In a Dark Season (20 page)

Chapter 23

Converging Threads

Saturday, December 23

A
whorehouse—here in bone-dry, Bible-thumping Marshall County? Go on, Mac, pull the other one! The church ladies would have raided this place with pitchforks.”

Mackenzie Blaine wiped at the dusty glass of the window and peered out toward the river. “Well, I guess it was more like a house of accommodation, not actually a bordello or whatever they used to call them. From what I’ve been told, when the railroad came through and the big cattle drives ended, whoever owned the stand put in these partitions to turn the drovers’ inn into a regular hotel. Thing was, there were better hotels not too far off, in Ransom or, going the other way, in Hot Springs.

“So before long, this turned into the area’s no-tell motel—fellas wanting to get drunk away from their wives’ eyes and still have a bed to pass out on, fellas slipping around on their spouses, couples looking to break the Seventh Commandment in more comfort than a hay barn allowed—that sort of thing. And there were usually a few country girls hanging around downstairs where the bootleg beer and liquor was sold, girls who were hoping to get together enough money for a ticket out of the mountains. They weren’t quite hookers; they called themselves waitresses—but most any man with a few dollars and a need on him could find company for the night.

“And when the passenger trains quit running, old Revis kept on selling liquor, and there were still plenty of underage young folks and boozy old lowlifes to keep him in business. No one even bothered to pretend that this was still a hotel, but anyone could slip the old boy a few bucks and get the use of one of these rooms for the night, no questions asked. It went on like that till Revis got himself killed. Then Miss Barrett locked up the place and threw away the key.”

Phillip looked at the stained mattress, then at the bolt on the door. “Where the hell was the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department when all this was going on?”

The sheriff shrugged. “Well, I’d guess they were likely getting a taste of Revis’s profits. Or some action, on the house. Or both. But I don’t know that for sure. One of the old-timers told me that the Holcombe brothers mainly saw Gudger’s Stand as a convenient way of knowing where the criminal element on this end of the county was likely to be on any given night.”

“So are we looking for something, Mac, or what? I appreciate the tour and all; it’s an interesting old place—but why are we here?”

“We’re here because all the threads
lead
here. Revis died in the room below us; Miss Barrett jumped from the porch out there; the preacher’s suicide note mentioned that silo across the road; there were human remains in the silo…even that Hummer someone burned up ties in with the stand, since it belonged to the developers who want to buy this place. But I just can’t seem to get a fix on how all these things are connected.”

As he spoke, Blaine turned away from the dusty window and gave Phillip an embarrassed half-smile. “Hell, I don’t know, Hawk, I guess I came here looking for inspiration—maybe hoping the house might tell me something…or you might get an idea. And then there’s the time element—if the county commissioners go through with the taking people are whispering about, that company young Holcombe’s friend owns is likely to gut this place and turn it into a lodge or god knows what—if they don’t just burn it down and put up something on top of the ashes. If there’s anything to find here, this could be our last chance.”

Phillip moved to stand beside his friend, bringing his face close to the windowpanes in an attempt to see the fields that lay by the river.

“You forgot the other thread, Mac—that alleged gang rape in the old school bus. That bus is right over there—and didn’t the woman say she’d been drinking just before? Maybe she’d been.”

Sweet Jesus, what is she up to now?
The thought interrupted his sentence, but then he resumed. “Mac, did you notice Elizabeth’s jeep down there in front of that old brick building? And, yep, there they are—Lizabeth and the girls coming out the door. What the hell are they doing down there?”

Mackenzie’s response was succinct and surprising. “Investigation, I have no doubt. Open the window and holler at your lady friend, Hawk. Ask her to join us. Maybe the house’ll talk to
her.”

“Why does Mackenzie want to see me?” Elizabeth asked as she made her way past the sheriff’s cruiser. “Will it take long? The girls are in a hurry to get back to the farm. I was going to run them back home, then go see Nola.”

Phillip lifted open-palmed hands. “You got me, Lizabeth. I don’t know exactly what Mac wants. But you were saying the other day that you’d never seen the inside of this old place. Now’s your chance and with two armed escorts to keep the ghosts away.” His face relaxed into a cheerful expression. “Tell you what, why don’t you let the girls take your car on back to the farm and you come with me? We could grab a bite somewhere first and then I’ll take you to see Miss Barrett.”

As she followed Phillip along the back porch to the door, Elizabeth noticed, with a familiar pang of revulsion, the dangling rubber dolls. Their once pink bodies were dappled with black mildew, and they shuddered and danced on the weathered clothesline.
It’s the vibration of our footsteps that’s making them jiggle—that’s all. Maybe I could just pull them down and never have to look at them again. Maybe—

But Phillip was opening the door and motioning her in. “Look at the size of these logs, sweetheart. And wait till you see the fireplaces!”

She stepped through the door into the little passageway and was assailed instantly by a confusion of sensations—cold dry air, carrying the scent of decay and rat droppings; the loom of the giant chestnut logs to either side of her; and the ceiling pressing claustrophobically low, mere inches above her head. There was hollow silence in which the pounding of her own pulse seemed amplified till it could be mistaken for the heartbeat of the old house itself.

Dizzied,
it’s coming from the light outside into this dark stuffy little hall,
she put out a hand to steady herself. The slight curve of the log met and accepted her hand, its polished smoothness speaking of the many other hands, long gone to dust, that had slid over it. Closing her eyes, she seemed to hear the tread of heavy boots, the scrape and whine of a fiddle, the laughter of drunken men and women, accompanied by a phantom whiff compounded of sweat, whisky, and tobacco.

“Lizabeth, are you all right?” Phillip’s voice brought her back to the present.

“I’m good. Just trying to get adjusted to the dim light.
Here and now, Elizabeth, here and now.
Where’s Mackenzie? I want to find out if I’m in trouble.”

“In here.” The sheriff’s voice emanated from the open door to the right. As she entered the room, Mackenzie Blaine turned a wry look on her and gestured to the tarnished brass bed in the corner. “Thought as long as you were out
investigating
things, Elizabeth, you’d be interested in the scene of a crime. This is where Revis died, back in ’96.”

It’s odd. The first time I met Mackenzie, when Miss Birdie was trying to find out about Cletus, I really disliked him. And he thought I was just a nosy woman, trying to second-guess the authorities. Which, I guess, I was…am. But now that I’ve gotten to know him as a friend of Phillip’s, I can understand his point of view a lot better. And, for whatever reason, at least he no longer treats me like a meddling idiot. What was it Phillip told me he said—Miz Goodweather has that blasted woman’s-intuition thing going for her, plus the instincts of a snapping turtle—she won’t let go of a problem.

“Hey, Mackenzie, how nice of you. I’ve always wondered what this place looked like inside. But what’re you and Phillip doing here?”

She was surprised at his candor as he explained the various threads of the several unsolved cases, concluding with “…and they all lead to Gudger’s Stand. So I thought Hawk and I’d come here and brainstorm a little about how or if all these cases connect. Maybe get some inspiration from the place. Then, what d’ya know, Hawk looks out the window and there
you
are, coming out of Blake’s crib. And I figure you’ve been asking questions and I also figure he may have told you more than he’d tell me. So, what have you learned from our resident eccentric?”

Before replying, Elizabeth looked around the lifeless room. The mattress had been stripped bare; two lumpy ticking-covered pillows had been tossed casually at the foot. To one side of the vast stone fireplace, a vinyl-covered recliner extended its footrest, almost touching a cheap television atop a flimsy metal stand. Strips of foil on the rabbit-ears antenna suggested that reception had been poor.

“Okay, Mackenzie, I
was
asking some questions. But really it was more about an ancestor of his way back. Mr. Blake has a wealth of information about the mid-1800s. But he’s not inclined to dwell on the recent past.”

“No, he wouldn’t be,” Blaine agreed. “He’s probably killed enough brain cells that the recent past is just a blur.” The sheriff was moving cautiously around the room now, inspecting first the battered chest of drawers, then the contents of an ancient trunk that stood at the foot of the bed. “I don’t know why I bother; after this long if there was anything incriminating, the murderer would likely have gotten rid of it.”

“I thought you said the place had been locked all this time,” Phillip broke in. “And only Miss Barrett and the sheriff’s department have the keys—”

“Exactly,” said Mackenzie Blaine. He opened a door on the farther wall. “Three—no, four—small rooms through here, one leading to the other. Stacks of magazines, no furniture. Probably kids’ rooms, in the days when the whole family lived in this end of the building.”

“Is there a bathroom back there?” Elizabeth knew what a rare commodity indoor plumbing had been in the county at least until the seventies, when there had been an effort to nudge homeowners and landlords toward installing septic tanks.

“No bathroom, not nohow, not nowhere.” Blaine grinned at her. “There’s an old zinc tub hanging on the back porch. And down that path behind the house is what used to be an outhouse, till it burned. When I was doing some research on this place and Revis’s death, I came across a reference to the fire trucks responding to a call from here. The old outhouse was on fire and it was completely destroyed. It was written off as a prank. And Revis didn’t have long to be inconvenienced by its loss, because he was dead a week later.”

Phillip laid a hand on her arm. “Lizabeth, did that Blake fella mention that Miss Barrett’s niece and her boyfriend paid a call on him this morning?”

Elizabeth stared at him. “How did you know that? Yes, he did, just as we were leaving. Said it was a red-letter day, with so many young women calling on him. And then he said something about a bond he shared with Nola’s niece. A
sad
bond, he called it. And something about hoping there would be time to see justice done. But then he kind of went all distant and very politely hustled us out the door.”

“Blake’s funny that way.” The sheriff removed a glove and began to run his fingers along the top of the rustic mantel. “He was hanging around when we were removing those remains from the silo. Finally I went over and asked him if he remembered anything unusual going on around the silo eleven years back. Stupid question, I know, but his reaction was pretty interesting. His eyes started to tear up, behind those Coke-bottle-bottom glasses of his and he kind of muttered something about bad boys running wild that year. Then he shuffled away, still mumbling to himself. I thought I caught the words ‘One more.’”

Chapter 24

Desperately Seeking

Saturday, December 23

E
lizabeth followed Phillip and Mackenzie through the old house, silently listening as Mackenzie pointed out the original structure beneath the recent accretions. The odd feeling that had come over her on first entering the hallway had gone, but the strange sense of
almost
hearing the sounds and
almost
smelling the odors of a time long past teased and danced just at the edge of her consciousness.
It would be so easy to close my eyes and imagine what it was like—but I don’t really want to. I don’t think this was ever a happy place, in spite of all that laughter.

The solid reality of the two men beside her and the unchecked flow of their speculations and theories were a comforting anchor to the present as the three of them came once more into that claustrophobic hall and passed quickly through the door to the back porch.

As Mackenzie turned to snap the padlock back into place, once again the dolls, shivering and twisting in the chill breeze, caught her eye.

“Mackenzie, I have a favor to ask.”

Neither Phillip nor the sheriff so much as smiled at her request. Mackenzie gently cut the wretched little dolls down, handling them gravely to her, one by one.
This is ridiculous—but I can’t just leave them here. Maybe when we pass by the collection center—
But she knew that, after years of seeing the dolls not as lifeless rubber toys but as piteous tormented creatures, she couldn’t toss them into a bin to lie amid rotting garbage. No, no more than she could have thrown away the much-loved toy dog that had been her bedmate for much of her childhood and now reposed in state in a trunk with her grandmother’s wedding dress. The Velveteen Rabbit
syndrome appears to work, not just for inanimate objects you love, but also for ones you pity.

“Thanks, Mackenzie, I really appreciate it. These things have given me the creeps for years. It’ll be nice not to have to see them hanging there anymore.”

She shoved the trio of dolls into her denim shoulder bag, trying to act as if they were just some litter that she would eventually dispose of in a responsible manner.
I’ll probably have to bury the bloody things with bell, book, and candle—my god, Elizabeth, are you on your way to becoming a very strange old lady or what?

“Take your time visiting Miss Barrett.” Phillip pulled into a slot in the Layton Facility’s parking lot. Cutting the ignition, he reached behind his seat, pulled out a small newspaper, and flapped it open. “I picked up the latest issue of the
Guardian
and it’ll keep me occupied for a while—I’ll be interested to see what kind of coverage they gave that public meeting where the Hummer got torched. Plus I always get a kick out of the letters to the editor. All the news that fits, as they say.”

“I probably won’t be long—Nola tries hard to communicate but it wears her out way too quickly.” Leaning over, Elizabeth swiped his ear with a hasty kiss before heading for the Layton Facility’s front door.

Alone, alone, all all alone. Michelle, not belle, horribelle Michelle. Stay away all the day—

Nola Barrett lay motionless in her bed. Behind her closed eyes, unruly thoughts swooped and darted like startled birds, buffeted by the blare of the television and the unwelcome odor of untouched and congealing food on the tray beside her bed.

A soft voice was riding on the raucous sound of the chattering, mindless box that flickered on the wall. “Hey, Nola, it’s Elizabeth.”

Nola opened her eyes.
A friend in need, a friend indeed.
Elizabeth’s tall form stood beside her bed, stretching out a hand.

I will not be nil. I will not—
Focusing all her attention and willpower on the inert mass that was her limp left arm, Nola struggled to clasp Elizabeth’s hand.
Find the words!

As Elizabeth’s strong hand took gentle hold of her trembling fingers, Nola bent her will to calling forth and ordering the words that beat against the bars of her mind. She clung to the calloused hand and croaked, “No pills, I will
not
be nil!”

Panting with the exertion of forcing her tongue along an uncharted path, Nola pulled Elizabeth’s hand toward the farther side of her bed and guided it to the hidden tablets.

“Whose pills these are, I do not know.” It was easier to let the poet help her speak, but now she must form her plea unaided.

“What’s this, Nola?” Elizabeth pulled loose the small white tablets and peered at them. “Are you spitting out your pills?”

“They. Are. Ill.”

Each word was a battle to be fought, a child to be birthed in slow, agonizing labor. But Elizabeth’s blue eyes were intent and Elizabeth was listening…

“Pill. Makes. Nil.”

Elizabeth seemed to be considering. Would she understand? One more effort must be undertaken. Beat back the circling, swarming, scattering, chattering words and choose.

“‘Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.’”

“Nola was trying very hard to tell me something about these.” Elizabeth held out the pills for Phillip’s inspection. “She’s evidently trying to avoid taking them. These were stuck to her bedspread—like they’d been damp from her mouth and as they dried, they stuck.”

Phillip took one tablet between his fingers and held it to the light. “You know what these are?”

“Not a clue—my pill taking doesn’t extend much beyond an occasional ibuprofen. And Nola sure couldn’t tell me.”

“It’s an Ambien—a pretty heavy-duty sleeping pill. I know about it because it gets used some recreationally and by meth users trying to come down. Maybe we should check the Internet when we get home. Seems like there was a big flap not long ago about some weird side effects associated with Ambien. Who’s Miss Barrett’s doctor?”

“I don’t know. Remember I told you about Dr. Morton—the brother of that pastor who shot himself—they were visiting her soon after she went in to the facility. But Dr. Morton told me right out that he wasn’t Nola’s physician—he was just there as a courtesy to the family.”

Phillip frowned. “What family do you suppose he was talking about?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I assumed he meant his brother—who, I guess, was Nola’s pastor—had asked him. But it’s an odd way of putting it.” A thought struck her. “That neighbor of Nola’s, Lee what’s-her-name, told me that Nola had slammed the door in the pastor’s face a few days before she jumped. I wish I knew what that was about. But the thing I’m trying to figure out, Phillip, is whether I rat on Nola—do I inform the people back in there that she’s not taking her meds—or—”

“I’d hold off on that, sweetheart.” Phillip tossed the folded paper aside and started the car. “Let’s find out some more about Ambien first. It’s just a sleeping pill, after all. It’s not going to be life-threatening if she misses a few.”

There were errands to do before returning to the farm—a few last-minute groceries and a stop at the gas station. Phillip popped the hood of his car and got out to confer with the always taciturn Jim Hinkley. “The engine seems a little off and I want to see what our local car wizard thinks. Shouldn’t take too long, though.”

As the two men lost themselves in the study of the car’s workings, Elizabeth idly picked up the copy of the
Guardian.
Not much of interest. The report on the meeting sounded like a commercial for development; the burning of the Hummer was dismissed in a paragraph as a “fire of unknown origin.” The letters to the editor were better—a fairly evenly divided representation of those for and against development in Marshall County.

On to the classifieds…real estate, shockingly expensive.
I can remember when land at a thousand dollars an acre was considered over the top, now…good grief, not quite a whole acre and they want $50,000!…$149,500 for 5.39 acres…thank god Sam and I moved here when we did…sure couldn’t afford to buy here now…cars…job opportunities…“Need man with chain saw”…who doesn’t?…“Two Wedding Gowns for sale, Size 12, Size 16, never used”…wonder what happened? A story there, for sure.

She looked up. Now Phillip and Jim Hinkley were in the work bay of the garage, and Jim was holding a dirty-looking cylinder in his hand. Phillip seemed entranced, peering at the object and poking at it with one finger.

She sighed and turned a page. Birth announcements…a “Lordy, Lordy, Debbra’s Forty” ad beneath the photo of a gap-toothed little girl wearing a majorette’s outfit; a “Seeking Information” ad.
“Will anyone with information on the whereabouts of Spencer (aka Spinner) Greer, last known to be in the Ransom area in October, 1995, please contact Boxholder, PO Box 1066”—ah, the Norman Conquest—“Ransom, NC”…
It was familiar; the same ad, offering a substantial reward, had appeared intermittently in this paper for years.
Another story waiting to be told.

Her eyes wandered on to the next page
…after-Christmas sale…moving sale…Wait a second—the address. The other ads like that had a Tampa address, that’s why I noticed them in the first place.
She flipped back to the previous page.
Box 1066, Ransom, NC.

“It was the air filter. Took a while to find the right one, but while he was looking, Jim actually chatted with me a little bit. Asked how I was liking the county, talked about the weather and stuff. I felt honored, first time he’s actually talked to me. And then he showed me pictures of some fish he caught last summer.”

Elizabeth looked up, confused. Phillip was behind the wheel again, the hood was down, and Jim Hinkley was back in the work bay, doing something with a tire.

“What? Oh, right, I remember when Jim finally started talking to me, I felt like I’d been let into some exclusive club. It was a great feeling.”

“You sure were lost in that newspaper. Do you even read the classifieds?” Phillip had an amused look on his face as he pulled back onto the road.

“I always do—there’re interesting little hints of stories.” She told him about the unused wedding dresses and they speculated on the meaning—two jilted sisters? One bride with weight-gain issues?

“And here’s an ad that shows up every so often, someone looking for Spencer or Spinner Greer. Only I’m pretty sure that before, the box to reply to was always in Tampa, but now it’s in Ransom.”

“Maybe this Greer’s the one who ran out on the girl with the wedding dresses. And she’s moved here to hunt for him in person and she’s brought the dresses with her.” Phillip’s grin widened.

“Well, she’s hung on to those dresses for a long time—the ad says ‘last known to be in the Ransom area in 1995.’ But it’s definitely a theory.” Elizabeth folded the paper and tossed it to the back seat. “Or what if he promised to marry
both
sisters—”

“Hold on, Elizabeth. When did it say this Greer was last in the area?”

The silly game was over: Phillip’s face was serious now. Elizabeth reached for the paper again.

“I think it was ’95…yes, here it is, October of ’95.”

Phillip didn’t reply at first. Then in a voice of great weariness he said, “Probably just a coincidence. But October of ’95 is when that gang rape is supposed to have happened.”

“And you’re thinking…?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m thinking the two are connected. Hell, Lizabeth, I’m thinking it’s all connected.”