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

by Barbara Bartholomew

  But Eddie had the last word. “It’s always been family legend that she was taught to shoot by her mother. I should know. I learned more from her more than I did from Papa. And Zan says I’m a crack shot.”

  “I guess that would move you on to the suspect list,” Betsy decided, “if the poor man had been shot. She reached up to take her small daughter into her own arms, handing the basket of fresh eggs to Mac.

  In spite of her anxieties, Mac found the acceptance the sisters gave her comforting. They acted as though she were one of them, another sister. She wondered what Jerry would say if he could see her melting into his family this way.

  They were in the house enjoying a cup of herbal tea before Betsy brought up the subject again. “You knew about the missing husband,” she suggested. “That’s why Mrs. Myers’ history was so brief at the birthday celebration.”

  “Korn’s a funny little town.” Eddie sipped thoughtfully. “Well, not so little by our standards. I’m sure Mrs. Myers wouldn’t even recognize it these days. It had a population of about five hundred back when she lived there. Now we’re talking about twenty thousand or so.”

  “Not so many, considering over a century has passed.”

  Eddie considered and Betsy knew she was thinking about her promise not to reveal too much about the present state of the world to Lavender’s time locked residents. “Come on, Eddie, I was born in California twenty nine years ago and I’ve been there since. You have no secrets from me.”

  Eddie nodded. “These days most people live in cities. The cities are huge and not so many are out there in places like Korn.” She hesitated before going on. “It’s like where Aunt Lynne and Uncle Moss live in Oklahoma. They have fewer neighbors every year.”

  Betsy considered that. “With so much violence in the world people feel safer in cities. In the few years since Mom and I moved to Lavender, a lot has changed and Americans no longer feel confident behind their ocean barriers and great distances of land.”

  Eddie agreed. “War these days happens everywhere and can strike in the heartland itself.”

  Betsy frowned that she didn’t like to think so negatively and wished out loud she could convince Eddie and Zan and her aunt and uncle to come here permanently so she could feel they were safe.

  Not that Herbert Myers had been safe, Mac thought, though she didn’t say the discouraging words aloud. Someone had killed him, perhaps deliberately. Life was never entirely safe, not even in Lavender.

  “The bones of the old town of Korn are still there even though these days it’s a tourist destination with people coming to see how life used to be. It’s full of little inns and ethnic restaurants, historic farms and a small museum. People may want to live in the cities, but they like to visit the past.”

  Betsy smiled. “We should set up a Lavender tour.”

  Eddie grimaced. “Not funny. I can just see you conducting people across our border to watch you milk cows and gather eggs.”

  “Or watch us tell our stories and histories for the entertainment of the community. They’d probably be so bored they’d throw rotten tomatoes at us.”

  “Don’t envy them, Betsy. I know things are never perfect anywhere, never quite the ‘good old days’ people like to imagine, but I wouldn’t trade Lavender for the whole of New York City.”

  “Broadway plays, French cooking, the latest movies, the New York Yankees . . .” Betsy listed wistfully. “Life is not all about children and buggy rides and church on Sunday in your best new hat.”

  Eddie laughed, than countered. “Police everywhere, terrorists blowing themselves up, afraid to let your child out of your sight.” She raised a hand, dismissing the conversation. “Don’t forget, Betsy, I know how you really feel. Of all of us, you make a genuine choice. You could cross that border any time you wanted.”

  Betsy was too kind to point out to her sister that she’d made a choice as well, knowing full well that for Eddie that meant going with Zan into that dangerous world where he played a vital part in trying to make things better. This was what it meant to love Alexander Alston, just as her choice of husband had taken her into the past tragedies of the civil war.

  She sighed. “What was it like for Mrs. Myers back in Korn?

  “She came from a respected family. Her father died in the war, was something of a hero, and her mother finishing raising her family alone, three daughters. She was something of a legend for her independence.” Eddie smiled. “Esther and Herbert married young and had their own daughters, worked hard, Esther more so than Herbert. He was better liked, easy going and affable, while she was said to have a sharp tongue.”

  “With a heart of gold underneath,” Betsy said defensively.

  “Still she wasn’t exactly Mrs. Popular and when Herbert disappeared, people figured at first he’d gotten tired of it all and taken off. Then when there was talk of blood found in their little cottage and evidence of a struggle. .. His body was never found . . .”

  “Because he wasn’t dead,” Betsy put in hurriedly.

  Eddie shrugged. “Still there was talk that they weren’t getting along and that he was involved with someone else, a local flirt name Audrey Harris. . .”

  “You sound like you actually met this Audrey and didn’t care for her.”

  “She’s long dead, silly. The Korn I visited lies far in your future. I got my information from old newspapers and journals and the memories of descendants.”

  Betsy raised questioning eyebrows.

  “She stuck it out for several years, searching for him the whole time, but finally her little girls were hearing the rumors, being hurt by what was said. One day she packed and left Korn under a considerable cloud and didn’t tell anyone, not even her own sisters, where she was going.”

  “And came here?”

  “It was before,” Eddie agreed. “Lavender was just a normal town back then before everything happened and we voted to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. But fifty miles was a long way then and nobody in Korn knew where she’d gone. Like her husband, she and her girls just disappeared.”

  Suddenly Mac had to interrupt. “But what about Jerry?” she demanded. “That man knew Jerry.”

  Finally Eddie spoke. “We aren’t ignoring that possibility,” she said. “That’s why Zan is paying a visit to Korn.”

  Harlan Crombacher came by to talk to Esther the next morning. A lanky young man of reserved disposition, she knew him mostly as the boon companion of family friend Warne Chapman, who had not so long ago followed the strange path sometimes offered to Lavender residents and gone elsewhere to live out his life with the young woman he loved. Warne had been friendly and likable while Harlan, shy and plain-looking, mostly listened. Not a bad quality, she thought now, for a Dr. Watson.

  But then that was another storybook character and while she could find herself in the Miss Marple books, there was no trace of an elderly, slightly over-weight woman whose feet sometimes ached acting as a detective in the Sherlock Holmes tales.

  Still she needed Harlan on her side. “Sorry about your husband,” he began awkwardly. “The doctors say he got beat up.”

  She nodded. Everybody knew that. “He wasn’t a fighter.”

  He blinked. “Beg pardon, Ma’am.”

  She supposed he thought a woman like her wouldn’t make such a ticklish point, but Mrs. Myers knew it was what Miss Marple would have asked. “You know, he was easy going, got along with everybody, not apt to pick a fight.”

  “I reckon it wasn’t exactly a fight, ma’am. More like several guys went after him and just pummeled him until he was near dead.” He hesitated before going on, “Sorry, Mrs. Myers, I suppose that wasn’t very tactful saying that when it’s your husband we’re talking about.” Harlan swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his embarrassment.

  “Call me Esther,” she told him absent-mindedly. Youngsters his age were taught to address their elders more formally, but if she was going to work on a regular basis with this obviously not par
ticularly bright young man, they had to get on some sort of communicative basis. Good Lord, even young Sylvie, who as practically her granddaughter called her Mom Myers or sometimes ‘old lady.’ Not that she approved, but somehow Sylvie was such a dear that she got away with it. She supposed she was growing old and a little too mellow. She would never have accepted such treatment from Eddie or Betsy.

  Good Lord, she was letting her mind wander while Harlan sat there blinking at her in that way he had as though he were slowly processing information.

  “If we’re going to work together, Harlan, you might as well call me Esther. I have a feeling we’re going to become real well acquainted.”

  He blinked some more, his thin crop of eyelashes barely visible. “We’re going to work together, Mrs. Myers?” he finally asked. “You and me?”

  “Esther,” she reminded him. “Go talk to Forrest. He’ll explain the whole thing to you.”

  She showed him out the door, closed it and then stood there for a long minute thinking. The poor boy had no idea how to conduct an investigation. He’d treated her as though she were in charge when anybody knew it was the other way around when you were questioning a suspect.

  It was a good thing she’d taken on this job. And even if she figured Miss Marple, if she’d been a real person and not one made up by a clever writer, would never have investigated a crime where she was the chief suspect, she knew she had at least one advantage. She was absolutely sure she wasn’t guilty.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mac began to take walks. Each sunny late August morning, she set out before breakfast to explore the streets of the town. Now that she had at least a faint hope that Jerry was being kept prisoner somewhere in Lavender, she could search.

  They wouldn’t let her out of here so she had no choice but to leave the outside search to Zan and the authorities, but the town and the surrounding rural community were hers to explore.

  Nobody even seemed to think it odd, her going off by herself this way each morning. They probably thought it was good for her, walking off tension.

  Each day she explored a new area. Today she strolled through the more modest western area of the town with its little wooden frame houses, painted in soft pastels, and yards bright with roses and flowering trees.

  Nowhere in Lavender had she seen anything like the spare, grimy-looking tenements of the city, nor the tumbledown shacks of poverty. Even the simplest house had its own beauty and she wasn’t sure but she wouldn’t have felt more at home in one of these pretty little cottages than in the Victorian mansion on Crockett Street.

  Somewhere among these houses, she knew, was the one occupied by Eddie and Zan when they were here. She had no idea which one was theirs, however, and fell to imagining herself and Jerry, together and living in one of the homes.

  Later in the day, summer would sizzle unpleasantly, driving residents to inactivity on shady front porches and children under the shade of the big trees, but now the air felt cool and fresh, scented by the many colorful flowers—she smelled honeysuckle on the light breeze—and soon the residents of Lavender would be stirring on sidewalks and streets as they went off to school or work. But for now, they were inside getting ready and eating breakfast and she had the outside mostly to herself as she watched the milk wagon move down the street from house to house, depositing milk, butter and eggs, just brought in from the country.

  Even as she allowed the morning peacefulness to lull her with its sweet sound of songbirds and the scents of summer, her gaze stayed sharp, taking in everything, trying to find any hint of the presence of one Gerald Caldecott being held against his will in one of these innocent looking dwellings.

  “Morning, Miss Alva,” a deep male voice startled her, and she turned to recognize Constable Crombacher in his brown uniform, striding up behind her. “Nice morning for a walk.”

  Just polite chit chat. He had no news for her, nor was likely to. No doubt he followed a prescribed routine, moving about the town as part of his job.

  She nodded and smiled, but didn’t speak as, at a fast clip, his long legs took him past her. He seemed a nice guy, but she could give him little credence when it came to solving either a murder or finding a kidnap victim.

  Of course she was the only one who believed Jerry was – or even might be - in Lavender. A little boy ran out from a yellow house just down the street, stopping to stare at her. “Morning, Teacher,” he said.

  She smiled. She recognized him as one of the fourth graders she’d helped Sylvie teach that one day, but didn’t remember his name. “Good morning,” she said. “Have a good day at school.”

  “No school today,” he replied, grinning widely. “It’s Saturday. I’m gonna play baseball.”

  She hardly knew what day it was. When you were off in what seemed a permanent vacation, you lost track of the days and date. None of these seemed to matter as much as when she’d reported five days a week at a job. Now she barely knew which century she was in.

  Suddenly she felt lost and half-sick. “Oh, Jerry,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  Jerry ran recklessly at first, the noise of his escape attempt resounding through the thick woods as he stumbled over fallen branches and through brambles and then, hesitating, stopped to listen for pursuit. Not hearing any approach, he slowed down a little and began to move more quietly.

  He felt sure the men chasing him were not country-wise, but urban pirates, while he at least had grown up on a ranch in rural Oklahoma, giving him, he hoped, something of an advantage out here.

  Conscious of Herman left behind, he buried deep into a wild plum thicket, ignoring the scratches and scrapes that came his way, and settled in this hiding place for long enough to catch his breath as he tried to think of the best way to go to the other man’s assistance.

  Damn, but he felt a deserter for having run off that way, but there had been nothing to be gained by both of them getting caught. And Herman himself had urged him to flee. All he’d asked was to make sure his wife and daughters were safe.

  Jerry hoped to do better than that. He would go for help and bring back a posse of men to rescue Herman and his family. He waited in his hiding place until dusk began to creep in, late on this summer evening.

  He’d slept a little and when he’d awakened, found his brain beginning to clear. Finally he was starting to shake off the results of the drugging and to feel physically and mentally himself.

  He moved quietly now, not hurrying and crashing through the thick woods. He could still hope he was in Lavender, but doubted it after what Herman Myers had said. Up until now, he’d only known two people who could move easily across the rippling barriers of time. But in Zan’s laboratories, things were happening.

  Things he’d known about. Matters that their shadowy enemies had extracted from his mind under the influence of drugs. Zan had kept secret his newly acquired ability to cross without Betsy’s help, but Jerry was one of the few who was privy to that knowledge.

  And now their enemies.

  Herman had said they were near a little German settlement town named Korn. From the appearances and contents of the cabin with its wood stove and candles for light, he felt fairly sure they were not in the 21st century. He could only hope that Korn was somewhere near 1913 Lavender. From there he could find his way home to McKinley.

  It was her image that kept him sane as he forged his way through woods too thick and tall to be anything that existed in Lavender.

  “Mac?” Mrs. Myers called impatiently. “McKinley? Where are you?”

  “She went for a walk,” Sylvie’s young voice answered.

  Mac heard them both as she went in the front door, feeling discouraged that every effort she made to find Jerry seemed fruitless. “But she’s back,” she tried to sound more cheerful than she felt. “Walk’s over.”

  “Well, thank goodness.” Mrs. Myers, already half down stairs, came, slowly and carefully down the rest of the winding stairway, holding carefully to the polished wood of the rail. “I need to ta
lk to you urgently.”

  “Me too?” Seventeen-year-old Sylvie’s pretty face looked up from where she’d just settled on her piano bench, her hands posed over the keys. “Sounds intriguing.” She grinned hopefully at the older woman.

  Mrs. Myers could never turn her baby down, but she pretended to reluctance. “I suppose,” she said. “We’ll need somebody to drive the horse.”

  “Horse?” Mac questioned helplessly, feeling she was being swept into who could know what just when she needed to come up with some new ideas for her search.

  She didn’t protest, however, when the older woman ushered them upstairs to the bedroom they were currently sharing, though with their young legs they got there considerably before she did. When she did arrive, she was blowing and puffing from the effort and Mac couldn’t help thinking the family was probably right when they insisted she relax a little from her hard-working habits. It couldn’t be easy at her age to keep up with this big house.

  While Mac seated herself on the little bench in front of Sylvie’s pink and feminine dressing table, turning her back to the oval mirror, Sylvie flopped onto the bed where she slept across the room from the one she’d loaned to Mac for her visit. Mrs. Myers sat down in the delicate cushioned rocker between the two beds.

  Mac couldn’t help wondering how the older woman must be feeling these days, having just learned of her husband’s death. And yet there he’d been, dying down by the creek as a young man while she was in her seventies and nearing the end of her days. She knew it all had to do with the time lines, but it was as puzzling to her as Betsy’s twin children, Emilee and Ben, who were obviously different ages. It made her head ache to try to figure out either situation.

  She wondered what it would be like to meet Jerry again and find that he was either much younger or much older than she. She felt it would break her heart, but maybe it was different for Mrs. Myers. Perhaps when you were in your seventh decade, things didn’t hurt so much.

  “I have to apologize, Mac, but I haven’t been thinking real clear. Just stunned at first, I guess, but now I’m remembering. You said Herman called out something to Jerry.”