The Legend of Peg Powler
(A Sewing Box Mystery)
Chapter 2: Saturday October 29, 2011, 11:37 am
When Missy arrived at Jeanette’s house, her aunt was in the front yard raking. It was a beautiful fall day and, if one had leaves to rake, this was the day to do it. Her aunt looked good. Younger, somehow. As if something had lifted. Perhaps she was finally over the loss of her mother, or at least as over such a loss as one could get.
After Grandma Jean had passed, Missy had noticed her aunt recede into herself. Their first outing to St. Petersburg had done a lot to change that. The challenges they had faced and the fact that they had actually solved what had happened to Jack Arneson had brought Jeanette back to life. Since that time she had become more the woman Missy remembered growing up with. She was acting more her age. Her love for adventure had returned. Gone were the dowdy sweatshirts and sweatpants, and what Missy had termed her ‘old lady’ hair. Mom jeans had given way to ones sewn in this century, giving her aunt back her hips and ba-donka-donk. The hair thing had relaxed, too. It was longer now and usually pulled back in a ponytail. It made her face less Paula Dean and more classic-looking, like a retired ballerina who had rediscovered food.
Jeanette’s face broke out in a big grin as Missy approached. “Hey, girl! I got a rake with your name on it hanging in the garage. Get to work!” Missy laughed. Raking leaves was not on her list of things to do that day. With very little in the way of persuasion, Missy convinced her aunt to abandon her rake and garden gloves and head indoors. “How about… a little white wine?” her aunt mischievously suggested. Missy glanced at the clock. It was a little early, but it would be time for lunch soon, so she thought, what the hell.
Kicking off their shoes, they settled down on the couch in the living room. Missy couldn’t help but notice the amount of dog hair everywhere. Her aunt did a good job keeping on top of it, but it was pretty obvious exactly who ran this particular household. Pancho and Lefty, her aunt’s dogs, came over, panting and smiling. They were good-natured mutts, both ugly as hell, but they had a charm to them all the same. Missy reached out a hand to pet the head of one of the dogs and the other immediately muscled his way under her hand, demanding equal time. “Okay, you two, that’s enough. Go lay down!” ordered her aunt. The dogs padded off to a corner of the room and snuggled into their respective beds, filled with fuzzy micro-fiber blankets. They had it good.
After a bit of small talk, the women got down to the matter at hand. Missy read aloud the poem she’d found in Grandma Jean’s sewing box.
Beware ye little children
The shores of the River Tees
There lurks an evil woman
Betwixt the tawny reeds
With teeth as sharp as daggers
Her fingers, talons long
Swift as Satan's fury
Her arms be twice as strong
She‘ll grab thee by thy pants cuff
Or methinks thy petticoat
Then drag ye underwater
And rive thy very throat
No eye shall see thee vanish
No ear shall hear thee screamin’
For the evil-eyed Peg Powler
Tis in league with a demon
A crafty hag from hell
She steals ye young babe’s breath
And drags ye down
And there ye‘ll drown
To sleep the sleep of death.
Once finished, she smiled, feeling like a grade-schooler who’d just completed an oral report in front of the classroom. “Lemme see that.” Her aunt snatched the piece of paper from her niece's hands. Good thing she’d made a copy; the original would not stand up to such abuse. Her aunt perused it quickly and then eyed Missy with a sardonic, resigned gaze. “You want to go back to St. Petersburg? Really? Based on what?”
“What do you mean?” Missy hadn’t expected any resistance.
“Why are we going? What are we looking for?”
“Are you telling me that you’re not the least bit curious? The people in that town talk about this Peg Powler as if she’s a real person. Still. In this day and age. Look…” Missy reached for her laptop and opened a word document she’d been using to collect information found on the web related to Peg Powler. “She’s a myth, part of English folklore.” Missy read part of the document, “…with green skin, long hair and sharp teeth, she inhabits the River Tees, grabbing the ankles of those who wander too close to the water's edge, especially naughty children, and pulls them underwater and drowns them.”
“The River Tees? Isn’t that the name of the river that runs through St. Petersburg?”
“It sure is!”
Her aunt shook her head in disbelief. “So, you think your grandmother was dreaming about a green-skinned monster that haunts the banks of a river in a town she’d never set foot in? Come on.”
Missy could see her aunt’s point, but felt she was missing the big picture. “What if there are children missing and we can help find them? We did it that last time.”
Jeanette’s eyes narrowed, but Missy could tell she was interested. “Are there? Are there children missing in St. Petersburg?”
Missy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I couldn’t find anything on the internet, but then, if you remember how law enforcement conducts business in that town, they probably don’t report such things to The Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
Her aunt laughed. “Yeah, Sheriff Paul didn’t seem too keen on sharing info with outsiders.” Her aunt’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know if I want to risk poking around the darker corners of that particular town again, Missy. That place is a little strange.”
“A little?” Missy reached over and grabbed her wine glass from the coffee table. “If I had an opportunity to dig into the town’s hall of records I bet I could find something. Or the newspaper. I bet they would be of help.”
“Doubt it.” Her aunt’s succinct comment seemed to put the kibosh on the topic.
Taking a sip, Missy searched her mind for the thing which would persuade her aunt to return to St. Petersburg with her. Then she got distracted. Something hanging near the front door, on a coat hook, didn’t make any sense. It was a worn backpack with all sorts of faded, crinkled protest stickers and politically-charged buttons stuck to it. There was also a rabbit’s foot and what Missy guessed was some type of roach clip attached by a leather tether to a bunch of fluffy feathers. In other words, something that definitely did not belong to her aunt. Puzzled, Missy spoke before thinking, “What’s that?”
“Huh?”
Missy pointed toward the knapsack. “Did you return to college, or something?”
“Oh, that…” Missy watched as her aunt’s face went full flush. “That belongs to… my dog walker.”
Eyebrows raised, Missy scoffed. “Oh, you have a dog walker now, huh?”
Her aunt’s face went blank. “Dog walker, dog sitter. You met her once. She must have left it here.” Jeanette shifted in her seat and then redirected the conversation. “I can’t see any reason for us to go back to that town. They don’t like us much, anyway.”
“Okay. Well, if that’s how you feel, I understand. I guess I’ll just go by myself…”
Jeanette’s posture changed dramatically, as her eyes grew aflame. “You will do no such thing! I forbid it.”
Now it was Missy’s turn to laugh. “You what?”
“I forbid it” her aunt stated firmly. “You can’t be sticking your nose in that town’s business all by yourself. What if something happened to you? You could disappear and nobody would know to look for you.”
“You would.”
“Yeah, well, if those are my only choices: going with you or letting you go by yourself, then I guess I’m going to St. Petersburg. But I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you want to go. This wouldn’t have to do with a certain handsome groundskeeper?”
Missy's mouth opened to protest, but then, thinking about it, she closed it and decided not to reply. Now it was her turn to redirect the conversation. “Well, there is the whole wanting-to-do-it for Grandma Jean. And then there’s part of me that’s just curious.”
“About Peter?”
Her aunt was really pushing that button, but Missy was still not going to respond. “No, I’m curious about this Peg Powler business. I mean, they talk about her as if she were a living, breathing being. So maybe there’s something to it.”
Jeanette took a sip of wine and mulled it over for a second. Missy couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but was pleasantly surprised when she came back with, “All right, I’ll contact my dog sitter. When do you want to do this?”
Missy’s heart soared. Which struck her as odd. Maybe it was due to the rather lackluster summer she’d experienced. There was part of her which had hoped for a little summer romance, whether that involved Peter Peterson from St. Petersburg – or 'Pete Repeat', as he was known throughout the town - or not. Was her aunt right? Was the real reason she wanted to go back there to take care of some unfinished business she had with Peter? Missy took another sip of wine. Nope, she decided. That was not the case. That couldn’t be the case.
Realizing she'd become lost in thought and that her aunt was waiting for an answer, Missy snapped back to reality. “How about… Monday? Monday is Halloween. It might be fun to see all those little trick-or-treaters running around a cloistered little town like St. Petersburg. It’s so safe there; I bet they don’t even have to x-ray the candy.”
“Monday? During the day?” Her aunt looked doubtful.
“It has to be during the day, otherwise we won’t have access to the town hall,” Missy explained.
“Don’t you have to work?”
Oh. Work. Missy frowned. Funny how every weekend she managed to forget that she actually had to work for a living. “I can take a personal day,” she reasoned. “Besides, my boss is traveling, so I’m kind of at loose ends anyway.” Still, Jeanette looked as if she needed more convincing. Smiling a beatific smile, Missy coaxed her, “Come on, it’ll be fun.” She prodded her aunt with the socked toe of her foot.
Jeanette hesitated. “I’m supposed to do something with a friend of mine.
Missy prodded her again with her foot.
“But… I think maybe I can get out of it.”
That sounded like a ‘yes’ to Missy. She was about to tell her aunt how excited she was, when her aunt silenced her with a raised index finger. “I’ll go… but on one condition. Could we please avoid being detained by the sheriff’s department and be back in Minneapolis by 7:00 pm? There’s a Halloween Party I sort of promised someone I’d go to.”
The fact that her aunt had been invited to a party on Halloween while she, on the other hand, had no such plans and never got invited to said parties, struck an envious chord in Missy’s heart. But rather than dwell on the lack of upcoming engagements in her datebook, she decided to remain upbeat and focus on their return to St. Petersburg. Still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Who are you going as?”
The question caught her aunt off guard. More oddness. Missy wondered how you could plan on going to a Halloween party and not know who/what you were going as. After stumbling a bit, Jeanette said, “I don’t know. Maybe… Peg Powler!” Warming to the idea, she added, “I think I could scrounge up some green face paint and fake nails.”
Missy laughed. “Everyone will think you’re The Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz.”
Thinking quickly, Jeanette expanded on the idea, “I could drape myself in a fishing net and put seaweed in my hair!”
Missy nodded. That sounded like a good idea. “Where’s the party?”
Her aunt answered guardedly, mumbling an address before quickly changing the subject. “It's a bar. Hey, you know who we should go pay a visit to? Before going to St. Petersburg? Terri Nelson.” Terri Nelson was a former neighbor and confidant of Grandma Jean’s. She now lived in a nursing home. “If this is indeed something your grandmother used to dream about, then she would have spoken to her about it. Remember how helpful she was with the Jack Arneson dreams?”
“No.” Missy seriously doubted they would get the little dynamo to sit down long enough to learn much of anything pertaining to their mission in St. Petersburg. “Are you drawing from some revisionist history that I am not privy to? That woman was way more concerned with polka dancing than helping us.”
“That’s not true. She told us about the big eye, remember?”
Oh, yeah. Missy had forgotten that. “But she really didn’t offer up a lot more than that.” Missy giggled. "The big eye..."
“Hey, it was something. And tomorrow’s Sunday. That might be the time to get her attention. Maybe she won’t have quite so much on her social calendar,” her aunt reasoned. “It’s worth a shot.”
Missy couldn’t come up with a good excuse not to visit the old woman, like say, some plans she had made with friends or a date, or… anything. “Sure. Let’s go rockin’ with the oldies.”
Jeanette stared at Missy, her eyes half-lidded. “You know, you too shall be old one day, little Missy.”
Missy grinned. “Not if I can help it. Got more wine?”
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