by Etta Faire
"Rosalie, is that Carly Mae's car out front?" a voice asked. I recognized it. Caleb Bowman, Jackson's cousin.
I came up behind Rosalie, peeking out from the corner of her shapeless green dress to see Caleb grinning at me in full sheriff uniform.
He looked older than I thought he'd look. It had only been four years since I’d seen him last, but he looked like he’d aged 15. He was younger than Jackson, but his pale, weathered face and dark brown goatee made him look like a sad commercial for beard dye.
He walked up closer to me, fixing his beady eyes on mine, like his stare and his police uniform were going to intimidate me.
"Enjoying my family's house?" he asked.
"It's okay, I guess. Little old."
This made his neck veins throb, and his teeth clench.
Rosalie stepped in front of us, her thick hands on her hips. She wobbled a little from her hip being unsteady and I grabbed one of her arms to help her. "Caleb, leave her alone,” she said. “The only person you should be mad at is Jackson. Carly Mae had no idea your cousin was going to leave her that house. So why don't you go on down to the cemetery and spit on his grave or something useful like that."
He scratched at his bushy goatee with the back of his uniform-sleeved arm. "Come on, Rosalie. You know Jackson better than that. Would he have left his house to the ex-wife he obviously couldn't stand if he was in his right mind? That's gotta be a fake will or there's some nefarious reason. And I might know what that reason is. I just got done talking to my friends at the Landover police department. Everyone thinks it's weird how these murders and disappearances suddenly stopped the minute Jackson's heart did."
I looked at Rosalie then back at Caleb, trying not to look at my purse where I still had a suspicious bone in the compartment usually reserved for my cell phone.
Caleb went on. "You gonna pretend you don't know about the murders?"
"I was told when I came into town, but I don't know much."
"Well, go on down to the library and catch up on some local news." He looked at me about 10 seconds too long before leaving, as if not knowing enough about a murder somehow made you an accomplice to it. Potter Grove's finest, right there.
Rosalie turned to me. “It’s just a rumor that’s been making the rounds. You remember how small towns are.”
I nodded. I was all too familiar.
“Jackson died about four months ago, around the same time the last strippers went missing. And no one’s gone missing since. That’s all. People talking nonsense. It’s nothing.”
"Strippers?" I said. No wonder they were accusing my ex. He did have a thing for strippers. And there was that bone in his yard... nobody but me knew that last part, though.
I still didn't think the bone in my purse could possibly have belonged to one of the missing women, though. Sure, my ex-husband had changed a lot over the years, and he did have a penchant for boozing it up with strippers. But murdering them and burying them in his backyard? That seemed like an awful lot of work for a privileged man who probably didn't even know if he owned a shovel. Besides, the ladies were only missing for four months. Even if they died on the first day, they wouldn't have been reduced to a skeleton yet. And this bone was about as clean as they got. I'd quietly turn it into Justin later.
But first I needed to learn more about these murders.
Chapter 6
Strippers
Right as you walk into the Landover County Library, on the back wall just above the copiers, hangs a gigantic black-and-white photo of the building's ribbon-cutting ceremony taken sometime in the 50s. Mrs. Nebitt, the town librarian, is the one holding the gigantic scissors. She was scowling then too.
I nodded my hello to her, but she barely peered up from behind the humungous computer monitor that hid all but the tiny glare from her coke bottle glasses and a tuft of cottony hair. Still, I thought she'd be happy to see me. Not too many people came into this library on a regular basis, but I had always been one of them. I waved. "Hi, Mrs. Nebitt. Remember me? It's Carly." I almost said "Carly Mae," only remembering at the last second to leave the Mae part off. She grunted out an irritated shushing noise. Aww, she did remember me.
Twelve years ago, when I first walked into this library and signed up for a library card, she'd given me that same disapproving look, like I had been trying to obtain a fake ID or something. Cheat the town out of a whole slew of funny-smelling paperbacks. Then, after finding out I was about to be Jackson Bowman's wife, she made a point of telling me what she thought of that.
"Tell me something," she said, over-enunciating each syllable. "What kind of a young lady marries her much older professor? And what kind of a man does she get? A decent one?" I thought at the time that she was just bitter and mean, and that she should mind her own business and stop talking in cryptic riddles. And now, her scowl was extra smug. She'd been right.
I grabbed a stack of Gazettes and sat down with them at the one rectangular table in the periodicals section right next to an extra-large "Quiet" sign. My chair made a screeching sound across the tile and Mrs. Nebitt shushed me again, even though we were the only two in the library. Apparently, decent people worked on Thursday mornings, and everyone else should be scolded for drawing attention to their squeaky chairs and lack of employment.
Every single Landover Gazette had a story about the murders and the missing women. No wonder Caleb thought it was suspicious that I hadn't heard much about them. They'd been the talk of the town for some time. He didn't realize there was a lot of news like this in Indianapolis. So much so, we hardly needed to get more of it from other cities.
The girls ranged in age from 18 to 24, all were nude dancers, two had lived in Potter Grove, two from Landover. I started at the beginning with an article titled, Police Still Baffled By Missing Women. I thought about the police here in Potter Grove. That sounded about right.
Trish Jenkins, 24, and Kelly Moore, 23, were last seen at work at the Night Owl in Landover on October 31 and were reported missing three days later by their parents after not returning calls or texts. Police do not suspect foul play at this time. Sources say the women were roommates behind on their rent and known to leave town for various questionable parties, sometimes not returning for days.
I scanned through the pile of nothing-new articles until I found the next interesting one, the date their bodies were discovered. March 4.
Local Boy Scouts Make Gruesome Discovery
While collecting trash along Main Street Saturday morning, Boy Scout Troop 9071 at first thought they'd found a wig sticking out of the dirt. Upon further investigation it was determined to be human remains. Police were summoned immediately. No confirmation has been made on the identities of the victims, but they are believed to be those of missing Landover dancers, Trish Jenkins and Kelly Moore.
The strangest part was that they were found without clothes or fingers. Police later discovered the fingers, stripped of flesh straight down to the bones, in a Ziploc bag next to the bodies.
I wondered if they were the same Ziploc bags I had frozen pizza in right now. I couldn't stop reading between the lines that the bone in my purse was probably connected to these women.
Apparently, the still-missing women were the younger of the bunch. One was just about to turn 19 when she went missing in March. She was stripping her way through college at Landover University, and her parents were particularly distraught in one of the interviews, blaming themselves because they couldn't afford her education, begging for her safe return. She was an English major who always wore a large blue pendant necklace her parents gave her when she started college. It had a Shakespearean quote engraved on the back: We know what we are, but not what we may be.
I felt my shoulders hunching as I read. I had been 19 when I took Jackson's class. I was an English major too. Had she been one of his pupils? I couldn't help but notice the woman had similarities to both me and Jackson’s second wife, Destiny.
Whoever wrote the article made it seem like these women ha
d it coming to them. "Seen around town in scantily clad dresses, inviting perversion."
Inviting perversion?
I realized I was clenching my teeth and I tried to relax. I used to blame Destiny for Jackson cheating on me, like her "scantily clad clothes" had invited his perversion. Truth was, he was the one who caused his own perversion. He was the problem. I almost wished he was also a murderer. Then, I'd have another reason to hate him. Then, the threat would be over for any more women. But, I honestly didn't think he could have done this.
I gathered up the Gazettes and carefully put them away so I wouldn't get an extra scowl. Then I grabbed my purse to head down to the station.
"I knew you'd come in here." It was Caleb Bowman's booming voice, yelling from across the library. Mrs. Nebitt didn't even shush him. "Did you find some evidence at your house that you're looking up? Is that the reason my cousin gave you everything? Because he knew you'd be the one person who'd cover up a murder for him?"
I whisper-yelled back to him. "You are really grasping at straws here, Caleb, and we both know it. Nobody plans things out like that, and besides, I would be the last person to help that man out, dead or alive."
"You might for a free house and a significant inheritance.”
Mrs. Nebitt shushed me. Me. Even though Caleb had been yelling the entire time.
I lowered my voice even lower. "You'll stop at nothing to try to take that inheritance, though, huh?"
There was no way he could have known I had discovered evidence at my house unless he planted that evidence, if it was evidence, which it probably wasn’t.
I pushed by him and went straight to the police station, only because I knew Caleb wouldn't be there. And I could trust the deputy. Maybe.
Christine, a middle-aged woman with short red hair, thick cheeks, and a wide smile, rushed over as soon as I stepped through the door. "Carly Mae. I heard you were back in town."
I gave her a quick hug. Justin and Christine both seemed normal. I had no idea how they put up with a spastic man-child like Caleb day after day. "Is Justin here?"
"No, he's out on patrol. Why?"
I briefly thought about giving her the evidence, but I wasn't sure it was even evidence or what was going on. "Can I leave you my number to have him call me?"
"Sure. Why? He's single, you know? And just as cute as ever."
I was starting to notice you couldn't be a single woman in Potter Grove without people trying to throw men at you. I wondered briefly why I left.
When I didn’t say anything, Christine’s smile fell. “That’s right. I forgot you two dated.” She quickly looked down at her paperwork again, making me realize my reputation around this place might be tainted by whatever stories Justin Fortworth was telling everyone.
I scribbled my number and a quick "Call me as soon as you get this" note on the sticky note she handed me, debating for a good half a minute whether I should add that it was about business so he wouldn't think something else. I didn't.
Then I hightailed it over to the Walmart to pick up some food for the house and the ugliest swimsuit I could find to shower in. I did not trust my awful, perverted dead ex-husband to know his boundaries at my house. He was, after all, still the problem.
But before Rosalie got rid of him tomorrow, he had some explaining to do, about bones in the yard and possible missing strippers.
Chapter 7
On Shaky Ground
Brock's large white work truck was already waiting for me when I got up the hill to Gate House. He was right on time. In more ways than one, I was pretty sure.
He looked exactly the same as yesterday -- same blue uniform and work pants -- but when he got out of his truck, my mouth dropped. I'd forgotten how good exactly-the-same could look sometimes. I adjusted my curls and sucked in my stomach before getting out of my car. The humidity instantly smacked my face and threatened my hair again. Rats. I was going to look exactly the same too.
"You look good," he said, making me happy I'd taken the time to touch up my lip gloss while heading up the hill.
He grabbed two of the bags from my grasp, and I made sure neither had the awful grandma swimsuit in it that I bought for wearing around my ex, something I still couldn’t believe I had to do. Not for long. Rosalie was coming tomorrow, I reminded myself.
As we made our way to the veranda, I squinted at the patio table and chairs. They seemed to be shaking a little. The small potted plant on the side of the kitchen door jiggled like it was doing a dance then fell over.
Slowly, I put my foot on the first step up to the porch. An almost shocking vibration ran up my leg, making my veins itch. I pulled it off again. The veranda was shaking, all right. It had to be my dead ex-husband. I couldn't wait to get rid of that guy.
Was he going to be like this every time people came over?
Brock was about to step onto the veranda when the front door swung open and a cloud of dust almost smacked us in the face. All I could see was a swiftly moving broom, but I knew who was holding it. Mrs. Harpton. I'd forgotten she always came on Thursdays. I'd only met the woman two other times. Jackson used to say she was the only housekeeper the Bowman family trusted with the Victorian.
But I always avoided the strange woman when I was married, which was just fine with Mrs. Harpton. She liked to do her cleaning and managing of the property without anyone around. According to her, “People slowed her."
Her long, heavy, black dress scratched along the veranda as she moved. Her dark hair was always severely parted in the middle and plastered to her head in lumpy waves that seemed to poof out at the bottom and tuck into themselves.
When she saw us approaching, she curved her mouth farther down into its folds and shooed us away with the broom. "Not done yet," she said in lieu of a smile. Her voice quivered as she spoke. "Come back in 20 minutes."
I stepped onto the shaky veranda. "We won't get in your way," I said. "I promise. But we do need to get into the house. We have to set up the phone and cable."
"Don't care," she said, briskly spinning about with her broom. She looked like a stiff dark blur with movements that were both fluid and mechanical at the same time. "Phone and cable were supposed to come at 11:00, but you changed the appointment."
"Yes," I said. "I changed it because I was busy at eleven."
"Be done in 20 minutes. Come back then," she said, shutting the door behind her.
I looked back at Brock, who seemed to be laughing a little under his breath.
"I think she's using some kind of machine or something that's shaking the house. It's probably best if we just wait the twenty minutes."
We put the bags back in my car and Brock suggested we go for a walk around the outside of my house, something I didn't exactly want to do. I was wearing my good sandals and the outside of the house was mostly just overgrown bushes and trees, lots of places to catch Lyme Disease or find the dead strippers your husband killed.
The cicadas picked up as we made our way around the wooded area. Sweat dripped along the back of my neck, and I briefly thought about going back to the car to get a beer, but Brock probably couldn't drink on the job, and it wouldn’t be polite to drink in front of him.
Every once in a while, he'd look over at me and smile, the side of his face growing red. "Don't tell Tina, but back when we were all working at Thriftway, I was going to ask you out first."
I smiled, remembering those days. It seemed like ages ago. "Things probably would've been a lot different if you had," I admitted, immediately kicking myself for saying something so telling. Truth was, I wasn’t sure I believed him right now. He was probably saying what he thought a second fiddle wanted to hear, when first fiddle was no longer an option.
Everyone thought Brock and Tina were going to get married. They’d been dating on and off again for forever. Then, Tina had her first "rough spell" about four years ago. One day the poor girl seemed fine and the next, she was freaking out at the Shop-Quik, yelling that grizzly bears with blue-shoveled claws were conspiring
with her mother to bite all of her limbs off, eat them like hotdogs.
I was just about to ask Brock about Tina when he stopped walking. “I always wanted to know something about you.”
I stopped and looked at him, his blue eyes seemed to almost sparkle in the sunlight.
"Why’d you marry Jackson? He was so old.” He paused. He looked down at his work boots then back up again.
Great. The rumor was back again. Everyone, including the town librarian, thought I dumped Justin for the obvious reasons.
“His money," I said because the question took me by surprise, and it had been rude.
He chuckled. "I heard it was daddy issues. You didn’t grow up with a dad.”
“Neither did you,” I shot back then thought better about it. I stared at him, not sure how to correct my snippiness, not sure I wanted to. It was something Brock and I had in common. I knew Rosalie's sister adopted him, right before her husband died. We both only had adopted moms growing up.
Mine had a slightly different story, though. My mother was one of those power-suit-wearing 80s-ladies who pummeled through glass ceilings with her shoulder pads. First woman engineer at Stellaplex in 1975. First woman supervisor by '83. But sometime along the way, in her early 40s, she looked around and realized she'd forgotten to have kids. So she took the next logical step and adopted. She didn’t need a man in the picture. And we never had one.
I shrugged. "It doesn't matter, anyway,” I said. "Things were good with Jackson until they weren't. But he wasn't like a dad. He was someone I could trust who protected me. Sure, he told corny jokes, but he gave pretty good advice and... oh god, maybe there were some daddy issues in there."
He slipped his hand into mine and turned toward me. I felt myself holding my breath. “We should get dinner sometime and really catch up on things," he said, looking first at the forest then up at the sky. He seemed to be avoiding my eyes.