Buried (Twisted Cedars Mysteries Book 1) (21 page)

God, he felt like he was going crazy. It was this damn book—no, he couldn’t call it that. Research project more like. He still didn’t know where it was all heading, whether he would find the answers that would let him piece together the entire story. Next week he would travel to Corvallis, then to Medford, to follow up on the phone interviews he’d made earlier. But he already suspected the ultimate answer lay right here in Twisted Cedars, if he could just uncover it.

Because Twisted Cedars was his town. And he must have been chosen for a reason.

But what if he never did figure out what had happened all those years ago? Then he’d have wasted all this time. It wasn’t like him. His agent was waiting for the next book proposal. He’d never let so much time slide between projects before.

Maybe his writing career was over?

Was that why he’d returned to Twisted Cedars? Because he’d realized he was just a trailer-park kid after all?

As soon as he reached the cottage, Dougal’s anxieties slipped away. This was his place. At least he’d figured out that much. If he never published another novel, he would be okay. He turned off the ignition and stepped out into the quiet of the woods. The librarian’s cottage waited patiently for him. He unlocked the door, switched on a light, and glanced around. All was as he’d left it.

He headed to the bathroom where he turned on the water, dropped his clothes, and then stepped into the shower. Sand streamed from his body, stopping when it reached the floor of the tub, stubbornly refusing to swirl down the drain. Less visible, but as efficiently eliminated as the sand, was Charlotte’s scent. He erased it with the soap and the water, and tried not to think about how much he wished she was with him right now.

sorry the place is such
a mess.” Jamie sat at the table in the trailer. Stripped of the stuff that was meaningful to her, the rest in boxes, disassembled, ready to be picked up by Goodwill tomorrow, the place was not only a mess, it was bleak.

Dougal had already loaded his box into his car. He hadn’t even bothered checking to see what was inside.

She was worried about him. He looked sad and tired, his dark hair a crazy mess, his face unshaven.

“To be expected, I guess. Moving is always a hassle.” He set a paper bag on the table then pulled out sandwiches and colas. “Tuna,” he said, picking up a half and taking a bite.

Had he chosen tuna sandwiches on purpose? Their mother must have packed a thousand of them for their lunches over the years. So much so that Jamie had grown to hate them. Still, she dutifully picked up a half.

“I took the family photos over to Kyle’s. I’ll be happy to divide them up with you, if you want.”

“No. You keep them.”

She took a bite, found it tastier than she’d expected. Dougal was still chomping at his, looking around as if he couldn’t even remember a time when he’d lived here.

Yet he had. For eighteen years. Fourteen of those years had been with her, yet she couldn’t say she knew the man sitting opposite her very well. Dougal had always kept so much of himself hidden, unlike her and their mother. For Jamie it was natural to talk about problems when she was upset, and to share her joy when she was happy. She remembered Dougal calling her a chatterbox, complaining to their mother that she never shut up.

He hadn’t been a mean brother, though. He’d helped her with her homework, and taken care of her when she was sick and their mother had to work.

He’d done a lot of ignoring her, too, especially as he grew older.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to stay in Twisted Cedars for a while. Maybe you can come over for dinner sometime.”

His dark eyes, like always, seemed to be holding something back when he looked at her. “It’s better if we just get together for lunch every now and then.”

“You don’t need to be jealous of him, anymore. You’re a successful author. You have no need to feel inferior to anyone.”

“You think I’m jealous?”

Jamie shrugged. Of course he wasn’t going to admit it. “What I meant to say is that he’s my husband now. That makes him part of your family. I think it would be nice if you could try to get along.”

Dougal said nothing to that. He finished his sandwich, then took a long drink of the cola. “So who bought the place? Do I know them?”

“You do. You hired her to clean out the Hammonds’ cottage before you moved in.”

“Liz Brooks?” He looked around the double wide as if trying to imagine her living here.

“Yeah. Apparently she likes our town and plans to stay. She’ll take over the cleaning business when Stella retires...and that day can’t come too soon for Stella. The arthritis in her knees is really killing her. Plus…losing Mom really took something out of her.”

Dougal nodded. He finished the last of his sandwich and stood. “I should be going.”

Jamie cleared her throat and looked away. “Um...when I was cleaning out Mom’s jewelry drawer, I found something interesting.”

“Yeah?”

He was out the door already. She had to run to catch up to him. “A letter. From our dad.”

Dougal stopped in his tracks.

“Would you like to read it?” She’d brought it along with her and now she passed it to her brother. He hesitated, but reluctantly took the pages. His jaw tightened as he read. When he was done, he pushed the pages at her.

“This changes nothing. He was a monster.”

“But—"

Dougal looked at her hard. “You aren’t thinking of tracking him down are you?”

“M-maybe...”

“Don’t. Trust me, you’re lucky you never met him. He killed my pet kitten. Did I ever tell you about that?”

“No.” She couldn’t take her eyes off her brother. He so rarely offered her stories from the past, she was afraid to even breathe in case he got distracted.

“He and Mom had an argument. The poor kitten got in his way, so he just picked her up and hurled her out the window.”

Jamie covered her mouth with her hand, stifling the cry that came instinctively.

“I found her in the hedge.” Dougal’s gaze went to the line of old junipers that still defined the boundaries of their lot. “But she was already dead. He’d twisted her neck before he tossed her.”

* * *

Dougal drove from the trailer park, through town, to the highway, hands shaking, stomach in knots. He knew his sister meant well, but at that moment he was furious with his mother. Why had she kept that letter? She must have known Jamie would read it. And that she’d fall for all that sap their father had written. As if he’d ever really loved his wife. And as if he truly cared about his son.

Thinking about his family was bloody painful. So he switched his thoughts to Charlotte.

Making love to her on Saturday night. That had been great.

Not so great was when she’d shut her door on him, afterward.

Since then he’d been tempted many times to call her, but hadn’t. It seemed that every time he resolved to keep his distance, he did the very opposite.

Thank God he was getting out of town for a while. Maybe distance would clear his head.

But this project of his was making him crazy, too. He was all too aware that he was being manipulated by whoever was sending those emails. But to what end? He had no idea, yet something compelled him to find out as much as he could. So he kept driving north on the one-oh-one, straight to Corvallis. He arrived about four hours after he’d left Twisted Cedars, with an empty tank and an equally empty stomach.

He filled both with one pit stop at a gas station connected to a Jack and Jill. After his burger and fries, he settled with a cup of coffee and the file he’d started on Bernice Gilberg.

Bernice had been fifty when she was murdered, a grandmother. She’d been working as a volunteer at the library the day she was lured down to the basement and summarily strangled with a red silk scarf.

He’d managed to track down some information on one of her grandchildren, a Derek Gilberg. After gulping down the last of his coffee, he pulled out his phone and called the guy at his work number.

“This is Derek Gilberg,” said a soft, effeminate, yet decidedly male voice. “How may I help you?”

Dougal introduced himself, but got no further.

“
The
Dougal Lachlan? The author?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve read all your books.”

“Well, thank you. That leads nicely into the reason for this call. I’m working on something new, a crime that occurred back in the seventies. And I was hoping I could speak to you about it.”

There was a silence. Then, “This must have something to do with my Gran.”

“It does.”

“The police never found the guy who killed her.”

“I know. I was hoping we could meet and talk about it."

“I’m at work right now, at the Valley Library at Oregon State in Corvallis.”

“I realize that. I’ve just arrived in town. I’m at the Jack and Jill off Highway 33. I could meet you on campus whenever it’s convenient.”

“I have meetings all afternoon. And I’m afraid I have commitments tonight, too. Would tomorrow morning work? Around ten?”

Dougal sighed at the delay. That’s what he got for not phoning ahead. “Sure, I can make ten.”

“Good. Let’s meet in the quad out front of the library.”

“Thanks.” Dougal called the Corvallis police department next, and asked to speak to the Detective he’d called earlier in the week. They made plans to go out for a beer, but the meeting yielded nothing new for Dougal’s case notes.

He found a motel for the night and spent his evening downloading old programs of
Dexter
and watching them on his laptop.

The next morning he went back to the Jack and Jill for breakfast, then used his GPS to navigate his way to the university, got directions at a campus information booth, and then drove to the library quad.

Though it was a moderately warm day, the clouds were thick and low, and Dougal felt the weight of them as he strolled through the pleasant-looking campus. He’d never gone to college and he eyed the passing students with more than a little envy. He’d spent his early twenties working nights in a bar, crashing for a few hours in an apartment he shared with two other guys, then getting up to write until it was time to work again.

Ahead of him he saw the Valley Library, a big, curved building with an impressive grand entrance. He sat on a low concrete ledge to wait. At precisely two-thirty a man in his forties exited the library. He was short and plump, neatly dressed with a goatee and dark-framed eye-glasses.

“You must be Dougal Lachlan.” He held out his hand as he approached. “I recognize you from your cover jacket photo.”

Dougal hated that picture, considered it pretentious, too artsy. “Thanks for taking the time to meet with me.”

“Not a problem. You’re talking about an important part of our family history. We were devastated by that tragedy.”

Dougal nodded. There was nothing he could say to that. Thirty-eight years might sound like a lot. But murder left scars that ran deep.

“Want to grab a coffee while we talk?” Derek asked.

“I’ve just finished a cup, but I can always do with more.”

Derek led him inside the university library, to the Java II coffee shop...a large, open circular area with wooden tables and chairs. They ordered their beverages then sat in a quiet section.

“Interesting that you chose to work in a library. Does that have anything to do with your grandmother?”

Derek stroked his goatee and nodded. “She used to read to me when I was very young. And every week she’d take me to story circle.

“At the public library where she volunteered, on Monroe Avenue?”

“Yes.” He swallowed. “I was nine-years-old when she was murdered. I wasn’t told much by my parents, but I could read very well and I got all the details from the newspapers, which made a big deal of the fact that she was killed in the basement. As a result I developed a childish fear of basements, which I’m ashamed to say I haven’t totally overcome, even as an adult.”

“She was lured down there by the murderer, wasn’t that the theory?”

“That’s what they surmised since there was no evidence she’d struggled. Who knows what excuse he gave her to get her down there. Her duties normally wouldn’t have taken her anywhere but the children’s section, which is on the main floor.”

Derek used the male pronoun when talking about the killer. This was to be expected, as the majority of serial killers were male. But it made Dougal realize that he, himself, had begun thinking of their killer as female. “How was your grandmother’s body discovered? It would help if you could go through the events in chronological order, if possible.”

Derek touched his goatee again, it seemed to be a compulsion with him. “I’ll try. It happened on a Thursday. Gran’s shift was supposed to end at three in the afternoon. But when it came time for her to check out, no one could find her. Her coat and purse were still in the staff room. One of the employees began looking for her, and after checking all the obvious places, went into one of the meeting rooms in the basement, where the archives are stored. She’d been killed right there, left on the floor, with the door closed, but not locked. The medical examiner told us later that she had died less than an hour before she was found.”

By the end of his recitation, Derek’s voice was trembling.

“I’m sorry to make you re-live this.”

“It’s okay. Believe me, I’ve gone over the details countless times on my own.”

“I can imagine.” If something like this had happened to his mother or sister, he knew he’d have done the same. “I assume the police questioned all the staff members to see if they’d noticed anyone unusual in the library that afternoon?”

“Yes. Unfortunately all sorts of people wander in and out of a library and this was before the days of video surveillance. The librarians and staff members did their best to remember, but came up with no real leads for the police to follow. Most of them admitted to being distracted at work that day anyway. There was a big library convention in town that weekend. The closing dinner was scheduled for that evening.”

“So no suspects were identified. And I take it no physical evidence was found at the scene, either?”