My heart hammered staccato with Betty's sinister pronouncement. I clutched Paul. "Why? Why do you need Paul? You can't have him. I won't let you."
"Thea." Paul said. A shiver ran through his body and I gripped him harder. He tucked his phone away. "What's she saying? What does she want with me?"
"You don't understand," Betty said.
"Darned right I don't understand. How about explaining so I do?"
"I -- I can't. Just stay, please."
I shook my head and hung on to my love with all my strength.
"I understood her," Paul said, arms tightening around me with a strength I normally associated with emotion of another sort. "This is impossible. Not happening."
Betty glanced up. Then, without a word, she disappeared. I hung on to Paul, but looked for Jim.
"You're the builder, you know about houses. How do we get out of here?"
"Your bedroom floor -- at the corner that took the most fire damage -- it shouldn't be too difficult to knock a hole we can at least boost you through."
Paul flicked the light in that direction. The ground sloped down to the point where I was certain even Jim, as big as he was, would have a hard time reaching high enough. Apparently, Paul had the same impression. "Dave's on his way. I caught him before he'd gone too far down the road. Maybe we ought to sit tight."
"Shine that little light over there again, Paul," Jim said. "Let me take a look just in case."
He did and Jim strode over, but just as he reached the corner Betty blinked back into view directly in front of him. Jim leapt backwards. Fortunately, he missed the overhead joist by a good few inches.
"Criminey mother of a dog!"
Betty waved her arms frantically. "Be quiet, all of you."
Jim backed a couple of careful steps. "Bug-ass, freaking crazy dead woman!" Jim said, not softly.
She spun on me. "Thea --"
"Shut up, Jim."
"Thank you. Now hush up, all of you."
"What did she say? To hushal?" Paul asked.
If this was a preview of him as a deaf old man, I was in trouble. "Quiet," I whispered. "She said to be quiet."
And I soon realized why. Voices approached, a man and woman. Margaret's voice was quite clearly above us.
"What did you bring her for?" Margaret asked.
Jim sucked in a breath to say something and I lunged for him. "Shh…"
"Thank you," Betty said. "You all stay quiet and you may learn something."
I don't know why, but Paul seemed to get it. However, his attention was divided between the conversation above us and the ground Betty was standing on.
"I brought him because he doesn't drive. What's going on Margaret?" It was Lauren Ipsom's voice and she sounded unusually snappish, even for her.
"This is between Leroy and me. You need to go."
"Fat chance of that happening. We brought that diary like you asked. After I went to all the risk of getting it out of Thea's apartment, I think I get to stay and find out what's so important about it."
My jaw could not have dropped further. I was so going to kick her ass. They were talking about my diary -- or I should say Peg's. Mother wasn't lying to Paul when she said she didn't have it.
"Lauren, do as she says. Go back to the car."
"But Leroy --"
"Go on, get."
"What if something happens? What if she --"
"I mean it, Lauren." Then, in a gentler tone he said, "I'll be fine, won't be but a minute."
There was silence for a long moment then Margaret spoke. "Do you have it on you?"
"Yes."
"Give it to me."
"Now what are you thinking of doing with an old diary some little girl scribbled her wild imagination in?"
"I'm going to protect my mother, just like I've been doing all these years. Give it to me."
"Well, now, just hang on a minute. What are you going to do with it once I give it to you?"
"I'm going to destroy it, like I should have done years ago."
"Are you, now? All of it? Even the part about the man who walked in on the fight and did all the work of burying your pa?"
Oh, my God. I'd been correct about the identity of the skeleton. I just hadn't known precisely how correct. I gripped Paul's arm.
"Yes," Margaret answered.
"You'll pardon me if I don't believe you."
"Why would I lie?" Margaret's voice was shrill. "I will not allow my mother to go to jail for killing a man who had been beating her for years and was going to kill her. There's no justice in that. No justice."
"Supposin' I told you a story," Leroy said, almost too soft to hear. "Maybe about how a man came by to collect rent and walked in on a bad, frightening situation. What if I told you that man could see your mama didn't have the nerve to kill your daddy, how she nicked the bastard, saw the blood and would have let him turn the knife on her? What if I told you that man knew he had only one choice for putting an end to that abuse and saving that woman's life, so he took that knife, finished the job, and was dang glad the little girl hiding in her room didn't see what happened?"
There was a long silence and an unsteady shuffling of footsteps before Margaret spoke again. Even from under the floor I could hear the tremor in her voice. "So you killed my father. And for all these years I believed it was my mother who finally got brave enough to protect us."
Almost afraid to breathe, I watched Jim, waiting for his reaction. Even in the darkness, relieved only by Paul's penlight, I could see the rigid stance. It didn't change. Betty stood beside him, her eyes full of worry, one hand pressed over her heart, the other reaching toward him wanting to comfort. Not one of us moved.
From above us came the sound of soft weeping.
"That's an interesting story." I recognized Dave's voice, even though it was faint.
Paul put an arm around me, probably to keep me quiet.
"Are you confessing?" Dave asked.
"Me? No, young man, I'm telling a story. And it's a story, all right. Full of a lot of 'what ifs,' the way I see it." Defeat or exhaustion marked his words.
"It's a good story. Even sounds plausible."
There was a long moment of silence. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I'll be running along. Miss Nelson and I have said all we're going to say to each other."
"You might want to stick around a bit," Dave said. "I understand your son has gotten himself stuck in the crawl space of this old house."
"Jim," Leroy raised his voice to shouting. "Jim, you all right in there, son? What in the love of Pete are you doing under the house?"
Jim swiped at an eye with the back of his hand, then rubbed his beard before answering in an over-loud voice. "Thea and Paul are here, too. We're all fine. There's a trap door in the pantry. Seems to be jammed."
"On my way, boy." Leroy's shout didn't diminish as he continued. "Well, Mr. Detective Dave Ross, are you going to give an old man a hand?"
The two sets of footsteps that climbed the stairs were slow, but the ones that padded across the kitchen floor to the pantry weren't. A screech and thump I now recognized as the folding ladder to the attic came before the opening of the back door. Call me crazy, but I had the distinct feeling there was going to be more than a little truth-bending going on once we all got out of here.
I started toward the hatch, but Paul stopped me. "There's something I have to look at real quick."
Betty now stood on the same spot she'd occupied earlier when Paul had played his penlight on the ground. She smiled as Paul approached, and stepped aside. He dropped to a knee, pulled out his pocket knife and began scraping away at the dirt. The trap door squeaked and thumped.
"You guys okay?" Dave asked. A strong beam from a flashlight played across the crawl space.
"Yeah, Dave," Paul called. "Give me a minute. Can we have that flashlight of yours down here?"
There was a scuffing, a shuffle and finally a thump. Dave walked toward us playing his light ahead of him.
"Hey, I didn't know you had someone else down here, too."
"Oh, well, Dave, this is Betty."
"You must be cold without a jacket." He started to remove his.
I stopped him, only because I desperately wanted to get out of the crawl space. But oh, I so would have loved to see the look on his face when his jacket hit the ground.
"Trust me, Dave," I said. "She doesn't need it."
"A little light here, if you don't mind," Paul snapped.
Dave made an effort with the light, but he was more concerned with Betty and her jacket-less state. "I can't believe neither one of these two offered theirs."
She smiled, shook her head and turned to watch Paul. Dave gave up.
"What are you digging for, Hudson?"
In the short time he'd been excavating with his hands and knife, he'd displaced quite a bit of dirt and small rocks. "Half a sec, here." He brushed with his fingertips. "Light."
Dave trained the beam on what Paul had uncovered. It looked like a bone. What kind, I didn't know, but I suspected I knew whose.
Dave sighed. "Not another one. Here," he handed me the flashlight. "I'm going to have to call this in. Come on up, you guys, and be careful of that ladder."
When he'd gone, Paul, Jim and I turned our attention on Betty.
"That's you, isn't it?" I asked.
"Yes." She nodded for Jim and Paul's benefit.
Paul stood and brushed his hands on his jeans. "And the other one -- the one we dug up with the rhody – who’s that?"
Betty’s gaze shifted to me. She wouldn’t say his name before, and she wouldn’t say it now. "It’s Nelson," I said. "The one whose driver’s license we found in the cigar box."
Paul shot me a quizzical look, and returned his attention to Betty. "Any connection between you two dead people?"
Again, Betty passed his question to me.
"Uh," I said.
Even in the dim light and deep shadows, Paul’s expression seemed annoyed.
"I don’t think so," I said, then looked at Betty for confirmation. She only smiled her enigmatic little smile.
Paul sighed and rubbed his forehead. "How about Nelson’s skeleton? Where’s that? Not buried someplace else in my yard again, I hope. Or does Thea have the answer to that, too?"
"Hey," Jim said. "She didn’t deserve that."
Paul ignored him.
Betty held down a chuckle then said, "No."
"I don’t know," I said.
"I heard her," Paul snapped, then his eyebrows shot up and all his attention focused on Betty. "Where are the bones now? Do you know?"
Betty glanced around and nodded.
"Well?" Paul demanded.
She began to hum, slowly at first. Paul and I leaned toward her, listening hard. The tune was somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Then Paul began to hum along with her. After several notes he snapped his fingers.
"I know. ‘Lazy River.’ I’m right, aren’t I?"
Betty nodded.
"You tossed the bones into the Snohomish River."
She frowned.
I grabbed Paul’s arm. "No, she couldn’t have. Someone else did. It had to have been …" I eyed Jim.
He held up both hands. "Don’t lay that at my feet. I didn’t touch any bones."
"Then it was Leroy," I said. "It had to be, and it makes sense."
Betty shrugged.
"Oh, come on," I complained. "Who else –"
"Lauren!" Jim said. "She does everything Dad asks her to do."
We all waited for Betty’s response. She beamed like a parent whose child just proudly brought home her first kindergarten art project.
"Well," Paul said, "now that we have that settled – although we’ll never be able to prove it – want to let us know why you’re buried here?" He pointed to her grave.
A sick feeling clutched at my stomach, but I had to know. "How did you die?"
She looked down, her lips pressed so tightly they disappeared. It took her a moment, but when she looked up her jaw was set with determination. She held out her right hand displaying two grotesquely misshaped fingers.
Horrified, my gaze sought hers only to see an eye swell and discoloration spread over her cheekbone. Within another moment, blood began to drip from a swollen lip. A long gash opened on her left arm, blood oozed, quickly changing from a trickle to a sheet of red bathing her arm to her finger tips.
Then, one by one, bright scarlet stains blossomed across her chest and abdomen until they blended together, becoming progressively darker until deep maroon replaced the blue of her dress and stained her legs.
I cried out and reached for her, but Paul's arms folded me into his side. From behind us came a sigh and thud. Jim. Out cold once again.
I scrubbed tears off my cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Betty." The words felt worse than inadequate.
In a heartbeat, all the blood and injuries were gone, but the sadness in her eyes remained. "It was a very bad time. My son was the only good thing that came of that marriage." Her gaze softened as she turned her attention to Jim's inert form. "You might want to help him."
I took a step toward him and stopped, my mind spinning with information that had gathered. "Your son? You're not… " I scrubbed at my face with both hands. "What's your last name?"
"My husband's last name was Brown. It's the English translation of Braon."
I gaped at her then grabbed Paul's arm. "Did you hear what she said? Did you?"
"No, not quite." He looked back and forth between Betty and me, like he was watching a tennis match.
"She's …" I spun toward her. "You're … Jim's? … No, no. Leroy. Leroy is your son? Jim's your grandson?"
"Yes."
I clutched at my head. "Cripes, Betty. Why didn't you tell me? Did you know that Leroy killed Margaret's father?"
"Yes."
"Betty." My hands were still fisted in my hair. "You could have saved us all a lot of trouble, you know."
She shook her head. "There are things I cannot speak of. And before you ask, I don't know why, I'm only a ghost and I don't make up the rules -- they just are. I wasn't even sure why I was still here, but now I believe I know."
"Margaret?"
"Yes, but not entirely. The ripples in the river touch more than just one rock." Her gaze settled on me, and her meaning took a couple of beats to sink in. Her expression turned soft as my eyes widened. She meant me and Paul. She was here because of us.
The edges of her form began to shimmer. She was leaving.
"Betty, wait. I don't understand. Why us -- "
She smiled and shook her head. I snapped the lid on the confusion she'd just stirred and went for shorter questions.
"Is Margaret's father's ghost here?"
"No." Her voice was distant.
"Why?"
Her form wavered, nearly transparent and her voice touched my mind, as if she was sharing a secret. "The darkness took him."
Then, with a light that was at once intensely bright and soothing, she was gone, leaving behind one last message.
"Tell Leroy I am proud of him. I will see him soon."