Imogene
It was a cavern of hollow memories that ricocheted off dark walls, repeating themselves over and over and over until Imogene wished to clap her hands over her ears and scream the remembrances into silence. She sensed Oliver beside her, but he said nothing. What was there to say, after all, with the vision before them, splayed out in all its murderous glory? The aftermath of Hazel’s death, staining the rug by her bed. The droplets of blood marring the wallpaper, making a mockery of the beauty of the pink roses and green vines that wrapped themselves delicately across a pale pink background. Hazel had picked out the wallpaper after their parents gave her permission to make the attic into a bedroom. Her “oasis,” Hazel said. Her “haven.” Now her tomb.
Imogene covered her mouth with her hand, blinking furiously against the hot moisture welling in her eyes. She wanted to erase the mental picture of her beloved nineteen-year-old sister sprawled on the rug. To eliminate the vision of violence and the blatant reality that Hazel was never going to grace the attic bedroom with her smile ever again.
“Close your eyes. Sometimes it’s too much to take in.” Oliver’s soft words were rife with understanding.
Imogene cast him a look and stiffened her shoulders. It wasn’t his sister whose blood he’d stepped in, or whose chest he’d spread his hands across, or his screams that echoed in his ears. No. It was hers. Hers. Her Hazel.
And she would make sure she remembered everything. Every detail. Every drop of blood, every out-of-place item, every molecule of dust disturbed. She would remember for Hazel.
Her eyes surveyed the room. Where moments before she’d wished not to look, now she ached to memorize every detail. The box radio, its curved wooden corners and scrolled golden knob. It had a droplet of blood spatter on the number 12 at its dial. It sat on the table next to Hazel’s bed. The small piece of bedroom furniture was also marred with dark, burnished splotches. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Oliver’s hand rise, as if he were going to rest it in a comforting gesture on her forearm. She took a step forward and away from him, letting her vision drift to the bed.
Hazel’s tufted white bedspread over crisp, floral sheets. It was mussed, as if Hazel had sat on it and perhaps even rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling as she was wont to do. Daydreaming. Imagining herself a heroine off in a bookish land. Imogene’s gaze cast upward as if following the image of Hazel and her vacant stare at the ceiling. The beams of the roof spanned it to the peak. A spider web hung there, neglected and old, long abandoned by the creature that might have borne witness to Hazel’s murder—had it not already died long before. There was no blood on the ceiling. There was a nail protruding from one beam, a tiny wisp of webbing hanging from it like a cotton bead.
Imogene’s focus returned to the bed. The portion of coverlet that hung over the side to the floor had a bloodstain on it. Dots and splotches. Most of the evidence of violence seemed to be cast away from the bed and against the wall, the table, partially onto the radio, then on the rug. Imogene dared not pause to conceptualize the grief that danced in the shadows of a heart she was purposefully turning cold and distant. Walking forward, she bent and picked up a book that lay on the rug next to where Hazel had fallen. Beneath it, the rug was clean, void of the disturbing evidence. The book itself was clean on its front but had a few spatters of deep burgundy marks on its spine. A Grace Livingston Hill romance. The dust jacket a picture of tranquility, of a rosebud-cheeked young woman with waved hair pulled into a roll on one side, with curls on the other. She looked a lot like Hazel, when Hazel didn’t have her hair pulled into a snood, its netting protecting from tangling at the plant where Hazel worked.
Setting the book on the bed, Imogene stepped over a smeared footprint. Perhaps from one of the detectives who’d first investigated the scene with camera in hand? She knew they’d moved Hazel a few times to look for evidence. Fingerprints had been taken off the doorknob and other areas, but so often, Chet had warned them, they weren’t matched to anyone in the index-card file.
Disturbed by the motionless chaos of the scene, Imogene brushed past a silent Ollie and moved to the window overlooking the farmyard. She could see the barn, Mother’s garden with its tomato plants crawling up cages, a mixture of red fruit and yellow blossoms promising more. Cows dotted the pasture beyond, the black-and-white Holsteins the heartbeat of the farm.
A sob caught in Imogene’s throat.
“Genie?”
Oliver’s voice tore her from her mental photographing.
She turned and met his deep blue eyes. They reflected some emotion, but she couldn’t tell what. Empathy? Pity? Shared sorrow?
“How?” she whispered, fingertips pressed to her bottom lip. “How does God allow something this—this heinous?”
Ollie dipped his head and toed a warped floorboard for a second before raising his eyes again. “I ask myself that every day.”
His admission was a stark reminder that he’d seen his own share of inexplicable horrors. The damage mankind could cast on others. The empty lack of soul as one killer drained it from another.
“We should go.” Imogene had nothing to add. One couldn’t answer for the intentions or oversights of God, and He rarely offered explanations. The clichéd comfort offered at death was a stark underscore to the concept that it could have all been stopped before it ever happened. Had God been watching . . . caring.
Imogene took another lingering study of the room. Hazel’s gold locket was draped on the top of her bureau next to a framed photograph of all the Grayson siblings. Before Ivan and Chet went to war. Before the war changed everything. When they lived in a blessed cocoon of contentment, even as others dragged themselves from the pits of poverty caused by the weak economy. Farmers were necessary. Their livelihood shaky but secure long term. The Grayson farm was safe, all was well and—
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” The words escaped Imogene’s mouth before she could halt them.
Oliver stood, hands deep in his overall pockets. A strand of dark blond hair draped over his forehead, but otherwise he looked almost spit-shined for church. His shirt was clean, not wrinkled from working at his father’s farm. It was almost as if he’d spent the entire day wandering aimlessly and doing nothing, ever since muttering his ominous warning that morning.
“Did you know?” Imogene took a step forward.
Oliver frowned. “Know what?”
“This morning.” She blinked, catching the shadow of her black lashes coated in Vaseline to emphasize their thickness. “When you told me to take warning. Did you know this was going to happen?”
Oliver seemed taken aback by her question. He shuffled his feet and shook his head, meeting her eyes. “No. Of course not. I just . . . it’s a sayin’. That’s all.”
“A saying.” Imogene swallowed. Nodded. Trying to accept. Trying to comprehend. “Well, you were right. If I’d only been here, if I’d only told Mrs. Nelson I didn’t have time for that permanent. She could have done pin curls, stretched it out longer, and I could’ve curled her hair tomorrow. Then I would’ve been home. I would’ve been here—”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her body beginning to quiver in a tremor she hadn’t expected.
Oliver took a step forward in concern.
Imogene stared at the bloodstains on the rug. “Hazel was by herself. She suffered here—I should’ve been here.”
“You couldn’t have known.” Oliver’s sense of reason, of logic, only irritated Imogene. She didn’t need to be placated. To be made to feel better. To be let off the hook of blame.
“No. I should have! Besides, it was always left to Hazel. Me at the beauty parlor? Mother off doing her charity work or canning at our aunt’s house? Daddy off in the fields with Ivan? For gosh sakes, Ollie! Poor Hazel made dinner for us all after working all day at the plant. You’d think they’d shut it down now that the war’s over! What do they need more ammunition for anyway? She works so hard, and I knew she’d be coming home to make supper for us. I should’ve told Mrs. Nelson her hair doesn’t hold a permanent wave, so why bother? She spends so much money trying to look like Hedy Lamarr, but she’s over fifty years old and as vain as they come! She’ll never look like an actress no matter how hard she tries! She has wrinkles and is downright bat ugly!”
Imogene’s words ended in a squelched wail. She clapped her hand over her mouth, red lipstick smearing on her skin. Her eyes widened and locked with Oliver’s. His shoes echoed on the wood floor as he crossed to stand in front of Imogene. His work-worn fingers wrapped around her upper arms, and something in his voice made her keep her eyes on his.
“You couldn’t have saved her. We don’t know what—who killed her. Coulda been you too, layin’ there tonight if you’da been here. Mrs. Nelson’s hair may not be worth a plugged nickel, but that don’t change that you bein’ here wouldn’t have saved Hazel.”
“You don’t know that,” Imogene whispered.
A shadow crossed his face. He ducked his head, then lifted his eyes. “I don’t know a lot of things. But knowin’ don’t always make it better neither. It don’t change what happened. Never can. Never will.”
There was something in his voice that told Imogene he’d figured that out firsthand. That there were things he’d like to have changed but couldn’t. For a moment, she hung there, suspended in the understanding of his eyes. Then she blinked, and all she could see was beyond Oliver Schneider to the bloodstains of her sister.
Her jaw tightened as she bit down against her grief, against her pain. She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I’ll make them pay.”
“Genie—” Oliver started.
“If it takes me forever, I will make them fess up for this and then they’ll pay for it. She is my sister.” Imogene brushed past Ollie, striding toward the stairs. “It’s what sisters do. We protect each other. In life and in death.”