The call ended before I could reply, but JoJo snickered at my expression. Before I could figure out how to respond, the office number rang and I answered, “PsyLED. Special Agent Ingram.”
“This is Sophee Anne Ragel, Stella Mae Ragel’s sister. I’d like to talk to someone who can tell me about the investigation into my sister’s murder.”
“Ms. Ragel,” I said. JoJo looked up and motioned me to put it on speaker. I did. “We’re just in the opening stages of the investigation. I know this must be very difficult.” JoJo gave me a thumbs-up to continue. “And I thank you for calling. Can you tell me if you have any new thoughts on your sister’s state of mind in the days leading up to her death?”
“I can’t think a nothing new. I can only think about the usual death threats. Are you people looking into them?”
JoJo nodded and mouthed,Me.
“Our very best investigator is looking into each and every one, Ms. Ragel. Was Stella Mae unusually worried or afraid of one of the threats?”
“It was always business as usual with Stella. If she was singling one out, she woulda told her security, not her family. She wouldn’t ever worry us.”
“Have you had any further thoughts about Stella seeing someone new romantically?” I asked, wondering if her family was really blind to Stella’s lifestyle, or if I would hear the truth now. “Has Stella recently broken up with someone? Fired someone from the band? Was she having financial problems?”
“I don’t know. No. And definitely not. Her band are family. This tour was a crazy good financial success, according to her manager.”
I glanced at JoJo, who rolled her hand in the air in akeep goinggesture. “Has anyone found her will?”
“Not that I know of. There’ve been three in the last few years. It’ll turn up. Or her lawyer will come forward with the latest.”
“Three? Why so many wills?”
“Stella was always adding people to her will. She’d make a few codicils or whatever you call ’em, and then her lawyer, Augustina Mattson, would tell her it was getting confusing and it was time to upgrade. This last time she created trusts and added gifts for a bunch a friends. But I haven’t seen it. None of us have. We been putting together funeral arrangements, and we ain’t had access to her house to look, thanks to the cops. You can check with Mattson.”
I asked, “What can you tell me about the poly marriage Stella was part of at the commune?”
Sophee pulled in a noisy breath and said, “That’s disgusting. We don’t talk about that. Ever.” She hung up.
“Sounds like you hit a nerve,” JoJo said.
I stared at the wedding photo, thinking about hidden emotions and anger and jealousy and multiple-partner marriages. Thinking about secrets, church-style.
***
I could have, probably should have, stayed longer at HQ, but I was exhausted. I left work early, and felt my usual intense joy at driving onto Soulwood land, passing a small open space between trees, about an acre of grassland at the bottom of the hill, close to the road. A deer was standing in the center of the grass, nibbling, ignoring me as I drove past. I knew, without understanding how I knew, that Mud and Esther were not at the house, which meant that tomorrow, someone from the church would have to drive Mud to school and Esther to wherever she wanted to go. I should have listened to the messages from my sisters, but consoled myself that they had survived the day at the church. My Honda pulled up the hill, a steady purr of sound. The car wasn’t an all-wheel drive, which meant it wasn’t as practical for winter driving as I might want, but the heated seats and the ability to lock my weapons in the trunk made up for not getting an SUV with better icy-road-handling for winter.
Just as I was about to turn into my drive, I spotted the trees. New trees. Trees growing where they shouldn’t. I slowed, coasted to a stop on the side of the road, and stared at the trees growing among the oaks and poplars and sweet gums on the far side of the boundary between the Vaughns’ farm and Soulwood. They were saplings with dark bark and very dark green leaves with redpetioles and red veins. Leaves that looked a lot like the kind I grew. There were long, thin thorns on the branches. What looked like vines reached from branches to the ground. The vampire tree had taken root just beyond the boundary of my property, hiding in plain sight among the existing trees on the Vaughn farm side. The tall straight trunks were directly across the street from my dogs’ gravesites, the dogs shot by the churchmen.
I stared at the graves and my eyes teared up, making the trees waver. “Stupid to grieve about the dogs now,” I whispered to myself.
The trees stood in a line, a hundred feet long, at least three trees deep. As if guarding the road to the house and, perhaps, the small graves. The tree had no fruit, no others of its kind to mate with, so until it figured out how to cross to itself, it propagated via runners, rootlets that pushed through the soil. The roots had to extend far onto my land and also back, the many,manyyards, beneath the top of the hill east of my land, to the original tree on church land.
Sneak attack. Dang tree.
I blinked the tears away, put the car in park, and walked across the dirt to the grass verge, the engine still idling. The afternoon temperatures didn’t prove it, but it was technically autumn and there were a few colorful leaves on the ground, mostly maple and poplar. My three acres needed to be mowed, but it took a while to cut that much grass, even using the new small tractor and large mower attachment I had bought recently.
I walked to the graves, still easy to pick out even now. The rocks I had placed over them were mixed river rock and broken hill-stones, iron brown and deep gray, some with sharp edges. I stood between the graves, regarding the trees. They— No.It. It was a fast-growing hardwood, once an oak, now a meat-eating monster, despite its claim to be the Green Knight. A squirrel was speared on one of the thorns and a vine was circling around it. I had never watched to see how the tree ate. I didn’t really want to know and, as if the tree knew that, it pulled the squirrel around back, out of sight.
I sank onto the ground and put my hands flat on the grass, wriggling my fingertips in through the roots into the soil. Good, rich Soulwood soil warmed me up through my hands and arms. It was like getting a hug from Mama, safe and protected.
I reached into the ground with my gift, deeper into the soil, bypassing the bones of my dogs, not encouraging the earth to digest them. I touched buried rocks and clayey soil and various layers from floods. Roots from all the nearby trees had encroached onto the land. Including the roots of the vampire tree.
They knew I was there, underground, with them. I let my eyes close and my shoulders slump. Conversation with the tree wasn’t easy. It didn’t have eyes or language as people understood it. However, it had absorbed mammals, probably even the man who had gone missing on the church land, a slime of blood the only trace. It had digested and taken in their sensory perceptions, perhaps even their memories. It had created for itself the human-shaped persona of the Green Knight to protect me and talk to me. Communication was possible, strangely image-based and concept-based. I envisioned the place where I sat, the house behind me, the grass beneath me, the trees in front of me.
I got back an image of a green horse, nibbling green grass.
I sent images of human shapes cutting down oak and pine and walnut and hickory trees, sawing them to make boards.
