I raced down the sidewalk, the ambulance passing me as I jogged in my pajamas and slippers. It was cold for March, but the early crocuses were beginning to poke through the bits of snow that were crusted here and there on the ground. Not that I could see the crocuses right now. It was still dark out—not even time for Daisy’s and my six a.m. yoga, let alone sunrise this time of year. The coffee hadn’t finished brewing, and Judge Beck was still sleeping when Daisy’s text came in. As soon as I’d gotten the message, I’d barely paused to throw a coat over my pajamas before I’d run out the door.
Emergency at Suzette’s.
My mind churned through all the horrible possibilities, fire the foremost in my thoughts. Break-ins weren’t all that common in this neighborhood, but not unheard of. The ambulance driving past made me start obsessing on all the horrible things that could need a paramedic response. Had Suzette fallen? Or Olive? Olive stayed over at the cabin that Suzette had inherited from her grandmother far more than Suzette stayed at her place. They were both rather young for a heart attack, so my thoughts went back to a bad fall.
I jogged past the last Victorian-style home and turned down the long driveway that led to Suzette’s house. All of the homes in this neighborhood had once been part of the Hostenfelder farm. The farm had been in Suzette’s family since the eighteenth century when her ancestors immigrated from Germany to settle here. The cabin still sat on a couple acres of land, complete with a pond and a few dilapidated outbuildings. Aesthetically it didn’t fit in with the ornate nineteenth century homes lined up on what had once been fields and pastures, but the cabin was a part of the neighborhood’s history—part of the town’s history. And Suzette had never wanted to sell to the developers who continued to wave a tempting amount of money in her face each year.
The cabin’s lights were ablaze. I saw Daisy as I was about to climb the porch steps, and she waved for me to follow. I caught up with her just as we rounded the back corner of the house.
“What happened?” I panted like I’d just sprinted five miles instead of the equivalent of three blocks.
“The code that came across the scanner was for some sort of medical emergency. I had to look it up. It’s one I’ve never heard used before.”
I gawked at her. “You have a police scanner? And you’re listening to it at five o’clock in the morning?”
“The question is why you don’t have a police scanner, Ms. Private Investigator,” Daisy teased. “I listen to it a lot. I like to know what’s going on.”
“Really? Like traffic stops and the occasional kitchen fire?” I asked. “It’s got to be pretty quiet on that police scanner most of the time.”
Daisy was a gossip. And now that I thought about it, it really wasn’t inconceivable that she’d have a police scanner.
“There’s more than you’d think going on around here,” Daisy replied. “And I like to know if someone got pulled over drunk, or if a farmer’s cows got out and are in the road.”
Or if there was a murder. There seemed to be a lot of murders in the last year. I wasn’t sure if I just noticed them more because I was working for a private investigation company, or if there had been a new and disturbing increase in violent crime. Maybe I should get a police scanner of my own.
“The medical emergency code was the one for a drowning,” Daisy continued, her voice softening with worry.
“Drowning?” It was thirty degrees out. There was snow on the ground. What the heck would Suzette or Olive be doing that there would be a drowning? I normally would have assumed some sort of shower or bathtub incident, but Daisy was leading me past the backyard and through a field of brown, unmown grass to the pond, where all the first responders seemed to be gathered.
Who in the world would be swimming in the pond in this weather? It was probably still iced over from the bitter cold snap we’d had last week. Had someone been ice skating and fallen through? But I’d seen Suzette’s pond, and it wasn’t the sort of place for skating or even swimming anymore. The dock had crumbled to a few posts rising from the murky water connected here and there by some broken boards. The edges of the water were thick with briars. The pond itself was full of grass and cattails.
All those thoughts came to an abrupt halt when I saw Suzette sitting on the ground next to the pond, her face in her hands. She was wrapped in the quilt I recognized from her living room sofa. Olive knelt next to her, her arm around Suzette’s shoulder.
“I’ll go inside and get another blanket,” Daisy called out as I ran to the two women.
“What happened?” I asked when I reached them.
“Gus was barking at the back door,” Olive explained as she rubbed the other woman’s back. “Suzette looked out and saw the paper boy’s bike by the rear porch, and got a feeling.”
Olive worked in finance, but she was also a medium who could contact and speak with ghosts. I saw ghosts—shadowy figures at the edge of my vision—but I’d asked Olive for help a few times when I’d felt a ghost needed to inform me of something that I just wasn’t understanding. Outside of Olive and me, I didn’t know any of my friends who had more than the occasional ghostly experience. I wasn’t sure what sort of feeling Suzette had had, but I certainly understood why others might want to keep any paranormal sensitivities they might have to themselves.
“That darned pond,” Suzette said. “I’ve been meaning to do something about it, but I haven’t had the money. I should have it filled in if I can’t afford to restore it. I should have done something years ago. That boy—” She burst into tears, burying her face in her hands once more.
Olive wrapped both arms around the other woman and held her tight. “Shush. It’s going to be okay. It’ll all be okay.”
I glanced around, realizing that the paramedics weren’t over here administering to Suzette, they were helping someone else—someone bundled in metallic blankets and being hooked up to a variety of medical apparatus. He was young—a teenager with floppy dark hair.
He was someone I recognized.
The paper boy. I gasped. He always tossed my paper into the flower beds, or the bushes, or even on the porch roof in the morning. I’d considered getting the electronic version of our local news over the last two years, but I liked holding the actual paper in my hands. And I’d liked the young man who rode by on his bike in the dark hours before the sun rose every morning, earning some extra cash. His aim was poor, but he always seemed so industrious and cheerful on the mornings when I was up early enough to see him go by.
What had he been doing in Suzette’s pond? A shadowy figure materialized over near a mess of briars, and I lifted a hand to my mouth in horror. It was a ghost. Had the paperboy died? Oh no, how could that have happened? He was just a teenager, so young. But there was a ghost, right there not twenty feet from the spot where the paramedics were working on the boy.
The shadowy spirit shifted, moving closer, and I realized the ghost felt a bit older—possibly in his early twenties. And the ghost itself felt old, as if the tattered spirit had wandered this spot for well over a hundred years.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Suzette’s place had ghosts. Her family’s long history here meant some of her ancestors were probably reluctant to leave after death. Plus there was a good chance there was a cemetery somewhere nearby as so many old farm families used to bury their dead on their own land. Add to that a traumatic event in the pre-dawn hours, and a ghost was bound to show up.
I was just relieved it wasn’t the paperboy’s spirit. The absence of that particular ghost gave me hope that maybe this morning would see a happy ending.
Glancing over at Suzette, wet and shivering in the cold, I realized she must have gone into the pond after the boy while Olive dialed 911.
“Here.” Daisy re-appeared and wrapped a second blanket around Suzette.
“Should we go inside?” Olive asked. “Suzette, you really should get in a hot shower. There’s a pot of coffee ready, bacon in the oven, and some pancakes I’d been cooking before all this happened. Enough for everyone.”
“No. Not until…” Suzette lifted her head and nodded over to where the first responders were working on the paper boy.
“Then I’ll bring some coffee out here for all of us,” I announced. We could all use a hot beverage, and I probably wasn’t the only one desperately in need of caffeine right now.
I headed to the house, noticing Gus barking and jumping up and down at the back storm door, clearly excited about all the commotion outside. Making sure the dog didn’t escape, I squeezed inside. I patted the Gus’s head, trying to distract him from the events by the pond, then I headed into the kitchen to check on the bacon taking the last, somewhat crispy, pancake out of the skillet. I poured four cups of coffee, adding cream and sugar to the ones for Daisy and Suzette. I was about to go back out to the pond when I saw the paramedics carrying the paperboy on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance. Suzette, Olive and Daisy were heading toward the house. Deputy Miles Perkins was trailing behind them, so I poured another cup of coffee and started a second pot.
Gus ratcheted up his enthusiastic barking and jumping as everyone came into the kitchen. Olive picked the dog up to shush him while I handed Suzette her cup.
Daisy shot Miles a warning glance before shooing Suzette upstairs. “Hot shower and coffee first. Questions can wait until you’re warmed up,” she said.
Miles nodded in agreement, smiling his thanks as he took the mug I held out to him. Daisy pulled the bacon out of the oven, Olive put some food in Gus’s bowl, then set out plates and silverware, as I got the butter and syrup for the pancakes. We’d just sat when Suzette came down the stairs in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt, her wet hair wound up on top of her head in a towel.
“Fastest shower ever,” Olive teased her.
Suzette gave a strained laugh at that. “I didn’t want you to eat all the bacon.”
Miles rose and pulled out a chair for her and Olive passed her the tray of bacon. I watched Suzette fill her plate with food, noting that the hot shower and coffee had done her a world of good. Her eyes were still red and her face blotchy from crying, but she was no longer shaking with cold.
We all ate in silence. I went in for a second pancake, because Olive’s recipe was the best. She used buckwheat flour and some malt which gave the pancakes a wonderfully nutty flavor. I didn’t even bother to put syrup on mine. They were so good all they needed was a big pat of butter.
“Are you going to get in trouble for taking so long?” I asked Miles, suddenly realizing that he probably shouldn’t be sitting here eating breakfast with us while he was technically on the clock.
“I’ve got to interview Ms. Suzette for my report,” he replied, somewhat defensively.
“It’s not like we’d let him stand around and watch while we’re eating,” Olive commented. “And Suzette needed a hot shower and some breakfast. Nobody should be answering police questions on an empty stomach—especially right after jumping in a freezing pond.”
She had a point. I got up and poured us all another round of coffee, then Daisy and I started clearing the dishes.
“Are you ready?” Miles asked Suzette. He waited for her to nod, then took out his pad of paper and a pen.
She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out before speaking. “Olive was making breakfast. I was getting out Gus’s food when he started barking and scratching at the back door. It wasn’t his usual I’ve-got-to-go-pee kind of bark. It was the bark he does when there’s a delivery guy in the drive or someone’s here. I opened the door. Gus shot out, ran down the porch steps, and headed for the back part of the lawn that borders the field and the pond. For a second I thought it was a cat from the neighborhood or some other animal and I called for him to come back.”
“Did Gus come back when you called him?” Miles asked as he scribbled notes on his pad of paper.
Suzette shook her head, her smile rueful. “No, he didn’t. French Bulldogs have a stubborn streak. The obedience classes are a challenge for poor Gus. He’s very good about staying on our property, but he doesn’t always come if he’s chasing a bird or sniffing something.”
As if he wanted to prove Suzette wrong, the Frenchie gave his bowl a final lick, then trotted over to sit attentively beside her, tongue lolling out of his mouth.
Miles chuckled. “I’m glad we’re not having that problem with Hutch. He’s the star of his obedience class,” he added proudly.
I was happy to hear that. Miles had adopted one of the rescue puppies Daisy and I had needed to help place and I was so glad things were working out with his new four-legged friend.
“I stepped outside to go after Gus. Then I saw a bike laying in the grass by the corner of the house. When I saw that bike, I just got a bad feeling.” Suzette crossed her arms and hugged her chest. “We’ve got one of those invisible fence things, so Gus hadn’t gone all the way down to the field. But he was standing at the very end of the yard, barking at the pond. So I ran out of the house and in that direction.”
Tears sparked in Suzette’s eyes. She blinked hard, and took another deep breath.
“Did you hear a shout? Someone calling for help?” Miles asked her.
She shook her head. “No. But I saw a trampled place in the weeds and bushes where someone had recently gone through, so I ran through there. The ice was broken over a section of the pond, and I just knew someone was down there. I jumped in, and let me tell you, that water was so cold it took my breath away. I had yelled for Olive to call 911 as I was running, but as soon as I jumped into the pond, I couldn’t have said anything if I wanted to.”
“You didn’t hear the ice breaking or anything like that before you got down there?” Miles pressed.
Suzette shook her head once more. “Maybe he fell through when I was still in the house and Gus heard it and started barking? If that’s when he went in, I wouldn’t have heard him if he called out for help.”
Suzette sipped her coffee as Miles wrote, waiting for him look up at her before continuing.
“So, like I said, I ran down to the pond and I saw where the brush had been flattened and where the ice had been broken. I pushed past all the briars and grasses, and dove in. The water was freezing cold and dark. There’s all sorts of vegetation growing up through the water. That pond is a mess and has been for the last fifty odd years. The mud sucks your feet in clear to your knees in some places, and it’s easy to get tangled in the grasses and cattails. We used to swim there when I was little, but Grandpa made us stop, saying it was too dangerous. They never had the money to fix the pond.” She paused and wiped away a tear. “And I haven’t either. I haven’t even had the money to get the back three acres mowed like I try to do at least once a year.”
Three acres? I had only thought Suzette owned the two acres around the old farmhouse cabin. I’d not realized she also owned the field behind the pond that was thick with overgrown bushes and saplings.
“This place is falling apart,” she continued. “I can’t keep up with it, and now someone may have…may have died.”
Olive reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Suzette.”
“It is.” She swiped at another tear. “I should have at least come up with the money to fill that pond in, or sold it and the back three acres to one of those developers so they could fill it in. I just…I kept hoping I could save enough to restore it. I’ve got pictures of my grandparents and parents fishing from the dock, swimming, floating on rafts. We used to have ducks and geese there as well. I didn’t want to give up on the old pond, but if kids are going to sneak over to swim in it and almost drown…”
“Nobody wants to swim in an ice-covered pond in March,” Daisy pointed out. “If kids are going to sneak somewhere to swim, it’ll be in that gorgeous new pool the Wilson’s put in last summer, not your muddy, weed-filled pond, Suzette. No offense to your family watering hole.”
Suzette laughed. “No offense taken. You’re right. Nobody in their right mind would want to go swimming in my overgrown pond in March. But why was that boy out there, then?”
Miles waved his pen. “Let’s put that on hold and go back to your account of what happened. You jumped into the pond…?”
“I jumped in and started feeling around in the water because I couldn’t see anything. The pond is iced over, but it wasn’t thick and looking up I could tell where the ice was broken and the weeds trampled because it was lighter in those patches. I came up a few times for air. I think it was the second or third time I dove down, I felt something. Like an arm or a leg. I grabbed hold with both hands and just swam like crazy.” Suzette let out her breath in a whoosh. “I’m not the most athletic woman in the world, but I’ve always been a good swimmer. I don’t know how I managed, but I got him out of the pond and started to do CPR on him. Olive must have let Gus inside when she called 911 because I remember not hearing him barking as I pulled the boy out of the water. She came running down with the quilt and next thing I knew the paramedics where there taking over for me.”
“Is he…is he going to be okay?” Olive voiced the questions we’d all been afraid to ask.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t conscious when they took him away.” Miles gave us a worried look as he closed his notepad and put it back in his jacket pocket.
“Can you let us know if you hear something?” Suzette asked. “I know the hospital won’t tell me anything, but I just want to know if he’s going to be all right. So please tell me.”
“That boy has a chance because of you,” Miles told her as he stood. “Ms. Suzette, you’re a hero this morning. And I’ll absolutely let you know as soon as I hear something from the hospital.”
He patted Gus on the head, thanked Olive and Suzette for breakfast, put on his coat and hat, and headed out the door.
Suzette turned to Olive. “Part of me wants to call in sick today at work, but the other part of me thinks it might be good to go in. It might take my mind off everything.”
Olive reached down and scratched Gus’s head. “This little guy would love to have you hang out here with him for the day, but personally I think it would be better for you to head in to work.”
“I agree,” Daisy chimed in. “Staying home means you’ll just obsess over what happened and worry about that boy.”
“Does anyone even know his name?” I wondered, feeling horrible that I didn’t. The boy had been delivering my paper for at least three years that I could recall.
“Travis something, I think,” Daisy replied.
Travis. I did the math and realized that he probably went to school with Madison, and was most likely in her grade or maybe a year behind her. Did she know him? I suddenly thought of the judge, who was probably getting ready for work and wondering where the heck I was. There would have been a full pot of coffee when he’d got up. Normally Daisy and I would be out back finishing up our yoga, or on our way in for a quick bite and hot drink before getting ready for work ourselves, but instead he’d come down to an empty house, a hungry cat, and a full pot of coffee.
I dug my phone out of my purse, sending him a quick text. “I should probably get back home,” I told the others. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Can you find out the boy’s name for me?” Suzette smiled. “And thank you—both you and Daisy—for racing down here. Having you here really made me feel better.”
“I’ll figure out who he is and text everyone,” I promised. “And I’ll see you both at porch happy hour tonight?”
Olive smiled. “We’ll be there.”
I was glad. After this morning, we all could use a glass of wine and the company of friends.
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