There, lay it on thick. My poor momma is dead and you must help me. If Kay Pugh Rees had an ounce of Corbin Meadow style compassion she ought to race over there to help out. This was, after all, about family and she might be able to help. As far as Zoe remembered, Kay was a nice enough woman. She’d probably fall for that.
“I’ll definitely tell Charlene,” Donna said. Zoe could almost feel Donna’s fingers start to itch with the desire to punch in Charlene’s number.
“That would be great,” Zoe said. “I wish my dad would get home. He went out to his usual day haunts and I bet he stayed at the coffee shop longer than he expected, but after what I thought I saw in the yard, I’m kind of scared.”
That was probably just asking for the whole town to know that she was scared, Zoe thought. Did she want to be remembered as the scared woman? Of course, being scared covered a multitude of sins and if, as she started acclimating to Corbin Meadow again, she failed to be nice enough and they thought she was a bitch, someone would remind others that “Bless her heart, she was just so scared around that time,” and all would be forgiven.
Donna chatted on about a few things and how the boys were disappointed that the school hadn’t closed even though they were getting hit by a hurricane. It might only be a sideswipe, well out of the cone, as everyone called it, but it was exciting for kids when they were young. It was kind of exciting, Zoe thought, even when you weren’t so young. It was only not exciting when you were certain your backyard was out to kill you. There were probably not a lot of people with that problem.
Finally, she and Donna hung up with a final promise on Donna’s part to talk to her sister. Zoe hoped that she’d been successful in relating her fears and that Donna would do what she had always done and embellish those fears when she talked to Charlene. Hopefully, then Charlene would take those fears and relate them to Kay and fairly quickly.
Zoe looked at the clock. It was nearing three. She could expect to hear something probably by eight that night. The downside to her plan was that likely the town would hear she was scared and soon enough her father would rush home and go searching the yard with his rifle.
Zoe didn’t expect him to find anything. What she’d seen wasn’t something you could shoot, but it was possible some other good neighbor might be checking the place out and then one or both of them could get hurt. It was a problem that wasn’t completely unique to the rural South but it wasn’t something Zoe had ever had to worry about in her condominium complex back in Portland. Heck, she didn’t even have a backyard out there.
Unfortunately, Tyler lived there, too, not that Portland was such a small city that she couldn’t lose him. It was just that part of their problem was that Zoe didn’t really want to stay there as much as she loved it. Nor, she realized, was she certain she wanted to stay in Corbin Meadow. She felt like she had a job to do at home and after that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.
Zoe flopped back on the sofa, hugging a blue and black pillow she didn’t quite recognize, wondering when her father had gotten it or how, and sighed.
Chapter 22: Before
Dixie was carrying low, which everyone said meant she was having a girl, or maybe a boy, but definitely one or the other. While she was young and not particularly knowledgeable about biology, Dixie figured she could have guessed that herself. Based on what she’d heard from Emrys, she was thinking this was her daughter.
“Emrys,” she whispered into the early morning air. Lorne had left for work. Dixie was home alone, drinking some tea that didn’t have caffeine and which she hated. She was still tired, but then she’d felt tired for the last six months, practically since the little egg had embedded itself in her womb. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever feel energetic again.
This garden was smaller, with a low fence around the back to keep in a small dog, which they hadn’t gotten around to adopting and wouldn’t until well after the baby was born. Lorne was superstitious and didn’t want to get a dog for the baby, not before the baby was born. He practically crossed himself every time he said the word “baby” though he’d never been in a Catholic Church and thought Catholics were rather pagan in their beliefs, not that there were any of them in Corbin Meadow. If there were, they kept that to themselves going quietly down Highway 321 to Hickory and the church there.
But though the garden was smaller with only one crepe myrtle and several low bushes, Dixie felt at home there. She’d planted rosemary and lavender in a small garden behind the garage so that when she came out onto the patio there was something pretty for her to look rather than the neighbor’s washing hanging on the circular clothesline that they had on that side of the yard.
Maybe someday Lorne would build her a trellis so she could have a climbing rose bush or something else that flowered and was pretty over there rather than the looking into the yard. Behind her, the neighbors had some sort of maple tree with pointed leaves in pale green that quickly turned yellow at the first sign of an insult, whether it was the weather getting too hot or too cold or having less than perfect care. Dixie did not want such a fussy plant in her yard, but she was perfectly fine with enjoying the tree that someone else had to work for.
She sat on a cushioned swing with the cover angled to keep the sun off of her in the late afternoon. Fortunately the sun wasn’t at an angle to shine directly in her eyes while she rocked, the squeak of the swing sounding each time she changed direction. The sounds of a lawn mower a few houses down reached her, and she wondered who was mowing their lawn on a week day. Probably someone with a teenager.
Dixie liked her home, nestled on the corner of one of the mountain roads so that she only had neighbors on one side. It suited her and Lorne, their home sitting between the rural mountain homes and the compact town homes, a compromise between the two worlds, just like her life with Lorne.
The air was filled with pollen that made everything feel as if she was smelling through cotton which kept all the scents to a minimum. The baby would come in high summer when she was sweating her worst. She was already warmer than normal. Even her mother had suggested she’d been foolish for allowing herself to become pregnant with a due date in high summer.
“Emrys?” Dixie called quietly, again. It was harder to relax in this yard. It seemed harder for Emrys to come, particularly since she was pregnant.
“Yes, Child of the Blood who holds another Child of the Blood,” Emrys said, always formal. He looked paler in this place as if being nearly in the town of Corbin Meadow further from the trees and surrounded by humans made him less than his full self.
“I want you to protect my children,” Dixie said.
“Of course. They are of the Blood. That is my duty,” Emrys said.
“You said my mother protected me. But I saw you. I know about you. I’ve been frustrated all my life thinking you could do things for me when you can’t. I wish that my children won’t have that frustration. I don’t want you to approach them.”
Emrys sucked in a breath. For the first time Dixie saw how sharp and long and white his teeth were, teeth that were for rending and tearing flesh, not teeth for grinding plants. Even the front teeth were pointed and jagged and marred, slightly by something of a different color.
“I wish that of you,” Dixie pressed before he could speak.
“If you wish it of me, I will grant it,” Emrys said slowly.
“I do.” Dixie forced her entire will into the words, practically spitting them out, feeling the spit from her mouth land on her hand.
“It is a dangerous wish,” Emrys said.
“I will accept any danger so long as it protects my children from the kind of disappointment I’ve had to live with.”
“There are worse things than disappointment,” Emrys said carefully.
“I am aware of that, but I doubt you can prevent the other sorts of pain. I can at least control this.”
“There are dangers only I can protect them from.”
“Do you protect everyone in Corbin Meadow from those
dangers?” Dixie asked.
Emrys hesitated.
“If you do, then my children will still be protected unless everyone can see you and talk to you, but you say that’s not true. If you don’t, then other children live here without danger, so mine will, too.” Dixie opened her eyes, pushing herself up from the swing.
She didn’t want to see Emrys. She felt her stomach cramp. She was far too early for it to be a contraction she thought.
The cramp got larger, spreading throughout her whole body. She felt a pain like a knife cutting through her middle, slicing her in two, as she sank down on to her knees, knowing she needed to get to a phone, right away, and call someone to help her.
“Momma,” Dixie whispered as she felt something flood between her legs, knowing without looking that she was now sitting in a puddle of blood and that the pain was going to get far, far worse before it got better.
What had she done?
Chapter 23
When Taran got home, the rain was mostly a fine mist with a few sprinkles splattering the pavement and keeping the running streams from dying back. He had stopped at the grocery store, his uniform still damp from running in and out of the rain earlier in the day, his mind still fogged from trying to figure out what had happened at Zoe’s. In the office, he’d sat under the slight breeze the air conditioner gave off until he smelled like cigarette smoke that must have lodged in the old machine and was pumped back out on days when the old thing had to work the hardest.
Now he had a fried chicken breast, some coleslaw, lightly sweet and tangy, and a Dr. Pepper, which, he knew, probably wasn’t good for him, but he figured it was a heck of a lot better than having a beer. Because if he had a beer after a day like today he wasn’t going to stop at one, probably not at the six pack he had in the fridge, and then he’d be out driving, probably near to killing someone. And how would that look if the chief of police had to sit in the drunk tank and possibly be tried for felony drunk driving?
No. Dr. Pepper it was.
Taran tore into the chicken breast, which was juicy or greasy or both, and the liquid ran down his chin, not too hot because the warmers in the grocery weren’t all that warm, and Taran had come in late when the deli area was winding down and closing up.
Dolly Jean had given him a lot of gossip about the Masons and the Hyers. Jodie had always been a good girl, according to her, but always a bit pushy, bless her heart.
“Pushy how? Could she have made someone mad?” Taran had asked.
He’d sat in her cramped little sitting room which she said was for guests, a room in the back of the building that was probably the size of his bathroom with shelves of books that held more dust than his entire house, poor housekeeper that he was, and four wingback chairs which had probably been made around the time his grandfather was born and never touched since. There were books scattered on the floor around the edge of the walls, too, and the curtains on the lone window out to the side of the house were threadbare, though they’d once been blue, how bright, Taran wasn’t able to say.
The bulb in the lamp that Dolly Jean had turned on when she led him back there through a narrow hallway that ran beside the room the historical society was in, was probably twenty-five watts at most, and in the gloom, she might have been a ghost. Even her voice was soft and scratchy and hard to hear.
He had heard the voice of his hallucination better than he could hear her.
“Oh, I doubt anyone would ever be mad at Jodi, would they?” Dolly Jean said. “She was a nice girl. She just had ideas, you know?”
“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t,” Taran said.
“I forget sometimes how you young people are.” Dolly Jean had leaned back, defeated. “When Jodie grew up, it wasn’t as common for girls to think about boys like that, you know?”
Taran tried to smile and nod, not certain he wanted to have this conversation with Dolly Jean.
“But Jodie watched all that television and got her ideas from there, though I suspect if she’d been raised right, she wouldn’t have.”
Taran nodded, encouraging.
“And then she had ideas about the town, had even talked about running for mayor at one point. If she hadn’t been killed before that, I’d expect she’d’ve been killed for that if she’d managed to win, not that she would have, given she’d have had to run against Hank and everyone loves him.”
Taran smiled at her. He wasn’t sure about that. Hank got his share of complaints and a guy named Russ Martinez, one of the workers who had arrived in Corbin Meadow thanks to Jack Lyle, had done quite well in the last election, surprising everyone. A home-town woman like Jodie Mason-Hyer would have been a force to be reckoned with. Taran made a note about that. Could Mayor Siemens have had a hand in the deaths?
“Anyway, you know. In my day, women didn’t do those things. They knew their place. We ran the homes and kept the families and the histories.” Dolly Jean trailed off, looking at the wall that sat between them and her little historical society. Dolly Jean had never married, never found a man that she wanted to marry, she said, although there had been gossip that she’d been jilted by a boy who went off to Raleigh. All that would be left for her, not having the education to run the library, or clearly not having the organizational skills, she’d started the historical society, keeping the history of Corbin Meadow.
“Tell me about Jodie’s parents,” Taran pressed.
Dolly Jean thought. “They were like most parents, I guess. I mean, they could have raised her to be a bit more ladylike, bless their hearts, but they were ordinary folks. I think her father was a furniture maker.”
It gelled with what Taran had learned. “And Ed?”
“Ed was a star. He was the boy everyone loved. I’m not sure how it was he ended up with Jodie. And to have only one child. That must have broken his heart.”
“Why?” Taran asked. Not that he thought Ed had anything to do with the murders but now he was curious.
“Well, because don’t all men want a boy to follow in their footsteps? A boy to throw the football around with and to carry on the name?” Dolly Jean looked at him sharply.
“I guess,” Taran said slowly.
“I heard that your Kay might have information on this,” Dolly Jean said slyly, now with her head turned as if she didn’t dare look him straight on and meet his eyes and have to share where she’d heard that so quickly.
“Maybe,” Taran said noncommittally.
Dolly Jean nodded with feeling as if she’d just ferreted out a well-kept secret. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to see her, won’t you? You were always a nice young man and she was so flightly. Of course, what else could she be with her mother the way she was, bless her heart?”
Taran knew the town tended to think of Dixie Pugh, Kay’s mother, as a little bit crazy. A few sandwiches short of a full picnic, as they’d say. She just wasn’t quite right. And she certainly hadn’t been raised right, even now, they said that, although who knew anyone who had raised Dixie was probably dead and buried.
“You do know about the lost child, don’t you?” Dolly Jean asked, leaning forward.
“What child?” Taran asked.
“Kay didn’t tell you? Perhaps she didn’t even know herself, poor dear. Before she was born, her mother lost a child, a boy. The doctors weren’t certain Dixie’d ever have another child after that, but Dixie was always certain she’d have a girl, had the name Kay picked out long before she was even pregnant, although I’m not that thrilled with the name. And lo and behold, two years later, in spite of the doctors, she had a girl.”
It was interesting, Taran thought. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“Of course, she was always going up to her momma’s house to visit. Her daddy would have been there, I suppose, but during those times it’s momma that girl goes to. You wouldn’t know, being a man.”
Taran waited, not quite trusting himself not to put his foot in it, being, as she said, a man.
“Anyway, rumor always had it that although Momma
Fulton was a church-going woman, she wasn’t particularly god-fearing and had some doings with things that no one ought to speak of.” Dolly Jean sighed, as if the very idea made her pause. “And everyone wondered if perhaps she hadn’t worked some spell on her daughter to be sure Dixie got what she wanted.”
Taran had no idea how this was helpful. Maybe he’d been wrong to go to Dolly Jean. He wanted gossip, but he wanted gossip that might have pointed him in a direction of why someone would want Jodie Mason-Hyer and her daughter dead.
“I’m not sure how that’s helpful,” Taran said. “I had a talk with Zoe Mason-Hyer Parker earlier today because she thought she saw something in her backyard. I’m concerned that whoever is doing the killing is now after her.”
Dolly Jean drew back, eyebrows raised as if that was the most shocking thing she’d ever witnessed. “Really?”
Taran nodded, hoping he was doing the right thing.
“That child hasn’t been here more than a month, staying with her daddy, getting tongues wagging about that husband of hers out there in the wilderness and how they must live, but I can’t imagine someone wanting to kill her. She’s just a child.”
Taran waited wondering if Dolly Jean would say more.
“No one ought to push towns to be something they aren’t, Chief Rees. Particularly not women. I don’t think the universe likes that.”
And with that Dolly Jean had sat back, waiting for more questions. Nothing else she’d said had had any merit, unless you liked particularly salacious gossip and innuendo. Taran needed neither.
Dolly Jean had talked about the universe, not god. He wondered if she was aware of the things he’d seen, if those things sometimes made themselves known to others, or if she’d just heard things, particularly about Dixie Fulton Pugh, Kay’s mother, and started making up her own stories.
Souls Lost (Appalachian Souls Book 1) Page 9
