Buried (Twisted Cedars Mysteries Book 1) (11 page)

Seeing that picture of Shirley wearing the red scarf had cinched matters. He couldn’t believe it was a coincidence. Both of the librarians who had been murdered back in the seventies had been strangled by a red silk scarf. The women had to be linked in some way, beyond their jobs as librarians.

“Hope you’re not afraid of ghosts. Last person to live there was Shirley Hammond.” Holly leaned across the counter, lowered her voice to a whisper. “You know she hung herself?”

In an equally quiet voice he responded, “I heard about that.”

“I know it happened a long time ago. But I always thought it was quite a mystery.”

Dougal checked the total on the Visa receipt before signing. “It’s always difficult to understand why someone chooses to take their own life.”

“That’s not what I mean. I guess she had her reasons. But why’d she hang herself at the library? Seemed like her isolated cottage would have been a better location.”

* * *

Dougal had arranged to meet Liz Brooks at the cottage at ten o’clock. That left him forty-five minutes to grab some breakfast. Rather than head for one of the cafés on Driftwood Lane, he drove to the trailer park on the eastern edge of town. He stopped his car out front of the doublewide where he’d grown up.

He stared at the door, remembering all the times he’d seen his mother standing there—calling out for him and Jamie to come in for dinner. He could also picture her at the mailbox, hand on one hip, frowning at the bills. And watering the geraniums she always planted in the front window box. Red blooms flowered there now. Jamie must have kept up the tradition.

For some reason Jamie never minded growing up dirt poor the way they had. She’d laughed off taunts about living in a trailer and wearing cast-off clothing. He had always admired, and slightly envied, his sister’s sunny attitude. He’d tried his best to adopt it.

But he’d hated feeling different—inferior. It wasn’t just that they were poor. But his father was bad.
Evil
. Dougal had been sixteen when his father had gone to jail for killing his second wife. He’d seen the looks in the eyes of his teachers and the parents of the other kids at school. He’d known what they were thinking.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
.

He couldn’t wait to finish with school so he could leave this place.

But the trailer, itself, wasn’t as awful as he remembered. Terra cotta flowerpots flanked the door. The mailbox had been painted and new curtains hung in the windows. The aluminum siding was clean, too. Maybe Jamie had spruced the place up hoping to get a higher asking price.

Quinpool Realty had posted a “For Sale” sign on the lot. Dougal had an odd impulse to knock it down.

Much as he had hated this place, it was weird to think it would soon belong to a stranger.

He’d seen enough and was about to drive off, when his sister appeared at the door. She put her hands on her hips in a posture that reminded him achingly of their mother.

“Are you going to come in, or what?”

He hesitated, then forced himself out of the car.

Though Jamie had resented his departure from Twisted Cedars, his mother had never complained about the choices he made. If she had a mean side to her, Dougal had never seen it. As a teenager, he hadn’t been easy on her. He’d been a minor delinquent, sullen and uncooperative. Not a nice person to be around.

Yet, she’d always treated him kindly.

“He’ll come around,” he’d heard her tell Stella on the phone, after he’d been expelled from school for drinking beer at a school dance.

He wondered how much longer it would take.

“Jamie, what happened after Mom’s funeral? Is she...buried somewhere?”

The skin between Jamie’s eyes pinched with pain. “Dougal. No. We rented a boat and sprinkled her ashes on the Rogue River. It was what she asked for.”

“Right.” He remembered Jamie telling him this, in that long ago phone call when she’d let him know their mother had succumbed to the cancer.

“Have you changed your mind about Kyle and me, Doug? Is that what you came to tell me?”

He could see how much she wanted him to say yes. To give her his blessing. Coming here had been a mistake. If only she hadn’t been home.

“I don’t know what to say. He’s a cheat, Jamie. He used to copy my papers at school.” Always his. Never Wade’s. Wade wouldn’t have stood for it. But Dougal had been so damn anxious to be liked by the coolest guy in the school.

She frowned. Shook her head. “That’s kid stuff. I don’t get why you’re so hard on him.”

“This thing works both ways. I bet he tried to talk you out of inviting me to the wedding, didn’t he?”

Her silence was his answer.

“So I think it’s better for everyone if I don’t go.”

His sister stuck out her jaw, a sure sign she was fighting tears. “You didn’t come here for me at all, did you? I hear you’ve rented the Librarian Cottage and you’re working on a new book.”

“That part’s true. But—” He stopped. Jamie wanted his blessing, and if he couldn’t give her that, she wasn’t interested in anything else he had to say. “Good luck, Jamie. I hope I’m wrong about Kyle. I really do.”

* * *

Driving up to Shirley Hammond’s old cottage, Dougal felt the same sense of anticipation as starting a new book. For some strange reason, this place spoke to him. Strange, when up to now he’d done all his writing in the city. But as soon as he’d seen this place last night with Charlotte, he’d felt a sense of coming home.

The irony did not escape him. He’d spent his adult years running from his past, and now the Oregon forest was claiming him back.

The silence, the majestic height of the trees, the tang of the sap and the cushion of pine needles under his feet. This was where he belonged.

And the old Hammond cottage was perfect. Built from cedar, the A-frame was simple, functional and more beautiful than the most opulent of Park Avenue penthouses—to his taste anyway.

Even as he dug the brass key from his jeans pocket, he heard another car approaching from the lane. A woman, who had to be Liz Brooks, drove up in a battered green Jeep. She sat for a minute, studying him, then the house. Then she squared her shoulders and jumped from the driver’s seat, her sneakered feet landing with a soft scuff on the dirt driveway.

“Hey there. You must be Dougal.”

Liz was about five-foot-four, skinny in a pair of jeans that seemed to hang from her hip bones. Her T-shirt was so faded he couldn’t read the logo, and she had a huge quantity of brown, curly hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Her eyes narrowed in a calculating way.

“Better not be any dead animals in there. Stella tells me this place has been vacant for a mighty long time.”

“No dead animals. We checked last night.” He held out his hand, introduced himself.

Liz’s palms were calloused and her hand slid out from his a second after he’d touched it.

“Are you from Twisted?” he asked. She seemed only a little younger than Jamie, but he didn’t find her familiar at all.

“No. I moved here a few years ago. Saw the job listed on the Internet.”

That struck him as odd. There were dozens of towns like Twisted Cedars along the coast of Oregon. And surely cleaning jobs weren’t that hard to come by.

She narrowed her eyes again. It seemed to be a habit of hers, and he wished she wouldn’t do it. It made her seem far more perceptive than she probably was.

“You don’t look much like your mother,” she finally pronounced.

“So I’ve been told.”

She stared at him a second longer. In her odd, slanted gray eyes he saw mistrust—as if his lack of resemblance to Katie was a strike against him.

Then, abruptly, she seemed to lose all interest in him.

“My gear is in the car.”

“I’ll help.”

“No. I’ve got it.”

Fine. He headed into the cottage, leaving the door open behind him. Last night he hadn’t noticed how stale it smelled in here, but this morning the air was thick enough to choke on. No wonder Charlotte had been sneezing. He opened all the windows on the main level, and then made his way upstairs.

He wished Charlotte hadn’t removed the picture of her aunt from the bureau. That red scarf. He wondered if he would find it among Shirley’s clothing.

He went through the bureau drawers, in search. Mingled in with the underwear drawer—staid, no-nonsense briefs and well-constructed bras—he found a couple of silk scarves, but none of them were red.

“You want me to clean those out for you?”

He hadn’t heard Liz climb up the stairs and he started at the sound of her voice. Worried she’d think checking out women’s underwear gave him a perverse thrill, he slammed the drawer closed.

“That’s okay. Charlotte said she would come by later to box this stuff up.”

She kept looking at him, as if to ask,
Then what were you looking for, anyway?

He would have been hard pressed to give her an answer.

kyle’s mother arrived in
Twisted Cedars at five o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. Jamie was French-braiding Cory’s hair. She was almost done, weaving the strands the way she remembered her mother once doing for her. Cory held a mirror in both hands, watching the progress with an expression bordering on awe.

“Do you like it?”

Cory nodded.

Then suddenly Jamie saw Muriel Quinpool’s face in the mirror. Cory spotted her grandmother at the same time.

“Grandma!” She jumped from her chair and ran to the woman, hugging her around the waist. Muriel looked teary-eyed by the reception. She patted Cory on the back, while her gaze met Jamie’s.

“Muriel! What a surprise...hello, how are you?” She went to give her mother-in-law-to-be a kiss. She hadn’t expected her to arrive tonight since Kyle had said she definitely wasn’t attending the rehearsal dinner.

Muriel clasped her granddaughter’s face between her hands. “How are you, sweetie? Excited about the wedding?”

“I’m going to be the flower girl! I have a long pink dress and shiny shoes and I’m going to the hair dresser tomorrow.”

“Then why was Jamie braiding your hair?”

“For the rehearsal dinner,” Jamie explained.

“It’s tonight? I thought Kyle said Thursday.” Muriel sank onto a kitchen chair, looking concerned.

Jamie hadn’t seen Kyle’s mother since she’d moved to Portland. Muriel had aged noticeably in that time and she had a nervous tic in her eye that was very distracting.

“Now you can come with us, grandma! I’ll go tell Chester.” Cory shot out of the room, leaving an uncomfortable quiet in her wake.

Jamie sat in the chair opposite Muriel’s. Her mother-in-law-to-be was rubbing one wrist in a compulsive manner.

“I can’t go. It isn’t possible,” she murmured. “The wedding is going to be difficult enough.” She lifted her gaze to Jamie. “Where is Kyle?”

“He’s helping Chester get dressed.”

“Chester’s been dressing himself for years.”

Jamie grinned. “His father doesn’t want him wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt tonight.”

Jamie had taken the day off from work. She’d been too excited to work, anyway. The day had sped by as she worked through a checklist of items, including picking up the kids after school and bringing them home to get ready for the rehearsal dinner.

Cory had been thrilled at the excuse to wear another pretty dress, but Chester wasn’t impressed with the shirt and trousers he’d found pressed and waiting on his bed.

“But I have to wear that stupid suit tomorrow. Can’t I be comfortable tonight?”

Jamie might have given in to him on this one—only close friends and family were invited and the clambake was being held at the beach—but Kyle was standing firm.

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” she pressed Muriel. “I know the kids and Kyle would love for you to be there.”

“I’ll stay at home. Maybe I can make myself useful.” With that, Muriel moved to the sink and began running the hot water.

Though the place wasn’t yet her responsibility, Jamie felt embarrassed. The kitchen was frankly a disaster—remnants of breakfast and lunch were still cluttered on the counters. Jamie had planned on a quick clean-up once she’d finished with Cory’s hair.

“Sorry the place is such a mess.”

“No problem. I like to be useful.” She sighed. “I’ve missed all this.”

Then why had she moved so far away, Jamie wondered? “Are you settling in okay in Portland?”

“I’m fine. I have my sister.”

But she missed having her grandchildren around. That much was obvious. And again Jamie had to wonder why she had felt compelled to put so many miles between them.

* * *

The rehearsal dinner didn’t last long—only a few hours. Jamie wanted an early night and she was glad of it the next morning—
her wedding day!
—when she woke at dawn, with the birds. She stared at the low ceiling of the trailer above her.
This is the last time
.

From now on, she’d be waking up in Kyle’s house, in his bed, with him lying beside her. She turned her head to one side and tried to imagine him cuddled up beside her.

She smiled.

So much to do today. She was glad she’d awakened early. Quickly she showered, ate breakfast, and then organized her trousseau. She and Cory would be dressing at Stella’s home. Stella had a beautiful old claw-foot tub and Jamie was looking forward to a nice, long soak before getting dressed.

But she had a lot to accomplish before then.

Phone calls, last minute arrangements, a trip to the salon.

On the way to Twisted Locks, she stopped at Kyle’s house to pick up Cory, who had an appointment booked for the same time. Muriel was outside watering the shrubs when she arrived.

“Hey, Muriel. Isn’t it a wonderful day!”

The older woman straightened, frowned up at the sky. “So far, so good.”

“I booked an extra appointment if you’d like to come with us to get your hair done?”

“Oh no. I couldn’t.”

Jamie frowned and was about to try to persuade her when Cory came bounding down the porch stairs. Kyle followed, with a garment bag in one hand and a duffel bag in the other.

Jamie had no time for silly superstitions like avoiding her groom on their wedding day. She ran up to kiss him.