Chapter 56
“Anyone come through here?” Abby asked the person holding aloft a half-emptied water pitcher as if carved from marble in that position.
He set it down so abruptly it was surprising that it didn’t shatter. He jerked to attention and saluted Cutcher. “I was first in, Group Captain.”
“At ease.”
“See if anything’s missing,” Abby told him.
He glanced at his commander.
“Do it.”
Zackie was zigzagging back and forth across the kitchen. Miss Watson must have spent time here.
“Two knives and—” the server held up a half-empty packet of cookies. “Right on the center of the counter so as I couldn’t have missed it.”
Zackie sat and stared up at the chalkboard.
She, Derek, Cutcher, and Dilya circled up close behind the dog. The dog remained focused on the very left end of the chalk tray, with good reason. “We found your cookies.”
“Biscuits,” the server corrected her. “Digestives.” There was a stack of four of them barely on the tray.
“Digestives. They look as dry as a—” now it was Abby’s turn for an inappropriate laugh.
“—as a dog biscuit?” Derek finished for her, nudging his shoulder against hers.
“Miss Watson guessed you were on her trail, Dilya. And, of course, you’d have Zackie with you.”
But Dilya was busy pushing Cutcher out of her way. She inspected the chalkboard, the tray, the underside of the tray, and where it attached to the wall. When a tug wouldn’t free it, she ran her fingers along the edge.
“She must have left a message other than biscuits.” Dilya’s motions became more and more frantic as her search turned up nothing of interest.
That’s when Abby spotted the chalk on the back of Dilya’s left knuckles. She grabbed Dilya’s wrist and checked her other hand. No chalk marks. Picturing Dilya’s motions…
“Miss Watson is a very smart woman.”
“She is. Why do you say that?” Dilya inspected her own knuckles.
“The biscuits were teetering on the edge, as if telling us to look beyond the edge.” She slapped a thigh pocket of her flightsuit and extracted a small flashlight but it didn’t show anything when she shone it at the white-painted cinderblock wall. “Kill the lights.”
Someone did.
Abby shifted the flashlight to strike the wall beside the chalkboard at a grazing angle. The paint was a gloss white but, with just the right angle of light, she could see that non-reflective areas had been chalked to form letters.
“White chalk on a white wall. As I said, very smart.”
Derek’s hand clamped firmly on Abby’s shoulder. “Speaking of…” He whispered to her as he squatted beside her.
All her life, her brains had pushed men away.
Derek didn’t let go and his training meant he didn’t need contact with her to keep his balance.
Instead he squeezed her shoulder for a long moment as he picked up a piece of chalk and began recreating the message on the lower corner of the chalkboard.
It required shifting the light several times and making a few guesses, but the message finally came clear.
D, Run! No follow. W.
“What in the world could ever make her think I’d listen to that?” Dilya stood with both fists on her hips.
“Maybe she didn’t think we’d be with you,” Derek teased her.
That earned him a quirky smile, “Or she did and still thinks we should run. Who knows how deep the danger goes?” She said the last in sepulchral tones and made a creepy fingers-wiggling gesture.
“Only comes up to here on the ducks,” Abby held a hand to her hip just as Ricky would when describing the dangerous ocean out on his lobster boat.
Derek’s laugh echoed off the hard walls. The rest just looked at her like she was crazy. Nobody from away understood a Mainiac’s sense of humor—except Derek.
“So, give Zackie a biscuit and then tell her to Seek again.”
Dilya did, and said, “Faigh” again.
She sniffed in a circle. Stopped and tilted her head a couple of different ways before looking at Dilya with what even a non-dog person like Abby could read as confused.
“Try starting her out in the hall again.”
Dilya led her out, called out the Seek command, and Zackie came straight back into the lunchroom.
“She follows the freshest scent, right?” Abby asked as they all watched Zackie crisscrossing the room.
Dilya nodded. “Or the strongest.”
“Which means that either way, it isn’t out in the hall.”
“But—” Dilya waved a hand to indicate the four walls of the lunchroom. There were no places to hide.
Abby took a cue from Colonel Gibson and watched Zackie instead of her own intuition—especially as the latter wasn’t leading her anywhere.
Behind the counter, refrigerator, trash can, halfway to the door, back to the supply drawers behind the counter, over to the chalkboard… Then Zackie’s puzzled look again. The Sheltie appeared to get the paths mixed up from there.
Chalkboard to middle of the room, over into the servers’ side of the counter.
Abby’s eyes tracked to the answer mere steps ahead of Zackie.
“The dumbwaiter. We’re in the basement. She took the dumbwaiter where food supplies must be delivered from a service truck up at street level.”
It wasn’t big enough for even Dilya and Zackie together, though Derek had to physically force Dilya not to ride up into the unknown alone.