describing. It’s the same shack the Midnight Marauder used, isn’t it?”
Terry’s gaze dropped to his shoes.
Brian squared his shoulders. “Well, let’s go and take a look.”
“You don’t need to come with us,” Trixie offered to Terry, misunderstanding his expression. “Brian and I can go by ourselves and you can stay here with Jim.”
At once, Terry’s chin raised. “No, I’m okay. I’ll come with you.”
Both Brian and Trixie looked at him with respect.
“Okay, let’s get it over with,” Brian suggested. “Try not to touch anything; this may be a crime scene.”
The three walked towards the shack, with Trixie in the lead.
“I see what you mean about the smell,” she commented, covering her nose. “It’s putrid.”
She flipped on her flashlight and began examining. “Is that it? In the middle of the floor?”
Terry nodded and began to move closer. Trixie held out a hand to stop him.
“See that on the floor? I think that’s a clue to what’s happened here. Don’t step on it.”
The teenager frowned at where she was pointing. “Those scuff marks?”
Trixie nodded. “Step there, okay? You, too, Brian.”
He did as she instructed and leaned forward, getting a better view. His shoulders relaxed.
“I don’t think we need to worry,” he told the others. “It’s not a matter for the police.”
“What? Why not?” Terry wondered.
Brian turned to him and smiled. “Come and look. See just here,” he directed, pointing with a pencil. “Do you see this line here? Do you see this one? Now look down here.”
Terry leaned closer, a hand over his nose and mouth. His voice was muffled when he spoke. “Made in China.”
Brian nodded. “It’s plastic. Those lines are from injection moulding.”
“But the smell!”
“Oh, it’s certainly rotting flesh,” Brian answered. “Squirrel, I think. Skinned.”
“The box hasn’t been there long, either,” Trixie added. “You can tell by the way the dirt is lying around it that a hole was dug for it – not all that well, either – and it was dropped in and the space filled in. It hasn’t been there for years; I’d say it was there a few months at most.”
“I don’t have a lot of expertise in that area, but I’d concur about the amount of decomposition I saw there.” Brian began walking back to where Jim was waiting. “When you consider that it would have been frozen for quite a lot of the last few months… I think we’re looking at it having been left there somewhere near…”
“Halloween?” Trixie suggested.
Her brother smiled and nodded. “Just what I was thinking.”
“You mean, this is someone’s idea of a joke?” Terry asked, disgusted.
Trixie looked thoughtful. “Or, someone’s idea of a creepy thing to do on the creepiest night of the year.”
They reached Jim at that moment and she took the time to explain what they had seen.
“It takes Ben’s parsquirrel to a new level,” he commented. “A persquirrel, perhaps.”
“Persquirrel?” Trixie wondered. “Oh! Part person, part squirrel.”
Terry looked at them as if they had taken leave of their senses, especially when the adults began to laugh.
“I’ll explain on the way back,” Jim offered. “Then I’ll come back here and bury the remains. Does that sound okay to you, Brian?”
The other man nodded. “You might as well bury the whole thing. It’s not all that big. And, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to extract the non-biodegradable parts.”
Jim made a sound of agreement. “I think I should be able to do that.”
“There’s a recently-fallen tree just over here,” Trixie pointed out, having wandered a short distance away. “You could take advantage of the hole it’s made.”
“I think I will,” he answered. “Are we finished here for now? Let’s get back.”
The group returned to Rose Cottage, rather more cheerful than when they had left. They were met at the kitchen door by two anxious teenagers, plus Ginnie, who appeared as calm as ever.
“Nothing to worry about,” Brian announced.
“You are kidding,” Bobby blurted out. “You have to be.”
Brian shook his head. “I think you can trust me to tell the difference between bone and plastic – especially when it has its country of origin clearly legible.”
“Even I knew that wasn’t bone,” Trixie added. “It wasn’t the right texture, or colour, or even quite the right shape. And the lines were wrong. Real skulls have kind of join-y bits.”
“You’ve seen a lot of skulls, have you?” Larry asked, full of scepticism.
Trixie grinned. “I’ve seen a few. More than you have, I’d bet.”
“My sister’s an archaeologist,” Bobby muttered. “They dig stuff up – including dead people.”
“I work for an archaeologist,” Trixie clarified. “I’m not one, yet.”
Bobby waved away the difference. He glanced around. “Hey! Where’s Jim?”
“Oh, he’s gone back to deal with the persquirrel,” Trixie answered. “We thought it needed a proper burial.”
“Persquirrel,” Bobby repeated, with a blank expression.
His sister nodded. “We think someone created a horrible creature out of a skinned squirrel and a plastic skull and so Jim named it after that dreadful thing Ben made for you, that time.”
A slow smile spread across Bobby’s face as he remembered. “Persquirrel. That’s good.” Another thought appeared to occur to him. “You’re back quickly, though.”
Terry grimaced. “It’s nowhere near as far away as we thought. And the Bob-Whites had been there before, years ago. And there are houses nearby.”
“Not quite as secret as you thought,” Brian suggested, with sympathy.
The other two teenagers slumped, their expressions showing their displeasure at this news.
“Well, I think we’ll be going now,” Bobby mumbled. “Come on, guys.”
“Thanks for your help,” Larry added, heaving himself to his feet. “Sorry to bother everyone.”
“Yeah,” Bobby agreed. “Thanks.”
“That’s okay,” Trixie answered for all of them. “I thought it was really interesting.”
Bobby nodded and stepped out of the door, the other two following along behind him. When it had closed behind them, Brian let out a sigh of relief.
“I didn’t want to say anything to them,” he explained, “but I was rather concerned about what we were going to find. The size they were describing…”
“It was more like a baby than a child,” Ginnie finished for him. “Possibly even pre-term.”
“But the description didn’t quite fit,” Brian continued. “I’m glad it wasn’t real.”
Ginnie nodded. “We all were.”
April, 1997
Sleepyside
Trixie had seldom taken much notice of the Sleepyside rumour mill. She knew that it existed. She could even identify some of its most vicious rumour-mongers. In her opinion, they needed something useful to be getting on with, instead of spreading unpleasant and inaccurate information all around town. She did not encourage those types of people to talk to her and, since she was generally bored by the snippets reported in the gossip column in the Sleepyside Sun she rarely read it. So, it came as a surprise late one Friday afternoon when she found two police officers on her doorstep, wearing grim expressions.
“Mrs. Frayne? May we come in?” one of them asked.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, even as she opened the door and ushered them inside. “Has something happened?”
The two took a seat where she indicated and one began to explain. “We have received information that several weeks ago, you and your husband were concerned in the illegal disposal of human remains.”
“What?” Trixie burst out, trying to hold on to the laughter bubbling up within her. “Who told you that?”
“That is not relevant,” the officer snapped. “Is the allegation true?”
She refrained from rolling her eyes, with an effort. “Of course not.”
“You categorically deny any dealings with remains–”
“I deny dealing with human remains,” she interrupted. “I have no trouble with admitting that we dealt with animal remains.”
“Our information is that the remains were definitely human,” the man insisted.
Trixie looked at him carefully. “Well, I can think of two explanations for that: firstly that the person was lying, or second, that the person was misinformed.”
As she was speaking, Jim entered the room, asking, “What’s going on here?”
His wife turned to him. “Someone’s been claiming that the persquirrel was really a person and that we illegally disposed of human remains.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he answered. “My brother-in-law, Dr. Brian Belden, was with us at the time and he identified the skull as being plastic. The rest he tentatively identified as a skinned squirrel. When I went back to bury the remains, I had a look at them and I agreed with his assessment. It was definitely squirrel – with the tail still attached and its own skull tucked inside the plastic one, also still attached. And, if you don’t believe us, we can show you where I buried them and you can check.”
The officer made a note, then asked, “Do you have any children, Mrs. Frayne?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
She gave him a cool look. “No, I haven’t. Is this relevant somehow?”
“Our information suggests differently.” He gave her a stern look. “I’d like the truth, please, Mrs. Frayne.”
Trixie stared at him for a moment, open-mouthed, while Jim turned an angry shade of red. Before he could speak, she reached out a hand and touched his arm.
“Sergeant Davis,” she began, having read the name off his nametag, “I have answered all of your questions truthfully. I will answer any further questions truthfully. But the thing you just referred to can’t rightly be called ‘information;’ a more accurate term would be ‘unfounded and malicious speculation.’ Yes, it’s true that some people claimed that Jim and I got married when we did because there was a baby on the way, but there wasn’t.”
The sergeant’s face had shown increasing anger as she spoke. “Let’s take this down to the station.”
She held his gaze for a long moment. “Fine. But I’ll only speak to Captain Molinson.”
“He won’t agree to that,” Davis countered.
“Let’s go and ask him,” Trixie suggested, with a mischievous light in her eyes. “It might make his day.”
A short time later, Trixie and Jim sat in an interview room, waiting for someone to come and see them. The door opened and Wendell Molinson entered, followed by a scowling Sergeant Davis.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Frayne,” Molinson greeted, wearily. “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”
“It’s really not my fault, this time,” Trixie told him, grinning. “I’ve been keeping out of trouble, honest. It’s just that Sergeant Davis didn’t believe any of the things I told him, even though they were all true.”
“Hmm. How about you start at the beginning?”
Trixie nodded. “A few weeks ago, while my brother Brian and his girlfriend were visiting us – they’re both medical doctors, you remember? – my brother Bobby, along with Larry and Terry Lynch, arrived at our door with a story about finding a dead body. Brian asked them to describe it and… well, all of us were a bit dubious about the whole thing, to be honest. It just didn’t sound real. So, Brian and Jim and I went out to look and we took Terry with us.”
“You didn’t tell me any of this earlier, Mrs. Frayne,” the sergeant grumbled.
“You didn’t ask,” Trixie retorted. “Anyway, we went to the scene – do you remember the place where Margo Birch dumped that hamburger meat? The same place. I took a look at the floor before I let anyone in and I could see what looked like the remains of a pentagram scratched in the surface, along with drips of red candle wax. The box that the remains were in was in the middle of the floor in a relatively-newly dug hole. They were in an advanced state of decomposition. I told Brian where I thought it was safe to put his feet, in a place that was undisturbed.”
“These things are best left to the professionals,” Davis told her, looking angry.
Trixie ignored the interruption. “He leaned in and shone a light into the metal box. It only took him a few seconds to determine that the remains were not human. From my place behind him, it was obvious to me that the skull was not real and the body didn’t look anything like the right shape to be human. Brian called Terry to come and look, then he showed him the lines left by the injection moulding and the place where the words ‘Made in China’ could be seen. Terry read them out. Brian thought the body was a skinned squirrel.”
“I went back later to bury them,” Jim added. “I’m certain it was a squirrel – a complete squirrel, except for its skin. The head and the tail were attached and the plastic skull was over the top of its own head.”
Molinson leaned back in his chair. “And what conclusions do you draw about all this, Mrs. Frayne?”
Trixie paused a moment. “I think that there are some boys who live on the opposite side of the Preserve to us in Goodwin Lane and that last Halloween they decided to try out some kind of fake satanic ritual, that at some point it turned into a bit of a joke and that they just dumped the dead squirrel there, rather than deal with it responsibly.”
The older man nodded. “I would concur with that assessment.”
“Unfortunately, your sergeant had a different idea,” Trixie continued. “He seemed to think that I’d secretly had a baby, killed it, buried it, then when the boys found it, convinced them that it was really a dead squirrel.”
“Hmm. That doesn’t seem likely, Trixie, even for you,” Molinson replied. “Can you see any reason why he might have come to this conclusion?”
“I’d guess that he’s been listening to rumours – from some of the most malicious old busybodies in town. I know they were saying that I was pregnant three years ago, even though I wasn’t. I haven’t heard anything lately, but I’d bet they’ve been talking their heads off about this incident and adding all kinds of things that didn’t really happen. I’d add my guesses as to who the main perpetrators might have been, but I don’t think you need me to tell you that,” she answered.
“True,” he agreed. “But does this mean that I finally have one over Trixie Belden – excuse me, Frayne? You don’t know the other reason why he might have had that theory?”
She frowned for a moment, thinking. “No, I don’t.”
Molinson rose and smiled. “Thank you for your time, Mr. and Mrs. Frayne. You may go now.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?” Trixie asked, laughing. “You know I’ll find out for myself if you don’t!”
“Undoubtedly,” he answered, ushering them out. “And in no time at all, I’d wager. Good evening, both of you.”
Trixie gave in with good grace and bid him goodbye. “At least I know there’s nothing dangerous about this,” she muttered, as they left the building. “He practically told me to investigate.”
Continue to part two.