Chapter Eleven
My heart slammed into overdrive as disjoined thoughts formed. Definitely a man. No one I recognized right off, but his face was turned away from me toward the stairs. He wasn’t moving at all. Was he okay? I couldn’t see his chest moving, but it was pretty dim in the hallway, even with the light from the flashlight.
Get out. Get out now. Don’t look. Just get out.
I walked backward a step, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave without seeing if he was all right. I stepped back into the doorway, then inched a bit closer to him.
My stomach lurched at the unnatural angle of his head. There was no way he was alive. Blood had pooled under the side of his face on the floor. I looked away and I forced myself to breathe in and out. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick.
I gazed at the stairs, fighting down the surge of bile in my throat. I focused on the rug at the top of the stairs. It was wrinkled and twisted so that the edge of it lapped over the top step. There was a glove on a step about halfway down the stairs. My gaze was pulled back down the stairs. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. I stumbled backward and caught the door frame to the hallway. Police. I needed to call the police. Fingerprints—I jerked my hand away from the door frame.
A groan sounded behind me. I whirled toward the extra bedroom, then swiveled back so that I could see both the bedroom and the man’s body down the hall. I didn’t want my back to anything. As impossible as that was, that’s how I felt.
The eerie noise came again, this time fainter, and I saw the door to the extra bedroom shift an inch. It was open and I could see the room was empty. I leaned to the side and looked down the tiny strip of space on the side of the door where the hinges were. Through that sliver, I could see there was no one behind the door. The door wavered again, letting out another creaky moan as the hinges shifted. I released a jerky breath that sounded loud in the stillness of the house. A gust of cold air brushed my face as the door creaked and shifted another inch, revealing that the board that had covered the broken window was gone. The window was wide open.
I backed out of the hallway and hurried across the living room. I was running by the time I got to the kitchen. It’s amazing I didn’t fall as I skidded down the steps outside the kitchen door. I fumbled with the key fob and unlocked the van door with a click. I scrambled inside, locked the doors. My cold fingers trembled as I dug my cell phone out of my purse and punched in the three numbers that would bring the police back to Grandpa Franklin’s house.
After I’d given all the details to her, the 911 operator told me to stay on the line.
“I can’t. I’ve got to make another call,” I said.
“We need you to stay on the line,” she countered.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when the police get here,” I said, and hung up. I dialed Mitch’s phone number. He wasn’t going to like this one bit. The wind whipped a few dry pine needles against the windshield and I flinched. I realized I was shivering and turned the ignition key, then cranked the heat. The phone line rang as I watched the wind sweep some brown leaves across the driveway and into an eddy before they caught in the undergrowth of the bushes surrounding the back of the house. I knew the body inside the house was going to stir up everything that had been so carefully smoothed over. The questions about the disappearance at the funeral home would be looked into further and the Avery family wouldn’t be happy about that, Mitch included.
The call finally went to voice mail and I left a quick message with the basic facts. As I hung up, a sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway and Officer Taggart emerged. I stayed in the van and rolled my window down as he came around.
“Hello, ma’am. You called nine-one-one?”
“Yes, I did. There’s a body in the house. At the foot of the stairs.”
“A body?”
“Yes. A dead body. I don’t know who it is.”
“And why were you in the house ... ?”
“I was picking up some mail for my aunt, Christine Avery. She gave me the key.”
“You were here the other day. You’re the daughter-in-law from out of town.”
“Yes, I’m Ellie Avery.”
He wrote down my name and contact information, then told me to stay in the car. “Is the door locked?” he asked, looking at the door that opened into the kitchen.
“No. I didn’t lock it when I ran out, just called nine-one-one.” A second car from the sheriff’s office pulled into the driveway and another officer joined Officer Taggart at the steps leading up to the kitchen door. I watch, fascinated, as they drew their guns and held them, arms stiff, and pointed the barrels to the ground. They exchanged nods and then went through the door. I blinked and shook my head. I felt like I was watching a cop show. The few windows on this side of the house reflected back the banks of trees and bushes with a slice of sky. I couldn’t see anything inside. I didn’t think there had been anyone else in the house, but I supposed you couldn’t be too careful when you entered a crime scene.
I shifted the heat to a lower setting and flexed my fingers around my phone. I was finally warm, but I wondered if Mitch had picked up my voice message. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Five more minutes. I’d give him that before I called Bill and Caroline’s house. I couldn’t put it off longer than that.
They should have found the man by now. I watched the door, which they’d left open, but no one appeared. I’d seen the dead man—before, when his face was whole and normal. I swallowed hard and forced myself to think about the clothes he’d worn—tan barn coat over a brown plaid shirt, tan slacks, and suede lace-up boots.
The jacket had been large and had probably covered up his heftiness when he was alive, but with him sprawled on the floor, the jacket had fallen open and showed the man’s pudgy stomach straining against the fabric of the brown plaid shirt. There had been a second glove, a match to the one on the stairs, hanging halfway out of his coat pocket. My mind flashed back to the man’s face. I didn’t want to dwell on that image, but I took a steadying breath and made myself think about his features. His face—the side that had been turned up toward me—had been plump and rounded. His sparse hair was brownish gray. And there had been some facial hair—not a beard, but a goatee. I’d only been able to see a small bit of it because his head had been turned away, but I remembered the goatee. It was brown going gray.
I’d met someone recently who had a goatee. Had he been at the funeral? I didn’t think so. Earlier? Had I met him at the visitation? That was it! I sat up straighter—the Weebles guy. What was his name? Sam? No—Stan. Stan ... Anderson. Stan Anderson. I’d only talked to him briefly at the visitation, but he’d said he’d never met Grandpa Franklin. I flipped my phone around and around in my hands, trying to figure out why he’d be in the house in the first place.
Officer Taggart came out the door. His gun was in his holster and the other officer moved behind him at a regular pace. So the inside of the house must be empty except for Stan Anderson. The second officer moved off around the back of the house and Officer Taggart came over to my window. I rolled it down.
“Describe to me what happened when you arrived here.”
I took him through each thing I’d done and when I finished, the second officer had come back and drew Officer Taggart aside. They were only a few feet away and I could hear the second officer reporting, “No sign of footprints. There’s a thick ground cover under the window and with all these leaves, there won’t be anything in the woods.”
“Check anyway,” Officer Taggart said, and the other officer nodded and left to search the woods behind the house.
A flash of reflected light in the mirror shined in my eyes and I turned to watch an F-150 pickup roar into the gravel beside me. It was followed by another car, this one a dark blue four-door sedan with tinted windows. Uncle Bud swung down from the pickup’s driver’s seat and Mitch climbed out of the other side. Detective Rickets emerged from the unmarked car. He braced his hands on his hips and stretched his shoulders back, then went to greet Uncle Bud with a hearty handshake.
Mitch trotted over to the van and I unlocked the doors. “Ellie, you’re so pale. Are you okay? I came as soon as I got your message.”
“Yes. A little shaken up, but okay. It’s Stan Anderson in there,” I said, tilting my head toward the house. “He was at the visitation. I met him.”
“Why are you even here? Mom said something about you taking Aunt Christine home.”
I explained what had happened as I pulled the bills out of my coat pocket and set them in the console between us. “I ran out here and called the police,” I said as I wound up my story.
“You’re sure he was dead? Not just passed out?”
“Oh, he was dead all right,” I said, catching sight of my face in the rearview mirror. Mitch was right. My skin looked chalky. “His neck’s broken.”
Mitch took my hand and squeezed. “You’re okay now. Everything’s going to be okay now.”
I smiled at him halfheartedly. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?” Mitch asked.
“Don’t you see? This is going to reopen the investigation into Grandpa Franklin’s death. Even though he’s already buried, they’ll have to try and figure out why Stan broke into his house.”
Mitch frowned as Detective Rickets ambled down the steps from the kitchen door and rounded the corner toward the back of the house. There was a tap on Mitch’s window and we both jumped. Uncle Bud loomed beside the window. Mitch rolled the window down and a frigid breeze coursed through the two open windows. “So, Ellie, what’s the story here?” Uncle Bud asked. He might have been asking me if I thought it was going to rain later today.
“A man’s dead,” I said flatly.
My abrupt answer didn’t seem to bother him. “Know who it is?” he asked conversationally.
“His name was Stan Anderson.”
“Stan Anderson? Who the hell is Stan Anderson?”
Before anyone could answer him, Detective Rickets came around the corner of the house and walked up to Uncle Bud. “It’s the new guy, Stan Anderson. Was going to open up some sort of restaurant.”
“A pizzeria,” I said, and everyone turned to look at me. “I met him at the visitation. He said he was opening a pizzeria in downtown Smarr. He didn’t know Grandpa Franklin, but his father did. That’s why he came to the visitation.”
Detective Rickets studied me for a moment, then turned back to Uncle Bud, a deliberate dismissal of me. “It’ll take us awhile to get the body out. Coroner’s on his way.”
“What happened?” Uncle Bud asked.
Detective Rickets shrugged a shoulder. “Funeral was today, right? Announced in the paper?” When Uncle Bud confirmed both things, Detective Rickets said, “Anderson probably saw the notice and figured it was the best time to break into the house. Pick up a few valuables before the relatives take everything away.”
“But it didn’t look like he’d taken anything,” I said, and Detective Rickets leaned down so he could see me inside the van. “Was there anything in his pockets?” I asked, thinking of the large pockets on the barn coat.
“No, well, nothing you wouldn’t expect. Wallet, keys, that sort of thing.”
“Then how could it be a robbery?” I asked.
“He didn’t have a chance to take anything before he died.”
“But he was at the foot of the stairs. The rug at the top of the stairs was rumpled and one of his gloves was on a step. He’d been upstairs. If he was looking for valuables, wouldn’t he have taken something from there and have it with him on the way back down?”
Mitch pressed my hand and I shot him a look. Detective Rickets said, “Probably doing a quick run through to get the layout of the house. He takes the stairs too quickly, trips, and, well ... that’s it. Down he goes, pockets empty.”
I supposed it could have happened that way, but it wouldn’t have been my first assumption. “Why would Stan break into Grandpa Franklin’s house, anyway? It’s not like he was extremely wealthy or had lots of valuables lying around.”
“You’d be surprised what some people consider valuable, Mrs. Avery,” Detective Rickets said. “A jacket, a pair of shoes. Even one of those fancy digital music players all the kids have now. Heck, Mr. Avery had a TV and that’s probably all it took.”
“But the TV is still there. He didn’t take it. He hadn’t taken anything.”
Mitch gripped my hand tighter and I glared at him. Detective Rickets stepped back from the window and turned so that his back was to us, and he spoke to Uncle Bud. Mitch powered up his window, then twisted around to face me. “Ellie, what are you doing? Are you trying to irritate him?”
“No! I’m trying to get him to do his job—investigate—but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.” Detective Rickets shook hands with Uncle Bud, who looked satisfied. “Uncle Bud wouldn’t look like that unless Detective Rickets was doing exactly what he wanted.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Uncle Bud pressured the sheriff’s department to close your grandfather’s case. And he’s doing the same thing here.”
“How could you even know that? Did Uncle Bud tell you himself?”
“No. Someone in the sheriff’s department told me.” Mitch opened his mouth and I quickly said, “And that’s all I can say right now, but this person is someone who would know.”
Mitch ran his fingers through his hair, a sure sign of frustration. Under his breath, he said, “Contacts. She has contacts in my hometown. How is that possible?” He took a deep breath and turned to me. “Okay. Let’s leave that for now. Let’s stay focused on what’s really important here. Why? Why would Uncle Bud do that?”
“I don’t know—that’s what my ... my ... source is trying to figure out. Look at it this way, Uncle Bud is pretty powerful around here, right? How many times have you told me how he influenced zoning changes and county decisions? He’s got connections and he’s not shy about using them to get what he wants.”
“But why would he want the case closed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s got something to hide. Maybe someone in the family has something to hide.”
“Are you serious?” Mitch’s gaze was cold. “You really think a relative is involved in this? That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. I thought you were letting go of the Avery family as prime suspects.”
“No, I’m not saying an Avery is involved. I don’t know what happened. But Uncle Bud got the investigation of Grandpa Franklin’s death shut down. Now there’s a dead man in Grandpa Franklin’s house on the day of the funeral. And that’s not even taking into account the whole missing casket fiasco. Yes, I’m serious about this. What I don’t understand is how anyone wouldn’t be seriously looking into what’s going on.”
My cell phone rang and I snatched it up. I listened, then said, “Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I turned to Mitch and said, “That was Caroline. Livvy’s not feeling good. We need to get back.”
“Why don’t you go ahead,” Mitch said stiffly as he opened the door and stepped out. “I’ll catch a ride back with Uncle Bud.”
“Fine,” I said shortly, and put the van in reverse.
“Fine.” He shoved the door hard.
“Fine!” I managed to get out before the door slammed. He turned and walked to Uncle Bud’s truck without a backward look.
Ellie Avery’s Tips for Preserving Family Treasures
Organizing Photographs
If you have hard copies of your photos, thin your photographs before placing them in albums or photo boxes. You don’t want to regret throwing away photos later, so err on the side of caution. There are many ways to organize photos:
• Chronologically by date—this is the most popular.
• By individual—a photo album or collection focused on a single person. Some families like to keep both chronological albums as well as a running album for each child. A photo collection that focuses on a child is a wonderful graduation or wedding gift.
• By location/event—since we tend to take more photos on special occasions, you could organize photos around holiday celebrations or family reunions.
• Scrapbooking—this hobby takes photo albums to the next level and allows you to showcase the most interesting and unique photographs by combining them with decorative papers, text, and embellishments that reveal the story behind the photographs.