by Judy Clemens
“What?” She blinked slowly.
“Did you want to tell me something?”
“No, I…” She searched Casey’s face. “Where did you come from?”
“The store. Vern sent me home for lunch.”
“No, not the store.”
“You mean on Friday? I’m just traveling through.”
Dottie frowned. “But from where? Where have you been?”
“Colorado.”
“Colorado?” She looked stunned. Surprised. “Why were you in Colorado?”
“I live there. Or, at least, my family does. Did.”
“Your family.” Dottie’s eyes went unfocused, and her head drooped to the side.
“Dottie?”
The old woman blinked. “I’m sorry, I was…I thought you were…” She struggled again to get out of the chair.
“Please. Stay. I came for my sweatshirt. I’m going back out.”
Dottie closed her eyes, then sank back into the chair.
Casey stood by the door, regarding her landlady. What had just happened? She didn’t know.
But whatever it was, it gave Casey a hollow, icy feeling in her gut. What were all of those things in the corner? Vern and Dottie had no other children. No extended family Casey could see. Who was the woman with the baby? Who had worn the Homecoming banner? And who was this Anne Marie Daily who had earned the diploma?
The diploma.
A chill raced through Casey. There wasn’t an Anne Marie Daily who had walked across a stage to shake the university president’s hand, was there? There hadn’t been a girl who had worn that ribbon, or carried those flowers.
It was all made up.
Dottie and Vern were so enmeshed in the past, so filled with regret and sorrow and wishes, they had made up their daughter’s history. Her childhood, her adolescence, even her adulthood.
Casey’s stomach roiled and she tiptoed back toward Dottie. The old woman’s eyes remained closed, and her breathing had evened out. Careful not to wake her, Casey took a closer look at the photo in the frame. Could she see Vern or Dottie in the woman’s face? Or in the face of her baby?
No. But she could see something else.
A tiny, almost invisible, company logo in the bottom corner. The photo was a stock image, sold with the frame. The subjects in it had nothing to do with Dottie and Vern. They were models, paid to be photographed.
A rush of sadness swept over Casey. Was she herself going to become like them? Was she going to find herself this way someday, broken and ready to die?
Oh, God.
Casey set the frame back on the shelf and tiptoed from the room, her heart in her throat. Maybe Death was right. Maybe she needed to move on.
Or maybe she needed to run farther.
Casey grabbed the party photo, stuck it back in her jeans, and trotted up the stairs, wondering if it was okay to leave Dottie alone. She reminded herself that Vern had gone back to work, and Death wasn’t in attendance. That was a good sign, right? Or at least a sign that Dottie wasn’t about to die in that guest room chair.
Casey took her lunch to the park and sat on a bench under a maple tree that had lost most of its leaves. She had just gotten settled when she felt someone watching her. Looking up, she expected Death, perhaps there to tell her to hightail it back to the house, or even to discuss Casey’s newest revelations about her life, but was surprised to find herself looking at Flower Pants.
Casey waited for the old woman to approach, or at least say something, but she just stood on the sidewalk and stared.
“Can I help you?” Casey asked when she became too annoyed not to.
“Who are you?”
“Just someone passing through.”
“But you’ve been here since Friday. I saw you at Vern’s.”
“I remember.” Casey stood, not wanting to look up at someone, even if that someone was a little old lady who was hardly a threat.
“So?” Flower Pants thrust out her jaw. “Who are you? Are you related to Vern?”
“No.”
“To her?”
Her. She wouldn’t even say Dottie’s name.
“No. Why does it matter?”
Flower Pants’ mouth worked. She had no ready answer to that. Because she was nosy? Because she hated Dottie and wanted to use Casey against her? Or did she have something of her own to hide?
“Where were you that Halloween?”
Flower Pants’ eyes angled right. A flush bloomed on her neck. “What Halloween do you mean?”
Oh, she knew exactly what Casey meant. “The one where a woman died at a party. Were you there?” Of course she was. Dressed up as Princess Leia, in the gold bikini. Casey knew it was Flower Pants, just as she knew the photo she carried was from that night. She wondered if the old bat would fess up to it.
Flower Pants breathed hard, her chest rising and falling several times before she sagged. Casey jumped forward and caught her. She staggered under the dead weight, but was able to drag Flower Pants to the bench and set her down. More gently than she deserved, perhaps, but Casey didn’t need a lawsuit.
Casey used her empty lunch bag as a fan to bring Flower Pants back to consciousness. Casey studied her bright lipstick, the dyed hair, the garish clothes—today a pair of yellow pants and a shirt with yellow, orange, and red leaves. Yikes. Casey wished Death were there to comment on the outfit, but then, Death’s presence might mean there was yet another elderly woman on her way out. So maybe it was best Death was not present.
After a few scary moments, Flower Pants blinked and sat up. Her eyes were bright with fear until she recognized Casey and her expression went back to judgmental and angry. “What are you doing?”
“You fainted. I was trying to wake you.”
“Fainted? I never faint.”
Casey stopped fanning her. “Whatever happened, you look fine now. Maybe you could answer my question?”
She straightened her blouse, averting her eyes. “What question?”
“The one about where you were the Halloween night a woman died at a party? How long ago was it? Forty-five years?” Casey crossed her fingers Flower Pants wouldn’t hyperventilate again. At least this time she could keel over on the bench.
“Why should I tell you anything?”
A good question. Casey wasn’t sure what to tell her except, “I heard about the tragedy from Officer Whistler, and can’t help but think it still affects the town, especially people who were a part of the evening. It must have been terrifying.”
Flower Pants waited so long Casey was sure she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, her voice small, she said, “I was there. It was…awful.”
For that moment, Casey saw Flower Pants as a real person instead of a flirty, stuck-up, mean old lady. She looked tired and uncomfortable and weary.
“What’s your name?” Casey figured it was time she became something other than Flower Pants. “Mine’s Casey.”
The woman sniffed. “Ethel.” She straightened her shoulders. “Miss Bernard.”
Miss. So, not a widow, despite her age. A woman from that generation would keep the “Mrs.” forever if she’d been married. And she definitely wouldn’t stoop to the progressive “Ms.”
“So, Miss Bernard, what do you think happened that night at the party? Who were those people who threatened you all?”
Miss Bernard shook her head, still not looking at Casey. “I don’t know. Nobody does. The police could never figure out anything.” She brushed something from her lap. “There were strangers at the party with us and no one knew. But then, we did go through a lot of wine…”
Who are the ones who don’t belong? I think you know.
Casey itched to pull out the photo and show it to Flower Pants, but what if the old woman herself was the one who had sent it? She certainly had enough animosity toward Dottie
to pull that kind of trick, and Casey didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing the photo again.
“Did you really think they were going to burn the house down?”
Miss Bernard kneaded her hands. “We didn’t know. It was so frightening. So unexpected. It was hard to think anything.”
Casey knew the feeling. She found it hard to make decisions in times of crisis, as Thursday night’s fiasco proved, and she was trained for it. How could a group of drunk housewives be expected to react to such violence? With fear and chaos. “And the woman who died?”
Miss Bernard closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Amelia. She was so terrified, her heart gave out. She was dead before the ambulance arrived.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She was weak. I guess now they call it depression, or anxiety, or whatever term they’re using, when really she just couldn’t handle it. She wasn’t strong like the rest of us.” She sniffed, then quickly added, “God rest her soul.”
Casey stared at the woman, who she deemed no longer worthy of an actual name. To think that for a moment Casey had felt sorry for her.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Flower Pants said. “We were friends. I liked her well enough. Not like some people.” She angled her eyes toward Casey, then immediately away. “My friend Wilma, you saw her, the one who was with me at Vern’s. She wasn’t the strongest, either. She wet her pants.” She giggled, and her eyes sparkled as she covered her mouth with a bony hand.
Casey stood abruptly. “I have to get back to work. Do you need me to take you anywhere? I mean, since you got weak and fainted?”
Flower Pants’ face went hard, and the sparkle in her eyes disappeared. “I did not faint.” She stood up, shakily, Casey thought, and stomped a few feet away before turning back. “And why don’t you ask your new landlady where she was that night? You might be surprised by the answer.”
She didn’t have to ask. Casey knew where Dottie had been. Vern said she was home, despondent over the argument with her friend and her friend’s subsequent departure. But maybe that wasn’t the whole truth. Maybe she went to the party by herself when Marianne ditched her.
Flower Pants narrowed her eyes. “They didn’t tell you, did they?”
“Who? Tell me what?”
“Vern and that woman. That she’s a murderer.”
“What?”
“She came to town, made Vern marry her because of…because of that baby. And then the baby died.”
“She didn’t kill her baby. It was German measles.”
Flower Pants sniffed. “Vern’s father died two months later. Heartbreak.”
“He was that attached to the baby?”
“No. But his son was saddled to that awful woman because of the baby, and there wasn’t even a baby to raise. It wasn’t the way Vern’s life was supposed to go.”
Good grief. Did the whole town feel this resentful? No wonder Dottie was unhappy there.
“So,” Casey asked again, “was Dottie at the Halloween party?”
Flower Pants hit Casey with a gaze both feral and arrogant. “I told you before. Ask her.”
And she turned and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-six
Casey watched Flower Pants totter away, restraining herself from tackling the woman and punching her in the throat. Her stomach growled. She ate her sub without pleasure, wondering how people can get so twisted, and hold grudges for so long.
“Now that is a good-looking sandwich.” Death sat beside her, wearing jeans, white Nikes, and a t-shirt declaring: Vote for Pedro.
“Napoleon Dynamite?”
Death’s face lit up. “You knew one! So proud of you.”
“Eric loves that movie. Not sure why, but we watched it a couple of weeks ago. He thought I needed to add it to my life experience.”
“And?”
“I laughed some.”
Death gazed at her. “You are a piece of work. You know that?”
“No. That woman is a piece of work.” She pointed toward the retreating figure and recapped the Flower Pants conversation.
With a sigh, Death said, “You know what you need to do.”
“Punch her in the throat?”
Death laughed. “No. Although I’m sure you would enjoy that. You need to ask Dottie about the party. And about her friend Marianne.”
“Az, she just found out she’s going to die.”
“I realize that. Doesn’t that up the stakes? What if she dies without answering the questions?”
“Why should she answer them? She doesn’t know me.”
Death looked into the tree above them. “Something is festering in this town. You can feel it. Don’t you want to find out what that is?”
“Not really.”
“Then why are you still here?”
Casey took another bite of her sub. It was a good question. Why was she still there? To stay close to Beltmore, in case they needed her? To recuperate from her injuries? To fill the hole in her soul by solving other people’s problems?
Oh.
“I guess I need to ask Dottie some questions.”
Death smiled gently. “It may not fix you. But it helps. And in the process you could fix them.”
The bench was suddenly empty, but Casey could smell a hint of bleach. Another nod to Napoleon.
She finished her sandwich and pulled the photograph from her jeans. Why put it off? She threw her trash away and headed back to the house.
Entering through the kitchen, she went directly downstairs. Her ribs protested, perhaps from the strain of rescuing Flower Pants in the park, but not so badly to take one step at a time.
“Dottie?” Casey knocked lightly and opened the door to her room. Dottie wasn’t there.
Casey went back upstairs, but the living room was unoccupied, and Dottie’s bedroom door was closed.
So much for that.
The silence of the house descended on Casey like an overcast day. She didn’t want to stay, but Vern made it clear she wasn’t to come back to the store until later. She tapped her finger against the envelope. There was another way to research that awful night forty-five years ago.
The small library in the downtown business district was as tiny as they came. One big room with several short stacks of books, three public computers, a children’s area, and the checkout counter. Casey approached the librarian, a woman her age, maybe a little older. She was bright-eyed and colorful in a red shirt, huge dangly earrings, and nail polish to match. The earrings sparked some recognition, and Casey remembered seeing her over the weekend, buying coffee or gas or something.
“Can I help you?” The woman shot up eagerly. “Casey, right? Staying with Vern and Dottie?”
“Um, yes.”
“I’m Tara, we meet the other night at the movie. I live in the house behind Vern and Dottie.”
Casey relaxed. Right. She could picture it now, the woman buying popcorn on Saturday night.
“What can I do for you?” Tara asked.
“Do you have newspapers from the seventies?”
“Not the actual papers, but our larger library system—the county, you know—they put some online several years ago, received a grant for historical purposes and high school interns scanned them all in. What papers are you interested in?”
“Anything that would have local news stories.”
“Local as in Armstrong? Or local as in the area?”
“Armstrong.” Searching any wider would send her down too many rabbit holes, and she doubted the drama of Armstrong reached very far.
“So you could check out the Idaho Press-Tribune, the bigger newspaper that covers our county, or the Armstrong Arrow, which comes out Wednesdays and Sundays. That’s just our town and one or two neighboring communities.”
“Let’s go with that one.”
The librarian led Casey to one of the public computers. “So you’ve been living with the Dailys a few days now, is that right? I saw you running the other morning.”
“Yup, I try to get out most days.”
“Good for you. I’m lucky if I get out once a month. Not exactly my thing, you know?” She laughed. “My husband and I walk our dog around the neighborhood a couple times a day. At least I get exercise doing that.”
“So have you always lived in that house?”
“Oh, no. I grew up over in Elmore County. Met my husband at a football game, wouldn’t you know, and when we got married I figured it was time for a change. His hometown seemed as good as any.” She pointed at an icon on the screen. “That will get you to the database, and you simply choose the paper you want and the date range. It’s quite easy, actually.”
“Thank you. Do you know the Dailys well?”
“As well as neighbors do, I guess. We see each other in our yards sometimes, and Dottie used to make pies and bring us one every once in a while. She was really good at that, before she got sick. Used to take them to the fair and win ribbons, from what I hear. Now I’m the one who takes stuff over to their place when I can. I feel so sorry for them. It must be awful.”
“You mean how sick she is?”
Tara glanced at her. “Yeah. That.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t.
It was odd. Someone actually giving Dottie a passing thought that wasn’t poisonous. And Tara wouldn’t even know about the horrible news from the doctor that morning.
“So you and Dottie are two of the transplants in town.”
Tara laughed. “Yeah. There aren’t a whole lot of us, so we’ve bonded a bit over that. I’ve only lived here ten years. Will and I got married after I was done with college, and we moved here then. He grew up on a farm a few miles out, but didn’t want to go into the family business, so we bought this place. Close to the library for me, and he works at the bank.”
No wonder she had a clearer view of the Dailys than the rest of the town. She and her husband didn’t grow up hearing all the stories about how Dottie had betrayed Marianne’s family. Which still seemed like an odd thing to blame her for, especially for so long. And the ridiculous accusation that she killed her father-in-law by marrying Vern. Had Dottie being an outsider really meant that much?
