Hard Truth (4 page)

But if Mellie was there, she needed to come out and go home.

No doubt Mrs. Eagan was going to be loaded for bear. Lorna had heard her grandmother say that, and while she wasn’t exactly sure she understood what bears had to do with anything, she understood the sentiment perfectly.

But they hadn’t found Melinda that night, or any other night. It would be years before Lorna dropped the “and please bring Mellie home” from her prayers. The thought that Melinda could have been right there, on the Palmer land, all this time, twisted Lorna’s stomach into knots.

I would have known, wouldn’t I, if my best friend had been murdered and buried in a place I could see from my bedroom window? Wouldn’t I?

Only in books, or in movies,
she told herself, slapping at the mosquito that had landed on her leg.
Not in real life.

But if it was Melinda, and she had been buried out there at the far end of the farm, it would go a long way toward easing that little twinge of guilt that bit at Lorna every time she thought of how she’d not given up the secret hiding place.

Thunder rumbled from somewhere over toward West Grove, and Lorna stood to watch the darkening sky. The clouds were low hanging and fast moving. The storm would hit within the next twenty minutes or so, she figured, but wouldn’t last too long. Above the rain clouds, the sky was lighter and held promise. Maybe after the rain passed, she’d walk down to the family plot and sprinkle some of her mother’s ashes, as she was bound to do.

Or maybe she would just sit there on the porch, and wonder what had become of her friend all those years ago.

T
hree

At eight forty-five on Wednesday morning, Lorna was seated at the dining room table, eating dry cereal from a small blue plastic bowl and preparing a profit-and-loss statement on her computer for one of her clients. To access the Internet, she’d had to plug into the house phone and go the dial-up route. It had been a long time since she’d done that, and the squawk through the phone line sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

She made a mental note to look into broadband service while she was there. Even if it took her a month to finalize things in Callen, it would be worth the connection fee to have cable brought into the house.

She’d set up the laptop at the far end of the table, so that her back would be to the china cupboard. Empty of its contents, it reminded her of a mouth without teeth. Each piece of china or crystal had left its footprint on the dusty shelves, ghostly reminders of holiday dinners and birthday parties long past.

Stone crunched under the tires of a car in the driveway, and she went to the front door, arriving just in time to see Chief Walker get out of his cruiser.

“Hi, Chief,” she called as she unlocked the screen door and stepped outside.

“Hey, Lorna.” He walked toward her, one hand resting on the holstered gun that sat on his right hip.

“What’s going on?”

“Just thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing, make sure everything is all right.”

“Everything’s fine, thank you.”

“Wanted to talk to you a bit about the bones we found out in the field on Monday.”

“Want to come in? Or have a seat on the porch? It’s probably cooler out here.”

“The porch will do just fine.”

He walked up the steps and sat in one of the rockers.

“Can I get you something?” She paused beside the second rocker.

“I’d love a cup of coffee, but I’ve already surpassed my daily limit.”

“Just as well, then.” She sat in the rocker nearest the door. “I’ve been buying mine at the mini-mart up the road. I did find Gran’s old percolator, so I’ll probably pick up some coffee on my next trip to the market. Maybe I’ll get up there later today.”

“We were all sorry to hear about Mary Beth. She was a good woman, your mother was. We’ll all miss her.”

“Thank you, Chief. We appreciated the card you and your wife sent. Please thank her for us.”

“Least we could do.” He rocked for another moment, then said, “About those bones . . .”

“Any idea yet who it might have been?”

“Actually, it looks as if they’ve been identified.” He stopped rocking and leaned forward a bit, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair. “Looks like we might have found Jason Eagan, after all these years.”

“Jason!” She stopped rocking, too. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. The medical examiner estimated we were looking at a young adult male who’d been dead about twenty-five years. We went back through the files and found there were only two men reported missing around here from that time period. One was Alvin Hawkins, who was in his late forties, the other was Jason. He was only fourteen but he was tall for his age. We brought his mother down, she identified the shirt we found with the remains as belonging to Jason. It did match the description she’d given back then of what he was wearing the last time she saw him. The ME is looking at the dental records that Dr. Pollock dropped off, but we’re pretty sure it’s him.”

“How ’bout that, after all these years,” she murmured.

“Well, here’s the thing.” He started rocking again, but with more deliberateness. “The bones showed signs of old abuse. Like both arms having been broken in more than one place, and not at the same time, according to the medical examiner. Looks like that boy took a lot as a child.”

Lorna took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“My wife remembered that you were good friends with the sister, the girl who disappeared, said you used to come into the library together all the time. I was wondering if you knew whether or not she was roughed up, too.”

“I know that Mrs. Eagan had a temper, and that Melinda was afraid of her.” Lorna chose her words carefully. “I never saw her mother hit her, but I did see bruises on Mellie. On her arms, on her legs. I never asked her how she got them. I figured if she wanted to talk about it, she’d tell me. She never did.”

Chief Walker tapped on the arms of the chair with the fingers of both hands.

“That’s pretty much what I thought. I’d heard Billie Eagan had a reputation for being tough with her kids.” He pushed himself out of the chair and stood up. “I just wanted to know if you had any firsthand knowledge of that.”

“I can’t swear that Mel’s bruises were caused by her mother, but I strongly suspected that they were. I had heard her say things like ‘My mother is going to give it to me when I get home,’ things of that nature.”

“Ever hear her say, ‘My mother said she’d kill me if I did . . .’ whatever?”

“Yes, but all kids say stuff like that.” Lorna stood and followed the chief to the porch railing. “I remember times when I did something stupid, or maybe got a C on a test I should have gotten an A on, and said, ‘My mother will kill me for this.’ It’s just something kids say.”

“Your mother ever hit you hard enough to leave a mark, or grab you hard enough to leave a bruise?”

“Are you kidding?” She shook her head. “My mother never raised a hand to anyone, as far as I know.”

“Billie Eagan did. I can’t help but wonder if that was all she did.”

“Wait a minute, you’re not suggesting that she killed either Melinda or Jason?”

He turned and looked at her. “When the girl went missing, I really thought the brother had killed her. He was the last person that we could prove had been with her. Then, right before we go to arrest him, he disappears. We figured he ran. Now it looks like if he did, he didn’t get very far.”

“I can’t believe Mrs. Eagan had anything to do with what happened to either Melinda or Jason. Yes, she was rough with them, I know that, but I can’t believe she would have gone that far.”

“Who knows where the line is drawn?” he said. “If you can lose it enough to break your kid’s arm, can you lose it enough to go one step further? Where does it end?”

Lorna frowned. “But why would she have done that?”

“Maybe the boy did kill the sister,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe she found out that he did it, maybe he even told her he had, and she hit him. Could have been accidental, but could have killed him, all the same.”

“Does the medical examiner know what killed him?”

“A blow to the head with something heavy. One blow to the front, one crushing blow to the back. Either one could have killed him.”

“That’s horrible.” She shivered. “Poor Jason.” Even though she hadn’t liked him, had even feared him, he hadn’t deserved that. No one did.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know what was going on, since you were friends with the girl, and the remains were found on your property.”

“Not mine anymore.”

“It was when the body was buried. And, like I said, you were friends. In any case, I should probably get going. You take care, now, Lorna.” He walked to the police car and got in the still-open door. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the place while you were gone. We’ll continue to check on you when we do our rounds at night.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ve been fine.”

“All the same, you’re by yourself here.” He waved and then slammed the car door.

“Thanks,” she called to him and returned the wave.

She walked after the retreating car and watched as it disappeared a few hundred yards up the road to the left. Then she walked back to the house and stepped inside and poured herself a glass of iced tea. The temperature was already well into the eighties, and it was barely nine-thirty in the morning.

She returned outside and sat on the top step, wondering if Billie Eagan had had a hand in the disappearance of either or both of her kids. It had made Lorna uncomfortable to admit that she’d known that Melinda had been abused by her mother but had pretended not to. All these years later, Lorna still felt guilty that she’d been too much of a coward to have confronted Mellie with it.

But how do you make someone talk about something they don’t want to talk about, or confront something they’re not ready to deal with? she asked herself, not for the first time. Mellie had angrily brushed aside the few feeble attempts Lorna had made. How could she have forced her friend to admit that her mother had hurt her, when maybe Mellie didn’t want to admit it to herself?

There had been times Lorna had wanted to talk to her own mother about it, but she’d always rationalized her way out of it. What if she was wrong? What if Melinda really had fallen down the steps that time she’d broken her arm? What if Melinda got really mad and stopped talking to her? And what if her mother had said something to Melinda’s mother and Mrs. Eagan got mad and really hurt Mellie? It would have been Lorna’s fault. The list of what-ifs and possible consequences seemed endless. As a child, Lorna had hid behind excuses for her silence. As an adult, she was ashamed that she had, but still wasn’t sure what she could have done differently back then.

What if Chief Walker was right? What if Mrs. Eagan had killed Melinda, even by accident? And what if she had killed Jason, too?

What, Lorna wondered, could she have done—should she have done—that would have made a difference, all those years ago?

The question stayed with her, nagged at her. It followed her to the family burial site that afternoon when she took one of the urns holding her mother’s ashes, as she had promised she would do.

“Okay, Mom, we’re here,” she said aloud as she went through the black iron gate into the enclosed area that sat by itself on a slight rise. She held the silver-colored urn to her chest as if it were a child. “I’m not really sure how to do this, but I’ll give it a shot.”

She walked among the graves, some of them ancient, the engraving on several of the markers now little more than faint scratches on stone. The air was heavy with the sounds and scents of August, the
zzzzz
of the cicadas only barely drowning out the buzz of the yellow jackets as they fed on the season’s first fallen apples rotting on the ground on the other side of the fence.

“Guess you’d want some here, by Gran, and some over there, by your aunt Emily.” Lorna removed the lid and tilted the urn slightly, letting the breeze catch the coarse gray dust and carry it. “Maybe a little by Grampa . . . and the rest over here by Dad.”

Lorna stood behind her father’s headstone and sprinkled the ashes, watching them disperse on the ground around her. He’d been gone for so long, it was hard sometimes to remember all the things she’d thought she’d never forget. She could recall his laughter and the sound of his voice, and the way his eyes narrowed when something displeased him, and the look on his face when her mother came into the room. Mary Beth had been his life; the children had often seemed to be afterthoughts, as far as he’d been concerned. He had loved them in his own way, Lorna felt certain, but he’d always somehow looked upon them as belonging more to his wife than to him. She was his. The children were hers. They had never held the importance in his life that she had, and all three children had instinctively known.

When Lorna was growing up, her mother had always been the dominant force in her life, her father’s absence felt more than his presence had been. The one thing she could never forget was the way they had all grieved when he died so unexpectedly, the anger that first year after his passing, how Rob had withdrawn and for a long time after been awakened nightly by nightmares, and the way her mother had never been quite the same.

Well, she thought, tears coming for the first time since she’d stepped through the iron gate, they were together again, wherever they were.
She’s all yours again, Dad.

When the container was empty, she set it on the ground. She had thought it would have been more difficult. Then again, she’d shared her mother’s last days, watching the life fade away, mystified by the way it had drained from her in stages. The end had come quickly, mercifully, and having held her mother in her arms as she’d breathed her last, for Lorna, watching the ashes scatter was almost anticlimactic. She did it because she’d promised to, but she felt no more or no less of her mother’s presence once the urn was empty.

“There you go, Mom. One down, two to go.”

The graves were untidy, so Lorna spent a half hour pulling weeds. She’d come back later in the afternoon, or tomorrow, if it was cooler, and bring that hand-mower she’d seen in the barn, to cut the grass. Overgrown graveyards always made her sad, as if those laid to rest had all been forgotten.

Well, I guess for the most part they have been,
Lorna conceded.
At least since Mom came out to Woodboro.

Before she left town, Lorna would ask around to see about having someone tend to the graveyard, after the property was sold. Her grandmother—who had kept such a tidy and immaculate house—would definitely not be pleased to have her final resting place such a tangle of weeds. Lorna owed her that much.

She finished weeding, tucked the urn under her arm, and set out for the house. She worked for a few hours on the monthly billing for a boutique in Woodboro, then turned off the computer. She was just about to open the refrigerator door when the phone rang.

“Lorna? Chief Walker.”

“Hi, Chief.”

“Lorna, I have Billie Eagan down here at the station with me. She’s asking to speak with you, and I was wondering if—”

“To me?” Lorna frowned. “Why would she want to talk to me?”

“Well, I asked her if she wanted to make any calls, and she said the only person she’d want to talk to was Mary Beth Stiles, but she knew she’d passed on. I told her you were back, and she asked to talk to you instead.”

“You’re not holding her, are you?”

“Actually, we are.”

“Then she should be talking to a lawyer,” Lorna protested. “I’m not a lawyer.”

“I’m well aware of that. I already told her we’d recommend to the court that she be given a public defender. No question she qualifies. But she still wants to talk to you.”