CHAPTER 11

Imogene was resistant to admit it even to herself, but by the time she’d gotten off the bus and started the two-mile walk home to the farmhouse she was loath to return to, she was thoroughly shaken. What had at first seemed to be a simple stumble now grew in its ominous undertones.

It’s over.

They might as well have typed the words Stay the heck away. Stop nosing in what was nobody else’s business. Let go of Hazel and leave it to the police. Or maybe . . . Imogene halted on the side of the road, gravel crunching under her feet. Maybe this didn’t have anything to do with a threat to stay silent. Maybe it was a consolation. A short, stilted recognition that Hazel was gone, that Imogene needed to move on, that . . .

Footsteps behind her made Imogene spin on her heel. Oliver strolled toward her, his hands in his overall pockets, the calm look on his face set as though not much could dislodge it. It wasn’t much unlike his expression the morning of Hazel’s murder.

“Going my way?” Imogene opted for a half smile and a lilt to her voice. Anything to ward off the concern that flickered in Oliver’s blue eyes and then disappeared.

“Yep.” His one-word answer relieved her. Anyone else would have probably asked a dozen or more questions as to how she was holding up. Or “Has Chet made any breaks in the case?” Or “How’s your mama faring?” Or since this was Oliver, he could straight-out ask her how she was managing after seeing all that gore. The kind of horror no human eyes should ever behold. But he didn’t. Instead, he moved beside her and matched her steps.

One, two, three, four . . . Imogene found herself counting them. Distraction. Anything. She was light-headed, dizzy even, as a wave of exhaustion and emotion raced unexpectedly through her. To cover it up, she looped her arm through Oliver’s and hugged it. He tripped against her and cast her a bewildered look. She was quick to cover it up with another red-lipped smile.

There. More distraction. His eyes dropped to her mouth, then quickly back up to her eyes.

“Thank you, Oliver Schneider.” She sincerely meant it, even if she did sound a bit flirtatious.

“For . . . ?”

They continued to walk, and she continued to cling to his arm as though she had a mad crush on the boy and was quite khaki wacky. In reality, the world ahead was swimming in a blur.

“For not badgering me with incessant questions and not expecting me to be sobbing like a weeping mess in the corner.”

Oliver gave a sniff and then chuckled. “Imogene Grayson isn’t known for being a mess.”

“No.” She gave a definitive nod, blinking fast to clear her gaze. “That’s not to say”—gracious, she realized how callous and bitter she sounded—“I don’t have emotions.”

Oliver paused on the road and tipped his head. A strand of dark blond hair fell over his forehead, and his brows drew together. “No one ever said you didn’t.”

Imogene hadn’t released his arm. She noticed the firm tone of it, in spite of his rather lanky appearance. She didn’t want to let go, and the unwarranted feeling that surged through her surprised her. He was safe. Oliver—Ollie—was safe and nonthreatening and . . .

“Thank you for understanding me,” Imogene murmured with sincerity. For he did. She could tell. He saw through her flirtatious façade to the wounded, broken heart beneath that she refused to let show. She’d let him into it the night she’d climbed the stairs to Hazel’s room.

Ollie twisted toward her, dislodging her arm from his. A red-winged blackbird swooped over their heads, chirping its warning call. It must have a nest somewhere nearby. Imogene’s attention was snagged by the bird as it landed in the tall grasses bordering the road, the green rows of corn just beyond that, with the glimpse of the Schneider barn in the distance.

“Genie . . .” His voice tugged her attention back, and Imogene met his eyes. “Why did you take a job at the plant?”

She didn’t want to tell him. He’d try to talk her out of it and for no good reason other than it was police business. Let Chet handle it. Hazel’s murder wasn’t hers to unravel, to resolve with any sort of justice.

It’s over.

The words were burned into her mind, right next to the image of Hazel’s bloodied body that had lain like a rag doll on the floor.

“No, it’s not,” Imogene protested aloud, shaking her head.

“What’s not?” Ollie tilted his head. She could tell he was trying to get a read on what she meant. That her face was more likely than not emblazoned with consternation and fury didn’t help.

“It’s not over, Ollie. Hazel died for a reason, you know? I can’t believe it was random. There had to be a cause. And—and no one can tell me it’s over and done with. No one!”

Ollie rolled his mouth together and drew a deep breath as though carefully weighing his words. “People dyin’, no, you’re right. It’s never over.”

“I can’t just let it be, Ollie.” Imogene heard her voice tremble.

Hang it all! She turned into an emotional puddle whenever she was around Oliver Schneider and she didn’t know why. She’d known him all her life as that “Ollie boy” down the road, as her parents called him. Though he was only one year her senior, they’d never played together much. He was a boy, rough and tumble, throwing around a baseball and pretending to be Babe Ruth. But now? Now there was something deep and hidden behind those sky-blue eyes of his. Something that hinted he had his own secrets of horrors he’d seen. That maybe, out of everyone in Mill Creek, Ollie understood the terror she experienced when she closed her eyes. He understood that one couldn’t just close the book on the sight of someone’s lifeblood draining from their body.

“Was it awful?” she whispered.

There, on the side of the country road, Ollie lifted his fingertips and grazed Imogene’s cheek with a gentleness that took her by surprise.

“Awful can’t begin to describe it.”

Imogene blinked back a sudden burning of tears. She knew they balanced on her dark Vaselined eyelashes, probably making her green eyes shimmer emerald, like Daddy always said they did when she cried. Which wasn’t often.

“Then you know why I’m saying it isn’t over?”

Ollie’s jaw muscle jumped as he seemed to bite down against his own conflicted feelings. He peered beyond her, over her shoulder at the cornfield on the other side of the road. “It’ll never be over.”

His words drilled a hole in Imogene’s heart, and with them followed the haunting reality that death branded its mark into a person’s soul, and time healed no pain. It never would.

Imogene had nothing to go on but a typewritten note, the memories of Hazel’s room the day she discovered her, and a new job at the powder plant doing the type of service work she’d swore she would never do. Imogene sat cross-legged in the middle of her bed. She’d stripped out of her hosiery and the dress she’d worn for supper and had slipped into pajamas. She busied herself setting her hair in pin curls for the night as the jazzy strains of the music from her radio filled the void of silence in the room. And now she sat on her bed, staring across the room at the window.

Closing her eyes, she let herself float back on the memories to the night she’d climbed the attic stairs with Ollie. Every creak of the steps, every pounding heartbeat . . . she could recall it all in vivid detail. For now. She could even smell the faintest hint of Hazel’s perfume. A sweet scent tipped with rose. Hazel used to spray it on liberally after coming home, to get the smell of the powder plant out of her nose, she’d always said.

Another strong whiff made Imogene’s eyes snap open, and she fixated on the window opposite her, the dark night sky drenching the familiar in blackness. Right above her room—right above her!—was Hazel’s attic bedroom. There was nothing worse, nothing more awful than reliving every moment of the discovery of Hazel’s battered body while in the same house. Sleep was not going to be her partner tonight.

She blinked, clearing her burning eyes from their unblinking stare at the night sky. Taking a deep breath, Imogene imagined Hazel still alive. She would have perched herself beside Imogene on the bed, probably wearing those silly yellow pajamas her sister had gotten for Christmas when she was thirteen. They were a bit snug now, but Hazel loved them. They’d—

“They served me well during the war, why not still?”

Imogene smiled back at her imaginary Hazel. She reached out, her hand swiping the air where the vision of Hazel sat.

“Because they’re silly and threadbare.” Imogene’s voice echoed in the empty room.

Hazel’s form cocked her head to the right, and she gave Imogene the sweet smile she always did when she wanted to insinuate that although Imogene was her senior by four years, Hazel’s maturity far exceeded hers.

“There are a lot of people still in need. The war has left us all in a fit, Genie. Why should I spend money on nice pajamas?”

Why indeed? It wasn’t as if Hazel didn’t plop every coin she earned into Daddy’s hand to help keep the farm afloat. She deserved new pajamas.

Imogene’s throat tightened with emotion. The kind that warred between an imagined moment and reality.

“Hazel, you need to come home.” Her whisper floated like a feather across the room.

Hazel’s face wavered for a moment and then became clearer. Her smile was sad. “You know I can’t.”

“I know.” Imogene picked at a loose thread on her spread. “Chet said they took all sorts of photographs of your room. I don’t know why he won’t let me see them.”

Hazel’s response resonated in Imogene’s mind. “Because you don’t need to keep seeing me. Not like that.”

“I need to help find out who killed you.” Imogene drew in a thick, shuddering breath. Why did the police take photographs? What did they hope to learn from them? She recalled Chet saying the police would look at several factors. Fingerprints, for one, but since they matched none on record at the station, it’d be tough to figure out who might own any strange sets they might have lifted from the scene. Dust displacement. Whatever that meant. Maybe if something had been moved in the room, or a foreign substance was left behind, like—like red clay traces when the soil at the farm and surrounding area was mostly sand? Perhaps. But Chet hadn’t let on that there was any dust displacement outside of the footprint that had proven to be a dead end.

“Who killed you?” Imogene repeated, this time as a question. The image of Hazel flickered before her eyes. Hazel wasn’t looking at her now. She was staring out the window as if she would float away into the night sky. As if she could float away.

“I can’t tell you that.” Hazel’s words carved their way through Imogene’s mind. No. Of course she couldn’t. She wasn’t really there. She was a conjured fragment of Imogene’s broken heart.

“Then what can I do?” Imogene uncurled her legs and pushed off the bed, padding across the floor on her bare feet to the window. She glanced to her side. In another life, with a different direction, Hazel would be studying her closely from the bed. Imogene could almost sense her there, and the pain that riffled through her soul was poignant. If she could just turn—just close her eyes and spin around and open them—and Hazel were really sitting there. On the bed. In those silly pajamas.

“You can remember me. Every part of me. Every moment. Every item. Every stain. Every footstep. Every smell. Everything.”

Imogene did spin then. Right as the saxophone belted out a lilting tune through the radio’s speaker. Just as the moon passed behind the clouds. Just when she heard the creak of the mattress bedspring. Her gaze raked the bed, the floor, the dresser beyond, and she saw her own reflection in the mirror. The bed was empty, and even the mirror boasted one face only. Hers. Black hair in silly pins, green eyes wide with both hope and horror, her hand clutching the V of her pajama top where the button met the first hole.

Remember. Yes. Photographs. Yes. Chet wouldn’t let her see them, but she didn’t need to. She already had memorized everything, and in doing so she would uncover something. Something Chet had missed, something the police had overlooked. If she could walk in Hazel’s footsteps during the day, then she could theorize in Hazel’s room at night. Every single memory poured into one room. One house. The Grayson farmhouse.

The shrill high pitch of the saxophone followed Imogene as she bolted from her bedroom, her purpose fully intact.