Picture Them Dead (13 page)

“And I'm eager to tell you,” Claire said. “Right after it happened I told it over and over until I had no voice left, but I couldn't get anybody to listen to me. Then somewhere along the way I gave up trying to convince people. This was all before you came to live here, Esme, and close as we've become, I don't think I've even told you.”

“No, I've never heard you speak about it. I thought maybe you didn't like to remember,” Esme said.

“Well, it's not pleasant to remember that night, but it's important to set the facts straight. This is the way it actually happened, as opposed to what you've likely heard around town through the years. I was a young teacher, twenty-six years old and filled with idealism. Honestly, if you could have heard me talk about my call to teaching, it probably would've made you puke. I was obnoxiously evangelical about it. Quentin was working at a small manufacturing company that made electronic thermostats. We'd been married nearly three years and we'd just bought the house. Now, I grant you, we were not the romantic fantasy of happily ever after. We fought and made up and fought again. We gave in and held out and got over and saw through. We were both immature, but we were finding our way in making a life together. We were happy. Our own version of happy.

“A few days after school was out that year, I ran into Nash Simpson at the hardware store. I'd known him since we were kids. We went to school together, or at least we did when his folks bothered to send him. His family was dirt poor and didn't value education much. Anyhow, he pulled me aside and asked very quietly if I could teach him to read. He'd just gotten on at the power plant, sweeping floors and doing gofer jobs, but he could see a chance to make something of himself there, except he knew he needed good reading skills. So I told him I'd be happy to work with him. Then he laid down the rules. No one was to know. He was embarrassed about being illiterate. So I agreed it would be just between the two of us.

“Quentin was working second shift, so we made plans for Nash to come over to our house two nights a week for me to work with him, and all went along fine for a while. Our house was isolated—well, still is pretty isolated, but even more so back then. No one was likely to see his truck there and he wasn't married at the time, so he didn't have anyone to answer to as to his whereabouts. He was making good progress and I was feeling pretty self-righteous about my part in it.

“Then one night I heard Quentin's truck come roaring into the driveway while we were working at the kitchen table. He came up the back porch steps at a run and flung open the door and nearly ran over the two of us before he stopped. He was wild-eyed and red-faced. Quentin had always been the jealous type, and to my everlasting shame, I sort of liked it. I thought it meant he really, really loved me. Never occurred to me in my romantic fog that it also meant he didn't trust me.

“He demanded to know what was going on and I started to tell him, but Nash put his hand on my arm to stop me, reminding me with that one gesture of my promise. But it only made us look guilty of something else. I stammered some lame thing and then Quentin turned toward Nash and took a step. But here's the thing, the big thing. Nash swung first. He started the fight. He hit Quentin in the stomach so hard he doubled over and then the rage was let loose. They fought all over that kitchen, both of them snarling like animals. Somewhere in all the confusion I got knocked down, and my back struck the edge of our old dinette table, which had been turned over during the fight. My scream ended the brawl.” She stopped and I could see she was struggling not to cry, her voice coming out in a strained whisper. “My scream ended life as we'd known it.”

“Oh, Claire,” Esme said. “Darlin', how awful for you.”

“So you see,” Claire went on, “we were all guilty of something. Quentin was hotheaded and acted before he thought; I was wrong to agree to keep things from him and to encourage him to feel jealous; and Nash was guilty of an excess of pride for not wanting to be open about his illiteracy and for starting the fight in the first place. I might have been able to calm Quentin down if Nash hadn't thrown that first punch. They arrested Quentin that night while they were still working on me at the hospital. I was in no condition to tell them what had happened and Nash insisted on pressing charges.”

“That's not the way I've heard the story at all,” I said.

Claire nodded, her eyes swimming with tears. She wiped them away impatiently. “You'd think as many times as I've told this I'd be over the crying by now. Anyway, while they were still discovering the extent of my injuries, charges were being drawn up against Quentin, and they kept piling them on. First it was simple assault, then aggravated assault, then assault with a deadly weapon, which, by the way, was a turkey platter we'd gotten as a wedding gift. It was absurd. And to make matters worse, Quentin had been in a couple of scrapes when he was a kid and because he had a record, he came in under three strikes. James Rowan, curse his hide, was trying to make his bones as DA and wanted to show he was a law-and-order guy. Quentin was sent off for a seven-year stretch in prison.”

I did the math. “But that means he should have been out . . .” I began, still calculating.

“Should have,” Claire said, “but Quentin still had anger issues and things didn't go well his first couple of years inside. He kept getting weeks and months tacked on to his sentence for one infraction or another. I couldn't go see him at all in those early years because I was struggling with my rehabilitation and he had to earn visitor privileges, but as soon as I was able, I started visiting. He'd thought during that whole time that I blamed him, and maybe there was a part of me that did, but gradually we got through it and he started taking his own rehabilitation seriously. He got into counseling and picked up some computer training and we started planning for a life together when he got out. But it's been a long road, and we're not newlyweds anymore. We're trying to get to know each other again. We've agreed to live apart for at least a year and try to work on things slowly.”

“One thing I'm curious about,” I said, thinking back over her story. “What made Quentin come home that night?”

“There it is,” Claire said, nodding. “That's the big question. He got a call at work. His boss came and got him off the assembly floor, told him it was an emergency. The voice on the line told him he should come home quick if he wanted to catch his wife with the other man she'd been seeing behind his back.”

“Surely there were phone records they could have checked to find out who placed the call,” Esme said.

Claire nodded. “From the pay phone at the Kwik-Mart, plenty of pay phones around back then, remember?”

“And Quentin didn't recognize the voice?” I asked.

Claire shook her head. “He said it sounded like someone had something covering the receiver. The words were clear enough, but he couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman.”

“Who do you think it was?” I asked.

“Well, I've thought a lot about that over the years. Nash was dating Connie back then. She's his wife now. She had a really bad temper, and she still does, by the way. If she knew anything about him coming to my house, she'd have been really angry. And Quentin had some coworkers who didn't like him much and were always trying to shaft him in one way or another. I had a couple of ex-boyfriends who hadn't taken kindly to being rejected. Those are the only people I can think of, but honestly, I don't think it was any of them. To this day I still can't think of anyone with cause to do something like that. So, that's the story and I'm happy to have you two actually listen and believe, or at least I hope you believe me.”

“I would never doubt your word on anything, Claire,” Esme said. “And I hope you'll forgive me for some of the things I've said about Quentin. I spoke out of turn.”

“What about Nash?” I asked. “What's up with him? He bears some fault in this, too. What's with his attitude?”

“Guilt, I think,” Claire said with a sigh. “Or shame. He knows this might have gone differently if he hadn't thrown that first punch. And it was ridiculous to hold me to the pledge of not telling about tutoring him. But it's easier to make Quentin the villain. Quentin and I would like to stay here in Morningside and try to pick up the pieces of our lives. I love it here, and my work and my friends are here, but if things don't settle down soon, we may have to move away to get some peace.”

“Well, we can't let that happen,” Esme said. “You're needed here.”

“I'm glad Quentin didn't move back in with me right away, and that he has an iron-clad alibi,” Claire said. “Else they'd probably have tried to pin Sherry's murder on him, even though I don't think he ever even met Sherry or Luke.”

“Luke is here, did you know that?” I asked.

“So they found him?” Claire said. “I knew they were looking for next of kin. Well, that's good. I'd love to see him.”

“They didn't exactly find him, but since I need to get going, I'll let Esme tell you that story. Amazing how two siblings can grow up under the same conditions and yet end up such different people. Luke seems like a good guy.”

“ ‘Seems' being the operative word,” Esme said.

thirteen

I decided to go out to see River in person to ask if he'd mind me bringing Laney to the grave site. In any case, I wanted to tell him what we'd found that afternoon and give him a look at the photo album so he could see what Samuel Wright had looked like.

I found him trying to put order back into his trampled garden beds. He looked up as I drove up the long gravel drive, stones popping out from under my tires. His frown disappeared when he recognized my car and he stood and peeled off his work gloves, stowing them in his back pocket as he walked over. I asked about Laney's request right off so I could text Dee the plan.

He hesitated, but then I told him Laney's reason for wanting to make the visit.

“Well, sure, that's fine,” he'd said. “Poor girl oughta have somebody that knew her grieving for her, other than Luke, I mean.”

“Yeah,” I said. “About Luke, do you have any idea where he's staying? Claire would like to see him.”

“Matter of fact, I know exactly where he's staying; right here with me,” River said, giving a head jerk toward the house. “He'll be helping me out with some things around the place and the rest of his time he'll spend writing up his findings and analyzing his data for his dissertation. I got plenty of room, and after the conditions he's lived in for the past year, he doesn't mind a little construction dust.”

“That's very generous of you,” I said hesitantly, “especially since you hardly know him. What does Jennifer have to say about it?”

“I believe her exact worlds were, ‘For Pete's sake, Dad, he's not a stray puppy,' but I may be misremembering the front end of that. Jennifer's got a foul mouth when she's riled. But she'll warm to the idea. Sometimes it just takes her awhile to come around to things.”

I smiled, careful to keep what I was thinking from showing on my face.

“I'm a good judge of character,” River said. “That's not a boast, it's a statement of fact. I like the kid, and frankly, he's got more claim to this place than I do.”

“Well, I wouldn't go quite that far, River,” I said. “This is your land now, you bought it and you own it.”

“Yeah, but that's only if you believe you can own the land. I hope someday this place will become a part of my being, but right now we're just getting to know one another. For Luke it's different. Anyhow, if, as you say, this is my place, then I get to say who stays here, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, wondering why Luke would choose to hang around this place. It didn't sound to me like he could have many happy memories of his time here.

“What you got there?” River asked, nodding at the album I held clutched against my chest.

I told him what we'd found. “I thought of taking it out to Miss Lottie, but technically it belongs to you, so I wanted to get your take on it. But it looks like I've caught you in the middle of something.” I motioned toward the garden.

River shrugged. “Garden's not going anywhere. The land abides. Let's go inside.”

As we walked to the house I told him more about the contents of the bundle we'd found and about the faded inscription on the cloth.

“I'd love to see it,” he said, “but as far as the whole ownership thing goes, that's Miss Lottie's stuff if she wants it. And if she doesn't, maybe Luke would. It might mean something to him to know about his family and this land. I sense the boy has a powerful need to belong to something—a place, a tribe, or a cause, maybe. I imagine that's one reason he was drawn to his profession.”

We found Luke in the kitchen putting ice into three glasses. “I saw you coming,” he said. “Lemonade or tea, what'll it be?”

“You're a handy fella to have around,” River said, slapping his gloves into a basket by the door.

“Homemade?” I asked, eyeing the lemonade pitcher.

“Is there any other kind?” Luke asked. “That's one thing I learned during the past year. Modern life has brought us many wonderful things, but processed food is not one of them. This was made with fresh lemons and raw honey.”

No wonder River liked this guy, I thought. They were two peas in an organic pod.

We sat at the table and looked through the photo album together. River took his time with each page. “So this is Jimmy,” he said when he came to the one of Samuel in his uniform. “I guess I have to start calling him Sam now. He's got a good face.”

“Yes, he does,” I agreed, looking at the photo more closely. Samuel had been handsome in a boyish way. Light-haired and blue-eyed, he looked much too young to be going off to war. “I see a little of you in his face, Luke.”

“So, he's my, what, great-grandfather?” Luke asked.

“Yes, this is your grandmother Lottie's father. There seems to be some mystery surrounding how he died.”

Luke took all of this in clinically, as if it were one of his case studies. And indeed, it might very well end up that way. It seemed River had told him about the glass casket and Luke had started to research it immediately, thinking he might get an article out of it.

I heard the toot of a horn, Dee and Laney's signal. I chugged the rest of my lemonade, not wanting a drop to go to waste, and left Luke and River still perusing the photo album, speculating about each picture.

*   *   *

“Oh, Sophreena,” Laney said as she slammed the door to her SUV, a Mercedes, naturally, “thank you so much for arranging this. I don't know how to explain it, I just felt I needed to see where she died. Is that weird?”

“No, it's not weird,” Dee said after she'd slammed her own door. “Not real weird, anyway,” she added after a moment's thought.

“People grieve in different ways,” I said, figuring that covered all contingencies.

“I know, but it seems strange that I'm feeling so sad about somebody I haven't seen in years,” Laney said. “You knew her, too, Dee. Is it hitting you like that?”

“I didn't really know her, Laney. I saw her only a couple of times before my mother reined me back in.”

Laney nodded, looking toward what I now thought of as Samuel Wright's grave. “Is that where you found her?”

“Yes, I'll show you,” I said, moving into the lead. “But we can't go inside the cordoned area, and try not to disturb anything. We don't have a final ruling on anything related to the grave yet.”

When we reached the area, I described to Laney how we'd found Sherry, and then we took a moment of silence, each lost in our own thoughts.

“She never had a chance,” Laney said at last. “­Really, not one chance to have a decent life. Her mother went from one man to another, and Sherry never had a real home or any kind of family support. I guess when you grow up like that you make bad choices because you feel you have nothing to lose.”

“Maybe,” I said, though I was thinking that Luke must have experienced the same upbringing, and from all appearances, he'd turned out quite differently.

“Oh, but she was so much fun,” Laney went on. “I wish you could have known her. So wild and crazy, but there was something deep about her, too. She gave us all tribal names and we used to meet down there by the creek.” She motioned toward a copse of trees at the bottom of the hill. “We'd chant nonsense we imagined sounded like some Native American tongue and tell ancient tales—ones we made up on the spot, mind you. Sherry used the red mud from the creek bank to draw symbols on herself and then she'd dance under the moonlight like she was in a trance. It was silly, but at the time it all seemed very exotic and exciting.”

“Now, that's weird,” Dee said. “I always thought of you as a frou-frou girl back then. Make-up, boys, clothes, all that stuff.”

“By day,” Laney said, “but by night I was an earth goddess. Well, okay, Sherry was a goddess, but I was maybe a wood nymph or something. Anyhow, that's what drew me to her games. I was able to be something I wasn't, something different. I'd think of everybody indoors playing computer games, watching TV, listening to CDs, while we were discovering the hidden secrets of the night, and I'd feel pity for those people. We took it so seriously. I can't believe I never got caught crawling in and out of my window. My folks would have grounded me for the rest of my life.”

“Did Sherry ever get caught?” Dee asked.

Laney shrugged. “She wasn't what you'd call closely supervised when she stayed here,” she said, turning to look again at the trees.

“Would you two mind? I'd like to go down to the creek to see if that little clearing is still there.”

“We'll come with you,” Dee said, but Laney was already moving out, as if drawn by a magnetic force.

“I'll run on down and try to find the place,” she said. “I know you've got stuff to do. I don't want to keep you.” And with that she trotted off down the hill. It struck me as I watched her run that Sherry had been wearing similar running togs when we'd found her. Lots of people ran out along the main road. Maybe Sherry had been out for a run and had the same idea Laney had, to revisit a place where she'd been so happy when she was a child. That might explain what she was doing out here. But surely she wouldn't have been running in flip-flops.

Dee and I loped down the hill, zigzagging to avoid potholes and the briars coiling up to claw at our exposed ankles.

“Down here,” Laney called when we got to the creek. She spread her arms as we came into the clearing. “This is it,” she said. “It's so much smaller than I remember. Gavin used to sit right over there on the other side of the stream, usually whittling something. He called them totems, but they just looked like little pieces of stick a dog had chewed. I suppose if you'd ­really let your imagination work, you could see an animal in one or two of them. Anyway, he'd make them and give them to Sherry like an offering.” Then, pointing to a flat rock that jutted out over the stream, she said, “That was Bryan's place. He'd sit there and watch Sherry, practically drooling. He was the main storyteller. This little spot over here was like Sherry's stage. She'd predict our futures, or dance, or tell us about the different places she'd been with her mother.”

“Where was your place?” I asked, looking around and trying to imagine the little tribe of children out here sharing ancient mysteries, or maybe a few purloined cigarettes.

“I was sort of a floater,” Laney said. “I usually brought food I'd nabbed from the pantry at home and I'd pass it out and sometimes I'd think of a story, too, but mine were never as good as Sherry's or Bryan's.”

She looked around for another moment, then let out a sigh. “Okay, well, thanks for indulging me. We can go now.”

As we walked back up the hill to our cars, we talked of other things. Dee filled us in on how the preparations for Marydale and Winston's wedding were going, then teased Laney by asking if her wedding would be the next to take place at High Ground.

“Maybe,” Laney said coyly. “I think James may be working up to a proposal. He's been dropping a few hints and my birthday is coming up. Could be I'll get a special present, say, in a package about this big”—she pinched her thumb and forefinger together to show the size of a ring box—“but you're not to tell that to a living soul. You'll jinx it.”

Dee put a hand over her heart and I drew a zipper across my mouth. Laney laughed, then gave one last mournful look in the direction of the grave site before we walked back to our cars.

“Well, will you look at that!” Laney exclaimed after she'd opened her car door. “I thought I'd lost this forever.”

Dee and I turned as Laney held up something shiny. I stepped closer and saw it was a silver bracelet with a single heart charm.

“I've searched everywhere and all this time it was down in the seat. James gave this to me for Christmas last year. He'll be so happy; he was upset I'd lost it.”

“Did you step on it?” I asked, noticing the mud caught in the links. “I'd clean it up before he sees it.”

“Oh no, I must have,” Laney said, looking down at her dirty shoes. “I'll go shine it up quick so I can wear it tonight.”

She put the bracelet in her pocket, climbed behind the wheel, and shot out of the driveway as if going to clean her jewelry was an emergency. If she'd had a bubble light and sirens, I had no doubt she'd have used them.

*   *   *

Clouds were gathering and the wind was freshening as Dee and I arrived at the mall. I rummaged in the trunk for an umbrella, but of course there wasn't one.

I was never a mall rat. Even as a teen I didn't care much for shopping. I've heard it said that when it comes to shopping, humans revert to primitive roles. The men go out looking for something specific, find it, kill it, and drag it home. Whereas the women constantly scan the surroundings searching for edible herbs and brightly colored berries to gather. I'm with the guys on this one. Get in, bag your quarry, and get out.

But tonight I was enjoying myself as Dee and I trekked from store to store searching for shoes that looked good and didn't kill her feet.

“You know,” Dee said as we headed to store number four, “you promised me a full report of what went on with Jack the other night. I've been waiting for you to bring it up, but you're holding out on me.”

“I never promised you a full report,” I said, “but okay, I'll hit the highlights. I've got to tell somebody or I'm gonna burst.” I told her about our initial misunderstanding and how we'd eventually worked it out. “We're going to take it very slow and see where it goes. But we're going to mark our beginning by going on a real date. He asked me to dinner at Olivia's on Sunday night.”

“Olivia's,” Dee said, her voice lilting. “Ooh, fancy. What are you going to wear?”

“Wear?” I repeated. “Huh, I guess jeans and a ­T-shirt won't do.”

“Sophreena,” Dee said suspiciously, “what are you wearing to Mother and Winston's wedding?”