Payne & Misery Read online

  By then, I’d righted myself and begun to investigate the room. Rubbing the welt that throbbed across my midsection, I ignored both Jesse and the bass drum beating inside my brain.

  A closet door stood ajar just enough to detect outlines of clothing. I stuck my throbbing head in and saw a walk-in closet, about medium-size. A wave of nausea washed over me as I inhaled pungent shoe odor. Piles of work boots littered the floor. Rows of men’s clothes hung along the back. On a hook at the left dangled a red plaid wool jacket. A small cutout door in the ceiling indicated attic access.

  Not a feminine sign in the entire room. Where is Lila?

  I tiptoed toward the doorway. “I’m going to look around,” I said over my departing shoulder. “Meet me at the front door.”

  12

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jesse mumbled something in which the words snoop and brain-dead featured prominently. I tiptoed into the hall, as preoccupied as a cow at milking time. To my right, I first came upon a closed door. Opening it with caution, I peeked into a second smaller bedroom. Stale air and body odor filled my nostrils and I almost gagged. Air circulation in this room had been restricted far too long. The room’s only furnishings included a mahogany nightstand and a single bed in much the same condition as the first bed I’d seen. Checking the closet, I found it empty, except for a couple of hangers that fell to dwell among the dust bunnies.

  I couldn’t deduce the identity or gender of the room’s occupant from the furnishings or lack thereof. Just like the larger bedroom, the color and design of the décor gave no hint. The red plaid wool jacket and men’s clothing in the first closet belonged to Will. That seemed logical. But I hadn’t yet seen anything that looked as if it might belong to Lila.

  “Molly?” I called aloud, hoping to fill the emptiness. “Are you here?”

  Silence answered.

  Turning my attention to the nightstand, I encountered stacks of old paperbacks, sections of yellowed newspaper, assorted magazines, and wads of used Kleenexes—an untidy mess. I grimaced. Dirty Kleenexes? Why save them? I pulled the gardening gloves out of my pocket. Bulky and clumsy, they would at least protect my hands from germs. They wouldn’t leave fingerprints either. I moved the pile to the bed, examining each item.

  At the bottom, I came to a writing tablet, the kind held together with a metal coil on the left side. I removed one glove so I could flip from the beginning and discovered several pages of writing in a small, cramped, but painstakingly neat hand, devoid of punctuation and capitalization. Doodles embellished several pages. Being a former librarian, the lack of proper mechanics grated my sensibilities.

  Stuck between two of the pages I discovered a black-and-white photograph, crumpled and bent as if someone handled it too often-a young girl and a smaller boy. The pair held hands and stared directly into the camera. Wide eyes, no smiles, hopeless and helpless. The girl looked like a young Lila.

  I returned the picture to the middle of the tablet and flipped to the beginning. There I read a melancholy verse, which I assumed to be a poem, although the ends of the lines didn’t rhyme. I wrinkled my nose, much preferring poetry that rhymes. The writer—Lila, I assumed—overused exaggerated images of blood, murder, and punishment to the point of seeming contrived and intentionally gory. “Dark avenging angels—piles of maggots—punishing fire— screeching ravens—Oh, ick!” I turned the page.

  The words of the second poem painted an even darker picture of impending doom. Surreal images of babies with wicked-looking grown-up faces heightened the distasteful mood. Drawn in pencil on all four borders of the page, the ghoulish babies stood out luridly against the paper. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

  Leafing through with tentative fingers, I counted thirteen poems, some illustrated, some not. The drawings looked so creepy, I hurried past them. A newspaper article had been scotch-taped inside the back cover. Both newsprint and tape had yellowed and become brittle with age, like the crumpled newspaper in the boxes on the fire pile. This article must have been cut from the middle of a page because it didn’t include the date or a heading.

  The body of a baby boy was discovered outside Harvard on Saturday morning by a group of local children. Wrapped in a blue receiving blanket, the newborn had apparently been interred in a shallow grave for some time. Authorities did not know the identity of the child, nor how it came to be abandoned in the town of fewer than 400. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Guthrie County Sheriff’s Office are investigating near the water tower where the body was found. An autopsy will be scheduled to determine cause of death.

  As I flipped back to the beginning to reexamine the first “poem,” I heard Jesse pounding on the front door. Startled by the thunderous racket he made, I inadvertently tore the page.

  “Oh, dear!” I hesitated, unsure what to do about the tear. “Might as well pull it all the way out, I guess.” I tore out the page and stuffed it into my pocket. Jesse’s loud commotion continued. Soon he would rouse the neighborhood. I replaced the notebook on the night table and tugged my glove back on.

  I reassembled the untidy stack with great care, puzzling over the article. Whose baby was that? Lila and Will’s? Someone killed him. What if it was Lila? She cut out the article and kept it in her poem book. Clearly, the article interested her or was important for some reason. Why keep it if she wasn’t involved? But how could the frail creature I met be involved in something as hideous as infanticide?

  I moved toward the knocking.

  Down the hall—the one Zora Jane and I hadn’t taken from the entrance the other day—I came to a gap in the wall where stairs descended to the lower level of the house. Under normal circumstances, a black hole leading to who-knows-what would scare the soup out of me, but this didn’t qualify as a normal circumstance, and the stairs beckoned. I peered into the inky stairwell.

  Jesse’s knocking persisted as I raced downward. Were his knuckles getting sore? I rounded the corner, and a large room opened before me.

  In the dim light filtering down the stairwell, what might once have been a game room became visible. Two closed doors faced each other on either side. I picked one and pushed it open tentatively, my heart thundering so loudly that for a moment I couldn’t hear Jesse.

  The small room lacked a window, being only marginally larger than a good-sized walk-in closet. Stacks of cardboard boxes lined one wall, as if placed there by someone in the act of moving out or moving in. Must be a storage chamber built into the cool slope as an afterthought.

  I went to the next door and opened it with less anxiety. Again, unsteady stacks of cardboard boxes were piled in the middle of the space, but the room held nothing else.

  Tiptoeing to the darker side across the dim subterranean hall, I pulled on the knob of the third closed door.

  At first, I saw only thick blackness. But as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, a shrine appeared, spread along the far wall. Dozens of half-used white candles covered the floor in front of a low altar. In the center of the room, a large, irregularly shaped stain spread across the concrete floor like a dark rug. A thick roll of something leaned against the wall in one corner. I couldn’t identify the material, but an image of crumpled wrapping paper discarded after a birthday party came to mind.

  A strange, acrid stench overpowered my senses. The air hung thick with naked evil.

  Why did it remind me of snakes and spiders?

  My heart raced, roaring in my ears like a jackhammer about to blow a gasket. My airways constricted, repulsed by the air I sucked into my lungs.

  Go to the light! Hurry!

  I jumped back as if I’d touched a red-hot stovetop. Operating on pure survival instinct, I staggered out and up the stairs the way I’d come.

  My heart pounded as if it might explode as I rushed to the front entryway. When I opened the door to daylight, I abruptly encountered Jesse, inflamed with aggravation.

  He yanked my arm, dragging me out. His face flared red. Anger seethed from his usually emotio
nless voice. “What were you doing in there?”

  “We’ve got to get out of here! Quick!” I tugged his arm, but he didn’t listen, as if he hadn’t noticed my rapid breathing or the terror in my voice.

  “Were you born in a barn?” He reached inside to lock the door before banging it shut. His eyes flashed when he spoke. “This is completely unacceptable—”

  “Okay, okay, lecture me later. Right now we need—”

  “I replaced the window screen for you. You probably forgot all about that. Even wiped it down in case you left fingerprints. Do you know you can go to jail for breaking into—?”

  “There’s no time now, Jesse. We have to go.” I ran, turning back at the corner to beckon him.

  Jesse glared after me, arms akimbo. His fury had shut out reason. Had he heard anything I said?

  I motioned him to hurry.

  Mouth set in a thin rigid line, his eyes narrowed before he marched toward me. He nearly knocked me over as he rushed by. At our property boundary, Jesse high-stepped over the fence, but didn’t stop a second to assist me. With short legs like mine, getting over the fence proved challenging, but he didn’t glance back to see how I fared. Nor did he help me negotiate the hard, lumpy sod of the weed-infested pasture. How could I love someone who behaved in such a thoughtless, unkind manner?

  I brushed away tears as I struggled to keep up. He had no right to be upset, not after what I’d just experienced. Once again, when I needed his support, his own agenda came first. I felt my face redden and I steamed, hot with vexation. Maybe I just wouldn’t tell him what I saw. Maybe I’d never speak to him again.

  We had never used our back gate before. It opened to the pasture in the corner where our property lay closest to the gray house. When Jesse got to the gate, he yanked it open without breaking stride, using such force I looked to see if he’d ripped it off it’s hinges. I stomped after him.

  He was angry, for sure.

  But so was I.

  13

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Even after we returned to the sanctity of our house, Jesse continued the punishing silence. Instead of speaking to me, he called the Callahans to share the latest news. “Ed, this is Jesse Sterling. Listen, our dog Molly is still missing. You haven’t seen her, have you?”

  I paced across the kitchen while Jesse listened to Ed’s answer.

  Without looking my way, Jesse shook his head. “I don’t think she went into the woods. We followed the path you suggested but didn’t see any sign of her.” He turned his back and lowered his voice. “We ended up at the Paynes’ and found Molly’s dog tags beside that first garage.”

  I crept closer. Not too close, though, since I didn’t know whether Jesse might explode or not.

  Molly’s dog tags at the Paynes’ must have interested Ed, because Jesse repeated that information twice, adding additional details the second time. I returned to pacing, debating with myself about sharing my discoveries with Jesse. He certainly didn’t deserve it.

  Jesse listened a short time. “Well, if you hear anything or happen to see Molly, we’d appreciate a call. Thanks, Ed.”

  The phone crashed into its cradle on the dry sink. Placing both hands on the slate surface, he lowered his head and sucked in several deep breaths, letting the air out slowly. I stepped back, keeping the kitchen island between us in case a shield became necessary.

  When he faced me, his eyes crackled, but the evenness of his voice almost masked the intense feeling mirrored in his eyes. “Did you hit your head and get brain damage? What were you thinking? You can’t go around jumping in people’s windows without being invited. Have you completely lost your mind?”

  “Just a minute, Jesse.” My voice quivered. “I have to tell you … about the room downstairs.” I shivered, aware of coldness deep inside that I feared might never get warm again. “Bad things are happening in that house.”

  To justify my actions, I told him about the poem book, although I didn’t show him the page I tore out. That secret plunder burned a quiet hole in the safety of my pocket. Rather than feed him the whole sordid story at once, I’d give him a little and see how he reacted.

  He crossed his arms.

  Words flew out faster. “There’s a newspaper clipping taped inside the back cover, like the papers we found in the boxes—from Iowa. The clipping is about a dead baby.”

  A scowl spread over Jesse’s handsome face. He shifted weight, showing his usual impatience with holding off judgment while I elongated my story.

  I paused, studying his expression.

  His fingers drummed one arm, intolerance growing as seconds ticked by. “What’s your point? They subscribed to the Des Moines Herald Examiner. That would be normal for someone living in Iowa.” From his pocket, he extracted the crumpled piece of newsprint and held it in his hand. “Are you suggesting this baby connects to the Paynes?”

  “Certainly to Lila. Maybe it’s Lila and Will’s baby.”

  “Because you found a newspaper article?”

  “Not just that.” How could I make him understand? “The back page with the clipping … it’s covered with splotches. Like she cried on it … more than once. And the poems mention babies dying and the pain going on and on. I definitely think they’re connected.”

  His lip curled into a sneer.

  My insides burned like salt in a cut. “Don’t laugh at me, Jesse. That woman is wounded, and her pain has something to do with a baby.”

  Jesse leaned against the kitchen island and recomposed his face. He wasn’t smiling, but his features were no longer tight either. “What you’ve got is an overactive imagination. You always do this. You take some little observation that may or may not be fact and make up a story to explain it. Pure guesswork. In this case, there could be any number of other explanations.”

  I cocked my head. “Such as?”

  “Such as, Lila clipped the article out of morbid curiosity like when people gather around accident sites. Maybe she can’t have babies, so she’s fixated on other people’s babies. Did you ever consider that your sweet little Lila might be a psycho?”

  My shoulders drooped. I hated to be talked down to. Why couldn’t he ever accept what I said? After all these years, why didn’t he remember how good my hunches usually proved to be? At least half the time, anyway.

  He dropped his arms and re-crossed them the opposite way. “Most likely there’s no connection at all.”

  I lowered my eyes, staring at the kitchen tiles.

  “Did Lila sign the poems? Was her name anywhere in the book?”

  I shook my head without looking up.

  “So you don’t even know if she wrote them. This kind of thing is not real evidence, you know. You’d need a handwriting expert to prove Lila wrote it.”

  Oh, sure, use logic against me. “There was also a photo in the book. A boy and a girl. I’m sure the girl was Lila.”

  “Because Lila’s name was on the picture?”

  He had no clue what I’d seen and felt. A brief flashback of that dark hole skulked across my memory. “That’s not even the worst part. In the basement, down the stairs …” Just the thought disturbed the regular beating of my heart.

  With faltering words, I told him about the shrine room with the dark stain that looked like dried blood. “You can say what you want. I know something awful happened there. I can’t explain it, but I felt it. I’m sure it’s all connected to Lila.” I shook my head. “You should’ve seen her eyes. Pain, intense pain. And bruises on her arm and neck … I don’t know how that connects either, but it adds up to evil things in that house. We’ve got to help Lila. Plus, that awful man took Molly, and who knows what he’s done with her. Don’t forget he threatened me.”

  Jesse arched one eyebrow.

  I started to cry. Maybe from that vile hormone fluctuation that comes at this season of a woman’s life. Or simply from discomfiture. I didn’t do it on purpose, but a crying female always elicits a reaction in men. Jesse softened as he drew me toward him. When
I felt his strong arms around me, I let go and bawled like an orphan calf. After I’d cried it all out, I allowed him to comfort me.

  The overcast autumn afternoon brought a chill that invaded the house like a foreign army, magnifying my disappointment about our failure to find Molly. The frosty air sent icy fingers curling around us, cutting off circulation to arms and legs. Jesse built a cheery fire in the river rock fireplace. The crackling comforted me, and soon the air warmed enough to thaw my appendages. While I soaked in the warmth, the sense of looming depravity dissipated into distant memory.

  I collapsed onto the sage green sectional in the living room, tucking in with the beige afghan my mother crocheted at over eighty years of age. The cats came to console me.

  Roy and Hoppy taunted and wrestled like rivals, and then groomed each other before entwining into one furry mass to sleep on my legs. I caressed the similar white markings on their black fur. Sometimes they were hard to tell apart. Sleeping together, they looked like a two-headed zebra.

  Jesse stood near the fire, warming his hands like a stranger. The first rain of the season fell outside, starting softly, then pouring down. Watching the cats sleep, I remembered poor Molly. Would God answer our prayers for her safety?

  After a while, my growling stomach reminded me that we hadn’t eaten all day, so I pulled out from under the sleeping cats. I guided Jesse to the sectional and piled a fluffy green lap robe over him. Then I prepared a platter of his favorite Sunday night snack: cheese, crackers, and fruit.

  When I returned with the food, Jesse sat staring into the fire as if mesmerized. I roused him so we could eat in the glow of scented candles while the fire warmed the room.

  In the glittery light, I watched Jesse’s face. Memories of better times left me wishing for more. His hazel eyes sometimes seemed mostly blue and other times mostly green. I never knew how to read them. His chiseled features and sharp wit always kept me guessing about his degree of seriousness. I called his sense of humor edgy. Some people called it peculiar. Too bad we couldn’t turn back time to when I laughed in delight at everything he said.