Echoes among the Stones

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “So you tried to scare the life out of her? Whatever happened to an old-fashioned house call and a conversation?” Aggie wasn’t sure she’d ever sensed such a fierce protectiveness course through her.

  “I tried. A couple of times about two years ago. She knew me well enough to understand who I was. She didn’t want to talk to me. She’d hang up on me when I called.” Glen shook his head. “I never meant to hurt her, but I had to get her attention. I figured she’d see I was serious. The roses—Hazel’s favorite pink ones. The note. The bones—sort of like an unsolved crime, you know? She should’ve got the message. But she chose to turn a blind eye. Maybe it was all too painful, I don’t know! But she finally answered her phone the other night when I tried the ‘old-fashioned way,’ as you put it. She kept telling me it was over. But it’s not! My daddy doesn’t deserve to be tagged with that girl’s death!”

  “And you’re not sorry,” Aggie surmised. “About any of it? You’re unhinged.”

  Glen looked up at her and shrugged. “Sometimes it’s too late for ‘I’m sorry.’”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped back.

  He swiped at his phone screen, tapped it, tapped it again, then held it out to Aggie. “Watch.”

  She reached for the phone, shooting a cautious look at him.

  It was a paused video of a TV screen. The image on the set was blurry, but she could make out an elderly man’s profile, blued by the coloring of the video.

  “Who is it?”

  “Press play.” Glen was picking at his thumbnail.

  Aggie braved the bench and eased down at the far end of it, away from Glen. She tapped the phone screen. The video was a bit shaky. Someone had held up the phone and recorded another video playing on the TV.

  The man on the screen was speaking. It was garbled. Difficult to hear. Aggie drew the phone closer to her face.

  “My name is Sam Pickett . . .”

  Aggie gave Glen a startled look.

  He was gone.

  She surged to her feet, his phone still in her hand, Sam’s voice playing in the background. “Glen!” Aggie shouted. She spun in a circle, scanning the sidewalk. There he was. Moving fast for an old man with a cane. “Glen!” she shouted again. But he ignored her. Payback for being ignored the last many months? Perhaps. Aggie had no intention of launching bones at him to regain his attention, though.

  Besides, Glen had left behind answers. Maybe all the answers even. In the voice of a man who seemed to connect them all.

  Imogene

  Imogene had rung Lola. Their chat was brief. Lola said that the entire town was subdued since Sam Pickett’s arrest. She told Imogene she’d gone to visit Sam’s aunt and Ida—to take them a loaf of bread and some muffins—but Sam’s aunt said Ida hadn’t been home since before Sam had been arrested. She’d found a note from Ida saying she was hopping a train and going to New York City.

  “What about Sam’s son?” Imogene asked her friend.

  “He’s with their aunt,” Lola responded.

  “I hate everything about this,” Imogene mumbled into the phone.

  “You and me both,” Lola said.

  Imogene hung up the phone. She found Mother sitting at the table. She looked up at Imogene and pushed a teapot toward her.

  “Have some,” said Mother.

  Imogene nodded and sat down. Pouring the lemon tea—Hazel’s favorite—Imogene watched the honey-brown liquid slosh into the blue cup.

  “I did it.” Mother’s declaration was soft but firm.

  Imogene glanced up, setting the teapot down with a thud. “You did what?”

  Mother met her eyes. “I poured Hazel’s tea. That night Daddy shot the raccoon? I’d been up just minutes before. Made tea. Poured it. I was drinking it on the front porch. Then I heard the raccoon and figured Daddy would hear it rustling around out there. One of the dogs was sure to bark. So I came back in. ’Course, I didn’t latch the door, so the wind blew it and scared you silly, but I hightailed it back to bed. I’m so sorry I never said anything.”

  “Why?” Imogene remembered the steaming cup of tea. That feeling that Hazel had been there—but wasn’t. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Why not just tell me? Or tell Chet? So we didn’t wonder?”

  “Because . . .” Mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I missed her. I just—missed her. I wanted to remember.”

  Imogene reached across the table and took her mother’s hand in hers. Their eyes locked in mutual understanding. “I’ll never stop missing her,” Imogene murmured. Because it was true.

  “Red in the mornin’ . . .”

  The words knifed her heart as Imogene stared across the valley, the brilliance of the sunrise stretching over Wisconsin farmland like a wash of blood reminding the world what had been shed in recent times. Reminding Imogene what she had lost.

  She gave Ollie a sad smile as he strode up beside her on the hillside, hands buried in his overall pockets. His hair was damp, like he’d just showered.

  “They all want me to say goodbye to her.” Imogene’s admission was quiet and drifted into the morning air. She watched as Daddy strode across the yard toward the barn, his frame small from their vantage point on the hill. The dog bounded beside him and then paused, catching sight of a cat. He barked and took off after the feline. The tabby scurried under the fence and toward the cows, dodging the Holsteins’ hooves and escaping the playful dog.

  Ollie cleared his throat. “I never found sayin’ goodbye to be worth the while.”

  Imogene tugged her hand-knitted sweater around her dress as the breeze brushed a ghostly reminder over them, as if Hazel had swept by hoping they’d take notice.

  It’d been days since Imogene had heard Hazel’s voice. She knew it was her own heart that kept Hazel alive. She knew Hazel didn’t really talk to her, that Hazel was dead. Still, everything in Imogene wanted to converse with her sister. Somehow see Hazel just as she had the day she’d escaped from Sam. Beautiful, gentle, soft, sweet Hazel.

  “I don’t think he did it, Ollie,” Imogene whispered.

  She noticed Ollie’s face shadow at her words. He looked at her, his shoulder brushing hers as he stood beside her. “Still think Sam’s a good guy, huh?”

  Imogene shot him a quick glance. “No,” she answered quickly. Maybe too quickly. Ollie didn’t look as though he believed her. She took a step away from Ollie. A little distance. A little distance might be helpful. The headiness of having him standing beside her caused a battle of emotions to swirl inside. She wanted to launch herself in his arms, have him hold her, kiss her, pretend that life was fairy tales and handsome soldiers returned heroic from war. But she also knew that life wasn’t like that. It was dark, empty, and all too often void of satisfactory answers.

  “I just don’t think he killed Hazel,” she said belatedly.

  Ollie grunted.

  “Do you?” Imogene wanted to know. Needed to know what Ollie thought.

  His shoulders rose in a shrug. “Reckon I don’t know. Makes sense he did, though. ’Specially if she was gonna blow the whistle on him. He tried to hurt you. Even admitted to hittin’ you with his truck. Tryin’ to get you out of his way. Get you to stop nosin’ around his business. He confessed to callin’ me to rush into the town hall to save you when you weren’t even there. Thought somehow even I was catchin’ on to him. So he tried to kill me too. Heck, he destroyed buildings out of revenge, Genie! I don’t see why anyone could think he ain’t capable of murder.”

  “But why would he—?” She stopped, hesitated, then plunged forward, voicing her doubts to the one person she ached would understand her. “Why would Sam confess to all that and not to Hazel’s death? He’s already going away for the rest of his life. What does it matter if he admits to murder too?”

  Ollie was quiet. He either didn’t have a response or simply knew Imogene wouldn’t agree with his response. No one would understand her reticence to blame Sam. Not really. Logic said all the evidence pointed to him. But other pie
ces—the dollhouse pieces—didn’t. The cockeyed photograph of the family cemetery. It should mean nothing to Sam, so why stop to look at it, touch it? Hazel’s missing shoes . . .

  “We’re never going to agree,” Imogene admitted quietly. It was like an unscalable fence had suddenly risen between them.

  Ollie glanced at her before refocusing on the horizon. “There ain’t always answers for everything. Sometimes you just gotta move on, even when you’re screamin’ Why? on the inside.”

  His words were spoken from some deep place inside him. The wounds that festered and that he never spoke of. The agony that Ollie had packed within himself when he came home, like he’d packed his Army trunk when he first went to war.

  “How do you move on?” Imogene took a step closer to him. The distance between them was painful, especially now as a tingling of worry rose that they wouldn’t be able to heal from their grief to start anew.

  Ollie glanced at her.

  Imogene filled in the blanks of his unspoken question. “War. Losing buddies. Watching people die.”

  The only response was the breeze. Then the crooning warble of a mourning dove. The lonesome, guttural moo of a cow.

  “I haven’t” was Ollie’s reply. “I just keep tryin’.”

  She had no response. Keep trying. It wasn’t what Imogene wanted to hear. The closure she was aching for seemed so far away. Hazel’s death hung like a black flag draped over life, reminding her every day that someone had been stolen from her.

  “But you brought me home.” Ollie’s quiet admission caused Imogene’s breath to stick. She looked up at him. He met her eyes and turned. “I remembered you. Every day. I needed a reason to make it home.”

  What was her reason? Imogene couldn’t ask the question. It was remarkably selfish in light of the care and honesty that emanated from Ollie’s eyes.

  “Ollie . . .” She didn’t know what to say. Two months ago, before Hazel had died, she might have laughed. Might have toyed with Ollie, flirted, maybe even melted a little under his brooding look. The loyalty there, the sincerity—a girl should love it. But it only caused more pain. A dull, aching sensation deep in her heart that told her she couldn’t climb the insurmountable agony of loss to get to the place of hope she wanted to be in.

  A knowing look washed over Ollie’s face, replaced then with defeat. “I get it.” He nodded. “I know.”

  Imogene reached out, laying her hand on his arm. “Ollie, I don’t . . .” She didn’t what? Didn’t love him? Didn’t at least have feelings for him? She did! Oh, she did, sure as shootin’, but . . . “I don’t have anything to give you right now.”

  They were the whispered words of a broken heart. Flayed open in all their truth, painful and raw. A truth that ruined good things as the bad crept across the final remnants of optimism, suffocating her future along with her joy.

  “Nothin’?” Ollie’s question pierced her.

  Imogene’s eyes brimmed with tears. She let them spill over onto her cheeks. “Do you? Do you have anything to give?”

  The way he blinked. The way his face winced. The way he looked over her shoulder and away from her eyes told Imogene all she needed to know.

  Ollie was right. Saying goodbye wasn’t worthwhile. So, she wouldn’t. Not today. She wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head against his shoulder. But someday. Someday soon she would, and Ollie would live his life and she would live hers. Forever in the shadow of grief and a longing for what should have been.

  Maybe one day a sunset would come, sweep the valley in its red delights, and promise a new beginning.

  Today was not that day.

  CHAPTER 40

  Aggie

  Mumsie sat up in the hospital bed. The blush had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes were aware, and she lifted her own cup of coffee to her lips. “Honestly—” she paused to swallow the brew—“one would think I almost died. All this attention and fuss.”

  “You did almost die.” Aggie ignored Mumsie’s veiled complaint and adjusted the ties of her grandmother’s hospital gown.

  “For pity’s sake.” Mumsie batted Aggie’s hand away, but there was a sheen over her eyes. The unspoken affection and gratefulness that Aggie knew Mumsie simply didn’t know how to voice.

  “Well, Cricket,” Collin said from the other side of the bed, his eyes connecting with Aggie’s before meeting Mumsie’s soft smile at the newest moniker to be bestowed on her by Collin, “you have enough sass to live for another twenty years.”

  Mumsie gave a curt nod, and her smile at Aggie insinuated that at least Collin understood she was all right. “I will. I plan to make it to one hundred and ten, and then if I keel over, so be it.”

  “Why one hundred and ten?” Aggie couldn’t help but ask.

  “Well, by then the game-show host of my word puzzles show will have retired—or died—and then it won’t be worth watching anymore.”

  Of course.

  Aggie exchanged amused glances with Collin, but then the seriousness of what had occurred earlier that morning returned. She’d called Collin from her phone the minute Glen Pickett had walked away. After telling Collin of Glen’s claim that the dead woman in the mystery grave was his aunt Ida, Collin had made some fast calls to follow up on that story. She wasn’t sure who he’d called—didn’t even know what, if anything, he’d uncovered. She certainly didn’t understand what Glen’s aunt Ida had to do with any of it, or why Glen had been so quick to leave his phone with Aggie after going to all the trouble of dropping a trail of threats to gain attention.

  Aggie had yet to watch Sam Pickett’s video. Mumsie needed to be with her when she did so. If it was a confession of Hazel’s murder, Mumsie should hear it. Aggie was glad they were in the hospital. The idea of inducing another stroke was a real concern of hers.

  “What is it?” Mumsie looked between them. “Someone die while I was asleep?”

  “No.” Aggie shook her head. “Your friends were here, though, to be sure you didn’t.”

  “The Three Stooges?” Mumsie squeaked, lifting her brows.

  Aggie laughed. More evidence she and Mumsie were so similar. They’d even attributed the same title to Mumsie’s friends.

  “Oh, they’re good sorts.” Mumsie’s smile was a satisfied one. She handed her coffee to Collin and adjusted her blanket. “A person needs family—even church family.”

  Aggie fingered the phone in her pocket that Glen had left behind. She should call the police. But her knees felt better now, though bruised, and somehow calling the cops on old Glen Pickett seemed . . . cruel. She didn’t like the man, but at the same time, something about him just seemed so defeated. If anyone called the police on him, it would be Collin’s right. Glen’s admission to striking Collin at the cemetery still made no sense as far as motive, but it was enough to have him arrested.

  “Mumsie?” Aggie started, pulling the phone from her pocket. “Glen Pickett visited me this morning.”

  “That boy?” Mumsie scowled. “Trouble in a handbasket.”

  “Like his father?” Aggie led.

  Mumsie gave her a quick look. “Sam Pickett was troubled. He did some bad things, but—”

  “But he loved Hazel,” Aggie finished for Mumsie.

  Mumsie’s expression confirmed Glen’s story. “Sometimes a person can’t help who they love.” There was a wistfulness in her voice, and a faraway look entered her eyes. Then she blinked and it disappeared as fast as it came.

  Aggie glanced at Collin, who was eyeing her from across the bed. She dropped her gaze.

  “Glen gave me this.” Aggie showed the phone screen to Mumsie.

  Mumsie’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened in a small o. “Sam,” she breathed. Her eyes locked with Aggie’s. “People said he killed my sister. But he didn’t. I’ve always believed him.”

  “Is that why you allowed him to be buried in the Grayson cemetery?” Aggie reached for a chair and scooted it next to the bed. She lowered onto it. Collin followed her lead and leaned onto the sill of t
he window that overlooked the parking lot.

  Mumsie’s lips tightened. “Yes. No one seemed to care about Sam Pickett after he was sent away. Everyone thought it was all over, though he never once confessed to killing Hazel. That dollhouse? I’ve spent seventy years looking at it. Pondering it. No matter how I studied it, how I try to remember, I can’t fit the pieces together. I know he loved Hazel, and . . . and I believe she loved him too.”

  Collin adjusted his weight on the broad windowsill, his hands bracing on either side of him. “Did you notice anything missing from Hazel’s room after she died?”

  Mumsie shifted her gaze to him. “I did.” A swift nod followed. “Her shoes. A pair of short-heeled oxfords. And a picture—one of her art pieces. She had one by her bedside. Although, for all the details I recall, I’ve never been able to remember what it was of. I even asked my mother and daddy, and my best friend, Lola. None of us had ever paid it much mind.”

  Collin cleared his throat, and the sound drew Aggie’s attention. He stood and returned to Mumsie’s side, taking her hand and easing down onto the bed. “Cricket, we found Hazel’s shoes. Well, the heel of one.”

  Mumsie’s eyes widened. “You did? Where?”

  “In a grave. Buried in Fifteen Puzzle Row,” Aggie supplied.

  Collin nodded. “At least I think it’s hers. There was also this.” He pulled the man’s ring from his pocket and handed it to Mumsie.

  Mumsie held up the ring, reading the inscription. She laid it in her palm, cupping it with her other hand, breathing in a deep sigh and closing her eyes. “Ohhh, my sweet Hazel. What did you do?”

  Collin shot a glance at Aggie. “I’ve been doing some records searching. Hazel and Sam—they were married. About two months before Hazel died.”

  Aggie clamped her hand over her mouth, biting back her cry of surprise.