“Ladies. Thank you—for your—devoted vigil over Mumsie. But, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to see Mumsie alone.”
“Oh yes!” Mrs. Donahue nodded vehemently.
“Certainly!” Jane affirmed.
“Come with me.” Mrs. Prentiss slipped her aged arm through the crook of Collin’s elbow, much like an old woman intent on snagging a younger man.
“Ohhhh, no.” Aggie tugged on Collin’s hand and gave Mrs. Prentiss a gentle but not-so-subtle back off raise of the brows. “He’s coming with me.”
“Ahh.” Mrs. Donahue smiled, nodded softly. “Sweet love. Yes. Leave them be, Prentiss.”
“Go, go.” Jane patted Collin’s arm.
Mrs. Prentiss released him with a little snort of disappointment.
Aggie rolled her eyes to herself and muttered “Sorry” to Collin from the corner of her mouth.
“Whatever for?” He grinned as they made their way at a slower pace to Mumsie’s room, the three old ladies staring at them as they departed.
“Sweet love?” Aggie shook her head.
Collin tugged her hand and leaned to whisper in her ear, “You need to be more romantic. Not everything is dark crypts and murderous schemes, you know.”
“Honestly!” Aggie sniffed. Then, hearing herself, she realized how remarkably like Mumsie she sounded, the bitter and the jaded included.
They entered the room, and Aggie jolted to a stop.
An older man bent over Mumsie’s bed. His shoulders were stooped and thin, covered with a sweater. His hair consisted of a narrow ring around his otherwise bald head, gray mixed with white. He balanced on a cane that resembled a shepherd’s staff, hook included.
The two of them were speaking in murmurs. Mumsie’s voice was strained.
“Mumsie?” Aggie stepped toward the hospital bed, dropping Collin’s hand.
Collin moved just a tad in front of her. “Who are you, sir?” he demanded.
The elderly man turned. His face was wrinkled, with sky-blue eyes that appeared kind but with a tinge of anxiousness to them. He looked back at Mumsie.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant . . .” the man started to say.
“It’s over,” Mumsie said. “Leave me at peace now.” She waved toward the door. Her hand shook. A tear rolled down her face.
“But—” he protested.
Mumsie speared him with a vibrant green glare that never faded as she aged, her eyes never losing their fervor or zeal. “You’ve done more than enough.”
The elderly man staggered past Aggie, his shoulder brushing hers, leaving a whiff of tobacco and cinnamon in his wake.
Mumsie watched him leave, then shifted her attention to Aggie. She was pale. Her wrinkled skin still powder soft, but the rosy blush on her cheeks gone. Still, a determination entered her expression as she leveled her gaze on Aggie. “Come to see me rise from the dead?”
Her hint of a smile warmed Aggie’s soul, even as she cast a questioning look over her shoulder to where the strange old man had fled through the door. Mumsie was back. That was what mattered right now.
CHAPTER 37
Mumsie refused to explain who the elderly man was. Aggie pressed. Collin changed the subject. Aggie glared at him. Collin winked. Mumsie dozed on and off until finally a doctor came in and recommended they let her rest. Her vitals looked good. He was pleased to see there didn’t appear to be lingering damage to her brain from the stroke. The doctor insisted they go home.
Mumsie was deep asleep by the time he was finished.
Now Aggie half fell onto a kitchen chair. She grabbed her tablet from her purse and powered it up.
“Coffee?” Collin asked, but he was already making it.
Aggie did some web searches. Samuel Pickett, Mill Creek, 1946. It didn’t take long to find information on him.
“So, he was the one who blew up the post office and burned down the town hall?” Aggie stared at a black-and-white image of the man. He was once a “looker,” Mumsie would have said, and Aggie agreed. But it made no sense why a local terrorist had been buried in the old family cemetery, while their murdered sister was laid to rest in a cheap grave in Fifteen Puzzle Row.
Collin straddled a chair beside her. He was wearing jeans. Dark-washed, ironed jeans, but jeans nonetheless. His spicy aftershave made Aggie a bit heady in her weariness from the shocks of the day. Yet she ignored him for the moment, flicking her finger on the screen to scroll up.
“Apparently, he fought in the war, came home to find his family farm had been sold to the government for the ammunition plant to be built there, and developed a case of vigilante justice.” Aggie skim-read for them both.
“And why are we suddenly interested in Samuel Pickett? Is he the gentleman from your grandmother’s room tonight?”
Aggie gave him a sideways glance. “Um. No. Samuel Pickett is dead. He’s buried in the Grayson family cemetery—also on old ammunition plant property.”
“That’s rich.” Collin pointed to a link off the newspaper article. “Notice that headline?”
Aggie leaned forward, then exchanged looks with Collin. “Man Suspect in Local Girl’s Murder.” She clicked the link. In silence they both read the article. How Samuel Pickett was also being investigated for the murder of Hazel Grayson. Aggie did a few more cursory searches but found nothing of import to conclude Samuel Pickett had ever committed the act.
“I’m a tad confused as to why the Grayson family would allow Samuel Pickett to be buried in their cemetery.” Collin’s face quirked as he tried to make sense of this.
Aggie blew out a breath, lifting a few strands of hair that then fell against her eye. She pushed them out of the way. “Decades later.” She twisted in her chair to face Collin. “I don’t understand. The girl at the Ammunition Plant Museum told me that to be buried in the Grayson cemetery you needed permission from the landowners, and the landowners verified familial connections with a living Grayson. The only one alive would be Mumsie. So why on earth would she authorize Samuel Pickett to be buried in the cemetery when he’s not family and he’s potentially Hazel’s killer?”
“We’re missing something.” Collin unwrapped himself from the chair and adjusted his wire-framed glasses. His hair sparkled a cinnamon-red in the dim kitchen lighting, but his eyes were intense with a determined glow. “Come.” He held out his hand.
Aggie took it—because not taking it seemed like a lost opportunity—and trailed behind him as he led her up the stairs. Collin pushed open the door to Mumsie’s study, but instead of entering, he stood in the doorway. Observant.
“The bed and the bedside table are positioned exactly like in the dollhouse,” he said, repeating what they already knew. “The spread appears to be the same one, as indicated by the stains.”
Aggie hadn’t let go of his hand, and he hadn’t released hers. She waited, allowing the archaeologist’s mind to turn. He stepped into the room, narrowing his eyes in thought.
“In 1946, they knew far less about forensic science than we do today. So how they looked at the crime scene—how your grandmother looked at the scene—may have been shortchanged by their lack of knowledge.”
Collin drew her over to the dollhouse. “What do you see?”
Aggie remembered the tilted frame of the gravestones in the Grayson cemetery. She pointed to it. “The frame—it’s tilted.”
Collin nodded. He stood silent, observing, his eyes sharp. He pointed. “Notice the blood in the bedroom?”
Aggie nodded.
He looked at her, waiting, as if something was supposed to click into place. But it didn’t.
“What?” she asked, impatient.
“The blood is pooled around Hazel’s head. She was struck on the back of the head.”
“So?”
“So, why is there blood spatter on the bedspread?”
Aggie frowned, leaning in to the diorama.
Again, Collin pointed. “If a person were standing and came up behind Hazel from the bedroom door, with Hazel facing
the wall, and they struck her, the blood would have projected back on them, and onto the floor by the door, probably missing the bedspread altogether.”
Aggie nodded. “But it’s on the wall, so the killer had to be standing between Hazel and the wall with Hazel facing the door.”
“Correct.” Collin drew his fingertip down to an empty space on the wallpaper. “There’s a void here. The spatter is around it. Someone caught the brunt of the spatter, probably on their face and chest, blocking that portion of the wallpaper.”
“But . . .” Aggie curled her lip as she thought. “How did Hazel end up lying facedown with her head toward the wall?”
“She was moved,” Collin stated. He drew a path in the air with his finger inside the attic bedroom. “If Hazel was facing the door and her killer was behind her with the wall to the killer’s back when they struck, Hazel would have fallen facedown with her head pointing toward the door. But, notice . . .” He indicated the spatter stains on the bedspread near the foot of the bed.
“Was she hit again?” Aggie didn’t like the way her stomach clenched. She could almost see it happening in her imagination. A killer striking Hazel. Hazel falling, then trying to get up, another strike, this time spreading blood on the bed. Maybe Hazel turned then, or maybe the killer moved her, but she died facing her killer.
“Hazel probably tried to get up.” Collin grimaced. “After the second strike, she turned herself before collapsing at the feet of her killer.”
“How can you know that?” Aggie whispered. She glanced at the window and the darkness outside. Night had fallen. Talking murder—a very real murder—in the yellow light of the room’s lamp was downright chilling.
“Assuming your grandmother re-created the crime scene accurately—which, given the amount of detail in this house, I have to conclude she did—there is a smear mark on the floor, but it’s rather light. If Hazel had been killed facing the doorway and then dragged to face the wall—”
“Oh.” Aggie realized where Collin was going with his reasoning. A large swath of blood would have traced the floor from her head wound.
“A pool of blood beneath her head suggests she collapsed, facing her killer, and bled out,” Collin concluded. “And note how there’s blood on the bottom of her foot. She stepped in her own blood.”
Aggie covered her mouth with her hand. “Did Samuel Pickett really do that? I can’t imagine . . . How could Mumsie allow him to be buried in the family cemetery?”
Collin leaned into the dollhouse. He clicked his tongue. “She’s not wearing shoes.”
Aggie shot him a questioning glance. “So?”
“We found the heel of a woman’s shoe in the grave today.”
“The woman buried there could have worn them,” Aggie countered.
“True.” Collin nodded. “Yet, follow my theory. Say someone killed Hazel, took her shoes, took a ring from Hazel, and there—see?” Collin turned to look at the life-sized table behind them. The empty picture frame.
“That frame represents this frame in the dollhouse. Except the real-to-life version here on the table is empty. The sketch that’s in the dollhouse version has apparently disappeared in real life. Very curious, don’t you think?”
Aggie nodded. It was starting to play in her mind like a TV crime show. “So the killer knows Hazel is dead. They take the ring, her shoes—according to your theory—a sketch from the bedside table. They run from the room. On their way down the stairs, they stop to tilt the cemetery picture sideways?”
Collin shrugged. “That, or they stopped to touch it. Look at it. Or perhaps tripped and bumped into it.”
It was outlandish. All of it. She eyed Collin, crossing her arms. “So, what then? The killer ran to the Mill Creek Cemetery, dug a grave, threw in Hazel’s shoes and a man’s ring—which still makes no sense—then jumped in after and buried themselves?”
The sarcasm in her voice brought Collin to a stillness that unnerved Aggie. He straightened from his anticipatory examination of the dollhouse and looked into her eyes.
“I don’t know, Aggie. But it isn’t a coincidence that bone fragments were delivered here and at the cemetery the day we exhumed the body. It isn’t coincidence that I still have stitches in my head from someone quite talented with a shovel. It isn’t coincidence that your grandmother gets a cryptic note stating, ‘She didn’t deserve death and he didn’t deserve life.’ None of this is coincidence. And while speaking the theories out loud implies a sort of insanity, isn’t that what crimes are? They don’t often make logical sense, unless predesigned by a psychopath. There’s nothing in this scene or in any of the story to indicate calculated killing. It’s all very passionate. Very intimate. Very personal.”
Collin drew closer to her as if to convince Aggie to allow her imagination to consider things outside of the box. She was only an inch shorter than Collin, so his eyes were almost level to hers, boring into her with an intense seriousness she’d not seen in Collin. She swallowed. Nervous. Nervous by the idea of murder. Uneasy by the darkness and the mock-up murder scene. Agitated by the way her senses came alive with Collin’s nearness. The determination in his voice. The magnetism of his attempts at piecing together her family mystery, to put to rest Mumsie’s lifelong disturbance.
She stumbled back a step. “Collin,” she whispered before whirling and racing from the room.
“Agnes!” he shouted after her.
She tripped down the stairs, hurrying away from him. She wasn’t afraid of Collin, but she had to get away from him. He was too close. She was too close. And his concern over solving the puzzle of Hazel’s murder and uncovering the identity of the unknown body in the cemetery was very passionate, very intimate, very personal. But it wasn’t his story. It was hers. Yet he’d inserted himself into it. He’d become a part of her and Mumsie’s story. He knew grief and yet had somehow moved past it. He watched her and Mumsie wallow in it, live in it, drown in it. That was why he wouldn’t let up. It wasn’t just his archaeological instincts for a good historical mystery. It was that he saw both her and Mumsie being slowly strangled by a grief he’d successfully fought off. He wanted to rescue them.
“Leave me alone!” Aggie shook off his hand as Collin landed at the bottom of the steps next to her. Tears burned—oh, how they burned—and she refused to release them.
Collin held his hands up, palms out. “I won’t touch you, Love. Just pause for a minute.”
They were in the foyer of Mumsie’s house. The kitchen to her right, Mumsie’s sitting room to her left, and the door—a way of escape—to her back.
“Death is personal.” Aggie spat the words she’d heard in her head the moment Collin had finalized his theory. “Death is personal!” She slapped at his chest. She didn’t know why, but she did. The anger, the loss, the agony of watching Mom slip into eternity. What did the Scriptures say? “O death, where is thy sting?” It was here! It was stabbing her in the heart, in her soul. It more than stung. It was agonizing.
Collin lowered his arms to his sides.
Aggie’s chest heaved as she sucked in a sob. A sob that never should have surfaced. She wagged her finger in his face. “You don’t understand. You don’t! Just because you lost your sister—it’s different. This was murder. Mumsie lost her sister by the hand of someone else. It’s not—it’s not the same as a car accident.”
“What’s your explanation?” Collin’s question pierced her.
Aggie squinted, shoving back furious tears. “My explanation?”
“Your mum wasn’t murdered. She died of cancer. One might say it was more natural than my sister’s drunken accident.”
“You dare to compare deaths to my mom?” Aggie glared. He was wickedly bold! Antagonistic. She detested him.
“You dared to compare Hazel’s murder to my sister.” His was a quiet observation.
She loathed him.
“My mom was stolen from me. Death stole her,” Aggie hissed.
“It stole my sister too.”
She despis
ed him.
Aggie took a step toward Collin. Her eyes collided with his. A lone tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. She angrily swiped at it. “You don’t have a right to be happy.”
Silence.
“I don’t have a right to be happy!” Aggie pushed Collin’s chest, the cotton of his shirt soft beneath her palms.
No answer.
“I hate it.” She choked, suffocated by two years’ worth of tears collecting in her throat. “I hate it. I hate—I hate that Mom died.” Aggie sucked in air loudly. A gasp. She stumbled back, lifting her arms as if to shield herself from someone striking at her.
Collin grasped her forearms gently. “Come here.”
“I want my mom.” Now she sounded like a lost little girl.
“Come.” Collin tugged her toward him.
Aggie resisted. “Mumsie needs her sister. She needed Hazel. Why would God—why would He—?”
“Allow it?” Collin supplied, still holding her forearms.
Aggie locked eyes with him as though now, if she looked away, she would surely drown in the hidden horrors of Death’s wake.
“There’s no good answer for that. We can’t understand the mind of God, and nothing I can say will make what happened feel any better. I can just be there for you, as I believe He is, and pray that one day you will find peace in spite of it all.”
Aggie crumpled then. Her strength was sapped.
Collin hauled her to his chest, and Aggie curled her fingers into his shirtfront. She would cry tonight. She would weep for Mom, for Hazel. She would weep for Collin’s sister. But most of all, she would weep for the lost memories that never took place, for the gaping holes loved ones left behind when they died, and weep for the fact that somehow—someway—God shared her pain.
CHAPTER 38
Imogene
She’d run. Sam had let her. He’d lost all desire to fight, and all Imogene could hear reverberating in her mind was “I loved her.” Sam had loved Hazel! Had it been reciprocated? If it had, then why had he killed her?
Imogene’s feet pounded the pavement. People came into view as she raced from the all-but-abandoned warehouse toward the populated area of the ammunition plant. Sam had driven her here. She’d seen his pickup truck as she’d raced from the building.
Echoes among the Stones Page 31