by Gregg Olsen
“Once,” Birdy said, “I think. I’m not absolutely certain. Are you in your car?”
“Sorry. On speaker. I’m about to drive by your house.”
“I wish I was home with Elan. He’s pretty upset by everything that’s happening with Amber and with my mom. But back to the Turners. Besides being racists—Elan told me about that—what’s weird about them?”
Kendall caught the sight of a ferry as it plowed through the dark blue waters of Rich Passage, a narrow channel separating the Kitsap Peninsula from Bainbridge Island, just after she turned on Beach Drive.
“Mr. Turner has major anger management issues,” she went on. “Seemed more concerned about Elan’s race than his daughter’s disappearance. Actually slammed his fist on the table. Mrs. Turner just sat there and didn’t even blink. Like she’s used to those kinds of outbursts.”
“Interesting, Kendall, but what’s the relevance?”
Kendall wasn’t sure. “None probably. It struck me as peculiar that Dad whisked their youngest out of town within hours of his older daughter’s disappearance. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Maybe,” Birdy said. “Or maybe he’s overprotective and doesn’t want the little one to pick up on the trauma he and his wife are experiencing. Cody’s a lot older, but couldn’t you see yourself doing something like that? To shield him?”
Kendall drove past the veterans’ home at Retsil.
“Of course,” she answered. “You’re right. How is your mom doing? I’ve been thinking about you and her today.”
“Not great,” Birdy said, her voice a little quieter. “I’m afraid. I’ve been keeping the phone charged and next to me in case Summer calls. As soon as she gives us the word, we’re going up there. My mom has been far from mother of the year, but she’s my mom.”
Kendall’s heart went out to Birdy.
“Keep me posted,” Kendall said. “I’m keeping you and Elan in my prayers.”
Birdy thanked her and they hung up.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The sound of the old tractor filled the yard. It had a peculiar rumble that made Violet think of her husband and how he told her that the secondhand John Deere could be rehabilitated and made to “work good as new.” When he failed at adjusting the engine to something less than a sonic roar and an exhaust output that rivaled Mount St. Helens, he told her that a “big green machine should sound mean.” She’d laughed at the time, but later the sound came to her in dreams or when a car backfired. The oddest times. Reminding her that Alec was gone.
Now Sherman was starting it, riding it from the barn to the field. In the shovel was something large, wrapped in a dark blue tarp. Violet leaned closer to the window and cursed her poor vision. She couldn’t see what her son was doing, but she noticed Vanessa had hitched a ride in the cab. She nuzzled Sherman’s neck and let her hair blow back behind her as he went over the bumpy soil through the orchard, to the field.
* * *
Brenda Nevins put her hand inside Sherman’s waistband. He was wearing light gray sweatpants because she’d told him that she liked how he looked when he was aroused.
“I see my effect on you and that makes me hot,” she said.
Sherman gave her that puppy dog look that meant he really liked what she was doing, where her hand was, where he hoped her mouth would eventually be.
“Baby, you like that,” she said, not a question, but a command. Her voice was loud to carry over the din of the tractor, but also to ensure that he felt her hot breath on his face.
Sherman eased his foot off the tractor’s accelerator.
“You know I do,” he said.
Brenda dug deeper, wrapping her hand around his hardening penis.
“Yes,” she said, “I can tell you do. Oh yes, I can.”
“Don’t stop,” he said, as he guided the tractor.
“We have work to do, baby,” she said, releasing her grip.
Sherman’s face fell a little. “You got me all worked up, babe.”
“That’s fine. That’s my job. That’s what I do. And don’t you worry for one minute. I’ll take you to the end, I promise.”
“I’m so horny,” he said.
She smiled. “Good. I like it when you’re horny.”
The tractor pulled up to the field beyond the apple and peach trees that had been the pride of the Wilder farm.
“Over there,” she said. She pointed to a flat space between two trees, and he maneuvered the tractor to the spot.
Patty Sparks had been delivered to her final resting place. He rolled the body, wrapped like a blue chrysalis, off the tractor’s shovel.
“I feel a little bad about her,” he said.
Brenda hopped off the tractor. She wore tight jeans and an almost see-through top. With a slightly more conservative top, maybe something with checks and pearl buttons, she could have been an advertisement for a line of cosmetics for the most beautiful country girls.
She was that lovely on the outside.
“Forget her,” she said. “Collateral damage. It happens.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wished there was another way.”
“We don’t have a choice,” she said, planting a kiss on his lips and running her hand up his thigh. “No one will listen to me unless we get their attention. You know that. I’ve suffered so much. I have cried a zillion tears for what they have done to me. It isn’t right. All of them. Now they will listen.”
Sherman looked down at the blue tarp, heavy with a dead body and wrapped up with rope, casually like his mother’s knitting. A dead stranger was collateral damage, indeed. It was neither tragic nor sad. It just was. The world ran that way. Everything Brenda said was true.
“Let’s get rid of her,” Brenda announced, stretching her arms as though she was readying herself to lift the body. Which she wasn’t. Brenda repeatedly told Sherman that she wanted things done, but didn’t think she had to be the one to do them.
“Right,” he answered.
“Then, babe,” she said, “let’s make love. Right here. On . . . what did your dad call it?”
“The mean green machine,” he said, a slight grin on his face.
She always knew what to say. She could lift him up, tear him down, take him higher than he’d ever gone. Before Brenda, Sherman Wilder’s life was nothing.
“I like that, baby,” he said.
Brenda acknowledged his approval with a smile. She gave Patty’s lifeless body a little kick. “Let’s bury this cow and make love. I’m so in love with you. You, Sherman, are more of a man than any I’ve ever met, seen, or heard about. I’m yours.”
Sherman Wilder scraped the leggy patch of field grass from the spot where Patty would lay for eternity. Two minutes later, he’d dug a shallow grave. Roots from the peach tree hindered his effort, but he didn’t think it mattered much. She was going in that dark hole, and the peaches that grew from her rotting flesh would be the sweetest he’d ever taste.
In a very real way those peaches would come from love.
Brenda’s love.
“Ready?” she said.
He grinned. Damn right he was.
Brenda tugged at Sherman’s sweatpants and lowered them to his ankles. His eyes rolled backward, and he braced himself on the tractor.
“I’m going to give you the ride of your life,” she said, her eyes grazing his before moving downward.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Once a month, the Clallam County Library System in Port Angeles sent a van with a collection of books and DVDs to shut-ins unable to travel to one of its branches. Violet Wilder had been on the mobile librarian’s route for six months and her delivery of books and a little conversation had been a highlight of the elderly woman’s days. It didn’t matter what books Tansy Mulligan brought; books were nearly beside the point. Tansy, in her early fifties, was a sparkler of a girl.
A girl, to Violet’s way of thinking, was any woman under sixty-five with her own teeth.
Tansy was a talker
too. She had three cats and she could spend an hour talking about each one. Violet wasn’t much of a cat lover. She thought felines had their place—mousing in the barn, for one. Maybe that was the only place. Whenever Tansy came with her little satchel of books from the van—“an eclectic mix for my most eclectic reader”—she’d sit down for a quick cup of tea and a sweet, and talk and talk. About the cats (“Smoky caught a sparrow!”). About the latest Laura Lippman thriller (“kept me guessing to the end”) and then, back to her cats. Violet didn’t mind. She had been lonely before Tansy.
She looked at the calendar in the kitchen—the only thing left in the house that clued her into the date. No TV. No phone. No radio. It was the Friday before a holiday weekend and she knew that Tansy would come for a prolonged visit. She’d told Violet that she always made Wilder Farm her last stop before heading home to her cats.
“Because you’re such a sweetie,” she said. “And you love cats as much as I do.”
Violet hadn’t the heart to tell Tansy the truth about her and cats.
The night before Tansy’s expected arrival Vanessa watched Violet set out her library books.
“You want me to return those for you?” she asked, as though she was offering up some enormous favor.
“No,” Violet said. “Tansy from the library will be here tomorrow.”
“That won’t be necessary. The county doesn’t need to spend so much money on one person’s reading material. I’m happy to have Sherman take them back next time he goes to town.”
“No,” Violet said again. “She’s coming, and she’ll take them with her. We often have a little tea and a visit.”
Vanessa seemed interested. “You do? About what?”
Violet knew that Vanessa didn’t care about the substance or subject of any conversation that didn’t have to do with her.
“Cats, mostly.”
“I didn’t know you were a cat aficionado,” Vanessa said.
Using a ten-dollar word to show how smart she is.
“I adore cats,” Violet lied, as convincingly as she could. Lying unfortunately was not one of her chief skills. She tried gamely though. “In fact, I’ve been worried about the kittens I heard crying in the barn the other day.”
“There are no kittens in the barn,” Vanessa said.
Violet couldn’t stand that young woman. Everything had to be contrary with her. “I heard them, Vanessa.”
“You probably heard the wind,” Vanessa said.
Must everything be a fight?
“Kittens don’t sound like the wind,” Violet said, mostly to herself.
“Someone is a little snippy today,” Vanessa said, circling Violet like a shark as she sat at the kitchen table.
Violet didn’t like where this was going. It was hard for her to hold her utter hatred for Vanessa inside, but she managed. She had to. To agitate her son’s lover was to risk some kind of outrageous retaliation. She was certain of that.
“Sorry, Vanessa,” Violet said, practically choking on her words. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
Vanessa studied Violet, then her eyes landed on the stack of library books. A pen and a tablet rested under one of Violet’s gnarled fingers.
Violet caught Vanessa’s stare.
“I’m going to make a list of what I’d like to read next,” Violet said.
“I see,” Vanessa said, adding, “Well then, I’ll leave you to it.”
With that, Vanessa left. Violet heard the screen door slam and she watched the woman she’d grown to loathe more than anyone on the planet—ever—vanish into the barn.
As fast as she could, Sherman Wilder’s mother started to write.
Tansy, please help me. Bring the police. Something is going on here and I’m not sure what it is. It involves my son and his girlfriend, Vanessa. They are up to something. Something very evil. I think they may have someone held captive in the barn. I don’t know why or what for. I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that they have cut me off from the outside world because they don’t want me to tell on them. I don’t even know what it is that they think I know. Please be very careful. Bring the police. Do it right away. My life depends on it.
Violet Wilder
Her heart pounded so rapidly that Violet felt the need for some baby aspirin, yet in her haste to get things done, she ignored the warning signs of a heart attack. Keep calm. Slow it down. Relax. You can do this if this is the last thing you do. She wasn’t going to die without stopping Vanessa, who she was sure was the ringleader of something nefarious. She tore the note from the tablet and folded it into a square and tucked it inside the Lilian Jackson Braun novel that Tansy had told her she would adore, but she hadn’t read a word of it.
Although it wasn’t easy maneuvering an armload of books with her walker, Violet made it back to her bedroom.
She wasn’t taking any chances.
She dressed for bed and crawled under the covers. The sooner she slept, the sooner the next day would come.
* * *
“What’s wrong? Is it Sherman?” Violet said, sitting upright in her bed and looking at the alarm clock that she’d set every night, but never needed to roust her. Vanessa had opened the door and a slash of bright light from the hallway landed on her face, waking her.
“You stupid old bitch,” Vanessa said. “From the minute I met you, I knew that you’d be trouble. Sherman kept telling me that you were a sweet old thing, but I knew better. I have a sixth sense about people. I really do.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Violet said, clutching her sheets and wondering if she should call out for her son.
Or if he’d even help her.
Vanessa held up something white, but Violet couldn’t see what it was. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Vanessa,” she said putting on her glasses. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you, and you’ve done everything you can to undermine me, from insulting my lasagna to spending time with my son.”
Vanessa took a step closer.
“I’m not Vanessa,” she said. “And I’m bored with your constantly referring to me by that name. It’s gotten very, very old. Very, very fast.”
Violet had no idea what was going on. “Then who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want?”
“I’m Brenda Nevins,” she said, moving a little nearer to the bed. “You’ve heard of me, haven’t you?”
Violet had, but she didn’t say so.
“I don’t know who that is,” Violet said. “I don’t know what you want. Please leave me alone. Leave Sherman alone. Does he know that you’re not who you’ve been pretending to be?”
Brenda laughed as she took a seat on the edge of the bed. Violet recoiled and inched away from her.
“You stupid old woman,” Brenda said. “He knows everything about me, and he loves me. He knows that the world has beaten me down, but that I’m stronger than everyone put together.”
“You need help,” Violet said.
Brenda smiled and surveyed the room—the door, the window. The only ways out.
“Help,” she repeated. “Interesting choice of words, Mom.”
This time Violet didn’t correct the younger woman, whoever she was.
Brenda held out the tablet, pushing it nearly in Violet’s face. The page was no longer completely white, but a pale shade of gray. Interwoven in the gray were the unmistakable white letters of the note Violet had written to Tansy, the library van lady.
No. No. No.
“I can explain,” Violet said trying to extricate herself from the bed. It was as if her body hadn’t yet fully awakened, as it refused to do even the simplest maneuver. “I was scared and mixed up. I’m old.”
She tossed in the word “old” like a tennis instructor does with a simple volley for a new student. She knew Brenda would pounce on it.
She did.
“That’s right,” she said. “You are old. Old and ugly. Sh
riveled up. Disgusting to look at. There’s danger in the ugly, as repellant as they can be.”
“I want to see my son!” Violet said.
“He’s busy with a project,” Brenda said. “Our project.”
The words dangled in the air, but Violet didn’t take the bait. She had another, more pressing concern. Brenda put the gray sheet from the tablet in her pocket and collected Violet’s library books.
“I imagine the note is in here,” she said, flipping through the pages, but keeping her eyes fixed on Violet’s. “Your pathetic little cry for help.”
“Please,” Violet said, despite knowing there was nothing she could do to stop this horrible woman.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
“Bring Sherman! I want to see my son.”
“He’s busy, tending to the livestock.”
Violet swung her legs to the floor and reached for her walker. Brenda pushed her back to the bed.
“I told you to stay put,” Brenda said, jabbing a finger into Violet’s rib cage. “You want me to break your bones? I could snap your arm like a twig. Every breath you take tempts me to do it, so don’t push me.”
She grabbed the walker and the cane.
“You stay put. You aren’t going anywhere. You aren’t seeing your little library friend tomorrow. I’ll give her these books,” Brenda said. Her eyes seemed black in the darkness, her mouth tight around her lips.
Violet started to cry though she wished she hadn’t.
“I want my son,” she said.
“So do I,” Brenda said. “When he gets back from the barn, I’m going to make love to him until the rafters crash down. Enjoy the show. I know you’ve listened every night.”
Violet wanted to say that it was impossible not to listen, that Brenda was an exhibitionist and a narcissist. But she didn’t. She didn’t say another word.
The door slammed. Violet sat still in her bed. She heard a piece of furniture, the hall tree by the sound of it, move across the floorboards and settle against her bedroom door.
