Chapter 20 - Mrs. Lehm

Earlier that morning, Olivia had gotten a call from Autumn. She told Olivia that she’d been contacted by one of Kirby’s neighbors, a woman by the name of Mrs. Lehm.

“Why didn’t she go see this woman herself?” I asked.

“Autumn has to make up some work. She’s been getting in trouble, and it’s hard to explain that she’s looking for someone that no one believes is missing,” Olivia said.

“And this...Mrs. Lehm? She said she has something important to show us?”

“That’s what she says,” Olivia grumbled.

“You don’t sound excited.”

Olivia had her phone in her hand. She was looking up the address Autumn had sent her. When she was done, she slowly put her phone back in her pocket. I watched her face as she did.

That was getting to be a bad habit with me—watching people’s faces, wondering if I’m going to be reading their expressions or some invisible emotion that nonetheless manages to brand itself onto my eyeballs.

In this case, I could only see her expression. She looked grumpy. I couldn’t tell if it was meaningful or her default setting.

“Autumn told me not to get my hopes up,” she said.

After a brief silence, I said, “Do you know why she said that?”

Olivia shook her head.

We were walking away from the town center, toward Kirby's shop. Small groups of people were scattered over the whole area, working to get the place ready for the Besom Days Festival. Canopy tents were being put up, men were unloading temporary gas firepits and patio heaters from their trucks, ropes were being tied off, and booths were being assembled.

As we passed by, a feeling of isolation stole over me. All those people were devoted to the same project—but Olivia, Jacky, and I were leaving them behind to pursue our own ends. It felt like we were walking in a different world.

“It’s possible she was cautioning herself as much as Olivia,” Jacky said. “There comes a point during a long struggle when many humans become scared to hope.”

I looked back at Big Jacky. He was striding along as if he hadn’t said anything surprising at all.

Jacky had come out with one or two perceptive insights before. There was no reason I should still feel that zap of mild shock. But you don’t expect to hear a statement like that coming from the same man who couldn’t understand why someone would be bothered by the sight of another person’s smashed-in skull.

On the other hand, Iset had been coaching Jack Noctis for three thousand years. Maybe he’d learned a few things.

When Jacky saw me gazing at him, he elaborated: “It’s been over a week, and there’s been little to go on.”

“Jacky,” I said, “do you feel hope?”

Olivia’s steps slowed.

“In this situation?” Jacky asked.

“In general,” I said.

For a while, the only thing we heard was the sounds of Olivia’s heels marking time as we walked along the wet sidewalk.

“I think I have,” Jacky said. “Twice. It’s an uncomfortable sensation. It’s very bright, but without substance, and when it goes away, it feels hollow.”

That was it. He’d got it in a nutshell, and the greatest poet alive couldn’t have added a single word to the description. Sympathy swelled in my chest until it pressed out on my ribs. I felt the urge to throw my arms around death and squeeze.

Jacky went on, “But the few hopes I’ve had have been disappointed. I don’t know what it would feel like to have them realized.” He paused. “Do you?”

My psyche took a quick one! two! hit from those words. It was like I was back in the ring with Conrad—but at least Conrad had a rough idea of his own strength.

I crammed my fists deep into my coat pockets, ignoring the ball of grief that had welled up inside me, and let my brain sift through my memories. Maybe it would find something useful.

The first thing it came up with was a rose-gold phone. Then the euphoric moment when Conrad scooted over to give me room on the couch. Igor and his cakes. Jacky sitting behind his desk, flourishing his hand bones out to the side—“Then my house and means are at your disposal.” Tiny things, little moments, that became drops of gold.

“Okay,” I said, “so you know how hope feels so bright and insubstantial?”

Jacky nodded.

“In a big burst of joy it becomes solid. It shrinks it down into a…a chunk of happiness.” I pulled a hand out from my coat pocket and held up a nonexistent cube. “Like a wooden toy block, and you pick it up and put it with the others.” I got carried away with the image and added, “And it makes a neat stack!”

Olivia said, “Why does every explanation you give sound like it’s coming from a five-year-old?”

I shrugged and glanced back to see if the other half of my audience had appreciated the lecture. Noctis considered the ground as he walked.

“Jacky?” I said.

“Does a bigger hope realized make a bigger block?” he asked.

I smiled. There was a lot in that smile—fondness, amusement, exasperation, and sadness. Sadness for him because he had no idea what I was talking about…and a speck of sadness for myself.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Olivia tugged the front of her hat down by the brim. “If we ever find Kirby, I’ll let you know.”

Mrs. Lehm lived in a second-floor apartment, kitty-corner to Kirby’s next-door neighbor. We climbed the stairs and Olivia knocked. As we waited for Mrs. Lehm to come to the door, I looked over the thin metal railing to the alley below.

Maybe there was some reason to hope. If anything had happened behind Kirby’s store, Mrs. Lehm would have had a good view of it.

The door opened wide enough to give us a three-inch view of the woman inside. Her face was partly obstructed by the brass security chain still fixed to the door. She had poofy brown hair with a half inch of gray roots showing. The skin of her face had wrinkles in a variety of depths. I couldn’t tell if they were worry lines or smile lines. She peered at us from behind her thick-rimmed glasses.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Lehm?” Olivia said.

“That’s me.”

“We’re friends of Autumn Langley and Nolan Kirby.”

“Kirby’s that blind boy that owns the shop,” Mrs. Lehm noted.

“Yes.”

Her eyes flicked up to Olivia’s hat, then returned to her face. “You’re a witch.”

“Is that a problem?”

Mrs. Lehm let out a humph. “Not to me. I don’t suppose I would’ve lived here for so long unless I didn’t mind witches. Most hide it better.” She looked at Big Jacky. “What about you? Are you police?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“No.”

Mrs. Lehm’s eyes narrowed.

I jumped in with, “But he does help law enforcement.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Lehm said. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?” Jacky said.

But Mrs. Lehm’s attention had turned to me. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“I’m a woman.”

“Why are you bald?”

I already felt nettled because of the boy-or-girl question. I don’t mind when people make a mistake, but I do mind when their tone makes it sound like they’re accusing me of something—as if it’s my fault they can’t tell, and I did it on purpose.

She used the same tone when she asked her second question.

“Hair dyeing accident,” I said.

Mrs. Lehm’s eyes widened. Olivia shot me a glare. Jacky leaned over and whispered, “Explains what?”

Olivia took a half step forward. “Mrs. Lehm, Autumn told us that you had something important for her—something that might have to do with Kirby’s disappearance.”

A slow, wide smile spread over the old woman’s face. It showed most of her upper teeth. All the wrinkles had to bend around it to give it room. “That’s right.”

The door closed, we heard some metallic skittering, then the door opened wide enough to admit us.

“Come in,” Mrs. Lehm said.

Olivia and Jacky went in first. I gazed around the place as I followed them in.

It looked like a standard low-income apartment. The paint was an egg-shell white that hadn’t been touched up in over a decade. The furniture looked worn, and no two pieces were the same. The bookshelves were crammed with paperbacks and DVDs, some of them turned sideways, sitting on top of the others. Two finely crafted cupboards stood out. They were as old as everything else—maybe even older—but they looked “aged,” rather than worn out. One was filled with delicate knickknacks. The other was filled with china. Both of the cupboards looked too big for the room.

Two tabby cats came out from the narrow hall that led to the rest of the apartment. When they saw Jack Noctis, they stopped and stared without so much as a twitch from their whiskers or tails.

Mrs. Lehm noticed them. “Come on, Milo. Chip. Do you want to say hello?”

Neither moved.

She said over her shoulder, “They always come out when they hear the door. They think they might get a chance to escape. When that fails, they yell at me for treats—as if they’re good little boys that wouldn’t have abandoned me given the slightest opportunity.”

She bent down and held out her fingers. “Come on. Come. No?” She straightened up and put her hand on her hips. “That’s funny. They’re not usually shy of strangers. I have to lock them away when Bethany comes over. She’s allergic, you know.”

“Um, Mrs. Lehm?” Olivia said.

Mrs. Lehm waved at her reluctant cats. “Never mind.” She turned to us. “Have a seat.”

She claimed the only armchair. Jacky, Olivia, and I had to make ourselves as comfortable as possible on the couch. I sat down in the middle and sank by a foot.

Mrs. Lehm started talking before we were settled.

“I think it was Pager.”

Olivia blinked, then leaned forward. The witch’s hat she was holding in front of her knees slid down a bit. “I’m sorry. Who?”

“Mr. Pager.” Lehm nodded while giving Olivia a significant look. “I told that to the chief, and I told it to that Autumn girl. I’ll tell it to you now. It was Mr. Pager.”

“Who’s Mr. Pager?” Jacky asked.

Lehm turned and pointed behind her, to some unseen apartment or store beyond the wall. “He’s a neighbor, though, I wouldn’t call him neighborly. He lives above the store next to Kirby’s. And I think…” She waved her index finger around. “I think he did it for the shop.”

“The shop?” I said.

“The chief said that I shouldn’t say things like that—that Mr. Pager doesn’t have a motive. So I’ve been thinking about it.” She lowered her voice. “The shop is the key.” She leaned back. “Mark my words. When they find the body, they’ll know.”

Jacky started to say, “Nolan Kirby isn’t de—” but Olivia cut him off.

“You think something bad happened?”

Lehm nodded.

“Why?”

The old woman scoffed. “Isn’t it obvious? You don’t get the police around asking questions because a man decides to go on vacation. It has to be something.”

The edge of Olivia’s lips pulled back and down. She was disappointed, but she was trying to hide it.

Mrs. Lehm went on. “After that, I got to thinking, and it all makes sense. Everything! Mr. Pager, the stranger, the footprints—”

“The footprints?” I repeated.

“Yes! It wasn’t the garbage at all!”

My eyes darted over to Olivia and Jacky, but they didn’t seem to be following her story any better than I was. I wished that Darius was there. Whenever he was around, interrogation sessions made a lot more sense.

“Um.” I swished my hands in front of me, trying to give some kind of outline or shape to my nebulous confusion. “Is there some kind of a beginning that we could, maybe, start at?”

Mrs. Lehm said, “It started the day before Kirby went missing—”

“Would that be Wednesday or Tuesday?” Jacky asked.

Lehm scowled at him for daring to interrupt.

“Sorry,” Olivia said. “Go on.”

When Lehm went on, her voice was dusky and dramatic. I found myself leaning forward. Milo and Chip crept into the room to listen.

“It started the day before Kirby went missing. That Tuesday night”—Lehm cast a dark look in Jacky’s direction, then continued—”I heard a car while I was watching the late show. I got up, went over to the window, and looked out. Mr. Pager was pulling into his usual spot after eleven o’clock. But he’s a man of regular habits, and I’ve never seen him come home later than eight. What I didn’t know was that he was meeting with the stranger—a woman.” Lehm raised her eyebrows. “A witch.”

She allowed a suitably impressive pause, then went on.

“The next day—Wednesday—I saw her. A woman came wondering down the alley around one o’clock. She got all the way down here, looked around, and left. I told Ansel she wasn’t looking at anything in particular, but now that I know what happened, I remember that she eyed Kirby’s place longer than anything else. That night they must have come for Kirby. They got him out of bed, used a spell to either bind him up or make him compliant, packed him up in their car, and drove away.”

“You saw this?” Jacky asked.

Mrs. Lehm glared at him with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t have to see it. The next morning, I was outside, throwing away my garbage, when I found a set of bare footprints in the snow. Mr. Pager caught me staring at them. That man won’t give me a good morning nine times out of ten, but that morning, he wanted to know what I was looking at. When I pointed them out, he laughed and said it must have been some lazy person who had to throw out their garbage late at night and didn’t want to bother putting on shoes. He said he used to do that when he was young, and that Hazel had a teenage boy old enough to do something similar. But those footprints were too big to be Luke’s. They must have belonged to Kirby, and no one would go out barefoot in the snow unless they were forced to.”

Mrs. Lehm shifted so she could lean on the arm of her chair and raise her finger. “They must have gotten rid of Kirby and hid the body. When the place goes up for rent, Pager will buy out the supplies from whoever inherits it, and he and the witch will move into the business. He can finally quit that day job he’s been working at for decades.” She gave us another solemn nod. “You mark my words.”

I blinked, breaking the storyteller’s spell. When I came to, I was leaning so far forward, my elbows were digging into my thighs. I looked over to see how Olivia was doing. Her expression was composed of equal parts concern and confusion.

I knew how she felt. Mrs. Lehm had sounded so impressive and certain that I caught myself wondering if Big Jacky was wrong about Nolan Kirby being alive—but once you start questioning whether or not you can trust death when it comes to life, you might as well give up and start reading books on nihilism.

Jacky was unimpressed. His low voice broke into the silence.

“Can you clarify something for me, Mrs. Lehm?”

The old woman turned her head so she could eye him better.

“What exactly did you see?” he asked.

She jabbed a bony finger at him. “You’re law enforcement all right. This was why I called Autumn, and not the chief.”

Jacky ignored the hideous accusation. “If I understand you correctly, you actually saw Mr. Pager come home late on Tuesday.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“I told you, I saw the bare footprints, and Pager was out there, trying to tell me where they came from so he wouldn’t look guilty.”

“What about the witch?”

“I saw her too. She came that Wednesday.”

“Can you tell us what she looked like?”

Mrs. Lehm stared at a point in space, then shook her head. “I’m too high up. I couldn’t rightly tell.”

“How tall was she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was she wearing a dress?”

“No, she was wearing pants and a coat.”

“Did she have long hair?”

“I didn’t notice.”

Jacky sounded frustrated: “Then how could you know she was a woman—let alone a witch?”

A triumphant smirk appeared on Mrs. Lehm’s face. “I found the spell they used to take him.”

Olivia and I both lurched to the front of the couch. Since I was already sitting on the edge, I almost fell off.

While I recovered my balance, Olivia said, “A spell? You found a spell?”

“Circle, lines, strange symbols.” Lehm smiled at her. “I bet you could make something of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Make something of it? If Olivia could actually see the spell they used, then she could tell us how powerful it was, what it was meant to do, and maybe even who’d created it. If she didn’t know the information off-hand, then it’d take her less than a day to track it down. This was exactly the kind of break we’d been looking for, and I could see the painful suspension of hope lighting up Olivia’s eyes.

Mrs. Lehm put her hands on the arms of her chair and pushed herself to her feet with a sigh. “Now, let’s see. I put it over here.”

Olivia was off the couch and only two steps behind her. I stood up but stayed back so I wouldn’t be in the way. When Jacky rose to his feet, the two cats flattened themselves against the carpet and crept backward.

Mrs. Lehm went over to one of the cupboards and felt around the top. She pulled down a piece of printer paper, folded into uneven quarters. Its edges were warped and its ink was smeared where it had lain in the snow.

Olivia had enough patience to wait for Mrs. Lehm to hold it out before snatching it from the old lady’s hand. She unfolded it.

A second passed.

Olivia’s forehead wrinkled, and her brows pulled together.

Unable to bare my curiosity any longer, I stepped up to Olivia’s side and looked over her shoulder at the paper.

I drew a quick, involuntary breath—and then I laughed.

I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I laughed and laughed—despite the fact everyone was staring at me, despite the fact I’d scared away poor Milo and Chip, and despite the disappointment seeping through my stomach.

A circle, lines, and strange symbols.

It was a partially filled out unit circle. His name wasn’t on the paper, but I was pretty sure that Luke, Hazel’s teenage son, was missing his trigonometry homework.