We were past the cars now and in the field. Headed away from the collection of buildings that made up New Pritchard and toward the woods. He prodded me along, and when we finally got far enough away from the hospital, he removed his hand from my mouth. The other remained twisted painfully in my hair.
“Scream and I’ll kill you,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I whimpered, hating how scared I sounded. Hating that he could hear it too.
He spoke in a patient tone. “Dove Jarrod got to be pretty famous out there in California, but down here in Alabama, we weren’t fooled. We always known who that bitch was, and Lord, let me tell you, have I ever been waiting a hell of a long time to set things right.”
I tried to keep my voice level. “Just tell me what you want.”
He laughed again and I smelled tobacco. The minty kind people tucked in their bottom lips. “Two things, darlin.’ Just two things. The big Rs. Revenge and recompense.”
He stopped and leaned in close, his face pressed against mine. “I want to know where the Flowing Hair Dollar is. The one your grandmama stole from Coe after she murdered him.”
Even though his grip was tight, I momentarily forgot about it and shook my head in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My grandmother ran away from this place when she was a kid. She went to California where she met my grandfather and started traveling with him. She couldn’t have killed anyone down here or stolen anything.”
He shoved me forward again. “Well, sure. Who’s gonna tell their own kin that they’re a murderer and a thief? But it’s true. The old-timers down here—the people who know the secret stories—they been talking about what your grandmama did since 1934.”
We were heading toward the far line of trees. Far enough away now that nobody would hear me even if I did scream. As we walked, I tried to formulate a plan, but my brain wouldn’t obey. All I could think of was what Danny would do if something happened to me. What Mom would do.
“She didn’t go straight to California,” the man continued in his wheezy hillbilly accent. “She stayed here in Alabama, for several years in fact. Made quite a name for herself here . . . in addition to killing a man and robbing him blind.”
I stumbled a bit but didn’t fall, because he yanked me up by my hair. I cried out and he pushed me onward in the darkness.
“She killed him, she robbed him, and after, she hid his body so everyone thought he wandered off. Then the bitch ran off with Charles Jarrod.”
My mind raced. None of what this man was saying fit the facts, at least the ones I knew. But I couldn’t think of one thing to say in Dove’s defense. It was like I’d gone blank inside.
He pushed me up a knoll, toward a filigreed iron arch. We passed under it, and I saw we were in a cemetery. A very old one. Moonlight spilled through the trees, bathing the ground and the rows and rows of iron crosses in watery silver. Then I saw what looked like a plastic milk crate sitting in the center of the graveyard. Terror rippled through me. I did not want to see what was in that crate.
He still held me by the hair, and pulling my head back, leaned close. His voice was a purr. “Down here, lots of folks fell for her pretty lies. God’s gonna heal you, just put your dollar in the bucket. Repent and follow the will of the Lord and you’ll be saved.” He clucked his tongue. “I say she could’ve prevented a whole heap of suffering if she’d taken a lick of her own advice.”
The man cleared his throat like he’d had his fill of reminiscing.
“But Dove’s dead and gone. And even though none of us can change the past, I believe you, darlin’, can improve my future. Now, if you find yourself in possession of such a valuable item like the coin she took, you basically got two choices. You can either sell it back to the person you stole it from. Or . . .” His minty breath was hot in my ear. “. . . you hide it.”
The man pushed me down to my knees. I landed with a thump, and he grabbed a fresh fistful of my hair and forced my head down toward the milk crate. Holding my breath, I forced myself to open my eyes and look. I was surprised by what I saw. A pile of bones with a dirty-looking skull sitting on top. I was oily with sweat and I needed to breathe. When I did, I could smell the bones—the stench of dank earth, decaying organic matter, and, oddly, motor oil. I felt myself sway to one side; the edges of my vision softened and blurred. I was going to pass out.
But the man held me fast. “Allow me to introduce you to Old Steadfast Coe, may he rest in peace. Dove Jarrod murdered him back in 1934, right in his very own bed, and then she hid the body so nobody could pin it on her.”
I gulped, trying to force down a retch. “These could be anybody’s bones,” I said faintly.
“They could be, but they ain’t. And I got a signed confession too. From Dove herself, admitting to the murder.”
I felt a scream rise up in me. And the overpowering desire to pummel this man with every bit of strength I had. My grandmother may have been a hustler, a showman, and a con, but this man wasn’t talking shell games. He was calling my grandmother a murderer.
Above me, he chuckled, a low, evil sound. “Sorry to break the news to you, darlin’. Sorry to knock that angel off her pedestal. But Dove killed this man right here, Steadfast Coe. And now you got three days to give me the coin she stole or the whole world is going to hear the truth about it. I’ll call you at this time in three days.”
It was Friday. He was giving me the weekend to find something that had been lost for decades.
“Monday at seven-thirty. I’ll call and tell you where to bring it. You understand? If you don’t hand over the coin at that time, I’m gonna take Old Steadfast here to the police and tell the whole wide world that Dove Jarrod was a murderer.”
I started shaking uncontrollably, sweat pouring in rivulets down my back and legs. My vision went spotty, and I tried to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. I’d lost control of the situation, and now, I was losing control of myself.
Still I tried to sound calm. “It’s not true. And people won’t care. Nobody cares what some woman did a hundred years ago.”
He tightened his grip on my hair, burning my scalp. “But your family does, don’t they? And all those rich folks inside that hospital over there. Dove held out on me, and I can respect that. But you’ve got no reason to do the same.”
“Dove? You saw Dove? When?”
“The day she died, the very same day. I guess you didn’t know that. Why would you? Yes. I did see Dove—and then I choked the life right out of her.”
Everything around me went still and black. My body was trembling but not from fear. I was flooded, from my head to my toes, with clean, hot rage.
I took a deep breath and clawed my fingers into the dirt. “You sonofabitch,” I growled. “I’m going t—”
Suddenly my head jerked back then forward, connecting solidly with the ground. There was a root there, and as my mouth filled with grass and dirt, white, hot pain exploded behind my eyes. My body went slack, sliding out of his grip to the ground. I waited for the next blow but heard instead the rattle of the bones and the chuck-chuck-chuck of cowboy boots on dirt. He was running away. The sound diminished into silence, and I rolled myself into a ball, trying to focus. There were no stars visible, just a strange yellow glow muddying the blue.
I felt myself drift.
Murder. A dead man’s bones. A stolen coin . . .
“Hey!” I heard across the field. A woman’s voice. “Come back!”
Then a man’s voice too. “I found her! She’s over here!”
I rolled onto my back, arms flopping out on the ground beside me, and groaned. Two people ran to my side. A woman—Althea, I realized—kneeled beside me, helping me right myself.
“Eve? Oh my God! What happened to you?”
Gingerly, I touched my forehead, then winced at the lightning bolt of pain. “Somebody grabbed me. A man. He hit me . . .”
And then the other voice. Griff. “I think I saw him, but he was too far away.” He paused. “
I was looking for you to set up the Luster shots and . . . Jesus. Eve . . . your face . . .”
Althea fumbled for her phone. “I’m calling 911.”
I put out a hand in protest. “No. Please. I’m fine. Really.”
My head was reeling, fuzzy and sluggish from the pain, but my brain still screamed at me. No police! No police! it warned. And I knew enough to listen. The man had called Dove a murderer and a thief. I couldn’t risk anyone else hearing those accusations.
I had to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible until I could deal with the asshole who’d attacked me. And I was sure as hell going to fucking deal with him. This was why I’d stayed at the foundation. This is what I’d always known was coming.
“No police.” I stood, with some difficulty, and touched my fingers to my forehead. “I just got a knot, I think. I’m fine.”
“What the hell’s going on, Eve?” Griff asked.
“I’m not sure.” I glanced at Althea, her phone already connected to 911. Ignoring her shocked expression, I took it from her and pressed it to my ear. “Hello?” I said in a shaky voice. “So sorry. Misdial. Everybody’s safe here. Everybody’s safe.”
Chapter Eight
Tupelo, Mississippi
1934
Ruth crouched in the dark corner of the cage, sawdust beneath her shoes. She braced herself between two iron bars. The smell of animal urine stung her nostrils and made her eyes water, but she didn’t dare close them. She needed to keep an eye on the shifting shadow in the opposite corner.
She was seventeen years old. Only just a bit taller than she was four years before when she’d run from Pritchard, and barely a brick heavier. She’d never had much in the way of food, and doing the work of two grown men didn’t allow for much meat to accumulate on her bones. Still, she was too big to slip between the bars. And no matter what size she was, she’d be the loser if she had to battle with what lurked on the other side of the cage.
Down in Meridian, the town she’d first come to after her narrow escape from Jimmy Singley and his preacher uncle, she’d fallen in with a gang. They’d nicknamed her Annie, after that radio show Little Orphan Annie. It wasn’t so much that she had no parents—none of the kids did—but more because she fought first, swung hard, and, more often than not, ended squabbles. And her hair was redder than Alabama dirt, that was for damn sure.
The children slept in alleys and barns and sometimes fields with haystacks. The leader, Bug, a giant of a twelve-year-old with a kick of sandy hair right in the center of his forehead and a persistent rash on half his face, liked lording it over the others. But he didn’t much like to fight, and even though he was big, he was doughy. He told Ruth she could be his lieutenant because she kept the others in line.
“Swipe ’em,” he’d say after sauntering past a café and seeing silver candlesticks on a carved oak sideboard through the window. “And the doilies what’s underneath while you’re at it.” Or “Get that Sutton feller to cough up a few coins for the Orphans’ Home, why don’t you?” The Orphans’ Home being another word for Bug’s pockets.
One night, when they were all gathered under a rotted-out dock, Bug suggested a couple of kids waylay a traveling menagerie and steal their lion.
“What you gonna do with a live lion, Bug?” Ruth slurred. She and another girl had nicked a fancy brass cane from the train station and discovered it was filled with moonshine. Ruth had been strutting around with the cane all day like the queen of England, ducking into alleys and tipping back like a fancy chip.
Bug’s head wobbled on his shoulders and he imitated her voice. “Sell it off to another circus man, what do you think?”
Ruth eyed him coolly. He could mock her all he wanted, but he should be careful. She had a suspicion that she didn’t need him half as much as he needed her, and one day she was going to let him know all about it.
“All right,” she said. “Well, I guess I better handle this one on my own. We don’t want nobody getting killed.” A couple of the filthy, bedraggled children gaped at her. Bug nodded his assent.
Of course, Bug was an imbecile, and she hadn’t even considered stealing the gol-dang live lion. What she had done, however, was introduce herself to the owner of the circus and offer to feed and pitch hay for the animals for a dollar a week. After appraising Ruth’s skinny but scrappy body, the man said he’d just lost his number-one fellow to some floozy in Tupelo and if she weren’t afraid of the occasional nip or stomp, he’d be right glad to have someone new.
She left with them that night.
Dr. Asloo’s Wild Menagerie was surely a step up or two from Bug’s gang. That is, until just a few moments before, when she’d lugged in the cat’s water bucket and the door to the iron cage had swung shut, locking her in. It had happened one other time, years before, but she’d just slipped between the bars. Unfortunately, she’d gotten too big, and now she was cornered in this stinking cage, staring down an ill-tempered lion who wasn’t double dosed with Dr. Asloo’s special pine syrup like he was before the shows.
At least he wasn’t pacing anymore. Ruth shot him a baleful look, catching a flash of orange eyes and a hungry snort in return. Well, if this was where she died, so be it. She didn’t have any regrets, and the only two people she ever missed were Dell and the Major. Well, she missed Dell; she worried about the Major.
But she’d made her choice. She couldn’t go back. And, likely as not, the Major was already dead. He’d been as old as dirt when she ran and that had been four years ago. She did wonder if Singley was still there and what had happened to that horrible preacher uncle of his. She’d never forgotten the man’s oily eyes and smile. The way his face lit up in a leering way when she said she’d been done wrong by another man.
Later, oddly enough, she’d found it to be a handy lie, when embellished just the slightest bit. She told one of the other girls that she’d had relations with numerous men, afterward relieving them of what money they carried and a tiny nick of earlobe sliced off with her knife. The girl had backed away in awed deference. It worked with the others too, keeping them at a distance and making her feel safe. The lying didn’t bother her, not at all. What she was—or wasn’t—didn’t matter one whit.
She might still be a virgin, but she was tough as any whore.
The lion roared, jolting her from her thoughts. Braced against the bars, her arms were aching now, thighs trembling from the exertion of holding so still. Trying not to startle the snuffling shadow, she eased herself down to a sitting position, whispering under her breath the only words that came to her fear-addled mind.
“Sittin’ by the roadside on a summer’s day. Talkin’ with my comrades to pass the time away . . .”
A snort and a whine. Scratching in the soiled sawdust.
She felt a trembling set in. A heat settling over her body as the creature neared. She smelled his sour, filthy smell. But the silly song was stuck in her head now, and strangely it made her feel better. She sang again.
“Lyin’ in the shade underneath the trees . . .”
The lion made a sort of mewling noise, an almost mechanical sound that came from deep in his throat. He was closer now. So close she knew she was in trouble.
“Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas . . .”
The lion snuffled and nudged her. Instinctively, she put a hand out, feeling thick fur and wet nose.
And something else. A needle of electricity, like lightning, zapping her body, zinging up and down along her spine. It filled her with a floating sort of peace. Maybe this is what you feel right before you die. If so, she was grateful.
She blinked, then looked into the lion’s orange eyes. “Come on, now,” she said to him. “Step back.”
Instantly, the great cat wheeled around and pressed his bony hindquarters against the bars. Ruth watched him for a long while, completely still, barely breathing. When he didn’t move either—didn’t pounce or tear her to shreds—she let herself lie down on the straw and close her eyes.
Chap
ter Nine
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Present
The Embassy Suites was huge and seemed to be hosting a dozen conferences. I wished I’d tried a little harder to find a charming Southern B&B outside of town. A place out of a William Faulkner novel maybe, wallpapered with cabbage roses and crammed with rickety, peeling, homey furniture. A place where a person who’d just had their face shoved in a pile of dirty bones could melt down in peace.
Althea and Griff had somehow managed to maneuver me and the box of Dove’s belongings that Althea had brought from the Alabama house through the crowded lobby and up to my room. I texted Mom and Danny that I’d suddenly gotten violently sick to my stomach and had had to sneak away from the ceremony. It was a lame excuse, and I wasn’t sure if they were going to fall for it, but it was the only thing my addled brain could come up with in the moment.
Althea had texted her husband, Jay, too, and I didn’t know what she told him, but apparently, he was cool with taking the kids home and letting her stay with me. I felt a little better now that we were up in my room, door chained and bolted, an ice pack pressed against my tender temple. I sat on the bed, Althea and Griff on the narrow sofa. After I made them swear not to call the police, I told them everything.
Althea looked from me to Griff, flabbergasted. “You’re telling me this guy broke into Dove’s house and killed her and nobody knew it? I don’t see how that’s even possible. The authorities said she died of natural causes, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “But he had to be lying. He was just trying to scare me, right?”
Griff dug in his pocket and produced an airplane bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He cracked it open and handed it to me. I took it with my left, sipped, then closed my eyes, letting the warmth spread. I offered it back to him, but he waved me off. “All yours.” He looked royally pissed, but I was too tired and upset to ask why.
“Okay, I’m confused. Why were you outside in the first place?” Althea asked.
Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters Page 5
