Murder Comes to Notchey Creek

by Liz S. Andrews

  And that was exactly what she needed to be that summer. Pearl had offered to play with her—board games, t-ball, jump rope—whatever she wanted, but Harley said she just wanted to sit beneath that brilliant oak tree and read her books. “Each person has his or her own method of mourning,” she overhead Pearl telling her husband, Arthur, “and that is Harley Henrickson’s method.”

  And that is all she did, day after day that summer. She read, she thought, and she mourned. And in many ways, that old oak tree mourned her mother’s death right along with her, listened to every quiet prayer, every silent sob, every angry cry she sent to whatever power might listen. And by summer’s end, the tree and Harley both had a new ring to add to their trunks, the sign of a shared experience that left an indelible mark on both.

  Those sultry summer days passed one after another, July into August, and she had grown accustomed to the symphony of sounds in her secret garden: the chirping of birds, the scampering of squirrels, the croaking of frogs, the creek babbling in the distance. The woodland creatures had become like a second family to her. She had even taken to naming several of them: Squabby Squirrel, Robby Robin, Frank the Frog, Minnie Minnow, Rupert the Rabbit, and Theodosius. He was the slug. She figured she might as well name all of them, being as they were her only friends.

  But then someone else began appearing in her little domicile that summer, interrupting the not-so-quiet ecosystem.

  A boy. A boy in the yard next door.

  From what she had heard about Eric Winston, she knew he was about six years older than her and from a wealthy family in town. He was at the top of his class at the private school he attended in Knoxville and like his father, a prominent surgeon in town, he would attend Yale and become a doctor. The Winstons had big plans for their young scholar.

  That summer, she watched Eric a lot, not because he was handsome, or because he read a lot, but because he seemed to have a wounded heart. And wounded souls she understood. She wondered what his story was, why he always seemed so sad. She knew why she was sad. She knew she would never see her mother again, would never rest her head on her mother’s shoulder, would never feel her mother’s soft touch as she brushed her hair from her forehead, would never feel her lips on her cheek as she kissed her goodnight. And her mother would never read to her again.

  But why Eric Winston? He seemed to have the whole world at his disposal, yet he seemed to care for nothing or no one in it. He never smiled, he never laughed, he never cried. He was just listless. The one thing he did that summer was take long walks along the creek bank, day after day, his eyes focused and narrowed on something in the creek below him, something invisible. He would trace the water with a branch and intermittently flip rocks to look beneath them or lift the marsh to search for something underneath.

  On occasion, he picked up an object from the creek bed for a closer look and after examining it for several seconds, he dropped it back into the water once more. At last, tired from his wanderings, he would lie beneath a weeping willow tree and read a book, a grown-up book by the looks of it, one with small text, thick binding, and an ancient man staring from its tattered cover. Moments passed then his body would relax, and his handsome features would soften into a dreamlike trance.

  She decided to leave presents for him underneath the weeping willow, little things to brighten his mood. First, she left an apple, then a string of daisies, followed by a shiny river stone, then a cork from her grandfather’s distillery. Lastly, she left a bookmark, one she had made by cutting a pressed leaf into a heart shape and attaching it to heavy craft paper. Underneath the heart, she had written in crayon: You Are Loved.

  What Eric thought of those gifts she never knew. When he came to the tree to collect them each day, Harley ducked behind the hedgerow, hiding from his sight and any reactions he might have had. But, in the end, it mattered very little what his reactions were. She knew she had done the right thing. She had helped someone who was hurting, hurting like her.

  Those peaceful days passed one after another in that fashion, the two of them acting as amiable and silent companions, aware of, but not acknowledging the other.

  Too bad it was all about to come to an end.

  Away from school, away from the playground, she thought she would be safe from the evils that tormented her at school each day. But somehow, some way, they had found her, discovered her shelter, her secret hiding place. And when she looked up from her book one afternoon, she found Kevin Grazely and Spider Buttle standing over her, wicked smiles across their freckled faces.

  She sprung from the tree’s bow, only to find her collar ripping at her throat, whiplashing her body backward into Kevin Grazley’s chest. Kevin, big-boned at eleven, held her suspended by her t-shirt as Spider Buttle, skinny and rat-tailed, tore her book from her arms and hurled it into a nearby mud puddle.

  “You’re such a freakin’ nerd,” Kevin said.

  She kicked Kevin in the shins and took a running slide across the lawn after her book, skidding her knees on the grass. As she blindly slopped through the mud, searching for her book, she could hear the distant chime of the ice cream truck two streets away, its trills matched by the cries of children racing toward their favorite time of day.

  Cries came from Harley’s mouth too, but for another reason.

  Kevin and Spider pushed her face-forward into the mud puddle, her eyes stinging with mud. “Haha! What a stupid dork,” Kevin said, standing over her.

  “Yeah,” Spider said, “and she’s even uglier with all that mud on her face!”

  With her knees and palms scraped with blood, her face covered with mud, Harley pulled The Giving Tree from the puddle and stared at it helplessly. A swell of hot tears ran down her cheeks. The book’s green cover had been reduced to swamp, its pages congealed to pulp.

  She fell to the grass and hugged the book to her chest, rocking her body back and forth. The Giving Tree had been the last present she received from her mother, the last gift before her death. Kevin Grazely stomped his foot down in the puddle and splattered mud on her face and overalls.

  “Yeah, try to read your stupid book now, you stupid weirdo.”

  Harley charged at Kevin and, raising her fist, popped him in the eye. He cried out in pain, his hand cupped over his left eye.

  But Spider, seizing on Harley’s distraction, ripped the book from her arms. He held it out in front of her and howled with laughter, “What’re you gonna do now, weirdo?”

  A red-faced Kevin grabbed the book from Spider and ripped the soggy pages out, throwing them at Harley’s feet.

  In defeat, Harley fell to the ground, taking the torn pages in her hands, burying her face in the book’s remains.

  “Haha! Haha!” they laughed, then silence fell over the backyard.

  A long silhouette stretched across the lawn beside Kevin and Spider, who raised their eyes to towering heights.

  A deep voice, deeper and more grown up than Harley had ever imagined, said, “Beat it. And if you ever come near her again, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  27

  Great Expectations

  Kevin and Spider stood frozen, with their mouths agape. The three children stared up at the boy with the golden hair, the teenage boy who was even bigger than he appeared from a distance. There was something in his manner, something hard and cold and worldly. Realizing this was a fight they could not win, Kevin and Spider sped across the Johnsons’ yard and jumped on their bikes, speeding down Briarwood Avenue.

  Harley wiped her eyes on her t-shirt and squinted into the blazing sun, eclipsed by the shadow of the boy’s face.

  The boy extended his hand to her and lifted her tiny body from the ground. He wiped a row of sludge from her cheek and smiled. “You okay, kiddo?” he asked in his deep, grown-up voice.

  “Yes,” Harley said, trying to hold back more tears.

  “Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice shaking. “Granddaddy says I’m a big girl now. That I’m not
supposed to cry anymore. He says that if I cry anymore I’ll run out of tears.”

  “You know,” the boy said, lowering himself to her level, “a very wise man once said, ‘we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.’”

  “But what does it mean?” she asked, sniffling.

  He brushed a tear from her cheek and smiled. “It means it’s okay to cry.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Though his eyes were rimmed with sadness, they were surprisingly kind. “You were a very brave little girl just now. I saw you. I saw how you stood up to them. I saw how you fought back. And they wouldn’t have beaten you, not if they hadn’t taken something you loved.”

  Harley swallowed a sobbing breath. “My book.”

  “Shh … shh,” he said, wiping another tear from her cheek. “Hey, look, I’ve brought something for you.” He extended his arm out, revealing a hardback book bound in leather.

  “Great Expectations,” Harley read aloud, gazing at the front cover. She looked up at the boy with curiosity. “But what is it?”

  “It’s a story about an orphan who has big plans for his life.”

  Harley gazed at the boy thoughtfully. “I’m an orphan. I mean … well, I used to be a bastard, but now … um, I guess I’m just an orphan.”

  The boy closed his eyes for a moment, lines forming between his brows. He gently shook his head, then slowly opened his eyes once more to meet hers. “You may be an orphan, little thing, but your life is destined for greatness. Just like mine.”

  “But the kids at school are so mean to me.”

  “Now, now,” he said, patting her on the head. “There are always going to be bad people like those kids who try to run you down, who try to make you feel bad. And they won’t be happy, not until they’ve done just that. Until they’ve hurt you. That’s where they get their power, you see, and you can’t let them have it. You just ignore them, okay? Remember, you’re a very smart little girl with a big, big heart. And you have an amazing future ahead of you, too big for any of them to consider. You have to keep your power, Harley Henrickson, your pureness of heart, you promise me? Don’t ever let it go, okay?”

  Harley wondered how he knew her name, but instead of asking, she nodded, and looking up with wide-eyed wonder, said, “Okay.”

  He rose back to his towering height and stretched his long limbs. “Now, you keep enjoying those books of yours. Sometimes they’re just what we need during tough times. Sometimes they’re better than what the real world has to offer.”

  Harley nodded. She had never met a boy as wise and gentle and mature as this one. “I will keep reading them,” she said. “I promise.”

  The boy smiled, looking down at her. “You know, one of these days when you’re all grown up, you’re going to look back on all of this, and you’re going to wonder why you even cared what any of those stupid, mean kids thought of you.”

  “Really?”

  “I promise.” He gazed down at her intently. “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “A writer. I want to write books. I want to tell stories.”

  “And you will. I have no doubt about that.”

  Harley smiled at the mere idea of his predictions for her future.

  “All right, kiddo,” he said. “I’ll let you get back to your reading. Goodness knows, you’ve had too many interruptions today already.”

  Then he stepped out of the blazing sun, his golden hair catching the sunlight in waves, his kindness having saved an eight-year-old girl in more ways than he could have imagined.

  “Wait,” Harley said, calling after him.

  He looked over his shoulder and waited for her to speak. “How does it end?” she asked. “The orphan’s story.”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled. “I haven’t finished the book yet. Why don’t read it and let me know how it works out for him, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “And don’t forget about me, you promise, Harley Henrickson?”

  Harley held the copy of Great Expectations to her chest and watched the boy disappear among the trees in the backyard.

  “I won’t. I won’t ever forget you.”

  28

  Eric

  “Harley Henrickson?’

  Eric Winston stood before Harley, his handsome face gazing down at her with concern. Above him the last of the fall leaves rustled in agitation, seeking escape from the tree’s limbs as they reached toward the brooding sky.

  “You’re Harley Henrickson, right?” His voice was soothing, calm and kind.

  Harley repositioned herself on the grassy bank, trying to reclaim her equilibrium. “Yes,” she muttered. “Yes, I’m Harley.”

  Eric inclined his head toward her and, his voice filled with caring, he said, “It’s okay, Harley. I understand you’re the one who found Patrick’s body. It’s perfectly normal to feel shaken after what you discovered. I’m assuming you and Patrick were friends and then having to find his body—well, that makes it even more tragic. I’m so sorry.”

  His calm demeanor, the genuineness of his concern disarmed her at once. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was horrible.”

  He gave a sigh of understanding. “It always is. And it never gets better. You know, even after all the cases I’ve had, each one still seems new to me, each one still seems to haunt me afterward. They’re never just bodies. Not for me. They’re people, people who had lives, families, loves. When I see a hand, it’s not just a hand, but a part of a person that held loved ones, favorite books, those special cups of coffee in the morning.”

  He extended his hand in a handshake. “I’m Eric Winston by the way. I grew up next door to Patrick. He and my parents were good friends. And now I’m back—as the new medical examiner.”

  “Everybody’s so glad you’re home,” Harley said, but she was disappointed Eric didn’t seem to remember her.

  “I only wish it were under better circumstances.” He looked toward the creek where Patrick’s body had once been, then back to Harley. “I was wondering if you might have a minute to help me out.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks. They removed Patrick’s body from the creek before I was able to examine it. They took photographs, of course, but it’s not the same thing as seeing it in person and …” His voice trailed off, but then he continued. “Jed’s a good man—a good sheriff, but I’m assuming he hasn’t had much experience investigating suspicious deaths. He and his officers might not be abreast of proper protocol. Anyway,” he said, drawing a pair of shoe covers from his pocket and handing them to Harley, “if you could just follow me to the creek for a minute, and answer a few questions, it’d be a great help.”

  After affixing the shoe covers to her boots, Harley followed Eric down the hill toward the creek. “Just watch your step,” he said kindly.

  When they reached the bank, he asked, “Now, when you found Patrick this morning, was his body facing up or down?”

  “Up. And with his eyes open. He was staring up at the sky and he had this horrified look on his face—as if he’d just seen a ghost.”

  “A ghost?”

  “Yes. Well, maybe not a ghost, but something had definitely frightened him. It’s almost like he was in the middle of a bad dream, a nightmare, like he sleepwalked from his bed to the creek.” Her gaze, focused in concentration on the water, snapped back to Eric. “Do you happen to know what time Patrick died?”

  He considered. “Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. That’s my best estimate anyway. And that’s what I’m having so much trouble with. I keep asking myself, ‘Why would Patrick have been down here at that time of night?’ It just didn’t seem normal for him. From what I understand, he was a nine o’clock bedtime sort of person.”

  He paused in thought for a few moments and lowered his voice. “And why was he still wearing his pajamas? He didn’t even take the time to get dressed before coming down here.” He shook his head. “None
of it makes any sense to me. It’s almost like you said, that he sleepwalked down here.”

  He looked to Harley for an explanation and she said, “Samhain. I think that’s why he was here in the middle of the night.”

  “Samhain?” Eric seemed to roll the term around in his mind. “What’s that exactly?”

  “A Celtic holiday. A precursor to what we know as Halloween. I didn’t know what it was either until last night. You see, there was a meeting at Patrick’s house for the historical society. He’d asked Iris O’Shaughnessy—she owns Celtic Memories on Main Street—to give a presentation on Samhain. I guess he thought it’d be appropriate since it was Halloween.”

  She collected her thoughts and continued. “You see, the ancient Celts believed that on just one day of the year—Hallowmas—spirits came down from what they called the between places, such as bodies of water, mountains … They’d enter the earthly realm, and stay until dawn the next day. And expecting them, the Celts gathered at the between places at midnight, hoping to see their lost loved ones.”

  “And you think Patrick took this Samhain legend to heart? That he came down here to meet somebody he’d lost?”

  “Possibly. Look, I know it sounds crazy, Eric, and Patrick wasn’t a suspicious person, not usually anyway, but he hadn’t been himself lately. He seemed, at least to me, deeply troubled by something. Like somebody or some thing was haunting him. But there’s another reason I think he was here because of the legend.”

  She continued. “When I found him this morning, he was holding something in his hand. A wooden coin with an engraving of a tree and a crescent moon on the front. It’s the symbol for Samhain, and it was the same coin Iris brought to the meeting for her presentation last night.”