Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5
Part 6
It was a dark and stormy night. As the clock struck midnight a black cat on the prowl on Virginia Street cried out as if it sensed trouble.
An owl high in an oak tree stopped hooting for a moment and looked down to see if the cat was possible dinner. Deciding it was a bit too much to digest, it resumed its hooting. (The scene was so scary that Merrypen writing part six in her new crime story all alone in her office on Kent Street in Urbanna was shaking in her slippers.)
A tall, stealthy figure, presumably a man with a shock of blond hair on his head dressed entirely in black with a mask over his face and black pack on his back was slipping behind the Urbanna Museum. He crouched down and studied the wooden barred basement window at the museum.
“Stop, you fool!” cried a voice like a lunatic baying under the moon from behind a shrub. Snark jumped back and then shone his flashlight into the eyes of Whiz, who ducked in the glaring light.
“What are you doing here?” Snark demanded.
“I’m here to try to save you from this terrible mistake, Snark!”
Snark answered her with a sharp crack against the wooden bars on the basement window followed by his snapping them out one by one. The smashed window and shattered glass came next. Whiz was so shocked by such sudden violence she took off running and crying like a stuck pig.
Whiz ran as fast as her legs could carry her. The dogs that lived along Cross Street barked as she ran by their homes all the way back to her home on Kent Street. There she slipped through the back door, up the stairs into her bed and threw herself under the comfort of her blankets. So much for Whiz in any future role in crime.
Meanwhile back at the museum, Snark had positioned a chair at just the right spot and put his battery-run jig saw to use opening a hole in the floorboards just his size to crawl through into the first floor of the museum. He moved stealthily toward the map and with a thud he hit the glass with his handy mallet.
“What the devil?” Snark muttered. The hammer did not shatter the glass! Snark examined the encased map closely. “Rats!” It was not glass but plexiglass! “Plastic!” He swore under his breath. How to shatter plexiglass?
Suddenly there was a banging on the front door. Snark jumped back in terror. “Open up!” a man’s voice commanded. Oh no! It was a gentleman known around town as “the Lord” because he could trace his lineage all the way back to English peerage. The townspeople, never sure of any proper social rank title, just addressed him as “the Lord” and left it at that.
The Lord was no doubt disturbed from sleep by the crying stuck pig as he had come to the museum dressed in his robe, PJs and bedroom slippers. He smelled trouble in River City.
Snark swore, threw his tools into his knapsack and made a dive for the hole into the basement. He was out like a flash and disappearing quickly behind the museum, was able to scurry down the hill to the waterfront and the safety of the Goose.
The Lord was still banging on the front door demanding to be let inside when the sheriff pulled up. He responded to the alarm that had gone off notifying him that there had been a break-in at the Urbanna Museum.
The sheriff and the Lord made a thorough investigation quickly surmising not much damage had been done beyond the hole cut into the floorboards and a shattered window in the basement. The important thing was the Mitchell Map was safe. Under close inspection it appeared that even the plexiglass covering the map had not been damaged.
The sheriff walked the Lord back to his house. “We’ll be back in the morning to do a more thorough search and to look for fingerprints or possible DNA evidence. Whoever this culprit was when I drove into town there was no sign of any traffic going out on Route 227.”
“Could it have been a local?” asked the Lord. “Maybe a teenager on a prank?”
“Anything’s possible. Probably just a prank.”
If the moon had chosen to slip out from behind the racing clouds for a few seconds and if someone had been looking, there could be seen a stealthy figure dressed in black rowing out into Urbanna Creek toward an awaiting sailboat. He soon seemed to be peeling off letters affixed to the stern of his boat only to be replacing them with a new set of letters. The name “Goose” appeared to be changed over to “Hawk.”
The dingy was hoisted back on the boat and tied fast to the bow and within minutes a soft purring of an engine could be heard and an anchor being hauled up from the muddy creek bottom.
The sheriff was just passing back over the Urbanna Creek bridge returning to his office. The moon broke loose from the racing cloud cover for a few seconds giving the sheriff a grand view of the harbor.
Was that a sailboat motoring out of Urbanna Creek with no lights on? He blinked as the moon once again covered in clouds. He looked again but the darkness showed nothing. It must have been his imagination.
The sheriff pulled over and took out a Thermos of hot coffee to pour himself a drink then continued driving back to his new Cooks Corner office. He checked his watch. Four more hours on duty before he headed for home.
All was well. The town was fast asleep. But most important of all, Urbanna’s prize possession, the famous Mitchell Map, was safe.
→ Part 7
