Divine Evil (8 page)

“We wanted to give you the morning to settle.” Min took over, as was her right as the mayor's wife-and president of the Ladies Club. “You remember Gladys Finch, Lenore Barlow, Jessie Misner, and Carolanne Gerheart.”

“Ah…”

“The girl can't remember everybody all at once.” Gladys Finch stepped forward and thrust a Tupperware bowl into Clare's hands. “I taught you in fourth grade-and I remember you well enough. Very tidy handwriting.”

Nostalgia swam sweetly through Clare's mind. “You put colored stars on our papers.”

“When you deserved them. We've got enough cakes and cookies here to rot every tooth in your head. Where would you like us to put them?”

“It's very nice of you.” Clare gave a helpless glance toward the door that opened into the laundry room, then the kitchen. “We could put them inside. I haven't really…”

But her voice trailed off because Min was already sailing through the laundry room, anxious to see what was what.

“What pretty colors.” Min's sharp little eyes darted everywhere. Personally, she didn't see how anyone could keep a dark blue countertop looking clean. She much preferred her white Formica with its little gold flecks. “The last tenants in here weren't very neighborly-didn't mix well-and can't say I'm sorry to see them gone. Flatlanders,” Min said with a derisive sniff that put the absent tenants in their place. “We're glad to have a Kimball back in this house, aren't we, girls?”

There was a general murmur of agreement that nearly had Clare shuffling her feet.

“Well, I appreciate-”

“I made you up my special Jell-O mold,” Min continued after drawing a breath. “Why don't I just put it right in the refrigerator for you?”

Beer, Min thought with a knowing frown after she wrenched open the door. Beer and soda pop and some kind of fancy chip dip. Couldn't expect any better from a girl who'd been living the high life up in New York City.

Neighbors, Clare thought as the women talked to her, around her, and through her. She hadn't had to speak to- or so much as look at-a neighbor in years. After clearing her throat, she tried a smile. “I'm sorry, I haven't had a chance to go shopping yet. I don't have any coffee.” Or plates or cups or spoons, she thought.

“We didn't come for coffee.” Mrs. Negley patted Clare's shoulder and smiled her wispy smile. “Just to welcome you home.”

“That's so nice of you.” Clare lifted her hands and let them fall. “Really, so nice. I don't even have a chair to offer you.”

“Why don't we help you unpack?” Min was poking around, brutally disappointed at the lack of boxes. “From the size of that moving truck that was here this morning, you must have a mess of things to deal with.”

“No, actually, that was just my equipment. I didn't bring any furniture down with me.” Intimidated by the curious eyes fixed on her, Clare stuck her hands in her pockets. It was worse, she decided, than a press interview. “I thought I'd just pick up what I needed as I went along.”

“Young people.” Min gave a quick, skipping laugh. “Flighty as birds. Now, what would your mama say if she knew you were here without a teaspoon or a seat cushion to your name?”

Clare yearned for a cigarette. “I imagine she'd tell me to go shopping.”

“We'll just get out of your way so you can.” Mrs. Finch rounded up the ladies as competently as she would a group of nine-year-olds. “You just return the dishes when you get around to it, Clare. They're all labeled.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the trouble.”

They filed out, leaving the scent of chocolate cookies and floral perfume behind.

“Not a dish in the cupboard,” Min muttered to the group. “Not a single dish. But she had beer in the refrigerator and plenty of it. Like father like daughter, I say.”

“Oh, hush up, Min,” Gladys Finch said good-naturedly.

Crazy Annie liked to sing. As a child she'd been a soprano in the church choir at First Lutheran. Her high, sweet voice had changed little in more than half a century. Nor had her skittish, uncomplicated mind.

She liked bright colors and shiny objects. Often she would wear three blouses, one over the other, and forget underpants. She would crowd dangling bracelets on her arms and forget to bathe. Since her mother's death twelve years before, there had been no one to take care of her, to patiently, lovingly fix her meals and see that she ate them.

But the town tended its own. Someone from the Ladies Club or the Town Council dropped by her rusty, rat-packed trailer every day to take her a meal or look at her latest collection of junk.

Her body was strong and solid, as if to make up for her fragile mind. Though her hair had gone steel gray, her face was remarkably smooth and pretty, her hands and feet chubby and pink. Every day, whatever the weather, she would walk miles, dragging her burlap sack. Into Martha's for a doughnut and a glass of cherry fizz, to the post office for colorful flyers and occupant mail, by the Gift Emporium to study the window display.

She moved along the roadside, singing and chattering to herself as her eyes scanned the ground for treasures. She
stalked the fields and the woods, patient enough to stand for an hour and watch a squirrel nibble a nut.

She was happy, and her blank, smiling face concealed dozens of secrets she didn't understand.

There was a place, deep in the woods. A circular clearing with signs carved into trees. It had a pit beside it that sometimes smelled of burned wood and flesh. Walking there always made her skin crawl in a scary way. She knew she had gone there at night, after her mother had gone away and Annie had searched the hills and the woods for her. She had seen things there, things that had made her breathless with terror. Things that had given her bad dreams for weeks after. Until the memories faded.

All she remembered now was the nightmare vision of creatures with human bodies and animal heads. Dancing. Singing. Someone screaming. But she didn't like to remember, so she sang and doused the memory.

She never went there at night anymore. No sir, no indeedy, not at night. But there were days she felt pulled there. And today was one of them. She wasn't afraid when the sun was up.

“Shall we gather at the riiiv-er.” Her girlish voice drifted through the air as she dragged her sack along the edge of the circle. “The beautiful, the beautiful riiiv-er.” With a little giggle, she touched a toe inside the circle, like a child on a dare. A rustle of leaves made her heart pound, then she giggled again as she saw a rabbit scamper through the underbrush.

“Don't be afraid,” she called after him. “Nobody here but Annie. Nobody here, nobody here,” she chanted, dipping and swaying in her own private dance. “I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the ro-ses.”

Mr. Kimball had the prettiest roses, she thought. He would pick her one sometimes and warn her not to prick
her finger on the thorns. But he was dead now, she remembered. Dead and buried. Like Mama.

The moment of grief was sharp and real. Then it faded away to nothing as she saw a sparrow glide overhead. She sat outside the circle, lowering her thick body to the ground with surprising grace. Inside her sack was a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper that Alice had given her that morning. Annie ate it neatly, in small, polite bites, singing and talking to herself, scattering crumbs for some of God's little creatures. When she was finished, she folded the waxed paper precisely in half, in half again, and stored it in the sack.

“No littering,” she mumbled. “Fifty-dollar fine. Waste not, want not. Yes, Jesus loves
meeee.”
She started to rise when she saw something glint in the brush. “Oh!” On her hands and knees, she crept over, pushing at vines and old damp leaves. “Pretty,” she whispered, holding the slender, silver-plated bracelet to the sunlight. Her simple heart swelled as she watched the glint and glitter. “Pretty.” There was carving on it that she recognized as letters, but couldn't read.

“Annie.” She gave a satisfied nod. “A-N-N-I-E. Annie. Finders keepers, losers weepers. She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Delighted with her treasure, she slipped it over her own thick wrist.

“Nobody saw her, Sheriff.” Bud Hewitt set Carly Jamison's picture on Cam's desk. “I showed it all around town. If she came through here, she was invisible.”

“Okay, Bud.”

“Broke up a fight in the park.”

“Oh?” Because he knew it was required, Cam looked up from his paperwork.

“Chip Lewis and Ken Barlow trading punches over some girl. Sent them both home with a bug in their ears.”

“Good work.”

“Got cornered by the mayor's wife.” Cam lifted a brow.

“Complaining about those kids skateboarding down Main again. And the Knight boy gunning his motorcycle. And-”

“I get the picture, Bud.”

“She told me Clare Kimball was back. Got a garage full of junk and no dishes in the cupboards.” “Min's been busy.”

“We read all about her in
People
magazine. Clare, I mean. She's famous.”

“That so?” Amused, Cam shuffled papers.

“Oh, yeah. She's an artist or something. Makes statues. I saw a picture of one. Must'a been ten feet high.” His pleasant face screwed up in thought. “Couldn't make out what it was. I dated her once, you know.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, sir, took her to the movies and everything. That was the year after her dad died. Damn shame about all that.” He used his sleeve to wipe a smudge from the glass of the gun cabinet. “My mom was friends with her mom. Fact is, they were out together the night he did it. Anyway, I thought I might go by the Kimball place sometime. See how Clare's doing.”

Before Cam could comment, the phone rang. “Sheriff's office.” He listened for a moment to the rapid, high-pitched voice. “Is anyone hurt? Okay, I'll be right there.” He hung up and pushed away from the desk. “Cecil
Fogarty ran his car into the oak tree in Mrs. Negley's front yard.”

“Want me to take it?”

“No, I'll handle it.” Mrs. Negley's was just around the corner from Clare's, he thought as he went out. It would be downright unneighborly not to drop by.

Clare was just pulling into the drive when Cam cruised up. He took his time, watching her as she fumbled for the lever to pop the trunk. Hands tucked in his pockets, he strolled up behind her as she tugged at the bags and boxes heaped in the back of the car.

“Want some help?”

Startled, she rapped her head on the hatchback and swore as she rubbed the hurt. “Jesus, is it part of your job description to sneak around?”

“Yeah.” He hefted out a box. “What's all this?”

“Things. I realized you need more than a sleeping bag and a bar of soap to survive.” She dropped two bags on top of the box he held and gathered up the rest herself.

“You left your keys in the car.”

“I'll get them later.”

“Get them now.”

On a long-suffering sigh, Clare walked around the car, juggling bags as she leaned inside to pull the keys out of the ignition. She went in through the open garage and left him to follow.

Cam took a look at the tools, several hundred dollars′ worth, he estimated. The steel tanks, the stone and metal and lumber. “If you're going to keep all this stuff in here, you'd better start closing the garage door.”

“Taking our job seriously, aren't we?” She stepped through the laundry room into the kitchen.

“That's right.” He glanced at the counter loaded with covered dishes. “You want to make room for this?”

“Sorry.” She pushed plates and bowls together. “The ladies came by this afternoon.” She pried a plastic lid from a tub, took a sniff. “Want a brownie?”

“Yeah. Got any coffee to go with it?”

“No, but there's beer and Pepsi in the fridge. And somewhere in all of this is a coffeepot.” She began to dig in the box, unraveling items wrapped in newspaper. “I hit a flea market on the way to the mall. It was great.” She held up a slightly battered percolator. “It might even work.”

“I'll take the Pepsi,” he decided and helped himself.

“Just as well, I think I forgot to buy coffee. I got plates, though. This terrific old Fiestaware. And I got these great jelly glasses with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck on them.” She tossed back her hair, pushed up her sleeves, and smiled at him. “So, how was your day?”

“Cecil Fogarty ran his Plymouth into Mrs. Negley's oak tree.”

“Pretty exciting.”

“She thought so.” He passed her the bottle of Pepsi. “So, you're going to set up shop in the garage.”

“Um-hmm.” She took a long sip and handed it back to him.

“Does that mean you're settling in, Slim?”

“That means I'm working while I'm here.” She chose a brownie for herself, then scooted up to sit on the counter by the sink. The light of the fading sun glowed in her hair. “Can I ask you something I was too polite to ask you last night?”

“All right.”

“Why did you come back?”

“I wanted a change,” he said simply, and not completely truthfully.

“As I remember you couldn't wait to see the last of this place.”

He had gone fast, not looking back, with two hundred and twenty-seven dollars in his pocket and all kinds of needs boiling in his blood. There had been freedom in that. “I was eighteen. Why are you back?”

She frowned, nibbling on the brownie. “Maybe I'd had enough change. I've been thinking a lot about this place lately. This house, the town, the people. So here I am.” Abruptly she smiled and changed the mood. “I had an incredible crush on you when I was fourteen.”

He grinned back at her. “I know.”

“Bull.” She snatched the Pepsi from him. When he continued to grin, her eyes narrowed. “Blair told you. That weasely creep.”

“He didn't have to.” Surprising them both, he stepped forward and laid his hands beside her hips on the counter. Her head was above his so that his eyes were level with her mouth. “You used to watch me-and waste a lot of energy pretending like you weren't watching me. Whenever I'd talk to you, you'd blush. I thought it was real cute.”

Cautious, she studied him as she tipped the bottle back and drank. She resisted the urge to squirm. She wasn't fourteen anymore. “At that age, girls think hoods are exciting. Then they grow up.”

“I've still got a motorcycle.”