Scraps of Paper (15 page)

Why was she being so ungracious? Mason was just trying to be nice to her. Trying to help her. And she needed help. She could at least be nice back. She returned his smile.

 “I need to pick up some groceries. I’ll be back.” She edged towards the shelves, aware that his eyes followed her every move. She gathered what she needed, paid for it and got out of the store as quickly as she could, feeling guilty for not being more grateful to him. But he still made her nervous. Relieved to be away from him, she drove home.

That night she pushed all thoughts of dead people and murderers out of her mind and worked on her paintings. It was hard, but she did it. Snowball kept trying to prance across her illustration board and she had to shoo her off more than once. That kitten had to be in the middle of everything. When Snowball stuck her nose into the swirl of red paint on the palette, Abigail ended up locking her in her bedroom. Pitiful meows from above.

Abigail was still working when the noises begun outside. It sounded as if something or someone was roaming around her yard. But each time she looked, there was no one there. Just the warm darkness and the silent trees.

Yeah, she was getting way too paranoid. Time to go to bed. Maybe sleep would help.

Chapter 12

At ten minutes after six on Saturday Abigail arrived at Frank’s cabin. Louisa and her husband Michael O’Neal, Martha and her friend, Ryan Sutcliffe were already coffee klatching on the front porch. They introduced each other and Martha told Abigail that Frank was inside playing cook.

On her way to the kitchen she bumped into Frank’s son, Kyle, who was lurking in the living room, sitting on the couch with a laptop computer on his knees. His long fingers clicking away as fast as a magician’s. “Hi, I’m Abigail. You must be Frank’s son, Kyle?”

“Guilty.”

She put her hand out and he just looked at it and returned his attention to his computer. She waited for him to say something else but he didn’t. Kyle, olive-eyed, with a hairless face, and short cut hair, was so unlike Frank that Abigail couldn’t believe he was his son. His clothes were the standard college uniform of T-shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes and he didn’t look like a future doctor as he hunched over his laptop, his thin face serious. He looked like a kid.

Frank’s voice boomed from the kitchen. “Kyle, you need to get that fire started for us, Son.”

“Okay, Dad. Doing it.”  Kyle got up, shambled past her like a brontosaurus, heading for the deck.

“Nice laptop. A Macintosh,” she said to his back. “I used to work all the time on Macs doing ads for the newspaper. If you’re an artist, you need a Mac. Pretty shade of green.”

The boy paused a second in the doorway to look at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Thanks. It’s a good computer. I like the color. An artist’s computer, huh?” He smiled slightly, then went into the kitchen.

Abigail followed and found Frank busy preparing the meat for the barbeque grill. The rear door slammed as Kyle exited to the deck.

“Are any of Kyle’s friends coming for dinner?” She put the plate of brownies on the kitchen counter. “I don’t see any other young people hanging around.” The kitchen was overflowing with brought food. Frank was supplying the meat and drinks.

“No. He insisted he didn’t want them over tonight. Too many grownups. He’ll see them tomorrow. I think he’s ashamed of us.” Frank chuckled. “I didn’t argue and count yourself lucky. Have you heard the music they’re listening to these days? Rap or hip hop. I can’t understand a word they’re singing. Drives me wild. It makes me want to pull out
their
hair.”

“I know the feeling. Rap isn’t one of my favorites, either. But my parents didn’t like the Beatles much, if I recall. They said they sounded like a bunch of off key girls.”

Frank glanced upwards, pursing his lips, and a smile slid out. “Neither did mine.”

Abigail sampled the potato salad, her stomach growling. “Samantha couldn’t make it?”

“No. Something about going home to see her parents for the weekend. She said to say hi and let you know she’s working on the next chapter of the Summers saga. Told me to tell you there’s some letter marked personal waiting for you at the newspaper from some woman. You should come by Monday and she’ll give it to you.”

“I can’t read it until Monday? Darn. What else is new?” She watched him salt and pepper the meat and stack it on a plate.

He turned to Abigail. “I made a call to the sheriff this afternoon. He’s gotten complete forensic results on the bodies you found and on the two elder Summers.”

“The M.E. said it’d be a while for the results. Whew, they sure got it done quickly.”

“I pulled some strings is what happened. Being a big city ex-detective has its advantages.”

“And?”

“According to the forensic anthropologist, someone whose specialty is osteology, the study of bones, the three bodies were an adult woman in her late twenties to early thirties and two children around ten to twelve years old, a male and a female. They’re Emily, Jenny and Christopher all right. I have little doubt of it.”

“Could they tell how they died?”

 “When dealing with bodies dead three decades, forensic anthropologists can only assess age, sex, stature, and analyze trauma and disease with the bones that are left. Without any soft tissue, death by other means is hard to pin down. It takes longer. We got a break from the adult female body, though. Her bones showed she most likely died by strangulation. Her neck was broken and that was the probable cause of death.

“The two kids had no obvious traumas or injuries. They weren’t in any kind of accident. Car or otherwise. But the bones did show signs of poison, which permeates into the marrow. The same with the old people. They’re going to run more tests. But they wanted us to know what they’d found so far.”

 “Broken neck and poisoning,” she echoed. “Jenny wrote in her diary how sick Christopher was that last week or so and her mother was also missing. If Christopher was being poisoned that would explain his mystery illness. And it’d explain how someone was able to get away with poisoning them so easily. No one was watching out for them.”

“That could be a possible scenario.” Frank had known those three piles of bones when they’d been walking, talking and feeling human beings with problems and dreams. His expression was unreadable, but Abigail knew his memories were torturing him.

 “Since you’ve found those graves, Abby. I can’t stop thinking about them, and how wonderful, but fragile, life is. It makes me grateful for this moment in time with good friends on a lovely summer’s evening and a terrific meal ready for us to enjoy.” His smile was bittersweet. “I’m a lucky guy.” He nodded and went to put the meat on the grill.

She trailed after him, thinking of what he’d said about cherishing the good moments in life when they came. And realized he was right. This was one of those times.

“You did a fine job with the fire, Kyle. Thanks.” Frank’s face softened when he was around his son. He put down the plate of meat, threw his arm over the young man’s shoulder, and gave him a hug. Kyle tolerated the show of affection, but made a face over his dad’s shoulder.

“I have to get something from my room.” Kyle grunted, sweeping his gaze across Abigail. He acknowledged her with a quicksilver grin and a hand gesture as he moved past. She’d been accepted. His shuffling footsteps made their way up the stairs to his room.

 “He’s a good kid,” Frank said as he worked over the grill. “I only wish he were more outgoing and had more friends. He’s so darn smart, so in a world of his own most of the time there’s no room for anyone else.”

“He’ll grow out of it.” She voiced the observation and felt comfortable enough to make another one. “And that I-don’t-give-a care-about-anything attitude? It’s a façade to protect him from being hurt. He’ll open up to people in his own time. I think he misses his mother.”

 “He does. He took her death real hard. Blames himself for the car accident. Jolene died on the way to pick him up from a party one night. A party she didn’t want him even going to but he’d badgered her until she took him. I was on duty, wasn’t home. Weather was bad, snow and ice. She ran off a bridge. Kyle locked himself in his room for days and wouldn’t talk much to anyone, even me, after it happened. He seemed to pull himself together when he went off to college and I thought he was on the road to recovery. He’s not, but he’s working on it.”

“And given more time and space, your love, he’ll eventually heal.

“By the way, while we’re alone. Who is this friend of Martha’s, this Ryan fellow?”

The smell of the sizzling meat curled around her nose and made her eyes water.

“I was going to ask you the same question. This is the first time I’ve met him. All Martha told me was he was another realtor from Chalmers she’s known for a long time and he’s recently divorced. He seems like a nice enough guy. Except, as all salesmen, he talks too much.”

“Then Martha and he are perfect for each other.”

Frank laughed.

“I met your sister’s husband on the front porch. He’s not very talkative, though, is he?”

Frank made a funny noise in his throat. “No, he isn’t. They’ve been married fifteen years and I don’t think we’ve exchanged more than a handful of words. He works in a mortuary and sells cemetery plots and stones on the side. I guess that explains it. His clients don’t talk much so neither does he. But my sister loves him and he’s been good to her so I put up with him.”

“Oh, you’re a good brother.”

“I am,” Frank affirmed with a mischievous grin. “Let’s join the others on the porch. I can hustle back here every so often to check on the meat. It won’t take long.”

“Hey, how’s your novel going?” she asked as they reentered the house.

“Done and in the hands of my agent.”

“You promised you’d tell me what it’s about once it was finished.”

“I’ll give you a synopsis before you leave tonight I promise. Now comes the waiting. My agent told me not to dwell on it but move forward and start another one. I’m thinking, if it’s okay with you, of doing it on Emily, Jenny and Christopher. She thinks it’ll make a good story.”

Abigail wasn’t surprised. The newspaper had gotten such an amazing response to the articles, that Frank putting it into a book made sense. “Okay with me. It’s quite a story. Especially if we can find out who killed them and why.”

“Hopefully if we keep digging, we’ll solve it. Or, at least, get more answers. I won’t give up and I know neither will you. Emily’s counting on us.”

“Spoken like a true detective,” she muttered, trying not to let her uneasiness show, and returned to the earlier topic. “I’m going to hold you to that promise of a synopsis on your book tonight–even if I have to camp out on your porch. I won’t go home until I have it.”

“Hey, now that could be fun. I have extra fluffy sleeping bags and marshmallows we could toast over a fire. We could have a porch camp-out. It’s not supposed to rain.”

She let out a laugh and thought how good a friend Frank was becoming. He could make her laugh and that was rare. They joined the guests on the porch and the seven of them sat in the rocking chairs and got to know each other, or tried to, discussing trivial and important matters and the main themes of the night which were the Summers’ mystery and Frank’s book. They even got a few words out of Michael.

Ryan turned out to be a friendly man and Martha seemed smitten with him. They held hands and smooched when they thought no one was looking. They were so cute together comparing notes on their work and making eyes at each other. But Ryan did talk a lot.

 Which balanced out Michael’s muteness and Kyle’s holding back in the shadows.

They were waiting for the meat to cook and Louisa was perched on the porch railing bathing in the warm twilight. “Abigail, I have a story to add to the Summers’ folder. Something I’ve never told my brother about Jenny and Christopher. I’m younger than Frank and though I was a deal older than Jenny, we hung around together some that last summer. I hadn’t thought about her and that house, that strange family, in years and years…until Frank gave me copies of those newspaper stories the
Journal
’s doing and I saw their pictures. It all came back.”

 “You knew Jenny and Christopher?” Abigail was interested. So many coincidences.

“I did. I met Jenny one day in the park, she and her brother were on the swings and she asked if I was Officer Lester’s sister. I said yes. My brother had been kind to them after a car accident where Christopher was hurt. She wanted to be instant friends and tagged around after me for weeks. I liked her but she was younger and a pest. They were peculiar kids. Daydreaming and drawing pictures, always yakking about stuff like aliens coming to earth and…ghosts.

“Jenny believed there was a ghost living in her basement. Her grandma. And she believed the ghost talked to her all the time. One night I was stupid enough to spend the night. We slept on the front porch on cots, Jenny, Christopher and me. Ate popcorn and drank soda pop from cans. It was sweltering that night, summertime, and we couldn’t sleep. The katydids were noisy and the dark was spooky.