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After Claude left, I found myself alone in a room full of people. Rather than seek someone else to talk to, I immersed myself in my thoughts as I reviewed the notes I’d taken.
The lights blinked out again. Rather than return right away, they stayed out. Someone moaned, and someone else muttered the words ‘not again’. I’d always found solace in the quiet moments, and normally didn’t mind the darkness, but this was different. Bad things happened every time the lights went out here, and I instinctively pressed into my chair that I hoped would protect me from a potential attacker.
As I waited, my heart thudded in my chest as I strained my ears, trying to catch any hint of movement or sound. The silence was as pressing as the darkness. In my mind, I counted the seconds off as I sat uncomfortably waiting for the lights to return.
Off in the distance, I picked up a loud thud, as if something had fallen. With my luck, it was a chandelier toppling from the ceiling, creating yet another mystery I couldn’t solve. I overheard whispers but couldn’t make out any words. A flicker of panic surged within me. My mind raced through all the possibilities of the lights failing so consistently. I didn’t think it was the storm causing it. I’d remembered someone saying something about a backup generator, and if that kicked on, I didn’t expect the power would still be so shaky. There had to be something else, and I wanted the lights to return.
Then I remembered I had a light in the back pocket of my jeans. I leaned forward and found Laurel’s phone. It took me only a few seconds to turn on the built-in flashlight, and with that on, I at least saw my feet. I considered heading over Bozeman’s way, but then it dawned on me that if I could see using the little light, the perpetrator could also see me. That thought overwhelmed my mind, so I turned the light off and shoved the phone back in my pocket. At that moment, I realized I had seen no other lights during the outages. Phones were so prevalent I couldn’t do a single show without seeing at least a dozen pointing in my direction, but tonight, except for the bar-back, no one else seemed to have one. I wondered why.
I considered my next move as I internally counted off the seconds of darkness. Funny how the seconds seemed to stretch when one couldn’t see. Then, with a sudden click, the darkness shattered as the room was once again flooded with light. Since the light had been out for an extended time, I blinked against the brightness, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the sudden change. I glanced around the room and noticed that everyone else seemed to be no worse for the wear.
I wanted to figure out what the sound was, and to do that, I wanted to get a little help, so I approached Bozeman and Laurel, who were still sitting together.
“How is Viola?” I asked.
Laurel looked down at her patient. “She seems to be sleeping. Breathing is fine, and I’ve checked her pulse periodically, and that’s remained steady. She’ll need a scan to determine if she has a concussion, but that will have to wait until we can get her to a hospital.”
“You’ve done a good job with her. Thank you,” I said.
Laurel smiled, but didn’t respond.
“Did either of you hear that noise when the lights were out just now?” I asked.
“Sounded to me like a chair fell over,” Laurel said.
Bozeman disagreed. “I don’t imagine it was a chair. It sounded smaller, with not as much heft to it.”
I considered it for a moment, trying to replay the sound in my mind, and I tried to determine the direction from which it came. Finally, it hit me.
“Come with me,” I instructed Bozeman. I headed toward the stage with Bozeman right on my heels, and before we’d even gotten there, I saw what had happened. My microphone stand was lying on its side. I stepped onto the riser and picked it up. Concerned that my favorite Shure microphone had taken some damage, I examined it carefully, looking for dents or other issues.
“Codi,” Bozeman said.
“I guess it’s okay,” I answered. “I can hook it up to one of the small amps and give it a quick test.”
“Codi,” Bozeman repeated. This time, something in his tone told me I should forget about the microphone for a moment.
I turned to face him. “What?”
He didn’t speak, he simply pointed at my old wooden stool on which I usually kept my water, and an extra guitar pick or two if I dropped mine during a show. When I wanted to get down-homey with the audience, I would sit on the stool and play an acoustic number.
I glanced at the stool. My water bottle was on the floor, leaning against the stool’s leg. Next, I saw the guitar picks scattered across the floor.
“Codi. Please, look,” Bozeman insisted.
Finally, my eyes focused on the top of the stool. And there, lying innocuously on the round seat, was a single sheet of paper, folded in half. My heart raced with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension as I leaned to take a closer look. The paper was part of the set list I’d printed for Laurel, and someone had folded it so the song list showed on the outside. I unfolded the note cautiously, and my eyes widened as I read the stark message scrawled across the paper in bold, menacing letters: BACK OFF.
The words sent a chill down my spine, and my skin prickled with unease. I showed the note to Bozeman and set it back on the stool. I turned around and faced the room, like I was ready to give a performance, but instead, I studied the room and tried to notice if anyone was watching with interest, or if I could pick up any tell of who might have left me the love letter.
Someone tried to intimidate me, but that was a mistake. Because of my size, people had been trying to intimidate me for my entire life, but it wasn’t going to work. Over the years, I’d grown a spine and an unstoppable spirit, both of which I was more than ready to use. I refused to be intimidated, refused to let fear dictate my actions. The note was simple, for me to back off. That meant to me I needed to double down and figure this thing out before I was the next person receiving a candlestick at the back of my head.
I took a deep breath, and I felt my resolve harden. More than ever, I was determined to uncover the truth. And I knew just where to start.
I left Bozeman on the stage, and I headed right for Brantley. He locked eyes with me when I was still several strides away. He attempted to step backward, but since he was at the edge of a table, he had nowhere to escape to.
“What’s up, Brantley?” I asked when I’d got close enough for the tips of my shoes to touch his green boots.
“What... what do you mean?”
“I’m really curious about a few things, and the first of which is why the lights keep going out.”
“It’s a power fluctuation. We get them all the time when storms roll through. All the time,” Brantley answered.
“We all live and work around here, and have gone through severe storms before, and we’ve never had a problem with the power grid,” Loren said.
During my brief bout of tunnel vision, as I wanted to question Brantley, I hadn’t noticed the group that had gathered. Loren was standing just to the left of me, and Amelia, Helen, Amy, and Claude gathered in a small semi-circle around Brantley and me. Perhaps they were expecting a good old-fashioned schoolyard fight. The thought crossed my mind as well, and I had to admit, I was ready if it came to that.
“No. I don’t mean the grid itself,” Brantley said. “I think I explained before that when there’s even a second of power disruption, the automatic systems pop into place. The generator turns on, and the house locks down.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why?” Brantley repeated. Apparently, he was having trouble understanding my questions all of a sudden. He made me question if I had to slow things down for him and enunciate better, or if I had to get closer to his face.
“Why,” I repeated. “Why does the house go into a full fortress mode at the loss of an amp of power?”
Brantley tried to move back, but encountered the table again. Instead, he boosted himself up and sat, trying to look nonchalant in the process. “I shouldn’t say. Mr. Harris wouldn’t like it.”
I threw a thumb over my shoulder toward the body. “Honestly, I don’t think he’s going to object at all.”
Brantley sighed. “Okay, okay. Several years ago, there was an incident here. A small group of thieves waited until the early morning hours, then cut the power at the main line. After they broke in, they held Mr. Harris at gunpoint until he opened his safe. They got away with money, jewelry that had been in the family for generations, and a couple of paintings. A Rembrandt and a Van Gogh, if I’m not mistaken.”
“So that prompted the power to cut over?” I asked.
Brantley nodded. “And more. He hired a security company to do an assessment of the property. On their recommendation, Mr. Harris added the guard out front, along with a roaming night patrol. And the generator, along with an electrified fence. Rumor has it there are multiple safe rooms in the house now, but I know of only one myself. I also heard he added a huge walk-in safe behind a wall somewhere, but I’ve seen no evidence of that.”
“After the robbery he became a paranoid recluse?” Loren asked.
“A recluse, no. Paranoid? Certainly. I think he would have added a moat filled with crocodiles if it wouldn’t have been a potential eyesore.”
“What about the thieves? They get caught?” Amelia asked.
“Almost immediately. And only because of their bad luck. A local cop had pulled over a speeder, who had turned into the driveway to get off the road. The thieves, in their hurry to escape, plowed right into the unlucky speeder’s car.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Claude said.
“No one did. Hawthorne feared if people knew, he’d be even more of a target. So, he buried it deep. He even managed to keep it out of the papers,” Brantley said.
“To get back to my original question, what’s the deal with the lights?” I asked. “Even if the generator didn’t get wired correctly, I wouldn’t expect that the power would fail so much. And it’s doubly suspicious that every time the lights go out, something bad happens.”
“Unless there’s someone standing over there by the switch.” I looked at the doorway where I expected the light switches to be, just like every other building on the planet. There weren’t any. It was the only entry into the room, so I didn’t bother looking elsewhere other than where they should be. “Where are the light switches?”
“There aren’t any in this room,” Brantley said, like it was a logical answer.
I rolled my eyes. I was growing tired of having to ask questions to people like I was interrogating a group of five-year-olds who didn’t speak English.
“Look, Brantley. Stop with the word play. If there aren’t any light switches in this room, how are the lights controlled? I can’t imagine they just stay on until all the bulbs burn out.”
“There’s an app for the lights in this room that Mr. Harris uses.”
I stared at him, hoping he’d get the hint that he should expand on his answer, and eventually he did. “When Mr. Harris made the security improvements to the house, he also added technology to turn it into a smart house. Cameras, an app to control the lights and temperature, that sort of thing. Surely, you’ve seen those commercials where people turn on the lights before they even get home? Or have those doorbells they can answer remotely?”
I was well on my way to frustration. “I don’t watch a lot of television. Who has access to the app?”
Brantley stewed on it for a while. “Mr. Harris, of course. I have it. The security chief, and I believe the head maid.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Is that annoying dinner gong controlled the same way? Through an app?”
“Yes. The same one. It’s quite remarkable. It can dim the lights, play audio, all kinds of things.”
“Fascinating. Can I see your phone, Brantley?”
“No. I don’t have it with me,” he said.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“No, it’s true. Mr. Harris didn’t like people having phones at his dinner party.”
“Paranoia again?”
“No. He simply thought that people should live in the moment and enjoy each other’s company without doing so behind a phone.”
“Laurel had a phone on her. So did the bar-back. So did Viola.”
“He wasn’t as concerned about the band. We should have checked the bartender, and we wouldn’t have allowed the phone in had we found it. Heather has worked with us before. She knows all the rules quite well. They’re all spelled out right there in the contract.”
“And Viola?” I asked.
“Why, she’s the police chief,” Brantley answered. “She wouldn’t have parted with it even if we’d asked her to. A call could come in for her at any time, and there have been events here where she’s been called away on police matters.”
That tracked with me. My dad was the same way. He always said he was a cop twenty-four hours a day, eight days a week, three hundred and sixty-six days a year. Even when on vacation out of state, he carried his badge and gun, just in case. Fortunately for the family, he never got pressed into service when he was enjoying his well-needed time off.
“What about the patrol?” I asked.
Brantley didn’t answer at first. Once again, he looked at me as if he hadn’t heard the question.
“You said before at night there were roaming night patrols. Why hasn’t anyone come to our rescue?” I pushed.
“The gate closed and locked. No one will get in until it’s unlocked.” Brantley said.
“What about the guard at the shack? That was inside the gate, wasn’t it? I seem to remember driving through the pillars, then down the road for a spell before we got to the guard. He was well within the gate. What happened to him, Brantley?”
“I don’t have an answer to that question. You’re right. The guardhouse is always manned, and as soon as the compound went into lockdown, he should have been in here.”
“Where is he, then?” Helen asked.
I glanced at Helen when she asked the question. She looked like she’d come down some since I’d last talked to her, but her eyes had reddened, and her complexion seemed a little off. I assumed she was in the middle of a crash.
“Good question, Helen,” Amy added. “Where is the guard if there’s someone always on duty? We’ve been stuck in here for literal hours now and no one has come to get us.”
Brantley shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. I’ve been here with you. All night. I don’t have knowledge about anything going on outside of this room.”
“And you’ve got no way to contact the guard?” Claude asked.
“We could try the land line again,” Brantley said, pointing to the phone he’d try to use earlier.
“What’s the number?” I asked.
“It’s on speed dial. 8911.”
I turned around and yelled to Bozeman across the room. “Boze, see if that phone works, will you? Try to get the guardhouse.” I gave him the number and watched as he ambled to the phone and picked up the receiver. He put it to his ear and jiggled the hook switch a few times. He replaced the receiver and shook his head at me.
“I guess we’re still cut off from the outside world.”
“Unless we leave here,” Amy said. “Why can’t we just leave? Get in our cars and go?”
That was an excellent, simple solution to the problem.
“What about it?” I asked. “Could I send Bozeman out to get help?”
Brantley frowned, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise it. He electrified the fences. The best we can do at this point is wait until daybreak and have someone stand by the gate and see if they can flag down a passing car.”
It wasn’t the news I wanted, but was the news I got, so for now I had to live with it.
Some of the others had additional questions for Brantley, but I stepped away, my brain processing what I’d recently learned. As I headed back to the stage to talk to Bozeman, I surveyed the rest of the room. Laurel still sat next to Viola, diligently watching over her. Danny appeared to be sleeping off his wine, and based on the way he slumped in his chair, he would wake with the backache of a century. Jackie wasn’t in the corner I’d left her in. She’d moved to another seat farther down the wall, between where she’d sequestered herself in the corner and the stage. Hawthorne still lay where he’d fallen, which, I thought, was a good thing. The last thing I needed to deal with was a zombie running amok.
I took another three steps forward, then stopped in my tracks. A question popped into my head. Why had Jackie switched seats?
