Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (35 page)

Mrs. Beecher chuckled and led me farther inside. “That girl and her imagination, I
tell ya. She started telling stories when she was around five and never let up.” She
strolled all the way into her kitchen. I peeked into every nook and cranny I could
along the way, trying to assess exactly what I was dealing with.

As luck would have it, Cookie called, her timing impeccable. “I’m sorry,” I said,
pushing the icon to accept the call, “will you give me a minute? I have to take this.”

“You go right ahead, dear.”

I turned and walked a few feet away toward an open door just off the kitchen, and
I found it interesting that the closer I got to that door, the more apprehensive Mrs.
Beecher became.

“Hey, Cook,” I said, all cheer and goodwill. But before she could respond in kind,
I said, “Yeah, I’m here talking to Mrs. Beecher now. This case is a dead end. I can’t
find any evidence whatsoever of what Harper Lowell was talking about.” My words calmed
the woman a bit, so I took another few steps that way.

“Okay,” Cookie said, catching on, “are you in immediate danger?”

“I don’t think so, but one never knows with cases like this.”

“What can I do?”

“Sure, I can meet Uncle Bob for coffee. Can you call him and have him meet me at that
address you gave me?”

“I can definitely do that. Do I need to get emergency over there?”

“Oh, no. That’s okay. Just tell him to take his time. I’m almost finished here.”

“Okay, calling Ubie now. Be careful.”

“What? You like to look at naked men on the Internet?”

“I mean it.”

Darn. Didn’t even get a rise out of her. What good was harassment if she didn’t rise
to the occasion? I hung up and took one more step closer to that door. I couldn’t
see past the thick blackness, but it was cooler than the rest of the house, possibly
a basement of some kind. Nothing good ever seemed to come of basements, so I started
to turn back, when I heard a loud thud. A sharp pain exploded in my head; then the
world tumbled around me in a series of somersaults and painful bounces.

I landed in a heap of hair and body parts at the bottom of a very solid set of stairs.
One would think pine gave more than that. But crap on a cracker, that hurt.

I curled into a fetal position, cradling my head and gritting my teeth against the
pain shooting through every molecule in my body. Above me, I heard a door close and
then Mrs. Beecher’s feeble steps descending the stairs. She moved at a pace that would
have given a baby turtle a run for his money. A cast-iron skillet hung from her hands,
and I was fairly certain that was what started my tumultuous journey into the unknown.
Who knew cast iron was so hard?

I still needed evidence of her involvement in Harper’s case. Right now, all I had
was an assault with a skillet by an elderly woman who could claim dementia and most
definitely get away with it in court. With every ounce of strength I had, I forced
my muscles to relax, my body to go limp like wet noodles. Uncle Bob was on his way.
Maybe I could wrap this case up before he got here.

My eyes had watered and the air felt cool against the wetness on my cheeks, but that
was the only positive I could wring out of the situation. Well, that and the fact
that I could probably outrun Mrs. Beecher if push came to shove. She was about halfway
down the steps at that point, so I decided to save my mental strength and ponder what
it would be like to live in a world where butterflies ruled and humans were their
slaves.

It didn’t help. All I could think about was the pain shooting through Barbara, my
brain. Normally, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Barbara—she didn’t get out
much—but today was her day to shine. I was certain parts of her were oozing out of
Fred, my skull.

As I lay there channeling spaghetti, Mrs. Beecher headed toward a stack of shelves
and started rummaging through old boxes, probably looking for a rusty old hacksaw
to dismember me before she buried my parts in this very basement. I couldn’t help
but notice it had a dirt floor. Convenient.

Then I heard something else. I looked up as Harper tiptoed down the stairs. I glared
at her, but she rushed down the minute she saw me.

“Charley,” she whispered, glancing around in horror, “what happened?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked through gritted teeth, trying not to move my lips.
Not sure why. I wanted nothing more than to hold my head and writhe in agony.

Harper spotted Mrs. Beecher. She put a hand on my shoulder as recognition dawned on
her face. “I remembered something, so I came over here.”

“You really need to leave. She may not look like much, but that woman has a wicked
left hook.” I glared at her over my shoulder. “Freaking cheater. How the fuck did
she wield a cast-iron skillet? She’s the size of a tennis ball.” But I’d lost Harper.
She was staring at Mrs. Beecher’s back, a combination of astonishment and anguish
in her eyes. I had anguish in my eyes, too, but for a completely different reason.

“Harper,” I whispered, trying to coax her back to me. Thankfully, Mrs. Beecher seemed
to be unable to hear anything under a dull roar. “Sweetheart, what do you remember?”

Harper’s huge brown eyes glanced down at me but didn’t quite focus. “Her grandson,”
she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Dewey was a little older than me. He lived
with us. With Mrs. Beecher in her apartment.”

The pain ebbed slightly, the throbbing becoming almost tolerable. “What happened,
hon? She stayed with you at your grandparents’ house while your parents went on their
honeymoon. Did her grandson hurt you?”

Her expression was so distant, I was afraid she wouldn’t answer. But after a minute,
she said, “No. Not me.” She put her hands over her mouth. “A little boy. I think he
killed a little boy.”

My eyes slammed shut in a feeble attempt to block the mental image her words had conjured.

“Mrs. Beecher found Dewey. He was trying to wake the little boy up, but he couldn’t.
That’s when she saw me.”

I looked back at her. “Mrs. Beecher? She saw you nearby?”

“Yes. We were playing hide-and-seek in the barn, but Dewey got mad when the little
boy found him. I’m not really sure what happened, but they started wrestling. Dewey
got him down and sat on him until he stopped struggling. Stopped breathing.” Harper
shut her own eyes, and tears spilled out from them. Then she jumped, remembering more.
“I came here. I came to ask Mrs. Beecher why she did it. Why she covered it up.”

Mrs. Beecher had apparently found what she’d been looking for. She was headed back
our way. I had to hurry. “Harper, what did she do? What did Mrs. Beecher do that day
when you were in that barn?”

“She grabbed me.” Harper refocused on her arms. “She had sharp nails and she shook
me. Said that Dewey had accidently killed a rabbit. A white rabbit. And that if I
ever told anyone, he would do the same to me. Then she put the rabbit in a suitcase
and brought him back to the city with us.”

My shock must have shown.

Harper nodded as sadness welled in her eyes. “But it wasn’t a rabbit. I remember now.
That little boy is buried somewhere on our property. In a red suitcase.”

My lungs seized. Cookie told me there’d been a missing child from Peralta around that
time, and Peralta and Bosque Farms sat back to back. It was hard to tell where one
stopped and the other began. The case had never been solved.

Well, it was certainly about to be.

Still pretending to be unconscious, I lowered my lashes to slits as Mrs. Beecher ambled
near. I could see just enough to make out her image as she shuffled into view. Carrying
an ice pick.
An ice pick.
What the hell? This woman was cold. Harper gasped and huddled over me protectively.
It was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for me.

The door above us opened, and heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs. Sadly, it couldn’t
have been Uncle Bob. Not enough time. And Uncle Bob almost always yelled things like,
APD! Get your hands up!
This guy didn’t yell anything.

I cringed as the guy from the pictures stepped beside me. Partly because he was ginormous,
almost twice the height of Mrs. Beecher, but mostly because shit just got real. Now
I’d have to outrun both of them with Barbara oozing out of Fred.

“Who are you?” he asked me. He apparently talked to spaghetti, as I was doing my best
impression of a wet noodle.

“This woman wants to take you away from me. We’re going to have to plant her in the
ground so she can grow.”

He lowered his head. “I don’t think I want to do that anymore.”

“I don’t want to either, but I need you here with me, honeybun. Who else is going
to do the yard work?”

The yard work?

“I know, Grandma, but—”

The fucking yard work?

“No buts. Now, you take care of her like you did Miss Harper.”

He looked over into a dark corner of the basement. Toward a fresh mound of dirt. “Harper
was nice to me.”

I’d mow her lawn, for fuck’s sake. This was honestly about yard work?

She reached up and patted his big shoulder. “I know. I know. But she was going to
turn you in to the police. They would have taken you to jail, sugar britches. What
would I do without you?”

He shrugged and she cackled in delight, pinching his cheek as if he were four. I was
in so much trouble.

Gripping the ice pick like her life depended on it, she looked down at me. “Hold on,
though. I have to make sure she’s dead first.”

She bent to one knee beside me, a laborious act that took her enough time for me to
ponder what would happen if the polar ice caps melted. After that played out, I wondered
if I should make a run for it or try to reason with Dewey. He seemed to be slightly
saner than his counterpart.

“Now, where do you suppose her heart is?” said counterpart asked.

Betty White? She was going for Betty?

Instinctively, my hands shot up to cover her. She was so fragile. So vulnerable. And
Mrs. Beecher wanted to jab her with an ice pick? Not on my watch.

The woman jumped back in surprise, and I started to scramble toward the stairs when
a weight comparable to a cement mixer landed on my back.

“Oh, that’s good, sugar pie. You hold her there. Now, where’d that ice pick go?”

Harper lunged forward, intending to knock Dewey off me, and was surprised when she
flew right through him.

Damn. I should have told her. It was hard when people didn’t know they were dead.
The realization sent them into a state of shock, and sometimes I wouldn’t see them
again for years. But I really should have told her, because the stunned expression
on her face as she turned back and reached through Dewey’s head broke my heart.

She locked gazes with me. “I’m dead?” she asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. She
sank to the ground, her expression a thousand miles away.

I strained against the weight of Dewey, wondering what the heck his grandmother fed
him but thrilled she’d lost the ice pick. “I’m sorry, Harper.” I could barely get
out the words. “I wanted to tell you.”

“What?” Mrs. Beecher asked.

“I called the police,” I said, craning my neck. “They’re on the way.”

She scoffed and turned her back to me. “I need more light. Where could that thing
have got off to?”

“They killed me?” Harper asked, still in a daze.

I reached out to her and put my hand on her knee. “Yes. I’m not sure who exactly.
Do you remember what happened?”

“She’s talking, Grandma.”

“Well, sit harder.”

He took her advice and bounced, and all I could think was,
Oh. My. God.
Where was Uncle Bob when I needed him?

Feeling like I was in a horror movie, waiting for evil clowns to appear from under
the stairs, I tried to focus on surviving this freak show.

“What are you doing?”

I turned to my other side to see Angel. He wore a scowl of disapproval.

“I’m trying to breathe,” I said, trying to breathe. But darkness crept into my periphery.

“Why is that guy sitting on you?” Then he saw Harper. “Oh, hey.” He nodded an acknowledgment,
but she was still in shock. She raised her hands and looked at them, turning them
over and over.

“I don’t suppose you could push this guy off me?” I asked him.

“I guess I could try.”

“So, like, soon?”

Angel frowned, then focused on Dewey and concentrated. After a few seconds, he pushed.
And Dewey went head over heels.

Sweet potato pie.

I scrambled for the stairs again while fighting the tilt of the Earth. It kept throwing
me against the wall, and I realized I probably had a concussion. Unfortunately, Dewey
recovered and reached over the stairs, grabbing my leg and pulling it out from under
me.

This was going to hurt.

Yep. My chin hit a step, clashing my teeth together. This was so much like a thousand
horror movies I’d seen.

Dizziness played a huge part when I tumbled right back down the stairs.

I held up my hands and said, “You need to calm down.”

That was when Dewey wrapped his large hands around my throat. Someday I’d realize
telling people to calm down had exactly the opposite effect.

“Hold her still, sugar. I can’t find that danged ice pick. I’ll have to use the skillet.”

“You need to stop thinking like a human,” Angel said.

“You are not helping. Go get Reyes.”

“I’m here,” Reyes said from a corner. “Watching you get your ass kicked. Again.”

His thick black robe undulated around me, not helping at all with the sudden onset
of motion sickness. This was definitely the incorporeal Reyes. The Beechers couldn’t
see him.

When Dewey’s grip slipped for a split second, I said to Reyes, “Do something.”

“Can I break her neck?”

“No.”

“Can I break his neck?”

I had to think about that one.

Mrs. Beecher was headed my way, skillet at the ready.

“You have to … save … Fred and Barbara,” I said. With Dewey’s hands around my throat,
I sounded like a cartoon character. A fact that could not possibly be appealing. Really,
how long was he going to let this go on?