Mystic Falls Page 7

  Gemma blew out a breath and poured the water from the kettle into a silver teapot. “So, tell me again why Gram didn’t tell her one and only granddaughter that she was a psychic? I understand why she kept it from Genevieve. But why me?”

  Paloma patted her hand. “Marissa wanted good things for you. She thought you were happy down there, working with Robert. She didn’t want to interfere in your life the way Genevieve had. To be honest it broke her heart when she watched you pack up and leave with Genevieve. And it broke her heart knowing your mother had so easily yanked you away from the only home you’d ever known. In the back of Marissa’s mind, she always felt that it was inevitable. She never had a legal custody agreement with Genevieve to raise you. Your mother could’ve shown up at any time and packed up your bags and took you away long before you ever married Lando. Which is exactly what Genevieve seemed to be waiting to happen, some huge drama she could milk for all it was worth. After you married Lando, the woman went nuts, raising hell about why Marissa had allowed it to happen. Personally, I’m not sure what took Genevieve so long to interfere. Think about it. She swooped into town in her limo and talked you into leaving here in what seemed like fifteen minutes. That event turned out to be for good, at least until Marissa died. Her death brought you back. But make no mistake, your Gram was a broken woman after you left.”

  Gemma heaved out a sigh. “I’m so embarrassed that I let that happen. I wasted ten years doing everything my mother wanted me to do, hoping she’d love me more and ultimately discovered nothing could make that a reality. It took me that long to figure out that Genevieve loves Genevieve. I just wish I’d known about Gram’s gift. I’d loved to have talked to her about her visions, what they meant, how often they happened, what triggered the incidents. I’ve been reading up on the clairvoyant experience. But it’s not the same thing as talking to Gram about it.”

  “Marissa realized she couldn’t openly let you see her helping others. Didn’t you ever wonder why all those people came into the shop?”

  “I thought it was for her chocolate.”

  “That too. But there were also plenty of people who showed up at the house. Didn’t that ever make you wonder?”

  “Obviously not. I guess it shows how wrapped up I was in myself. I didn’t find any of it odd at the time.”

  “Stop being so hard on yourself. If Genevieve had gotten wind of Marissa’s activities in that regard, it might’ve opened the door for her to show up out of the blue and take you back to San Francisco sooner than she did. Your grandmother wasn’t about to let that happen, especially when she knew her daughter never wanted to live in Coyote Wells. Your grandmother was a very wise woman in that regard. She was certain that at some point, Genevieve would come back for you. She couldn’t risk losing you. That’s why she kept her participation in the psychic world a secret. And the townsfolk helped her guard that secret every step of the way, closed ranks around her, and didn’t let outsiders in on what was nobody’s business.”

  “But I don’t want to be like my mother, Paloma. Not in any way. The idea makes…it makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve no interest in throwing lavish parties, or being seen at all the right society gatherings. I want to be more like Marissa. That’s why I’m here, now, trying my best to get the shop to run smoothly. I want to live here and be part of the community just as she was.”

  “Oh, Gemma. She’d be so proud of you for making that decision. She was so afraid that leaving you everything you might turn your back on the shop and everything else.”

  “That won’t happen. I’m going out to the cemetery to tell her.”

  “Now? It’s almost dark.”

  “But it’s a beautiful spring evening with a full moon. Will you do me a favor, though?”

  “Anything.”

  “Will you tell me everything you know about what Marissa did and how she did it?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll even help you locate your grandmother’s old journals. That alone would be a wonderful resource for you to read through and understand her mindset. It would help you figure out how long she’d been at it. You must understand one thing, though. She helped so many people who needed her guidance on almost every level of their daily lives that the people in town miss her. They may expect you to take up where she left off.”

  “Mr. Ballard seemed convinced Marissa could solve a mystery. Is that true?”

  “The Marissa I knew could do just about anything she set her mind to doing.”

  “I think so, too. I gotta run. I want to swing by the house and cut some lilies for Gram and Poppy.”

  The full moon guided Gemma and her dog along the pathway to the Redwood Burial Ground, a hundred-year-old cemetery that still allowed statues to mark the gravesite. The plot of land---almost fifty-five acres located on a hilltop---offered sweeping views of the ocean. This windswept landscape was guarded by a spattering of giant redwood trees that seemed destined to give comfort to the souls who rested here.

  There was an iron fence, eight feet high that surrounded the property, but she knew the gate was never locked. She and Rufus meandered their way along the headstones and statues that seemed steeped in tradition and history.

  By the end of the nineteenth century, most indigenous people in the area realized their rites of passages had changed dramatically. They could no longer practice the same rituals they’d celebrated for hundreds of years. Part of accepting the ways of their new regime meant their dead would no longer rest above ground wrapped in buffalo robes or blankets, but rather placed in a hole and covered over with dirt. As this new ceremony dictated, they laid their loved ones to rest in the same place where white funerals were held, and like them, covered the ground in flowers and carved headstones to mark the spot.

  Over the years, Redwood Burial Ground had seen its share of funerals. As late as the 1950s, the graveyard allowed for both burial and inurnment. For those who wanted an above-the-ground resting place now, there was even a modern-day columbarium on the other side, several free-standing niches that stored urns after cremation. By the 1930s, the owner even added a mausoleum and sold those vaults to a variety of customers, some native, some not.

  Gemma’s grandparents had picked out their burial plots six months after arriving in town. Not surprising since Marissa had a tendency to always plan ahead. Whether her grandmother saw the future or not, Gemma knew this spot had been a favorite place for her Gram to come and sit and be with the man she’d loved her entire adult life.

  Under the starlit sky, Gemma and Rufus plopped down on the grass next to a statue of a weeping angel. Made of stone, the base was about five feet wide, enough to span over both plots. The angel on top was another four feet in height, her body draped over the base in a grief-stricken pose. Marissa’s own design. Something she’d seen in a book and insisted the monument company follow her instructions exactly to create a replica of the saddest angel she’d ever seen.

  To Marissa’s way of thinking there would always be that angel crying her heart out over the loss. Now, the base of the memorial had been chiseled to include Marissa’s date of birth and date of death.

  As Gemma stared at the plot of dirt no longer covered in grass, she realized this was her family. She rested her hand on the stone and began to pour out what was in her heart.

  “I miss you both so much. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with you. I’m sorry I didn’t come back home more often. And you, Gram, I wish you’d told me about your ability, we could’ve shared so much. I wouldn’t have made fun of it, I swear it. Maybe that was the reason you didn’t tell me. But I understand completely why you kept it from Genevieve. She would’ve used it to take me away from you out of spite. So maybe…I guess…it was meant to be this way. Although I’m still having a hard time seeing the why of it.”

  Rufus snuggled up against her and laid his head on her lap.

  She ran her fingers over his smooth coat and went on, “I didn’t even realize the basics, how you were able to use the ability God gave you for s
uch good work, to help others. Obviously if you helped catch a serial killer, that was…huge. I wonder if Poppy knew. Of course, he did,” Gemma said, answering her own question. “I can’t believe it’s been almost twenty years without him. I’ve missed him. Now I’ll miss the both of you. The only family I’ll ever really know.”

  The somber mood was broken when Rufus’s head snapped up and he went on alert as a shadowy figure approached a nearby grave several rows over.

  After a few minutes, Gemma let go of the breath she’d been holding. She recognized the man as Daryl Simmons. “Daryl, goodness, I won’t lie, you gave me quite a scare.” In the darkness, she could see Daryl’s smile.

  “Sorry, but if it’s Wednesday I come out here to put white baby roses on my daughter’s grave. Those were her favorite. She died four years back from lymphoma. She was just seven.”

  “I’m so sorry, Daryl. You work at the middle school, right?”

  “I coach basketball. Usually I have this place all to myself on Wednesday evenings. You gave me a bit of a shock, too.”

  “I guess we both were thinking that. By any chance did you know Marnie Hightower, the teacher who went missing?”

  Daryl flinched at the question. “Of course. Not only do we work together, we were seeing each other up until last Christmas.”

  That brought Gemma to her feet. “Really? I didn’t know. I only just got into town several weeks back. What happened to break you guys up?”

  “Vincent Ballard happened. He invited Marnie to a Christmas party at the winery and I didn’t want to go. She ended up going without me. Apparently, she hit it off with Ballard that night. So much so that he and Marnie spent New Year’s Eve together. She broke it off with me when school started back up on January 3rd. And that was it. Two weeks ago, she didn’t show up for work. The faculty contacted the police and Lando Bonner ended up interviewing all of us, including me. After breaking up, I didn’t talk to Marnie outside of school.”

  “No contact off campus at all?”

  “Nope. Once she gave me the boot, that was it. Chief Bonner ran my cell phone records and cleared me as a suspect. Our seeing each other at school was limited anyway because when I’m not coaching boys’ basketball, I’m teaching PE classes, which means I only get to interact with the other teachers during lunch period. Marnie and I had totally different lunch schedules this semester.”

  “And you told all this to Chief Bonner?”

  “You bet I did. I didn’t hurt Marnie. But I heard Ballard was messing around with Collette Whittaker, too, before she went missing. I don’t even know what women see in that guy. Do you? I didn’t understand it with Marnie and I said so at the time. The age difference was…Ballard must’ve been eighteen years older, and yet, she acted like he hung the moon or something. It had to be his money. I guess all women go for the dough, right? That leaves me out. I’m a lowly basketball coach working on a schoolteacher’s salary. Ballard makes a lot more money than a PE teacher does, that’s for sure. What do you think happened to those women? Do you think Marnie could still be alive?”

  The question gave Gemma a jolt. “No idea. But I think somebody should be doing more to find out.”

  6

  Gemma tried to do just that when she got back home by doing an online search of Marnie’s social media network. The teacher was popular and often posted classroom pictures of herself interacting with students and faculty. There were photos from the recent science fair, photos taken at school events, but no threatening posts on her Facebook profile, just the usual tidbits about life. Nothing indicated that someone wanted her gone.

  She spent an hour looking up information about parapsychology and learned that certain notable places had more significance than others. These sights generated more energy because of whatever historic value was attached to the place. Battlefields were always recognized as sources of power since they were usually where so many souls had been lost.

  She thought about that as she worked on updating Marnie’s missing poster, something she never thought she’d have to do for a friend. Maybe in a town the size of San Francisco things like this happened all the time, but not in little ol’ Coyote Wells.

  While heating up a bowl of soup for dinner, she came to a decision. She’d bypass Lando and seek out Jeff Tuttle, the county medical examiner, and talk to him herself about Marissa’s injuries. If he was the one who’d gone along with Lando’s assessment at the scene that it was an accident, then Dr. Tuttle needed to be the one to answer her questions and defend his decision.

  She went ahead and called the county offices even though she knew they’d be closed this time of night and left a voice mail for Tuttle or one of his staff members to get back to her.

  By eight-thirty she had enough Marnie posters printed out for the downtown area. She stuffed the ones targeted for outside display into protective plastic sheets and then decided she might as well retrace her steps from the afternoon and start putting them up alongside Collette’s, at least along Water Street. She took Rufus with her.

  A few storm clouds had moved in blocking out the moon and stars from earlier. The wind off the ocean smelled like rain. She’d worn her grandmother’s all-weather Mackinaw just in case it started pouring.

  It took her forty minutes to canvas the businesses downtown---the ones that were still open---to ask them if they’d let her add Marnie’s flyer to the window. From there she moved on to Lighthouse Landing where she realized sticking them up on the old landmark seemed too tacky. Besides, the flyers would probably just blow off as soon as the bad weather made landfall anyway.

  Lando Bonner, off-duty, and out for a stroll, thought he was imagining things when he spotted Gemma standing under a streetlight with a nail gun in her hand poised to attach a poster to the pole.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  Gemma jumped like she’d been cattle-prodded. “I didn’t realize the local fuzz had implemented a curfew.”

  “Only for incorrigible delinquents who can’t stay out of trouble.”

  “Might as well lock me up now, Chief. I’m running wild in the streets.”

  Lando was tempted to reach out and touch those dark honeyed tresses she’d tamed into a ponytail. But instead of doing it, he kept his hands in his back pockets and his feet planted firmly in one spot, refusing to take a mindful step toward her.

  “I have my cuffs here somewhere. You look like you’d put up a fight though.”

  “Better believe it. Try me and I’ll put my Tae Bo to good use.”

  “Tae Bo? The teens usually just throw water balloons.”

  “I remember those days. We were all about making trouble, weren’t we? Even goodhearted Luke used to egg a house or two on Halloween.”

  “Goodhearted Luke was more like the devil in disguise. Leia and I kept trying to convince everybody of that, especially Mom.”

  “Poor Lydia, a widow left with three hooligans for children.”

  Lando grinned. “That’s probably why she kept us so busy at Captain Jack’s. Dad used to say before he died that we’d all better like working at the restaurant because that’s where we’d end up someday.”

  “At least you all learned to cook. All of you know how to grill a mean snapper or make steak fajitas worth the effort.”

  “A lot of good that did Luke and me. Leia’s the only one who found she liked cooking. What are you doing out here this late putting up posters of Marnie?”

  “Somebody has to. Earlier tonight I met her ex-boyfriend, Daryl Simmons. He says you interviewed him.”

  She saw Lando’s jaw tighten, a habit she recognized that he always did when he was annoyed. “I’m just asking.”

  “I know how to do my job, Gemma. I interviewed the entire faculty at Harbor View Middle School…and then some.”

  “Okay. Did you carry out any searches for the women?”

  “With Collette, Ballard took care of organizing a few. And then when Marnie went missing, the teachers at her school covered the neighborhoods
. They got a group of faculty members and students to show up for an all-day search the Saturday after she didn’t show up for work.”

  “Is that it? Because one day of searching isn’t enough. We live in an area where dumping a body would be easy and we wouldn’t find it for twenty years. We’re surrounded by patches of forestland and rugged mountains that stretch for thousands of square miles all around us.” She pointed to the ocean. “And then there’s that big body of water.”

  “Exactly. The county did a couple of air searches using infrared, hoping Marnie was out there lost in the woods alive, but that got us nothing. And in Collette’s case, we used search dogs where her car was found. The dogs indicated she’d never even been at the scene, which meant someone else probably left her car there.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean two people were involved? Otherwise how did the driver leave the area?”

  Lando cocked a brow. “Not bad for an amateur.”

  “Thanks. But those few searches weren’t enough for either woman,” Gemma insisted. “What if it was a member of your own family who went missing? What would you do then?”

  “I’d tear heaven and earth apart until I found them.”

  “Then why not do it for Marnie and Collette? I don’t get it.”

  “Look, I understand where you’re coming from, but the budget around here isn’t exactly what it is in larger counties. We can’t just pull the money out of thin air for a land search.”

  Gemma let out a huge sigh. “It somehow always comes back to that, doesn’t it? No matter where you go it always ends up being about the bottom line.”

  “Taxpayers demand it. It’s called reality.”