***
Matt’s digital clock on the stove read 2:12. Jacobs, Jan, Catfish, Chuck, and Edie sat around Matt’s dining room table sipping coffee, all except for Catfish who was not much of an afternoon coffee drinker. He was chugging a Sugar Free Dr. Pepper.
Gail said “Edie? I knew that you were very much in love with Matt the night I first met you.”
Edie looked across at Gail. “How would you know that back then?”
“I can feel and sense things from other people through touch. It’s sort of a curse and a gift all under one roof.”
“Is that like ESP or psychic?”
“Similar, but not exactly the same, I can feel and sense things but not every time and not from all objects. I can feel the energies and memories coming off things. When a person dies those energies change, they become different, but I’ve learned to tell them apart. That’s how I’ve known all along that Matt was alive.”
Jacobs asked, “Can you tell what really happened with Abatha Pary at Whispering Pines all those years ago?”
“You know the old car in the barn out back?”
“Yes,” Edie said. “It was Matt’s Aunt Cindy’s car. He and Chuck worshiped her. How did you know that? Did Chuck tell you about her?”
“I’ve been picking up visions off the car since the night we got here. I’ve seen some wonderful things and some not so wonderful. The car kept trying to tell me something, to make me see something that, at the time, I didn’t understand.”
“Matt loved the car, Gail, probably because he loved the Aunt who drove it.”
“I know Edie. She took them everywhere it seems, to the beach, skating, swimming at the creek, many fun places for kids that age. I saw that in my visions, and I saw Matt alive but hurt in one of those same visions.”
Chuck smiled. “You are not kidding about Aunt Cindy. If she was around then we went places. I don’t think that woman ever sat still more than five minutes in her entire life.”
Edie bit her lower lip as though trying to make some deep decision or other. Finally, she said, “Matt told me that his father and mother had met at a skating rink or something. Her sister was this Aunt Cindy. She was older and had been a nanny out at Whispering Pines many years before when she was a young girl. Apparently it was around the time Tom Veal was murdered because she quit and never set foot back in the house again, ever.”
Gail looked at Edie and said, “I know. I finally saw that vision and everything that happened to her. She was very young when Abatha poisoned Claudia and Tom Veal.”
Edie sighed. “It’s so hard to grasp, Aunt Abatha a murderess.”
Gail said, “The original will of Tom Veal is hidden and I know where. She showed me in a vision where she saw Abatha hide it.”
Chuck said, “I wonder why she hid it instead of destroying it or something, burning it in the fireplace maybe.”
“Can you take us to it? Edie asked.”
Gail looked at Chuck. “Matt was right. The will is hidden in his Grandfather’s casket and buried at the cemetery.”
Chuck nodded. “That explains my dream and why I was told “The answers are in the grave.” So, why don’t we let it stay there since we have enough proof otherwise, and Edie, don’t just sign away Whispering Pines to us. You own a share too and we can prove that if we have to.”
Gail said. “Right and it was the car that made me realize something was out of place about everyone thinking Tom Veal was married to Abatha. Chuck’s Aunt Cindy was trying to tell me, to show me, that she was there at Whispering Pines the night of the murders. She saw exactly what happened and why. She knew the truth all along but was too young for anyone to believe her. By the time she was old enough, the lie was deeply ingrained in everyone’s minds so she continued to keep silent. She lived the rest of her life with the guilt of knowing that Claudia and Tom were not buried side by side and it really ate away at her. They say a spirit with something or some issue weighing heavily on their soul can’t move on to the next plane until that issue is resolved back here.”
Chuck spoke. “So that’s a new matter we need to discuss, the Cemetery. Claudia and Tom should have been buried side by side and if we fix that then our Aunt’s spirit can move on to where she belongs.”
Gail said, “That’s the message I got. Why, in death, am I not buried beside my beloved?”
Edie gasped. “Oh my God I hadn’t thought about that. My mother is Tom’s wife and they should not be apart like this. Is it possible to have him moved to North View and put him beside my mother?”
Chuck said softly. “Why don’t we do this instead? Let’s hire a landscaping company to go into the old Veal cemetery and clean it up, find all the graves and remark them. Then we put up a new fence and have a proper road built to the gates and then move your mother out there next to him where she belongs.”
Edie hesitated. “You want to move my mother into that briar patch? I don’t know Chuck. Twenty years from now it might return to neglect and all.”
“Edie, Matt and I are going to have our mother and father moved out there to be with his father and then we are going to mark off an area where we ourselves, will be buried. If that cemetery ever falls back on neglect then it will be long after Matt and I are dead and gone.”
Catfish, the normally silent type in discussions such as this, spoke up. “Dang, North View Cemetery’s population is going to go down. I’ve never heard of a cemetery getting smaller and smaller, have ya'll?”
Jacobs said, “Maybe you could leave a trust fund of some kind that will pay for upkeep on the place for a long time.”
Catfish chimed in. “I know a feller who takes care of the cemetery out on the east 80 highway. I bet he could give you a good price on something like that. He’s got a big old tractor with a bush hog on the back too.”
Edie smiled and said, “Okay then we can have my mother moved too.”
Gail stood, “Let me show everyone something.”
She walked over to a nearby shelf and pulled Claudia’s diary down. As she walked back to the table she opened it to the last page, back cover and laid it out on the table open. With one finger, she pointed to the lower left corner of the page and said, “Ya’ll see that? This book sold in the year 1944 for five cents.”
She then reached into her pocket, pulled out an old buffalo nickel, and held it up for all to see. “Every vision I’ve had about Whispering Pines involved something that called itself a “nickel. Now this buffalo nickel was in my purse in North Carolina and when I touched it, I saw Whispering Pines for the first time in a vision, but then the vision wanted me to be afraid of this nickel once it had shown me all that it held.”
“I don’t understand” Edie said.
“It’s like this Edie. This nickel, the coin, was the trigger that got me to come down here in the first place; otherwise I probably would have taken Chuck’s invite as a romantic prelude or something.”
Chuck said, “It was a romantic prelude. I’m a good liar you know?”
Everyone laughed then Gail continued. “Thanks to this coin, it gave me curiosity enough to accept his invitation as it was intended and I agreed to come. When I got here the new visions from the car and later the diary itself, all kept saying that the “nickel has much to show you. It took me a while to realize that the coin’s purpose was over and I needed to listen to the new nickel, a nickel that had much to show me.”
Edie pointed at the diary. “And that was the new nickel, the diary. I bet that’s what they called them back then, a nickel diary or something?”
Gail shrugged, closed the diary, and said, “I don’t know but I’m going to put these two nickels in a safe place and keep them.”
(Two Weeks Later)
Chuck and Gail were cruising along lazily down the river front highway on the east side of West Creek County. Chuck was at the wheel of his Aunt’s 1951 Chevy. He looked at Gail, smiled, and said, “She really rides beautifully, doesn’t she?”
“Where’s the Air Conditioner.
It’s hot in here.”
“Gail, they didn’t have Air Conditioners in 1951. Roll your window down.”
“That’ll mess up my hair.”
“I’ve never seen your hair messed up.”
Patting the dash of the car Chuck said, “She runs good, purrs like a kitten.”
“Chuck, that’s a metal dash and no padding. Also, there are no seatbelts in this thing. What if you have to stop suddenly or worse, what if you hit something? My head is going to burst open on that thing.”
“Gail? You really don’t care much for cars, do you?”
“I like cars that go when I need to get somewhere. I also like cars that take me back after I am done going. Most important of all, I like cars with seatbelts and larger windshields, and short hoods so you can see the road. The hood of this thing looks forty feet long. I am too short for this high dash too. Did they build smaller cars back then for people like me?”
Chuck looked over at Gail grinning from ear to ear. “This car came from the same era as the expression, to which you are now officially assigned. It’s called “Motor Mouth.”
A Georgia State Patrol officer was sitting beside the roadway monitoring traffic when he noticed a jet black 1951 Chevy topping a hill. It was a mint condition classic and he admired it jealously almost. There were two people in the car, a man driving and a woman seated beside him. They were laughing and the woman was slapping playfully at the man. The officer, the pride of Georgia, watched it pass and then turned on his blue flashing lights. “I bet that old thing doesn’t have seat belts.”
He spun the patrol car into a sharp U-turn and floored the accelerator pedal.
Off into the evening sunset they rode, deeply in love, cherishing their seconds together in harmony… with a Gray and Blue Georgia State Patrol Car hot on their heels.
Pick up your Nickel… pick up your nickel… it has much to show you…
THE END
The Beginning (Whispering Pines Book 1) Page 53