Chapter 65
When Annie opened the unlocked door of the little house Cookie had lived in, she was surprised that the heat was still on. It was so nice and warm, in contrast to the cold November air. She walked into the empty living room, wondering what had happened to Cookie’s yoga things that were in there. Did her landlord take them? She was hoping to find something of Cookie’s. Anything.
Out of the hospital several days, Annie had just filed her latest story. During her research, she had been floored when she spoke to the FBI agents, who confirmed her suspicions—that the group of people on the mountain was a cult of sorts, that it was more than a front. Many outsiders were coming into the area to study with them. When she asked one of the agents about the anti-Semitism, he confirmed that he thought it was one of the precepts of the cult. She shivered, thinking about being on that mountain with a bunch of people who hated her because she was Jewish.
“These folks are very clever. They know the legal system and are working it. Until one of them steps out of line, there’s not much we can do about it,” the agent had revealed.
“Murder is out of line,” Annie had pointed out.
“Yes, but that had nothing to do with the cult. It was one individual.”
“It seems like the murders had a ritualistic element, with the runic patterns cut into the victims. I even heard them mention the word sacrifice when I was out on the mountain the night I was shot.”
He’d sighed impatiently. “Many murderers have a ritual. We don’t think it has anything to do with the group,” he’d said in a clipped voice, leading her to believe the case was closed.
But what about the word sacrifice, which she’d overheard that night on the mountain? Why was he ignoring that?
Why can’t I leave this alone?
She looked out Cookie’s sliding glass door at the mountains. She’d never known that Cookie had such a beautiful view—no wonder her scrapbook pop-out so accurately reflected the shape of those mountains. She saw them every day in all their glory. In fact, it was almost a straight line from her house to the mountains. Interesting.
She walked into Cookie’s bedroom, where it seemed to be even warmer. The warmth circled Annie as she took in the empty room. Even the closet was empty.
Where was Cookie? Annie felt the sharp, cutting pang of friendship loss, and she leaned against the wall, suddenly sobbing. It was almost as if Cookie had died. Annie had been so busy getting better, spinning her stories, that she hadn’t allowed it to sink in.
She slid down the wall and sat on the floor. A sudden heaviness came over her. Ah, maybe she’d pushed herself too hard. She had played with the boys earlier in the day and wanted to leave for the crop early, so she didn’t get a chance to take a nap.
Cookie was gone.
And nobody knew where to even start to look. There were the doctors who claimed she was an expert at escaping and reinventing herself. Didn’t she care about the people she left behind, if that was the case? Annie wondered if they were real doctors. Were they FBI? She had no idea and made a mental note to try to track them down.
And then there was Beatrice’s story that she told the police—that Cookie was traveling through time, or was adept at making herself invisible and moving through space? The police had shrugged her off as an old fool who’d finally lost her quantum physics marbles. But Annie knew better. Still, it didn’t help in trying to make sense of anything, and maybe it didn’t matter. Because Cookie was gone—and that was how she wanted it to be, or needed it to be.
Annie felt herself give way to weariness, lifted her knees, and draped her arms over them. She laid her head down. Closed her eyes. Man, she’d nearly lost her mind over this thing. Didn’t see things clearly at all. It was almost as if the whole thing were a misty dream. Maybe it was time to stop being a reporter.
“No,” a feminine voice said. “You must continue. There’s more for you to do.”
She struggled to lift her head up. Did she really hear that? Or had she slipped into sleep and was dreaming? She looked around and saw nothing. “Cookie?”
The windows in the bedroom flew open, and yet more warmth surrounded Annie. She watched as the brown leaves blew around, and she stood up to latch the windows. She turned around to a pile of leaves in the room. Oh well, it simply didn’t matter. Nobody lived there anymore. She shoved the leaves over to the corner and realized there was a piece of paper in the middle of it all. A picture. Annie brushed away the dirt. It was a photo of Cookie holding Elizabeth. A smile spread across Annie’s face, and her heart lifted.
“That picture looks old,” Sheila said as the group gathered around to see it.
“It was outside for a while, I think,” Annie said. “I’m just glad to have it. I’ll make copies for everybody,”
“I had seen another picture like that in her book, remember?” Vera said. “Whoever Cookie is or was, I believe she loved my girl.”
“Indeed,” Sheila said. “Does anybody know what happened to the baby?”
“She’s with her father now,” Annie said. “Zeb. Can you believe that? That beautiful little baby belongs to Zeb McClain, Tina Sue’s husband. He lied to me, obviously, when he said he didn’t know Sarah. At first, Sarah’s parents were keeping her. I’d feel better about that.”
“I wonder how Tina Sue feels about that,” Paige said.
“I bet I know,” Vera said, sitting down to her own scrapbook project, picking up her scissors. “It’s not pleasant. It’s not the first time he’s cheated on her.”
DeeAnn held up a recipe card embellished with pie stickers. “I can’t imagine a younger woman wanting to sleep with my husband. In fact, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to sleep with him.” She howled with laughter.
The other women joined in.
Annie took a deep breath, taking in her friends. Even with all the weirdness in this community, she guessed these women made living here completely worthwhile. Although her children’s schooling would need to be figured out with this Weekly Religious Education program. She had just begun to fight that.
And then there was this group of neo-Nazis living on Jenkins Mountain. She vowed to figure all that out. She knew there was more to it than the authorities were leading her to believe. But how to find out?
“At least one murderer is off the street,” Paige said.
“Make that two murderers,” DeeAnn reminded her. “Two murderers in a little over two years.”
“Interesting,” Vera said after a moment. “Both of them have connections to Jenkins Mountain and the Nest.”
“That’s no big deal,” DeeAnn said. “Most of the people at this table could say the same thing. Whether it’s us or our husbands.”
Everybody, perhaps, except for Annie.
“I just can’t get over Zeb McClain as a guru. Jeez, what’s the world coming to?” Sheila said.
Something clicked in Annie’s brain. She’d known gurus before—both the real kind and the phony kind, the ones who wanted nothing more than their followers’ money or sex, or were on some ego trip, or just plain mental cases. Zeb definitely had charisma—just as other gurus had. She’d known women who appeared to be sane and intelligent, who would sink into submissive roles to be close to a guru. She’d known men who had sold their homes and handed over the money to their gurus. She’d known children who grew up in communes under gurus, never knowing who their father was or the outside world.
“Does anybody know who the police were getting ready to arrest when Luther confessed?” Annie asked.
“Wasn’t it Cookie?” Sheila said.
“At first,” Annie replied. “But didn’t someone say that they were getting ready to arrest someone else? I was in the hospital, and I kind of remember a conversation about this.”
“That’s right,” Vera said. “I was in the station with Mama when they brought the men in.”
“Men?”
“I couldn’t see their faces. It was pouring down rain. I was in my car. But once I was inside, sitting for a while with Mama and Bill, Detective Bryant came in, told us to leave, that they had just gotten a confession.”
“Okay, so if it was Luther that you saw, who else would have been there?”
Vera shrugged.
“Maybe it was Zeb,” Sheila said. “Makes sense. After all, he is the guru,” she added with a smirk.
Annie needed to hear someone else say that.
Would a man confess to murder to protect his guru? Oh, now. She was leaping to a conclusion, but her gut was telling that Luther’s confession was not exactly right. Did she believe he could kill somebody? Yes. Did she believe that he killed Sarah and Rebecca and tried to kill that baby? She wasn’t so sure. Nah, it was too crazy, even for her. And besides, they had Luther’s DNA all over the place—even on the baby’s clothing from the night he, evidently, dropped her off at Vera’s place. Annie’s brain was still foggy after her hospital stay. But her gut had a mind of its own.