Graveminder

He slid a shelf forward and to the left.

“Damn,” he whispered. Floor to ceiling was stocked with whiskey and Scotch. Bottle upon bottle lined the shelf, all label forward, sorted by brand, five deep.

Maylene had never seemed drunk, didn’t smell like the bottle, but unless she was running some sort of speakeasy, there was no way any one person could need this much liquor. If she got drunk every night, it still would’ve taken years to drink this much. If it had always been so, it wasn’t any wonder now where Ella and Rebekkah had found their never-ending supply of liquor all those years ago.

Byron slid the next shelf over and saw the same sort of overstocked shelf, this one full of unmarked bottles of clear liquid. He took down a bottle and twisted the cap. There was no seal to break.

Moonshine?

He sniffed. It didn’t have any scent.

Not shine.

He dipped a finger in the neck of the bottle and touched his finger to his tongue.

“Water?”

The town’s water was tested regularly. There wasn’t a thing wrong with it. The grocers didn’t carry much in the way of bottled water, finding the idea of buying water foolish, and these bottles were clearly not from any store.

“I don’t get it.” Byron examined the bottle in his hand, turning it around, looking on the bottom and under the lid. The only identifying mark was a date written in black indelible marker on the bottom. Home-bottled water, a distillery worth of whiskeys, and enough food for years of living. Short of preparing for End of Days–style catastrophes, this didn’t make sense. Maylene wasn’t any more religious than the rest of Claysville, and she certainly hadn’t seemed like she was planning for any sort of Armageddon.

And stockpiling food and booze doesn’t explain why anyone would kill her.

Byron closed the pantry door, set the bottle of water down on the countertop, and walked upstairs. He didn’t know where to send a sample for testing, but it was something.

Except bad water doesn’t result in torn-up bodies.

Upstairs, everything looked perfectly in order. Even the beds were made. In the bathroom that Ella and Rebekkah once shared, someone had set out a hand towel, bath towel, washcloth, and one of those little seashell-shaped soaps. It looked homey.

The guest bedroom that was once Rebekkah’s room had a quilt folded at the foot of the bed, and Maylene’s bed had fresh linens on the night table as if whoever tidied up wasn’t sure if changing the linens was a good idea or not. Byron wasn’t sure either. His father had kept his mother’s things out for months, even going so far as to spray her perfume in the air every so often. The shadow of her presence had lingered long after she was gone.

For a moment he considered sitting down, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. It was one thing to come into Rebekkah’s home to look for something, some clue, some anything to answer the questions he knew she’d have. It was another altogether to make himself at home.

He paused in the doorway, remembering the first time Rebekkah had dealt with the death of a loved one.

Rebekkah sat on the edge of her bed. Her face was wet with tears, and her sobs were the gulping-gasping kind. He’d seen grief before; sobbing people were normal in a funeral home. Those people weren’t Rebekkah, though; seeing her in pain was different.

Byron went over and pulled her into his arms.

“She’s gone,” Rebekkah said against his chest. “Dead, B. She’s dead.”

“I know.” He could see Maylene watching them from the hallway. She didn’t come in; instead, she nodded at him approvingly.

Rebekkah clutched his shirt in her hands, holding him to her, so he kept his arms around her until her cries faded to sniffles.

“Why?” She lifted her face and looked up at him. “Why is she dead?”

But he didn’t have any more answers than she did. Ella had been acting strange the past few days. Without warning, she’d broken up with him in the morning. They’d never fought, never argued, and until that week, he’d thought she was happy.

What happened?

He’d hardly thought about anything else since she’d told him she was done with him. She hadn’t been angry, just sad. He didn’t tell Rebekkah any of that, not yet. In the span of a few days, he’d gone from having a girlfriend and a good friend, to being afraid he’d lose both of them because he and Rebekkah had kissed, to holding Rebekkah as they both tried to make sense of Ella’s death.

Was it our fault?

“Don’t leave me. Promise.” Rebekkah pushed away from him, but kept her hand fisted in his shirt as she stared at him. “She left us, and now … She could’ve told us what was wrong. She could’ve told me anything. Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I don’t know, Bek.”

“Promise me, Byron.” Rebekkah wiped her cheeks angrily. “Promise you won’t keep secrets or leave or—”

“I promise.” He felt a guilty twinge at how right it felt to make that promise to Rebekkah. Her sister, his girlfriend, was dead. Byron shouldn’t think of Rebekkah as anything but a friend—except that he had been thinking of her like that long before Ella had died.

And Ella had known.

“I promise,” he repeated. “No secrets, no leaving you. Ever.”

It was Rebekkah who had left, not quite a year later. She’d left Claysville and left him.

“How do I tell her you were killed, Maylene?” he asked the empty room.

He opened the doors to the other rooms. The third bedroom, Ella’s old room, wasn’t made up. The bed sat in an anonymous room that was overfilled with clutter. Maylene hadn’t built a shrine to her dead granddaughter—nor had she done so with her dead son. The room that had been Jimmy’s was a storage room now. In it, there were more boxes and plenty of clutter, but no bed at all. Both Ella’s room and Jimmy’s room looked untouched by the murderer and by the townsfolk who’d cleaned the house.

Byron went downstairs and grabbed the bottle of water. He let himself out, checked that the door was locked behind him—and then stopped.

A teenage girl sat astride his bike, kicking her foot back and forth.

“Hey!”

She cocked her head. “Yeah?”

“Off my bike.” He leaped off the porch and crossed the lawn, but when he reached her, he hesitated. Grabbing hold of a girl—regardless of the reason—wasn’t something to do lightly.

She hopped up so her feet were tucked under her and then sprang backward, putting the bike between them. For a moment she stared at him. Her forehead furrowed in apparent confusion. “She’s dead. The woman that lives here.”

“Do you know her?” Byron tried to place the girl, but he’d been back in Claysville only a few months, and he didn’t recall seeing her anywhere. She didn’t look like anyone he knew either, so he couldn’t peg her as someone’s daughter or sister.

“They stopped bringing her milk.” The girl’s expression turned wistful as she stared past him to the porch. “Yesterday there was milk, and today there’s not. I’m hungry.”

“I see.” Byron took in her frayed jeans and dirty face. There weren’t any homeless shelters in Claysville. He wasn’t sure if there was even a foster-care system. Relatives took in those that needed taking in, and neighbors handed over whatever extra they had to the folks who lacked.

He opened his jacket and pulled out his phone. “Do you have a home? Relatives here in town? I can call someone to come for you.”

“No, I’m not going anywhere. Not now,” she whispered.

The skin at the back of Byron’s neck prickled, but when he lifted his gaze from his phone to look at her, she was already gone.

6