Glynnis’s mother clearly hadn’t slept since her daughter’s body was discovered. Her eyes were rimmed in red and swollen, tears a constant stream down her cheeks. I hoped for their sake the crime would be solved soon. I knew enough now about crime detection to understand that a whole lot of slow work would be done before the solution could be found. Coroner’s report, DNA analysis, fingernail scrapings, witness interviews, alibi investigation and much much more that I would never know about.
I started the car and pulled away from the curb, but then saw someone I wanted to talk to. It was Mariah’s sister, whom I had overheard in the cafeteria the day before.
Chapter Sixteen
She was sitting on a park bench smoking a cigarette. She lit a fresh one from the butt of the old one, which she tossed in a receptacle designed for that function. I didn’t know how to approach her, but decided it didn’t really matter. Either she’d speak to me or she wouldn’t.
Thin, with a halo of frizzy bleached blonde hair pulled back in a scrunchie, she smoked determinedly, like she only had so long and wanted to get in as much nicotine as she could to hold her until the next break. I walked up to her and smiled. “Hi. You don’t know me.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
I chuckled politely and ducked the cloud of smoke. “I heard you talking about your sister, Maria, yesterday in the cafeteria. I think I’ve met her out at the Light and the Way Ministry compound.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I thought you might like to know that she seems to be doing well.”
Grudgingly, she said, “Okay. I guess that’s good.”
“But I’m really trying to wrap my head around what makes women join the group. You seemed to have some trouble with that too. I have a friend there . . . in fact, my friend introduced your sister to me as her sister-wife of Barney. What . . . why do you think women would be drawn to a guy like that?” I was trying to think of a way to ask a question more sensitive than that.
“I got no clue,” she said, dragging deeply on the cigarette and lighting another, then butting out the second of her break-time cigarettes.
“Have you spoken to her since she moved out there? How are they living? Making money? It looks like such a tough life.”
“I think she went out there because she was worried about her son,” the woman said, her gruff voice. “Johnny was getting into trouble. She tried to keep him on the straight and narrow but . . .” She shrugged. “You know what kids today are like.”
“What kind of trouble was he getting into?”
“Fighting, girls, drugs, no job, no goals . . . you know. The usual. She hooked up with that prophet when he was still living in Ridley Ridge. I thought it was a phase. So did her hubby, poor jerk. But then they moved out to that place and never came back.”
“And she married Barney?”
“Can’t be married to him . . . not legally. She’s still married.”
“But what is she getting out of it . . . being married to Barney, with a sister-wife?”
The woman grew impatient, and I didn’t blame her. She tossed her third cigarette down on the ground and stomped it. “Heck if I know,” she groused, glaring at me. She picked up the butt and tossed it in the receptacle. “All I know is, in the old days my sister wouldn’t have stood for that kind of life, being bossed by some man. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know what she’s getting out of it, but whatever it is must be pretty important. I keep thinking . . . she’s trying to protect Johnny from something. But I don’t know what.”
“This Johnny . . . what does he look like?”
Her expression shuttered. “That’s none of your business,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”
“Uh, I—”
“I gotta go back to work.” She whirled and headed inside, through the outpatient entry.
I drove out of Ridley Ridge thinking of what little I had learned; Mariah was never a pushover who would let a man be her boss. But she was getting something out of the group, and it seemed to be protection for her Johnny. I’d need to find out who Johnny was. Maybe Gordy would know, though I didn’t want to make another trip out to the compound. Maybe Cecily had met Johnny; I didn’t even know how old he was or what he looked like.
I headed back to Autumn Vale and stopped in at Binny’s. I had ordered a raspberry cream-filled cake. It was ready, and Binny boxed it up for me. She’s a nice person, but her natural expression is not just RBF, it appears to reveal a disdain for all of humankind. That was especially evident today.
“What’s up, Bin?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Just feeling off today,” she said as she slid the box across the pass-thru to me.
“I know what you mean,” I said. Cecily’s account of her time at the compound was weighing on me, and the people we had left behind had me deeply concerned. If the police had managed to keep Voorhees and Barney locked up it would have been easier, but they were back among the others. I had been worrying at a few pieces of information all day, since the night before, but it was like a knot I couldn’t undo. I needed to find the right end of the tangle. I felt if I found the right spot to tug, it would all unravel and begin to make sense.
There were bits and pieces that felt off. I told her about being out to the encampment a couple of times, and my worry about Gordy. Though she was about Gordy and Zeke’s age, she hadn’t grown up in Autumn Vale. Her mother had taken her away when she was young, leaving behind Binny’s now-deceased older half brother with their dad, Rusty.
But she had gotten to know the two fellows since moving back after culinary school. She frowned, a worried grimace on her face. “Gordy’s a nice guy, but he’s so easily influenced. I hope no one convinced him to do something he ought not to have.”
“What do you mean, Bin?”
“I don’t know what I mean.” She shook her head. “I have a bad feeling about it all.”
“You’re scaring me, Binny. What do you mean?”
“I wish I knew,” she said, tears in her eyes. Teary-eyed, she nodded and went back to work.
I stared at her for a long minute as she bustled around in back, throwing pans and utensils about, the set of her shoulders letting me know she could feel me watching. I finally exited. Butcher shop next, a new business owned by a local farmer, Garth Owens. He was in the shop, which was not the usual case. It was most often one of his kids running the place. He was a lean fifty-something, grizzled and with a lined face, but quick moving and quick thinking. He had his own recipes for sausage, including a maple garlic that was so good people were starting to come from Batavia and even as far away as Rochester and Buffalo.
“Hey, Garth,” I said. He looked up from his phone. “I called ahead for steaks.”
“Yup; we got ’em. Virgil’s grilling, huh?”
“He is. We’ve got company coming.”
The bell rang over the door and Janice Grover, my dear friend and our ally in getting locals on board for the arts center, huffed in. We hugged. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks; she and her hubby, Simon, had been away, attending a wedding. I knew they were back, having seen Simon in the coffee shop the day before. As usual she wore a caftan-style dress, this time in autumnal shades, with a border of sunflowers along the bottom edge. She had topped it with an elaborate crocheted poncho in shades of gold, red and orange. She will never blend in with the crowd.
We exchanged pleasantries as Garth packaged my steaks, and she told me about the opera she had attended in Toronto, put on by the Opera Atelier group. “It was glorious,” she sighed. “I have some names I think you and Pish should investigate.”
I told her we’d welcome input, and then conversation inevitably turned to local news.
“So, what’s this I hear about all your intrigue at that encampment . . . those batty Light and Way folks?” she asked.
“It’s a mess,” I said. “It wouldn’t bug me if they were doing their own thing—to each their own and all that—but . . .” I lowered my voice and leaned in to her.
“I’m worried they’re tied up with the missing girls, and the death of Glynnis Johnson.” I told her about Anokhi and her family finding Glynnis’s body. “She was found on the highway pretty close to the encampment.” Garth went into the back for a new roll of butcher paper. “I’m worried. I can’t help but think that it’s one of the men from the encampment. There are a few possibilities: the prophet, Arden Voorhees; Barney, that awful street preacher . . . he’s the worst, with vile views on women! And even Nathan, the boy who roomed with Gordy right here in town . . . he gives me the creeps. Remember we had to get him fired for stalking Shilo.” I shook my head. “He seems to keep to himself out at the compound though, along with Gordy. It’s the prophet and Barney who get to town the most. It’s deeply upsetting.”
Janice nodded, her chins quivering. “It’s terrible. I heard that the girls at that place are treated like servants. I don’t like that. I was talking to Helen this morning—Glynnis Johnson’s father is a cousin of hers. She said Reverend Maitland’s Sunday sermon is going to be about those who use the name of the Lord to do the devil’s work.”
“So you knew about that encampment, too? How did I miss hearing about it, if it’s been there for years?”
“I have friends in Ridley Ridge, which is how I know. And with my antiques business, I keep up on who is getting rid of what and where. Those folks started buying up lots of junk . . . you know, household stuff. They started out at a big rented house near Ridley Ridge. Kept a low profile for the longest time, even after they bought that land.”
Garth had returned and was bagging my wrapped steaks. He gave a loud humph of displeasure. “Couldn’t believe it when Bob Taggart sold some of his family land to those looney tunes.”
It seemed that many people, like the cashier in Ridley Ridge, were still mystified by that. It made me wonder too. “You know the trucker, Bob?”
“Sure. Grew up with him and his brother, Walt. Walt’s a welder; runs his own garage in Ridley Ridge.”
“Yes, I heard of him from a waitress at the coffee shop. He’s a mechanic, too. I heard today that he was not totally on board with his brother selling land to the Light and the Way folks.”
“The Taggart farm and mine . . . they’re right across from each other on Silver Creek Line. Bob told his brother to worry about his shop, that he’d run the farm like he ought to. Then he goes and sells twenty acres to that weirdo, Arden Voorhees, and his crazy crew.”
“Did he have his brother’s permission?” I asked.
“I guess he musta, even if Walt gripes about it now and then,” Garth said, sliding an elastic band over the top of the plastic bag. “Walt still spends a lot of time at the farm, though. He’s got a big welding shop there . . . all kinds of trucks coming and going. I guess he fixes ’em out there, rather than in town. We all grew up together, me, Bob, Walt, Lloyd Mackenzie . . . he’s another neighbor; he’s got land on the next line, behind Bob ’n Walt’s land. Bob shouldna sold to that bunch, though.”
“How could Bob know what Voorhees was going to do with the land, Garth?” Janice said.
“Come on, now, how could he not? Anything involving those Voorhees boys was gonna be trouble. Always were.” He handed me my bag and I paid as he kept talking. “We went to school together. I always thought Bardo was the trouble. Arden more or less kept his nose clean. He was married, a good woman, Essie Palinkas . . . nice family. Good values. Then Bardo dies, after which Essie disappears and Arden goes bonkers. He was so medicated that he couldn’t even come to his own brother’s funeral! Pissant turnout anyway.”
I had heard that refrain before, that it was Bardo’s murder that set Arden off on the wrong path. But no one goes off the rails at fifty-something. “Are you sure Arden wasn’t troubled before that?”
Garth snorted. “Nah. Well, maybe. He was a skinny runt afraid of his own shadow. Bardo bossed him. Oh, Arden did things, sure—killed a neighbor’s cat once, and got in trouble for spying on the girls in the locker rooms—but it was always Bardo put him up to it.”
It seemed to me that people blamed Bardo for whatever Arden did wrong. And they still were, in a way, blaming Arden’s current weirdness on Bardo’s death. “So why do you think Bob Taggart sold the land to Voorhees? It does seem an odd move.”
“I’ll tell ya why . . . Bob has always looked out for his own self.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, putting my wallet back in my Birkin. “How was selling land to the ministry folks looking after himself?”
“Free labor. Bob never did like working. He sold that Voorhees fellow the land dirt cheap, and in exchange he has guys to work his acreage and look after his animals—leaves him free to truck, rather than work the land—and gals to clean his house, do his laundry and cook his meals. Perfect setup for a lazy-ass jerk like that.”
“I guess it’s a symbiotic arrangement.”
“Sure, if by that you mean using each other. Not the way to live, if you ask me, getting other people to do all your work for you. Why don’t he remarry, have kids, have someone to pass it all down to? Selfish, if you ask me.”
I hesitated, but I was troubled still about Shilo’s reluctant admission that there was some connection between an abused woman and either the ministry or someone connected to it. “Garth, have you ever heard anything about Bob mistreating women?”
He looked up from his cash register and frowned over the counter. “Now, what would make you ask that?”
I didn’t want to be more precise. “Just wondering. As one does. Have you?”
“Bob was married once upon a time. This is going back twenty years or more. When his wife divorced him she claimed he beat her, but she never charged him or anything. Probably made it up to get out of the marriage or she would have charged him.”
I stiffened, but breathed through it. As much as I wanted to rip him a new orifice, I resisted the urge. It’s a hard lesson in life that not every battle can be won. I simply said, “Garth, I hope you don’t believe that. She may have had private motives for not charging him.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense to me. If someone beat me up, I’d sure as hell charge him.”
“Perhaps she was concerned that if she did charge him, and he got off on the charge, he’d retaliate.”
Garth frowned, started to shake his head, but then stopped. “I don’t know. I don’t understand it, I guess.”
So Bob Taggart was likely an abusive jerk as well as being a misogynistic creep. Was he also a serial murderer of young girls who landed at the cult situated on his land? It was possible.
I waited as Janice bought some of the sausage and then walked out with her, down the two steps to the sidewalk. “Bob and his land seem to be a sore spot for Garth.” I was uneasy. “I mean, even though Bob’s marriage failed, and he might be a wife beater, Garth believes he should remarry, have kids and pass the farm down to them. Some people are better off alone. It’s none of anyone else’s business.”
“Garth is a by-the-books kind of guy,” Janice agreed. She grabbed me in a bear hug. “Honey, I know things are grim right now—no one feels worse for the parents of that poor girl than me—but you keep chugging along.”
A hug from Janice goes a long way toward making one feel better. We parted ways and I headed home. I got a text from Lizzie; she and Cecily wanted to come out to talk to me. Perfect. As I pulled into the parking area, I texted back to meet me at the castle. Becket, who had been lounging in the fall sunshine on the terrace, followed me in and all the way to the kitchen.
I made some lunch, a plate of sandwiches for the girls and myself, as well as some fresh-baked muffins from the pail of batter I had stored in the big professional fridge. I heard the girls enter but knew Lizzie would give Cecily a tour, first, before coming to find me. I put on the pot for coffee.
When they joined me I stared; Cecily looked like a different girl. Her plump figure was dressed in leggings, a long shirt with a blue jean jacket over it, and boots I recognized as some of Emerald’s. But it w
as her hair that was the real kicker. She had cut it shorter and dyed the blonde a fabulous magenta. “Wow,” I said, examining her. “From Little House on the Prairie to punk goddess in two days.”
She smiled. “It all feels . . . weird. I’ve been out of it so long.”
We sat at the central trestle table in the kitchen and had lunch, as Becket twined around our legs begging for food. I fed him—again—and brought out the platter of muffins. Cecily tried and failed to get Becket onto her lap. She had coffee, while Lizzie preferred her bottle of water with lemon.
“This is so good,” Cecily said with a sigh, draining the last of her coffee to wash down the last bite of muffin. “When I saw you guys at the camp I knew I wanted to leave. I was so tired . . . and tired of being afraid.”
“Why were you afraid? Did anyone threaten you?”
She frowned and flicked a muffin crumb off her plate. Becket scooted to claim it off the floor, pouncing on it like it was a bug. “I can’t explain it. We had to stay up all night for prayer, you know, and there were these long boring tapes we had to listen to. They were of this old guy from way back . . . I mean, they were, like, cassette tapes!”
“What did he say in the lectures?”
“That there was one way to salvation, and that was to follow his word.”
“The guy on the tape?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I never thought of that. Mother Esther said it meant we had to follow Prophet Voorhees.”
“Was the prophet around much?”
“Not really. He was there sometimes, but other times Mother said he was praying and couldn’t be disturbed. She’d tell us what he’d said we were to do, like, stay up all night scrubbing the kitchen shack, or doing laundry by hand.”
Lizzie snorted. “Bet that all came from her. Bet Voorhees never said anything of the kind. And I’ll bet she did nothing.”
“No, she . . .” Cecily paused and cocked her head. “I guess you’re right. I mean, she’d say she was going to do something, and would check in on us, but I don’t think I ever saw her actually working.”
Muffin But Trouble Page 17