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  Chapter 3

  Some of the people inside Stella’s Diner gave her a fleeting look when she entered, and one or two of them, the man from the hardware store and Stella herself, who was busy waiting on tables, smiled and waved. Martha in a back booth, gestured furiously for Abigail to join her. She was wearing a black lace top and white slacks. Her short hair a halo of brunette curls.

  Abigail headed for her new friend, a safe harbor in a squall, and plopped down in the seat beside her. Martha wasn’t alone. Sitting across from her was a large man, not heavy, but strong looking. It was hard to tell what his age was, middle or late forties, perhaps, or younger or older. He had a deep blue button down shirt on and blue jeans, his hair was dark, longish and streaked with gray, his face sharp angled and clean-shaven, except for a neatly trimmed mustache.

  “Abigail, this is Frank Lester, our resident Jack-of-all-trades retired lay about and a friend of mine. We grew up together here in town. He’s the brother I never had. These days he’s writing a mystery novel. Imagine, our town not only has an artist in its midst, it has a writer as well. Frank’s been living in the big city of Chicago for years and only recently returned to the town of his birth. And we’re thrilled to have him back.”

  Martha winked at Frank, then looked sideways at Abigail. “Single good-looking intelligent men are rare in these parts, let me tell you.”

  “Shucks, ma’am, you’ve made my ears turn red with embarrassment.” Frank reached over and held out his hand and Abigail had no choice but to give him hers. His grip was strong and sure, his big hand warm.

  “Nice to meet you,” Abigail remarked. “So you’ve just come back to town?”

  “Not exactly, I’ve been home for over a year. I grew up here until I went off to the big city to seek my fortune.” There was humor in his words and amusement in his expression. His eyes had this way of taking in a person, as if he were aware of more than most people were, and little could be hidden from him. For some reason she couldn’t put her finger on, he ruffled her. He had the same inquisitive gaze as that detective she’d hired two years ago to find Joel when she’d become exhausted with putting fliers all over town and calling everyone in the world Joel had ever known. But the detective, who’d charged her a bundle and had never uncovered any answers, hadn’t found Joel. Some other cop had found Joel later.

  “So did you find your fortune?” Abigail shifted in her seat. Memories of Joel did nothing but unnerve her, and Frank was watching her too closely.

  He shrugged. “I did. But it wasn’t what I thought it’d be. That’s why I’m back.”

  “It never is.” She sighed. “Life is never like you think it’s going to be. We ought to be allowed to stop our lives at any point and relive over what we didn’t like. Change it if we want. Maybe then we’d have a fighting chance to do it right.”

  “Ah, an introspective woman. So…how do you like our little village so far?”

  “So far I like it,” she managed to get out, lowering her eyes. Too many people were gawking at her and she was too tired to be going through this tonight. She should have stayed at the house and opened a can of ravioli. But that would have been the old Abigail and she’d pledged to be different. She needed to get out. To make friends. To have a real life. Now.

  “And soon,” Frank murmured, “you’ll feel as if you’ve lived here all your life. This town grows on you. You’ll see. Characters and all.” There was a sureness and compassion in his voice which put Abigail at ease. Here was a man who said exactly what he thought. A man who was exactly what he appeared to be. She was sure of it.

  Martha patted her hand and Abigail finally smiled. “What’s the special? I’m starving. I’ve been cleaning, painting and wallpapering all week and I’ve worked up an appetite.”

  “They have the best cheeseburgers in the state,” Frank suggested.

  Stella was hovering over her by then with her order tablet and Abigail asked for a cheeseburger, onion rings and chocolate malt. An older man, Stella’s brother, Abigail guessed, was cooking in the back kitchen.

  “Martha informs me you’ve been redoing the old Summers’ house,” Frank stated when Stella left. He was on his second cup of coffee since Abigail had sat down. There was a small notebook on the table beside him and every couple of minutes he’d scribble something in it.

  “I have.” She turned to Martha. “You wouldn’t know the place. I’ve been cleaning and painting and I think it looks beautiful. You’ll have to come over and see it.”

  “I’ll do that.” Martha popped another French fry into her mouth.

  Frank had fallen quiet, listening, as Abigail raved about her house. Someone had turned on a radio and country music floated in the air along with the hamburger aromas.

  “I met this elderly lady out on the street coming here,” Abigail casually remarked. “Pulling a wagon behind her and singing old songs. She looks poor and a little bizarre.”

  “Oh, that’s Myrtle Schmitt,” Frank cut in. “Our resident crazy rambling woman. Don’t let her appearance fool you. She may dress and act peculiar, she wanders all over town salvaging junk out of peoples’ trash cans and she lives out in a ratty RV along Highway 21, but she’s filthy rich. She has a broker, a financial portfolio and probably millions of dollars in assets.”

  “If you think old Myrtle is weird, you haven’t met the cat and dog lady yet.” Martha chuckled.

  Frank laughed and satisfied Abigail’s curiosity. “Evelyn Vogt. She lives behind you actually. A patch of woods is all that separates your two properties. Be grateful for that. She hoards animals, that’s what they call it these days. Mostly cats and dogs, but she collects all kinds of creatures. She must have thirty or forty in and around her house. I imagine on calm nights you’ll be able to hear the meowing and dog yapping even at your place.”

  “I can’t wait.” Abigail was studying the folks around her. The couple to her left had paid their tab in quarters, dimes and pennies; tip as well. Another couple hobbled out on walkers. Canes were propped against booths and hung from chairs. There seemed to be a lot of elderly in town.

  Her food arrived and she sat eating and listening to Martha and Frank magpie about town stuff and gossip about the other townies. She learned a lot about Spookie and its people during the meal. She learned a lot about Frank too. He seemed like a sweet guy. A little nosy maybe.

  “By the way,” she said to Martha between munching onion rings. “I’m looking for rugs for my living room and bedroom. Nice, but not too expensive. I’m on a tight house decorating budget. Know where I can find any?”

  But it was Frank who spoke up, “My sister, Louisa, sells carpets and flooring in a store in Chalmers, fifteen miles down the highway and two towns over.” He tugged out his wallet and removed a white business card, which he gave to Abigail. “Tell her I sent you and she’ll give you a discount on top of a fair price.”

  “Thanks. I couldn’t ask for more, I guess.” She accepted the card and put it in her purse. She’d finished her meal and exhaustion was claiming her. The day outside was shifting into twilight. Soon it’d be dark. She stood up. “It’s been nice meeting you Frank. And seeing you again Martha. But right now, with my stomach full and my body one big ache, my bed is calling me. I’m heading home. I think I have just enough energy to limp back there.”

  “If you walked, let me drive you.” Martha stood up, grabbing her purse. “I’ve been here for hours. It’s time I go home too. Besides if you don’t mind I’d love to take a quick peek at what you’ve done to your house. I’m dying to see it.” There was a plea in her eyes which Abigail couldn’t deny. Martha wanted to be her friend in the worst way.

  “Okay, I’ll take you up on that ride. It seems my legs have stiffened into two rock pillars anyway since I sat down. They don’t want to work.”

  She wasn’t sure how it came about, but Frank spoke up about seeing them both home safely and before she knew it, all three of them were heading to her house. The old Abigail would have squashed that
quickly enough, but the new Abigail let it happen. After paying their bills and saying goodnight to everyone the three of them left the diner.

  She and Frank rode with Martha because Frank had also walked to Stella’s. “I’m obsessed with walking lately, since one of my friends had a stroke. Exercise, says my doc, is the key to living a long healthy life. I own a truck, but I walk whenever I can. It saves gas too.”

  Leading her visitors through the front door, Abigail announced, “I’m not done with the house yet. It’s a work in progress. I’ve still got to paint the porch and hang my collection of birdhouses from the ceiling. Bird houses, that’s my porch motif.”

  Martha made a beeline for the kitchen. “I love what you’ve done in here. Love the wallpaper,” she hollered. “Ooh, I love sunflowers too.”

  Abigail left Frank, who was standing in the middle of the living room seemingly lost in thought, and she hobbled into the kitchen. Now she could barely walk. Old age setting in early, she fretted, relieved the hardest work was behind her and a soft bed awaited her–as soon as she could get rid of her visitors.

  Martha had settled at the kitchen table and was admiring Abigail’s handiwork. “You’ve been busy. It’s astounding what you’ve done to the place in such a short time. I adore it. Looks like something you’d see in one of those house beautiful magazines. You sure have a flair for colors and such. Must be the artist in you.”

  “You want coffee, Martha? It’d only take a minute. I always leave the pot ready to plug in.”

  “Nah, I won’t keep you. I know you’re tired. I only wanted a quick peek at the house. I’ll visit again soon, I promise, and stay longer. I’ll bring you lunch one day next week and we’ll have real girlfriend time together. Where’s Frank?”

  Frank walked into the kitchen.

  “Lordy, Frank, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” exclaimed Martha. Her face had turned grim. “Oh, how stupid of me, you have been in this house before. I remember now.”

  “You have?” Abigail echoed, looking at Frank, who stood in the kitchen doorway, his face shadowed. He was eyeing the room as if it stirred up some sad memory.

  Martha explained for him. “I never told you, Abigail, Frank’s a retired cop. Early retirement. He spent most of his time being a Chicago homicide detective, but he began his career here in Spookie as a deputy sheriff in the early nineteen seventies, during the time when that woman and her two kids lived in this house. Frank was on the sheriff’s department when the alleged disappearances took place, weren’t you Frank?”

  “I was,” Frank admitted. “It was one of my first cases. I was twenty-one and had only been on the job for a few months. I…knew Emily and her children,” he spoke softly. “Sweet, sweet woman. She was a friend. Her children were good kids. Bright. So hungry for love.”

  “The three were never located, never seen again, were they?” Abigail’s interest was captured entirely. There was something Frank wasn’t revealing, she could sense it.

  “No, they weren’t. We didn’t have the technology we have today. People got lost and stayed lost. I was about the only one who thought something fishy had happened.” He sat down on the chair next to Abigail. “When they disappeared I worked here in town, but I’d applied earlier for the Chicago P.D. I’d been notified a week before I had the job. I stayed here as long as I could trying to find them, but there weren’t any clues, any leads, so when the time came to move to Chicago and begin my new job, my new life, I had to go. Either that, or I would have lost the position and the opportunity. I made senior detective over the years, had a good run, a good life and my retirement benefits can’t be beat. I don’t regret leaving Spookie back then, but I regret not finding Emily and the children. If I had been here I wouldn’t have stopped looking as everyone else did. The sheriff at the time thought they didn’t want to be found and just gave up.”

  Abigail was watching Frank. Ah, ha…a retired police detective experienced in digging up hidden clues who’d known the woman and her children and here he was in this house again after so many years; right after she’d found notes from those missing children. The coincidence of it all didn’t escape her.

  “Well, it’s late and I’m going home,” Martha declared. “Frank, want a ride home?”

  Martha had probably seen the way Frank had looked at her so she wasn’t surprised when he excused himself with, “No, thanks, it’s a lovely night and, with shortcuts, I don’t live that far away. I’ll hike it home. Walking helps me get my thoughts straight for my late night writing sessions.”

  “Okay. Abigail, I swear he’s safe. I’d trust him with my life. So I don’t hesitate to leave you alone with him. And being an ex-cop you can be sure he won’t steal anything or make improper advances towards you.” It was a joke, but no one laughed. Abigail’s wedding ring glittered in the kitchen’s light.

  At the door Martha reminded Abigail about the commission to paint her home. “The house is over one hundred and twenty years old. It’s been in my family since it was built.” She dug into her purse and handed over a couple of colored photographs. “Here it is. You think you can do it from these or does the house have to sit for you?”

  Abigail examined the photos. “These aren’t bad…but since it’s summer, I’d prefer to draw, or at least begin, from the real thing. I’ll call you next week and set up a day to start. I’m about done with my house’s cleaning and painting for now and wouldn’t mind working on a smaller canvas for a bit.” And she wanted to see if she still had it in her, see if she could draw anything which wasn’t in Photoshop or on a computer screen.

  “Okay, you call and I’ll show you where I live. Out in the woods and all, it’s hard to find.” Then Martha was gone.

  “I realize you don’t know me well and I’ve barged in on you,” Frank told Abigail. “I wanted to talk to you. And I had to see this house again. Be inside. It’s brought back so many memories of when I was a young cop just starting out. The past. Some of those times were good days.”

  “I understand. There are times in my youth, my past, that I reflect back on with great fondness too.” She was thinking of Joel. “I understand.”

  “Can I look around? I won’t disturb anything. I won’t stay long.”

  “Go ahead, be my guest. I’ll wait here for you. Resting. Making coffee.”

  Frank moseyed around the house, snooped upstairs and returned to the kitchen. She was tired, but she didn’t mind. As Martha had said, she was safe with him. But he seemed reluctant to leave. It was a spur of a moment decision to offer him coffee. He accepted.

  Over cups of black liquid they began to discuss their lives and to form a bond. He was easy to talk to, an attentive listener, and was intrigued with the same thing she was: what had happened to Emily and her kids. In the end, she confided why she’d come to Spookie, about her last job, the old apartment, Joel’s disappearance and his death.

  Frank listened and said gently, “Unexpected and unexplained disappearances. You wouldn’t believe how often that happens. For what it’s worth, you can be at peace now, knowing your husband didn’t just leave you. He was taken. Mugging gone wrong. At least you have closure.” His eyes fell on her wedding ring. “People disappear every second of every day–someone’s fault or not anyone’s fault. Merely moving on. Or foul play. I was a detective in a big city, I know. It can be heartbreaking.”

  Abigail was touched when he told her about his wife, Jolene, who’d died the year before in a car crash. “That’s why I retired from the force early and returned home to Spookie. My son, Kyle, is away at college and I couldn’t keep living that lonely life once Jolene was gone. There didn’t seem any point to it. She was the one who loved living in the big city. She loved the concrete, the stores, and the hustle and bustle. Over the years I’d accepted I was and always would be a small town boy. I love the country, the trees and everyone knowing everyone else’s business.

  “So we’re both starting over, hey?” he finished with a soft smile. “What a coincidence.”
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br />   His eyes were scanning the solid black view outside the kitchen window. No moon had risen yet. It was all darkness. “I sat here one night so many, many years ago just like this having coffee with Emily Summers, her two kids playing with firecrackers and sparklers out in the yard, giggling and yelling. It seems like another life. I’d only been a cop for a short time and had brought her boy, Christopher, home after a close call with a car. He was lucky. It nearly hit him. But Christopher had sworn the driver was trying to run him over. The kid was really upset.”

  Abigail opened her purse and retrieved the two scraps of paper. “Strange you should mention those children. While I was working on the house, I discovered these messages tucked under some baseboards. I think you might find them interesting.”

  She handed over the notes and he read them. His face was expressionless but his hands shook slightly as he refolded them. He didn’t say anything at first and then, “These are from the children all right. They were always writing things in crayon and drawing pictures. Jenny was an artist, even at her young age. I can’t believe you found these…after all these years.”

  “Maybe,” she interjected, “there’s more notes hidden in the house. I’ll keep looking. Maybe these are clues to what happened to the three of them.”

  Frank only replied, “The trail would be so cold you’d need snow boots. Now you sound like the mystery writer.”

  “You could help me.” She ignored his lack of enthusiasm. “You knew this town, these people, who their friends were and how they lived. You can fill in the gaps no one else could. Were the children often sent to bed hungry? By their mother? And who do you think the HE in the one note referred to?” she grilled, though Frank seemed uneasy with the subject.

  He moaned and responded, “The HE might have been Emily Summers’ secret boyfriend. We never figured out who it was. No one knew, except the kids and they weren’t talking, if you know what I mean. Emily Summers was divorced and had gone back to her maiden name. Being divorced in 1970 was scandal enough, but to be dating someone who was somehow unavailable was worse. She was already the town pariah. All the married women in town disliked her anyway. They were afraid she was going to steal their husbands. You know how insecure women can be.

  “But I believed then and now the boyfriend was part of the reason for their…leaving. Him and our illustrious sheriff, who wouldn’t leave Emily alone, either. I never discovered who the boyfriend was and Edna, who’d been living here with her sister that whole summer, swore she’d no idea who he was either. Edna worked days in a factory in another town, slept like the dead at night from exhaustion, and didn’t seem to know anything.”

  Abigail was disappointed.

  “And no, Emily would never have mistreated those kids or sent them to bed hungry. I don’t understand that at all. She was a good mother.”

  Frank gave her a thoughtful look. “Tell me. Are you so intrigued by this because of your husband’s vanishing act two years ago?”

  “This has nothing to do with that,” Abigail snapped back too quickly.

  “Doesn’t it?” Frank’s voice was sympathetic. “Listen, it’s late and I’ve stayed too long. My advice is let the past be the past. There’s no one left anymore that remembers the Summers’ family, except a few old town people and me. We don’t know if there even was a crime. Edna said her sister ran off in the middle of the night with the children because she was a flighty woman. The sheriff claimed Emily left because she was hiding or running from someone and she didn’t want to be found. We should leave things be. To complicate matters, Emily had an abusive ex-husband she was afraid of. I looked for him, but that was when the world was larger, before a central based criminal computer system like Regis or NCIC, or computers and emails. People could get lost easily in those days. And some did.”

  “But from what Martha told me, Edna, Emily’s own sister, never heard from them again. Never in all those years. That’s not normal, is it?”

  “If you knew those two back then you’d understand. Edna and Emily weren’t close. They were continuously feuding. Everyone knew that, including me, though I didn’t know them well. Edna hated her younger sister, for some reason or other. Maybe because their parents loved Emily and her children best. No one knew why for sure, only that it was so.”

  The more Abigail learned about the four people who had once lived in her house the more fascinated with them she became. They were becoming real to her.

  “Well, I’m going home now, Miss Marple,” Frank concluded sarcastically, as he stood up to leave. The carefree smile returned. “It’s been nice meeting you, Abigail. Having coffee and talking. Welcome to our town. And as small as this burg is, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon.

  “And don’t drive yourself crazy over this old mystery. They were just four people who used to live here; one’s dead and probably three of them are all a lot older living somewhere else right now. They didn’t just evaporate into thin air, they probably moved away. They started a new life somewhere else. It happens all the time. Not all suspicious circumstances point to a crime.”

  “Okay, I hear you, Mr. Ex-cop. I won’t make this into something it isn’t.”

  Frank left and Abigail, as tired as she was, still went to sit on the porch swing. It and the night had called to her one last time. A cat’s weak meows haunted the night air. Abigail thought she heard children’s voices out in the woods somewhere and contemplated that thirty years past two children had sat on her porch and romped in the yard before her. The same two children who’d written those notes. She imagined they were dancing in the moonlight, their bodies skinny and coltish, and their laughter hauntingly sad as they pranced across the grass and faded into the night. If they weren’t dead…what had happened to those two children? Where did all the missing people go anyway?

  In a strange mood, she pushed the swing. She couldn’t stop thinking about those kids. Above her the stars sparkled in a velvet sky and it felt sweet to be alive. Meeting Frank made her want to wear more make-up and buy new clothes, yet her sad heart wouldn’t let her dwell on anything further with him than friendship for now. After all, she was a recent widow. Or, at least, that’s the way it felt to her. To her, Joel had died a month ago because before that he’d only been missing.