Chapter 37
‘Where did Frankie get all this stuff?’ Ramona shuffles furiously through the stack of papers.
‘Slow down,’ Ellis says. ‘There’s a letter on top.’
They crowd round to read it. Sadie feels her heart jolt as they get to the end.
‘Take care, Cash Leonards.’
‘I know that name.’
‘You do?’ Ellis asks. ‘How?’
Sadie takes a breath. ‘Okay. I ran into Stella, the coroner, the other night. I asked if there was anything weird about Frankie’s death.
She told me it was possible he’d had an allergic reaction to a sting before he went in the pool.
She said she’d seen something like it years ago – a mailman called Cash Leonards, who also died in a freak accident.
’ She pauses. ‘Cash rented a room from Frankie’s grandma. ’
‘Shit!’ Ramona’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Frankie’s been staying with his grandma. So maybe he found this stuff in the room, hidden somewhere.’
‘Holy fuckeroonie!’ Ellis grins at Sadie. ‘I’m so glad I invited you on to our team.’
Sadie blushes. To hide it, she picks up some of the papers Ramona has discarded.
Against each house number, in neat, childish writing, a name and occupation are written, and then, either ACCIDENT or LEFT/DISAPPEARED.
Next to some there’s further detail – Bike crash.
Electrocuted. Fell downstairs. A few names have been circled in a different-coloured pen.
‘These must be all the ghost houses,’ she says. ‘And it looks like these are notes about what happened to the occupants.’
They all study the list. There must be over fifty houses. Dax whistles through his teeth. ‘That seems like a lot of people.’
‘I wonder why these have been circled.’ Ramona points at the list.
Owen Green – kid. ACCIDENT (fairground)
Wendy Molton – Sheriff’s clerk. SUICIDE?
Dean Hatchett – Sheriff. LEFT
Malcolm Gravelot – coroner. ACCIDENT (gas explosion)
Carrie Sanderson – reporter. ACCIDENT (shower)
Malcolm Gravelot. Sadie frowns. Stella’s father, maybe?
She starts to sift through the sheets of paper again. Beneath the list of names and addresses are several copied pages – newspaper stories. The ones Frankie must have been looking up on microfiche.
‘Wait. Where’s the list of dates?’ Dax asks.
Ramona pushes the list across the table.
‘Okay.’ Dax reaches over and starts to place the newspaper stories in date order. ‘So, this is the first one.
ESCAPE FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH!
Beneath the headline is a picture of the lake and a blurry picture of a teenager with long blond hair and glasses.
A local teenager is in a stable condition in hospital after he was attacked by an alligator on Saturday evening. It’s believed that Milo Miller had stolen a boat for a prank when it overturned and the alligator pounced.
Ellis points at the date on the newspaper. ‘The 29th of October. The paper comes out every Monday. So, if this kid was attacked on the Saturday—’
‘That makes it the 27th,’ Sadie finishes, looking at the list: 27th October 1991.
‘So, now we’re getting somewhere.’ Dax picks up a pen and adds the name next to the date.
‘What’s next?’ Ellis asks.
Dax slides the next newspaper story into the centre of the table.
BOY, FOUR, DROWNS IN FAMILY POOL
There he is again, Sadie thinks. Davey Junior grins out from the page, the same picture as in the ‘missing’ leaflet. The date on the paper is 20th May, the Monday after he drowned: 19th May 1997.
Dax makes another note. ‘Okay, so we’ve got an alligator attack and a kid who drowned.’
They go through the rest of the stories, matching the dates on the list.
FAIRGROUND HORROR: TEEN DIES ON GHOST TRAIN
‘He’s one of the names circled.’ Ramona cross-checks. ‘Owen Green.’
Sadie looks at the date: 22nd June 1997. Not long after Davey Junior. Barely a month. Dax places another sheet of paper on top of the pile.
JILTED brIDE HANGS HERSELF IN HOTEL
‘Weeping Wendy!’ Ellis exclaims.
‘Real name – Wendy Molton. Also circled.’ Dax makes another note. ‘Twelfth March 1998.’
The final two stories are smaller articles:
Coroner Dies in Gas Explosion at Work (13th April 2008) and Sheriff Dean Hatchett Retires (17th September 2012).
‘So,’ Dax says. ‘In summary, we’ve got almost eaten by alligator, drowned, crushed in Ghost Train, suicide, gas explosion and retired.’
‘And four of those are circled on the other list,’ Ellis says.
‘What about this one?’ Ramona asks. ‘Carrie Sanderson. Reporter?’
Sadie frowns. And then it clicks. Quickly, she shuffles back through the newspaper stories. ‘Look. Byline – Carrie Sanderson. She wrote all these stories.’
‘So maybe that’s why she ended up dead,’ Ramona says. ‘She started asking questions.’
Sadie stares at the newspaper articles again. ‘The sheriff and coroner. They would have been involved in all these deaths. Plus, Wendy Molton was a clerk at the sheriff’s office. Maybe they uncovered something they shouldn’t?’
Dax nods. ‘But what links the other three – alligator boy, Davey Junior and Ghost Train kid? Why are they important?’
‘Fuck knows.’ Ramona throws herself back in her chair.
They’re close, Sadie thinks. They just can’t quite see it. They don’t have all the pieces. She finds herself looking at the first story again. The teen who almost lost a leg to an alligator.
Aside from the former sheriff who retired, he’s the only other survivor.
She guesses he’d be around fifty by now.
She squints at the photo. Long, white-blond hair.
Glasses. One of his eyes, the left, is a little lazy, and maybe it’s the light but it looks like …
it’s a different colour to the right one.
She freezes. Milo Miller.
‘Shit.’
Ellis glances at her. ‘What?’
The limp, the walking stick. That mop of blond hair, now white and shorn to the skull.
‘This kid – Milo Miller. Don’t you realize who he is?’
They all stare at her blankly.
‘It’s Father Miller, the priest.’