“Here’s a picture from when my mom and dad were married, the first time. And here’s one from the wedding last month,” Annie said.
“I love that you’re doing that,” DeeAnn said.
“Maybe we’ll be doing one for Bea at some point,” Sheila said.
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Vera said. “They both seem content with the situation.”
“So what’s going on with the dig?” Annie asked.
“They were pulling out a lot of things that just looked like pieces of rock to me. But there was this interesting piece of rounded pottery. Who knows if it was a cup or a bowl,” Vera said. “It’s the only thing I saw that made any sense to me. And it’s been raining for two days, so, of course, they stopped. Mom hopes they’ll be back soon. Good God, she was right down there in the ditch with them.” Vera handed Annie a picture of her mother “supervising” the progress. Annie laughed.
“I’m so excited. I wonder if your mom would let me bring my class by sometime this week,” said Paige, the high school history teacher. She was supposed to retire last year, but they asked if she could stay on another year.
“She’ll probably charge admission,” Sheila said with a grunt.
“She might really like that,” Vera said. “She’s now on the board at the museum and really seems to be getting into history.”
“Speaking of history,” DeeAnn interjected. “I heard a rumor about Emily McGlashen’s body.”
“What?” Paige said.
“They say it’s still in the morgue.”
“What?” Annie said. “I thought they finally reached her parents.”
“We all thought that,” DeeAnn said, “but evidently, there was a mix-up with the names. It was the wrong people.”
“That’s odd in this day and age,” Annie said.
Vera’s stomach fluttered. “And sad,” she said. “I didn’t like the woman, but someone should give her a proper burial. I mean, a life is a life, and death should be handled respectfully.”
“So,” Annie said to DeeAnn, “have they found her real parents?”
“I don’t know. Annie, I was hoping you could find out,” she said. “My source doesn’t know anything else.”
“Your source, DeeAnn?” Vera said and smiled. “Everybody knows your favorite customer works in the morgue.”
They all laughed. Shorty Swice came into her bakery every day and always ordered six blueberry muffins. Where does the man put it? DeeAnn often wondered.
The funny thing was that he had a bit of a crush on DeeAnn. It was harmless, of course. She was a big-boned, happily married woman, and he a tiny man with a big appetite, as henpecked as could be by his wife, Valerie.
Just then, there was a knock on the glass sliding door in the Sheila’s basement, which was where she held her crops. She answered the door. “Why, Detective Bryant.” Her voice went up a decibel or two.
Vera’s eyes shot to Annie, whose face reacted by coloring pink. Annie looked at her, then looked around the table at the other women sitting there. Some were looking her way; others were twisting their necks already to see the handsome detective as he entered the room.
“How do?” he said to the group of women. “How goes the crop this evening?”
They all murmured their separate answers.
Vera’s heart felt like it sank into her stomach as she witnessed the discomfort of Annie. Vera was probably the only one at the table who knew about the kiss Bryant and Annie had shared and knew how tempted Annie was by this man. She had opened up to Vera one night, while they were sitting on Beatrice’s front porch together. The woman was in some turmoil. Vera wanted to tell her to hang on to her husband, the father of her children, with all her might; that it was only human to be tempted, after all; to be kind and gentle to herself. But it didn’t come out that way at all. In fact, she bumbled around the conversation. But she felt for her.
“Annie, we need to talk,” the detective said.
Annie’s mouth dropped open, and she leaned back.
“It’s business, of course,” he said quickly. “We’ve had a break in the Emily McGlashen case.”
“And?” Annie said. “I’ve filed my story about her. I’m not working on it anymore. You know that. And when I wrote about the other murders in Cumberland Creek, you were not forthcoming. So what gives?”
“Well, it turns out that Emily is not who we thought she was.... She, um, had these tattoos.”
“Tattoos?” Annie said.
“Rune patterns.”
Vera’s heart leapt to her mouth, DeeAnn dropped her drink on the floor, and Annie gasped. In the rush to clean things up, Vera’s mind ran a mile a minute. The NMO? Again? They were going to lose Annie, Mike, and their boys. Cumberland Creek was going to lose them. Just like they lost Cookie Crandall.
Chapter 9
Annie stood and gathered up her photos, shoving them into their envelopes, then into her bags.
“Annie,” Detective Bryant said. “I need your help.”
“I’m the last person whose help you need,” she said, trying to stop her voice from shaking.
“I know what this must feel like, but—”
“You know?” Annie said with her voice lifted. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think any of you could possibly know what it feels like. It’s like I’ve stepped back in time fifty years or something. There’s a group of neo-Nazi pagans in the hills nobody wants to talk about. There’s my boys in a school system that promotes Bible education. And let’s not forget about the weird, hateful symbols painted on barns and houses around town a while back. And then there’s Cookie.”
Annie felt herself unraveling there in Sheila’s basement, surrounded by her friends and the ephemera of scrapbooking, such as the paper, the scissors, the glues, the colored pens and pencils. All of it seemed to mock her right now.
“Now, Annie.” Sheila led her to the couch in the corner. “I know you’re upset. You’ve got every right to be. But you need to calm down. Take some deep breaths.”
“Yeah, uh, I didn’t know it was going to upset you this much,” Bryant said, looking to the floor, then back up at her. “It’s just that you’ve got these great investigative skills, and I know you’ve been working on this book. I don’t know if there’s a link or not, but I thought you could answer some questions. We are so short of staff right now.”
Annie took a deep breath as she watched his discomfort. He was admitting he was in over his head—and he was doing that in front of the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Club. She smiled. Then laughed.
Sheila shoved a glass of water in her hand. “Drink up, Annie.”
As Annie drank the cool water, she began to calm down. She looked up and realized the other women were not looking at her anymore. They had gone back to their projects, or at least they wanted it to look that way. She caught Vera looking at her out of the corner of her eye; then she looked back at the paper in front of her.
Bryant crouched down next to her.
“What do you say, Annie? Can you help me out?”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” she said. “Let me think about it, okay?”
He was too close to her face. She could see the shadow of his whiskers on his face and wanted to reach up and run her hand along his chiseled cheek. No, probably not a good idea.
Because sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night and realize it’s been three months since you and your husband have made love. Because sometimes you want to scream from the boredom of it all—the house, the kids. Because sometimes all you want to be is a woman. A woman who is nothing more than that. And you want a man who makes you feel that way.
He stood too close to her. She felt a psychic pull from him. And knew she couldn’t resist this project, was unsure she could continue to resist him. But one thing she knew was if Emily McGlashen was NMO, it would make a hell of a story. A story she wanted. It reached into to her guts, and she felt it forming there.
Was Emily McGlashen an NMO m
ember? She had come to town, reclaiming her roots as a McGlashen, part of the Scotch-Irish founding family of what was then called Miller’s Gap, now Cumberland Creek. And she had come as an international Irish step-dancing champion. She had appeared to be on a mission to destroy Vera’s business and to take over the historical society. Maybe, just maybe, they had her all wrong. Maybe she had been on a different kind of mission. And now Annie wanted to find out.
Annie took a deep breath and stood, gathered her bags. “Okay, Bryant. Where do we start?”
“We start tonight, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I know it’s Saturday night and all that.” He looked at the ladies. “I don’t think they will mind if I borrow you for just the night.”
“Just one night, Detective,” Sheila said.
“Okay, I’ll give Mike a call and let him know I might be late,” Annie said, following Detective Bryant toward the door. She turned around to find Vera on her heels.
“Annie,” she said quietly. “Can’t this wait? I mean, I don’t think Mike is going to like you digging around again.”
“Vera,” Annie said, “I think Mike is going to have to get over it.”
Vera’s hand went to her chest in concern, and her brows knit.
Annie rode in the police car with Bryant to the station, and she called Mike along the way. As predicted, he wasn’t happy, but he felt a little better knowing Annie was with his new best friend.
Before they left the car, Annie told Bryant what Mike had said. He looked back at her with a pained expression.
“I know you care about him,” she said. “So do I. Believe it or not. Let’s keep this arrangement platonic and professional. If you can’t do that, I won’t help you.”
“Annie, I—”
“I mean it. Don’t push me,” she said, glaring.
He leaned back into his seat, then fumbled with the door. “It’s your call, Annie. All of it.”
Chapter 10
When Beatrice woke up, she was startled momentarily—a man snored softly in her bed. Oh yes. Jon. He had come padding into her room last night, wanting to make love. After, instead of going back to his own room, he had stayed with her. He preferred to sleep with her. Beatrice didn’t feel the same about sleeping with him. She had grown used to sleeping alone and liked it. Just because she didn’t want to sleep with him didn’t mean she didn’t want to have sex with him. She never told him no, always welcomed his touch. Sleeping alone after Ed died had been difficult. But now she liked to spread out and to pass gas and scratch her ass if she wanted to. Hardly attractive.
She left the room quietly, glancing back at Jon, with his mouth open, snoring a bit. She smiled to herself. He was cute. She loved him madly.
Now she had a lot of work to do. She’d invited the business professor and his family to Sunday dinner. Vera and Elizabeth were coming, and she hoped her no-good ex-son-in-law would come, as well, sans new girlfriend.
“Now, Bea, she’s a part of my life,” he had told her when she issued the invitation over the phone. “You are going to have to get used to it.”
“Like hell,” Beatrice had said. “She is not welcome in my house. Your ex-wife and daughter will be here, and you are welcome here. Please don’t complicate things by bringing your child bride into my home.”
“Beatrice! She is not a child, and we are not married,” he’d said.
“Well, you might as well be. The way you’ve turned your back on your family, you ought to be ashamed.”
“I haven’t done that, Bea. Times are tough everywhere,” he said. “I am still sending Vera money for Elizabeth. It’s just that she’s not making as much on her own.”
“Men. Do you always equate love with money? One of these days Elizabeth isn’t even going to know you, Bill. Then how will you feel?”
“I just saw her what? Two, no, three weeks ago.”
“Three weeks? Humph,” Beatrice said.
Silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “I’m sorry, Bea. I’ve been very busy settling in here. You’re right. I need to see Elizabeth.”
Beatrice took the roast out of the refrigerator. She’d taken it out of the freezer last night. She placed it in the kitchen sink. Child brides. Ex-wives. Money. Love. When did modern life get to be so mixed up, you couldn’t even have a simple Sunday dinner without causing a ruckus?
She scooped coffee out of the can, placed it in her coffeemaker, turned it on, and went to sit on the sunporch, wondering when Jon would get up. The scent of the coffee brewing filled her with comfort.
As she sat down in her wicker rocking chair, it creaked and sighed with age. She should probably get another one, but it suited her.
“Good morning,” Jon said as he entered the porch and kissed her on the cheek.
“Morning,” she said.
“Ready for your coffee?”
She nodded.
He came back with a cup of coffee for her and had the paper, as well. He sat down and started reading it.
“Well, this is something,” he said. “Emily McGlashen’s murder gets more mysterious.”
“What’s going on?” Beatrice asked after taking a drink of her morning elixir.
“Her body still remains unclaimed by her family, though the police say they’ve found them and they are on the way to Cumberland Creek.”
“But that is odd. It’s been what? A week? I thought there was a couple here a few days ago. . . .”
“No. There was a mix-up with her name. Her parents have a different last name, from what I’ve heard.”
“Really?” She mentally leafed through the article Annie had written about Emily. No mention of any of this. She remembered Annie had said she had problems getting anything on Emily. It was all the smoke-and-mirrors press release standard stuff. Maybe she should read it again. She thumbed through her stack of newspapers.
“Her parents are living in a commune of a sort.”
“Fascinating,” Beatrice said, sipping her coffee, gradually feeling her senses come alive.
“I wonder if Annie knows all this,” Jon said. “She seems to be in the know most of the time.”
Beatrice skimmed the article. “International Irish dance champion . . . from California, lived in London, Madrid, Rome, Galway . . . studied with so-and-so . . . . retired at the age of twenty-seven to teach . . . will be greatly missed.” No mention of her parents. No names. Nothing.
“I can’t help but think of the NMO. Surely, the NMO would not be so foolish as to murder another young woman, not now, with this book being written about them. All this attention. Even they could not be so stupid,” Jon said.
Beatrice loved listening to him speak. With that French accent, even the word stupid didn’t offend her.
Beatrice thought for a moment. The paper hadn’t mentioned any NMO trademarks being at the scene of the crime. So it seemed unlikely. Besides, strangulation was a personal way to kill someone. Someone really wanted to watch her die and didn’t mind watching the life drain out of her. Beatrice shivered.
Sometimes, Beatrice wished this country wasn’t so free. People had the right to believe what they wanted, but she just wasn’t so sure about acting on those beliefs. She often thought of the innocent lives taken based on nothing more than ignorance. She couldn’t dwell on it, or her blood pressure would skyrocket. As if she didn’t have enough to worry about. But if the NMO didn’t have anything to do with Emily’s murder, who did? And was the murderer really trying to frame Vera?
Chapter 11
Vera’s mother had seated them next to one another. Was she harboring the hope that she would get back together with Bill? Hard to believe. Beatrice had never really liked Bill. Well, she had for a while, when he stayed with her. But these days, Beatrice was back to not liking him, and her mother never minced words or feelings.
“Pass the potatoes, please,” Vera said to him. He did so, avoiding eye contact. He held a smitten Elizabeth on his opposite knee. Beatrice had tried to get her to sit at the table in her own chair, b
ut nothing doing. Elizabeth hadn’t seen her father in three weeks and stuck to his lap.
Vera spooned the potatoes on her plate, noticing that Dr. Reilly was watching her. She looked up at him and smiled. “Mama has a way with potatoes,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said. “With everything. This is a delicious meal.”
“Quite,” his wife said.
“Thank you kindly,” Beatrice said, looking pleased with herself.
“So I understand you are a business professor,” Jon said to Dr. Reilly.
He nodded. “Yes. I specialize in marketing. I’m also consulting for some Irish music groups and researching the influence of Irish music on Appalachian music for them. Great fun.”
“Fascinating,” Vera said, though she could care less about it. “Did you hear about Emily McGlashen?”
Leola Reilly spoke up, with her mouth half full. “Oh, yes.” Vera had never seen the woman wear anything but a long denim skirt. She had been beginning to wonder if she wore anything else. But tonight she wore a black skirt and a white shirt. Very simple and almost in the same style as the denim skirts she wore.
“We knew her work, had run into her at many Irish music and dance festivals. It’s a small community,” Dr. Reilly explained. “We are waiting on word about her memorial service or something. Nobody seems to know a thing.”
Vera squirmed in her chair. She wasn’t sure how much Detective Bryant and Annie would appreciate her adding to the conversation.
“It’s the oddest thing, really. She was quite the superstar in Irish dance and traditional music circles, but nobody seems to know a thing about her personally. What makes it even stranger is that the nature of the traditional art form is that you see a lot of the same families, you know, for generations in the field. Even if families aren’t in the art, they are around in support. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody around Emily. She was a loner,” the professor said.
Death of an Irish Diva (A Cumberland Creek Mystery) Page 4