The Curse of Crawford Manor: The CaseFiles of the Sleuth of Sethalton, #1

By A. D. Franklin

Death threats. A haunted mansion. Family blood feuds that span generations. And at last, murder.

 

Alexandra Whitfield, the Sleuth of Sethalton, is hired to investigate the mysterious goings-on at the home of the richest and most hated old man in the city, dying centenarian Jacob Crawford. Her partner, Eric "Bric the Handyman" Thompson, former professional wrestler turned bodyguard, reluctantly tags along. While there, they encounter a cadre of some of the worst villains in Sethalton, including a psychiatrist with questionable morals and a less-than-sterling reputation, his social climber of a wife, two narcissistic young women who seek to find their pleasure in causing the Sleuth pain, and a mysterious, ghostly, scarecrow-looking man who seems to be stalking the estate in order to pursue his own agenda. To make matters worse, the longer he stays on the estate, the more convinced Bric becomes that the whole place is haunted. He assumes the situation can't get any worse, but is proven quite wrong when disaster strikes, people start getting murdered, and his partner, Alex, the Sleuth of Sethalton, disappears. A frantic search begins.

 

Who has taken the Sleuth? Where has she been hidden? Has she left on her own volition? Can anything be done to save her? Or is it already... too late... ?

 

Join Eric "Bric the Handyman" Thompson & The Sleuth of Sethalton, Alexandra Whitfield, in a series of first-person action-adventure/mystery novels about a guy and a girl... … and a whooooole bunch of bad guys who want our heroes dead!

• Language: English
• Publisher: F.A.B. Works
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386201106

Book preview

Table of Contents

Chapter One:

The Scarecrow-Looking Man

Chapter Two:

What Mr. Whitfield Thought

Chapter Three:

The Sleuth of Sethalton

Chapter Four:

The Mystery at Crawford Estate

Chapter Five:

Unpleasant Memories

Chapter Six:

Crawford Manor

Chapter Seven:

Dr. Martin Oppenheimer

Chapter Eight:

The Gardener's Tale

Chapter Nine:

Crawford Estate

Chapter Ten:

The Twisted Heart of Jacob Crawford

Chapter Eleven:

Unnatural Causes

Chapter Twelve:

The Crawford-Malicore Case

Chapter Thirteen:

A Dark and Stormy Night

Chapter Fourteen:

The Dinner Party, Part I

Chapter Fifteen:

One-on-One in Crawford's Tower

Chapter Sixteen:

Agitha's Terror

Chapter Seventeen:

The Dinner Party, Part II

Chapter Eighteen:

The Curse of Crawford Manor

Chapter Nineteen:

Murder in the Mansion

Chapter Twenty:

The Face Beneath the Mask

Chapter Twenty-One:

Plans for a Getaway

Chapter Twenty-Two:

The Towers of Crawford Manor

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Jacob Crawford's Diary

Chapter Twenty-Four:

Evidence of a Kidnapping

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Searching for the Sleuth

Chapter Twenty-Six:

The Prisoner in the Barn

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

Operation: Kill Alex

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

The Dungeon in the Basement

Chapter Twenty-Nine:

Thompson & Drexler

Chapter Thirty:

The Last Voyage of The Ol' Betsy

Chapter Thirty-One:

Down with the Ship!

Chapter Thirty-Two:

Hour of Evil

Chapter Thirty-Three:

One More Warner

Chapter Thirty-Four:

Descent into Darkness

Chapter Thirty-Five:

The Handyman vs. The Scarecrow-Looking Man

Chapter Thirty-Six:

The Last Will & Testament of Jacob Crawford

Chapter One

The Scarecrow-Looking Man

For the first time since I began working for Mr. Whitfield and his daughter, Alex, a few months earlier, I was the only one left in the building during working hours on this dark and stormy Friday night just before Halloween. Mr. Whitfield had been tied up in court for the past two weeks on a difficult murder case. Alex, who was still in school, had helped him out by running various errands in between her classes. Neither one of them had been in the office much recently. Mavis Davis, the secretary, had asked me if I thought it was okay for her to leave at 4:30, a half hour earlier than usual. She wanted to get ready for the Halloween parade downtown. I said sure, as long as she didn't expect me to answer the phone. I hate answering phones. Given that it was so late on a Friday afternoon, we figured nobody would call, so Mavis said it was okay, and left. Being the sort of forward-thinking person that I am, I decided to get an early start on the mopping. With any luck, I could get done in time to head upstairs (I lived in an apartment on the second floor of Mr. Whitfield's two-story office building), have dinner, and catch the opening bout of the local Friday night fights. So I locked the front door and flipped the window sign from Open to Closed, and got to work.

I had finished with the Whitfields' offices and was getting ready to do the hallway when I heard someone knocking at the front door. I checked the grandfather clock at the end of the hall, and sighed. Only quarter till five. Somebody was trying to get in, and I was going to have to explain to him why he couldn't. I rinsed out the mop and laid it up against the wall, then went to deal with this headache.

I pulled back the curtains on the front window, and looked through the darkness and the rain at the man standing there. He noticed me and stared back. For a moment I wondered if I had entered a horror movie. Everything about this man's appearance was unnatural, grotesque, off-putting. Judging from his wrinkles, he was probably about sixty years old. He was extremely tall, around seven feet, and extremely skinny. His arms, hands, and fingers were freakishly long: he was standing completely erect, and his fingertips came down to the tops of his knees. His face was a mask of horrors, with unnaturally white skin and mustache, deeply bloodshot eyes, sunken cheeks, a mouth that curled up on one side and down on the other, and a cavity in his face where his nose should have been. From his skin and hair I judged him to be an albino. His ancient, threadbare suit was several sizes too small for him: his sleeves only reached halfway between his elbows and wrists; his pants, halfway between his knees and ankles. Around his neck dangled an ugly necklace, at the end of which appeared to be a shriveled human hand. The fingers had been bound together with twine and were holding a candle. Talk about a macabre fashion sense. I sure hoped it was nothing more than a decoration. His shoes were comically large, with wide, round front ends. They looked like clown shoes. To top it off, he had on a ridiculous pointed hat, like a witch's hat, under which a colorless shock of hair poked out. All in all, he looked like a scarecrow that had come to life and shaken himself free of his pole.

I embarrassed myself by staring at him much longer than I should have, but he was such a sight, I couldn't help it. He returned my stare evenly, never changing expression, never even blinking. Then I shook myself to my senses, reminded myself to follow Alex's life lessons and not judge based on appearances, and convinced myself to open the door and politely ask him to go away (I only opened the door an inch or two—I didn't unlock the chain).

I'm sorry, sir, but we're closed.

He tilted his head to one side and did something weird with his cheeks. I think he was trying to frown, but his face seemed frozen in that hideous mask and he couldn't actually do it. He pointed at the sign in the window where our office hours were listed. Friday, 9:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M. He had a point, but I still wasn't going to let him in.

Yes, sir, I know the sign says we're open till five. But neither of the lawyers is here right now, and they're not going to be back tonight. If you wish, I could take your name and number and leave a message for them? I felt a bit too much like a secretary carrying on like this, but I figured that's what I get for letting the real secretary leave early.

My offer didn't seem to please the scarecrow, since he shook his head back and forth several times in slow, purposeful motions. Then he raised his right index finger and pointed at himself, then at the window, motioning to the office.

Is this guy mute, or something? I wondered. Everything about this guy felt off to me, but I didn't want Alex to chew me out later for letting a potential customer walk away because I didn't like the way he looked. This was the exact sort of thing Alex would get worked up about. She firmly believed in letting everyone have a fair shot at representing himself properly before the law, or some such nonsense, and I knew she would let me have it if I turned someone away due solely to his looks. Plus, I'd encountered my own fair share of disgusted looks and questioning glances over the years due to nothing more than my appearance, so I knew what it was like to endure that type of scorn, and I didn't want to be guilty of doing that to someone else. But I still wasn't quite willing to let him in.

Do you know where the First Christian Church of Sethalton is? That's where the Whitfields go to church. Every Sunday afternoon, Alex Whitfield—that's the daughter—offers free legal advice to people who go there to talk to her. You could try meeting her there this Sunday, say around two o'clock? With all the people who go in and out of that church on Sundays, I figured it wouldn't be a problem for him to be there then. Alex would be well protected, even if I wasn't there.

But nope! Another firm, slow shake of the head, another dramatic use of the right index finger. So be it.

Okay, I said, unlocking the door chain, you can come in and sit down until closing time. But I guarantee you that neither Mr. Whitfield nor his daughter will show up, so you'll be wasting your time.

He responded by giving me a smile. At least, I think it was meant to be a smile, but he had the most crooked mouth I'd ever seen, and it was impossible to know for sure what it was doing. Then he came inside and took a seat on the green wingback chair we keep in the corner, between the plants. He moved incredibly slowly, as if he were stuck in a world where everything went at half speed. But his movements, slow as they were, had an inexplicable gracefulness to them. Every motion was deliberate, calculated, purposeful. He was a man who knew how to conserve his energy. For such a big guy he had an amazingly soft step. He didn't even get any noise out of the loose floorboard that creaked practically every time anyone got near it. This was a guy who had a lot of experience not drawing attention to himself. He'd probably spent his whole lifetime being stared at and made fun of for his odd appearance, and had learned how to avoid trouble wherever possible by sneaking around as silently as he could. Maybe that's what those crazy shoes were for—maybe somehow they muffled his footsteps, or caused him to walk in such a way that his steps wouldn't be heard. He pulled out an old news magazine from the magazine rack, crossed his right leg over his left, and settled down to read.

Whatever. I checked the clock again. As long as he didn't cause any trouble and got out of here in the next fourteen minutes, I didn't care. It wasn't my time he was wasting. I went back to my mopping.

I finished the hall, the restrooms, and the area in the lobby around Mavis's desk, and went to work on the other side of the room from where Mr. Scarecrow was sitting, reading his magazine. I kept a close eye on both the clock and him. I was getting more uncomfortable with him by the minute. He wasn't doing anything but sitting there, reading, but still... something about him just seemed off. I was sure he wasn't armed—there was no way he could have hidden a weapon in that badly stretched and frayed suit of his—and even though he was taller than I was and had a longer reach with those inhumanly long arms, he was probably thirty years my senior, in much worse health, emaciated and weak-looking. Plus, I had professional fighting experience, and somehow I doubted that he did. I wasn't at all concerned for my physical safety, yet I still found myself counting the seconds before I could kick him out.

And the moment finally came. At 5:00, the grandfather clock at the end of the hall started chiming, the little toy bird came out of its hiding place and chirped five times, and I put my mop in the bucket and turned to deal with my guest, who was staring intently at the clock, or maybe at the little blue bird that was sticking out of it, singing its heart out. Before I could say anything, he held up his hand as if in acknowledgment and rose to his feet, untangling those incredibly long arms and legs once more, and stretching himself out to his full height. I gulped. A moment ago I'd been convinced I could take the guy if I had to, yet seeing him standing there in all his scarecrow-looking glory, I began to have my doubts.

He carefully tucked the magazine back in the newsstand. Then he reached into his suit coat and pulled an envelope out of his pocket. He handed it to me. The look he gave me indicated a sense of urgency. He really wanted to deliver this letter.

I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Alex.

You wish to give a letter to Miss Whitfield? I asked.

He nodded.

Then I'll put it face-up on her desk. That way she'll get to it first thing Monday morning. Assuming she came in Monday morning. But I had a feeling she would. She usually dropped in either before she went to school, or after her morning classes. And if not her, then I'd give it to her father. Now, then—

I broke off because he was vehemently shaking his head no. Is something the matter? Do you not want me to deliver this letter to Miss Whitfield?

This time he emphatically pointed at me, using both index fingers.

You want me to deliver this letter to Miss Whitfield personally?

He shook his head again, but less firmly this time. Then with his left hand he pointed at his mouth, then made a type of mouth-opening-and-closing motion, and with his right hand he alternated between pointing at me and pointing at the letter, with a few occasional gestures towards the back of the hall, where the Whitfields' offices were. It took me a moment, but I finally got it.

You want me to read this letter and deliver the message to Miss Whitfield out loud?

A great big nod, along with a thumbs-up sign. I felt proud of myself, and happy. Now I could get the guy to leave.

All right, then. I'll go ahead and read it right now. If you'll wait a moment—

Truth be told, I didn't want him to wait, and I was glad when he didn't—he walked out while I was still unfolding the letter—but I figured saying that was the best way to remain courteous, and I did need him around in case I had any questions about the contents of the letter.

Which I most certainly did. For the handwritten letter read as follows:

To Miss Alexandra Whitfield: 

Forgive me for any potential indiscretion in sending you this letter. I do not wish to frighten you, only to raise your awareness to a deathly serious issue. For I have reason to believe that you, Alexandra Whitfield, will soon be placed in terrible danger. The forces of darkness are conspiring against you, Miss Whitfield, and they mean to do you harm. At some point in the near future, you will be approached by a trusted acquaintance who will ask you to accept a simple-sounding case pro bono. This case will involve a house that is supposedly haunted. Given the seeming simplicity of the case, your long-time friendship with the client in question, and your kindly disposition in general, I feel it safe to assume you will agree to take this case. I came here to warn you that you must not!

Terrible things will happen to you if you agree to assist in this case. You will suffer an ignoble end, and the story of your young life will be finished far too soon. Only small parts of you will be left for your loved ones to find. Grief and heartache will consume your loved ones when news of your fate begins to spread. Your name will become a source of terror to all the young women of Sethalton. When they think of you, they will be filled with fear and will say to themselves, Remember what happened to Alex Whitfield! All your accomplishments in your young life will be forgotten, all the goals you have for your life will go unmet, and you will join the list of countless young women who met a sinister fate at the hands of evil men hiding in the darkness. Years will go by, decades will pass, and the memory of you will fade. Eternity alone will reveal your fate.

Do not accept this case, Miss Alexandra Whitfield. I beg of you.

It was signed only A Concerned Observer.

I tore open the front door and stared out into the darkness and the rain, scanning both sides of the street for any trace of the Scarecrow-Looking Man. But he was gone.

Chapter Two

What Mr. Whitfield Thought

Nobody ever came into the office on Saturdays, and at this point in our relationship Alex and I did not spend any time together outside work, so I didn't see either Alex or Mr. Whitfield the next day. I did try calling them, once in the late morning and again in the early evening, but I only had their home phone number, and neither of them was home when I called. The second time I called, I went ahead and left a message with Evie, one of their housekeepers, for them to get ahold of me, but I deliberately kept the message low-key and vague in order to avoid startling Evie, who was easily startled, and to avoid breaking Alex's No. 1 Rule: confidentiality. Alex hated talking about her cases with anyone, for any reason, even when it was legally okay for her to do so. I knew she would be upset with me for sharing information over the phone with anyone other than her or her father.

(Me, I was a much more easygoing guy. I always figured the trouble Alex and I got into was interesting enough to share with others whenever possible. And since I had become somewhat obsessed with putting everything down in writing as much as I could, for personal reasons, I had plenty of material saved up about our adventures together. But I always had to be careful to change all the dates and all the names of the people and places involved. Sometimes I even altered the events that occurred. I knew that if I didn't, Alex would come after me with the fury of a thousand lawsuits. I'd be tied up in litigation for my next dozen reincarnations!)

So I wasn't able to deliver the Scarecrow Man's message at all on Saturday. I wondered what he would think about that. Part of me was hoping he would come back to see if I'd passed his message on yet. With a full, sunny day to think about it, as well as being prepared for a confrontation rather than being caught off-guard, I was ready to have it out with him. Even if the guy was a crackpot, which I figured he probably was, I still wanted to ask what he had in mind delivering such a macabre letter to my young partner.

In the six months since Delaware Del Whitfield had hired me, Eric Thompson (I go by Bric, my nickname) to work together with his daughter as her partner/bodyguard combination (it was hard to define what my job actually was, since Alex, her father, and I all seemed to have different ideas of what, exactly, I was supposed to do), I had become quite fond of Miss Alexandra Mary Whitfield, or Alex for short. Not in a romantic sense: she already had a fiancé to whom she'd been engaged for some time, a fine, upstanding young man who was studying to become a pastor; and I'd already had a taste of what it was like to love, and live with, a woman, an experience which had ended very badly—so badly, in fact, that despite my ongoing fondness of and attraction to the opposite sex, I had no desire to go through that experience again, ever. But Alex was the sort of woman about whom it's easy for a man to become extremely fond. She had numerous characteristics that made her, in my mind, at least, a prime example of what a young woman should be, and how she should live. She was the sort of young woman I would have wanted as a role model for my daughter. If I still had one, that is.

To start with, she was incredibly intelligent and had a superhuman capacity to store huge volumes of information inside her brain (a useful trait for someone who wanted to become a lawyer). She was kind, caring, and compassionate and went out of her way to help people in need. One of her goals as a lawyer was to provide services to people who couldn't normally afford legal fees, which was why setting up hours to offer free legal advice and taking cases pro bono was such a big deal to her. At this point she was still a year away from becoming a licensed lawyer, so everything she did was on an unofficial basis, but she knew what she was talking about, and she still wanted to help as many people as she could. She invested herself totally in others, whether it be her friends, her family, her church congregation, her clients, or even people she didn't know. She held herself to an extremely high standard of character, conduct, speech, and appearance, and made it a goal to be consistent throughout all aspects of her life. She often said she wanted to be the same person on Friday evenings, when she was tired and exhausted after a long, stressful week, as she was on Sunday mornings, when she was on full display at her church for everyone to see, singing and praising and leading prayer groups and Bible studies and all that stuff. To Alex, anyone could be a good person, if all it required was to put on a public display one morning a week. The test came when life got tough and tempers got short. Whether or not one passed the test under such circumstances was the mark of whether one was truly a good person, according to my young partner. In the short time I had known her, so far she had passed the test.

Alex was very much a daughter of the upper class, and she knew it. She had been born into wealth, born into high society, born into privilege. She was a trust fund baby and had at least a few million dollars sitting around in bank accounts that she could access at any time and that could never be taken away from her, and that she had never had to lift a finger for (to her credit, though, she refused to access that trust fund and insisted on paying her own way through life. Still, she had lived her life with the knowledge that the money was there whenever she needed, or simply wanted, it). She, her father, and her brothers lived in a gated community in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods smack in the heart of Sethalton, where houses were valued at seven figures and had heritages that went back a century or more. Her family was the oldest and most well-respected family in Sethalton. Heck, the Whitfields are Sethalton—the city itself owes its existence to Alexander Whitfield (Alex's first namesake), who moved to this plot of land, strategically located between two rivers, in the 1780's and founded the city, eventually naming it after two of his sons, Seth and Alton. For seven generations and two centuries now, Alex's family has been entrenched in the highest levels of life in the city—they've been mayors, police chiefs, aldermen, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, politicians of all shapes and sizes, university professors, museum curators, clergymen, fire chiefs, artists, architects, everything. Their women have married men of similar influence in other cities. They've shaped the city's religious life, its political life, and its cultural life. Of all of Sethalton's mayors throughout its entire history, one-third of them have been Whitfields. Alex's own father, Mr. Delaware Whitfield, a lawyer by trade, had been Mayor of the city when Alex was a girl. Her mother, Mary (Alex's other namesake), had been Circuit Attorney at the same time. Alex's career ambition was to follow in her mother's heels and become Circuit Attorney of Sethalton County (which includes the City) someday. Everything she did, everything she had done since seventh grade, was a calculated step along that journey.

So Alex was a rich white girl. She came from money and planned to marry into more money (her boyfriend, the up-and-coming pastor, was a son of the Billington family, one of the few families in town richer than the Whitfields). She had never not had access to money and had no idea what it was like to live without money. But to her credit, she, unlike a lot of rich white girls, actually was aware of this. Short of outright giving up her money, which she maintained would be an incorrect stewardship of the resources her God had given her, she had done everything she could think of to help and identify with people who did not have money. She had been volunteering large amounts of her time in homeless shelters since sixth grade. She was involved in numerous outreach programs at her church specifically aimed at the poor and needy (she was even the main organizer behind several of them). She donated her money to various charities that went towards widows and orphans and feeding destitute children, both at home and abroad. She'd been spending a few weeks each year for the last several years on mission trips in countries like Honduras and Kenya. She was involved in a whole bunch of other ministries at her church, as well as at other places, dedicated to helping people with their problems, such as wrestling with grief after the death of a loved one, overcoming the trauma and emotional baggage resulting from childhood abuse, learning how to manage finances and be responsible with money, or simply providing a willing ear for people who needed someone, anyone, to listen to them. Already in our short association with each other, I had heard her express her contempt on numerous occasions for useless, do-nothing, sit-on-their-asses (that's my paraphrase of her soapbox rants; Alex didn't use words like asses) religious people who complain about their own rights but don't give a crap about anybody else's. Such people bothered Alex terribly; she seemed to have more problems with them than with just about anybody else, including hardened criminals. This was especially true when these so-called religious people were also rich, as was often the case. Alex had no patience for rich people who claimed that they were rich because God had blessed them for being righteous or morally superior, or that poor people were poor because they weren't righteous and therefore God hadn't blessed them. And since these sorts of people were her neighbors, she was constantly getting into arguments with them.

In short, she was the sort of person who was fully willing to wade into the mud of people's lives to help them clean up their messes, rather than standing safely at a distance and simply shouting encouragement at them, or being indifferent to their problems. I believed she was sincere about these things, sincere and a little naïve, and that was why, despite only knowing her for a few months, an intense loyalty to her was already forming in my heart, one that resembled the loyalty others had to her, people who had known her far longer than I had. I had been making it a point to have private interviews with some of her long-time friends and associates, and confirm whether the Alex Whitfield I knew was real, or a mirage. So far the people I'd spoken to viewed her more or less the same way I did.

All of this was why I had affectionately begun calling her the Sleuth of Sethalton. Alex was an intelligent, compassionate, and sophisticated young woman, who had seen and experienced much in her twenty-four years on this earth and was much wiser and more mature than you would expect someone her age to be. But despite all her advantages and all her wisdom and all her experiences, she was still only twenty-four, she had never lived in an uncontrolled environment without having access to her home base in Sethalton County; and thus she lacked the sort of world-weary knowledge that I had. She was not naïve in the sense that she assumed better out of people than she should have—as she often reminded me, she was well aware of the sinfulness in human nature—but she was naïve in what she thought she could do about it. She was still in her conquer the earth phase and had not yet come to accept, and learn how to work within, her own limits. That was why her father wanted her to have a partner, someone older, someone male, someone with a more practical understanding of the way the world worked, someone who wouldn't take advantage of her but would help keep her from completely losing herself in her relentless quest for idealistic justice. I was under the impression that Mr. Whitfield was assuming this would be a fairly short-term arrangement, that my role would be finished once his daughter got through her idealistic phase and was willing to accept her own limitations and stop trying to do things that were flatly impossible for her, or anyone, to do. But that hadn't happened yet, as Alex had resented her father's insistence on getting her a partner and still wasn't totally on board with it. She sometimes went out of her way to make my job harder, and she and I had a strained relationship at this point.

As for me, I had no idea how long I would be doing this. I had no idea how long I would even want to do this. Alex was a handful, and could be difficult to deal with at times. I got the feeling that she fundamentally didn't like me, or at the very least she didn't want me around (her clear resentment at being forced to have me didn't decrease my admiration for her, by the way). Many young white women of Alex's class are uncomfortable around someone like me, a non-white ruffian from the seedy parts of society. At first I thought Alex may have been, too, but after being around her for several months I realized that that wasn't the problem. She just resented having a partner. My background and heritage—or lack thereof, as the case may be—didn't seem to factor into her (or her father's) thinking at all. Some of her brothers may have had a problem with me—she had eleven of 'em, and I'd met a couple, and those meetings had been pretty brief and tense—but it was still too early for me to say for sure.

Anyway, I was looking at this whole thing as a way to get a wrestler's license for Sethalton County, so that I could join Two Rivers Wrestling, the local wrestling promotion, and get my career back on track, which was what I really wanted. Mr. Whitfield had promised he would get one for me. Once that happened, I might well be out of here the very next day, for all I knew at the time.

Speaking of Mr. Whitfield, he showed up at the office sometime about half past noon on Sunday. He and his daughter, as well as every other Whitfield in the city, were highly religious people and could be counted on to be at church every Sunday morning. This was a family trait that stretched back seven generations to Alexander Whitfield over two centuries ago (Alexander had been a missionary, and his sons Seth and Alton both became preachers and missionaries, thus starting the tradition that at least one son of every Whitfield would become a missionary, and at least one daughter would marry a missionary. So in addition to all their other roles, the Whitfields were a missionary family. In fact, that's how they saw themselves first and foremost). I'm not at all a religious person and can be counted on to sleep right through every Sunday morning (after staying out late every Saturday night). I was still rolling around on my bed upstairs, awake but not yet fully up, when I heard a disturbance on the ground floor, in the office. I hadn't expected anyone to come in today. Thinking it was an intruder, maybe even my friend Mr. Scarecrow, I quickly threw on some clothes, grabbed a weapon, and went downstairs as softly as I could. There was a light on in Mr. Whitfield's office. I approached the door to the office slowly, quietly. I dropped my guard when I heard his familiar whistling.

I put my weapon away and called out to him, Mr. Whitfield! What are you doing here? Then I entered his office. He was sitting at his desk, going through some files.

Del Whitfield was the man who had been responsible for raising my partner (and her army of brothers), and he was still helping mold her into maturity. He was fifty-six years old and in excellent health. His light brown hair was thinning, but he still had a lot of it left. I hoped I'd have that much hair in twenty years. He had thick coke-bottle glasses (a result of all those years spent reading microform materials while researching his cases, he said), a handlebar mustache, and a small goatee. An average-sized guy, he was by no means a physical powerhouse, but he always seemed to be in control of any given situation he found himself in. He had a calm, reassuring voice that bespoke authority and commanded respect without having to shout to get it. He loved wearing brown suits. Heck, he loved wearing brown anything—shoes, socks, hats, coats, you name it. I don't think he owned a single article of clothing that wasn't brown. Dark brown, light brown, medium brown, beige, tan, beaver, russet, whatever. Didn't matter. As long as it was some shade of brown, he would wear it; and if it wasn't, he wouldn't.

He had sought all his life to be a lawyer, and as a young law student one of his classmates had been a firebrand of a girl named Mary Sue Lambs. A relationship between them was inevitable. Del and Mary were an awesome team. They challenged each other, encouraged each other, and completed each other. Del was a Whitfield and was used to money and privilege, but Mary had come from the working class, the daughter of a factory man, and had had to fight for everything she ever got. She could only attend law school on full scholarship and had to study day and night to keep her grades up so that she wouldn't lose it (heck, her being in college, period, let alone law school, was unusual for a woman at that time). She had pressed Del into bettering himself as a man and as a student and had shown him areas where he had been weak. It's no understatement to say that Delaware Whitfield became the man everyone in Sethalton still talks about fondly to this day because of Mary. They were the very definition of the saying that beside every great man is an even better woman. Due to their differing backgrounds, Del and Mary had different points of view, but they shared many more things in common, particularly their love of justice and their deep desire to see it applied equally to all people, regardless of their age, gender, race, or, especially, class. A highly religious woman from a highly religious family, Mary slotted in perfectly with the Whitfield family culture and took on all of their traits and characteristics. It was as if she was a natural born Whitfield, rather than one by marriage.

As a young couple Del and Mary had set out together to change Sethalton, which at the time had been in severe decline due to terrible economic conditions and an ongoing war against the underground drug cartel which had sprung up in the midst of those bad conditions. Their dream became reality when Del was elected Mayor and Mary was elected Circuit Attorney on the same day back in 1976 (Del's brother, Alaska, was elected Police Chief, as well). This was the first time in nearly twenty years that a Whitfield had been in the Mayor's office. As Mayor, Del's first act was to fire numerous officials suspected of corruption and replace them with members of his family. Along with the rest of the Whitfields, who focused on improving the economic situation in the city and educating the people, particularly the young people, about the dangers of drugs, the three of them enacted a series of programs designed to eliminate the drug cartel and save the city. It didn't happen overnight, and the price was stupendously high (both Mary and Alaska, as well as several of Del's other siblings and their spouses, and a bunch of other Whitfields from different branches of the extensive family tree, lost their lives as part of this war), but eventually, they succeeded. This was the environment in which Alex and her brothers had grown up, and this was the man who had raised them. This was the man who, along with his late wife, had imparted such values into his children's hearts as honesty, integrity, courage, faithfulness, justice, love, and mercy.

This was also the man who had helped me out of a bind and given me a chance when no one else would. He was the only person in Sethalton who knew anything about the severe case of retrograde amnesia I was suffering, which had wiped out pretty much all of my memories from the first twenty-five or so years of my life. I hadn't even told Alex about that yet.

Oh, hello, Bric, he said. Sorry to disturb you. I just needed to get a few loose ends tied up before my trip.

Trip?

Yes. One of my former clients has gotten himself into a predicament out west. He's being represented by an old friend of mine, who has asked me to put in an appearance at court as a character witness. I'm not a huge fan of character witnesses and prefer not to rely on them, but in this case, I believe my name and reputation should mean something to the jury, and I believe I can present myself in a way that won't give the prosecution an opportunity to frame my old client in a negative manner. Also, I've looked into the case, and I do not believe the young man has done what he's being accused of. So I have agreed to appear. I'll be leaving this evening, and I expect to be back in a few days. He brought up the next topic before I could. You were trying to get ahold of me yesterday, weren't you? What did you need?

The Scarecrow Man's letter had been addressed to Alex, but I figured it was my duty to let Mr. Whitfield know about it. You got a minute?

Sure. I'm not leaving till this evening.

So I went into the whole story of my friend the scarecrow. I didn't show Mr. Whitfield the letter, or even told him I had one. I just repeated the essence of the warning, toning down the drama somewhat. When I was finished, Mr. Whitfield looked thoughtful.

Do you have any idea what he could have been talking about? I asked.

Hmmmm. He looked like he was searching through his memory banks for a moment, then shook his head. "No. No, I don't. I've never seen a man matching that description. I'm not sure what such an individual would have to do with this place. As far as I'm aware, my daughter hasn't investigated any cases that fit the bill, either, although it's possible that she's talked to people in some of her free sessions that might—might, I say—have something to do with this. However..." He let it trail off. His eyes turned down toward the floor.

I leaned forward. However?

He made eye contact with me again, and shrugged. Bric, are you aware what last night was?

Yeah, it was Saturday.

I mean, what sort of special night it was.

Oh. I could see where he was going with this. Yeah, it was Halloween.

Precisely. I think it is far more likely that your scarecrow man was simply playing a Halloween prank on this office. Not on you, per se, but this office. I've dealt with such pranksters many times in my long years of service to this city. All of us Whitfields have. I am certain that is all it was. I do not think you have anything to worry about.

I wasn't in the mood to argue with the man who had saved my life. In addition to offering me this so-called job in the first place (choosing me over any number of more qualified candidates, solely because I'd passed his gut test, whatever that was), Mr. Whitfield had done a lot for me. He had given me a place to stay rent-free, agreed to pay me much more money than a guy like me, complete with a criminal background, would have any reason to expect from any place else (and do it all out of his own pocket, too, basically as one giant favor, not as an official employer-employee relationship, so that I wouldn't have to pay taxes and deal with the government and face difficult questions about my identity and past that I wasn't ready to deal with until I'd recovered my memory), and he was working on getting me a wrestler's license so that I could join the wrestling promotion here in Sethalton and get back to doing what I loved. At this stage in our relationship, only a few months in, I hadn't gotten to the point where I felt comfortable questioning my boss's instructions, authority, or experience. So all I said was, Okay. I turned to head back upstairs, and he got ready to leave. Right as I reached the top step, I thought to ask him another question and went back down. He had his brown hat and his brown coat on and was a few steps away from the door. By the way, how'd that murder case turn out?

He stopped and looked at me. Quite well. The jury deliberated for all of an hour before they rendered their decision. He smiled. Not guilty.

You did your job, then.

I did the job I had in front of me to do, yes. As did Alexandra.

I decided it was time to ask something I'd been wondering about. How's Alex going to adjust to being a prosecutor when you're a defense lawyer and she's cutting her teeth helping you out?

He seemed to consider his answer for a moment before coming up with, Because in the end, all good attorneys ultimately want the same thing: justice, mixed with mercy. My daughter is a good person, and I am certain she will be an excellent attorney, just like her mother was. Her desire is for justice, and her passion is for mercy. Her desire and her passion will manifest in her no matter which side of the aisle she finds herself on at any given time.

A reasonable answer, I supposed. I didn't have anything else to say to him, so I went back upstairs, and he went out.

No sooner had I plopped back into bed than the phone rang. I hate phones. But this was my personal number, not the office number. Only two people on the face of the earth had this number, and one of them had just walked out the front door. There was only one person this caller could be. I answered. Hey, Alex!

Hey, Bric.

What's up?

"I am, actually, and I'm getting a little tired of it."

What?

I mean I'm up, silly. Up as in, I've been on my feet in high heels all day, and I'm ready for a break.

Oh. So why'd you call?

Because I want you to join me here at the church this afternoon. Meet me in my office at two.

Me, going to church? That’d be the day... Do you need me for something?

I'm not sure. A friend of mine has asked me to talk to her aunt about looking into something. From what I've heard so far, it sounds simple enough, but I think it's the sort of thing I should have you in on. So I want you here, okay? The big bad bodyguard needs to take care of his little princess!

I never could tell whether Alex was being sarcastic or playful when she went on like this. But she did ask me to be there, so I told her I would be there, especially in light of the warning I'd been given by the Scarecrow Man. I decided to bring the letter with me so I could show it to Alex after we met with this prospective client, someone from her church, someone she knew, her friend's aunt. Surely that would count as the trusted acquaintance mentioned in the letter. Circumstances seemed to be setting themselves up exactly the way the letter predicted they would...

Mr. Whitfield had used the front door because it was Sunday, but we all usually used the back door and left the front for the customers. There was an alley hidden behind the building. That was where we parked our cars. After cleaning myself up, getting dressed, and having a quick (and I mean quick) bite to eat, I went out that way. Suddenly my sixth sense tingled, and I felt certain that I was being watched. I looked around frantically at every possible hiding spot nearby, convinced that the Scarecrow-Looking Man was going to jump out at me at any moment. But nothing happened. I chastised myself. It had been forty-four hours since Friday afternoon, when my mysterious visitor had disappeared into the rain, and I was letting his phantom spook me at every corner. I couldn't allow that to keep happening. I shook my head, got in my car, and started on my way.

Chapter Three

The Sleuth of Sethalton

I'd been in Alex's church once before, when Alex was showing me the little room she used for an office here, so I knew right where to go. I passed through the large greeting area and into one of the myriad hallways that wrapped themselves around the main sanctuary. Alex's room was the last door on the left at the end of the hall. The sign on the door read simply Office.

I knocked. No answer. I jiggled the doorknob. Locked, and no one came to open. Hmmm. Alex wasn't here yet. It wasn't like her to be late.

I decided to be adventurous. I turned around and went into the main greeting room. The janitor was there, taking out the trash. I felt a certain kinship with this man, so I approached him and asked if he knew who Alex Whitfield was, and where she might be.

Sure, I know her. She's Del's daughter. One of the best young people we have in the congregation. Do you need her for something?

I explained that she had called me and asked me to meet her here this afternoon, but she wasn't in her office. He replied that he had seen her sitting in the sanctuary talking to Christopher Billington, her fiancé, a few minutes ago.

They're probably still there. She has stars in her eyes whenever she looks at that young man, he added. I'm sure glad they got together. They're a perfect match.

I thanked him and went inside the worship hall. Sure enough, there was Alex, sitting way down in the front, in the pew closest to the stage, talking to a handsome, sandy-haired young man in a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. Well, actually, the guy was doing all the talking. Alex's part in the conversation was to smile and laugh at everything her companion said. She seemed to be quite enjoying herself, though. Her laughter was genuine; she wasn't putting on a show for the sake of the guy's ego, like women sometimes do.

Seeing an attractive young woman so happy and joyful can put a bounce in the step of any straight man, and I am no exception. I'm not going to insult your intelligence and try to say that Alex's physical attractiveness didn't play a large part in shaping my opinion of her. It did. The first time I had ever seen her, when Mr. Whitfield wanted to introduce me to her, he and I had barged into her office without even knocking, catching her totally off-guard. She had been sitting with her feet up on her desk and was humming along with a tune on the radio (some old church hymn—Alex was extremely old-fashioned in her tastes in music and was an avowed enemy of modern pop). She'd been wearing her typical skirt-suit-and-high-heels combination, the sort of thing she always wore to both work and school, and the sight of her sitting there, leaning back in her chair, her long, luscious legs on full display for me to see, was breathtaking, and had a long-lasting impact on our relationship. Sometimes I wondered if the reason she was being so frosty towards me in those early months was because she had been embarrassed by that first meeting and had made the decision not to be friendly or open with me at any point thereafter, in case I turned out to be one of those guys who were only in it for the physical rewards, which she had no intention of giving. I didn't know for sure, and I never felt brave enough to ask. One way or another, though, I was determined to overcome that terrible first impression and earn her trust as a partner.

Alex was tall for a girl: she stood five-eleven in her bare feet, or so she claimed. I didn't know for sure (although I assumed she was probably right), because I had never seen her standing flat on the floor; she was always in high heels when I was around. Heck, she was always in high heels, period. Of the two of us, I was naturally taller and stood over her when she was in flats... but she was never in flats, so I always appeared shorter. Some guys would be embarrassed to be seen walking around with a girl who was taller than they, especially one they were supposed to be there to protect, but it didn't bother me. She and I had even learned to use it to our advantage. Whenever we entered a room together, everybody's heads invariably turned to look at her, which allowed me to slip by relatively unnoticed. Plus, the two of us looked so different from each other—she was white, while I was half-black (or something—thanks to my amnesia and the various other messed-up circumstances of my life, I wasn't sure exactly what I was); she was beautiful, while I was ugly; she was always dressed professionally and looked supremely put-together, while I considered wearing a flannel shirt to be dressing up; she was the daughter of wealth and privilege and had a natural aura of expectation and entitlement about her, while I was a scoundrel who preferred to remain hidden in the shadows; and she was a lawyer, on her way to becoming the top prosecutor in the city, while I was an ex-con who most people assumed should still be in jail just on general principle—that no one ever assumed we were together, anywhere we ever went. We'd used this trick on multiple occasions already to distract people from paying any attention to me, and we did it many, many more times in the days ahead, too.

Alex liked being tall, and she liked the extra boost that her high heels gave her, because she was in a profession dominated by men, and as we all know, men are terribly concerned with size. Being able to look these men in the eye—and in some cases, even look down on them—helped her get to their level and communicate with them in a way they could understand. Sometimes—okay, many times—this increased their jealousy of her, but that just made it even easier for her to manipulate them and defeat their arguments. Being so tall also made her less likely to get attacked by guys who were looking for an easy target, which was a good thing, because Alex was always going places and getting into situations that young women of her age and upbringing didn't usually go or get into, at least not alone. It helped a lot that she was bigger than many of the guys whose instincts might drive them to go after her (the various self-defense techniques I had taught her helped a lot, too). It also helped that she was in fantastic shape, having taken dance, fitness, swimming, and diving courses all her life, and having been trained since she was a toddler how to eat right and aim for good health. She followed a highly detailed diet and exercise program. Her family had a gym inside their mansion, where she and her brothers spent an hour each day stretching and working out. She even had her own personal trainer. As a former (for now) professional wrestler, I knew a thing or two about fitness and training, and Alex's diet and workout routine, as she had described them to me, were top-notch.

Her height and physical fitness also accentuated her natural beauty. A lot of models are tall, and Alex could have given a lot of models a run for their money. She had a full head of lovely red-gold hair. I still haven't been able to determine if she was more of a blonde or a redhead. The exact shade of her hair seemed to change depending on the light, or maybe the stuff she put in it any given day. Her hair was lush and thick and full and long enough that she could experiment with it in many different ways, such as letting it fall straight down behind her head, where it extended just past the tips of her shoulder blades, or curling it, or tying it up in a ponytail, or putting it in a bun, or braiding it, or any number of more exotic styles. Today she had a strand of it braided and twisted around her head like a crown, and had another chunk of it knotted off in the shape of a bow behind her head.

All that hair framed an oval-shaped face that somehow managed to look cute, exotic, glamorous, inviting, pleasant, friendly, mysterious, and aloof all at once. Her eyes were green as emeralds, her lips as red as rubies, her teeth as bright as diamonds, and her skin as clear as crystal. She had a rubbery face and was always making crazy facial expressions. She had the gift of being able to communicate her entire thought process with a single glance, if she wanted to. And she didn't do it for no reason, either—she knew exactly how to use her face to get guys to do things for