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I try to speak coherently without worrying myself sick about West.
Drake sits at my side, punching words into a tablet, while I repeat exactly what happened after Gram and Marty left to comfort Faye.
I also learn how a wandering Hercules found Drake and tipped him off that something was very wrong. To complete the weirdness, he mentions Granny Coffey stepping up in our absence, taking care of the poor abandoned guest who’d tried to check in.
“Wow. Looks like Gram might owe her a month’s worth of strawberries,” I say with a snicker.
“Sure enough,” Drake says in his flat Yankee drawl, calm as ever. “Now, you mentioned Carson Hudson—and that’s not his real name—mentioning some meteorite business in an earlier interaction?”
I nod, but I’m confused.
“Yeah. You mean he used a fake name or what?”
“He’s a Carson, all right, but his last name’s Bostrom. Took some deep digging in Boston police records to figure that out. Turns out, that uncle he mentioned, a man named Gerald Bostrom, was scamming folks all over the Pacific Northwest thirty or forty years ago with similar schemes. Only, he got a little farther than his nephew. He had a nasty ring of stolen art going. Pretty nice black market business till his greed took over. Then he got in over his head with some space rock out in Montana, and that was the end of him.”
I raise my eyebrows, surprised that part is true. But Carson was awfully obsessed with the fake meteorites the Three Musketeers found, wasn’t he?
The same rock in Faye’s photos that drew him here like a wolf smelling blood.
“That’s insane,” I whisper. “I’m guessing this wasn’t his first try with stealing antiques?”
Drake shakes his head.
“Not hardly. I called Montana and had a chat with Sheriff Langley out in Heart’s Edge about an hour ago. This guy showed up there under a third different name a couple months ago, sniffing after some secret gold in a lake or somethin’. But an old lady in town noticed the resemblance to his dead uncle, and he blew town pretty fast. We also turned up some reports of petty thefts at antique shops and flea markets in New England further back. I’d bet my bottom dollar his prints will be a match for some of ’em.”
“What about the other stuff that went missing here? Did you find Faye’s gun?” I ask.
He smiles.
“A thorough search of the Tesla in the trailer with the Corvette turned up a couple real interesting concealed compartments. Faye’s Winchester was tucked under the back seat, along with several other valuables he swiped from your grandma’s basement. He called in the goons he recruited through Carolina Dibs to set up the big heist, going after your grandpa’s cars.”
I nod slowly.
Everything makes sense, it just doesn’t make me happy.
I want to barf for ever giving Carson the benefit of the doubt.
A traveling antiques dealer?
Ugh. Why hadn’t I trusted my instincts?
I mean, what kind of sicko can stand the taste of those rotten swamp nuts?
The more we talk, the more questions I ask, and the weaker my voice gets.
A couple throat lozenges help, but my voice is totally exhausted. Drake has me sign the statement on the tablet while Gram returns and insists on calling a doctor.
“Totally understandable, Miss Simon,” the doctor tells me after Drake leaves. “Your voice box needs time to heal. It’ll be much better by this time tomorrow. I promise. There’s no lasting damage.”
Knowing I can’t get more words out, I just nod.
The doctor looks at the nurse next to him. “Nurse Amy has a pair of socks for you to wear, and then she’ll take you down to recovery to see Mr. McKnight, if you’d like. For our sake, I hope you want to. The man practically threatened to start tossing heads around the room if you aren’t there when he wakes up. The surgery went quite well and he’ll be going home in three or four days.”
“That long?” I squeak out.
“Yes. Regrettably, we need to keep his leg immobilized and under observation. The gun was fired at such close range that the bullet did significant muscle damage before it became lodged in bone. It’ll heal, however, we need to take plenty of extra precautions the first few days,” he says.
My heartbeat picks up while the doctor rambles on with the nurse and Marty, explaining that Weston won’t be very coherent when he wakes, and that I need rest, too. But I can sit with him for a short time.
