CHAPTER 14

Imogene

Her father’s barn had often been a place of respite for her when she was little. Usually because kittens scampered about the hay and were the source of hours of entertainment for Imogene. Until they grew and became mousers, some getting stomped on by the cows and sent to their early doom. Not unlike Hazel.

Imogene shuddered as she rolled the barn door to the side on its rollers. The wood creaked and slapped against the frame, the red paint chipping beneath her hands. Daddy’s barn was nowhere near as pretty as the Schneiders’, who seemed to repaint theirs every five years. The Graysons were good, decent farmers, but making a living had been the primary focus, not creating a vanity of outbuildings. Especially not after Daddy worked so hard to hold on to the farm when things got bad around the time Imogene was born. Money had been tight, work almost impossible to find. They were lucky there was still a demand for dairy, although even that had significantly dropped in value and was still making its comeback. War ravaged more than just people. It could demolish entire economies and strip communities of their futures with just one explosion.

Mother’s voice sounded from the front porch, and Imogene looked over her shoulder. Her mother had aged—aged in days, with new streaks of gray in her upswept bun. She gave Imogene a halfhearted wave.

“I’m going to take Daddy’s truck into town. I need to stop at the market and drop my shoes off to get resoled.”

Imogene nodded. “Bye, Mother.” Her acknowledgment went almost unnoticed as Mother hurried down the porch steps, pinning a hat to her hair, her purse slung over her elbow.

Normal. That was what they were all reaching for. A new normal that didn’t satisfy any of them.

Imogene blinked, her eyes adjusting to the barn’s dim lighting. She watched hay-dust particles dance in a shaft of light that shone through the vents on the portico. The stanchions for milking the cows were in the lower level, while this floor was heaped with mounds of hay as high as the loft rafters. The beams that spanned the vaulted roof had hoists and pulleys attached to them. Ivan’s Farmall B, hitched to a trailer, was parked beneath. Along the side wall to her left stood his workbench. Her brother spent hours in here, tinkering with the tractor’s motor, jury-rigging tools and such to suit his needs for whatever maintenance project he embarked on.

Imogene wrapped her arms around herself, eyeing Ivan’s bench. Tools lay scattered across the top, greasy rags, bolts, and parts of an engine. It didn’t help that she also remembered hearing Ivan cursing in here too. The sound of a pipe wrench launching across the barn and hitting the wall. His temper had always been just below the surface, but since the war . . . And he’d never been close to Hazel. He was the eldest, she the youngest. Imogene hated where her thoughts were inadvertently leading her for the second time. No. There was nothing—nothing—in her memory that would lead her to believe there was enough animosity between Ivan and Hazel to cause Ivan to strike his own sister.

But the war had changed so many. The Depression prior to the war as well. It was almost as though the entire world had tilted off its axis and there was no one strong enough to right it. Not even God himself.

She reached up and tightened the bandanna she’d rolled and tied around her head. Touching her fingertips to the top button of her dress, Imogene heaved a sigh knowing exactly where she must go next.

“I’m so sorry, Hazel,” she whispered.

It’s all right. It won’t do me no good anymore anyway.

Imogene winced as she heard Hazel’s voice in her ears. A quick sweep of the barn told her she was still very much alone. She hurried across the straw-strewn wood floor to a side stall where they would occasionally house a sick or injured animal. It was empty—it had been for some time. Ivan didn’t have much patience for animals. That was Daddy’s role. Daddy had begun to work with those animals in the lower level. Even he was leaving Ivan alone lately and giving him his distance.

She reached the dark stall, shadowed for lack of lantern light. But Imogene didn’t need any. She knew where to go. She knew Ivan wouldn’t question her either. He and Hazel might not have been close, but they both found their respite in the barn’s upper level.

In the far corner of the stall, a bulky object was covered under canvas. Imogene approached it, giving her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. Without much hesitation, she swallowed any angst and set her jaw with determination, reaching out and dragging the canvas to the floor.

There it stood. In all its beauty and glory. Hazel’s masterpiece.

“Oh, Hazel,” Imogene breathed. Her eyes took in what she’d seen before but now seemed to see for the first time. Hazel’s artistry. Her to-scale, handmade dollhouse of the Grayson home. It was open, revealing all three floors. The bottom with the kitchen, dining room, living area, pantry, even the small mudroom off the back porch. The second floor with the bedrooms.

“And your room.” Imogene caressed the empty attic bedroom. Hazel had gotten so far as to paper it with tiny scraps of the original wallpaper.

Her sister had been an artist. An artist of miniatures. Even the roof had hand-cut shingles, meticulously laid as though a roofer himself had transformed into someone tiny and spent a week nailing them all to the framework.

Where Ivan was talented in machinery and engines, Hazel had found her forte in delicate beauty. Accuracy and eye-pleasing finesse. Now she would never finish it. Never reconstruct the house to the homey glory it had been prior to her death. Before blood had stained the walls and the floor. Before the tenuous thread of peace the Graysons had was broken by the intrusion of someone unknown and evil. Someone whom Hazel had trusted, had allowed into their home and—

Imogene startled, snatching her hand away from the attic replica. No one had said that Hazel knew her attacker. Chet had implied there’d been no forced entry, yet that didn’t mean Hazel had known her killer personally. So why was she consumed by the sudden feeling that Hazel had willingly walked to the screen door, smiled as she opened it for her killer, the hinges squeaking in hospitality?

“You talked to them, didn’t you? Greeted them as you would a friend while you bid them to follow you into the kitchen so you could get supper started?” Imogene positioned her fingers in thought around her lips. “You would never have opened the screen door for a stranger.”

Of course, one could argue a screen door was not much of a barrier if someone wanted to enter the house. But what Chet hadn’t known was that there should have been signs of forced entry, unless Hazel absolutely knew her attacker and trusted them.

“You always hooked the lock on the door.” Her whisper filtered through the shaded stall and echoed in the empty rooms of Hazel’s dollhouse.

Because I was sure if I didn’t, some traveling salesman would come and have his way with me.

Hazel would have said it with a laugh. The kind that indicated she understood how farfetched her fears were and how her imagination exaggerated realistic possibilities. Nonetheless, she would have flipped the metal hook into its latch. So, a stranger would have to at least kick in the door—easy, for sure, but leaving obvious damage—or rip the screen and reach through with their hand to flip the hook from its metal ring.

Imogene backed away from the dollhouse.

“You knew them. You knew them,” she repeated to the darkness. It was something she needed to tell Chet right away. Hazel didn’t have many friends. The circle of trust had to be small, which meant the narrowing of suspects.

Imogene surged forward and dragged the canvas back over the dollhouse. She arranged it so the pigeons that sometimes fluttered in and out of the barn couldn’t leave their droppings on the piece of artistry. Once convinced it was properly covered, Imogene pressed her fingers to her lips in a kiss, then stretched her hand out to leave the kiss on the covered dollhouse.

“I’ll be back.” It was a promise. An addendum to the promise she’d already made to Hazel. Her death would not go unsolved, and now her dollhouse would tell its story. A story that screamed unintelligibly from every drop of blood Hazel had left behind.

“Where ya goin’?” The motor on the Ford pickup truck hummed as a distinct scent of gasoline mixed with motor oil wafted to Imogene’s nose.

She hiked along the side of the country road toward town, cursing every step in her black pumps and wishing she’d thought to exchange them for more sensible walking shoes before hightailing it to town to find Chet. A quick call to the police station might have sufficed, but she couldn’t rightly discuss Hazel’s death on the party line. All the busybodies would be listening in—since they didn’t have anything better to do—and with two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Imogene’s theory that Hazel knew her killer would be front and center in the Mill Creek Gazette.

Now she shot a glance at the man who drove the truck, his arm dangling out the open window. A lazy grin tipped his mouth, and green eyes met hers with a similar spark. Interest? Maybe. Flirtation? Definitely. Only she wasn’t in the mood, not like she might have been even three weeks ago. A stranger in a truck who seemed vaguely familiar now held only suspicion to her. Yet he was a stranger, so perhaps that meant he was safer than those Imogene knew.

“I asked ya where you were goin’?” There was a chuckle in his voice.

Imogene concentrated on walking a straight line on the shoulder. Her dress swished around her shins, and out of the blue she wondered if her stockings were straight or if in her rummaging through the barn the seams had shifted cockeyed to the back of her legs.

“The road goes in one direction, so if you have half a mind, you’d know I’m heading into town.” Imogene allowed her tone to include a snap. The man could interpret it either as flirtation or as being put in his place. Whichever was fine with her, but she wasn’t about to be coerced into giving him details.

“Need a lift?” he asked, his voice inviting and not at all sinister.

Imogene halted, immediately wary. Her own theory about Hazel’s killer swirling in her head didn’t leave her of the mind to befriend strangers. Of course, in Hazel’s case, it seemed friends might have been more likely the concerning factor.

The man braked. His smile stretched wide and reached the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Jeepers!” Imogene exclaimed, allowing the full force of her sauciness into her voice, offsetting her nervous shudder. “You’re rather brave to offer a ride to a girl you’ve never met before.”

The twinkle sparkled in his eye. He reached his hand from the side of the truck door. His left hand, but he extended it anyway.

“Sam. Sam Pickett.”

Pickett. She’d heard the name before. Something about the Picketts, years ago, only it wasn’t spouted in a pleasant way like respectable families were. Troublemakers. Rum runners. Hidden distilleries. Who knew if the rumors were true? But then war came, the Picketts seemed to have scattered, and now, apparently, only Sam had come home.

“Well, hello, Sam Pickett.” Imogene braced her hands on her hips and eyed him.

Sam tossed a glance through the windshield and down the road before looking back at her. “Your pegs are goin’ to get tired fast if you insist on hiking all the way to town.”

“My legs will be fine, and I do it on a regular basis.” Imogene began to walk again.

The truck started to roll forward. “I’m just sayin’ I’d give you a lift is all.”

“Oh really?” She tipped up her chin and kept walking.

“And don’t you have a name?” he ventured, allowing the truck to slowly parallel her.

“Of course I do.” Imogene bit back a smirk. He’d have to work for it.

“Lemme guess. Betty?”

Imogene kept walking.

“Susan.”

It was more of a declaration than a question.

“Frank?”

Imogene spun to face Sam Pickett. “Listen here!” Again her hands found her hips, and she perched them there while doing her best schoolmarm impression. “I’ve no intention of accepting a ride with a man I’ve never met before.”

“I promise you I’m a gentleman.”

“Says the fox in the henhouse.” Imogene matched his smile. He was rather charming, but then charm could be deadly too.

“Let the poor Marine help a gal in need, why dontcha?”

Oh, honestly! He wasn’t the first soldier-come-home to use that line, and yet it always smacked her right in the heart. The boys had seen so much, done so much for them . . .

Pickett. Ida Pickett.

Imogene startled as she realized she knew another Pickett. The potential connection had never dawned on her. After meeting Ida on the bus to the powder plant, Imogene had all but forgotten her. She stared up at Sam. “Do you have a family?” One more test of his credibility to ease her overly suspicious state of mind.

At first, Sam seemed a bit taken aback. Then he gave a nod and said, “Sure. Got a sister. And a brother too, but he’s buried somewhere in France.”

“What’s your sister’s name?” She ignored the twinge of empathy for the loss of his brother.

“Ida, and my brother was Ralph.” He rattled them off without hesitation.

“I know Ida.”

“You do?” He raised an eyebrow. There was still humor in his eyes.

“I do. Where does Ida work?” This would tell if he was who he said he was.

“The plant, of course, like I do. Like half of Mill Creek does.”

With that answer, Imogene stiffened her shoulders and gave him a pert nod. “Very nice to meet you.” And she kept walking.

Imogene snuck another look at Sam. The idea of thinking so suspiciously about those she met was foreign to her. She was a small-town girl, and small-town girls were supposed to be able to trust people. Everyone knew everyone for the most part, and if you didn’t, only one or two relations separated you from commonality.

“If it helps,” Sam offered with a sly wink as the truck rolled beside her at a snail’s pace, “I go to the Baptist church every Sunday too.”

“Well . . .” Imogene straightened her back and ran her hands down her dress. “There’s the problem. I’m a Methodist.”

The truck pulled up in front of the station with a rattle and a puff of exhaust. Sam had been the perfect gentleman—so far—and remarkably annoying but funny as he’d rolled alongside her the entire length of the trip to town.

“This was the most ridiculous escort,” she muttered under her breath to him and gave him a snippy smile that should have left him cold. Instead, Sam held up a hand, indicating she should wait, and he shoved open his door, hopping down onto the sidewalk next to her.

“Can’t have you thinkin’ I’m no gentleman, now, can I?” A wink. A flicker in his eyes, and Imogene narrowed hers.

Not able to restrain herself, she leaned forward and tapped the end of his nose with a customary boldness her parents used to lecture her about but Imogene rather enjoyed. She pulled her finger back as Sam cocked his head to the right and smiled, which communicated he was enjoying the exchange. “You may be a hunk of heartbreak, cookie, but I’ve gotta keep my date.”

“With the police?” His broadening grin indicated he found her shallow flirtation intriguing.

“Never say a woman can’t be trouble.” Imogene tossed him a saucy smile and flounced past.

“I better keep my distance, then.” Sam winked as she breezed away, leaving him behind.

Pulling open the station door, Imogene waltzed inside, then leaned against the door as it closed behind her. Her increased heart rate told her all she needed to know about how she felt regarding Ida Pickett’s brother. He made her both nervous and warm inside at the same time. His brooding good looks and the way he could dish it back to her . . . well, she’d never met anyone like him.

Imogene finally allowed herself a dreamy smile.

“What’re you doin’ with Sam Pickett?”

Ollie Schneider’s voice came out of nowhere and echoed across the linoleum floor, bouncing off the ceiling. Imogene yelped and clutched her neck.

“Holy Joe, Oliver Schneider, you scared the wits out of me!”

Ollie observed her with his sad eyes. He reminded her a bit of a lost dog. One that had once been a strong, vibrant pup but now was so beat, he might whimper if someone moved at him wrong.

“Sam—um, escorted me to town,” Imogene answered belatedly. She adjusted the belt at the waist of her dress and patted her bandanna hair band with an absent gesture.

Ollie shrugged and glanced out the window that skirted the door. “Oh.”

“None of your business anyway.” Imogene couldn’t help being coy as she brushed past her neighbor. It was in her blood and was the perfect deflection for anyone asking her how she really was. What would she say if she had to be honest?

Heartbroken.

Hearing her dead sister’s voice in her head.

Having conversations with her sister . . .

Spinning, she planted a fingertip on the bib of Ollie’s overalls. He looked down at it and then back into her eyes.

Imogene opened her mouth, poised to say something witty, charming, or sassy. Instead, the depth and sadness in Ollie’s expression was like a bullet piercing her soul. Somehow he knew—he knew it all. The pain, the horror, the agony, the tears that were filling up a hidden well inside that she could only pray were held back by the wall she was carefully building.