Smoke in Mirrors

shadows off to his left, reached out, groped and caught her hand. Together they plunged deeper into the damp mist. Darkness closed in around them, offering safety and a new kind of danger.
    A short distance into the woods it became almost impossible to see where they were going. Getting lost or brained by a long hanging branch was not on his agenda. There were other risks inherent in this activity. In the damp, chilly muck they could wander around for hours and fall prey to hypothermia.
    He drew Leonora to a halt. “Hold on. I need to get my bearings. We don’t want to get too far from the cabin. It’s our only solid reference point in this pea soup.”
    At that moment a dim glow appeared in the mist behind them.

    “Thank you for turning on the porch light, Rhodes,” he said softly. “Just what we needed.”
    He tightened his grip on Leonora’s hand and moved toward the right. He kept the dim glow of the porch light at his shoulder as they made their way through the trees. The result was a path that described an arc with the cottage at its center.
    A few minutes later they emerged onto the graveled drive that led to the road.
    “Okay,” he said. “Gravel has a nice crunch to it. Sort of like breakfast cereal. As long as we’re crunching we’re headed in the right direction.”
    “I’ve never seen fog this thick.”
    “They’re saying in town that this is the worst spell of the stuff that anyone has seen in Wing Cove in years.”
    They struck pavement a short time later. The fog seemed somewhat lighter here on the road. The SUV was where it was supposed to be, parked out of sight behind an empty summerhouse.
    He glanced at the run-down cottage with its drooping front steps and boarded-up windows.
    “I almost bought this place instead of the one you’re living in,” he told Leonora as he opened the door on the passenger side. “It was a real steal. Glad I picked the other one, though.”
    “Me, too.” She scrambled up onto the seat. “I’m not sure I’d want to be living this close to a guy who sells unidentifiable stuff out of unlabeled bottles.”
    “Location is everything in real estate.”
    The thought of her having old golden-eyes as her neighbor was more disturbing to him than Thomas wanted to admit, and not just because of the unidentified powder in the blue bottles.
    He got behind the wheel and checked the road. Hecould see the white line now. The fog had thinned out, at least for a while. They could make it back to Wing Cove.
    There was a distinct chill in the vehicle. He shoved the key into the ignition and fired up the heater.
    “That,” he said, pulling out onto the pavement, “was a little close.”
    She folded her arms and gazed straight ahead through the windshield. “Well, what can you expect? We’re still new at this detective business. I’m sure we’ll get the hang of it sooner or later.”

Chapter Ten
    He brought the car to a halt in her driveway a short time later and switched off the engine. She was very conscious of him sitting there close beside her in the front seat. It was comforting, not to mention extremely reassuring, to have him nearby. There was something solid and substantial about Thomas. She was, she realized, reluctant to let him go.
    “I can’t believe we did that,” she said.
    “It was a different sort of outing for me, too.” There was no inflection in his words. “When it comes to entertainment, I usually prefer to go down to the hardware store and look at screwdrivers.”
    “We could have been arrested.”
    “Doubt it.”
    She turned her head quickly to look at him. “If Alex had caught us inside his house he would have been perfectly within his rights to call the cops.”
    “Sure. But then he would have had to explain thatweird mirror, which he obviously swiped from Mirror House. And something tells me he wouldn’t want Ed Stovall going through his cupboards and maybe taking a few samples, the way we did.”
    She caught her breath. “You don’t really think Alex is selling drugs, do you?”
    “Who knows what the hell that guy is selling? Even if it’s just powdered sugar, he won’t want the word to get out that he’s a complete con. No, I don’t think he’d have called the cops.”
    She exhaled slowly. “Nevertheless, in hindsight, it was probably not the brightest thing either of us has ever done.”
    “On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a two.”
    “You’ve done dumber stuff?”
    “Sure.” He pondered that