CHAPTER 34

Imogene

She couldn’t get to Chet fast enough. Hazel’s list of names, of explosives . . . it was horrific. Somehow Hazel had gotten mixed up in something bigger than herself. It had to be that! There was no way Imogene would believe Hazel had somehow masterminded such a hateful act of revenge.

Imogene wanted to call Chet—it’d be quicker—but of course, someone would be listening in, and knowing Imogene had called the police station, the news would be all over Mill Creek before she even had a chance to get to town.

She was wary of walking. The distance didn’t bother her, but the last time she’d walked alone—well, if someone was targeting her, she didn’t mean to make it easy for them. Imogene had hesitated for a long moment before lifting the handset and asking the operator to dial the Schneider farm. She’d asked for Ollie. He’d answered. Now she sat beside him in his truck as they bounced down the rough road to town.

Imogene glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t talked to him since the town hall burned down two days ago. Hadn’t let herself think about his kiss. His kisses. Holy Joe, she didn’t even know what to think about it, other than she wanted to kiss him again. Her heart was all aflutter, and this was the worst time to suddenly want to go out dancing with Oliver Schneider. To cast him coy looks and little come hither winks that would make Mother blush and then lecture Imogene until kingdom come. Fact of the matter was . . . she’d changed. Imogene realized her not wanting to go out dancing and flirting with Ollie seemed disrespectful to the man somehow.

She looked down at Hazel’s note gripped in her hand. No. She just wanted this all to be over so she could go on a simple country stroll with him. Maybe have him steal another kiss. Think about a quiet life—on a farm? Sure. Why not? She’d even lost her stomach for style and fame and Hollywood. Hazel’s death had turned her solemn, and now she’d pay just about anything to have back the normal life they all thought they could have when the boys came home from the war.

“You’re awfully quiet.” Imogene tried to break the silence between them.

Ollie’s arm rested on the open window of his truck. Wind ruffled his hair, pushing it off his forehead, making his chiseled features more pronounced. He shot her a quick glance.

“I’m just glad you saw fit to call. No reason you should be walkin’ alone right now.”

“No. Of course not.” Imogene bit her bottom lip. She eyed the bandage on his hand. “Is your burn awful bad?”

Ollie gave it a tiny wave. “Nah. It’s nothin’.”

Nothing compared to what? Imogene jerked her attention to the view of Mill Creek coming closer on the horizon. Compared to his buddies getting blown to bits? She’d heard the stories. Whispers of them from some of the boys willing to talk. Boys like Sam Pickett, whose charismatic personalities lent toward bragging—bragging up their bravery. She couldn’t blame him for it. Sam had put himself on the line just like Ollie, just like Chet and Ivan. Heck, they had all put themselves on the line, so whatever they had to do to cope with it, she was fine with that.

“Listen,” Ollie began, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard.

Imogene’s hand shot out and grasped his wrist above his burned palm. She held it lightly. He looked at her, searching her eyes, then shifted his attention back to the road ahead.

“Don’t, Ollie.” She didn’t want him to apologize. She didn’t want to figure out what they were feeling, or thinking, or even needed from each other right now. “Leave it be. It’s okay.”

“You sure?” There was resignation in his voice, also a tiny thread of hope. Future hope. As though he hadn’t potentially ruined things between them.

“I’m sure.” Imogene squeezed his wrist before releasing it. “We can talk, but another time.” She didn’t know when that would be. How it would be.

They entered Mill Creek. She noted the white Baptist church steeple rising over the rooftop of the police station. Funny how faith cast a shadow over the wickedness represented by the need for law enforcement. No one in her family was outspoken about God, but they’d always been churchgoing people. Good people.

“You suppose God knows what’s going on in Mill Creek today?” she ventured.

A wan smile touched Ollie’s mouth. “He knows. Just don’t know if He’s gonna do anything about it.”

Imogene nodded. There it was. He said what they were thinking. What many were thinking before, during, and after the war. The economic crash, the droughts, the struggles not to lose farms, the war, boys getting killed, and now Hazel and all this other stuff at the post office and town hall? It was one catastrophe after another. Every now and then Lola said something about the “end days being close.” End days or not, Imogene hoped God had some sort of plan. ’Cause right now He’d done a sore job of making anything make sense.

“What’s a looker like you doin’ walking alone?” Sam Pickett jogged across the street to meet her.

Imogene couldn’t hide the instant smile, even as she glanced over her shoulder for Ollie, who’d told her he’d catch up to her at the station, but first he needed to stop at the drugstore for his mama.

“I’m not alone,” she tossed back coyly. “I’m with Ollie Schneider.” Something in her enjoyed saying that maybe a little too much. Gone were the days when she didn’t want to belong to anyone. Now there was some security in leading even Sam to believe she and Ollie might be an item. Not that she needed protection from Sam—regardless of what anyone said.

Sam’s jaw muscle twitched, but his eyes remained smiling, or glassy, Imogene wasn’t sure. He seemed a little too happy—on the tail end of tipsy maybe. He made an exaggerated display of looking around them as he kept up pace beside Imogene. “Well, that’s a gas! I don’t see Ollie anywhere.”

Imogene laughed a little, rolling her eyes as she stepped away from him. A little distance from the handsome man was wise if he’d spent the night with a bottle. “He’s meeting me at the police station.”

There was a small hitch in Sam’s gait, but then Imogene noticed his toe had caught a lip on the seam of the sidewalk.

“Goin’ to see your brother?”

“Mm-hmm.” Imogene didn’t mention Hazel’s note that she’d tucked safely away in her clutch.

“Any news about your sister?”

Now it was Imogene’s turn to trip. Sam’s grip on her elbow steadied. She pulled away. “Um, no.”

Sam appeared genuinely empathetic. There was a recognition of grief in his eyes. He was no stranger to loss himself. “I keep hopin’ they’ll find who did it.”

Imogene went cold inside. The kind of cold that made it possible to carry on without Hazel. “What do you care anyway? You weren’t even her friend. Ida was.” She heard the snap in her voice. The lack of social tact and etiquette, and darn it, she didn’t care.

Sam halted, and Imogene faced him. His eyes were deep with hurt, and a pang of regret speared her heart. She should care. It wasn’t fair to transpose her agony onto Sam. Not when he carried his own, in his own way. They all needed to cope. Booze for one, a Bible for another. But what did she have?

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. Half meaning it, half not.

Sam’s finger trailed briefly down the side of her cheek. Just a brush, a swift touch. “I get it. I get mad too. Losin’ a loved one ain’t ever easy.”

“No, it’s not.” Imogene glanced at the station door a few yards away. Hazel’s note was burning a hole in her purse. “I-I need to go see my brother.”

“Sure.” Sam took a step back, shoving his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “Hazel was a good gal, you know. Always hummin’ and wearing pink roses on just about every dress she owned. Sorta like the paintings she loved to paint. Always a streak of pink in ’em somewhere.”

Imogene stilled. “You noticed that?”

Sam blinked and squeezed the bridge of his nose as though he were relieving a headache. He gave her a quick smile. “Of course. She was as pretty as her sister.”

Imogene stared at him quizzically. It was the first time Sam had said anything personal about Hazel. “I didn’t think you knew Hazel all that well.”

Sam shrugged, his expression dull. “She was Ida’s friend.”

“But”—Imogene frowned—“you knew that Hazel loved to paint?” It wasn’t that it was a secret hobby, but Hazel didn’t announce that she dabbled in artistry, let alone show anyone she barely knew one of her paintings.

Sam blinked and shrugged again. “She never made it a secret.”

But she had. That side of Hazel was on the easel in her bedroom, hidden in the stall of the barn, framed in an unaccounted-for frame with a landscape Imogene was hard-pressed to recall.

“I see,” Imogene nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say. Wasn’t sure how to process the fact that Sam Pickett knew one of the more intimate details of Hazel’s life. She offered Sam a shaky smile. It didn’t sit well. Especially with the Pickett name on the list of farmers who’d lost their property to the powder plant.

“Who’ve you shown this to?” Chet’s expression was grave. Imogene could tell he was calculating it all in his head. The list of properties, Hazel’s handwritten word propellant . . . plus the recent attacks on local government property and Hazel’s death, and it was all adding up to an obvious conclusion. Except for why Hazel had died—and who had killed her.

“No one,” Imogene assured him. “Well, Ollie.”

Chet didn’t seem bothered by that. “Have you talked to anyone on this list since you’ve taken the job at the plant?”

Imogene hoisted herself onto Chet’s desk next to his chair. He gave her a half scowl for perching on his desk, but he was too focused on this latest piece of evidence she’d hand-delivered to him to rebuke her about it.

“The Picketts, obviously. Ida and Sam. I know I’ve chatted with some of the others. Several of them have kin who work at the plant or took jobs there themselves.”

Chet ran his index finger down the list of names. He clicked his tongue. “Picketts were mighty upset when they had to sell their land, and I wouldn’t put something like this past one of them. But, honestly, it was Mr. Jakowski who made the biggest stink.”

Imogene crossed her ankles and pointed at the Jakowski name on the paper. “I think their son works in the A.O.P. building.”

Chet looked up at her from his seat in his wooden chair on rollers. “Remind me what that is again?”

“It’s where they work with the ammonia. I think he helps unload the ammonia off the train when it arrives.”

“You ever talk to him?” Chet asked.

Imogene maintained her casual air, but her insides were churning. If she’d inadvertently talked to someone who’d had intentions of sabotaging the town . . . The thought made her sick to her stomach. Not to mention, a fierce rage rose in her when she thought of Hazel. The kind of rage that made her wonder if she were ever face-to-face with the man who’d taken Hazel’s last breath, would she be able to refrain from breaking one of the most specific commandments? Thou shalt not murder. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

“Genie?” Chet’s question snapped her attention back to him.

“What? Oh. I don’t know. I’m sure I have talked to him. I talk to all sorts of the boys—and women—who work there. I mean, they have to eat.”

Chet nodded. “But nothing that stands out?”

“No.” Imogene’s frustration increased. She uncrossed, then recrossed her ankles and, shifting on the desktop, rustled papers beneath her hips. “Daddy’s name is on that list.” She ventured it, the suspicion. The nagging taunt that somehow this could be far closer to home than any of them realized. She tried to gauge Chet’s reaction. Not his defense of Daddy so much as whether he showed any sign of guilt himself.

Chet reared back in his chair, green eyes widening until she saw the flecks of yellow in them. “That’s more than a bum rap you’re puttin’ on our father, Genie!”

Imogene leaned over the desk, bracing her body on her right palm with fingers splayed across his desk mat. She leveled eyes with her brother. “Or Ivan, then.”

“Genie!” Chet’s explosion caused him to glance around the station. It was mostly empty this afternoon, but a secretary toward the front raised her head for a moment before returning to her typewriter. Chet leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. Imogene could smell tobacco on his breath from his last cigarette, and maybe a hint of mint from chewing gum.

“If you want to play the game that one of ours is behind all this, then you’re—” He stopped.

Imogene noted the hesitation in his eyes. “See?” She sat upright. “See? It’s not all plain as day, is it? It’s as ugly as a bug’s ear, but the fact is you can’t tell me Ivan—or Daddy—doesn’t have their own grudge against the U.S. government.”

Chet cocked his head to the left. “But Hazel . . .” He snatched up the paper and wagged it in Imogene’s face. “She was the Grayson messed up in all this. She was the one who got herself killed. There’s no way on God’s green earth you could convince me that Daddy or Ivan did that.”

“You couldn’t convince me that Hazel was involved either, but there it is in black and white! Besides, Ivan’s changed, Chet.” Imogene brought her voice down a bit and glanced over her shoulder at the secretary, then back at her brother. “He’s not the same since he got home.”

Chet’s eyes darkened. “Genie, none of us are. Now, I’ve gotta talk to the captain about this note. This, along with the last two incidents to government buildings, is goin’ to get this taken out of my hands faster than you can spit out a riddle. The government isn’t going to play around with this. I think they’ve already got someone from the military goin’ to investigate at the plant. This is a national issue of security, Genie, not just some small-town scrape.”

Imogene hadn’t considered that. She hadn’t thought about the fact that it potentially involved the powder plant where the government was making supplies for the war effort.

“Things are tense right now.” Chet set Hazel’s paper back down on the desk. “I don’t know what Hazel got herself mixed up in, but it wasn’t good.”

“But the war is over . . .” Imogene knew that it didn’t matter. For many, the war would never end—not really—and all for very different reasons. Some grief, some anger, some just lost and wandering.

Chet pushed back in his chair and stood. He looked down at her, and for a moment a softness touched his face. The kind of brotherly affection Imogene missed from Chet—from Ivan even. “I know none of us were behind this, Genie.”

“That’s conjecture,” she argued back, using her brother’s own law enforcement logic.

Chet ran his hand over his head and blew out a puff of air. “Doggone it, do you want it to be one of us?”

“No!” Imogene quailed at the very idea, but she wanted to feel safe too. She didn’t want to look over her shoulder when she was working on Hazel’s dollhouse for fear Ivan was going to come in and strike her from behind. She didn’t want to doubt Chet’s honesty when he protested too much against one of her theories. She wanted their names cleared without a doubt—and not just because she was loyal to family.

Chet nodded and reached for his cap. “There’s nothing that says a Grayson is behind this. Ivan was in the fields with Daddy when the post office blew up, and he was with the veterinary working on that old sow’s cut leg when the town hall caught fire.”

Imogene couldn’t help but release a breath of relief. Chet noticed it and gave her a grim smile, but one filled with disapproval that she’d doubt their brother.

“’Sides, it was a field, just a field that we sold.”

“And Mother’s cemetery.” Imogene winged a brow upward.

Chet nodded. “Yeah. What? You think Mother did all this?”

No. Imogene shook her head. No. Mother wouldn’t know how to build a bomb. Heck, Mother didn’t even know how to hold a grudge, truth be told. She was just a silent, stoic warrior through her pain of losing babies, and loved ones, and now Hazel.

“Then the Picketts.” Imogene redirected the attention away from her family. Chet had made his point, and she was satisfied—relieved.

Chet braced his hands at his waist and stared at her. “Like I said, I wouldn’t put it past them. But which one? You know Sam and Ida, but there’re cousins too, and I thought they had an aunt or something. She may have a vested interest, especially if she shared any of the ownership.”

Imogene struggled to see through her cloud of suspicion. “I was with Ida on the bus when the town hall went up in smoke, and Sam was with me when the post office blew up.”

Chet frowned. “He was?”

“Well, yes. Right after anyway. He and Ollie took me home, remember?”

“Huh.” Chet scratched beneath his nose. “Doesn’t mean they’re cleared. I’ll check it out, and the Jakowskis and this other family. Hazel saw some connection there somehow. It can’t be coincidence all of us on that list lost land for the plant to be built.”

“And you think someone wants the government to pay for it?”

Chet opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. “I think you should go home and help Mother with supper. You’ve done what you needed to do. You found this paper and got it to me. Hazel would be proud of you. Now stay out of the rest, Genie.”

She slid from the desk and laid her hand on her brother’s elbow, giving him a slight nod. He was right after all. This was getting deeper—bigger—than she’d imagined. She had helped Hazel, though she still needed to figure out why Hazel’s oxfords were missing and what that missing sketch in the bedside frame had been of. They had to be clues. They had to be.

“I’ll go home, Chet.” It was the least she could do. He had assuaged her worst fear. The fear that Ivan was behind it all, or even Chet himself. But no. Their family was clean. That was the way it was supposed to be.

“Genie?” Chet reached out and gripped her wrist lightly.

She turned, question in her eyes.

Her brother hesitated, tightened his lips, then gave a small click of his tongue in resignation against whatever internal battle he was fighting. “Hazel—she’d be proud of you wantin’ to figure out what happened to her.”

Imogene blinked back tears that immediately sprung to her eyes.

Chet gave her a nudge and a shaky laugh. “She’d tell ya you were half a stick of butter short of a recipe too.”

“I’m not losing my mind.” Imogene’s own laugh in return was equally as wobbly.

Chet’s smile was sad. “Get home, Genie, and stay outta trouble.”

She tossed him a flippant wave and a wink over her shoulder as she walked toward the door. “It’s what I do best!”