Lord of the Wings Page 9

  “On my way. Goblin Rob, over and out!”

  Chapter 10

  I headed over to the Mutant Wizards office. Fortunately, it wasn’t quite in the tourist-filled center of town. Rob had originally rented the top floor of a ramshackle two-story office building from the 1930s. Eventually he’d taken over the ground floor as well, and about the time his staff had completely outgrown that, the Pruitts, the family that had been running Caerphilly since shortly after the Civil War, went bankrupt and Rob had been able to buy the building that had housed their once-great financial empire.

  I pulled up in front of what had at one time been a dignified if somewhat conventional six-story building. Clearly Rob and his employees liked decorating for Halloween. The trees and shrubs surrounding the building were draped with orange fairy lights as well as strings of skeleton lights. Most of the lawn was covered with what was undoubtedly the town’s largest collection of fake tombstones. All of the windows bore decorations—silhouettes of black cats, pumpkins, witches, or skeletons. Two realistic-looking skeletons clung to the door frames on either side of the double front doors, which had been painted black for the occasion.

  I pushed open one of the doors and a bloodcurdling scream rang out in the reception room.

  “Welcome to our dungeon,” the receptionist intoned. She was dressed in a long black Morticia Addams-style gown, and was somehow managing to work her computer keyboard in spite of six-inch blood-red nails.

  The vast two-story reception area was completely redecorated in orange and black. The enormous crystal chandelier that had once hung from the ceiling had been replaced by an equally enormous light fixture made of black wrought iron and faux human bones, draped with spiderwebs and strings of red crystals. The double stairway that swept up each side of the room to the mezzanine level was also decorated with fake bones, and several lifelike skeletons posed on it, including one apparently about to take a header over the railing of the mezzanine and one sitting near the bottom of the right-hand stairs with his skull resting on one bony hand in a pose that echoed Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

  A bit over the top, but not inappropriate for a computer game company, and I had to admit that I liked it all better than the rather pretentious and overwrought Pruitt décor it had replaced.

  “Is Rob here yet?” I asked.

  “Hi, Meg,” the receptionist said. “He told me to convene an all-staff meeting as soon as you arrived. Shall I give the signal?”

  I had figured Rob would want to hear what I had in mind before committing his staff to work on the project, but apparently he trusted me.

  “Go for it,” I said.

  She reached down and pressed a button, and the room filled with fiendish laughter. Vincent Price’s laughter, I suspected. The building erupted into activity. Doors slammed. People in costume began popping out of doors and swarming down the stairway. The elevators began dinging and disgorging more people.

  I made my way against the tide up to the mezzanine level. I’d seen Rob hold all-staff meetings before, and he usually chose to address the troops from just about where the skeleton was attempting to end it all.

  Sure enough, within a few minutes, just about the time the flood of witches, wizards, zombies, vampires, mummies, and other unearthly creatures slowed down to a trickle, Rob stepped out of the elevator and joined me.

  “You want me to fill you in on what this is all about?” I asked.

  “Nah.” Rob waived his hand in a nonchalant way. “Let’s just go for it. Attention, everyone!” he called out loudly.

  The almost deafening clamor of conversation in the room rapidly faded into silence.

  “Most of you know my sister, Meg,” Rob said. “She’s got something to tell us. Meg?”

  They didn’t stand much on formality here.

  “Chief Burke and I want to ask your help on something that could affect the success of this year’s Halloween Festival.”

  A murmur of interest rippled through the crowd and then died down.

  “This morning, we apprehended an intruder at the Caerphilly Zoo,” I began. “He apparently threw a fake foot into the alligator habitat just before a class of first graders was about to tour it.”

  Disapproving mutters.

  “We think he was doing this as part of some kind of game—although he called it a quest or adventure. We found a piece of paper in his pocket that apparently listed the tasks he was supposed to complete today as part of this game. Let me read it to you.”

  I read out the task list, studying the faces below as I did—at least those whose faces were visible rather than obscured by some kind of mask, makeup, or headgear. Some of the Mutant Wizards looked puzzled. But a lot more looked interested.

  “Chief Burke is worried about this game. He wants to find out who’s behind it. Shut it down if possible.”

  I could tell from the faces that many of the Wizards were inclined to side with the gamers.

  “Because shortly after we caught the guy who was terrifying the kids, we found the body of someone who the chief believes may also have been playing the game.”

  I could tell they were taken aback, but still not ready to side against the game’s organizers.

  “You know,” Rob piped up. “The idea of a giant scavenger hunt sounds kind of cool.”

  Murmurs of agreement from the audience. Did Rob not get the point?

  “But you know what’s not cool? They come to our town—our turf. And they’re running a game here. Without even including us. I don’t like that!”

  Noisy agreement from the troops.

  “And then, to top it off, they kill a gamer!” Rob shouted. “A gamer! Let’s get ’em!”

  The bony chandelier shook from the resulting cheers.

  “By which Rob means we need to collect competitive intelligence on this scavenger hunt,” I put in. “We need to find out who’s organizing this game. Who’s playing it. And what other pranks they intend to pull.”

  “And then maybe we can prank them back, big time!” Rob added.

  We’d see about that.

  “I figure there’s a slight chance one of you might have heard something about this game,” I said. “Because I know all of you are passionate about studying anything that might possibly turn into an exciting new game. If anyone does have any information, please let Rob or me know. And if no one knows anything—is there any team in the world better able to find out!”

  Cheers greeted this pronouncement, and Rob high-fived me, from which I deduced that he approved.

  “Now remember,” I said, when the crowd quieted again. “We’re working to find evidence that Chief Burke might need to use. Someone was murdered here in Caerphilly, and it might have something to do with this game. So be careful.”

  “And don’t do anything we know we shouldn’t be doing,” Rob said. “No vigilante, cowboy stuff. And no risking your own necks. Anything else, Meg?”

  I shook my head.

  “Everyone,” Rob said. “Mission Scavenger Hunt is our number one priority from now until Halloween is over! A day’s vacation to anyone who can prove he or she has found some useful intel. Let’s roll!”

  Most of the crowd stampeded out of the lobby and into the stairwells, while a few formed lines for the elevators. Most of them looked cheerful. I suspected the few who weren’t were project leaders who hadn’t quite lost sight of the deadlines they were paid to meet.

  “And how badly is this going to disrupt your company’s workload?” I asked Rob. “Don’t you have a new game rolling out in a few weeks?”

  “Vampire Colonies II,” he said. “And hey—want to see the final on the packaging? Your ironwork looks great.”

  He pointed to a poster hanging in the foyer. On it, a woman in a black-and-silver dress stood on a balcony, holding an elaborate candelabra that looked as if it had been constructed out of human finger bones painted black. Below her, in a moonlit courtyard, stood a man in a black cloak holding an ornate dagger with a sinister wavy blade, like a
n Indonesian kris, and a handle shaped like a bat with half-furled wings. The balcony was made out of oddly curly rails with gargoyles and bats entwined in them, while teeth, claws, and sinister slitted reptilian eyes erupted asymmetrically out of the railings. The whole effect was eerie, ominous, and almost monochromatic, the better to showcase the words Vampire Colonies II in dripping blood-red letters. I liked to think that my work helped achieve the creepy effect—because yes, the candelabra, the dagger, and the intricately wrought iron of the balcony were all my work. Below the poster stood a DVD case with a smaller version of the artwork on its cover, and the real items were in a glass case nearby.

  “Looks great,” I said. I confess, I breathed a small sigh of relief that if the posters and packaging were made, Rob and the art department were probably not going to come back to ask me for yet another variation. “Just a little creepier, Meg,” were words I’d learned to dread over the past few months. Although I had to admit, Rob paid very well, and made sure my contribution was boldly highlighted in the game credits.

  “But getting back to your schedule,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. We’re in good shape, and this should only take a couple of days. And who knows? Maybe we’ll get a cool game out of it. The idea of a scavenger hunt in a town that’s celebrating Halloween—the visuals would be awesome.”

  “Hey,” said a programmer who happened to be passing. “What if it’s like Groundhog Day Halloween. The town’s stuck in Halloween unless someone can finish the quest and end the curse.”

  “I like it!” Rob said. “Keep thinking—but first let’s find the other team so we can milk their brains for everything they know. Could be LARPers, you know. Live action role players,” he added for my benefit. “They act out games in the real world.”

  “Definitely a possibility,” the programmer said. “And there’s no way they could plan something like this without leaving some tracks online. I’m going to go work some chat rooms where some of the LARPers hang out.”

  “Hey, count me in!” Rob said.

  The two of them hurried off together.

  As I was about to leave, I remembered something. I needed to alert the Goblin Patrol. A blast e-mail would probably be the easiest way to do it. But I hated typing more than a few words on my phone. It would be so much easier to do it from a full-sized keyboard. Where better to do that than in the Mutant Wizards building, which probably contained more computers than every other building in town put together.

  “Is there a computer I could use to send an e-mail?” I asked the receptionist.

  She led me to a small cubicle near the back of the lobby where they had a computer set up for guests to use. I logged into the Web-based version of my e-mail and quickly composed my marching orders to the rank-and-file goblins. I outlined what we knew about the scavenger hunt and the murder and ordered them to be alert for people eating bugs, stealing pumpkins, carrying fake body parts, doing tombstone rubbings, or anything else weird.

  And then I went back and deleted the word “weird.” It was Halloween. Weird was the new normal. I changed it to “anything else you reasonably suspect could be part of a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt.”

  I added in a line asking everyone to reply or text me to confirm that they’d gotten the message, printed out a copy of my Goblin Patrol roster so I could check off the replies as I got them, and shut down the computer.

  I left the Mutant Wizards building in a good mood. My phone was already dinging with acknowledgments from Goblin Patrol members. If the tourists were up to something out on the streets, the Goblin Patrol was on the case. And if there was any information on the scavenger hunt to be found on the Internet, the Mutant Wizards would find it.

  I’d done everything I could do to help the chief’s murder investigation. At least everything I could do without crossing that invisible line between helpful citizen and interfering busybody. And the festival wasn’t going to slow down. Time for me to start making my rounds. And then my stomach growled, and I decided to start my rounds with a visit to the town square, where all the churches had set up their characteristic food tents.

  And since it was only a few blocks to the town square, and I already had free parking that was closer than anything else I was liable to find, I hefted my purse and my tote bag and set off down the street on foot.

  I’d had mixed feelings about the festival itself from the beginning, but I loved the enthusiasm and ingenuity that the townspeople showed in their decorating. The town had opted for its generic fall/harvest decorating scheme to placate those who weren’t sure they approved of Halloween, but the houses and small shops had gone in for Halloween by a ten-to-one margin. Hardly a house was without its pumpkin, and most people had gone in for groups of pumpkins, either ingeniously carved into jack-o’-lanterns or au naturel. And I had to remind myself that these were just the pumpkins left behind after the best had been gathered into the tent in the town square in preparation for Saturday morning’s jack-o’-lantern judging. In one yard a huge mobile of paper bats fluttered from the limb of a towering oak tree. In another a bony hand slowly crept out of the ground in front of a fake tombstone and grabbed at the ankles of anyone walking toward the front door. One resident had woven orange and black ribbons between the pickets of her picket fence. Another had tethered a filmy ghost to her chimney so that the slightest breeze or puff of smoke would set it to dancing. I made a mental note not to bring the boys down this street after dark—the ghost was slightly spooky even in the daytime.

  Before long I’d arrived at Caerphilly’s tiny commercial area. The tourists were already out in force, and from their festive mood I suspected word of the murder hadn’t yet started to spread. People were pouring into and out of the bakery with pumpkin bread and cookies shaped like cats and frosted with chocolate. They were standing in line halfway down the block from the coffee shop, which advertised pumpkin lattes and apple cider. They were admiring the Nightmare Before Christmas display in the front window of Caerphilly Cleaners and the animated skeleton string quartet on the flat roof of the Caerphilly Supermarket.

  My own enjoyment of the beautiful fall day faded as I found myself staring at the tourists, expecting every moment that one of them would reveal him- or herself as part of the scavenger hunt—or maybe even a killer. Was that a fake finger sticking out of that cup of hot chocolate? No, only a biscotto. Was that a spider on that pumpkin muffin? No, only a dribble of chocolate. I kept an eye out for people who might be consulting lists and then, after a few minutes, realized that if I were participating in the scavenger hunt, I’d put the list in my phone, so I could consult it without anyone realizing I was doing anything other than checking the time. Suddenly, every other tourist I saw seemed to be staring at a phone screen.

  “What’s wrong, Meg?” I glanced up to see the tall, lanky form of Randall Shiffley.

  “These people came all this way to see the Halloween festival,” I muttered. “You’d think they could take their noses out of their phones for five minutes to look at it.”

  “Oh, I expect half of them are using their phones to take pictures.” He pointed at a woman who was using her phone to take a picture of three children beside the Headless Horseman scarecrow in front of the hair salon. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “It’s been a crazy morning,” I said.

  “Yeah. The chief filled me in on the murder, and Lydia seems to be miffed that you haven’t dropped by to brief her. She seems to think she’s responsible for your finding the body because she sent you out to investigate something at the zoo.”

  “I didn’t find the body, and she sent me to the burglary at the Haunted House, not the zoo, and I had no idea she wanted a briefing.” I was careful to keep my tone light. “She just told me to take care of it. Which I’m doing. Want me to fill you in?”

  “That’d be great,” he said. “Mind if we do it over some lunch? I was just headed for the food tents.”

  “Great minds and dishwater run in the same channels, as Mot
her always says,” I replied. “I’m going to start with Baptist chicken and mashed potatoes, and then finish up with some Episcopalian pumpkin pie.”

  “If you pick me up some Baptist bread pudding, I’ll get your pie. I’m doing the Episcopalian ham and green beans.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “Meet you on the steps.”

  Chapter 11

  Randall and I made our visits to the church food tents and a few minutes later we joined the crowd who were using the front steps of the courthouse as a picnic site. At my suggestion, we climbed all the way to the top of the steps where we could have a little privacy. In between bites, I filled him in on what I knew about the murder as well as the pranks at the zoo and the Haunted House.

  My phone dinged several times during the telling. I noticed Randall frowning when I pulled it out to check it.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I sent out a briefing to the entire Goblin Patrol and asked them to acknowledge. After lunch, I plan to track down the holdouts to see why they haven’t answered.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “I was worried it was Lydia bothering you for a report.”

  “She usually calls,” I said. “And asks me to drop by her office so she can issue whatever orders she has in person.”

  Randall winced.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said. “She means well, but she still has a lot to learn. She still seems to be under the mistaken impression that in our quaint little town everything’s only a few steps away.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I do have two voice mail messages from her, but I’m going to wait to answer until I finish my lunch.”

  “I can beat that,” he said. “I have five.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” he said. “Five’s better than none. Last week I went for two days without getting a single message from her. Quite a relief until I figured out she’d mixed up two digits of my cell phone number and left forty-seven messages with poor Branson Flugleman down at the feed store. He was a mite peeved.”

  I shook my head in commiseration, although I had to admit, I was secretly relieved that Randall was no longer singing Lydia’s praises. Maybe he’d actually do something to get her to shape up. Or fire her. Either would be fine with me.