Hog Wild
Page 27
“Literally scraps. Yellowed news clippings pasted in this dime-store scrapbook, all about Wenda’s murder.”
“A scrapbook. That’s—” I caught myself before I said, That’s creepy.
Something in her faint frown said she knew exactly what I was thinking—and she agreed. When I thought about it, though, it made sense. Of course Gran would have clipped the articles. Anybody would. Maybe it was just the idea of a scrapbook that struck me as weird.
“Most of the articles were from the Greenville and Dacus papers,” Fran continued. “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution really didn’t cover it, I guess. Plenty of home-grown crime there. At first, the articles filled the front page, but it didn’t take long for the story to shrink out of sight. A few follow-up articles on the first anniversary, but eventually nothing.”
“The whole scrapbook was nothing but articles about the murder?”
“It was the only scrapbook. Gran had no photo albums—just pictures stuffed into drawers or a couple of shoe boxes. No baby books, no high school memory books or wedding albums. Just the one keepsake book. With the articles. And one photo stuck inside.”
“Photo?”
Her shoulders scrunched as if she was drawing back from something. “It had been laid in the front of the album, loose. Of Wenda’s body on the grave marker.”
“You’re kidding? Where did she—how—?”
“Who knows? We—Neanna and I—wondered the same thing. Where did she get it? A newspaper photographer? A passing motorist? Who knows? How would Gran get something like that?”
And why would she keep it? On some level, like the newspaper clippings, I could understand why she might. After all, throwing it away wouldn’t put it from her mind.
“Do you have the scrapbook?”
She shook her head. “I guess Neanna brought it with her.”
“What exactly did the photo show?”
She closed her eyes, whether to remember or forget, I couldn’t tell. Likely forgetting wasn’t an option for her, any more than it would have been for Gran.
“She was lying on her back, her head lolled back with her throat exposed. She looked so vulnerable, I remember that in particular. She had a coat on—it made me think of a velvet opera coat, though I don’t know why it brought that to mind. Her dress was gathered at the front.” She swept her fingers across just below her collar bones. “Like one of those sixties peasant dresses, a tie-dyed print. She wore dark ballet flats.”
“She died when?”
“1985.1 know,” she said with a shrug. “It didn’t fit the time, but other pictures I saw of her always made me think of hippies and the sixties. She wore her hair long, parted in the middle and pulled straight back.”
Trends tend to sweep Dacus anywhere from three years to a decade after the fashion’s finished every-where else. But Wenda hadn’t been from here. Had her retro look been out of fashion or all the rage? I couldn’t say.
“Her suitcase sat on the ground at her feet, and one of those hard-sided makeup cases that would have been old-fashioned even then. You could see lots of brown leaves around her, covering the ground like it was late fall or early winter.”
I couldn’t quite picture the scene. “You said she was found on a headstone?”
“Not like a tombstone. I wouldn’t have known that’s what it was except that’s what the news articles said. It looked more like a bench, with rolled stone arms at either end. Her head was tilted back over one arm, and her body stretched along the seat with her feet on the ground beside her suitcase.”
“And no indication who took the photo?”
She shook her head. “To me, it looked as though it was taken at night. You know how flash photos sometimes look both bright and dark at the same time? At least that’s what it looked like to me.”
I couldn’t think of a gentle way to ask my next question. “How did you know she was dead?”
She bit her bottom lip and studied the dark oak floor beside my chair before she answered.
“I saw the picture before I read the scrapbook, before I knew the details about what happened to her. At first, I thought she was wearing a heavy necklace.” She blinked rapidly. “The articles said her throat had been cut, that she’d been cleaned up and dressed before she was carried to the graveyard and—left. That’s why it looked like—” Her hand rose to her own throat.
In my bright, high-ceiling office, I felt a chill. Packed up and sent on her journey. Whoever left her knew she wouldn’t need whatever was in the suitcase where she was going.
“If her aunt has been dead thirty years, why would she come here now?” I circled back. Lawyers and cops know that repeating questions can shake loose new information.
Fran shrugged. “She kept insisting she was coming to hear Nut Case play. Or, more particularly, their lead singer Gerry Pippen. But I’ve known Neanna for an awfully long time. Do you have sisters?”
“One.”
“Then you know, don’t you? She can’t lie to you, can she?”
I smiled, not bothering to explain that Lydia’s a horrid liar. I probably am, too; I just like to believe I’m better than Lydia.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1 Friday Morning
2 Friday Afternoon
3 Saturday Morning
4 Midday Saturday
5 Saturday Evening
6 Sunday
7 Late Sunday Afternoon
8 Sunday Evening
9 Sunday Night
10 Monday Morning
11 Monday Afternoon and Evening
12 Tuesday Morning
13 Midday Tuesday
14 Tuesday Afternoon
15 Tuesday Afternoon
16 Wednesday Morning
17 Wednesday Morning
18 Midday Wednesday
19 Wednesday Afternoon
20 Wednesday Afternoon
21 Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning
22 Thursday Morning
23 Friday Morning
24 Friday Evening/Saturday Morning
25 Late Saturday Morning
26 Midday Saturday
27 The Weekend