After I picked up the sweater, I set my GPS on my phone to guide me to the Pickering Manor. I wanted to make this trip quick because heavy gray storm clouds were moving in at a rapid rate. Get in, give the woman her dog’s sweater and get home before the heavens opened.
Violet’s house was just outside the city limits. I vaguely remember the farm from high school but I did recall that the owners were big horse people at one time. I drove to the electronic gate and mashed the call button.
I could see Violet’s Cadillac parked in front of her three-story house. I had expected a more elegant building. The brown of the brick work was rather plain, offset only by the deep red shutters framing each window on all three levels. The window dressings were closed, as if to shut out the world against prying eyes. The gabled porch roof was held up by two white columns. Even from the road I could see the shining brass fittings on the wooden front door.
The two acres of front yard were immaculately tended. Even the area around the giant magnolia tree in the center of her front pasture, because it sure wasn’t a lawn, had been professionally mulched. She must pay a fortune to have someone to do her yard work. Violet Pickering didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to do it herself.
Overall, it was unremarkable, as houses go. That was surprising considering how much money Violet Pickering dropped on a diamond collar for her Chihuahua.
Did she forget I was supposed to come by? Maybe I should have called first? I pushed the call button a few more times, all to be met with silence.
I really didn’t want to come back. Those clouds were looking ominous and very wet. I wanted to be home and with my coffee before it opened up.
I climbed out of Mom’s car, and retrieved her golf umbrella from the trunk, just in case. Inspecting the fence, it was solid and wooden and well kept. It should hold my weight. Thankfully no one was around to witness the clown routine mess I made of getting over the fence. The wind was whipping up and moisture was heavy in the air as the first drops of the rainstorm began to fall.
If I sprinted, maybe I could make it back to my car before getting soaked.
As I neared the house, I heard Winston barking. It sounded as if he was outside. I paused and turned a small circle before spotting him near the magnolia tree. He was barking at the heap of blue piled on the grass. The same blue color of the dress Violet was wearing so...bravely, when she terrorized the shelter staff.
The closer I got, the more my stomach knotted. The blue heap wasn’t moving. Winston was quite upset. He raced to one side, paused to bark frantically. Then he was in motion again to the other side. His little body quivered in distress.
When he saw me, his ears flattened and he crouched at my approach. “Hey, buddy,” I cooed. “What’s this you found?”
The coffee in my stomach started to churn. Yacking up coffee was not a favored pastime so I swallowed hard to keep it at bay.
Violet Pickering was sprawled on the grass, her lifeless eyes staring up at the sky. Sticking out of her chest was a slender silver stiletto or knife of some kind with an intricately carved silver handle.
Oh.
Oh.
This wasn’t good.
The wind whipped up as the gray clouds hung heavy overhead. The rain was starting to pick up energy as it splattered down faster. I fumbled with my phone to call 911. My experience (also read as: fascination) with crime dramas warned me that I was contaminating the scene. I took a step back. “Come on, Winston. You need to come away...”
Winston stood his ground, barking at his now-dead owner.
I didn’t have a good feeling as I tried to gain distance from Violet, frantically calling for Winston to follow. The air closed in and tasted...odd. Metallic. Looking up, I realized just how close I was to the tree.
Tree...umbrella...thunder...storm.
No. Nonononono...Stupid stupid stupid.
The rest was just a blur. The tingle, the smell of ozone, a loud noise, and a flash as my world went white.
Chapter Three
If I were to rank the worst feeling upon waking up, it would be a tie between the heavy compression on my chest, making it a difficult to breathe, and the muscle ache that usually accompanied someone falling from a second-story window.
Possibly the third story.
With a gasp I was awake, eyes stuck together with sleep goo or something. That made it hard to see what was going on.
“Mary! Mary! I’m so glad to see you!”
The high, squeaky voice banged like pots and pans in my head. In an effort to fix some of the confusion associated with the completely unrelated series of sensations, I struggled to sit up. Whatever was on my chest fell into my lap and rolled between my knees.
“What is all this...good Lord, you’re awake! Sarah, get the nurse.” That was my mom’s voice. Using one hand, although I couldn’t figure out what was restricting my movements, I managed to scrub at my eyes. I was in an unfamiliar room. My guess? It was a hospital room judging by the lack of decorations. My hand was trapped by IV drip tubing. Soft beeping noises filled in the background noise as my sister shouted distantly for a nurse.
“What?” My throat was dry and I sounded like I had eaten a cup of sand.
“Have some water, honey.” My dad guided a cup into my hand and I gulped at it greedily.
Four points of pressure danced all over my lap. Moving the tray back, Winston’s head popped into view. “Winston...”
“Mary! Mary!”
Who was shouting for Mary?
Who was Mary?
“Winston, quiet,” my mother scolded. She scooped up the little dog and handed him off to Sarah who followed the nurse back into the room.
Everything was very confused for several minutes as everyone talked at once. I grimaced from the noise, from the fact that I was so sore and... “Oh. My. God. What is wrong with my arm?”
A pattern raced down my arm, like a crack in a window pane, the lines red and angry looking. The area of skin along the pattern was raised slightly. It stung. Like a burn.
It was hard to contain the hysteria in my voice but, okay, give me a break. Nothing was making any sense.
“You were struck by lightning, sweetheart,” Dad said gently. He took my hand in his. Worry etched at the corner of his eyes.
“Lightning?” Did I...I think I remember...
The nurse gently moved everyone back so she could check my vital signs and then the equipment I was hooked up to. “You’re very dehydrated. I’m sure you feel pretty beat up right now and it’s all confusing,” she said.
That was a mild understatement.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake.” A final smile from the nurse before she disappeared, leaving me with my family and best friend standing in a group huddle at the foot of my bed. They all stared at me expectantly.
Winston wiggled out of Mom’s arms and high-stepped across the blankets to curl up at my hip, his tail thumping lightly on the bed.
“So...I was struck by lightning.”
Silence broke as everyone started talking at once. It hit me like a word tidal wave, everyone eager to tell me what happened. Instantly, a headache throbbed behind my eyes. “Wait...wait wait wait...just one person, okay?”
Sarah shushed everyone and they fell silent. “Lightning struck Mrs. Pickering’s magnolia tree. Apparently you were too close to the tree holding an umbrella—”
“Why were you standing in a thunderstorm holding an umbrella, honey?” Mom asked. “Next to a tree?”
“Mooom.”
“Sorry, Sarah.”
“As I was saying, you were standing too close to the tree when lightning struck it. The fact that it was burning and smoldering alerted Mrs. Pickering’s neighbors to call the fire department and they found you out there with—”
Dad reached out and squeezed Sarah’s shoulder. “Not now, Sarah.”
“Right.” Sarah glanced sheepishly back at Dad before she continued. “Anyway, a neighbor called it in and here you are.”
“Why is Winston here?”
Winston lifted his head at the sound of his name.
Mom stared fondly at the little guy. “He wouldn’t leave your side. The EMTs couldn’t get to you because he kept them fought off. He even attacked one of them, grabbing their pants leg. They thought it best if he came with you to the hospital. Even the nurses couldn’t risk removing him for fear of life and limb.”
“He was mean about it.” Sarah laughed. “All growling and teeth. Very un-Winston-like.”
Winston barked. “Mary!”
...wait. No. No...but I swear his bark sounded like...
That lightning strike had done a number on me to be imagining that.
“Okay. So,” I started carefully. It was easy to see there was something that no one was mentioning. I either imagined it or something truly messed up was happening. “What happened to Violet?”
“About that,” Mom said. She was uneasily evasive. “We’re...not to talk to you about it until Chief Reed gets back.”
A sick feeling hit me. “She’s really dead, isn’t she?”
“Bob Marley dead.” Good ol’ Gramma. She could always be counted on to be unflinchingly honest.
“Don’t you mean Jacob Marley, LaLa?” Where had Sarah’s boyfriend, Robbie, come from? He stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. Young love. So cute. Almost made me miss being in a relationship again.
Almost.
Gramma patted my foot. “No. And don’t get all literary on me,” she said to Robbie.
“Okay.” I had nowhere to file that.
Everyone camped out in my room until the doctor came. He gave me a clean bill of health, or as clean as one can get after having been struck by lightning.
The fractal scarring that ran down my arm, across my back and curled around my waist was called Lichtenberg figures. Apparently it was normal in lightning strike victims. They could go away in a week, a month, even as long as six months.
There was some science that went with it but I really wasn’t up to learning about it. Robbie said that I may get lucky and they never go away. It would leave me with what he called ‘truly righteous’ scarring.
Right. Lucky.
There was something far more pressing on my mind.
Two things, actually.
Violet Pickering was really dead and the police chief wanted to talk to me, having gone so far as to warn my family not to talk to me about anything.
Not long after the doctor left to put in the paperwork for my release tomorrow morning, there was a tapping at the door. Dad got up to answer it.
“Alistair,” he said, shaking hands with the man just out of sight.
“Galen. I got word she’s awake?”
My eyes widened and I glanced at Jolene, who returned my surprised look with a smug eyebrow arch.
That was a voice I wouldn’t mind reading me my rights, if you get my drift.
The man behind the voice wasn’t a disappointment, either. He stood about dad’s height, dressed in the dark blue uniform of the Harmony Grove PD, with dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes that regarded me coolly. “Miss Cooper. I need to have a word with you about Violet Pickering.”
He glanced at everyone in the room before looking at me. “In private.”
The butterflies at the bedroom voice quickly turned into nervous voles digging around in my guts. “Uh...sure.”
“Alistair—”
“Alone, Galen.”
“We’ll be just outside, sweetie.” Dad ducked to kiss my cheek before he motioned for everyone to leave the room. With every disappearing family member through the door, my heart sank deeper.
“Does that mean Winston, too?” If all else fails, try for a little levity.
Chief Reed’s stone expression didn’t twitch a muscle. He waved his hand at Winston. “Up to you,” he said in an official voice.
What was it about official voices from law enforcement that made people feel instantly guilty? Was that something they taught or was it a natural talent?
“He stays,” I said, suddenly feeling stubborn.
He flipped open a notebook and clicked his pen. His incredible blue eyes pierced me right to the bed. “Fine. So...tell me what happened.”
“I um...don’t remember much. I went to see Viol...Mrs. Pickering—”
“About what?”
“What?”
“Why did you go see her?”
“A sweater. I was returning Winston’s sweater. It was covered in cow poop. I mean...Winston came to the animal shelter and he was covered in cow poop and we washed him and his sweater. And I was returning it.”
He nodded and scribbled in his notebook. When I didn’t keep talking, he lifted his eyes to me again. “And then?”
“I drove to her place and tried to raise her at the gate. She has one of those electronic security gates that you have to activate to open and she wasn’t answering, even though I saw her car parked outside her house. A storm was moving in and I wanted to get home before it started raining so I jumped the gate—”
“You ignored the No Trespassing sign?”
There was a No Trespassing sign? “I guess I didn’t see it.”
He nodded and wrote some more.
“Anyway. I was heading across her front lawn, it’s really big, you see, and it was a bit of a walk when I saw Winston barking. And I found Mrs. Pickering on the ground dead.”
“Did you move anything? Touch anything? Notice anything unusual or out of place?”
“Other than the knife sticking out of her chest, no.”
Chief Reed’s head snapped up. “The knife in her chest.”
“Yes. I assume that’s how she was killed. Winston was very upset. And the weather was getting really bad. I figured I would call 911 when...well...I got struck by lightning.”
“So you didn’t make the call before that?”
“It came on me rather sudden, Chief Reed.” My temper started to fray a little. I guess I was just tired but something about the way he looked at me, talked to me was a little unnerving. “I didn’t have much time to react before being struck senseless.”
“So...you approached the body, saw this,” he waved his pen, “weapon in the body, tried to call the police and then you were struck by lightning.”
“That’s pretty much all I remember.”
“Did you and Mrs. Pickering have...issues?”
“What kind of issues?”
He waved his hand again but at least he had the decency to look at me and not that damned pad. “Issues. Problems.”
“No. Other than her acting like a total harpy at the animal shelter.”
“That’s Inge’s shelter, right?”
“Is there another one?” Damn it...I didn’t mean to sound like that.
He didn’t say anything, just wrote something down. “Did you two have words at the shelter?”
“Not really. I told her to back off when she started getting hateful. Then she stormed out.”
I probably should have said something about Inge following her out and having a shouting match in the parking lot but I didn’t like where this was going.
“Of course. So you don’t know of anyone who would have a reason to kill her?”
If what everyone said about the woman was true, there were quite a few people who had reason. “No. Of course not. Look, not that I’m telling you how to do your job or anything but I think if you have the murder weapon, there would be fingerprints or something, right?”
“The only possible weapon was next to Mrs. Pickering’s body. It was your umbrella. Nothing else was found at the scene.” Chief Reed finished writing before he closed his notebook and tucked it, and the pen, into his pocket. “I’ll be in touch. Don’t plan on any out of town travel.”
I was left wondering what the heck just happened.
I’m thirty-five years old and haven’t been treated like a child since I was ten. It was a little unnerving to have my parents treat me like I was a fragile te
a cup, getting me home and comfortably situated. All my life I’ve been independent, much to my parents’ consternation. I know they wanted to help me, and I appreciated it more than they would ever know but...I really did like to do things on my own.
By the time of my release, I was feeling fine. Maybe a little sore, banged up, with these distressing lines shooting all over my body, but that was it.
Fighting with Mom, I eventually convinced her to let me sit at the kitchen table while she fixed lunch if she wasn’t going to let me help.
“Hello, Cooper Clan!” Jolene called from the back porch. The screen door slammed shut behind her. “I come bearing gifts for the sickie in the house. Where is she?”
“I’m sitting right here.” The aroma of Jolene’s signature brownies hit me in a chocolate wave. My stomach let me know right then and there it was time to eat.
She jerked the canister back when I stretched my arm out and set them down on the counter, out of reach. “Not until you’ve had lunch, young lady.”
“I’m a sickie, just as you noted. I was struck by lightning, you see.”
“Where’s Winston? Aren’t you keeping him?”
“Dad’s taken Gramma to a doctor’s appointment and he offered to swing by and pick Winston up from the vet on the way home. I talked with Mom and Dad about keeping Winston. They’re fine with him staying with us until we can figure out if any of Violet’s family wants him.”
I kind of hoped no family stepped up to claim Winston. Maybe I didn’t need the responsibility of a dog so soon after coming back home but I couldn’t explain it. There was a bond there, silent, strong and comforting between us. Even letting them take Winston to the vet was difficult because I didn’t want to be parted from him.
Silly, huh?
“How is the little guy?”
Mom paused in fixing lunch and set out a teapot with three mugs. “The vet said he had escaped the worst of the lightning strike when Galen called this morning.”
I eased out of the chair, regretting the moment I went into motion, but the tin of brownies was a great motivator.
Bone Is Where the Heart Is Page 3
