The Sisters Hemingway

by Annie England Noblin

  Brody took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he replied. “It’s just I expected to find weeds and found bones instead.”

  “We’re all in shock,” Hadley continued. “It’s okay.”

  From the porch, Lafayette let out a bark and waddled down the steps, trotting over to where they all stood. She sniffed at Brody’s feet before, to their abject horror, she began to sniff at the skull and, in a move that could only be described as sharklike, grabbed it between her teeth.

  “Lafayette!” Pfeiffer screamed. “No!”

  As Pfeiffer reached for the dog, she took off, running away from them and toward one of the large oak trees in the yard.

  “Give that back!” Pfeiffer said, running after her.

  The dog stopped at the tree, plopping down to give the skull a good once-over with her tongue. By the time Pfeiffer reached her, she had one of her teeth lodged in the eye socket and was chewing. Pfeiffer dropped to her hands and knees, attempting to wrench the skull out of the dog’s mouth, but Lafayette held tight, and then let go for a millisecond before latching back on, as if she and Pfeiffer were playing a game.

  In the distance, there was a crunch on the gravel road as two Ozark County sheriff’s deputy cars pulled up to the farm. Two men got out of each car and ambled up to where Hadley, Martha, Brody, and Old Crow were huddled. “We’re here about a call we received,” one of them said. He was wearing sunglasses, so that nobody could see his eyes. His dark hair was slicked over to one side, and Pfeiffer got the distinct feeling that he thought he might be on an episode of Miami Vice.

  “Nice glasses, Wade,” Brody said.

  “Thanks, man,” Wade replied, adjusting them. “Got ’em on one of the yard sale pages on Facebook. Thought they make me look more official.”

  The deputy standing next to Wade rolled his eyes. “So, what seems to be the problem?”

  Pfeiffer looked up from her position next to the dog and gave the skull one last pull. Lafayette let go, sending her spiraling backward into the dirt. After a few moments, she held the skull up triumphantly and said, “I got it!”

  Over by the garden, Hadley and Martha stood with their hands over their mouths while Brody looked as if he were caught between a laugh and a grimace.

  “What’s going on?” Wade asked.

  Pfeiffer stood up and dusted herself off with her free hand. “This,” she said, presenting him the skull. “There’s a dead guy in our garden.”

  All four of the deputies turned to stare at her.

  “Well, a dead person,” she corrected herself. “I don’t know if it’s a guy or not.”

  “Are you serious?” Another one of the deputies spoke up. “There’s a dead body?”

  “We stopped digging after we found the skull,” Brody replied. “Mr. Crowley and I were digging up the garden, and . . .” He trailed off and pointed to where the skull was resting in the dirt. “We found that.”

  “Then the dog ran off with it,” Pfeiffer replied. “I had to chase her down. I’m sorry.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wade muttered, taking off his glasses.

  Pfeiffer recognized him immediately once the glasses were off. His name was Wade Pierson, and he’d been in her class in high school. He’d pined after Martha for years.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to call in the sheriff,” Wade replied. “He’s gonna shit when he sees this.”

  “I’m going to need everyone to take a step back,” one of the other deputies said. “This is now an active crime scene, and we need to treat it as such.”

  Pfeiffer took a step back, and Hadley, Martha, and Brody did the same. On the other side of the garden, Old Crow stood, still staring into the dirt.

  “Come on,” Brody said to him, motioning for him to follow. “We need to let them do their job.”

  “It can’t be,” Crowley muttered. “It can’t be.”

  Pfeiffer looked around to see if the deputies heard what he’d said, but they were busy back at their cars radioing for help. She wanted to ask Old Crow what he was talking about, but Brody got to him first.

  “Are you all right?” Brody asked.

  Crowley looked up at Brody as if seeing him for the first time all morning. “I should get home,” he said.

  “Nobody leaves,” Wade replied, heading back toward them. “The sheriff and coroner are on their way.”

  “I need to get home,” Crowley repeated.

  “Did you hear me?” Wade asked, one hand on his gun as if Old Crow might bolt any second. “Go on up to the house.”

  “Cool it, Wade,” Brody said, putting one hand up. “He heard you. He’s an old man. Give him a break.”

  Wade scowled at Brody, but said nothing, turning around to face the noise of the sirens creeping closer and closer to them.

  Pfeiffer watched as four more patrol cars pulled up, and she had to cover her ears to keep the wailing of the sirens out of her head. She backed toward the porch and sat down next to Crowley.

  “You’ll sit here for a minute?” Brody asked her. “I don’t want to leave him, but I think I need to go out there and give some kind of an explanation.”

  “Sure,” Pfeiffer replied.

  Crowley was staring out at the garden, seemingly unaware of the commotion around him. “I need to get on home,” he said.

  “Brody will take you home later,” Pfeiffer said as gently as she could. “But you’re going to have to stay here for a little while. The deputies are going to have some questions.”

  “I don’t know nothin’.”

  “Me either.”

  Crowley looked over at her as if he just realized he wasn’t alone. “Of course you don’t,” he said. “You weren’t even here when this happened.”

  Pfeiffer raised an eyebrow and looked around to see if anyone else was listening. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she said, “Were you?”

  Crowley shook his head. “No,” he replied. “I weren’t.”

  “Then how do you know when it happened?”

  “I just know,” he said, pushing on his knees with the palms of his hands to stand up. Without saying another word, he ambled over to where Brody was standing at the edge of the garden talking to three officers with their pens and notepads out, taking notes.

  Pfeiffer was about to respond when one of the officers came over, pen and pad in hand. “Mr. Crowley,” he said, “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Crowley stood up and put his hands in his pockets. “All right.”

  “Were you with Brody when the skull was discovered?”

  Crowley nodded. “I were.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  Crowley pointed over to the garden. “We was diggin’ down purty deep. All of a sudden my shovel hit somethin’ hard. I figured it were a rock, so I stuck my hands down in the grass to pull that sucker out.”

  “And it was a skull?”

  “It were.”

  “And what did you do when you found it?”

  “I dropped it on the ground,” Crowley replied matter-of-factly. “And backed away, because I ain’t interested in holdin’ no skull in my bare hands.”

  “Do you have any idea who the skull might belong to?” the officer asked.

  Crowley removed his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms over his chest, and Pfeiffer prepared herself for whatever he might say.

  “I don’t,” Crowley said. “This ain’t my property, and it ain’t my business.”

  “Okay,” the officer replied. “Thank you, Mr. Crowley.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” was all Crowley said.

  Pfeiffer stared at Crowley as the officer turned his attention to her. “And where were you when the remains were found?”

  “Uh,” Pfeiffer began, feeling her mouth go dry. For some reason, law enforcement terrified her. She thought it might have something to do with driving down back roads with too many boys and too much liquor when she was in high school. “I was in the attic with my sisters.”


  “And you have no idea who that skull in your garden might belong to?”

  “It doesn’t belong to me,” Pfeiffer replied. “I mean, no, I don’t know.”

  “Uh-huh,” the officer said. “And what were you and your sisters doing in the attic?”

  “We were looking for Martha’s guitar,” Pfeiffer said. “Well . . . it was our dad’s guitar. But Martha got it after he died, and we thought it might still be up there.”

  The officer’s gaze fell on Martha, who was smiling and touching the arm of one of the other officers as she used her other hand to sign his notebook. “Hey,” he said, jogging over to where Martha stood. “Can I have your autograph, too?”

  “Sure thing,” Martha replied, sending a wink Pfeiffer’s way.

  Pfeiffer rolled her eyes, but was relieved that she was no longer being questioned. She turned her head to say something to Old Crow, only to realize that he was no longer standing beside her. In fact, he wasn’t standing beside anyone. He was gone, taking whatever he knew about their garden and its contents with him.

  Chapter 19

  Pfeiffer

  THE DEPUTIES HAD COME AND GONE, LEAVING YELLOW crime-scene tape around the garden and a promise to return the following day with the medical examiner to exhume whatever remains there might be. Brody stayed until everyone else had gone, also promising to return as soon as the sun was up.

  Pfeiffer caught him outside as he was heading to his truck. “Brody,” she called. “Hey, wait up.”

  Brody turned around, his fingers curled around the door handle. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, you mean besides a dead body in the yard?” Pfeiffer quipped.

  “Besides that.”

  “Would you go check on Old Crow before you go home?”

  Brody cocked his head to one side and said, “You gettin’ soft, Pfeiffer?”

  “No,” Pfeiffer replied, setting her jaw in the way she used to do when they were children and he’d teased her. “It’s just that he was acting kind of strange, and I want to make sure he’s okay. He left in a hurry without asking the officers or telling anyone.”

  “Well, like you said, there is a dead body in your yard,” Brody replied. “I don’t blame him for wanting to leave. It’s creepy as hell.”

  Pfeiffer bit at the insides of her cheeks. “I think he knows something.”

  “About the body?”

  Pfeiffer nodded. “How did he react when you found it?”

  Brody shrugged. “I don’t really remember. I was paying more attention to the skull in his hand.”

  “He was muttering about how I couldn’t know anything about it, because I wasn’t here when it happened,” Pfeiffer said, the words coming out in a rush. “I asked him what he meant, but he wouldn’t elaborate. And then when the officer asked him about it, he said he didn’t know anything at all.”

  “Pfeiffer,” Brody began, “the man is almost ninety years old. He’d just had the shock of his life in the middle of a heat wave. I doubt anything he said was making much sense.”

  “I think he knows something.”

  “I don’t think he knows any more than either one of us, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go over and check on him on my way home,” Brody told her.

  Pfeiffer sighed. “Okay,” she said. “You’ll be back tomorrow?”

  “I will.”

  “Do you think they’ll be able to figure out who it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Thanks,” she said, not knowing where the words came from.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know,” Pfeiffer said, shrugging. “Just thank you.”

  Brody nodded and climbed into his truck. Pfeiffer watched him pull away and felt for a moment a sense of sadness as the tires left behind a trail of dust on the dirt road. Brody made her feel safe. She supposed that he made her sisters feel safe, too, even though she knew that Hadley would never admit it now.

  “Did Brody leave?”

  Pfeiffer turned to see Hadley standing on the front porch, her arms crossed over her chest. “Yeah,” she said. “He’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  Hadley nodded.

  “Are you okay?” Pfeiffer asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hadley replied. “I mean, this wasn’t exactly how I expected the day to go, you know?”

  “I know,” Pfeiffer said. “I figured we’d be done with yard work and would be getting ready for dinner.”

  “Did the deputies say anything to you that indicated they might know who it is?” Hadley asked.

  “No,” Pfeiffer replied. “Do you think it’s been here . . . for a long time?”

  “I think so,” Hadley replied. “Unless Aunt Bea killed someone within the last twenty years and buried the body by herself.”

  “Why would Aunt Bea kill someone?” Martha asked, joining her sisters on the porch.

  “She wouldn’t,” Hadley replied. “Aunt Bea was the quietest, calmest person I knew.”

  “Maybe nobody killed anyone,” Pfeiffer said. “People used to bury relatives on their property all the time. Maybe that’s what this is.”

  “That could be it,” Martha said. “But there was a hole in the skull. We all saw it.”

  “This is going to be all over the news,” Hadley said. “Once people in town get wind of it, it’s going to spread like wildfire.”

  Martha gave her sisters a panicked look. “This is all I need right now,” she moaned. “Everybody is going to find out. It’ll be all over the Internet, too. I need to call my agent.”

  “I should call Mark,” Hadley replied.

  Pfeiffer felt herself becoming annoyed with both of her sisters, and it had nothing to do with the fight they’d had earlier that day. “Is that all you care about?” she asked. “What all of this might mean for you two?”

  “No,” Hadley said quickly. “But it would be stupid of us not to at least attempt to mitigate the damage.”

  “The damage has been done,” Pfeiffer said. “There is a dead body in our front yard.”

  “I don’t want to think about that right now,” Hadley said. “Right now all I want to do is take a shower to wash this day off me.”

  “Me too,” Martha replied.

  “You go first. I’m going to call Mark.”

  Pfeiffer watched her sisters go off in opposite directions—Martha to the shower and Hadley outside to use her phone. She knew that they were right about the need to mitigate the damage of the day. If she’d still been employed with Henry Brothers, she would probably have reacted the same way. But there was nobody for her to call—nobody for her to recount her story to, so instead, she went upstairs to find her suitcase so she could change clothes. She was dusty from the attic and dirty from wrestling with the dog.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Old Crow had acted when the deputies arrived. She didn’t care what Brody said; the man knew something—something he was either too scared or too upset to talk about. Pfeiffer thought about the journal and the way her aunt wrote about Old Crow. It was clear that he had had some feelings for Bea and that she didn’t reciprocate. Maybe there would be more in the journal than just flowery writing about a boy that Aunt Bea loved. Maybe her aunt and Old Crow had seen something, something they should not have seen, and maybe her aunt had written it down. When she was sure she was alone, she extracted the journal and began to read.

  Beatrice

  March 11, 1948

  The ground is finally beginning to thaw out, and it appears maybe the snow will let up and make way for spring. Daddy says we shouldn’t count on it and should prepare for a snow in April, but I hope he’s wrong.

  At the dinner table last night, he told Mama that he was going to hire Rufus to help out on the farm this summer. He says Rufus could use the money since his daddy can barely keep all of his family fed. He doesn’t think their farm or his daddy’s health will last another season.

  I told Daddy that Will and Rufus didn’t get along too well, consideri
ng Rufus doesn’t like Will, and Daddy said it wouldn’t matter come spring, because after he and Charlie get back from St. Louis in a couple of weeks, he’s going to send Will packing.

  I thought I would burst into tears right there, but I kept myself together until I got to my room. I made up my mind to go and tell Will Daddy’s plan so that maybe he could figure out a way to make himself invaluable to Daddy, but when I got to his house, I found that I couldn’t do it.

  I started to think that maybe Will might leave before Daddy had a chance to send him away, and then I’d be left here all alone. I couldn’t stand that. When Will asked me what was wrong, I told him Mama and I had a fight, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  We sat on his bed and he held me until I could stop crying. I got his shirt wet with all my silly tears, but he didn’t seem to mind. I love the way he smells—like soap and fresh earth. I didn’t want to let him go.

  Will gave me a glass of water, and then he gave me a kiss. We’d kissed before, but not like this. This kiss was different. It was hungry. I felt like I’d been starving for years, and I could tell he felt it, too.

  I thought for a moment about Mama and Daddy. I knew they wouldn’t like it if they knew where I was and who I was with. I thought about Anna, and how she’d be mad at me for not talking to her first, and then I thought about Rufus and how mad I was at him for being so darn good and helpful to my daddy. I know it’s not his fault, but right then, I didn’t care. I blamed him for losing Will, and there was nothing that could have talked me out of what came next.

  After it was over, we lay in the bed for a time. I said I’d love him forever, and he said forever was a long time, but that he loved me, too. By the time I got home, it was almost sunup. I was afraid Mama or Daddy might be awake, but the house was quiet. I undressed and tried to go to sleep, knowing that nothing in my life would ever be the same.

  Pfeiffer turned the page, ready to read what came next, only to find that there were nothing but blank pages. Even more curious, it appeared as if several of the pages in the journal had been ripped out, jagged tears evident in the binding.

  Pfeiffer sat the journal down next to her on the bed, her brow furrowed. Why would there be pages missing from the journal? More importantly, what had happened to Will? Had Beatrice’s father, her great-great-grandfather, fired him from working the farm? It was obvious Beatrice hadn’t gone on to marry him or have any kind of a relationship with him after she left Cold River, so there had to be more to the story. She felt deflated, like she sometimes felt after a literary agent sent her what promised to be a wonderful work of fiction only to have it pulled out from under her by another sneaky editor at another publishing house.