The May Queen Murders (31 page)

hillmen rushed through the graves. Graves kept secrets. The woods

kept secrets. Finding the truth meant digging deeper and in the least

obvious of places.

“Where are you takin’ him?” I asked Coyote, who still held Rook’s

arm as we crossed Promise Bridge, jingling chains and crackling

wood.

“To see his daddy,” the man answered. “Sheriff needs to hear

what’s goin’ on in the woods.”

As we charged up the hill to the road, the clang of the warning

bel s resounded over the field.

“Something’s happened,” I murmured.

Rook looked back to me. “It’ll be okay, Ivy.”

My gut didn’t agree, though. It was an exhausting trek to Sheriff’s

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station posted near the highway. The bel s continued to ring, and cu-

rious folks peeked out from their homes or looked up from the fields

as Rook and I were marched down the dirt road with two strangers.

Yet when we reached the station, Sheriff was gone.

Coyote called to a farmer working out in his field, “Where’s Jay?”

“You ain’t heard?” the farmer asked. “Violet Crenshaw’s body is

missin’.”

"

The mad jingle of warning bel s stirred my thoughts.

The news was sickening. They couldn’t leave Violet’s body out in

field for the scavengers and beetles that morning, not with the after-

noon warmth folks expected. So off to Papa’s clinic her remains were

taken while waiting for the county folks to look over her remains

for autopsy tomorrow. The clinic was close enough to the highway

that few Glen kind ventured there unless going to town. No one saw

anything, heard anything, except for the hillman who’d noticed the

door was broken off its hinges as if rage had torn it away.

Sheriff was gone rounding up his men for a door-to-door search.

Not an inch of Glen land would go unexplored. With the hillmen

joining Sheriff, Rook and I were alone on the station’s steps. Speak-

ing seemed so wrong. Words might break the stupor falling over us.

Dead girls, black bones inside a tree, and a letter that revealed a

secret.

Sheriff approached from the road, winded from searching the

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Glen. “Rook Michael Meriweather, what in God’s good name is goin’

on? What’s this about a body in the woods?”

The story came out at once, the Entwhistles, Birch Markle’s skel-

eton, someone faking Birch’s existence.

Sheriff opened up his station and motioned Rook and me inside.

“You need to sit.”

I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

“Ivy, darlin’, when you’re told to sit, it’s ’cause someone’s got news

you don’t take standing.”

I didn’t sit. My body was fatigued, and I feared I wouldn’t get up.

My mind spiraled in too many directions. I wanted outside in the

clear air. I wanted to breathe. Except I couldn’t; what had happened

to Heather was still a mystery.

Sheriff took off his hat. “I made an arrest. Some of my men are

bringing him in now. Marsh Freeman killed Heather.”

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Chapter Twenty-one

Folks can endure many hardships. You gotta live with your

history. You may not need to talk ’bout it. But you gotta

live with it. It’s the only way to stop wickedness from hap-

pening twice.

When I came home, the house looked strange with the boards I’d

nailed across my window. I’d gone half mad trying to save myself.

Sheriff leaned against the counter, the slice of fruit bread my mother

had cut when he arrived was untouched, but he took some coffee.

Papa stood beside the oil lamp, a lit match in his hand. The flame

singed his fingers before he seemed to remember the match was

burning, and he waved it in a hurry with a muttered curse. Mama

took the matches, lit the lamp, and tucked the pack inside her apron.

He stared at the lamp’s glow, not moving, until she ushered him to a

chair.

“I knew Timothy’d take it hard.” Sheriff frowned. “Having the past

dragged up ain’t easy.”

I showed him the map of the woods that led to Birch’s body. His

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forefinger tapped on one word:
marsh.
“There ain’t marshes back in

those woods.”

“She must have written it down because she knew what he did,” I

said.

Sheriff pursed his lips in thought. “I never suspected anything. All

those years ago, your daddy loved Terra MacAvoy. The way Marsh

told it, when your daddy didn’t meet Terra, he did. Told her she’d do

better setting up house with him. Terra didn’t want him and ran off.

Marsh gave her chase down to the river. She slipped and went in the

water. By the time Marsh got her out, Terra had drowned. He was

scared and left her on the bank.

“Birch Markle real y was mad. He belonged in an institution, and

when he got loose and was found beside Terra’s body, you’d make the

assumptions other folks did ’bout him killin’ her.”

Something haunted Sheriff’s face, maybe years of tracking Birch

Markle, maybe how wrong not only he but everyone was. “By the

looks of that skeleton, I’d say it wasn’t long after Birch disappeared

that Marsh found him and put an iron ball in his brain. He helped

create that Markle story by screaming and making sure folks caught

enough of a glimpse over the years. Until Heather must’ve found out

what he’d done.”

Killed Terra. Murdered his wife’s daughter. Murdered Violet.

Marsh would’ve murdered me.

Sheriff sat at the table and spun the tarnished Markle ring I’d giv-

en him. “That poor girl. The things folks’ll do to keep secrets hidden.

I went over to Marsh’s house earlier to see how Rue’s baby is com-

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ing along. He was bandaging his arm and made out like he’d hurt

himself, but when I suggested having a doctor check on it, he got all

skittish. He tried telling me it was a scrape. Raised my hackles, ’cause

I know a bullet wound when I see one. My boy shot him in the arm.

Hopeful y, he’ll tell us where he hid the Crenshaw girl’s body, and

that’s one more charge against him.”

“Did you realize Milo was a Markle when Rook and I brought him

out of the woods and you and Papa fixed his arm?” I asked.

Sheriff gave a slow nod. “Your daddy did. Marsh had told us he

thought Heather was running ’round with some boy. He must’ve re-

alized who she was with and killed her to stop her from telling what

real y happened to Birch Markle.”

Not a boy, a girl. Who loved her. Who she couldn’t tell anyone

about because of blood, because of fear. Maybe Emmie and Milo

told her their mother’s side of the madman’s legend. Who was to

say whether Heather’d still be alive if she’d told everyone in the Glen

what she knew? Would anyone have believed her?

Sheriff wandered to the living room, where he stood before my

father. I didn’t listen to their murmured voices. Finding out what had

happened in the past, how far Marsh had strayed to hide an accident

and how it so devastated the present, there was no resolution. Only a

hollow sense it could’ve been avoided.

I tugged off Heather’s necklace and flicked through each collected

item that had brought her joy. Things others buried, she uncovered

with delight, dusted them off, and strung on her chain. No matter

how we covered up the good and bad of what we’d done, of who we

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were, there’d always be some Heather to stumble upon it and find it

remarkable.

"

Rook set the box of Heather’s belongings beside the highway, the

high beams of a truck reflecting off his glasses. I wrapped her neck-

lace within a red scarf and tucked it down amid the other things she’d

shared with Emmie. Mary Jane.

As we made our way back to the Glen, Rook’s hand eased into

mine. Unspeakable things weighed on my tongue, yet the silence

between us wasn’t full of pressure. It was simple, wind sneaking

between oat grass. Heather was right. Love was gory, ugly. She was

also right that when you opened up enough, you had someone else’s

heart.

“This is different,” Rook mused.

“What?” I asked.

“Being out after dark. Not being afraid.”

My lips spread. No, I wasn’t afraid. Not of the dark.

He lowered his face, and I rose on my toes to meet him. His lips

were tender and warm. I was still cold, maybe not as cold as before.

A death-touch didn’t wear off. That didn’t mean I had to feel half

dead. My fingers combed through Rook’s hair. He cupped my shoul-

ders and kissed me deeper, kissed me in a way I’d remember, even if

that prickle in my lips numbed right then. That kiss would linger.

“What do you think it’ll be like?” I asked once the kiss was over.

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“When people find out there was never anything in the woods?

What’ll they say when they find out Birch Markle was a big lie?”

Rook surveyed the empty fields, the scarecrows with no crops to

oversee. Only torches to light the way and innumerable stars glitter-

ing overhead. “It’ll be strange. Relieved, I guess. We’ve never believed

anything else.”

“The way Papa’s talked about it before, families facing scandal

leave the Glen.”

He pushed my hair behind my ear and kissed me there. “Do you

wanna go?”

“No.”

“Then don’t.”

I hoped it’d be so simple. Hillfolk had a way of remembering the

blood spilled by your name, but there needed to be someone who’d

get the story right. Who’d get all the stories right and not let them

turn into outlandish legends.

August’s home lay off the dirt road close to this side of the Glen.

The Donaghys used the barn for dyeing clothing, which I supposed

August mostly handled since his father had taken il . The clapboard

house needed some upkeep, especial y for the summer storm season

when the hail might come, and it always came.

“We should tell him,” I said. “Have you seen him since . . . this

morning?”

“He wouldn’t talk,” Rook replied. “He was heading to the barn and

ignored me when I called for him, so I came to see you.”

Telling August that his girlfriend’s killer had been arrested, that

her body would be found soon, was delicate. I didn’t want him to

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hear it from anyone but me. Few folks knew the gravity of the loss

he’d endured. He’d been there, a comfort and friend when I needed

one. My hope was he wouldn’t turn me away once he learned it was

my kin who’d killed Violet. I couldn’t yet explain my grief for her.

The friendship was never quite all it could’ve been.

So much loss.

Rowan’s Glen needed a good year. All the hopes that’d been pinned

to Heather’s crowning as May Queen.

The lights were off inside the Donaghys’ house, but the glow of

a lantern filtered between the planks of the barn. Rook eased open

the door, the hinges whining in need of oil. The light in the barn was

poor, but a clothesline was hung with a rainbow of drying shirts. The

dyes’ bitter odor was strong and burned my nose, as if the Donaghys

had added some chemical. Giant glass jugs were filled with dark,

reddish-black dye and lined up near the wal . The corks were slimy

with whatever boiled plant extracts, perhaps overcooked red cab-

bage, created that shade.

“August?” Rook called. “We’ve got some news.”

A thud echoed from deep within the barn, then footsteps on the

stone floor. August’s hand slithered between two dyed skirts. The

rims of his eyes were swollen and reddened, maybe from crying,

maybe from the fumes.

“Marsh Freeman was arrested,” I stated, trying to get out the

words. “He pretended to be Birch Markle. He killed Heather. And

Violet. I’m so sorry.”

August shuffled back to wherever he’d been working. Rook’s fore-

head creased. “Ain’t you gonna say something?”

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Nothing. No reply.

Every step we took brought more of the barn’s back room into

view. On shelves built into the wall were dozens of bleached skul s,

all with pointed fangs and hollowed eyes, boiled clean to remove the

meat. There was an old anatomical drawing framed in my father’s

clinic with the same type of skul .
Canis lupus familiaris.
The domes-

tic dog. Every size skull from the smallest breed to massive work-