The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (42 page)

Beckett carried Shakti inside. He looked at Jess, then reached down to put the phone on speaker. “Hello?” Johnny’s voice had a hollowness to it, coming through the speaker, or maybe it just sounded that way because his father was dead. Beckett took it off speaker and put the phone to his ear. He carried it and Shakti into the kitchen. Jess heard him talking to Johnny, his voice audible, but the words indistinguishable. He came back into the living room as he hung up.

“We’re invited to the funeral, day after tomorrow,” he said.

Jess took her hands away from her face.

“You aren’t crying.”

“No. I don’t know what I am. I just couldn’t handle the news right then. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I thought we’d go to Hadley and tell John his name could finally be cleared.

Beckett glanced at the dog tag. “Yeah. I did, too.”

Jess wore a lavender wrap over her bare shoulders—a little color in honor of life. Beckett stood at her side in a gray suit, his hair pulled back into the knobby ponytail. He kept his hands linked behind his back and his eyes on the ground in front of his feet. Jess would have appreciated an arm around her waist or a hand on her elbow, but for some reason this funeral seemed difficult for him.

It was difficult for Jess, too, because it was the culmination of everything that had happened since she moved to Skoghall. And then there was Johnny. He had his daughter at one side and his cousin, Pam, at his other. They held hands, their draping arms connecting them like paper dolls. His daughter, Melanie, was a lanky fourteen year old in strappy three-inch heels, the sort Jess wouldn’t dare to walk in. She topped her black miniskirt with an off-the-shoulder, cropped shirt, pushing the boundaries of what was appropriate. Freckles covered the exposed shoulder, as though someone had taken a wide brush and swept amber blush across her skin. Her light blonde hair, not quite the towhead of her father, was held back on one side with a barrette sporting a large, orange-red silk poppy.

Pam belonged to a Catholic church and had been put in charge of finding the priest to officiate. Father Mike’s face sagged around its perimeter; the most prominent feature, eyebrows that looked wiry enough to scrub pots. From the looks of things, all the hair he had left was in those eyebrows. A panama hat dressed with a black band kept the sun off his head, and his robes sloped over the swell of a hearty beer-and-brat gut. Father Mike was known to love church socials and knocking back a few with friends whenever Brewers or Packers were playing. Before his knees got too bad to run, he was a legend of the Interfaith Intramural Baseball League of La Crosse, the IIBLL. Someone with a sense of humor printed an eye surrounded by heavenly rays on their t-shirts, and they became known as The Eyeballs. Within the league, jokes and puns about the eye of God were constant.

“John Harold Sykes was a wretched soul, suffering forty years for a crime he did not commit, denied access to his only son, accused of a heinous offense against his wife, whom he loved most dearly. Even as we feel regret and sorrow for his life’s affliction, let us now feel relief and gratitude for his passing into the hands of the Lord God.

“Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord hear my voice. Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.”

Jess looked at Johnny and his family, at what they had been reduced to. Johnny freed one of his hands to wipe tears from his face, then returned it to the comfort of another.

“But there is forgiveness with Thee,” Father Mike continued, “My soul waiteth on His word: my soul hopeth in the Lord.”

When the priest finished, Johnny stepped forward to the head of the open grave. “I was deprived the opportunity to know my father. I am sure…” he clenched his jaw in an expression that denied the words he spoke, “…my grandfather did what he did with the best of intentions, but as a result, this man, John Sykes, spent forty years unable to see his only child. And I spent forty years believing my father was a dead man.

“I am grateful I got to know him, however briefly, before he died. My father loved my mother and he loved me. He was an innocent man.” Johnny’s face clenched again and he blinked back tears. He made a choking sound as he drew in a quick breath. Father Mike put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and patted. Johnny nodded and stepped back around the grave, resuming his place between Melanie and Pam.

After each of the family members tossed a handful of dirt onto the coffin, Jess and Beckett took their turns. John was being buried beside his wife. Her headstone read, “Bonnie Ecklund. Beloved daughter and mother.”

A waitress delivered plates of pancakes and hash browns, topped off their coffee cups, and then left them alone, correctly gauging the black formal clothing and somber mood as immune to cheerful, tip-garnering banter. Beckett sat beside Jess, kneading a sugar packet until the paper wore thin and ruptured, spilling a pile of white crystals onto the tabletop. Johnny and Melanie sat on the other side of the red vinyl booth. Pam had gone to work after the funeral and wasn’t with them.

“I’m getting a new headstone,” Johnny said. “One for both of them. It’ll say, ‘Beloved
wife
, mother, and daughter’ on my mom’s side.”

“That’s good,” Jess responded. “I know she’ll like that.”

“She’ll?” Melanie said, sitting forward and leaning her elbows against the tabletop. Her dark lipstick matched the silk poppy in her hair. “You said
she’ll
. Don’t you mean
would
have
?”

“Mellie.” Johnny said.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.

“Mellie,” he repeated more forcefully.

“I know when you’re hiding something. I’ve developed a good bullshit radar, you know, what with you and Mom hacking out the divorce. I’m not a baby. I…”

“Your grandmother’s a ghost.” Beckett blurted it across the table.

Jess stared at him, her mouth open.

“Dad?” Melanie drew out the
aa
sound, emphasizing the disbelief contained in the question mark that followed.

Johnny sighed and pulled off his glasses to rub at the space between his eyebrows. “Anyone got some aspirin or something?” Jess dug in her purse and handed a tin pill box across the table. Johnny thanked her and nodded in his daughter’s direction. “Go ahead.”

Jess glanced at Beckett. He was breaking a pancake apart with his fork, creating puzzle pieces of the plate-sized flapjack. She faced Melanie to find the teenager staring at her, leaning over her plate, penciled eyebrows arched in impatience. Jess told her story, leaving out a great deal, but providing enough detail to excite Melanie. Something of the girl came through when she bounced on the bench before asking if Jess could talk to Bonnie and if Bonnie knew about her. Jess hesitated before saying, “Of course she knows about you. She’s kept an eye on her family.”

“What about your face? Did my grandmother do that to you?” Melanie pointed at Jess’s cheek.

“Melanie,” Johnny growled.

Jess fingered the pink ridge of scar under her right eye. She forgot it was there if she wasn’t looking in a mirror. And already there were times when she barely saw the scar, as though it had been there her whole life.
Is it that obvious?
she thought and suddenly wanted a mirror.

“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “She’s tactless. Like her mother.”

Melanie clicked her tongue and glowered into her coffee cup.

“Do you know who killed my mother?” Johnny asked Jess, his eyes serious and pained. Maybe it was only the headache making him squint, maybe it was more than that. His gaze shifted to Beckett, then back to Jess. “I hired a lawyer. She’s getting in touch with the sheriff’s department to track this evidence you turned in. She’s going to help me posthumously exonerate my father.”

“Posthumously exonerate?” Melanie repeated.

“After his death. Clear his name,” Johnny said.

“Oh.”

“I’d rather hear it from you than my attorney, if you don’t mind,” Johnny continued.

Beckett shifted on the bench beside Jess. She wondered if he was going to leave, but he only pulled the band off his ponytail and let his hair swing forward. Her food, still untouched, lost all of its appeal. She took a sip of water to wet her mouth. “Johnny, I don’t…”

“Just spit it out.”

“Carl Copeland.” There. Like a Band-Aid. Jess chewed on her lower lip, watching Johnny’s face turn red, waiting for him to explode.

“Holy shit!” Melanie exclaimed. “Dad. The guy you thought was your father actually killed your mother.”

“That…um…that’s not what I expected to hear.” Johnny picked up his coffee cup and took a drink. He made a face like it was also not what he expected and set his cup down, then pushed it away from himself.

Melanie took up her own cup, which was full after being topped off, and tipped some of its contents into Johnny’s mug. She grabbed for the bowl of creamers and began dumping one capsule of white liquid after another into her coffee. She did the same with the sugar packets. Jess watched her, a little horrified at the way she was destroying the coffee.
But then
, she thought,
this is diner coffee
, and reached for a sugar packet herself. Melanie resumed talking while she stirred her concoction. “So, like, Dad, what does this mean? How did he do it? Do we know that for sure? Is he still around? Can we send him to jail now? Do I have to call your father grandpa when we talk about him?”

“Melanie!”

She shut up, and her hands dropped to her lap before muttering a quiet, “Geesh.”

“I’ve heard all I need to for now. Let’s just eat.”

They each picked up their forks and began their meals. Jess’s pancake was already cold and flavorless. She switched to the potatoes; they at least had ample salt to dress an otherwise bland starchiness. She considered how normally after a funeral, the bereaved would share memories of the departed, but they had barely known John Sykes. The four of them ate, not even trying at conversation. Jess watched Beckett’s jaw move while he chewed a bite of pancake, noting the way his skin had already tanned since she met him. Somehow he was finding time to get on his bike and get outdoors. She hoped, with John and Bonnie Sykes at peace, she’d be able to join Beckett on some of his rides.

They stepped out into the bright sun, and Jess pulled her sunglasses off the top of her head and put them over her eyes. Johnny took her elbow and pulled her aside. They stood near some over-pruned shrubbery under the diner’s red neon sign in the big plate window: Best Pan_akes Sausage Cof_ee. Jess slipped her wrap off and folded it into a square.

“I know it’s all too soon,” he said. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents’ memory or anything.”

“I get it,” Jess said. “Go ahead.”

“I feel like I need to write a book. A memoir, I guess. About what it was like being raised with this belief and this mystery. I mean, I believed what I was told, but not deep down. I think I always knew someday it would fall apart. And all this…it’s remarkable.” He pulled his glasses off his face and looked over at his daughter. She was animatedly talking to Beckett about something. “I’m not trying to profit off my misfortune. I just feel like I need to tell my story.”

Jess nodded, encouraging him.

“I’d like you to co-author it with me. I think I could tell my story, and you could tell yours. About the haunting stuff. And you could maybe make sure my part’s not dry and academic sounding.” He smiled at her, an exhausted gesture of acceptance and maybe hope.

Jess nodded again. “I would love to.”

“Good.” He looked out at the cars waiting at the traffic light in front of the diner. “It’s all so mundane. This diner. This road out here. I just buried my father, then ate pancakes.”

“I know.” Jess put her hand on Johnny’s arm, touching him for the first time. He placed his free hand over hers and met her gaze.

“Thank you, Jess.”

Chapter Thirty

Jess drove and Beckett stared out the window, his head held in his hand, elbow on the door frame. She streamed a Coldplay album, figuring if they weren’t going to talk, she would at least have some driving music. After an hour of not talking, however, she’d had enough.