“This is Mom’s,” Bella said unnecessarily. She looked around, as if seeing it with fresh eyes. “I guess when she moved back here, it must have been Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
Erin could see nothing that would give them any clues about Grandma’s disappearance. What did they think, that the room would have been preserved as a shrine, still awaiting her return after twenty years? Cindy had moved on. She’d gone on to live her life.
Erin retreated to the hall and Bella took them on to the next room.
“Mine,” Bella offered.
It was a typical teen girl’s room. Vestiges of her childhood: dolls and middle grade books, posters of the current teen idols; an adult study desk, carefully arranged. Bella gave a shrug. “Mom’s room when she was a girl. I guess she wanted me to have the same one as she had. Or to be in the room closest to her. I could pick one of the other ones if I wanted, but this is fine, and it’s a pain to have to move everything.”
Erin nodded. She didn’t go in or spend long studying it. It wasn’t like Grandma would have left a secret note for them to find, or Grandpa might have hidden a confession of guilt. It had been their daughter’s room. Nobody was playing games.
There were two more bedrooms, one set up as a guest room and one holding excess furniture and other items they wanted to store. There was no upstairs bathroom.
“Was either of these used by your grandparents as a sewing room or study?” Erin asked.
Bella’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Just bedrooms. I think they were both pretty outdoorsy, that’s where they spent their time.”
Erin nodded. “Okay. I don’t think… I can’t think of anything we need to see. We should look at the kitchen downstairs, but… I don’t think we’re going to find anything significant.”
Bella took them back down the stairs. They nodded awkwardly at Cindy, who was still sitting in the rocker in the living room.
The kitchen was bright, with modern appliances that looked oddly out of place fit between old cupboards and counters. It was big enough for a small family to eat in. There wasn’t a lot of space to store dishes or pantry items, but there was ample counter space for food preparation. No twenty-year-old blood spatters.
“And there’s a cold room downstairs,” Bella offered, but didn’t indicate any desire to go down there herself.
“We should probably check that out,” Erin said.
“No… there’s nothing down there. Just shelves and canned goods.”
Erin raised her eyebrows. “Then it will only take a minute to look. Where are the stairs?”
Bella reluctantly led them to the narrow door and opened it. She clicked on an electric light and stood to the side to allow Erin and Vic to go down.
“You’re not coming?” Erin didn’t really need to ask; the answer was obvious. Bella had no intention of venturing down to the basement. Maybe it wasn’t haunted like she thought Auntie Clem’s basement and the barn were, but it was still spooky enough that she wasn’t going to go with them.
Erin led the way down the stairs. She tried not to let Bella’s anxiety infect her. It was just a dug-out basement beneath an old house. There was nothing to worry about. No haints. No animals. Nothing that was any threat to them.
The lighting was dim, barely enough to see by. The stairs were bare wood, as was the handrail mounted on the wall beside them. It was much cooler than the rest of the house, enough to make Erin shiver. There had been some attempt made to put up wallboard and a subfloor, but it was clumsy and haphazard and didn’t do much to enhance the space. Erin walked out into the middle of the cold room and gazed around at the jars of home-canned fruit together with commercial cans of vegetables and other products. There were some large sacks of grains and other dry goods, and the distinctive smell of rotting potatoes. Vic and Erin looked around at their surroundings and then each other.
“Could have buried her under the floor,” Vic said, tapping the wood floor with her toe. It was still yellow rather than the gray that older wood turned. Of fairly recent vintage.
Erin nodded. “I don’t smell anything dead.”
“You wouldn’t after twenty years.”
“No, I guess not.”
Erin looked at the floor, seeing whether there was a way to lift some of the floorboards up to have a peek underneath, but everything seemed to be nailed down securely. The floor had been laid before the walls, so it disappeared under the wallboard rather than ending before it.
“Nothing else to see,” Vic said.
“Okay. Back up.”
They both tried to look as if they were not hurrying for the stairs, and there wasn’t exactly a scuffle at the bottom to see who would go first, but there was definitely a moment of awkwardness as they shifted and tried to decide who would go first. Erin had led the way down, so she figured it was her right to be the first one up and, in the end, she got the first position, walking back up into the oppressive heat of the day.
“I told you there wasn’t anything,” Bella said.
“And now we checked, so we know,” Vic agreed.
“So you want to see the rest of the farm?” Bella led them out of the house.
Chapter Fifteen
S
tepping out into the sun, Erin immediately regretted the choice to search the Prost property in the heat of the afternoon. They should have been there in the early morning as soon as the sun came up, or the evening as it went down, not right in the middle of it. She couldn’t imagine how they were going to traipse all over the farm without fainting of heat and dehydration. Erin put her sunglasses on, but she needed a hat. And an air-conditioned car.
Bella led them to the parking area and pointed to a small vehicle that seemed to be a cross between an ATV and a jeep. “Climb on.”
Vic didn’t hesitate; in fact, she seemed eager to climb aboard. Erin was the only one who seemed to have reservations about the idea. She stood looking at the dirty, chipped, open-air vehicle.
“Uh… you drive?” she asked Bella.
“Sure, I’ve been driving this thing around for years. Trust me, you don’t want to have to walk.”
Erin reluctantly climbed into the vehicle. “Is this safe? There are no seatbelts.”
“If it rolled over, you’d be pinned underneath,” Bella said blithely, “so no seatbelts.”
Erin looked at Vic. “If it rolled over?”
“Don’t think about it. Bella knows what she’s doing. Enjoy it!”
Erin hung on to whatever she could reach, thinking more about how to remain in the vehicle than of enjoying the ride. Bella keyed the ignition and the engine roared to life. Clouds of exhaust billowed out behind them. Before Erin had the chance to prepare herself, Bella put the car into gear and they started moving.
They bounced over the uneven ground. Erin felt every bump and clung tightly to her handholds. Vic give a whoop and leaned forward, looking like she was having the time of her life. She and Bella shouted to each other over the roar of the engine, but Erin couldn’t hear most of what they were saying. She was supposed to be paying attention to the landscape, looking for any clues as to what might have happened to Bella’s grandma. It wasn’t like she would find disturbed earth or new growth where a fresh grave had been dug; Mother Nature would have reclaimed the area over the ensuing decades. She tried to force herself to pay attention to the passing landscape anyway and strained to hear Bella’s comments as she gestured to various areas.
The road, if it could be called that, was rough and rutted, just a trail worn through the ground cover. They broke free of the thick growth of trees into a clearing, and Erin shaded her eyes from the sun in spite of her sunglasses. Bella pulled the car over to the side and parked it. The engine quieted a little.
“This is the lower pasture,” Bella explained, motioning to the goats grazing or resting in the field. It wasn’t flat like a farmer’s field. It was hilly and rough and the pasture itself was on a fairly steep slope. But Erin knew that goats could climb just about anything. T
hey looked tranquil and happy in the pasture and paid no attention at all to the roar of the engine intruding on their peaceful munching.
Erin evaluated it and found nothing unusual or out of place. “This is the same pasture as your grandma would have used?”
“Sure. Same one as has been here forever.”
“And goats aren’t like pigs, they won’t eat just anything, right?”
Vic looked at Erin questioningly. Bella shook her head. “Goats will eat all kinds of things, food or not. You have to make sure there’s no poisonous plants or anything else that might harm them in the field.”
“But they’re herbivorous. Not omnivorous, like pigs.”
“Yeah.” Bella gave a little shrug, her mind not following the same tracks as Erin’s.
But Vic’s face showed that she knew exactly what Erin was thinking. Pigs had been used by more than one serial killer to dispose of human bodies. She wrinkled her nose and shook her head at Erin. Erin gazed at the goats in the field.
“And you’ve always had goats? Not any other animal?”
“Goats are the best,” Bella said. “In these parts, there isn’t lots of flat land and it takes time and effort to clear the trees. You can’t grow wheat here. Cows don’t do well here. But goats do. That’s what we’ve been raising for generations.”
Erin nodded. “Is there anything else to see?”
Bella put the car back into gear, and they bounced around some more, winding around through the trees. They stopped at a large, curve-roofed metal structure. “This is the barn. The goat barn. This is where they come to shelter at night.”
“How long has this been here?”
“I dunno. Thirty, forty years.”
“So it was here when your grandma disappeared.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Not much has changed since then. Everything is done pretty much the same.”
“And the red barn was never used for goats? The one that—”
Bella waved away the rest of the question. “No. Back when they had horses, that’s probably where they were kept. Maybe a milk cow. Garden stuff. Farming equipment.”
“And it hasn’t been used since your grandma… disappeared?”
“No. Mom had a horse when she was a little girl, but it died… maybe when she was a teenager, I’m not sure when. I think that was the last horse they had. And I don’t know when they had a cow last. Mom doesn’t talk about having to milk cows, so I don’t think they had one when she lived here.”
“Should we go in?”
Bella raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to? Not much to see.”
“I’d like to, if we’re allowed.”
“Mom said to stay out of the old barn, she didn’t say we couldn’t come to this one.” Bella shut off the car engine, and Erin and Vic followed her to the barn.
Even before they stepped inside, Erin was regretting the request. The pungent smell of goat filled her nostrils, making her nauseated. She breathed as shallowly as she could, through her mouth, but she could still smell and almost taste the rank, muddy smell of the goats. They weren’t as bad as pigs. Erin remembered going to a farm on a field trip when she was younger. The pig pens had been so revolting, she had thrown up her lunch, causing chaos among her classmates. She was glad she hadn’t stayed too long in that family. She had endured all kinds of teasing at school, and introductions always included ‘the one who threw up on the farm trip.’
“Are you okay?” Vic asked.
Erin swallowed and nodded. “It’s just… the smell.”
“Takes some getting used to,” Bella admitted. “I’ve been around them all my life, and it still bothers me when the wind is blowing from the west.”
But she didn’t seem to have any problem marching up to the building and throwing a door open. She groped for a switch in the darkness inside the door and turned on some lights. Erin held her breath and stood in the doorway for a quick look around, then backed out again to breathe. Vic went into the barn and took a few minutes before coming out. She made no comment on Erin’s swift departure and spoke in a low voice before Bella finished up and joined them.
“The floors are slatted so that waste flows down into pits under the building. I don’t know what the procedure is for getting them flushed or mucked out, but I assume they’ve been cleaned at least annually since Grandma disappeared. If there were any remains down there, I doubt if anyone could find them now.”
Erin nodded. Bella exited the barn, shutting the lights back off and pulling the door shut. She didn’t, Erin noted, lock the door. Why would they need to? It was out in the middle of nowhere, and why would anyone want to break into a goat barn? If they did, what harm could they do?
They all walked back to the vehicle. Bella seemed happy to be outdoors, unaware of the grisly conversation Erin and Vic were having. They all climbed into the car and proceeded on to another field, this one without any goats, that Bella said was the upper pasture. Erin could see that the growth there was longer, with leggy weeds and hardy grasses. Presumably, when the lower pasture got too short, the goats would be moved to the upper pasture.
Erin couldn’t think of anything to ask. She nodded and looked around. Off to the right, she could see white posts and dark shapes. “What’s that?”
“Family graveyard,” Bella said. “You want to see?”
“Yes.”
Bella put the car in gear and took them in a curving route to a little cemetery in a glade. The posts Erin had been able to see had been crosses, and the dark shapes various statues and monuments. Erin was first out of the car, and the others followed her. Erin explored the cemetery, fascinated. She’d rarely been to a regular cemetery before, and never to a family cemetery. She walked from one grave to the other, looking at the family names, the husbands and wives buried side by side. The tragic little gravestones with cherubs for babies who had died in infancy. Most of the marker stones were modest, but there were a few big ones with statues that towered over the others. Erin heard approaching footsteps, and Bella came up beside her. They browsed over the stones, Bella pointing out a few relatives or telling what she knew about this person or that. They made their way down an aisle, and Bella pointed.
“Over there, that’s Grandpa’s grave.”
Erin approached it and looked down at the stone. Black with gray engraving. Just Ezekiel’s name and the dates of his birth and death. No scripture, no ‘loving father and husband,’ no angel motif. Erin studied it.
“You said your mom is Christian?”
Bella nodded. “Yeah. We don’t go to church every week, but she’s still Christian.”
Erin nodded thoughtfully. Maybe Cindy hadn’t told them everything she knew about Ezekiel and what had happened to Martha.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here,” Bella mused, gazing around. “It looks different. I guess it’s just because of growing up. Everything from your childhood seems smaller than you remember.”
Erin withdrew her focus from the one gravestone to again take in the neat rows and columns of the plots. Somebody kept it maintained. Not the golf-short grass of a city cemetery, but it wasn’t overgrown either. Some of the plots, like one of the ones next to Ezekiel, didn’t have markers. Maybe they’d had wooden markers that had rotted away, or maybe there had never been markers, but slight depressions in the ground showed where the ground had settled in the graves.
“It’s a beautiful little place,” Erin said. “Maybe it’s a weird thing to say, but I love it. I’ve never been in a cemetery like this before.”
Bella beamed. “I like it too. Even though there are lots of bodies buried here, I’ve never felt like it was haunted. It’s not spooky.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s because it’s consecrated ground.”
Erin nodded. She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it probably wasn’t the time to ask.
With Bella beside her and Vic somewhere behind looking at other gravestones, Erin was startled by a movement in the trees ahead of them.
“Who’s over there?” a man’s voice demanded.
Chapter Sixteen
B
ella didn’t seem perturbed to be addressed in such a way out in the middle of the bush. She peered through the trees.
“It’s me, Mr. Ware. Bella Prost.”
“Bella?” the man’s voice repeated.
Erin watched him emerge slowly from the cover of the trees. An old man, solidly built and slow moving, each step deliberate. Erin tried to estimate his age. Sixty? Seventy? His hair was gray, his face deeply wrinkled by many years in the sun. It took a few minutes for him to make his way over to them.
“Erin, this is Mr. Ware,” Bella introduced. “He lives the next property over. The boundary line is just over there. You see the fence posts…?”
Erin squinted at the trees Mr. Ware had come through. She could just barely see the fence posts. The wire in between them was invisible from where they stood. Apparently, there was a break or a gate somewhere that Mr. Ware had come through. It wasn’t an old, weathered fence like Erin expected to see, but something newer that had been erected in the last five or ten years. The posts were too white to be wood, but were maybe some kind of plastic or other synthetic.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Ware.”
“Erin is my boss,” Bella told him. “She’s the owner and head baker over at Auntie Clem’s Bakery.”
“At the bakery? I thought the bakery closed.”
“The Bake Shoppe closed, this is a new one. Erin opened it where the tea room used to be.”
“You run the tea room?” Mr. Ware asked Erin, apparently either hard of hearing or deliberately misunderstanding.
“I have a bakery where the tea room used to be,” Erin said in a loud, firm voice. “You should come by sometime and have a look.”
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