72 St. Margaret’s Way Chapter 3
Gabriella was only interviewing Mrs. Domingo, so James didn’t need to be on comms with her. And the other case was simple enough that James was basically silent on comms as Madelyn and Graham carefully explored the house. He sipped his coffee as he watched through their cameras. It was a cute place, the kind of cabin he might envision retiring to when he was older if he decided a hobby farm was too much work.
If the Foundation ever let him retire.
By the time the two of them had taken their pictures and set up the cameras, it was early afternoon. James glanced at the clock. The wellness fair ran until seven tonight, so they had plenty of time. But if Bradley wasn’t out by the time Madelyn and Graham got back, James would probably have to go nudge him.
And if he overslept, James couldn’t blame him. Considering he was getting up and cleaning between tasks in order to keep himself awake.
He didn’t need to worry too much, because Bradley came out of the back bedroom at two-fifteen and was back on the clock at two-thirty. James caught him up on the details about the wellness fair while they waited for the others to return from their cases.
“And what are we doing there?” Bradley asked.
“Just getting the lay of the land,” James replied. “Maybe we can get some statements from some of the stall owners. Though if it’s one of them that’s causing the problem…”
“Yeah, good point,” Bradley said, to James’s slight surprise.
“We’ll just play it by ear,” he said. “There’s a few different approaches that might work and honestly, I don’t expect us to narrow things down today. But the Foundation is pushing to get this one closed, probably because of the potential for public panic and the temporary nature of the fair.”
“The stupid wellness fair shuts down and then they lock it in a box for some team eighty years from now to solve.”
“Exactly.”
James glanced toward the door, but no one was back yet. “The Foundation sent me this email.”
He opened the email from earlier, which he’d been repeatedly opening on his phone, then handed it to Bradley, who put on his glasses and read it with a scowl. “Reallocating resources?”
“Does that sound like layoffs to you?”
“Possibly. And we have a really good record, but we’re one of two teams in Worcester County. So we might appear trimmable.”
“Yeah, my thought exactly.”
James shook his head. “We can solve this quickly,” he said. “You and I will go do a general observation of the space today, focusing on food and drink. Then tomorrow, we go back and fully narrow in on the consumables.”
“I’m not here tomorrow, I’m doing the overnight.”
“Right, sorry.”
“I can come in early though.”
“No.”
Bradley scowled again as he handed James back his phone, but no, James wasn’t taking that offer. “Thank you,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t smooth things over. “I’ll sort it out. I’ll have Graham or someone on comms with me and get some samples of foods to give the Foundation labs, if they still exist. Unless that’s just you with an old microscope at this point.”
Bradley huffed a short laugh as he took a sip of his coffee. “We’ll get it done quickly,” James said. “The last thing we need to do is give them any reason to cut resources or people.”
They worked silently for a few minutes until Bradley spoke. “Hey, McManus?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you receive a request to expedite the case?”
“No, but it’s top priority in the system.”
“I have signed forms to expedite in my email right now,” Bradley said. “Approved by McGovern. It says they allow for reduced paperwork and waiting on safety checks so that we can complete the case by the end of the week.”
That was very strange. James was all too aware that the Foundation was trying to streamline its paperwork process, he and Bradley had nearly come to blows over the contradicting instructions they were receiving. But normally there were original reports, final reports, procedure forms that James filled out for each case ensuring that safety procedures were followed, and other paperwork he did so frequently that it showed up in his dreams. And McGovern, their branch liaison, wasn’t necessarily one for messing around with safety.
“Have they given a reason?” James asked as he checked his own email, where no explanation waited for him.
“No.”
“Who do we think their lawyers messed up negotiating with this time?”
That had certainly happened to them before, but nothing about this felt right. James reached over for the cordless phone and dialed McGovern’s office, which he knew by heart at this point.
“Richard McGovern.”
“Sir, hi, it’s James McManus from North Worcester County.”
“Captain, hello.”
The title always made him feel weird, even two years into the job. He’d technically been declared acting captain while they found a replacement, but they never really bothered with that and eventually someone had quietly dropped the “acting” part from his file. But being called captain still made James feel like a fraud.
“Sir, we just got an approval to expedite a case focused on strange behaviors, possibly connected to the Orson Center Wellness Fair. Do you know what’s going on with that?”
“No,” McGovern admitted, as though his signature wasn’t on the paperwork. “But I’ve just taken on Vermont’s branches as well, so my attention has been somewhat spread out.”
Vermont too. McGovern was now liaison for four different states, over half of New England.
James waited a moment while McGovern read over the case on his end. “Right,” he said. “Yes, they want this done by Friday.”
It was Tuesday and they’d never been given a hard due date before. “Why?” James asked as Bradley listened silently beside him.
“Because they need it done then,” McGovern said, that slight hint of testiness raising James’s blood pressure another point. “It’s a volatile situation on top of the Foundation’s now-pressing need to reallocate some of our funding. They’ve already started it for you, it’s food and drink. That narrows down your options considerably. Keep your focus there and you’ll be fine.”
No, they’d said probably food and drink. But Friday. With everything else going on. “Right,” James said. “Thank you. Are there additional safety considerations, if we’re putting off safety checks?”
“Just don’t eat anything and you’ll be fine. You’re within Foundation guidelines.”
“Right,” James said again, shaking his head as Bradley motioned for the phone. “Yeah.”
He hung up a second later. “Whatever,” he said, running a hand over his face. “That changes nothing. I’ll take the lead on this one and just grab whichever of you are available at any time. Which is never, but that’s nothing new. Let’s just do this and we’ll put off the Foundation’s terrible decision-making for another day.”
Everyone else was successful on their missions today, so maybe that was a good sign for James and Bradley as they started theirs. Around three-thirty, they were pulling up outside of the Orson Center, a local event space. It was a big building with a wide gymnasium inside that held all kinds of events and conventions. James had been a couple times, but not in a while.
“I think the last time I was here was for the science fair in tenth grade,” he said as they walked up the pathway toward the front door. “I grew up in Lancaster, but this was kids from all the area high schools who’d placed in their school science fairs. My group did a kind of cool setup with bacteria and the human digestive system. We simulated it with these chemicals my friend’s mom got us. It was weirdly hardcore for a high school science fair, but it was cool.”
“Right.”
“Have you ever done a science fair?”
As he said it, he remembered Bradley had mentioned going to boarding school. James had this image of boarding school from movies and books, which was probably incorrect, but he could see a teenage Bradley scowling in a uniform as he hurried to class along an old, ornate corridor, clutching an armful of books as he ran. It was kind of adorable.
“Yeah,” Bradley said.
“What projects did you do?”
“I don’t remember, it was over twenty years ago.”
Well, he didn’t have to go for the kill right then, did he? “Alright,” James said, instead of contemplating his own mortality. “Let’s see what the fuss is about.”
The Orson Center opened into a small lobby area, which then opened into an enormous hall filled with vendors. They ranged from simple tables filled with hand creams to a full-on massage table tucked into a corner. The woman who was currently being served on the table looked like she’d never had a problem in her life and James was tempted to go next.
There was a row of tables right inside the entrance. No food, but these were the vendors who would have witnessed any weirdness. As Bradley looked at the mineral supplements displayed at the table behind them, James looked at the charms on the cheap Party City tablecloth at the first booth, sending the images back to Madelyn who was on comms at headquarters. Most of them were unfamiliar, but maybe that was the problem. If there were active charms here, they might be influencing people’s behaviors in and out of the fair. The three at the top, with the leather straps, were all warding charms. Legitimate ones that looked very similar to what Madelyn had set up for all of their doorways at some point, either under Robin’s instruction or just on her own.
Food was the priority, he needed to focus. James smiled at the busy woman behind the table who was currently fielding questions from a group of teenagers, then moved on to the next booth, which had Skin Care by Adele displayed on a simple banner. The table was loaded with various creams and soaps, some in plastic containers and others in bar form stacked neatly on trays. They all smelled somewhat the same, a rubbery scent permeating all the fruit and herbs that were clearly supposed to be the focus, but got lost somewhere.
Nothing was edible, so he’d have to keep going, but he wanted to grab a card if there was any. The woman behind the table was young, probably in her mid-twenties. She had lank blonde hair and sullen eyes, and half-sneered at a woman who was eyeing her merchandise. “Are these moisturizers?” the woman asked, motioning toward a tiny bottle of lotion.
“Yeah.”
“Are they good for sensitive skin?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The other woman’s face fell slightly, and she set down the bottle she’d just picked up, moving away from the table.
“This place sucks,” she muttered to James, clearly not caring that the woman running the booth was still in earshot. “It’s like they got the worst vendors in Leominster and stuck them all in here for months at a time.”
“I just got here,” James said.
“You should leave, there’s much better stuff, like, a five-minute drive from here,” the woman said. “There was a huge fight here the other day, it was ridiculous.”
“Oh yeah?”
Clearly seeing she’d lost her sale, the woman behind the table glared over at them before stalking off to the boxes of supplies behind her under a little canopy.
“Yeah,” the woman said. “These guys started just beating the shit out of each other in the lobby. I saw that they were screaming about a woman, but that was in the Facebook groups so who the fuck knows? But it was so trashy.”
She looked back at the table. “I’m going to Daphne’s Sundries,” she said. “She’s a weirdo, but at least her stuff is legit.”
Daphne was a weirdo, James could professionally attest to that. The woman walked off and James kept going, walking through the next row of vendors, all of whom were selling food or supplements. After a quick break to check the local Facebook gossip pages, he took cards and notes, but none of the foods yet. In order to do that, he needed plastic bags and a plan. And lunch beforehand, because it was getting hard to resist the stand in the back, where someone actually had a grill set up just outside the open door.
After taking notes throughout the building, James went back up front. He spotted Bradley looking at some crystals while he waited for James to get there.
“This one picks up bad energy,” James said, pointing at a rose quartz as he came up behind him. “Don’t touch it, it’ll kill you.”
“Fuck off.”
Bradley started to walk away as James followed. “Did you get anything or are you just here to be an asshole?” Bradley asked as they went outside.
“Both, I guess,” James said. “About half of these places are selling food, so I’ll come back tomorrow and get samples. I’ll check the supplement tables too. But I feel like everything checks out about this place being it. The ghosts, the weddings, the fight. Apparently Facebook rumors have it that they were fighting over a woman they’d both come here with. Everyone had seemed fine, then the guys beat the shit out of each other.”
“So we’re on the right track.”
“Looks like it.”
When they were in the car a few minutes later, they compared notes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so they’d focus on food tomorrow, just like James had planned before.
“Some of it smelled amazing,” James admitted with a laugh as he drove back toward headquarters.
“Most of it sucked,” Bradley said.
“I don’t totally disagree,” James said. “That skincare table? Fucking rashes for days. The one next to it was a little weird, so even though it wasn’t food, I’m going to ask Madelyn to take a look at the sigils they’re using.”
“Better hurry though,” Bradley muttered. “You don’t want to allocate resources incorrectly.”
“Fucking assholes,” James said. “Whatever, we’ll just get this done so they can yell at us about something else.”
