Blue Medusa Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Blue Medusa

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

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  Blue Bonobo Books

  (or The Hot Potato Boat of Death)

  Trapper Westing

  BLUE BONOBO BOOKS

  The Blue Medusa

  A Curious Beach Mystery

  By Trapper Westing

  Published by Blue Bonobo Books

  © 2019 Trapper Westing

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Neither the author nor the publisher claims responsibility for adverse effects resulting from the use of any information found within this book.

  Dedicated to Jeanna,

  who took me to see the ocean

  for the very first time.

  Blue Medusa

  Chapter 1

  The armored bank truck’s route was inefficient. The one-ways and out-of-sync stop lights made all of downtown Iron City’s traffic inefficient, but even so, the armored truck was wasting time.

  From the roof of Allium Tower, Stella watched the blue and white Paymaster truck crawl from red light to red light for three days before she had a better route mapped out in her head. She watched for three more days before she realized that there was an old brown car that followed the same dumb route, day after day. Three days later, the brown car changed its ways and adapted to the more efficient route, and Stella felt a restored hope in humanity.

  Today, she also felt chilly. She could feel the cold, aluminum ventilation shaft through her jeans, but she felt safer sitting on it than on the very edge of the roof. It was really high. She pulled her beanie down tight over her long, dark hair, and wrapped her flannel shirt tight around her.

  At least her ears were warm, always covered with a big set of headphones that not only played a steady stream of The Pixies to keep her calm, but also served to dissuade people from starting conversations with her. The other kids tended to group together by things like sports and ethnicity. Most of the Korean kids stuck together, but she was barely even Korean. She didn’t speak Korean, and the Foxes were white. There wasn’t really a clique for her to be in, even if she wanted to, which she did not. She hated small talk. Maybe, she hated people. She wasn’t sure about that yet.

  She didn’t hate her dad.

  But he was gone now.

  Now there wasn’t anyone.

  Among a few other items of value, more sentimental than intrinsic value, she had claimed all her dad’s flannel shirts when he died. This is the one he had wrapped her in the night he’d found her in the burning house when she was six years old. He liked all those grunge bands, like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam.

  “I thought I’d find you up here.”

  Stella was startled. She hadn’t noticed Dr. Barnes on the roof with her.

  “You scared me,” Stella took the headphones off her head. “Usually, I hear footsteps on the gravel.”

  “Even with those on?” Dr. Barnes asked. “You must have really been lost in thought, then.”

  She talked about thoughts a lot. It was her job, and Stella liked her, but sometimes she was a little transparent. It was like that saying, ‘to a carpenter, every problem is a nail.’ To a psychologist, everything is about the mind. Maybe she was right. Maybe the carpenter was too.

  “That armored truck is inefficient,” Stella said, then clarified, “its route is.”

  “Is it?”

  Stella nodded, and continued to watch cars move through the streets fifteen stories below, disappearing behind buildings and reemerging on the other side. She delighted a little when a car changed directions behind a building and popped out from a different place than she expected.

  “The reason I came up here, to the roof, where residents, as you know, are strictly forbidden, Stella Fox...” Dr. Barnes looked for a response, but Stella’s attention was on the bank truck leaving Plaza Galleria Mall. “The reason I came up here is last night someone reorganized the flow of... traffic... through the dining hall. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  Stella didn’t say anything. She kept watching traffic. She considered putting her headphones back on, but that would have been rude. She didn’t want to be rude.

  Dr. Barnes removed one of the scarves from around her neck and wrapped it over the high, hair-sprayed, curled perm on her head. If Luke Fox, the firefighter who adopted Stella, was a stereotype of the nineties, Leta Barnes was just as much one of the eighties.

  She could walk straight onto the set of Pretty in Pink or Sixteen Candles, with her big plastic-framed glasses, over-sized cardigans, and turtleneck dickeys.

  “Do you see that blue and white armored truck?” Stella asked.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Dr. Barnes said. “People were complaining about what a mess the setup was, and your solution was a good one. Director Scott wanted me to thank you.”

  “It’s fine,” Stella said.

  “You should let people know it was you,” Dr. Barnes said, “so they can say thank you. Wouldn’t that be nice, to feel appreciated?”

  No. It would be torture.

  “Do you see it?” Stella asked again, and pointed directly at it. “The blue and white armored bank truck at Westfield Mall?”

  “I don’t see anything,” the psychologist was looking in the completely wrong direction.

  “In front of my finger,” Stella said. “Under the Old Navy sign at Westfield Mall. One of the guards is inside getting the money now. The other one is still in the truck.”

  “Okay?”

  “When it leaves Westfield Mall, it’s going to go to Merrimack State Bank,” Stella said. “But it’s not going to go all the way up to Washington Avenue to turn left. It’s going to turn left at Jefferson Avenue. That’s a waste of time, because they end up waiting at two extra red lights that way.”

  “I see,” Dr. Barnes said, “It’s blue and white. That’s pretty.”

  “See that brown car driving past it?” Stella pointed again. “It’s going to go to Washington Avenue. It will get to the bank three minutes before the armored truck does. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Does it need to make sense?” Dr. Barnes asked.

  “After the armored car unloads the money at the bank, it waits in the left turn lane to turn left, when it could go two blocks farther up, like the brown car always does.” Stella talked faster when she didn’t feel she was being understood, a habit that did not work to her benefit. “Only, the brown car turns right when it gets to 3rd Street, not left like the armored truck does, because the
truck is going to the Paymaster headquarters and the brown car is going to that old warehouse next to Howard Cross-Fit.”

  “Cross-Fit.” Dr. Barnes nodded. “That’s interesting. How do you feel about-”

  “The armored truck,” Stella kept going, “would have to turn left at 3rd, but... wait. Wait.”

  Dr. Barnes had no idea what was going on, but Stella was undeterred.

  “Look!” Stella jumped to her feet and ran to the edge of the roof. “The armored truck didn’t stop at the bank. It didn’t stop at the bank. It has money in it. Why didn’t it stop at the bank?”

  “Maybe they forgot,” Dr. Barnes said.

  “They didn’t turn left,” Stella said. “They’re going up to 3rd. They’re turning right. Do you see this? This isn’t the armored truck’s route. This is the brown car’s route. It’s going to the warehouse.”

  “For Cross-Fit?” Dr. Barnes asked.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Stella said. “None of this makes sense.”

  “Do you know what I spy?” Dr. Barnes said. “I spy a breakthrough opportunity. Let’s talk about your need for things to make sense.”

  “What?” Stella asked.

  “I think,” Dr. Barnes said. “It’s because of so much uncertainty in your life. Your birth parents disappeared. Your adoptive mother left you. Your adoptive father died. You have a lot of unanswered questions in your life.”

  If she said more after that, Stella didn’t know. She was already running at a full sprint. Her Chuck Taylors crunched through the gravel and padded across the old worn-out putting green. When she reached the stairwell door, she threw it open so hard it crashed against the concrete wall. She yelled, “sorry,” but didn’t slow down.

  She had to find out what was going on with that armored truck.

  * * *

  Stella was breathless when she reached her bedroom on the fifth floor. The elevator might have been faster, but she might have had to wait for it, and she didn’t like having that many variables outside her control.

  The room was big, and rented for several hundred dollars back when the tower was still an upscale hotel. It was too big really, but it was hers. She didn’t have to share her room anymore since she was technically an adult, and over the past couple years she’d slowly personalized it with grunge band posters, a Taegukgi South Korean flag, and an ‘I Want to Believe’ poster of a UFO hovering in the sky over some trees.

  She had moved her bed over to make room for a large black yoga mat where she parked her 1973 orange and brown, fixed gear Schwinn Stingray. It was a little rusty and had black electrical tape where the hand grips were supposed to be, but it got her where she needed to go.

  Where she needed to go now was that warehouse next to Howard Cross-Fit.

  The elevator was quicker than the stairs to get out of the building, but when the elevator doors parted in the lobby, she was ready to roll. She pedaled across the white marble floor and weaved through the groups of kids. It was Sunday, so all the offices in the building were closed. The residents had the run of the place for the day. They took advantage of it by sprawling out in the huge lobby, letting their music echo up the three-story wooden walls to the ceiling, playing Super Princess Wars on the big screen TV, and playing cards on mahogany tables under crystal chandeliers.

  The front door opened automatically and within moments she was gliding her bike behind two trashcans in front of Howard Cross-Fit. She covered it with two newspapers, which were as good as a bike lock. If someone wanted to take a bike, they would take it, lock or no lock.

  The warehouse wasn’t really a warehouse. It was just an old, abandoned, two-story brick building with a large garage door in the front of it.

  The garage door was almost closed, but open enough that Stella could duck under it. The armored truck was still there. The back was open, and the bags they used to carry money were still in there. The truck was still running, and even with the door open a little, it still reeked of exhaust fumes. Maybe they were just taking a break and they still intended to deliver the money to the bank.

  She knew that wasn’t true. She knew this was a heist. Of course it was a heist. But she didn’t understand how some parts of it fit together. The inefficient route. The brown car. She just needed a few answers.

  “Did somebody order Chinese?” a man’s voice came from farther back in the room. For the first time, Stella took in the whole space. The full building was all just that one big room with oil-stained concrete floors, rafters criss-crossed with metal pipes and extension cords, and exposed brick walls with a single large map of Iron City marked with color-coded truck routes.

  She wanted to look at that map, but the four men standing up from the card table in the back of the room wanted her to pay attention to them instead.

  They were crossing the floor toward her. She considered slipping under the garage door and escaping, but then she wouldn’t get any answers.

  “I recognize you,” she said to the one in the blue and white uniform. “You’re the one who drives the truck.”

  “Who is this?” the man in the bandanna asked.

  “Is Rogers your first name or your last name?” Stella asked, reading the name tag patched on the chest of the driver’s uniform. “Or is it a made-up name? Where is the other guard? The one who carries the money from the stores? With the red beard? I have a lot of questions.”

  “He’s off today,” Rogers said. The other guys looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Rogers, who is this kid?” The bandanna man was getting frustrated. So was Stella.

  “Listen,” Stella said. “You always take a left at Jefferson instead of Washington. It doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you go up to Washington?”

  “What?” Rogers asked.

  “Don’t you get tired of sitting at so many red lights?” she asked. “I can show you a better route on the map. Or maybe you could ask whoever drives the brown car. They go the right way. Is the person with the brown car with you?”

  “The person with the brown car is Martin,” Rogers nodded his head toward the bandanna man.

  “You gonna tell her who we all are?” Martin asked. “Do you want to just give her a full confession? Do I need to get a pen and some paper?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rogers said. “Because she is never leaving this room.”

  “I’m leaving after I get answers,” Stella said.

  “The answer to your questions is,” Rogers said, “that no one cares. You think too much.”

  “That can’t be,” Stella said.

  “People don’t pay attention to every little thing like that,” Rogers said. “Sometimes people just do things.”

  “You’re lying,” Stella said.

  “Fine, you win, you got me.” Rogers shrugged. “My daughter does ballet at Little Swans Studio on Washington, and if she saw me driving this truck, she would be a witness to me committing a crime. And I don’t want my little girl seeing her daddy break the law.”

  “Is that true?” Martin asked. “You didn’t even ever have a daughter, do you?”

  Rogers didn’t look at him, only smiled at Stella.

  “No, it’s not true.” Rogers turned and walked away, and without looking back, he added, “Kill her.”

  Martin pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans and pointed it toward Stella’s head.

  Stella played the truck’s route over in her head, and then the brown car’s route. Over and over, faster and faster, and then she saw it. A small cross, covered with flowers, leaned against the base of a light pole on Washington Avenue. It had been there for weeks, in front of Little Swans Studio. He wasn’t lying.

  “I’m sorry about your daughter,” Stella called out to Rogers. She didn’t know what else to say, but she knew that losing someone hurt so badly that maybe there aren’t any reasons or answers to find. Sometimes people just do things.

  It all happened so fast. The time between Martin the bandanna man pulling out his gun and the garage door fl
ying wide open couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

  She watched Martin turn toward the door, and she turned too, and there were so many police, the lights were flashing so bright, and it was so loud. For a moment she was disoriented. Overwhelmed. It was too much.

  Martin grabbed for her, and she knew instantly that he planned to use her as a hostage. But her drive to escape the commotion far exceeded his desire to escape the law.

  She dropped and rolled under the armored truck, emerged from the other side, slipped out the side of the garage, grabbed her bicycle from behind the trash can as the SWAT team sieged the brick building.

  Across the street, standing with two uniformed police officers, was Dr. Barnes. When she saw Stella, she pointed at the sign at the top of the cross-fit place and gave a thumbs up. Dr. Barnes had been listening after all.

  Stella raced around the corner and away from the action. She had her answers.

  * * *

  Stella was technically too old to still be a resident of the Allium Tower group home. Dr. Barnes had made arrangements for her to work as a cook’s assistant in the dining hall in exchange for room, board, and therapy.

  This evening, she was cleaning up after dinner when Dr. Barnes approached her.

  “There’s someone downstairs that wants to talk to you,” the psychologist said.

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

  “You’re not in trouble. It’s not about the bank heist,” Dr. Barnes said. “That was amazing, but it’s not about that.”

  “Who is it?” Did it even matter?

  “It’s a lawyer.”

  “That sounds like trouble.” She wanted to run.

  “It’s not,” Dr. Barnes said. “I promise.”

  “Fine,” Stella said.

  Five minutes later, she was sitting in a conference room, across the table from a lawyer in a dark gray suit. He said his name was Bradford Blumenthal from Blumenthal, Blumenthal, and Ross, Attorneys at Law. Dr. Barnes sat beside Stella and Director Scott sat beside the lawyer, like the teams had been divided up, and it definitely seemed like Stella was going to be in trouble for something.