The May Queen Murders Read online

  You can’t have mine.

  Heather had once trusted me with everything. I didn’t know why that had changed, what changed in her, in me. She kept so much to herself and scattered crumbs of half-truths.

  Rook embraced me, his lips against my forehead, his nose touching the part in my hair. My fingers treaded his suspenders, along the planes of his back muscles. His shirt buttons embossed my skin. The fabric was wet where my tears had pooled between my cheek and his chest, but he held me tight, no matter how long the cries shuddered my back.

  “I’ll do anything to help,” he promised.

  I lifted my face. “Even keeping some things from your dad?”

  A slow nod. “Yeah, but if we don’t get anywhere, I gotta tell him.”

  I wasn’t alone.

  Knowing Rook would help, even with Heather missing and the chasm her absence created, made the hollow not seem so bottomless. It was dark and cold, but Rook was down there as well.

  His lips skimmed across mine, only for a heartbeat.

  A group of hillfolk, including August, were searching the field with a hound. August wore a stony expression and raised his hand in a wave. I shooed Rook over to his friend while I reached for the thermos and poured myself more coffee. The moment I unscrewed the lid, the clouds shifted, allowing the scarlet haze of sunset to bleed across the desolate land. Something metal glinted near the river.

  Rook and August didn’t notice how I inched down the shore to the twinging spark. The hound up near August’s group howled, some odor on the wind tickling his nose. He lurched hard to the left and started down the embankment. I had only a minute to seek out the metal winking against the spoke of light before the group lumbered my way.

  “What is it?” someone yelled as the dog scratched at a dirt patch fifteen yards up from me.

  “Can’t tell,” the hound’s handler called. “Get Sheriff. We got something. Boomer’s digging hard.”

  I sifted through clods of dirt and grass until I unearthed a metal chain with a rusted nut. Folks must’ve trampled it into the ground.

  The dog barked and whined as his claws exhumed some secret. The hillmen stood around, anticipating Boomer’s find. Rook claimed a position at the base of the group, vacillating between the search and where I unstrung the chain from the mud.

  “Boomer, move,” August said, and eased aside the hound. He knelt and brushed the ground before holding up a thick string. A piece of red thread. “This is Heather’s! I’ve seen her wear it!”

  I bit back a slug of bile. Mama and the red threads our family wore. They were supposed to keep us safe.

  I thrust the thoughts from my mind and picked harder at the earth. Rook knelt by me now and helped me wipe away dirt. Link by link, I scraped off the soil and bits of grass until I uncovered a necklace with charms and treasures made from relics people had discarded or lost. It was ugly and enchanting. Heather’s necklace.

  A lump swelled in my throat. “You see what I have?”

  Rook’s lips tucked together, his glance flicking to August. My fingers wound the chain, looping around each nut, each tarnished pendant that Heather adored. I’d counted them, was with her when she took things from the earth and made them special. Some charms were missing, mostly rocks she’d turned into jewelry, the green glass circle with her birthday. My hands quaked, the links trembling against each other with a soft jingle. She never took it off.

  Chapter Twelve

  Oh, they searched for Terra. Everybody knew it was a right shame. Then she was found on the riverbed, half sunken in mud, the swamp grass ready to take her.

  The next few days were a haze, that silvery part of the mind plunging me underwater. It felt like hours before surfacing. My skin was heavy, my clothes weights that made it impossible to lift my arms or move my legs. Since Heather had abandoned me in Potter’s Field, I’d only remembered to breathe. I hadn’t yet climbed out. Without her, I couldn’t.

  A metal pail hung from a willow near Milo’s trailer, clattering against the tree in the wind. It didn’t bang with a hollow noise. Something was inside. Probably so Milo could leave out weed and get paid. Beside the trailer was a carport housing an old truck and a chicken run. A half dozen hens pecked bits of corn, and some fluffy chicks waddled among their mothers. I reached for a chick, coddling it in my hands to enjoy its downiness.

  “What the hell are you doin’?”

  Milo stretched on the steps and dumped what looked like needles into the BIOHAZARD bin by the door. On his hand without a cast, he wore a latex glove, which he snapped off and placed in the bin.

  “Pettin’ a chick,” I said.

  He half smiled. “Ivy, hey. Thought you were this hippie broad who tries to free our chickens, tells them to ‘Fly away, pretty birds,’ and I’m like, ‘They don’t fly!’”

  He withdrew a tin of lip oil from his pocket, one of the products Aunt Rue sold in the market.

  “Heather gave that to you,” I remarked.

  He nodded. “She said this’d help. People ain’t usually so nice to us.”

  I set down the chick, shamed. Judgments came so fast. I lived that, yet had made assumptions about him.

  Milo held up his arm with the cast, which had grown dingy over the past few days. “Your daddy’s the vet who patched up my arm. He’s got my ring, which I’d like back. Your family’s got good folks.”

  “We try.”

  Milo drew a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, and put one to his lips. With his good hand, he lit it, taking a long draw. Something was off about him. His body didn’t hang with his usual jingle-jangle, and his face was drawn, more so with the fading bruises on his cheek.

  I set the chick into its run and unclipped Heather’s necklace. “You know what this is. Some charms are gone. Where are they?”

  He reached for the necklace, but I yanked it back before he grabbed hold. His fingers brushed mine and he laughed. “You’re adorable.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the gate in the fencing surrounding the trailer park. Rook waited there, plucking at some green vines.

  “Touch me again, and you’ll learn whether what you’ve heard about the Glen is true,” I said.

  Milo hoisted up his jeans to his waist instead of letting them fall so low that any farther would’ve been indecent. “All right. Let’s have ourselves a talk. Go inside. Him, too. I ain’t havin’ you weirdoes hanging outside my door.”

  I entered Milo’s trailer with Rook close behind. The front room was claustrophobic, with an air mattress on the floor. The blankets were neat and pulled tight, pillows fluffed. There were two baskets of folded clothing, one with some items I recognized as Milo’s, and the other I guessed was his sister’s, given the black lace bra on top. The floor was waxed, and the spartan furniture was dust-free.

  A girl a few inches shy of Milo’s height and waif-thin, maybe a year or two older, swaggered into the front room. I barely remembered her from school before she dropped out. Her pants were leather and her shirt a halter under black fishnet. A blue star tattoo marked her thumb. Save for heaps of mascara and matte red lipstick, her pale eyes and pouty mouth matched Milo’s.

  “What are they doing here?” she asked, her tone not at all friendly.

  “Came to talk about Heather, I reckon,” Milo said.

  She wandered to an antique rolltop desk and stuffed some bags of green herbs into a shoulder bag. She snorted. “So, Ivy, what’d Heather tell you ’bout us?”

  “N-nothing,” I blurted. “How’d you know my name?”

  “Heather talked about you, told us lots of things.” She maneuvered around me in the small room and stopped, taking hold of Heather’s necklace. Her brow furrowed. “Why are you wearing this?”

  “Heather’s gone,” Rook said.

  Milo raised his head from his pillow on the air mattress. “Gone?”

  “She’s been missing since May Day,” I explained. I hadn’t been in school to tell him, but he must have noticed her absence. “I know Milo’s . . . cl
ose to her, so if anybody knows where she’s at, I figure it’s him.”

  The girl dropped the necklace. “My brother don’t know where she went.”

  “What about you?” Rook asked.

  “There ain’t anything ’bout me.” She tucked her bright orange hair with its dark roots behind her ear and bent over to pick up some barn boots, one with a scuffed toe. The boots I’d seen in the stable when everything with Heather changed. No wonder I’d been mistaken—they were the same kind as Rook’s boots.

  “Milo, I’m borrowing your shoes,” the girl said. “I gotta sell some bags to pay for last night.” She pushed open the screen door and pointed at her brother. “Don’t do anything dumb.”

  She headed outside, boots clomping loudly, and went to feed the chickens.

  Milo’s gaze shifted from his sister to Rook and me, studying the gap between our bodies, how it narrowed, the way Rook’s hand rested on my shoulder. “Ah, so you’re a thing.”

  “What about you and Heather?” I asked. “Your sister’s gone, if that’s what’s holdin’ you back.”

  Milo’s hand covered his mouth. I wondered if he thought about kissing Heather.

  “Emmie knows all about Heather. She came here a lot.” His face took a sad shadow. “Heather needed a place she felt safe.”

  His words stung. Even with Birch Markle’s screams and the animals dying, I still considered the Glen safe. Though I planned to attend college, maybe be a veterinarian like Papa or study art, I’d never leave, not forever. I needed the fields and horses, the harvests and quiet, because the Glen was my home. To Heather, it was a trap.

  “Why were you in the woods on May Day?” Rook asked.

  “Heather wanted to meet me there.” Milo ran a finger along his cast’s edge. “She wanted out.”

  My brow knotted. “What do you mean, ‘out’?”

  “She was gonna run away, Ivy.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s what she did.”

  But where’d she go if not with Milo? She bared her soul to him, shared secrets with him. I went to Rook when I was troubled. It stood to reason Heather did the same if she was in love with this scarecrow-bodied boy.

  “So is she here?” Rook asked. “Are you hidin’ her?”

  He moved toward the hallway and glanced at the other rooms. If a door creaked, a foot fell daintily against the floor, all this would be over. If Heather came out from wherever she was.

  Milo pushed back his shaggy hair. “You heard Emmie. I don’t know anything. I figured Heather’s plans went out the window when I got attacked. Guess she ran while she could. I hope she turns up. But she’s scared.”

  “Of what?” I asked. Heather, who seemed so fearless, was frightened?

  “She couldn’t tell—” Milo cut himself.

  I followed his gaze to the screen door where Emmie stood scowling, her jaw set hard. Who knew how long she’d been listening?

  “I’ll be back,” Milo said, and got up to join his sister.

  From the window, I watched Emmie pull him out of earshot. Rook walked over to a bookcase and scanned the titles, which left me to nose around for a bathroom. After I finished, I noted the closed doors in the hallway. My knuckles gave a soft rap against one.

  “Heather? You in there?” I asked hopefully.

  From within the room, someone coughed. I tested the knob to find the door unlocked and eased it open. The room was dark, but a smell of antiseptic and sickness hit my nose so hard I covered my nose. If Heather was in here, she was either sick or—I switched on a dim light.

  A skeletal body lay on a hospital-style bed. My back went rigid. She’d not been gone long, but what if she’d been attacked, forced to stay here? How long could she be held hostage before her body gave out? She’d written of secrets in her letter. How far would Milo go to keep those secrets hidden?

  I inched closer. An arm colored decomposing yellow and webbed with bruises stuck out from the sheets. An IV pole was beside the bed. I rounded the edge, and all the breath left my lungs.

  Not Heather.

  A young man, one who was obviously ill, stared with open, vacant eyes. Gaze fixed on a picture of trees on the wall, he didn’t realize I was beside him. A medical chart hung off the foot of the bed, and I bent down to read. Mark Entwhistle. He was only twenty-four.

  The human shell on the bed choked on phlegm. I bolted upright and knocked my head on the IV stand, making a racket so great Rook poked in his head.

  “I was looking for Heather,” I explained, rubbing my head.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Milo said from behind me. He squeezed past Rook. “My brother’s sick, and the last thing he needs is some busybody snooping ’round for things that ain’t there.”

  “I-I’m sorry,” I said as I staggered into the hall.

  Milo shut the door and pressed his back to the wood. “He had a bad night, needs his rest. Emmie’s gotta sell some weed to pay for last night’s nurse.”

  I could understand not wanting us to disturb his brother, but something about the sick man in that room didn’t seem like the kind of secret Milo had talked about in his letter to Heather. It was unfortunate, yes, yet not something that’d change what Heather thought of him.

  The front door swung open, boots loud in the trailer. Emmie thrust her pointer finger toward the door. “Y’all need to leave. There ain’t anything here for you, but I can tell you that even if Heather was here, she wouldn’t go back to that hellhole.”

  Rook had to pull on my wrist to unfreeze my feet from the floor. I shuffled toward the front room and glanced back to Milo, but he wouldn’t look my way. There was nothing more I’d learn about Heather right then, but my questions mounted.

  Outside, I didn’t want Rook to see my simmering frustration. I rested my head against his chest and glowered at the closed door.

  I wished Heather had told me about Milo instead of crushing her spirit by hiding him. I didn’t understand her attraction, but I knew about wanting someone, to hear his voice and have time where it was only the two of you. Yes, I’d have done everything to keep her in the Glen. Because I was selfish. Yet maybe if she’d told me what she planned, I’d have understood.

  “Are you gonna talk to my pops about all this?” Rook asked. “I know you don’t wanna get Heather in trouble, but something ain’t right.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  But as I walked away from the trailer, from Milo and drugs and his sister, I knew I wouldn’t talk to Sheriff until I found out what the Entwhistles were hiding.

  Instead of stopping by the clinic upon returning to the Glen, I had Rook take me to Whimsy’s new pasture. Papa had moved her and the other horses after Journey’s slaughter. He said the horses remembered and would spook.

  Sheriff had tracked down a new stallion for Rook, but I’d not seen him yet. As we drew near the pasture, Rook pointed out an Andalusian grazing near Whimsy. Beautiful charcoal-gray tail flicking flies from his white coat. Rook propped up his foot on the horse fence. “His name’s Veil. He was a jumping horse for show, but when he was injured, his life got real bad. Pops got him from a good rescue.”

  I smiled. “You ride him yet?”

  “A couple of times, made sure he wouldn’t buck me off.”

  The two horses loped around each other. I liked the rhythm of their hooves, the points of their ears, and even the spray from their noses as they huffed.

  “Let’s go riding, Ivy.”

  “It ain’t safe,” I protested. “I’ll be in trouble if my parents find out.”

  “You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.”

  He had a point. Veil nickered at me, eager to nuzzle my hair and skirt no matter how Rook shooed him, as we pulled out our reins from the tack room. I clipped Whimsy’s reins to her halter. Her head bowed. She knew things were different. Not just with Journey. With me. That I missed a piece of me. A tide of sadness swept inward on me, and I propped myself up against my horse, my hands on her
withers, my face in my forearms. She was strong and wouldn’t let me sink no matter how great the weight.

  “The first time I rode Veil, it was almost impossible to make myself get on,” Rook said. “I kept thinkin’ ’bout Journey and how you and I rode off together that last time. I’d convinced myself the same thing would happen to any horse I rode, but it hasn’t happened yet. I tell myself it won’t happen again.”

  I needed to hear that.

  We rode through the fields. Clouds rolled in from the southwest, and Rook tipped his head back as if expecting rain. There’d be none. The leaves didn’t flip over.

  I knew what Rook wanted to do. He was taking me riding because he knew how much I loved being out with Whimsy, and I hadn’t ridden her in far too long. Sitting on my horse’s back, feeling her move beneath me, her body and mine as one, I needed that freedom, that forgetting.

  Rook sped up Veil’s pace to match Whimsy’s until we rode beside each other. He was so at ease with his horse. It was the simple things—the flex of his thighs, the tightness of his stomach, things I couldn’t see in myself—that I enjoyed watching in him.

  He halted Veil and watched Whimsy and me trot, every part of me bouncing. “View’s nice here, Ivy.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “You’re doin’ it on purpose,” he said, and kicked Veil to catch up with Whimsy. We both laughed. Riding with him felt good, and—

  Heather was gone.

  How dare I feel good and enjoy that moment when I had no idea where she was?

  “Ivy,” Rook called. “Hey! Did you hear me?”

  I saw him again. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “We should water the horses,” he said. “Denial Mill’s up ahead. We can stop there.”

  We guided the horses to the water. The mill groaned as the wheel turned, a constant whirring against the liquid babble spilling over rocks. The river was shallow, the lack of rain during April and a dry winter speeding the shores dry. Only the middle had any depth. Shoals submerged in rainier seasons formed a rocky bridge across the banks. I unclipped Whimsy’s reins before she lowered her head to drink while I stooped to admire a tan snail shell in the dirt. Lavender wisps and a hint of green spun over the shell.