by Sherry Lewis
“Yes, I would have. But I can’t expect you to believe that.”
In spite of his desire not to, Fred did believe her. But the need to place the blame somewhere forced the next words from his mouth. “You haven’t seen Alison lately, have you? You have no idea what Garrett’s done to her.”
“Don’t I? Do you think this is the first time I’ve seen something like this?” She strode across the room and ground out her cigarette in an already full ashtray.
Fred drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “No, of course not. I know you were close to Jenny—”
Olivia barked a laugh. “Jenny. Yes, I had to watch her go through it, too. If I’d been a stronger woman then, I probably would have killed Garrett myself. I promised myself for years that I wouldn’t watch it happen to someone I loved again. But when it came right down to it, I didn’t have the guts.”
Rusty shot Fred a look of confusion. But Fred had no idea what she meant, so he couldn’t shed any light on the subject for the other man.
Olivia looked up at them. “You don’t know, do you? Neither of you. You think Cutler’s such a protected, safe little place. You don’t think anything ugly ever happens here.”
Fred didn’t answer. She was leading somewhere with this, and he didn’t want to derail her. But the hair on his scalp pricked with foreboding.
“When I was a little girl, I watched my best friend suffer after her father molested her. Over and over again, he came to her at night and I was the only one she told.” Tears filled her eyes and she dashed them away angrily with the back of her hand. “I made her tell her mother. I thought her mother would protect her. Instead, she denied it. She accused Rosie of lying. Said she made it up. So Rosie didn’t tell her any more, and she stopped talking to me about it because I betrayed her.”
She fumbled with an open pack of cigarettes, managed to get one in her mouth, and struck the lighter half a dozen times before she got a flame. Inhaling greedily, she closed her eyes and held the smoke in her lungs. When she spoke again, the words and smoke came out together.
“She left town the day we graduated high school. I lost touch with her, but I heard later she never got over it. It ate away at her—made her crazy. And eventually she committed suicide.”
Fred thought back thirty years, trying desperately to think of a girl named Rosie, but his memory failed him. Rosie. “Who was she?”
Olivia rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand for a long, agonizing moment before she lifted her eyes to his again. “You really don’t know?”
“Who was she?” he demanded.
“It’s funny in a way, how lightning strikes the same place twice.”
The hair on Fred’s arms stood up and he battled the uncanny certainty that this would tie everything together.
Olivia looked from Fred to Rusty and then back again. “I’m talking about Rosie Devereaux.”
TWENTY SIX
Fred pounded on Margaret’s door, waited half a beat then pounded again. He heard footsteps moving inside, but he knocked a third time for good measure.
Rosie Devereaux. Suzanne’s cousin. He couldn’t remember her, but she would have been about Margaret’s age. Margaret would remember.
His grandson Benjamin opened the door. “Grandpa?”
“Where’s your mother?”
Staring open-mouthed at Fred’s unusual greeting, Benjamin gestured toward the center of the house. “In the kitchen.” At fifteen, Benjamin already stood half a head taller than Fred, and it seemed like he grew another inch every week.
Fred started past him, but paused for a second to reach for the boy’s shoulder and send up a reassuring smile. At least he hoped it was reassuring. It felt desperate.
Margaret sat at the table, a cookbook open before her, her usual icy glass of Diet Dr. Pepper at her right hand. She looked up and smiled when he entered. “Dad? Was that you making all that racket?”
“Tell me what you remember about Rosie Devereaux.”
Margaret’s eyes clouded. “Rosie Devereaux? What made you think of her after all these years?”
“What do you know about her?”
Margaret turned toward Benjamin who must have followed him. “Fix your grandpa a glass of something, Ben. Dad, come and sit down for a minute. You look horrible.”
“I feel worse.” He gripped the table and met her eyes, hoping to convey his urgency. “What do you remember?”
Margaret’s eyes flicked toward Benjamin again. “Not much. Why?”
“Do you remember ever hearing anything about her being abused?”
“Abused? You mean beaten?”
“Molested.”
“Rosie?” Margaret’s hand flew to her throat and her cheeks flushed. “No. Was she?”
“I think so.”
“Not by Celeste—?”
Fred shook his head. “By Arthur. Archie. Whatever the Sam Hill his name was.”
“Archie,” she said automatically.
Out of the corner of his eye, Fred saw Benjamin fish an ice tray from the freezer and sidle up to the counter to get a little closer.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“I remember that she was always quiet. Not a lot of fun to be around. She never came to any slumber parties or anything like that. And when we got older, she didn’t date much. She was too quiet for me. I sort of ran with a different crowd.”
“She committed suicide. Later. After she left here. Do you remember hearing about that?”
Margaret nodded uncertainly. “I think so.”
Benjamin dropped ice into a glass almost silently while he soaked in every word.
“What do you remember?”
She shook her head as if trying to loosen the memories. “I don’t know. Just that she did it. And I remember that her father died not very long after that. That’s what I remember most. There was a big story about him because it happened so soon after Rosie died.”
“How did he die?”
“I don’t remember. An accident of some sort. I remember seeing pictures of Celeste. You know—the tragic widow and that kind of thing.”
Benjamin turned on the water tap—no more than a trickle—and stuck the glass under it.
“How long ago?”
Margaret tapped the fingers of both hands to her forehead in a gesture of exasperation and looked up at him. “I’d think you’d remember more than me. It couldn’t have been very long ago. Ten years. No, it was before Douglas and Suzanne got married. Fifteen, maybe? Don’t you remember?”
Fred shook his head. “No. I didn’t pay much attention to local tidbits then. I was too busy. What else do you remember?”
Benjamin handed him the glass of ice water. “Grandpa?”
“What?” He tried not to sound annoyed.
“Wouldn’t they have the old newspapers at the newspaper office? Maybe you could just go look it up.”
“What?”
“I said, wouldn’t they have the old newspapers—”
“Never mind, son. I heard you. Margaret, this boy’s a genius.” He took a healthy swig of the ice water and left the glass on the counter on his way out.
“Dad?” Margaret raced after him. “Dad? What’s going on?”
“It’s a long story, sweetheart, and I can’t stop to explain it now. Douglas knows most of it. Call him.” He stepped outside and started back down the sidewalk.
“Dad—?”
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t have time. If he was right. . .
“Dad? You ought to call Enos.”
He waved a hand over his head. Of course he’d call Enos. He’d promised to, hadn’t he? But he’d already sent Enos off in the wrong direction once today. This time he’d wait until he had proof.
Fred pushed open the door to the office of the Cutler Crier, a weekly newspaper that had been put out by the Jeppson family since just after World War II. There had never been enough local news to justify more than weekly circulation. And even at that, the pickings were usua
lly skimpy. But once in a while, almost by accident, they carried a newsworthy story.
Fred had rarely done more than skim the Crier—he preferred the Denver Post—but Phoebe had read it regularly, and she had always kept him informed of any noteworthy local news and gossip. After her death, he’d let his subscription slide.
The youngest Jeppson boy’s wife, Fred thought her name might be Lisa or Lora, sat on a stool behind the counter. Her mother-in-law, Hettie, took up the position of honor at a desk in the back of the small room.
The younger Mrs. Jeppson beamed up at him from a cherub face framed by dark hair held back with a huge white bow. “Mr. Vickery. This is a surprise. What can I do for you?”
“Do you have any old issues of the Crier stored around here?”
“I think so.” She looked at Hettie for confirmation. “Do we, Mama?”
Hettie scowled at him. “Of course we do, Fred. We do business like a real newspaper—no matter what some folks think.”
He ignored her barb. “Can I look through them?”
“Look? No. We have back issues for sale, but you can’t just come in here and catch up on the news by looking through them.”
“Fine. I’ll buy them. How much?”
“Which issues did you want?” She dropped her glasses down on her nose and stared at him over them.
“I don’t know. They’d have been out about fifteen years ago.”
“Fifteen years? What do you want something that old for?”
“I’m trying to find out about something.”
Hettie stood and crossed to the counter, leaning onto it with both arms. “We keep back issues for a year.”
“You don’t keep a . . . a scrapbook or anything?”
“No, we don’t keep a scrapbook.”
“It’s important, Hettie. Really important.”
Hettie adjusted her glasses, but they immediately dropped again. “Just what is it you’re trying to find?”
“I’d rather not say.”
She humphed and sent a meaningful glance at her daughter-in-law. “Then how do you expect me to help you?”
“I didn’t know you were going to.”
“We try to be of service,” she snapped. “To our subscribers.”
“Do you have any papers that old?”
“We might.”
“Hettie, please. . . What I’m looking for is extremely important.”
She pushed up from the counter and walked to the end where she lifted a hinged piece to let herself pass onto Fred’s side of the barrier. “Sterling might have some old issues in boxes in the basement. I suppose we could take a look.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. There’s no guarantee we’ll find what you want.” She glanced at her daughter-in-law and nodded toward the front door. “You keep an eye on things while I’m helping Fred.”
Lisa or Lora nodded and tried to look like she didn’t mind being told the obvious. “I will, Mama.”
Hettie led the way to a narrow stairway that cut through the center of the building into a musty basement filled with boxes and off-kilter filing cabinets. “Don’t know why I’m going to such a bother,” she muttered. “But if we have ’em they’ll be somewhere down here.”
At the bottom of the stairs she flicked on a single bulb hanging from a cord looped over a ceiling beam. The light bulb swayed and sent light skittering across the clutter.
“Point me in the right direction and I’ll look through them. No sense you having to stay down here with me.”
Hettie made a noise with her tongue and her teeth. “I can’t leave you down here alone with the archives. It’d be as much as my hide is worth. I’ll just have to help you, I guess.” She propped her fists on her hips and looked around the room. “Besides, I don’t have the foggiest notion where they’d be.”
With a sigh designed to let him know just how much he was putting her out, Hettie lifted the lid off the top box in a stack and dug through its contents.
“Should I start on these over here?” Fred needed her too much to annoy her, but he didn’t want to stand idly by while she looked through every box herself.
She gave him a brisk nod.
An hour later, they’d checked nearly all the boxes without finding any archived records. They’d found trophies, old office supplies, files, receipts and bills, but no newspapers.
Hettie wiped her forehead with the back of an arm, leaving a dirt smudge in the place of perspiration. “Looks like I was wrong.”
Fred tried not to let his disappointment show. “Thanks for your time anyway, Hettie.”
She settled the lid on the box she’d been looking through and perched on the top of it. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you want to know?”
But he shook his head. “I may be on the wrong track again.”
“Listen, Fred, this is silly. You need information and I’ve worked here every day for thirty-two years. Anything that’s happened in Cutler during that time, I’ll probably remember.”
Fred weighed his options and decided that the odds of finding another source quickly came up short. He might as well give in. “Archie Devereaux. How did he die?”
Hettie pulled back in surprise, but answered briskly, “In a house fire.”
“A house fire?” he repeated uselessly. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been that.
“Oh, yes. It was a terrible tragedy. Poor Celeste had just gone through that awful business with her daughter—you remember that, don’t you? Her suicide?”
He nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow.
“Those psychiatrists at that clinic made such a to-do about it, claiming she’d been suffering from depression or some-such all her life. You remember that part, don’t you? She’d written all those poems and drawn pictures, and the doctors said they thought maybe she’d been molested as a little girl? Celeste really went through the wringer on that one, I’ll tell you. It was ridiculous, of course. Archie and Celeste would never have done such a thing.”
“A house fire,” he repeated again. It wasn’t enough. Coincidental, that’s what Enos would say.
“Celeste barely made it out alive. Don’t you remember?”
He shook his head. “What about Suzanne?”
“I don’t remember if she was there at the time.” She tilted her head and thought. “Her parents had that accident, you recall?”
He recalled.
“Suzanne might have been there— Yes, I think it might have happened when Suzanne was there. And after that, Celeste bought the house up here and they came back.”
“What happened to Archie? If Suzanne and Celeste got out, why didn’t he?”
“I believe he fell.” She thought for a second or two, then nodded in a satisfied way. “Yes, I remember, he fell and hit his head . . . against the bathtub, I think.”
“Hit his head?”
“It was so tragic.”
“He hit his head?” Fred asked again. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I can be. Mama Jeppson would remember. She can’t remember what day it is today, but she remembers everything that happened in the past. Do you want me to call her?”
Fred’s pulse thudded hard enough for him to feel it. “No, I think you’ve told me enough. I might ask Enos to come talk with you, though. Is that all right?”
Hettie nodded. “Sure. Whatever I can do.”
Fred started up the stairway, clutching the handrail.
“Fred?”
He looked over his shoulder.
Hettie gestured toward the boxes. “I’m assuming you’ll want me to start up your subscription to the Crier again.”
Fred nodded. No sense fighting it. He knew when he was licked. “As a matter of fact, Hettie, I was going to ask you if you’d do that.”
She smiled her satisfaction. “You’ll get this week’s issue.”
TWENTY SEVEN
Fred emerged from the Crier’s offices into almost total darkness. Spri
ng might be around the corner, but night still came early. He’d left home without a heavy coat, and now he wished he’d thought ahead. His thin jacket didn’t keep the frigid night air at bay.
Two cars were parked across the street at Lacey’s, Grandpa Jones’s ratty old pick-up and Suzanne’s white Chevy. That meant that Enos had finished questioning her. The Copper Penny’s parking lot held a more sizeable crowd. But most of the downtown area had emptied.
Fred walked quickly, hoping to catch Enos before he left the office. He had to deliver this news in person, and after the last wild-goose chase Fred had led him on, getting Enos to listen might be tricky.
He had less than two blocks to walk, but when he reached the corner of Lake Front and saw Enos’s empty parking space, he knew he was too late. Just to be certain, Fred crossed the street and tried the door of the Sheriff’s office.
Locked.
He walked back to the corner and stared into the darkness that led home. Half a mile and he’d be there. Warm. Safe.
He looked the other direction. Less than half a mile past the church and the cemetery and he’d be at Enos’s. Warm. Safe. All things considered, he’d be wisest to head to Enos’s house.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Fred bent his head into the breeze that cut through his jacket and stepped down onto the street. The sidewalk would make his walk easier for the first two blocks. After that, the forest scrambled down to the edges of the road and obliterated most signs of civilization.
Headlights from a car came up almost behind him and played over the street as the driver made a U-turn and headed back into town. He tried to look up, but the wind collected pieces of grit and sand and blew them into his eyes when he lifted his head.
Jessica would offer him cocoa—not his usual choice, but tonight maybe he’d accept. But she’d expect him to let her dog Magnum, a white piece of fluff with pretensions of grandeur, sit on his feet, and he hated that.
He practiced how he’d tell Enos what he knew. He tried a dozen different starts, pictured Enos’s reaction to each, and thought again. Before long, he left the sidewalk and plunged into the darkness of the forest road.