Scrapped (5 page)

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Authors: Mollie Cox Bryan

Tags: #Cumberland Creek Mystery

BOOK: Scrapped
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Chapter 10
Beatrice had it all under control. Annie’s boys were off to school, Mike was off to work, and Elizabeth was napping in her portable crib in Annie’s living room. She rinsed off the last of the Chamovitzes’ breakfast dishes and was thinking about going home as soon as Elizabeth awakened when Annie walked in the door.
“The boys in school?” Annie said immediately to Beatrice when she saw her standing at the sink.
“Well, how do to you, too,” Beatrice said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Bea,” Annie said and dropped her bag on the table. “I’m a bit off this morning.”
When Annie dropped the bag, Beatrice saw her tremble.
“Here now,” Beatrice said, pulling out a chair and gently guiding Annie to it. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Annie looked directly into her eyes and smirked.
“Okay, okay, the irony’s not lost on me. Me and my ghosts,” Beatrice said.
“Oh God, my neck feels like a tightrope. Maybe I’m getting a headache.”
“Coffee?” Beatrice said, noticing the circles around Annie’s dark eyes.
“I was not thinking.”
“I know. You look like hell.”
“Thanks, Bea,” she said, taking the full hot cup from Beatrice’s hands. “I’ve been up since about three.”
“What on earth is going on?”
“Another murder,” Annie said hoarsely.
Beatrice clutched her chest and sat down. “Who?” she finally said, fingering her disheveled sweater.
“I don’t know yet.”
“What do you know?”
“I know . . . some incredibly sick and scary stuff.”
Just then a baby’s cry interrupted them.
Beatrice rushed to her granddaughter, pulled her from the crib, and sat down on the rocking chair. “Hey, Lizzie. Granny’s here.”
Beatrice felt her only grandchild’s weight on her, and she loved the warmth of it. The tenderness and reverence. Maybe it was true that being a grandparent was better than being a parent. She appreciated each step of Elizabeth’s life—in a way that she couldn’t have done as a young mom herself. When you were in the thick of it, it just wasn’t easy. Still, there were moments she would never forget with Vera, and sometimes she wished she could go back and freeze those moments. Sometimes she looked at Elizabeth and remembered those days with a startling freshness.
Poor Annie. Now that both boys were in school all day, she had a whole new set of worries. The local Weekly Religious Education program was just one of those worries that Annie had expressed to Beatrice. It was “Bible” education given by the local church—really they were proselytizing. If it were an “education,” she’d have no problem with it. But her two Jewish boys had no reason to attend Bible studies at the church. It was just beginning, Beatrice feared.
Annie sipped her coffee and watched Beatrice rock Elizabeth on the well-worn glider rocker.
“So?” Beatrice finally said. “Are you going to make me wait and read it in the paper?”
“Another young woman. Arms were cut off. There was a white powder all over the place. The CDC came. Thought it was anthrax, but it wasn’t. It was just a very fine specialty flour.”
“Jesus. You did have quite a morning.” Beatrice took a deep breath. Was this really happening in her sleepy little town?
“A couple more things, Bea.”
“Yes?” Did she want to hear more?
“She had those same markings. And she was a redhead.”
“You don’t say,” Beatrice said, eyes widening. “Are we talking serial killer, then?”
“It looks like it. And there’s another interesting piece to it,” Annie said, getting up to fix herself a bowl of cereal.
“God, what else could there be?” Beatrice looked at her with her eyebrows lifted.
“It seems to be getting personal.”
“What do you mean, personal? Personal for who?”
“For me. The phone call I received in the middle of the night? It wasn’t from the detective. It was from someone else, someone who wanted to make sure I was there.”
“You told the police that, didn’t you?”
“Bryant knows. They are going to put a device on my phone,” she said, opening the refrigerator, grabbing the milk. “It was a compromise. He wanted to post guards at my house. I don’t need Cumberland Creek’s finest hanging around my house. I want some time to unravel this before my life gets completely turned upside down.”
“That’s foolish,” Beatrice said. “C’mon.”
Annie had just started to speak when the doorbell rang.
“Yoo-hoo,” came Cookie’s voice as she entered. She looked from Beatrice to Annie. “What’s going on? I feel like I’ve walked into a hornet’s nest.”
Chapter 11
Annie was working on Ben’s soccer book. She was thrilled that Sheila had finally gotten in the soccer ball embellishments she’d ordered a couple of weeks ago. She placed the ball on the corner of the photo. Her oldest son with that grin on his face, holding a ball. She loved it. This was one way her boys were fitting in—with their athleticism.
Annie took a long sip of her beer and thought about this group of women who were her friends. Sheila, with her morning runs and scrapbooking business, everything in her home and life so precise, except for her own grooming; DeeAnn, with the hands and heart of a baker, always finding a reason to laugh; Paige, with her tie-dyed hippie clothes and decidedly un-hippie lifestyle; and Vera, always a little too made up, a butterfly stronger than stone. Cookie, the outsider that everybody adored, was caught up in some shimmery paper across the table.
“Oh, isn’t that beautiful!” DeeAnn exclaimed over a scrapbook page that Cookie was working on.
Annie glanced away from her boy’s photo on the page to Cookie’s white slender fingers holding the paper. It was just like DeeAnn to get excited over a shiny thing.
“It’s for my book of shadows,” Cookie explained.
“Your what?” Annie said.
“A book of shadows is a witch’s journal. I keep track of things and write about rituals and moon phases. My observations. Stuff like that,” she said. “My other one is getting kind of used and full. I thought I might start a new one, using some scrapbook techniques.”
“I love that glitter paper,” DeeAnn said, holding out some nachos with her homemade salsa. “Have you tried this?”
“Now, be careful. I don’t want salsa spilling. Take it over to the snack table, please,” Sheila said.
DeeAnn rolled her eyes but did what she was told. Food and precious photos didn’t mix well.
Annie went back to her soccer book, sipping her beer. Beer and scrapbooking had become synonymous with her Saturday nights. If her old friends in D.C. could see her now.
“I wonder what Vera is doing right now,” Sheila said and giggled.
“One thing she’s not doing is this,” DeeAnn said.
“Oh, it’s a good thing we have Vera and her sex life to talk about,” Paige said, fussing over the Cricut personal cutting machine. “None of the rest of us old married ladies get much sex.”
That’s what you think,
Annie thought.
“That’s because our husbands are
too tired
from work. What does that Tony guy do with himself, anyway?” DeeAnn said, scooping up more salsa. Her large hands dwarfed the salsa jar.
“God only knows,” Sheila said. “He’s teaching dance somewhere, I suppose. Chelsea Dance?”
Again, it became very quiet. The spurts of quiet were probably what Annie liked the most about their gatherings. They could be quiet among themselves, and it wasn’t a problem. DeeAnn was working on a scrap cookbook; Paige was working on her niece’s wedding scrapbook; Sheila was scrapbooking her daughter Donna’s senior year of high school.
But tonight an air of fear seemed to permeate. The news that a second body had turned up had sent the town—especially the women—into a state of fear and shock. The victims were both young women from Jenkins Hollow, a place that seemed to be legendary for outcasts.
“I just can’t believe it,” Sheila suddenly said. “Another murder.”
“Did they ever find out who the second woman was?” DeeAnn asked Annie.
“Yes, Rebecca Collins,” Annie said, pushing back the images that came to her from her morning at the landfill a few days ago. “We’re going to her funeral.”
“Did you say that Bea went to Sarah’s funeral?” Sheila said, pushing her glasses back on her nose.
Paige piped up. “Bea’s not going to miss a funeral.”
The women laughed. It was true Beatrice Matthews didn’t miss a funeral within fifty miles of Cumberland Creek proper.
Paige was one of the few croppers who still had deep ties to Jenkins Hollow. But she was recently ostracized by her church because her son was gay and she’d just reconciled with him. She stood up for him one Sunday during the preacher’s antigay rant, and that was the end of her church relationship. It was the church she was raised in, the one her family had always gone to, and it held many memories of weddings, baptisms, funerals. Paige was devastated, but also angry.
“Of course, my mother wouldn’t miss one, either,” Paige said.
Annie nodded affirmatively. “Both of us went and wished we didn’t. It was sad and bizarre.”
“What do you mean?” Sheila said in a hushed tone.
“Very few people were there. I mean, there were five of us. Bea, me, Detective Bryant, and her parents. There was no wake, no friends. Nothing.”
It was the second Christian funeral Annie had attended since she moved to Cumberland Creek. The two funerals were a year apart from one another. This one was so different from Maggie Rae’s, which was attended by everybody in town, and then some. The wake was huge, with tables and tables of food. Sarah’s memorial service was sparse, and it left Annie feeling weirdly frightened. Was Sarah that isolated that she had no friends? Or was there a statement being made? If so, what was it? Or were people afraid to show up for some reason?
Annie was met with silence from the scrapbookers.
“That makes sense,” Paige finally said, her blue eyes lit. “It makes sense in some weird kind of way. Those people are very superstitious, very backward.”
“Do you mean they think her bad luck would rub off?” Cookie asked with one eyebrow lifted.
“I don’t know, really. Who knows?” Paige said, waving her hand. “But there’d have to be a reason for it, and I’m betting it has to do with one of their strange beliefs.”
“I keep hearing about their strange beliefs,” Annie said. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about. Is there a certain religion? What is it?”
“Who really knows?” Sheila said. “No outsiders know all about them. Some Old Orders don’t even believe in funerals. Maybe people didn’t even realize she was gone at the time they buried her. They bury their dead quickly, sometimes before the service. One thing I can say for sure is that some of them may call themselves Old Order Mennonites, but they are not Mennonite.”
“Oh, heavens no,” DeeAnn said. “That’s some odd brew of weirdness going on up there. They keep real close to themselves. I’ve heard of cousins marrying. I’ve heard of animal sacrifice. And even drugs and rituals.”
DeeAnn, hailing from Minnesota, had married a local man and had settled in Cumberland Creek with him. She was a culinary school graduate and owned and operated her own bakery, yet Annie had always thought she was a bit sheltered.
“Sounds a little far-fetched to me,” Cookie said.
“Humph. This coming from a witch named Cookie,” Paige said good-naturedly and rolled her eyes.
“They call me Cookie for one simple reason, Paige,” Cookie said. “If you bite me, I taste really, really sweet.”
Laughter ensued.
“Let’s turn up the music. Gosh, I love that new Usher song,” Sheila said.
Annie emptied her glass of beer, smiled at Sheila dancing between the chair and the shelves that held every color of paper you could imagine. Tomorrow she would be slaving over her next article for the paper, trying to keep Ben and Sam occupied, fixing some kind of supper, and trying to keep some semblance of sanity. But tonight she’d finish this book, eat some chips and salsa, and drink another one of those dark chocolate stouts. Yes, indeed.
Chapter 12
Vera loved the train. But as it moved away from the city this time, she felt it in her guts. Leaving Tony was getting harder and harder. They had both said this relationship was just for fun. Both of them divorced. She with a baby. He with a new teaching job. And besides all this, he was in New York and she was in Cumberland Creek.
She felt an intense pang for him move through her body—like a wave of heightened awareness. She ached; her guts twisted; her heart sank. And then she caught herself. Wasn’t this the stuff of cheap romance novels? She was almost forty-two years old and couldn’t continue this emotional roller-coaster ride with him. For how many years could it go on? Where could it lead? She could never leave Cumberland Creek to be with him—because of Elizabeth. She couldn’t take the child away from Bill and Beatrice. Meanwhile, he was so Brooklyn. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to leave behind his city—this place that pulsed with energy and life—for her sleepy little town.
Perhaps it wasn’t so sleepy anymore. Two murders within a month of one another. Both young women with red hair. Unique markings called runes were carved into their bodies.
“You don’t hear about that stuff in New York,” Tony had told her over bagels that morning. “It’s so safe here now.”
“Yes. I feel safer here now than I used to,” she said, looking around his tiny studio apartment. His years of dance had not left Tony well off—quite the contrary. He had to give up the touring because his knees finally gave way. But he was able to teach and commanded a decent salary, most of which he was saving for a knee replacement.
But she loved the simplicity of his place and his life. A wall with a desk that held his computer, next to that a keyboard and stereo, then what counted as his kitchen—just a wall with a sink, stove, fridge, and a few cupboards. She smiled at the thought of the first time she baked him an apple pie there. It was a challenge. But, oh, he loved it. Raved about it between fork-fed bites from her own hand.
Of course, along the opposite wall was mostly just his huge bed, where his touch made her feel more alive than she had in years.
Someone gave a laugh on the train—it had the same quality as Tony’s. He laughed again. It was so similar that she had to turn around and look. Of course, it wasn’t him. But when the laugh came again, Vera realized she was crying. That laugh. She could picture Tony’s smiling mouth, open, framed in deep dimples, with that sound rolling out of it. How could he fill her with such pleasure and such bittersweet longing at the same time?
Every time she left him, she was grateful for the transition time on the train or plane. The train was nicer for this very reason. She felt as if it was transporting her between two worlds. Two lives that she struggled to keep separate. Tony wanted to come to Cumberland Creek, and that thought made her uneasy.
“Are you ashamed of me?” he’d asked her just last night, his deep brown eyes softly looking at her through long black eyelashes. “What?”
She’d wanted to cry. “This time together has been like a dream I don’t want to wake up from. I don’t want to share you.”
He’d kissed her with such passion at that moment that it almost took her breath away. The next thing she knew, they had gotten so carried away that they knocked all his plants down that were perched along the headboard of his bed.
Vera smiled. She’d keep that to herself—along with all the decidedly kinky things that went on this weekend. He was leading her to explore a side of herself that had been stuffed inside for far too long. In a way, she felt foolish. Here she was, a slightly overweight new mother, feeling like a lithe teenager. She lost all sense of herself in his arms. What they had seemed to go beyond the physical trappings of their bodies, though the trappings were what brought them such joy.
She opened up her laptop and clicked on the local news, hoping there had been no more murders in her little town. She scrolled down and breathed a huge sigh of relief at the lack of news—there was only Annie’s recap of the events about Sarah’s death.
Jenkins Mountain—one of the biggest mountains in the Shenandoah Valley—houses several communities. One of the communities is a tight-knit Old Order Mennonite enclave, which is where Sarah Carpenter was raised.
“The Mennonite faith encompasses many branches,” says the Reverend Paul Thomas. “Some dress simply. Some dress in modern clothing. But we are all Mennonites, and we are all Christians seeking a simple, peaceful way of life.”
At first glance, one might think peace might be found surrounded by the pristine mountains and farm fields of the region. Long days are spent working the land or canning the garden’s crops or picnicking with your church. This place is far from the temptations of neighboring cities, like Charlottesville, Waynesboro, or even small town Cumberland Creek—which is where Sarah’s body washed up approximately ten hours after she drowned.
“We know it wasn’t an accident. There are marks that indicate that she was held underwater until she died,” says Detective Adam Bryant of the Cumberland Creek police.
Sarah’s murder, the second murder in the area in two years, is shrouded in mystery. Part of that mystery is her life on the mountain. Given that the community is in mourning and enforces strict mourning precepts, many of her family and friends are not available for questioning.
But as a typical young Mennonite farm woman, she probably began each morning with prayer, then farm or kitchen chores. Sarah had three brothers and two sisters. Given her age, she may have begun each day in the kitchen, helping prepare food for the family.
One thing we know about Sarah is that she played the piano and gave lessons to the local children as a way to earn money—which she no doubt gave to her parents.
Her social life would have consisted of visiting with neighbors and friends who were also Mennonite. She would have attended church functions, since the Jenkins Mountain community does not have a bar, a grocer, or even a restaurant.
Just then Vera’s cell phone blared Beethoven’s Fifth. She brought it to her ear.
“I miss you,” Tony whispered into the phone.
She smiled and reached into her bag for a chocolate. “I miss you, too.”

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