Beyond the Grave

by Judy Clemens

  “Thanks for the picture.” Coop laughed. “Although you could have smiled.” Laughing, he screeched away, leaving tire marks on the road. Casey checked for children in the street, thankful they were all out of harm’s way.

  So, crap. What could he want her picture for? Was he in touch with people from Beltmore? Would he have any idea the cops were looking for her? Or was he just being a dick?

  Thinking of cops, Casey made a detour and swung by the police station, hoping Whistler would be there. Fortunately, the young officer was sitting behind the desk, laughing at something with Austin. She stood with one hip against the counter, while he leaned backward in a straight wooden chair, the front legs off the ground. Whistler buzzed Casey into the back.

  “Good lunch yesterday?” Casey asked Austin.

  He grinned. “The burgers we snuck out to get afterward were great.”

  “I warned him.” Whistler laughed. “He didn’t believe me.”

  “Did so.”

  “Did not.”

  “I specifically said, ‘My mom is a horrendous cook, we’ll have to order pizza.’ And you said, word for word, ‘It can’t be that bad.’”

  “Well, sure, because everyone thinks their mother’s cooking isn’t that great.”

  “They do not!”

  “Do so.”

  Casey cleared her throat.

  “Sorry.” Whistler’s eyes sparkled. “Did you need something?”

  “Well, yes. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Right. That’s usually why people come in.”

  Casey grinned back—because how could she not?—and sat in an empty chair. “Remember that Halloween party from a long time ago? The one where the woman died?”

  “Sure. The town’s big mystery.” She spoke in an exaggerated whisper, as if the whole thing were kind of a joke. But that could have been that she and Austin were in a joking mood and she hadn’t transitioned back to serious cop mode.

  Casey could forgive the attitude. She would give anything to feel that lighthearted again, even for a moment. “What about Marianne Rush?”

  Austin frowned. “Who’s that?”

  “The town’s other big mystery, I thought.”

  Whistler tapped her pen on the counter. “Right. The woman who disappeared.”

  “When was that?” Austin dropped the front legs of his chair onto the tile.

  Whistler shared a smile with Casey. “You have to forgive him. He’s new.”

  “Not so new.”

  “You’re a baby.”

  “Am not—”

  “So what do you know?” Casey asked, before they could get into another lengthy back and forth.

  “She took off the same night as the Halloween party, right? Marianne Rush up and left her family. Didn’t tell anybody, except supposedly Dorothy Daily.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “That’s the rumor, you know? That Dottie—and Vern, of course—have known all along where Marianne went, but they’ve refused to tell. The family is still mad.”

  “But the Dailys say they don’t know?”

  “That’s what I’m told. Not that people really talk about it much these days. I’ve never asked the Dailys. We’re not investigating either of those cases anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “What evidence could there be now that wasn’t around forty-five years ago? It’s not like they would have known to keep DNA samples, or anything. And stuff was so crazy that night, it was impossible to categorize all of the forensic evidence. Not that people thought about forensic evidence very much back then.”

  Casey could believe it. If anything had been collected, there was a good chance in a small precinct such as this things wouldn’t have been processed correctly, or even at all. Not that the cops were bad—they probably weren’t trained to do it.

  “Has anyone ever suggested the two things are connected?”

  “What? The Halloween party and Marianne Rush taking off? Wouldn’t know why.”

  “Because they happened the same night.”

  “Oh, well, sure. I guess they might have considered a connection, but there apparently wasn’t any. Dottie was helping Vern hand stuff out at the store, and Marianne took off while her kids were out trick-or-treating with their dad. Neither one of them was seen at the party.”

  Which they wouldn’t have been if they were hiding behind full-face masks. But why would they lie about that? And how would their presence not have been documented when the police and ambulance arrived?

  “So how come you’re asking about this?” Whistler asked.

  “I don’t know. It caught my interest.”

  Austin snorted. “Not a lot in this town to do that. It’s no wonder it stuck out.”

  “This town’s okay,” Whistler said.

  “If you like boring.”

  “It’s not always boring.”

  Casey turned away and walked out while they bickered.

  They didn’t even notice she’d left.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The streets had cleared out, and Casey saw only a few kids as she headed back to the Dailys’. How odd was it, really, that Marianne disappeared the same night as the fatal Halloween party? Was it the nature of the holiday? A huge coincidence? Or was there more to it than that?

  Unsettled, she arrived at the house and went in the side door. The TV murmured on low volume in the living room. Vern would be over at the store, so she was hopeful Dottie was awake.

  Dottie sat on the love seat, facing the television but not really watching it. She was so still Casey would have thought she was dead if she hadn’t blinked once, very slowly.

  Casey sat on the chair catty-corner from her. “Hey. Are you all right?” It seemed like a stupid question, with the news Dottie had gotten earlier that day, but Casey meant it in a more immediate kind of way. Dottie didn’t look so good.

  Dottie scrutinized Casey’s face, as if trying to figure out who she was, or where she had come from.

  “Dottie? It’s Casey. Remember? I’m staying in your basement.”

  “Of course.” She nodded, and refocused on the TV.

  “Dottie…” Casey considered what she was about to do and wondered if it was smart. Or kind. Maybe it was neither, but it seemed necessary if she was going to figure things out and help Dottie and Vern get out from under the accusations. She slid the Halloween photo out of her stack of copies and held it out. “Do you recognize this picture?”

  Dottie went very still. “Where did you get that?”

  “It came in the mail to the store. There was no return address.”

  Dottie stared at the photo, but didn’t say anything.

  “Do you know when this is from?”

  Dottie looked away. “A long time ago. Another lifetime.”

  Casey set the photo back on her lap. “Do you remember that night?”

  Dottie’s face remained blank. Stony. Finally she said, “That was the night Marianne left me.”

  “Forty-five years ago?”

  Dottie’s eyes drifted up to Casey’s face. “Yes.” Casey heard the question Dottie wasn’t asking, and wasn’t sure how she was going to answer. Did she admit she dug through their trash to find the anonymous note?

  “Did you and Marianne go to the party?”

  Dottie turned away, toward the kitchen. “She was supposed to meet me to hand out candy at the church, but said she was sick.” Her breath became labored. Loud.

  “Dottie—”

  “I helped Vern hand out candy at the store. And then we came back here.” Her jaw worked, and her face grew red. “Marianne left me that night. She didn’t come back.”

  Dottie put a hand over her chest and closed her eyes.

  “What’s happening?” Death sat on the opposite end of the love seat wearing workout c
lothes, as if interrupted during a training session. The jersey said, “Do It Anyway.”

  Casey grabbed Dottie’s wrist. Her heartbeat was rapid. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to upset her.”

  Dottie didn’t seem to notice Casey talking to someone else. Her eyes were glassy, and sweat broke out on her forehead.

  “Should I call 911?”

  “No. Calm her down. It’s not her time yet.”

  “Dottie. Dottie.” Casey knelt in front of her and held her hands. “Look at me. It’s okay. You’re all right.” Was Casey lying? She kind of felt like she was.

  Casey let go of Dottie’s hands and placed her own on the woman’s cheeks. “Look at me, Dottie. I’m here.”

  Dottie met Casey’s eyes with her panicked ones. Casey smiled. “Deep breath.” Casey took one, hoping Dottie would mimic her. “Deep, slow breath.”

  Dottie followed Casey’s lead and breathed in, held it a few moments, and let it out. After several more of these shared inhales and exhales, Dottie’s pulse slowed, and the red in her cheeks faded to pink.

  Casey reached for a tissue and blotted the sweat on Dottie’s face. “It’s all right. You’re better now.”

  Dottie patted Casey’s hand. “Thank you, sweetheart. I can always count on you.”

  Casey hesitated, then kept dabbing Dottie’s face with the tissue.

  “My sweet Anne Marie. I knew you’d always be here for me.”

  Death’s brow furrowed. “Oh, my. She thinks you’re her dead daughter.”

  Dottie wiggled around on the love seat, looking for something. A pillow. “If I could…lie down for a bit.”

  Casey jumped to grab the throw pillow from her chair and set it on the end of the love seat, shooing Death away. Dottie lay down and Casey ran to Dottie’s bedroom to grab an afghan. She draped it over Dottie and tucked her in. Dottie closed her eyes and gave a huge sigh, a smile on her face.

  So much for getting any worthwhile information from her.

  “Crisis averted,” Death said. “Now I can get back to my workout. The Olympics is coming up, you know. I need to be ready.”

  Casey sat on her heels and wiped her face. She hadn’t been prepared for such an intense few minutes.

  Death flexed. “Looks like you could use a workout, too.”

  “I have to get back to the store. I’ve already been gone too long.” She picked up the photo. “I still think there has to be something about this party that’s important to Dottie. Why would someone send this photo to her otherwise?”

  “Someone thinks she knows something.”

  “Or believes she was there.”

  Dottie’s eyes shot open. “I couldn’t have gone there.”

  Casey suppressed a gasp. “Right. Because you were home with Vern.”

  “No. Not because of that.” Her lips trembled. Her eyes watered. Casey grabbed another tissue and wiped the old woman’s eyes.

  “Why then? Why couldn’t you be there?”

  “All the young mothers were invited. I wasn’t…a mother.”

  Casey’s breath left her in a whoosh. The other women wouldn’t have been that cruel, would they? “Wait. Wasn’t Flower P—Ethel there? She didn’t have kids, did she?”

  “No, but then, she was Wilma’s best friend, and Wilma was the one hosting the party.”

  And not too many years earlier, Dottie had married the man Flower Pants had been engaged to. Casey couldn’t imagine Flower Pants would want to socialize with the woman who stole her fiancé.

  “I couldn’t have gone because it would have been too hard, knowing what they all had that I didn’t.” Dottie closed her eyes. “But the real reason I wouldn’t have been welcome wasn’t about having children. It was the same with Marianne, and she already had two babies.”

  “I don’t understand. What was the same?”

  Dottie curled her fingers around the edge of the afghan, pulling it closer to her neck. “The two of us couldn’t have gone to the party, even if we had wanted to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when all the invitations went out, neither Marianne nor I received one.” She let out a long, slow breath. “We couldn’t go to the damn Halloween party, because we weren’t invited.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “Can you believe that?” Casey made her way to the store from the house. Death gave up on working out and tagged along like one of the children headed home from school. Death’s shirt bore a sticker reading, “Save Ferris.”

  “I don’t know why they stayed in this town,” Death said. “I mean, I know why, with their baby and the store and everything, but I don’t think it paid off.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking earlier.”

  Death grunted.

  “What?”

  “Does seeing their situation make you think about yours?”

  “It is not at all the same.” Casey heard the defensiveness in her voice, hanging there, she was certain, because Death had hit on the very thing she’d been considering only minutes before.

  “Fine.” Death’s head cocked. “Gotta go.”

  Casey, alone again, was greeted by Roger as she stepped into Vern’s. Well, not exactly greeted. He ducked his head, exited the cashier’s area, and left the store. She wondered where Vern went. He wasn’t at home, and she didn’t hear him in the store.

  Since Casey left, the lunch crowd had been and gone, leaving the front section a mess. As she cleaned, she studied the photos surrounding the cashier window. She’d noticed them her first day but hadn’t stopped to look at them. They ranged from present-day athletic teams and the high school’s show choir to decades-old photos. Forty-five years? Casey searched for Vern, since she might now recognize him after seeing the yearbook.

  She finally found him toward the ceiling, holding the rack of a dead buck, which lay on its side by Vern’s feet. His rifle rested on the ground, and his smile told a story of victory and pride.

  Other than that, she couldn’t find him anywhere, although she did see a photo of Flower Pants and Wilma, along with some of the other women from the Halloween photograph. Lucy and Wonder Woman and, she thought, the Bride of Frankenstein. They stood in front of the white corner church many years earlier, Frankenstein’s Bride wearing her own, real-life wedding dress. Marianne and Dottie were, not surprisingly, absent.

  Casey sold some Bugles and Gatorade to the under-twelve demographic, weeded through the DVDs Vern had asked her to sort, and was cutting orange and black ribbons for some Halloween decorations in the bread aisle when a beeping noise split the air. Casey dropped the scissors and searched the room—was it the smoke alarm? The gas pumps?

  No.

  It was her phone, in her pocket, actually ringing. When had anyone ever called her?

  She dug it out. The number came up without a name. “Hello?”

  “Casey? Officer Maddy Justus, from Beltmore.”

  “Oh. Hey. Everything okay?”

  “I’m not sure. Are things all right in Armstrong?”

  “Depends on how you define ‘all right.’”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a strange town with dark undertones. Lots of old grudges, unsolved mysteries, and layers of resentment.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like most small towns.”

  Casey laughed. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So why I called…I think you might get some company.”

  “Company? As in… Oh, crap. The guys from the playground?”

  “Or their friends.”

  “How did they find me?”

  “That’s the weird thing. You’re online.”

  “I am? I really haven’t been.” Casey tried to think of the last time she’d used her phone, or even pulled it from her pocket.

  “No, not you personally, I mean, you haven’t been doing stuff. But there’s
a photo of you. It got sent here, put up by some kid named Brian Cooper? He’s asking if anybody knows you.”

  Casey gripped the phone. “That little creep. I was walking home less than an hour ago. He pulled up beside me and the girl in his truck took my picture.”

  “Well, that takes care of that. You haven’t seen anybody yet? From here, I mean?”

  “No. Should I tell someone?”

  “I’ll call Whistler, see if there’s anything she can do. Protection she can offer.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “But—”

  “I can take care of myself. I promise.” Let them come.

  “Chief Spears is trying to get the guys in custody, but he can’t find them. They’re probably hiding out in their hunting cabin in the mountains, but there’s no phone service up there, and it would take hours to get to them. The chief is talking to the cops up there to see if we can get some assistance.”

  “Thanks. Sorry to cause all this trouble.”

  “No apology necessary. If we can get these creeps it’s worth it. But I’m concerned about you.”

  “I’ll be fine. Is Sheila okay?”

  “Pastor Sheila’s fine, other than worrying about you. I don’t think those guys are stupid enough to mess with a messenger of the Lord.”

  Casey wasn’t sure if she was joking or not, so she didn’t laugh.

  “So…” Justus coughed. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything, and you do the same.”

  “You got it. Thanks.”

  Casey hung up and peered out the front door. No strange cop cars yet. And no huge trucks.

  “Everything okay?”

  Casey jumped as Vern called from the grocery area. “Fine.”

  “I’ll be in back if you need me.”

  Casey was furious with herself. She couldn’t lose focus like that again. If the Beltmore guys came for her, she had to be ready. She took stock of her body. Her face was still colorful, but she didn’t need her face to protect herself. Her ribs, while better than three days ago, still ached if she pressed on them or moved too quickly.

  She stepped to the end of the carb aisle, between the donuts and the door to the parking lot, and tried a few defensive stances. Nothing had changed since her workout that morning. Achy, but serviceable.