Home Stretch

by Jenna Bennett

  He said he would, and I slammed the door and watched him peel off before I crossed the road—looking carefully both ways before I did—and through the gate into the cemetery.

  Like I said, there was nothing creepy about it. Nothing at all. Not at this time of day. And the Oak Street Cemetery isn’t rumored to be haunted, either, so there was nothing at all to worry about. It was overcast, the sky heavy with low-hanging clouds, but it wasn’t raining. Visibility was pretty much a hundred percent. And while there was a distinct chill in the air—I really hoped Mrs. Jenkins had thought to put on her coat before she left, but I had a feeling she hadn’t—it wasn’t as cold as it could have been.

  I didn’t know where Oneida and her husband were buried. I could have called Audrey and asked, I guess, but I figured Mrs. Jenkins wouldn’t know either, so there was no point in actually finding out. If she was here at all, she’d either gone back to LaDonna’s grave, which did know where was—if she remembered from yesterday—or she was wandering around, trying to find Oneida.

  I decided to wander, too. In the direction of LaDonna’s grave, to begin with, while I kept an eye out along the way for Mrs. Jenkins.

  When the city of Sweetwater first acquired the land for the cemetery early in the 20th century, they started by burying people close to the road. That’s a hundred years ago, give or take, and although we’re a small town, we’ve had a few deaths since then. By now, there are graves all up and over the hill, with the new burials on the other side, out of sight.

  I trudged in that direction. That’s where LaDonna was, and for all I knew, Oneida as well.

  There was no sign of life around me. As far as I could tell, I was the only one here. A couple of birds tweeted, and a squirrel chattered, but other than that, it was quiet.

  When I got to the top of the hill, I turned around and looked out at the area I’d traversed. My stomach was doing its cramping thing again, and my lower back hurt. I put my fist back there and kneaded through the layers of clothes while I surveyed the terrain.

  With the trees bare, I could see the road in both directions, and most of this part of the cemetery from fence to fence. There was no sign of Mrs. Jenkins, and no sign of anyone else, either. I dropped my hand and turned my back to the road and surveyed the other side of the hill.

  And there she was. A small, blue figure weaving among the gravestones, over in the area where LaDonna was buried.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Rafe. “I’ve got her. Or rather, I see her. She’s here. You can turn around and come back.”

  “Good,” Rafe said, sounding grim, “cause I’m here at Audrey’s house, and I ain’t seen her, and they haven’t, either.”

  I heard him explain to the others—Audrey and Darcy and maybe Patrick Nolan—that I was at the cemetery and that Mrs. Jenkins was here, too.

  “I figure she’s probably looking for Oneida’s grave,” I told him when he came back on. “I don’t know where she’s buried. Would you mind asking Audrey? I might as well show Mrs. J where it is, since we’re here anyway. It’s going to take you five minutes to get back here to pick us up, and we might as well keep moving. Your grandmother left without her coat again.”

  “Hang on.”

  I heard him pose the question to Audrey, and heard her begin to give directions for where to find Oneida’s final resting place. I was listening to the faraway voice with one ear, and keeping the rest of my attention on Mrs. Jenkins, as I picked my way toward her. We were moving in the same direction, but she was moving faster than I was. She was probably cold, and anyway, she most certainly wasn’t pregnant. My back was killing me, my feet hurt, and I felt like I was carrying a medicine ball strapped to my stomach. A medicine ball that was sitting squarely on my bladder.

  For a second I contemplated the possibility of squatting behind a gravestone. Not on a grave, of course. Somewhere where I could be sure that nobody was buried.

  There was a nice, bushy line of trees near where Mrs. Jenkins was, along the perimeter of the cemetery. She wouldn’t be there by the time I reached that spot, of course, but maybe I could duck in among the trees for twenty seconds.

  Or maybe not. It was cold, and while I was squatting in the trees, Mrs. Jenkins might get away from me. I could just see myself trying to explain that to Rafe. And anyway, it’s probably not a good idea to pee anywhere in a cemetery. Just in case. So I’d just have to hold it until we got home. Or back to Audrey’s. Or wherever we were going once we’d gathered up Mrs. Jenkins and put her in the car.

  “OK,” Rafe’s voice said. “Here’s what Audrey said—”

  “Hold on.” Something was moving on the right. In that tree line I’d just been contemplating using for an impromptu bathroom.

  “What?” He was instantly alert.

  “Something.” I had stopped, because one does, while Mrs. Jenkins was blithely moving forward. “I saw something move.”

  “Fesmire,” Rafe began.

  “Is dead. I know. I don’t think it’s Fesmire.”

  If he was haunting somewhere, it wouldn’t be here.

  “Prob’ly just a bird or something.”

  It was too big to be a bird. But before I could say so, it burst out of the trees and straight for Mrs. Jenkins. And it was considerably larger than a bird. What it was, was a fully grown man dressed head to toe in camouflage, including a hood covering his head.

  I screamed—as one does—and he turned my way for a second. Just long enough for me to see that under the hood was a ski mask, the kind that only leaves two holes for the eyes and one for the mouth.

  It looked like my presence made him falter for a second. He must not have noticed me until I screamed.

  Too focused on Mrs. J, I guess.

  And he still was, or maybe he’d been calculating quickly in his head, and determined that I was no threat. I was still far enough away that there was nothing I could do when he descended on Mrs. Jenkins and flapped the black thing in his hands open before pulling it down over her head.

  It looked like a big, black trash bag.

  I had just processed that when he yanked her off her feet and up over his shoulder, and set off down the hill with her.

  I dropped the phone in the grass and gave chase down the hill. But whoever he was, he was in better shape than me, and I fell behind with every step. I was also moving farther and farther away from the road where Rafe and the SUV would be coming. The guy was moving toward the back of the cemetery, toward the service road back there. The bag with Mrs. Jenkins inside bounced up and down on his shoulder.

  My spirit wanted to follow. Hell—heck—my spirit wanted to fly. To soar through the air and jump on the guy’s back and knock him down and then beat him bloody and make him give me Mrs. Jenkins back.

  My flesh, however, was weak. I couldn’t keep up. And although it felt a lot like failure, I stopped and turned and started plodding back up the hill again, to where I’d dropped my phone. Rafe was probably already on his way here. Close by. If I could divert him, maybe he could reach the service road before whatever car was down there had a chance to leave.

  It took a minute or two to find the phone in the dry grass. By the time I lifted it, Rafe was long gone, and I had to call back. While I waited for him to pick up, I turned once more, and started trudging in the direction of the service road.

  The phone picked up. “Yeah.”

  I could hear from the echo that I was on speaker. Probably so he could have both hands free to drive.

  “The service road,” I said—or perhaps gasped is a better word. “Behind the cemetery.” I was seriously winded, and my back was screaming. My stomach chose that moment to have another contraction, too, one strong enough that I actually had to stop for a moment while I waited for it to pass. “Oh, shit. I mean... shoot.” I leaned forward and braced my hands—or one hand; the other was holding the phone—on my thighs.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Other than the obvious? “Nothing. Just another stupid contraction.” I f
ocused on breathing through it. “He picked up Mrs. Jenkins and threw her over his shoulder. And ran down toward the back of the cemetery. There’s a service road there. If you hurry—”

  “We’re almost there,” Rafe said, and I could hear the squealing of tires through the phone when he took another turn on two wheels. “Where are you?”

  “On my way down there.” Slowly. “If I can’t get there by the time you do, and you see the car, follow it. I can call Dix for a ride home.”

  “What kinda car?”

  I had no idea, and told him so. “When I couldn’t keep up, I went back for my phone. So I didn’t see the car. But I doubt they’re on foot.” The bad guy had been pretty quick, but he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. Mrs. Jenkins isn’t big, but she’s still a hundred pounds or so, and that kind of weight starts to wear after a while. Just look at me and the baby. It was nowhere near a hundred pounds—even though it sometimes felt that way—and I couldn’t run more than a few yards before I was out of breath.

  “Did you recognize the guy?”

  Nobody could have recognized the guy. “He was wearing camouflage from top to bottom. With a hood. And a ski mask.”

  “Army? Or hunting?”

  The camouflage? What was the difference?

  But I thought about it for a moment. “Hunting. Pretty sure. It was pale tan, with those stripes that look like grass or twigs.”

  “Weapon?”

  “I didn’t see one,” I said, as the service road came into view at the bottom of the hill. “Although it went really fast. He had a big, black bag—like a lawn and leaf bag—that he threw over Mrs. J’s head. And then he picked her up and took off with her, like she weighed nothing.”

  “She doesn’t weigh much,” Rafe said. I could hear the squealing of tires in stereo now, from the phone and from down on the road to my left.

  “I can hear you,” I told him.

  “We’re turning onto the service road now. How long before you’re here?”

  I was so close now, that I didn’t want to be left behind. I tried to move faster. “Thirty seconds. Less.”

  “I see you.” Dix’s SUV burst into view and came to a quivering stop. The back door opened as I huffed and puffed my way toward it. Someone else must be in the car. Rafe couldn’t have opened that door from behind the wheel.

  I staggered toward the SUV and climbed in. With a little help from Darcy, who grabbed my arm and hauled.

  “Ooof.” I smacked against the seat before I clambered to a sitting position and yanked the door shut behind me. “Go.”

  He went. The turn on the narrow road would have landed us in the ditch if anyone less skilled had been driving. And then we were on our way down the service road spurting gravel, with another two-wheeled turn onto the paved road that made Audrey, in the front passenger seat, squeal and grab for the chicken stick.

  “You’ll get used to it,” I told her, although to be honest, I never have. I trust him, and trust that he won’t get us into an accident, but I’ve not gotten used to it.

  “We didn’t see any cars.” His voice was as calm as if he were driving down a nice, wide-open interstate at sixty miles an hour, instead of keeping that same speed on a narrow two-lane country road edged by trees limbs that slapped at the sides of the SUV. “They musta gone this way.”

  “This is the way to the river, isn’t it?”

  The Duck River runs through the Bog, or what used to be the Bog, but before it gets there, it also snakes along the southern perimeter of town.

  Rafe nodded, his face grim. So did Audrey, the Sweetwater native.

  “I’m guessing you’re not happy about that.”

  Rafe glanced at me over his shoulder, as we flew down the road like it was a NASCAR race track. “Too much water in this story.”

  There was, actually, now that I thought about it. From the rain the night Mrs. Jenkins had shown up in our yard, to Julia Poole’s car submerged in the Cumberland River, to the cops fishing Alton Fesmire’s body out of the water.

  And the river winding past the nursing home in view of the pavilion where Julia had been murdered.

  “Mrs. Jenkins told me that one of the Bristols has a boat,” I said.

  Or not a Bristol, but someone in the Bristol family.

  Rafe gave me a look. “Is that so?”

  “She said they took Beverly out on the river.”

  “Who’s Beverly?” Audrey wanted to know. She was gripping the bottom of her seat with both hands, her knuckles white.

  I explained who Beverly Bristol was, and what had happened to her, and what—if anything—it might have to do with Mrs. Jenkins. Then I turned my attention to Rafe. “There was a truck parked outside the funeral home on Tuesday morning. It had an ‘I’d rather be fishing’ bumper sticker and one of those balls in the back, that you hook things to.”

  “A trailer hitch.” Even under the circumstances, his lips twitched.

  I nodded. “It probably belonged to one of the Bristols. Or whatever their names are. It wasn’t Fesmire’s and it wasn’t ours, and it probably didn’t belong to the staff.”

  Chances were they didn’t drive hearses to work, but a truck with ‘I’d rather be fishing’ seemed a little too frivolous. And anyway, the employees probably had their own parking lot. Or their own corner of one, away from the spaces in the front, where the mourners were likely to park.

  “One of the Hammonds lives on the river in Madison,” Rafe said. “With his wife.”

  “No kidding?”

  He shook his head. “It ain’t much of a place. A modular home on a half acre or so. But they do have a river view. Why?”

  “I guess I’m questioning our theory that Fesmire killed Julia and then himself. I mean, it certainly wasn’t Alton Fesmire in the cemetery. He’s dead.”

  Rafe nodded. So did Darcy and Audrey.

  “And nobody else has a reason to want your grandmother out of the way. Just the person who killed Julia, because he knows that your grandmother can identify him.”

  “So?” Rafe said.

  “So what if it all goes back to Beverly Bristol? What if she was the main victim? We’ve been treating her like she was sort of incidental—like, she died because Julia Poole wasn’t where she was supposed to be, too bad, right?—but what if it was all about her? I mean, there she was. Old and demented and childless. And while not rich, at least quite comfortably off.”

  “Quite,” Rafe agreed.

  “So maybe the Bristols wanted money. Or needed money. Or could use money. It wasn’t doing Auntie Beverly any good, after all. She was down there in that facility in Brentwood, losing her mind more and more every day, while all that lovely money was just sitting in the bank.”

  “And you think one or more of’em decided to do something about it?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “It probably wouldn’t be all of them. But it would have to be more than one.”

  We screeched around a bend in the road. “Lay it out for me,” my husband said.

  “Hold on a second. I’m having another contraction.”

  Darcy and Audrey both looked worried, and I added, “I have several weeks to go. They’re just fake contractions. Not the real kind. Probably from all the running up and down the hill earlier.” The baby had gotten bounced around quite a bit. Not as badly as Mrs. Jenkins, but I’d been jostling it more than usual.

  We drove on in silence, just broken by the sound of the tires on the blacktop and the branches slapping at the windows.

  “Shouldn’t we have caught up by now?” Audrey asked, her voice worried.

  Rafe shot her a look. “Depends. They’re probably going fast, too.”

  I nodded. “He saw me. So he has to assume someone’s coming after him. He probably didn’t realize we’d be coming so soon, though.”

  My stomach relaxed, and I unclenched my teeth. “Anyway. The person who picked up Mrs. Jenkins and ran with her was a man. It couldn’t have been a woman. She wouldn’t have been strong enoug
h to do that. And he was tall. And bulky.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “But it was a woman who called me the other day. And while Fesmire might have bribed an innocent bystander to make that call, I doubt the Bristols would have thought of it. It was probably one of them.”

  “Mrs. Roberts,” Rafe said, “Mrs. Wilkerson, or Mrs. Hammond.”

  “One of the twins is married? Which one?”

  “Chet,” Rafe said, hands on the wheel and eyes forward.

  “Who isn’t married?”

  “Les. The thinner one.”

  Who had worn the gray suit at the funeral. “Lester and Chester Hammond? Are you serious?”

  His eyes met mine in the mirror. “Their parents were.”

  Right. “Moving on. If Julia Poole was sleeping with someone, it was probably the single brother. So we can probably assume Lester is involved.”

  “Unless Chet and his wife did it all,” Audrey said, getting into the game. “And she was OK with him seducing Julia for the good of the mission. She might have wanted the money enough to put up with that.”

  She might have. That would mean Mrs. Chester was the one who called me and got me out of the house on Tuesday. And it was Chester I’d seen in the cemetery, abducting Mrs. J, after he failed in Nashville.

  “Here’s what I think happened.” Now that Alton Fesmire was dead and my whole big theory about him had gone up in smoke. “Chet and his wife, or Chester and Lester and Chester’s wife, wanted Beverly Bristol’s money. So one of the twins started making googly eyes at Julia Poole sometime when they were down there, visiting Aunt Beverly. Julia googlied back, and they arranged to meet at midnight in the pavilion on the night Beverly died. It might not have been the first time. Maybe they did a trial run, just to make sure it would work and they could do it. Julia probably gave whoever it was the code to the gate. Or maybe they didn’t come by gate. Maybe they came by boat.”

  Rafe didn’t say anything, but he arched a brow.

  “That would mean Fesmire suspected something was going on, and came to the nursing home on Saturday night to see if he could catch Julia in the act. He’s the one who came through the gate. And instead he ended up there when Julia was murdered.”