26

NORAH

Present Day

HOW DARE LEROY SUGGEST Naomi hadn’t told the family about him—about her pregnancy—because of Norah!

“Don’t listen to him,” Ralph groused as he shut the door firmly on LeRoy as the man headed back to his car parked on the street. Ralph turned to glower through saggy eyelids at Naomi. “You weren’t that bad.”

Naomi blinked at Ralph’s choice of words. “That bad?”

Ralph had the decency to flush through his stubby white whiskers. He waved her off as he lumbered into the kitchen and away from her. His left overall strap threatened to slide off his sagging shoulder.

“Ralph.” Norah raised her voice in warning. “Ralph, you come back here!”

The old man ignored her and exited like an ashamed puppy dog. The screen door slammed shut behind him.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Norah grumbled, slipping her feet into a pair of sandals and hurrying after him. She shoved open the screen door and chased Ralph into the cemetery, where he was picking up a rake that was lying next to a grave dated 1894. “What do you mean I wasn’t ‘that bad,’ Ralph?” Norah stood, hands on her hips, demanding he answer her.

Ralph was the quieter one of the two brothers, while Otto was the more expressive and affectionate one. If Norah needed comfort, she went to Otto. But she could always trust Ralph for his blunt honesty, his crotchety defense of her and Aunt Eleanor, and his loyalty. Always loyal. Norah had never questioned why the brothers didn’t live in the same house. They were alike in so many ways and yet different enough that they likely would have imploded. Ralph wanted his privacy, and Otto wanted his toolshed. They needed some distance from each other, their own space.

But now? Now Norah wanted Ralph’s honesty. Well, truthfully, she didn’t want it, but she felt she needed to hear it anyway.

Ralph laid the rake over a wheelbarrow, then squatted to pick up a stick that was tarnishing the grave of Katherine Humperdink, who’d died in 1873. What a name, Humperdink.

“Ralph?” Norah pressed.

“Fine.” He tossed the stick into the wheelbarrow and faced her. “You’ve always been a worrier, a fretter. So much so that you can’t leave people alone sometimes.”

That didn’t fit with Norah’s view of herself. In fact, she avoided people. Had for years. It seemed Ralph saw through her.

“Oh, sure.” He waved her off. “You don’t hound folks now, but back in the day when it was you two girls runnin’ around here, you just didn’t know when to let up when you were worried about somethin’ or you didn’t understand. It was like you couldn’t find any peace until you had control, and you couldn’t have control unless you pestered the heck out of people for explanations to help you stop frettin’.”

Norah felt that gnawing in the pit of her stomach that came with hearing the truth, but not wanting to admit it was the truth. She challenged Ralph further. “Give me an example.”

Ralph grabbed the rake, planted it, and leaned against the wooden handle. “How ’bout that time Eleanor wanted to send you to church camp, paid for it and everything, but you ended up not going ’cause she couldn’t tell you all the details. Which cabin you’d be stayin’ in, who your counselor would be, if they’d make you eat eggs for breakfast or if they had a cold cereal option.”

“Okay, well, I was only eleven. A new place? New people? Any young girl would have questions.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ralph adjusted his grip on the rake. “All them times you tried to follow Otto home to his place?” Ralph adjusted his voice to sound high and like a child’s. “‘What if your tools aren’t hung up right, an’ they fall on ya an’ cut off your head?’ Or ‘You know there’s such a thing as killer bees, an’ if they make a nest in your shed, we’d best get them out.’”

“Both are rational concerns.” Norah pursed her lips.

Ralph gave her a cockeyed look. “How’s it rational that a teenage gal can hang tools better’n someone like Otto, who’s been doin’ it for years?”

“Maybe it wasn’t worry so much as curiosity. Maybe I just wanted to have a look inside the man’s shed.” Norah crossed her arms over her chest.

“We all got a right to a little privacy. It’s why I ain’t never bugged my brother about his shed, and he ain’t never bugged me about my bathroom.”

“Your bathroom?” Norah quirked an eyebrow.

“Never you mind.” Ralph shook his finger at her. “Fact is, you had a way of not only frettin’ but also not givin’ up trying to find reasons so you didn’t have be afraid. Even if it meant steppin’ on others’ toes, or hurtin’ their feelings, or just being dad-blamed nosy.”

Norah let her shoulders droop. They were probably sagging lower than Ralph’s now. He noticed and gentled his tone.

“I’m not sayin’ Naomi was right not to tell you about LeRoy back then. I’m no fan of that boy anyway. I’m just sayin’ I understand a bit why Naomi didn’t say anything. She wanted something for herself and didn’t want to answer twenty questions and give fifty reasons to justify her decisions were good ones.”

Norah nodded. She had to consider what he was saying. Ralph wouldn’t exaggerate the truth, and he wouldn’t candy-coat it either.

“What else did Naomi not tell me?” Her question was rhetorical, but it spawned another she truly wanted answered. “Do you think Naomi didn’t tell me some things because she was worried I’d be more afraid?”

“You mean did she keep secrets to protect you?” Ralph clarified.

Norah nodded.

“You bet I think she did.” Ralph’s face wrestled with various expressions as he fought back emotion. “That girl loved people as much as you feared for people. Both are good and bad, you know? You fear for people, but then you’re mighty protective of them too. Naomi, she loved people hard, but then they could use her and spit her out ’cause she’d let them.”

“Yeah.” Norah remembered, and with the memory came a revelation. Ralph was silent, letting her think. After a moment, Norah sucked in a determined breath and reached out to give Ralph’s forearm a squeeze. “Thank you, Ralph. For being honest.”

He smiled.

She smiled in return and then headed back toward the house, sidestepping a grave so she didn’t walk over it. It was time she looked at the cold case files again. This time by herself. And let Naomi speak to her from beyond the grave, and maybe shed new light on what Norah’s fear had always blocked her from seeing.

She fingered the folder of Isabelle Addington. Sebastian had been right. There wasn’t much in it of substance as to who she was, nor was there much regarding the story surrounding her murder. A few handwritten notes by a Constable Talbot stated that the initial crime scene had been hidden, then later discovered by Euphemia James and Lewis Anderson. Apparently, Lewis Anderson had identified the alleged victim in all probability to be Isabelle Addington. Constable Talbot’s note stated that Mr. Anderson had followed Miss Addington to Shepherd, having had firsthand knowledge that she was staying at 322 Predicament Avenue. However, no body had been found.

Two names were scratched in pencil and underlined. Norah stared at them for a long moment, recalling the visit to the Oppermans’ descendant Betty and her husband, Ron. There on the copy of the old pencil scratching were the names Floyd Opperman and Mabel Opperman—along with a question: But if she’s dead, where’s the body of Isabelle Addington?

Aside from that, Norah could see why the case file would have disappointed Sebastian. There was nothing to expand on the tale. Not that would be worth episodic retelling on his podcast anyway. And his wasn’t a podcast of ghost stories and the paranormal, and spouting off the so-called sightings of Isabelle Addington through the years wouldn’t add much either.

Frankly, there wasn’t much basis for Mrs. Miller to sue the bed-and-breakfast as though responsible for her husband’s heart attack should she decide to take legal action. But then enough time had passed that Norah was fairly certain the Miller family had accepted that their loved one’s death was the result of natural causes and not the fault of Norah and her business.

As to the question this Constable Talbot had written concerning the mystery of Isabelle Addington’s missing body, Norah wondered if that wouldn’t be enough to show beyond doubt that the house wasn’t haunted by Isabelle after all. Her body had never been found—unless she was to believe the postmortem photograph of that woman truly was Isabelle Addington. And if so, it was never proven that she’d been murdered on the premises of Predicament Avenue. It put to rest the notion that her ghost snuck through the house, scaring people and causing heart attacks.

Yes. She’d call Rebecca, her lawyer, and feed her that idea. Just in case.

Norah closed the folder. Isabelle Addington wasn’t her primary focus now. She bit the inside of her lip as she stared at the great number of photocopies and notes and folders that had to do with Naomi’s disappearance.

She pulled out a spiral notebook and made a timeline to remind herself of the events. Naomi’s disappearance and the subsequent search for her. The hunter who found her remains three months later in the woods—a place with no connection or reason anyone could think of other than it being remote. Norah pulled out paperwork outlining the questioning of suspects. Her parents had been cleared, she had been cleared, coworkers, Aunt Eleanor . . .

Norah winced as she read the names of a few suspects with no alibis but no motives either.

Ralph Middleford.

Otto Middleford.

Mike Dover.

Norah’s breath hitched. Mike Dover? Detective Dover had been a suspect? She’d never known that, or if she had, it hadn’t registered for some reason. Norah thumbed through the pages, reviewing notes.

Mike had been employed by the same combination retail store and pharmacy as Naomi was at the time—him working in the store, her in the pharmacy. The two had been seen flirting a few times, but coworkers later stated it was congenial and there had never been an issue between them. Mike had been at the store that night when it closed. He’d been the third person in the store besides Naomi and the pharmacist, who had an alibi. Mike Dover did not. According to his statement, he’d locked up, driven home, and fallen asleep in his apartment where he lived alone.

Norah sank onto a chair. Dover had been inserting himself into her life here and there, especially since Mr. Miller’s heart attack, and had reawakened not only the stories about the first murder victim of Shepherd, Iowa—Isabelle Addington—but also the questions that seemed to pop up again about Naomi’s unsolved murder.

She focused on a printout of LeRoy Anderson’s information—height, weight, other physical attributes. He’d also not had an alibi, but according to the notes, he’d had a motive. The baby.

Norah wrote in her notebook.

Mike.

LeRoy.

The only other names on the list with no one to account for their whereabouts on the night of Naomi’s abduction were Ralph and Otto. That would be like accusing Santa Claus of murdering Rudolph. Norah could have told the cops that had she known they’d even considered the two brothers as suspects.

Norah lifted the page that reported the condition of Naomi’s body when it was found. She steeled herself as the heaviness of anxiety began to seep into her.

“You can do this,” she breathed aloud to herself. A prayer would probably help too, so she tried that. What was it about being afraid that pushed a person away from God instead of toward Him?

Deciding to explore that conundrum later, Norah let her eyes examine the report.

Norah had been found in the woods just twenty yards from a gravel road. She had been fully dressed. No signs of sexual assault. In spite of the condition of the body having been lying there for three months, the investigators were able to identify her based on the graduation ring she wore that was inscribed with her name.

Norah drew in a shaky breath. Yes. She remembered helping Mom give the police a list of articles Naomi would have had on her. The ring, her cellphone, her Coach wallet . . .

She stilled. Norah stared at the next line.

Her hands were bound behind her back with a pink bandanna.

Pink.

Norah began to tremble. It traveled from her head down her neck and shoulders, then through her torso and down her legs until she had to grip the edge of the table.

A pink bandanna.

She knew Naomi had been found with her hands tied together with a bandanna. The cops had mentioned it several times. A few had commented on a bandanna being a flimsy way to control a prisoner.

But she’d never heard the color before.

That pink bandanna had been Naomi’s! The person who bound her had taken the bandanna from Naomi’s belongings. Naomi never went anywhere without her pink bandanna, which was given to her by one of the most important people in her life.

“Always have a bandanna on ya. Can use it as a nose wipe, a rag, wet it down to keep ya cool in the summer, and can even make a tourniquet out of it. People underestimate the power of a bandanna.”

Those words had come from Otto—and Ralph too—but Otto had spoken them for the brothers. Norah heard them as clearly as the Christmas when they’d both opened their gifts with the bandanna of their favorite color. Naomi’s was pink. Norah’s had been green. Norah had lost hers rather quickly, not fully believing in the so-called power of a bandanna. Naomi, though, was fiercely protective of hers. Because she was fiercely protective of the brothers.

The room began to whirl as Norah struggled to retain her equilibrium. Now was not the time for the panic attack to return. How dare someone use something so precious to Naomi as her pink bandanna to bind her for her death! If Otto and Ralph were to find out, it would break them. Norah stared at the names and then reached for a pencil and crossed out Otto’s and Ralph’s. She would never tell the boys that Naomi had been restrained by the very gift they’d meant to be sweet and special.

Norah shifted her attention to the remaining two names.

LeRoy.

Mike.

Strangely, she might be led to believe that either of them could have done it. But now just a little bit more of her was less suspicious of LeRoy and more concerned that Dover wasn’t who he said he was. If Dover had been Naomi’s coworker, he would’ve had ample opportunity to see her with her pink bandanna. He would’ve known that Naomi was carrying in her bag the very restraint that would eventually be the tool used in the taking of her life.