The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1)

by Alida Winternheimer

  “It’s what Johnny wants. If he and Pam are all right with it, who are we to judge?”

  “But why all this?” He gestured at the computer.

  “He’s a historian. I think he wants it preserved. You know, straight from his grandfather’s mouth so there won’t be any guessing later. When he came to my house, he said we can’t trust our memories.”

  Beckett was going to say something else when the front door opened. He hit record and they watched the live feed as Pam went to greet her uncle Bill. She said hello, but avoided calling him anything, waiting for him to decide who she was. They heard Bill say, “This nice young man gave me a ride here. What do we owe you? Vera, do you have your purse?”

  “It’s taken care of,” Johnny said. “I’ll come pick you up later.”

  “Later?” Bill.

  “For your appointment.” Johnny.

  Pam appeared on the computer monitor, leading Bill into the dining room. She was saying the young man could show himself out. A moment later, the door opened quietly and Johnny joined them in the bedroom. They all sat on the edge of the bed, the computer before them on a small student’s desk, a desk that had been Johnny’s when he was in high school and still bore the marks of his boredom. Jess pointed to the plates of pie sitting on the dresser and Johnny nodded. She passed them round and they sat, watching the charade and eating pie on Johnny’s childhood bed.

  Pam poured coffee for Bill, then joined him at the table. She asked him how his day was, and he said the shop was a mess, he hadn’t found a machinist to replace Carmichael who was half as good. Johnny whispered that it was around 1985, give or take. Bill complained for several minutes about work.

  Pam set her fork down and looked at Bill thoughtfully. “I was thinking about Bonnie today, Bill.”

  “I think about her every single damned day.”

  “Johnny asked me why we don’t have any baby pictures.”

  “We got plenty.”

  “He means from before. He needed some for a school project, you know like they do these days. And his classmates were all bringing in baby pictures, like from the cradle, before they could stand up even. He wanted to know why we don’t have anything from when he was a baby.”

  Jess was thinking how well Pam was playing her part, when she saw that Bill looked uncomfortable. He laid his fork on the table and made a fist beside it. Pam didn’t seem to notice.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him his baby album got lost and it was a real shame.”

  Bill relaxed, took up his fork again.

  “I think maybe we ought to tell him.”

  “Tell him what?”

  Johnny had coached Pam, but maybe she was pushing too far too fast. Jess could feel Johnny tensing up beside her. Beckett, too. They were thinking about Johnny’s secret past. Jess, however, was concerned with Bonnie and what was coming as the anniversary of her death drew near. I hope this is what you want, she thought, as her fingers found her throat and lingered there.

  “About his father,” Pam said.

  “Vera!” Bill’s voice was harsh and authoritarian, but Pam wasn’t to be undone.

  “Oh, Bill,” she chided. “Doesn’t the boy have a right to know where he comes from?”

  “He comes from us. We’re his family and thank God he’s got us.” Bill was getting agitated, something that would be bad for all of them. Pam reached over and patted his arm.

  “All right. I suppose you’re right about that, dear.” She patted a few more times then withdrew her hand. “How’s the pie?”

  “You make a fine pie, Vera.”

  They ate in silence until Bill’s plate was clear.

  “I got something for him,” Bill said.

  “Got something?”

  “I got something for Johnny. I think it will help.” Bill began to stand up from his chair.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll get it to show you.”

  “Just tell me about it. You can show me tonight.”

  He sat again, easily swayed ever since his illness took over. “All right, Vera. I went to see Bonnie one day after…. Well, after.” Pam nodded. “There was a jewelry box on the headstone, so I picked it up. It was a Purple Heart. Carl Copeland’s Purple Heart.”

  Jess looked at Johnny, wondering how much he understood. His face was blanched. He still didn’t know Copeland had killed his mother, and the thought of telling him turned all that rhubarb pie to acid in Jess’s stomach.

  “But Bill, Carl’s not Johnny’s father.”

  “Who’s going to tell him otherwise? The Copeland’s are gone to Arizona now. And isn’t it better to have a father who died a war hero, with a Purple Heart, than that, that bastard.” Spittle followed the word like it had a foul taste all its own. Bill wiped his lower lip with the back of his hand, then took up his coffee cup and drained the last of it. Pam immediately picked up the carafe and refilled his cup. “That boy deserves a father and a decent man.” The coffee cup clattered against the saucer as he set it down with a trembling hand. “That Carl was a nice kid and he went to war for his country. That’s more’n that John Sykes ever did.” Bill’s face had flushed, the creases around his eyes deepening with his rising aggravation.

  Pam put her hand on his arm again. “You know,” she said softly, “John swears he’s innocent, and Bonnie sure always seemed happy with him.”

  He shook off her touch. “That just makes it all the more damned sickening!” His hand trembled as he picked up his coffee cup so much that coffee sloshed over the lip and onto his shirt. “Damn it!” He set the cup on its saucer with a harsh clatter.

  Pam jumped up and hurried into the kitchen. She returned with a tea towel and dabbed at his shirt.

  “Oh, quit your fussing. It’s nothing.” Bill brushed Pam’s hands away from his shirtfront and grabbed the towel from her. He brushed it over himself a few times and put it down. “What do I care?” he said. “I’ll change it before I go out.”

  “That’s all right then.” Pam eased back into her seat and refilled her own coffee cup.

  Bill was quiet. He lifted his coffee again, this time succeeding in his aim, and made a slurping noise as he drew the first hot sip through his lips. He set the cup back on its saucer, then ran his battered old fingers around its rim. His face softened as the agitation of a few moments before left him. He looked blank. Pam waited patiently for whatever would come next.

  Johnny muttered to himself, something Jess couldn’t make out. She looked sideways at him and saw he was crying, his lips barely moving to shape his utterance. “Ask him…” she made out those two words. Jess put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and he glanced her way before wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Ask him why he doesn’t believe John Sykes is innocent.”

  “More pie?” Pam said.

  Jess looked at the computer again.

  “No. One is enough at any one sitting, Vera.”

  “Right you are, Bill.” Pam smiled at him, a conciliatory look. He reached out to take hold of her hand. Pam seemed surprised, her eyes widening and body pulling back, but she relaxed and leaned toward him, completing the shift in an instant so short Bill never noticed it had occurred. “Bill?”

  “I get worried,” he said. “Sometimes I think about the future and I get worried.”

  “Honey, why don’t you think John might be telling the truth about being innocent?”

  Bill’s head jerked up on his body and he looked at Pam so directly Jess flinched. She was afraid they had gone too far, but then he relaxed and shook his head. “Because the law found him guilty. The law has its methods and he had his trial. If the law says he killed our girl…well, I got no reason not to believe the law. I’ll never understand it. Not a single piece of it. But the law put him in jail and we got that precious little boy and that’s what I know. All I can do…” His voice became thick with emotion and he paused to clear his throat. “All I can do, Vera, is go forward. Give that boy a father who’s fit to h
ave.”

  “All right. All right, Bill.”

  Bill pressed a thumb into the crumbs on his pie plate and put it into his mouth. When he looked up and saw Pam, his face pinched and opened and pinched again as he worked through conflicting notions of reality. His consternation rose and he put his hands to his face and rubbed, pushing his palms up and over his head. He shook himself at last and looked at his niece again. “Pam?”

  “Hi, Bill. How’s it going?”

  “I think I’m tired today.”

  Pam glanced at the shelf where she knew the camera was hiding. Her look said that she was done.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Beckett didn’t speak on the drive back to Skoghall. Whenever Jess said something pleasant, he responded with little more than a grunt, so she gave up talking and left him to stare sullenly out the window, his head on his hand and his elbow on the door of the car. The sky was a still blue and the humidity hadn’t broken yet. The sun seemed to reflect off everything and be everywhere at once so that Jess found herself squinting, even with sunglasses on. The River Road curved between the Mississippi and the bluffs. Motorcycling clubs trolled the road in their leather and bandanas, the noise from their engines blotting out the tranquility of the drive. Jess thought about stopping for a bite to eat somewhere, but Beckett was so far withdrawn she decided it was best to get home. Maybe he could take it out on some clay, wedging it into nice balls.

  “I don’t know who to be more angry at,” he said, finally turning his head from the window, “Bill Ecklund or you.”

  “Me?” Jess’s voice was high with surprise. “What did I do?”

  “You started this whole thing, didn’t you?”

  “Whoa. Hang on. First, I did not start this. His mother, Bonnie, started this. Remember?” She stretched her throat toward him. “So, what was I supposed to do? Ignore her?”

  “No, but…”

  “I don’t see how you could think any of this is my fault. I’m just trying to not get run out of my house.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jess glanced at him, then fixed her gaze back on the road as it curved yet again. “Don’t know what?”

  “I think you enjoy this, Jess.” He put his hand to his chin and rubbed at his goatee.

  “Enjoy? Enjoy?” she spluttered with indignation. It was ludicrous.

  “I don’t mean you like having a ghost. I mean you like getting involved. You’ve had these meetings with Marlene and Sterling. You’ve been to the prison and now this…this charade. I’m not sure that was ethical, Jess. The poor guy has Alzheimer’s.”

  “The poor guy? A minute ago you were mad at him.”

  “I am mad at him.” Beckett slapped his hand against the dashboard. “I’m furious he wasn’t honest with Johnny from the beginning. He created this whole other father for Johnny and let him believe it.” Beckett shifted on his seat, rearranging his legs, then looked out the window again.

  Jess waited a minute before speaking. “Beckett, are you sure this is about Johnny?”

  “Of course,” he snapped. “Who else?”

  Jess didn’t like to state the obvious, so she kept quiet and drove.

  The house felt stuffy after being closed up all day. Jess went through both floors opening windows, hoping it would make things better. She found a fan in the back bedroom where she was keeping everything she hadn’t unpacked yet. She pulled her hair up on top of her head and secured it into a messy bun while she stood in front of the blowing fan in the living room. She pulled her shirt away from her back before padding barefoot into the kitchen. Shakti was lapping thirstily at her bowl. “I know, girl,” Jess said as she opened the freezer and got out the ice cube trays. It was time for a cocktail if ever there was one.

  She took her vodka tonic onto the porch and sat in a rocker, a book beside her on the table. Shakti flopped down at her feet, too hot to run around in that fluffy fur coat of hers. Jess rocked slowly in the chair, enjoying the calming motion, the awareness of sweat forming at her hairline, the sounds of birds in the trees. Sparrows sat at her feeder, pecking at their meal. From the branches, a small, dark-headed bird cried chick-a-dee-dee-dee. Jess pressed the sweaty glass to her face and took a sip.

  Out beyond the sugar maple, the door of the smokehouse swung open with a creak, then slammed against the brick wall. Jess sat upright. The ice cubes in her drink tinkled against the glass as her hand trembled. She watched the smokehouse, her heart thudding away. Jess had put a new padlock on, she was certain of it. Shakti lifted her head, her ears alert, but when nothing happened, she laid her chin back over her paws and flicked her tail against the boards of the porch. Maybe it hadn’t been locked, after all.

  Jess sat back and put her glass aside. She began pushing on the balls of her feet, rocking easily back and forth. It was difficult to enjoy herself now, but she was determined to wait and see, even relax a little. She deserved some time off, and Bonnie was denying her even this one moment of respite. Her lips thinned into a tight line and her face flushed. She grabbed the armrests of the rocking chair and curled her fingers until her nails scratched the wood surface. “Dammit, Bonnie!” she exclaimed. “Give me a break, would you?”

  The answer was no. It was as clear as anything Jess had ever felt, a sensation of complete denial, of disappointment and rage, of the unfairness of so many things, and it startled Jess.

  She pushed herself up and out of the rocker, yanked open the screen door, and stepped into the vestibule. Jess stopped. In a path from where she stood, back as far as she could see into the hallway, stretched a line of bloody footprints. Jess gasped, her hands reflexively covering her heart. When her shock passed, however, she found herself angrier still and the anger allowed her to look. Jess bent toward the first set of footprints. The feet were small. The steps were narrowly spaced and uneven. The right foot, especially. Jess examined it and saw the toes curled unnaturally in, shortening the foot overall and raising the pad under the big toe off the floor. Bonnie’s feet were deformed…no. She had been hobbled and was somehow walking on a curled foot.

  “Well, that’s interesting, Bonnie!” Jess yelled. She turned in the vestibule, shouting in every direction. “But how does it help me? I’ve seen these before. What of it, Bonnie?” Jess lifted her face to the ceiling to shout up into the office. “Johnny has the photo and the cowboy. He knows he’s Johnny Sykes. He knows! Isn’t that what you want?”

  A buzzing noise was suddenly audible behind Jess. She turned and saw black dots streaming out of the smokehouse, forming a cloud, buzzing louder and louder as the swarm grew.

  “Oh shit.”

  Jess leapt onto the porch and looked around frantically. She found Shakti cowering under the rocker. She threw the rocker over and it crashed into the table, knocking it and the glass to the porch. Jess grabbed Shakti by the scruff of the neck and jerked her up. “Come on!” she cried as she backed into the house and slammed the screen door, latching its hook and eye closure just as the first of the swarm hit. Flies peppered the screen door, covering it completely, blotting out any view of the yard. She slammed the front door and bolted it, but not before a single fly slipped through a gap in the screen. Jess backed into the hallway, holding Shakti to her chest. The fly buzzed past them, circled the hall, and disappeared through the kitchen doorway. They were surrounded by a buzzing louder than the drone of cicadas in August.

  Jess went into the living room first. Seeing the windows blacked out by an undulating screen of insects made her gag. She shut all the glass, running from window to window and room to room, rattling the panes as she slammed them down and secured the latches. When she had finished, she was covered in sweat. Jess went back to the living room, exhausted, and got onto her hands and knees. “Shakti?” She found Shakti wedged between the couch and the wall. When they made eye contact, Shakti wagged her tail and belly crawled out to Jess. They flopped onto the couch together to wait out the infestation.

  Jess focused on Shakti, stroking the soft fur over t
he top of her head and behind her ears. She wondered if any of these strange frights would affect her, make her a nervous dog or something. “That’s all I need,” she said to the puppy. Shakti lifted her face to lap at Jess’s chin. Her smushed snout was beginning to elongate, showing the first hint of the dog she would become. Jess picked up one of her front paws and examined the black pads. Some day she would grow into these feet.

  The buzzing at the windows increased, as though something had excited the flies. Jess had been trying so hard to pretend they didn’t exist, and now Shakti’s ears stood out to better pick up the sound, her eyebrows raised in a worried, quizzical look. Jess kissed the top of her head. The busily-moving swarm on the window behind them let in pinpoints of light here and there. Jess shuddered and looked at her puppy. Shakti was the only thing keeping her calm: Pet the dog. Pet the dog. Jess’s neck muscles stiffened like a coat hanger had been inserted over the triangles of her shoulder blades. She felt her heart beat quicken and closed her eyes. Breathe. She inhaled, lifting her diaphragm against the weight of the puppy, which made it difficult both to breathe and to relax. Just like practicing with a sandbag in yoga class, she told herself to stifle a rising panic. A wet tongue lapped her cheek and Jess opened her eyes in surprise, smiled at the puppy and stroked her head, before realizing they were not alone. Jess forced herself to lift her gaze from Shakti.

  Bonnie stood in the corner where Johnny had said he remembered playing, barefoot, in her summer nightgown with the lace trim fanning out over her shoulders. Red blotted her eyes and the mark on her neck looked raw and painful. Bonnie raised a hand to point at Jess, who cringed, pushing deeper into the couch cushions and clutching Shakti tighter to her chest.