Imogene covered her mouth with her hand, blinking furiously against the hot moisture welling in her eyes. She wanted to erase the mental picture of her beloved nineteen-year-old sister sprawled on the rug. To eliminate the vision of violence and the blatant reality that Hazel was never going to grace the attic bedroom with her smile ever again.
“Close your eyes. Sometimes it’s too much to take in.” Oliver’s soft words were rife with understanding.
Imogene cast him a look and stiffened her shoulders. It wasn’t his sister whose blood he’d stepped in, or whose chest he’d spread his hands across, or his screams that echoed in his ears. No. It was hers. Hers. Her Hazel.
And she would make sure she remembered everything. Every detail. Every drop of blood, every out-of-place item, every molecule of dust disturbed. She would remember for Hazel.
Her eyes surveyed the room. Where moments before she’d wished not to look, now she ached to memorize every detail. The box radio, its curved wooden corners and scrolled golden knob. It had a droplet of blood spatter on the number 12 at its dial. It sat on the table next to Hazel’s bed. The small piece of bedroom furniture was also marred with dark, burnished splotches. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Oliver’s hand rise, as if he were going to rest it in a comforting gesture on her forearm. She took a step forward and away from him, letting her vision drift to the bed.
Hazel’s tufted white bedspread over crisp, floral sheets. It was mussed, as if Hazel had sat on it and perhaps even rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling as she was wont to do. Daydreaming. Imagining herself a heroine off in a bookish land. Imogene’s gaze cast upward as if following the image of Hazel and her vacant stare at the ceiling. The beams of the roof spanned it to the peak. A spider web hung there, neglected and old, long abandoned by the creature that might have borne witness to Hazel’s murder—had it not already died long before. There was no blood on the ceiling. There was a nail protruding from one beam, a tiny wisp of webbing hanging from it like a cotton bead.
Imogene’s focus returned to the bed. The portion of coverlet that hung over the side to the floor had a bloodstain on it. Dots and splotches. Most of the evidence of violence seemed to be cast away from the bed and against the wall, the table, partially onto the radio, then on the rug. Imogene dared not pause to conceptualize the grief that danced in the shadows of a heart she was purposefully turning cold and distant. Walking forward, she bent and picked up a book that lay on the rug next to where Hazel had fallen. Beneath it, the rug was clean, void of the disturbing evidence. The book itself was clean on its front but had a few spatters of deep burgundy marks on its spine. A Grace Livingston Hill romance. The dust jacket a picture of tranquility, of a rosebud-cheeked young woman with waved hair pulled into a roll on one side, with curls on the other. She looked a lot like Hazel, when Hazel didn’t have her hair pulled into a snood, its netting protecting from tangling at the plant where Hazel worked.
Setting the book on the bed, Imogene stepped over a smeared footprint. Perhaps from one of the detectives who’d first investigated the scene with camera in hand? She knew they’d moved Hazel a few times to look for evidence. Fingerprints had been taken off the doorknob and other areas, but so often, Chet had warned them, they weren’t matched to anyone in the index-card file.
Disturbed by the motionless chaos of the scene, Imogene brushed past a silent Ollie and moved to the window overlooking the farmyard. She could see the barn, Mother’s garden with its tomato plants crawling up cages, a mixture of red fruit and yellow blossoms promising more. Cows dotted the pasture beyond, the black-and-white Holsteins the heartbeat of the farm.
A sob caught in Imogene’s throat.
“Genie?”
Oliver’s voice tore her from her mental photographing.
She turned and met his deep blue eyes. They reflected some emotion, but she couldn’t tell what. Empathy? Pity? Shared sorrow?
“How?” she whispered, fingertips pressed to her bottom lip. “How does God allow something this—this heinous?”
Ollie dipped his head and toed a warped floorboard for a second before raising his eyes again. “I ask myself that every day.”
His admission was a stark reminder that he’d seen his own share of inexplicable horrors. The damage mankind could cast on others. The empty lack of soul as one killer drained it from another.
“We should go.” Imogene had nothing to add. One couldn’t answer for the intentions or oversights of God, and He rarely offered explanations. The clichéd comfort offered at death was a stark underscore to the concept that it could have all been stopped before it ever happened. Had God been watching . . . caring.
Imogene took another lingering study of the room. Hazel’s gold locket was draped on the top of her bureau next to a framed photograph of all the Grayson siblings. Before Ivan and Chet went to war. Before the war changed everything. When they lived in a blessed cocoon of contentment, even as others dragged themselves from the pits of poverty caused by the weak economy. Farmers were necessary. Their livelihood shaky but secure long term. The Grayson farm was safe, all was well and—
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” The words escaped Imogene’s mouth before she could halt them.
Oliver stood, hands deep in his overall pockets. A strand of dark blond hair draped over his forehead, but otherwise he looked almost spit-shined for church. His shirt was clean, not wrinkled from working at his father’s farm. It was almost as if he’d spent the entire day wandering aimlessly and doing nothing, ever since muttering his ominous warning that morning.
“Did you know?” Imogene took a step forward.
Oliver frowned. “Know what?”
“This morning.” She blinked, catching the shadow of her black lashes coated in Vaseline to emphasize their thickness. “When you told me to take warning. Did you know this was going to happen?”
Oliver seemed taken aback by her question. He shuffled his feet and shook his head, meeting her eyes. “No. Of course not. I just . . . it’s a sayin’. That’s all.”
“A saying.” Imogene swallowed. Nodded. Trying to accept. Trying to comprehend. “Well, you were right. If I’d only been here, if I’d only told Mrs. Nelson I didn’t have time for that permanent. She could have done pin curls, stretched it out longer, and I could’ve curled her hair tomorrow. Then I would’ve been home. I would’ve been here—”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her body beginning to quiver in a tremor she hadn’t expected.
Oliver took a step forward in concern.
Imogene stared at the bloodstains on the rug. “Hazel was by herself. She suffered here—I should’ve been here.”
“You couldn’t have known.” Oliver’s sense of reason, of logic, only irritated Imogene. She didn’t need to be placated. To be made to feel better. To be let off the hook of blame.
“No. I should have! Besides, it was always left to Hazel. Me at the beauty parlor? Mother off doing her charity work or canning at our aunt’s house? Daddy off in the fields with Ivan? For gosh sakes, Ollie! Poor Hazel made dinner for us all after working all day at the plant. You’d think they’d shut it down now that the war’s over! What do they need more ammunition for anyway? She works so hard, and I knew she’d be coming home to make supper for us. I should’ve told Mrs. Nelson her hair doesn’t hold a permanent wave, so why bother? She spends so much money trying to look like Hedy Lamarr, but she’s over fifty years old and as vain as they come! She’ll never look like an actress no matter how hard she tries! She has wrinkles and is downright bat ugly!”
Imogene’s words ended in a squelched wail. She clapped her hand over her mouth, red lipstick smearing on her skin. Her eyes widened and locked with Oliver’s. His shoes echoed on the wood floor as he crossed to stand in front of Imogene. His work-worn fingers wrapped around her upper arms, and something in his voice made her keep her eyes on his.
“You couldn’t have saved her. We don’t know what—who killed her. Coulda been you too, la
yin’ there tonight if you’da been here. Mrs. Nelson’s hair may not be worth a plugged nickel, but that don’t change that you bein’ here wouldn’t have saved Hazel.”
“You don’t know that,” Imogene whispered.
A shadow crossed his face. He ducked his head, then lifted his eyes. “I don’t know a lot of things. But knowin’ don’t always make it better neither. It don’t change what happened. Never can. Never will.”
There was something in his voice that told Imogene he’d figured that out firsthand. That there were things he’d like to have changed but couldn’t. For a moment, she hung there, suspended in the understanding of his eyes. Then she blinked, and all she could see was beyond Oliver Schneider to the bloodstains of her sister.
Her jaw tightened as she bit down against her grief, against her pain. She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I’ll make them pay.”
“Genie—” Oliver started.
“If it takes me forever, I will make them fess up for this and then they’ll pay for it. She is my sister.” Imogene brushed past Ollie, striding toward the stairs. “It’s what sisters do. We protect each other. In life and in death.”
CHAPTER 6
Aggie
Mumsie had already made coffee. It was the inexpensive grocery-store kind. The kind that left a burnt scent in the air. Aggie shuffled into the kitchen of the old house, her gaze skimming the yellow cupboards with the rounded corner doors, and she sniffed appreciatively anyway. Coffee was coffee, after all, and desperate times required desperate measures. Besides, the kitchen was quaint and vintage, so in a way, high-end gourmet grounds wouldn’t have fit. It made sense the coffee came from a can.
Aggie eyed the room with expertise. If she were to sell this place, she could sell it on charm alone, never mind the fact it desperately needed updated appliances. The yellow could be repainted to a weathered teal. The wood floors with their scuffs could be polished. Or leave the scuffs. Maybe it was more charming that it looked worn.
Aggie shrugged off her thoughts. It didn’t matter. She was now a cemetery secretary and no longer a flourishing real estate agent who sold houses with the ease of someone who also knew how to convince even the worst do-it-yourselfer that they could indeed do it.
Mumsie leaned on her walker that was braced against the counter and poured coffee from the pot into a green thermos.
“Can I have a cup first?” Aggie snatched a mug from the kitchen sink drying rack, barely noticing the orange-painted mushrooms on the ceramic.
Mumsie was still in her pajamas. Cute cotton ones, capris style with purple roses on them. Her baggy sweater hung past her hips, a fluffy cream color, and her hair had a cowlick in the back where the gray-permed curls split where her head must have rested on the pillow for most of the night. She gave Aggie a raised brow. “Do you need creamer?” Mumsie poured some of the black pitch into Aggie’s offered mug.
“No. Black is good.”
Mumsie gave a wan smile. “Well, at least that’s one thing we have in common.”
One thing. Yes. Aggie had a sneaking and almost foreboding suspicion they were more similar than either of them realized.
She sank onto a metal kitchen chair, the kind with the vinyl padded seat and the silver studs that bolted the back to the chair with a small swatch of the same green padding. The table was also quaint. Its edges a worn silver, its top an old Formica white mottled with cream flecks and yellowed with age.
Mumsie sat opposite Aggie and took a sip of her coffee, looking out the four-paned window that inaudibly announced cheerily that it was morning and that the filmy curtains in front of it couldn’t bar out the sunshine if they tried.
“Happy mornings shouldn’t be squandered,” Mumsie said with a bit of censure. She set her mug down with a solid clunk on the table.
Aggie drew back, cupping her mug with the tenacity of a drowning victim clinging to a life preserver.
“Excuse me?” She couldn’t help the squeak of surprise in her voice.
Mumsie tipped her head and raised her brows as if the answer were obvious and she was surprised Aggie wasn’t already following her line of reasoning.
“Happy mornings are a rarity, and when they come, one should revel in the delight of them. Regardless of the circumstances. Happiness is fleeting, after all, and you look as though you swallowed a sour apple—or have a doozy of a hangover. I’ve not decided which.”
Aggie’s latest sip of coffee went down in a scalding gulp.
“It’s not a hangover.” Aggie hadn’t even had a glass of wine in . . . well, in over a month. It was the first non-necessity to go after she’d been fired from her position. No more one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottles of Cabernet, and it wasn’t as if she’d ever gotten wasted on wine anyway.
Aggie gave her grandmother a look of consternation. “Who do you think I am?”
Mumsie pursed her lips with an impish smile. “How should I know? You haven’t visited in eight years. For all I know, I should be planning an intervention and calling a rehabilitation center to reserve you a spot.”
“Good grief, Mumsie!” Aggie glowered, but she didn’t miss the twinkle in Mumsie’s eyes. She was goading Aggie—and having quite a bit of fun with it too.
“My first stint at rehab didn’t go so well.” Aggie decided to return the favor.
Mumsie’s eyes widened, then narrowed. She tipped her chin up and looked down her nose. “You shouldn’t joke about those things. For some, they are very real and very sensitive circumstances.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Aggie muttered, then wondered how Mumsie was so adept at spinning the fault off herself and on to others.
Shaking past the interlude, Aggie tapped the side of her coffee cup.
A bird twittered outside the window.
A drip fell from the faucet into the kitchen sink.
Mumsie’s breath was soft.
Aggie felt as though a bulldozer was shoving its way through her emotions and shattering every piece of stillness she had left inside of her.
“Why didn’t you come to Mom’s funeral?” The question blurted out with sincerity, though the timing was awful. Aggie immediately regretted the question that had scarred its forever-spot on her mind since the day she’d buried her mother. Alone.
Mumsie blinked, but she didn’t respond with impulse. Instead, she looked out the window at the sparrow that hopped across the grassy lawn and over an orange leaf that had floated down from the nearby maple. “Farewells are difficult for me.”
“But lying about broken hips isn’t?” Aggie shot back, again wishing she had the fortitude to simply bite her tongue.
Mumsie’s glance was savvy. “You wouldn’t have come any other way.”
“I didn’t feign a broken hip to get you to come to Mom’s funeral,” Aggie countered.
“I wouldn’t have come regardless.” Tears welled in Mumsie’s green eyes. She reached up with an arthritic-bent finger and swiped away the offense. “I don’t handle funerals well.” Her admission was vulnerable but unsatisfactory.
“And if I needed you?” Aggie ventured, softening her voice, a pang of guilt for accusing Mumsie.
Mumsie sniffed. “Well then,” she said, and raised her gaze to lock with Aggie’s. “I’ve needed you too, and it seems only now we’ve come together. So, bygones be bygones. Shall we move forward?”
Yes.
Move forward.
It was what Aggie had been trying to do since the day of the funeral.
And it wasn’t working. Not at all.
The Mill Creek Cemetery sloped up a hill and over the ridge, lines of different-sized stones marking row upon row of graves. Aggie pulled her car onto a small gravel patch just to the side of the cemetery office that would be lucky if it boasted more than five hundred square feet. Its boxlike form was sided in white, the paint worn and peeling. But there was an urn stuffed with silk daisies and carnations at the door.
Aggie grimaced. She eased from the car, feeling insecure in just jeans, blouse, and ca
rdigan . . . and flats. Gone were her powerhouse days. Confident and sure of herself in suit and stilettos. Aggie perched her hands at her waist, flipping her black braid over her shoulder. Here were the days of service. Serving . . . dead people.
She blinked and shook her head. Self-pity was going to get her nowhere, and with Mumsie safely ensconced in her recliner with TV remote in hand, it was time to get to work. Whether Aggie liked it or not.
The ground was still soggy beneath her shoes. It squished like stepping on a sponge, and the colorful leaves blanketing the green grass were heavy with moisture and glistening from rain and the onset of mold. Aggie had done a quick browse online the previous night and learned more of the disaster she’d inadvertently been hired to fix. Days of heavy rains just two weeks ago had flooded the lower areas of Mill Creek, making the creek itself crest and overflow its banks. The river to the east of town overtook roads and made traveling on those highways near to impossible. Sandbags had saved some of the homes along the river, but no one could plan for the fact the earth could absorb only so much water before it affected basements, wells, foundations, and even the cemetery.
With the newer section of plots on the acreage in the higher planes, Aggie was left hopping over a rather wide puddle to hike to the iron fence that was open for visitors. In her bewildered state yesterday, she hadn’t really taken the time to study the mess. Mr. Richardson, the head of the cemetery board, had prattled on and on about Fifteen Puzzle Row, but now that Aggie was alone, she could do what she did best. Take in the entire vision of the project, much like she’d survey a house she was to sell. See what needed repairing, refinishing, or replacing, and then prepare the perfect pitch to sell it. Of course, she wasn’t going to sell plots—not yet. Not until the water surrounding Fifteen Puzzle Row receded completely, the graves were repaired, and—
Aggie halted on the narrow asphalt path.
Echoes among the Stones Page 4