Chapter 30 Avery
AVERY
The meeting room was packed, every seat occupied, townspeople clustered around the edges of the room like sardines in a tin. Conversation hummed, everyone talking to everyone else before the meeting started as six people milled around behind a dais on a raised platform at one end of the room.
On the wall, the second hand of a clock inched toward twelve and the start of the meeting.
Lena and I nudged our way through the tall people at the back of the crowd, looking for a place to stand where we could actually see the town council.
“Is it always this crowded?” I asked, trying to keep up with Lena as she skirted a bulky old-fashioned slide projector in the middle of the room.
“Definitely not,” she said over the murmur of the crowd. “It’s because of Harold.”
The people behind the dais started to take their seats, and I clocked each member of the town council as they got settled behind their respective nameplates: Doug Haversham, Ellen Roscoe, Thomas Ashcroft, Marlene Pruitt.
My pulse kicked up a notch when my gaze landed on the name of the final member: Victor Ames.
“Victor’s a member of the town council?”
“Not technically,” Lena said. “He doesn’t get a vote or anything. He’s just here to shill for Hearthstone.”
Dressed in tailored pants and a crisp button-down shirt, Victor Ames looked to be in his late thirties, with an angular face and coiffed brown hair. He took his seat at the end of the dais and I wondered if it was my imagination that the rest of the town council avoided his eyes.
When everyone was seated, there was one empty chair, and I realized it had probably been Harold Pembroke’s seat.
I turned my attention to the familiar faces in the crowd, most of them already seated.
Rosie sat on one side of the room — Mayor Biscuit sitting politely next to her, panting on his leash — while Lyle stood on the other side of the room, one hand resting on the stroller where Cleopatra sat regally within its cushioned interior.
Jared was there too, sitting next to Sheriff Crowe, in uniform, the two of them chatting like old friends.
Clara sat next to the woman I’d seen in the window of the antique shop, her thin shoulders draped with multicolored scarves.
Her black hair trailed down her back, which was ramrod straight, like she might have been a dancer, and she wore sharp black eyeliner, her lips carefully outlined and filled in with bright red lipstick.
Bastien turned in his seat to scan the room and waved when he caught my eye. Next to him, Gabriel surveyed his fingernails like he was already bored out of his mind.
Lena and I found a place near the front of the standing crowd just as an older man walked to the podium to the left of the dais. His white hair was neatly combed, his face flushed, and cheerful yellow ducks marched up the blue tie he’d paired with a rumpled, slightly outdated suit.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” His glasses slid down his nose and he moved to push them back into place.
“Mayor Penbury!” a middle-aged woman in a smart skirt suit called out. “Daphne Sinclair with The Hollow Herald. What do you say to residents worried about the serial killer on the loose?”
The man — the mayor apparently — sighed. “Miss Sinclair, this is a small town. We’ll take questions at the end of the meeting, just like always. And there is no evidence that Blackwell Hollow has a serial killer.”
The crowd erupted.
“— then who —?”
“He’s not telling us— ”
“— a conspiracy, mark my words.”
Mayor Penbury held up a hand. “We can’t hold the meeting if everyone is talking at once.”
The volume lowered a notch, indignant shouts turning to hissed whispers.
“First things first,” Mayor Penbury said, his watery gaze scanning the crowd. “Sheriff Crowe, would you like to give a statement?”
Sheriff Crowe stood, climbed over the legs of the people sitting around her, and made her way to the dais.
Mayor Penbury stepped back and Sheriff Crowe stood at the podium.
“Good evening.” Her voice was clear and confident as she spoke into the microphone. “As many of you know, one of our residents, Harold Pembroke, was found dead five days ago on Evelyn Whitaker’s property.”
“Sheriff Crowe,” the reporter called out, “Daphne Sinclair with The Hollow Herald— ”
Sheriff Crowe sighed. “I know who you are, Daphne. We just had lunch.”
“What do you say about rumors that Harold Pembroke’s killer is a member of the town council?”
Gasps echoed through the crowd.
Sheriff Crowe held up one hand. “I’ll take questions at the end of my statement.
Right now all I can say is that Harold’s death has been ruled a homicide and there is an active investigation into the crime.
We currently have no suspects in custody, but we’re working several leads and will continue to keep residents and the, uh, press” — she glanced at the reporter named Daphne — “updated as new developments arise.”
“We all knew who did it!” Rosie said, standing and pointing at Victor. “Who else had as good a motive as Mr. Ames?”
Victor looked nonplussed, like he wasn’t surprised by Rosie’s accusation.
“We haven’t arrested anyone in Harold Pembroke’s murder,” Sheriff Crowe reminded the crowd, “and I think we’d all do well to remember that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”
“Court of law my ass!” an elderly man leaning on a cane yelled from the back.
“You’re telling us it’s a coincidence that Harold was murdered when he was fighting against that snake’s project?”
Rosie was sounding more than a little hysterical, but the crowd ate it up, murmuring while they shuffled in their seats.
Lena grinned as if to say, See? I told you this would be wild.
“I’d like to remind everyone that the Hearthstone Gated Community represents a wonderful growth opportunity for the town, an opportunity that— ”
“Growth opportunity? You mean a profit opportunity — for you!” Lyle shouted. “Take your project and get out! No haven for Hearthstone! No haven for Hearthstone!”
“Stop trying to make that stupid chant a thing, Lyle!” someone shouted.
“Yeah, you don’t speak for us!” a middle-aged woman in jeans shouted.
“Hearthstone Haven will bring much-needed tax dollars to the town of Blackwell Hollow,” Victor said into the microphone in front of him. “The town will benefit through the infrastructure upgrades agreed to as part of the project. Your property values will rise and— ”
The crowd got louder, and I felt a push from the people standing behind Lena and me.
I didn’t blame residents for being mad. Big developers always thought infrastructure upgrades should make up for their negative footprint in the community, like the community should be grateful to trade affordable housing and local flavor for upgrades to roads and bridges that they should have gotten anyway.
Still, I was getting nervous. The residents of Blackwell Hollow were really mad. Their anger bubbled like a volcano ready to blow, and Lena and I were trapped between the people in chairs and the ones standing behind us.
Sheriff Crowe stepped aside as Mayor Penbury approached the lectern.
He banged his gavel repeatedly on the podium. “Please,” he said weakly, “let’s remember we’re neighbors!”
Behind the nameplate reading Doug Haversham, a doughy man with a circular fringe of pale hair around his bald head started to read from a stack of papers in his hand.
“Statute 451, Section 9, paragraph 2 reads, “'The zoning board may approve new development within Blackwell Hollow’s city limits provided infrastructure and environmental studies are completed and concerns addressed.’” As Victor has stated, infrastructure upgrades will be paid for from funds generated by the project— ”
“The compound, you mean!” Rosie shouted, getting to her feet.
Victor leaned in to speak calmly into his microphone. “The community.”
“Okay, the fancy compound!” Mayor Biscuit’s leash slipped from Rosie’s hand, and the dog disappeared under the sea of chairs. Rosie looked around frantically. “Mayor Biscuit!”
Someone behind Lena and me laughed.
“How will the town provide water for the new development?”
The question, called out firmly over the sound of Rosie calling for Mayor Biscuit, came from an old man at the center of the standing crowd: Walter Finch, the duck farmer I’d seen when I’d taken flowers to Aunt Evelyn’s grave.
“Our studies show that the water table can more than provide for the additional development,” Victor said into his microphone.
“How will the ducks get to the water with all those houses between them and the lake?” Walter asked.
Victor leaned forward again. “The economic revitalization will— ”
“Economic revitalization for who?” The question came from a man in his fifties wearing a blue-and-gold flannel shirt and work boots.
Conversation had been building among the townspeople as they discussed the questions and answers among themselves. Now it got louder as some agreed with the man’s question while others argued that some people were just afraid of change and holding the town back.
“Mayor Biscuit!” Rosie was wringing her hands, walking up the aisle between the chairs. “Does anyone see Mayor Biscuit?”
“Maybe you should try leaving your dumb dog home next time,” a woman called out.
Rosie turned toward the voice. “Shut up, Mary! It’s none of your business.”
“It is when we have to look for your dog again,” a blonde woman in her thirties answered back.
“Mayor Biscuit!”
Cleopatra hissed in her stroller, his eyes trained on the ground, and everyone around Lyle looked at their feet, then moved out of the way as a chair skidded on the linoleum floor with a shriek.
Mayor Penbury banged his wooden gavel repeatedly, trying to quiet the rising chaos, and the end of the gavel flew off, soaring into the crowd. It was halfway to the floor when Mayor Biscuit bounded into the air, soaring out of the crowd like a star basketball player about to make a slam dunk.
Everyone gasped as he locked onto the end of the gavel.
There was a split second of stunned silence.
Then he landed on Gabriel, who let out a surprisingly primal shriek.
Gabriel seemed to stand on instinct, the picture of tailored formality as he shoved Mayor Biscuit away in horror, Bastien’s mouth open in surprise next to him.
And then Mayor Biscuit was back on the ground, the gavel still in his mouth as he raced through the crowd like a sprinter who’d just been given the baton.
Cleopatra leapt out of his stroller and chased after the dog.
Everyone stood, trying to get out of the way as the two animals tore through the meeting hall. Except in the crush of bodies, someone stepped into a stack of folding chairs leaning against one wall.
They fell like dominoes, sliding to the floor and causing everyone else to jump out of the way as a deafening crash sounded throughout the meeting room.
Daphne Sinclair, the reporter, stumbled in her heels and knocked into the projector. A stack of thin transparent slides fell to the floor.
I bent to pick them up but I’d only managed to gather a couple when the final folding chair hit the floor. It yanked on the projector’s cord, already pulled taut, and the plug disconnected from the wall.
The lights flickered in the room before everything went dark.