Those Who Mourn: A Wolf Creek Mystery (Wolf Creek Mysteries Book 1)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  “Good Lord!”

  Jon nodded. “Considering what happened before, we figure Harry was the target and Marian just an unfortunate chance victim.” He hesitated. “I haven’t told him yet about Marian. Figured it might be better coming from you.”

  “She was such an old friend, almost like a sister to him and an aunt to me.”

  Jon nodded. “We were all fond of Marian and Paul.”

  “What happened to Paul? I’ve been afraid to ask.”

  “Died of a heart attack last summer. He’d been having problems so it wasn’t exactly a surprise, but Marian took it hard. Your granddad was a big help to her.”

  David closed his eyes, remembering Paul Ellers, a cheerful, round little man about two inches shorter than his attractive wife. He and Grandpa had often reminisced about their boyhood adventures together and he’d counted on the Ellers to be with his grandfather when he’d been away.

  Aching in every damaged joint, especially in the knee joints which had been replaced after the explosion in Iraq, he moved like the rusted Tin Man of Wizard of Oz fame, calling back. “I’d better go talk to him before he hears the bad news from somebody else.” He didn’t believe he’d ever dreaded any task more than having to tell Grandpa that his friend was no longer among the living.

  Chapter Eight

  Susan felt a certain satisfaction as she watched June Allie’s grim face tighten into even more unpleasant lines as she groped among the local history books for the small volume she would never find because it had been torn to bits and thrown in the trash.

  She couldn’t think that she’d saved a life, not considering that even here in this small library there were certain to be many other sources of information on poisons. But what she’d done, in a way, was to tell Mrs. June that somebody was on to her. She couldn’t know that the somebody was neither visible or able to speak against her. But maybe she would be just worried enough to stop her efforts to kill David’s grandfather.

  She went over to stand at the woman’s side as she continued to search, following her as she went across the library to the nonfiction section where she looked through the area where the booklet had most likely been shelved. No doubt she was hoping the misplaced book had been discovered by the librarian or her assistant and put back where it belonged.

  ‘You won’t find it there,’ she found some comfort in her own words even though nobody else could hear them.

  “Can I help you find something, June?” Mrs. Kaye had come up so quietly that even Susan hadn’t heard her approach.

  “No, no, only browsing,” June said, uncommonly flustered. A woman of stoic character, it must have seemed strange to the librarian to see her so disconcerted. But Susan understood, she had been caught looking for the guilty evidence. “Nobody’s business what I choose to read.”

  Without further word, she bustled out into the open area past the shelves and swinging her legs long with indignation, left the building.

  “What is it Beatrix?” the assistant came in response to the abrupt departure. “Something wrong?”

  Mrs. Kaye sighed. “Such an unpleasant woman. She seems to go out of her way to be rude. Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside her head.”

  “Things must be upsetting over at Harry’s house. First his stroke, and now Marian dying so suddenly.”

  “She died?” Mrs. Kaye’s sweet face took on a look of distress. “Oh, no.”

  “I just heard. My sister called.”

  Mrs. Kaye closed her eyes and seemed to speak a little prayer. “The Johnson house has just become a place of tragedy lately. Poor David to come home to such a welcoming.”

  The assistant nodded. “Life’s not fair sometimes. Such a deserving young man to have gone through so much. They say he’s permanently disabled.”

  Mrs. Kaye frowned in disapproval. “No need to waste time feeling sorry for David Johnson. I’ve known him since he was orphaned as a little boy. He’s a man of strong character. He’ll pull through and amaze everybody who’s counting him out.”

  The assistant disagreed, “A person can only stand so much. Even the bravest can be battered down.”

  Susan listened with horror, having learned more in one minute of eavesdropping than she’d wished to know. The man who had attracted her by his looks and manner had borne a heavy load. She must do what she could to make sure nobody took his grandfather away from him ahead of time.

  If anyone knew what it was like to suffer loss, it was her. It took a minute for her to take in that thought. Nothing bad had happened to her in her years in the library. It couldn’t. She had what she thought of as friends, but nobody to love. And she didn’t have a flesh and blood body to be harmed.

  She was safe and somehow that was what she wanted more than anything. She never wanted to risk terrible pain again. To care was to risk. To walk out into the world would be to return to life as a hostage to fortune once more.

  Mama always said . . . For just a moment the word ‘mama’ almost meant something to her and she caught a glimpse of a kind soft face and loving eyes.

  And then it was gone. She shook the memory away as though it was a threat to be ignored.

  “We found no rat poison or anything of the kind at Marian’s house,” Jon told him as they sat at a table in the back of the Coffee House. The front tables were busy with mid-morning breakers, but here in the back they had enough privacy to talk quietly without being overheard. “In fact, her daughter said she never used anything of the kind because she was afraid of accidentally killing her little dog.”

  Jill, the Ellers only child, lived in another state with her husband and three children. The whole family had come immediately at the news of her mother’s death and Jill had fallen into Grandpa’s arms before turning to hug David. “Oh, David,” she said. “It’s so awful.”

  Jill Ellers, though a few years older than himself, had been the closest he’d had to a sibling. Now her pain felt like his pain and he looked past her to her kind-faced husband and stunned looking kids and was glad that she had them.

  They were staying at Marian’s house down the street from Grandpa’s while they waited for necessary process before they could bury her mother.

  David took a sip from his cup, the really excellent coffee tasting bitter in his mouth.

  “I can’t help but be glad I didn’t lose Grandpa, but I feel guilty every time I look at Jill. It’s as though I traded her mother for my grandfather.”

  “Can’t think that way. Life doesn’t give us those choices. Thank God.” Jon’s voice was solemn, his face filled with grief. David doubted that his friend ever took the losses he saw in his line of work for granted, but this one was worse than usual. Along with his brother, he’d grown up with the Ellers and Johnsons. They were much like family.

  He sighed. “Dave, we’ll need you to come in and make a statement.”

  David nodded, not surprised. After all they were assuming this last attempt had been directed at his grandfather. And who else would have motive to try to kill Harrison Johnson but the man who would inherit his considerable fortune.

  David told himself he should have known better. When he returned from the police station, he found Grandpa shaking with anger. “You could have told me the truth. The whole truth!”

  Knowing he was guilty, no matter what the charge, Dave sat down heavily, pretty sure he could guess what was coming. “About what?” he evaded.

  “About Marian. About how she really died.” A couple of tears ran from the old man’s eyes. “She didn’t have a heart attack. She was poisoned. Somebody killed her.”

  “That’s not entirely definite. More tests have to be done. Besides, who saw fit to pass on that information?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Harry snapped. “Do you have so little respect for me, David, that you can’t be honest with me? It’s not like I’ve never faced hard things before.”

  “Gramps, you’re in your eighties and you’ve just been very sick.”

  His eyes flashed anger. “
Sure I was sick. Maybe somebody tried to kill me too.”

  David found himself struck dumb.

  The anger faded as Grandpa stared at him. “That’s it,” he crowed triumphantly. Then his elation also faded as he obviously remembered what David had told him before. “Somebody tried to kill me?”

  “We talked about that possibility,” David said weakly. “Though they were different poisons. You were given an overdose of heart medicine and hers was a rat poison of some sort.” He winced at his own words, painful as they were. But maybe at least Grandpa would take due warning and be more careful.

  “But I don’t take heart medicine.” Grandpa pounded his check. “My heart’s sound as a bell.”

  “That’s why Jon’s been asking you all those questions. He’s trying to find out how you and Marian ingested something . . .” David tried to think of the right word, “questionable.”

  Grandpa considered. “Seem more likely if we were given the same thing. You know, some crazy person deciding to rid the world of anybody over sixty or something like that. Wait a minute, lots of people ate here. Anybody else get sick?”

  David drew in a deep breath. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “So somebody was just after me and Marian?”

  Well, maybe honesty was the best policy. “The police think they were after you and just got Marian by mistake.”

  “That’s nonsense. Who would want to kill me?”

  “Apparently, as your heir, I’m the number one suspect.”

  Grandpa stared at him, than leaned back in his chair to indulge in long and loud laughter.

  Without asking permission, David left Grandpa in the house, instructing him to not answer the doorbell, stopped by June’s apartment to instruct her that while his grandfather was recovering, he would be doing the cooking and cleaning and her help wouldn’t be needed.

  She stood in the doorway, regarding him malevolently. “Now that’ll be a real mess.”

  “Nevertheless, both of us need our privacy.”

  “Well, we’ll just see what the police chief says about that. I reckon he might not think you’re the best person to see to Harry.”

  David raised his eyebrows in polite disdain. “Tell Jon if he has any question about it, he can get back to me.”

  Calling from his cell phone, David got in contact with a local locksmith and arranged to have the locks changed immediately. He was sure not only June Allie, but anybody else in town who cared to was used to having access to the house. Grandpa had always made it public knowledge that he kept a key under the rosebush beside the porch.

  Then, just for a quiet place to get away, he went to the library.

  She was aware the minute he walked in. Since she knew what had happened she expected to see him looking more sick than ever, but somehow his face seemed set in determined lines and his eyes were sharp and penetrating. She hadn’t the experience to know that look, but an older, wiser woman could have told her it was that of a man preparing for battle.

  Without willing it so, she found herself drifting toward him and she was barely aware that others in the library were noticing him as well. Staring for half a minute, these turned quickly away as though something about his presence embarrassed them.

  Didn’t make any sense to her. He’d almost lost his grandfather, poor man, and his friend had died. And he had to know that people were whispering that both attempts had been deliberate. Of course there were only a few people in the library at this time of day and maybe none of them knew him well. Mrs. Kaye and Molly were both busy at their separate jobs.

  He glanced around as though he didn’t quite know where he was, then went over to browse through the new selections of books, selected a presidential biography and, instead of checking it out, went over to find a chair in a remote corner and began to read.

  So he did read actual books now and then, she thought with a certain feeling of triumph. The e-reader didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight.

  Seating herself across from him, she tried to pretend they were sitting in companionable silence, content to be in each other’s company. If she had dared she would have picked up one of the magazines on the nearby table, but she could hardly expose him to the sight of Oklahoma Today floating in midair.

  This was pleasant, she decided, the way it used to be when she came here with . . .oops. . . she couldn’t remember who had brought her here, who had sat across from her back then. She couldn’t, wouldn’t remember.

  She forced herself to focus on the man across from her.

  He sat there, lost in thought, staring straight at her, but not seeing her at all. Over the years she’d gotten used to the fact that nobody saw her, but this was different. She wanted to be seen. She needed to talk to him and ask him why he’d seemed so sad even before he’d heard about his grandfather and his friend.

  What it had it been like to fight over in that war that caused him to be so injured? She knew little of battle except what she’d read in books, but it seemed to her people were always fighting. She shivered at the thought and was glad she was not flesh and blood and such had no place in her life.

  And then it seemed another memory slipped past her and she stood in a crowd, mostly made up of young women, and they sang to the boys on the train, who answered them in responsive melody. “’Til you’re mine again,” she sang and the tune seemed a familiar one.

  She looked into a dear face, smiled with tears in her eyes at the blond boy with a strand of hair across his forehead and intense hazel eyes. A beloved face. And somehow she knew he would come back to her.

  Gil, she thought. His name was Gil. And then she blinked and the image faded from her mind. Gil and Gertrude, those had been their names. She had been Gertrude back then.

  It was the first real memory she could remember ever having had. And it frightened her.

  Things were coming unraveled.

  Chapter Nine

  When David got up to leave again, placing the book he’d borrowed back on the display shelf, he felt oddly refreshed. Even though he’d not said a word, nor been spoken to be another soul, he felt as though he’d spent time in the comforting presence of a friend.

  He went back home to Grandpa and was able to engage in reasonable conversation with the older man while he prepared a supper of bacon and eggs—Grandpa always said he liked breakfast for supper—and they sat down to eat together.

  Even though he’d long ago left all that behind, he bowed his head reverently while Grandpa said grace as he always had, and then sampled the scrambled eggs.

  David spread homemade blackberry jelly on his biscuits, hoping neither were products of June Allie’s hands. Somehow he just couldn’t like or trust the eccentric woman and, as for her family, they gave him cold shivers.

  “Whatever made you hire June to work for you?”

  “Oh, it was a couple of years ago. A cold winter and I’d been sick, flu or something like. Heck said I needed to get somebody in to see I ate proper and keep up the house. I figured as long as it wasn’t a live-in I could stand it.”

  “But June!” David protested.

  Grandpa gave that crackly laugh that distinguished him. “She’s not so bad, son. Just had a hard time growing up and it turned her a little sour in attitude.”

  “A heart of gold underneath, I presume,” David responded cynically.

  “Well, silver anyway.” Grandpa still smiled. “She needed work and I needed help and she was glad to get the garage apartment to live in.”

  “And piled in with her whole family.”

  Grandpa’s blue eyes twinkled. “That came kind of gradually.”

  The home health care nurse came just then and David was happy to see that she was a kindly appearing woman in her middle years and like most of the townspeople familiar to his grandfather.

  “Good to see you, Lara,” he said. “But I’m capable of looking after myself.”

  “Of course you are, Harry,” she agreed as she set about taking his blood pressure. Since she obvio
usly knew what she was doing, David decided this would be a good time to raid the kitchen to see what he could put together for dinner.

  He stopped in the doorway when he saw the housekeeper standing staring into the refrigerator. He waited until she emerged, a container of milk in her hands. “David,” she said. “Good idea to change the locks, but you forgot to give me a key.”

  He had no answer for the charge. He hadn’t meant for her to have a key. She was one of the people the change of locks was meant to keep out and until he was sure his grandfather was safe, he wouldn’t change that policy. “How did you get in?”

  “Oh, I came in through one of the basement windows. Those are never locked.”

  He would see to that right away.

  It wasn’t until she and the nurse were both out of the house that he went downstairs to take care of that task. He was not cheered to find company in the basement as well. June Allie’s granddaughter was down there, throwing darts at the dartboard Grandpa had put up for him long ago.

  In firm but polite tones, he urged her to go back out the window through which she’d entered, ignoring her whispered swearing and thinking that back when he was a kid young girls didn’t talk like that.

  Then he grinned, glancing around at the play room that had been the exclusive territory of his crowd in years past and thought that maybe he was getting old when he thought about the good old days.

  He could barely restrain a sigh as he looked at the old television where they’d watched adventure flicks, he and his friends, and noticed the spot on the wall splashed with colors from a long ago paintball fight. They’d had such fun and he wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or not that Grandpa hadn’t changed a thing over the years.

  It didn’t help his melancholy feelings when, during their simple meal of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Grandpa talked about those days when they’d lived so happily together, often entertaining a houseful of teens. But when Grandpa fussed over all the elegant desserts that had been tossed out in the wake of the poisoning scare, he promised to stop by the local bakery in the morning.