The keeping place, p.1
The Keeping Place, page 1
Also by Mae Clair
SERIES
The Hode’s Hill Novels
Cusp of Night (Book 1)
End of Day (Book 2)
Eventide (Book 3)
The Point Pleasant Series
A Thousand Yesteryears (Book 1)
A Cold Tomorrow (Book 2)
A Desolate Hour (Book 3)
STAND ALONE NOVELS
The Haunting of Chatham Hollow (co-authored)
Myth and Magic
Eclipse Lake
NOVELLAS
In Search of McDoogal
Food for Poe
Solstice Island
COLLECTIONS
Things Old and Forgotten
ANTHOLOGIES
Murder They Wrote (A Winter Reckoning)
Macabre Sanctuary (The Lady Ghost)
Quantum Wanderlust (Family Tree)
Copyright © 2024 by Mae Clair
All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Cover designed by Get Covers
In loving memory of Mom O
May every daughter-in-law be blessed to have such a wonderful mother-in-law.
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
From the Author
About the Author
Chapter 1
Five minutes into Channel 72’s six o’clock news broadcast, veteran anchor Hayden Dalton put a .38 caliber bullet through his skull. Within a handful of hours, the footage was replayed by most every network across the country with the somber warning the video contained “disturbing and graphic images.” According to reports, Hayden left a suicide note pinned to the inside of his jacket.
Scratched on the back of a receipt from the local hardware store, it read only “Tell Glory I’m sorry. It never should have happened.”
Glory Larkin added a wedge of lime to her Tanqueray. Sour worked. She’d never intended to become a sixty-year-old has-been sucking gin to the scratchy strains of Aretha Franklin belting “Respect” through tinny speakers. In Hornwood, they called her the girl who almost made it. Ironic, since she hadn’t been that starry-eyed twenty-something for decades.
Thank God, the restaurant had emptied.
Earlier, the line for a table snaked out the door. Too bad the crowd hadn’t come to bask in her stories of Hollywood glamor or gush over the artsy black-and-white publicity stills lining the walls. Tonight, nosey spectators filled her modest eatery because, in postcard-perfect Hornwood—population 3,004 per recent census—no one turned a deaf ear to gossip. Rumors oozed from one loose tongue to the next, a fungal infection no one was in a hurry to cure.
Glory switched off the radio, her head throbbing from the performance she’d staged flitting from table to table, laughing and chatting, ignoring the elephant in the room. An Oscar-worthy feat while the crowd eyed her like an egg about to crack.
Splat! There goes Glory. Isn’t it a shame? All she’s been through, and now this.
This.
With her back to the bar, drink dangling from the tips of her candy-apple red fingernails, she eyed the photographs. She’d been gorgeous then. Still was for a woman whose star had peaked and set. But back in the day, oh, how she could turn heads!
“I figured you’d have left by now.”
The opening scrape of the front door, combined with a man’s voice, drew Glory from her melancholy trip down memory lane. She could have locked up, but why bother? Everyone in Hornwood knew Glory’s Place closed at eleven sharp on Friday nights. It had been that way for decades, going back to when her grandparents owned the original Larkin’s Restaurant. No one stuck their heads inside once she closed the blinds.
No one except Jude Beck.
“What are you doing here?”
He eased onto a barstool. “Is it a crime to be worried?”
“That depends.” Glory tipped gin into a clean glass before sliding the drink in front of him. “Last I checked, you were still Hornwood’s Chief of Police. If I crossed a line, you’d tell me.”
“Drinking by yourself won’t change the past.”
“Then drink with me.” She clicked her glass to his. When his mouth thinned in a scowl, she tossed her head back with a tinkling laugh. “Why so glum, Chief Beck? Even an old, washed-up movie star is entitled to wallow in her glory days.” She wasn’t drunk, just tipsy enough to realize leaning into the bar made good sense. Propping her elbows on the edge, she smiled. “Get it—Glory days?”
“I get it.” He pushed the drink away. “I also get you’re torn up inside.”
“Do I look torn up?”
“Appearance has nothing to do with it. You were an actress.”
“Still am.” He’d missed her earlier performance, all breathless energy and chatty friendliness. Not easy to do when the bones of your dead daughter surfaced after ten years. When a man you’d known for most of your life offed himself on live TV, then dropped your name into his cryptic suicide note. “If you’re not going to drink with me, why are you here?”
“I was wondering what you decided. About Nicole.”
The other daughter.
Glory sniffed, irked he’d dragged up the one person she’d been trying to forget. “Nic isn’t going to rush home after all this time. What’s the sense? You can’t be certain those bones belonged to Janie.”
“Her bracelet was wrapped around the wrist.”
A special inscription bracelet. She’d always imagined her younger daughter’s remains entombed in watery silt, not beneath mounds of rubbish. There had to be rats, spiders, even snakes in the old Boone Rail shack.
“Janie might have lost her bracelet that night at Elderberry Creek. Someone could have found it. Taken it.”
“Maybe.”
Her gut told her otherwise. “How long until you know for sure?”
“We’re waiting for dental forensics. I should hear something tomorrow.”
Part of her feared the truth. It was less painful thinking Janie had drowned than imagining her the victim of a crime. Why else would she be buried under cast-off junk and refuse?
The gin soured her stomach. “I don’t want it to be her.”
“I know.” He laid his hand over hers where it rested on the bar.
“What about Hayden?” The cowardly bastard.
“Sorting out his connection is going to take time. He might not be involved.”
She snorted. “A couple of teenagers stumble over my daughter’s remains in a derelict shack, then two days later Hayden kills himself on live TV? What about the note he left—it never should have happened.”
“Ten years buries a lot of sins. We’re looking into it.”
“I think he killed her.”
“If he did, Vin and I will get to the bottom of it.”
The entire police force of Hornwood—Jude and his single detective sergeant. Frustrations aside, she couldn’t ask for more. “Vin was at the creek the night Janie disappeared.”
“Which gives him greater incentive to uncover the truth.” He cocked his head, studying her in a manner that made her feel transparent. “Did you ever have anything to do with Hayden?”
Her spine stiffened. “Like I do with you?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“But you implied it.”
Beck could be a hard ass. Tall and lean with hair the dark blond of a tumbleweed and eyes that sharpened to ice when he was pissed, he looked the part of quintessential lawman. The stereotypical my-word-is-my-vow type. She would have pegged him as a sheriff in the Old West if casting a movie.
“I’m not saying Hayden didn’t look, but I never took the bait.” They all looked. She’d gotten used to it years ago. “Bottom line—I want to know how my daughter died.”
“We all do. As soon as I hear from the coroner in Bottleneck, I’ll be in touch.” Jude climbed to his feet. He glanced toward the door then hesitated. “You’ve had a rough two days. Let me drive you home. You shouldn’t be alone.”
Glory kicked back the rest of her gin. “I shouldn’t be with you, either.”
“Maybe. But we both know it’ll end that way.”
Coming from anyone else, the comment would have reeked of arrogance, but he said it without conceit. She sometimes wondered what he saw in her—the faded gloss, the almost-famous allure? He was forty-nine, eleven years younger, a man of authority who commanded respect in the community. Yet here he was, waiting for her answer.
Waiting for the girl who almost made it.
“A ll right, Chief Beck.” She switched off the light above the bar. “Take me home.”
“I thought you’d want this. It was mailed to the house.”
Nicole Seabrooke glanced at the return address on the envelope her stepmother handed her. Hornwood, PA. No name, no street. There was only one person who’d be so intentionally vague.
“From my mother.” How long did it take a person to write? To acknowledge a daughter branded by unforgivable sin?
Nicole’s mouth grew dry. She sipped iced tea, trying to downplay a sudden jolt of nerves. Cordella’s was busy, typical for an eatery in downtown Enzo on any given Saturday. She would have preferred sandwiches in her apartment, but her stepmother wanted to follow their lunch with shopping—accessories for her newly remodeled bathroom.
“Are you going to open it?” Amelia nodded to the letter.
“Later.” Nicole slipped the envelope under her salad plate. The busy back and forth of the other diners seemed louder than usual. How many might be discussing Hayden, caught up in the ugly hoopla of his death since the on-air clip went viral? Nearly a week had passed, but talking heads continued to debate mental illness, suicide prevention, and the effects of work-related stress, all the while replaying the segment for shock value. Social media ran rampant with tweets, posts, and podcasts debating gun control and Second Amendment rights. The sensationalism sickened her.
She remembered Hayden’s nightly newscasts but little else about him. If he’d been involved with her mother, they must have flown under the radar. Either that or their relationship developed after she’d left Hornwood.
Amelia worked at cutting up her grilled chicken. “Aren’t you curious what your mother has to say?”
“It can wait.” It’s waited ten years. Nicole prodded an olive with her fork. “You were going to show me pictures of the new bathroom.”
“That can wait, too. It’s not every day you get a letter from Hornwood.”
Did anyone ever get a letter from Hornwood? Nicole used to think the place was stuck in a time warp, tucked between miles of farm fields and yards of abandoned rail tracks, a dot in the middle of nowhere. No wonder the Boone Line had gone belly up.
Her gaze flicked to the window and the bustling street beyond. Across the road, a woman holding a toddler waited for the WALK signal while two teenage girls pecked their cellphones under a traffic light. A tractor trailer bottled up the intersection as it made a wide right turn, headed for the freeway and the bypass toward Baltimore. Enzo was a far cry from sleepy Hornwood, always in motion, humming with energy. Too bad it had never felt like home.
“Would you like more tea?” A young server materialized at her elbow, beaming a smile that made Nicole feel maudlin by comparison.
“No, thank you.” She waited until the girl refilled Amelia’s glass then left before parting with her latest news. “I got a phone call from Leese Medical yesterday.”
“And?” Amelia seemed to be holding her breath.
More olive prodding. “I didn’t get the job.”
“Oh, Nic, I’m sorry. I know how much you were counting on it.”
“Three interviews and I lost to an in-house transfer.”
“Something will give. It has to.”
“Hopefully before my unemployment runs out.”
Amelia dabbed her lips with a napkin. “I wish I hadn’t sold the business after your father died.”
“It wouldn’t matter. I want to work in my field.” She’d never had a knack for retail.
“I know. But if you need anything in the meantime. Rent money or—”
“No, I’m fine.” She shouldn’t have made the reference to unemployment. Amelia had always been gracious and loving. Especially when saddled with a moody seventeen-year-old after only six months of marriage. She might have told her new husband she didn’t want his troubled teenage daughter living with them, but she’d taken the higher road and welcomed Nicole into their home. Now a decade later, three years had passed since a heart attack claimed the life of Nicole’s father. Glory hadn’t shown for the funeral, instead sending an extravagant spray of flowers to the gravesite.
Glory.
Her mouth tightened. Sometimes it was hard thinking of Hornwood’s near-famous actress as Mom. Her gaze strayed to the envelope. Without a word, she broke the seal. Amelia cocked her head, apparently surprised by her change of heart.
A small square of paper fluttered to the table, its ragged edge giving the impression of having been torn from a pad in hasty afterthought. Judging by the signature, it may well have been.
“It’s from Vin McCain.”
“The boy you used to date in high school?”
The boy she hadn’t spoken to since leaving Pennsylvania for Maryland. He’d been with her at Elderberry Creek the night Janie drowned. All of them—Vin, Marshall, Chelsea, and Kevin. So many others, yet no one had done anything until it was too late. For years she’d tried to hate Marshall, hate Kevin, even Vin. In the end, there was no one to hate but herself.
“Nic.” When she didn’t answer, her stepmother leaned forward. “What does he say?”
Nicole passed her the paper.
They found Janie. You need to come home.
Chapter 2
Ten years earlier
It was early Saturday afternoon when Janie popped into Kocher’s Market for a pack of cinnamon bursts. A woman she didn’t recognize held the door for her, but strangers in Hornwood weren’t unusual. She was probably someone who’d stopped by Glory’s Place for an autograph only to discover the town’s most famous citizen wasn’t there. The number of people who’d elevated Fifth Street Sundown to cult classic amazed Janie. Not that the film wasn’t good or her mom’s acting subpar, just that the movie hadn’t received much attention when it was released thirty-odd years ago.
Or so her mom said.
Repeatedly.
She found the cinnamon bursts wedged in their usual spot between the Skittles and Hershey Bars. At the register, Mr. Kocher took her money with his customary smile and a “hello” for her mom. When she stepped outside, she spied the woman who’d held the door on a bench, cellphone glued to her ear, a tissue balled in her hand.
She’s pretty.
Not glamorous like her mom, or dark and willowy like Nicole. More like she’d stepped from a storybook populated by wildflowers and butterflies. Wavy brown hair layered with hints of gold curled around her shoulders. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Nicole.
Janie was still immersed in her thoughts when a black Dodge whizzed by with a honk of its horn. She glanced to the street in time to catch Vin McCain with his hand in the air. She waved back then popped a cinnamon burst into her mouth. After a quick check to make sure her backpack was secure, she walked to the rack where she’d left her bike. Close enough to eavesdrop on the woman as Janie fiddled with the lock. She liked collecting tidbits for her lists despite her sister saying listening in on other people’s conversations was impolite.
“… home soon…” The storybook lady spoke into her phone. “… horrible mess… thanks, Rhonda… good friend… figure something out…”
Janie tugged the bike from the rack, bumping the front tire onto Main Street. Traffic was busier than usual, almost as if the impending arrival of June had hyped everyone for summer. Two more weeks and school would be done, seventh grade officially behind her. Then what? She wasn’t even sure what to do now.
Straddling her bike, she eyeballed the sign across the street. Flowing violet script proclaimed Glory’s Place. No sense going there. Her mom didn’t work on Saturdays. Worse, Nic planned to hook up with Vin and some of their friends, which left her on her own. No one wanted a twelve-year-old tagging along.
“Stupid thing!” The woman on the bench had ended her call and was pressing buttons in agitation. As Janie watched, the phone slipped from her fingers to the sidewalk. “Damn.” She scrambled to grab it, but an unintentional butt from her shoe sent it skittering into the street.
“I’ve got it.” Janie stooped for the cell. It hadn’t fallen far, but the cover had broken. Cheap white plastic, it sported the image of a monarch butterfly on the back, a crack zigzagging through one wing like a bolt of lightning. “Sorry I didn’t catch it sooner.” She passed it to the woman. “The case is busted.”
