The Summer We Lost Alice (27 page)

"But they won't
... they won't put him down, will they? At least, not right away?"

"No, they'll give the owners three days,
then they'll put him up for adoption. Though why anybody'd want a mutt like that—"

Ethan and Flo stood on the front porch and watched Sammy and the deputy lead the dog away. Heather had been observing from the passenger seat of the Mustang
. When the dog appeared she got out and stared as if hypnotized by the sight.

"That dog—!" she said.

"Yeah. Looks a lot like Boo," Ethan said.

Flo waved at the sheriff and the deputy as they drove off. The dog propped its big feet on the back of the rear seat and stared at her as the car drove off.
The dog
woofed
loudly. Its breath fogged the rear window.

"It isn't Boo," Ethan said. "It can't be."

"I know," Flo said.

"It's been twenty-five years. Boo is dead. He'd be dead even if Sam Morse Sr. hadn't shot him."

"I know."

"It can't be him. It's impossible."

"I know."

Matt and Brittany
ran over from next door. Flo wasn't sure what to tell them. Someone had called Cat, probably the Clements. Cat's car had just turned the corner, was crossing paths with the sheriff, they were talking. What was Flo going to tell her? Flo's head spun with a thousand questions.

"Three days," she said, realizing only after the words were out of her mouth that she'd spoken them aloud.

Ethan looked at her as if she'd sprouted a second head.

"You aren't thinking about adopting him?" he said.

Heather looked at Flo and smiled.

"I think someone's feeling a strong spiritual connection," Heather said.

BRITTANY'S EYES widened. A smile plastered itself on Matt's face at the sight of the mess in the kitchen.

"It was a dog," Flo said, "just a stray dog that got in."

"Must've tore in like a hell hound!" Matt said, looking at the rip in the screen.

Brittany hugged her mother's legs.

"Was it really a hell hound?" she said.

"Of course not," Cat said. She stroked Brittany's hair.

"It was just an ornery old mutt," Flo said. "Matthew, hand me the dustpan. The rest of you get out of here and let me finish supper."

Ethan volunteered to clean up the mess and volunteered Heather to help him. Sensing a chore in the vicinity, Matt fled the room. Brittany followed. Cat lingered in the doorway. The others worked in silence, Ethan and Heather sweeping up the spilled garbage and Flo stirring the soup, tasting and seasoning. At last Cat spoke.

"Go on, spill it," she said.

Like one multi-headed organism, the others gave her looks too innocent to be believed.

Cat sighed.

"Okay, I get it," she said. "You're thinking, 'Cat's on edge already, we don't want to worry her. She'd never understand.
Yada yada yada.'

"Meanwhile, Ethan's been sweeping that same spot in the floor so long he's digging a hole in the linoleum, and if Heather doesn't quit twisting that one bit of hair around her finger, she's going to pull it off. And
Mother, you're stirring that soup to mush. You're all just waiting for me to leave so you can whisper among yourselves, but I'm not leaving so you might as well spill it."

She struck the pose she used on the kids to signal "Mommy's mad" and waited for an answer.

Ethan spoke first, to Heather.

"What did you mean, you saw the sheriff bury a boy's body?"

Cat's mouth dropped about eight inches. She steadied herself against a chair. "Sammy did what?"

"Not Sammy, his father," Heather explained. "He was talking to Ethan. I'd gone off and when I got back and saw him, the words just leaped out of my mouth like they'd been hiding there for twenty years."

"Twenty-five years, actually, but go on," Ethan said.

"I never saw anything of the sort, really, not that I can remember. But there it was. I
knew
it more than remembered it."

"What did Sam Sr. have to say?" Flo said.

"He had a heart attack."

"Admission of guilt," Flo said, "sure as if he'd come out and confessed."

"He was already in bad shape, Aunt Flo. I'd suggested that he sit down and he just plopped down right where he stood."

"But Heather's
words—that was the straw that broke the camel's back. He killed that little Proost boy as sure as I'm standing here!"

"It
... it wasn't the Proost boy," Heather said. "It was one of the other kids, from that summer."

"How do you know, dear?" Flo said. "Are you seeing it in a vision?"

Ethan rolled his eyes.

"I just know. Look at
me, I'm getting all goose-bumpy."

"My
God, she's pale as a ghost," Cat said. "Sit down before you pass out!"

Heather took a seat at the kitchen table. Her heart was pounding.

"I'm scared," she said. "Terrified. I don't know what of."

"You're having a panic attack," Cat said. "Mine usually hit around seven in the morning. Take deep breaths."

Ethan pulled up a chair and sat next to Heather. "Okay, let's say, for argument's sake, that Heather—as Alice—saw Sam Morse Sr. bury a body twenty-five years ago. A boy's body. It had to be Martin Dale, the second kid to go missing. Right?"

"Right," Flo said. Cat nodded agreement.

"So, starting there, where does that take us?"

Silence.

"Anybody?" Ethan said. He looked from face to face, finding nothing. Clearly there wasn't a Miss Marple among them.

"He killed me," Heather said. She took Ethan's hand in both of hers. He felt them trembling. "I caught him burying Martin Dale's body, so he had to kill me."

"How?" Flo asked. "How did he do it?"

"I'm not remembering anything like that. I saw him. He turned around, the shovel in his hand. I can see his face.
Shocked. Frightened."

"Frightened?" Ethan said.

"Scared of being discovered," Flo said.

"He used the shovel," Cat said. "He hit you with it."

Heather shook her head. "No, no, I don't think so. I just remember his face, and then ... darkness. Darkness swooping in."

She held her hands out in front of her, palms down.

"Look. Steady as a rock now." Her heart had stopped racing.

"You're at peace." Flo locked eyes with Heather. "But that's all you remember? He didn't rush at you? He didn't
... grab you?"

"No, nothing like that.
I just saw his face. Then the darkness."

"Someone came at you from behind," Cat suggested.

"Maybe."

"At any rate, you—Alice—she didn't suffer."

"No, I don't think she did. It was very sudden."

Flo dug a wad of tissue out of her pocket and dabbed her eyes. Her lips were tight as she bit back the emotion. Without another word
, she walked out of the room.

Ethan, Heather, and Cat sat quietly for several minutes.

Cat was the first one to speak.

"Okay, look," she said, "I don't know that I believe any of this. I'm sorry, but I keep thinking it's a scam. You come here from Los Angeles, open a bunch of old wounds, and now—this. I keep waiting for the part where you ask for the deed to the house so you can cleanse it of evil spirits or something."

"Cat," Ethan said, "I don't know what's happening. I don't know that I believe any of it, either—sorry, Heather. But it's no scam. We're not asking for anything."

"We just want to find out, that's all."

"Find out what?"

"Who I am.
What happened. Why Ethan's nose gushes blood whenever the subject comes up—"

Cat shook her head.

"I don't care about any of that," she said. "All I care about is my kids. If this thing is happening again, I want to stop it. I want to stop it cold."

"I think we all want that," Ethan said.

"Wanting isn't good enough. If you aren't willing to see this thing through no matter what, you should leave. Right now, before you get in any deeper."

"What do you mean, see it through?"

"I mean we go the next step, whatever it is. We've got a lead—Sammy's father, implicated 'supernaturally' in the death of Martin Dale. All right. What do we do with that information, such as it is?"

"What we have isn't exactly evidence," Ethan said. "As compelling as Heather's memories may be, they'd never stand up in a court of law."

"I hope you aren't suggesting we take the law into our own hands," Heather said.

"Of course not
," Cat said. "But we have to do
something!
Maybe we go to Sammy. He's the sheriff. We take the case to him."

"Right.
We tell him, based on what Heather remembers from a past life as my cousin, that we think his dad's a murderer."

"Yes."

"And he'll say we're nuts."

"Sure, but so what?
It'll plant a seed in his mind. I know Sammy. He's persistent. He'll talk to Sam Sr., he'll ... I don't know. It'll nag at him. He'll set out to prove that it's all a bunch of crap, and maybe something else will turn up. But we can't just sit here and do nothing!"

"Ask Agent Myer." The voice came from the doorway so unexpectedly that it made them jump. It was Brittany. She'd appeared like a wraith.

"Honey, how long have you been standing there?" Cat asked.

"He's FBI. Can I have some milk?"

"How do you know Agent Myer, sweetie?"

"He came to our school and talked. He says flies can smell a corpse a mile away."

Cat, thinking now of flies and corpses, got up and poured Brittany a glass of milk. Brittany took it in both hands.

"Agent Myer's good at solving murders," Brittany said as she left the room.

Flo caught the tail end of the conversation as she entered, eyes red but dry. She busied herself getting out bowls for soup.

"If you're talking about Wallace Myer," she said, "he won't help. I hear he was the first one they talked to when Willy
Proost went missing. He all but slammed the door in Sammy's face. Myer's a—well, you know." She made a tippling motion with her hand. "Nice as can be when he's sober. But if you breathe a word about that summer, watch out!"

"Why would he move here?" Ethan said.

Flo and Cat both turned to regard him with cold glares.

"I mean,
Meddersville's a fine little town and all if you grew up here, but really, out of all the gin joints in the world—" Ethan looked to Heather for help.

"What Ethan means, I'm sure, is that
Meddersville must have made a big impression on him," Heather said.

Ethan mouthed a silent "thank you."

"Either that, or it still pulls on him, you know, that he never solved the case. Maybe he's secretly hoping some new evidence will turn up."

"Like Heather's vision," Flo said. "That's new evidence."

"I'm sure he'd like something a little more concrete."

"We should talk to him, or try anyway," Cat said.

"You're really serious," Ethan said. "You want to pursue this."

"Somebody's killing kids in my town, cousin. They, or somebody like them, already killed my little sister. Yes, yes, yes, I'm serious. And if you don't have the stones for it, then go home.
'Cause I'm going to find that sonuvabitch."

"And when you find him?"

Cat didn't reply. What
would
she do if she found Alice's killer? The images that played inside her mind were not pretty. Although she didn't recall specifically imagining them before, they came to her with an air of familiarity. She wondered how long they had been lurking there in the back of her mind, poisoning her subtly over the years.

"Soup's on," Flo said. They all moved to the dining room.

THE TORNADO SIRENS sounded as Flo and Cat were picking up the dinner dishes.

"It must be a short circuit or something," Cat said. "This isn't tornado season."

"Climate's changing," Ethan said. "The weather's going bonkers."

"Get the kids," Flo said.
"Everybody in the basement." Her tone of voice indicated that this was not a matter for discussion. Cat turned off the television. She muscled the two complaining children toward the basement door.

"Take those blankets and pillows from the sofa bed," she said. "Ethan, grab a box of crackers."

"How long are we going to be down there?"

"Long enough to want to stuff something in the kids' mouths.
Grab that carton of juice, too."