The May Queen Murders Read online

  “Matters to me.” Rook approached me, thumbing the collar of my dress. “Where’s your acorn necklace?”

  “My pocket. August gave it to me last week, and I plan on giving it back to him. It ain’t right to wear it if we’re together.”

  “I made that necklace,” Rook said.

  “You?”

  He gave me a weak smile. “You were mad at me, so August told me he’d give it to you. He was supposed to tell you.” His brow knotted. “Why’d he let you think he made it?”

  I shrugged. Anything I said risked making Rook mad. I didn’t want any more anger.

  “It wasn’t right of him to let you think it was his gift,” he muttered.

  Maybe August would’ve told me the truth if I hadn’t seen dead Heather with a smile slashed into her face.

  “Here,” I said, and fished the necklace from my skirt pocket. “You put it on me.” Rook swept my hair aside, retying my necklace, and when he finished, he seemed calmer.

  Then a scream echoed from the neighboring room. I jumped and darted for the door. I reached it first, only for Rook’s hand to cover mine on the doorknob. Fingers warm on top, metal cold beneath. His breath was against my neck.

  “Open it a crack,” he whispered.

  The doorknob hitched, the hinges hummed, but Sheriff and Papa were too busy to notice. Milo yowled again. He was bare but for his jeans begging to slither off his bony hips. His skin glowed under the light, purpling bruises near his left eye. A gash crusted on his lower lip. Sheriff pushed him down on the table while Papa examined Milo’s forearm, which was swollen and bluish-red where blood had flooded the tissue.

  “You got a fractured ulna, boy.” Papa traced his finger near Milo’s wrist. “Broke right here. You also got some radial dislocation.”

  “You sure?” Milo thrashed against my father. “Ain’t like you took any x-ray.”

  “Doc might work on animals, but he knows when a bone’s off-kilter,” Sheriff said, “so I suggest you calm your spirits and hold tight.”

  Milo’s eyes were huge, and the one was such a mess it’d gone red to the blue of his iris.

  “We got a radio and can patch in a call to your folks. There’s a truck to drive you to the hospital,” Papa offered.

  “No parents, and my brother and sister are busy. If you’re a doctor, fix it. Pop it back in and slap on a cast. I’ll find a way to pay you back. Swear on it.” His tongue slicked over the blood on his lip. “I’ll muck stalls, plant crops, whatever you need. Just no more bills.”

  Papa set down Milo’s arm and pulled Sheriff by where Rook and I were eavesdropping. “The boy needs help, Jay. The right thing would be to haul him to the hospital.”

  “It’ll bring questions here, Timothy.”

  Papa sighed. “I’ll patch him all right, but he’ll get aftercare if he’s smart. Just give me a hand with this and pray he doesn’t throw a blood clot.”

  Papa started back to the coffee table, and Sheriff lagged a step behind and muttered, “Lord have mercy. This idea’s dumber than a box of shit.”

  Milo poked his broken forearm, cocking his head with the fascination of a kid coming across roadkill.

  “It’s kinda gone numb,” he said.

  “That’s shock,” Papa explained. “You oughta go to the hospital.”

  “No. Damn. Hospitals.”

  Papa picked up Milo’s shirt from the floor. “You want a cloth to bite? This is gonna hurt.”

  Sheriff cracked his knuckles and positioned himself behind Milo, hands on his shoulders. Milo studied Papa manipulating his forearm. Papa paused over a silver ring on his pinkie. He slipped it off and placed it in his veterinary bag. “Your finger’s swelling. Should the ring cut off the blood, you don’t care to lose your finger or that ring. What’s your name?”

  “I didn’t say,” Milo answered.

  CRACK!

  A groan twisted Milo’s face, and blood dripped down his chin from the gash in his lip. I clutched the door frame, ripples of disgust running through me as the bones inside his body ground together.

  “Hold him tight,” Papa ordered. Sheriff adjusted his grip. Papa settled his fingers around Milo’s wrist. “When I was eighteen, I was a missionary in Mexico. A buildin’ collapsed, no doctors for miles. This one fellow’s hip dislocated. It bulged, stretchin’ his skin all shiny. Man alive, he was screamin’.

  “Anyway, this girl—didn’t speak a lick of English—begged me to help, said he was her brother. My granddaddy was what old-timers called a bonesetter, and I remember seeing him piece back together a hillman trampled by horses. So I did what he did. This fellow’s hip was fixed, and the girl was so grateful she came home with me. The next day, her daddy said I’d married her.”

  Milo gave a good-humored laugh, then came a swift jerk of Papa’s hands.

  POP!

  The only time I’d heard that noise before was a wet June when Heather unearthed a raccoon skull from the riverbank. It was squelched down in the muck, and once a bit of air got inside, it uncorked and flew into the air. She’d caught it in her slippery hands. She’d laughed when she’d done it, too.

  Milo’s face reddened, but he sniffed back what had to be mind-bending pain. He spied me and Rook playing ghost by the doorway. “I see you back there.”

  The door rocked open. My steps plodded against on the floor. I’d forgotten about the crown adorning my head, now stuck with dry grass and forest leaves.

  “You,” Milo said, “I know you.”

  “Know’s a relative term,” Rook muttered.

  “How’d I guess I’d bump into the likes of you again?” Milo could’ve been more brazen than brains, or so hurt that adrenaline talked to Rook for him; yet he struck me as more likely putting on a show of false bravado. The wiggle of the coffee table’s legs as he shook gave him away.

  “You got a problem with my boy?” Sheriff asked.

  “No, sir. We’ve just seen each other ’round.”

  Rook settled back in his boots, face blank, and I wasn’t giving up what I knew of Milo.

  “Why are you here?” Sheriff asked.

  Milo’s breath wheezed. “’Cause I like to party. Didn’t know the inbreds would stone me half to death.”

  “Oh, you’re plenty used to being stoned,” Rook said. “Woods ain’t a long walk from here. You’re welcome to go back.”

  Milo attempted to straighten his spine, gritting his teeth. He switched his attention to me. “Why’d you help me?”

  “M-m-murderin’ folks is wrong. They’d have killed you.”

  In the woods, with the lanterns and loomed fabric above, the others would’ve pounded him with their stones, wine bottles, whatever they found. I thought it better to catch the monster alive than destroy it.

  Yet was that monster Milo?

  “Who told you there’d be a party?” Sheriff asked.

  Heather.

  “Around school. People talk,” Milo replied. “I had to wear that getup to blend in. You know what’s said ’bout y’all. I had to find out how much is true. Plenty, it seems.”

  I assumed he was referring to the raggedy brown cloak, now splattered with blood, that hung over the back of one of the Meriweathers’ kitchen chairs.

  “Hey, now,” Sheriff cut in. “You’ve gotten some kindness from the good folks of the Glen. Don’t be a peckerhead.”

  “Good folks of the Glen.” Milo snorted and shoved off from the coffee table and not without limping or letting loose a pained moan. He lifted his shirt off the chair with his good arm and slipped it over his head with a hiss. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lawman’s star. You gonna do anything about how your good folks jumped me?”

  “We deal with our own kind.”

  With his shirt all cockeyed, Milo stared me down, his good arm roaming his pockets until he found a squashed pack of cigarettes. “You be careful out there, Ivy.”

  My belly gave a warning quiver. Inside, I writhed under the intensity of his watch. Somehow, I’d find out wha
t went on between him and Heather.

  “Let’s get you to the clinic, get your arm in a cast,” Papa intervened.

  “Mind if I have a smoke?” Milo asked.

  Sheriff nodded. “Stay close to the house. For safety.”

  Milo’s gait was creaky, the walk of battered bones. There were bells rigged up by the front door, and they sang out even after the door slammed behind the boy. The lantern outside the door lit up his blondest hair while streams of smoke traveled past the window.

  “You think he’ll go to the county police?” I asked.

  “Nah, bunch of hot air, that one,” Sheriff said.

  Papa closed his veterinary bag. “Don’t be so sure, Jay. Folks always know more than they let on.”

  I headed back to the kitchen. My thoughts were a sticky web of dead dogs, dead girls, skirts loomed through trees, and Milo’s bloody eye; fists clutching rocks, Heather. I felt sick and didn’t want to empty my stomach on the Meriweathers’ floor. I shoved open the back door to breathe air perfumed by May Day.

  I smelled cigarette smoke. Milo sat with his back against the fence and his bad arm tight across his chest while his other hand brought a cigarette to his lips. Rook motioned for Milo to get up and said, “You best get that arm fixed up. You don’t want to be caught here if folks are thinkin’ you’re that devil in the woods.”

  Milo stood and closed the space between himself and Rook. “Shame I ain’t, huh? Then you might have a real reason to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Rook said. “Just hard to see where we have common ground.”

  Milo flicked some ashes to the dirt. “I know y’all think I’m shit, but I got reasons to be here.”

  Her name spun through my mind, a tornado of upset and hurt.

  “Heather?” I asked.

  Milo’s mouth twitched. “No matter what you think about me, we ain’t that different.”

  The back door of the Meriweathers’ house opened, and Papa exited with his bag. He must’ve noticed the tension between Rook and Milo, how they stood with nothing remotely close to friendship between them, and approached to ease back Rook with a hand to his chest.

  “None of that,” Papa said. “I don’t care what your history is, but this fellow needs a cast, and I’m giving it to him. Pastor says we look out for our neighbor, and our neighbor’s more than who lives next door, Rook.”

  Rook bowed his head, mumbling, “Yes, Dr. Timothy.”

  Papa opened the gate in the Meriweathers’ fence and stepped out to the road. Milo followed behind him, and I looked on for a bit as they headed off toward the clinic. As a veterinarian, Papa interacted with folks outside the Glen more than most. When I was at the clinic, I shied away from outsiders, focusing on the animals they brought for care. Listening to Milo, watching his pain and anger and resignation, I couldn’t help but feel that tug in my chest, wondering why Heather was drawn to him, why she took such risks for him.

  The black sky went on forever. Sounds in the distance of the May Day celebration chimed across the fields. Rook ventured over to his greenhouse that harbored fragile seedlings. A burn pile of belladonna was drying on the ground. It seemed no matter how it was torn, the weed was too resilient to die.

  “We shouldn’t stay out here long,” Rook said, and dragged over a crate. I sat. I wished to smother away the sadness and pretend he and I were outside on the first night of May with no other fears than the strange shapes the fire from the torches cast across our faces.

  The wind blew the tattered clothes of the scarecrows, shaking the bells strewn along the fences. The berm of forest rose in the distance. Something squeaked as it flapped overhead, a bat circling, once, twice, a third time.

  Bats flyin’ a circle thrice brings luck that ain’t nice, Mamie once said.

  We weren’t alone. Others ran toward us.

  “Rook?” I pointed. Closer and closer, a girl and a boy ran. I recognized Violet’s blond hair and her purple dress. She was whimpering.

  “Vi!” Rook climbed over the fence to hit the road on the other side. Violet’s crying stilted with her every footfall. I ran at her, grabbed her wrists to pull her close, and held her.

  August’s and Rook’s faces spiraled tighter, and in the center, my body pressed against Violet’s shivering frame. She gripped a tattered crown of dried flowers. Heather flowers.

  “P-please, Vi,” I begged. “Where’s Heather?”

  “We don’t know,” she answered with a sniff. “No one can find her.”

  I reached for the crown. The pink blooms were all wrong, flattened and sparse, even for ones dried and used by the granny-women. Strands of red hair clung to the crown.

  As if ripped from Heather’s head.

  Chapter Eleven

  It wasn’t until the mornin’ after the May Day festival that folks noticed Terra ain’t come home.

  The hounds’ baying was constant. They were the dogs we tried so hard to keep safe, sent now to track and hunt. Aunt Rue needed a sedating tea brewed of chamomile, gingerroot, and herbs that wouldn’t bring on the baby a month too soon. My duty was to select items belonging to Heather to give the dogs her scent.

  I’d have told the dogs my cousin smelled of lavender soap and she dabbed rosemary oil behind her ears. Dogs didn’t understand those things. Their noses knew body chemistry, every miniature galaxy within our cells. They knew when someone was dead or alive.

  “Choose cloth,” Sheriff had instructed. “It holds the body’s oils, and the dogs’ll get the best of her smell. Hair’s good, too.”

  Heather’s broomstick skirts were twisted around wooden dowels and arranged in a rainbow. Her blouses and vests, each echoing some memory of her, were ordered in her bedroom closet. As I picked through the fabric, something fluttered to the floor, a paper from a crafter in the Glen. The family made stationery and journals for the farmer’s market. The note was velvety, as if unfolded and refolded numerous times, and I read the date heading the page, January 4, this year:

  Dear M,

  I’ll never betray you. Don’t you trust me? You can tell me your secrets. You know how I feel, how I think you are brave, strong, and so much more than where you live. Where you’re from.

  I’m not only a Glen girl. I’m your girl.

  Why can’t you believe me? Do you know what I do when I’m all alone? I think about you. I think about that cigarette on your lips I want to kiss. I think about your messy hair and your lean body. I remember the taste of you, wanting more, and I wish what I give myself was as much as what you give me.

  You can trust me. I trust you.

  Is it crazy to say I love you?

  —H

  A few lines down, a different handwriting replied:

  My H,

  I trust you. I trust you more than I trust anyone. I’ve never been closer to anyone. I can’t say why. But when we’re together, I want to tell you everything. It’s right there. I want to give in. I’m learning to give. To you.

  —M

  I refolded Heather’s love letter.

  She’d been seeing Milo far longer than either of them let on. But was that all they hid? How deep did their secrets run?

  My thoughts were unsure of too much, and I numbed myself to find something to bring to Sheriff. I rummaged through her drawer and selected her black gauze shirt and the red curls knotted in her bone comb, but the note remained tucked inside my camisole, hidden beside my heart. I left the door to her bedroom open, sunrise poking through the patchwork curtains. She’d be back. She had to come back.

  I stood on the bank all day while the dogs snuffled the river water, their paws splashing. They ran across fields and snooped around the stable. Promise Bridge continued to swing even after the dogs crisscrossed it and barreled over to Potter’s Field. They tracked her smell to the woods, to the place where Birch had made his home of girl skirts and old spoons, but then her scent was gone. They searched for blood and came up with nothing. Heather had vanished.

  I clutched the shawl around
my shoulders. I watched from my vantage point on the shore, until northern winds brought a chill and the earth sparkled with mist. By dusk, an owl roosted somewhere in the trees and sang its darkening elegy.

  Hoo . . . Hoo . . .

  Who . . . Who . . .

  “I brought you coffee,” Rook said, and held out a thermos. “I added cream and honey, the way you like it.”

  He uncapped the thermos and poured me a steaming cup. The heat soothed the stiffness in my joints from standing in one place for so long.

  “Did you tell my pops about Heather sneaking around?” he asked.

  “She’s already so furious that I betrayed her,” I said, setting down the coffee. “If I do it again—”

  “Ivy, that don’t matter if it gets her found.”

  “She’ll never speak to me again.”

  Who . . . Who . . . the owl wondered of the clouds. Her . . . Her . . .

  Rook pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. His fingers nudged mine, and I loosened my hand so ours could twine together. He said softly, “She’ll forgive you.”

  One of the hounds barked and barreled back into the river, the Sheriff’s hillman barely able to hold the tether and falling face first in the water.

  “P-please, Rook,” I pleaded. “Don’t tell Sheriff Heather’s secrets.”

  “I can’t lie to him,” he protested and set down the thermos.

  I grabbed his other hand and brought both of them to my cheeks so that his forefingers traced my lips. His thumbs drew a heart beginning with the crescents under my eyes and ran down to my chin.

  “Help me,” I pleaded.

  “How?”

  “Help me find her. I need to make things right. I didn’t have that chance before she disappeared, and . . .”

  My knees gave. Rook dropped his hands to my shoulders and tugged me against him. Keeping me from falling.

  She was gone.

  I’m not letting you be my shadow anymore.

  She could’ve run away.

  Get a life.

  The crown was hers. She could’ve pulled it off.