Annie shrugged, still eating her scone.
“Surely we can figure it out,” Beatrice said. “But what a pain in the ass. Can’t you call someone?”
“Mother,” Vera said, opening her door. “Who would I call out here?”
“Does the cell even work?” Annie pulled out her phone. Dead.
“Lord, how did civilization manage without the cell phone?” Beatrice said, getting out of the car. “Let’s see. That is a very flat tire.” She bent down and touched it. “What is that?” She reached her finger and felt along the rubber. There was not just one, but three huge nails puncturing the tire. “Nails.”
“Do you have a spare?” Annie said.
“I’ve no idea,” Vera said. “Bill’s always dealt with these things. Where would it be?”
“Probably in the trunk,” Annie replied.
Beatrice harrumphed. “Yeah, probably. Thank God you didn’t bring Elizabeth. This will probably take some time.”
Annie and Vera slipped out of the car to a cool day and took in sweeping views of mountains and farms in the distance. Annie rolled up her sleeves.
“I’m sure we can figure this out,” she said, lifting the trunk.
After messing with the jack and getting nowhere, Annie tried to place it again. “It looks like it should go right there,” she muttered as she crouched down beside the tire, smelling the rubber, the grease, and the gravel from the road. It would help if she felt better. She felt so weak these days. Maybe she just needed more sleep.
“Oh, here comes a car,” Beatrice said.
“Maybe they’ll stop,” Vera said.
“That’s Cookie!” Annie exclaimed.
Annie stood up, and sure enough, it was Cookie in a rental car—a yellow Volkswagen Bug. She waved and pulled along the slim berm that dropped off into a ditch along the hillside.
“Look at you ladies. I wish I had my camera,” she said, grinning, with her hands on her hips, after getting out of the car. She was wearing old blue jeans and a thick gray wool sweater. The color brought out the gray in her green eyes and was set off by huge dangling silver earrings.
“Would you just be quiet and help if you can?” Annie said, smiling, brushing her hands together.
“Shoot, I can change a flat,” Cookie said. “But he can probably do a better job than me. Upper body strength and all that,” she added and pointed at the Bug. A large man was trying to get out of the small car. “Found him walking along the road. I offered to give him a lift.”
He was dressed in what the locals called “plain clothes”—black Mennonite garb—and tipped his hat to the women. “How do?”
Annie noticed the three earrings in his right ear. He was no Mennonite.
Beatrice took over. “Fine to meet you, Mr., ah . . .”
“Name’s Luther Vandergrift,” he said, sizing up the women with a few brief looks.
“Can you help us out?” Beatrice said.
“No problem,” he said, taking off his hat and crouching next to the car.
In no time the old tire was off, looking like a pitiful, huge fake snake with nails sticking out of it. Huge nails.
“What are you doing way out here?” Vera asked Cookie while Annie tried to help Luther by sliding the new tire onto the rim.
“It’s my annual retreat. I told you about it. I do it every year, a few days before Halloween. That’s why I couldn’t come with you to Aunt Rose’s today.”
“This is a retreat? I thought you were going to a spa or something,” Vera answered.
Cookie smiled. “No. I take my tent, some food, water, notebooks. And it’s just me and the sky.”
“It’s too damned cold to be camping out up here this time of year,” Beatrice said.
“I do okay. I’ve got a great sleeping bag.”
“What about the bears?” Vera said.
“I’m okay with the bears,” Cookie said, moving her head around so her dangling earring caught the light. “If they are okay with me.”
“You’re certifiable,” Beatrice said.
“So they tell me.”
“Thanks,” Luther said to Annie while she helped hold the spare tire in place.
She smiled back and nodded, half listening to the other conversation, trying not to stare at his earrings. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen men with earrings—there were plenty of them back in D.C., where she used to live and work. You just didn’t see many of them around Cumberland Creek. If you did, it was usually a teenager. Certainly not any of the Old Order Mennonites.
Annie wasn’t certain, but she thought one of his earrings was a cross. She couldn’t make out what the other two were. His beautiful blond hair looked like spun gold, falling in waves around his ears and down onto his neck. It made seeing the earrings’ details difficult.
He gave the tire one last wrenching and grunted. “There.” He stood up, and Annie saw very clearly that one of his earrings was the same rune symbol that was painted on Beatrice’s house. Her heart began to pound in her chest, and she felt the rush of blood through her body as she tried to take a breath. The feeling just tipped her right over the edge. She’d been just feeling lousy. Now this.
“Are you okay?” he said and grabbed her, steadied her as her knees wobbled.
“Annie?” Vera said.
The women swarmed around her, and she realized this was not what she wanted. She needed space and air and room to move, but they were all around her, fanning her as she lay on the ground now. His face between the women’s concerned faces, all looking down at her.
“Maybe she got a whiff of fumes,” someone said.
“I’m fine,” Annie said. “Really. I just need some air.” She struggled to get up, and the man reached for her. His blue eyes met her deep brown eyes, and they locked, softened momentarily, but his touch made her pulse race. She felt fear and anger ripple in waves through her arms and shoulders as he placed his arms around her and led her to the car.
This was not like her. She had looked into the face of murderers and rapists, dogfighters, crooked cops, and she had dealt with them all. She was slightly embarrassed. And ill. Was she coming down with something?
Cookie was on the other side of her. “Take some deep belly breaths, dear. You’re going to be fine.”
Cookie looked her in the eye, and momentarily Annie thought, She knows. Cookie knows about the earring, and she’s trying to calm me down.
For God’s sake, she was on a mountain—not too far from Jenkins Hollow, thinking her yoga teacher and friend was sending her psychic thoughts and Luther was transmitting evil through his fingers. He didn’t even know her. As long as Annie could get air and space and she could think her way around this, she’d be fine. Get it together, girl.
As she sat in the car and took a deep breath, she looked closely at Luther’s face and smiled faintly. She took a deep drink from one of the water bottles that they had brought. Her thoughts were still jumbled, but she wanted to remember his face. As she recalled some of the research she’d done on runes, she thought that this was too much of a coincidence and that she could be looking at the face of a murderer, the man who strangled one young woman and placed her body in the raging Cumberland Creek River, the man who chopped the arms off of another young woman and left her body in pieces in a huge recycling bin. And she certainly couldn’t allow Cookie to drive off with him in her car. But a persistent pain jabbed in her gut.
She leaned her head back onto the car seat and took a deep breath. Think. Think. Think.
“I’ve never known a Mennonite man to wear earrings. Who are your people, son?” Beatrice said, loud enough for everybody to hear.
Leave it to Bea. Annie lifted her head and watched as the young man put his hat back on.
“I’m new in the area, ma’am. You don’t know my people. And I am not a Mennonite.”
Chapter 25
Vera’s sweaty hands felt the cool steering wheel sliding beneath them. What a day. She glanced in her rearview mirror to see if Cookie
was still behind them. She had insisted on following them to the nearest tire shop. Then they would have to turn around and head back to Cumberland Creek. “That doughnut of a tire is not going to take you up these mountain roads. It’s closer to the nearest shop than it is to go back,” she’d said.
And she’d left the man to walk the rest of his journey along the dusty mountain roads—which was fine with Vera and the rest of the women in the car, all of them thinking how incongruous that he was dressed like an Old Order Mennonite and yet was wearing earrings. But Annie was the only one who had seen the rune earring.
Damn. Annie, of all people. She’d been seriously spooked by the whole hollow. And who could blame her, really? It didn’t take long for any of them to make the leap from the rune in his ear to the possibility of him being the killer of those two young women—as irrational as it was. Now that Annie knew more about runes, his weird earring was hard for them to shake. So, Vera wouldn’t be seeing her aunt Rose today. Her mom was in the backseat on the cell phone, now explaining the tire situation. At least they were back in cell phone range.
“After we get the tire on, I’m heading over to the police station,” Vera told them. “I think we need to tell Detective Bryant about that man.” She looked at Annie for some response, but she was staring out the window, deep in thought and pale. “Did you hear me, Annie?”
“Yes, yes, I heard you,” she said and went back to staring.
“Well, that’s that. We’ll have to go up next Sunday,” Beatrice said, clicking her cell phone shut.
“Busy weekend with Halloween coming up,” Vera told her. “But I guess we could squeeze a trip in on Sunday.”
“If we are not sacrifices to the gods of Halloween,” Beatrice said, grinning.
Cookie had invited them to a Halloween ritual. She called it samhain and pronounced it “sow-hane.” After trick-or-treating and once Elizabeth was asleep, the women were going to gather in Vera’s living room for a real “witch” ritual.
“It’s my favorite ritual. It’s our new year and the time we remember our loved ones who’ve died. I want each of you to bring a photo or an object that belonged to someone you loved that has died. It will be wonderful to share this with you,” Cookie had said.
“Sounds silly to me,” DeeAnn had remarked. “But if there’s a feast after, I’m in!”
The vegetarian potluck feast had hooked Vera, too. Besides, what was the difference between this ritual and any number of rituals she’d participated in at the local Baptist church? She trusted Cookie wouldn’t be conjuring evil spirits or sacrificing chickens. But she wasn’t sure what to expect.
She pulled into the Jiffy Lube.
“Finally,” Beatrice said. “Could you drive any slower?”
Vera ignored her. Driving with the doughnut of a wheel was not easy—no matter what her mother thought. Besides that, Vera was a little shaken. A flat tire was one thing, but that Luther guy was an oddball. Oh, sure, he helped them out and was nice about it. Dressed in the simple clothes of an Old Order Mennonite man and not being Mennonite? What was going on in that hollow?
The women made themselves at home with the free coffee in the waiting area while the car was in the shop. Vera took a sip and loved the way the coffee’s warmth traveled down to her stomach. It seemed to be getting colder, instead of warmer, throughout the day. The skies were tinged with murky gray. Was it going to rain? Snow?
Annie sat down next to Cookie and pulled out her notebook. Cookie elbowed her as she turned to speak to Beatrice, who was sitting on the other side of her. All of Annie’s things went flying. All the women bent to help her pick them up.
“What’s that?” Cookie gasped, picking up a loose page from the floor.
“Let’s see.” Annie looked it over. “Ah, those are the symbols that were carved into the bodies of those young women. The runes. I think this is the one that was painted on Bea’s house.”
Cookie’s face whitened. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“What is it?” Beatrice said.
“It was the same symbol on both of the women?” Cookie asked.
“Yes. On their arms and backs. I thought you said you didn’t know much about them,” Annie said, still gathering her papers.
“I don’t know many of them,” Cookie said. “But I think I know those symbols.”
“Well, for God’s sake, Cookie. If you know something, spit it out,” Vera said.
“What I know about runes is the simple divination patterns. That in itself is kind of controversial. I’m sorry I didn’t see the combination before. Anyway, some scholars think it was more of a language than a divination tool,” Cookie said. “But this looks like the Three Lifetimes Spread, which is what a rune reader would use to portray character.”
“And?” Vera said.
Cookie placed the paper on the floor. “You see, it’s five symbols.” She pointed to each of them and counted. “The center rune is your present character, the top rune is your future lives, the bottom rune is your past lives—”
“Lives?” Annie said. “Reincarnation?”
Cookie nodded. “The left rune is your future in this life, and the right rune is your birth or childhood.” She paused, running her long, skinny fingers across the page. “If a rune is reversed, it has the opposite meaning from the upright rune. We have a reversed rune here at the bottom. Nauthiz reversed, which would mean ‘bringer of pain, suffering.’ Here’s another reversed one. Um, I think it’s called Fehu, which would mean something like ‘mindless joyousness that should be avoided at all costs.’”
“That’s the one they painted on your house, isn’t it?” Vera said, squinting her eyes.
Beatrice nodded. “What about this one? I like this one,” she said, pointing at the center of the page.
“That is called Uruz, which means ‘strong woman,’ ‘wild ox,’ ‘darkness,’” Cookie replied.
“How could it mean all three of those things?” Vera said.
“They weren’t meant to be read in English or even taken literally, Vera. Stay with me here,” Cookie said and paused. “This rune is Wunjo reversed. That means ‘a crisis, difficult passage, or an absence of joy.’ The top rune is Isa, or ice, ‘something that impedes or a kind of spiritual winter.’”
“What does it all mean?” Annie said.
“It’s obvious,” Beatrice said. “It means a strong, stubborn woman who needs to be tamed. You came about from much darkness and tragedy, and you offer joys of the flesh that only cause trouble. You have left pain in your path wherever you’ve been, and ahead of you is only coldness and loneliness.”
“Beatrice, you are a woman of many talents,” Cookie said and smiled.
“Humph,” Beatrice said. “It’s not brain surgery, my dear.”
Chapter 26
Beatrice hated the police station almost as badly as she hated the hospital. Yet she’d spent more time in both of them the past few years that she ever had in her previous seventy-nine years. But the group decided they would go together to tell Detective Bryant what they had learned. She didn’t care for the man but had softened to him with the latest incident of the rune being painted on her house because of his concern for Annie. She completely agreed with him that Annie needed to be more careful. She breathed a huge sigh of relief when Annie allowed him to alert school officials to watch her boys carefully, and to instruct the local patrol to go by her place several times a night. It wouldn’t be intrusive at all.
She unwound her red scarf. Damn, it was hot in here—one of the many reasons she hated the place. Also, it needed a good cleaning. Couldn’t they get somebody to come in and clean the place up? It wasn’t just the piles of papers and pens all over the place, the half-opened drawers, and the clothes flung over chairs. It was also the real dirt on the floors and the windows. You could hardly see out. Then you never knew what drunk or other lowlife the officers would have trudging along in front of them on their way to the cells. It just made Beatrice uncomfortable
. She couldn’t wait to leave.
Detective Bryant came into the room. “Ladies, what can I do for you?” He looked directly at Annie.
“We think we have some leads for you,” she said to him.
What was wrong with her? Beatrice looked at her, and she seemed pale, certainly not herself.
“Why don’t you all come into my office?” he said. “Follow me.”
Finally, a soft chair, Beatrice thought when they entered his office, and plopped herself into it.
Annie and Vera told the detective about the suspicious young man, and he asked what he looked like. Beatrice whipped out her cell phone.
“I’ve got a picture of him right here,” she said.
“Mama, why didn’t you say?”
“I just did,” Beatrice said, handing the phone to the detective.
“Ms. Matthews,” he said, looking at the picture, “I’m going to need to keep this phone until I can get this photo downloaded into our system. Just in case.”
“Damn. When do I get it back?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, just when his cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”
“I guess I’ll have to use my landline. I was just thinking about getting rid of it,” Beatrice said.
“Okay.” Detective Bryant put his cell phone down on the desk and sat down in his chair. “Do you have something else for me? You said something about the rune symbols . . . if that’s what they even are.”
“Yes, we know what they mean,” Annie said and told him.
“Who told you that?” he asked when she was finished.
“Cookie Crandall,” Annie answered.
“How does she know about runes?”
Annie shrugged. “She said she didn’t know much about them, but she knew what these meant.”
“Interesting,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll give her a call.”
“She’s on her way to a retreat,” Beatrice said. “Up on the mountain.”
“Alone?”
“Yes,” Beatrice replied. “We tried to talk her out of it.”
“I see. She’s not afraid, knowing a killer is on the loose?”
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