Sunshine Walkingstick Omnibus

by Celia Roman

  That was somewhat before I come to live with ‘em. Mama hardly ever talked about it. She never was much one for Lily, ‘though her and Ferd got on well enough.

  Now Riley? He was a puzzler. His eyes stayed on the road sure enough, but his right hand wandered over to my thigh about the time we hit pavement and stayed there nigh on the whole drive.

  Me, I spent my time trying not to think a’tall, and by the time Riley eased the SUV to a stop behind a parked police car, I’d succeeded pretty well.

  We exited into the night bisected by the strobing blue and red lights thrown from a dozen vehicles squatting at the bottom of the cemetery, some police, some first responders. An ambulance was parked off to the side on the frost coated grass. Its headlights was on and the engine rumbled, but the top lights was dark as the night.

  Most of the activity was centered about halfway up the hill in the place where the oldest graves mingled with newer ones. Officially, the cemetery was known as the Old Kilby Cemetery. Over time, other folks asked permission to use the hallowed ground and more’n Kilbys was buried there, until the whole site reached a good hundred graves or more and no space remained for new burials.

  Kids loved to come up here and hang out on the weekends. The cemetery was far enough off Persimmon Road for privacy’s sake, but not so far it felt isolated. There was rumors here of ghosts and haints, ‘specially ‘round the graves of them what died in a tragic manner. But mostly, it was a place to escape the ever-growing scrutiny of parents and neighbors and government busybodies.

  Ever body needed to hide away ever once in a while. Being a young’un didn’t keep that from being true.

  Soon as we rounded the hood of his SUV, Riley latched onto my hand and guided me careful like up the hill toward the clumps of officials gathered there. Trey tagged along behind us, quiet as a church mouse, and maybe that was good. Maybe me seeing Lily and Ferd first would keep some of the heartache off of him.

  A man dressed in a deputy’s uniform of brown polyester pants under a matching brown jacket parted from the crowd and faced us.

  Soon as we got close, Riley said, “Hey, Todd. You remember Sunny and Trey.”

  Deputy Franks tucked his thumbs into the thick police belt wrapped around his waist and nodded. “Sorry for your loss.”

  I near about laughed. The words was sincere enough. That weren’t it. But what loss? Lily and Ferd hadn’t been a part of our lives since we was young’uns. I knowed it was gonna hit Trey and Gentry hard, losing their mama all over again, but for crying out loud. Lily abandoned ‘em when they was little saplings and never once looked back.

  “Thank you,” Trey said, gruff like. “Can we see ‘em?”

  “Not supposed to.” Todd lifted his hat off and resettled it onto his head over close-shorn locks, then glanced over his shoulder. “Crime scene and all.”

  “Was they killed here?” I asked.

  Todd’s mouth thinned. “You know I can’t say. It’s an on-going investigation.”

  “Well, what can you say?”

  “Unofficially?” He shrugged. “Single wound to the chest. No blood spattered or pooled anywhere that we can find.”

  It being pitch black outside, that weren’t unusual. Likely wouldn’t be able to tell for hours yet whether or where the blood was.

  “They were found in an…” He sighed and scrubbed a cold-reddened hand over his mouth, and his eyes flashed from me to Trey and back again. “It’s unusual.”

  “How so?” Riley asked.

  “Not supposed to say,” Todd said. He backed away a coupla steps and motioned us to follow. “Come see for yourself. Just stay on this side of the tape, ok?”

  We followed him up the hill, threading between monuments to the dead and the dying, and stopped just shy of the yellow crime scene tape stretched between poles circling two tall, marble obelisks. Lily and Ferd was tied to one each with thick ropes around their chests, waists, and feet. Their arms was behind their backs, like their hands was tied together around the stones, and their heads lolled forward. In the strobing light, red rimmed holes no more’n an inch or two across marred the perfect lines of their nekkid torsos.

  My breath evaporated, and in its place lingered a dark, fetid odor. Moss-coated stone, a rich, loamy earth, and the stench of unwashed skin hidden too long in the night.

  I bent over double and retched onto the ground, gagging over the bile coating my throat. Nothing come up or out ‘cept that, and when I was done, when the unknown odor was expelled from my sinuses and crisp, clean air stung my lungs, I turned my back on my aunt and uncle, and stumbled away from the concerned men attempting to comfort me.

  Chapter Three

  I huddled in the car for a good half hour waiting for Riley and Trey to suss out the deputies and make what they could of the scene. Seeing the way the bodies was laid out and the almost surgical holes piercing their chests, that was enough for me.

  Seemed almost ritualistic, the way they was tied up, like a makeshift imitation of the Christ child’s crucifixion. I could figure out the names on the chosen tombstones later and work around police restrictions on information sharing, too. Tom Arrowood might be able to help us there.

  Speaking of.

  I fished out my cellphone, thumbed through the contacts, and dialed his office. His voice mail picked up on the third ring. I waited through it patient as I could, then left a brief message. His secretary’d get it Monday morning. Couldn’t do nothing before daybreak nohow and it the weekend.

  My gaze was drawn again and again to the scene up the hill. I tucked my phone away and stuck my hands between my thighs, scant protection against the bitter cold seeping into the SUV. Lily and Ferd been gone over a decade and a half, if memory served correct, and I was pretty sure it did. They left the county after Fame caught ‘em in bed together. No idea where they settled once they skeedaddled. Coulda been close by, coulda been a far piece, but wherever they went, wouldn’t they’ve wanted to be outta Fame’s easy reach?

  In which case, what’d brung ‘em back to this area, practically in Fame’s back yard?

  I was gonna have to quiz Fame. Weren’t no way around it. He’d probably kept track of his ex-wife and brother’s whereabouts. He was just cautious like that. Keep your enemies close and all that, and Fame was right savvy when it come to keeping tabs on them what set themselves against him.

  Riley broke off from the group and jogged down the hill. His breath frosted in the air with ever thump of his feet against the frostbit ground. By the time he got in the Range Rover, his cheeks was as red as the emergency lights slicing through the night.

  He slammed the door shut and fumbled with the ignition, and finally got the engine cranked. “You shouldn’t be sitting in the cold.”

  I shrugged. Couldn’t tell him I didn’t rightly feel comfortable messing with his stuff, now could I? “I was ok.”

  “Trey’s almost finished.” Riley cupped his hands around his mouth and blew into ‘em. “Still in shock.”

  “Ain’t we all,” I murmured.

  “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “You got not a blessed thing to do with it.”

  “I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he amended.

  I glanced at him, eyebrows arched high on my forehead. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

  He huffed out a soft laugh and rubbed his palms together, and I finally relented and took ‘em between mine. His fingers was stiff and frigid, too cold for good health.

  “Shoulda brought gloves,” I chided, gentle as I could.

  “I wasn’t thinking about winter accessories when I left the house.”

  No, I reckon none of us was.

  Trey accepted a man pat on his shoulders from a couple of the deputies, then turned and ambled down the hill. His expression was fixed, his posture rigid. Not once did he look back.

  Soon as he got in the car, he said, “Let’s go.”

  Riley glanced into the rearview mirror. “Home?”

  I twisted ‘round and
stretched a hand back to my cousin. Our eyes met, his the wild blue of his daddy’s, mine the bitter chocolate I was born with, and understanding arced between us.

  “Waffle House,” I said.

  Riley shifted the Range Rover into reverse and executed a k-turn, and we left the gruesome scene on Cemetery Hill behind.

  I called Missy on the way to the Waffle House and got orders for her and Gentry. Seemed he reverted to a child-like state sometime after I called to warn Fame, which shouldn’ta come as no surprise to me or anybody else. Gentry’s mind was fragile at best. Hearing his mama was dead, after him never really knowing her, musta done some deep damage.

  We opted to order at the counter and carry the food home. It’d be cold by the time we arrived, but what the hey. None of us was gonna sleep again that night, or not sleep well if we managed to drift off in the first place. The shock was too fresh, the horror of Lily and Ferd’s deaths too new for any other reaction.

  And Fame getting hauled off before a proper investigation was done hadn’t helped a whit.

  Plus, by unspoken consent, none of us wanted to face questions, well-intentioned or not. We’d face that soon enough. For now, it was better to stay outta the public eye ‘til the storm of gossip hit and we couldn’t avoid it no more.

  On the way home, I held a plastic bag of boxed entrees on my lap, letting the heat seep through the Styrofoam into my legs. Trey was a statue in the backseat. He hadn’t spoken but once since we left Cemetery Hill, and then only to order a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich with a side of fries.

  I shoulda said something. We was raised together, me and him, and not too far apart in age. Him and Gentry was the next best things to brothers I had. I shoulda been able to muster sympathy or kind words, something to strengthen him or lighten the burden falling on his broad shoulders.

  But there I sat, hollow as a drum, unable to aid one of my closest kin.

  Missy was waiting for us when we bumped up the driveway, parked, and spilled outta the Range Rover into the security lights blazing around Fame’s trailer. She held the door open for us still dressed in a terrycloth bathrobe. Her mouth was pinched into a thin line and her hair was piled on top of her head, more normal than the floating locks she sported earlier, but her eyes was still dark, still somehow menacing and vengeful.

  We trudged inside one after t’other. Trey sat down by Gentry and laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Hey, little brother. Look what we brung you.”

  Gentry turned innocent eyes on the greasy cheeseburger ensconced in Styrofoam Trey held out for him. “Is it got ketchup?”

  Gentry’s voice was high and soft, tentative. My heart about broke on hearing it. I tugged Riley’s jacket sleeve. “C’mon. We’ll take the table.”

  Missy sat down with us, her eyes on Trey and Gentry. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, firm. “Tell me.”

  So I did, relaying ever detail I could recall from the way Lily and Ferd was tied up to the oddly sterile holes in their nude chests, piercing right through their hearts to their spines, looked like.

  When I was done, Missy dropped her hands into her lap. “Fame isn’t to blame here.”

  I kept my voice even around the temper sparked by her words. “I never said he was.”

  “Others will believe him guilty.” Her eyes drifted to Riley sitting quietly beside me, then flicked away. “What can we do?”

  “We already done it. I called the lawyer and left a message for him. We had a look-see at the scene.” I shrugged and picked up a soggy french fry. “Not much else to do in the here and now.”

  Silence drifted over the three of us against the backdrop of Trey coaxing Gentry to eat and the fire hissing and popping in the woodstove warming the trailer. I forced myself to pick up the burger I ordered and eat it ‘til I couldn’t hold no more, just to keep my hands occupied.

  Lord knowed they needed occupying. The urge to shake Lily Carson from the dead and wring her useless goose neck was a strong fire burning in my innards. Was her cheatin’ ways what caused this mess, her and that no good traitor Ferd. If ever there was two what deserved to go to the devil, it was them.

  Riley polished off his steak sandwich and scrubbed a napkin over his grease-stained hands, then settled a no nonsense look on me I was beginning to recognize. “Time to get some rest, Sunshine.”

  Missy leaned across the table and rested her hand on mine. “Go on, darling. We’ll be fine tonight.”

  What protest could I offer? I scraped my chair back and stood mute whilst Riley cleaned up our trash. Finally, I said, “Call if you need me, Missy. You hear?”

  “I hear,” she said, and in a flash, we rounded the table and fell into each other’s arms, and tears popped into my eyes for the second time that night. “Hold on, Sunny. You just hold on.”

  “You, too,” I croaked out, then Riley’s hands cupped my shoulders and he led me outta my family’s heart into the cold, black night.

  Riley carted me home in his Range Rover and followed me into the trailer with a canvas duffle slung over one shoulder. I shivered in my jacket and hurried to bump up the heat. Dang ol’ furnace. Had to baby it or the ancient machinery refused to work proper like, and I forgot to reset it to a normal temperature before I left to give it time to warm the trailer whilst I was gone.

  But that’s what happened when a family’s freedom was on the line. They come first. Ever thing else fell by the wayside.

  Riley shrugged off his ski jacket and draped it over the back of the couch beside his duffle. His fingers went to work on the buttons of his flannel shirt, and my eyes went about as round as saucers.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  He left off fiddling with the buttons and yanked his shirt tails outta his jeans. “Getting ready for bed.”

  I knuckled my forehead over the beginnings of a headache. “C’mon, Riley. I ain’t in the mood for your tomfoolery.”

  “No tomfoolery.” He shrugged off his shirt and draped it over his jacket, and tugged the hem of his undershirt down over the waistband of his worn jeans. “You don’t need to be alone tonight.”

  Uh-oh. I knowed that tone. It was his we’re gonna do things my way voice, and for once, I just didn’t have the strength to argue. I pivoted on a booted foot, not easy on shag carpeting, and marched into my bedroom without another word. He knowed his way from living room to bedroom. He wanted to be in one or t’other, weren’t no never mind to me.

  If a little thrill of heat flickered to life in my nethers, it was easy to ignore. I was bone weary, the throb in my noggin was growing by leaps and bounds, and worry over Fame gnawed away at whatever of me was left over. Weren’t no room for the physical in amongst that lot.

  I slipped into the bathroom and took care of the necessities, and when I walked back out, Riley was sitting on the end of my bed unlacing his boots. Dark shadows marred his sun kissed face and wrinkles bracketed his mouth what shouldn’ta been there. He glanced up and them hazel eyes of his was hard and flat, like the thin line of his mouth.

  “Your turn,” I said, and put my back to him.

  Let him find his own way about.

  His boots thudded onto the floor, then his swishing footsteps passed me by. The bathroom door shut behind him, and I scrubbed my hands over my face. Lordy, it was gonna be a long night.

  I was tucked snug as a bug in a rug into bed by the time Riley finished in the bathroom. My eyes was squeezed shut, but that didn’t stop me none from knowing when he flicked off the overhead light, nor when he padded across the bedroom and slipped under the covers, let alone when he curled his big oak of a body around me and kissed the side of my throat like we done this ever night.

  Sure, we’d slept together a time or two, but it’d only ever been sleep, and usually, them nights me or him one was sick or otherwise too tired to tango.

  And we was heading right quick toward the time when the horizontal tango was more’n a slim possibility.

  His sigh feathered over my nape through my stick stra
ight hair and he relaxed beside me. “Night, baby.”

  “Goodnight,” I said.

  Heat seeped into me, shared from his skin to mine, and gradually, his breathing eased into sleep. I lay stiff as a board under the heavy hand draped over my hip, scarce drawing air into my lungs. Thoughts whirred in my head, like an offbeat engine skipping outta time. Death, imprisonment, family, sex, ‘round and ‘round the images went, spinning into a confused hurricane of fear and dread.

  It was too much for one woman to hold. My mind rebelled and clicked off, and I followed Riley into Morpheus’s uneasy grip.

  Chapter Four

  A warm, calloused palm slid across my thigh and hard hips pressed into my bottom.

  “Sunny,” Riley said, his voice sleep-rough and sexy as sin. “God, baby. You feel so good.”

  I snuggled into him, too groggy to resist. Didn’t want to nohow. Hadn’t ever wanted to, but he was a Treadwell and I was a Carson—

  My eyes popped open and I went stiff as a board as reason popped into my daft noggin.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  He laughed, low and husky, and his hand slipped into the willing place between my thighs. “What does it feel like I’m doing?”

  “About to draw back a nub,” I retorted.

  I blinked gritty eyes against the thin dawn streaming into the room through gaps in the curtains and did my best to ignore the sensual heat stirring under the skilled caress of his fingers. My heart skipped a beat, then hit double time, and I bit my tongue against a curse. Dang his sorry hide, and dang mine, too. I been too long without, and unless he cheated on me these past few months, so had he.