Holly Grove Homecoming

by Carey, Carolynn

  “She can’t let Larry go, is what it is. He was an only child, and when he died the way he did, supposedly after killing two other people, well, I guess that just made everything worse for Marge. Of course she’d always doted on him. Thought the sun rose and set in the boy. He was a bit of a troublemaker, but not bad considering how spoilt he was. He’d drive a little too fast and sometimes drink a beer or two even though he was underage. But he wouldn’t be the first teenage boy to be a little bit on the wild side, and I don’t speak ill of him for that.”

  Carly frowned. “So this isn’t unusual, for Mrs. Abbott to stare out of her window all day?”

  “I think she’s been looking out more than usual the last couple of days. She may be upset because of Nelson being back.”

  “But why would she care one way or the other?”

  Myrna’s shoulders lifted and fell in a deep sigh. “You’d have no way of knowing, of course, but when Nelson left town all those years ago, he swore he wouldn’t come back until he was ready to try to clear his momma’s name.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why Mrs. Abbott would object to that,” Carly admitted.

  “Well, child, you see, if it was to turn out that my sister and Marge’s son weren’t having any illicit affair of any sort, that would mean that Larry had killed two innocent people before he turned the gun on himself, and I don’t know as Marge could live with that knowledge.”

  “Ah, I see.” Carly at last gave in to temptation. Turning casually, as though merely taking her leave of Myrna and heading back home, she stole a quick glance toward the Abbott house, just in time to see an ugly green drapery twitch back into place.

  * * *

  Marge jerked her hand back from the edge of the drapery and snorted. “Some neighbor,” she muttered to herself. “The little hussy. First she traipses around all over her yard early this morning with Trooper. Then she lets him into her house after he jogs to town and picks up something at the bakery, and then she steps across the street and visits for half an hour with Myrna.”

  Marge walked across the room and stared at her reflection in the mirror that hung above a small table next to the front door. “Do they think I couldn’t figure out they were talking about me? About me and about poor little Larry, who worshipped Trooper. Larry didn’t care anything about Trooper’s old momma, that I know for sure. But he fairly worshipped Trooper. And look where it got him. Dead and his name smeared forever in this town.

  “But it’s not Larry’s name that should have been smeared because he didn’t do anything wrong. If he hung around the Myers house a lot, it wasn’t because he was having an affair with Mary. It was because he was hoping to get a little attention from the mighty Trooper Myers. Football hero. President of the senior class. Most popular boy.

  “But Trooper didn’t have time for little Larry Abbott, now did he? No. He just let Larry hang around his house until…”

  She paused. She could never say the words. Three dead and a letter from her son claiming it was by his hand. But that wasn’t true. The letter was typed and Larry hated typing. She’d tried to tell them Larry wasn’t guilty.

  And now Trooper was back and probably wanted to dig it all up again, to try to prove Larry just imagined that he’d had an affair but had killed two people and himself anyway.

  Well, Trooper had no right to bring it all back to the forefront again, and he certainly had no right to try to prove Larry was crazy.

  Because she’d bet anything that’s what he planned to do. To prove Larry was crazy.

  Well, Trooper was crazy if he thought she’d let him get away with that stunt. Yes indeed. Crazy as a bedbug.

  * * *

  Trooper’s run that morning had taken more out of him than he’d expected. Of course he’d known he was out of shape, considering that he’d been flat on his back in a hospital bed for seven days and then allowed only limited activity for the next five weeks.

  But he still hadn’t expected his morning run to exhaust him so completely. After sharing a pot of coffee with his aunt, he’d excused himself to lie down a few minutes and had drifted off to sleep. When he awoke some time later, he lay still, staring up at the ceiling. The day had begun to heat up. Hot air was seeping through the window screens and into his bedroom. And voices, muted but familiar, drifted up from below.

  He slipped out of bed. Crossing to the window, he looked down into his aunt’s front yard. She and Carly were visiting beside the flowerbed.

  A slight movement from a window across the street drew his attention. Mrs. Abbott was spying on them again. Myrna had said that Larry’s mom spent all of her time indoors but that she also passed a good portion of her days staring out the window and watching her neighbors on Sugar Maple Drive.

  He couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman, even though her son had admitted to killing Trooper’s mom and dad. The thing was, Trooper was almost certain that Larry’s admission had been based on his delusions. The boy had never been the soundest apple on the tree, and the fact that his mother obviously worshipped him had done nothing to help the situation. Instead, her devotion had convinced him that he was inherently entitled to anything he wanted.

  And what he wanted was to be accepted by his peer group as their superior. That attitude, of course, had earned him nothing but their disdain.

  Trooper had spent a lot of years hating Larry Abbott. In fact, he’d gone into the FBI hoping to learn the skills necessary to prove that Larry had been lying about having an affair with Mary Myers, who was not only old enough to be his mother but who was also his junior English teacher.

  But the years had slipped by and he’d discovered that he was, if not happy, then certainly content to push that convoluted incident to the back of his mind while he dealt with the details of other people’s tragedies.

  Until April. April the twenty-first to be exact. The date would be forever ingrained in his memory. The date he’d watched a child die and then lost his partner. His own wound had been of no significance to him at the time, although they told him later in the hospital that he’d almost died from loss of blood.

  There had been days he’d wanted to die. But his body had ignored his wishes, fighting to live, as was a body’s duty to do, to preserve the spark of life even when the mind insisted that life wasn’t worth preserving.

  Movement below pulled him back from his descent into the past. Carly had turned and appeared to be looking toward Mrs. Abbott’s window. What did she think of her neighbor who never left her house? Did she know the story behind Mrs. Abbott turning her back on the world?

  Come to think of it, Carly herself was still a bit of a mystery. Although she’d shared with him the fact that she’d left her high profile job in the city because of a stalker, she still had no obvious means of support. Even if she had accrued quite a bit in savings before leaving her job, she surely couldn’t live indefinitely without earning some additional money.

  Besides, her stalker had been caught and was in prison now. If the stalker was her only reason for going to ground in Holly Grove, then why wasn’t she moving on? It didn’t make sense for an unusually attractive woman to bury herself in a small town and do nothing beyond trying to turn her dissertation into a book. And based on the dry-as-dust title of her dissertation, she’d better not expect the book to become a best seller.

  Suddenly a memory cell stirred. Something about the words “best seller” had seemed for a second to bong a bell deep within Trooper’s brain. But almost immediately the reverberations faded and Trooper was left grasping at echoes.

  Cursing under his breath, he shrugged and watched Carly throw up a hand to take leave of his aunt and then make her way across the street. Once she was back in her yard, she picked up her water hose long enough to inspect the container on the end of it. Then, after making a trip to the side of the house so she could turn the water on, she returned to the front of the lot and started spraying her wilted impatiens.

  He needed an excuse to see Carly again, one that wa
s legitimate. He wanted to talk to her some more, to try to find out what she was doing in Holly Grove and how she had picked this little town out of thousands of others when she’d decided to hide from her stalker.

  Because his gut told him that there was more to Callie Morris/Carly Morrison than she’d told him thus far. And he’d learned over the years to trust his gut. It had never failed him.

  Discounting, of course, April 21.

  Chapter 6

  Half an hour later, after he’d showered and dressed in clean jeans and a cotton shirt, Trooper went downstairs looking for his aunt. He found her seated at the kitchen table writing on an index card. He smiled to himself. The scene brought back memories of his early teen years when he would visit Myrna after school and sit at her kitchen table doing his homework. She’d often sit down with him and copy off requested recipes on index cards for church friends who’d tasted one of her specialties at a recent church supper.

  “What mischief are you up to this morning?” he asked, his tone teasing.

  Myrna looked up and smiled. “I’m copying my recipe for chicken salad. Carly asked for it. I told her you’d bring it over to her sometime this afternoon.”

  Trooper’s pleasure at his aunt’s words struck him as completely out of proportion to her news. Of course he’d been hoping to see Carly again soon, but there was no reason for him to get all excited about the prospect.

  “Okay,” he said, crossing the kitchen to open the refrigerator door and pull out the jug of cold water his aunt always kept on the top shelf. His desire to keep Myrna from reading his expression was actually more pressing than his thirst. The thing was, he didn’t want her drawing unfounded conclusions about his interest in Carly.

  Not that he actually had feelings toward Carly. That was the point. Since he didn’t have feelings, he didn’t want Myrna thinking he did.

  And how foolish could he be? He quickly reached the conclusion that his reasoning was reminiscent of his sophomore crush on Chrissie Scolis, who was head cheerleader and two years ahead of him at Holly Grove High. Trooper clenched his teeth and shut the refrigerator door a little harder than necessary.

  “Is your shoulder bothering you, Nelson?” his aunt inquired.

  “A bit,” Trooper lied, then felt like a heel when his aunt looked up from her chore with a quick frown.

  “But I had a good nap,” he interjected quickly.

  “Well, that’s nice, dear, because you’re going to need your strength. Karen and the kids are coming over to see you in a little bit.”

  “The kids? All of them?”

  “No, fortunately. The three oldest are at camp. She’s just bringing Martha and Jonah. They’re four and two. They’re not bad children, although we’ll have to watch Jonah like a hawk. He’s in the terrible twos, of course.”

  “Okay.” Trooper wasn’t sure he wanted to see Karen all grown up. He might prefer to remember her as the three-year-old he’d chased all over Myrna’s yard, but it didn’t sound as though he had any choice in the matter.

  “When will they be here?”

  “Any minute now, I assume. She called while you were in the shower and said she was leaving in half an hour. It’s a fifteen-minute drive.”

  Trooper glanced at the wall clock. “Should I wait outside so I can help her get in with the kids?”

  The racket of car doors being slammed barely preceded the sound of running footsteps approaching the kitchen. “Sounds as though I’m too late,” Trooper said. “Obviously she’s here now.”

  Karen hadn’t changed nearly as much as Trooper had expected. She was still petite, and she sported the same mop of red hair that stood out around her head as though it had never been touched with a comb or brush. Freckles still marched across her nose and sprinkled her cheeks, and her grin was as wide and welcoming as it had always been. She dashed into the house and flung herself into Trooper’s arms. “Trooper, Trooper, Trooper,” she murmured into his shirt collar. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Lord, child,” Myrna said, pushing back from the kitchen table and standing. “Don’t squeeze Nelson to death. The man’s just getting over a gunshot wound and you’re probably half killing him all over again.”

  Karen gasped and jumped back, releasing Trooper so quickly that he had to balance himself with a hand on the kitchen table. He grinned, hoping to prove he wasn’t hurt, and grabbed a handful of his cousin’s hair. “Come here, brat,” he said, tugging gently.

  She laughed and slapped his hand away. “I’d almost forgotten, but that was your method for making me go where you wanted me to go. I should be mad at you.”

  Myrna turned to glare at Trooper. “You pulled her hair?”

  “Only when she wouldn’t mind any other way.”

  Karen laughed. “Don’t look so horrified, Aunt Myrna. He didn’t really pull my hair. He just threatened to if I was about to wander off or to get into trouble in some way.”

  A little girl’s voice sounded from the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. “Mommy, is this the fib man?”

  Trooper glanced toward the doorway. Two children stood there, a little girl who was the spitting image of the Karen he remembered from twenty years before. The little boy beside her must take after his daddy, Trooper decided, because he had brown hair and eyes. He stared solemnly at Trooper, not bothering to take his thumb out of his mouth.

  Karen’s lips twitched. “That’s FBI, honey, not fib.”

  “But Stevie says F-B-I spells fib,” the girl protested.

  “No, honey. F-I-B spells fib.”

  “Then what does F-B-I spell?”

  Karen sighed. “Not anything really. It’s just short for words.”

  “So Stevie’s wrong again,” Martha commented with a delighted grin. “He’ll never get an A on spelling.”

  Karen turned to Trooper to explain. “Stevie is in first grade and is learning to spell. He’s not particularly good at it yet.”

  “At least he has the letters right, even if the order’s wrong.”

  The little girl spoke up. “Stevie’s mad cause he’s at camp and can’t see you. He wanted to see your gunshot. He’s never seen anybody that’s been shot before.”

  “Oh?” Trooper hadn’t been around children often in recent years and wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  Myrna came to his rescue. “Guess what, Martha? I’m pretty sure I saw some lemonade and cookies on the table on the screened-in porch, and I suspect if you ask her real nice, your mother might let you go out there and have some.”

  Martha immediately turned to her mother. “Can we, Mommy?”

  “Okay. But be sure and help your brother so he doesn’t spill lemonade on Aunt Myrna’s table.”

  Both children took off in a hard run and a second later Trooper heard the scraping of chairs on the porch floor.

  Karen immediately pulled out a chair and seated herself at the kitchen table. “Do you mind staying in the kitchen while we visit, Trooper? I need to stay close to the porch so I can keep an eye on the kids.” Trooper noticed that she had seated herself so that she could look through the connecting doorway and see the children.

  “Not a problem.” He helped his aunt be seated again, then pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.

  Karen picked up the index card still lying on the table and glanced down at Myrna’s writing. “Ah, your chicken salad recipe is in demand again, I see.” She looked across the table at Trooper. “Aunt Myrna is still famous locally for her chicken salad.” She placed the card back on the table. “I figured everyone in town already had your recipe. Who is this one for?”

  “Carly Morrison,” Myrna responded.

  Karen nodded. “Oh yes, the lady who lives across the street in the old Jarvis house.”

  “Have you met her?” Trooper asked.

  “A time or two. Most recently, it was at the newspaper office. I’d gone in to renew my subscription, and she was just leaving. Millie Coward, who’s the secretary there now, said that Carly had been
looking through their archives all morning.”

  Trooper frowned. “I wonder what she was looking for. Did Millie say?”

  “I asked but she didn’t know. Then, fortunately, Oliver Kinnard stepped out of his office. You wouldn’t know Ollie. He moved to town and bought the newspaper from old Mr. Sloan a few years ago. Ollie goes to our church and I know him fairly well, so I asked him what Carly Morrison was looking for in the archives.”

  “And what did he say?” Trooper asked.

  “He said she was a little vague about it but mostly she just said she wanted to get more familiar with the town. I don’t know as I buy that. I mean, if she wanted to get more familiar with the town, she could just talk to people, but she doesn’t much. She didn’t join a church and she doesn’t mingle with people. Frankly, I think there’s something a little off about her.”

  Myrna sat up straighter. “Lord, child, you think just because a body doesn’t talk their head off that there’s something wrong with them. We had Carly over for supper last night and you couldn’t ask for a nicer person. Could you, Trooper?”

  “She was very pleasant.”

  Karen raised her brows. “What’s that they say about damning with faint praise?”

  Trooper spread his hands. “I don’t know the lady well enough to judge her one way or another. However, I certainly didn’t intend to damn her with faint praise.”

  “Well,” Myrna interjected. “I like her.”

  Karen grinned. “You like everybody, Aunt Myrna.”

  “Now that isn’t true. But I do try to give a body the benefit of the doubt if there’s any doubt to speak of.”

  Because Myrna appeared to be growing agitated, Trooper shot his cousin a look and said, with a less-than-subtle attempt to change the subject, “So tell me about your children, Karen.”

  Karen’s tales about ten-year-old Meagan, eight-year-old David Jr., six-year-old Steve, and the two who were eating chocolate chip cookies on the porch filled the next half hour, at which time she jumped to her feet. “Why, look at the time. I’ve got to get these two to the church or they’ll be late for Sunday School.”