Well, she supposed no one was in a great hurry around here anyway. What did it matter if it took the thing ten minutes to go from floor to floor?
Once she was on the lower level, a flash of hot pink caught her eye. She spun around to see what she’d caught in her peripheral vision, but it had disappeared.
She walked down the empty hall, her shoes echoing against the shiny marble floor.
The rows of dearly departed—stacked one upon the other clear up to the ceiling like Campbell Soup cans on the grocery aisle—were disconcerting. Small alcoves held special memorials, which was nice, but those touches didn’t cancel out the place’s creep factor.
On her search for the restroom, she spotted a large wooden bureau tucked into a small alcove. Although her bladder was complaining, she had to stop and look through it because it seemed like a perfect place to hide something. Something like a pair of priceless cowgirl gloves.
With a quick look to the left and right, she walked over and carefully slid open the top drawer. Her pulse bunny-hopping, she quietly made her way through every one of the twelve drawers of varying sizes.
She slid the last drawer closed, and the excitement inside her burst. The entire chest was empty.
Well, that would’ve been too easy, wouldn’t it?
Although it would’ve been terribly fun to waltz back upstairs and show the other gals she’d found exactly what they’d come for.
Since that wasn’t the case, her only direction was onward.
Finally, she spotted the bathroom door. Shoot, she’d already spent six and a half of her twenty minutes hunting down the potty.
Inside the ladies’ room was a well-decorated anteroom. It held a plush couch and chairs positioned around a high-quality area rug. Slender vases, nearly as tall as she, stood in the corners, their plumes of foliage giving the otherwise stark space a softer look. Lil pulled out a drawer on the antique makeup table with an ornate mirror hanging above. Nice, but it was a reproduction, not the real deal.
Inside the restroom itself, the smell of ammonia and a sickeningly sweet freshener hung in the air. She went into the last stall, locking herself in to do her business. As she did, quick-heeled footsteps entered the anteroom.
Those couldn’t be Maggie’s footsteps. Maggie walked with purpose, not with a flurry of quicksteps that tapped out the tempo of a good foxtrot.
“Sera?”
No answer.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She cleared her throat, hoping whoever it was would make themselves known, because being alone in this place gave her the creeps. And being alone with her panties down was darn-right unnerving. On a positive note, those hadn’t been heavy men’s footsteps. Then again, if the footsteps weren’t a man’s and they weren’t a woman’s, then what else could be out there? Visions of ghosts, or worse…hot pink zombies…made it impossible to relax.
Maybe those footsteps had been her imagination, but her heart rate still seemed to be convinced otherwise.
At the sink, she washed her hands and glanced up to catch another flash of hot pink. Florescent zombies?
Lord, where was Daryl Dixon from the Walking Dead when she needed him?
* * *
Although still slightly sore from her lumpectomy and the long drive from Texas, Abby Ruth dressed herself and headed down the stairs, half expecting to be ambushed after what she’d let fly last night. But Summer Haven was strangely quiet.
Almost disappointingly so.
Just like that anonymous Houston hotel room had been last week.
More than once, she’d wished one of her friends or Jenny had been there with her. But why burden people? What they hadn’t known hadn’t hurt them.
Which was the reason she’d gone back to Texas in the first place. Otherwise, they would’ve been fluttering around her asking things like “Do you need help?” and “Can I bring you some water?”
She’d been perfectly fine handling the procedure all by herself.
Or had she?
Maybe her memory of feeling scared and alone could be blamed on the knock-out drugs she’d been given.
“Anyone here?” she called out.
Silence.
Fine. Perfect, actually. I didn’t want to talk about it anyway.
What she really wanted to do was go organize her guns, introducing the old guard to the newest family members, so she headed outside.
Before she could unlock her trailer, Jenny’s BMW came hauling butt up the driveway, a dusty rooster tail pluming behind it. She executed a tight turn, and the car’s rear-end arced around before she came to a rocking stop. If Abby Ruth hadn’t known better, she might think her daughter was competing in a professional fishtailing competition.
Jenny jumped out of her car. “I turned your phone to silent last night, but I expected you to text me when you woke up today.”
“Honestly, Jenny, I never checked my phone. It’s still upstairs.”
“What’re you up to?” Her daughter slid between her and the back of her horse trailer, much like Sera had intercepted her the evening before.
Abby Ruth held up her hands, the sweet Slotter Derringer in the right and a Spanish Miguelet in the left. “Getting my new babies settled in. It was careless of me to leave them in the truck last night.”
Rolling a hand in the general direction of Abby Ruth’s bustline, Jenny said, “I think we should talk about this…the…your…”
“You can say the word. Believe me, I’ve heard it plenty lately.” She set the guns on the back step rail of the trailer and dug in her pocket for her keys.
Jenny launched herself at Abby Ruth and wrapped her in a hug, pinning her arms to her side.
Abby Ruth let a humiliating high-pitched squeak escape her, and Jenny immediately pulled away. “What is it? What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
Sidestepping her daughter’s fluttering, the kind she’d hoped to avoid, Abby Ruth said, “I’m fine. Just a little sore.”
“From what?”
“You won’t leave this alone until you know every detail, are you?”
“Mom, I’m seriously torn between hugging you and strangling you right now. Of course I want to know everything. Now why did you flinch when I touched you?”
Maybe she should’ve stayed in Texas. Then again, Jenny, Maggie, and the others probably would’ve marched their happy heinies all the way to Houston if she’d stayed there for radiation treatment.
But she hadn’t decided about that yet.
“I have what’s called DCIS.”
“Ductal carcinoma in situ.”
“How did you know?”
“What do you think I’ve spent the past twelve hours doing?” Jenny rubbed her forehead, the line between her eyebrows attesting to the stress Abby Ruth had caused her.
“The internet can be a dangerous place.” Hell, she knew that from the online dating ring she and the gals had busted up a while back.
“That’s good news, though, right? Stage 0 cancer?”
“Which is the reason I didn’t feel the need to blab my business all over the place.” She turned her back on Jenny and started messing with the lock on the trailer, her nerves suddenly twanging like a two-bit banjo.
“Blab? Telling your daughter and best friends that you have cancer is not blabbing. It’s called sharing.”
“Fine. You want me to share? The reason your hug hurt was because I had a lumpectomy while I was in Houston.”
“You did not.” Jenny glanced at her chest. “You did not have surgery without telling me.”
“Sugar, it was a day thing.”
“And then you drove back to Georgia by yourself. My God, sometimes I think you shouldn’t be let loose alone. Even Grayson would know not to do something so stupid.”
“I should remind you that Grayson doesn’t have a driver’s license.” She stuck her key in the lock and clicked it open.
“Don’t go in there!”
“What? Why?”
“Because
…um…”
“If I find out Maggie has taken to storing her tools in here while I was gone, I will give her a talking to.” She opened the door and hopped up.
When she turned to grab the guns, Jenny was frozen except for her lips, which looked like the goldfish Grayson had recently begged Abby Ruth to buy him. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” Jenny moaned and dropped her face into her hands. “I’ve failed.”
“You are pregnant. I told Sera that was the reason you’ve been acting so crazy.” She stepped back down out of the trailer. “I remember when you got knocked up with Grayson, I swear it was like your brain had been sucked out by aliens and replaced with Jell-O salad. The kind with a bunch of nuts in it.”
“I am not pregnant. I’m not married yet.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “I can’t believe you just said that. You know how that whole pregnancy thing works, right?”
“Dammit, Mom. Listen to me!”
“Then say something worth hearing.”
“They’re gone.”
“The aliens?”
“No, the guns.”
Abby Ruth glanced down at the guns she was holding. “They’re right here.”
“No, the rest of them. You see, they were here, and then Lil and the others rented out your room. Then they were gone,” Jenny babbled.
“So someone squatted in my room and then they left?”
“No, every last one of your guns is missing.”
What? A hazy film covered Abby Ruth’s eyesight, and she swayed against the trailer door. Her guns were gone? No! That was almost as bad as if someone had snatched up Grayson.
“I’m sorry. We didn’t want to tell you last night because—”
Carelessly, she dumped her new babies into Jenny’s arms and hightailed it toward the other end of the trailer.
Sure enough, when she opened the door to the compartment that normally held her most precious treasures, it was empty. She sucked in what felt like her last breath.
This time, the sound of pain that came from her was low and mournful.
Chapter 11
Hand to her thumping chest, Lil spun around to see a chestnut-haired woman about her same height, dressed in highlighter pink from the top of her hat to the tips of her pumps, sitting in a Queen Anne chair in the anteroom. A half-smile on her lips, she rotated her pointy-toed shoe in a slow circle.
A light chuckle escaped Lil. This lovely woman was anything but a zombie. “You startled me.” Lil balled up the paper towel and dropped it into the waste bin.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t mean to.”
Well, then why hadn’t she answered when Lil called out?
“Unless a service is in progress, usually there aren’t many people around Holy Innocence except for the occasional cleaning crew.” The woman leaned forward and picked up a dainty teacup from the glass-and-chrome table in front of her.
Tea? Well if this wasn’t the oddest place for a such a beautifully dressed woman to take tea.
“I’m clearly not part of the cleaning crew.” Lil stood taller, glad she’d taken the extra time to dress in a nice blouse and skirt for the visit, unlike Maggie and Sera who came as they were in jeans and yoga pants. A resting ground should command a certain amount of respect. Clearly she and this woman had the same philosophy. “And it’s a shame that more people don’t visit their loved ones here.”
Even though Harlan hadn’t left this world on a high note, Lil still placed flowers on his grave and paid him due respect for the many wonderful years they’d spent together.
“I find most people aren’t as dedicated as we’d like to think they are in honoring their dearly departed. I seem to be a minority.” The woman took a sip of her tea. “Are you here visiting family?”
Not wanting to tell the complete truth about why she was here today, Lil said, “Not exactly. I attended a service recently but didn’t get the opportunity to see the beautiful stained glass. I thought I’d do a self-guided tour.”
“The Jessie Wyatt funeral?”
“The exact one.”
“You knew her?”
“Do I look like a funeral crasher?” Lil said, reluctant to admit that she was a friend of a friend of Jessie’s.
“Not at all.”
Well, that was certainly a relief. “I saw Hulk Hogan.” Now, why in the world had she blurted that out? This woman probably didn’t know who he was.
“You don’t say,” she said. “I spotted Michael Douglas and Sam Elliott.”
“You were here?”
“I’m here almost every day,” she said with a serene smile. “My husband, Ronald, didn’t much care to be alone when he was alive, so I try to spend several hours with him each day. Seems only right.”
Goodness, now that was devotion. “How nice.”
“The gauntlet theft has been all over the news.”
The woman seemed to be looking Lil over. Had she seen the footage the paparazzi had taken from the chopper? Did she recognize her as the woman touching the gauntlets? Lil’s stomach swirled.
“Seems so odd that they could go missing in plain sight. Don’t you think?” The woman in pink sat back and thrummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “But I doubt it was personal.”
“Stealing at a funeral? That seems terribly personal.”
“You’d be surprised what drives people to do things you’d think they would never, ever do.”
Lil felt a flush creep up her body to her cheeks. If this woman only knew the lengths some people would go, she certainly wouldn’t be sitting here sipping and chatting with Lil.
“People will do crazy things for money. It’s a master manipulator.” The woman’s lips pursed as if she’d sucked on the lemon floating in her tea cup. “Can tempt those you’d never think would harbor a bad thought. But then maybe someone couldn’t bear the idea of Jessie’s precious items being locked in that vault for eternity. Nostalgia is powerful too.”
She was right. Lil had crossed the line herself to keep up appearances when Harlan had let her down. And if someone was willing to steal from the dead because they wanted a memento, rather than money, maybe one of those Jessie Wyatt lookalikes was guiltier than they’d thought.
“Last week was my first time in a mausoleum,” Lil said. “I’m curious if you’ve ever seen anything strange happen around here?”
“What do you mean?”
It wouldn’t do to make her suspicious, so Lil said casually, “Oh, it’s such a large and fascinating place, I figure all kinds of people pass through.”
“Well, there’s plenty to see. Did you know there’s a vault in the outdoor pavilion the size of a garage because someone wanted to bury her husband with his John Deere tractor?”
Lillian could picture stuffing Harlan in a huge vault with those darned scratcher tickets. Somehow that would’ve been just deserts to have him half-suffocated in the middle of those black trash bags. She stepped forward and extended her hand. “Oh, I’m Lillian Summer Fairview. From over Summer Shoals way.”
The woman tipped her head to the side, her hat shading her face. She hesitated for only a moment then took Lil’s hand. “Rosemary Myrtle.”
“As in Myrtle Knolls?”
“One and the same.”
No wonder Lil felt such a kinship with this woman. They were both matriarchs of their respective communities. “Perhaps we could have lunch one day. I have a feeling we have a great deal in common.”
“I’d like that.”
As Lil shook Rosemary’s hand, she noticed it was past the time to meet up with Sera and Maggie. “A pleasure. I must be off,” Lil said, then rushed out and back toward the elevator. With each step, she thought of the woman she’d just met. Why weren’t there more ladies like Rosemary around? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a civilized tea once in a while? Tiny sandwiches, decadent desserts, and reminiscing about how things used to be.
Yes, that would be a wonderful way to spen
d an afternoon.
As she hurried past, the door to the loading dock was open and something caught her eye. She turned and walked back to find a bluebonnet lying in the middle of the floor.
How on earth had that gotten down here?
* * *
While she and Maggie waited for Lil to return from the ladies’ room, Sera glanced around at the mausoleum’s granite walls. The place had seemed safe enough a few days ago when they came for Jessie’s service, but today, all that cold stone felt foreign, foreboding, almost menacing.
Maybe the feeling was a reflection of her nagging guilt about not letting Marcus know what she and the other ladies were up to. He deserved to know, but she didn’t want him to tell her she shouldn’t get involved, because that would feel like a step backward when it seemed as if they might be finding each other again.
Besides, he hadn’t told her everything about his goings-on lately either. But today was about helping her friends, so she pushed her thoughts of Marcus aside and focused on her surroundings.
Huge murals of stained glass told stories from the Bible, but still the place felt like trouble.
Which was crazy.
Many of the panels etched with names, birthdates, and death dates were also labeled with nice sentiments like “She will be missed” and “His light shines on.” But most reduced a person’s entire life to a name given to them by someone else, two dates, and a dash.
“It’s all in what you make of the dash,” she said wistfully.
“What?” Maggie said.
Sera trailed her fingertips across Cecil K. Clementine’s vault, traced the curve of the Cs and the edges of the K. “Cecil’s dash lasted from 1948 to 2015. What do you think he did with it?”
“We don’t know Cecil.” Maggie pulled Sera’s hand down. “Do we?”
“Well, no.”
“Sera, did you sneak some of my iced tea before we left the house this morning? Because I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She whispered, but her voice still carried in the stark stone space.
“Have you ever thought, really thought, about the fact that we only get so much time to walk this earth? And we don’t get to say when or where our time is up?”
Under the Gun Page 10