“He’s a pain in the ass,” Irina said.
“I think he’s nice,” Annie said loud enough that she hoped Jorge heard. “He seems sweet.” It also seemed as if he was being picked on by his dear old auntie with the good gig in the big house. Had her concern for him at the station been completely fake?
Irina changed the subject. “Help yourself, Annie. We’ve got plenty of goodies here tonight.” She walked away and went to her spot at the table.
“She can be so hard on him,” Rosa whispered to Annie when she got back to the table with a plate of sugar cookies shaped like skulls and decorated lavishly with flowers and swirls and flourishes. “I feel sorry for him sometimes.”
“Rosa?” said Irina.
Rosa turned around. “Yes?”
“I’ve got your order of new paper right here,” said Irina.
“Do you sell scrapbooking materials?” Annie asked.
Irina nodded. “Yes, but only part time. I’m so busy taking care of Ms. Drummond.”
“Speaking of Ms. Drummond,” Annie said. “Where is she?”
“What do you mean?” Irina asked.
“I mean, where is she? This is her house, right? Why doesn’t she come to the crops?”
Irina laughed. “Ms. Drummond is in her rooms upstairs. She allows me to have the crops, but she doesn’t like to socialize. It’s part of her illness.”
Annie tasted a cookie. It wasn’t bad, but like most cookies with decorative icing, she found it a bit too sweet. “Sorry to hear that. Is it something like agoraphobia?”
“Yes, exactly. It runs in the family, I’m afraid.”
“There’s no medication?”
Irina tilted her head. “It doesn’t seem to help her. Like her mother, she is allergic to most of it.”
“Her moth—”Annie was interrupted by laughter at the end of the table, but things were clicking and zinging through her brain.
People who worked in others’ homes knew all the family secrets, didn’t they? It was an unspoken code that they never told—and yet Irina had just blurted out some personal information about Emma and Michelle as if it were nothing. Maybe it was. Maybe Annie was making too much of it. But that, coupled with the way she had just treated her nephew, left Annie with a sudden dislike of the woman.
She looked carefully at the woman next to her. Rosa seemed to like Irina, and she certainly knew her better than Annie did.
Then again, after all these years, Annie was learning to trust her intuition, no matter the cold, hard facts.
Chapter 58
Beatrice loved waking up with Elizabeth between her and Jon in their big king size bed. She knew it wasn’t in vogue to still share a bed with almost-five-year-olds, but when Elizabeth stayed with her, Beatrice left it up to her. She looked like a clichéd sleeping angel, curled between her and Jon.
Bea struggled to loosen herself from the blankets without waking anybody up. She planned on pumpkin pancakes this morning, one of her favorite breakfasts for the fall. It had become a tradition for Halloween morning.
She was so pleased that she would be taking Elizabeth trick or treating this year, then on to the fire hall for the community party. Vera and the others were all going to try to stop by the party, including Annie with her boys, so there would be no scrapbooking party tonight, but they were getting together later to do another Halloween ritual. Beatrice had thought about going—in truth she still thought about going. She might just leave Elizabeth with Jon and attend after all.
After breakfast, Annie called her.
“Are you ready for tonight?” Beatrice said. “Are the boys excited?”
“Yes and yes,” Annie said. “It’s going to be a busy one. But listen, I have a question for you.”
“Yes?” Beatrice asked.
“What do you know about Michelle Drummond’s housekeeper Irina and her nephew Jorge?”
“Nothing, really,” Beatrice said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I just had the weirdest feeling about them last night.”
“Last night?”
“Yes, I went to their crop, which was pretty cool. It had this Day of the Dead theme.”
“What kind of weird feeling did you have?”
“It’s hard to explain, really,” Annie said, but she tried to articulate her feelings while Beatrice listened.
“You probably just stepped into the middle of a family thing. Kind of like I did with Emma.”
“What happened?” Annie asked.
Beatrice relayed the story of seeing Sheriff Bixby at Mountain View and then visiting with him later. On Annie’s end of the phone, she heard a scuffling in the background, followed by a crash.
“I’ve got to go,” Annie said.
Beatrice laughed. “It sure sounds like it.” Those boys of Annie’s were a handful.
Jon and Lizzie were outside raking leaves, and then they planned to carve a jack-o-lantern. Of all the joys Elizabeth had brought Beatrice, seeing her with Jon was a huge one.
Bea finished loading the dishwasher, wiped off the counters, and finally went upstairs to change. She’d been in her nightclothes all morning.
When she came back downstairs she was surprised to see Detective Bryant, Jon, and Lizzie in her living room. Lizzie loved Bryant and was sitting on his lap, chatting away about Halloween.
“You need to promise me that you will check out each piece of candy you get or let a grownup do it, before you eat it,” Bryant was saying to her.
“Okay, I promise,” she said solemnly.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Beatrice said.
“Beatrice,” Bryant said, looking up at her, then back at Lizzie. “I’ve got to talk to your grandmother alone, okay?”
Lizzie wrapped her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek before she and Jon went into the kitchen.
“What can I help you with?” Beatrice said as she sat down in her favorite armchair.
“I hear that you’ve been buddying up to the local sheriff,” Bryant said.
Bea didn’t like his tone. Why did he have to be so sarcastic? “Well, that’s not exactlty true. And I hear you’ve been buddying up to a woman who’s half your age,” she retorted.
He reddened. “That’s my personal life. Not your concern. Or any of your cronies’.”
“Cronies?” Bea’s voice raised. She took a deep breath. “What do you want? Honestly, just get on with it.”
“I’ve been working pretty hard on the cases of the murdered sisters and trying to combine efforts with the sheriff.”
“And?”
“I wondered if you might have any leads for me.”
Beatrice sat back against her chair cushion. “Do you think I killed those women?”
“No no no! I just keep tabs on Bixby. I don’t trust the man. The feeling is mutual.”
“He’s a lawman, Bryant,” Beatrice said. “I’m surprised at you.”
“He’s a sheriff. He works at the will of the people. A lot of politics goes into his job. A lot of winks and slaps on the back.”
Beatrice thought about that a moment. “Well, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy.”
“No, I know that. He’s just a different animal from me. So have you found anything about the cases from him?”
“No, we had a personal conversation. His wife’s aunt, Emma Drummond, is my old friend and I ran into him the other day at Mountain View. We’ve just been discussing her and, um, well, family matters, if you must know.”
Bryant raised an eyebrow and nodded his head as if that somehow meant a lot to him. “That it?”
“I think so. Small talk, you know. Nothing else,” Bea said. “Sorry I can’t help you. I wish I could. You know, we were able to send cards to the Martelino family and I thought I’d feel better after that. But I sure would feel a whole lot better if you’d find their killer.”
“We all would, Beatrice,” Bryant said. “Believe me, we all would feel much better if these cases were solved.”
Chapter 59
After handing out candy in the early evening to a parade of little ghosts, goblins, and fairy princesses, DeeAnn, Jacob, and Tracy headed over to the fire hall where the community gathering was being held. DeeAnn’s new pills seemed to be doing the trick and since Tracy and Karen hadn’t taken away the second prescription of pills she’d gotten, she was able to take as many as she wanted.
Usually DeeAnn would walk to the fire hall, but she didn’t want to overexert herself, for fear of stopping whatever healing had already taken place so they’d driven. Her friends had saved a space for her at a table. Jacob gravitated toward the men in the corner, all looking a bit out of place. Tracy sat next to her.
Long card tables were set end to end, making rows of tables extending from one end of the room to the next. Orange and black paper covered the tables. A centerpiece stood in the middle of each—pumpkins with fall flowers, orange, yellow, gold, and crimson. Black and orange streamers were strewn across the room, with orange and black balloons in each of the four corners. It was Halloween, all right, and the Cumberland Creek fire hall was decorated to the hilt.
Spider-Man sauntered up next to DeeAnn.
“Well, hello there, Sam,” she said.
“How did you know it was me?” asked Annie’s son, who evidently at the last minute had decided he wasn’t too cool or too old to celebrate Halloween.
“It was a good guess,” DeeAnn said, looking over at the little boy next to him who was dressed as an old man. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“Mozart, of course,” Ben said.
“Mozart?” Who ever heard of a Mozart costume? “Well, I guess you know what you’re doing,” she said. “I wouldn’t know him if I tripped over him.”
“But he’s already dead,” Ben said, deadpan.
“I know that,” DeeAnn laughed. “I meant, if he were alive, I still wouldn’t know who he was. Or what he’d look like. Are you certain he looked like you, with the fancy hair, and such?”
Annie grinned. “Oh yes. He researched it.”
“Very nice,” Tracy said. “Maybe you’ll win the contest tonight.”
A large man dressed as a clown walked by the table and Sheila gasped. “I just find them so creepy!”
Annie did a double take and a questioning look came over her face, but then she appeared to shrug it off.
“Clowns?” DeeAnn asked.
“Yes, and that one is so big! A grown man dressed as a clown!” said Sheila.
“A lot of people here are dressed up,” Paige said. “I wish Randy were here to see it. I bet him that there would be some adults in costumes. But he had to work tonight. He’s trying out some new recipes.”
“Yeah, so did Karen,” DeeAnn said. “Halloween can be a nightmare in the ER.”
Beatrice chortled. “Sound likes a title for one of those campy horror movies.”
Jon was sitting next to Bea with Elizabeth on his lap. She was dressed as a giraffe—a costume her grandmother had made for her.
“It’s time for the contest, young lady,” Jon said, guiding her out of his lap.
The children began to line up for the costume competition and then so did the teenagers, and then finally the adults—the few of them that were participating. The clown was nowhere in sight, much to Sheila’s contentment.
Elizabeth ended up winning the competition in her age group for most original costume.
“Beatrice, you are such a talented seamstress,” DeeAnn said after Elizabeth came back to the table with her trophy.
“Well, now don’t make a big deal of it. I’ve been making costumes for many years. When I was growing up we all learned to sew. I’m not sure what the kids are learning these days.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to know, Mama,” Vera said. “I don’t think I do, either.”
Detective Bryant paraded by the table. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, off duty. DeeAnn wanted to grab him, shake him, and tell him to back off her daughter. Instead, she smiled and nodded politely . . . but it was killing her.
“Don’t look now,” Paige said. “He’s heading toward your husband.”
DeeAnn’s heart lurched in her chest. “Ohmigoodness!” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t look,” she said as the others around her laughed. “What’s happening?”
“He shook Jacob’s hand and is smiling at him,” Paige said in a low voice. “Jacob is not smiling back.”
“Oh Lordy, what should I do?” DeeAnn’s eyes were still closed, her face hot, pulse racing.
“Oh c’mon,” Bea said. “They’re polite adults. It’s going to be fine.”
“They are going outside,” Paige whispered in a horrified tone.
“Okay. I take that polite adults thing back,” Bea said.
“Let me go and check out the situation,” Jon said, rising from his chair.
“What? No, it’s none of your business,” Bea said. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“I’m a man. This is man’s business,” he said and left.
DeeAnn opened her eyes and noted that other men around the room were also moving toward the door. Poor Bryant, she thought.
“This is the biggest bunch of crap I’ve ever seen,” Tracy said and got up from the table. “I’m going to put a stop to this. Karen is a grown woman. It’s nobody’s business what she’s doing with Adam. I don’t like it, either; he’s so old. But it’s none of our business. Dad just needs to back off.”
DeeAnn sat back in her chair. She felt frozen and couldn’t move even if she wanted to.
“You stay put,” Vera said to DeeAnn. “You don’t need to hurt yourself over this. I’m sure it will be fine.”
But DeeAnn was not so sure. Tracy was right. On the one hand, it was nobody’s business. But on the other hand, what Tracy didn’t understand was that both she and her sister would always be their parents’ business. And in a small community like Cumberland Creek, dating a man like Adam Bryant—no matter what age you were—was going to set tongues wagging. That’s just the way it was.
Oh yes, many folks in Cumberland Creek had come a long way. The murmurs about a Jewish family living in town had faded—or at least gone behind closed doors, and one of their own had come back to live here as an openly gay man. That never would have happened ten years ago.
But DeeAnn knew that if you scratched beneath the surface, all of the prejudices were lurking beyond the picket fences and the neatly trimmed lawns. Paige and Earl had yet to be welcomed back into their church community. Annie and her family were always running up against bumps and ignorance. Her own twenty-five-year-old daughter dating a local detective who was almost twice her age? Well, people were talking. The more DeeAnn thought about it, the more it pissed her off. The more she wanted to tell people to back off. But she couldn’t, because she didn’t like it, either. So she sucked in her breath. Karen was old enough to know actions led to consequences. It was her life, not DeeAnn’s.
The door flung open and one of the men hightailed it into the fire hall kitchen and quickly came back out with some ice. If DeeAnn’s intuition was correct, a man was down.
Jon slinked back into the room and came to their table in a midst of a crowd of middle schoolers roaming around. “Well, that’s that.”
DeeAnn couldn’t speak. Had Bryant hurt her husband?
“What happened?” Bea asked.
“Bryant is bleeding a bit. I think he’s going to have a black eye,” Jon said.
“What?”
All of the women at the table turned to look at him.
“It’s all over now. I think he went home. It was only one punch, but Jacob made it a good one.” Jon grinned.
Chapter 60
After all the fuss at the Halloween party, the scrapbookers plus Beatrice got together in Vera’s basement. They moved a bunch of furniture around and created a circular space in which to hold the Halloween ritual.
The women gathered around. Cookie stood next to a decorated table. S
he was dressed in the same blue dress she had worn the first time they held the ritual. It was made of a deep blue velvet with large, flowing sleeves and hemline. Annie’s stomach tightened as she remembered the night that Cookie first wore it—the night she was arrested for murder based on some flimsy evidence that had never added up and a botched investigation that never made sense.
Paige was in charge. She and Cookie had come up with the ritual based on what Paige remembered and by looking over some books on Wicca. Each one of them had brought pictures of people they had lost. The photos of deceased people adorned the table, along with a huge seashell, a statue of Mary, candles, a wooden bowl of water, flowers, and silk scarves.
Once again, Annie was struck that although each item on the table was not usually pretty by itself, gathered together they had a simple beauty. “This reminds me of the Day of the Dead celebration over at the Drummond place last night.”
Cookie smiled. “So many cultures have similar celebrations and rituals.”
Annie reached for Cookie’s hand. “I remember the first time we did this like it was yesterday. You said something about women have been meeting like this for generations, gathering around the fire or the altar. Some of the things here represent some deep connections we have and always will.”
Paige grabbed Cookie’s other hand. “We are safe here.”
“Can we get on with it?” Beatrice said, but she held onto Vera and DeeAnn’s hands. They were all in a circle, holding hands.
“Okay, first I’ll call quarters,” Paige said, letting go of Cookie and DeeAnn’s hands and placing herself in the center of the circle. “Hail to the North,” she said with her arms out, palms up, facing Sheila’s fireplace. “Place of patience, endurance, stability, and earth.” She dipped her hand into a bowl of dirt and let it fall back into the bowl. “Hail to the East.” She picked up a feather and placed it in the bowl. “Place of wisdom, intellect, perception, and inspiration. Air,” she added with a flourish of the feather.
She struck a match and lit the black candles on the table. “Hail to the South, place of passion, strength, energy, and willpower. Place of fire.”
Scrapbook of the Dead Page 20