Echoes among the Stones

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “What?”

  Ollie’s chest heaved as he took in a deep breath of air to make up for what he’d released. He stepped back from her and glanced down at his burned hand. “Yeah. Okay. It’s stingin’ now.”

  “You need butter,” Imogene said, but her voice was weak as their eyes remained locked together.

  Ollie nodded. “Yeah. Butter.”

  “My mother has butter.”

  “So does mine,” he responded.

  “Okay,” Imogene nodded.

  “Yeah.” Ollie spun on his heel and hurried away, leaving her in the middle of an empty park, staring after his retreating form and wondering where on earth this side of Oliver Schneider had been hiding all these years.

  CHAPTER 31

  It was arson. Plain and simple, Chet said. Just like the post office had been a homemade bomb. Imogene eyed her brother across the dinner table as Mother served up a roast with potatoes and carrots. Chet half lived at the police station when he wasn’t at his tiny apartment. It wasn’t unusual for him to join them for a home-cooked meal. Mother said she’d invited Ivan to stay after field work and have his wife join them for dinner, but Ivan had turned them down. Typical. He avoided them, avoided socializing, and as a result, Imogene hardly knew her sister-in-law.

  “Does anyone have a reason for burning down the hall?” Daddy shoveled a forkful of roast into his mouth as Mother poured him a glass of milk.

  Chet snatched a dinner roll from the basket in front of him. “All sorts of possible reasons. Someone doesn’t like the government? Doesn’t like our community? They’re public buildings, so maybe they just don’t like people.”

  “That’s very nonspecific,” Imogene said, reaching for her water glass.

  Chet eyed her. They hadn’t spoken much in the last week. His mouth tightened. “Yeah, well, I do what I can.”

  Imogene gave him a look that told him she didn’t believe that. Chet narrowed his eyes at her, and then they both looked away from each other.

  Mother sat down and laid a napkin over her lap. “Myrtle Simmons said she heard on the party line that someone called Oliver Schneider and told him you were in the building, Genie!”

  Mother seemed remarkably calm about it, but then she’d probably heard of it after Imogene had already returned home from work, completely unscathed.

  “Myrtle needs to stop listening in on other people’s conversations.” Daddy prodded the air with his fork.

  “Ollie stopped by the station to let me know that.” Chet lifted his eyes to Imogene. “Any reason why someone would want to send Ollie charging into a burning building you weren’t even close to?”

  “Of course not!” Imogene fingered her fork.

  Chet frowned. “Well, twice in one week isn’t putting me at ease. Someone hits you with their vehicle and you don’t recognize it or the driver? Now this?”

  “Is there some conspiracy goin’ on around Mill Creek?” Daddy inserted.

  Chet shrugged. “I dunno. If there is and anyone in my department knows of it, it’s above my pay grade.”

  “Can we—not talk about this?” Mother’s voice shook, and the three of them looked at the matron of the family. Mother’s face had whitened, and she held her hands in her lap. “I just—I can barely get by each day as it is. I can’t speak of losing another daughter. I hardly got through the last few years with my boys overseas. Every day I waited for that knock on the door with the telegram. You finally made it home and then . . .” She suddenly stood, her chair legs scraping on the floor. She balled up her napkin and threw it on the table. “Excuse me.”

  Mother hurried from the dining room.

  Chet set his fork down, clanging it against his plate.

  Imogene couldn’t ignore the same ache that throbbed inside her.

  Daddy wadded up his napkin, wiping it across his mouth. He threw it on his plate, the material sopping up gravy. “Goin’ to have to sell this farm.” He cursed. “Your mama’s goin’ to lose it pretty soon. She won’t even go up to the attic.”

  He left the kitchen, following after his wife.

  Chet and Imogene sat in silence.

  Chet cleared his throat.

  Imogene patted the comb in her hair in an absent, preoccupied gesture.

  “Dad’s right,” Chet finally said.

  “Sell the farm?” Imogene echoed her father.

  Chet gave her a poignant look. “Well, sure. Mother’s goin’ crazy livin’ here every day with Hazel’s room upstairs. Didn’t help we had people clean it up. You can still see—her blood is still on the wallpaper, Genie. Has anyone even gone upstairs since the place was cleaned up?”

  Imogene nodded her head. “I have.” She’d considered moving into it. To be closer to Hazel, wrapped in the faint, lingering scent of her. Unlike Mother, Imogene wanted to cling to Hazel’s tangibility and see what remained of her. Mother saw only the violence. But that violence was imprinted in Imogene’s mind anyway, whether she was in the room or not. Still, it hadn’t been practical to relocate her entire bedroom there, so instead she’d allowed herself evenings sitting cross-legged on the floor by the window, staring at the stains and trying to remember—remember anything that would tell her who had killed her sister.

  “Only you, though.” Chet grabbed his fork and took a bite of roast. He seemed to be the only one in the mood to eat. “That room is goin’ to haunt us all till the day we get rid of this place. Just like we sold the land to the plant. Start over. Move into town. Move away. Heck, there’s not much left of our family anyway.”

  “Yes, there is,” Imogene argued. But it was weak. Even to her own ears.

  “You think so?” Chet challenged. “’Cause with Ivan taken a jump off the deep end, and Hazel gettin’ killed, and me not able to do a dang thing about it . . . seems the only one holding Mother and Dad together is you, Genie.” He swallowed his roast and gave her a dark stare. “And at the rate you’re going, you’ll be dead before the month’s out. Unless I can find whoever wants to hurt you, same as I need to find out whoever is targeting the public buildings.”

  It was coarse. Tactless. But true.

  Imogene released a shuddering sigh and tried to catch her brother’s eye. He wouldn’t look at her. “I’m not going to die, Chet. I’m just going to help you figure out what’s going on.”

  “Don’t, Genie.”

  “I promised Hazel I would.”

  Chet dropped his fork and leaned forward on the table, skewering her with his green eyes. “Hazel is dead, Genie. She’s dead. Leave her there and walk away before we have to bury you too.”

  “He’s right, you know. You’re dead.” Imogene finished dabbing the last puddles of blood-red paint on the floor of the miniature attic bedroom.

  But you’re not letting me go. Hazel argued back in Imogene’s mind.

  She sniffed, the air pungent with the tang of old straw and the lingering scent of cow manure that always tinged the air. Imogene put the paintbrush in a Mason jar of water and watched the red swirl in the clear liquid, staining it, claiming it, marring it. She picked up the doll she’d chosen to imitate Hazel.

  This was where it became the most difficult. The most suffocating and bitter.

  “I’ll never let you go,” Imogene whispered into the air as she positioned the doll in its pretty shirtdress facedown in the expanse of blood that Imogene had painted on the floor. Her breath caught, and she bit the inside of her cheek—hard—tasting her own blood while arranging Hazel’s limbs into the position she’d lain when Imogene first found her.

  “Hazel?” Imogene reached the top stair of the attic. Her hand braced against the doorframe as she peeked into the bedroom. Foreboding choked her. She could feel her throat constricting with premonition.

  Hazel didn’t answer.

  The room was empty, darkening as dusk settled over the farm. Time stalled for a moment while Imogene scanned the bedroom. Dresser, bed, chair, table and radio, a desk, an easel in the corner with a canvas of the farm Hazel had paint
ed last year. The flowered wallpaper—

  And then it all came true. The agonizing scream that tore from her and left her throat sore for hours later as her gaze realized it wasn’t all flowers on the wall. It was splatters of red. A foot on the floor peeked out from the end of the bed.

  Imogene’s knees gave out, and she crawled across the floor toward the feet. Bare feet in nylon stockings stained on the bottoms as though they’d stepped in their own blood.

  She shrieked Hazel’s name. Repeatedly as she sat back on her knees, rocking back and forth. Hazel’s body lay facedown. The back of her hair was matted with the evidence of violence. It was smeared on the floor, and a footprint—Hazel’s—had left its mark just before it was dragged across the wood floor like a paintbrush across a canvas, ending where Hazel fell.

  Imogene relived the moment as she dragged a tiny brush from the blood splatter to the bottom of the doll’s foot. Her hand was shaking viciously, and Imogene gripped her wrist with her right hand while her left lifted the brush to begin transposing red paint to the back of the doll’s head.

  Why are you doing this? Hazel’s voice begged Imogene for an answer. Imogene knew only she could hear it. It was in her head—in her very soul—Hazel’s voice.

  “Because.” Imogene let a drop of paint run down the back of the doll’s neck. “I need to remember.”

  But why?

  “Because I need to know who did this.”

  Why am I not wearing shoes?

  Imogene’s paintbrush stilled above the doll. “I-I don’t know.” She furrowed her brow in consideration. Hazel was right. She always wore shoes. Especially when cooking, because of the time when she was ten and dropped a can of Spam on her big toe. So where were her shoes? They were simple black oxfords with a short heel. Hazel owned only one pair of oxfords and then a pair of sling-back heels for dressier wear. Shoes had been rationed the last few years during the war.

  She dropped the paintbrush into the jar of water and wiped her hands on her apron. Shoes. Why would shoes be important? And an unidentifiable sketch from the nightstand? Imogene hadn’t a clue why, but the minute details of the scene seemed to shout at her. Begging for her to put the pieces together to form the story of what had happened that dreadful day.

  Hurrying from the barn, Imogene skirted a farm cat that was flipping a dead mouse into the air, toying with it. She shuddered. She’d never paid attention to the little omens of death before, the ones that hung around a farm. Cats and mice, the occasional death of a cow, the deer carcass when the boys hunted for venison in the autumn and winter months. It was all part of country life. But now it was too much a part of life.

  She pushed the screen door open, its hinges squeaking as it swung out, and then its frame slamming as it closed behind her. Mother was in the kitchen. Imogene could hear her as she peeled potatoes. The swish-swish of the peeler as it stripped the spud of its skin.

  “Mother?” Imogene burst into the room, taking in the domestic scene of the family matron bent over a porcelain-coated metal pan. Skins from the potato stuck to the inside. Her hand gripped the red handle of the long peeler and moved deftly and with experience.

  The Saturday midday light shone through the window with the frilly white eyelet valance bordering its top. Mother’s shin-length cotton dress, practical stockings, and kitchen apron were neatly in place as always. Her own pair of oxford shoes were scuffed but well-cared for.

  “Where are Hazel’s shoes?” Imogene blurted out, not waiting for Mother to greet her or to lift her head and acknowledge Imogene’s flustered kitchen entry.

  The peeler flipped from Mother’s hand and landed in the pan with a clank. Mother’s hands gripped the counter, and she steadied herself as she jerked in surprise. “Hazel’s shoes?” She gave Imogene a startled look. There was a distant expression in her eyes that unnerved Imogene. Like Mother had been far away in her mind, and Imogene’s question was a rude jerk back into the present.

  “Yes. She had two pairs.”

  “I know she did.” Mother reached to fish the peeler from the bowl.

  “Where are they?” Imogene pressed.

  Mother held the peeler aloft as she twisted toward Imogene, her eyes wide and pleading. “I don’t know. In her room?”

  Please don’t talk of Hazel.

  Imogene knew immediately it was what Mother really wanted to say. Still, she had to ask. “Which—which shoes did she wear when we buried her?”

  Mother reached for a potato, her hand visibly shaking. “Her sling-backs.”

  Guilt stung Imogene, and to make up for the agony she’d just put Mother through, she drew close and pressed a kiss against Mother’s cheek. “Thank you.”

  Mother nodded but didn’t answer. Her peeler took a decisive swipe, and a strip of peeling flipped into the bowl.

  Imogene exited the kitchen and hurried up the stairs, passed the second-floor bedrooms, and without giving herself time to pause—time to reconsider—she darted up the next set of stairs to the attic bedroom. At the top of the landing, she ignored the room to the right where they stored boxes of unused items. Turning the knob, Imogene flung open Hazel’s bedroom door.

  The air had already turned stale from lack of use. A faint smell of cleaning chemicals reminded Imogene that people had come to remove as much of the evidence as they could of what had happened. The floor was clean. Bleach had discolored the wood. The bed had been stripped, the spread folded neatly after having been washed, now lying across the foot of the bare mattress.

  All of Hazel’s personal items were still where she’d left them.

  Imogene hurried to the dresser, pulling out the drawers. She rummaged through them. Underclothes, stockings, ribbons, and a few slips. She knelt on the floor and looked under the bureau. Hazel had often kicked her shoes off and accidentally sent them deeper beneath the furniture than she’d intended.

  Nothing.

  Imogene moved to stand when a strip of white on the bottom of the dresser caught her eye. She reached for it, tugging until the small piece of torn paper would release.

  Hazel’s handwriting caught her attention immediately. A tiny cursive on one side of the scrap.

  Propellant.

  A knot formed in Imogene’s stomach. It was a word often bandied about at the plant. The smokeless powder propellants. Ammunitions.

  But why would Hazel care? She worked in the laundry where she cleaned the coveralls the workers wore when working with the nitric acid used to create the propellant. Imogene fingered the piece of paper. Ollie worked at the plant, except he was in the administration building. She wasn’t sure what he did there, but it wasn’t working on any of the lines. Sam worked on the C-Line, where they took the nitrocotton and formed it into pellets of the smokeless propellant.

  She flipped the scrap over, and a different handwriting met her. It was narrow and thin, reminding her of Daddy’s chicken scratchings.

  Waddall Farm

  Grayson Field

  Pickett Farm

  Jakowski Farm

  And beneath these, three more locations.

  Post Office—pellets

  Town Hall—cotton

  Courthouse—??

  The shock of what she read wrapped itself around Imogene, catching her breath. The paper dropped from her limp fingers, floating back and forth until it landed on her lap.

  Hazel had hidden a plan to destroy public buildings. Imogene ached to believe that Hazel had maybe stolen this and tried to hide it away to thwart the plan. But a nagging sense of truth gripped her as she reread the words Grayson Field. Hazel had somehow personalized it all. And it seemed, for some reason, it had become personal in return.

  CHAPTER 32

  Aggie

  She’d slept for twelve hours. On awakening, Aggie made a frantic grab for her phone. Two missed calls. One from Mrs. Donahue, one from the police station. She made fast work of checking her voicemail. Mrs. Donahue’s reassurance that nothing had changed, and that a handsome young man named Collin had c
ome to “keep vigil” didn’t necessarily bring Aggie much relief. The next voicemail was in response to the inquiry she’d made earlier regarding finding and accessing the cold case file on Hazel Grayson.

  Maybe they still had it.

  The evidence would need to be searched for in storage.

  No, a civilian would not be able to attain access to the evidence.

  The case would need to be reopened and a detective assigned to it.

  Please let them know if there were new developments such as witnesses or evidence that might influence reopening a seventy-year-old case.

  Aggie deleted the message and tossed her phone on the bed. Well, that was that. New witnesses? She let out a wry laugh that echoed in her otherwise empty bedroom. Outside of Mumsie, potential witnesses were more than likely deceased.

  She slipped out of bed and jammed her feet into a pair of slippers. She needed a hot shower, some coffee, and then she’d head over to the hospital to relieve Collin, who had promised her he’d stay all night with Mumsie. But she was antsy now. She needed to see Mumsie. To touch her hand and push her hair back from her forehead, feeling the warmth of her skin and reassuring herself that Mumsie was still alive.

  Aggie grabbed a few things and headed toward the bath. She paused outside of the room with the dollhouse. A vague recollection nagged at her. Honestly, it was something she’d seen on a TV crime drama once. She veered off course from the shower and reentered the room, beelining for the dollhouse.

  The rookie detective on the case in the drama had been so focused on the forensic evidence from the crime scene itself, he’d ended up getting shown up by a fellow detective who cracked the case when he took a broader view and found evidence in a completely different room.

  Aggie positioned herself in front of the dollhouse, only this time she ignored the gruesome, re-created crime scene and studied the other rooms in the dollhouse instead. If Mumsie had created this after the murder, then her intent was to add detail from the day of the crime. Had she focused only on the room where Hazel had been killed, or had she . . . ?