Those Who Mourn: A Wolf Creek Mystery (Wolf Creek Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Those Who Mourn

  A Wolf Creek Mystery

  By

  Barbara Bartholomew

  Those Who Mourn

  Published by Barbara Bartholomew at Amazon Kindle

  Copyright October 2016 by Barbara Bartholomew

  Cover Design by James: GoOn Write.Com

  Books by the Author

  The House Near the River

  The Ghost and Miss Hallam (Lavender series)

  Letters From Another Town (Lavender series)

  Leaving Lavender (Lavender series)

  Lavender Blue (Lavender series)

  Lavender Dreaming (Lavender series)

  By The Bay

  At This Time of Year (novella)

  Dreams of Earth

  Nightmare Kingdom

  Wrong Face in the Mirror (Medicine Stick series)

  Wakening the Past (Medicine Stick series)

  Bobbi and the Bootlegger (Medicine Stick series)

  Everyday Magic (Three Sisters series)

  More Than Magic (Three Sisters series)

  Almost Magic (Three Sisters series)

  Through Flame and Fire

  The Pot-Hunter’s Daughter (Ancient Cities series)

  Stolen Years (Ancient Cities series)

  Poet and Dreamer (Ancient Cities series)

  The Time Keeper (Timeways series)

  Child of Tomorrow (Timeways series)

  When Dreamers Cease to Dream (Timeways series)

  The Second Jeep Harris

  Finding Endymion

  Royal Blood

  Princess Alice

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter One

  Susan loved the library best at night. Then, cloaked in darkness, it was all hers with its long tables and comfortable chairs, a virtual microcosm of all she liked best from solitude to books.

  Ignoring the computers introduced not so long ago and cluttering up the landscape as well as bringing an undesirable element into the building, she could pretend she was back in the days when neatly dressed little girls and too-noisy boys came in with their mamas to linger in the aisles. She never expected much from the boys who tended to elect non-fiction about animals or science, but occasionally a little girl would be a real reader, entranced by works of the imagination and she could enjoy again the excitement of discovering Wrinkle in Time or Wizard of Oz.

  Though she’d actually been quite grownup the first time she read Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful time travel tale. She sighed at the thought that some books were written for readers of any age and spent several minutes back on the wishing rock with Meg Murray, longing for her missing father and disturbed with all the problems of her young life.

  She drifted through the large main room, than down the stairs to what was now the children’s library, an addition built on a while back, she couldn’t quite remember when. The old library had been constructed back early in the previous century when the old pirate Andrew Carnegie had sent his millions into public service, giving the gift of books to towns across the country.

  Small and picturesque and with a look of another time with its greenish tile roof and buff stone exterior, it set on Cottonwood Street just off Main and what she remembered as a busy downtown where folks gathered from the countryside, coming in their wagons and cars to do business, selling their cream and eggs and visiting with friends and neighbors who shared this day of companionship and commerce and, a few of them, stopping by the library for a share of reading material to occupy the few minutes they could snatch from their work-laden lives to immerse themselves in story.

  Susan knew she’d been one of those, reading aloud to Mama while she worked in the kitchen, excused from her share of the cleaning and cooking to read to the others while they did the chores.

  That was all she could remember. The knowledge of that kitchen and of the family around her had faded. She could remember the name they’d called her, the sound of her mother’s voice as she was urged to read a little faster so they would know how the story ended before they must all fall to the task at hand. But she could not remember the faces around her, or the look of her own features.

  Even when she looked into the mirror in the women’s bathroom, she saw no reflection there. As far as the mirror was concerned, she did not exist. No eyes looked back at her and she could have been old or young, portly or slim, ugly or pretty. She did not know her own identity and the knowledge of her past had faded from a mind that only dimly remembered the town around her. The only reality was the library itself, the women who worked there, and the patrons who came and went.

  Once, she knew, she had been free to walk the streets of town, but the only one she remembered at all was the wide brick-covered street called Cottonwood with its stately houses that increasingly seemed like dwellings from one of her storybooks. The old street, the pride of the town, was safeguarded by its affluent occupants, the brick street carefully maintained among the concrete roadways that lay in place for the rest of the town. Even its street signs and lights were special, chosen to emphasize more the Edwardian days of its origination than its current identity as part of a town characterized more by busy Interstate-40 that led to Oklahoma City or its longtime existence as a boom or bust oil town. Susan knew these things because she heard the people who came into the library talking and because she read everything she could find about the community and its history.

  Actually these days she was more familiar with fictional places like the town in Minnesota described by author Maud Hart Lovelace in her tales based on her early 1900’s girlhood than she was in her own hometown.

  She knew Betsy, Tacy and Tib, the characters in that series of novels, better than she knew anyone outside the library, better even than the people who came into read and check out books. She was acquainted, due to the skills of the author, with the inside of Betsy’s head, while here she saw only faces and behavior, while the inner workings of these personalities stayed forever a mystery.

  Even her own existence remained an enigma. The funny part was that she didn’t remember worrying about this until lately.

  He’d come home from war battered, bitter and anxious only to seek solitude and healing. The solitude he’d come by easily enough in the city which cared little about his existence, living on the pension granted him as permanently disabled, physically and mentally, so that he spent his days wandering the crowded streets of the largest city in the country and his nights lost in videos or e-books that did little to block out memories that so often seemed more real than the tiny apartment that had become all he had in the way of home.

  It had only been when even that room and what passed for food that kept his miserable life fueled became no longer affordable in this high-rent city that he was faced with the necessity for change. Grandpa kept sending letters begging him to come home to the town i
n Oklahoma where his family had lived for several generations, offering him shelter and company. He could respond to that summons or end his existence. The latter seemed the more desirable and he woke that Saturday morning to the noise of the city outside his thin walls and knew he hadn’t the energy to make that long cross country trip that might save his little valued life.

  Nobody would blame him. Nobody was left to care much. Except maybe Grandpa.

  He was being evicted today. What possessions he had included only a mattress he’d picked up for a few of bucks and a creaky old chair someone had left on the sidewalk to be picked up by the trash trucks and which he’d pulled up the stairs. He’d sold the old TV yesterday. With the power turned off, it had been useless anyway, and he’d double dosed on his meds to get through the night.

  There was no kitchen. He’d eaten his tasteless food cold, or spent a few dollars of his pension for meals at nameless diners where nobody would try to make conversation. Though he supposed he was looking scary enough these days that even the loneliest soul was unlikely to approach. Unkempt and ragged, he must look like one of the army of homeless who lived on the fringes of city life.

  He only owned one thing of value. He pulled out Grandpa’s last letter, read it again.

  “Still hoping you might come,” his dad’s father had written. “I wake up sometimes at night and think, “I’m the only one left. I’ll always be alone in this big house until I die.’ And then I remember, no, ‘I’ve still got the boy. Sam’s boy. My grandson.”

  I’m not able to get to you. Come to me, David. Please come while I’m still alive to welcome you.”

  Inside the folded sheet of paper was an airline ticket. Arriving only a few days ago, it was a one-way ticket for a flight scheduled for this evening and would take him to Oklahoma City.

  He had money. He’d cashed in his pension check yesterday. He had money enough to get him from Oklahoma City across the hundred or so miles to Wolf Creek. His pension, too small to support the anonymous life in this expensive city any longer, might give him a modest living in western Oklahoma. And, except for Grandpa, nobody would even remember David Johnson.

  The thing that finally convinced him was that Grandpa hadn’t invited him home so he could look after his invalid grandson. He’d said he was lonely. Grandpa needed him.

  That was the reason he chose life over death and hobbled a few blocks until he could catch a cab and give mumbled directions to the airport. Looking as he did like a homeless bum, he had to show his money in advance to keep the cabby from kicking him out, but at the airport he waited until evening, then with only a single carry-on bag, boarded the plane that would carry him back to the place where he’d come from.

  They’d fed him on the plane and he was juiced up on coffee. With all the meds he was on, he knew enough to avoid alcohol. If he wanted to suicide, he would take a more direct route.

  Still he delayed, hesitant to go back and face what had been such a promising past. He spent a day on the street, wandering until his legs would carry him no further, then finding a bed at a modest downtown hotel.

  By the time he got off the bus in front of the Wolf Creek stop, a day later than expected, he was weary past reason and could barely walk without stumbling. People buying gas from the pumps out front of the convenience store, glanced up and then away as one does when confronted with the pathetic wreck of what had obviously once been a strong man.

  Pity was the worst. He wanted no one’s sympathy. The scars on his face, his mutilated body had been well earned and he owed no explanations. Not that he was a hero, he hated it when people called him that. He’d been a professional soldier doing his job and that was all there was to that. He had medals and had been awarded honors. None of them meant much in terms of those he’d left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan: his buddies, his friends, the men and women he’d commanded. Too many of them hadn’t come home and for him each face remembered was a personal tragedy.

  He wouldn’t think about them. They haunted his dreams; the daylight was his own to survive. And sometimes, most times, he envied them that it was over and they didn’t have to go trudging on the way he did.

  He focused on the town, ignoring the curious glances. Nobody would recognize him as the boy who had left heaped with high school glory as both a football hero and outstanding student. He’d gone on to honors at university and to a rapidly rising career in the military. Grandpa had been so proud, not boasting, but receiving the compliments of his cohorts with that familiar, lovable grin.

  The man who had raised him after the deaths of his parents in an accident when he was twelve was popular in his own community, a beloved character, and he’d found solace for the death of his only son and his daughter-in-law in his pride in his grandson.

  Sheer stubbornness kept him going, moving down the sidewalks he’d run so enthusiastically as a child. Cottonwood, a short, brick-lined street, was the prettiest in town with its big old trees and well-kept lawns. Built in the early 1900s, it had been the place to live back then, and even now the homes, gracious but not huge, each one individual in style, presented an ideal of family living where in those pre-air conditioning days, residents gathered on front porches of an evening and called to friends as they strolled by.

  David had come here from urban life and fallen enthusiastically into a world of roller skating on sidewalks and backyard baseball. Grandpa would mix up a batch of hand-churned ice cream and invite all the kids in for bowls of the creamy dessert, served with fudgy brownies from Henderson’s Bakery on the other side of the library.

  He hadn’t been much of a reader as a kid, but still he glanced fondly at the little library, which looked like something out of a storybook with its hovering roofline and cottage-like sense of environment. Never pretentious, it could be said to be welcoming and for an instant he thought about climbing the steps and going inside. But no, Grandpa would be waiting, hoping he’d used that ticket and was wending his way to western Oklahoma.

  He almost thought he saw someone looking out at him through the opaque glass beside the big door at the top of the stairs, a welcoming face, but he dismissed it as fantasy and strode on past, ignoring the pain in his legs and back.

  Downtown had encroached on the little street over the years. The bakery was gone, but city hall, a large and ornate building for a smallish city, set on the far end behind him, its lawn dominated by the rather threatening sculpture of a wolf, a new addition since he’d last been back, but of course an obvious symbol for a town called Wolf Creek.

  Grandpa had told him once that there hadn’t been wolves here about even back when his grandfather had come in 1901. A few remaining buffalo, maybe, but doubtful considering they’d been mostly wiped out by that time. Mostly there had been jack rabbits, coyotes, roadrunners and lots of cattle. The battle for survival had been between the cowmen who’d ‘leased’ huge tracks of open plains from the Native Americans and the dust-buster dregs from Europe and the eastern U.S. who sought to claim bits of land offered free to settlers.

  All thought of such irrelevant details faded as his gaze fell on the houses just down the side street from the library. Each building held its setting on large grassy yards, laid out long ago before much of the now existing city had been formed.

  He turned to walk up the sidewalk and on to the porch of the house where he’d grown up, bracing himself for his meeting with Grandpa.

  Chapter Two

  Susan didn’t exactly sleep, but there were hours when she simply drifted away. This morning she came back to herself and stretched from her curled up position in the big chair near the bestsellers display, then stood to shake herself like a dog shedding sleep and disorder.

  Even though she could not see her own reflection in the bathroom mirrors, she could glimpse the apparently solid fact of the body dressed in denim skirt and white blouse, and feet in comfortable shoes that she remembered wearing back as far as yesterday.

  Her hair fell about her shoulders, long enough that she could p
ull a strand forward and see that it hung in glossy yellow ringlets. Not gray or white, so she wasn’t old, and her body looked slender and even athletic so maybe she was somewhere in the young adult range. On her right hand she wore a gold ring with a green stone.

  She didn’t remember so analyzing herself before from the evidence at hand, but then she didn’t remember much.

  She lived here in the library in a kind of timeless haze. The librarian, Mrs. Kaye was in her little office back of the checkout desk while her assistant, a mid-twenties woman named Molly, moved among the shelves, straightened and sorting.

  The front door was still closed as the library wouldn’t open until ten and the big wall clock indicated it was only twenty minutes after nine. Susan yawned, feeling only half awake, remembering how sometime last evening in her strolls through her territory, when she’d gone out to stare through the darkened glass on one side of the front door, she’d seen a broken figure ambling past. Poor old man. Probably a homeless character seeking the refuge of someone’s back porch for the night.

  Somehow that pathetic figure haunted her morning and she felt anew her helplessness to reach out and help anyone. She was an insect caught in amber and, even if Mrs. Kaye unlocked the doors for the public to enter, she could not leave.

  If she was a ghost, this was the place she haunted. She’d tried again and again, but she could not step through that door. She was imprisoned within the library.

  Even though he’d ended up pounding rather hard on the door of Grandpa’s house, he had been unable to waken any response. The big stone house had continued to lie in darkness with not even a single light to brighten its windows.

  Finally, he’d gone around back to flop in exhaustion onto one of the porch chairs, falling almost instantly into sleep. He woke up, aching from his uncomfortable position in the redwood chair to knock again, driven more this time by his almost panicked concern for his grandfather. Finally he gave up, settled back in his chair and waited. He’d sent that ticket. He should surely Have been here, though David had to admit that he was later than expected. Maybe something had happened to his grandfather in the mean time.