Crayons and Angels Read online

  Crayons

  and

  Angels

  A Miss Shirley Mystery

  By

  Rita Kano

  © 2019 Rita Valenti Kano

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Rita Kano with photographs contributed by Pxhere.

  First printing

  Contents

  Chapter 1 A Missing Girl

  Chapter 2 Pig Wing Soup and Blind Mice

  Chapter 3 Icky Fuzzy Jumping Spiders

  Chapter 4 The Secret in the Blue Mason Jar

  Chapter 5 Mysterious Old Letters

  Chapter 6 Time Ain’t What It Used To Be

  Chapter 7 Miss Bessie’s Warning

  Chapter 8 The Curse and the Rhyme

  Chapter 9 Grandma Sadie’s Diary

  Chapter 10Warnings from the Past

  Chapter 11Ghosts and Slithering Shadows

  Chapter 12Find Me or Find Death

  Chapter 13Dead Ends and Tombstones

  Chapter 14Hangings and Hanging Trees

  Chapter 15A Desperate Plan

  Chapter 16Trust, Lies and Taking Chances

  Chapter 17Sheriff Pate’s Suspicions

  Chapter 18 A Heavy-Handed Accusation

  Chapter 19 A Town Accused of Murder

  Chapter 20 Sue Bell’s Secret

  Chapter 21 Into the Woods

  Chapter 22 The Sweet Taste of Hope

  Chapter 23 Silver Bells and Angels

  Chapter 1

  A Missing Girl

  Small town newspapers latch onto a headline like there’s a grand prize for squeezing a story’s throat the longest. The Purity Post was no different. And it just so happened, the biggest, most scandalous headline ever was about to land on the Post’s doorstep. Well, the biggest at least for as long as anyone could remember. Only, they didn’t know it just yet.

  It had snowed in November for the first time in sixty years. For country folks who believe in farmers’ almanacs and signs and such, you’d expect someone would’ve taken notice that something real bad was about to happen. No one did.

  Until the snow fell, Beefy Boy tomatoes ripened in backyard gardens and pole beans dangled on vines. Overnight everything green turned to brown and the tomatoes to mush, drooping from their stakes like red balloons half full of water. And it wasn’t just the delicate seasonal plants that went under. The sudden cold snap stripped the most fragile trees and bushes of leaves so suddenly there had been a rush on Clive’s General Store for rakes.

  RAKES SOLD OUT. The Purity Post’s Sunday morning headline announced.

  Luke Atkinson read the headline and laughed. Having lived out of state for some number of years in Norfolk, Virginia before he inherited a 500-acre farm from his daddy, he was the one most likely to get a good snicker out of small town news and backwoods thinking. As fate would have it, Luke, who guarded his privacy and kept his distance from folks in more ways than most, was about to be caught up in a mystery.

  On a particular hill toward the southernmost border of the Atkinson farm, lay a mound of haunted earth, as told Luke by his daddy and his daddy before that and so on and so on. According to family legend, way back in the late 1890’s a horse thieving outlaw had been hung by the neck right there on that spot. And, just so happened, to the side of the hill, east of the upper middle part, a most peculiar looking tree stood. Thick, gnarled roots jutted through the ground. Branches, twisted by wind and mangled by lightning strikes, bent this way and that. Gouges and claw marks scarred the lower part of the tree’s trunk. Wounds of all sorts abounded, left there by whatever happened to crawl or creep out of the swamps in the dead of night. By all observances of nature’s way, that tree belonged to another time and shouldn’t have still been standing, much less living. More peculiar, nothing else grew within a thirty-foot circle of the old tree. Deer and pheasant hunters residing in that isolated part of the county in the section called Hog Swamp made a point of keeping their distance. Not because of the NO TRESPASSING signs staked into the ground every few hundred feet like grave markers or that they had any qualms about poaching. Wasn’t that. When asked why they steered clear of the spot they didn’t have any good reason for it at all. At least, no reason they could put into words. Not one body who ever stumbled upon the peculiar mound or searched it out on account of curiosity claimed they saw a spirit floating about there or heard whisperings that stood their arm and neck hairs on end or any such thing. No, simply put, they just didn’t like the looks or the feel of the place.

  Their scarcity of words was about to change.

  Two days after the unexpected November snowfall, slivers of Monday morning sun stabbed through scattered clouds and shone through the top half of the old hanging tree. Thick swamp air, set aglow by narrow golden rays, gave the impression of melting upwards. Patches of snow cradled in the v-shaped pits of bare branches had already begun to dribble like tears, drop by drop down the sunny side of the trunk. On the ground to the left of the weathered old Elm, two small bare limbs stretched out like they were reaching for something. A pale leg, bent at the knee, rested on the opposite side to the right of the trunk. The other lifeless limb lay scrunched up against the rough, gray bark. The young girl’s face turned away from it all. A few strands of long, leaf-matted hair covered her eyes, as if she herself had put them there. Safe to say, she had seen enough.

  Someone else had seen it too. Footprints in the snow led up the hill, stopped a few feet away from the body and then turned back the way they had come. In a couple more days, when the snow melted and the temperature rose back up to barefoot weather there’d be no sign of the tracks. In a week or less there might be no sign of the body either, should a hungry wild cat or alligator happen to drag it into the green slime of the murky swamp waters only a stone’s throw away. Nothing left of the girl at all. She’d be gone, disappeared. Just like the murder never happened.

  No doubt about it. Time was playing an ugly game with the folks of Purity, North Carolina. What is it the Bible says about visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children? Yes. Like a splinter working its way out of a wound, Purity was about to come face to face with its sins. If somebody didn’t wake up soon, not anybody inside or outside the town would know about the November tragedy and be able to stop its uncommonly dark trail of energy. And even if someone did get a sniff of trouble in the air and start poking around in some mighty cold ashes, by the way things was looking it’d still be a few weeks down the road before there’d be any answers. Yes, indeed. Just in time for Christmas.

  TWENTY-SEVEN SHOPPING DAYS LEFT read the Purity Post’s Monday morning headline. Shirley Foster, Robeson County Social Services Worker, glanced at it and then rattled the pages over to the obituaries. Today she looked not to see whose name landed in the death section as much as who avoided it. Martha Ann Lovett had gone missing. As long as the girl’s name stayed out of print, there stood a good chance she’d be knocking on her grandpa’s door saying she was sorry for running off again. Everyone within miles and miles of Courthouse Square knew Martha Ann had hot pants. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d hooked up with a handsome drifting farm hand or some spit-polished young city slicker selling more than the back of his business card listed. And then she’d disappear for a few days or weeks. Old news. That’s all Martha Ann’s disappearance meant to the town of Purity. Good for finger pointing and wagging tongues wav
ing the self-righteousness flag. According to the gossip over the butter-pecan tub at the Goody-Goody ice cream parlor on Main Street, she had been gone only a few days now. Not long enough for anyone’s curiosity to really sit up and take notice.

  On an ordinary day, Shirley, too, would have shrugged off Martha Ann’s disappearance like the rest of the townspeople. But, this time felt different to Shirley. And so she decided, as she spread another pat of butter flavored margarine on a slice of pan fried toast, that right after work the following Friday, if Martha Ann still hadn’t shown up, she wouldn’t drive straight home and sit quietly in the lamplight with her mind twisting and churning, wondering this and wondering that. Instead, she decided firmly, she’d take a little detour by the missing girl’s grandpa’s house.

  Shirley scooped up the last spoonful of warm, buttery grits from her plate and took a bite of crisp fried bacon. She always saved the bacon until last so the sweet smoky taste would linger on her tongue. As she finished her breakfast and folded up the newspaper, a small article on the back page caught her attention. The tagline said: Time Ain’t What It Used To Be.

  It seemed Bessie Redding found a diary hidden inside the false bottom of an old trunk stored out in her pack house. The ornate, dome-lidded chest sat out there for years on end, so long nobody knew how long or who it belonged to way back in the family. The content of recent years consisted of old newspapers and magazines used for starting a fire in case the kindling wood ran out. The unexpected snowfall having caught Bessie short of kindling sent her out looking for something to burn. Upon opening the trunk she discovered extensive damage. Rats gnawed a hole through the back of the chest and found the treasure of dry, nest building paper inside. Unfortunately, the rodents had destroyed any value, including sentimental, that could be claimed of the family heirloom. Deciding the time had come for the old chest to go; Bessie set the contaminated paper on fire in a plowed cornfield and then tossed the trunk on top of the burning pile. The trunk landed hard. When it did, a false bottom snapped open and a diary popped out.

  Turned out the diary Bessie snatched from the flames that day belonged to her dear great grandmother, Sadie Redding, who had passed away in the fall of 1936. The Purity Post got wind of the story and asked if they could publish some of the diary’s contents at Miss Bessie’s discretion each Monday and Wednesday thereafter.

  Miss Bessie, being a slow reader by her own admission and prudent in matters of privacy, said she would attempt to offer a tidbit to the Post each week as long as her dear friends and Post readers lent encouragement.

  This particular Monday morning, the first short excerpt from the Sadie Redding diary began:

  Time ain’t what it used to be. Having outlived my own time, I don’t expect anybody I know to truly understand what that means. It takes more than a mess of words to explain the changes. Even so, though my memory ain’t too good any more, I’m going to try to put some sense to it for whoever I decide to give this to. Or in case my departure into the hands of my dear precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ comes first, to whoever might find my humble little book.

  I never had seen a book so pretty as this one. I ain’t ever seen gold lettering and gold trimmed pages on anything other than the Holy Bible. Puttin’ my own words inside makes me feel like they might be important one day. I only know one thing for certain, though. My shaky scribblings need to get to the right hands. And once this little book gets handed over or finds its way into hands that ain’t as old and wrinkled as mine, I hope it will look the same as it does now.

  Putting that, as I know I should, into the hands of the Almighty, I’ll get back to what I was saying. Never mind starting out with reasons why time ain’t what it used to be. There ain’t any point in trying. I’m not even sure I know. You’ll see why for yourself. For now, all you need to hear is one thing. The story I’m going to write on these paper pages happened a long time ago.

  As I start to draw another letter of the alphabet with my pen, I almost put it down and don’t go any further. I wouldn’t have this pen in my hand if any of the young folks cared to listen to what an old lady has to say. But, I suppose I’ll keep on going just the same. My heart knows I really don’t have a choice.

  Yes, time’s a funny thing. It doesn’t know how to stay put. Just when a body thinks they’ve got the years pinned down with one thumb and reaches out with the other hand to grab them… well, there ain’t nothin’ underneath but dust. And since dust is dust, I ain’t going to start by telling you when, or even where all this took place. If I told you that I’d be trying to pin time down and I already know how useless that is. So, I’m just going to tell you how it looked and how it felt and you can try to pin it down if you ain’t able to resist the need. The point is nobody should be forgotten the way my dear Glory was, or poor Isabelle. I swear by all that’s holy, there ain’t never been either a child or a mother closer to being angels than those two dear darlings of mine, from their red hair to their skin, as soft and creamy as buttermilk pudding.

  Shirley rolled up the newspaper and slid the rubber band back around it wondering what in the world had troubled Sadie Redding so and what secret she had kept or been forced to bear, all the years of her long life. She knew Miss Bessie and the Redding line. They were all farmers and farm wives with little more time for anything other than plowing, planting, harvesting, cooking, sewing, sleeping and attending church services. After all that work six days of the week, even privacies of the bedroom lost their gumption, except for the conception of children. And after the honeymoon year, that too, more often than not, became a rare occasion of a practical matter.

  The discovery of Sadie Redding’s diary pushed hard on a door in Shirley’s mind; a door that seemed bound and determined to get slammed back against the wall that had kept it shut tight for years on end.

  Just three months earlier Shirley learned a long overdue lesson from the Cox family about keeping life pure and uncomplicated. She thought their example would be the magic potion to guide her through the rest of her life. Keep every day simple. Use your heart more than your head and the past and the future take care of themselves. Simplicity, said the Cox family, were the short and sweet four syllables that answered every question. Simplicity was an answer so extraordinarily plain, it had been invisible to Shirley, but she saw it now and she wouldn’t be forgetting it.

  Still lately, time and time again it seemed that simple lives hid a whole lot more than she could ever have imagined. A whole other side she never expected to be there. So, the question growing in Shirley’s mind this Monday morning read: Inside outside appearances is any life simple and ordinary?

  Chapter 2

  Pig Wing Soup and Blind Mice

  Turned out Shirley couldn’t wait until Friday evening to satisfy her curiosity about Martha Ann Lovett. An illogical, but undeniable need to look into the teenager’s most recent disappearance prowled around in her head to the point she couldn’t think clearly about anything else. So, Tuesday, after a long day of Intake interviews at the Robeson County Department of Social Services, she found herself driving down Raft Swamp Road with no particular aim in mind except to see where it would take her. And, if nothing else, prove once and for all, the nagging doubts about Martha Ann’s well-being haunted her without warrant.

  The road winding through Hog Swamp had changed since her last passing. Shirley glanced around and back through the rear view mirror. Nothing grew, stood or leaned the way she remembered. The former landscape had disappeared. She hadn’t come out this way in a couple of years, since her caseload area switched with Becky Simpson’s due to Social Worker Client tensions that sometimes occur with fresh out of college I’m going to change the world new employees. And while she recognized Martha Ann by sight, she had never met her grandpa or been to the Britt home. She knew they lived on Jenkins Road, a left turn off Raft Swamp Road, and thought she could spot the house by subtracting the homes of former clients, the area being sparsely populated anyway. But in the space of two years,
more tobacco and corn fields and fenced grazing pasture pushed clusters of Pine trees farther into the distance. And she was pretty sure a tobacco curing barn had been taken down, fallen down or grown over with weeds, as most were on the verge of doing, having been standing fifty or more years. So, Shirley, becoming less and less sure her memory could take her straight to Martha Ann’s grandpa’s house without the landmarks she recalled, stopped by the side of the road in front of the next house she came up on.

  A brown, shaggy dog, standing on the front porch of the small, white farm house, barked and wagged its tail as she opened the car door. Having plenty of experience dealing with country yard dogs, Shirley ascertained from the pitch of the bark that this one fell into the harmless range. She headed up toward the porch, stepping carefully on the half buried sidewalk bricks lying uneven from the wear of heavy downpours and body weight.

  “Nice doggy,” she called out a couple of times.

  As Shirley stepped around a protruding, freshly broken brick, a streak of red hair and dust came scrambling down the driveway from around the side of the house. The little girl kicking up the dust cloud leapt onto the porch, skipped across the rough wooden planks and down the steps toward Shirley with incredibly fearless bare feet.

  The child halted on the bottom step. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Shirley held out her right hand. “I’m Shirley Foster. Who are you?”

  When Shirley reached out, the dog on the porch went to spinning round and round in circles emitting piercing staccato yaps as if a heavy booted foot had stepped on its tail.

  “My name is Lizzie.” Lizzie glanced over a shoulder, slapped her thigh and raised her voice to an incredibly high pitch. “Shut up, Rufus.” She turned back to Shirley. “I like your red hair. I’m seven years old.” Lizzie spread a tight-lipped smile over her face and extended one arm.