Missing Pieces(82)

“Listen to yourself, Sarah. Beatings and poisoning, three blind mice. It sounds insane. You honestly believe that Jack is a murderer?”

Sarah struggled to speak. “Yeah, I do,” she finally said.

Remarkably, Celia didn’t react with the shock or indignation that Sarah expected. She just looked immensely sad. “What else did the emails say?” Celia leaned against the counter in resignation.

Sarah scanned her memory for the details. “They talked about a beautiful spring morning, laundry on the line, a yellow dress. Something about iron, cold and hard.”

“Iron? Like something made of metal?”

“I know, it doesn’t make sense. I think that maybe it could have been the murder weapon.”

Celia’s eyes went wide. “I have to show you something.” Celia went to the basement door and slid open the lock.

“What? What is it?”

“Someone left it on our front step.” Celia pulled on the doorknob but it wouldn’t open. “I came home last week and found it. I asked Dean about it and he said he had no idea what it was, but said something like, ‘It sure would make a good murder weapon, though, wouldn’t it?’” Celia yanked on the knob again and the door popped open. She flipped the switch on the wall and started the slow descent.

Sarah followed close behind. Her thoughts went to a fifteen-year-old Jack making this same trek down the stairs. “Celia, slow down. What is it?” With each step downward the temperature seemed to drop. The air was cool and damp. The air smelled vaguely of mildew.

The basement was immersed in darkness. The only light came from the top of the stairs. Next to her, Sarah heard Celia fumbling for something and then the click. Immediately they were bathed in the weak light of a naked bulb hanging from the unfinished ceiling.

Sarah flashed back to the crime-scene photos. She thought of Jack standing in this exact same spot and finding his mother wearing a sunny-yellow dress, lying on the concrete floor, arm outstretched, a bag of half-thawed strawberries just out of her reach, a bloodied dish towel covering her eyes.

“Sarah, here,” Celia said, and Sarah dragged her eyes from the cracked cement floor to where Celia was pointing to a dark corner of the basement.

Sarah stared at the foot-long wrench-like tool made of cast iron. Though she wanted to erase the images from Lydia’s autopsy photos, they kept flashing through her mind. Compared to the crime-scene pictures, while gruesome and bloody, the autopsy photos were more clinical but just as horrific.

“Don’t touch that,” Sarah ordered.

Celia pulled her hands back as if burned. “Why?”

“Because I think this could be the murder weapon.” Sarah’s heart was thumping in her chest.

“What do we do?” Celia asked, now seeming more panicked. “Oh, my God, do you think it was Dean? Do you think Dean did all this?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah patted her pocket for her phone to call the police. “Dammit, I dropped my phone upstairs.”

“I don’t have mine, either,” Celia said.

Sarah turned on her heel and in three long strides was at the foot of the stairs when something caught her eye. Her eyes shifted to a large wooden trunk intricately painted with strawberries and vines and flowers. The hair on the back of Sarah’s neck stood up. Sitting on the trunk was a box filled with hand sickles and corn knives. Something clicked in her mind. Exactly the same items that were in the photos on Seller85’s auction site. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Seller85. Cellar 1985.

Behind her Celia spoke.

“What did you say?” Sarah asked. She slowly inched toward the stairs, lifted one foot onto the first step, laid one hand on the rickety railing.

“See how they run,” Celia whispered.

From the corner of her eye, Sarah saw a flash of movement, felt the searing pain of metal on bone and then nothing.





22

WITH EFFORT, Sarah opened one eye and found herself on her back, staring up at the unfinished basement ceiling. Pain throbbed through her skull and a wave of nausea swept over her. Celia’s beautiful face appeared in her field of vision, staring down at her, a bemused expression on her face.

“Why?” Sarah managed to say, blood pooling in her mouth.

“It took you long enough to put the pieces together, Sarah. I thought for sure you were going to go back home to Montana without figuring it out.”

Sarah struggled to sit up, her elbows digging into the rough concrete.

“Oh, no, stay put, Sarah,” Celia ordered. “I don’t want to have to hit you again.”

Sarah willed herself to stay conscious, but the blessed escape of sleep kept pulling her one functional eye shut. Think of Elizabeth, think of Emma, she told herself. “Why?” Sarah asked again.

Celia knelt down next to her, careful to avoid the blood that had trickled onto the floor. “Why, why, why,” she mocked. Sarah’s eyes glanced toward the door. “Aw, waiting for your Jackie boy to come save you? You can scream if you like, but no one will hear you. Nobody heard Lydia, you know. She screamed and cried like a scared little baby.”

Tears slid down Sarah’s cheeks. “Jack was always such a simple boy,” Celia said. “He won’t know what to think when he gets here.”

“What about Dean? Where is he?” Sarah asked as her eyes searched the room for something, anything, to use as a weapon. The shelves of preserves in glass jars, a rake standing in a corner. Both too far away.