The May Queen Murders Read online

  After winding my hair in a loose braid, I found Rook in the kitchen. He stood on a stepladder affixing a potted strawberry vine by the window. Pale berries poked out between glossy leaves.

  “You only gotta water it,” he said as he descended the ladder.

  I pulled out a chair from the table and flopped down on it. My muscles were sand-heavy. No rain in days, and the house was dry. Every surface—tabletop, counters, floors, pails—layered with dust. A picnic basket covered by a checkered cloth rested on the table. At first, I guessed food from Briar, but the buttery smell of Mama’s empanadas wafted out.

  “You gonna talk?” Rook asked.

  I eyed the back door. Rook stretched out his hand. His skin was warm and toughened, and I stopped from crying out because he felt so good and alive. I’d forgotten not all skin felt like river mud.

  “How much do you remember?” he asked once outside in the yard.

  “E-everything,” I replied.

  “Everything? ”

  “What you said.” I studied my feet, too long and skinny for my body. “W-when you wanted me to wake up. I heard you.”

  “The thought of losin’ you scares the hell outta me.”

  His fingers traced my arm when my mother opened the door. He hopped back a step, ramming into a crate of ale bottles with his boot. Mama raised an eyebrow as she brought me the picnic basket from the kitchen table.

  “Take this to your tía ’s house,” she instructed.

  “You comin’?” I asked.

  “Ivy, I’m tired,” Mama said, and started back to the door. “I’ve been in la cocina making food for days. Just do this for Mama. Rook can go with you, sí? Don’t wander.”

  Mama went back inside, and I lifted the edge of the basket’s cloth where she’d stacked a dozen flaky golden empanadas. With the basket slung into my elbow’s crook, I reached inside my dress and withdrew Heather’s necklace, running the charms between my thumb and forefinger before stuffing the chain inside my collar, where its metal dangled over my heart.

  “What are you thinking?” Rook asked.

  “Not much. I’m drugged. I can’t believe she’s making me do this.”

  Rook opened the gated fence, allowing me to go before him. We took a few steps down the road, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, pausing at a scarecrow. Its head was a pumpkin from last autumn, only now soured with rot and slime.

  “She’s just trying to help out your aunt,” Rook said, nudging the picnic basket with his knee. “Your mama’s a good person.”

  “She says she still feels like she don’t fit in here,” I replied. “I mean, look at us. There ain’t any other Mexicans in the Glen, and the ones at school—I don’t relate to them ’cause I’ve always lived here.”

  “I think you’re beautiful.” I blushed but Rook turned my chin. “I like how sometimes you speak and there’s some of your mama’s accent in there. You don’t gotta be anyone but you, Ivy.”

  “Heather said I was tryin’ to be her. If we weren’t fightin’, I’d have been with her. She wouldn’t have died.”

  He shook his head. “Or you’d both be dead.”

  We walked down the path under the sun. Sweat beaded along my hairline, and wide cracks mapped the ground where the earth split from drought. All the grass, even the oat grass so tolerant of Ozark heat, bleached white. We needed rain, and soon, if there was to be any hope for a decent crop.

  As we passed the posts, I noticed some new signs tacked to the wood, decrees from Sheriff.

  DON’T GO OUTSIDE ALONE.

  STAY ON KNOWN ROADS.

  Hillfolk took posts along the trails, shotguns in hand and eyes narrowed in the unforgiving sun. Watching.

  When we reached Heather’s home, her bed sheets were hanging on a line in front of the house. Laundry usually sun-dried behind a house, but when a family was in mourning, they put their loved one’s sheets in front to announce a passing.

  Other hillfolk had visited my aunt’s house, evidenced by baskets of fresh bread, eggs, and even a wheel of the Lemays’ best cheese on the porch. Rook helped me gather the food. I turned the doorknob to let us inside. When I found it locked, I lifted the doormat to look for the spare key, but it was gone.

  Because now it was after.

  I took off Heather’s necklace and pieced through the bits of rusted history until I came to a time-darkened skeleton key. On a hunch, I slipped it into the lock and listened to the pop of the lock yielding.

  “Lucky,” Rook muttered.

  We walked through the living room. A white veil was draped over the mirror above the fireplace. Our footfalls fell hollow on the warped floor. I sped up my step as unease slithered up my spine and knotted around my shoulders, strangling me. A house in mourning, a house that had no life in it. We went into the kitchen, where I showed Rook how my aunt liked her necessities packed in the icebox.

  “Aunt Rue, I’m in the kitchen,” I called out. My voice returned with a tinny echo. “Mama sent over food.”

  No thumps of movement, no murmured voices. Rook shrugged. “Maybe they went for a walk.”

  A family in mourning didn’t go for walks. I wasn’t sure where Marsh was, probably at Papa’s clinic if he couldn’t bear to be home. I instructed Rook to tidy up the kitchen and living room, giving him a bucket of hot water and oil soap. I bumped against a Mason jar on the counter. Initially, I thought the jar was filled with coffee beans, but these were larger.

  “Pawpaw seeds,” I remarked. “When I was little, some townie showed up when Heather and I were outside playin’ ring-around-the-rosie. This woman was grieving hard, and she asked for Mamie. She gave Mamie money and begged her to bring pawpaw seeds to town for a burial, said they needed them thrown on a casket to find out who killed this woman’s father.”

  “Did Mamie go?”

  “She did.”

  “Did they find out who killed the man?” he asked.

  I didn’t know and drew my fingers back from the Mason jar. “They’re gonna throw them on Heather’s grave tomorrow.”

  Rook lifted the bucket of soapy water and then took the rag to wash down the floor. Too much heat in the past couple days, too much dust blowing through open windows, and I was sure they left the windows open as much as possible to make sure Heather’s spirit wasn’t trapped.

  While Rook cleaned, I sneaked down the hall, past my aunt and Marsh’s bedroom. Aunt Rue lay asleep, her strawberry-blond hair haloed on her pillow. Sunlight poured in and glinted off the sharpened blade of the ax under the bed. Mamie had put it there to ease the labor pains once the baby came.

  The door to Heather’s room was open as I left it. Pieces of quartz dangled from the ceiling to catch light, and I glanced to her dresser. Heather decorated the top with a jewelry box and another collection of found things too large to string on her chain—glass bottles with labels for things like “gargling oil” and “viper drops,” animal bones she’d washed and bleached in sunlight. Everything was a treasure to Heather. She’d been a treasure to me.

  My throat closed, my heart rising because it wanted to fall out among her things.

  I smelled her.

  I smelled her in this room.

  I expected to turn around and find her behind me with her tilted grin. She wouldn’t be there. She was in a barn over ice. By law, for any death unattended by the Glen’s doctor, Sheriff had to call the county police to send their medical examiner. They went to Papa’s clinic, the most sterile site on the Glen’s land, and pulled open the dead, dug around their insides for clues to what killed them, and stitched them up. All of it recorded with notes and cameras. There was no affection in their cuts and examination. It was science. A crime in Heather’s case. The Glen’s granny-women would’ve stood by to make sure traditions were kept and wrapped her in rags soaked in wahoo tea before placing her in a pine box so we could say farewell with Pastor Galloway reading Scripture and . . .

  I wasn’t here for this.

  Every drawer went opened in search of
something. Mindful of Aunt Rue’s sleep, I rapped quietly on floorboards, wondering if a loose one would spring up and uncover some mystery. Tapping in her closet, even with her dresses brushing against my face like her fingers pushing back a wild tangle of my hair. I pulled out a chair and picked around her ceiling, where I sneezed away cobwebs.

  All that was left on her stripped bed were bare pillows, the mattress, and frame. I poked around in hopes of finding something she’d hidden. Down on my hands and knees, I scooted underneath the bed. Heather was too good at hiding things.

  There was nothing for me to find, and I reluctantly pulled myself up before giving the room a last look. I spun on my heels, intending to help Rook with cleaning, but I pivoted right into Mamie. “Oof!”

  My grandmother held my face. Her mouth twitched, yet all I received was the comfort of her hands, so worn that her fingerprints seemed eroded by age. Her hands dropped to Heather’s necklace peeking out from my collar. She inched across the charms and pendants, lingering on the gaps of the missing ones.

  “I know, Mamie,” I said. “I w-wish I could find them. I want them back. I want her back.”

  Can’t have her back, girl, her eyes seemed to say. Don’t mess with tryin’ to conjure the dead to talk after they’re gone. Nothing good comes of raisin’ a tormented soul.

  If Heather’s soul was in torment because of the mystery of how she died, I had to uncover every truth about her, even the ones she wanted me to never know. Was it going against her wishes? I didn’t know. I wanted—no, needed—her to rest in peace.

  I needed to find peace in her death.

  But how could I live without her?

  Mamie shuffled past me in the doorway to enter Heather’s room. Like me, she felt along the dresser and bed frame, old pill bottles and animal bones, before stopping on the jewelry box on the dresser. I knew the hinged top, the carving of budded plants easy to mistake for wheat. It was heather. I supposed this was where Heather stored her necklace at night. If I were to take it, I’d have one more of Heather’s belongings to claim as my own. Except having her things wasn’t the same as having her.

  “I don’t want it, Mamie,” I said.

  My grandmother looked over her shoulder at me with her keen eye. She drummed on the box’s lid before pressing it into my hands. Her thumbs over mine, she made me trace the box’s corners.

  Ivy, look.

  Okay, Mamie, I’ll look.

  My breath held tight, I flipped open the silver hinge on the front. The odor of cedar oil to keep away moths whiffed out, and then Heather’s soapy, lavender smell. It was empty.

  I almost expected something to be inside.

  “Why, Mamie?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

  She touched the red thread bracelet on my wrist, then backed out of the room.

  Alone, I knelt on Heather’s floor with her box in my lap and smacked the lid. Damn it, Heather, there should be something here, something to tell who you really were.

  Whap! I hit the box again, then again.

  My hand throbbed with the blows to the front, the top. I didn’t care. I hurt.

  Another hit. Thud!

  I cocked my head. That sounded different. Hollow.

  Tapping along the box, I searched for the empty spot. It rattled. I bit my lip and tugged. A false bottom fell away, revealing a gap, and scrap after scrap of folded paper fluttered into my lap. All in the same stationery as Heather’s note.

  M,

  I don’t want to hide anymore, but I can’t tell anyone about us. They wouldn’t understand. Especially not Ivy. She keeps asking questions. She knows too much, and she’s obsessed. What am I supposed to tell her? Nothing is what she thinks it is. Birch Markle isn’t all there is to be afraid of. I’m ready to leave it all behind. Even her.

  —H

  H,

  Soon, I promise.

  Soon you’ll be free. Just hang on.

  —M

  M,

  Meet me in the woods.

  You know the place. We can’t leave anything behind.

  —H

  I crushed the notes and shoved them in my skirt’s pockets. I couldn’t read them right now. My thoughts were too scattered yet intent on one thing.

  Ivy is obsessed.

  OBSESSED.

  I stood and left Heather’s room. Rook’s scritch-scratch while he scrubbed echoed from the kitchen. In the hall outside Aunt Rue’s room, the air was stifling. She needed a breeze, and I crept around the bed to open the window in hope the humidity would dissipate outside. I turned to my aunt to whisper goodbye, but the word withered.

  Aunt Rue sat up in bed.

  Her legs dangled over the edge. Spidery veins crossed her calves, which were milky, as was her face. The purplish cast under her eyes revealed she mustn’t have slept much. The bloodshot whites rimming her irises were visible.

  “You gotta rest, Auntie,” I said.

  She stared blankly. The wind fluffed the curtains and her mussed hair. Her toes didn’t reach the floor from the bed, but between her feet, the ax head was visible.

  “He comes for girls with secrets, you know,” she said in a brittle rasp, and the sound raised every hair on my arms. “Terra MacAvoy had them. My girl did too. And you.”

  “Wh-what about me?” I asked.

  She didn’t blink. Her arm lifted as if raised by invisible marionette’s strings. She pointed at me.

  “Nothing can stop him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  We weren’t havin’ another May Queen after that. The grief of losin’ Terra, such a pretty, spirited thing, was way too much of a cross for the good people of Rowan’s Glen to bear.

  By dawn’s light, Mama held my hand as we walked the Glen’s northern end. Lush willows near a pond formed an alcove for eternal respite from life. Gramps was buried in the cemetery, as were his parents and theirs. Mamie’s side of the family as well. Stone markers rose from overgrown grass, untouched but for moss clinging to storm-worn dates.

  Pastor Galloway would lay my cousin to rest. Papa went ahead with Marsh. I didn’t tell anyone of Aunt Rue’s warning, never told Rook, despite my trembling. I fibbed that being in Heather’s home had brought too much sorrow, instead of showing him that I’d found more notes. I didn’t know if Aunt Rue was well enough to bury her daughter. God help me, I didn’t want to see her again anytime soon.

  When Mama and I neared the graveyard, I heard Papa yelling.

  “Who the hell did this? Where’s Leaf Clement? He knows better than to dig a grave the day before burial!”

  “Timothy, he might’ve done it at sunrise,” Pastor declared.

  Mama’s hand tensed over mine. We joined a cluster of Papa, Sheriff, Marsh, and Pastor. Mama tugged me past the pine box near the open grave. Heather was inside that box. Forever.

  Papa knelt to examine the graveyard dirt. “Soil’s dry. This ain’t done this mornin’. We ain’t buryin’ my niece in this hole. Leaf’s gotta dig a new one.”

  Pastor stepped forward, Bible in hand. “Timothy, be rational—”

  Papa threw Pastor a dark look. “You know what the old-timers say. We bury a body in a grave dug the day before burial, then death comes for the kin.”

  The cemetery fell into silence, but not the liquid hush of birds skimming the pond’s surface. It was the silence of anger. Pastor pulled my father aside. Half of me felt the prickle to measure the grave’s depth. The other half sought to run far away.

  Nothing seemed more terrifying than lying in a box while dirt piled on top. Eventually, the dirt would become heavier, thinning the air, and I’d strain to take a breath. I’d feel the weight and—

  I wouldn’t be buried alive.

  Graves were for the dead, for the Heathers.

  Mama worked her rosary in prayer. “Padre nuestro, que estás in los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre . . .”

  I took a Spanish class once in seventh grade. Didn’t matter that I spoke some at home, the teacher said I was too slangy. Other students, mo
stly rollers fluent from growing up in immigrant families, called me pocha because I didn’t act Mexican like them. I stopped speaking my mother’s tongue. I wondered how Mama felt giving up all but her language to come with Papa.

  “I want to bury my stepdaughter,” Marsh said to Sheriff. “Her mama’s a wreck, and last thing we need is y’all makin’ a scene.”

  Sheriff frowned. “I’m sorry this happened.”

  Marsh glared, his nostrils wide. I half expected him to yell at Sheriff to get out, that he’d done nothing to keep that girl safe. While he’d helped Papa patch up a boy some drunk kids had thought was Birch Markle, the real one had killed Heather and thrown her in the river. Meanwhile, Birch was still in the woods, still night-screaming.

  Mama let go of my hand and met Papa, embracing him. His hands rested on her hips. I couldn’t hear what they murmured, but I noticed the way her fingers slid through his hair, how she brought his forehead to meet hers. She loved him. She loved him with all her heart and wanted to take away some hurt.

  Some loss.

  After promising things would be done proper, Sheriff made his way to me. “Your cousin was spotted goin’ off alone in the days before her murder,” he said. “You know anything ’bout that?”

  The truth was, I didn’t know enough to give him an answer. Not really. She met Milo. There were drugs, sex, but what did telling any of that matter now except to disgrace her?

  “She mention runnin’ into Birch Markle?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Ivy, girl, if you know anything that might’ve caused your cousin trouble, you gotta tell me.”

  Not until I knew what those things meant first.

  Our families’ closest friends gathered after the funeral. It wasn’t open to anyone to come and pay their respects—that’d come in church when Marsh or Aunt Rue attended next, and seeing as Aunt Rue was bedbound, that would be some time. I suspected they didn’t want visitors.