She slapped his hand. “I will, if you leave me any.” She took a bite, gooey and cinnamony, an explosion of goodness so sweet it burned her throat. A swallow of scalding coffee to wash it down, and then she said, as casual as she could make it, “I’ve heard tales about the stone myself. Some guy named Jennings connected somehow, wasn’t there?”
It was a guess, and a total score. Cal looked up from the crossword, actually putting down the pencil, his keen eyes peering deeply into hers.
“The old man was a mean old devil. Beat all the kids and his wife,” Rich said.
“That fall his wife had maybe wasn’t so accidental.” Cal tapped the pencil on the page, but his eyes were no longer reading crossword clues, they were staring off into distant memory.
“Maybe so—but it wouldn’t have to be the old man that pushed her.”
“Weston mighta done it, you mean? He was only a little kid when she died.”
“Some are born mean.”
“He was nine. I hardly think—”
“Didn’t he shoot the family or something?” Vivian broke in.
“That’s what everybody said.”
“My dad never did believe that story,” Rich said. “He figured it was too convenient to blame the boy just because he wasn’t around to defend himself.”
“You saying the girl might have done it?”
“Why not?”
“A thirteen-year-old girl—”
“Like a woman has less murder in her than a man? Doc, I do believe our Cal might be a chauvinist.”
“You both are,” Vivian said. “Why do you suspect the girl, Rich?”
“Well, my aunt went to school with her, you know. Rose said Grace was downright unearthly, possessed maybe. Those were her words, mind. Hardly ever said a word, kept to herself but always watching. No friends. And they found her in that room with all the bodies.”
“Never going to convince me a slip of a girl shot her whole family in cold blood. And it wasn’t some stranger—no sign of a struggle. Had to be Weston.”
“Well, whatever happened up there, it was spooky. The house is haunted.”
“That’s a fact, sure enough.”
The two old men exchanged a grin that was suddenly all mischievous boy. “When we were kids we lived near the old place—what is it, twenty miles from here?”
“Round about.” Cal shoveled half of Vivian’s cinnamon roll into his mouth at one time, chewing with great enjoyment.
“Used to ride our bikes out there—take a lunch and make it a day. Dared each other to go through the house. Kitchen was allover bloodstains—nobody ever cleaned it.”
“Could you draw me a map?” Vivian asked.
Cal stopped chewing.
“Well, I reckon we could,” Rich said, slowly. “But why would you want to go out there? Less’n of course you took us along—”
“Some protection we’d be,” Cal snorted.
“We’re talking haunted, right?” Vivian made her voice clear, logical, and dripping with disdain. “Ghosts and such? Wooo and woooo? And you are going to protect me from that. You’re not only old chauvinists, you’re superstitious old chauvinists.”
Rich unfolded a napkin, took the pencil from Cal, and sketched out a rough map.
“Does anybody know what happened to Grace?” Vivian asked.
The two old men exchanged glances, quiet for a long moment.
“Well, my old man said the neighbors took her in for a bit. But they shipped her off to an orphanage after only a couple of weeks,” Rich said, finally.
“That seems harsh. Nobody in the community that would take her?”
“Probably would have done if she hadn’t robbed her daddy’s grave.”
“She what?”
“Well, not the grave per se. Gotta be fair, Rich.” Cal licked his fingers, then wiped them on a napkin. “Just the coffin. After the wake, before the funeral, minister come downstairs and found her rooting around in the coffin. Not kissing the dead good-bye, like, or weeping. Just cold and quiet.”
Rich nodded. “That’s what my mama said too. Couldn’t have her here, going to school with the other kids, loose in the community. Even if she wasn’t the one what did the killing, it must have turned her.”
Vivian wasn’t hungry anymore. The ancient tragedy, combined with her worry about Zee, swirled with cinnamon and sugar and dough in her belly. She shoved the plate and the remaining bits of the roll across the table.
“You not eating that?” Cal said.
“Feel free.”
“So she never came back?”
“Never said that.” Cal’s mouth was full with the remains of the cinnamon roll. “Moved back to Krebston once she was all growed up. Lived down by the river.”
“Died what—about forty years ago?”
“Near enough. Whole house burned up—poof. Didn’t look so much like an accident.”
“Suicide, if you ask me.”
“No way of telling. Nobody went to the funeral.”
“Let me get this straight. When she was a little kid her whole family got murdered, she got sent away to an orphanage, as an adult she was so miserable that she lit herself and her house on fire, and nobody in this community went to pay respects?” Vivian discovered that she was angry on behalf of this woman she had never met and knew nothing about.
The two old men looked surprised, then shrugged. “When you put it that way . . .”
“People want no truck with what they don’t understand, Doc, and that’s the truth. Something weird about that whole family.”
Cal took back the pencil, tapped it on the crossword. “You weren’t much help, Vivian. Twenty-one down, purchase price.”
“Did Weston ever come back?”
Both old heads shook no at once. “Not that I heard tell,” Rich said. “Never seen or heard of again. The rest of the lot is all buried in the old part of the Krebston Cemetery—not the one by the school, the one up on the hill. They found room for Grace in the family plot, so maybe you’ll feel better to know that she joined them in the end.”
Vivian looked at the map on the napkin, which seemed clear enough to find her way. “Don’t suppose you two know whether this land belongs to anybody?”
Rich shook his head, his face suddenly serious. “Look, missy doctor, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not kidding about that house. Laugh as you will about it being haunted, but there’s an evil lingers ’round that place.”
“Leave investigating to the cops,” Cal added. “Go take care of sick people like you’re meant to.”
Rich yawned. “Damn, I’m tired and my brain feels fuzzy. Must be getting old.”
“Ha, you were old when you were born.”
Vivian left them bickering amicably, getting another cup of coffee to go.
When she stepped outside, she left all the warmth behind her. A slice of wind cut through her clothing, and she shivered, huddling into the sweatshirt and running down the street toward A to Zee.
Sixteen
Zee sat in the shade of a giant tree that reminded him of an unholy union between a weeping willow and a pine. The drooping limbs bristled with long, yellow-green needles that drew blood when he accidentally bumped up against them. But the sun had grown into a torment, and the cool darkness at the base of the tree was worth the price. He drank from the canteen and ate one of the protein bars. His body needed fuel for healing.
Just ahead the road he’d been following ended at a sudden line of trees. Three paths curved away into the undergrowth. He had no way of knowing which one he ought to take, which was another reason to just sit here for a few minutes, resting. He leaned against the trunk and allowed himself to drift a little, close to dream.