“Did they, um, mention any names?”
“Only two, but they claim there are more. Local resident Leo Shirley and Maggie Rae’s brother-in-law, Zeb. Do you remember him? He was at the funeral.”
“Kind of. Usually in these cases, it is the husband,” he said, sitting down in his favorite overstuffed chair. He lifted his coffee to his lips.
Is that a tremor in his hands?
He set his cup down on the table beside him, then took the remote in his hand, flipping on the television.
Soon Vera would leave the room because she couldn’t stand to watch television with her husband. His constant flipping of the channels drove her to distraction—it was almost like fingernails screeching across a blackboard.
“You seem excited,” Vera said.
“Now that they know it wasn’t a suicide and are saying it’s a murder, it is exciting, ” he said after taking another sip of his steaming black coffee.
“They’ll find evidence, I bet,” he said. “He’s a strange guy, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He does seem odd. Maybe just very different from the men around here.”
“I bet he did it,” he said after a few minutes. “Just a feeling.”
Vera believed in the justice system and had absolute confidence that both the killer of Maggie Rae and the person who stabbed Bea would be brought to justice. So her thoughts already moved on to what colors she was going to use in the nursery. She noted, however, that Bill seemed to be taking quite an interest in this case. Maybe he’d offer to take up Robert’s defense.
“I’d like to start fixing up the extra room for the baby,” she said. “I’m thinking we should paint the walls yellow. Um, I don’t know. Maybe purple? But whatever we choose, we need to be careful of what kind of paint we use. You know, some of it emits harmful gases for a baby to breathe, so we need to be careful.”
Bill looked at her. “I’m leaving that all up to you, darling. I trust you to take care of it.” He turned back to the television.
“I’m going to need your help,” she said.
“What?” he said, clearly not paying attention. He smoothed what hair he had left down onto his head. “I’m sorry. I was trying to watch the news.”
“I said I’m going to need your help, Bill,” Vera said.
“Oh, sure, just let me know what you want done and when,” he said, smiling at her.
“I better get dressed. I’ve got a class this morning.”
As she walked up the stairs, she stopped momentarily to watch the weather, caught a glimpse of her husband biting his lip—a habit he only indulged in when he was worried.
Is he worried about the baby? About Maggie Rae’s husband? About what?
After brushing her hair thoroughly and placing a headband on it to keep the bangs off her face, Vera smeared red lipstick from corner to corner of her mouth. Then she took a sideways glance at herself in her full-length bedroom mirror. Of course, she was being silly. She wouldn’t be showing yet. But soon. She couldn’t wait for that beautiful baby bump to appear. Everybody would know she was going to be a mom. Finally. A mom.
Suddenly Bill was behind her, his arms wrapped around her.
“We are going to be parents,” he said quietly.
They looked at themselves in the mirror. Bill’s thin lips kissed the nape of her neck, sending shivers through her. His kisses were as light and soft as rose petals brushing her skin. He held her tighter in his arms, placing his chin on her shoulder.
“I, ah, have a little time to spare this morning. Do you?”
The doorbell rang, intruding on their Monday.
“I’ll get it,” he said. “You stay right there.”
Vera sat on the edge of the bed and began to disrobe. She heard the muffled voices of men. “Detective Bryant,” she had heard that. Those Cumberland Creek police just couldn’t leave her lawyer husband alone sometimes.
Chapter 20
Annie placed another picture of Ben in the scrapbook on her kitchen table. The boys were fed and watching Sesame Street, and all that she could think about was the potential murder case. She needed to think about something else, so she started working on her scrapbooks.
Even if Robert Dasher wasn’t an official suspect, the police talked to him, along with a few other men. That was enough, she knew, for the police to start investigating his background in earnest. And, unfortunately, in a town like Cumberland Creek, it was more than enough to start the rumor mill going. Three phone calls came for her already this morning—one from DeeAnn, one from Paige, and one from Sheila.
“I really think he did it,” Sheila said. “He gives me weird vibes. Imagine, your own husband killing you. What must her last thought have been? Oh, I just can’t think about it.”
Annie didn’t know what to think. She hated to jump to conclusions. But at the same time, she had been reading Maggie Rae’s own letters and cards. The way he “hurt” her was just a part of it. Their relationship was full of tension—it appeared that way right from the start. Countless apology letters from Robert were stacked up in the box—definitely a part of an abuse cycle.
In one of his early notes, he mentioned that he knew her family was not keen on him—they didn’t know his people. He was Unitarian, and to their way of thinking, he thought a little too highly of himself: We’ve overcome that. Don’t let them tear us apart.
Annie pasted the picture of Ben in the bathtub on the page, which was decorated with bubble stickers and a piece of journal paper, where Annie wrote about Ben and his baths—the way he always hated them and cried and sobbed through the whole thing. So different from his brother.
And that was one of the shocking things about having a second child—often he or she was nothing like the first one. They were their own little people right from the start.
Annie and her brother, Josh, were different—he was always much more studious and quiet. She was gregarious and popular. Maggie Rae and her sister were different, too.
Annie remembered a note written on the back of a picture of Maggie Rae and Tina Sue: “I sometimes wish I could be as good as Tina Sue. More pious.” Sometimes Annie felt that way about a couple of her cousins whose family was Orthodox—but never felt bad enough to really investigate that part of her faith further.
“Mommy!” Sam’s voice called in from the living room. “Potty!”
Annie ran into the living room, where Ben had just peed in the potty chair.
“Yay!” she said, and Sam patted his little brother on the back. “What a big boy!” Oh, wouldn’t it be great to have two boys out of diapers completely? She was so tired of changing diapers—not to mention the expense, and having to drag around the damn diaper bag everywhere she went.
Annie cleaned up after it and sat down in front of the computer. She turned it on and clicked on the icon for the Internet. “Hmm. Let’s look up Robert Dasher.”
Robert Dasher was a runner and that was clearly documented—so many titles and interesting “running” photos where you could barely recognize him because of the contortions of his face.
There was an honor he received from his employer, the Employee of the Year Award. Wow. That’s interesting.
“Mommy! Potty!”
Annie’s heart leaped. So quickly ... again? She ran into the living room—the scent greeting her first. Her hands went to her mouth and nose. Both of her boys were covered in it.
Chapter 21
“So they think it’s her husband, huh?” Rose said when Beatrice picked up her phone.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Such a foul mouth on you, Beatrice Matthews,” Rose, her cousin, said.
“It can get even raunchier. Push my buttons,” she said, laughing. “Now, what are you all up in arms about this morning?”
“Have you read the paper?”
“Not yet. I just got up and am having my breakfast. I try to wait until after I eat to read that lousy paper.”
“The p
olice are questioning young Robert Dasher about his wife’s murder,” she said.
“Well, well, well,” Beatrice said, sitting down. “It’s true then. They think she was murdered.”
“Heavens, yes. You knew that, didn’t you? If she shot herself, she wouldn’t still be holding on to the gun like that—and in her right hand, yet.”
“She was left-handed?”
“That’s what it says in the paper.”
“What’s the world coming to?”
“It’s always been like this. Where’ve you been? Remember the Jackson family? Oh, now, that was a horrible thing.”
Just thinking about the Jacksons made Beatrice’s stomach churn, and she swore she felt a chill travel up her spine. Rose and Beatrice had found them—the young lovers, killed by the girl’s father. Rose and Beatrice had been only thirteen or fourteen years old. They were wandering through the woods, looking for the orange conelike morel mushroom, which grew on the ridge overlooking the creek, underneath a dense patch of oaks. They had been singing a spiritual, “I’ll Fly Away.”
Between the thick shadows and pockets of mist in the mountains, the girls were used to their eyes playing tricks on them—or thinking they saw something that wasn’t really visible. A shadow could look like a bear or a witch or the Grim Reaper. So when they saw the shadow of a human foot, they had noted it but kept walking—but when they saw the booted foot sticking up from a tree trunk, they dropped their half-full baskets and went running to find their mothers.
“What is wrong with men?” Rose said suddenly into the phone.
“Stupid, I guess,” Beatrice said, and chuckled. “But I loved mine.”
“Yours was a good one,” Rose said. “Mine? Well, that’s another story for another day. So what do you think of this Dasher fella?”
“I don’t know him,” Beatrice said. “But they say he beat her. A man who beats his woman would just as soon kill her.”
“Unless she kills him first,” Rose said quietly.
“You did what you had to do,” Beatrice said. They had been over this several times throughout the years.
“I wish things were different,” Rose said. “I didn’t mean to kill him. Just meant to defend myself.”
Beatrice kept her thoughts to herself—but if ever a man deserved to die by the hand of his wife, it was Samuel. Everybody knew that—even the local sheriff and coroner. “Official” cause of death? Accident.
“I know, darling,” Beatrice said.
“I had a dream about him the other night. Bastard’s still in my dreams. He mentioned the legend to me. You know the one about the woman lost in time. She walks the mountains, lives in the caves, eats the earth, drinks the air.”
“And suffers great sorrows.”
“I’d like to know more about this time business, Ms. Quantum Physicist.”
Beatrice cackled. “Me too. But it is true that the caves are in geographic alignment with other places on the planet that are supposed to be ‘magic.’”
“Odd, isn’t it? I mean, I’m sure that story is older than the hills, and for us to find out that part of the legend is true, well, it makes you wonder about the other parts.”
“I don’t know, Rose. I’m fairly sure nobody is walking through time. We’ve yet to figure that out. They’ve been successful experimenting with some animals, but people? It’s just too dangerous to try right now, until we have a few more things figured out, like what happens at the cellular level when time travel occurs.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry I brought it up,” Rose said, and laughed. “Now, I better go. But be careful. Watch out for that Robert character.”
“He’s a skinny bag of bones. I can take him.”
“I’d think your gun would be more useful than your fists.”
“Depends on who you talk to,” Beatrice said, and smiled.
“By the way, did they find out who stabbed you, dear?”
Beatrice’s stomach sank. She’d never get over it— being intentionally hurt by someone in her community. Who would do such a thing?
“No. But it happened on the same day as Maggie Rae’s murder. And the brilliant Cumberland Creek police think there’s a link,” she replied.
“But why would Robert Dasher hurt you?”
“I told the police I didn’t think he was in the store that day, but I can’t be sure.”
“It’s the oddest thing,” Rose said. “You being stabbed the same day as Maggie Rae being murdered.”
After hanging up from talking with Rose, Beatrice placed her dishes in the sink and heard a strange noise on her front porch. Sounded like a cat. She rinsed her dishes off and placed them in the dishwasher. There it was again.
Oh, well, bother.
The sound was eerie. Maybe it was hurt. She padded to her front door and opened it.
She grabbed her chest and gasped. There, in front of her door, was a baby doll, crying, with a knife sticking in its neck. It was naked. Its big blue eyes stared up at her. Someone had smeared lipstick across her puckered mouth. Her red hair was a tattered mess. The knife was placed through her neck and came out of the chest, where it was evidently pressed upon the voice box, making the doll cry that fake little doll cry.
“What sicko did this?” she asked, stepping out onto her porch and looking around. She saw nothing out of the ordinary in either direction. At this time of day, it was pretty quiet on Ivy Street.
Her heart raced with anger. Who would do something like this?
Someone wanted to scare her. Someone thought she knew something. Well, the joke was on them. For once in her life, she was fairly certain she knew nothing at all.
She left the doll sitting on her porch as she went to phone the police.
“This is Beatrice Matthews on Ivy. You need to send someone over here. There’s a baby doll, with a knife sticking out of its neck, on my porch.”
“There’s a what?”
“You heard me. Someone better get over here and do something about it. The sound of it is driving me mad and I’m about ready to pitch the damn thing.”
Chapter 22
Vera sat at her desk, drumming her fingers. It was Tuesday afternoon, just like any other Tuesday afternoon—a pile of paperwork and a class in an hour—except for one thing: she was pregnant. She didn’t feel any different, maybe queasy or light-headed at times, but that could be because she had stopped drinking her morning coffee. Since when did caffeine get to be bad for fetuses? Still, she was determined to do everything right for the baby she was carrying.
She faced the computer screen, looking over the accounting on her computer. Something wasn’t quite adding up. Is that the right number? She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear Robert coming up behind her.
“Ms. Vera?” he said quietly, and she about jumped out of her skin, squealing.
“Oh, Lord, you scared me. I didn’t hear you coming. This damn accounting program,” she said.
He laughed. “Ah, I know it well. I’m an accountant.”
“Please have a seat,” Vera said, trying to remember her manners, even though she was scared to death of Robert Dasher. According to the newspaper, he was a strong person of interest in his wife’s murder.
Now she looked across her desk at Robert Dasher. What did a murderer look like? Like this? His blond hair could have used a wash, and he was in sore need of a shave. He was thin-lipped and pointy-chinned. His eyes were as ice blue as ever, even though they were red and a little puffy.
“What can I help you with?” she said, her heart racing.
“I wanted to let you know that Gracie will be continuing on with her dancing this year. I’ve spoken to a friend of mine, a counselor”—his voice cracked—“and he says that continuity is important, you know.” His eyes went to the floor. “The children all need to keep on with their same activities. Need to keep that continuity,” he said again, with a peculiar twitch of an eyelid.
Vera’s heart slipped a bit as she looked at this young man. She didn’t know w
hether to be frightened or feel sorry for him. Something about the way the light was hitting his face ... Suddenly he looked so young and vulnerable, like a grown-up child. How could he have killed anybody? Still, he did probably beat Maggie Rae—and that was hard to imagine now, in this moment. Maybe they were jumping to conclusions by thinking he beat her. Maybe he just “hurt” her feelings. But the newspaper said he had a history of domestic violence.
Robert was soft spoken, obviously in pain, and was trying to do what was best for the children. Still, he did not make eye contact. A flash of those bony hands slapping Maggie Rae across the face popped into Vera’s head.
He lifted one of his hands, then balled it up and placed it on the desk. What did he want? She jumped a little.
His feet shuffled around a bit on the floor. “The thing is, the payment this month might be a little late. There’s some mix-up with the finances and I can’t get into some accounts yet until the estate is settled.”
“Oh,” Vera said with relief. So the crop’s assumption was true—Maggie Rae was paying for the dance lessons. Perhaps he didn’t make much money. “Well, we will work with you on that, Mr. Dasher.”
She’d been in this position before—when a crisis hit a family, often it was dance classes they were forced to give up. When it was a struggle to put food on the table, who could blame them? But clearly this man knew how important dance was to Grace. It could be the very thing that helped pull her through this horrible time.
Vera had seen it before. She was more than willing to wait for money—and even foot the bill if necessary. Gracie needed to dance, and her father could see that.
Still, as Vera placed the paper she was holding onto her desk, she saw that her hand was trembling. She could be sitting across the desk from a cold-blooded murderer; she couldn’t shake that fear.
He noticed her tremor, too. Their eyes locked.
“Vera,” he said, his voice cracking again, dropping his balled-up hand on her desk hard. “I didn’t kill my wife.”
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