by Gayle Wilson
Despite the opinion she’d just stated so adamantly, her grandmother’s brow furrowed in quick sympathy. She reached across the table to lay her hand over Blythe’s. “Oh, child.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Blythe went on, speaking hurriedly, trying to get the words out before the force of the emotions she’d kept hidden for almost two months overwhelmed her. “I can’t believe this is about losing her daddy. Why would that start now, almost a year later? Why not immediately after his death? And don’t tell me she’s upset about the move. She seems happier here than she has been since John died.”
Her grandmother’s eyes had filled with tears of love and sympathy as she’d talked. Her fingers closed tightly around Blythe’s, adding their own silent comfort. “I don’t have any answers for you, sweetheart. I don’t even know where to tell you to go for answers. Maybe if you took Maddie back to that doctor in Montgomery—”
Blythe shook her head, not bothering to explain the dismissive attitude of the psychologist or her loss of faith in her advice. At first Blythe had attempted to obey her dictate not to try to wake Maddie, but the terrors had seemed to intensify as well as increase in frequency. And if something unnatural was going on at the house to cause them…
Once more the question hovered on the tip of her tongue. Ruth and Delores had lived in this town for more than eighty years. If that house had a history of violence or death, they would know about it.
Are you seriously considering asking them if the house you’re living in could be haunted?
Blythe pressed her lips together instead, knowing how much a question like that would worry her grandmother. In Ruth Mitchell’s world, when people died, they went to heaven or to hell. They didn’t hang around knocking on windows or causing little girls to have nightmares.
Besides, if Blythe really wanted to know what had happened at the place she was renting, there were other ways to go about it. Ways that wouldn’t alarm anyone or make them question her sanity. Something she was doing quite nicely, thank you, all on her own.
4
A da Pringle had been the librarian in Crenshaw since Blythe was a child. Despite the more than fifteen years since Blythe had seen her, the woman had changed very little.
Her hair and penciled brows were still coal-black, which made Blythe realize that the former had probably been dyed even then. And Ada’s eyes still peered disapprovingly at her over the top of a pair of tortoiseshell half glasses.
Although the library was deserted at this time of the afternoon, the effect of that look was the same as when Blythe had been twelve and asking for help to find information needed for school. As if she had no right to pester Miss Ada with a request for service.
“Good afternoon, Miss Pringle.”
“Blythe Mitchell, as I live and breathe. Heard you was back.”
Blythe waited, expecting the conventional welcome-home comments. None were forthcoming.
“For almost two months now,” she said with a smile.
“Not living at your grandmother’s, I hear.”
“Well, there’s moving home, and then there’s moving home.” It was quickly obvious her attempt at humor had fallen flat. There had been no change in the brown eyes. “We decided to get our own place.”
“Heard you have a little girl.”
“Maddie. She’s four. I’ve been meaning to bring her by. She loves books as much as I did when I was that age.”
“Children ain’t allowed till they start school. Same as it’s always been,” Ada said. “Now what can I do for you?”
Blythe suddenly remembered why, voracious reader that she had always been, she hadn’t enjoyed coming here. And if there were any other option for what she needed, she would be tempted to walk out now.
“As I remember, you have bound copies of the Herald.”
The Crenshaw Herald was a weekly, but it was the only game in town. Most of its pages were devoted to church and club activities and athletic events at the school. The editor had always thoughtfully included anything newsworthy that had happened between issues, although it was probable that everyone might already know all the details through the ever-efficient community grapevine.
“Since the beginning. Most libraries have gone to microfiche, but as long as the pages hold together, I’ll keep the papers themselves,” Ada said. “That’s how I like to read ’em. I figure I’m not the only one.”
“I’d like to see them, please.”
“Of course.” Ada’s words were abrupt, but she lifted the hinged section of the counter she’d stood behind, moving briskly past Blythe and toward the tall shelves at the back of the room. By the time Blythe arrived, Ada was pointing to a row of huge, leather-bound books, each marked in gold on the spine with the words Crenshaw Herald and a year.
“Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
Accustomed to the anonymity provided by a city like Boston, Blythe hadn’t anticipated the question. Given the objective of her research, she didn’t intend to share that information with a gossip like Ada.
“Just a little local color.”
“Local color?”
“Stories about the people and the community. I have several years to catch up on.”
“You still writin’ those articles, are you?” Ada’s tone sounded slightly disapproving.
Blythe had written three or four short travel essays for one of the regional magazines while she’d been in college. She hadn’t thought about them in years, but she was sure Ruth had made certain everyone in Crenshaw was aware of them. She might even have donated copies of those issues to the library.
“It’s always a possibility,” Blythe said, seizing on the excuse Ada had offered. “If something interesting turns up.”
All she wanted was to be left alone back here with the newspapers. Maybe this was a wild goose chase, but she believed that if there had been any sort of violence associated with the house she was renting, it would be detailed in the Herald.
When she’d dropped her daughter off this morning, she had asked her grandmother to keep Maddie this afternoon as well, pleading the need to investigate a couple of opportunities for employment. She would do that, too, before she picked the little girl up, but only in the most current issue of the Herald, which came out today.
“What kind of ‘interesting’?” Ada prodded. “More touristy stuff?”
The deprecating tone rankled. Granted, Blythe didn’t consider herself a writer, but she had been paid for that work. “Whatever will sell. As I said, something interesting.”
Ada’s eyes considered her over the top of her glasses. “If you’re looking for something that’d make money…”
The librarian ran her finger along the row of books until she found the one she was looking for. “I know it happened this year. Same as the flood in Sanger. My aunt’s house was damaged in that. And I know it was in the winter, so…” She pulled a volume off the shelf and laid it on one of the long empty tables and began flipping pages.
“I’m sorry?” Blythe had no idea what Ada was looking for.
“Sarah Comstock,” the librarian said, glancing up at her quickly before she went back to thumbing through the newspapers.
Blythe hadn’t thought about the Comstock murder in years. She’d been a little girl when it had happened, maybe five or six years old. Just slightly older than Maddie, she realized.
Although no one had talked openly about the murder in front of her, she had known. All the children in Crenshaw had known that Sarah had somehow been stolen from her room, taken from a bed where she’d slept beside her sister, and brutally murdered.
Blythe had come to the library looking for some incident of violent death. Yet for some reason, she had never thought about Sarah Comstock’s.
The newsprint continued to turn under Ada’s long, thin fingers. Suddenly the librarian’s hand stilled. She smoothed the pages on either side of the open book so that they lay flat and exposed.
“December. Thought so, but I wasn�
�t sure. I’ll get the next one, too, ’cause I know those stories ran for months.”
She turned back to the shelf, leaving the first volume on the table. The grainy picture in the center showed several men in uniform standing in the area the locals had always called Smoke Hollow. There was no body visible in the photograph, and Blythe was infinitely relieved not to have to view even a picture of a child-size corpse. With the sickness that thought created in the bottom of her stomach, she almost reached out and closed the book.
Before she could, Miss Ada laid another beside it. “First few months of this one, too. I don’t think the paper carried the story in depth much longer than that. Not a lot to cover.”
“Thank you.” Blythe set her purse down on top of the picture in the opened volume, as if to claim ownership of it.
“Cold cases always grab the interest of the reading public,” Ada said.
“Cold cases?”
“Unsolved crimes. Particularly murders. Why, you remember Mark Furman, don’t you? Made a mint on that girl’s murder in Connecticut. Don’t re-shelve ’em when you’re done. Just leave ’em out, and I’ll do it. Most everybody gets it wrong.”
“No, I won’t. And thank you, Miss Pringle.” Despite the passage of years and her own maturity, Blythe couldn’t bring herself to call the woman Ada.
“Sorry for your loss.” The librarian’s words were slightly awkward. “Good you came on home, though. Your grandmamma needs you.”
Blythe opened her mouth, trying to think of an appropriate answer. Before she could, Ada had turned and headed back to her counter.
Left alone, Blythe took a breath before she looked down again at the newsprint, sliding her purse to the side to reveal the picture. With her other hand, she found the back of one of the wooden chairs that had been shoved under the table. Without taking her eyes off the story that surrounded the photograph, she pulled the chair out far enough that she could slip into it. As she began to unbutton her coat, her mind was already occupied by the words that had been written a quarter of a century before.
“Time to close.”
Blythe blinked as she looked up. Ada was hovering at her elbow, a black vinyl purse hooked over her arm.
As she’d moved, Blythe had become aware of a stiffness in her neck and shoulders. Not surprising, she acknowledged. If it was indeed closing time, she must have been reading in this same position for hours.
It wasn’t only the gruesome details that had emerged from the yellowed pages of the Herald that held her rapt. She had been fascinated by the microcosm of the rural county’s society the investigation into the little girl’s murder had revealed. Since she had known most of its principals all her life, she had become completely caught up in the unfolding story.
Law enforcement, in the person of Sheriff Hoyt Lee, had admitted from the start that the lack of physical evidence was not only baffling, but virtually insurmountable. The child’s mutilated body, stripped of its nightgown, had been washed clean by the swift, icy current of the stream that cut through the hollow. There was no trace evidence, at least none that the technology of the day had been able to discover. No footprints. And as there appeared to have been no sexual assault at the time of the murder, no DNA had been preserved.
“May I check these out?” Blythe asked.
She couldn’t come back here every afternoon. She had already imposed on her grandmother enough. Lost in the articles on the murder, however, she hadn’t even looked for anything relating to her house.
“The newspapers? Oh, those don’t circulate.”
“I’d be very careful with them, I promise.” The schoolgirl feeling had come flooding back.
“Can’t make exceptions. Then everybody expects them.”
As Blythe debated whether anything might be gained by further argument, Ada reached over and closed the first book she’d taken down. “You should talk to Hoyt.” She juggled her purse as she prepared to lift the heavy book back up onto the shelf. “He’s bound to know stuff that never made the papers. Evidence, I mean.” The three syllables of the word were individually and distinctly pronounced, the accent on the last.
Despite her annoyance at being treated like a child, Blythe had to admit the idea was intriguing, but not because of the Comstock case. The former sheriff would be the ideal person to ask about the house she was living in. Not only would he know if anything had happened there, he would never gossip about her inquiry.
Hoyt had shown her extraordinary kindness while she’d been growing up. Maybe because he’d been friends with her father. Maybe he’d felt sorry for her because of his untimely death. Whatever the reason, he had treated her like a fond uncle, even escorting her once to a father/daughter church banquet.
“That’s a very good idea, Ada. Thanks for the suggestion,” Blythe said, pushing back her chair and gathering up her coat and purse.
The librarian’s eyes had widened at her use of her given name, a reaction that Blythe found surprisingly satisfying.
The Sheriff’s Department had expanded to take in the adjoining buildings in the years she’d been away. Obviously there was a greater need for law-enforcement officers with the growth of the population and the county’s changing demographics.
In the few weeks she’d been back, Blythe had become aware of the problem of meth labs, which seemed to spring up overnight in this mostly rural area. Even the redoubtable Sheriff Lee would no longer have been able to control things with only three or four deputies. Judging from the row of patrol cars parked in front of the building, there were far more than that now.
As she approached the door, her eye was caught by the neat gold letters, all caps, on its top half. DAVIS COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT. And below that, in both lower and upper case, Sheriff Cade Jackson. She had already reached out to grasp the doorknob when memory stopped her hand in midair.
Cade Jackson. She hadn’t thought about the object of her first teenage crush in at least a decade, but the image evoked by his name was still colored by those long-ago fantasies.
The reality would probably be much different. She’d run into a couple of her former classmates, both of whom had succumbed to the dangers of a regional diet heavy on fried foods and starches. Their bellies had drooped over their belt buckles, and one had already begun combing his thinning locks across his pate in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the aging process.
It would verge on blasphemy if that had happened to Cade, she thought. Given that he was still living here in Crenshaw, however, it was probably inevitable.
And why would you care if he’s fat and bald?
She would, she realized. Something about schoolgirl dreams and first loves. Even if Cade had never known about either.
She debated turning around and going back to her car. She had come here to see Hoyt, and it was obvious he was no longer employed by the county. Cade would probably know no more about the history of the house she was living in than she did.
Despite that logical conclusion, she turned the knob and pushed the heavy door inward. The kid at the desk looked to be about the same age as Cade the last time she’d seen him. A high-school senior, he’d soon left the county, heading to Tuscaloosa and a football scholarship at the University of Alabama.
Blythe, who had been twelve at the time, had grieved with all the emotion she’d been capable of. Which, as she remembered it, had been quite a lot.
That had been her first experience with loss. Although the memory of that pain had faded with the passing years and especially with the reality of true loss, within her chest stirred a shred of the apprehension she would have felt as a pre-adolescent had she known she was about to come face-to-face with Cade Jackson.
“Help you?” the young deputy asked.
“Sheriff Jackson, please?”
“May I ask what your inquiry is in reference to?”
At least the kid had been well trained. The question was both polite and efficient. Score one for Sheriff Jackson.
Tell him I’m trying to
discover if my house might be haunted.
Since she couldn’t divulge the truth, she said, “I’m trying to get in touch with Hoyt Lee.”
The kid held her eyes a moment, his assessing. Then he reached for the phone on the desk in front of him, holding the receiver in the same hand he used to punch in a couple of numbers.
“Lady out here wants to talk to you about locating Sheriff Lee.”
He listened, lips pursing slightly at whatever was said by the person on the other end of the line. His eyes met hers again as he nodded in response to what he’d been told.
He put down the phone and nodded toward another glass-topped door at the end of a short hall. “You can go on in. Sheriff’s expecting you.”
“Thanks.”
She had taken only a couple of steps when the door she was headed toward opened. A man stepped through it and out into the hall. Although the overhead light cast a shadow on his face, his body in the light-colored uniform he wore was silhouetted against the darkness behind it.
If anything, Cade was leaner than when he’d played quarterback for the Davis County Warriors. The shoulders were still as broad. His height the same, of course.
As he walked toward the well-lit reception area, her mouth went dry. Her first thought was that he hadn’t changed at all, but he had, of course.
The features that had been almost too fine at eighteen had strengthened. The straight nose had at some point been broken, so that a narrow ridge marred its perfection. The lips were thinner, more mature. More masculine, she conceded.
And far more sensual.
She was shocked by the thought. More shocked by the physical reaction that had produced it.
Cade Jackson had been a good-looking boy. He was a compellingly attractive man.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had responded to a man in this way. Other than John, of course. And John had been dead for almost a year.
