The news reports all talked about the location being in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest along the Nooksack River but I was going to need more of a starting point than that so Ebba promised to email me the exact location.
I realized she must be somewhat relieved that the body of Ron was found but she wouldn’t be so reassured if she knew that Ron had been murdered himself and maybe wasn’t the person who killed Ava.
Later that evening I was having popcorn and cola for dinner while watching a sitcom when my phone chimed with a reminder of an appointment tomorrow with my psychiatrist. I cringed. My appointments were down to once a month now but that still meant a drive all the way to downtown Seattle. The monthly appointments usually meant Wookie and I would spend the night at Garrett’s. He would get our favorite pizza—sweet fennel sausage, roasted peppers and provolone from Serious Pie—we’d cuddle on the couch to watch a movie afterward and sometimes make love right there in the living room. Honestly, it was the one ritual that made therapy worth it.
I debated only a few seconds before picking up my phone and emailing my psychiatrist that I needed to cancel. Almost immediately my phone rang in my hand. It was her and I knew that if I didn’t answer she would keep trying until I finally did.
“Hi, Doc.”
“Why are you cancelling?”
She’d plucked me from the brink of crazy last year with many hours of therapy and strong medication. If she had her way I’d still be seeing her weekly instead of monthly. I’d like to know how a wound was ever supposed to scar over if you kept peeling away the scab.
“It’s job related. I have to drive two and a half hours north of here tomorrow for a job. You’re an hour south from home. It puts a cramp in my day.”
“The next day then?”
I pursed my lips and tried to think of a good excuse besides I don’t wanna.
“Fine.”
“How are you at this moment?”
It was a loaded question. Did I tell her about finding a body today, running into Katie, or kick off a verbal interrogation by saying I’d discovered my mother could be alive. “Fine. I’m fine. Really.”
Might as well make her earn her two hundred dollars an hour at our next session.
We set up the time and I texted Garrett to let him know about the change. He was a scheduler. The second he got my message he’d be on his phone calendar rearranging things. He replied immediately saying he loved our time together today and was really hoping for tomorrow to spend the night together. Then he added he was happy to see me the next night and ended his text with a heart emoji. I knew he was somewhat disappointed in the delay and he’d probably already been fluffing Wookie’s doggie bed in his apartment. The thought made me smile and then wince because sometimes I didn’t know why I ever moved out.
“Moving out and buying your own place must have made you feel empowered?” Dr. Chen asked.
“Was it empowering or just another way to run away?” I mumbled, answering the voice in my head.
Abruptly I pushed those thoughts aside and sat down to make a plan to find Ava’s remains. As promised, Ebba had emailed the location of the camp and I used a map and satellite images online to check the area where all that blood had been found. It was as good a place as any to start but, let’s face it, even though that was probably where she died, if her body was nearby the cops or the numerous frequent search parties would have found it. I was guessing that Ron, or whoever the killer was, just stuffed her body into the trunk of his car and drove her somewhere else to be dumped. Ava could be anywhere in the seventy thousand square miles that made up Washington State, or even the whole country.
I was tired. It had been a long, emotionally charged day. I climbed into bed, set the alarm on my phone for the ridiculous time of six a.m., then pinched my eyes shut and hoped for a dreamless sleep.
“What do you dream about?” Dr. Chen asked.
Bodies.
Gramps.
Grandma.
Drowning myself with bottle after bottle of wine.
“Nothing. I don’t dream.”
My body relaxed into the cool sheets and I positioned myself perfectly so that the light blanket exposed my feet but covered the rest of me, and the table fan on my dresser blew, as I liked it, across my body but not in my face. Then my phone chimed.
“Shit.”
I’d neglected to turn off my phone notifications. Normally I turned off sounds for everything except texts from Garrett when I went to sleep so that email messages from people searching for bones wouldn’t wake me up. I couldn’t resist checking the message. It was a rambling email from Abel saying how he couldn’t sleep and was stuck on one of the Candy Crush levels and so he’d been thinking about me and his grandson, Wes, and did I know that Wes actually grew up in my old home town and that he was single.
I know you two didn’t hit it off right away, but I didn’t get on with his grandmother at first either.
He ended the email asking me to call him to talk about it if I had the time or inclination. I didn’t have either so I turned off the sounds on my phone.
When the alarm on my phone went off hours later it felt like I’d just closed my eyes. Wookie had crawled into bed next to me in the night and managed to take over the entire bed. I found myself clinging so close to the edge of the mattress that I nearly tumbled onto the floor trying to reach my phone to shut off the alarm.
“You have your own bed.” I gave the dog’s solid body a shove. “When we lived in our trailer you wouldn’t have dreamed of sleeping in my bed. All this fancy living is making you soft.”
He stretched then jumped off the bed as I got to my feet, and came over and licked my bare feet in apology.
“You are not forgiven.” He licked me some more. “Thanks for the bath but I’m still going to need a shower.”
I filled his bowls with water and kibble and let him out to pee while I scrolled through my phone. That’s when I realized that it was almost nine and not six.
“Damn. Damn!”
I’d screwed up in setting the time and now I was hours behind in my day. Once Wookie was back inside I hustled into the shower. While I stood under the spray and washed the sleep from my eyes and Wookie’s slobber from my ankles I debated bringing the dog with me. He enjoyed car rides and would love the chance to romp in the forest once we got to the state park.
I’d just started toweling off when Wookie went insane in the front room. It was his someone-is-at-the-door bark followed by his just-say-the-word-and-I-will-chew-their-face-off snarl.
Tightening my bathrobe around my waist, I made my way to the living room. Someone was knocking at my front door. In the year I’d been here, I don’t recall ever using that door. The side door into the kitchen was the one I used. I peered out the picture window and saw a young woman with shoulder-length lime-green hair and wearing cutoff denim shorts and a zebra-striped tank top. She had a couple grocery bags in one hand and more at her feet, and every time Wookie barked she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Can I help you?” I shouted through the door.
“Um. Grocery delivery!” she shouted back.
“I didn’t order any groceries.”
“Some guy called Frank’s Foods in town and asked us to make a delivery. He put it on his card and everything.”
Wookie was growling so much that his spittle was spraying the door as he threatened to gnaw his way through it.
“Hush!” I put a hand on Wookie’s head and, like a belligerent toddler, he still woofed except now it was quiet like he was muttering under his breath.
“Look,” the girl called, “I don’t need you to sign or anything so how about I just leave them here.”
I watched through the window as she put the bags down on the front stoop and began walking back to a small Hyundai that was the same bright green as her hair.
“Well, shit.”
After a split second debate I took off after her, pinching the top of my robe and wincing as my bare feet landed on every sharp pebble in the driveway. I reached her just as she was opening her car door.
“Sorry,” I said breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I really didn’t order any groceries.”
“Yeah, like I said—” she started.
“Some guy ordered them,” I finished.
“Yeah his name was Barry or Gary or—” She scrunched up her face.
“Garrett?”
“Yeah. Garrett.”
I blew out an exasperated breath and she smiled.
“That your dad? Is he making sure you eat right or somethin’?” She tucked her hair behind her ears, exposing the oddest double rings over the first and second joint on a number of her fingers.
“Definitely not my dad but sometimes he acts like it.” I smiled and then shifted my weight awkwardly from one foot to the next. “So how does this work? Do I give you a tip or something?”
“I’m not sure on account of we don’t do delivery, like ever.” She shrugged. “Guess your Garrett guy talked Frank into it and next thing I know I’m driving out here.”
“He can be convincing.”
“I guess.”
We stared at each other a second.
“Well, I think I’m supposed to give you something for your trouble,” I said. “Come inside and I’ll grab my purse.”
She looked at the house, where Wookie had resumed his overprotective attack mode of machine gun barking.
“Don’t worry. He’s all bark.”
“I’m good.”
“You don’t like dogs.”
“Not even a bit,” she admitted.
“Wait here then.”
I jogged back to the house, carried in the bagged groceries and then spent a couple minutes tracking down my purse. I was Googling the proper tip amount for grocery delivery while I walked back to her car but I couldn’t figure it out so I just handed her a ten.
“Wow. That’s too much.” But her multi-ringed fingers snagged the bill and it disappeared into the front pocket of her cutoff shorts.
“I appreciate you going out of your way especially since you don’t usually do deliveries,” I said.
She nodded, climbed behind the wheel of her car and started it up, or at least tried to start the vehicle. The car wouldn’t turn over. She popped the hood and we both stared at the motor.
“Goddammothertruckershitwaffle car.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe you just need a boost. I’ve got cables around here somewhere.”
We attempted to give the car a jump with my Jeep but that wouldn’t take either. I wanted to get on the road but I couldn’t exactly leave her stranded in my driveway. She tried calling her boss to come get her but his number went straight to voice mail.
“With me out here there’s nobody working the front till,” she said, running ringed fingers through green hair. “So he won’t be answering the phone ’cuz it’s in the back.”
“Well, I was just going to get dressed and head out the door myself. How about I drive you back to the store and you can send someone to tow your car?”
“That would be great.” She glanced up at Wookie barking through the window. “I’ll wait right here.”
It didn’t take me long to dress and put the groceries away. My fridge wouldn’t know what to do with all the fresh produce, milk and cheese—and my cupboards had never held so many kinds of soup with varieties I’d never heard of and labels that boasted organic this and healthy that. It was a really nice thing for him to do but it annoyed the hell out of me too.
Soon I was out the door and hauling my green-haired passenger into town.
“I’m Tracey Cook,” she announced after riding a couple minutes in silence.
“Nice to meet you, Tracey Cook.” I smiled at her briefly before returning my eyes to the road. “I’m Julie Hall.”
“Oh I know who you are.”
“You do?”
“Everyone does.”
“Everyone as in...?”
“As in everyone in town. Which isn’t a lot, of course, but I think we topped four thousand last year.”
“You’re saying everybody in town knows me? How?”
“Oh, sure. You probably hadn’t even moved in when everyone in town knew your business. You’re the girl from up in Blaine that used her inheritance to buy a house here after things went to shit in a hailstorm and—” She looked at me. “Sorry ’bout that.” Then she continued, “Also, you find dead people so there aren’t too many people like that around.”
“Am I the local freak?”
She just blinked at me.
“You know, the local attraction. Come one, come all to see witchy girl with her dowsing rods.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Maybe I need to up my game. Throw a neon sign on the front yard and learn to read palms.” I giggled at the idea.
“You can’t blame people because they’re going to talk ’bout stuff like someone new. Plus, you finding ol’ Corny Dooley made someone money too so—”
“Wait. What? Finding that old man made someone money?” I gave her my what-the-living-hell look.
“Sure.” She shrugged. “People were betting how long it would be before you used your sticks to find a body while living ’round these parts. Of course ol’ Abel couldn’t bet on account of he hired you to find the graves at the church.”
“People have been betting. On me.” I shook my head slowly. I guess just because I’d been avoiding spending time in town and getting to know my neighbors didn’t mean that they didn’t already know about me. Life in a small town made me want to pack up again and move back in with Garrett in his high-rise condo in downtown Seattle where people only nodded hello to each other if they had to ride up the same elevator.
“Don’t get twisted about it,” Tracey said. “It is what it is.”
I hated that saying.
We pulled up to the only grocery store in town and I waited for her to get out.
“You know, you should tell that Gary guy that the Fred Meyer one town over delivers and they have a bigger selection and better prices.”
“I don’t think he’ll be doing this on a regular basis.”
“Okay. Whatever.” She climbed out of the Jeep and then dug out a pen and paper from her purse and scribbled something on it. “We have a stitch and bitch meeting every Thursday night at seven o’clock.” She handed me a piece of paper with her name and number on it. “We take turns hosting. It’s my turn next. Send me a text for the address if you wanna come.”
“What’s a stitch and bitch?”
“We knit, gossip and just drink a lot of herbal tea.”
“I don’t knit.”
She shrugged. “Some do and some don’t and some drink wine instead of tea.”
With that she closed the car door and walked into the small grocery store. As I pulled away from the curb my head was swimming.
Once I’d had a moment to digest all that I’d heard from Ms. Tracey Cook the green-haired grocery clerk, I used the voice-activated Bluetooth feature in my Jeep to dial Garrett’s phone number. When it went to voice mail I left a message.
“Did you know that the people in this town know a-a-l-l-l about me and were actually placing bets on when I’d find a body? And now, thanks to you, I have an invitation to something called a stitch and bitch? Oh and thanks for the groceries.” I waited a beat. “Don’t do that again.”
I disconnected the call and began to play one of my audio self-help books through the speakers. The narrator’s voice was surprisingly upbeat as she informed me about the physical benefits of relieving PTSD through yoga and meditation.
I hit the highway and turned up
the volume of the book as the narrator talked about forgiveness. Dr. Chen loved to give me tidbits about that.
“You don’t have to forgive the people who hurt you in order to make peace with your past.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t want to make peace with my past. I wanted to incinerate it.
After heading north an hour, I took exit 236 to get onto Route 9. I stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank, use the washroom and grab a Coke and a candy bar. I still had almost ninety minutes of driving to go. Back in my Jeep I took a moment to scroll through my phone. Ebba Johansson had emailed to ask when I was going to the site, but hadn’t yet sent my deposit. If she didn’t send it by end of day, I’d have to send her a reminder.
For the remainder of the drive I switched audible books to one that was motivational. I’d probably listened to dozens of these books over the years. They all had that cheerleader Rah-rah-rah go-o-o team! feel to them but they were like my crack.
It should’ve been peaceful taking the forest-lined Mount Baker Highway into the North Cascades National Park, but I had a love-hate relationship with the woods. People died in the forest and those who wanted to kill you could easily dump you there. Taking up hiking to find the beauty in nature helped but it didn’t steal away that unease in my gut. I figured I was only a few miles away from the campground now so I plugged the address into the navigation system so I wouldn’t miss my turn.
As it was, even with the annoying lady’s voice telling me to turn right I nearly blew right by the faded wood sign that indicated the turnoff toward the campground. The trees were so tightly knit they caused the smaller drive to be camouflaged in shades of evergreen.
The road was loose, rutted gravel that split into a fork after a mile but the navigation system gave no indication of left or right. I stopped the Jeep and stared down each of the roads as far as I could and was rewarded by a small directional arrow pointing right for the camping area. A quarter mile down, the road sharply cornered right and I had to two-foot the brake or I would’ve slammed into the back of a news van.
“What the hell?”
A Grave Search Page 7
