Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (23 page)

“Oh, anything bigger than a parking ticket around here makes the news,” Tammy nodded. “You’re lucky Janine wasn’t running into your room with a camera, trying to get you on the cover.”

Remembering how pale she’d been, and the fact that she hadn’t seen a hairbrush until she got back to her hotel room, she was glad Janine stayed away. She was sure everyone else in town was glad, too. The last thing she needed was for everyone to see her in all of her natural glory.

“Have you had any more weird stuff out there at the house since the last time I saw you?” Tammy asked conversationally as she delivered Taryn’s order of a grilled cheese and peanut butter milkshake. She decided that the
weight loss really wasn’t working for her after all.

“Well, a little here and there,” she conceded. Now wasn’t
the time to talk about old diaries and murder mysteries. “But listen, do you know any Fitzgeralds?”

“Sure, there’s a few around here. I went to school with one. She’d be the granddaughter, great-granddaughter? Something like that
. One of the ones who lived in the big house that got torn down, the one up by Windwood Farm. Susan was her name. Her family’s still around here. But they never lived in the house, though. That was the daughter, not the son, um…”

“Jonathan?” Taryn supplied.

“Right, Jonathan,” Tammy agreed. “It wasn’t his kids. He had some but they all moved off. Ohio, Missouri. Something like that. This is his sister’s family. And then there are some other Fitzgeralds around. I don’t really know them that well. Just the name. But I know they’re related to that family, too. The name doesn’t mean what it used to, if you know what I’m saying.”

“I know what you’re saying,” Taryn agreed. “Well, while I’m giving you the third degree, what about
oil wells? Were there any around here? Was there any drilling?”

“Oh, yeah, all over the county. Back in the 1920s, 1930s, back then. For a long time there was. Not here, not in Vidalia, but in other parts of Stokes County. I had to learn about that in school. They kind of make a big deal about that around here, that and the railroad.”

Taryn finished her milkshake and decided it was time to take a trip back to the Stokes County Historical Society.

T
here were only two ladies present when she walked in that Saturday afternoon: Phyllis, the bird-woman, and the president, Geneva. Both were silently working on computers when she let herself into the doublewide and jumped a little when the door slammed behind her.

“Good Lord, child,”
Phyllis cried as she turned around and peered over her wiry glasses. “You’re about to give an old woman a heart attack. I was so lost in thought, I think I went back in time a little bit.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Taryn apologized. “I didn’t realize it would be so loud.”

“Us old folks scare easily,” Geneva laughed, as she ushered Taryn into the room and pointed her to a chair. “How are you feeling, dear? You look an awful lot better than you did the last time! An awful lot.”

“Now the girl doesn’t want to hear that, Geneva,” Phyllis admonished. “It wasn’t so bad, child, although you were a bit peaked. You do look lovely today, though. So fresh and young.”

“I feel a whole lot better, I can tell you that much,” she admitted. “I’m going to work on the frame tomorrow and Monday and I think I can have the painting delivered to you by Tuesday afternoon, if that’s okay.”

“Oh,”
Phyllis clapped her small hands together. “That would be perfect. I am so excited. Aren’t you excited, Geneva?”

“As a
rose after a rainstorm!” she cried. “I just can’t wait to see it. I bet it’s beautiful.”

“I actually came here to ask you a couple of questions, though. I thought you might be able to help me with a few things.”

“Well, we can surely try,” Phyllis smiled pleasantly. She wore a thin cotton dress and bright pink sneakers. Her knee-highs had fallen down and were pooled around her wrinkled ankles, but her white cotton candy hair was in an intricate chignon that Taryn imagined a professional had done for her.

“Can you tell me anything about the
oil wells here in Vidalia?”

“Oh,” Geneva waved her hand dismissively. “There are a few around here, but none have ever been drilled. Now, there were some over in Fitz that made a lot of people a lot of money at one time, right
Phyllis?”

Phyllis
laughed. “Oh, yes, those wells. The oil and the railroad. But no, dear, there aren’t any in Vidalia. At least not any that have ever been touched.”

“So there aren’t any at Windwood Farm then?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
She wasn’t ready to share her find yet with anyone. She didn’t know why, but the story didn’t feel finished and she wanted to keep it to herself until she had more answers.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Geneva answered. “Why? Did you find one? Because that might be a coup for Re
agan when he starts his demolition.”

Oh, yeah
, Taryn thought.
He might find a lot of things when he starts that demolition
. But she kept her mouth shut. “No, I just wondered. I heard about there being a lot in the area and I just thought that maybe…” Not just how to end the sentence she just let it die off.

“Not that I never knew of,” Geneva answered.
“If there had been one, you could’ve bet that he’d been trying to get it out of the ground some way at least, what with the money he owed.”

Taryn chewed on this. It left an unanswered question. Why hadn’t he tried to find a way to get to the oil even after her death, if it had really been there? Unless, of course, there really hadn’t been any oil to start with?

“How would that have worked anyway, if someone had one on their property?”

“Well, generally they would have sold the rights to a company and that company would have done the drilling.
The individual might have sold their property or the mineral rights, it just depended on how fancy the company did the talking,” Phyllis smiled.

“Kind of like coal mining?” Taryn asked.

“You could say that,” Phyllis agreed. “An oil well won’t produce forever, but it will for a good long time and if the field is good, they might find more than one site, especially on a farm. Something like that was good not only for that farm, but for the ones around it, too. Increased local property values.”

“But you couldn’t lie about something like that, right? I mean, not to the drilling companies.”

“Not for long anyway,” Geneva chuckled. “They’d eventually find that there wasn’t any oil. Might get by with lying to your neighbors, but not to the machines.”

Luckily,
the other women changed the subject at that time and began talking about the Great Depression and World War II, so she was saved by any further questions from them. It did set some other wheels in motion, though.

“
W
ow, that’s amazing.”

The voice came from behind
Taryn and startled her so much that she almost dropped the brush. She didn’t even hear a car approaching or anyone get out of it. Sometimes she got in the zone but she knew she wasn’t
that
out of it. Turning around at the sound of Melissa’s voice, Taryn smiled. “Hey, I didn’t hear you come up.”

“Sorry, I walked. It’s not that bad of a walk, really. Just through the woods there. About half an hour and it gets me out of the house. I do it every few days,” she shrugged.

Just like Donald did,
Taryn thought with cold chills.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, stepping back from the easel and crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t normally have an audience this early on.

“I think it’s incredible, I really do. It must have been a beautiful house when all of it was still here.”

“Yeah, it must have been,” Taryn agreed. Too bad it was filled with sadness, death, and probably murder.

“Listen, after talking to you a few weeks ago, I talked to my aunt and she had some stories to tell me, about my family. I wanted to pass them on to you because of the interest you had in them, about Donald.”

Taryn was starting to feel a little guilty about not telling Melissa of the diary she’d discovered, but the hairs on her arms were starting to rise
and it was a feeling she didn’t normally ignore.

“Okay, but let me just put this away first and let’s go sit down,
all right? I’ve had some trouble lately and I don’t want to have to start from scratch, you know?”

It didn’t take long for her to stick the canvas in the back of her car. For good measure, she locked her doors. She couldn’t leave it in there long, the heat wasn’t good for it, but her windows were tinted and she was parked under a tree. It would be fine for
a while.

Moving over to the house, they found places on the front porch and Taryn offered Melissa an Ale-8. She would miss those when she was gone. She wondered how many she could fit in her trunk before she left.

“Ahhh,” Melissa sighed as she took a swig. “Nothing like an ice cold one of these on a hot day. “The nectar of the gods.”

“So
, what you got for me?”

“Maybe not much,” Melissa shrugged. “But supposedly a few months before he disappeared there
was a big fight between his dad and the owner of this farm. He even shot out their window or something. Donald even got involved in it. It was messy. I guess the owner here didn’t let it go, either, and showed up there a few more times, threatening them. He owed them money, legit and everything, and then refused to pay it. But he got all paranoid about it, like they were trying to harass him to get it back. From what I understand, though, they’d just let it go because they were scared of him.”

“So did they think someone else was harassing him and making him think it was them?”

“Nah,” Melissa snorted. “They just thought he was nuts. My aunt said that people in Vidalia thought the daughter here was real sweet, shy as a church mouse, but a nice kid. She was engaged to the man on the other side.”

“I know all about that,” Taryn nodded. “Listen, I have to tell you something, too. I have reason to think that Donald did not just walk away from here. You see, the other day when I was here I found this
—”

Before she even
finished the sentence, a wail so long and deep it made both women drop their bottles to the ground shook through the house. “You heard that, right?” Melissa whispered.

Taryn nodded and then shot through the door and up the stairs, one thing on her mind: Clara. She had to know what had happened. “Clara!” she called. “Clara! Don’t go!”

With Melissa on her heels, she burst through the bedroom door, only to realize she had forgotten Miss Dixie below. “Shit, shit. A phone, a phone. Do you have your phone on you?”

The crying was fainter now, but still shook through the walls,
reverberating through the women’s soles of their shoes and up their legs. “Wha—” Melissa fumbled through her pocket until she found it.

“Take a picture,” Taryn cried. “The bed! Take a picture!” It just felt right.

Melissa snapped a shot of the bed, but it came away empty.

“Okay, it has to be Dixie, shit
!” Taryn cried. “I don’t think I have time. The crying’s stopping. Or maybe it has to me me. Here,” she reached for the phone and aimed it at the bed. With a single press of the thumb, the sounds stopped.

Both women gasped.

“Holy mother of God,” Melissa whispered.

“Jesus Christ,” Taryn breathed.

Again, the very faint outline of a young woman lay on the rumpled bed. But the this time, her arms were raised above her head, neatly wrapped in chains and bound to the wrought iron posts behind her.

I
t was getting dark when she pulled into the deserted parking lot, but the “open” sign was still on in the small shop, giving her hope. This time, when she went inside, she went straight to the counter and didn’t hesitate.

“I need help,” she said simply.

Rob, she had taken time to learn his name on her last visit, was wearing a Metallica T-shirt today and was busy trying to fix the screen on an iPhone. “Hey, what’s up?” One look at her face, however, told him most of what he needed to know.

“It either went very well, or really
, really badly,” he said sympathetically, putting down the tools and giving her his full attention.

“Well,” she agreed, raking her hands through her hair and leaning up against the counter. “It depends on how you look at it. But I need answers and nobody can give them to me.”

“You want to know what happened in the house?” he asked.

“No. Well, yes, but I think I’m figuring that out. I want to know what’s happening with
me
,” she said, and was embarrassed to find that tears were actually starting to form in her eyes. “Shit.”

Rob quickly got up and moved out from behind the counter. Despite the fact
that a young couple was heading toward the shop, he flipped off the “open” sign and waved them away. “If it’s important, they’ll come back,” he muttered as he walked back to Taryn. “Okay, come back here, sit down, and tell me what’s going on.”