Memory of Murder

by Ramona Richards

  Dream. It was a dream. He recalled every moment of the dream, but even digging deep into his memory, Jeff still couldn’t remember the actual events down in the cellar. But the memories were there. The dream told him they were still there.

  He had to remember. Had to. Because the one thing clear in the dream threw everything Lindsey had recalled into question. She’d insisted that her attacker at RuthAnn’s house had blond or red hair. The man who attacked Jeff had dark hair. He was strong, but not the extraordinary strength she’d described.

  Dark hair. Yeah, in my dream.

  He couldn’t mention it yet. After all, he wasn’t exactly reliable right now, mind, body...or heart.

  But what if she was wrong? How would this affect the case?

  Or, maybe worse, what if they were both right? There was not one attacker.

  But two.

  ELEVEN

  The enormous full moon shining through the trees looked as if it belonged in a horror film, an old black-and-white one from the ’40s, with spooky music warning of danger creeping in over the windowsill. Clouds scudded across the gleaming light, caught and tossed by the wind of a coming storm. The maple tree closest to Lindsey’s window still had more than half its scarlet leaves clinging to the branches, and in the daylight looked friendly and inviting. Now, dark and backlit by the moon, the skeletal limbs clawed the air, grasping for invisible prey.

  If only this was a movie.

  Lindsey tensed. A sudden movement at the base of the maple sent a quick spear of fear through her. Then Polly stepped from behind the trunk, continuing on one of her rounds. Lindsey sighed and shook her head, still amazed by how well-trained and obedient the German Shepherd was. On command, the dog would circle the property, just as if she were a military officer standing guard. Lindsey felt a distinct comfort at the thought. She’s probably more reliable than most human security guards.

  Lindsey closed the heavy drapes, shutting out the scene that underscored how she felt—shadowed and filled with looming dread. Weariness filled every inch of her body, and she felt drained. The roller coaster of the past few days had taken its toll, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl under the covers and never emerge.

  The events of the day lingered in her mind. After they’d left the hospital, accompanied by five of Ray’s strongest, most intimidating officers, the sisters had spent several hours closing the restaurant, securing the nonperishables and giving away any food that would spoil after a few days. Lindsey tried not to think about the money she was losing, repeatedly asking God if this was the right direction.

  Silence. She felt nothing, no sense of peace...but no discomfort, either. When she’d shut off the gas to the restaurant stove, Lindsey had paused, looking around at the dark wood and stainless steel of her dream. That was when she knew for certain this was the right thing to do. Closing the restaurant would allow them to focus on the case. Still, even knowing it was the right thing to do, Lindsey couldn’t shake the feeling of finality, as if she were bidding the building some sort of final farewell.

  Their next stop, the little house she rented from Max, hadn’t required as much time or emotion. Once more Lindsey mentally went through the rooms, taking inventory to see if she’d forgotten anything she needed or wanted. Nothing came to mind then or now as she eased into bed, plumping the pillows in the high four-poster bed and snuggling in for her nightly routine.

  She looked around the room, again grateful to April and Daniel for opening their home to her. This bed, the entire room, was more elegant and expensive than any Lindsey had ever slept in. While she knew it had passed to her sister from Aunt Suke, Lindsey couldn’t help thinking how far they had all come from the days when they lived in fear of their father, watching their mother make filling meals from the meager cash he would sometimes bring home.

  They’d had their trials, but God, in His time, had been good to all of them.

  Lindsey reached for her grandmother’s Bible. She handled it carefully, making sure none of the plethora of items stuck between the pages slipped free. The Bible bulged with an assortment of photos, letters, quotations, sermon excerpts, notes on Bible lessons, postcards, even a slip of fabric that someone had told her was a man’s collar, from back in the days when shirt collars were sold separately. Just as the diary was a glimpse into her mother’s life, the Bible opened Lindsey’s grandmother to her. At one time, in her teens, Lindsey had gone through the Bible, examining each article, but she hadn’t looked at most of them in years. To her they were as much a part of the Bible as the thin pages and silk ribbon markers.

  She knew which passage she needed tonight—the same one she’d relied on so often in the past, Psalm 91. As she read, however, one verse stood out: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.”

  Lindsey put her hand flat on the page and closed her eyes. “Lord, I know You will take care of us. You always have. I thought it was hard to trust You with my dreams. I never realized how much harder it is to trust You with my fears. Please forgive my doubts and strengthen my faith.”

  Lindsey sat still for a while, just trying to open her mind and heart to God, to listen. Still...nothing. No insight. No sense of peace. But no disquiet, either. Just...evenness.

  The clock at the base of the stairs chimed 11:15 p.m. Polly, now back inside, moved through the house, her nails clicking rhythmically on the wooden floors. Soft male and female voices echoed down the hall, perhaps April and Daniel...or a television. Aunt Suke laughed, perhaps at something she read. In the distance, a faint rumbling of thunder, foretelling the arrival of one of the autumn storms that regularly shook the central Tennessee area. Outside the wind picked up, the leaves rustling with a quiet fury.

  The sounds of a normal life.

  Lindsey’s eyes opened wide as her chest tightened with a sudden desire for this to continue. Normalcy. A home, family around her, a place of safety and love. It had never been part of her life, never been part of her dreams. She’d never thought it possible.

  “Is this what You want for me?” she whispered. “What You wanted me to see?”

  The craving did not ease, and Lindsey finally nodded. She closed the Bible and reached to return it to the bedside table. As she did, an envelope slid from within its pages and landed on the floor softly. Lindsey frowned, got out of bed and retrieved it. She recognized it immediately, a letter her mother had written to her grandmother not long before she died, although she didn’t remember much about the contents other than the nature of it that was so unlike the short, sensible daily entries of the woman who wrote the diary. Lindsey had found it hard to read, and only had done so once. Now, some of the words stood out, and a deep cold settled over her, chilling her to the bone, and tears slid down her cheeks.

  Dearest Mama,

  Things are worse than usual here, and you are right. My mind is not what it was. I still can’t seem to remember much, even after all these months, keeping straight the details that I need to raise my girls. I feel like a complete simpleton most days. Perhaps he is right about that.

  He is not the same as he was before the incident, either. I’d like to think he’s sorry he hurt me so bad that time, but that’s just foolish. He’s never cared about that, though he’s not hit me as much since someone whacked him around. Still withdrawn, and more silent. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was afraid of something. Maybe whoever beat him up?

  I don’t know, but he’s been even worse since they found that woman’s body. Bones, really. She’s been missing more than a year. He throws something at the TV and storms out every time it’s on the news.

  You probably saw it on the news. Karen something. She’s from the neighborhood, a few streets over. Shame. I hear she was a sweet girl. They’re still looking for her killer.

  I’m writing to ask if you’ll take July, if something happens to m
e. He’s threatened to throw them all out on the streets. I know June and April will be all right. They’re gone most of the time already, staying away from him. But July, she won’t have a place. So young, I don’t want her on the streets. Let me know.

  Love,

  Evie

  Lindsey leaned heavily against the bed, then slid to the floor, hugging herself and drawing her knees up. Heavy sobs broke through as the words bounced around in her mind.

  Karen something. From the neighborhood. A sweet girl.

  “Who beat up your father?”

  “Karen’s husband.”

  They’re still looking for her killer.

  “Dear Lord, help me. What in the world did I see? What happened to Karen?”

  Inhaling deep, gulping breaths, Lindsey forced herself to her feet. “I have to see Jeff.” She twisted around, confused. “No, not see. Call.” She spun around again, looking for her cell phone.

  Thunder boomed, and Lindsey jumped, crying out, turning toward the window. Lightning flashed around the edges of the drapes, like a camera flash in another room. Lindsey started again, her heart racing. Then the rain began, splashing hard against the window.

  Shaking, Lindsey went to the window and pushed back the drapes again. Darkness reigned now, the moon sequestered behind the rolling thunderheads. A lone dusk-to-dawn light in the yard did what it could to pierce through the murky rain, and floodlights under the eaves spotlighted round areas of glistening grass.

  It was raining that day, too.

  Lindsey gasped, her hand covering her mouth. She didn’t know where that thought came from, but she knew all too well what day her memory spoke of.

  The day her mother found her cowering in the garage. She’d been wet. Soaked.

  “I need to talk to Jeff.” She turned away from the window, crossed the room and snatched her cell phone up off the bedside table. Then she stopped, staring at it. No. He’s in the hospital. Medicated.

  Lindsey looked around the room as if searching for something. “I need to...” She wanted desperately to act on this information. No way she could sleep. “I need to get on the internet.”

  Her computer remained packed deep in one of her boxes, but she didn’t have access in the bedroom anyway. Grabbing her robe and sliding her feet into her slippers, she opened the door and headed downstairs. Daniel and April kept a home office in a butler’s pantry off the kitchen. As security conscious as Daniel was, it was probably password-protected, but she had to try. At least she could find some paper and do some brainstorming.

  Finding her way using the night-lights, she padded downstairs, down the wide hallway from the foyer to the kitchen, and into their office. Snapping on a desk lamp, she sat down and booted up the computer. Sure enough, it asked for a password.

  Could she guess? She didn’t have June’s savvy way with computers, but desperation was the mother of all kinds of invention. She thought about her sister, then typed in jamandjellies.

  Beep. No access.

  Lindsey scowled in frustration. Surely it was more than a random series of letters. Most people picked a password they could remember, something close to them.

  pollysuke. Beep. No access.

  “Try Evelyn May.”

  Lindsey yelped and spun around in the chair. Aunt Suke stood behind her, a mischievous grin on her face. Polly pressed against Suke’s leg, looking somber.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake anyone up.”

  Aunt Suke’s long gray hair trembled as she chuckled. “You didn’t. Old people don’t sleep like you young folks. I’m up several times a night. Sometimes I go right back to sleep. Other nights it takes some warm milk or cocoa to send me back to bed. With all this thunder booming overhead, I knew it would be a cocoa night. Maybe a late-night movie.” She nodded at the computer. “Try it.”

  Lindsey hesitated. “That’s my mother’s name.”

  “And your niece’s. In a few months.”

  Lindsey stared at the older woman as the words sunk in. Hard. Her mouth gaped. “April’s pregnant?”

  Aunt Suke put her finger to her lips. “Shh. They haven’t told anyone. Don’t want anyone to know yet. So you don’t know it, either.”

  Guilt clenched Lindsey as she thought about the mornings April hadn’t felt well. The oversize T-shirts. Other signs. They were all there, but in her determination to keep the Coffee-Time Café going, Lindsey had not noticed them. “She should have told me. She’s worked so hard for me.”

  “Hush, girl. She’s your sister. None of it put the baby in danger. She wouldn’t have done that. But we all willingly sacrifice for the ones we love.”

  The words sank in. Had she ever willingly sacrificed for someone she loved? Ever?

  No.

  Aunt Suke pointed at the computer again. “Try it. Daniel changes the password the first of every month, but I think that’s this month’s.”

  Lindsey turned back and typed in evelynmay. A pause, then the computer completed its start-up cycle. She almost cheered, and turned to find Aunt Suke dragging another chair into the office. She pulled it up to the desk and sat down.

  “Excellent. It worked. So let’s see what you needed so badly you couldn’t sleep.” She peered expectantly at the computer, then at Lindsey, who knew the surprise showed on her face. “It’s a night of shared secrets, my dear.”

  She was right, and Lindsey recognized it. Even though they barely knew each other, Aunt Suke treated her as if she were family. And maybe they were.

  Lindsey opened a web browser. “I need to find out if it was raining the day Karen disappeared.”

  “Well, you could have just asked me that.”

  Lindsey turned to face Aunt Suke again. “You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Sure. Karen Lawson. It was big news around here for a few months. They showed her picture on the news every other night.”

  “How come no one I asked had ever heard of her?”

  “Well, honey, that was, what, fifteen, twenty years ago? Y’all were all just kids. It wasn’t like a shuttle explosion or something national that everyone would know about. And scores of women have disappeared over the years. They stay on the news a few weeks, then they’re replaced by the next one. But if you want to know local news from twenty years ago, you ask old people like me.”

  “So what happened?”

  Aunt Suke frowned a few moments. “Now you’ll want to confirm with what you find on the net, but near as I remember it, Karen Lawson picked her kids up from school every day and dropped them at her mother’s. She worked second shift as a nurse. Her husband was some big-shot attorney who was never home.

  “One day, Karen doesn’t show. Grandma gets worried and calls the police. The kids were at different schools, and the police find out she picked up the youngest but not the high schoolers. Sometime between the two pickups, she and the little girl vanished. They found her van at the airport, thought she was probably a runaway wife. Husband took the two older kids and disappeared into Mexico. About nine months later, a jogger found Karen’s bones.” Aunt Suke’s mouth twisted. “Her daughter’s, too.”

  “Did they suspect her husband?”

  Aunt Suke shrugged. “No idea. If I remember, they couldn’t prove anything. No witnesses. No evidence. Nothing.”

  “But it was raining the day she vanished?”

  “Buckets. I remember because there’s this memorable shot of the police department spokesman trying to talk to the reporters. He had a floppy hat on, and it was pouring so hard, it kept folding the brim down in his eyes. Stuck out because it was a funny image in the midst of a serious subject. Behind him some of the police were coming in and out of the house, all bundled up against the rain. The husband complained later that all they’d done that day was ruin his carpeting. He sued them for the damages.”
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  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Lots of stupidity going on about that one.” Aunt Suke took a deep breath and absently stroked Polly’s head. “Anyway, you’ll want to confirm it, but that gives you something to go on.” She paused. “Why did you want to know if it was raining that day?”

  Lindsey licked her lips. “Because, Aunt Suke, I think buried somewhere deep in this thick head of mine are memories of that day. I think I saw what happened to Karen Lawson.”

  TWELVE

  “You have to walk around, Mr. Gage.”

  This morning’s nurse, all five-feet nothing of her, was a no-nonsense Hispanic woman who made Jeff think she could run the hospital all by her lonesome, thank you very much. Her orders had been firm but gentle, even if Jeff knew exactly what she meant. Stop being lazy and get yourself up out of that bed.

  “Shoes. I need shoes.”

  With clipped movements, she pulled his shoes from the closet and set them on the floor beside the bed. “You show no other signs of brain injury. Your vitals are good. So if you can walk unassisted, the doctor said he would discharge you. I have to watch you.”

  Jeff stuffed his feet into his shoes without untying them and stood up, feeling like an idiot in his hospital gown and street shoes. “How far do I have to go?”

  She checked the saline bag that had dripped fluids and painkillers into his system overnight, then unsnapped his IV tube. “To the door and back. That should be enough to judge your balance.”

  Jeff did the task, sat down on the bed, then looked up at her. “Okay?”

  “I’ll call it in. Once approval is received, I’ll send someone to remove the IV from your arm. Sit tight.”