Signs in the Blood (32 page)

CHAPTER 27

W
ORLD
W
ITHOUT
E
ND
 (
T
HURSDAY AND
F
RIDAY)

W
HEN THE JOYFUL CONVERSATION ENDED,
Elizabeth turned to Hawkins, grinning like a madwoman. “That was Miss Birdie's cousin calling to say that Miss Birdie's been cured of her cancer by prayer.”

Hawkins's brow creased, but before he could speak, Elizabeth raised her hand. “And the doctor's blood tests confirm it, though
he
calls it spontaneous remission.”

A door banged in the house and they heard the sound of hurrying footsteps. Ben burst onto the porch. “Aunt E! Aunt E, I think I've dug into a grave!”

They followed him to the site of his new outhouse, about fifty feet up the hill behind his cabin. There was a little flat-topped knoll and the beginning of an excavation. “I'd gotten down about three feet and all of a sudden I hit like a layer of rocks,” he explained. “That was weird because there hadn't been but a few rocks till then. So I heaved them out and started digging again and I hit this.” He pointed at the heap of red dirt piled around the excavation. Amidst the stones and clods was what looked like a dirt-stained bundle of rags. At one end of the bundle, the rags had fallen away to reveal a small, stained skull and the glitter of blue glass.

Elizabeth reached out to the bundle but Hawkins caught her arm. “We can't touch this. I'll call Blaine.”

“Phillip,” Elizabeth said, “these bones are really old—”

“Doesn't matter,” said Hawkins. “The sheriff'll come out, cordon off the site, treat it like any crime scene. They'll collect the bones and try to find out who it was—”

“I think I know who it was,” Elizabeth said somberly, kneeling beside the little bundle. She peered closely at the rags which, beneath the dirt stains, seemed to show faint triangles of blue and white. “It's a little quilt—the pattern called World Without End,” she said softly.

Sheriff Blaine had been grimly humorous about this latest call. “What, Ms. Goodweather, another one?” His men had indeed cordoned off the area with yellow tape and, as they searched the excavation, they had quickly uncovered two more rag-clad skeletons, as well as a corroded shotgun. Ben had watched, fascinated, from the cabin steps, envious that Phillip was allowed a role in the investigation. Elizabeth sat beside him, a feeling of melancholy growing as the excavation proceeded.
Now I know how Sylvie's story ended. The baby died. And . . .

“Man and woman, by the looks of what clothes are left,” Blaine reported as the three black body bags were carried gently down the hill to the sheriff's waiting vehicle. “You might be interested to know this: I took a close look at all of them and both the adults have buckshot pellets buried in their sternums. If those two didn't die from point-blank blasts from that shotgun, I'll turn in my badge. Of course, the ME'll have to confirm it.”

He looked closely at Elizabeth. “I know you haven't lived here but twenty-something years and these remains are likely a lot older than that. But do you have any thoughts, any
intuitions,
about who it was buried back there?”

“I think that I do,” said Elizabeth. “There's a story about a girl named Little Sylvie who used to live in this cabin—”

Blaine shook his head in disbelief. “I might as well show you this,” he said, laying a clear plastic evidence bag on the steps. “This was in a bottle wrapped up with the baby. Ben here must have broke the bottle when he dug into it.”

Through the plastic, they could see a yellowed piece of paper, crossed with faint blue and red lines. The faded writing was uneven but clear, and Elizabeth read it aloud.

This is my baby Malindy Johnson——Mister Tomlin kilt her with the Medcin in this bottle and I aim to make him Pay——Wrote by Sylvie Baker.

“So that's who the baby is. And the others are Little Sylvie . . . and . . . ?”

“Another thing.” The sheriff pulled out two more evidence bags. “These were around the necks of the adults.” In the bags were two dirt-encrusted gold chains. From each dangled a tiny golden heart.

Elizabeth put a finger against the plastic, feeling the outline of the heart. “The man is Levy Johnson,” she said. “They didn't make it to Texas.”

Back at her house Elizabeth made a quick phone call to the library, then fixed a fresh pot of coffee. She and Phillip and Ben sat on the porch and she told them the story of Little Sylvie as she had heard it from Birdie and Dorothy and from Walter. “It began with Dessie, though,” she explained. “Dessie said there was something not right about the story that Little Sylvie had abandoned her baby. The day she died, Dessie told me she had dreamed of Little Sylvie lying dead with her baby in her arms. And that was true.”

“Well, then, who killed them?” demanded Ben.

“Probably the husband,” said Phillip. “Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

The portable phone Elizabeth had set on the railing rang and Elizabeth said, “I may in a minute.” She answered the phone and listened intently for a few moments. “Thank you so much, Barb,” she said. “I really appreciate it.” She turned to the two listening men.

“Sylvie's husband, an Isaiah Tomlin, drowned in the great flood of 1916. Dorothy or Birdie had said that they thought that's what happened, so I asked a friend at the library to check on it. Tomlin was a wealthy and important man in the community and I felt sure there'd be a newspaper story about it.”

“And since he was a wealthy and important man,” mused Ben, “he could get away with murder. I guess everyone just took his word for it when he said that Little Sylvie had run off.”

“Phillip,” asked Elizabeth. “What will they do with the bones?”

“Well, once they're satisfied they've identified them, they'll release them to the families—if there still is family.”

“Walter Johnson is Levy's nephew and Dorothy has some kind of connection to Sylvie,” said Elizabeth, thinking hard. “Maybe I can get the families to agree and we can bury them all three together in the old Baker cemetery up on the hill near the road.” Her eyes were misty as she added, “I want to make sure everyone knows the real story . . . all these years they've thought she was a heartless woman who left her baby to starve . . . now we know what really happened. And I want to plant flowers on their grave. There's a mass of orange daylilies and some ancient pink shrub roses over at Ben's cabin . . . maybe it was Sylvie herself who planted them. I'll transplant some of them for Little Sylvie.”

She woke early the next morning just as the darkness in her room was fading. Her first thought was one of sheer joy
—Birdie's going to be all right! I don't have to lose her too!
The dog James was sleeping shoved tight against her knees. She disentangled herself and sat up to look out the three big windows just beyond the foot of her bed. Green security lights twinkled in the distance, and across the hidden river she could see the warm golden glow from a few houses with early-rising occupants. As she watched, more lights blinked on. She imagined families getting ready for the day, children, lunch boxes, coffee, sleepy greetings, hurried kisses.

She was still watching as the sky grew lighter and a narrow crimson line edged the mountaintops. The undersides of the scattered low-hanging clouds became tinged with pink, and suddenly the molten edge of the sun appeared over the tallest peak. As the day broke, filling the sky with glory and her room with sunshine, Elizabeth began to cry softly. Her tears were for Dessie, for Cletus, for Mary Cleophas and the child she had called Ishmael. And for Little Sylvie and her lover and their baby. And finally, at last, there were tears for Sam.

If you enjoyed Vicki Lane's debut mystery, SIGNS IN THE BLOOD, you won't want to miss her next crime novel featuring Elizabeth Goodweather and set in the hills and hollows of Appalachia.

Read on for an exciting early look at ART'S BLOOD, the second Elizabeth Goodweather mystery, coming soon from Dell.

ART'S
BLOOD

BY

VICKI LANE

A
RT
'
S
B
LOOD

Coming soon from Dell Books

PROLOGUE

F
ROM
L
ILY
G
ORDON'S JOURNAL
—F
IRST ENTRY

I still see the bed—its wide expanse floating like a snowy island on the deep pearly carpet—the creamy tufted silk coverlet neatly folded back—the heaped pillows, their pale lace soaked and stiff with her blood. Even the smells come back to me—Chanel No. 22, that sweet, spring-like fragrance she always wore—the scent of the white roses on the nightstand—and something else—a harsh, ugly,
insistent
smell—cloying and faintly metallic. And after all these years I still see her satin slippers beside the bed, placed neatly parallel to await a morning that never came—and the shadowy marks of her heels on the linings seem almost too much to bear.

On that day and until the day we buried her, he had seemed broken—weeping and bewildered, letting himself display a weakness none would have imagined. Was it genuine sorrow, I wonder now, or only a charade, as subsequent revelations would seem to suggest? And the child—so beautiful, so like her mother that it broke my heart to look at her—the child remained dry-eyed and quiet—already, I see now, beginning the long retreat that has transformed her into what she is today. And these are the scenes, the faces that haunt my nights.

It was at Dr. L's suggestion that I began this journal. Use it to record everything—doubts, fears, even confessions, he said. We all have our sins of omission as well as commission. If something troubles you, write it down. No one will ever read your journal; I want you to do it for yourself alone. Just write everything down and then let it go, he said. Burn the pages as soon as you finish them, if you like. I smiled grimly. A woman of my age had best keep the matches near to hand, I told him.

He patted my shoulder in that irritatingly patronizing manner of his and called me a wonder. With all you've weathered, he said, it's not surprising that you have bad dreams. He explained, as if to a child, that dreams are often caused by the mind's sifting through matters inadequately resolved in the waking hours—experiences, thoughts, emotions too unpleasant to be dealt with and so, repressed. Earlier, Dr. L had the effrontery to suggest that I see a psychiatrist, to work through some of these issues as he put it, but I dismissed that idea as preposterous. And so he proposed the journal.

If only you were a Roman Catholic, he chuckled. There's a lot to be said for a routine examination of conscience followed by confession and absolution. Clears the mind, so to speak. Many people blame themselves for trivialities when they've lost someone. They think If only I'd done this or hadn't done that . . . He helped me up and walked with me to the door where Buckley was waiting. Dr. L is a fool in many ways—there are things I would never speak of, even to a priest. But I think that he could be right in one thing. I believe that putting these memories down on paper, giving them a shape, however ephemeral (for I do intend to burn these pages), will help me to sleep.

So now I have my journal to keep me company through the interminable afternoons—the quiet, tedious times when the tick of the clock in the hall seems to slow and hang suspended like a dust mote in the fading light—the light that dims inexorably, all as if in rehearsal for the long night which soon must come. It's at these times that the past is most real, that the dead still live. And it is at these times that I see F as she was then, my mountain flower, my heart, my soul.

CHAPTER 1

D
ON
'
T
K
NOW
M
UCH
A
BOUT
A
RT,
B
UT . . .
 (
S
ATURDAY AND
M
ONDAY)

F
ROM HER VANTAGE POINT AT THE TOP OF THE STEPS
leading into the gallery, Elizabeth Goodweather regarded the pile of burnt match sticks with an expression that wavered between hilarity and disbelief. The heap of pale wooden slivers, some charred just slightly at one end, others little more than a fragile curl of carbon, sat in the exact middle of the room on a low pedestal covered with a sheet of thick red vinyl. The
assemblage
was about four feet in diameter and its peak was almost knee high. And it was growing.

The bare, bone-white walls of the gallery had been covered with a fine grid of narrow scarlet-lacquered shelves bearing red and blue boxes of kitchen matches in uniform stacks. As Elizabeth watched, one after another of the dinner-jacketed and evening-gowned throng of art patrons took boxes from the wall and began striking matches, extinguishing them, and adding them to the accumulation that was the focus of the evening's event.

Seemingly all of Asheville “society” had turned out to mark the late August opening of the Gordon Annex. The costly addition to the Asheville Museum of Art had been the gift of a single benefactor—Lily Gordon. This elegant little woman—
somewhere in her nineties,
whispered a woman to Elizabeth's left, had cut the crimson ribbon that stretched across the entrance to the annex and had said a few brief words in a voice that, though slightly cracked with age, was clear and carrying. Now she sat in a comfortable chair with the museum's director crouched on one side of her and the chairman of the board leaning down to catch her words.

She was wearing a simple but beautifully cut evening dress of black satin accented with white,
vintage Chanel,
Elizabeth's neighbor had informed a friend, and her arthritic fingers were covered with rings that glittered as she reached up to accept a glass of champagne from the chairman of the board. Behind her chair stood a tough looking, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit. His craggy face was expressionless and his eyes scanned the throng without stopping.
More like a secret service agent than an art lover,
Elizabeth thought.

Fascinated, she studied the little group, wondering what this very old woman made of the scene unfolding before her apparently amused gaze.
She's always been the museum's greatest patron,
someone behind her murmured,
absolutely millions of dollars. Her house is absolutely crammed with art—Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock—just to name a few. She and her husband began collecting just after World War II. Of course—

The voice moved away and Elizabeth smiled, wondering if she looked as out of place as she felt in this rarified crowd.

“You
are
coming in for the opening of the Gordon Annex at the Art Museum Saturday, aren't you?” Laurel, her younger daughter, had said on a visit out to the farm a few days earlier.

“Ah,” Elizabeth had hedged, “Saturday. . . . Well, I . . .”

“
Mum,
this is a really important show! And you
know
the artists—Kyra and Boz and Aidan. They're renting Dessie's house which makes them neighbors. So the least you can do . . .”

As an aspiring artist herself, Laurel was very much a part of the burgeoning art scene in Asheville and had done her best to develop Elizabeth's appreciation for the latest trends. Last year Laurel's passion had been outsider art; this year performance art was evidently the next new thing. While Laurel supported herself with a job tending bar at an upscale restaurant, she devoted most of her free time to constructing vast mixed media ‘pieces', as Elizabeth had learned to call them. Recently, however, Laurel had begun to speak wistfully about the ‘ephemeral beauty' of performance art and of the spiritual purity of a carefully choreographed presentation that would never be repeated.

Laurel had been relentless. “It's going to be something really special—the people attending the show will be part of the creation—” She had broken off, seeing Elizabeth's face, which unmistakably said
Oh, great.
“—if they choose to, I mean. And then Kyra and Boz and Aidan will be taking pictures during the piece and next month Carter Dixon's giving them another show at The Quer Y to display the photographs.
And
—” she had continued, with the air of someone producing a trump card, “there's going to be a really awesome twist to the whole thing that I can't tell you about now but it's going to generate some incredible publicity for those guys.”

Elizabeth had at last agreed to meet Laurel at the Saturday night opening. Kyra and Boz and Aidan
were
neighbors and one did for neighbors whenever possible.
Even if it means going to some ridiculous performance and dressing up—evening clothes, my god!
Elizabeth had fumed, rummaging in her closet for something to wear. At last she found an ankle-length black skirt in a heavy polished cotton, something she had worn to some long ago event, and a white silk shirt, a Christmas present from her sister two years ago, still in its gift box. A narrow jewel-toned scarf, long forgotten in the back of a drawer, would work as a cummerbund. Suddenly her mood had improved.
They're just kids, after all, and to have a show at the Art Museum is a big deal for Kyra and Boz and Aidan.

KyraandBozandAidan: one tended to think of them that way. Indeed, when they had first moved to the little house across the road from her farm, Elizabeth had assumed they were a
ménage a trois.
Laurel, however, had explained, with the careful patience of one speaking to the elderly and un-hip, that while at first Kyra and Aidan had been partners, when Boz had come on the scene they had briefly experimented with a three-way relationship; but eventually Kyra and Boz had excluded Aidan from the king-size futon that dominated the larger of the two bedrooms. However, no matter who slept with whom, the three still functioned artistically and domestically as a single entity and seemed to live in relative harmony.

After the death of her old neighbor Dessie, Elizabeth had been saddened to see the once neatly-kept yard growing up in weeds and had welcomed the news when one of Dessie's daughters called to say that the house was rented. “The said they was friends of Laurel and they seemed real nice, though they are awful hippies. They want to fix up the ol' barn fer a place to do their painting and such.”

And the three young people had settled into the rural mountain community with uncommon ease. Boz and Aidan had been quick to offer help with simple carpentry and plumbing repairs for some of their older neighbors and were said to be “right good hands to work”, while Kyra, whose nose ring and tattoos were the source of much head-shaking and tongue-clicking among the local women, had won hearts by joining in, friendly and competent, at a quilting bee held at the volunteer fire department. Elizabeth had taken her new neighbors some homemade bread and a basket of fresh herbs when they first moved in
was it February? Almost six months back.
But chores of the farm had kept her busy and beyond a quick chat on the few occasions she met one or another of the trio at the mailbox, Elizabeth had seen little of the three.

There had been the occasional encounter in Ransom, the nearby county seat, a somnolent country town which had only recently attained its second stoplight. She'd seen them recently in Wakeman's Hardware where she was purchasing hinges to repair a sagging door. They were clustered around a metal bin, evidently assessing the artistic potential of a mass of nails. Boz, at six five and in his customary red cowboy boots, towered over the other two. His frizzy brown mop of hair, wide crooked nose and acne-pitted face were unattractive, at best, but his deep confident voice and booming laugh seemed to mark him as the obvious leader of the trio.

Aidan was as handsome as Boz was ugly.
Beautiful rather than handsome,
Elizabeth had thought at the time. Slender, but well-muscled, Aidan stood not quite six feet tall with smooth tanned skin
except for that ugly burn scar on his arm,
and long blond hair that he usually wore in a sleek pony tail.

Kyra was tiny, barely reaching Aidan's shoulder. With her spiky hair dyed a jetty black, the nose ring, and the multiple tattoos, she was an incongruous sight amid the hardware and farm implements—yet in spite of all these affectations, Elizabeth had suddenly realized that Kyra was a very pretty young woman.

Elizabeth shook herself out of her reveries and tried to pay attention to the scene unfolding around her.
Strike on Box
—had been billed as “participatory performance art” and it was the first “piece” to be presented in the new modern wing of Asheville's art museum. Kyra and Boz and Aidan, billed simply as The 3—the name they signed to all their joint art works, were moving around the gallery, each armed with a digital camera. Kyra was flitting about the room with her camera, chatting easily with onlookers and encouraging their participation. Aidan's camera was focused on the growing pile of burnt matches and, as Elizabeth watched, Boz, snapping shot after shot, approached the chair where the old woman was sitting. He thrust the camera close to her unsmiling face and said something. An expression of distaste pulled down the old woman's thin lips but she did not reply. Instead she raised one hand slightly.

Instantly the blue-suited man came forward and motioned Boz to move away. Boz stared down in disbelief at the smaller man and laughed. The smaller man took a step forward and spoke briefly. After a moment's hesitation Boz shrugged his shoulders and moved on. The other man watched him go, then turned to the old woman whose displeased look had not wavered. She raised a finger and the man bent his head near to her mouth as she spoke a few words then resumed her aloof study of the evening's entertainment.