Thursby Manor
Chapter 3: Whoa There, Foxy Lady
Sam smiled joyfully at the bikini’ed women clustered about her. Completely forgetting her investigator persona, she immediately wanted to dive into the party activities.
“Whoa there, foxy lady,” Mackenzie chuckled. “You think you need some hipper threads?”
Sam paused, looking down at herself. Her street clothes, perfect for a private sleuth, stared back at her.
“Oh my God, you guys,” the young redhead blushed. “What am I wearing? This outfit’s so SQUARE!”
All the women, including Sam, laughed.
“C’mon,” Noelani beamed, taking Sam by the hand. “I’ll hook you up.”
Five minutes later, Sam had shed her clothes, swapping everything for a teeny white bikini with little pink flowers. The instant she put it on, the young woman felt invigorated, as if all her life she was meant to wear such a skimpy costume.
“Much hipper,” Sam giggled with satisfaction, and admiring her slim figure in the mirror. In a moment of airheaded playfulness, she wiggled her butt, just for fun. “Boop-boo-be-DOOP!”
Both Sam and Noelani giggled like kindergarteners.
“Alright, sister,” Noelani joyously chided. “Let’s get down there! The party’s started without us!”
“What a gas!” Sam cried, her eyes glowing. The two women hurried outside.
And what a party it was. Sam eagerly joined a volleyball game, and played her best. The funny thing was, not one of the ladies was keeping score, and girls frequently switched sides without realizing they’d done so. But who cared? Laughing and playing with the other women was so much fun!
“Into the pool, into the pool!” screamed Mackenzie, in sheer delight.
There was a giggling stampede of women who dashed across the greens. An onlooker would have been amazed at the sheer number of nude, curvy legs, exposed shoulders, arms, and tummies. The bouncing breasts and tight little rears were barely concealed behind the rainbow of bikinis. The women leapt into the crystal blue water.
Sam laughed and splashed, so happy to be in such wonderful company. When a young woman she’d just met (but now loved more dearly than a sister) playfully waggled her breasts, Sam squealed and waggled her breasts back. This created gales of overjoyed laughter, and soon a new “titty wave” party game had been invented. The exact rules were never nailed down, but Sam was a star player.
Then, another game broke out. “Chicken fight!” a brown-skinned beauty next to Sam shouted joyously.
Before Sam could react, she was hoisted onto the shoulders of another woman, and then was facing a similarly-hoisted Noelani, just two feet away.
“Fight, fight!” the women gleefully chanted, although there was nothing but innocent mischief in their voices. Sam roared with laughter, then playfully shoved at Noelani, just a little.
The other woman’s face lit up. “Oh, you naughty little minx!” Noelani declared, in faked outrage. She kicked water at Sam.
And then the battle was on. Sam and Noelani slapped and pushed, although neither woman really put any force into the playful blows. The onlookers cheered and laughed and whistled.
Eventually, Sam felt the girl beneath her—she never found out who it was—lurch backward. And then Sam was toppling into the water. She screamed with delighted laughter all the way down.
She’d never had so much fun.
And that was Sam’s night. She flitted from party activity to party activity, always laughing, always teasing, always overjoyed to meet another of her sisters. She never grew tired or needed to withdraw. It was like the wild celebration simply fueled more and more delight within her.
Sam was like a joyous little girl again. She was bubbly, scatterbrained, carefree. Rarely did two thoughts pass through her mind that were connected. All she knew was that she was having so much fun! These women were SO MUCH FUN!
Normally Sam the Detective would be inspecting everything, observing, making mental notes, being the sleuth. But now? She was entirely unconcerned about anything in the world. Her vast intellect was asleep. She twirled through the evening, loving every moment, comprehending nothing.
It was while Sam was in the Mashed Potato Dancing Contest that a low, bell-like chime sounded from the manor house. Immediately, the other women straightened, their smiles restrained.
“Come on, you cats,” Sam grinned, still dancing away. “Gotta keep boogieing!”
“No, Sam,” Noelani said gently, but firmly. “You really have to come with me.”
As she spoke these words, Noelani’s hand gently cupped Sam’s cheek. Instantly, the scatterbrained redhead forgot about dancing. A fog descended over her thoughts. She felt calm and obedient.
“Come,” Noelani smiled sweetly.
Now under her sister’s spell, Sam followed all the other women to the stone patio. There, the deck chairs were arranged in a wide circle. Burning tiki torches were placed all about, casting the stone platform in a gentle, golden light.
All the women gathered here. They were standing in small groups, talking quietly. The mood was still relaxed and cheerful… although the madcap delight of the party had clearly passed.
As Noelani led Sam into the torchlight, Mackenzie appeared. She smiled at her cousin. “Come with me, Sam,” she instructed.
Sam meekly allowed Mackenzie to guide her into one of the chairs. Four other women were placed next to her.
“I could use a cigarette,” Sam remarked off-handedly.
“Oh, Sam,” Mackenzie pouted, “that’s so bad for you, you know?”
“But I want one,” Sam said.
Mackenzie smiled again. “Well, I can fix that,” she promised in a motherly tone. “Sam? Sleeeeeep…” And she caressed Sam’s cheek with one loving palm.
Immediately, Sam’s body dissolved into perfect relaxation. Her mind went blank and her eyes closed. She descended into a powerful trance.
“Wonderful, Sam,” Mackenzie’s purring voice said. “You will sleep, sleep deeply until one of the other girls awakens you. You will remember nothing. Do you understand?”
“Yes…” Sam heard her own toneless voice reply.
“Very good,” complimented Mackenzie. “When you next awaken, Sam, you will no longer have a craving for cigarettes. Not ever. You will never want to smoke again. Do you understand?”
Once again, Sam’s lips replied, “Yes…”
“Yes, Sam, yes,” Mackenzie murmured. “Relax and obey…”
The younger woman’s voice rippled on, embedding more commands into the depths of Sam’s mind.
And then Sam was floating that perfect, meditative relaxation, she became aware of the other women about her. They had expanded their conversation, and were now holding an open council.
The women spoke calmly and one-at-a-time, and all earlier traces of their giggly, wild personas were gone now. Sam listened, fascinated, as the conversation rolled on. Sometimes, she thought she recognized Mackenzie’s voice. But she could never be sure.
One woman asked, “Have all the new women been put into sleep?”
“Sam is in sleep. I will put Kaleah, Wendy, Alanah, and Malina into trance now.”
There was a slight pause. The torchfire crackled.
“There. They are asleep. We can give them their return commands later.”
“Our next party is in three days.” another woman said. “Who can attend?”
One-by-one, Sam heard the women respond:
“I can attend.”
“I can attend.”
“I can not attend; my boyfriend wishes to propose. Harper does not want engaged or married women in the parties.”
“I can attend.”
One-by-one, each woman stated if she was available to return. Sam listened, fascinated. It was as if these ladies had been bewitched by total honesty and they were only loyal to preserving the next party. Every one spoke in the same, flat tone. No-one had an agenda or personal desire.
“I cannot attend; my vacation is over tomorrow. I must fly back to Seattle in the morning.”
“I can attend.”
“I cannot attend; I will lose my job if I skip work again.”
And on and on it went. Six women were leaving the secret community; fourteen were returning; three more plus Sam would be compelled to return, too.
“Very well,” someone said. “Harper wants us all to go into our minds one last time tonight. Memories must be cleansed.”
All the women began softly chanting, in unison: “I feel relaxed. I release my thoughts. In a moment, I will return home. When the next time comes, I will follow and obey all of the instructions in my mind. Until, then, I will remember nothing. I will remember nothing. I will remember nothing.”
And then, Sam felt herself sink deeper. Her own mind stopped listening, and she knew nothing more.
The sun peaked through the curtains, attacking Sam’s closed eyelids. She groaned, and rolled over.
Then the detective blinked, rousing herself. She was in bed. In her apartment. The morning birds were chattering away outside. She could smell the coffee that her neighbor down the hall was brewing.
Sam yawned like a grizzly bear. She stretched, rolled over again, and stared at the ceiling. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess. What…?
Wait a minute.
Sam looked down at herself in surprise. She was completely nude. That was odd; ever since she caught pneumonia as a teenager, she’d always worn pajamas at night. Even on the islands’ hottest, stickiest nights.
Confused, Sam rose and staggered toward her tiny shower. Why hadn’t she worn pajamas? For that matter, what had she been doing last night? Why hadn’t…?
As she twisted the water on, Sam frowned. Yesterday, she’d worked her cases, and then tried to call Mackenzie. Yes! Yes, that was it. She’d phoned Mackenzie, but gotten that busybody chaperone instead. And then…
And then there was nothing. Sam couldn’t remember a thing.
For a detective, a memory lapse is an alarming and potentially job-threatening thing. Sleuths like Sam depended on detailed recollections to piece together cases. Oh, a forgotten moment here or there wasn’t the end of the world… But to lose an entire evening? That was positively frightening.
Sam was about to step into the shower when she noted her skin. She was covered with the finest trace of some infitesimal particle, a strange, white dust. Sam sniffed. A dust with a fragrance. A pollen!
The substance had an odd aroma… like pumpkin and lilac.
Frowning, Sam stepped into the water. Should that scent seem familiar?
The detective’s thoughts were still jumbled and bumping about when she reached her office. With annoyance, she noted that despite furious scrubbing, not all of that sticky pollen had come off in the shower.
Of course, Halia was waiting in front of her office door, her smile brighter than a sunrise. As usual, the girl was hugging an oversized backpack.
“Good Morning, Chief!” Halia chirped.
“Mmgh,” grunted a still-sleepy Sam.
As the detective fumbled with her keys, Halia launched into her report, talking at breathless speeds: “So, I looked up sand surveys, like you wanted, right? And there are like, three different people who are sand people. Like, there’s the geology people up at the university. They wrote, like, a bunch of books about Hawai’i sand. I looked them up, but I haven’t read them yet. Did you want me to read them? They’re a lot. There’s also a land survey by the US Department of… of Something. They did an official survey of the beaches back in ’48. And then—“
Sam tuned out the perpetual chatterbox. She unlocked her office, gathered the mail, then moved to sit at her desk. Halia relentlessly droned on.
Suddenly Sam’s head cleared. She shot to her feet.
“My casebook!” she exclaimed, cutting Halia off midsentence.
“Huh?” the teenager said.
Almost frantic, Sam began looking about. “My casebook! My notebook with all my case notes in it! Its not here!”
“Oh,” Halia said, and began looking about. “Well, I can lend you a notebook, if you need—“
“No,” interrupted Sam, annoyed. She began stooping to peer under the furniture. “This is my CASEBOOK. You don’t understand; I never leave it anywhere. Ever. My whole professional life is in that damn little book.”
Not long ago, a thug had threatened Sam with a knife when she’d dared to jot his name into her book. At the risk of being stabbed, she’d held her ground and refused to surrender the tome. Another time, she’d risked life and limb to rescue the book when Mackenzie’s family house briefly caught fire. Sam would never have discarded that book casually.
After turning the little office upside-down, Sam sat, fuming. The casebook was gone.
“Where did you last see it?” Halia probed.
This was a reasonable question. Sam closed her eyes, thinking furiously. The last time she had the book…
…was in her BMW. Last night. Right around when she called Mackenzie’s dorm.
The fragment of a memory bubbled into Sam’s mind. She smelled pumpkin and lilac.
“Com’on,” she snapped at the teenager. “We’re going for a drive.”
Sam was half-surprised to realize that her car was covered in white pollen, that same pollen which smelled of faintly pumpkin and lilac. How had she not noticed before? It was as if she had finally awakened from a long, strange sleep, and only now her detective’s instincts were coming back to her.
The two young women piled into the BMW’s front seats, and they were off. Halia chatted nonstop, all the way across town, and then all along the highway. Her ability to ramble continuously on any given topic was truly impressive. And alarming.
After a half an hour, Sam found herself once again at the base of the hill, looking up at the great mansion overlooking Wailupe Beach.
“Hey,” Halia said, surprised, “that’s Thursby Manor.”
“You know it?” asked Sam.
“My dad talks about it, sometimes,” Halia explained. “He’s a cop, you know. The cops come up here every now and then to check on the place, because, you know, its kinda far from town, right? But dad doesn’t think anyone lives here.”
“Huh,” said Sam, starting up the hill. “Why’s he think that?”
“He never sees anyone here, like, ever,” rambled Halia. “Of course, it’s a rich person house, and rich people sometimes live somewhere else, like New York, and then they come here just for the season, you know? So I figure that’s what’s going on.”
“Fascinating,” Sam drawled. She was eyeing the small, white flowers littered on the ground in all directions. The aroma of lilac and pumpkin was everywhere.
Before too long, both women stood at the iron gates, looking into the yawning estate. The great white house stood silent, all the windows closed. But Sam could see a team of gardeners toiling away on the far side of the property. A pool boy was tending the grounds, too. A neat line of Koa and Hala trees lined the perimeter, just inside the walls. As Sam watched, the barest handful of tiny white blossoms dropped from twisted branches.
The detective folded her arms and glowered.
“What?” Halia said, looking between Sam and the house in rapid movements.
The redheaded woman didn’t answer immediately. “Every instinct I have tells me that I’ve been in this house recently,” she mused aloud. “And yet… I have absolutely no memory of being here.”
“Well, that’s just weird,” Halia scoffed.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed, determined. “Too weird. Com’on.”
She reached inside the gate, popping the latch. Then, moving quickly, she stole into the property.
Halia’s eyes bugged at this brazen act. Then, looking nervously over her shoulder, she scampered after the detective.
The two women hurried up a side path that was lined with small hedges and rose bushes. Sam kept a sharp eye in all directions. But no face appeared in the house’s dark windows, nor did the outdoor workers so much as glance in the women’s direction. Soon detective and teenager were standing on the wide stone patio, gazing up at the mansion.
“You still think this house is vacant?” Sam sarcastically asked.
“I guess,” the teen replied. “Why?”
“There was a party here,” Sam pointed out. “See? Burnt tiki torches. Recently-trampled grass. See where metal chairs were scraped across the stone? There. And there. I’d say it was quite a bash.”
Sam looked about again, then tested the French doors. They were unlocked. She jerked her head at Halia, a gesture which said Follow me.
The two women removed and carried their shoes, as to not clack on the indoor Spanish tiles. Then they stole into the great house, looking all about them. Halia went pale and, for once, fell silent.
They were standing in a large foyer, with high ceilings, twin staircases lazily sloping upstairs, and multiple passageways back into the great house. The two women could hear the whir of a vacuum cleaner above them. Then, heavy footsteps crossed from one room to another up on the second floor.
Sam bit her lip, looking about. She wasn’t sure what to do next.
“Chief…” Halia breathed, looking positively scared.
“C’mon,” the detective replied, and moved toward the open doorway to their immediate left.
This led to a billiards room, with a custom, brown carpet, tall bookcases made of chestnut, a grand hearth, and a full bar made from cherry and iron off in the corner. The room had been recently tidied, and the acrid scent of cleaner was still in the air.
Outside the room, the women could hear someone descending the staircase.
“Quick!” Sam hissed, and both ladies flattened themselves against the wall.
They heard the person reached the ground floor, pause, then cross the tiled floor. Then there was a neat thud and a click as the French doors out to the patio were pulled shut and locked. The person then moved away into the house. The women waited until the footfalls faded into the distance.
“Chief…” Halia moaned, clearly frightened. “Chief, if we’re caught, my dad, he’s gonna kill me if I get arrested—“
“Shh…!” Sam cautioned her. “We’re okay. Besides, I can’t leave yet.”
Ignoring the teenager’s miserable expression, Sam’s experienced eyes wandered everywhere. A bizarre feeling of déjà vu was eating at her. But nothing looked familiar. Still holding her shoes, she began to move through the room.
The bookcases were filled with thick volumes, all with titles like “Botany of the South Pacific,” “Tree Species of Fiji,” “The Complete Catalogue of Arecaceae Tree Species,” Volumes I, II, and III. Also: “Navigation by the Stars,” “The Voyages of Captain Cook,” “The Handbook of 20th Century Seamanship,” and “The Atlas of Pacific Waters.” On the lower shelves, Sam spotted “Brecht’s Advanced Psychology” and “Hypnotism and Pattern-Enforcement Clinical Studies.”
The detective shook her head, wondering who could possibly have interests across such a bizarre collection. Her gaze moved on.
On one wall, hanging over a small nineteenth-century writing desk, was an old black-and-white photograph, possibly clipped and enlarged from Life Magazine. In it, a kindly, white-haired gentlemen gazed down at a lovely young lady, his hand resting gently on her cheek. The woman stared back, her expression blank.
There was a printed caption: DR. HEINRICH BRECHT DEMONSTRATES HIS “CHEEK CUPPING” HYPNOTIC TECHNIQUE ON MISS BETTY WILSON, AGE 18. MISS WILSON IS BEING PLACED INTO A HYPNOTIC TRANCE MERELY WITH THE TOUCH OF DR. BRECHT’S…
Footfalls within the house moved towards the stairs.
“Chief…!” Halia whimpered. “Can’t we go now?”
Sam scowled. “Just calm down,” she whispered, continuing her search. “We’ll…”
Suddenly, the detective’s breath sucked inward.
“What?” Halia asked fearfully.
Sam crossed to the bar. There, casually lying on the bar’s polished surface, was her casebook.
The detective seized the volume, a look of conviction on her face. Just for certainty, she opened the book, quickly inspecting the last few pages. A small, white flower bloom that had been pressed between the pages fell out, landing at her feet.
At that moment, a woman’s distant voice from upstairs shouted, “Luana! Have you seen the feather dusters?”
A second woman, this one in the adjacent room, hollered back: “They’re in the billiards room!”
Sam’s heart leapt. Sure enough, the plastic feather duster carton was resting on the floor next to her, just out of the way.
Footfalls from the floor above began to approach the staircase.
“Let’s get outta here,” Sam whispered urgently at Halia.
In a flash, both women popped back into their shoes. They tore back across the large foyer, unlocking and throwing open the French doors, then racing away along the path. They ignored the surprised and alarmed voices that yelled after them while they made their escape.