Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

me, Mettle stomped on a large branch as if to put it out of its mercy. The crunching sounded like a giant stepping on a pile of bones.

“I didn’t bring my swimming boxers,” he said.

“You don’t need them.”

“So we’re going skinny-dipping? It’s a bit cold for that. High tide, too. Otherwise, I’m in.”

“No. There’s an alternate entrance.”

The crunching stopped. “A what?”

“The harbor isn’t the only entrance to the cave,” I said.

“Since when?”

“Since six thousand years ago. Or millions, depending on your version of history.”

“I meant, since when did you know about this?”

“Eldritch showed me. It’s how I found Chrissy’s bracelet.”

“When was this?”

“A few months ago. Before the trial.”

“Hold up,” he said.

I stopped. The harbor breeze was chilling me to the marrow and I wanted to keep moving. “What’s the matter?”

“When were you planning on telling me all this?”

From a tree, I broke off a branch that looked suspiciously like Eldritch’s arthritic fingers and used it to scratch my chin.

“Now, I think. Yes, I think this was the plan all along. I like to keep my friends in the dark.”

“Don’t be a jerk, Rosie. This is serious. You’re telling me that Eldritch kept this entrance hidden from us?”

“Not me. I knew.”

“Even when we brought him down to the station and grilled him, he didn’t say a word.”

“He kept it hidden from everyone. He didn’t want the leaf peepers transforming into cave peepers and swarming the place and making his life miserable. I swore I’d keep it a secret, but seeing how our best lead went up in flames, I don’t where else to look. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears.”

“Anything else you’d like to divulge, Ms. Arnold?”

“Who?”

“Bennydick Arnold. The traitor?”

“You mean Benedict?”

“Yeah, the guy who the eggs were named after.”

“I don’t think they used Canadian bacon during the American Revolution.”

“Whatever,” Mettle said.

I whipped the branch off the cliff. It nicked a tree on the way, flew over the edge, and then disappeared. A moment later, there was a faint crash as the wind blew it against the rocks.

“The entrance I’m going to show you is the one that Peter Hardgrave used to try to sneak Chrissy out of Dark Haven.”

“So why is that important?”

“Because there are two other passageways down there. And right now, Peter Hardgrave is missing.”

“And…why would you care if he’s missing? The guy’s a pervert.”

I didn’t want to tell him that Phyllis Martin died right after she revealed Hardgrave’s true identity. Somehow, the events were linked. I knew they were. I could feel their linkage crawling up my arms as tangibly as the harbor breeze. “How is exactly is Peter Hardgrave a pervert?”

“Whoa, a bit defensive here.”

“I am not.”

“Says the defensive one.”

“He’s not a pervert, Matt.”

“Fine. A degenerate. Same thing.”

“Not the same thing. They are different words and they have different meanings,” I said.

“Spare me the English lesson.”

“You think Hardgrave’s a bum, yet you were all too willing to steal all his rum and share it with your cop buddies. That’s like busting someone for illegal pornography and then getting off on it.”

Even in the darkness, I could tell he had turned red. “The thug supposedly escaped from prison, Rosie. He’s a wanted man. The very fact that he made it through that trial without getting shipped back to Leavenworth is either a miracle or an example of how incompetent our courts have become.”

“Or my foster father is a brilliant lawyer.”

Mettle shook his head. “Why do you care so much about this Hard-on fellow all of a sudden?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Hard-GRAVE. Let’s just say he’s more important to this whole mess…and me…than I realized.”

We finally emerged in the clearing and circled the electric lighthouse. The ground was still torn up from all the utility work and it felt like we were traversing a section of farmland after the plows had come through and churned up the earth.

“It looks like they held a monster truck rally here,” Mettle said.

Or that. “Maybe the town wanted to plant some strawberries,” I said, trying to stay upbeat.

I grabbed his shoulder to keep from twisting my ankle and he paused and looked at my hand.

I blushed, twice as pink in the revolving light, and removed it.

“Feel free to use me as a crutch anytime you’d like, Casket.”

“I’m not using you as a crutch.”

“Then why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me about this alternate entrance?”

“Because at the time I found it, you were head over balls in love with Bella Donley. Remember her?”

He narrowed his eyebrows. “Is that why this date keeps getting postponed? You’re still jealous of a dead woman?”

“We’re going for a nice walk along the deadly cliff, Matt. Don’t ruin it.”

He shook his head and turned to the lighthouse. Now outfitted with a giant electric bulb and painted with a spiraling red stripe, it looked more like a barber’s pole than a beacon that had saved lives in the harbor for over a century.

“It looks like a giant candy cane.”

“Or a dildo,” Mettle mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The keeper’s house, where Eldritch used to live, was still undergoing renovations to turn it into a mini museum, a place where leaf peepers could eventually come and hide from the cold and pick up a brochure and a map of Dark Haven’s historic properties—if there were any left after the mysterious “private entity” who wanted my house seized them all.

“I can’t believe Eldritch used to live that dump,” Mettle said.

“Me neither.”

With only his meager pension and the few dollars in tips he had picked up from telling stories at my inn, most of the real estate in Dark Haven, cheap as it was, was out of Eldritch’s price range. After the old man moved out of the keeper’s house, Mettle had directed him toward a tiny studio apartment over the Trading Post, a small pawn and consignment shop on the edge of town, the same one in which my alleged sister Lori used to live.

Neither of us had told Eldritch that it was so cheap because Lori had died after