Rattlesnake Hill

by Leslie Wheeler

  A gust of wind rattled the pile of leaves at one of end of the lawn, scattering them every which way. Irene’s frown deepened. Kathryn hugged herself against the chill. “And?”

  “Nobody knows for certain what happened that night. The next day they found the blinded Clyde weeping beside her dead body in the woods near the Cutter mill. They figured he’d shot her, then tried to kill himself, but blinded himself instead. They were going to hang him, but Aurelia made such an eloquent plea in his behalf that they let him go.”

  “Where was Jared Cutter while all this was going on?”

  “Away on business. He came back the following day to find his wife murdered. He stayed in town long enough to bury her and settle his affairs. Then he left for the West, and that was the last anyone heard of him.”

  A car turned onto the quiet residential street and drove slowly toward them. “That’ll be my husband coming back from the airport with my sister and her family.” Waving eagerly, Irene headed for the curb.

  “What about the baby?” Kathryn trotted after her.

  “Baby?” Irene’s puzzled tone told Kathryn her focus had shifted to the present.

  “Clyde and Marguerite’s baby.”

  “Oh, that baby. She was brought up believing she was a Judd. Given the scandal surrounding her parents, Aurelia and Clyde felt it was for the best. He used to visit her, though. And later on her daughter, my grandmother, and finally Mother herself. He was an old man by then, and he especially doted on Mother. But it wasn’t until after he died and Aurelia was close to death herself that Mother learned the secret of her background.”

  “So your mother really is a Barker,” Kathryn said softly.

  “If Clyde was the baby’s father, she is. But my sister and I prefer to think of Mother’s family as the Judds. If you’ve met any of the Barkers, you can understand why,” Irene finished with a wry look.

  The car pulled into the driveway and Irene rushed over to greet the arrivals. “Have a nice Thanksgiving,” Kathryn called, as she walked to her car. She got in and immediately became aware of a pungent, earthy smell she hadn’t noticed while Emily was with her. A pot with a tired-looking African violet plant lay overturned on the floor of the passenger side. She’d forgotten all about it after taking it from Alan’s. Now, she was tempted to toss it, but something stopped her.

  The pot rode with her the rest of the way to Boston, its scent pulling her back to the woods where the white stag still roamed, impervious to hunters’ bullets, and where two women had died more than a hundred years apart, under mysterious circumstances.

  Chapter 39

  Kathryn left Alan’s on Friday afternoon, filled with a sense of well-being. It had done her a world of good to be with him and his family. They were pleasant, ordinary people with none of the craziness or propensity toward violence of the Barkers. Even the woods, where she and Alan took a long walk after Thanksgiving dinner, seemed less menacing than the New Nottingham woods.

  But as she approached Springfield, her mood darkened. This time, both Emily’s daughters met her at the door. The younger Mary was shorter and bore a strong resemblance to her mother. “Mother’s upstairs getting ready,” Irene said. “Could we speak with you a minute?” The sisters ushered Kathryn into a small room off the living room that served as a study.

  “Mother’s getting on,” Irene said after they sat down. “She needs round-the-clock care, which is difficult to arrange in a small village like New Nottingham. Millie and the others do their best, and I know you’ve been a help, too. But Mother really should move into an assisted living place either here or in Florida, close to Mary. She won’t listen to us. We thought maybe you could speak to her, even get her to look at some of these brochures.” She handed Kathryn a stack from the desk.

  “I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything will come of it.”

  “Thank you, Kathryn,” Mary said, “we appreciate your help. We’d like to get Mother moved before she gets any worse. That girl’s losing her baby has really upset her.”

  Emily came downstairs and they left almost immediately. Kathryn had barely driven a block when Emily told her to pull over next to a trash barrel. “You can toss those brochures now.”

  “How do you know about them?”

  “Figured my daughters would give ’em to you. Always trying to get whoever they can to gang up on me.”

  “Won’t you at least look at a brochure? I promised your daughters.”

  “I’ve looked at ’em and you’ve talked to me. Get rid of ’em.”

  Kathryn obeyed. “How was your Thanksgiving?” she asked after a moment.

  “Too many people,” Emily groused. “Can’t keep ’em all straight. Same with the food at the restaurant. Tastes all the same, so I can’t tell what I’m eating half the time. I’ll be glad to get home. Did Gordon say when he’s coming back?”

  “No, but I assume it won’t be until Saturday or Sunday.”

  “You keep an eye out for him.”

  “I will, but do you really think he killed Diana? You don’t have much of a case against him.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Emily scowled at the dusky highway, as if the proof of Gordon’s guilt lay around the next bend in the road.

  Changing the subject, Kathryn said, “I understand now why you keep saying your great-grandmother would have taken care of Sis’s baby. You’re thinking of another baby she cared for a long time ago, the baby that was left motherless when Clyde Barker shot Marguerite and blinded himself.”

  Emily turned on her in a fury. “He did nothing of the kind! Whoever told you that is a damn liar.”

  “That’s the story I got from your daughter Irene. If it’s not true, why did they almost hang him?”

  “He was a Barker. People in town have always believed the worst of that family. You want the true story of what happened, you listen to the tapes of my recollections.”

  “I’d like to, but I don’t have them.”

  “I thought you told me you found ’em in the attic.”

  Kathryn sighed inwardly. Was Emily genuinely confused, or had she deliberately distorted what Kathryn had said? “I looked for the tapes in the attic, but I never found them.”

  “If I’d known that . . . ” Emily rummaged in her handbag. “I would’ve given them to you.”

  “What!” Kathryn couldn’t believe it when Emily produced a batch of cassettes. “I thought you didn’t have them.”

  “I didn’t know I did,” Emily replied innocently. “A few days ago, I was looking for something, and lo and behold, there they were. Figured I’d bring ’em along on account of the grandchildren always pestering me for stories about the old days.”

  Kathryn glared at Emily. The old woman had had those tapes all along.

  “You don’t want them, I’ll . . .” Emily started to put the cassettes back into her bag.

  “I want them all right,” Kathryn cried. “I want to listen to them now.” She grabbed a tape and was about to jam it into a slot when she remembered her newer model car was equipped with a CD player instead of a cassette player.

  “Guess you’ll have to wait until you get home,” Emily said. “I think there’s a cassette player on the stereo, unless Gordon’s made off with that, too.”

  Kathryn wondered if the old woman had planned it this way.

  *****

  Millie was waiting for them at Emily’s. “I’ll help her get settled for the night,” she said to Kathryn. “How was Thanksgiving with your boyfriend and his family?”

  “Great. How was yours? Did you cook?”

  “I have to,” Millie said with a resigned smile. “Earl and the boys won’t eat anyone’s turkey but mine.”

  Back at the Farley house, she called Alan, as he’d asked her to.

  “Glad you made it okay,” he said. “It was a lot of driving for one day.”
<
br />   “You did the Maine to Boston stretch,” she reminded him.

  “It was still a lot of traveling. I hope that old woman and her family appreciated what you did.”

  “Her daughters thanked me. And driving her there and back paid off, because she gave me tapes of her recollections. I’m hoping they’ll contain information about my ancestors.”

  “I hope so, too. I know how important that is to you.”

  “I’m going to start listening to them tonight.”

  “I’ll let you go then. And, Kathryn,” he added, lowering his voice, “I miss you already. Maybe you could come to Lexington next weekend? Or Sophie and I could visit you in the Berkshires?”

  Kathryn barely heard him. Her attention had shifted to the tapes lying on kitchen counter near the phone. “Mmm,” she murmured.

  “You’d like us to come to the Berkshires, then?” Alan asked.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. You must be exhausted. We can decide about next weekend when I call tomorrow.”

  Kathryn made herself a turkey sandwich with the leftovers Alan’s mother had insisted she take. She carried the tapes into the living room, where there was indeed a stereo with a cassette player. She slid the tape marked number one into the slot. Might as well begin at the beginning.

  This is Diana Farley recording the recollections of Emily Goodale on Saturday morning July 23, at ten a.m. What was it like growing up on Rattlesnake Hill?

  Diana’s high, girlish tones surprised Kathryn. Given what she’d heard about Diana’s ability to rub people the wrong way, she would have expected a harsher, more strident voice.

  Emily sounded exactly like herself, though. Three families lived on Rattlesnake Hill when I was a girl, she began.

  Kathryn fast-forwarded the tape, hoping to find the place where Emily told the story of Marguerite and Clyde. After several attempts, she gave up. That part didn’t seem to be on this tape. She had five more to go and was too tired to listen to them all tonight. Tomorrow, when she was fresh, she’d continue.

  Chapter 40

  By Saturday afternoon, Kathryn had yet to locate the part on the tape with Emily’s version of the end of the love triangle. Or, for that matter, where Diana said she thought Gordon might kill her. Listening to the tapes was more of a chore than she’d anticipated. Emily had a tendency to natter on and, still tired from yesterday’s trip, she had trouble concentrating. She snapped to attention, however, when Emily suddenly launched into the story of how Clyde rescued Marguerite from drowning.

  It was essentially the same story Earl had told, but devoid of the poetry that made his version so evocative. There was nothing about Marguerite floating past Clyde like a cloud on a summer afternoon, nothing about the Japanese lanterns lighting up the lake like fireflies, nothing about Marguerite lapping up the water dripping from Clyde after he carried her from the lake.

  As Kathryn filled in the missing words in her mind, a strange yearning came over her. She wanted to be back in the dark cab of Earl’s truck, smelling his aftershave, and listening to his voice growing richer and more vibrant the further he got into the story. God, she missed that! She shut off the machine. Better take a break before the longing became unbearable.

  Outdoors, wind blew in her face and whipped at her clothes, hindering her progress up the hill. In the yard at the cabin she’d shared with Garth, Cheryl struggled to remove wildly flapping sheets from a clothesline. Moved by her lonely battle, Kathryn caught the end of a twisting sheet and helped Cheryl collapse it into the basket. When they had wrestled down the remaining laundry, Cheryl invited her in.

  “I’m awfully sorry about your husband’s death and the loss of your sister’s baby,” Kathryn said after they’d sat. “It must be hard for you both.”

  “Sis moved out,” Cheryl replied. “She’s living with our parents now. Except for Derek, I’m alone.”

  “Derek’s your son?”

  “Yes. His uncle Earl took him for the afternoon.”

  Kathryn felt a fluttering in her chest. Just the person she wanted to avoid. Yet she had set out in the direction of the Barker compound and Earl’s trailer. Now she was here with his sister-in-law. What if he came back early with Derek? She ought to leave, but she didn’t. “It must be hard for Derek, too,” she said.

  Cheryl didn’t reply. Her silence said it all. They’d lived in fear of Garth and were probably relieved to have him gone.

  “You ever find the remains of the old house and mill you were looking for?” Cheryl surprised Kathryn by asking.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Sorry I wasn’t more help, but I knew Millie would get you on the right track. Thanks for your help with the laundry just now,” she added shyly. “And for the offer of a lift.”

  Kathryn looked at her, confused. “If you need a ride someplace, I’m happy to take you.”

  “I meant the afternoon our car broke down. It was good of you to stop and offer Sis and me a ride. I know I must have seemed ungrateful, but I was too ashamed to accept on account of the fight we were having.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” Cheryl protested. “Millie’s always saying I need to learn to accept help when it’s offered instead of trying to make it on my own. Ellen used to tell me the same thing.”

  “Ellen’s a friend?”

  “The counselor I saw for awhile. She gave me lots of good advice. It wasn’t her fault things turned out . . . well, the way they have.” Her young face assumed such a grim cast that Kathryn felt sorry for her.

  “If there’s anything I can do, please feel free to call on me.”

  Cheryl’s features softened. “Thank you, Kathryn. You’ve shown real Christian charity toward me and my family.”

  “I’ve hardly—” Kathryn began, embarrassed.

  “Oh, but you have,” Cheryl declared. “In church they tell us to turn the other cheek, and that’s what you did. You came to the benefit for Garth even though he tried to run you and your friend off the road.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Earl told me. He gave Garth quite a tongue-lashing when he found out.”

  Again Kathryn felt a fluttering in her chest. She really should leave before Earl returned with Derek. She stood. “I need to go now, but please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  Cheryl rose and took Kathryn’s hand in hers. “Thank you, Kathryn.”

  As she walked back down the hill, Kathryn heard the noise of a vehicle behind her. Her heart lifted, then sank when she saw it wasn’t Earl’s truck, but Pete’s beat-up car. She moved to the side of the road to let him pass, but instead of driving on, he pulled up alongside her. “Hey, Boston, heard you went home for Thanksgiving. You didn’t happen to get to any clubs while you were there, did you?”

  She shook her head. “There wasn’t time. I was in Maine mostly.”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “Too bad. Let me know when you do go to a club, though. I’d love to know what band you heard and what you thought of it.”

  “I will.”

  Chapter 41

  The slide caught Kathryn’s eye, as she climbed onto the large flat rock that formed a stepping stone into the Farley house. Lying on the ground just below the rock, it must have fallen out of a file drawer that Gordon had removed from the attic during his last visit. She held it up to the light. It was a picture of Diana with a slightly pensive expression.

  The slide reminded her of Emily’s suspicions about Gordon. This, in turn, made her wonder if the box in the far corner of the attic was still there, and if so, it contained Diana’s second will. It couldn’t hurt to have a look.

  Opening the trap door, Kathryn saw that Gordon had done what she had not: built a plywood bridge to where the box had been. He must have wanted it very badly to make such an effort. Did that mean Emily wa
s right about his need to destroy incriminating evidence? If only she’d thought to create a path herself. But after her first attempt ended in disaster, she hadn’t wanted to risk another.

  Yet the will—if in fact it existed— might still be hidden elsewhere in the house. In Diana’s study perhaps? She’d searched there earlier, but she’d been looking for the tapes.

  This time, Kathryn shook out the pages of the few magazines and annual reports that remained in Diana’s desk. No document fell out. Kathryn’s gaze settled on the tape of Elvis love songs she’d noticed before. She and Earl had danced to an Elvis song, and it had been so—Don’t go there! You know in your bones, he’s trouble. She shut the drawer with a bang.

  Downstairs, she made herself listen to Emily’s meandering monologues, every now and then punctuated by a question from Diana. Eventually, though, Emily wandered to the very place Kathryn wanted to avoid:

  When I was a young girl, I enjoyed dancing. They used to have dances at the town hall every Friday night. In my great-grandmother Aurelia’s day, people had dance parties in their homes. These parties were often held in the kitchen because it was the largest room in the house. A few of the houses had their own ballrooms, though. According to my great-grandmother, the grandest ballroom was in the Cutter house. It occupied the entire second floor and even had a balcony for musicians and built-in benches along the walls under the windows. At a ball there, Jared Cutter, the young heir to the family fortune, met and fell in love with Marguerite Soule, who later became his wife.

  Kathryn hit the “stop” button. Too late. Marguerite and Jared Cutter had already become she and Earl, gliding around the dance floor, pressed as close as two people could be. She couldn’t control herself any longer. She ran upstairs, got the Elvis tape, and brought it back to the living room, where she replaced Emily with Elvis. She fast-forwarded the tape until she found the right song. Their song.