But Cookie’s living room had nothing in it but a yoga mat, a block, some sitting cushions, and belts. A full-length mirror lined a wall and showed a reflection of a poster on the opposite wall of an Indian goddess dancing.
“I guess I know why we were never invited over. There’s no place to sit,” Beatrice said.
“Maybe she just doesn’t have much money,” DeeAnn said. “I wish she’d told us. Maybe I could have given her some work at the bakery.”
“No,” Annie said. “I don’t think that’s the case. I think she was fine. She was just living as simply as she could. That’s all. Let’s not read anything into this. Some people just live like this.”
“Evidently, she practiced what she preached,” Vera said. “She was always talking about living simply. Okay, here’s the list. We need her toothbrush and paste, some T-shirts and underwear from her dresser, her hairbrush, and some notebooks in her closet.”
The women scattered to find the objects.
Notebooks? Poor Cookie. She must think she’s not getting out anytime soon, Beatrice thought.
Chapter 32
Vera found the notebooks on an upper shelf in Cookie’s small closet. Two dresses, five blouses, and a few slacks and skirts hung on wire hangers in the closet. That was it. She reached up to grab the notebooks, and a book came crashing to the floor.
She squealed. “Lord, it almost hit me on the head!” she said.
“For such a graceful woman, you can be klutzy,” Sheila said and laughed. “What do you have there?”
“Looks like a scrapbook of some kind,” Vera said.
The notes of Vera’s ringtone on her phone interrupted them. It was Bill, asking that they hurry with the things. He said he’d like to get them to her as soon as possible.
“Do we have everything?” Vera said and gathered the notebooks and placed them in a cloth bag. “We do need to get back.”
Before they left, the women took a look around. The rest of the house was as bare and simple as the living room.
“I can’t believe how sterile this place is,” Paige said. “And Cookie is so creative. It doesn’t make much sense.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Sheila said. “I mean, simplicity is one thing, but this place . . . feels cold. Not at all like you expect Cookie’s home to be.”
The women piled into Vera’s van with a quiet sense of purpose.
It was odd, Vera had to admit, that creative Cookie didn’t decorate her home. But perhaps Annie was right—maybe she just preferred the simple life. Vera had her pegged as independently wealthy. She knew what Cookie earned by teaching yoga, and it wasn’t really enough to pay rent, let alone feed herself. Vera figured she didn’t have to worry about money.
She mentally sifted through her memories and tried to remember anything Cookie had said about money. But the fact was that Cookie was pretty quiet—especially when they were talking about personal matters, like money, sex, marriage, or their pasts. Yet she was always there when anybody needed her to provide a comforting shoulder without judgment, or a homemade bowl of pumpkin soup or warm apple pancakes.
She remembered one conversation about shopping. Vera had wanted to take Cookie to the outlets in Williamsburg, and she’d said she wasn’t interested. “I’m just not into shopping. I’m sorry, Vera. When I’m in the mood to shop, I shop at secondhand stores.”
“Cookie, don’t you ever want something new? A little treat for yourself?” Vera asked.
“Even if the clothes were worn by someone else, they are still new to me.”
Vera now mused over that statement. Then, she thought it odd. Was she trying to make a point? What was the purpose? She remembered her saying something about clothes ending up in the landfill and such. Why hadn’t she paid more attention to Cookie when she said stuff like that? Now it embarrassed her that she’d been so dismissive with her. Evidently, either Cookie was in trouble financially or she was an extremely principled individual. Vera just wished she knew exactly what those principles were. Vera couldn’t fathom someone who could afford nice things and not have them.
She glanced in the mirror as the other women got out of the van and the light went on. Yes, her make-up still looked fine—except her lipstick. She reached into her pocket and smeared lipstick on her lips. A little bright pink never hurt anybody’s face.
By the time the women arrived back at Sheila’s basement, where they scrapbooked every Saturday night, it was late and they were all beat. It was as if the emotional turmoil over the past couple days had worn them all to a frazzle. First, all the weird murders, then this business with the baby. Now their dear friend Cookie was in jail—and was the only suspect.
“Here’s the notebooks she asked for,” Vera said, sliding the bag across the table, the large scrapbook falling out of it.
“What’s this?” Bill asked. “Not a notebook.”
Beatrice sighed. “It’s a scrapbook we found, Bill. Somehow it got mixed in with the notebooks.”
“Okay,” he said, leaving it on the table and gathering the rest of the stuff. “Well, I’m off to the jail.” He leaned over and kissed Vera. “You’re still mine,” he whispered. “You just don’t know it.”
Vera grimaced.
Chapter 33
Annie had to be sure.
The first thing she did when she went home was head for her bedroom and flip on her laptop and look up Cookie Crandall. Nothing. Was her name even Cookie? Did people really name their kids Cookie? Maybe it was another name, like Catherine? There was a Catherine Crandall . . . an obituary. That couldn’t be her. That woman was 102 years old.
Oy. So Detective Bryant was right. Cookie Crandall was nowhere on the Internet. She checked all the information services she subscribed to for journalistic reasons. Was she in any of the government records? Taxes? Social Security? Nothing. Click. Click. Click. Birth certificate? Nothing.
What could this mean? It could mean that Cookie was running away from something or someone. It also could mean that she just liked to live “off the grid,” and Annie had known people like that. It would make sense. The only thing Annie knew about Cookie’s past was that she’d spent time in India, learning yoga. She’d also recently mentioned Eastern Europe. She’d certainly have a passport, then. She’d have to call the passport officials on Monday.
“Why would a witch choose Cumberland Creek? A place that still has the Sunday blue law and is extremely conservative?” The questions Bill had asked earlier nagged at her. Even she and her husband were starting to reconsider their move. If she could afford private school, she’d pull her sons out of the public school so fast. If she thought she could homeschool, she would.
Maybe Cookie was pulled in by the lower cost of living and by the beauty of the area, like she and Mike were. Maybe that was all there was to it. You think you can manage being different in a place like this, with its bucolic hills and valleys. You allow the beauty and softness of the views to lure you into thinking that the people are soft and beautiful, too. You think eventually you’ll find other people like you or that others will learn to like you despite your differences. But it took Annie over a year to find even one friend. Then, the next thing she knew, she had several—all in the scrapbook club except Beatrice.
Now she was considering leaving again, going back home to Bethesda. She was not sure she was the person to take on the school system about their religious “education” program. She didn’t think she had the heart to put her boys through it. She could take anything they dished out. But she didn’t want to place her boys in any more sticky situations.
“It’s not education if they are teaching just about Christianity,” Cookie had said quietly, matter-of-factly, at one of their last crops. “And they are doing the children a disservice by not teaching about the rest of the world’s religions. It feels cruel to me.”
“They’ve been doing it for years,” DeeAnn said. “Nobody’s died from it.”
“But religion shouldn’t be used as a way to divi
de. It sends the wrong message. We are all one, no matter how we choose to connect to the universe,” Cookie said.
Annie loved it when Cookie spoke up. She was so eloquent and steady about it. Annie herself couldn’t talk about religion sometimes, because she was so afraid to offend someone. But how could you be offended by that statement?
Annie’s stomach lurched when she thought of Cookie in jail. As a reporter, caught in the thick of investigations, she had spent nights in jail herself and knew it to be an unpleasant place, where it didn’t matter how nice of a person you were.
“Hey,” Mike said and sat up in bed. “Is Cookie out yet?”
“No,” she said, standing up and taking her clothes off. She reached for her nightgown, slipped into it, and crawled in bed beside her husband.
“You smell like beer,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
Mercy, he felt so warm and so hard. Smelled so male.
“Turn you on?” she said and grinned.
Chapter 34
Beatrice was ashamed of herself.
Here she was, a woman who until recently was haunted by her husband’s ghost. And a woman who believed in quantum physics, had seen it applied in her own life. She was a national expert; she was quoted in journals and books about the ways of quantum physics. So often, she was the subject of ridicule by the scientists on the other side of the issue—physicists who would not entertain some of her research, particularly her ideas about creating reality, the shifting nature of time, and the possibility of time travel. And yet the minute Cookie started talking with her about witchcraft, she jumped to all the wrong conclusions.
Well, hell’s bells, how was she supposed to know that witchcraft was a real religion? And it was a religion that asserted that you could alter reality—which was right up Beatrice’s alley. She’d participated in experiments that proved that thoughts and prayer could shift reality.
“You can call it prayer,” Cookie had once told her. “I call it magic. It’s about connecting with the universe, asking for it to listen, and watching as things unfold. We use different props, that’s all, my friend.”
And Beatrice had always believed in the possibility of prayer and had seen its power many times in her life. Sometimes, when she was alone on a warm night, especially in the hills, and she looked out on the star-filled sky, she felt like all she needed to do was ask and she could be lifted into the night.
So, tonight, as cool as it was, she bundled up and sat on her front porch to talk with whatever entity was listening, to let him, her, or it know that she knew she was full of hubris and probably had been her whole life, but that she knew, felt it in every inch of herself, that Cookie was an innocent woman. Even with her strange, wild ways and mysterious past. This young woman was good.
Something had brought Cookie to Cumberland Creek. Whatever it was, Beatrice was grateful for it. This young woman added so much to their lives. Elizabeth loved her. And no matter what you say, babies, children, they know good people. Yes, they do. So please, God, Goddess, all, and whatever angels, ghosts, or demons are around, please help get our Cookie out of trouble.
Beatrice knew Annie was upset and had tried to talk the detective out of believing the evidence. But the fact that the earring was at the crime scene? That was strong evidence and really, really bad luck. How to prove Cookie was innocent? How?
She thought back to the day they found the first body. Cookie was at Vera’s, making pumpkin soup and bread. She was as shocked as everybody else by the murder. Beatrice knew that Cookie did not commit that murder. Goodness filled her—even if it was a kind of goodness Beatrice could not quite relate to.
Beatrice looked at the stars, the planets, and wondered if Cookie even had a window. She thought about the look on Cookie’s face when she left the room that night, and was certain that she would not do well in jail. As strong as Cookie was, there was an underlying fragility in her.
Beatrice stood. She opened her door and turned her back on the night sky, grateful for the heat of her home as it rose to meet her old bones.
Sunday mornings used to be so calm for Vera—now they were filled with the chaos and noise of motherhood. And she preferred it like this. Only sometimes she wished for a moment of solitude.
But this morning her phone rang around ten—still early for a Sunday. She propped Lizzie on her hip and answered it. “Hello.”
“Hey there. It’s me,” Sheila said.
“What’s up? Did you go for your run yet?”
“Of course I did. I changed my route this morning, kept close to home. I’m a little freaked out by all the murders. I thought about not going at all, but I try to run every morning. You know that. Might do you some good. Gets your blood moving.”
“I chase Lizzie around and dance Tuesdays through Saturdays. That’s enough for me, dear,” Vera said.
“Are you going up to see your aunt?”
“Next Sunday,” she said. “Bill will have Liz. Besides, I wasn’t too sure about heading up there this weekend. It’s creeping me out.”
“I know what you mean,” Sheila said. “If you get a chance, why don’t you come by? I want to show you this book.”
“What book?”
Lizzie was squirming and wanting to get down. Finally, she slid down Vera’s body to the floor.
“Cookie’s book that we found. It’s here, and it’s, um, odd.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you come for lunch? I’ll see what Annie and Bea are doing. I’d like you all to see it.”
“Must be a hell of a book.”
“There’s leftovers from last night, so let’s just meet in the basement and I’ll show you what I mean.”
After she hung up the phone, Vera ran into the living room, where Lizzie was scattering clean laundry all over the carpeted floor. Through the window she could see Beatrice coming up.
“Come in, Mother,” Vera said.
“What? Are you psychic now?” Beatrice said, opening the door.
“I wish. I’d play the lotto and win all kinds of money and not have to work a day in my life.”
“Now, I hope you’d remember your poor old mum,” Beatrice said, giving her daughter a hug before bending down to pick up Lizzie.
“Gran!” Lizzie squealed.
“How are you?” Beatrice said to her, sparking up the way she did every time she saw her.
“Well, Mom, help yourself. There’s biscuits and coffee out there in the kitchen. I need to take a shower. Do you mind?”
“Nah, of course not.”
“Listen, Sheila called and said she has one of Cookie’s books. . . .”
“That scrapbook-looking thing?”
“I guess,” Vera said as she started up the stairs. “Anyway, she wants us to come for lunch and to check it out.”
“Eh, I don’t know. I’ve got a snoot full of the scrapbook queens these days. You know me. I like being alone.”
“Suit yourself, but I’m heading over there to check it out. She said the book is very strange.”
“Strange, huh? Maybe I will go.”
When she reached the top landing, Vera remembered that Sheila had invited Annie to tag along, and went back downstairs. “Can you call Annie? Sheila wants her there, too.”
“Annie’s not home. She’s off to the prison this morning, interviewing Mary Schultz.”
“I thought she was finished with that book?”
“She is.”
“Then what—”
“I believe she’s trying to get information about the recent murders.”
“From Mary? Bill said she’s lost her mind over killing her father.”
“He pushed her to it, I’m sure,” Beatrice said. “Can you imagine?”
Vera turned and walked back up the stairs. Why, she had never thought that there could be a link between Mary and the murder victims. That thought moved around in her brain and both intrigued her and scared her. Poor Mary Schultz had gone through hell, which left her a bit
crazy. There was Annie, off to see her. God, she hoped Annie was careful—and she hoped that her friend would unearth what she needed to help get Cookie out of jail.
Chapter 35
Annie sat across the table from Mary Schultz—just as she had done before—but this time was different. First, her friend Cookie was in jail. Second, her family might be in jeopardy. The phone call. The strange symbols. Her boys being singled out in school. The police were always watching her house and following her. Anything else that happened would lead the police to tapping her phone. It was unnerving. She was losing her patience dealing with these backward notions some of the locals seemed to have. If she could just get Mary to talk, she was certain it would help.
“Good chocolate,” Mary said. “Thanks so much.”
She seemed more alert today, and the guard told Annie that they were trying a new medication on her. Maybe that was why her blue eyes looked so alert and clear.
“You’re welcome, Mary,” Annie said, thinking she had very little time and so she had to forge a level of trust with the woman quickly. She was pleasantly surprised that the guards let her bring in the chocolates. “You know, I’m not supposed to feel friendly toward the people I visit here. But I can’t help but like you. We’re a lot alike.”
Mary nodded. “I can see that. We’re both fighters. I’ve read some of your stuff. Impressive.”
Annie’s heart leapt. She had always hated to hear about other journalists playing it this way, but was this actually going to work?
“Thanks, and yes, we are both fighters,” Annie said. “Sometimes it gets very lonely for me.”
Mary slowed down her chewing and looked almost as if she was empathizing. “Me too. It’s even harder now. These women in here. They just don’t get me.”
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