A picture was chalked on her driveway. A brief glimpse was enough to make Abigail stiffen and cover her eyes with her hand, but the young policeman touched her arm and forced her to look again.
Someone had outlined the unmistakable figure of a woman on the smooth blacktop, using great detail to depict long hair fanned out around the head and the contorted limbs of a sprawled body. The sketch gave the impression of brokenness, as though the woman had been struck and hurled to the ground by a tremendous impact, and with a spasm of fear, Abigail saw that a withered rosebud had been placed where the heart should be.
Chapter 35
Julia made the connection at two A.M..
“Where’ve you been? I needed to talk to you.”
“I’ve been out and about and here and there.”
She spat out the words. “Don’t quibble. The James woman tried to pry a confession out of Austin.”
“I know, Julia. I was at the house, remember?”
“What are you doing to stop her?” The question was shouted into the receiver.
The chuckle wasn’t meant to reassure. “That sassy redhead and I are on kissing terms now. I paid her a visit—two as a matter of fact. She’s probably not sleeping too well tonight.”
“I don’t care if she has insomnia—she’s still going on with the investigation. Why do you think I’m paying you?”
The man’s voice hardened. “You’re not paying me enough—tormenting her isn’t much of a bonus for what I’m doing for you. I could get into serious trouble, just like that.”
She heard the snap of his fingers and wished it was his neck breaking. “I want results, not cute tricks.”
“Relax, Julia. She’s pushing for action and I’ll give it to her, trust me.”
“Don’t call me Julia. The only way that little tramp is going to see her name in the papers is if it’s her obituary.”
“I’m not being paid enough to kill for you, Julia. Not yet, anyway.”
Julia drew a ragged breath through clenched teeth. When she could trust herself to speak, she replied, “I want you to keep Connie Pringle from talking.”
“Abigail James has already spoken with her—don’t forget I’m keeping tabs on this investigation.”
“Connie must not have told her everything or else the lawyer wouldn’t have left my house without a fuss. So I want you to convince Connie that it’s best if she keeps her mouth shut.”
He seemed amused. “Ah, that will cost you extra. Triple the last payment.”
Julia’s voice was thick with loathing. “You’ll get your filthy money. I’ve kept my part of our bargain.”
“Good. Leave the envelope in the same place tomorrow morning. And, Julia? I’ve been doing some digging around in your blue-blooded background. Whatever happened to Nathan, your loving fiancé? Killed in a tragic accident on a lonely road just before the wedding, wasn’t he? Like Rosemary?”
Julia slammed the receiver down so hard the casing cracked.
Flora was having a restless night and Belle tried every remedy that she knew, including a camphor-oil backrub and substituting the sick woman’s pillow with one stuffed with lavender and lady’s bedstraw in the hope that the soothing scents would have a calming effect.
The vapors released by her body heat seemed to soothe the invalid and the agonized gasps abated into regular, shallow respirations. Belle gave the limp hand a final pat and, rising from the chair by the bed, walked to the glass wall to stare out at the stars that peppered the heavens like tiny chips of glass.
Age had flecked her hair with gray, but time’s cruelest trick had been to increase the clarity of the past, reviving painful memories and condemning her once more to watch her dreams char and blow away like the ashes of a deserted campfire. She’d lied to Abigail James about only seeing Rosemary that one time and the scent of the lady’s bedstraw had brought their first encounter back to Belle. Everything had begun with Rosemary and ended with Rosemary…
The sky became a black-velvet backdrop, fading before the reality of a sun-dappled lane and a brown-skinned child clad in a patched red-and-white gingham dress. Belle welcomed the errand to a neighboring farm—Cook could run out of eggs every day if it meant a break from dusting and ironing and filling the coal scuttles. Little puffs of dirt came up between her toes with each step and when a meadowlark whistled, she tossed her head as if the salute had come from a beau.
Belle paused to watch a beautiful orange-and-black butterfly float across the path. Putting the basket of eggs on the ground, she raised her arms above her head and stretched, delighting in the sunshine on her face and the notion that she didn’t have to hurry back.
Sunlight winking off glass blinded her and she squinted toward the old barn set back from the lane. The reflected glare came from the windshield of a car—someone had parked behind the barn. Curious, Belle abandoned the eggs and picked her way through the grass on bare feet. The closer she got, the more the automobile resembled Mr. Austin’s machine, but he was supposed to be at the library doing some studying.
After ascertaining that the car did indeed belong to Mr. Austin, Belle put her fists on her hips and frowned in bewilderment. This was a puzzle—and she felt the first thrill of fear. What if some robbers had jumped Mr. Austin and left him for dead? What if he was even now lying inside the old barn with a grievous head wound?
The sliding door squeaked when Belle gave it a yank. Thankful that she was so skinny, she slipped through the narrow slot and into a dim, shadowy interior that smelt of corn and musty hay. As she waited for her eyes to adjust, the girl heard the throaty cooing of pigeons in the rafters and looked up.
Her sharp ears caught the sound of a woman’s laughter mingled with the muttered conversation of the birds. The loft. A woman was in the loft. A man’s voice. Mr. Austin!
Before she realized what was happening, Belle found herself clinging to the top of the ladder nailed to the wall and peeping over the edge of the loft, a fascinated witness to a strange tableau.
A woman was seated on an old seaman’s chest, her hands in her lap and a glowing fan of hair covering her bare shoulders. The blue-and-jet shawl bound across her breasts left her midriff bare. Mr. Austin stood before an easel and, arms folded, studied the canvas resting on it.
He sighed and shook his head. “It’s no good, Rosemary—I haven’t captured you.”
The woman’s laughter rippled out again, as light as bubbles in a stream. “I’ve already surrendered, Austin, my love.”
Austin picked up the canvas and carried it over to the corner where the sun fell upon it, washing out the details. “Maybe it’ll look better when it dries. Tomorrow I want to try a miniature—perhaps my talents lie on a smaller field.”
The woman remained motionless, but even in that stillness, she possessed the promise of excitement. Belle found her eyes drawn toward her as the low voice replied, “You have many talents, Mr. Kyle.”
“With you as my model, I’m sure I can sell enough paintings to pay the rent on a Paris garret. Session’s over, Rosemary. You may relax.”
She reached up behind her and the shawl dropped, along with Belle’s jaw. Mr. Austin made a choking noise in his throat as he crossed the room and took her in his arms. The two bodies fused together and collapsed into the straw.
The sun was gone, night had fallen. Rosemary’s death and the void in Austin’s life had combined to destroy Belle’s plans to educate herself, escape the servitude of her life, climb a mountain. Now she was chained to Flora by the knowledge of a terrible secret, but would Flora’s death open the prison door? Her hands balled into fists.
She was unaware of her employer’s pain-faded eyes upon her until the older woman spoke. “Belle? What are you thinking about that hurts you so much?”
Belle touched the outline of the coin through the material of her dress and looked down at the veins tracing blue rivers across the backs of her hands. She made an effort to clear the emotion from her voice. “Just wishing upon a star, Flora. Woul
d you like me to fix you a peppermint tisane?”
Chapter 36
“You want to know about way back when I was a deputy? What did I do wrong—misfile a report? Run over one of Old Lady Gossington’s chickens? Those little peepers were always wandering out and getting clipped by passing cars. The old biddy didn’t believe in fences—figured since the road went through her land, she could raise livestock wherever she darn pleased.”
The man with the burning eyes, Matthew Boyington, was still handsome after living over seventy years, and the passage of time hadn’t managed to warp his erect posture or chip away at the width of the shoulders wrapped in khaki material.
Abigail was in the county historical museum. Over the past year, the historical society had expanded its exhibits to fill the first floor of the building that had formerly served as a courthouse and the last county office had been moved to the new structure honey-combed with steel and glass. Now the two massive buildings, one of wood and the other its complete antithesis in design, straddled opposite ends of the municipal parking lot.
The museum required that the guides to the war room be in uniform and Matthew, whose name tag announced he was a decorated veteran of the Pacific Theater, was clad in the drab garb of an infantry man. The war room contained uniforms, medals and weapons, rusting and dusty flotsam and jetsam dating back to the Civil War.
Matthew fetched two folding chairs from a closet and placed them near a display cabinet filled with bayonets. Noticing the direction of Abigail’s gaze, he grinned. “The stains on the bayonets are molasses—our director’s quest for realism stops short of requiring us to stab ourselves. But don’t keep me in suspense—why interview me?”
The sight of the stains, however harmless, had conjured up visions of the blood pouring from her gashed hand and Abigail’s stomach flip-flopped with revulsion. Between dealing with the police and the horror of the drawing on her driveway, she had not fallen into an uneasy doze until dawn.
Her head ached in sympathy with her hand but when Matthew repeated his question, she pulled herself together and opened her interview notebook. “You found Rosemary Dickison’s body lying on Kelton Road.”
The smile disappeared as though she had flipped a switch. “Rosemary Dickison? Why are you asking questions about a girl who’s been dead for years?” Avoiding her eyes, Matthew gazed around the room as if seeking the welcome interruption of a party in need of a guide.
Abigail found herself concentrating on just keeping her body in the chair. When she’d scheduled this interview two days earlier, she hadn’t an inkling of what was to come.
She didn’t plan to reveal her awareness of Rosemary’s essay until later in the conversation so, assuming a briskness she didn’t feel, she said, “Rosemary’s sister, Flora, has retained my firm to investigate the girl’s death. I’ve read the sheriff’s report that you signed and now I would like you to tell me, in your own words, what happened that night.”
Matthew was staring straight ahead, his lips thinned. “She was my first death,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I’d never seen anyone dead before. Later, in the war, that was different. Men lying on the ground weren’t people, just empty corn husks after the shelling has taken the goodness out.
“But when I turned her over, she was soft and warm, her hair like a silky shawl dripping over my sleeve. Lying there in the headlights, blood trickling out of her mouth, she might have been asleep—at any moment could open her eyes, ask why I was holding her, try to brush the dust from her pretty dress.”
He was aging before her eyes. “The dead on a battleground are twisted and grotesque, Ms. James, just heaps of blood-drenched bones and tattered clothing. But my Rosemary was beautiful, peaceful, and very, very dead…”
Chapter 37
Zachery Drummer handled the squad car with the same panache he tackled everything in life, the jerky starts and wide turns a legacy from driving job horses in his youth. Matt was thankful the roads they patrolled were not well traveled and that so far the only casualty to fall under their wheels was a slightly stunned chicken. Zack had attempted to take the evidence home for frying, but Old Lady Gossington had come out on her front porch in time to see the deputies bending over the flapping body of the victim and chased them away with the help of her moth-eaten furred German shepherd.
The night air was warm, although hours earlier the sun had painted the sky with gold and lavender streaks on its descent below the horizon. Cicadas buzzed in the trees and dust blew in the open windows. The fields the two men passed were alive with the minute golden flicker of fireflies, while ripening ears of corn bowed the heads of the dusty, slender stalks.
Aware that the surface tranquility of a summer evening masked marauding foxes and arguments behind drawn shades, Matt knew that tonight was not a time for reflection on evil concealed behind the face of beauty. He was grateful for the rattle of the window in the door frame, the groan of the gear box, and even the distraction of Zack’s snuffling. Matt’s partner reeked of stale perspiration and cheap tobacco and even the open windows couldn’t blow the odor away. A small iron dog dangled by his collar from the key in the ignition, clanking rhythmically as the motion of the car sent him swinging into the steering column.
“Didja hear ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ the other night?” Zack raised his voice to be heard over the engine’s throaty rumble.
“No. I’d rather listen to ‘Benny Goodman Swings’ on ABC—I like something I can snap my fingers to.” Matt shifted his weight to his other hip; a loose spring jabbed him and he welcomed the distraction of the pain.
“Picturing yourself with a sweet little filly in your arms, ain’t ya, kid? You young bucks is all alike. Say, how come you didn’t go to the dance? I allus enjoyed the prancing in the parking lot best—if ya know what I mean.” Zack’s elbow was almost as sharp as the spring. “Hear they got The Down Beats to play.”
Matt winced. Stand on the sidelines—watch another man gloat over the smoothness of her bare back, inhale the seductive scent of her heated skin, or taste the honey of her lips?
Clenching his fists on his knees, he mumbled, “I’m too old to make a fool of myself on the dance floor.”
Zack whistled through the gap between his front teeth and seemed on the verge of pursuing the topic, but made an abrupt turn and subject change to the Louis-Braddock fight held back in June. “Braddock should’ve kept moving, not let Louis pour in with them coal-black fists of his.”
Matt agreed absentmindedly, his gaze on the passing countryside. Zack wanted to rehash the fight on an average of once a week since his champion had gone down in defeat.
“Louis will never hold the title,” Zack predicted, wincing as the car hit a vicious pothole.
Both men lurched and bounced and after checking to make sure his head was still attached, Matt massaged the sore muscles of his neck and wondered how the dance was progressing. He and Zack were the only two deputies on patrol—Zack because his wife had a stiff leg from a childhood bout with polio and Matt because he was a coward.
Patches of ground mist began to form as the cooler night breeze sent up eddies of moisture into the sultry air. Matt pulled out his gold pocket watch, which had belonged to his grandfather, and checked the face. Only 11:50. The dance would still be in full swing—the band blaring out popular tunes and arguments beginning as spiked punch infiltrated the bloodstreams of jealous husbands.
Rosemary. The dance. Matt felt his stomach knot with tension. It was a testimony to the depths of his devotion that Matt could look at his unshaven, rumpled companion and conjure up Rosemary’s image.
Zack’s harsh rasp banished Rosemary’s ghost from the car. “We’ll take a swing down Kelton Road before going back to the station for a cup of coffee, eh?”
Kelton Road. Matt essayed a nonchalant shrug, but his guts twisted again as the signpost appeared on the right. Rosemary lived on Kelton Road in a paint-peeling farmhouse with red shutters and a barn that leaned toward the surrounding trees as if needin
g the support of their leafy limbs. Her bedroom was on the west side of the house and he pictured the room as he had last seen it: rumpled sheets spilling to the floor, a lace-trimmed slip draped across the maple rocker that had belonged to her grandmother, and the red highlights in her hair against the pillowcase picked out by a stray sunbeam. He and Rosemary had shared that bed one hot afternoon when Flora had taken Mrs. Dickison to the doctor. “Don’t expect me to pick up your socks after we’re married,” Rosemary had told him, playfully tugging on his chest hair, a wicked gleam in her eye. “And my specialty is unmaking a bed.”
He shuddered with desire and tried to concentrate on the commonplace: the newspaper folded open to the comic strips on the backseat that fluttered in the breeze from the windows, the rumbling of Zack’s stomach, and the rough weave of the seat fabric under his fingertips. The squad car now traveled a narrow road, where groves of oak and soft pines broke up the squares of the fields and a stream, tamed and choked by weeds and the August sun, sliced under a culvert. The engine wheezed as it climbed the first of several rolling rises.
Zack was whistling again, a Benny Goodman swing tune. Matt gritted his teeth. How could Stella Drummer endure her husband’s constant noise? If the man wasn’t jabbering, he was humming, whistling, or cracking his knuckles. The window glass rattled in the passenger door and the iron dog clanked against the steering column; the car coughed again as it struggled up another incline.
Zack wiped his nose on his sleeve and fumbled in his breast pocket for a tin of chewing tobacco. “Didja hear old man Harris raised a pound of nails to five cents? I told him where he could pound his nails—the ol’ buzzard’s ears got as red as blazes.”
After first politely offering the tin to his companion, he stuffed his cheek full of tobacco, chewed vigorously, and spat out the window. “Nailed a possom in the eye.” He cackled with glee.
Rosemary for Remembrance Page 22
