Long Black Veil (18 page)

Skylar ignored her. Devon gritted her teeth, resisting the urge to make Skylar acknowledge her. The girl was on a tear. “I get that you might need some space,” she was saying, “but when you’re done with your cheap mountain strange, I’ll be here.”

Brock shook his head, his face angry. “I’m done listening to you talk about Devon this way. And you know what? I’m done with you.” He faced Devon. “You ready?”

“You have no idea.” She began to walk down the hall. A few students still hanging around had seen the whole thing. Devon held her head up, unafraid to meet their eyes. She heard Brock’s footfalls behind hers as he caught up to her.

“That was fun,” Brock commented drily as they left the school.

“Yeah, I’m hoping we can do that every day and twice on Sundays.” She made a face at him. She was surprised that he had been so comfortable being out in public with her. He was from an entirely different crowd than she was. Her popularity had nowhere to go but up, but his social standing was bound to take a hit. She hadn’t expected him to be so open about her.

They walked along the sidewalk, keeping pace with each other. Finally Devon couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why?”

“Why what?” Brock furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Why me? Why now?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, afraid she was going to make him mad. You didn’t question good fortune like this, but Devon had always been more interested in honesty. “You never knew I was alive before.”

Brock thought for a moment, still walking easily beside her. “I wouldn’t say that,” he eventually said. He stared at her, his hazel eyes intent on her face. “I loved the way you smelled sophomore year. You sat next to me and you always smelled so good. Like strawberries.”

“My shampoo.” Devon was amazed he remembered. That he’d noticed. She said as much.

He nodded, then took her hand. “I noticed.” They walked in silence for a few minutes, then he said, “And why now?” He shrugged. “I guess I got tired of waiting for the right time because there is never going to be a right time. There’s just right now. And you.”

Devon ducked her head, smiling. “That’s nice.”

Brock bumped into her, causing her to look up. His smile was one of the nicest things she’d seen all day. “I could ask you the same thing. Why me?”

“It was always you. I was just waiting for you to pay attention.” She felt herself blush at her bold words.

“I always was a little slow,” he said, pulling her close to him as they walked. “But eventually I catch on.”

“Took you long enough.” She wrapped her arm around his waist, wondering how it was that she felt so comfortable. She’d never have thought she’d be one to snuggle against a boy in public. But then again, she’d never thought she’d get to snuggle against a boy while still in high school. She had always figured it would be an experience that would have to wait until college.

“Too long.”

They turned right and continued down the tree-lined street. In spring, the trees would be in bloom, shading the sidewalks and houses, but right now, in the desolate time between fall and winter, they all stood bare, like ladies waiting to be dressed for the ball. There weren’t many people out; most were at work or already home from school, but Devon saw several cars slow down as they passed them. The news of the two of them walking down the street together, wrapped in each other’s arms would be all over school tomorrow. Heck, it would be all over town.

“Brock, are you sure you want to do this?” Better to find out now if he was likely to cut and run before the gossip really started.

He looked confused for a second, then his face cleared. “You mean us?” At her tentative nod, he squeezed her tight. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Would you like the list alphabetically or by order of importance?” She stopped walking so she could look at him and not worry about tripping over a bump in the sidewalk.

He tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I guess, maybe I should ask you the same thing.”

Devon went with honesty, as she always did, whether it hurt or not. “I don’t have anything to lose. But you—let’s face it, I doubt your parents are going to be thrilled when they find out about me. I only have a ghost to worry about. You’ve got the whole town.”

“Your ghost is still spookier than the whole town put together,” he answered, his eyes dark. “I can handle it.”

Devon eyed him carefully, not wanting to push, but hoping he was aware of just how hard it would be. She had her mother’s diary to go by and it hadn’t been easy for either her or Devon’s father. Things hadn’t changed that much in twenty years. Brock gave her a brilliant smile, and she let the matter drop.

They continued their walk. “People are going to talk no matter what we do,” he finally said as they began to climb the steps to the library. “You cool with that?”

“Hey, I’m ‘call me Pocahontas’. I’m cool with anything.”

Chapter Eighteen

“I found it!” Brock said just a hair too loud, earning him a quelling glance from the librarian on desk duty. He had the decency to look abashed. “I found it,” he whispered again, moving some of Devon’s notebooks out of the way so he could sit next to her.

“It’s all here,” he began, laying out photocopied pages. He leaned his head close to hers, and Devon could smell the fresh scent of his shampoo. It smelled like pine trees and winter. She inhaled deeply, then shifted her attention back to what he was showing her.

She’d given him the easiest piece of the research. She’d already done some work on the ghost herself after she’d found the picture when she was hunting for information on the grave marker, so it wouldn’t take much for her to pick it back up. But she had nothing on the more recent shooting and those archives were much easier to deal with, so she gave them to Brock. And he’d come up with something.

“So the man who was shot was a drifter by the name of Benjamin August. It happened in front of the Town Hall late at night on,” here he had to leaf through some pages to check the date, “February 21. Anyway, it looks like they didn’t have any suspects until someone came forward and said they saw the shooter.”

“Who was the witness?” Devon was jotting down notes as fast as she could.

More shuffling of pages. “Dwight Abernathy.” He pushed a photocopied picture at her. Abernathy was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, and he looked like he did a lot of work outside. “Anyway, ol’ Dwight over there fingered a local named Jackson Duvall.” He handed her another picture from his copies from the newspaper. “Duvall didn’t have an alibi so he was convicted, although the evidence seems pretty flimsy. He went to prison. That’s where he died.” Brock paused when he noticed Devon wasn’t scribbling. “What’s wrong?”

Devon sat staring at the black and white photo of Jackson Duvall. Gammy had told her that he’d been her father’s best friend and that he’d been close to her mother. But this wasn’t the first time she’d seen him. Her mother had countless pictures of Jackson Duvall: some with all three of them, some of just him, and a couple with Jackson and her. Devon had found these tucked into her mother’s diary pages along with some pressed flowers. She’d never found any of her father’s pictures tucked away in her mother’s diary though. Seeing him staring at her from the newspaper copies came as a shock. He was drawn and thin, looking nothing like the vibrant man in the photographs that her mother had kept.

“Devon?” Brock waved a hand in front of her face. “You still with me?”

She shook her head, as if that would help to clear the cobwebs. Everything was sounding too familiar. She pulled out her copies of the Daniel Holfsteder case reports. “Did he say anything in his defense?”

Brock shook his head. “Just that he was innocent, but that he didn’t have an alibi.”

“That’s just like what happened to Holfsteder.” Devon spread the pages out on the table in front of them.

“Who’s Holfsteder? I didn’t see him mentioned in this case.” Brock leaned over for a closer look.

“Daniel Holfsteder is the name on the tombstone that the ghost visits. I saw her standing in front of it on Halloween night. When I went to research him, this is what I found.” She skimmed the first article, then pointed at the line of text she was looking for. “He was accused of killing someone in front of the Town Hall too.” Her finger moved down the page. “And he didn’t have an alibi either.”

“Was he convicted?” Brock asked, his voice hollow.

Devon nodded. “And hung for his crime. And look,” she shuffled pages until the one she wanted was front and center. She pointed at the photograph of the crowd, specifically a woman staring stoically at the scaffold. “Remind you of anyone we’ve seen?”

Brock picked up the page to give it a close look. “Whoa.” His hazel eyes met hers. “It’s her!”

“I know, right?” She grinned.

“This is getting pretty creepy though.” Brock put the picture down. “I mean, the cases are almost exactly the same.”

“And both men died.” Devon’s grin was gone. “But why are they so alike? There’s got to be a reason. And why is the ghost replaying out what happened in her life if it was so awful?”

“Do you even know who she is? You figured out who her Daniel guy was, but do you have anything on her?”

Devon shook her head. “No, Gammy just told me that she was someone back in our line of kin. I don’t even know her name.” She brightened for a second. “But I’ve got tons of family information from the archives and the records room. Maybe I can track her down through those papers.”

“Check your Gammy’s Bible,” Brock suggested absently, still staring at the three pictures laid out in front of him.

“What? Why?”

He looked up, his eyes catching hers. Devon swallowed hard, thinking of what it would be like to drown in them. He had very nice eyes, hazel with a ring of black around the iris, fringed by heavy lashes. “Lots of people pass their Bibles down through the generations, and the names are listed of everyone who had it. It’s sort of like a mini-family tree.”

Devon put her chin in her hand and gazed at him. “That’s actually brilliant.”

Brock grinned. “I know. I surprise myself sometimes.” He looked over at what she’d been reading. “Any luck?”

She sighed. “There’s really nothing helpful in these books. Mostly seems to be a lot of talk about proving the existence of ghosts. We’re already ahead of the game on that one.”

Brock picked up one of the volumes stacked around her. “But nothing on how to get rid of it?”

“Not so far. I’ll check some of these out, maybe see what else they’ve got.” Devon checked her watch. “I need to get back. Gammy’s put limits on when I have to be home from school.”

“I’ll give you a ride.” He began to gather up his copies.

“You probably shouldn’t do that. It will make her mad.” She didn’t mention the ghost; then again, she already suspected they had pissed her off.

“I’ll risk it. I don’t like you walking alone.” His voice was firm. There would be no wiggling around it.

“Fine. But you can drop me off at the church and I’ll walk the rest of the way. I don’t need Gammy grounding me any more than she already has.” She shoved papers and notebooks into her messenger bag, then began to stack up the books she thought would be the most useful for checkout.

Brock took the stack from her. “I’ve got it.”

“I can do it, you know.” Devon tried for mock-offended and came out nowhere near it.

“What’s the point of having a guy around if he won’t lift heavy things for you?” He smiled down at her. “Besides I like doing things for you.”

“Oh.” Devon could feel herself blushing. “Okay then.”

Chapter Nineteen

Brock pulled his car over to the side of the road opposite the church. He put it in park and turned in his seat to look at Devon. For her part, she still felt weird when all of his attention was on her like this. She kept wanting to pull her head into her shoulders, like some kind of a human-turtle hybrid as a way of protecting herself. She wasn’t used to this kind of attention.

“So what’s our next move?” His voice was soft in the confines of the car.

Devon fidgeted with her seat belt release, needing to keep her hands busy. He’d used ‘our’ again, and it made her heart beat a little faster. The belt snapped off of her. “You see what you can dig up on Abernathy and Jackson Duvall. I’ll handle the ghost and what happened to Daniel. Sound good?”

He moved closer to her, his own seatbelt already off. “Sure. I’ll tell you what I find via Chat.”

Devon lowered her eyes, feeling that mountain embarrassment clinging to her skin. “I don’t have internet access out here.”

Brock just nodded, not bothered by her admission in the least. “Bet reception is pretty crappy out here anyway. So check back in at school tomorrow?”

Devon tried to put her embarrassment behind her. “Sure.” She looked out the windshield, noting how the sun was sinking behind the mountains. Darkness was gathering in the hollows of trees and at the base of their trunks. It would be night soon. “I should get going.”

Brock’s hand on her arm stopped her from picking up her bag from the floorboards. Her eyes flashed up to his face, suddenly unsure of what she was doing. Everything seemed so clear back at the school, but up here on the mountain, this seemed strange and dangerous. Then his lips were on hers and she didn’t care about mountain or town or school or research. All she cared about was the way his breath fanned along her cheek, the way his mouth tasted, and the way her skin seemed to tingle at his touch.