Scrapped (25 page)
Chapter 62
“So, as I was sitting there, another officer walked in the room and announced a break in the case, and they just let us go,” Beatrice said after she sipped her tea.
Annie’s heart skipped a beat. “What happened?” She sat up a little more in the hospital bed.
“There was a confession,” Beatrice said. “Evidently, the police were getting ready to make an arrest, and this other person—not the man they were going to arrest—steps forward and confesses. Do you remember Luther? The man who helped us with our tire?”
Annie shivered. “Yes. The man with the rune earring.”
“It was him,” Beatrice said.
“I need to get out of this bed,” Annie said. “Can you hand me my laptop and my cell phone?”
Beatrice handed her the items. Annie clicked on the computer and saw the story was breaking all over the Web.
Damn.
Here she was, scooped. This guy had been under her nose all along. She’d missed it.
Damn.
Here she was, scooped. This guy had been under her nose all along. She’d missed it.
Luther Vandergrift walked into Cumberland Creek Police Station, Tuesday, November 12, and confessed to the murders of Sarah Carpenter and Rebecca Collins, along with the attempted murder of Sarah’s infant child, now in the custody of Sarah’s parents.
According to the police report, twenty-eight-year-old Vandergrift has been a drifter since the loss of both of his parents eight years ago. A onetime medical student, Vandergrift relocated to Jenkins Mountain from Ambridge, Pennsylvania, after connecting online with a group called the New Mountain Order, led by Zeb McClain.
“We get together, hike, and meditate,” Zeb said offhandedly during a phone interview.
But according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), members of the group have records for various crimes. “We’ve not been able to find any concrete evidence that these folks, as a group, are up to no good. But you have to ask yourself why a young man would come all the way from Ambridge, Pennsylvania, to hike and meditate,” said federal agent Roger Delvechio.
Indeed.
“Vandergrift has a record of violence,” Detective Bryant of the Cumberland Creek Police Department added. “He spent some time in jail for assault. And one crime involved sexual assault. That’s all I am at liberty to say.”
I wonder if she had red hair
, Annie thought.
, Annie thought.
Other than Vandergrift’s history of violence, his brief stint as a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, and the loss of his parents in an accident, there doesn’t seem to be anything else on record about him.
“Ah, well,” Beatrice said. “There’s still more reporting to be done, I’d say.”
“Well, sure. And I’ve been on the case this whole time.”
“When are they going to spring you?”
“I don’t know. I still have a bit of a fever, and the doctors are afraid there’s an infection somewhere.”
“How do you feel?”
“Seriously? I feel, like, awful.” She couldn’t keep a clear enough head to piece one sentence together on her laptop.
Beatrice took another long drink of her tea. “You need to take care of yourself. I’m all for women following their passions, dear, but your health needs to be a priority. They have a confession. There’s nothing you need to do right now. And it turns out that we were right about Cookie. She wasn’t a killer, after all.”
“But you said that they were getting close to arraigning her.”
“What? Oh no, that wasn’t Cookie. It was someone else. I’m not sure who it was. Oh, wait. I think it was Zeb. I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. I mean, just because this guy confessed doesn’t mean he actually did it.”
“Why else would he confess?”
“A lot of people have confessed in the past and were completely innocent.”
“I heard they even had DNA evidence on this guy. They found one of his hairs somewhere or something. Sounds like a pretty tight case.”
“I’ll have to check all that out,” Annie said, mentally listing the interviews she wanted to line up. Hannah. Zeb. Luther. Roger Delvechio. Detective Bryant. If she could stomach that.
Chapter 63
Jon’s dark eyes lit up as he looked at Beatrice over a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, and gravy.
“I didn’t invite you,” she said.
“Beatrice,” he said, “we are both too old to worry about invitations, yes?” He smiled. “And we are both too old to worry about what other people think of us. Surely.”
“I never did,” she said and laughed. “But there will be questions.”
“Life is full of questions. We’ll answer them on our own, eh?”
“Yes,” she said after a moment, feeling her heart give way. “I suppose you’re right.”
But here she was, soon to be eighty-two, feeling like a teenager or a newlywed. One moment she felt like a ridiculous old fool. The next, she allowed the feelings to wash over her and reveled in them. She had never imagined another man would come into her life. She and Ed were so well suited, and she had loved him completely.
She’d known many women who had lost their husbands, and all of them had remarried. Most of them lost their second husbands, too. Tootie buried three of them before she whispered to Beatrice as she hugged her at the funeral, “Never again. I can’t take any more.” And she herself died four months later.
It was a risk always to get close to anybody at any time in your life—a careful line to walk between being open enough to allow the good in and to recognize the bad. But at her age, the risk felt sharper. She had found her place in the world as a widow and had occupied it for years. The other side of that sharpness was the sweetness of finding love again.
Here he was. Sitting in her house. At her kitchen table. Eating biscuits and gravy. Drinking from her coffee cups.
Cups that Cookie adored. They were purple, her favorite color.
Funny, Beatrice should think of her now. Beatrice was caught between hating and loving her. Maybe feeling sorry for her. Was she an escaped mental patient? She would have thought so at one time during their brief time of knowing one another. She’d always thought there was something not quite right, sort of out of time about her. Or was Cookie Crandall exactly who she claimed to be? A magician–time traveler sort of person from the future who had come back to set something right? Or maybe that was not what she had said to Beatrice at all. She’d said it was like time travel or some such thing. But Beatrice liked to think of her that way. Of course, it almost vindicated her life’s work. But perhaps she was as delusional as Detective Bryant thought she was.
She laughed at that. Nah. She was not delusional. She looked across the table and saw Jon plainly, clearly, just as she saw Cookie that day, leaning across the table in the jail, spilling her secrets.
Life was getting even more interesting in her town. There were murders and weird religious cults. According to the FBI, they had been watching that group for a while—and still were. They claimed it was for tax evasion. The group had been trying to set up a nonprofit religious organization that was full of ex-convicts. Turned out Rose was right about shenanigans on the mountain.
Blissfully unaware until Rose had filled her in. Beatrice realized that even then, it was just a blip on her radar screen. Land sakes, she couldn’t keep track of everybody. There were people moving into Cumberland Creek all the time. There was a new person sitting across the table from her.
And as she thought about Cookie and Jon, their appearance in her life, it just confirmed her belief, which sharpened as she had gotten older: Science could accurately predict some events, but the most meaningful things in a life often held no prediction, no explanation. The universe could be completely, delightfully random.
She started to get up from the table, reaching for the spent breakfast plates.
“Let me get that,
ma chérie,
” Jon said, beating her to it.
ma chérie,
” Jon said, beating her to it.
“Well, now,” she said, sitting back in her chair, “I could get used to this.”
Chapter 64
Vera’s train ride stretched in front of her as she looked out the window at the snowy landscape. Snow in November, the week before Thanksgiving. Could it be that she hadn’t seen Tony in two months? During this time, so much had happened to steal her time away—she’d even been in jail. And then there was Annie, who still was in the hospital, now being treated for pneumonia.
Vera hated to go away—even now. Even though they had the murderer in custody, it still felt unfinished to Vera. Just a nag she felt pricking away at her.
And then there was her mother’s romance with Jon. Why, before Vera even knew it, he was moving in without any explanation from either of them. Good God, didn’t he have a home in France? Vera didn’t like it. They should have at least consulted her about it.
“Why should they consult you?” Tony had said during a phone conversation. “They are grown-ups.”
“She is my mother,” Vera had said. “Why has she been so secretive?”
“But do you need her permission to come and visit with me?”
“No. That’s different. I’m not eighty-one years old. What if he’s after her money?”
Tony chuckled. “You’re a mess, Vera.”
“Okay,” she admitted. “I’m a mess.”
She saw his face immediately when she stepped onto the train platform. The eyes. The grin. The dimples. All heading her way. His arms encircling her, then reaching for her bags. He led her to the cab he had waiting for them.
“You’re a little late. I was starting to worry,” he said, handing her bags to the cabbie, who placed them in the trunk.
“You know how these trains are sometimes. And we have a little weather,” she said, trying to get her bearing. It always took awhile to get used to the speed of things when she first got into the city.
They entered the cab. It would be a short ride, but with her baggage, it was easier to take a cab to Tony’s place. They sat quietly for several blocks, holding hands, as she watched the buildings and people on the busy streets.
“I’m coming for a visit to Cumberland Creek. I want to meet your daughter, your mother, and yes, even Bill. Maybe those scrapbooking friends of yours, too. I want to come for Christmas,” he said, after a while.
Vera didn’t know what to say. She felt as if all the breath had been knocked right out of her. He didn’t ask her if it was okay. He just told her he was coming. This felt a little forced. She felt like a cat being back into a corner—almost felt her back hunch over in a protective stance. She breathed, counted to ten.
“I don’t know why that’s so important to you.”
He looked at her, astounded.
“We’re here, folks,” the cabbie interrupted. Tony took out some cash and gave it to the cabbie.
His apartment building loomed in front of her. A man came out of the building and smiled. He recognized her. Why did she feel like running the other way? She stopped in her tracks.
“Vera? What’s wrong?”
“Listen to me, Tony. Don’t push me. Do you hear me? I’ve been pushed around my whole life. Felt like I was living someone else’s life for the first half of it. I’m not ready to commit to you. I’m not ready to bring you into my daughter’s life.”
“God, Vera, we’ve been seeing each other for over a year like this. When are you going to be ready?”
Vera suddenly realized that they were still standing on the sidewalk outside his apartment building. The man was politely looking away. Who ever said that New Yorkers were impolite?
“Do we need to talk about this here?” she said quietly.
“No, let’s go upstairs.”
But as soon as they arrived in his apartment and he kissed her, her anger with him almost melted away. They went at each other like sex-starved newlyweds. Afterward, when she was lying in his arms, he grinned shyly at her.
“Whatever you want, Vera. I will wait for you.”
Her stomach flipped. Was that what she wanted to hear? His feelings for her were growing. And she felt nothing but lust. All she wanted to do was sleep with him. That was not a good thing on which to build a lifelong relationship. She kept thinking it would fizzle out. But it hadn’t. Sometimes she would lie awake at night remembering the way he touched her, the way he made her feel—like a vibrant, sexy, whole person. She was a middle-aged mother. Her feelings of lust should be set aside with her youth. But it was what it was.
But she had never totally considered his feelings and now wondered if she was being fair to him by considering him only as a lover, nothing more. She’d always wondered if you could have sex without love—if you could actually ever enjoy it. Good Southern Baptist girl that she was, she’d never truly considered that yes, you could enjoy sex with a man and not be in love with him.
Which was exactly what Bill had tried to tell her when she found out about his cheating on her.
Chapter 65
When Annie opened the unlocked door of the little house Cookie had lived in, she was surprised that the heat was still on. It was so nice and warm, in contrast to the cold November air. She walked into the empty living room, wondering what had happened to Cookie’s yoga things that were in there. Did her landlord take them? She was hoping to find something of Cookie’s. Anything.
Out of the hospital several days, Annie had just filed her latest story. During her research, she had been floored when she spoke to the FBI agents, who confirmed her suspicions—that the group of people on the mountain was a cult of sorts, that it was more than a front. Many outsiders were coming into the area to study with them. When she asked one of the agents about the anti-Semitism, he confirmed that he thought it was one of the precepts of the cult. She shivered, thinking about being on that mountain with a bunch of people who hated her because she was Jewish.
“These folks are very clever. They know the legal system and are working it. Until one of them steps out of line, there’s not much we can do about it,” the agent had revealed.
“Murder is out of line,” Annie had pointed out.
“Yes, but that had nothing to do with the cult. It was one individual.”
“It seems like the murders had a ritualistic element, with the runic patterns cut into the victims. I even heard them mention the word
sacrifice
when I was out on the mountain the night I was shot.”
sacrifice
when I was out on the mountain the night I was shot.”
He’d sighed impatiently. “Many murderers have a ritual. We don’t think it has anything to do with the group,” he’d said in a clipped voice, leading her to believe the case was closed.
But what about the word
sacrifice,
which she’d overheard that night on the mountain? Why was he ignoring that?
sacrifice,
which she’d overheard that night on the mountain? Why was he ignoring that?
Why can’t I leave this alone?
She looked out Cookie’s sliding glass door at the mountains. She’d never known that Cookie had such a beautiful view—no wonder her scrapbook pop-out so accurately reflected the shape of those mountains. She saw them every day in all their glory. In fact, it was almost a straight line from her house to the mountains.
Interesting.
Interesting.
She walked into Cookie’s bedroom, where it seemed to be even warmer. The warmth circled Annie as she took in the empty room. Even the closet was empty.
Where was Cookie? Annie felt the sharp, cutting pang of friendship loss, and she leaned against the wall, suddenly sobbing. It was almost as if Cookie had died. Annie had been so busy getting better, spinning her stories, that she hadn’t allowed it to sink in.
She slid down the wall and sat on the floor. A sudden heaviness came over her. Ah, maybe she’d pushed herself too hard. She had played with the boys earlier in the day and wanted to leave for the crop early, so she didn’t get a chance to take a nap.
Cookie was gone.
And nobody knew where to even start to look. There were the doctors who claimed she was an expert at escaping and reinventing herself. Didn’t she care about the people she left behind, if that was the case? Annie wondered if they were real doctors. Were they FBI? She had no idea and made a mental note to try to track them down.
And then there was Beatrice’s story that she told the police—that Cookie was traveling through time, or was adept at making herself invisible and moving through space? The police had shrugged her off as an old fool who’d finally lost her quantum physics marbles. But Annie knew better. Still, it didn’t help in trying to make sense of anything, and maybe it didn’t matter. Because Cookie was gone—and that was how she wanted it to be, or needed it to be.
Annie felt herself give way to weariness, lifted her knees, and draped her arms over them. She laid her head down. Closed her eyes. Man, she’d nearly lost her mind over this thing. Didn’t see things clearly at all. It was almost as if the whole thing were a misty dream. Maybe it was time to stop being a reporter.
“No,” a feminine voice said. “You must continue. There’s more for you to do.”
She struggled to lift her head up. Did she really hear that? Or had she slipped into sleep and was dreaming? She looked around and saw nothing. “Cookie?”
The windows in the bedroom flew open, and yet more warmth surrounded Annie. She watched as the brown leaves blew around, and she stood up to latch the windows. She turned around to a pile of leaves in the room. Oh well, it simply didn’t matter. Nobody lived there anymore. She shoved the leaves over to the corner and realized there was a piece of paper in the middle of it all. A picture. Annie brushed away the dirt. It was a photo of Cookie holding Elizabeth. A smile spread across Annie’s face, and her heart lifted.
“That picture looks old,” Sheila said as the group gathered around to see it.
“It was outside for a while, I think,” Annie said. “I’m just glad to have it. I’ll make copies for everybody,”
“I had seen another picture like that in her book, remember?” Vera said. “Whoever Cookie is or was, I believe she loved my girl.”
“Indeed,” Sheila said. “Does anybody know what happened to the baby?”
“She’s with her father now,” Annie said. “Zeb. Can you believe that? That beautiful little baby belongs to Zeb McClain, Tina Sue’s husband. He lied to me, obviously, when he said he didn’t know Sarah. At first, Sarah’s parents were keeping her. I’d feel better about that.”
“I wonder how Tina Sue feels about that,” Paige said.
“I bet I know,” Vera said, sitting down to her own scrapbook project, picking up her scissors. “It’s not pleasant. It’s not the first time he’s cheated on her.”
DeeAnn held up a recipe card embellished with pie stickers. “I can’t imagine a younger woman wanting to sleep with my husband. In fact, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to sleep with him.” She howled with laughter.
The other women joined in.
Annie took a deep breath, taking in her friends. Even with all the weirdness in this community, she guessed these women made living here completely worthwhile. Although her children’s schooling would need to be figured out with this Weekly Religious Education program. She had just begun to fight that.
And then there was this group of neo-Nazis living on Jenkins Mountain. She vowed to figure all that out. She knew there was more to it than the authorities were leading her to believe. But how to find out?
“At least one murderer is off the street,” Paige said.
“Make that two murderers,” DeeAnn reminded her. “Two murderers in a little over two years.”
“Interesting,” Vera said after a moment. “Both of them have connections to Jenkins Mountain and the Nest.”
“That’s no big deal,” DeeAnn said. “Most of the people at this table could say the same thing. Whether it’s us or our husbands.”
Everybody, perhaps, except for Annie.
“I just can’t get over Zeb McClain as a guru. Jeez, what’s the world coming to?” Sheila said.
Something clicked in Annie’s brain. She’d known gurus before—both the real kind and the phony kind, the ones who wanted nothing more than their followers’ money or sex, or were on some ego trip, or just plain mental cases. Zeb definitely had charisma—just as other gurus had. She’d known women who appeared to be sane and intelligent, who would sink into submissive roles to be close to a guru. She’d known men who had sold their homes and handed over the money to their gurus. She’d known children who grew up in communes under gurus, never knowing who their father was or the outside world.
“Does anybody know who the police were getting ready to arrest when Luther confessed?” Annie asked.
“Wasn’t it Cookie?” Sheila said.
“At first,” Annie replied. “But didn’t someone say that they were getting ready to arrest someone else? I was in the hospital, and I kind of remember a conversation about this.”
“That’s right,” Vera said. “I was in the station with Mama when they brought the men in.”
“Men?”
“I couldn’t see their faces. It was pouring down rain. I was in my car. But once I was inside, sitting for a while with Mama and Bill, Detective Bryant came in, told us to leave, that they had just gotten a confession.”
“Okay, so if it was Luther that you saw, who else would have been there?”
Vera shrugged.
“Maybe it was Zeb,” Sheila said. “Makes sense. After all, he is the
guru,
” she added with a smirk.
guru,
” she added with a smirk.
Annie needed to hear someone else say that.
Would a man confess to murder to protect his guru? Oh, now. She was leaping to a conclusion, but her gut was telling that Luther’s confession was not exactly right. Did she believe he could kill somebody? Yes. Did she believe that he killed Sarah and Rebecca and tried to kill that baby? She wasn’t so sure. Nah, it was too crazy, even for her. And besides, they had Luther’s DNA all over the place—even on the baby’s clothing from the night he, evidently, dropped her off at Vera’s place. Annie’s brain was still foggy after her hospital stay. But her gut had a mind of its own.
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