Echoes among the Stones

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Don’t do it, Genie. Just let me go. Hazel’s voice argued with her as she studied the doll in her hand.

  “I can’t,” Imogene whispered. “I can’t ever let you go.”

  There weren’t enough tears in the world to assuage the agony of grief. In that moment, Imogene knew that whether or not she found justice for Hazel, she would always carry the pain of it with her. The murder, the images, the suspicions, but most of all, the sorrow. Grief changed a person. Imogene could already feel it stealing away her reckless, fun-loving nature and replacing it instead with the tiny seeds of cynicism.

  No wonder Ivan had become a raging version of his old self.

  Violence stole any semblance of peace. One could never get rid of it. Its impression was a tattoo on her soul. On Ivan’s soul. Even God couldn’t make that right. Not today, not tomorrow. Not ever.

  CHAPTER 28

  Aggie

  She was surprised when a few ladies from the local church showed up at the hospital and offered to sit with Mumsie. Aggie wasn’t prepared to leave her grandmother—at least not emotionally—and now that she was eye to eye with the possibility, if not probability, of Mumsie’s impending passing, Aggie couldn’t squelch the clingy feeling she had. The kind that made her hold Mumsie’s hand while she balanced a plastic mug of hospital coffee in the other. The kind that had her curling into the fetal position in a chair with a stiff hospital blanket over her, trying to catch some sleep.

  It’d been two days. Collin had stopped in, as had Rebecca, Mumsie’s caregiver. Rebecca had been a saint and relieved Aggie so she could go work at the cemetery office. But working all day digitally logging index cards was draining any extra ounce of energy from her.

  But Aggie was taken aback by the elderly ladies who bustled in with clicking tongues, shaking heads, and expressions of utter kindness on their faces. There were three of them. Mrs. Donahue, Mrs. Prentiss, and Jane. Jane refused to be called Mrs.-anything, she’d instructed. She might be eighty-one, but it still sounded like her mother to her ears.

  “You need to go rest.” Mrs. Donahue patted Aggie’s hand. Her gray curls were permed tight to her head. Her brown eyes were narrow, hooded but soft.

  “She needs more than rest,” Jane inserted. She was plump and rosy-cheeked, and all she needed was a red mobcap and she’d look just like Mrs. Santa Claus—but with a first name because, after all, she didn’t like the title Mrs.

  “She needs a glass of wine,” Mrs. Prentiss said. She was the tallest of the three, with long legs encased in polyester slacks of forest green, and long peppery hair pulled into a braid.

  “Oh, heavens no!” Mrs. Donahue patted Mrs. Prentiss’s shoulder. “Spirits aren’t the answer to one’s problems.”

  “No. Jesus is.” Jane gave a firm nod of her head.

  “Yes, yes. That’s right,” Mrs. Prentiss acknowledged, as if she’d somehow forgotten that Jesus came before wine, even if He had done His first miracle by turning water into wine.

  Aggie had conversational whiplash. She could feel her eyes burning not just from exhaustion but from bewilderment. “How do you all know Mumsie?”

  “From church!” they cried in unison.

  Oh, wonderful. Aggie blinked fast to relieve the dryness in her eyes. First Mumsie starts acting vaguely spiritual, and now she finds out Mumsie had a church and friends. It was Sunday. Bets were the ladies heard about Mumsie at church that morning, though how the church had found out, Aggie had no clue.

  “I-I didn’t realize Mumsie went to church often enough to be missed.” Aggie winced at her unfiltered admission.

  “Oh, she doesn’t,” Jane responded bluntly. “She used to. When you get old, church gets overwhelming, poor dear. And she’s too old to figure out how to ring an Uber for a ride.”

  Aggie coughed to cover a chuckle. Apparently, Jane figured she was quite a bit younger than Mumsie.

  “She’s very Baptist,” Mrs. Donahue offered with a smile. “Been a member of First Baptist since, ohhhhhh, I think the early seventies?” She cast a questioning glance at Mrs. Prentiss, who nodded in agreement.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Prentiss confirmed. “Although she was raised Methodist, as she always reminds us. Regardless, Imogene joined the church a year after Mildred Benning ran off with Esther Halloway’s husband.”

  Aggie’s eyes rounded.

  Jane rolled her eyes. “That Mildred. I didn’t like her in grade school, and I still don’t like her.”

  “Now, now.” Mrs. Donahue patted Jane’s arm. “We must still show love and not judgment. It’s not our place.”

  “One has to have standards!” Jane protested.

  “Well, of course. But even then, love wins every time,” Mrs. Prentiss corrected gently.

  Aggie cleared her throat, both to keep from bursting into tired, hysterical, and emotional laughter and to stop the old ladies’ ramblings. Here she’d thought Mumsie was a character. No wonder she’d made friends with these three, albeit her juniors. Aggie smiled at the thought. If a person being in her eighties could be considered “junior.”

  “Ladies, I appreciate you coming, but I don’t intend to leave Mumsie.” And she didn’t. Yet a part of her was tempted to take the ladies up on their offer if for no other reason than to start some serious digging into who had called Mumsie and what exactly had happened to Hazel. They had to be tied together somehow. Mumsie’s last mumbled words “It is over” was so similar and yet so contradictory to the roses Aggie had found. And the cryptic note that was delivered that had yet to be explained.

  She didn’t deserve death. He didn’t deserve life.

  Her blasted job toiling over old grave plot records hadn’t been conducive to having much free time, and Mr. Richardson had left her a friendly note to “Stay focused, your grandmother will be fine.” How lovely was that?

  “We know you’d never leave your Mumsie without good reason.” Mrs. Prentiss’s affirmation was given with an encouraging smile.

  “No, of course not,” Mrs. Donahue nodded.

  “But you should leave her,” Jane inserted.

  Aggie blinked.

  “Yes, you should,” Jane repeated. “You need to go. Get some fresh air. Sleep. Your eyeliner is almost gone, and what’s left makes you look like an albino raccoon.”

  Oh. Well, how thoughtful. Aggie bit her lip.

  “Is there such a thing as albino raccoons?” Mrs. Prentiss tossed a quizzical glance at her friend.

  “You must trust us and go get some rest.” Mrs. Donahue ignored her cohorts. “Not to mention we have cellphones!” Mrs. Donahue dug in her purse and pulled forth an old bar phone the size of a block of cheese. Aggie couldn’t believe it worked, but Mrs. Donahue showed her the black-and-white digital readout. Yes. There was a signal.

  “If that doesn’t beat all,” Aggie muttered, using one of Mumsie’s favorite phrases.

  “Yes, and so if something changes with her condition”—Mrs. Prentiss waved at Mrs. Donahue’s phone—“then we will call you. You can rush right back.”

  “But there’ll be no reason to rush,” Jane added quickly. “I’m sure Imogene will be just fine.”

  Aggie hesitated. She hated the idea of leaving Mumsie, but the more time that went by, the less likely she’d uncover who the caller had been. The phone company hadn’t been helpful at all. Because she wasn’t authorized on the account, they wouldn’t release any call information. Aggie would have to get a court order for the information to be obtained, that or show proof of power of attorney. The police said no crime had been committed, so they had no reason to investigate. When Aggie had inquired as to the fake skeleton, the assault on Collin, and the strange note, she was given a “We’re still looking into it.”

  So where did that leave her but to try to fit the puzzle pieces together herself? And Aggie hated puzzles. But she also hated loose ends and unresolved issues. Much like Collin was determined to get the graves exhumed, she was committed to once and for all understanding what had happened to Hazel Grayson.
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  “All right. Let me give you my number.” Aggie wrote it down for Mrs. Donahue, who didn’t have a clue whether or not she had a contact book in her cellphone. She gathered a few items, her jacket, purse, water bottle, then nodded her thanks to the group of old ladies. “Thank you all. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “You take your time, dear.” Mrs. Prentiss patted Aggie’s arm.

  “No hurry,” Mrs. Donahue parroted.

  “We need to pray,” Jane announced.

  “Excuse me?” Aggie blurted.

  Jane stared at her. Faded eyes set in a round face. “You pray, don’t you?”

  Of course she did. Had . . . Aggie swallowed. “It’s . . . been a while.”

  “No time like the present to start!” Jane smiled, her cheeks full. “Now, let’s pray.”

  The three little ladies bent their heads, closed their eyes, and Jane launched into a prayer. Aggie stood there uncomfortable for numerous reasons. One being she didn’t know the last time she’d prayed, let alone prayed corporately and out loud. Two, the memory of Mom praying came back in a rush. The déjà vu familiarity of walking into a room and seeing Mom curled in the chair, her head covered in a turban, her body thin and dying, but her lips moving in prayer and a look of sheer hope written on her face.

  Aggie scanned the faces of the ladies beside her, hovering around Mumsie’s still body. She heard the beep beep beep of the heart monitor. The air from the oxygen. The pump on some machine Mumsie was hooked up to. Jane’s voice praying in simple conversation.

  For a strange, almost surreal moment, Aggie was flooded with warmth. Not a physical warmth, and nothing uber-charismatic or spiritual. She just felt . . . cared for.

  “. . . In the Lord’s precious name we pray, amen,” Jane ended.

  Three sets of elderly eyes lifted and looked at Aggie.

  It was strange. So strange. She’d hardly shed a tear since Mom had passed away. Not at the funeral. Not afterward. But in this moment, her throat was clogged. It took everything in Aggie’s power to nod and walk from the room, keeping her burning eyes from spilling over.

  Thankfully, the Mill Creek Library was open with shortened Sunday hours, and their newspaper archives had been digitized. Given how tired her eyes were, Aggie wasn’t looking forward to scrolling through microfiche. She typed the year 1946 and the key words Hazel Grayson into the database and was soon greeted with several links to newspaper articles surrounding Hazel’s murder. It was more than she’d found in her Google searches. These document files were unique to the library’s database.

  Aggie skimmed them, trying to learn the story she’d not asked Mumsie about soon enough. A lot of it matched Mr. Richardson’s cursory explanation. Mumsie, or “Imogene Grayson,” the older sister of the victim, had found Hazel in the upstairs attic bedroom. There was no sign of forced entry. The investigation was being headed up by . . . Aggie squinted at the names listed, then scrunched her face in surprise. Chet Grayson. She alt-tabbed to an online family tree she’d found on an ancestral site. Okay, so Chet was Mumsie’s older brother. He’d been dead for twenty years already.

  She kept skimming. The articles covered the bulk of the first few days following the murder. No further leads. No suspects had yet to be taken into custody. Aggie clicked the link on the next article. It popped up on the monitor, only the headline had nothing to do with Hazel. In bold letters it announced an explosion at the post office.

  “All efforts to investigate Hazel Grayson’s brutal murder have been paused as Mill Creek police have launched an investigation into yesterday’s explosion at the post office. Four people were hospitalized . . .”

  The article went on to name a few people. Two individuals were injured and later released from the hospital, including Hazel Grayson’s sister, Imogene, and the young son of Hargrove Thompson and his wife.

  Apparently, the paper had seen fit to draw a tie between the investigation of Hazel’s murder and the weird explosion of the post office. Blowing up a post office sounded like a modern-day version of terrorism. More than likely, that was why the investigation into Hazel’s death appeared to have stalled.

  Aggie sagged back in the uncomfortable library chair, stifling a yawn as she clicked another link. This one read, “Search for Grayson Woman’s Killer Gone Cold.” The headline came roughly eight weeks after Hazel’s death.

  “Gosh, Mumsie,” Aggie mumbled to herself, shaking her head. How had she coped, never knowing? The agonizing unresolved death of her sister no doubt had catapulted Mumsie in a whole new direction in life. Emotionally, maybe physically, and for all sakes and purposes probably spiritually. Aggie knew it was bad enough to try to move past her own mother’s death. But that had a reason. Cancer was the enemy. Boldly making a claim on its victim. In spite of the disease’s relentless brutality, Aggie at least knew what to blame. But Hazel?

  Aggie clicked on another link.

  “Mill Creek law enforcement has confirmed the use of a homemade explosive device in the destruction of the post office one week ago. Also confirmed were similarities between the ingredients used and those manufactured at the powder plant. Police are investigating any ties to the plant, but so far no suspects have been named.”

  Powder plant? Aggie scrolled down. The links trickled out. A few small mentions of Hazel’s murder, but no resolution at all. No one convicted. No answers.

  Aggie exited out of the database and logged off the computer. Grabbing her notebook, she stuffed it into her leopard-print bag that had been one of her last expensive splurges before she was blindsided by losing her career. She approached the library desk, where a man smiled kindly at her, his balding head crowned with graying brown hair, and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses perched on his nose.

  “Can I help you find something?” he asked.

  Aggie adjusted the bag’s straps on her shoulder. “I was researching an article from the late 1940s and ran across one about an explosion at the Mill Creek Post Office.”

  “Ah, yes. My dad was actually there that day.”

  “Really?” Aggie raised her brows, intrigued.

  “Mm-hmm.” The librarian pointed to his nametag. “I’m Ronald Farber, and my father was a postman back in ’46. I wasn’t born yet, but my dad told me later that the explosion blew off the side of the post office. Injured a few, I believe.” Mr. Farber scrunched his face in thought and raised his eyes to the ceiling, considering. “Mmmm, I don’t think anyone was killed.”

  “No. The article said it was just injuries,” Aggie said, confirming Mr. Farber’s memory. She reached for her notebook, pulling it from her bag and flipping open to the notes she’d jotted down. “The article mentions that Hazel Grayson’s murder case was put on the back burner in light of the explosion? And that they thought some of the bomb might have been resourced from the local powder plant?”

  Aggie had a vision of a factory that produced compacts of face powder like one would find in a store’s cosmetics department. She was tired enough to feel like giggling at the idea of blowing up a building using makeup.

  Good grief. She needed sleep.

  Mr. Farber reached for some books that had slid across the counter as a patron dropped them there and walked off without looking back. He started to restack the books so he could check them back into the system. “I’m not familiar with any murder cases from back then. But I can’t imagine that a government building getting attacked right after the war ended didn’t take front and center after that. The powder plant? Yep. That was Mill Creek’s claim to fame for quite a while. The U.S. government built it in just a little over ten months in 1942 to manufacture ammunition for the war. It stayed in production until well after the Korean War. Not sure, but they might have still been producing ammunition for Vietnam. I don’t recall.”

  Aggie had never heard of a powder plant before, let alone one dropped in the middle of south-central Wisconsin on acres of farmland. She imagined that being something they would have built on the East or West Coasts. Maybe the strateg
y at the time was that German or Japanese bombers wouldn’t be able to fly this far inland to form an attack?

  “Is the plant still active?” she asked the librarian.

  “Oh, no. The ammunitions plant was put on standby in case of a war, but the government pretty much shut down all ten thousand acres of it. Sort of turned into a ghost town, minus a few offices that were left open. But then, about ten years ago, the property was put up for sale by the government, and they took bids on the land. It’s owned by a few different organizations now. Most of them are private, even the company that secured the cemetery.”

  “Cemetery?” Aggie looked up from the notes she was taking.

  Mr. Farber hefted the books he’d stacked and bent down to set them in a bin behind the counter. His voice ricocheted off the floor as he spoke. “Yep. When the land was purchased during World War II, it had been family farms up until then. A family cemetery was there too. Like an acre maybe? I’m not sure.”

  “So families just sold their land in support of the war effort?” Aggie was impressed. Back then, having just come out of the Depression, families who owned land, let alone farms, had to be some of the lucky ones.

  Mr. Farber straightened and sniffed, rubbing his nose. “I remember my dad mentioning they were offered X-amount for their property from the government. But I didn’t get the feeling they had the choice to decline it either.”

  “They were forced off their farms?” That seemed archaic for the U.S. government. But then maybe not, considering America didn’t always have a shining history when it came to honoring people’s land rights.

  Mr. Farber shrugged. “That’s where my know-how ends. I’m not a historian, just a local librarian.”

  “Do you have a historical museum here I could visit to get more information?” Aggie inquired. Perhaps they’d have more documentation surrounding Hazel’s death as well.

  “We did, but it shut down two years ago. Ran out of funds. It doesn’t seem like a lot of locals care much about our community’s history. Those Millennials, you know?”