For once, Dodie didn’t argue. Instead, she said, “Where do we start?”
I knew the answer now. “We have to go back,” I said. “To the beginning.”
10
Violet
I took a booth at the Pop-Top Diner, ordered a coffee, and spread out my newspaper. Time to catch up with the news of Fell while I waited for Detective Pine.
A quick perusal showed a town that looked unremarkable on the surface. A public hearing had been held on a proposed zoning change on East Avenue, which would allow a disused church to be torn down and repurposed for apartments—the dullest news story imaginable. Only at the bottom of the short article did it mention that the church had a haunted ceiling beam, from which two priests had hanged themselves eighty years apart, and if the beam came down, no one was quite sure how to dispose of it.
Fell was a creepy little town.
On page three of the paper, a small group of students from the Fell College of Classical Education—a tiny, privately owned school that taught many a useless subject—had protested on campus two days ago. However, as all their protest signs were in Latin, no one was sure what they were objecting to. When asked by the paper’s reporter, a protester said that the poltergeist in the library—whichthrew books from the shelves and knocked over students’ chairs—was keeping them from studying, affecting their grades. The school, they said, refused to hire an exorcist, and they had had enough.
I flipped the page. There had been a smattering of arrests at the Sun Down Motel, the dive motel I’d driven past on Number Six Road on my way into town. The Sun Down was apparently a hot spot for drug dealers and prostitutes, and the police had broken up a drunken party the night before. “No one was hurt,” local cop Alma Trent was quoted as saying, “except for one person who fell into the empty pool. He’ll be fine. And we think the ice machine was damaged.”
At the bottom of the page, tucked into the corner, was a snapshot of a pretty young woman holding a toddler and smiling for the camera.Nine years later, still no leads in Caldwell murder,the headline said. A young wife and mother named Cathy Caldwell had been found stripped and murdered under the South Overpass in 1980, and her killer had never been found.
I was still looking at Cathy Caldwell’s face—something about it was so terribly sad—when a shadow fell over the paper.
I looked up. The man who had taken the seat across from me was in his early sixties. The top of his head was a shiny bald pate, and a bushy beard—wiry white mixed with the last few remnants of brown—covered the bottom of his face. Two bloodshot brown eyes stared at me with the power of laser beams, as if seeing through my skull. He wore an old flannel shirt, and his hands, folded over my newspaper on the table, were knotted and thin, like rope that would never fray.
“It’s really you,” he said without preamble. “The Esmie girl.”
I blinked at him. “Yes, it’s me.”
“The oldest one, or the youngest?”
Dodie and I both had dark hair, so I could see why he wasn’t sure. “The oldest,” I replied. “My name is Violet. You’re Detective Pine?”
The man snorted. “Not Detective anymore. I’m just Gus now. And I remember all of your names.”
The waitress came by—she and Gus were on a first-name basis—and while Gus ordered lunch, I refolded the newspaper. When she asked me what I wanted, I was going to refuse, but then I remembered the sparsely stocked kitchen at the house. I ordered scrambled eggs and toast.
The waitress left, and I looked at Gus’s face, trying to remember if I’d seen it that day. He’d have been somewhere in his forties then, and he’d probably looked different, but I’d remember those eyes, wouldn’t I?
Oddly, what came into my mind about the police that day was feet. Lots of heavy boots, some of them crusted with snow from the searches outside. One man’s shiny wing tips. I realized with a start that I must have kept my gaze down, staring at the floor. I hadn’t looked into any of the men’s faces—that’s why I couldn’t remember one.
“So,” Gus said, ignoring my rude scrutiny. Apparently, neither of us was going to mention the fact that he was meeting me about an old case when he wasn’t a detective anymore instead of sending someone still employed by the Fell PD. “You have information for me on your brother’s case.”
His gaze told me he didn’t believe a word of it. He probably terrified people with those laser eyes, but those people weren’t me. When you see the dead on a regular basis, people who are alive stop intimidating you.
He was right to distrust me, though, considering I was lying. “I’m willing to trade information,” I hedged.
“Uh-huh.” He was still skeptical. “Tell me why you’re back in town after all this time while I eat. I’m hungry. You’re paying.”
I didn’t argue. I waited while the waitress put our plates in front of us. Then I said, “Why we’re back in town is none of your business.”
“We?” Gus popped a french fry into his mouth. “So it’s all three of you, then. Just the kids, because your parents are dead.”
I picked up my fork, annoyed at myself. That had been a stupid slip. “How do you know my parents are dead?” Neither of them had died in Fell.
“Word gets around in this place.” Gus took a bite of his club sandwich. “Keep talking.”
I shrugged, poking at my eggs and deciding how much to tell him. “Okay, yes, we’re back. We’re going to solve our brother’s case.” I glared at him. “Since you couldn’t do it.”
The shot glanced off him with barely aping.“Why now?” he asked.
