by Judy Clemens
And what about the second line, about where “they” are now? Where could they be? Boise? Brazil? Graveyard? Jail?
Death drifted up to sit on—or above—the counter. “If you found some old photos in Vern and Dottie’s house you might be able to figure out who they are. Or at least who Dottie is. She’s bound to have some pictures of herself from back then, even if they don’t have them sitting out.”
“More snooping?” Casey picked up the envelope to replace the photo, but Death waved a hand over it.
“Snap a picture first.”
Casey frowned, but used her phone to do as Death suggested. If she was going to put names to faces she would need a copy, even as blurred as it was. “Remind me again why we’re getting involved? Why I don’t take off down the road?”
“Because that’s what you do.”
“Stick my nose in other people’s business?”
“No, take care of people around you. Especially ones who have been kind and given you a place to stay when you were injured.”
“Maybe they did that so they can kill me in my sleep.” She slid the photo into the envelope and stuck it on the bottom of the bill pile. “I should leave and find someplace else.”
Death took on the annoying know-it-all tone Casey hated. “Do Vern and Dottie look like serial killers to you?”
“What exactly do serial killers look like?”
“You know. Crazy.”
Casey shook her head.
Death hopped off the counter, moving in a remarkably human-like fashion. “Wherever you end up there’s weird stuff happening. You know that. It’s human nature. And it’s your life. You’re a drama magnet.”
“But why is it always creepy drama? Because you can’t tell me this isn’t creepy. A threatening letter, an ancient photo from a fatal party, and the town treating Dottie like a pariah.”
“The townspeople don’t seem to care when it comes to what they can get from the store. Lunch, movies, that tiny little screwdriver to fix glasses. It’s like Vern by himself is okay, but when you add Dottie into the mix…”
So Death had seen the same contradiction.
The back door slapped shut, and the sound of footsteps filtered into the office. Casey checked quickly to make sure the photo was out of sight under the other letters as Vern came around the corner. The look of devastation on his face told her all she needed to know about Dottie’s appointment. She shoved papers off the chair behind the little desk, and he dropped onto it.
“Should I close the store? Vern?”
“What? Oh, no. You can’t close.”
But when the door dinged he spun to face the back of the room.
Casey rented the customer the latest Fast and Furious movie, sold him popcorn and candy, and saw him out the door.
“Vern? What’s wrong? What happened?” The envelope with the Halloween photo lay unremarkably under the stack of bills, so he couldn’t have seen that. Unless he and Dottie had gotten another one at their house.
But she knew it wasn’t about that. This was worse.
Vern’s expression was bleak. “It’s Dottie. The doctor said she has only a few weeks to live.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Casey’s stomach dropped and Death shot away, maybe to check on Dottie.
“I’m sorry.” Casey wasn’t sure if Vern wanted to talk, or if she should leave him alone, so she waited.
“It’s cancer,” he said. “You probably guessed.”
She had, even though the rest of the town had not. Or maybe they wanted her to be dying from something rare and exotic. And scandalous.
He swiped a hand down his face. “She was diagnosed last year when she started having back pain. The doctor ran tests and gave us the bad news. Would you believe it originated as lung cancer? Never smoked a cigarette in her life, hasn’t lived with smokers. Docs say it could be from radon, or asbestos, or who-knows-what. I don’t know why they even guess. I don’t think they really have any idea.” He let out a long breath. “She’s been through it all. Radiation. Chemo. Surgery. All of it stopped working eventually. Now she’s on an experimental hormone, takes it in pills. But we found out today…it’s not working anymore.” He stared at the wall.
A customer came in asking for a receipt from the gas pump, which had run out of paper. Casey printed it out and thanked him. He saw Vern, but either didn’t have anything to say or didn’t want to.
“So what’s next?”
Vern shook his head. “There is no next. We’ve exhausted our options. Now next is…” He rested his head on his arms.
“Why don’t you go home? I’ll call if I need anything.”
He sat quietly for so long Casey thought maybe he’d drifted off, but he soon sat up. “Dot’s sleeping now. Nothing I can do, anyway, except house stuff, and she gets upset if I do too much because then she feels like she can’t do anything.” He slapped his knees and stood up. “So, how ’bout I show you how to change the paper in the gas pump?”
Casey didn’t argue.
On the way out Casey slipped the blank envelope from the bottom of the bill pile and shoved it under her jeans at the small of her back, hidden by her T-shirt. Vern and Dottie had enough to deal with. They didn’t need to try to decipher another cryptic message.
After a quick tutorial on changing the receipt roll, she and Vern were met by Roger, who came by in his usual unscheduled fashion to work. Vern and Casey used the time to clean out the deep freeze, which opened into the back hallway. They didn’t talk much, but Casey felt it might be a good time to find out some things, while they were both busy doing stuff.
“So,” Casey said after a trip to the Dumpster with some freezer-burned hamburger, “I re-stocked the shelves with those Halloween costumes today, and the new boxes of Halloween candy came in, too. Does Armstrong go all out for this holiday, or what?” She hoped a casual inquiry might lead to that tragic Halloween so long ago.
Vern sat back from where he crouched in the far corner. His lips were turning blue.
“We’re almost done, right?” Casey asked.
He stood up, flexing his fingers. “Probably should take a break.” They went into the main store and he blew on his hands. “Guess I ought to do this in shorter stints.”
“So…” Casey tried not to sound too pushy. “Halloween?”
Vern wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Just another excuse to get out and have a little fun. An hour of trick-or-treating, a costume contest down at the fire station. Nothing too big, but a little something for the kids. We don’t get many people from out of town, like some of the wealthier places, but a few come to beg for candy down Main Street, mostly.” His voice stayed level, not matching the enthusiasm of the actual words.
“Do you give out anything here at the store?”
“Sure, a little treat, and I grill hot dogs for the families who are out. It’s a fun night.”
Casey watched as he absent-mindedly straightened soup cans on a nearby shelf. “You don’t seem to be a fan. Or…” Shame washed over her. “I’m sorry, I’m being insensitive after today. Of course you don’t want to talk about Halloween.”
“No, no, you’re right. It isn’t my favorite holiday. Not Dottie’s, either.”
Should she ask? He gave her an opening. “How come you don’t like it?” She thought about the photo shoved in her jeans. Could the party have anything to do with the couple’s feelings about the holiday? There was obviously something connecting the Dailys to the group of women in the picture, or the anonymous sender wouldn’t have sent it, well, anonymously. Casey didn’t know for certain Dottie was in the shot, or if it was even the deadly party. It could have been from a different year altogether.
But she doubted it.
“I told you before,” Vern said.
“I don’t remember you saying you don’t like Halloween.”
“No, about her moving here with me.”
“That was at Halloween?”
“No.” Vern moved down the row, straightening boxes, flicking dust with his fingers. “A long time ago, when Dottie moved here with me, she had a hard time fitting in. That’s what I told you. You know, everybody had grown up here and had lots of family around. She felt like an outsider. This town didn’t embrace her like I’d hoped. She was a city girl, coming to the country, and maybe she could have been more approachable. I’m not going to say she was perfect, but she was one woman, and they were…a clique.”
“That’s hard.”
“It is. Was.” He walked into the cafe and slumped onto a chair. “There was one person who took the time to get to know her. One. Out of a whole town. It was pathetic.”
Casey sat at the next table. “Who was it?”
“Marianne Rush. She and Dottie hit it off like you wouldn’t believe. It made all the difference. If it hadn’t been for Marianne, I don’t know, maybe we wouldn’t have stayed. I sometimes wish we hadn’t, and I kind of blame Marianne, maybe unfairly, but there’s no point in dwelling on that, I guess.”
“So where is Marianne now? I don’t remember meeting her.” Or maybe they weren’t friends anymore. Casey winced. Maybe it was Flower Pants.
Vern scratched his nose. “She’s gone.”
So, not Flower Pants. “Gone as in dead?”
He jerked his head up. “No! I didn’t mean that. Gone as in…somewhere else. Just up and went. A long time ago. Took off with some guy, left her husband and kids. Her children came home from trick-or-treating, divvied up their candy before bed, and didn’t realize until the next morning that she was gone.”
“Oh. Halloween.”
“Right.” He sat back. “Dottie and Marianne were going to hand out candy at the church that night. Marianne called to say something had come up and she couldn’t do it, she was sick or something. Dottie was upset and said some things she regretted immediately, but when she tried to call Marianne back, there was no answer. Dottie was heartbroken. In fact, I don’t think she’s ever recovered. Sometimes I wonder if it didn’t contribute to—” he waved his hand “—what’s going on now. ”
A broken heart certainly could mess with your health. Casey knew that for a fact. She herself may not have cancer, but if she didn’t force herself to run and perform her katas, she would have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning.
“Did Dottie know the guy Marianne ran away with?”
Vern rubbed at something on the tablecloth. Dried ketchup, maybe? “If she did she’s never told me, and that would be a big secret to keep when you’re as close as we are.”
“It was a total surprise? Dottie didn’t have a clue?”
“Looking back she could see some changes. Canceled lunches, a new haircut, a diet. At the time she thought Marianne was trying to better herself, you know? She was a young mother, feeling trapped and like she’d lost part of herself.”
That would have been tricky, since Dottie had been hoping to be a mother, too. How do you sympathize with your friend for feeling like a homebound mom when that life was stolen from you?
“But Marianne took it farther than we ever imagined she would.” He shook his head. “Everybody blamed Dottie.”
“Dottie? Why? She wasn’t the one having an affair, and if she didn’t know anything—”
“Who’s going to believe that? Her best friend has a lover and she doesn’t know? The whole town thinks she’s been holding back all these years. That we have.”
Could that really be the reason for all the bad feelings? That they didn’t believe she didn’t know about her friend’s affair? That seemed like a stretch.
“Didn’t Marianne tell her family it wasn’t Dottie’s fault? If Dottie told her how bad things had gotten—”
“Marianne never got in touch with her family after that night.”
Casey stared at him. “What?”
“Never called them. Didn’t want anything to do with them. She wrote to Dottie once—one time—to say she was all right and was sorry for leaving, but she hadn’t been happy here. She had to go. Wasn’t even a return address on the envelope. Dottie never…she never had another friend like that. It about killed her.” He looked exhausted, and Casey felt a twinge of guilt for making him remember such a sad time, especially on a day when he’d already had enough bad news. But she still had one more question.
“How long ago was this?”
He glanced at her, then quickly away. “This Halloween it will be forty-five years.”
Casey kept her face blank. Vern didn’t know she’d read the anonymous note, and there would be no other way for her to realize that number was important, so she couldn’t let on that it meant anything. But forty-five years ago Marianne left her family and a local Halloween party turned deadly.
“Forty-five years is a long time for a town to hold a grudge. Especially when Dottie wasn’t the one who did the actual destructive thing.”
“Tell me about it.”
Casey considered the photo she was hiding. More than ever she wondered if it was connected to the other anonymous note, or maybe Marianne’s disappearance. There was no way for Casey to know without finding out more. Should she show the photo to Vern? She wished Death were there to tell her what to do.
Vern pushed himself up from the table. “I’m going to check on Dottie. When I come back you can take a break.”
“I can stay.”
“I’ll see how long Roger feels like working. If he wants to go, I’ll take you up on it.”
He left, and Casey checked for customers before pulling the photo from her jeans. Was this picture taken before Dottie’s best friend left town? Or was she missing from this picture, having already disappeared? But no, Vern had said Dottie and Marianne were going to hand out candy at the church, and Marianne had begged off. Did that mean they weren’t going to the party at all? Or was the party later, after trick-or-treating? That would make sense. The women would get their sugar-laden children to bed before going out to have fun themselves.
Casey studied the faces of the women, searching for Marianne, for someone who looked like she desperately wanted out, and was about to make that happen.
Casey was surprised how many of the women fit that description.
Chapter Twenty-five
Since Roger seemed happy to be hanging out behind the counter for another hour or so, Casey set up lunch—sausage patties on the grill—so Vern could begin cooking when he returned from checking on Dottie. He was back within five minutes.
“Still sleeping. So you go on.”
“But it’s lunchtime. You’ll be busy.”
“I’ve done it a million times before, and the customers know the drill. Roger can take care of the money. If it makes you happy, you can help clean up when you get back.”
“But—”
“I was doing it myself long before you got here, and I’m violating all kinds of rules by having you work so many hours. So go. And don’t come back for a while.”
“The amount of time you spend over here can’t be within the rules.”
He grinned. “But I’m the owner. I can work myself as hard as I want. Who am I going to complain to?”
Casey laughed.
“Make sure you take one of the subs you made this morning. Don’t tell the lunch crowd, but they’re better than these sausage patties.”
She had to agree. The patties resembled flattened mud pies, and didn’t smell much better. But the men who showed up for lunch seemed to like them.
She chose a sub and purchased it from Roger—Vern didn’t have to know—along with a cold water and some baby carrots that didn’t look too old. The day was nice, if a little cool, so she figured she’d eat outside.
She ran to the house to get her sweatshirt and ditch the envelope stuck in her je
ans, careful not to wake Dottie. She tiptoed downstairs and opened her door, pulling the envelope from her waistband.
Dottie was sitting in the L of the room on the soft chair, her head resting on the back. In her arms was the stuffed pink puppy, held tightly against her chest. Her head rolled toward Casey, and Casey recognized the look in her eyes. Pain. Physical? Emotional? Casey wasn’t sure.
Casey held the envelope behind her and backed up a step. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Dottie struggled to sit up. “I shouldn’t have come into your room.”
“Please stay. It’s okay.”
Casey glanced at Dottie’s surroundings. The baby picture, the Boise State diploma, the mobile. Who were those things for? And what baby was that, seeing how the Dailys’ Anne Marie was both stillborn and a girl?
Casey eased the envelope onto a shelf in the outer room, thinking that would be less obvious than sticking it back in her jeans. She slipped into the bedroom, skimming the foot of the bed, as far from Dottie as she could get, and pulled her sweatshirt from her duffel bag. “I’m heading outside for lunch. Do you need anything?”
“Could you stay for a minute?”
Casey tried not to think about the Halloween photo as she sat on the edge of the bed.
Dottie didn’t speak. Instead, she gazed out one of the high windows. Casey waited. Not patiently, maybe, but calmly. After several minutes, her stomach growled, and she checked her watch. “Was there something you wanted to talk about, Dottie?”