I blinked in surprise and looked Kim over with fresh eyes but no memory came.
“Oh it was only a time or two.” She waved it away with a swat of her hand. “You were only about eight and your grandma and grandpa were going away on some overnight fishing trip so you slept over.” She pointed to where I sat. “You slept on that very couch you were sitting on!”
She cackled loudly at that and my stomach rolled.
“Sorry. I don’t remember ever having a babysitter.”
“Oh hell I prolly shouldn’t’ve even brought it up on account of what happened and the way your grandparents were.”
She tsked and watched me closely. Her eyes were hopeful that I’d say something about my traumatic upbringing and malicious grandparents. Their notorious reputation had fueled the gossip mill in this town for years. A comment from me about that time would be currency for her around town for months. It wasn’t going to happen.
“After you e-transfer me my deposit, send me an email listing all the names, numbers and addresses of anyone who had any contact with Alice.” My tone was businesslike now. “I want to know the names and contact for all her lovers, coworkers, and anyone else you can think of.”
Kim agreed and I stepped through the door. As I was going down the steps, an old Honda stirred up the driveway dust and came to a rest a few feet away.
“That’ll be Blossom now,” Kim said from behind me. “She’ll be here to get the dogs.”
“She cares for both dogs?” I asked over my shoulder.
“I just dog-sit while she works.” Kim opened the door wide and both dogs bounded outside and over to the car. Then Kim went inside and shut the door, not bothering to greet Blossom as she climbed out of her car.
The Blossom I remembered was one of the queens of high school but the woman patting the heads of the two dogs in front of her looked nothing like royalty. The dark hair that dusted her butt in school was now cropped to her shoulders in an uneven home haircut. Her face was void of makeup, and the dark circles under her eyes aged her well beyond thirty.
She noticed me then, straightened to her nearly six feet, planted hands on her hips and stood mouth agape, exposing a missing eyetooth. “Oh dear Jesus, is that you, Beanster?”
She was the only one who’d ever called me that, and all these years later it still rankled. An old high school friend had given me some jellybeans, which I’d jammed into the pocket of my sweater. Walking down the hall, Blossom had bodychecked me into the lockers, causing me to drop an armload of books. As I bent to pick them up, the jellybeans spilled from my pocket and rolled everywhere. She called me Beanster after that.
“Blossom.” I gave a hard nod to the black lab she was loading into her back seat. “Didn’t know you had Jet. Roscoe told me that Kim had the dog.”
“She did for a while but after she hurt her back she asked me to take him on account of he’s got too much energy for her.”
“But she dog-sits?”
“Yeah she watches Jet and Chichi while I’m at work. Kim likes the bit of cash and Jet doesn’t eat my shoes when I’m at work, so we both win.” She laughed.
“Where do you work?”
“Over at the motel.” She nodded with her chin in a vague direction, then looked away as if embarrassed. “Housekeeping.”
The girl in school with the most expensive and current fashion was scrubbing toilets. I wanted to find some joy in that but I didn’t. I didn’t follow my classmates or neighborhood on social media but sometimes word of someone reached my peripheral anyway. Now one of those things jogged my memory.
“Didn’t you own a secondhand shop on Martin and Third Street?”
She nodded. “Named it Blossoming. Cute, huh? I loved that shitty little store. Didn’t you hear? The whole building went up in flames last year. It was just starting to make a profit too. All my inventory turned to ash, and I’d just let my insurance lapse. It sucks.” She scowled at the ground, and for a second, I thought I saw tears in her eyes, but they were replaced with a look of determination. “I’m going to reopen just as soon as I get enough cash behind me.”
“That’s good. You always did have an eye for fashion.”
“I know, right?” She looked proud even in her grubby jeans and stained T-shirt.
“Tell me about the night of Alice’s death.”
A couple of fat raindrops fell, and she shielded her eyes with her hands as she looked at me. “Shit, you gotta know what happened, right?”
“I’m just trying to hear it from everyone’s point of view.”
“Okay.” Blossom stuffed her hands into her jeans and proceeded to tell me everything about that night. How she and Roscoe had been at the bar and when she’d gone outside for a cigarette, she could hear Jet barking in Alice’s car so she mentioned that to Roscoe when she went back inside.
“Never shoulda said a word to Roscoe because the second he heard the dog was across the street in Alice’s car, he went ballistic, and well...” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”
“Did you leave with Roscoe after the fight?”
“Nah, he wanted to take off and bring the dog home but I still had friends drinking inside so I stayed with them and got a ride home afterward.”
“When did you hear about the blood in the pickup and Roscoe being arrested?”
“I was sleeping in when Kim called me after lunch. She was freaking out. Most of the town was.”
I remembered how things got around town when something dramatic happened. “So everyone gathered for coffee or beers to chat about it, I guess?”
“Not me, man.” She shook her head. “The whole thing creeped me out. I was dating a murderer? Someone who chopped off a girl’s thumb?” She placed the back of her hand to her forehead as if to faint. “I couldn’t handle. I talked to the cops, gave my statement, then disappeared for a few days. I was smoke in the wind.”
“What about your store?”
“I let my staff run it while I was gone. I needed the break.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“Kim mentioned she thought Alice was having an affair. Any idea who she was sleeping with?”
“She said that?” Blossom glanced sideways at the trailer. “Take that with a grain of salt, know what I mean? Kim can be a bitch.”
“So you don’t think Alice was messing around behind Roscoe’s back?”
“Alice didn’t have it in her. She was all sweetness and light. Definitely not the cheating type.” She wagged a finger in my face then. “Hey, do me a favor and don’t be telling Roscoe I’ve got Jet. He’d lose his mind.”
“Why would he care?”
“Dunno. He just would. Guess after all he did to get the damn dog, he wants to keep him in the family, but I’ve grown kinda attached to the stupid hound.” She tucked a greasy strand of hair behind her ear. “Not that Roscoe’s getting out any time soon to come and check.”
“So you think he’s guilty?”
“Don’t you?” She gave me a smirk.
“Guess I’m hoping to find Alice’s body and see if that proves anything.” I caught movement in the window of the trailer. Kim was watching us. “Any idea where I should start looking?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” She burst out laughing and reached through the window of her car for a pack of smokes. After she had one lit, she drew in a deep drag and blew out the smoke in a long stream toward my face. “If I had to guess, I’d say he just rolled her off a cliff somewhere. One thing about Roscoe is he’s a lazy SOB. I can’t see him digging a deep hole, know what I mean? He’d have to actually break a sweat. He’s the kind of guy who’d drive ten miles to go to a drive-thru just cuz he didn’t want to walk inside a burger joint to get his food.”
Washington had over three thousand miles of coastline. If he pushed Alice’s body off a cliff I was going to need an army of dowsers to find her.
“Any place in particular he liked to go? A fishing hole somewhere? A park he liked to visit?”
“We went out only a couple of times so I couldn’t tell you.”
“Anyone who might know?”
Blossom puffed away on her cigarette while she contemplated my question. “Talk to Barb over at the diner. She went down to visit him a few times.” As she flicked an ash at her feet, she tilted her head and eyed me curiously. “Never thought you’d come back here after all that shit with your grandparents.”
“It’s in the past.” The words came out smooth as silk even as my gut clenched.
“You were just over there, right?” She gazed off into the distance. “Maybe two fields over?”
Blossom was trying hard to open that wound but I wasn’t playing. She opened her car door and slid behind the wheel.
“Can I get your phone number in case I have any more questions?”
She rattled off her number and I immediately sent her a text message so she’d have my number too.
“Let me know if you think of anything.”
“Tell you what, next time you’re up this way you can buy me a coffee and I’ll see if I can dig up all of Roscoe’s secrets to tell you.” She giggled at that. “Not that he was exactly a deep person with a closet of skeletons, but I could ask around.”
“I appreciate that. I’ll also go talk to Barb.”
“You do that.” She started up her car. “Might wanna bring a Bible with you.”
She drove away and I noticed Kim’s eyes watching me through a part in her drapes. With a quick wave, I turned my back on her and climbed into my Jeep. Less than three minutes later, as if drawn by an evil magnet, I was parked on a country road staring at the land where I’d grown up. Gone was the little white farmhouse, long ago bulldozed because nobody would’ve lived in it after knowing the hellish history. Gone also was my singlewide trailer that had been parked in the back forty. But the new owners had worked and harvested the land. Deep down it surprised me that anything could grow in a place that held such evil.
Abruptly a wave of nausea rolled through me and I opened the car door just in time to vomit.
The land might have been stripped naked of its buildings, but a malevolent vibe still seemed to rise from it and engulf me.
Chapter Four
Part of me wanted to get on I-5 and head back home and never return, but I also wanted to at least talk to Barb at the diner as Blossom suggested. I drove away from the road of my quicksand memories and headed into town.
You could practically see the Canadian border from the diner. I’d eaten many meals here and worked at the gas bar just a stone’s throw away. As I pulled into the parking lot to park behind the restaurant, it felt more like coming home than it had a right to.
Before going inside I felt a powerful need to wash away the ugliness in my head and to touch base with someone who was lightness in my life. Garrett answered his phone immediately. I told him about visiting Kim, running into Blossom and driving to the old homestead.
“How are you holding up?” his voice was so filled with concern I had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying.
“Besides losing my breakfast, I’m good.” I laughed.
“Do you need me to come home?”
And the very fact that he would drop everything at his FBI job and run home to be there for me was all that really mattered in this world.
“Nah, I’m going to be okay. I talked to Dr. Chen before getting here and she double-checked that everything between my ears was staying together.” I tried to keep it light because I hated how much he worried about me. I detested even more how necessary his concern was and that I had to rebuild his trust after failing a few months ago. “I’m stopping for a bite to eat before heading back home.”
“Send me a text once you’re home, okay?”
I said I would and we ended our calls with air kisses.
Stepping inside the retro diner felt like a tumble back to my earlier life. You could tell the difference between the locals in the place and any Canadians day-tripping across the border. The town residents looked up from their meals and coffee cups to stare unabashed at me and follow my walk across the restaurant, while those from across the border didn’t know or care. I slid into a vinyl booth in the back and looked down at my phone so as not to make eye contact with any of those curious gazes.
“Coffee?” a young waitress asked. I didn’t recognize her and she obviously didn’t know me either.
I was grateful for the small reprieve. “Yeah. And a grilled cheese. Is Barb working?”
“She’s on her break. I’ll send her to say hey once she’s back.”
I thanked her and then reached across to another table to get the newspaper. It was more about hiding my face than reading the local news but by the time my sandwich arrived, I lowered it to see most people had become bored with my arrival.
I was halfway through my grilled cheese when a waitress began walking toward me. She was maybe sixty, stocky and wore her gray hair in a tight ponytail. When she was a couple feet away, she stopped. I could see the exact moment she recognized me and weighed her options to turn heel and walk away.
She stiffened her spine and came to me instead. “I’m Barb. You asked to see me?”
“Yes, I’m—”
“I know who you are and I know what you do.” She leaned in, putting palms on the table. “I’m a God-fearing woman, Julie Hall, and I don’t take to no satanic voodoo crap, ya got me?”
“I hear you loud and clear.” I held up my hands in a symbol of surrender. “I’m only trying to help Roscoe Ebert and I understand you visited him.”
She gave me a sharp nod. “I did. Drove all the way there to read him the scriptures a time or two. Tried to get him to repent.”
“No luck?”
“Sometimes the devil has such a deep hold on a person they can’t see the light of the Lord standing right in front of them.”
The way she looked at me said that she was the light and I was the devil. This idea was not something new to me.
“Do you think Roscoe’s innocent?”
“I’m neither judge nor jury.” She picked a piece of lint from the front of her uniform.
“Oka-a-ay.” I was getting nowhere here. “Did you know Alice?”
“Of course. She actually worked here a month or two. Was always late so eventually she was let go.”
“She worked here? Was she close to any of the coworkers? Is there anyone else here I should talk to?”
“I have no idea who that girl spent her time with. It was none of my business.”
“Okay.” I tried a more direct tactic. “Do you have any idea where a killer may have stashed her body?”
She shook her head hard. I reached in my purse and pulled out a business card. “If you think of anything Roscoe may have said that could help find Alice’s body, or even if you think of an area that could even have a remote chance of being the spot where she could be, then please contact me.”
“If I think of anything I’d be sure to contact the police instead of the likes of you.” She left my business card on the table when she turned and walked away.
I left the card sitting there in case she changed her mind but that was doubtful. Half my sandwich remained untouched on my plate. I paid my bill and left a good tip before heading back to my Jeep. I put my keys in the ignition and noticed one of the cooks standing by the back door having a smoke. I hopped out of the Jeep and walked toward him.
“Hi, I’m Julie Hall.”
“Yeah, I know who you are.” He dropped his smoke to the pavement and it sizzled out in a puddle.
“So you know I’m looking for Alice. I understand she used to work here.”
“Yup.” He looked up at the clouds and squinted. “Not for long. A few weeks maybe.
”
“Was she close to anyone at that time? Did she socialize outside of work with anyone else?”
“Nah, she was so shy and quiet it was like working with a mouse.” He snorted and then his face got somber. “Not that it’s a bad thing to be quiet. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”
“So she didn’t take coffee breaks with anyone, or chum around before or after her shift with any other cooks or waitresses.”
He shook his head.
“What about customers? Were there any regulars that insisted on sitting in her area so she’d have to serve them?”
“No, it was the opposite. Regulars stayed away from her section on account of she was slower than the other girls. She was polite to the customers but, you know, not overly polite.”
“So you never saw her with anyone outside of work.”
“Nope. She was a loner. Kept to herself. She was nice enough but not talkative. Not one bit.”
I thanked him for his time and then returned to the Jeep. I drove through town stopping briefly at the corner of Martin and Third Street to look at the charred remains of Blossom’s thrift store. You could still make out the name Blossoming in faded red letters above the door. I got out of the car and briefly walked down the street. The familiar buildings and the feel of the small city were a distant pull of memory and nothing more. I was relieved. Maybe I could do this. I could look for Alice’s body in this area and be just fine as long as I didn’t drive near the farm where I was raised.
“I’ll give it a week,” I muttered to myself and got back in my car.
As I pulled away from the curb, my phone rang.
“This is Dana. I was your waitress and I saw your card.”
“Oh. Hi, Dana, did I forget something?” I glanced over at the passenger seat and saw my purse so that wasn’t it.
“Nothing like that.” She lowered her voice. “Some of the customers were talking to me about what you do and I think that’s kind of cool. I haven’t lived here long so I didn’t know you were, like, famous or somethin’.”
“Definitely not famous.” I had to resist the urge to laugh. “More like notorious.”
A Grave End Page 5
