Chapter 10
“Oh, goodie, been a long time since I’ve been on a road trip.” Frank was cheerful the next morning, lounging behind the wheel of his truck as they moved down the highway. His baseball cap had the word POLICE on the front in small white letters, his long hair brushed his collar and he had a diamond stud in his ear. The earring was an unexpected touch, but it made him look more like a hippie than an ex-police officer, she’d teased, and he’d laughed saying she was showing her age talking about hippies.
A breeze fanned their faces from the open windows as summer fields and houses sped by. They’d stopped earlier at a pancake house and were two hours into their trip, worrying about the progress of their mystery, as they’d begun to call it; reviewing what they’d discovered and what had occurred so far.
The graves. They’d been exhumed the afternoon before and hadn’t been empty. Three bodies, a woman and two children wrapped and buried in blankets, had been in them. The remains had been taken to the morgue until the forensic experts could examine them. The medical examiner told Frank on the phone it definitely looked like there’d been foul play. The three hadn’t died of natural causes that was for sure. It had to have been an accident–or murder. The M.E. promised someone would get back to them as soon as they knew more.
They’d also been trying to figure out who might have broken into her house and taken the diary and the kids’ notes.
“Someone who’d read the newspaper article and knew about the messages. They got the diary as a surprise bonus,” Abigail groused.
“How would they have known to take it? That it was Jenny’s?”
“Now that’s a puzzle. It could have been someone who’d known Emily and her children from the past, were aware the diary existed, and lucked out by coming across it on the coffee table.” Frank threw Abigail a sharp look.
Her reflection in the windshield was distorted. She’d been relieved her house hadn’t been trashed a second time, but the fact the diary had been taken bothered her. “How did Brown sound when you phoned and asked if we could speak to him about Emily and the kids?”
“Initially he refused, saying it was ancient history. He sounded cold. I broke the news we found their graves. And he said he didn’t care if they were dead. That they’d been dead for years to him anyway. I told him if he didn’t talk to us he’d be talking to the police. We had evidence he’d been in Spookie the last month of their lives and he’d made a scene at the diner, so he’d lied to Sam Kako. It made Brown change his mind quick enough.”
“I hope he’s there when we arrive.”
“If he runs it’ll tell us something, though fear often triggers the same response. Flight.”
“Fear of being caught?” Abigail placed her fingers against the cool glass.
“Or fear of being innocent but being accused of the crime anyway. Lots of innocent people run for it and lots who didn’t run are now behind bars. The system doesn’t work for everyone and sometimes if you’re innocent or guilty doesn’t make as much difference as how much influence or money you have for competent representation. I’ve seen that first hand. Being a cop gave me some immunity, but I’ve had nightmares of being an innocent arrested and locked up in prison for years for a crime I didn’t commit. I can empathize.
“Brown did sound stunned when I said we’d found their remains, though murderers are good at fooling people. I’ve dealt with enough of them to know how well they can lie. He was surprised, but not upset, as if they’d been strangers to him and not family.”
“Well, it has been thirty years. But for Brown not to have heard from or been contacted by the kids in all this time–and we know they used to call him–and not wonder what happened to them, does seem strange. Unless he was part of their deaths. Then the discovery of their graves would be an unpleasant shock,” Abigail put her opinion in. “He’d be running scared.”
“You got a good point there.”
She was content to admire the passing scenery and listen to Frank rattle on about what the M.E. might be able to determine from thirty year old bones. Murder, missing evidence and dead bodies aside, she was otherwise in a good mood. Martha and Mrs. Vogt had paid generous amounts for their watercolor pictures and tomorrow she would begin Frank’s. She’d collected her old paintings to put in the general store and had ideas for new ones. Now she had hope she’d make it as a freelance artist, if she worked hard and lived simply. Yet she didn’t like the idea of dealing with Mason and his constant fawning. Oh, the things she did for her art and for money.
At three o’clock they pulled up before a modest subdivision home with the name Brown on the mailbox. The grass needed cutting and one of the front windows was cracked. In the driveway was a twelve-year-old Buick in need of a paint job and new tires. Apparently Todd Brown hadn’t gotten very far in life.
A man, bent with age and years, answered the door when Frank knocked. He could have been tall, it was hard to tell the way he was hunched over, but his puffy face and red-rimmed eyes gave away he was ill. His thin hair didn’t look as if it’d been washed recently and the same for his clothes. There was the stink of cheap booze around him. She couldn’t tell how old he was but guessed he had to be over sixty. He looked eighty.
“Hello, I’m Frank Lester and this is my associate Abigail Sutton.” Frank put out a hand and the other man avoided taking it, retreating into the house so they could come inside. Frank had left his police cap on. Brown didn’t know Frank was retired, and unless he asked, Frank had maintained, there was no need to tell him.
Brown hobbled past them and dropped his body into a worn chair. There was a television with a blurry picture and he turned down the volume with a remote. “Sit where you want.” The sofa was stained and swayed-backed in the middle but it was the only place to sit. So they sat.
Abigail couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man in the chair across from her. He didn’t look like a wife-beater or a murderer, only a man who’d come to the end of his life and was living hand to mouth like many old people had to do. The inside of the house, drab and lightless, was as dismal as the outside. It needed a healthy cleaning. It looked as if the person living there no longer cared.
“Do you live here alone?” Frank inquired of Brown once they were settled on the lumpy sofa.
“I do. Janet, my third wife, died two years ago of cancer. I’ve lived by myself since. I like it that way. Less hassle. If Janet wouldn’t have died we’d most likely be divorced. All women are nags.” He smiled and showed rotten teeth. “I have some charity broad who comes in a couple times a week, does shopping for me, picks up prescriptions and dusts the house some. She’s not much to look at, dumb as a cow, but she can drive and fetch. And I don’t have to put up with any nagging. I have, er, ailments which make it hard for me to get out.”
“Sorry to hear about your health, Mr. Brown.” Frank was surveying the room, taking in everything and trying to be as cordial as he could stand to be. Brown wasn’t very likable.
“Thanks. But that’s life. Not much good, mostly bad.” Brown’s shoulders slumped. The man might have been handsome once, but ravages of time and booze had changed him into a face-sagging, speech-slurred man with his time running out. He didn’t seem particularly happy they were there and Abigail began to feel uncomfortable. The house smelled. Brown smelled. She wanted to get their questions answered and get out. The sooner the better.
Brown didn’t offer them anything to drink or any pleasant conversation either. Sitting there glaring at them, he repositioned his legs, as if they ached, and Abigail noticed an empty whiskey bottle on the floor besides the chair.
“You still drink the hard stuff?” Frank casually asked as if he didn’t already know the answer.
Brown’s rheumy eyes mirrored a flash of animosity. “I was forced to be sober for a long time cause one day, drunk, I plowed into a family in another car and killed four of them.” He didn’t seem remorseful, just stated what he’d done. “To get and stay out of jail, hold that lousy job th
e state helped me find, I had to do what the court told me to and go to AA. Stop drinking. For a while. But now, since I don’t drive, don’t have a job–I’m on disability–and don’t got any harpy woman telling me not to drink…sure,” he grinned, “I take a sip now and again.”
Abigail wondered if a whole bottle was his idea of a sip.
“Anyway, you came here to tell me you found Emily and the kids’ bodies, right? I won’t lie to you. I’m past caring. Emily left me a long time ago, a lifetime ago–her idea, not mine…I wasn’t good enough for her. In the end she wanted nothing to do with me. Those kids?” And here for the first time Brown seemed to soften a little. “They weren’t bad kids but I never helped raise them and never saw them much after the divorce. I’m sorry they’re dead but what’s it got to do with me? I didn’t kill them. I even tried searching for them after that summer. I did.” His face fell into a stubborn defensive look and a sarcastic smile twisted his mouth. “But I never found ‘em.”
He shrugged. “And life went on. I went on. I thought they didn’t want me to find them. You know Emily hated me. But then she always was an uppity sort of woman.” A past resentment in his eyes, he stared around the room as if he were seeing things they couldn’t. Ghosts, perhaps.
“I didn’t kill them,” he blurted the words out in a gruff voice. “If that’s what you’re thinking. I. Did. Not.”
Frank pacified him. “We’re not accusing you of killing them.” Yet. “We’re just asking questions, just trying to unravel what happened to them, if we can.”
Brown stared at Abigail. “Why is it so important to you?” He’d guessed she wasn’t a cop. So he wasn’t as dull and sick as he acted.
The truth seemed to be her best route. So she explained about buying the house, finding the scraps of paper, the diary and the photos, instigating the newspaper story and its repercussions, including the break-ins and finding the graves.
Brown sat there and listened, and Abigail thought she saw his hands shake, thought she saw a glimmer of humanity in his hard eyes. For a brief moment. “I wouldn’t have minded having one or two of those pictures you found. Pictures of kids make women feel sorry for ya. I got a couple of churchwomen who stop by once and a while and bring me things. They take me places I can’t go to anymore on my own. And I don’t have any pictures of the brats. I lost them along the way. I’ve moved a lot.” He repositioned his body in the chair and released a painful sigh. “Ah, I guess it doesn’t matter no how. They’re all dead anyway. They’re no good to me. I could have used some help in my old age. A kid or two might have been nice…to take care of me, you know?”
Abigail stared. She’d rarely met someone as unsympathetic and she didn’t need to know what Frank, sitting stiffly besides her, was thinking at that moment. He was probably ready to deck the guy.
“But you visited them in August 1970, didn’t you?” Frank asked, not showing any emotion.
“Okay, I did. Sorry I lied to your cop partner,” Brown confessed. “I was afraid I’d be accused of something. Old reflex. And yeah, I had a fight with Emily in the diner. I’d been drinking. I drank a lot in those days. I wanted her to get out of that town and come back to me. She was going to get that house. Money. I wanted my share. She wouldn’t think of it.” A snort. “She always was a selfish woman.
“What I could never understand was…she had this new boyfriend and, from what I heard, he was worse to her than I’d ever been. He was a drinker, too. I never met him but I hated him.
“There he was getting what was mine. He was mean to my kids. I didn’t go for that. He’d get drunk and push Emily and them around. Now Emily probably deserved it, with that mouth of hers, but he had no right to yell at my kids. I went down there to put him in his place, but Emily wouldn’t tell me who he was or where he lived; wouldn’t leave and wouldn’t let me take the kids with me. I guess I got a little angry. I guess I made a scene. Bad me.
“But I didn’t hurt her. The whole thing was blown way out of proportion. That nosy waitress and those nosy townspeople. Ha, Emily was probably dating half of those men who jumped up to get me off her.” His hand plucked at his pant leg in a repetitive gesture. “Emily was wild as they come. Nah, I was never good enough for her. Never.”
Abigail suspected Frank was boiling by then and wanted to hit Brown smack in the face, but he was behaving himself. She didn’t think Brown remembered he was one of those men who’d known the real Emily. He probably didn’t remember him at all. Good thing.
“Any idea who might have meant them harm then, Mr. Brown?” Frank pressed. “Did Emily have any enemies? She ever say anything to you about being stalked or threatened?”
“I don’t know. It was so long ago.” Brown thought as his empty eyes looked beyond them, maybe into the past. “Her sister, Edna, despised her and was jealous as all get out of her. I do remember that. Edna was mentally ill, if you ask me. The woman had tantrums or episodes, or whatever you’d want to call them, where she’d see and talk to people who weren’t there.” He twirled his finger near his ear. “She was as nutty as a bed bug.
“It was Edna who swore Emily and my kids drove away in their car. Edna who told me they were living somewhere else, that she’d been in touch with them, but Emily didn’t want me to know where they were. Edna who said Emily hated my guts and wanted nothing more to do with me. I never liked that stupid woman. Edna would do anything to get what she wanted. And she wanted the house and inheritance money Emily’s parents had left. Jenny told me that over the telephone. Silly kid, yakked as much as her mother. Emily was going to sell everything. The house, too. She was going to move. Edna was the oldest and should have inherited, not Emily. So I bet that made Edna furious.”
“Anything else you can recall?” Frank’s voice was firm, his eyes were flat. “Anything?”
There was a squinting of eyes and Brown spent a little time thinking. Then, “Ah, there was Emily’s so-called stalker.”
Abigail slid a sideward glance at Frank, who said, “I asked earlier if you knew of anyone stalking her and you said you didn’t know.”
“I forgot. I just remembered.”
“The stalker?” She gently reminded Brown.
“Yeah. Someone was harassing Emily and the kids. Now it’s coming back to me. Chris was a victim of a hit and run and he had to have stitches. I remember because I had to pay the hospital bill. Jenny said she was being followed, someone was scaring her, and there was vandalism. Rocks were thrown at windows, threats against them were left in the mailbox. The shed behind the house was burnt down. Their cat was found hanging dead from a tree in the backyard and Emily’s car brakes were tampered with. She had an accident with the kids. It shook her up. She was really frightened.”
No wonder she wanted to sell the house and leave, Abigail thought.
“She had no idea who this stalker was? No idea who was that mad at her or for what?” Frank was fidgeting, as if he wanted to get the visit over with and leave. Maybe the filth around them was making him sick, too.
“No, none at all. I don’t have a clue, either, even now looking back. So long ago it’s all kind of fuzzy.”
They didn’t stay much longer. A few more questions and when Brown pulled out a whiskey bottle and started pouring a drink, they wrapped the visit up and got out.
As they drove away, Frank mumbled, “He hasn’t changed much. What a poor excuse for a human being. I don’t blame Emily for leaving him. What I can’t see is her ever being married to him and having two kids with him. Jenny and Christopher were sweet, smart, creative children. They were nothing like their father. Emily, no matter what he said, was a good woman. Another ten minutes in there and I would have had him by the throat, sick old man or not.” He pounded the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, his anger obvious.
“So,” Abigail said. “We didn’t learn much, did we?”
“Not so. We learned Edna was, along with being spitefully jealous, possibly mentally unbalanced…though I’d already suspected that
, as young and green as I was in those days, just from knowing her. And Emily definitely did have a serious stalker.”
“You think Brown killed them?”
“Not sure. He had reasons and I sensed he was hiding something. He knows more than he was saying. He could just be clever, pretending to be sickly; pretending not to care. But, on the other hand, it’s rare when a father kills his own children. But who knows? Men do awful things when they’re drinking. We’ll have to look into it. Murderers can be great actors.
“And he might have lied about his not driving. I checked his car as we left and it has been driven lately by someone. It might have been him. Then again, he lives four hours away, so it’d have been difficult breaking into your house either time, but someone did. Maybe someone else for some other reason. It’s another mystery I don’t have an answer to.”
Abigail leaned against the seat, stretched her legs out and closed her eyes. Frank turned the radio on low and Bonnie Raitt’s husky voice filled the truck’s cab as they drove. When Abigail reopened her eyes it was dark outside. They were almost home.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Frank suggested. “There’s a truck stop up ahead that’s good.”
“Sure. I could use a cheeseburger.” Abigail smiled, still stretching.
At the restaurant over dessert, Frank asked, “How would you like to come over Saturday for a barbeque? Kyle’s going to be home and you can meet him. Hey, we’ll make a party of it. We’ll invite Martha, Samantha, my sister and her husband. We’ll sit around playing cards afterwards and when we get tired of that us old folks will migrate to the porch rockers. The stars are beautiful from my front porch at night.”
“Sounds like fun, Frank. Give me a time and I’ll be there.”
They were back on the road heading home when Frank asked, “Did you and Joel ever want kids, Abby?”
“We did, especially Joel. He loved kids. We tried for years. We just never got lucky.”
“You still miss him, don’t you?”
She hadn’t wanted to talk about Joel, but at that moment, darkness at the windows and an understanding ear to listen, it spilled out. “Every day. For a long time I used to pretend aliens abducted him. That when he’d been out getting cigarettes, somewhere on the road, he’d come across a spaceship and they’d taken him, car and all, and someday they’d bring him back to me. I just had to wait. Be patient. It kept me from going crazy. Until I’d see one of those X-Files episodes which showed all the experiments aliens did on humans. Then I’d freak out and pray he’d merely vanished or ran off with a loose woman.
“Having him found dead the way he was made it worse in a way. It made it all so final. At least before I could pretend he was still alive. Somewhere. Safe. On the other hand, finding him helped me accept things, remember the love we’d had for each other and the good times.”
She let her voice go soft as she continued, “In the beginning people told me maybe I hadn’t really known him. That he’d had a girlfriend and had run away with her. Maybe he had a gambling problem or a drinking problem…on and on. They were trying to make me feel I was better off without him. Truth is, I did know Joel. We’d been sweethearts since high school. He was a carpenter. That’s what he did for a living. He smoked too many cigarettes, talked too much, but he was a decent man, a dreamer and a loving husband. He didn’t cheat, didn’t believe in it, didn’t drink much, and didn’t gamble. I know he loved me and wouldn’t have put me through that misery of his disappearance if he could have helped it.
“Finding him dead cleared up all that uncertainty. I know now he didn’t leave me willingly.” She leaned back against the seat and rubbed her eyes, looked out the window at the night so she didn’t have to look at Frank.
“The week Joel went missing we were getting ready to break ground to build our dream house. I kept the land for years and only sold it after Joel was…found. I used the money to buy the Summers’ house. Joel wouldn’t get his dream, but the money helped me get mine.”
“Sorry, Abby. I shouldn’t have brought Joel up. I know it’s still too painful.”
“It is. But I don’t mind talking about him to you, Frank. It’s a relief. You understand because of Jolene. You know what it’s like to lose someone you really loved. I think about him, dream about him. If I talked about him more, perhaps I wouldn’t be plagued by the nightmares. Thanks.”
“Ah, you have nightmares, too, then?”
She turned her head and met his gaze for a moment. She nodded. “Sometimes. I’m always chasing him but never catching him. He runs away from me. It’s heartbreaking. I miss him in real life and in my dreams.”
Frank didn’t say anything to that but she got the feeling his dreams were pretty much like hers. It made her feel sorry for him, too.
Then she switched subjects. “Are your parents alive, Frank? I’ve never heard you mention them.”
“No. My dad died about five years ago and my mom followed pretty soon after. They’d been married forever and neither one was any good without the other. They were simple, loving people. I had security and tenderness growing up. Along with missing Jolene, I miss them.”
“Any other sisters or brothers besides Louisa the carpet selling lady?”
“A younger brother, Warren, who moved off to California after high school. He’s one of those people who have a knack with computers and he’s happily making the big bucks in the land of the sun. I don’t see him much since our parents died.”
Then Frank wanted to know about her family. “I have a brother and two sisters spread over the country. They’re busy with their lives but we kept in touch by phone and e-mail. I see them a few times a year.” They talked families for a while longer, comfortable, as if they’d known each other for years.
“Oh, by the way,” Frank finally said, “I took more snapshots of my dogs on the porch. Shows the front of the cabin clearer than the last batch I gave you. They’re in the glove compartment.”
Abigail opened it and retrieved them as Frank turned off the highway and onto her two-lane road. They were getting close to her house and she was glad. It’d been a long day and her home and cat were calling to her…and so were the ghosts who lived in the graves beneath the tree house. They were like her family now.
Emily and her children were becoming more real each day and Abigail wondered if they were becoming too real. She could see their faces, hear their voices; almost feel their pain. Too real. And more than ever she wanted to know what had happened to them.
“Almost home, Abby,” Frank’s tired voice announced.
Yes, almost home, she thought as she smiled at him in the dim light. Home.
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