Exousia (Karass Chronicles Book 4)

by Beca Lewis

  Nineteen

  After she closed the coffee shop for the day to the public, Grace opened the back door for her friends. Mandy had kept the coffee on, and baked a sugar-free cake for the group. She was still experimenting with recipes, and the council of women was the perfect group to try out these alternative ways of baking. Some were delicious. Some were a disaster.

  Grace hoped that the cake for tonight would not be a disaster this time. They would need something comforting while they met to talk about what was happening on the hill.

  Sarah and Grace had debated whether or not to ask Emily to be part of the group. She was so new to all of it. Plus, no one but Hank and Melvin knew her beyond the fact that Emily was Hannah’s dance teacher.

  However, Hank spoke highly of her and was as protective as if she was a daughter. So, using Hank’s judgment, they decided that they would make it a provisionary membership. She needed them, and it would be wrong to leave her out of something that could be so comforting and uplifting.

  That brought into question if other women should also be invited to join the council. They decided that there were only two that could be considered at this time—Barbara and Valerie.

  They didn’t know either of them as well as they knew each other and Mandy, Mira, and Ava. They debated and thought it over for a while. In the end, they asked Barbara, but not Valerie. Sarah felt that Valerie might fit in, but a voice inside of her kept telling her it wasn’t a good idea, so she obeyed that intuition.

  That meant there were going to be seven of them. Grace could still fit them in her living room, but for this meeting, they decided on the coffee shop. With new members, they wanted a slightly more formal meeting. They needed to talk about what the council was about, what internal rules they followed, and what was expected when they were part of the group.

  At first, Sarah didn’t like the idea at all. She had been happy to keep the council smaller, with her close friends. But Leif had something to say about that.

  After the visit with everyone at Ava’s on Friday night, Leif had followed Sarah home. Actually, the word “followed” was the wrong word. He was already there when she got home as she expected he would be. Perhaps not having a physical body was helpful sometimes, Sarah had thought. As she added a few logs to the wood stove Hank had installed for her she also thought it might be nice never to be cold again since Eric and Leif didn’t feel hot and cold anymore.

  On the other hand, without a physical body, there was no hand-holding, no hugs, and no warm body in bed at night. The loss of not having Leif around physically had been painful.

  However, that kind of thinking never made her feel better. So Sarah dropped it in favor of being grateful for having Leif around to talk to, and that’s what they did.

  They had a lengthy discussion about what was going on and her role in it. Sarah didn’t want a role. She wanted to stay home with a good book, and have a casual council meeting once in a while.

  Leif laughed at her, as she knew he would. Of course, that was ridiculous of her to think such a thing. All of the Circles knew they had to be of service. Now that Leif was part of both the Stone Circle and the Forest Circle he was the bridge and conveyor of messages, and everyone in both circles knew that Sarah had a role to play. She had to guide them, as she had promised the Forest Circle she would.

  “Everyone needs a purpose higher than themselves,” Leif reminded her. He didn’t need to remind her. She knew that, but she was resisting it. It meant she was moving on. Leif laughed again, and this time she joined him.

  “Yes,” he said. “That is what we do. Move on, expand, grow, learn, and hopefully become more aware of the one authority of divine Love and good.”

  So, as the women arrived at the coffee shop, Sarah greeted each one of them with joy. They had each other. And they had a crime to solve. They would solve it differently than the men that were out working at the site. They were there to listen to what was really going on. They were there to make sure everything was uncovered that needed to be discovered. They were there to watch over and protect. That they could do.

  After everyone sat down, the women took time to introduce themselves. Of course, they all knew each other. But for Emily, this idea of a gathering of women with the intention to be of service was entirely new. Barbara wasn’t quite as new to the process. She had been part of the larger group, or Doveland Circle, for a while, according to Hannah,.

  After introductions, Sarah set the ground rules. What was discussed in the council, stays in the council. Period. No one shares anything said in the council with anyone. That would leave them all free to say whatever they needed to talk about with the full comfort of knowing it was a safe place.

  Ava asked about husbands and boyfriends, and even Hank and Melvin. Sarah knew this was tricky. She always talked over everything with Leif but didn’t tell him things she knew had been shared with the desire not to be repeated. Instead, she gave overviews to him so he could provide insight to her.

  Ava also trusted that Evan would be the same way. Grace and Barbara said the same thing about the other men. They could be trusted. At this point, Sarah began to realize why it hadn’t felt right to ask Valerie. Even if the provision was that only general ideas could be discussed with significant others, it didn’t feel safe that Harold would know what was happening in the council. The other men, yes. Harold, no.

  So, they agreed that current husbands, and Hank, Melvin, Sam, Craig, and Tom could know generalities when they needed to know, but not specifics unless given permission by the woman in question, or all the women if it was a general piece of information. They also decided that they would act as a consulting counsel to any of these men if they came to them with questions.

  Then they talked about Sarah’s new favorite word, Exousia. They would not be a human authority. They would be a conduit for Divine authority as the word implied. That meant they would have to address their own motives and intentions continually.

  It was going to be hard work. But each of the women felt the light of purpose burn within them as they discussed these ideas.

  And then they turned to the task at hand. Emily and the discovery.

  Twenty

  It took longer than expected to get the autopsy report back. It arrived Wednesday morning. Both Sam and the local authorities got a copy. Hank was still staying in the bunkhouse, so Sam came over to Evan’s with the report, giving Craig a call along the way. They could have met at Craig’s office, but all of them had remained cautious, perhaps overly cautious, after dealing with Grant and Lenny.

  Sam knew that Evan still had the house swept daily for listening devices and cameras and a Faraday box for phones to be put in whenever they met about things like this. The house was the perfect meeting place. Hannah was in school, and Ben was napping.

  Tom was out of town, so they put him on a Skype call. He could have remote-viewed in, but not everyone could see him when he did it that way, so it was more comfortable to have him on a call.

  Recently Ava, Sam, Hank, and Craig had begun to be able to see Leif and Eric who were also there. No one was sure if it was because their minds had fully accepted that it was possible, or if Leif and Eric had decided to be seen. Perhaps it was because of the current situation. For whatever reason, everyone was happy about it.

  Of course, there was no need to pull up a chair for them, but they did. It made everyone nervous to have Leif and Eric just hovering around. A pretend sitting at the table was much easier to deal with than their nonphysical presence.

  Ava made coffee for all of the people who were physically present and served them the leftover cake from the meeting the night before. It had turned out to be delicious. All of the men knew about Sarah’s council of women. They also knew that the women would, as they always had, guide them to doing the right thing. So the men asked Ava to stay and listen so she could tell the council
what they had learned.

  She wanted to be there, and she knew it was essential to understand what the report said, but it was painful to listen and to look at the pictures. She tried to be detached while hearing the information, but it was hard to do.

  Sam laid the report and the pictures out on the table. He said that all four of the bodies were women. They were probably all between twenty and twenty-five. It would take a while to get DNA samples back, but they weren’t holding out any hope of finding out who they were that way.

  “Why not?” Ava asked.

  “Because it turns out these bodies were buried back in the Seventies. At least forty-five years ago.”

  No one said anything as everyone thought over the ramifications of what that might mean. Did it mean that whoever killed the women kept on killing? Would they ever find the killer?

  “Wait. This report says that there are no signs of how they died. How can that be?” Craig asked.

  “That’s one of the most puzzling parts of this. The women had to die of something. Unless the report is wrong, there is no sign that they were murdered. But how could it be otherwise? The women were young, buried together, and at about the same time,” Sam said.

  “And buried together in a shallow grave,” Evan added. “If they died a mysterious natural death, why not report it to the authorities?”

  “And why were they all up on that hill? Was there something there before?” Ava asked.

  “Well, we do have a few answers about that, thanks to Dr. Joe,” Craig said.

  “He was the one that sold the land to Emily. It is part of his process of retiring. I know he sold the property that is enabling you to build the bike trail to Concourse, Hank. He said he bought the land on the hill in the late Seventies, so according to this report, the bodies were already there when he bought it. He never developed the property on purpose. He didn’t want the town sprawling out too much. Plus he can see the hill from his home office window and liked looking at the view.

  “But when Emily came to him and told him what she wanted to build and how she would preserve the look of the hill as much as possible, he agreed. He has a soft spot in his heart for the arts.”

  “So who did he buy the land from then? They must have been there when the bodies were buried. Maybe they would know how they died and why they were buried there?” Ava asked.

  “Well, this is where it might get tricky,” Sam said. “Most of the town records before 1990 were destroyed when the basement of the town hall flooded. Dr. Joe said he purchased the land from the bank, but no one who worked at the bank is still around here, and the bank records are going to be hard to find too since it has changed hands more than a few times.

  “What Joe did say was that there was an informal commune up on the hill for a brief time. Finding out about that and someone who knows about it is a priority. Joe said he visited it a few times and gave talks on basic health care, but doesn’t remember much more than that.”

  Hank had sat quietly listening and trying to remember something that Emily had told him. Finally, it came to him. “Emily told me that she originally came to Doveland because her aunt had sent them a postcard of the town and Emily thought it looked beautiful. She came here to see what it was all about and then stayed. Perhaps she has more information or could ask her aunt. Ava, could you talk to her about it?”

  Ava nodded while wondering why Emily hadn’t mentioned that in the discussion at the council the day before. “I’ll arrange to meet her after Hannah’s dance class.”

  “How is she doing?” Craig asked.

  “We took her home yesterday, and she wanted to start teaching again. Said it would take her mind off of what happened, and get her back into believing that the dance camp will happen this year, even if only for a week.”

  “It’s possible,” Hank said. “If she wants, we could build the barn and probably a deck. She won’t have a house there yet, but it would work for a day camp. As soon as the hill is released officially, we’ll start building again.”

  “She’ll be happy to hear that,” Ava said. “I’ll let you all know what she says about her aunt.”

  Ava was happy for Emily but wondered why she withheld that information. Still doesn’t trust us yet, she thought. Wonder why.

  Twenty-One

  Valerie was at her wit’s end. Harold had become temperamental as he aged, but he was so much worse since the discovery on the hill. She sighed. She was getting too old for this. Well, maybe that wasn’t the right word. She was getting too wise for this. Whatever this was, she was not happy.

  She and Harold had met at work twenty-two years ago. Harold was a big shot in the company where she slaved away as an assistant to an assistant. Everyone got along with him. Charming and handsome and quite a singer, he always had a crowd around him at company gatherings.

  She had noticed Harold long before they met officially. It was hard not to. He stuck out so much from everyone else. Besides, he was her boss’s boss so he would often be at the department meetings where she would be sitting in the corner taking notes for her boss who hated going to meetings. Plus Harold was so much older than she was and at the time that made him even more mysterious. Forty and never married?

  Valerie sighed again at the thought. Harold ran those meetings with a compelling combination of grace and authority. Harold always knew the right thing to say, and how to get people to do things for him. She marveled at his skill. At the time, Valerie was taking night classes to finish up her teaching credentials. It had been her dream to teach in a small town. Her parents had both been teachers, and she wanted to carry on the tradition. She had learned a lot about how to run her classroom by watching Harold run a meeting.

  It was when her boss told Harold that Valerie was studying to be a teacher that Harold began to notice her. Harold told her later that he had always noticed her, but he was officially her boss and didn’t feel right about asking her out. She was young. He was old and set in his ways. However, when he found out that she would be leaving to be a teacher he knew he couldn’t let her go.

  Valerie always loved him for that choice. She thought he demonstrated integrity. Later, Valerie wondered if perhaps he had been expressing his willingness to follow the rules of someone with more authority and not his own sense of what was right and wrong. She thought it was a subtle but profound difference.

  They continued to date for another year, while he worked and she taught school. She loved the teaching but didn’t enjoy the school. Too big, and too regimented, without enough leeway to help each student with what they needed.

  When Harold asked her to marry him, she thought it was the best day of her life. By then he was forty-one, and she was twenty-five, ready to marry. A year later, the company moved many of their employees out of the country and offered those that didn’t want to go a small settlement package.

  Harold had a plan. Why not take the money, move back to his hometown, and open a Bed and Breakfast. He would do the work of running it, and she could teach school in a small town. He barely got the words out before Valerie said yes. It never occurred to her that she wouldn’t like the place, or that she wouldn’t get a job teaching there. It sounded like a dream come true.

  The Bed and Breakfast Inn took a while to get off the ground. However, Harold turned out to be great at both the restoring of the building and the day to day business of running the Inn. They didn’t have many visitors. Doveland wasn’t a destination spot for tourists. On the other hand, they didn’t need much money to live comfortably. Harold’s natural gregariousness worked well in town and for their business. He also continued to do consulting work with people he had met in his last job. That helped with the money, and he could do most of the work from home. Once in a while, he would have to go out of town, but they just never booked the Inn during those times.

  Johnny came along a year after
they moved to town, but she never took time off. He was born in June, and she was back to work in September. Lex was a surprise, born eight years later. By then, she was the principle of the school and loving every minute of it. Everything was perfect.

  Except that as the years went by, Harold’s charm became more controlled. He was a good father, but at times was a demanding husband. He stopped listening to her and got mad at the smallest things. She overlooked it because otherwise everything worked pretty well. She still loved being a principal, and he did a great job of running the Inn.

  However, when Johnny started getting into trouble, Valerie began to look at her marriage differently. Maybe Johnny was acting out because of the tension that sometimes happened in their house. She thought she kept Harold’s abusiveness hidden, but she knew as well as anyone that children know much more than it appears that they do.

  After Johnny was caught last year working with that evil man, Grant, things began to turn around for him. Sam gave Johnny a second chance, and Johnny was grabbing it for all that it was worth. It was his last year in school, and he would be heading off to college in the fall. Thanks to Pete and Hank taking him under their wing, Johnny had discovered he could be his own person. He dropped his friends that got him into trouble and, if she was honest, stayed away from his dad as much as possible.

  Had it really gotten this bad? Valerie wondered. Was she like the frog in hot water, and hadn’t realized that the situation with Harold had gotten worse because it had been a slow progression? Not slow anymore, she thought. That’s what had changed. Since the incident with Grant last year, Harold’s rude, dismissive, and sometimes abusive behavior had escalated.

  After rushing off from the Diner a week ago, he had returned angry and withdrawn. She tried to find out what was wrong, but he dismissed her saying he didn’t feel well. And then, the day after the discovery, something had set him off, and he had slapped her. It wasn’t the first time, but this time felt different.