Buried (Twisted Cedars Mysteries Book 1) (4 page)

Elva Mae Ayer’s death had been big news in Roseburg. Dougal read the articles for facts and names of people he could follow up with. He noted the name of the Detective who’d been quoted in the articles, and also the name of the library staff member who had found the body.

The obit provided Elva Mae’s next of kin, which turned out to be her sister, Edwina Shaw and brother-in-law Harry. Apparently Elva Mae never married or had children and her parents had pre-deceased her.

According to several editorials, the people of Roseburg assumed some deviant, transient committed the crime. The lack of motive was a sticking point.

As months passed, there were fewer and fewer articles and editorials about the murder.

The last one surmised, “I guess we’ll never know what happened to Edwina Mae on that fateful spring day in 1972...”

Once he’d made his copies, and returned the papers to the librarian, Dougal went on-line to find addresses and phone numbers. The detective who’d worked on the case agreed to meet him for lunch, but had little to offer other than corroborating the fact that the victim had been strangled by a red, silk scarf.

“Every cop has one case that stays with them after they retire,” the detective confided. “For me, this homicide was that case. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if she’d been murdered twenty years later, when we had DNA, computerized data bases, and other tools to work with. When you think about it, back in the seventies, crime investigations were pretty primitive.”

The library staff member who’d found the body—a janitor—was no longer living. But Dougal did manage to track down Elva Mae’s sister. Over the phone Edwina sounded confused, but eventually agreed that he could drop over that afternoon.

Her tiny bungalow was located just off the Oakland Shady Highway. Edwina was sitting on the front porch when he arrived. The woman was in her seventies, he guessed, dressed oddly in an ill-fitting dress, socks and sandals too big for her feet.

“Is your husband home?”

“He’s out golfing.” She eyed him cautiously, perhaps hopefully. “No one’s mentioned my sister’s name to me in over thirty years.”

“A long time,” he agreed.

She got out of her chair and took a step closer to him. Squinting at him, she said, “My neighbor, Brenda, gives me books to read. I recognize you from the back cover. You write about real life crimes.”

He nodded, surprised that she’d recognized him. Maybe she wasn’t as confused as he’d thought.

“Are you going to write a book about my sister?”

He hesitated. “Maybe.”

“So you’ve figured out who killed her?”

He hated to disappoint her and sure didn’t want to raise her hopes. “No. Probably too much time has passed to find the truth now. But I’m checking into it.”

That was good enough for Edwina, apparently. “We can talk in the back. In the shade.”

She led him along concrete blocks to a modest yard, with a patchy lawn dominated by one large tree. Two dusty aluminum chairs were placed on either side of an equally dusty glass-top table. Edwina grabbed a grungy cloth from one of the chairs and brushed off most of the dirt.

They sat opposite one another. Now that he was in the shade, Dougal removed his sunglasses. Edwina had a pronounced tremor, like the late Katherine Hepburn’s. Unlike the famous star, Edwina was neither beautiful, nor elegant. She was short, skinny and didn’t look especially clean. She folded her hands in her lap and cast an anxious glance in his direction.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

Guilt niggled at him then. He could hear the hope in her voice, see it in her eyes. She had no idea he was just killing time here, putting off the moment when he would have to face Twisted Cedars and Jamie. He ought to apologize for wasting the woman’s time, get up and leave.

“Tell me everything you remember about what happened.”

“Where do I start?”

“Do you have any idea why anyone would have wanted your sister dead?”

Expression grim, Edwina shook her head. “My sister was a nice, decent woman.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, no,” Edwina said, as if that would have been so terrible. “She loved her books. Elva Mae lived a quiet life.”

“Were the two of you close?”

“Not so much when we were little. But our mother had a stroke and died when I was sixteen. Elva Mae was living on her own by then, but she moved back in with me and Dad to take care of us. Dad died a year later, and then it was just Elva Mae and me, until I married Harry and we bought our own house.” She glanced anxiously at the home in question, then back at him. “Even after I was married, my sister and I visited or spoke on the phone every day.”

“And did your sister and your husband get along?”

Edwina gave him another of her anxious looks. “Mostly.”

Dougal guessed that meant they hadn’t. Which might have made Harry a potential suspect, except that earlier the detective had told him that both Edwina and Harry had been at work when the murder occurred. A fact corroborated by several witnesses.

After almost an hour of questions about her sister’s life, a life which seemed to contain not a hint of conflict or scandal, Edwina seemed tired. “I need to lie down,” she said.

“Of course.” Dougal stood as she got up.

She headed for the back door, but on her way, she stopped, turned and said, “I hope you find out what happened to Elva Mae. I’d like to know the truth before I die.”

Her words gave him another stab of guilt as he made his way back to his car, careful not to trip on the tree roots that blighted the sparse lawn. The odds of him discovering anything that would bring Edwina the peace of mind she craved were very slight. He was about to slide into the driver’s seat, when he noticed a neighbor gentleman watching from the porch next door.

He made eye contact with the man, whom he guessed to be in his late sixties, dressed in gray pants and a wrinkled blue shirt, open at the neck.

The old guy got up. Left his porch and came down to the sidewalk. “You visiting with Edwina?”

“I was.”

“That’s a first. Edwina doesn’t get many visitors.”

“Why is that?”

He hesitated. “She hasn’t been right in the head for a long time. It’s sad that she’s ended up alone like this. My wife and I take her food now and then.”

“What about her husband?”

The man hesitated again. Maybe he was wondering if he should say more to a stranger. Dougal gave him his name and a brief explanation for his interest. The man raised his eyebrows, as if impressed to find himself speaking to a “real” author.

“They’ve been divorced a long time. Happened a few years after her sister was murdered.”

Fall-out, Dougal thought. Every tragedy left misery in its wake.

* * *

Between his second and third beer that night, Dougal managed to arrange a breakfast meeting with Edwina’s ex-husband, Harry, for Thursday.

Harry didn’t sound pleased about talking with him. But once more Dougal found his familiar name and New York Times Bestseller reputation, got him the interview. Now that they were face-to-face, Harry spoke fast, as if to get the meeting over as quickly as possible.

“I don’t have any idea who killed Elva Mae, but he might as well have strangled Edwina, too. She went off her rocker after her sister was murdered. Stopped eating for a while, refused to talk, wouldn’t leave the house. I tried to be supportive. But a year went by with little improvement. There’s only so much a guy can take. Finally I told her she had to start seeing a shrink or I was going to leave. I guess you can figure out what she decided.”

“That must have been hard for both of you.”

“Actually, I don’t think she even noticed when I moved out. I go by her place once a month, drop off groceries, take care of the yard and the exterior of the house. My second wife is a decent sort. She understands my obligation. But I haven’t had a real conversation with Edwina since the day her sister died.”

First Edwina. Then Harry. Both of them victims, too, in a way. Dougal understood all too well, how far the stain from a murder could spread.

Back at his car, he assessed the slim folder of notes he’d taken so far. Pathetic. He’d figured out nothing.

He couldn’t put this off anymore.

Time to put Roseburg behind him. Time to go home.

* * *

The route to Twisted Cedars followed brutal, hairpin mountain roads that paralleled the Rogue River. A distance that would have taken an hour to drive on a normal highway, chewed up almost double that amount of time. Finally Dougal arrived at the edge of the continent, facing the Pacific Ocean and the one-oh-one highway. He turned left.

Only sixty miles separated him now from his destination. So many years had passed since he’d been in this part of the world, he felt like another person. But his memories were stubbornly intact and he had a different one for every mile of this familiar stretch of the Oregon coastline.

Most of them involved his old friends, Wade, Kyle, and Daisy. Kyle had owned a convertible back then, a 1988 red Mazda RX7, and the four of them had clocked a lot of miles looking for thrills, heading out to parties, or just aimlessly cruising.

Though he’d played football with Wade and Kyle, and hung out with them on weekends, Dougal had always been aware he was a misfit. The others were all from wealthy families...at least wealthy compared to his mother.

Wade’s father was the Sheriff of Curry County, Kyle’s dad owned the local real estate agency, and Daisy’s father was a bank manager, the town mayor and the richest of all. No one talked about the fact that Dougal’s mother cleaned all of their houses. Certainly none of them ever came to visit him at the trailer where he lived with his mom and sister. He would have died of embarrassment if they’d tried.

Dougal recalled his mother asking him to introduce her to his friends after a football game once. He’d been so embarrassed of her then. Now his jaw clenched with shame for himself. What a jerk he’d been.

One hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the gear shift, Dougal focused on the scenery—the ocean churning at his right, the dark forest looming to his left. He lowered his windows so he could smell the pine and salt in the air.

The miles flipped by, like pages of a familiar book, disappearing much too quickly. His hair, whipped by the early summer wind and air-borne salt, began to feel thicker, wilder.

He passed a beach that had been the location for one of their wilder parties. Kyle had been dating Daisy Hammond already, by far the prettiest girl in town, but he’d hooked up that night with the girlfriend of the quarterback of the rival football team they’d played against that afternoon.

“Cover for me, Dougal,” Kyle had said, as he and the girl slipped into the tall grass beyond the bonfire.

Dougal winced at the memory, at his own weak desire for Kyle’s approval, at his guilt for not telling Daisy what had happened.

Maybe Kyle had changed over the years, become a stand-up guy. But Dougal doubted it.

And Jamie, his too-sweet, too-good sister, was planning to marry him.

late Thursday afternoon
, Charlotte finally had time to file the DVDs that had been returned the previous day. Ten years ago she would have had a huge stack, now there were just a couple. Most people watched their movies on Netflix nowadays or downloaded them from the Internet.

Included with the DVDs was the movie she’d watched after dinner last night. One scene had stuck with her all day. The hero of the story—a young teacher suffering from cancer, about to marry a woman he’d been dating for a long time—shares a joint with a hippy who claims to have been happily married for seventeen years to his childhood sweetheart.

“How did you know she was the one?” the teacher asked.

“If you have to ask, she isn’t.”

Charlotte couldn’t stop thinking about that. Was it true? Did the best romances and marriages come wrapped in that sort of certainty?

She couldn’t imagine ever feeling so—swept away. She certainly hadn’t in her relationships to date. Not that she’d had many. There’d been Ned Pullman in high school, Craig Turner in college...and now Wade.

They’d made love for the first time on Friday. She’d been surprised, at first, when Wade asked if he could come inside. But sex with Wade had felt natural and, well, satisfying. Nothing like the awkward fumblings with Ned, or the hurried, sweaty sessions with Craig. No, Wade had been sure of himself, sweet and tender.

Lying in his arms afterward though, Charlotte had entertained a very uncharitable thought. It was like they’d gone for a test drive in a prospective new car, to make sure everything was working before they put down a deposit.

Charlotte checked her watch. It was quiet this afternoon. The morning had been busier, but Abigail had been in then, and the work had been easily managed. She wondered if she should speak to the board about reducing hours. It would be one way to manage the budget shortfall.

And just as she’d had that thought, a man came in from the street, a man with dark hair and eyes, familiar and excitingly different—all at the same time.

Her heart skipped two beats when she recognized him. Oh, my God, it was Dougal Lachlan.

She couldn’t believe he was here, in real life, looking exactly like the author photo printed in the back of all his books. Rebelliously attractive, intelligent, weary, disillusioned. These were the adjectives that came to Charlotte’s mind. His thick, curly hair, so like his sister’s, was windswept. He removed his sunglasses and studied her with his dark mocha-colored eyes.

“Are you Daisy’s little sister?”

She was surprised and a little flattered that he was able to place her so easily. If she hadn’t known what he looked like from his author photos, she never would have connected this man to the scowling teenager she remembered hanging out with her sister’s group of friends.

Dougal had been part of the gang, but also apart from it. Never really one to fit in with any crowd, she guessed.

“Yes. I’m Charlotte.”

“All grown up now.” His gaze swept over her gray skirt, loose-fitting blouse. “You don’t look much like your sister.”