The Stone of Sadness (An Olivia Miller Mystery Book 3)

Copyright 2014 J.A. Whiting

Cover copyright 2014 Humblenations.com

Formatting by
www.polgarusstudio.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved.

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June, 1973

The old beat up truck edged to the side of the road and pulled to a stop in front of a sandy haired young man who tossed his things in the back bed of the pick-up, opened the passenger side door and climbed in.

“I called in sick,” Dan said with a cheery smile.

“You don’t look sick,” Bobby replied. He turned the steering wheel to the left and pressed on the gas pedal.

“I don’t feel sick either,” Dan chuckled.

“You’ve only been out of school and working for four days,” Bobby said. “Is it a good idea to call in sick already? And, on a day like this? Would seem pretty obvious you aren’t sick.”

“You only live once,” Dan answered. The breeze from the open window tousled his hair. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand working every day. It’s worse than being in school.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Bobby said. “I’m glad to be making some money. I wouldn’t want to be back in school.”

“Well, the fish better bite in case I lose my job,” Dan said.

“You better have a good day off, fish or no fish,” Bobby said.

“The sun’s shining. We got cold ones in the cooler. It’s a good day already.”

The truck traveled past farms and fields as they followed the back roads to the Howland State Park. The old, tinny speakers blared Three Dog Night’s song
Shambala
and Bobby’s fingers tapped the steering wheel in time to the beat. Dan sang along, his voice high, loud, and pitchy.

“Ugh.” Bobby groaned at the singing and took one hand off the wheel to cover his right ear in mock disgust. Dan sang louder.

After another mile, Bobby slowed his vehicle and turned onto the dirt lane that led to the clearing in the woods. From there, they would walk the trail down to the lake. The truck bumped along as the wheels dipped and rose over the ruts. A branch swished against the side of the truck. After a few more yards, Bobby pulled over as far as he could to get the truck off the narrow back road. There would be barely enough room to turn the pick-up around when it was time to leave.

“Jeez, how am I going to get out? I’m rammed right up against the trees,” Dan protested.

“Climb out my way,” Bobby told him.

Bobby took the cooler and Dan pulled the fishing gear out of the back. They walked along the wooded dirt road towards the field and the trails to the lake. The air was still, and the early morning sun was blazing in the hazy June sky.

“I hope you brought some bug spray.” Dan swatted at mosquitoes.

“Just gonna have to suffer.”

The clearing was up ahead. The two young men saw a dark blue Ford parked in the tall grass. The sun glinting off the hot metal was blinding.

“Looks like we’ll have company at the lake,” Bobby said. “Why’d they park in the middle of the field?”

The young men stepped through the long grass towards the car. The left rear door was open.

“They left the door open,” Bobby noted. “Battery’ll be dead.”

“I’ll shut it.” Dan headed over to the car but when he got close he stopped short. He stood frozen, his eyes wide, staring at the ground next to the Ford.

“No.” His voice quivered. He took a clumsy step back. “No.” Dan’s strained voice was just above a whisper. “Bobby, get over here.”

The sound of Dan’s voice made the hair on Bobby’s arms stand up. “What’s the matter with you?” He came up on Dan’s left side and saw what was lying beside the car.

“Christ.” He dropped the cooler. His stomach felt like it was filled with ice water. He turned around and vomited into the grass.

A young woman was on the ground, lying face up, her head partially under the left side of the car. Her eyes were open but she didn’t see anything. The blood that had soaked her yellow shirt and white shorts was dry now. The throat was slashed, the wound parted wide. Blood covered the pale skin and had run down both sides of her neck onto the grass.

“What the hell?” Bobby wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sweat was beading on his forehead. He shot a quick glance at Dan, averting his gaze from what was on the ground. His eyes were wild as they swept around the clearing. “Who’d do this? Who’d do this?” He choked on his words. His chest heaved up and down. He shuffled his feet two steps backwards. “We gotta get out of here. We gotta report this.”

“Hold on. Wait.” Dan stepped around the woman to peer into the car.

“What are you doing? Come on, Dan. Don’t touch nothing.” Bobby wouldn’t look at the blue car. He took two more steps away from the scene and wheeled around.

“There’s a kid. A little girl. In the front seat.”

Bobby kept his eyes focused in the direction of his truck. “A girl? She okay?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Dan whispered.

“What? What now?”

“Man,” Dan muttered.

“What is it?” Bobby asked but he didn’t want to know.

“She’s dead. Throat’s slit.”

“Oh, God.” Bobby lurched away. He was shaking. His head buzzed. “A kid? What the hell? We gotta get out of here. Dan, come on.” Bobby took off through the field. He wasn’t waiting to see if Dan was following.

Dan’s legs wouldn’t move. He was stuck in the spot, staring through watery eyes at the little girl sprawled in the front seat. She was half leaning against the passenger side door of the car, her skin white, so white, the ends of her long blonde hair crusted with blood. Her eyes were open. Flies buzzed around her.

Dan’s lower lip trembled. “Damn bugs,” he whispered. His blood had drained out of his head. He swallowed some air. His breath was coming in gasps. A tear escaped from his eye and rolled down his cheek.

“Come on!” Bobby yelled to him from across the field.

Dan shook himself, backed away, and ran after Bobby to the truck.

A kid
,
a kid.

June – Forty years later

Olivia sat cross-legged on the living room floor of the two hundred year old Colonial house going through stacks of old newspapers. She had promised her cousin John that she would help clean out the attic while she was staying at his house. Now that she saw all the stuff crammed up there, she was sorry she said she would do it.

John groaned as he lugged his suitcase down the stairs and let it thud against the front door.

“You travel light, huh, John?” Olivia said, her eyes on the papers.

John waved his hand in the air. “I’m always afraid I don’t have enough clothes with me,” he said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. “This humidity kills me. It seems like the weather gets hotter and more humid every year.”

He plopped in the big, soft easy chair across from Olivia. A chocolate Lab roused itself from a nap and tried to climb into the chair with John. Her long, pink tongue rolled over John’s face and he put his two hands against her chest to push her away.

“Lily. Jeez. No.”

“You said you were hot. She’s trying to cool you off,” Olivia said without looking up. She pulled the elastic from her wrist and used it to put her hair up into a high ponytail. The fan on the coffee table wasn’t doing much but blowing the hot air around.

“Liv, there are two portable air conditioning units in the basement. If this heat keeps up, you might want to bring them up. They’re easy to install. I should have done it but I didn’t know a heat wave was settling in.”

“Okay. I might use them if the heat doesn’t break soon.” Olivia was reading the headline of the old newspaper from June 1973 reporting a double murder. On the front page was a picture of a dark haired young woman and beside it, a picture of a blonde girl about four years old.

“Why did your dad keep these?” Olivia asked.

“Oh, you know how my dad was. He loved old newspapers.” John looked down to see what Olivia was reading.

“That’s Mary and her daughter Kimmy. They were murdered here in town, about forty years ago.”

Olivia grimaced.

“They were our cousins,” John added.

Olivia looked up. “What?”

“Yeah, second cousins or something. The killer was never caught.”

“I never heard about this,” Olivia said.

“Everybody sort of forgot about it, I guess. It was long before we were born, Liv.”

“Our cousins?” Olivia bent over to read the article more closely. She pushed a stray lock of her brown hair behind her ear. “What happened?”

“Distant cousins. They were stabbed. They both had their throats slit. Two young guys found the bodies. Over in the state park.”

Olivia looked up, her blue eyes wide. “A little girl? Who could do that to a child?” she asked. “A little girl and her mother?” She tilted closer to the paper on the floor to read more details.

“It’s gruesome,” John said, still leaning back in the easy chair.

“What happened? Who did it? Why?” Olivia asked.

“Nothing happened. No arrest.”

“Why, not? The case just got dropped?”

“I suppose. They probably couldn’t figure it out.”

“But,” Olivia said. “How could it just get dropped? What about the family? Didn’t townspeople push for answers? Couldn’t the police find the killer?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. Not enough evidence maybe. People want to move on from painful things.”

Olivia looked across the room. Her eyes didn’t focus on anything; she just gazed off into space.
Painful things
. Olivia knew plenty about painful things. The aunt who raised her had been murdered just over a year ago. Olivia had spent the past year as a first year law student, throwing herself into the work to keep from thinking about painful things. She thought she had coped with the violence that ripped her aunt from her life, but recently she wasn’t so sure. Nightmares had begun plaguing her, she felt fatigued for no reason, and sometimes headaches hammered her head so hard that all she could do was go to sleep.

“But,” Olivia said, “the killer is just walking around? For all of these years? Just living his life?”

“There was an article in the paper a few years back about unsolved cases in Massachusetts,” John said. “Mary and Kimmy were one of the cases discussed. The District Attorney talked about doing DNA testing on some evidence that had been collected back then from the crime scene. But I never heard what came of it. Never saw anything about it in the news.”

Olivia stared at the pictures of her distant cousins looking back at her from the first page of the old newspaper. Her heart contracted.

“Who could do that to a little girl? Was the girl killed in front of her mother?”

“I don’t remember.” John checked his watch. “Liv, thanks for staying here while I’m gone. I appreciate it. The contractors are supposed to show up tomorrow to start on the sunroom. It’s bad timing with the office asking me to go away at the last minute. But it couldn’t be helped. I have to make this trip. And I just couldn’t put Lily in a kennel for two or three weeks.” John ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I don’t have a firm return date.”

“It’s no problem at all. I can stay for three full weeks if you need me to,” Olivia said. “I’ll keep an eye on the sunroom renovation. Joe has taught me a thing or two.”

Joe lived in the house next door to Olivia and her aunt Aggie for over twenty years. He had been Aggie’s best friend and was like a dad to Olivia. Joe owned a restoration and construction business specializing in antique homes.

“Lily and I are buddies,” Olivia continued. “We’ll keep each other company. It will be a nice relaxing few weeks.”

Lily was stretched out on the rug next to Olivia and she lifted her head at hearing her name. Olivia reached over and scratched the dog behind her ears. Lily flopped over on her side and nudged her neck closer to Olivia’s fingers.

In May, after completing her first year of law school, Olivia went to the Netherlands for a three week internship. She had just returned to Massachusetts and was feeling worn out. It would do her good to have some time off before she started a summer course at the beginning of July.

The doorbell rang and John rose to open the front door for his co-worker.

“Hey,” Dave said. “I’m a few minutes late, but we have plenty of time to make it to the airport. How’re you doing, Liv?”