The May Queen Murders Read online

  “That’s what Heather told them, and they went after her instead.”

  Would Heather have told me that if Rook hadn’t? She’d stood up like Dahlia had. Their cruelty was for me, and she’d smothered it. She did what a sister would. A bitter-tasting guilt puckered my mouth. I wanted to believe I’d do the same for Heather, but the truth was I didn’t know. I wasn’t that brave.

  Once we reached the art room, I settled into my usual spot. The room smelled chemical—glue and acrylic paint—mixing with the earthen slop of clay. The art room was safe. Everyone was too into their projects to bother with us but for a few wary glances when Rook wandered over to the bin loaded with red mud. The townies’ cluster went silent as he neared. Then they veered inward, whispers floating above their sacred circle.

  “ . . . dog . . . in pieces . . . You think they were there?”

  Rook shot them a dirty look before claiming his seat beside me. I broke apart some clay to roll out snakes for a coil vase with a perilous tilt to the left. I had no illusions—it was ugly as sin. While drawing came natural, sculpture wasn’t my gift of the spirit.

  A glop of clay squished between my fingers. “What do you think that guy Milo wanted with Heather?”

  “It’s always Heather, isn’t it?” Rook grunted and rolled out the clay for his own vase. “Milo’s scum. If Heather’s got some deal with him, she’ll tell you, but from what I know, nothing good comes when that guy’s around.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “It ain’t like you run with any rollers.”

  “No, but I know trouble when I see it.”

  Crash!

  The bang ended with the shatter of glass. I jumped from my seat, and all around, the other students searched the walls with startled expressions to see what had fallen.

  “What was that?” Rook asked.

  I spied a broken picture frame on the ground. My stomach dropped as I knelt beside the shards of glass covering my pencil drawing of Whimsy from last year. Mrs. Fenton had liked it so much she entered it into several contests. I won a couple. Now the remnants were splintered on the floor, and I stooped to clear away the broken pieces. It shouldn’t have fallen. That was bad luck.

  Worse than bad. Fatal.

  “Miss Templeton,” Mrs. Fenton said as she rushed over. “Are you okay? Oh, your picture!”

  Rook approached with a broom and dustpan. “I bet it can be reframed.”

  “It ain’t the picture.” I tamped the grains of glass into the dustpan and waited until another student distracted Mrs. Fenton before I whispered to Rook, “Mamie says a picture that falls without warnin’ brings death in the mornin’.”

  His expression stayed neutral, and even though he didn’t tell me I was off my rocker, heat circled around my neck and spread to my jaw. Rook dumped the glass into the trash, returned the broom and dustpan to their place, and found his seat. God, I must’ve sounded so insane he didn’t know how to respond. Yet he crooked his finger to beckon me to our table.

  He murmured, “My pops gets wily if a bird flies into our house.”

  A bird in a house means death is flyin’ about. Mamie’s once-strong voice echoed in my memory. She’d comb my hair with one hundred strokes and tell me the hillfolks’ lore, stories of the backwoods. Mamie went quiet when Gramps died, but when I was small and needed coaxing to sleep, she recited the tales. The words she spoke wove themselves into the ribbons of my veins and knitted together my very soul.

  Rook knew the stories too, and he didn’t outright dismiss them. Not the way Heather did.

  The front of his throat bobbed. I didn’t want to look like I was studying him, but I was. Because I drew everything I remembered, there’d be more pages of him in my sketchbook.

  A loud laugh broke my focus. Heather beamed under the unforgiving hallway lights, laughing with someone away from the door’s view. She was willowy in a green halter laced to show off her slim waist and small breasts. A gauzy black shirt beneath was painted on like a second skin. When she lifted her arm to push away whomever she talked with, she was like a cattail bending from the breeze.

  I looked at my blue peasant top. Heavier with hips and breasts, I was dowdy and cloaked, nothing like the bright star of my cousin. Papa and my aunt Rue were Templetons, Mamie’s children, and Heather had Mamie’s once-scarlet hair, our grandmother’s hair so red she’d even been named Ginger at birth. I was darker, with wide lips and shadows under my eyes, which were as black as ebony wood. On the surface, there was nothing proving Heather and I shared blood. I was three weeks older than she, the only days I’d lived without her.

  A boy’s hand, all I saw of him, brushed his fingertips along Heather’s arm. Milo? I couldn’t be sure. With a giggle, she tossed her curls. His hand lingered in the air as if the touch was unfinished. Whatever had upset her had dissolved. I was mesmerized and unblinking, not from envy or anger but because she was magic and life and joy.

  “Hey, you all right?” I asked once she joined our table. “I heard what happened. Thank you.”

  She pushed my hair from my face. “It’s fine, Ivy. Like I’m gonna let anyone talk bad about my kinfolk. Those kind of guys are what’s left after Uncle Timothy castrates the bulls—useless dicks.”

  Rook snickered, but I tilted my head. How could she be cavalier? She wore a brave face, but I had to wonder if she was so brave when alone.

  “Who was that?” I asked. “Out in the hall.”

  “Some roller.” She lifted her bag off her shoulder and opened the flap. Inside was a paper bag with the top parted to reveal a dried lump of herbs.

  I squished some clay between my fingers, sighing. “Rose Connelly has a whole pot field growing behind her house. If you want weed, don’t go buyin’ it off that Milo creep.”

  “Milo?” Heather’s eyes widened, and she slapped her bag shut. “What do you know? Were you spying on me?”

  “He cornered Ivy in the stairs,” Rook intervened.

  “What’d he say?” She cuffed my wrist and held tight. I pulled back, but she squeezed harder. The half-moons of her fingernails paled my skin. What a sudden shift in her.

  “Heather, what’s your problem?” I asked. “He only said he was looking for you.”

  She dropped my hand, then wiped her palm on her shirt. “Well, I guess he found me.”

  Her ass wiggled in her seat as if she was contemplating bolting from class. Before Heather could get up, Mrs. Fenton came around to survey our work and take attendance. The teacher took one gander at my leaning vase and huffed before moving to the next table.

  “Heather,” I pressed.

  “Ivy, not now.”

  Her bag lay on the floor between my shoes and hers. She nudged it beneath her chair, the toes of her sneakers bumping mine as she kicked it back.

  Kept it away from me.

  Chapter Three

  Animals ’round the Glen started missin’. First, the barn cats. Jackdaw Meriweather’d find ’em in the dirt road. Maybe one got under a wagon’s wheels, but two? Six? No one knew how many. Then folks noticed birds and fur ’round the Markle house and the bones hangin’ in the trees.

  My hands dove into soapy water. Warmth swirled around my forearms while I drew the washrag in circles over the plate. My parents and I had arrived at Mamie’s home before the skies cracked and gushed rain, bellows of thunder rattling the windows.

  From the sink, I had a view into the dining room, where the grownups relaxed around the table. Mama, Papa, and Heather’s stepfather, a hillman named Marsh Freeman, sipped wine, while Aunt Rue rubbed her belly, round with a June baby. Taking the evening meal with kin was common in the Glen. I liked the closeness of our families. For some folks, there were so many members, they dined in a barn around a harvest table filled with dishes of mashed potatoes, cornbread, roasted chickens, and salad greens piled high in bowls. Most years, the Glen’s growing season was good, and we shared the bounty.

  Mama’s fingers walked across the knotted pine to rub Papa’s arm, her bracelets sing
ing as she moved. He’d been in a quiet mood since examining Bart’s remains. Mama exchanged a nervous glance with Marsh. Few people read Papa’s moods like Marsh—he’d been reading them since they were ten-year-olds with Sheriff trying to hook a catfish that supposedly ate a pony in the river.

  “Rue and I had tea with Iris Crenshaw.” Mama ventured a conversation. “Señoras are planning a May Day celebration for the Glen. Iris says it’s ’cause of all the horrible things happening, that it might bring some joy.”

  “Luz, you have no idea how wonderful the old May Days were.” Aunt Rue beamed. “The parties went all night. There was singing and dancing. We haven’t had one in over twenty years, but I can’t wait! It’ll be such fun!”

  Mama nodded. “It all sounds very sweet.”

  Aunt Rue continued. “We hung flowers on the houses. Oh! And there was a maypole and a parade!”

  I dried my hands on my apron and met Heather’s eyes. She stopped braiding her mother’s hair and shrugged. We’d heard tales about the May Days of Rowan’s Glen, but all that ended because of Birch Markle. Maybe, though, enough time had passed that folks were willing to try again without the specter of murder haunting the celebration.

  “Ivy and Heather, you señoritas will have a good time,” my mother said. “Iris said she was May Queen one year. Maybe one of you will be queen.”

  Aunt Rue gave a stiff smile. “Maybe so. Either way, you’ll both be in the parade. We have Mamie’s old dress. One of you should wear it.”

  The May Queen. I’d seen old photographs in Mamie’s album, girls in long dresses with flowers in their hair, girls dancing with spring mud between their toes. They were new growth. The one chosen as queen was the Glen’s very best, the embodiment of hope for prosperity and harvest. With death haunting the fields, maybe a prayer and dance for life would chase off the sorrow.

  Perhaps I could be May Queen. Maybe. It’d be nice to be chosen. I’d come out from my shadow and show how green and vivid I could be.

  Heather twisted a curl around her finger and asked, “So how does it work? Do you just randomly pick someone to be May Queen?”

  Aunt Rue sipped from a mug of tea. “Any girl sixteen and older, not yet married, can be May Queen. The women choose by a secret ballot. The girl’s gotta be the brightness of spring. Back in the old country, after our clans became Christian, the May Queen also reflected Mary and her holiness.”

  Heather giggled, but her mother gave her a cross look and continued, “It’s been done this way for centuries, and I don’t reckon it’s funny. The May Queen’s important. She’s gotta be gentle, virtuous, and love the land and folks here. After years without one, I’m glad to see a return.”

  Papa poured a fresh glass of wine, his mouth twitching with what seemed half a dozen thoughts before he blurted out, “It’s a terrible idea.”

  Mama tore a chunk off a loaf of bread left on the table, popped it into her mouth, and chewed as she spoke. “Qué? I don’t see a problem. The way Iris and the others talk, they miss it. Things will be different than in the past.”

  “Did you forget why we stopped?” Papa asked.

  All the family focused on him. He didn’t sound angry or unreasonable, rather hushed. He tipped his chair onto its hind legs and folded his hands behind his head. “The townies, if they got wind of a May Day ’round here, they’d send their preachers and pitchforks. We don’t need that kind of trouble again.”

  He walked over to the window to watch the storm blowing through the village. Mama reached for the wineglass he’d poured but hadn’t touched, and she swallowed it herself without stopping to breathe.

  “Timothy, Iris took it to council,” Aunt Rue declared. “It’ll be good for the Glen.”

  My father turned halfway from the window so the storm reflected off his glasses. “So that’s it? It’s a done deal? May Day ain’t just a bad idea. It’s cursed. You know bringin’ back May Day is trouble, and we got enough.”

  My aunt cast her gaze to her belly while her husband approached Papa and placed a hand on his shoulder, his arms strong from kneading bread dough. Shadows drawn by the rain spilling down the glass formed wavy lines on their faces. Marsh had married my aunt two years before, some six months after her first husband, Heather’s father, departed from a tobacco habit that put cancer in his mouth.

  “C’mon, Timothy,” Marsh murmured. “All that’s buried. Let it rest in peace.”

  “For twenty-five years, I’ve left it buried. Y’all had stories about Birch Markle, and they damn near ruined the Glen. The way the county police came in, tromped all over our land. They got the outsiders talkin’ ’bout us and wonderin’ what we do. It took a year before we could sell anything at market in town. I don’t wanna risk that, all ’cause Rue wants Heather to get some attention.”

  “That’s not—” my aunt protested.

  “Really?” Papa asked. “’Cause you know Ivy can’t be May Queen. Did you tell Luz that?”

  My gut tumbled. So it wouldn’t be me. Some other girl. I glanced across the room to Heather, who stared at me, her expression oddly plain. Mama saw my frown and asked, “Why not? You won’t let her name be on the ballot?”

  “She can’t be on the ballot,” Marsh said. “Both parents of the May Queen gotta be Glen born.”

  A flush came over Mama’s cheeks. “Mierda.”

  The tension in the house thickened, foglike in its depth. My mother, the peacemaker in most disputes, ducked into the kitchen while my father glowered. This was more than hackles raised. Some history, some secret Papa wanted untold, moved from a forgotten thing to one with substance. It spread to the corners and rose along the walls.

  I followed Mama and asked, “Why’s Papa so upset? Is it ’cause of what they said about how I can’t be May Queen?”

  She dropped the rosary working in her fingers, a remnant of growing up Catholic. I picked up the chain of freshwater pearls and lingered on the crucifix before handing it over. Mama tucked the rosary into her apron. “If that’s all it was, bonita. Señoras were so excited about May Day . . . I thought Timoteo would be too, but the past still hurts. I wasn’t here then. Sometimes, Ivy, it feels like no matter how long I live in the Glen, I’ll never belong.”

  The sadness in my mother’s face pained my chest, and I didn’t know what to say. Sometimes even silence felt like a falter.

  She patted her apron pocket. A loop from the rosary strand peeked out from the eyelet trim. “Jay called on your father today. Another dog, this one only bones.”

  The subject change wasn’t a relief. I prayed it wasn’t a dog from the clinic—maybe some farmer’s hunting hound—but if the poor beast was only bones, we wouldn’t know which owner to visit.

  “The skull was missing,” Mama went on, though the distant look on her face made me wonder if she was talking to me or speaking to rid her mind of the image. “Can’t imagine who’d do such a horrible thing. I don’t want you and Heather down by that water. Too much blood in it.”

  The crude electrical wiring in the Glen couldn’t support a washer or dryer, so going to the river was a constant task. All the times I’d done laundry in the river, listening to Denial Mill’s churning wheel, and the times Rook, Heather, and I went fishing, the water was clear when it skimmed through my fingers. Now my mind made it sludgy red, with bits of fur and meat clinging to my skin as the blood oozed past.

  A sudden thump from the room above the kitchen shook the light. For a while after Mamie had gone silent, she sat with the family, taking in the clunky sounds only happy busyness made. She’d knit, a muted but steady presence. Not now. Perhaps her silence finally removed her from the living world.

  Footsteps gave way to the squeal of a door opening and a fork scraping a plate as she set it on the table outside her room. I started up the stairs between the kitchen and dining room. Mamie’s door was shut, and her plate was nearly full on the table.

  I let myself into the room. My grandmother sat in a rocker beside a window overlooking the Glen’s
fields. The kerosene lamp on her desk spread a gold glow across the dark. In the corner, Gramps’s shotgun was propped against the wall, unused since his death years ago but still within reach—ready for those nights if the screaming from the woods got too close. Some nights it sounded as if Birch came out of the woods and into the fields, but I’d always been too scared to look out my window because what if he was there?

  “Mamie, everything all right?” I asked. “You didn’t eat much.”

  She didn’t move from her rocking chair. Her profile split the window, the sharp nose and high cheekbones common in Templetons—but not me. Blue lightning bloomed around Mamie. Some sandy wisps sprouted near the wings of her red hair, which she kept in a bun. She’d worked the land as a girl, and the once-creamy skin had ruddied under the sun. But in the few pictures that existed, ones where she was young, she looked like Heather.

  Mamie gave me a good study, her face a lattice of wrinkles. Her china-blue eyes narrowed as she assessed me, and then her hand shot out, grabbing my red thread bracelet. That grip was tough, no gentleness, while she flipped my hand from side to side and bent my fingers this way and that.

  Then for the first time in years, Mamie’s tongue loosened enough to make a sound.

  “Hmm.” It was a grumble of a noise, but it was something.

  Something she didn’t like.

  She dragged me by the wrist over to her desk. I smelled the mustiness of time past and held still while she pulled off the glass chimney from the oil lamp and unscrewed the burner and collar. She tugged the red string with one of her burled fingers, breaking it so it fell to the floor. My wrist felt naked and slippery, but Mamie seemed intent on not letting that last long. Her hand dove into her apron pocket, and she snapped a new length of red thread from the spool with her teeth and dredged it through the oil in the lamp where a small string of red wool already drowned.