There. More distraction. His eyes dropped to her mouth, then quickly back up to her eyes.
“Thank you, Oliver Schneider.” She sincerely meant it, even if she did sound a bit flirtatious.
“For . . . ?”
They continued to walk, and she continued to cling to his arm as though she had a mad crush on the boy and was quite khaki wacky. In reality, the world ahead was swimming in a blur.
“For not badgering me with incessant questions and not expecting me to be sobbing like a weeping mess in the corner.”
Oliver gave a sniff and then chuckled. “Imogene Grayson isn’t known for being a mess.”
“No.” She gave a definitive nod, blinking fast to clear her gaze. “That’s not to say”—gracious, she realized how callous and bitter she sounded—“I don’t have emotions.”
Oliver paused on the road and tipped his head. A strand of dark blond hair fell over his forehead, and his brows drew together. “No one ever said you didn’t.”
Imogene hadn’t released his arm. She noticed the firm tone of it, in spite of his rather lanky appearance. She didn’t want to let go, and the unwarranted feeling that surged through her surprised her. He was safe. Oliver—Ollie—was safe and nonthreatening and . . .
“Thank you for understanding me,” Imogene murmured with sincerity. For he did. She could tell. He saw through her flirtatious façade to the wounded, broken heart beneath that she refused to let show. She’d let him into it the night she’d climbed the stairs to Hazel’s room.
Ollie twisted toward her, dislodging her arm from his. A red-winged blackbird swooped over their heads, chirping its warning call. It must have a nest somewhere nearby. Imogene’s attention was snagged by the bird as it landed in the tall grasses bordering the road, the green rows of corn just beyond that, with the glimpse of the Schneider barn in the distance.
“Genie . . .” His voice tugged her attention back, and Imogene met his eyes. “Why did you take a job at the plant?”
She didn’t want to tell him. He’d try to talk her out of it and for no good reason other than it was police business. Let Chet handle it. Hazel’s murder wasn’t hers to unravel, to resolve with any sort of justice.
It’s over.
The words were burned into her mind, right next to the image of Hazel’s bloodied body that had lain like a rag doll on the floor.
“No, it’s not,” Imogene protested aloud, shaking her head.
“What’s not?” Ollie tilted his head. She could tell he was trying to get a read on what she meant. That her face was more likely than not emblazoned with consternation and fury didn’t help.
“It’s not over, Ollie. Hazel died for a reason, you know? I can’t believe it was random. There had to be a cause. And—and no one can tell me it’s over and done with. No one!”
Ollie rolled his mouth together and drew a deep breath as though carefully weighing his words. “People dyin’, no, you’re right. It’s never over.”
“I can’t just let it be, Ollie.” Imogene heard her voice tremble.
Hang it all! She turned into an emotional puddle whenever she was around Oliver Schneider and she didn’t know why. She’d known him all her life as that “Ollie boy” down the road, as her parents called him. Though he was only one year her senior, they’d never played together much. He was a boy, rough and tumble, throwing around a baseball and pretending to be Babe Ruth. But now? Now there was something deep and hidden behind those sky-blue eyes of his. Something that hinted he had his own secrets of horrors he’d seen. That maybe, out of everyone in Mill Creek, Ollie understood the terror she experienced when she closed her eyes. He understood that one couldn’t just close the book on the sight of someone’s lifeblood draining from their body.
“Was it awful?” she whispered.
There, on the side of the country road, Ollie lifted his fingertips and grazed Imogene’s cheek with a gentleness that took her by surprise.
“Awful can’t begin to describe it.”
Imogene blinked back a sudden burning of tears. She knew they balanced on her dark Vaselined eyelashes, probably making her green eyes shimmer emerald, like Daddy always said they did when she cried. Which wasn’t often.
“Then you know why I’m saying it isn’t over?”
Ollie’s jaw muscle jumped as he seemed to bite down against his own conflicted feelings. He peered beyond her, over her shoulder at the cornfield on the other side of the road. “It’ll never be over.”
His words drilled a hole in Imogene’s heart, and with them followed the haunting reality that death branded its mark into a person’s soul, and time healed no pain. It never would.
Imogene had nothing to go on but a typewritten note, the memories of Hazel’s room the day she discovered her, and a new job at the powder plant doing the type of service work she’d swore she would never do. Imogene sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She’d stripped out of her hosiery and the dress she’d worn for supper and had slipped into pajamas. She busied herself setting her hair in pin curls for the night as the jazzy strains of the music from her radio filled the void of silence in the room. And now she sat on her bed, staring across the room at the window.
Closing her eyes, she let herself float back on the memories to the night she’d climbed the attic stairs with Ollie. Every creak of the steps, every pounding heartbeat . . . she could recall it all in vivid detail. For now. She could even smell the faintest hint of Hazel’s perfume. A sweet scent tipped with rose. Hazel used to spray it on liberally after coming home, to get the smell of the powder plant out of her nose, she’d always said.
Another strong whiff made Imogene’s eyes snap open, and she fixated on the window opposite her, the dark night sky drenching the familiar in blackness. Right above her room—right above her!—was Hazel’s attic bedroom. There was nothing worse, nothing more awful than reliving every moment of the discovery of Hazel’s battered body while in the same house. Sleep was not going to be her partner tonight.
She blinked, clearing her burning eyes from their unblinking stare at the night sky. Taking a deep breath, Imogene imagined Hazel still alive. She would have perched herself beside Imogene on the bed, probably wearing those silly yellow pajamas her sister had gotten for Christmas when she was thirteen. They were a bit snug now, but Hazel loved them. They’d—
“They served me well during the war, why not still?”
Imogene smiled back at her imaginary Hazel. She reached out, her hand swiping the air where the vision of Hazel sat.
“Because they’re silly and threadbare.” Imogene’s voice echoed in the empty room.
Hazel’s form cocked her head to the right, and she gave Imogene the sweet smile she always did when she wanted to insinuate that although Imogene was her senior by four years, Hazel’s maturity far exceeded hers.
“There are a lot of people still in need. The war has left us all in a fit, Genie. Why should I spend money on nice pajamas?”
Why indeed? It wasn’t as if Hazel didn’t plop every coin she earned into Daddy’s hand to help keep the farm afloat. She deserved new pajamas.
Imogene’s throat tightened with emotion. The kind that warred between an imagined moment and reality.
“Hazel, you need to come home.” Her whisper floated like a feather across the room.
Hazel’s face wavered for a moment and then became clearer. Her smile was sad. “You know I can’t.”
“I know.” Imogene picked at a loose thread on her spread. “Chet said they took all sorts of photographs of your room. I don’t know why he won’t let me see them.”
Hazel’s response resonated in Imogene’s mind. “Because you don’t need to keep seeing me. Not like that.”
“I need to help find out who killed you.” Imogene drew in a thick, shuddering breath. Why did the police take photographs? What did they hope to learn from them? She recalled Chet saying the police would look at several factors. Fingerprints, for one, but since they matched none on record at the sta
tion, it’d be tough to figure out who might own any strange sets they might have lifted from the scene. Dust displacement. Whatever that meant. Maybe if something had been moved in the room, or a foreign substance was left behind, like—like red clay traces when the soil at the farm and surrounding area was mostly sand? Perhaps. But Chet hadn’t let on that there was any dust displacement outside of the footprint that had proven to be a dead end.
“Who killed you?” Imogene repeated, this time as a question. The image of Hazel flickered before her eyes. Hazel wasn’t looking at her now. She was staring out the window as if she would float away into the night sky. As if she could float away.
“I can’t tell you that.” Hazel’s words carved their way through Imogene’s mind. No. Of course she couldn’t. She wasn’t really there. She was a conjured fragment of Imogene’s broken heart.
“Then what can I do?” Imogene uncurled her legs and pushed off the bed, padding across the floor on her bare feet to the window. She glanced to her side. In another life, with a different direction, Hazel would be studying her closely from the bed. Imogene could almost sense her there, and the pain that riffled through her soul was poignant. If she could just turn—just close her eyes and spin around and open them—and Hazel were really sitting there. On the bed. In those silly pajamas.
“You can remember me. Every part of me. Every moment. Every item. Every stain. Every footstep. Every smell. Everything.”
Imogene did spin then. Right as the saxophone belted out a lilting tune through the radio’s speaker. Just as the moon passed behind the clouds. Just when she heard the creak of the mattress bedspring. Her gaze raked the bed, the floor, the dresser beyond, and she saw her own reflection in the mirror. The bed was empty, and even the mirror boasted one face only. Hers. Black hair in silly pins, green eyes wide with both hope and horror, her hand clutching the V of her pajama top where the button met the first hole.
Remember. Yes. Photographs. Yes. Chet wouldn’t let her see them, but she didn’t need to. She already had memorized everything, and in doing so she would uncover something. Something Chet had missed, something the police had overlooked. If she could walk in Hazel’s footsteps during the day, then she could theorize in Hazel’s room at night. Every single memory poured into one room. One house. The Grayson farmhouse.
The shrill high pitch of the saxophone followed Imogene as she bolted from her bedroom, her purpose fully intact.
CHAPTER 12
Aggie
She’d never been fond of the saxophone, or any brass instrument, but the peals filled the house as Aggie opened the door, Collin behind her. What inspired her to invite him for dinner still left her questioning herself. But he was there, behind her, and in front of her was the overwhelming flamboyancy of true music of the forties. Clarinet, trumpets, a chorus of them, with a peppy tune that made Aggie feel as though she were stepping into a time machine. Even the kitchen into which they stepped heralded that feeling. So did the hallway with the coat tree and the wool coat hanging from a peg, its collar fringed in mink. Maybe real, maybe faux, but mink nonetheless and very much not current-day winter coat style.
“It’s real,” Collin muttered as they passed it, his hand brushing the fur.
Of course it was. Mumsie wouldn’t concern herself with animal welfare. She was of the era of the Depression and entered adulthood when blackouts were practiced, even throughout the rural countryside, in case Japan or Germany decided that Wisconsin was high on their target list. Concerning oneself with whether an animal had the right to live or trim a coat with its fur was a shallow, purposeless question, considering human plight and the last grasps of holding on to the golden-age vanity of the twenties.
“Mumsie?” Aggie called with a brief glance over her shoulder at Collin, who was eyeing the musty old architecture. She waved at him to follow her. “Mumsie, where are—?”
“Well, for pity’s sake, child, are you trying to raise the dead?” Mumsie’s wobbly but vibrant voice caused Aggie to jump back into Collin as the old woman appeared in front of her, having stepped out from a hall closet Aggie hadn’t noticed before. It was small and under the stairs, but one could go in by ducking, and Mumsie apparently had. Her large silver flashlight in her hand, she pulled shut the closet door behind her and reached for her walker.
Adorable was too cutesy of a word for Mumsie, and yet she was. Her curls were perfect around her angelic face. She looked past Aggie at Collin, who had steadied Aggie by gripping her elbow.
Mumsie’s green eyes sparkled. “There’s the looker from the other day!”
“Mumsie!” Aggie widened her eyes in embarrassment.
“What?” Mumsie gave her a quizzical look. “He is. That hair—all that ginger—and yet he’s manly.” She sidestepped Aggie and lifted up her chin, studying Collin. A tiny smile tilted her mouth, the wrinkles that feathered off her lips deepening. “I say, do you have a girl?”
“Mumsie!” Aggie hissed through clenched teeth.
Collin dipped his head congenially. “I daresay no.”
Mumsie clicked her tongue. “It’s amazing that a boy like you hasn’t been snatched up by the first dame who’d have you!”
“They’ve tried.” Collin winked, adding a playful tone to his words that made Aggie raise an eyebrow at him. “But I’m hard to catch.” He dipped his head conspiratorially. “And equally as hard to hang on to.”
Mumsie’s laughter filtered through the hallway. “Oh, I’m so glad you brought your young man home for dinner.” She patted Aggie’s arm as she sidled past, her slippered feet shuffling on the wood floor, and her polyester button-up blouse of vivid purple leaving behind a whiff of baby powder and perfume.
“He’s not my young man!” Aggie protested without thought, chasing after Mumsie. She shot Collin a desperate look. He shrugged. Aggie rolled her eyes. Oh, Mumsie, Mumsie, Mumsie!
Mumsie deposited the flashlight on the kitchen table and moved to the kitchen sink and the hand-washed dishes in the dish rack. Actually, they were plastic sandwich bags. Mumsie reached for one and lifted it, eyeing its clear insides and the few drops of water that remained.
“Oh, these take forever to air-dry.” She reached for a dish towel of yellowed white linen with embroidery on it and lacy tatting on the edges.
“What—why are you washing baggies?” Aggie couldn’t stop her bewildered question.
Mumsie’s look was innocent in return. “Why wouldn’t I? They’re perfectly good and reusable. Now, I’ve not prepared a decent meal for dinner. But I do have some canned green beans and mushroom soup. That would make a perfect side dish to the leftover roast beef from Sunday.”
“Brilliant!” Collin chimed.
Aggie spent the next few minutes hand-cranking the can opener to open the cans, not particularly looking forward to the combination of their innards. Collin rifled in the pantry, and he called out, “By any chance would you have some French-fried onions?”
“Bottom shelf. To the left,” Mumsie responded with the sharp memory of one well practiced in not forgetting, even if one hundred years was staring her in the face.
Aggie sank onto a kitchen table chair and watched in puzzled silence as Collin and Mumsie worked side by side. Collin mixed the beans and soup in a pan on the stovetop, his round glasses sliding down his nose, but his square jaw making up for any boyishness that might have been tempted to shine through. Mumsie cocked the glass lid sideways on her glassware container and popped the roast into the microwave. She punched a button, hesitated, Collin reached over and hit another, and with a playful smile, Mumsie punched the start button with her crooked finger.
“Now . . .” She made her way to the table and pulled out a chair, slowly easing her old bones onto it. “You’re here to pry, I can see it all over your face. If you played poker, Agnes, you’d be out on the first hand.”
“I’m not here to pry!” Aggie defended herself. Collin’s smile appeared again, but he remained focused on the pan and mixing the green beans so they didn’
t scorch.
Mumsie drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Mmmm-hmm. I’m quite sure you’ve been adept at pulling the wool over many of your house-buying clients, but you cannot weave it over mine.”
There was a deep, pointed gleam in Mumsie’s eyes. One that made Aggie squirm and shoot another despairing look at the oblivious Collin. Mumsie knew about her midnight jaunt into Mumsie’s room, didn’t she? That Aggie had seen the horrid dollhouse with its crime scene in miniature. Or did she? And what if she did know? It couldn’t matter. Fine. She really wanted to interrogate her grandmother about the disturbing scene, her room that sported a bloodstained spread, and the nagging sense that there was something hiding behind Mumsie’s eccentricity that made Aggie more than a little bit concerned.
But she would start simple.
“The cemetery office was broken into this morning. The entire room was trashed.” It wasn’t a question or a prying into anything. She was merely interested to see if it sparked anything on Mumsie’s face. Not that it should. But something nagged at Aggie.
Mumsie’s small laugh surprised Aggie. She exchanged looks with Collin, who was dumping the green-bean soup mixture into a bowl.
“What were they after? Old bones? Buried treasure?” A swift intake of melodramatic breath, and her eyes widened.
“Neither.” Collin popped open the microwave and poked at the leftover roast with a fork. He’d apparently taken over the cooking. “Although, I daresay, that would cause quite the kerfuffle if it’d been dug-up graves.”
Aggie frowned. “You know, that is odd. A skeleton—no matter that it was fake—in Mumsie’s backyard. The cemetery office ransacked. It’s sort of as if a grave had been, you know, messed with.”
Collin shrugged and sprinkled fried onions over the green-bean casserole that apparently was going to be served straight from the stovetop and never see the inside of an oven.
Mumsie didn’t say anything, yet Aggie could feel the old woman’s eyes on her. Aggie met her grandmother’s stare. Frank. Open. Wary. They were both equally cautious of each other, it seemed. It was difficult to trust.
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