Hard Truth

by Mariah Stewart

“Sorry, miss, you can’t-Hey, Lorna, that you? Lorna Stiles?” The police officer walking toward her car removed his sunglasses as he drew near.

  “Brad Walker, a cop?” She grinned. “I’d heard the rumors, but of course I didn’t believe them.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s sort of the family business.”

  “Your dad still chief of police?”

  “Still chief.” He nodded and leaned into the car window. “How you doing, Lori?”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone outside the family has called me that,” she told him.

  “Seems like a long time since you’ve been back.” He patted her on the arm. “Hey, I was sorry to hear about your mom. She was a real nice lady.”

  “Thanks, Brad. I appreciate that.”

  “Guess you’re home to settle up things?”

  She nodded and tried to be subtle about the fact that she was trying to look over and behind him.

  “Oh, you’re wondering what’s going on back there?” He turned in the direction of the field.

  “Well, yeah. I saw the cruisers out by the field, then the ambulance. But when I saw the medical examiner fly past, I got really concerned. This being our old property and all.” She took a sip of the coffee. Still too hot. She put it back in the cup holder. “Please tell me that no one’s been killed.”

  “No, no-well, not recently, anyway. The guy operating the backhoe found a bunch of bones, and he-”

  “Bones? Out here?” She frowned. “Human bones?”

  He nodded confidently. “Yeah. I saw them myself. They’re definitely human. They’ve been there awhile, though. The clothes are just about disintegrated.”

  “How could bones…?” Lorna was still frowning. “There’s a family burial plot on the farm, but that’s way over on the other side, I doubt the bones could be from there.”

  She pointed to the opposite end of the field. “And it has a fence around it. As far as I know, no one’s ever been buried outside the fence.”

  “No telling how old they are just by looking at them, but the medical examiner is going to take the bones back to the morgue and he’ll look them over.”

  “But you took pictures, right? Before the bones were taken out of the ground?”

  Before she could prod further, he said, “Oh, wait. Let me guess. You’re a graduate of the CSI School of Forensics. And here I thought you were still an accountant.”

  She colored slightly. “Ouch. I deserved that. And you’re right. I watch entirely too much TV. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.” He turned back to the field, where someone from the county was trying to slip the skeleton onto a large piece of plastic. “I think I need to check on what’s what back there. Good seeing you, Lori. Maybe I’ll get a chance to see you again while you’re in town.”

  “I’ll be around for a while. Don’t forget to give my best to Liz. I’ll try to run over and visit with her while I’m home. I still haven’t met your baby.”

  “The baby isn’t a baby anymore. She’s five, going to kindergarten already. I’ll tell Liz you’ll be giving her a call.”

  Lorna waved as he walked away, then sat for another minute, craning her neck, trying to see over the crowd of law enforcement and county personnel who’d gathered around the remains of… Who? she wondered.

  She drove back to the house, still wondering. How long had the bones been buried on the Palmer farm? Whose bones were they, and how did they get there?

  Lorna parked in her drive and emptied the rest of her belongings from the back of the car. She stacked everything near the front door, then took her coffee and walked to the edge of the field. From this vantage point, she couldn’t see across to the Conway Road side, though years ago she could have. Over the past decade, a small grove of trees had sprouted up along the right-side property line, and in order to see past them, she had to walk out into the field.

  The weeds were waist-high, and the dirt was dry from lack of rain. She stumbled in the rutted furrows, bumpy reminders of the last tractor to have plowed over the field. After the death of her father, her mother and grandmother had agreed to lease out the back fields to a farmer down the road to put in corn, a popular cash crop. They’d been happy to see the fields productive again, and had welcomed the extra money at a time when money had been tight. Back then, when her grandmother had been alive, there had been no talk of selling off any of the Palmer land.

  Lorna paused at the top of a rise and looked down to her left, to where the field sloped gently and row after row after row of white trellises lined up like headstones in an unkempt graveyard. A mass of vines and weeds overgrew all, making Uncle Will’s fabled attempt at establishing a vineyard one big wild tangle.

  Lorna had heard the story of the vineyard from her grandmother, Will’s sister, about how a young Will Palmer served in France during World War II, where after having been injured and taken to a nearby farm to recover, he had met the love of his life. The daughter of the owner of a vineyard, the equally young Marie-Terese Boulard, had agreed to marry her suitor and come to the States after the war. Before Will left to return home, Marie-Terese’s father had given him cuttings from several of his prized grapevines, having talked his future son-in-law into trying to establish vineyards of his own on American soil.

  It hadn’t been so far-fetched an idea, Will had told his parents upon his arrival back in Callen. He’d done some research, and he’d found that the first commercial vineyards in America had been in Pennsylvania. “Why not now, why not here, in Callen?” he’d asked.

  Grateful that their son had survived his injuries, and delighted that the once wild child was not only willing to settle down, but to settle down there on the farm, his father gave Will his blessing and offered him thirty acres to experiment with. Will returned to France to make Marie-Terese his bride, and while he was gone, his father built them a cottage overlooking the future vineyard. Will spent almost two years in France, learning all his in-laws could teach him about grapes and winemaking. When he and Marie-Terese came back to Callen, they brought with them more cuttings and their infant son. The grapes flourished in the southeastern Pennsylvania climate, but in 1948, Marie-Terese and their son were stricken with a dreaded virus that had been making a lot of news. Before the year came to a close, both Marie-Terese and the child succumbed to polio. A broken Will lost all interest in his grapes, and late in the summer of 1949, he lay down on his wife’s grave and shot himself in the head. The would-be vineyard was forgotten, and the thirty acres of grapes soon grew wild.

  Lorna wondered what her great-uncle would think of the decision to sell it all.

  It can’t be helped. There’s nothing else to do, Lorna reminded herself.

  All the same, it still bothered her, still made her feel guilty, as if somehow she’d let down generations of Palmers who must be, at this moment, frowning down upon her and wringing their hands.

  She hoped Uncle Will wasn’t one of them.

  That afternoon, Lorna sat on one of the rockers she’d found in the barn. After she’d cleaned it up and dragged it to the front porch, she had sat and rocked mindlessly for a while, listening to the birds chatter in the hedge and wishing she hadn’t made the trip to Callen alone. Why hadn’t she insisted on Andrea or Rob taking a week off from their lives to come home with her? Why had it all fallen to her to make the decisions and tend to the family business?

  She knew the answer. She was the oldest. She had the most flexible life-no husband, no babies, no budding career on the opposite side of the country. Andrea had been totally appalled at their mother’s decision to be cremated and had wanted nothing to do with the ashes. Rob, self-centered and spoiled, had left home years ago and had never looked back. He’d already told her to just mail him a check once the property was sold. He wouldn’t be coming back to the East Coast anytime soon.

  The soothing back-and-forth motion of the chair served as a reminder of why rockers were so popular. She went back to the barn and b
rought out the other one, hosed it down, and set it in the sun to dry. If anyone ever stopped by, it would be nice to be able to invite them to sit for a while. It was certainly way too hot to invite someone inside the house.

  If anyone ever stopped by.

  Out on the road, a police car went past, and she thought again of the bones that had been found that morning. She wondered how long before the bones would be identified. She wished she’d asked whether they appeared to be those of a child or those of an adult.

  What if it turned out to be Melinda, she wondered. Melinda Eagan, her best friend in fourth grade, who had disappeared in the blink of an eye on her way home from Lorna’s house after celebrating her ninth birthday. Melinda, who hadn’t been at the bus stop the following morning, or any other morning.

  It didn’t take much to recall the shock and sense of the surreal she’d felt when, as a child, she’d been told that Melinda had disappeared. Just thinking about that night brought back the fist-to-the-gut feeling you get when something is too terrible to be true.

  Melinda’s mother had called the Stiles’ house around six-thirty that night, looking for her daughter. Lorna was in the dining room clearing the dinner table when the phone rang, and her mother answered it. She walked toward the kitchen, and heard her mother say, “Jason stopped by for her around five. I offered to drive them, but he said… Are you saying she hasn’t arrived there yet?”

  Lorna went into the kitchen. Her mother stood at the back door, looking out into the growing darkness.

  “What did Jason say?”

  Lorna set the dishes on the counter and watched her mother’s face. “Billie, I’m going outside to take a look around. Maybe she forgot something and doubled back and got disoriented in the dark. I’ll bring her home if I find her.”

  Mary Beth hung up the phone, a very worried look on her face.

  “What happened to Mellie, Mom?” Lorna had asked.

  “She must have gotten distracted by something, someplace between here and there, because her mother says she hasn’t gotten home yet. She said that Jason told her Mellie ran ahead of him through the field and he thought she went straight home, so he stopped off behind the Conrads’ house to talk to his friend Matt. But when he got home, she wasn’t there.”

  “Did he go look for her?”

  “Billie-Mrs. Eagan-says they looked over on their side of the field, but she wasn’t there. Or maybe she’s there and just doesn’t want to be found.”

  Lorna watched her mother grab a jacket from a hook near the back door.

  “Maybe it has something to do with the dress… maybe Mellie’s trying to hide the bag so her mother won’t know she took the dress out of the house. Who knows what that child is thinking?” She turned in the doorway and looked at Lorna. “Can you think of any place she might have gone? Any place she likes to hide, or someplace she goes when she wants to be alone?”

  Right then, Lorna’s father came into the kitchen.

  “Mary Beth, where are you going?” he asked.

  “Melinda hasn’t arrived home and her mother is worried. I thought I’d take a look around the barn.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “She left around five, right?” He frowned. “It’s been an hour and a half already. Billie’s just looking for her now?”

  “She’s been looking on their side of the field.” Lorna’s mother opened the door and went outside. “I’m thinking maybe she’s hiding here, on our property. I won’t be long.”

  “I’ll come with you. And here, Mary Beth, we need light.” Lorna’s father took two flashlights from the closet and followed her mother outside.

  Lorna had leaned against the windowpane and watched the twin yellow circles of light from the flashlights glide across the yard and disappear into the barn. All the while, she was biting her bottom lip, wondering if she should tell about the secret place where she and Mellie sometimes went to read or to be alone and talk. If she told now, and Mellie wasn’t there, then everyone would always know their secret, and if Mellie came back, she’d be mad that now everyone knew and she’d have to look for a new hiding place.

  But if Mellie was there, she needed to come out and go home.

  No doubt Mrs. Eagan was going to be loaded for bear. Lorna had heard her grandmother say that, and while she wasn’t exactly sure she understood what bears had to do with anything, she understood the sentiment perfectly.

  But they hadn’t found Melinda that night, or any other night. It would be years before Lorna dropped the “and please bring Mellie home” from her prayers. The thought that Melinda could have been right there, on the Palmer land, all this time, twisted Lorna’s stomach into knots.

  I would have known, wouldn’t I, if my best friend had been murdered and buried in a place I could see from my bedroom window? Wouldn’t I?

  Only in books, or in movies, she told herself, slapping at the mosquito that had landed on her leg. Not in real life.

  But if it was Melinda, and she had been buried out there at the far end of the farm, it would go a long way toward easing that little twinge of guilt that bit at Lorna every time she thought of how she’d not given up the secret hiding place.

  Thunder rumbled from somewhere over toward West Grove, and Lorna stood to watch the darkening sky. The clouds were low hanging and fast moving. The storm would hit within the next twenty minutes or so, she figured, but wouldn’t last too long. Above the rain clouds, the sky was lighter and held promise. Maybe after the rain passed, she’d walk down to the family plot and sprinkle some of her mother’s ashes, as she was bound to do.

  Or maybe she would just sit there on the porch, and wonder what had become of her friend all those years ago.

  3

  At eight forty-five on Wednesday morning, Lorna was seated at the dining room table, eating dry cereal from a small blue plastic bowl and preparing a profit-and-loss statement on her computer for one of her clients. To access the Internet, she’d had to plug into the house phone and go the dial-up route. It had been a long time since she’d done that, and the squawk through the phone line sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  She made a mental note to look into broadband service while she was there. Even if it took her a month to finalize things in Callen, it would be worth the connection fee to have cable brought into the house.

  She’d set up the laptop at the far end of the table, so that her back would be to the china cupboard. Empty of its contents, it reminded her of a mouth without teeth. Each piece of china or crystal had left its footprint on the dusty shelves, ghostly reminders of holiday dinners and birthday parties long past.

  Stone crunched under the tires of a car in the driveway, and she went to the front door, arriving just in time to see Chief Walker get out of his cruiser.

  “Hi, Chief,” she called as she unlocked the screen door and stepped outside.

  “Hey, Lorna.” He walked toward her, one hand resting on the holstered gun that sat on his right hip.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing, make sure everything is all right.”

  “Everything’s fine, thank you.”

  “Wanted to talk to you a bit about the bones we found out in the field on Monday.”

  “Want to come in? Or have a seat on the porch? It’s probably cooler out here.”

  “The porch will do just fine.”

  He walked up the steps and sat in one of the rockers.

  “Can I get you something?” She paused beside the second rocker.

  “I’d love a cup of coffee, but I’ve already surpassed my daily limit.”

  “Just as well, then.” She sat in the rocker nearest the door. “I’ve been buying mine at the mini-mart up the road. I did find Gran’s old percolator, so I’ll probably pick up some coffee on my next trip to the market. Maybe I’ll get up there later today.”

  “We were all sorry to hear about Mary Beth. She was a good woman, your mother was. We’ll all miss her
.”

  “Thank you, Chief. We appreciated the card you and your wife sent. Please thank her for us.”

  “Least we could do.” He rocked for another moment, then said, “About those bones…”

  “Any idea yet who it might have been?”

  “Actually, it looks as if they’ve been identified.” He stopped rocking and leaned forward a bit, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair. “Looks like we might have found Jason Eagan, after all these years.”

  “Jason!” She stopped rocking, too. “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. The medical examiner estimated we were looking at a young adult male who’d been dead about twenty-five years. We went back through the files and found there were only two men reported missing around here from that time period. One was Alvin Hawkins, who was in his late forties, the other was Jason. He was only fourteen but he was tall for his age. We brought his mother down, she identified the shirt we found with the remains as belonging to Jason. It did match the description she’d given back then of what he was wearing the last time she saw him. The ME is looking at the dental records that Dr. Pollock dropped off, but we’re pretty sure it’s him.”

  “How ’bout that, after all these years,” she murmured.

  “Well, here’s the thing.” He started rocking again, but with more deliberateness. “The bones showed signs of old abuse. Like both arms having been broken in more than one place, and not at the same time, according to the medical examiner. Looks like that boy took a lot as a child.”

  Lorna took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  “My wife remembered that you were good friends with the sister, the girl who disappeared, said you used to come into the library together all the time. I was wondering if you knew whether or not she was roughed up, too.”

  “I know that Mrs. Eagan had a temper, and that Melinda was afraid of her.” Lorna chose her words carefully. “I never saw her mother hit her, but I did see bruises on Mellie. On her arms, on her legs. I never asked her how she got them. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she’d tell me. She never did.”