The Reckoning Stones: A Novel of Suspense (21 page)

“Don’t you?”

Mrs. Welsh twitched her brows together and then said, as if surprised, “Why, yes. Yes, I do.” She marched in the direction of the office and the phone.

thirty-three

jolene

The residue of Jolene
and Zach’s argument coated their Wednesday evening. Zach had left for the church before Jolene was up, and there was still constraint between them as Zach prepared to make the pancake supper he cooked every Wednesday. Jolene offered a “How was your day?” which he ignored by pulling the griddle out from amidst the pots and pans with a painful clanking. The uplifting aromas of vanilla and butter sizzling did nothing to diffuse the tension in the kitchen. Rachel was uncharacteristically silent, accepting her pancakes with a muffled “Thanks,” and eating them quickly, darting glances at her mother and father. Jolene declined pancakes, helping herself to leftover ham and scalloped potatoes. She knew she was only doing it to needle Zach, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. He accepted her refusal without a word, merely adding her pancakes to the stack on his plate and drowning them in syrup.

A sharp rap was followed immediately by the creak of the front door opening. Jolene gripped her lips together. Esther. Just what the evening needed. Her sister-in-law hurried into the kitchen, looking
more unkempt than usual with hair flat and beginning to show dark roots, her black suit jacket unbuttoned over a white blouse with a stain on the collar. “I should have called you, but—Did the hospital call?”

Jolene and Zach exchanged puzzled looks and shook their heads.

“What’s wrong, Aunt Esther?” Rachel asked.

Esther took a deep breath, expanding her already formidable bosom, looked at each of them in turn, and said, “Your grandfather’s slipped back into his coma because of her, that … that Mercy Asher. She attacked him and she’s going to get away with it, even though she’s taken him away from me—us—again.”

Zach stood statue-still, and then swallowed hard. “He’s gone?”

“I don’t believe it,” Jolene gasped. “Iris? Attacked your father? What happened?” Sensing Zach’s pain, she moved to him and rubbed his back. He seemed to lean into her hand for a moment, but then stepped toward his sister.

“Sit down, Esther,” Zach said, pulling out a chair. He returned to the stove and dolloped batter on the grill to make more pancakes.

Holding the table to steady herself as she lowered onto the chair, Esther shot Jolene a condemnatory look. “I might have known you’d side with her over your own family.”

“What happened?” Jolene asked again, keeping her voice level and resisting the urge to shout that Matthew Brozek was not related to her by blood.

“She attacked him. Last evening. She went to the hospital, lied to Dr. Shaull, and shook his bed so hard it jarred something in his head. He’s unresponsive again.” Esther covered her mouth with a cupped hand and blinked rapidly.

Conscious of a feeling of relief that Iris hadn’t actually struck Pastor Matt, Jolene put a comforting hand on her sister-in-law’s shoulder, sympathizing with her very real grief.

“The police questioned her, but they let her go.” Esther’s cheeks quivered. “They told me the DA will decide whether or not to press charges, but I could see they’re just going to sweep it under the carpet. Well, I’m not going to let her get away with it. It was her all along, not her father.” Seeing their confusion, she added impatiently, “Neil lied about attacking Father to cover up for Mercy. She needs to pay.”

Jolene exchanged a surreptitious glance with Zach and knew he was as troubled as she was by his sister’s delusional accusations. Trying to reason with her wasn’t going to work when she was so wrought up. Dismayed by the way Esther’s eyes glittered, Jolene stepped back and busied herself by clearing the dirty dishes from the table. Behind her, Esther wheezed several heavy breaths, and then said, “I’m going to visit Father this evening, Zachary. You’ll want to see him, too.”

“I can’t go with you,” Zach said, putting a plate of pancakes in front of his sister. “I’m counseling Mary Lee and Seth. Their wedding’s next Saturday, remember? I’ll drive out to see Father tomorrow.”

“I’ll go with you, Esther,” Jolene heard herself say.

Esther shot her a look, but then smoothed her face into a mask of gratitude. “Thank you, Jolene.” She slathered her pancakes with butter.

Unable to watch her sister-in-law eat because it made her sad, and already regretting her offer to visit Pastor Matt, Jolene rose to scrape off her plate and put it in the sink.
At least this gives Zach something to think about other than Rachel’s thefts and our argument.

On the thought, Zach said, “Rachel, I need to see you in my study as soon as you’ve done the dishes.”

When Jolene moved to speak, he directed a look at her that she couldn’t ignore. Rachel would have to face her father alone.

“Yes, Father,” Rachel said, her voice trembling slightly. Brushing past Jolene with an armload of dishes, Rachel put them on the counter. The set of her mouth told Jolene she felt betrayed. Rachel wouldn’t meet her eyes or absorb the message of reassurance she was trying to send her. Zach wouldn’t be overly harsh. He’d lecture their daughter, express his disappointment and sorrow, take away some privileges, and assign her extra duties, like reading to Mrs. Dorfmann or taking meals to old Silas Billings. Even though they hadn’t discussed it, Jolene fully agreed that their daughter’s stealing, no matter the motivation, deserved heavy punishment.

Picking up on the tension, Esther glanced from Zach to Rachel. “What’s going on? What’s Rachel done? Did something happen at that concert? I was against letting Community youth attend from the start, as you know. Rock concerts stir up all sorts of unhealthy urges.”

Irritation flared in Jolene and she snapped, “It’s none of your business, Esther.” Even as the words left her mouth, she knew they were a mistake.

Zach, who otherwise might have gone with a dignified silence, gave her a minatory look and explained in measured tones, “Rachel has admitted to stealing.”

Esther’s fork clattered to the table. Her mouth dropped into an O, her multiple chins sagging one atop the other to her collarbone. “Stealing! A member of the Brozek family?” She glared at Rachel’s stiff back. “For shame, Rachel. Your sinfulness reflects badly on all of us, and as shepherds of the Community flock—”

Rachel whirled, showing a tear-stained and angry face. “I don’t see how my sin of stealing reflects any worse on us than your gluttony.” Without waiting to see how her words went over, she rushed out the back door, leaving it swinging. The canary’s happy evening song trilled into the room.

The disastrous truth of Rachel’s words lingered. With precise movements, Esther folded her napkin and tucked it under her plate, leaving half her pancakes uneaten. She scraped back her chair and rose, tugging down the hem of her jacket. “I trust,” she said, addressing her brother and not Jolene, “that you will convene the elders to mete out the appropriate punishment. You cannot be lax because Rachel is your own daughter. She has broken a commandment—she must submit to the reckoning stones.”

“No!” Jolene gasped. “We don’t do that anymore. Not since—”

“Brother, you know what must be done.” Esther’s pious expression was belied by the gleam of malice in her eyes.

Jolene wanted to dig her thumbs into the woman’s glittering blue orbs and pop them from their sockets like peas squeezed from a pod. She’d never experienced such an urge to violence and it made her shake. She caught her breath on a sob and folded her fingers around her thumbs as if to control them. “Zach—”

Zach held up a hand to silence both women. “I will discuss it with the elders.”

thirty-four

iris

By the time the
police had come and gone—the same deputy eyeing Iris askance and asking her what she’d gone to make herself so “unpopular”—and Iris had taken photos of the damage to send to her insurance company, and moved what she could salvage into the room next door, it was coming up on seven o’clock. She had just finished locating the last of her gems and stones by getting on her hands and knees and patting every inch of the floor in her old room when her cell phone rang.

“Cade called,” Marian said when Iris answered. “He wants to interview me and Neil together about that night, see if we can come up with anything he can use to get Neil’s case reviewed. Tomorrow. At the prison, of course. If only Neil had let me tell the truth at the time …” She spoke in her usual phlegmatic way and Iris couldn’t read her state of mind.

It was a good idea. Discussing that night together might bring up something neither one had thought to mention before. “I’ll go with you.”

“I can’t drag Angel out to the prison. I need you to watch her.”

Her mother was asking her to
babysit
? “Tomorrow? All day?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t there someone else—”

“You’re her aunt.”

Iris got it then. Her mother thought she should want to get to know her niece. A bit to her surprise, Iris realized that she did. “I don’t know anything about what five-year-olds need or want,” she warned.

Marian laughed and Iris smiled at the sound, realizing she hadn’t heard her mother laugh since she returned. “Don’t worry. Angel will let you know.”

It wasn’t until Iris drew level with the co-op store Thursday morning that she realized that taking care of Angel meant spending the day in Outback Cottage. No way. Her mind raced to find alternatives as she drove slowly down Center Street and parked in the church lot. Her mother emerged from the cottage as Iris came around the church. Angel peeped from behind her, eyes big with curiosity and a little worry.

“It’s about time,” Marian said. “Angel’s had breakfast, so all you have to do—”

“I thought we’d go to the zoo,” Iris interrupted. She vaguely remembered visiting Cheyenne Mountain Zoo on a field trip in elementary school and hoped it was still in business. “Do you like animals, Angel?”

The little girl rushed out from behind Marian, clapping her hands. A small red purse with Tweety Bird on it swung from her shoulder. “Can we see the bears and the elephants and can I pet Tiger Lily?”

“What’s Tiger Lily?” Iris asked, unwilling to make blind
commitments.

“A skunk.”

“We’ll do it all,” Iris said, swept away by the girl’s eagerness. “When will you be back?” she asked Marian.

“Hopefully, by five. You can go back to the cottage and—”

“I’ll take her out to dinner after the zoo,” Iris said, refusing to take the cottage key Marian was trying to hand her. “I’ll put her down at the motel when she gets tired, if you’re running late. Just call my cell when you’re half an hour out of town.”

The three of them walked to the parking lot and Marian opened the door of an old station wagon and pulled out a booster seat. “This is a good opportunity for you, Iris,” she said, as if she was conferring a favor.

Maybe she was doing Iris a favor. “Angel and I are going to
have fun.”

“No ice cream or candy. She’s not allowed sweets between meals.” With that, Marian got into the station wagon, and drove off. Angel and Iris waved until she was out of sight and then Iris led the girl to her car and opened the front door. Angel gave her an appalled look.

“What?” Iris asked.

“I can’t sit in the front seat, Aunt Iris. The airbag will kill me when we crash.”

At the zoo, Angel immediately towed Iris up a steep hill to the giraffe enclosure where she demonstrated the proper technique for feeding the prehensile-tongued creatures with lettuce Iris bought from a vendor. Having no interest in getting slimed by a giraffe’s tongue, Iris gave her share of the lettuce to Angel and mentally sketched the asymmetrical spots from the giraffes’ coats into a bib-type necklace. Heavy links could connect irregularly shaped enameled disks …

“Come on, Aunt Iris!” Angel headed uphill toward the tapirs and elephants. Iris followed, the altitude making her momentarily dizzy. Built on a mountainside, the zoo sloped steeply and trolleys clattered as they carted the less fit visitors from exhibit to exhibit. Iris decided she might be grateful for a ride herself by the end of the day.

While Angel scrunched up her nose against the odors of the elephant house, Iris, feeling uncomfortably sneaky trying to elicit information from a child, asked casually, “So, Angel, who’s your daddy married to?”

The girl gave her an incredulous look, apparently dumbfounded by her stupidity, and said, “Mommy, of course!”

Duh, Iris thought, realizing she didn’t know squat about a five-year-old’s thought processes. Angel darted across the street before Iris could reformulate the question, and Iris found her with her nose pressed against the glass of the lion exhibit. Bouncy music drifted from an out-of-sight but nearby carousel.

“That lion’s sad,” Angel announced, pointing to a tawny lioness who seemed lazily, contentedly asleep to Iris.

“You think so?”

“Uh-huh, cause her babies got taked away. One went to a zoo in New Mexico and one went to California. That’s what the lady said when my class came.”

A field trip, Iris figured. “You must be sad that your parents aren’t—”

“Let’s ride the tram,” Angel said, her eyes pleading with Iris. “Please? Can we?” An aerial tram let the more adventurous get an eagle’s eye view of the zoo and surrounding landscape.

“Why not?” Iris said and held Angel’s hand as the girl skipped all the way to the tram station. The feel of the sturdy little palm against hers, damp with what Iris hoped was sweat and not giraffe spit, gave her a lump in her throat. She cleared it and said, “We have to save time for the hippos, though; they’re one of my favorites.”

From the swinging tram car, Iris looked down on the zoo enclosures, and then out across Colorado Springs, spread far below. The air was so clear and sharp it seemed brittle, like if she breathed too deeply, she’d suck in jagged particles. So different from Portland’s gentle, moist air.

“They have wolves here, too,” Angel said, pointing toward a wooded area. “They’re my mommy’s favorite.”

As they exited the tram car and stood aside so a bevy of mothers with strollers could pass them, Iris took advantage of the opening Angel offered. “Where is your mommy?” she asked casually, hoping the girl wouldn’t say “dead” or “living with my other daddy.”

“In Qatar. That starts with a Q, even though it sounds like a
G. Nana showed me where it is in the atlas. It’s yellow.”

“She’s a soldier, too?”

Angel’s head bobbed yes. “Like my daddy, only she wears a blue uniform. I like daddy’s better.”

Iris didn’t know why she was surprised that her brother had married someone in the military. Noah had always had a thing for strong women—witness his infatuation with Esther Brozek. “I’ll bet you miss her.”

That got a tiny nod. “We Skype with her, too. She told me about finding a scorpion in her boot.” Angel’s eyes lit up, as if finding a poisonous arachnid in her sneaker would make her day. “We never Skype with Grampa,” she added after a moment. She kicked at a pebble that dribbled two feet. “He’s in jail because he’s a bad man.”

Iris’s hand tightened on her cup and Coke splooshed over the side. “Who told you that? Your nana?” If Marian was denigrating Neil to his granddaughter …

“Uh-uh. She doesn’t talk about Grampa. Sarah said so. She sits beside me in school and is really good at math.”

Iris wanted to slap the uber-smart Sarah. “Well, Sarah’s wrong.” She didn’t know where her anger had come from. Neil had confessed, after all. Having his granddaughter think he was evil was part of what he’d signed up for, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.

Angel gave her a doubtful look. “He murdered somebody. That’s against the Commandments. So he has to stay in prison until he dies.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you your grampa is bad,” Iris said, “and don’t you say it.” When Angel pulled away, looking uncertain, Iris spoke more gently. “Your grampa didn’t kill anyone,” she said. “I’m going to make sure everyone knows that so they let him out of prison and he can come home to live with you and Nana. Would you like that?” She hunched down so her face was level with Angel’s.

“Look, that grizzly bear is swimming!” Quick as a hummingbird, Angel darted away.

Iris flinched from the melancholy that threatened to sneak up on her. Angel’s seeming indifference to Neil wasn’t her problem. Putting aside all thought of learning more about the family she’d cast off, Iris concentrated on enjoying the afternoon. Time was Angel’s laughter, bright and unconstrained, passing in a whirl of ice cream eating, skunk patting, and lion roar imitating, as they ran, skipped, or hopped from one end of the zoo to the other. Iris was exhausted when they finally headed for the car at three o’clock. She carried the worn-out Angel, who had her arms wrapped around Iris’s neck and her legs around her waist. The girl’s head slumped heavily on Iris’s shoulder.

Although she enjoyed her niece more than she would have anticipated, Iris welcomed the silence as she plodded toward the parking lot. Her thoughts returned to Angel’s remarks about Neil and a realization crept up on her. She cared about more than freeing her father. She cared about his happiness, about his having a relationship with his granddaughter so she’d know he wasn’t a “bad man.” She rested her cheek briefly on the sleeping Angel’s head and wondered if Neil would ever have the opportunity to stroke her sleek hair and inhale the scents of sweaty scalp and coconut after a hard day’s play.

Iris had just made the turn-off of Woodmen Road when her cell phone rang. It was Marian, saying she was half an hour from Colorado Springs.

“I’ll see you at the cottage,” she said, sounding weary.

“We’re about to have an early dinner at Bumpers,” Iris said. “Why don’t you join us?”

“Dinner! Yay!” Angel crowed from the back seat, apparently refreshed from her forty-minute nap and starving since she’d had nothing but ice cream, a hot dog, peanuts, and animal crackers, Iris suspected, since lunch.

Marian agreed, sounding too tired to argue, and Iris hung up, relieved she was going to be able to avoid Outback Cottage.

The restaurant was busy on a Thursday evening, the celebrating sports teams replaced by families with young children. Angel accepted a placemat with a scene to color and a cupful of crayons. They both ordered burgers and fries before Marian walked in, wearing a slight frown and an air of weariness. Iris waved. Angel leaped up to greet her nana with a hug. “We saw meerkats. I think their babies should be called meerkittens.” She giggled.

“You look tired,” Iris observed.

“I am.” Marian ran a hand through her short gray hair and sat. “It’s a long drive.”

The psychic distance from freedom to caged was even further, Iris thought. “Food might help.” She beckoned the server and waited while Marian ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.

“So, what happened?” she asked, dipping a fry in ketchup and taking a bite. “How’s Dad?”

Marian moved her head slowly from side to side. “You’ve got his hopes up, Iris. He thinks you’re going to get him out, but I don’t see how. Cade took us round and round about that night, but it always came out the same: We were together at the house, cleaning up after dinner, until Neil went to check on you. When you weren’t in your room, he stormed out without telling me where he was headed. But I knew. It was only minutes later that the ambulance went past—he didn’t have time to do … what was done to Pastor Matt.” She shook her head again.

Making sure Angel was focused on her coloring, Iris asked, “Where was Noah? Surely he could testify that—”

“He spent the night at Tony Gray’s, went over there before dinner.”

Iris and her mother sat in silence for a moment, pondering the difficulty of freeing Neil Asher and watching Angel color. Finally, her mother said, “Cade gave us some time alone. We read the Bible together for a long time, and prayed. ‘Find rest O my soul in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and salvation; he is my fortress; I will not be shaken. My salvation and honor depend on God.’” Marian fell silent, her gaze on Angel, but Iris didn’t think her mother really saw the girl. “My hope comes from Jesus,” she almost whispered, “but days like this it’s thinner than air.”

Caught by something in her mother’s voice, Iris studied her face. What must it be like to be married but alone, to have a husband who shared his days and his thoughts with inmates who had killed and swindled and battered, rather than you? She was living a type of widowhood, but with her husband still alive and without the option of remarrying. Iris hadn’t thought she could feel sorry for her mother, but she did. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said.

Marian reached a hand halfway across the table, but then let it fall. “Our Lord Jesus is with Neil,” she said.

“I’m going to visit him again before I go.”

Pushing aside her half-eaten sandwich, Marian asked, “Are you … have you found out anything about that night? Anything that might allow Cade to make a case for Neil, to get the conviction over-turned?” Although she tried to sound casual, Iris heard the piano wire tautness in her voice.

“Nothing definitive.” Iris hated to admit it. “No one has a real alibi for the whole time. I knocked on the Brozeks’ door but left before anyone answered. I didn’t see anyone. Jolene was at their house briefly, and heard Zach arguing with Pastor Matt. She saw Cade’s car. Zach admits the argument but says he left to find Jolene. They never hooked up, so technically they’re both unaccounted for. Obviously, I don’t know where Mrs. Brozek was or what she was doing. Esther was in the church. Cade was in the house long enough to belt Pastor Matt—”

“What!”

“He wanted revenge for my sake.” Iris kept her voice level, but hoped her mother heard the unspoken,
“Someone believed me.”