The May Queen Murders (23 page)

Chapter Fifteen

We weren’t havin’ another May Queen after that. The

grief of losin’ Terra, such a pretty, spirited thing, was way

too much of a cross for the good people of Rowan’s Glen

to bear.

By dawn’s light, Mama held my hand as we walked the Glen’s north-

ern end. Lush willows near a pond formed an alcove for eternal

respite from life. Gramps was buried in the cemetery, as were his

parents and theirs. Mamie’s side of the family as wel . Stone mark-

ers rose from overgrown grass, untouched but for moss clinging to

storm-worn dates.

Pastor Galloway would lay my cousin to rest. Papa went ahead

with Marsh. I didn’t tell anyone of Aunt Rue’s warning, never told

Rook despite my trembling. I fibbed that being in Heather’s home

had brought too much sorrow, instead showing him that I’d found

more notes. I didn’t know if Aunt Rue was well enough to bury her

daughter. God help me, I didn’t want to see her again anytime soon.

When Mama and I neared the graveyard, I heard Papa yelling.

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“Who the hell did this? Where’s Leaf Clement? He knows better

than to dig a grave the day before burial!”

“Timothy, he might’ve done it at sunrise,” Pastor declared.

Mama’s hand tensed over mine. We joined a cluster of Papa, Sher-

iff, Marsh, and Pastor. Mama tugged me past the pine box near the

open grave. Heather was inside that box. Forever.

Papa knelt to examine the graveyard dirt. “Soil’s dry. This ain’t

done this mornin’. We ain’t buryin’ my niece in this hole. Leaf’s gotta

dig a new one.”

Pastor stepped forward, Bible in hand. “Timothy, be rational —”

Papa threw Pastor a dark look. “You know what the old-timers

say. We bury a body in a grave dug the day before burial, then death

comes for the kin.”

The cemetery fell into silence, but not the liquid hush of birds

skimming the pond’s surface. It was the silence of anger. Pastor

pulled my father aside. Half of me felt the prickle to measure the

grave’s depth. The other half sought to run far away.

Nothing seemed more terrifying than lying in a box while dirt

piled on top, first with bits of air so I’d breathe. Eventual y, the dirt

would become heavier, thinning the air, and I’d strain to take a

breath. I’d feel the weight and —

I wouldn’t be buried alive.

Graves were for the dead, for the Heathers.

Mama worked her rosary in prayer.
“Padre nuestro, que estás in los

cielos, santificado sea tu nombre . . .”

I took a Spanish class once in seventh grade. Didn’t matter that

I spoke some at home, the teacher said I was too slangy. Other stu-

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dents, mostly rollers fluent from growing up in immigrant families,

called me
pocha
because I didn’t act Mexican like them. I stopped

speaking my mother’s tongue. I wondered how Mama felt giving up

all but her language to come with Papa.

“I want to bury my stepdaughter,” Marsh said to Sheriff. “Her ma-

ma’s a wreck, and last thing we need is y’all makin’ a scene.”

Sheriff frowned. “I’m sorry this happened.”

Marsh glared, his nostrils wide. I half expected him to yel at

Sheriff to get out, that he’d done nothing to keep that girl safe. While

he’d helped Papa patch up a boy some drunk kids had thought was

Birch Markle, the real one had stabbed Heather and thrown her

in the river. Meanwhile, Birch was stil in the woods, stil night-

screaming.

Mama let go of my hand and met Papa, embracing him. His hands

rested on her hips. I couldn’t hear what they murmured, but I no-

ticed the way her fingers slid through his hair, how she brought his

forehead to meet hers. She loved him. She loved him with all her

heart and wanted to take away some hurt.

Some loss.

After promising things would be done proper, Sheriff made his

way to me. “Your cousin was spotted goin’ off alone in the days be-

fore her murder,” he said. “You know anything ’bout that?”

The truth was, I didn’t know enough to give him an answer. Not

real y. She met Milo. There were drugs, sex, but what did telling any

of that matter now except to disgrace her?

“She mention runnin’ into Birch Markle?” he asked.

I shook my head.

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“Ivy, girl, if you know anything that might’ve caused your cousin

trouble, you gotta tell me.”

Not until I knew what those things meant first.

"

Our families’ closest friends gathered after the funeral. It wasn’t open

to anyone to come and pay their respects — that’d come in church

when Marsh or Aunt Rue attended next, and seeing as Aunt Rue was

bedbound, that would be some time. I suspected they didn’t want

visitors.

Marsh poured himself some ale and offered more to Sheriff and

Papa, who both shook their heads. Drinking was for a celebration,

but Marsh perhaps wanted to drown the misery of the day. I didn’t

want to be close to the grief. It was better to numb myself in the

kitchen by cutting wedges of cheese or slicing bread, setting out

cream churned to butter and pinch bowls filled with mixed salt and

herbs. Busyness kept away reality.

“You shouldn’t cut yourself off,” Rook remarked, leaning against

the doorway separating the kitchen from the guests filtering in and

out.

“I-I can’t talk to anyone,” I said, voice broken.

I wiped my eye with the heel of my hand and took up the knife to

cut another loaf of bread.

Rook wrapped his arms around me from behind while his chin

rested on my shoulder. I longed to crumble, to break my knees and

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never run again. The sobs building in my throat caught in a web

of stammers. A soft sniffle behind my ear, and I turned my head

enough to see Rook’s eyes damp behind his glasses. He loved me, but

he grieved Heather’s loss, too. She always was. Now she’d never be

again.

I laid the knife on the cutting board. We held each other in mutual

sadness, in changes that came too fast. Love and sorrow were similar,

in that both ripped you wide open and left you without skin.

“I hate this,” I whispered into his shirt. My lip rubbed against a

button. “I hate feeling so tangled inside.”

He held the back of my head, lowering his mouth to kiss the top

of me.

The bell by the front door rang to announce the arrival of anoth-

er guest. I composed myself and took out a fresh bread plate. Papa

opened the door to Dale and Violet Crenshaw. Violet carried a pie

and gave me a wan smile. Sheriff pivoted from talking with Pastor

and marched over to Dale.

“You ain’t welcome here, Crenshaw.”

“What’re you talkin’ ’bout, Jay? I’ve been friends with Marsh for

nearly forty years. We’re payin’ our respects,” Dale argued.

“No, you ain’t.”

Papa stepped between the men. “What’s going on here? This is a

time for condolences.”

“Fine,” Sheriff huffed. “I’m taking you to the station, Dale.”

Mama hurried Violet to me. “Help Ivy in
la cocina, sí?
”

Violet’s feet skidded. The pie shifted in her hands, and I grabbed

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it to keep it from splatting on the floor. No one dared leave the room

until we knew why Sheriff and his deputy were squaring off in a

house of mourning.

“I was gonna wait until I had a word with Marsh and Rue,”

Sheriff said, shaking his head. “Heather’s autopsy report came this

morning.”

My breath hitched.

“What’s this gotta do with Dale?” Marsh asked.

“Heather was poisoned. By Crenshaw wine. The medical examin-

er confirmed what the granny-women already thought — there was

bel adonna mixed with her drink. That girl never had a chance.”

Dale balked. “Jay, are you insane? I’d never go after another

person.”

“You can’t go ’round accusin’ people of things!” Violet yelped.

“Besides, ain’t we said it was Birch Markle who killed her?”

“How the hell is Birch gonna have a bottle of wine?” Marsh shout-

ed back.

Tension brewed thick and thunderous. Violet stood by her father.

Marsh near Sheriff, Papa between both sides. There was no escaping

the anger.

“You got something on me, Jay? Come to my winery. Show every-

one what you find,” Dale snapped.

“I’ll do just that. Right now,” Sheriff replied.

The front door swung open. Dale muttered a curse at Sheriff.

Mama and Briar stayed behind to care for my aunt and Mamie, but

I had to go. If this was how Heather had died, I had to bear witness.

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Find it,
she’d told me. Maybe this was it. She’d chosen me to see that

she had justice.

As the last to leave, I pulled the door shut. My mind poked at

the idea of Dale Crenshaw poisoning my cousin, how the father of

a friend might be responsible for such cruelty. I only had a vague

sense of Rook at my side, matching my stride despite his much lon-

ger legs, and keeping me from wandering lost. I knew the Glen. I

loved the Glen. The Glen was home, yet without Heather, it was an-

other hollow.

When we reached the Crenshaws’ fermentation barn filled with

barrels aging wine, a crowd gathered. A crate was filled with cobalt-

blue glass bottles. Sheriff piled bottles in the crate before he grabbed

another empty box to collect more.

“Keep at it, Jay,” Dale growled. “You’re takin’ my livelihood for no

good reason. I ain’t done anything!”

Violet was a statue huddled against Dahlia and their mother, Iris.

So much work in the field. So much time pressing the grapes. Those

bottles represented the maintenance of fickle vines to produce Cren-

shaw wine generation after generation.

Sheriff found an open bottle with the cork shoved in it. He swished

around the wine, popped the cork, and sniffed. “This is goin’ for test-

ing, and if it’s poisoned, Dale, you’re a murderer. Somebody gave it to

that poor girl and left her half-dead on the riverside for Birch Markle

to finish her off.”

Or maybe Markle snuck into the festival and poisoned it him-

self. He could slip in undetected. He’d done it before. Yet I didn’t see

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Heather taking a bottle from a man covered in animal skins. Some-

one she trusted gave it to her.

“Did you see what was left of her, Crenshaw?” Sheriff hollered,

disgust twisting his features. “She was
mutilated!
”

A wave of nausea gripped me. I’d seen Heather’s corpse. Her living

ghost had warned me.

Death seemed close, so cold, so real that if I reached into the fog,

I’d find its fingers and lock hands.

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Chapter Sixteen

Wanting to forget that terrible things happened don’t

change the past.

The past makes you. It’ll break you if you let it, and

Lord have mercy on broken souls.

The lantern on my desk guttered as I sketched Heather’s arm, arced

from her body as she choked a bouquet of dandelions gone to puff. I

hadn’t left room to draw her face. Only her arm, her ribby side, bony

hip, and skirt. Her curls. All of it red, red, red. I wanted to remember

her in color, not the gray shell on the shore.

That Dale Crenshaw could’ve killed her didn’t sit well with me. It

seemed off, badly so. There had to be more.

I tapped my pencil against my lips and glanced to Heather’s jew-

elry box that I’d taken from her home. What if Heather found out the

secret Milo mentioned in the note? His sister didn’t want him talk-

ing to us. To what extent would the Entwhistles go to keep Heather

silent? The only thing I was sure of was that Birch Markle may have

had his way with Heather’s remains, but someone she trusted put her

in his sight.

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Down the hal , my parents’ movements weren’t the usual post-

dinner sounds of washing dishes and murmurs meant for each oth-

er, sometimes punctuated by Mama’s trickling laughter. This night’s

noises were feverish with too many thumps, and when I opened my

door, I caught sight of Mama with her hands on Papa’s shoulders.

“Don’t go, Timoteo,” she begged.

He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. “Luz, I gotta. It’s