On days when Sawyer and I had to be out of the house early, I planned for a picnic and then a car nap. Today I was especially glad for the string cheese, tangerine, and slices of ham in his backpack because there was no way we were settling in for a nap at home after all that excitement.
I drove up the road as Saw tried to bite Beau’s tail. I gave thanks for a patient cat who would walk away rather than attack.
Luckily, it was just cool enough for the farmers’ market pavilion up in town to be empty, and the sole picnic table that had not succumbed to too much weather was free.
Saw was bouncing as I poured Beau a bowl of water and then unstrapped my two-year-old from his seat. “Time for picnic,” he said again and again as we made our way to the table. I did a quick sweep of the area for potential hazards: pile of gravel, drop off on the other side of pavilion, water drainage behind three layers of construction fence. If I wasn’t careful, Sawyer would explore all of those in the time it took for me to scarf down my own ham and cheese sandwich.
Fortunately for all of us, including the maintenance crew I might have to summon from the county office building if my son crawled into that water pit, there was a large puddle nearby, and Sawyer busied himself by throwing rocks with one hand and eating cheese with the other. That small distraction gave me enough time to think back about the morning’s events.
When the murder twenty years earlier had hit the news, it had rocked our rural county. We had violent deaths, of course, but they always seemed tied to specific things like drugs or domestic abuse. Those things were horrible, of course, but this murder had seemed random, out of the blue. No robbery even. For weeks, people couldn’t talk about anything else.
Now, it seemed far too much of a coincidence that a second person would be found dead randomly in that same building. It only seemed reasonable that there was a connection between the two deaths.
That hypothesis led me down a stranger thought-trail as Sawyer headed toward the rock pile. Maybe someone was hoping to hide a body there because they assumed no one would be in the building before it was taken down. If that was the case, the person must have been aware that the building was about to be demolished, and I didn’t think that information was widely known, but of course, in places with few people, gossip travels remarkably fast. But that didn’t mean the death was connected to the building.
Maybe, though, someone wasn’t hoping to hide the body. Maybe the two deaths were linked by more than just place. Maybe someone wanted to send a message or had some symbolic reason for leaving the body there. My train of thought went very dark at that point as I pondered serial killers and cults and all kinds of ugliness. I blamed the fact that I’d binged Mindhunter the past two weekends that Sawyer was with his dad. That show was great but all kinds of creepy too.
Sparing me from my own macabre reflection, Sawyer made a beeline for the water hole, and I leapt into all the action my middle-aged body would allow and lifted a flailing forty-pound boy back over the orange fence he had just scaled like an American Ninja Warrior. It was time for a nap. I wondered, for a split second, how long it would be before self-driving cars were safe because that would be a true gift to the parents of small children who only napped in a moving vehicle.
Praise be to the God of parents because Saw dropped off before we were even out of town, and I had a blissful two hours to wander the mountain roads, study the way yellow trees held their leaves against the black trunks and branches of their brethren, and ponder the Scruggs store.
I didn’t know much about the murder that had happened there two decades previous, just that it had been the father of the family, Luther, and that the case had never been solved, at least not that I knew of.
As we rode along the Blue Ridge, I stroked Beau’s head and made mental notes about what I needed to look up. I decided I would feature the building and its history in my next newsletter. Those newsletters were one of the things I looked forward to most about my work, and as my subscriber list had grown, I’d started getting to know the people who replied. Some of my readers were genealogists with a penchant for place, and some were historians who loved the facts of a building. But most of them were just ordinary folks like me who appreciated old buildings and the stories that lived in them. They would love to know more about the Scruggs Store, and I was happy to oblige.
When Saw’s father and I had split up a year ago, I had needed to find a way to work and have my son along. The research-intensive historical articles I’d been writing as a freelancer were just not feasible since they required many hours a day to dig through archives and read books, so I’d taken to a more hands-on field – salvage. In some buildings, Saw could come along and actually help me – the boy was a natural with a hammer—and when the job was dangerous, my best friend, Mika, kept Saw at her shop in downtown Octonia. He loved playing in the bins of soft yarn.
Between online sales, pop-up shops in Charlottesville, and word-of-mouth, I was building a steady income, enough that Sawyer and I had just bought a house of our own. Apartment living – as convenient as it was – just wasn’t ideal. We needed history around us and nature out our door. Beau needed that too because the mouse population in our apartment complex was just not up to par.
But as much as I longed to sit on our farmhouse porch for a couple of hours, instead of turning toward home when I saw Saw was starting to stir, I headed toward town and hoped that it wasn’t one of Mika’s yarn group days. A toddler and women trying to knit were not a good combination, at least not as far as the knitting was concerned.
Just as we parked on the street outside her store, Sawyer opened his eyes and said, “Apple juice please,” and I handed back the tumbler I had filled from a juice box while on a particularly quiet road. I had learned through a succession of sticky trials that a squeezable box and a toddler are not a good combination.
I let my slow-waking son sit and drink for a few minutes while I wrote down the notes that I had accumulated in my mind. Everyone kept recommending those note-taking apps for my phone, but they weren’t exactly ideal when a toddler was sleeping nearby.
Notes recorded, I peeked in Mika’s windows and saw her and one other older woman sitting in the wingback chairs by the windows, yarn in hand. Perfect, I thought, and got Saw out of his car seat. Beauregard, recognizing his surroundings, hopped out and followed me to the shop door and then slid past me as I pushed it open with an elbow. He had a special bed in the back of the store, and he loved how people admired his sheer size and lustrous fur. If he could, I swore he’d be creating a line of Maine Coon-inspired yarn as a tribute to himself.
Saw wriggled out of my arms with less grace than Beau, but with equal enthusiasm, and barreled into Mika’s lap, barely missing a lung puncture from a knitting needle. “Auntie Mickey,” he squealed.
“Saw-Saw, I didn’t know you were coming.” Mika held him out at arm’s length before pulling him close again. “It’s so good to see you. Can you stay and help me unroll some yarn?” Mika and Saw had an understanding – he could unskein any yarn she gave him, but he couldn’t do more than touch any other stock in the store. Regularly, she had him string out the yarn she was going to use for herself or for a knitting circle, and then, I’d sit around and talk with her as I rolled the loose yarn into balls that she then secured with painter’s tape. It was a winning arrangement for us all.
Today, though, I was hoping Mika was okay with me skedaddling to the county courthouse. I was eager to dig into the deeds on the Scruggs store, and the presence of a toddler might just send our county clerk into cardiac arrest. She was a tad fastidious about records, a trait I appreciated unless it meant I couldn’t get my hands on something I wanted. “Have time and space to keep your assistant for a couple of hours?”
Mike smiled at me as she stood and gave me a tight hug. “Sure. Everything okay?”
I nodded. It wasn’t the time to talk about the murder, not with Sawyer near and the knitter still in the wingback. “I’ll catch you up via text. Just need to go to the courthouse for a bit of research.”
“We’re totally good here.” Saw was testing the drumstick quality of the various knitting needles in a barrel Mika kept by the register. “I’ll text you if we need a Mommy-vention.”
“Thanks, Miks.” I turned to the woman in the chair. “Wow, that’s a gorgeous shawl. Sorry if my little tornado’s presence disrupts your calm.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I have nine grandchildren. I concentrate better when someone wants to show me something every fourteen seconds.”
I laughed. This woman clearly knew toddlers. With a kiss on Saw’s head and an abrupt “Bye” from him, I headed the two blocks to the courthouse. The day had stayed perfectly clear, and I studied the way a few leaves hung to the sheltered side of the maples along the way.
The county records room was one of my favorite places – big tables, heavy books, and pages and pages of history all waiting to be studied. I’d been there enough times to know just what I hoped to find, but I also knew that just because I hoped the records were there didn’t mean they would be.
First, I had to find the plat number for the store then research the deeds to make a list of who had owned the property when. Then, scan any wills for those people to see what I could learn about the place. That information should be able to get me pretty far toward a clear timeline of the store, and then, with the names I gathered, I could send a few emails to ask about the people who had lived there. Soon, I’d have more than enough for a good newsletter article with links to more information.
The clerk’s office was filled with the gentle thrum of office work that was typical for the space. People came here for only a few main reasons – marriage licenses, land title research for real estate activities, and historical and genealogical research. All of those were quiet activities, except for maybe the marriage license requests, which sometimes including a fair amount of giggling and, on rare occasions, loud kissing. Otherwise, the research room was a lot like a library, and after a morning tending a boundary-testing toddler, I was ready to sink into something that didn’t need to be fed or washed and that could occupy my attention for more than three minutes at time. I loved my son, but I craved space to go deep and let my brain sink into something for a long period of time.
I found the plat information on the store in no time, and within an hour, I had a full run-down on who had owned the store when, including in the 1990s when the first murder on the site had occurred. I also saw the deed of the current owners, George and Berlinda Jefferson and that they lived over in Richmond. I had known the Jeffersons owned the store because they had given me permission to salvage there once a high school friend had told me in passing at the grocery store that his crew had been hired to take it down. We had become friendly, if not yet friends, and I really liked them.
I expected the sheriff had already reached out to them about the morning’s events, so I knew I wouldn’t be bringing them news when I called. Still, I figured kindness dictated I wait and see what the investigation turned up before I contacted them to talk about the store’s recent history. Besides, I wanted to read up on the first murder and be sure I understood the ins and outs of it before I went asking questions. In a rural community, it was best to be wise and informed before you started talking about a place’s or a family’s secrets.
So, I turned my attention to the early history of the store. The first time a building is shown on the plat for the land was in 1903, so I assumed – given the architecture of the building – that this was probably the year the store was built. I took the name of the owner at the time, the Elijah Scruggs for whom the store was still known, and went looking for wills.
It took a few minutes, but I eventually found reference to the store being willed to an Alice Scruggs in 1922. Alice was Elijah’s daughter, and on the inventory for the will’s distribution, the store and its contents are valued at two-hundred-thirty-eight dollars, which was a lot of money for a woman to inherit at the time, particularly a black woman. I felt a frisson of excitement for Alice and decided I would focus on my story on her. I loved all history, but I particularly liked history that wasn’t mainstream . . . which usually meant the history of women and people of color.
Then, with about forty-five minutes to go before I was due back to Mika’s store, I took a quick scan of the other Scruggs wills, making notes of names and dates before carefully putting the books back on the shelves. Lifting these tomes always felt like a little bit of a workout, and my shoulders had a healthy ache as I waved a thanks to the staff and walked back out into the late afternoon.
As I strolled, my phone rang. I didn’t normally answer calls from unknown numbers, but the day's events made me think it would be wise to pick up. Sure enough, it was Sheriff Shifflett, and he wondered if I had some time to talk.
“I’m downtown now. Coffee shop in five?” I said with a quick glance at my watch. “My toddler is with his auntie, so I have about fifteen minutes.”
“See you in three,” the sheriff said, and I picked up my pace as I crossed the street and ducked into the coffee shop across from Spin A Yarn, Mika’s store. I ordered my usual late-day beverage – a steamed milk with vanilla syrup – and took a seat by the window with hopes that the late day sun kept me from being visible to Sawyer. He was great with other people . . . until I appeared. Then, it was all Mama all the time.
While I waited, I stared at Mika’s shop. It had been her dream to open it ever since we were in college in Pennsylvania, but only after a really hard decade running a preschool did she decide it was time for a change. She moved down from her hometown up north, bought the storefront with the apartment above it in the town I called home, and started her bookstore/yarn shop. It had meant lots of hours of the two of us unloading boxes of used books and shipments of yarn, but I was almost as proud of that store as she was. More, though, I was proud of her. She had taken a risk, and it was paying off.
I took a long sip of my steamer and sat back and inhaled a long, deep breath just as the sheriff walked in. He waved as he headed to the counter for his own order and then made his way over with a giant cup of something coffee-based, so the scent told me.
I smiled, “Thirsty?”
“It’s going to be a long night. Normally, I don’t do caffeine after three p.m., but today . . . “
“Say no more. For the first eighteen months of my son’s life, it was only a late afternoon coffee that got me through to bedtime.” I sipped my warm milk and tried to let it soothe the nerves that had suddenly popped up when I saw the sheriff. I didn’t know exactly why I was anxious, but I was.
“First, let me assure you that you aren’t a suspect.”
My blood pressure spiked at the words. “Wait?! What?!”
A smile teased the edge of the sheriff’s lips. “Gotcha.”
I glared at him until I couldn’t hold back my own grin any longer. “You did get me. Too many police dramas, I expect.”
“A common problem, which gives me my best gag. You were never a suspect, just to be clear.” He chugged half his coffee. “No one who commits a murder first lugs out six cases of Cheerwine.” He laughed.
“I’ll remember that if I decide to commit a murder and want to throw you off the trail.” I felt some of the tension of the day ease with the banter. “But why did you need to see me?”
A certain tightness took hold in the sheriff’s jaw again, and my heartrate picked up in response. “We identified the woman in the house.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay?”
“You probably know her, actually. Bailey Thomas. Name ring a bell?”
It did, but I couldn’t place her. I knew, from funerals, that the bodies of people didn’t look much like the people in life, but even with that in mind, I couldn’t connect the wispy blonde hair, white skin, and thin frame on the woman in the bedroom with a living face I recognized. “Kind of, but I don’t know why.”
Shifflett nodded. “She was kind of infamous in town for making trouble, especially at the grocery store. Some people call her, “The ‘But the Sign Says’ lady.”
“OH, HER! Yes, I do know her. Wow.” Twice I’d seen her lose it – as in screaming and even throwing things – on a clerk at our local IGA because the price on the register didn’t match the price on her item. One time, the high schooler running the checkout had started to cry so hard that the manager had to take over. “She was, um, something,” I said as I tried to honor the dead but not lie.
“That’s putting it nicely.” He cracked his knuckles one by one. “Going to make it harder to catch who did this, I expect.”
I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said quietly, “but how many people would really kill someone over temper tantrums?”
He shrugged. “Hopefully not many.”
Now that my surprise at the victim’s identity had worn off, I was again trying to puzzle out why the sheriff was telling me all this information. “Can I help somehow?”
“Well, I do have a couple more questions about this morning.” He took out a small notebook.
“Shoot.” I blushed and wanted to smack my forehead. “Er, sorry, poor choice of words. Ask away.” I was pretty sure I’d told him everything I could this morning, but if I could help, I would.
“Did you see anyone else around the store this morning when you were there? Anyone in the woods maybe?”
My heartrate got booming again, but I tried to think, to remember what I’d seen on my way into the building. “Not that I can recall. There definitely weren’t any cars there, well, except for the construction equipment.” I tilted my chin up and looked at the ceiling as I scanned my memory one last time. “But no, I didn’t see any people.”
The sheriff made a quick note and then asked, “Anything seem out of place or weird to you as you went through the building?”
“Besides the eerie cookies and the blanket on the sofa that made it seem like people had just walked out, you mean?”
“Well, besides the cookies, yes.” He scribbled in his notebook with a little too much attention.
“But the blanket wasn’t weird to you?” I said. I was not going to let his careful choice of words go unnoted.
His eyes met mine, and I saw a tinge of color reach the tips of his ears. “Well, yes, but not when we found out Thomas had been living there.”
It took me a second to process what he had just said, and then I was still confused. “She was living there? With all that moldy food in the kitchen?”
He shrugged. “Apparently, she didn’t care much about that. But by some mistake from the power company, the electricity was still on, and so she had some food in the refrigerator and in the cupboards.”
I cringed, and he continued, “Mostly pre-cooked stuff, so she didn’t need the oven or stove.”
“Still,” I said, and then I thought about how this one steamed milk was all I could afford as a “luxury” for at least the next week and wondered if tight finances might have been why Thomas was such a bear at the grocery store. “Do you think she’d been living there long?”
“We’re not sure. The electric co-op is going to pull the usage for the past few months. We’ll know soon.” He sat forward a bit more in his chair. “I know you have to go, but one more question?”
I nodded.
“You didn’t, by chance, touch anything around her body when you were there, did you?”
My first instinct was to answer with a quick no, but I knew his question was important, even if I wasn’t sure why yet. So I took a breath, walked my way through the memory again, and then said, definitively, “No. I saw she was dead as soon as I got close, and I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene.” I looked at the sheriff. “And dead bodies creep me out.”
“That is, Ms. Sutton, the most honest answer I’ve ever gotten to that question. Thank you.”
I glanced at my phone and saw that it was almost time for Mika to close up shop. I slipped on my coat as I stood, but I couldn’t help asking one more question. “Did you think I had touched the body?”
The sheriff stood, too. “No, but since she was still warm when we got there, I was curious if you’d realized that she hadn’t been dead long.”
A wave of weakness ran up my legs, and I braced myself against the table. “She had just been killed? Like how long?”
The sheriff stared at me for a long minute, and I wondered if he was going to answer my question. But then, he took a deep breath and said, “Thirty minutes before we arrived.”
“Oh.” I shook the sheriff’s hand and tried to act like this information was on par with a report on how long my dishwasher needed to run a cycle as I walked out of the coffee shop. But when I made it past the front window and out of sight of the sheriff, I let out a gasp. That woman was killed while we were there.