So it must be a serial killer who has it in for redheads. She twirled her one remaining strand of red hair around her finger. But often, as in her study of quantum physics, these things went beyond the purely physical. What did the two women have in common, other than the red hair? Maybe, just maybe, the red hair was a pure coincidence. Well, they lived in Jenkins Hollow. The Collinses were not Mennonite; they were Baptist. She knew that from her church days—and from attending Rebecca’s funeral. They were both eighteen. They both had ended up dead—one drowned, as the paper had reported, and the other dismembered. They both had those runes markings on them.
Did they know one another? If so, how well? That was the question. Of course, she couldn’t go butting her nose in up in Jenkins Hollow, but she had a cousin, Rose, who lived up on the mountain that looked out over it. Perhaps it was time for a visit.
Chapter 22
All the arrangements were made. Annie hated the drive to the prison, with its twisty mountain roads. Queasy barely touched it. She’d visited several times for research for the book, which was now at the publisher’s office, thank God. If she had to look at it one more time, she would scream. She had worked on it. Rewritten it, checked her facts, rewritten it again. She was so finished with that book.
But she felt compelled to visit this Mary Schultz, the young Mennonite woman who recently murdered her father with an axe, claiming he’d abused her. It was fascinating to ponder, but what Annie wanted was inside information about the communities at Jenkins Mountain. Not only did she want to avoid the place, but it was also a closed-off community. Nobody would talk to her.
By now, Annie knew the prison drill—she wore a T-shirt and sweatpants, nothing with buttons, which, if they fell off of her, could be saved and used as a weapon. Annie handed her bag to the prison guard, who searched through it. She looked at Annie and smiled a weary smile.
“How are you today?” she asked politely.
“Fine,” Annie said. “How about you?”
“Uh, well, another day, another dollar.”
“I hear you.”
The guard kept the bag. “Go ahead.”
When Annie walked into the room, she was shocked at how fragile and small Mary was. This woman killed her father? How could that be? She was expecting a big farm girl—not this petite person in front of her.
The papers didn’t give much information. Everything had happened quickly, and for months it was all handled within the Mennonite community. No press access until the young woman was brought to the local authorities by her church pastor, who claimed that she was insane and could not be cared for by her family or the community. In fact, she was a threat to them.
“Good morning, Ms. Schultz,” Annie said.
Mary looked up and nodded, barely meeting her eyes. Pale. Plain. Brown hair cut short, uneven, as if she’d taken a pair of old scissors haphazardly to her hair.
“I’m Annie. How are you doing?” she said, sitting across the table from her.
A pause. “I’m still alive, and that’s something, I suppose.”
Annie smiled. “Indeed,” she said. “I hear you’ve had a rough time of it.”
Mary smiled weakly at her and almost met her eyes. “I’m not going to talk to you about my case,” she said. She spoke succinctly, her voice soft and quiet. “My lawyer doesn’t think it would be a good idea for the appeal. And I agree with her. I don’t want any sensationalism.”
“I understand. But if you ever change your mind, I’d love to write your story. But right now, I’m working on another project,” Annie told her. “I’m writing articles about the murders. You heard about them, of course.”
“Yeah,” she said, running her fingers along the edge of the table.
“Do you know those families?”
“Yes.”
“What do you know about them?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the Carpenters. They were Old Order Mennonites, right?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’m not sure,” Annie said. “I’m just asking.”
“Well, yes. They are one of the few families left in the hollow who are actually real and Old Order. They go to my church . . . or my old church, I should say.”
“What do you mean by ‘real’?”
She shrugged. “They’ve never been involved with any of the others. . . .”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“A good bit of mixing is going on. It’s very rare these days that the generations stay what they call pure in their faith,” she said.
Pure in their faith? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“You know,” Mary said and smiled, “just like all young people . . . a Mennonite might fall in love with a Baptist.... It’s complicated when it’s Old Order . . . you know. . . . Depending on the family . . . there could be a shunning. That’s bad . . . really bad. . . .”
Annie thought of the young woman’s funeral she’d attended. Nobody went except her parents.
“Was that Carpenter girl being shunned?” Annie said out loud, but mostly to herself.
“I don’t know. I’ve had a few problems of my own, and I’m not exactly a favorite in that community right now,” she said. “But I could ask around.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Annie said. “Look, Mary, there’s no real reason for you to help me. I appreciate anything you can give me, though. Someone is out there murdering young women. I’m supposed to write about these women, write about this case. I’ve got a job to do. I know you’re having a rough time. I can see that.”
“I killed my father,” she said point-blank. “I belong here. This is justice, right? Even though the man abused me for years, my killing him was the worst of the crimes.”
“I read that you went to the church and asked for help.”
“I did. And I wrote to other churches. Nobody would help. All I kept hearing is that I needed to forgive my father,” she said. Suddenly tears were sliding down her cheeks. “This is better. Being here. It’s better than being out there. My family? My church? They’ve turned their back on me. I’ve not exactly been shunned, but I have nobody. And all I’ve ever done is everything they wanted me to. Except . . .”
Annie willed away tears and swallowed hard. “I think you did the right thing in defending yourself,” she finally said. “No matter what the justice system says . . . or your family or church.”
Mary looked at her with a glimmer of something. Was it hope?
A knock on the door. That was it. “Time’s up, Ms. Chamovitz.”
“Okay, thanks,” Annie said. “I’ll be back. Once you get settled in, think about things. Maybe you’ll have information for me.”
Mary nodded.
Annie took a deep breath. She hated this place. She’d visited this place too many times over the past year. It was dingy and sterile, just as you would expect a prison to be, but it seemed that the women’s side of the prison was worse. It left her with a feeling of profound sorrow. But this was better than going up to Jenkins Hollow and snooping around herself. It had to be.
Chapter 23
“Invisible ink? That is too much!” said DeeAnn at the weekly crop. “It could be fun.”
“But, of course, someone would have to know it was there to put the solution on it to read it,” Annie said.
“Well, sure. But you could leave it as a part of a time capsule for your children, for example. Send them on a treasure hunt for it. It might make getting a sweet note from Mom a little more fun,” Sheila said.
“But I love that vanishing-ink pen. That makes a lot of sense to me,” Annie said. “I love the fact that I can draw lines on my pages with it. Journal along those lines, and in a few days the lines vanish. How cool is that?”
“Very. So many new products, so little time,” Vera said.
“And money,” DeeAnn said. “Good thing we share.”
“Speaking of sharing, I heard that you went to
the prison again,” Vera said to Annie, then reached out for an angel food cupcake.
“Yes. I saw Mary Schultz,” Annie said.
“What did you find out? Anything?”
“She won’t talk to me about her case. I totally get that. But I did find out that the Carpenters are an Old Order Mennonite family. I’m wondering if there was a shunning of that young woman.”
Paige spoke up. “Shunning? That would have to be because of a serious issue. We don’t do them . . . my church, that is.”
“But you’re not Old Order. I’d not even know you were a Mennonite by looking at you,” Cookie said.
“I wouldn’t know you’re a witch by looking at you,” Paige said and laughed. “But yes, there’s a big difference between us and the Old Orders. But we respect them a great deal, you know. A shunning is serious business. When a young person is shunned, it’s usually because of romance. You know, they’ve gone against their parents’ wishes. They’ve married someone outside the religion. And that’s it. No turning back.”
“It seems kind of unchristian,” DeeAnn said. “But that’s just little ole me talking. It just seems like being a Christian would give them a bit more forgiveness. . . .”
“That’s all very New Testament,” Annie said and drank from her beer glass.
“Yep,” Paige said. “And we are all about the Old Testament.”
“It’s so harsh,” DeeAnn said.
“Not any harsher than the fire and brimstone,” Vera said.
“That’s not harsh,” Paige said, lifting her voice. “C’mon.”
Vera could hear the history teacher in Paige’s voice, who didn’t come out very often at the crops, but her dance students claimed Paige was one of the toughest teachers at the school.
An awkward silence filled the room.
Cookie cleared her throat, looked up at them through her long strands of black hair, which had fallen in her face. “It’s all Christianity, right? Just different takes on the same philosophy.”
“So, if there was a shunning . . . Let’s say Sarah was involved with someone, and Rebecca was her friend and may have known something. But a shunning is not murder. Why kill them?” Annie said.
“I had an aunt one time who said she’d rather be killed than shunned. It’s a very painful experience,” DeeAnn said.
“Maybe the reason they were killed had nothing to do with the shunning,” Sheila said.
“Could’ve been some crazy man who hates redheads,” Cookie said. “Could be that simple.”
“Yes, but what about the rune symbols carved into them? I mean, to me the killer is leaving a message on them,” Annie said as she doodled the runes on a page of scratch paper.
“I’d be more interested in hearing about Vera’s weekend in New York than about all this religious stuff. What’s gotten into people? All we talk about are murders and religion,” Sheila said and bit into a chip.
“Yes, I think it’s time you told us what happened last weekend,” Annie said and smiled.
“A lady never tells,” Vera said, smiling back at Annie, feeling her face getting warm.
“Well, now, doesn’t that beat all?” Sheila said, cutting a photograph.
Vera sat with her page, pictures, and pens, smoothed her hands over the thick paper. The sex between her and Tony sizzled—even when they were younger. He was the only man she’d slept with besides her ex-husband.
Tony reached inside of her soul somehow and touched a wild part of her—so wild that it scared her sometimes. It was like a wild beast escaping out of a cage. And lately her sexual thoughts dwelled on Tony, but occasionally, on other men, as well.
It was the oddest thing to be forty-one, almost forty-two, and suddenly discover a rampant, evolving sexuality that had been so repressed for years, she hadn’t even known it existed within herself. It was certainly not a topic for discussion at a scrapbook crop.
Did DeeAnn just say she had gotten a gun? Vera thought.
“Yes. I went and learned how to use my gun. It’s in my purse. I have a permit for it. I’m not listening to any of your liberal nonsense, Annie. I’m almost as liberal as you are—but not with a goddamned killer on the loose in Cumberland Creek.”
“I’m just saying that it seems a little drastic. Yes, there’ve been two murders, but they seem related. You don’t have red hair, you don’t live in the hollow, and you aren’t eighteen. It seems to me the last thing we need in Cumberland Creek is another woman carrying a gun in her bag,” Annie said. “How many times has Bea almost shot someone by mistake?”
Sheila’s stifled giggle escaped, sending them all into fits of laughter.
Chapter 24
Beatrice loved Sunday mornings so much better since she had stopped going to church twelve years ago. Church was always more of a social and community event for her because she was never a believer in the traditional sense. Oh, she believed in God, all right, and knew God as well as anybody could. But she had a different view of Him and certainly a different view from what the local Baptist church claimed. Some folks thought that meant she was an atheist, and she’d even heard the whispers at Dolly’s old beauty shop. She was that weird non-believing quantum physicist. But if only they knew that the mystery of the universe was always its beauty, and the more she studied it, the closer to God or Spirit she felt.
Sundays in Cumberland Creek were glorious days because most people were in church. Between the hours of nine and eleven, one could walk the whole of the town without seeing anybody, which suited Beatrice, who was not a woman for small talk and gossip. So as she stood on her porch, waiting for Vera, she took in the quiet of her growing town.
Trouble was, with the growth came more problems than just annoyances, like lines at the grocery store and post office. Why, before all of this recent nonsense, Cumberland Creek had little crime in its history, with no murders in thirty or so years.
She wrapped her scarf around her neck and ears and relished the rustling sounds of the crumbly fallen leaves blowing in the breeze. She couldn’t believe that Friday would be Halloween already. She couldn’t wait to see Lizzie dressed up like a pea pod. How cute was that going to be? Just a year ago, she never would have imagined enjoying Halloween as much as she did now. For that matter, enjoying life as much as she did now. So much of that had to do with her granddaughter. Unfortunately, she barely remembered Halloween with Vera. She recalled an angel costume—or, wait, was that a ghost? Bah. Who knew? It was too long ago.
Beatrice loved having Vera in her life. But she didn’t have many specific memories of Vera’s childhood. The memories, some of them were just one big—albeit happy—blur. She remembered more about her work and her husband than she did about Vera. She took very few pictures. It wasn’t like today—everybody had a camera, and mothers, especially the scrapbooking ones, always took these little digital cameras everywhere. They didn’t want to miss a move and not be able to chronicle it.
Last year Beatrice handed Vera all the scrapbooks she had kept of her daughter for years, even with how busy she was as a young mother. She surprised herself that she had so many of them.These scrapbooks were mundane compared to what people did these days. They consisted of pictures snapped of Vera during special occasions, like birthdays and graduations. And then the dance recitals had taken over. Even so, Beatrice had managed to put something together, even during her busy career years, albeit without stickers, fancy cutouts, and glitter.
Vera’s car pulled up to the curb, drawing Beatrice back to the present. “Are you ready?” she yelled at Beatrice.
Beatrice just shook her head. “What do you think? I’m standing here for my health?”
Vera waved her mother’s attitude off and reached over to open the door.
“Where’s Elizabeth?” Beatrice said, looking into the empty backseat.
“She’s with her dad. She’s got a little fever. Teething, I think.”
“Aunt Rose will be disappointed.”
“Well, if it matters that much to her, sh
e could come down off that mountain,” Vera said, looking into her side mirror and pulling back onto the quiet road.
Beatrice chortled. “I’ve been telling her that for fifty years.”
“I’ve never understood it.”
“Me neither,” Beatrice said. “But it makes her happy to stay. It’s her domain, and it seems to work out for her. Where are you going?” she asked, because Vera was going in the wrong direction.
“Annie’s coming along. I thought it would be good for her to meet Aunt Rose. I asked Sheila to come, but something’s up with her oldest daughter, Donna,” Vera said as she pulled over to the curb and tooted her horn.
Annie’s door flung open, she turned to kiss her husband, and they were off.
“So this woman has never ventured off the mountain?” Annie said later, after she was situated in the car, as they turned off the main road.
“That’s right,” Beatrice said. “And she has an in with all the mountain folk—even the nesters and Mennonites. She’s an herbalist. Knows her stuff. They call her before they call a doctor. That used to drive Ed crazy.”
“Oh, I remember . . . ,” Vera said in a faraway voice.
Beatrice loved this old road. She knew every twist and turn, every bump and dip. She loved the way fields on either side gave way to heavy woods, with high tree branches swaying over the road.
“You know who else knows a lot about herbs? Cookie,” Annie said. “She also knows about runes.”
“Runes?” Beatrice said.
“Yes. Cookie figured out that’s what those symbols are that were carved into the bodies and painted on your house.”
“You don’t say,” Beatrice said, digging in a cloth bag. “Scone? I just made them this morning. I call them my good-for-travel cinnamon scones.”
Annie reached her hand in the bag and pulled one out for Vera, who reached for it and then suddenly swerved as a loud thud, thud came from the rattling car.
“Damn,” Vera said, pulling over. “Must be a flat tire. Anybody know how to change one?”
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