The man walked out, a hefty stack of newspapers clutched to his chest.
Nate was not a conventionally handsome guy; his face was long, his hair longer and pulled into a ponytail draped over one shoulder. A carefully trimmed goatee covered the lower half of his face, surrounding large lips. Golden eyes gazed from beneath bushy eyebrows. He smiled a genuine, kind smile that travelled to his eyes. He looked nothing like the clean-cut guy in the prom photo, but Bette recognized him just the same.
“Welcome to the Rebel Music Store, young lady. How can I assist you?”
He plopped the newspaper copies on the desk, and she saw they were not local but called The Upper Underground.
“All your anti-establishment news north of the Mackinac Bridge,” he told her, tapping the paper.
“Are you the sheriff’s son?” she asked, suddenly wondering if he was not Nathan Montgomery after all.
The man showed the dazzling smile a second time and nodded.
“That’s not a greeting I hear much these days. But yes, you’ve found the sheriff’s son. One of three, I might add. I’m Nathan, Nate if you buy me a beer.”
Bette smiled and shook his outstretched hand.
“I’m Bette and actually I’m on my way out of town, but—”
“It was a joke, no beer necessary to call me Nate.”
Bette nodded and thought again of Nate’s editorial. Nearly twenty years had passed since the death of his friend, Matt. He probably wouldn’t be smiling much when she mentioned his name.
“Nate, I’m actually wondering if you’d be willing to talk to me about Matt Kelly.”
Nate’s smile faltered and then, as she suspected it would, dissolved.
“Are you a reporter, Bette?”
She shook her head. “I’m a research assistant for an anthropology professor. My sister disappeared a week and a half ago and I’ve been…” She searched for the explanation that took her from Crystal’s disappearance to the murder of this stranger’s friend nearly two decades before. “I’ve been following every possible clue.”
“And somehow you’ve ended up in the Rebel Music Store asking about Matt Kelly,” Nate murmured in wonderment. “Man, I haven’t had a conversation about Matt in months.”
“Months?” she asked, surprised. She would have suspected years.
“Yeah. I feel guilty right now, realizing it’s been so long. I try to bring him up at every opportunity, but the summer around here gets crazy, and I’ve neglected my responsibilities to my friend.” He sighed. “Let’s sit over there. That’s my gathering space. I’ve told Matt’s story a hundred times or more from that armchair.”
Bette followed him to a circle of well loved couches and chairs that surrounded a coffee table fashioned from a worn leather suitcase on wooden legs. Magazines lay strewn across the surface.
“Who have you told his story to?” Bette asked, settling into a cracked red leather chair.
“Anyone who will listen. Tourists, bands who visit the store, newspaper reporters, psychics. I’ve had two of those come in.”
“Psychics. Really?”
He laughed. “Well, that’s the question isn’t it? They didn’t tell me who killed Matt, but I’m a believer. I’m more of a prove-it’s-not-real kind of guy. Our government likes to keep everything in a tidy little cafe while in the kitchen they’re testing biological weapons and dropping atom bombs. I’ll trust the psychics over the news most days.”
Bette sighed.
She didn’t believe in psychics. And though she didn’t explicitly trust the government, she’d never had much patience for conspiracy theories.
“Did they say anything of value?” she asked.
Nate nodded. “The second one did. The first woman was writing a book. She wanted to break open a case for publicity, but she couldn’t tell me a thing about Matt. She was either full of shit or really off her game that weekend. The second woman came in out of the blue. She didn’t do readings for a living or anything like that. She’d stopped into Blackbird Coffee. It’s a little place with coffee and scones in a shopping center where Bishop Park used to be. She was sitting at a table and saw a vision of Matt in that same spot, bleeding to death.”
Bette balled her hands in her lap, listening dubiously.
“She asked the owner of the coffee shop if someone had been murdered there. Pretty weird question, right? Anyway, the woman told her about Matt and the park that used to be there. Then she mentioned me. So the psychic walked into town and showed up here. She told me Matt knew his killer, and she had a strong sense that the murderer was a woman. She couldn’t give me any more details than that. It wasn’t groundbreaking news. I’ve known all along who murdered Matt. But it was a pretty amazing insight, considering she’d never heard of Matt and was just here for the weekend photographing the lakeshore.”
“You believe Greta Claude killed Matt?”
Nate nodded. “Yeah. Greta Claude. And I’m not afraid to say it either. No journalist has ever printed it because she came into some serious money back in the day, but she murdered him. I’d bet my life on it. So, tell me, Miss Bette, how is your sister connected to Matt Kelly?”
Bette sighed and leaned her head back on the sofa.
“My sister was having an affair with Greta Claude’s husband.”
45
Then
“Why I am still alive?” Crystal mumbled.
She’d woken to find Greta sitting on the bed beside her, brushing her long hair. It flowed over the pillow in a plume of red. Her hands were still zip-tied in front of her, her ankles secured to the bed frame.
“That sounds like an existential question,” Greta said, continuing to slide the brush through the strands.
Near the door, a stiff-looking gray dress hung.
The fever had passed, but Crystal’s arms and legs still felt heavy and weak.
“Why haven’t you killed me?” Crystal asked.
“I grew up in this house,” Greta said ignoring the question. “People thought my father worked for the asylum, but he worked for the monster in the woods.” She chuckled. “That’s what we called it when we were little, my sister and I, the monster in the woods. The insatiable monster who fed on blood and fear and suffering.”
Greta stood and walked to the wall, running a hand over the fading wallpaper.
“Only when I got older did I realize the monster was the land itself.”
“What happened if you didn’t feed it?” Crystal asked.
“Bad things. Our people died, my mother, my sister. My father went insane. You learned not to test its power, not to question its reach.”
“Those things happened when you didn’t feed it?” The questions were ridiculous.
Greta was insane, but Crystal wanted her to open up; she clearly longed to tell the stories, and there were stories to tell. Crystal sensed them swirling within the woman, a thousand angry shadows leaping for her attention.
“I spilled the blood once,” Greta said, walking to the blurred window. “It was February. I must have been ten or eleven and my hands were frozen with cold. I had gloves on, but it didn’t matter. They’d gone numb within minutes of walking away from the house. I started losing the sensation in my fingers, but I trudged on, my father in front of me. And suddenly one of the buckets just fell out of my hand. It splashed across the snow. There was so much blood, and the snow was so white. The snow made the blood look vivid, scarlet.”