Wilmington, NC 05 - Murder On The ICW

around, found some cheese and crackers, and had just popped one in my mouth when Spunky slunk into the kitchen, hair all spiky, looking around suspiciously.
    "It's okay," I said, "he's gone."
    Spunky hates Mickey, and with good reason.
    I broke off a bit of cheese and held it out to him. He licked it off my finger with his scratchy tongue. Then he gave me a long, unblinking cat look.
    "Hungry?" I asked.
    In answer, he sat down and wrapped his tail around his haunches, and stared at the upper cabinet where Melanie keeps his Fancy Feast. He ate his tuna delicately; I made a mess of the cheese and crackers. I placed our dirty dishes in the dishwasher, brushed up the crumbs, and was on my way to get his pet carrier from the hall closet when the doorbell rang.
    Oh, no, not Mickey again. I yanked the door open and took a deep breath, ready to blast him.
    The man standing under the porch light was not Mickey. I had never seen him before. I pushed the door closed immediately, put the chain on, then opened it a crack. My watch cat had vanished.
    "Yes?" I said through the crack.
    "I'm looking for Ashley Wilkes," the man said. He was not friendly nor unfriendly, just determined.
    "Who are you and what do you want?"
    "Are you Ashley Wilkes?" he asked. "I tried the house on Nun Street but she . . . you . . . were not there. If you're Ashley I've got to speak to you."
    "You still haven't told me who you are," I said, about ready to slam the door shut on him.
    "My name is Scott Randolph and I'm an agent with ATF, that's Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Here's my ID."
    He stuck a plasticized photo ID and a heavy metal shield in a leather case through the crack in the door. I held up the photo. It was him all right. I moved the shield to the light. It looked official to me but what do I know?
    I handed his ID back to him. "You can probably buy that shield on the internet."
    I'd meant it as a joke but he did not laugh. Instead he growled, "Not this shield."
    From what little I could see of him through the crack in the door, he was tall and big, probably muscular if he was really an agent. He had dark brown eyes, dark brown hair, a square jaw. He looked like a hundred other men.
    "Okay," I said, "I'll accept that you are who you say you are. What do you want?"
    "I'd like to come in," he said firmly.
    "Let someone in my house I've never seen before just because he has a tin badge? No way." What I was thinking was that he was after Mickey Ballantine. That whatever deal Mickey was involved in was of interest to the ATF. And I wondered if Mickey had left something incriminating behind. And would Melanie be implicated?
    "Then step out here. We'll talk on the porch."
    "That's not smart either. We'll talk this way, through the door. What do you want with me?"
    He shrugged, controlling his anger. "So you are Ashley Wilkes. Okay. As I said, I'm Agent Scott Randolph. I work out of the Charlotte Field Office and I'm working a case in this area. Official ATF business. Then we learned that you had discovered the remains of a man who is of interest to our agency. I was assigned that case as well. We have reason to believe the man you discovered had been one of our agents, an agent who went missing seventy-five years ago."
    "Oh," I said softly. I unchained the door and opened it. "Come in."
    I led him into the living room. "Would you like something to drink? Tea? Water?" I offered as he sat down in a comfy club chair.
    "Nothing, thanks. I'd like you to tell me about how you found those remains, and I'd like to arrange to see where you found them."
    "Why aren't you working with the police? They could show you the shed," I said. I still wasn't sure this man was who he said he was.
    "How I work my cases is none of your concern. We can't always involve the locals in what we're doing. Not since 9/11. Everything changed then, as I'm sure you know." He came across as dour as J. Edgar Hoover.
    "Okay," I said and sat down across from him, clasped my hands in my lap and began the story of first finding the bottles, of contacting the Raleigh Bottle Club members and their arrival, of seeing the outline of a face under the broken glass.
    Agent Randolph nodded. "Tell me what you know about the history of the property."
    I told him about Increase Boleyn, how he'd been a successful banker in Wilmington, with a house downtown, and the hunting lodge on the water. How he'd lost just about everything in the great stock market crash. "He died right before World War II.