Scrapped (11 page)
“I mean, what will happen to the other boy?”
“I can’t discuss the other child with you. Privacy matters.”
“Okay, then,” she said, swallowing, then taking a deep breath. Just then an image of Cookie came to her mind. She was so different in her beliefs and views, yet she handled all the potential sticky issues with such grace and such matter-of-factness. She found herself pretending to be Cookie. “Let’s discuss the ignorance of the whole WRE program.”
His mouth flung open.
“Seriously, we need to come to terms about this. My children are Jewish, they attend your school, which is a public school, and it seems their civil rights are at issue,” she said as a pain ripped through her gut and she fell to her knees.
“Mrs. Chamovitz?”
Chapter 27
Vera was at her desk, going over the billing statements for the first of November, to be sent out next week. Every month she wished she could hire an accountant, but things were tighter than ever. Enrollment was way down, and she was afraid she’d have to raise tuition, which she hated to do. Dance was for everybody, not just the middle class. But at the same time, she couldn’t continue like this with the way the economy was tanking. And the latest talk was of a new dance school opening in town. Who knew what that would mean?
Her eyes rested on a picture of Tony that was framed and next to her computer. She’d see him again in two weeks—and this time he sent her the train ticket. She knew he couldn’t afford to do that a lot. But this was special—the whole weekend was on him. He had a surprise for her.
Back to the statements. The business. She thought about giving it up sometimes, but then she thought about the girls she knew for whom dance meant everything. The Dasher girls, for example. They had lost their mom in a tragedy, yet somehow they managed to keep dancing, and she could see how they poured themselves into it.
Suddenly, she remembered the strawberry blond hair of the youngest Dasher girl, who was in her Saturday morning “baby” class. Not exactly red, but still. She drifted to the river in her mind. She imagined a strand of red hair floating there, twisting around a tree branch, and she shivered. There had been no trips to the park since the body had washed up there. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Both of the victims were from Jenkins Hollow. Both had red hair. Both had these rune symbols, which basically meant they were thought to be evil, marked women. How many more could there be? If it was a serial killer, how many others could fit this pattern?
Just then the phone rang, and she nearly jumped off her chair.
“Hello. Cumberland Creek Dance.”
“Vera Matthews please.”
“Speaking.”
“This is Jennifer Blake at the elementary school. There’s been an emergency with Annie Chamovitz, and she has you listed as an emergency contact for her children. Can you pick her boys up at the school?”
“An emergency? Is she okay? Where is she?” Vera leaped to her feet.
“She was rushed to the emergency room about an hour ago.”
“I’ll be right there.”
After she called Beatrice, who had Lizzie for the day, she hightailed it to the school, where both Chamovitz boys were sitting in the front office with their backpacks.
She smiled. “How about some ice cream, boys?”
Ben smiled.
Sam’s brows knit. “Where’s my mom?”
“She got sick and was taken to the hospital. The doctors are taking good care of her,” Vera told them.
Later, with a house full of children and women, who had gathered at Vera’s place when they heard the news, Vera received a call from Mike, Annie’s husband.
“She’s all right. She’s, ah, out of surgery, and as soon as she’s up, we’ll be coming home.”
“Surgery?”
The adults in the room quieted.
“Yes,” he said and sighed. “She had an ectopic pregnancy. We are lucky we found it so early.” His voice was strained. “I need to call her parents, and . . . I’ll pick up the boys in about an hour.”
“I can keep them, Mike. It’s not a problem,” she said.
“I feel like I want my boys at home with us right now,” he said and sighed. “There was trouble at the school today, and I need to talk to them.”
“Okay. Good-bye,” she said and hung up the phone, thinking she was so glad she had made that huge batch of chili. That, along with Sheila’s corn bread, should help them out tonight.
“She’s fine,” she told the group of women who were gathered around her. Sheila, her longtime friend, DeeAnn, Paige, and her mom—the women she’d always had in her life. She couldn’t imagine life without them. Now she couldn’t imagine life without Annie, as well. Or Cookie, for that matter.
“Ectopic pregnancy,” she said in a low voice, partially because she didn’t want the children to overhear, partially out of respect for Annie’s baby, who was gone, whom Annie didn’t even know she was carrying.
“That is so dangerous,” Sheila said. “She’s lucky to be okay.”
“Indeed,” Paige said.
“Let’s pack up a box of food,” Beatrice said, rubbing her hands together. “We need to feed this family.”
“I popped him,” Ben was telling Sam loudly.
“Who did you pop?” Vera asked, only half listening as she poured the chili into a Tupperware bowl.
“Edward Carpenter,” he said. “A boy at my school.”
“Why would you do that, Ben?”
“He called me a devil Jew boy and told me I was going to hell with the rest of the Jews, and so I popped him.”
With that, Beatrice dropped her tin foil–wrapped rolls into the box with a thud. Her eyes met Vera’s, but she didn’t say a word.
Chapter 28
Two days later Annie was feeling a bit stronger and Beatrice had taken up residence on her couch. Beatrice finished the boys’ costumes, made an overflowing pot of chicken soup, baked bread and pies.
“That coconut pie is simply the best I’ve ever had,” Mike said before he left the house that morning.
“Thanks. It’s an old recipe of my mom’s,” Beatrice told him. Funny, when she was a younger woman, she didn’t care to bake. Now she loved it and always had a freezer full of her baked goods.
Annie, always a thin woman, looked devastatingly thin to Beatrice. She moved like a ghost through her little house, checking e-mails, looking over books full of ancient symbols and runes, reading romance novels that DeeAnn and Sheila brought her.
Beatrice thought she’d be okay. She just needed to rest and eat to get her strength back—and Beatrice was going to see that she did so. Annie’s mother could not make it to help take care of the situation.
Annie had lost a lot of blood—so much that the doctors had considered a transfusion, but she was otherwise so healthy that they thought she could manage without one. Transfusions could be risky.
She plopped herself down on the other end of the couch. “I’ve been thinking, Bea,” she said. “I should have seen this coming. I knew I wasn’t feeling like myself. Why didn’t I pay attention?”
Beatrice smiled. “Stupidity, I guess.”
Annie laughed. “Okay. Hey, thanks for finishing the boys’ costumes. I was worried about that.”
“No problem,” Beatrice said.
Halloween was two days away. Beatrice looked out the window at the graying, cloudy sky. The wind was picking up, and leaves and branches were blowing around. Another storm?
Annie picked up a tablet. “Hannah Bowman.”
“What?”
“Hannah Bowman,” Annie said. “She is the young woman I met at the funeral. Same age as Sarah and Rebecca. She’s so hard to reach.”
“The Bowmans that live up in Jenkins Hollow are Old Order. She may not have a phone. They’re good people. I’ve known them a long time,” Beatrice said.
The doorbell rang. That would be Paige, bringing pizza for lunch.
“Well, hello,” she said, walking in the door and hugging Annie.
“Now, this will help fatten you up. I also brought some treats from the bakery. Vegan chocolate cupcakes.”
“Mmm,” Annie said.
“Vegan? Since when does DeeAnn make vegan anything?” Beatrice asked.
Paige shrugged. “She’s just experimenting.”
Annie plunged a cupcake into her mouth. “Mmm.”
“Let me try,” Beatrice said and took a dainty bite of one of the cupcakes—but, damn, she needed another bite, a bigger one. She nodded. “Good.”
“It’s getting a bit cold out,” Paige said, digging in a plastic sack and pulling out paper plates. “The temperature must have dropped ten degrees since this morning.”
“Glad the boys went to school dressed warmly,” Annie said.
“Have you heard anything about the case?” Paige asked.
Annie shook her head.
“You’d think they’d have caught him by now,” Beatrice said. “Land sakes, we just about handed Bryant the murderer on a silver platter. I’m sure it was the guy who helped us change our tire. Or at least he knows about it. “
“You’re sure it’s him?” Paige said, passing around the plates.
“He’s a bit strange, Bea, but it doesn’t mean he killed those women,” Annie said.
“One thing is for sure. That man was bizarre, very different, not local, and he also was some kind of weirdo, with that damned rune in his ear.”
“Doesn’t mean he killed those girls, though,” Paige said, opening the box of pizza. “I heard they brought him in for questioning and let him go. Not enough evidence.”
“What? Why did they bring him in? Just because of what we said? That doesn’t make sense. Damn, I need to call Bryant. Maybe he’ll tell me why they brought him in,” Annie said, placing her pizza slice on a plate, licking her finger where some of the sauce had spilled.
From everything that Beatrice could gather while pretending to watch television, Paige was correct. The young man was questioned and had rock-solid alibis. Rumors were sometimes true. But there was something else. Beatrice strained her ears to hear.
FBI? Halloween? Runes? Cults
? What the hell was happening?
FBI? Halloween? Runes? Cults
? What the hell was happening?
Annie hung up the phone. “They couldn’t hold him. His name is Luther Vandergrift. We knew that. He is new to the area. We knew that. He doesn’t drive, doesn’t have a regular job. He lives on some farm up around the hollow.” She took another bite of pizza.
“Now, let me think,” Beatrice said. “There aren’t too many working farms up there. It never was a good place to farm. It’s very rocky.”
“It’s a new farm,” Annie said.
“What are they growing?”
Annie shrugged.
No, Annie wasn’t herself. The old Annie was sharper than a tack and would have asked what they were growing—even if it didn’t matter. She was always curious. But maybe the pain medicine was muddling her mind.
“The police are on high alert, and a few undercover FBI members will be hanging around Cumberland Creek. Isn’t that strange?” she said.
“Why the alert? The FBI?” Beatrice said.
“Halloween,” Annie said after she swallowed her pizza. “They are expecting trouble. You know, copycats, pranksters, and stuff. Halloween is the night all the troublemakers come out.”
“I’ve heard that a lot of parents are keeping their kids home this year because of the killings,” Paige said.
“I can understand that,” Annie said. “But the rest of it? I don’t know.”
Beatrice didn’t know how to feel, either. “It seems like a bunch of superstitious mumbo jumbo to me. Halloween, indeed.”
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