Missing in Lavender: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas series Book 6)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  Not that she’d had anything like this in mind. She’d been thinking more in terms of stolen objects, domestic abuse, or straying children. She felt confident that any woman with common sense would be good at that kind of detection. But murder? Miss Marple had dealt with the problem of murder at the vicarage and the body in the library, but what would she do about the victim in the buggy?

  Send in a doctor first thing to make sure nothing could be done for the poor murdered man. And then the doctor would determine how the victim had died.

  Beaten to death, Zan had said. Well, Eddie’s husband was one clever man, though he could be a little strange. He would recognize when he viewed a body what had likely happened. And nobody else had corrected him.

  “He told Jerry to run.”

  She was abruptly aware that Mac hadn’t followed the others out, but stood as though stricken. When Mrs. Myers stared in her direction, she murmured, “It was the last thing he said. He yelled, “Run, Jerry!”

  Mrs. Myers swallowed hastily. “Honey, he couldn’t have been talking about our Jerry. We know he’s not in Lavender.”

  Trying to feel assured that Mrs. Myers was right and the dead man couldn’t have been calling to Jerry, Mac went out herself to trail along behind the others as they went back to the buggy, having little wish to view the dead man once more. She was, therefore, the first to see Grandpapa Forrest returning down the street from his evening walk.

  “Something wrong, Mac?” he asked. A dear man, from the first he’d treated her as though in Lavender she’d found her true home, even though she was actually related to none of them and truly belonged in another place and time.

  She listened as Betsy quickly explained how they’d found the body by the creek near the border and brought the poor man back here. “None of us recognized him,” she added hastily, seeing the look of concern on his face. Naturally as mayor of Lavender and a lifelong resident who could even remember the time before the community separated itself from the rest of the world, he knew more people and felt a sense of responsibility toward all.

  With a pat on his granddaughter’s shoulder, he moved past and edged his way up next to his son who was making a cursory examination of the corpse. She saw him look, give a start, moving up look closer. He touched his white mustache and then exclaimed, “Dear Heaven, that almost looks like Herbert.” He bent closer. “It’s been years, but I do believe it’s him.”

  “Herbert?” Evan questioned his father. “Herbert who? I don’t believe I ever saw that man before.”

  Forrest backed up, pulling a large white handkerchief from his pocket and mopping his face. “Of course you haven’t, son. Herbert died when you were just a little tyke. We must break the news to Esther.”

  “To Mrs. Myers?” Betsy asked, confused. “But why? Would she know him?”

  “I’d guess she would. She was . . .is . . . ,” Forrest, who never swore added an emphatic, “Dammit, Betsy. That’s Esther’s husband lying dead there.”

  Dr. Evan looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “Papa, you can’t possibly identify a man so badly beaten and anyhow, Esther’s husband died long ago. Even if he was still alive, he’d be an elderly man.”

  Forrest could be stubborn. “But that’s him, Evan. That’s Herbert Myers.”

  Chapter Ten

  It took a while for it to sink in. Forrest, her longtime friend whom she trusted more than most anybody, insisted that the dead man in the buggy was her husband.

  That couldn’t be. After he’d disappeared so long ago, time had allowed her to finally accept that he was dead and she’d been able to get on with building a life for herself and her daughters. They’d left gossip-ridden Korn behind one day when Forrest, an old friend of her husband’s, came visiting a neighboring business and she’d asked him to help them move, without fanfare, to Lavender. He’d agreed, knowing how she was suffering from the rumors and gossip in her home town.

  She’d even been glad when the old Stephens grandfather, Forrest’s dad, had cut the community off, set it aside in time away from the terrible things that were happening in the larger world and she’d known that she and her girls were safe as though they’d been sealed into an envelope. Nothing from Korn, nothing from the past could get to them.

  “I don’t think I’m mistaken, Esther,” she heard Forrest saying, “I haven’t seen him since I was a young man, but this surely has to be your Herbert. Unless he had a twin brother,” he added almost hopefully.”

  Her mouth was so dry that she had to croak out words. “Herbert was an only child.”

  They seemed to think Forrest’s recognition wasn’t enough. She would need to identify him, Dr. Evan said, and he was the one who took her arm to gently usher her out to the buggy. “Just a quick look,” he said soothingly, “to make sure Papa’s right.”

  The others stood back as she and Evan approached the buggy. The doctor removed the blanket that covered the man’s face. At first she saw nothing familiar.

  When she’d last seen Herbert he’d been in his early thirties, a tall, dark-haired man with laughing eyes. Brown eyes like those several of her grandchildren inherited.

  Now those eyes were closed and the man must be as young as he had been back then, but gradually she saw the chin line, the long straight though swollen mouth, the noble nose where the bone structure had been smashed. He’d been so handsome that other girls had envied her when their engagement was announced.

  She swallowed hard. “How can this be Herbert?” she asked calmly, “He would be in his seventies. ”She watched as the blanket once more covered his face. It had all happened so long ago, their romance and marriage, the birth of two daughters and his vanishing. She’d searched for him for years, certain he would never leave her by choice. He must be dead or he would be at her side and so she’d mourned him, never marrying again because she would love him for the rest of her life.

  And now she was numb inside, feeling nothing. What a terrible joke that anybody would think this man could be her husband.

  Still there was Forrest, her oldest friend and once close as kin to her husband, and he thought this was Herbert. She closed her eyes remembering. “When he was a boy he cut his left ankle badly on a broken jar. It left deep scars.”

  She watched as the blanket was lifted further away and Caleb examined the poor ankle. “They’re there,” he said gently, just as you said. She had to look for herself. He was right. She would have recognized the pattern of those scars anywhere.

  She felt the taste of bitter bile in her throat. “How can this be?”

  “It must have to do with this time thing,” Betsy’s voice hardly sounded familiar, but was high and squeaky. McKinley slipped up to Mrs. Myers’ side, taking her hand in an offer of support and her granddaughter and foster granddaughters took their places on either side of her as she watched the blanket pulled back up over the still form.

  When Harlan Crombacher, one of Lavender’s two constables arrived, looking nervously official as he reported to Forrest, she led the rest of the family back into the house where Cynthia and Betsy brought hot coffee into the living room, handing her a cup. Mac sat on the floor at her feet, refusing the hot drink.

  “I’ll have to tell the children,” Esther murmured to herself.

  “Dottie has gone for her cousins,” Cynthia told her.

  Nobody offered comforting words, but they seated themselves around her, their presence saying much.

  She had friends and families. She wasn’t alone.

  Sylvie came back downstairs. “The children are asleep,” she spoke in a whisper, absorbing the solemn atmosphere. The most demonstrative of them all, she went to sit at on the floor beside Mac.

  Esther, on her other side, touched the soft dark hair. “It’s Herbert,” she said. “The man I thought dead long ago.”

  She looked up. “But what was he doing here and why would anybody kill him? Nobody had reason to hate him.”

  When Dottie came rushing in, followed by her two cousins,
there was little she could say by way of explanation. “Your grandfather’s dead,” she said quietly, taking all three young women in her arms. She left the Stephens to tell what little else they knew about the demise of Herbert Myers.

  People in Lavender dealt with death in the old fashioned way and by the next morning homemade cakes, pies, fried chicken, ham , potato salad, and countless other goodies were being brought by the house on Crockett Street where Mac and Dottie helped store them away in the pantry..

  Her neighbors didn’t know what to make of the news that the woman they’d long thought a widow had just lost her husband, but they were ready to rally to her support.

  As for Esther, she tried to answer her granddaughters’ questions as best she could. They’d lost their own mothers at an early age when they died of the same illness that had killed many in the community. Raised by loving fathers and stepmothers , they had still been close to their grandmother. She wished she had more answers for them, but could only say that their grandfather had disappeared one ordinary day and never come back again. Until yesterday she’d assumed him dead.

  After they left, she thought about what it had been like before. Sympathy at first, assurances from her friends that Herbert would be back any day, though she’d felt the unspoken doubts.

  Everybody said Herbert was such an easy going man, everybody’s friend, and she knew that even those closest to her would never have thought her an easy person.

  In those days she had a spitfire temper and a restless impatient nature with things that were not as they should be. She’d been a young woman who rocked the boat whether it was a matter of justice for colored people, opportunities for young women or forgiving the fallen.

  Esther Fredericks Myers could be counted on to champion unpopular causes, a woman who spoke her own mind, and couldn’t be a comfortable partner in marriage.

  She didn’t have to guess, but knew that when Herbert went away, there were those who said she’d only gotten what she deserved.

  What they couldn’t know was the inside of the marriage, the caresses and deep conversations late in bed at night after the girls were asleep. She and Herbert loved each other, she had never doubted that.

  But the evidence was incontrovertible. He’d gone away and not returned.

  She wore her best black dress to the services held in the church she attended each Sunday and with her granddaughters clustered around her and the Stephens girls and Mac at the other end of the pew, saw him buried in the community’s only cemetery.

  People were kind, saying sympathetic words to her, and the food continued to pour in to the Stephens’ house, but she could imagine the whispers.

  That was the way it had started back in Korn. They said she had to know what had happened to Herbert. And when his horse was found wandering the back country with blood on the saddle, there were those who said she’d shot him.

  Everybody knew that Esther’s mama had taught her to be an expert shot.

  After the funeral, she went to find Forrest, knowing she must talk to him. He was out in the back yard, digging weeds out of the flower beds. Since he’d retired from active duty at his shop downtown, he’d taken up gardening. And though the Stephens employed fulltime help, he’d managed to become something of an annoyance to the middle-aged man who provided that service.

  Holding her full-skirted dress up an inch or two to keep from sweeping mud with the hem, she stood watching him as he furiously attacked the invading plants, managing to wipe out a petunia or two in the process. Sunlight warmed her and dispelled some of the darkness that had seemed to linger around her these days.

  She’d thought him unaware of her presence and so was startled when he said, “You know what I’d like, Esther? I’d like you to make one of your strawberry shortcakes. Nobody can make one like you with lots of juicy berries and rich, thick whipped cream.”

  With the house stocked with more delectable food than they’d ever manage to eat, this seemed a strange request. “You don’t want to talk to me, Forrest,” she accused. “Leastways not about anything more serious than cake.”

  He glanced up with a grin. “Guilty as accused.”

  “Why not?”

  “Harlan tells me not a soul in Lavender or roundabout had any reason for shooting your husband. Nobody but you ever even met him.”

  “Far as we know,” Esther said defensively. “Come on, Forrest, you don’t think I killed Herbert.”

  He sighed. “No, Esther, I don’t. In fact I’m sure of it. That’s why I told Harlan Crombacher to back off and let the whole thing go. We’ll never find an answer and it’s just going to get sticky if we go around trying to figure the whole thing out.”

  Esther considered that. It was tempting now that Herbert was safely buried in the Lavender cemetery to pretend the whole thing had never happened and since she still had a sense of unreality, it would be easy to do.

  “I’ve been here before. A sweet young mother with two young children who nobody would suspect of anything more violent than wringing the neck of a chicken. And actually Herbert did that while I was left the cooking and cleaning. Next thing I know people are looking at me funny and refusing to let their children come over to play with my girls.”

  She grinned. “’Course there were those who said I was never that sweet natured.”

  He matched her grin. “I like my women with a touch of spice,” he countered. His expression sobered, “Good thing too, considering the independent young women who happen to be my granddaughters.”

  Esther refused to be distracted. “You named me town investigator,” she pointed out, “so now I need to investigate and find out who killed Herbert. It’s the only way to keep fingers from pointing in my direction.”

  Forrest looked startled. “But Esther, I never heard of a detective investigating himself.”

  “Herself,” she said firmly, lifting her skirt a little higher as she turned to go back inside. “You might advise the constables that I will be working the case.”

  She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d called after her to say he could never sanction such a crazy idea. But they’d been friends for a long time so he only said, “Maybe we’d just better not take this before the council just yet, Esther. For now, it’ll just be a private appointment by the mayor.”

  She nodded, satisfied, and went around to the bushes in the side yard to see if there were enough ripe berries for short cake.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Probably just a fight that got out of hand,” Betsy suggested. It was the first time she, Mac and Eddie had really sat down to discuss the death. Well, they weren’t exactly sitting. Helping your husband run a farm was a full time job and the other two trailed after Betsy that evening as they fed the calves and then gathered eggs.

  When Emilee screamed, Eddie matter-of-factly rescued her from a rooster with evil intentions, placing the little girl on her shoulders for a ‘horsie’ ride. Ben was down at the barn helping his dad with the milking.

  “An accident ,” Eddie suggested readily. “Perhaps he was thrown from a horse or attacked by a bull.”

  Betsy shrugged. “But how did he end up out in the middle of nowhere like that? It was more like he was dumped.”

  Mac listened quietly, wondering when they would get back to the mention the dead man had made of Jerry. The Caldecotts had insisted on going home when Zan left after the funeral, but her attempts to accompany them had been refused.

  “Jerry would want us to make sure you are safe,” his mother insisted, an irrational argument Mac thought since she herself wouldn’t stay in safe Lavender.

  “And how did Mr. Myers get here? He was last heard of about fifty years ago over in Korn. It’s not like he could have been hiding out in Lavender when Grandpapa closed things down to keep the flu from spreading and nobody’s noticed him since and he’s not grown a year older. Nobody can cross over without your help, Bets. You know that.”

  Even Mac knew by now that she couldn’t leave without Betsy’s a
ssistance. This knowledge frustrated any efforts she might make to get out on her own. Not that she was as sure now that was what she wanted. As far as she was concerned, the dying man’s call to Jerry was significant. Nobody else seemed to agree. There were lots of men named Jerry they said.

  Betsy tried to laugh. “That makes me number one suspect, I guess.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Everybody knows you couldn’t land a punch if you tried. I remember when Papa taught us to box. You ran into the house and hid in a closet under some pillows and said you couldn’t stand the sound. Besides you know they say it’s always the husband or wife who . . .” Eddie stopped abruptly, realizing what she’d said.

  Emilee tapped her on top of the head with her small, fat hand. “Crow like a rooster, Eddie,” she demanded.

  “Cluck, cluck, cluck,” Eddie responded without enthusiasm.

  “No!” Emilee yelled. “Not a hen. A rooster.”

  “Ur, ur, ur, urrrrh,” Eddie complied. Normally she made the most of her rare opportunities to play with Betsy’s children, but this evening other things were on her mind. “You know I don’t mean our Mrs. Myers,” she explained quickly.

  “The gentlest person imaginable,” Betsy agreed. “She always had a hard time even giving us well deserved spankings.”

  “That’s right. She would just threaten to tell Dad about our misbehaviors.”

  “And when he showed up, she’d conveniently forget,” Betsy said. “And I was always so disappointed because I was so looking forward to you getting what you deserved.”

  “Ditto to you,” Eddie agreed.

  “No spankings,” Emilee said firmly. “Quack, quack.”

  “A duck,” Eddie guessed, taking up the game automatically. “Mooo.”

  “Cow,” Emilee said, delighted at having taken over the conversation between her mother and aunt.