2 A Reason for Murder (12 page)

"People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote."

(Charlotte Gray)

Chapter Eighteen
.

All went according to plan, at least at first. The threatening thunderstorm had the ability to thwart our plans, was still a while off. The realtor would likely balk at taking the long walk to the barn in the approaching torrential rain typically brought by a thunderstorm in this region of the central east coast of Australia.

I hid in the back of Jamie's rental car, and waited for Jamie to text me the
all clear
. Text received, and having ascertained that no other cars were in sight, I made a beeline for the front door.

I'm not cut out to be a spy; goose bumps broke out on my flesh. My heart thumped as if I'd had five double shot espressos on an empty stomach. I jumped at every boom of thunder and flash of lightning.

Crawley's study was easy to find, and the door was open. I walked around the room as fast I could, videoing on my iPhone. Nothing stood out as suspicious. The videoing didn't take as long as I had expected so I decided to open the desk drawers and film the contents. They were all locked, all six of them.

I thought it strange that the desk chair was sitting off to one side of the desk. While I was fruitlessly looking underneath the desk for any sign of a key stuck underneath, I noticed a trapdoor.

I could see no possible way to open it, as there was no latch or even handle. It fitted seamlessly into the polished wooden floor. Then it hit me. This section of the building wasn't original; it was an extension. It would have been easy to build a room underneath this one. We don't generally have basements - or even attics for that matter - in Australia, which I suppose is why the possibility hadn't occurred to me. But how to open it? It must have some sort of electronic locking device.

I needed a few more minutes to find it. If anything suspicious was in this house, it stood to reason that it would be through that trapdoor. I carefully peeked around the heavy, drawn curtains to the right of the desk, but no sign of Jamie and the realtor. I tiptoed to the kitchen door and looked down to the barn; still no sign. I texted,
Can u give me 5 more mins?

No immediate reply, so I hurried back to the room, put my phone on the desk, and prepared to search for the trapdoor device.

When I turned back to the trapdoor, it was open. My first response was, "Great!" followed by, "Ugh!" then my world turned obsidian.

"We own a dog — he is with us as a slave and inferior because we wish him to be. But we entertain a cat — he adorns our hearth as a guest, fellow-lodger, and equal because he wishes to be there. It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolized master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolize, but it is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a cat."

(H. P. Lovecraft, Cats and Dogs)

Chapter Nineteen
.

I was alive. That was the first sensation when I came to awareness. I was lying on the floor. I opened my eyes. Pitch black enveloped me. Thunder boomed overhead. Gingerly, I moved my limbs, one after the other and did an inventory. Arms, okay. Right shoulder, sore. Left foot, okay, right foot, hurt to move. I moved my hands over my head. A lump the size of an egg, not so good. Could feel no blood dripping. That had to be good. Took a deep breath. Ribs not sore. No pain. Even better.

How had I gotten here? I couldn't remember. Slowly, I pulled myself up into a sitting position. When the inevitable nausea passed, I took some deep gulps of air.

The air smelled stale, but not deprived of oxygen. There was a musty scent, reminiscent of back rooms of antique stores or in grandmothers' houses where the lace doilies are found in abundance, enclosed by shuttered, double sets of drab curtains and long-closed windows.

I raised my arms above my head but felt no low roof pressing down upon me. Things were looking up, no matter how marginally.

Thunder rumbled again. It sounded close. I crawled a short distance but came up against some sort of furniture. A few changes of direction provided me a clear passage ahead. A few more paces, and I reached what seemed to be a wall. I carefully stood and felt along it. It was cold and with grooves, perhaps concrete blocks.

Without warning, suddenly the wall ahead of me was visible. I spun around, but had no real glimpse of the scene in front of me before it all went black again. I did see what was a small to medium sized room. Perhaps the lights had been on, and the electrical storm had caused the power outage. I could only conclude that when the power company did whatever they had to do to get power back on to the area, the lights in the room would come back on.

I sat down to think more clearly. One thing was for certain; I was sure I had been alone when I had been attacked. I had been facing the doorway and would have seen anyone who entered from that direction.

Slowly, my mind was beginning to cooperate with my attempts to recollect. I had been struck from behind and had been pushed into an opening in the floor. By whom? It would have to have been David Crawley or someone closely associated with him. It was his house after all. That meant that this room was in fact directly below the room I had been searching. Not so good. That meant no windows through which to escape.

Another flicker of light, and then the lights came on. I greedily surveyed my surroundings.

The vista before me mimicked an overcrowded storage room in a museum. Three painted skulls hung from a support beam. Behind them, shelves were packed with all manner of items. There were bottles everywhere, some covered with sequins and cowrie shells, others with skeletons inside. More African art. Bottles everywhere, all labeled. I felt as if I had stumbled onto the set of a Potions Class in a Harry Potter movie.

I recognized shelves of zombi bottles from the anthropological journal articles I had read. That explained the Crawley family's continuing success and luck.

I took stock of my situation. The researcher in me warned that someone had already tried to kill me, and so would be intent on finishing the job. My would-be murderer would return, possibly at any minute. I had to find a weapon, and fast. No sharp knives were apparent. I tried to think what Sam and Dean Winchester would do in this situation. I ran the last season I had seen of
Supernatural
through my mind, episode by episode. Then it hit me. Salt, and there was a large jar of it on the shelf in front of me, kindly labeled.

When I had finished, I turned my thoughts back to processing my predicament. Why had my attacker hit me over the head and thrown me down the stairs into this room? I supposed as I had surprised him. Why hadn't he finished me off then? That question was soon answered.

I heard a grating, a thump, followed by footsteps. A man's shoes came into view, followed by a figure cloaked by the dark steep stairway.

David Crawley stepped into the light. Clearly he was not here to rescue me.

"Who else knows what you know?"

I bit back a smart reply. "I didn't know you were the killer until I saw you just now."

Crawley's tone dropped to a venomous tone. "Killer? I personally haven't killed anyone - yet."

Gone was the manner of the suave businessman, replaced by a more primal and far more unpleasant aspect. "Who knows you're here? How much do you know about me?"

"Jamie Smith knows I'm here."

"That useless English gentleman?" Crawley laughed. It was a menacing laugh, even more so as a rank power was radiating from him.

"Not so useless, he's M16." I thought that better than saying, "He's something like M16."

That just made Crawley laugh even harder. "You should write novels with an imagination like that. How much do you know about me?"

"Obviously, you poisoned my food, and tried to kill me two other times."

"Two other times? I called your motel and heard your voice, and when you spoke, I knew the poison hadn't worked, which I suspected might be the case as you hadn't eaten much due to your incessant talking, so I tried to run over you with my truck. Anyway, enough boasting from me; tell me exactly what you know about me."

"I know you're into some sort of black magick."

Crawley snorted. "There's no such thing as black magick. Magick itself is neither black nor white; it's what it's used for that is good or evil. You cannot say electricity is good or evil. You cannot say a car is good or evil. Both provide benefits, yet also kill."

"Okay, well I know you use magick for evil, using your
whosiwhatsits
." I gestured around the room.

"What is your tradition?"

I was taken aback. "Mine? I don't have one. I dabble in a bit of this, a bit of that. I only know what I've researched for the magazine."

Crawley appeared to be summing up the truthfulness of my words. "Then why did you go to the University of New England?"

I considered it, and thought I couldn't be any worse off by telling him the truth. "I interviewed Professor Bill Dolan about ancient spells for my story on Morpeth ghosts." Well, close to the truth, anyway.

Crawley crossed his arms across his chest. He did not look happy. "You showed me the text on your phone. What was the purpose of that? Were you trying to let me know you were onto me?"

"What text?"

"Don't play smart." Crawley took a step closer. I backed away. "Answer me; did you show me the text that said
'govi'
to show me you were onto me?"

I shook my head. "No! Someone kept texting me that. I have no clue who sent it."

Crawley bared his teeth at me. "You're digging your own grave by lying to me like this." He was so close to me I could feel his rancid breath on my cheek. His eyeballs looked yellowed. The stench of decay shrouded him. I tried to stop my stomach clenching.

I thought,
WWBD
? What indeed would Buffy do in such a situation? She would most likely impale him with Mr. Pointy, or do some clever moves. If only I had been a Slayer. I had to keep my wits about me, and wait for a chance to escape.

Crawley loomed over me. "Cut the nonsense. I know you know I've been using zombi bottles to get spirits to work for me. But I bet you don't know that my family's had Baxter Morgan here in a bottle for years, working away. All the spirits have been working for my family since 1840."

Oh no. Not another one. I'd recently returned from London where I had come up against the Black Lodge, whose members had conducted rituals in the belief that it would regenerate their youth. "So you're over a hundred and seventy years old?"

Crawley looked shocked, and somewhat offended. "Are you crazy? No, I'm thirty two. My ancestor Joe Crawley killed Baxter Morgan with black magick, and put him in a zombi bottle."

I interrupted. "But how? How did your ancestor know how to do that? That's an African thing to do; I thought the all early settlers in Australia were Irish, Scottish, and English?"

"Some of the Morpeth settlers had trade connections with Africa. In fact, the original Campbell of Campbell's Store had coins minted in Africa. Joe Crawley spent ten years in Africa, and what he learned, he passed on to his sons, who passed them on to their sons, and so down to me and my brother. Our family became wealthy, and everything went well for us. We put spirits to work for us, to bring us money and success. Joe was given land grants, and got rid of anyone who opposed him, and all his descendents followed suit."

Crawley was so engrossed in his narrative, that I took an opportunity to size up the distance to the stairs. Too far. I need to think of something, and fast.

"Now tell me, who is Scotty?" He reached out and snatched for my arm and dug in his fingers.

I yelped. "I honestly don't know. I only know he runs a ghost tour. He told me that he always speaks to the ghost of Baxter Morgan and says the ghost wants to know where the treasure is."

David Crawley cackled. I wondered if insanity ran in his family. Surely his family couldn't harm others for generations and come off scot free. "Baxter Morgan has been here since 1840." He pointed to a shelf holding an array of bottles. "He worked hard for our family. We told him he was unjustly accused and hanged with the Jewboy Gang. Somehow that got around town. He worked for us hard though. Then my stupid brother let him out."

I was interested, in spite of my dire predicament.

"Let him out? What do you mean?"

"Des and I were arguing about the sale of this property. Des doesn't believe in the family ways. He grabbed Baxter Morgan's bottle and dashed it to the ground."

"What happened then? Where did his spirit go?"

"Who knows? The other spirits are all in their bottles. Let me give you a personal demonstration of zombis." At that moment, he turned his back on me.

I made a dash for the stairs, and went up them faster than a rat up a drainpipe. Crawley made no attempt to lunge at me, and I discovered why when I reached the trapdoor. It was locked. I pushed and shoved. It was immovable. I could hear Crawley chanting, so went back down to look for something I could use as a weapon.

Crawley was already well engrossed by some type of ritual he was performing but not too engrossed not to wave a handheld device at me. The trapdoor remote. No time to worry about that; I had to find something with which I could defend myself.

I eyed the skulls; perhaps I could hit him over the head with one. Surely there was something in here I could use. The chanting stopped and I became aware of Crawley looking at me.

"Nothing's happening to you." He seemed puzzled at first, then enraged. In three strides he made it over to me and shook me. "Have you done something? They're not working for me. You should be dying by now!"

Crawley dropped me and ran over to the shelves. He seized one of the bottles, large and encased by mirrors, and opened it. For a while he stared in it, and then screamed at me, "Salt! You've used salt!"

I ducked behind a table, and threw a skull at him and then hit him with some facts.

"Yes. If you feed salt to zombis, they're then free to desert their masters. The reference is Elizabeth McAlister,
A Sorcerer's Bottle: The Visual Art of Magic in Haiti
, 1995; Louis P. Mars, 'The Story of Zombi in Haiti' in
Man: A Record of Anthropological Science
, Volume 45, 1945."

Crawley launched himself over the table at me. I hit him with the other skull, but it glanced off. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me hard, but I whipped around and threw a handful of red brick dust in his eyes. Before I'd come over here to his house, I'd put red brick dust in one of my pockets and crushed eggshells in the other. I had hoped they would give me some measure of spiritual protection.

That only gave me momentary relief, as he then turned back to his supplies and brought out a ritual dagger. My first thought was that it looked too Wiccan for him. My second thought was that I wished I had found it.

Crawley turned to me with renewed purpose. I was deathly afraid. He was bigger and stronger than I; I could think of nothing else to save me.

Crawley smirked and made his way to me. I backed behind the table, looking around desperately for something to use against him.

Suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he halted, and stared fixedly in utter horror over my shoulder. I wanted to look behind me, but dared not take my eyes off him. I was totally freaked out. Understatement of the century.

Finally he spoke. "How did you get in?"

I backed off to one side and looked behind me.

Scotty.

I hoped he was here to rescue me and was not one of Crawley's henchmen. I hadn't heard him come in, but I'd been otherwise occupied.