The May Queen Murders (19 page)

Chapter Twelve

Oh, they searched for Terra. Everybody knew it was a right

shame.

Then she was found on the riverbed, half sunken in mud,

the swamp grass ready to take her.

The next few days were a haze, that silvery part of the mind plung-

ing me underwater. It felt like hours before surfacing. My skin was

heavy, my clothes weights that made it impossible to lift my arms or

move my legs. Since Heather had abandoned me in Potter’s Field,

I’d only remembered to breathe. I hadn’t yet climbed out. I couldn’t

without her.

A metal pail hung from a willow near Milo’s trailer. The wind

pushed the pail so it clattered against the tree. It didn’t bang with a

hollow noise. Something was inside. Probably so Milo could leave

out weed and get paid. Beside the trailer was a carport housing an

old truck and a chicken run. A half dozen hens pecked bits of corn,

and some fluffy chicks waddled among their mothers. I reached for

a chick, coddling it in my hands to enjoy its downiness.

“What the hell are you doin’?”

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Milo stretched on the steps and dumped what looked like needles

into the biohazard bin by the door. On his hand without a cast, he

wore a latex glove, which he snapped off and placed in the bin.

“Pettin’ a chick,” I said.

He half smiled. “Ivy, hey. Thought you were this hippie broad who

tries to free our chickens, tel s them to ‘Fly away, pretty birds,’ and

I’m like, ‘They don’t fly!’ ”

He withdrew a tin of lip oil from his pocket, one of the products

Aunt Rue sold in the market.

“Heather gave that to you,” I remarked.

He nodded. “She said this’d help. People ain’t usual y so nice to

us.”

I set down the chick, shamed. Judgments came so fast. I lived that,

yet had made assumptions about him.

Milo held up his arm with the cast, which had grown dingy over

the past few days. “Your daddy’s the vet who patched up my arm.

He’s got my ring, which I’d like back. Your family’s got good folks.”

“We try.”

Milo drew a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, and put one

to his lips. With his good hand, he lit it, taking a long draw. Some-

thing was off about him. His body didn’t hang with his usual jingle-

jangle, and his face was drawn, more so with the fading bruises on

his cheek.

I set the chick into its run and unclipped Heather’s necklace. “You

know what this is. Some charms are gone. Where are they?”

He reached for the necklace, but I yanked it back before he grabbed

hold. His fingers brushed mine and he laughed. “You’re adorable.”

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I looked over my shoulder at the gate in the fencing surrounding

the trailer park. Rook waited there, plucking at some green vines.

“Touch me again, and you’ll learn whether what you’ve heard

about the Glen is true,” I said.

Milo hoisted up his jeans to his waist instead of letting them fall

so low that any farther would’ve been indecent. “All right. Let’s have

ourselves a talk. Go inside. Him, too. I ain’t havin’ you weirdoes

hanging outside my door.”

I entered Milo’s trailer with Rook close behind. The front room

was claustrophobic, with an air mattress on the floor. The blankets

were neat and pulled tight, pillows fluffed. There were two baskets of

folded clothing, one with some items I recognized as Milo’s, and the

other I guessed was his sister’s, given the black lace bra on top. The

floor was waxed, and the spartan furniture was dust-free.

A girl a few inches shy of Milo’s height and waif-thin, maybe a year

or two older, swaggered into the front room. I barely remembered

her from school before she dropped out. Her pants were leather and

her shirt a halter under black fishnet. A blue star tattoo marked her

thumb. Save for heaps of mascara and matte red lipstick, her pale

eyes and pouty mouth matched Milo’s.

“What are they doing here?” she asked, her tone not at all friendly.

“Came to talk about Heather, I reckon,” Milo said.

She wandered to an antique rol top desk and stuffed some bags of

green herbs into a shoulder bag. She snorted. “So, Ivy, what’d Heath-

er tell you ’bout us?”

“N-nothing,” I blurted. “How’d you know my name?”

“Heather talked about you, told us lots of things.” She maneu-

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vered around me in the smal room and stopped. Her fingers took

hold of Heather’s necklace, her brow furrowed. “Why are
you
wear-

ing this?”

“Heather’s gone,” Rook said.

Milo raised his head from his pillow on the air mattress. “Gone?”

“She’s been missing since May Day,” I explained. I hadn’t been

in school and doubted Rook would’ve told Milo anything. “I know

Milo’s . . . close to her, so if anybody knows where she’s at, I figure it’s

him.”

The girl dropped the necklace. “My brother don’t know where she

went.”

“What about you?” Rook asked.

“There ain’t anything ’bout me.” She pushed her bright orange

hair with its dark roots behind her ear and bent over to pick up some

barn boots, one with a scuffed toe. The boots I’d seen in the stable

when everything with Heather changed. No wonder I’d been mis-

taken — they were the same kind as Rook’s boots.

“Milo, I’m borrowing your shoes,” the girl said. “I gotta sell some

bags to pay for last night.” She pushed open the screen door and

pointed at her brother. “Don’t do anything dumb.”

She headed outside, boots clomping loudly, and headed over to

the chickens to feed them.

Milo’s gaze shifted from his sister to Rook and me, studying the

gap between our bodies, how it narrowed, the way Rook’s hand rest-

ed on my shoulder. “Ah, so you’re a thing.”

“What about you and Heather?” I asked. “Your sister’s gone if

that’s what’s holdin’ you back.”

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Milo’s hand covered his mouth. I wondered if he thought about

kissing Heather.

“Emmie knows all about Heather. She came here a lot.” His face

took a sad shadow. “Heather needed a place she felt safe.”

His words stung. Even with Birch Markle’s screams and the ani-

mals dying, I still considered the Glen safe. Though I planned to at-

tend college, maybe be a veterinarian like Papa or study art, I’d never

leave, not forever. I needed the fields and horses, the harvests and

quiet, because the Glen was my
home.
To Heather, it was a trap.

“Why were you in the woods on May Day?” Rook asked.

“Heather wanted to meet me there.” He ran a finger along his

cast’s edge. “She wanted out.”

My brow knotted. “What do you mean, ‘out’?”

“She was gonna run away, Ivy.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s

what she did.”

But where’d she go if not with Milo? She bared her soul to him,

shared secrets with him. I went to Rook when I was troubled. It

stood to reason Heather did the same if she was in love with this

scarecrow-bodied boy.

“So is she here?” Rook asked. “Are you hidin’ her?”

He moved toward the hal way and glanced at the other rooms. If

a door creaked, a foot fell daintily against the floor, all this would be

over. If Heather came out from wherever she was.

Milo pushed his fingers through his shaggy hair. “You heard Em-

mie. I don’t know anything. I figured Heather’s plans went out the

window when I got attacked. Guess she ran while she could. I hope

she turns up. But she’s scared.”

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“Of what?” I asked. Heather, who seemed so fearless, was fright-

ened?

“She couldn’t tel —” Milo cut himself.

I followed his gaze to the screen door where Emmie stood scowl-

ing, her jaw set hard. Who knew how long she’d been listening? Her

hands pressed against the screen with fingers hooked.

“I’ll be back,” Milo said and got up to join his sister.

From the window, I watched Emmie pull him out of earshot.

Rook walked over to a bookcase and scanned the titles, which left me

to nose around for a bathroom. After I finished, I noted the closed

doors in the hal way. My knuckles gave a soft rap against one.

“Heather? You in there?” I asked hopeful y.

From within the room, someone coughed. I tested the knob to

find the door unlocked and eased it open. The room was dark, but

a smell of antiseptic and sickness hit my nose so hard I covered my

nose. If Heather was in here, she was either sick or — I switched on a

dim light.

A skeletal body lay on a hospital-style bed. My back went rigid.

She’d not been gone long, but what if she’d been attacked, forced to

stay here? How long could she be held hostage before her body gave

out? She’d written of secrets in her letter. How far would Milo go to

keep that secret hidden?

I inched closer. An arm colored decomposing yellow and webbed

with bruises stuck out from the sheets. An IV pole was beside the

bed. I rounded the edge, and all the breath left my lungs.

Not Heather.

A young man, one who was obviously il , stared with open, va-

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cant eyes. Gaze fixed on a picture of trees on the wal , he didn’t

realize I was beside him. A medical chart hung off the foot of the

bed, and I bent down to read. Mark Entwhistle. He was only twenty-

four.

The human shell on the bed choked on phlegm. I bolted upright

and knocked my head on the IV stand, making a racket so great

Rook poked in his head.

“I was looking for Heather,” I explained, rubbing my head.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Milo said from behind me. He squeezed past

Rook. “My brother’s sick, and the last thing he needs is some busy-

body snooping ’round for things that ain’t there.”

“I-I’m sorry,” I said as I staggered into the hal .

Milo shut the door and pressed his back to the wood. “He had a

bad night, needs his rest. Emmie’s gotta sell some weed to pay for last

night’s nurse.”

I could understand not wanting us to disturb his brother, but

something about the sick man in that room didn’t seem like the kind

of secret Milo had talked about in his letter to Heather. It was unfor-

tunate, yes, yet not something that’d change what Heather thought of

him.

The front door swung open, boots loud in the trailer. Emmie

thrust her pointer finger toward the door. “Y’all need to leave. There

ain’t anything here for you, but I can tell you that even if Heather was

here, she wouldn’t go back to that hel hole.”

Rook had to pull on my wrist to unfreeze my feet from the floor.

I shuffled toward the front room and glanced back to Milo, but

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he wouldn’t look my way. There was nothing more I’d learn about

Heather right then, but my questions mounted.

Outside, I didn’t want Rook to see my simmering frustration. I

rested my head against his chest and glowered at the closed door.

I wished Heather had told me about Milo instead of crushing her

spirit by hiding him. I didn’t understand her attraction, but I knew

about wanting someone, to hear his voice and have time where it

was only the two of you. Yes, I’d have done everything to keep her in

the Glen. Because I was selfish. Yet maybe if she’d told me what she

planned, I’d have understood.

“What’d you tell them?”

Emmie’s voice was muffled but audible. I pulled back from Rook

and slunk next to the trailer’s wal . A window was cracked to let in

fresh air.

“Not much,” Milo replied. “You happy?”

“You gotta watch yourself, watch what you say.”

Silence.

The smell of cigarette smoke wafted from the window. After a

moment, Milo said, “I ain’t tellin’ anybody, all right?”

I lingered under the window another minute or two to hear if

Milo and Emmie might have more to say, but from the echo of her

boots, I gathered she left him in the front room. I found Rook wait-

ing near the gate.

“Are you gonna talk to my pops about all this?” he asked. “I know

you don’t wanna get Heather in trouble, but something ain’t right.”

“I’ll tell him.”

But, as I walked away from the trailer, from Milo and drugs and

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his sister, I knew I wouldn’t talk to Sheriff until I found out what the

Entwhistles were hiding.

"

Instead of stopping by Papa’s clinic upon returning to the Glen, I had

Rook take me to Whimsy’s new pasture. Papa had moved her and

the other horses after Journey’s slaughter. He said the horses remem-

bered and would spook.

Sheriff had tracked down a new stal ion for Rook, but I’d not

seen him yet. As we drew near the pasture, Rook pointed out an

Andalusian grazing near Whimsy. Beautiful charcoal-gray tail

flicking flies from his white coat. Rook propped up his foot on the

horse fence. “His name’s Veil. He was a jumping horse for show,

but when he was injured, his life got real bad. Pops got him from a

good rescue.”

I smiled. “You ride him yet?”

“A couple of times, made sure he wouldn’t buck me off.”

The two horses loped around each other. I liked the rhythm of