Exousia (Karass Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  Out of habit born of experience, Hank grabbed Hannah and held on to her until he brought his truck to a stop. She had been known to be so excited about seeing Melvin that she opened the door as the wheels were still turning.

  By the time he let go of her, Melvin was at the truck, opening the door and hugging her as she stood on the runner. If Hank was pretending that Melvin was his father, Melvin was pretending that Hannah was his granddaughter.

  Hank’s past was never far from his thoughts. He saw himself now as a good man steeped in the evil of his past. He would never be rid of it, but he had decided to soak up every piece of goodness in his life, and his niece’s relationship with Melvin never failed to touch his heart. Not that he would tell anyone. He still had his stoic reputation to maintain.

  That night after the two of them had tucked Hannah into bed and each of them had read her a story, they met at the kitchen table.

  “How are you doing with the investigation, Hank?” Melvin asked.

  “That’s just it. There barely is one. We have no proof it was murder. We don’t have any idea who the women were, and we have no idea how, or why, they were buried on that hill.

  “I was hoping maybe you could remember anything at all from that time that may give us a clue, or at least point us in some direction. We heard that there might have been an informal commune out there during the Seventies. But that’s it. Did you ever hear anything about that?”

  On the wall, Melvin’s old clock ticked as the seconds passed. Hank knew enough just to wait. He wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee, but instead sat as still as he could because he knew that any motion at all could be a distraction. So Hank waited and listened. And while the seconds ticked by, he realized how much he missed hearing his sister Abbie’s voice.

  He became so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t realize that Leif had arrived in whatever magical way dimension travelers got around. He still couldn’t see Leif as clearly as others did. He figured that it took practice.

  He could see Leif enough to see that he was putting his fingers to his lips, and Hank knew enough to stay quiet. So they both waited, silently.

  It felt like an hour had gone by before Melvin cleared his throat and got up to get coffee, although Hank could see by the clock that only a minute had passed. Either that or Leif had tinkered with time. Hank wouldn’t put it past him.

  Melvin couldn’t see Leif yet, so he almost walked through him on the way to the coffee pot. Even though it wouldn’t have made any difference, Leif still stepped out of the way, as he looked at Hank and laughed.

  When Hank grinned back, Melvin asked, while his back was turned, “Whatcha grinning at boy?”

  “Wait. How did you see me grinning?”

  “You know about eyes in the back of your head don’t you?” Melvin answered while grinning to himself, and then pointing at Hank’s reflection in the microwave door. The microwave was a present from Ava so Melvin could quickly heat up the food she sent over. Hank installed it after taking a whole afternoon to rewire the kitchen in order to put it in.

  Hank laughed. “Melvin, you old fool. You had me going there for a second. I was grinning at the fact that you almost walked through Leif.”

  Melvin spun around and said, “Hey, Leif,” to the wrong corner of the room.

  By then Leif was air sitting at the table, and Hank pointed to the space to let Melvin know where Leif had put himself.

  “Go ahead, Melvin,” Hank said. “I know you remembered something.

  “Well. Something. I don’t think it will be constructive, but I do remember a few young women coming out to the farm to buy some chickens from me. They said they were trying to be—what’s the word?”

  “Organic?”

  “Yep. That’s it. Organic. I had no idea what those girls were talking about, but I sold them some prime laying hens. They didn’t want a rooster. Told them that if they let a few eggs hatch, they might end up with one though.”

  “Do you remember what they looked like?”

  “Pretty. Long hair. Long dresses. Kinda naive. Really didn’t know much about what they were doing. Sally—you know, my wife—spent some time with them teaching them how to take care of the chickens. There were two of them. The reason I think they might be from that group you are talking about is they said they were squatting on some hill near Doveland.

  “Yes, it sounds like they might be part of that commune. Can’t you think of anything else about them? Their name or where they were from? Did they ever come back?”

  “They did. They must have done okay with the chickens, and they liked my wife, so they came back for a few more chickens. There were four women—well, young girls to me—that came that time. They told Sally that their little group was growing.

  “I remember Sally showed them how she made bread over a fire. Still don’t know how she did that. It always turned out tasty, but I never learnt how.

  “That time, when they came, it was probably in the fall, cause it was getting cold and Sally was worried about how they would stay warm. They said that they had built a few shelters and would be okay. Don’t see how. It gets to be freezing in the winter. Well, you know that, Hank. You grew up here.”

  “After that, did you ever see them?”

  “Yep, now that I think about it, we ran into them in the grocery store in Doveland the next spring. They looked pretty skinny and miserable, but they seemed to have survived the winter. If I know my Sally, she probably slipped them some money to get food.”

  Melvin stopped talking and gazed into the distance. Hank and Leif gave him time. They knew he was thinking of his wife, and that there wasn’t that much time until he would see her again.

  “You know,” Melvin said. “I think Sally was playing with her new camera that one time and might have taken a picture of those girls. If she did, the pictures are all up in the attic. Maybe Hannah and I could go through them tomorrow morning. Being a Saturday and all, she could stay longer.”

  Leif nodded at Hank and was gone. “That would be wonderful, Melvin. Now, how about a piece of Ava’s pie and more coffee to go with it.”

  Hank knew he wanted to grab every bit of joy out of every moment, because if there really was a picture, someday he might find himself delivering sad news to someone who had been waiting for a long time to have answers.

  He wasn’t looking forward to that job, but Hank was looking forward to getting answers and giving names to those four young women. They deserved to be remembered.

  Twenty-Five

  In the light of a fading sun, Joe could see Hank’s crew finishing up their work for the day. Hank had been there most of the day but had left early, probably to pick up his niece, Hannah, from school. Maybe, Joe thought, since it was a Friday evening, they were going to do something special together. Joe had heard from Craig that Hank and Hannah were very close.

  The building on the land was quite a sight. Joe loved watching people build things, and even though the building was temporarily destroying his beautiful view, he wasn’t upset. Even the low rumble of equipment that could be heard if the wind was just right, wasn’t disturbing him.

  Emily’s idea of an art retreat or camp centered around dance made him happy. His wife, May, bless her heart gone for so many years, loved to dance.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said aloud, even though there was no one there to hear him. Still talking to himself, he said, “Yes, I’ll set up a trust for the camp, too, in your name. That should make you happy, right?”

  Although Joe was talking to his wife, he was just pretending that she was there with him. Joe didn’t believe in the afterlife. In some ways, he wanted to. Joe thought it would be lovely to know that the essence of yourself continued after death. That once dead you could still be happy and prosperous. But Joe thought that if he believed in a glorious afterlife, then
he might have to believe that not everyone got there.

  So, no, Joe couldn’t believe in life after death. Although he was often called upon to support other people’s beliefs in the afterlife because it was part of what he considered being a good doctor, he just couldn’t get himself to accept it.

  Getting up from his chair, Joe walked to the window and stood looking out at the hill. He figured that since they were building on the hill again, there were no more bodies to be found. In the middle of this terrible discovery, that was a reason to be grateful.

  The autopsies that Craig brought to him were disturbing. There were no signs of how they died. Everyone was puzzled.

  Joe was puzzled, too. Why were they buried on the hill? Why together? And of course, the other question, who were they?

  Joe knew that was going to be almost impossible to solve. Too many years had gone by. Even if they were able to extract the DNA, they would have to have a relative that had DNA in the system within the last twenty years. So, unlikely. Too bad. He knew the families would want to know what happened to them.

  What if he had never sold the land to Emily? Would the bodies have ever been found? He hadn’t planned to sell that piece of property, and certainly, he hadn’t intended to let anyone build on it.

  Most of the land he had sold in the last few years had no-build restrictions placed on them. The bike path and the arts center were two ideas he liked, so he had approved Hank and Emily’s plans to build.

  But he detested housing developments and always said no to anyone that asked to buy his land for that reason.

  Joe thought about how much more money he could have made if he allowed that kind of building. He could have even developed the land himself. But then that would be how people would have remembered him. What he wanted was to be remembered for the good he did.

  Joe had delivered, or at least cared for, almost every person in Doveland, and a great many in Concourse. Joe believed that a man only has his reputation in the end, and he would do whatever it took to maintain the one he had spent his whole life developing.

  He had done even more than the good people of Doveland knew he had done. Whenever he went away for a few weeks, he always hired a doctor to come to Doveland to take care of his patients. They were never without Joe’s attention. They knew about his dedication to their health and well-being.

  What the townspeople didn’t know was that Joe had been attending private medical conferences when he went away. Special gatherings where alternative means of healing were discussed and practiced. Although Joe had been interested in mind-over-matter healing for years, it was only now becoming mainstream.

  Joe had so much more he could share about his discoveries on the power of mind over matter, but he was tired. Retiring and spending time in warm climates was on his mind. Someone else would have to make the information public. It wouldn’t be him.

  Because, once again, his reputation was what mattered to Joe most. His patients didn’t need to know why he was so successful at healing them, or the sacrifices he had made to become so skilled. They only needed to see the outcome. They were healed. By him.

  Joe turned back to his files. Deciding which ones to keep and which ones to destroy was taking him much longer than he anticipated. He needed to make sure that he was making the right decisions.

  Sometimes he thought there was no point in keeping any of them. Who cared what he did and how he did it? He was tempted to burn or shred them all.

  He wasn’t leaving for another few weeks, so he still had time to do that if it was necessary, or if it became easier than trying to divide them into keep-or-destroy piles.

  Joe had been building a legacy his whole life. If his son ever returned, he would be returning to a town that loved his father.

  Joe sighed. With all the resources he had at his disposal he never found his son, Edward. Only traces of where he had been. After his mother, May, died of alcoholism, Edward spiraled into a hatred of life that Joe couldn’t stop. He left home when he was fifteen. A runaway. Joe had no idea if he was still alive.

  Even if he was alive, it was possible that he would never come back to Doveland. If he ever returned, it would probably be long after Joe had gone. All Joe wanted was to be respected, and to hope that someday his son might find out that Joe was the town’s hero.

  In the meantime, he had work to do. With one last glance at Emily’s hill, he turned to his desk and his papers. He had decisions to make and time was running out in which to make them.

  Twenty-Six

  Just before Ava pulled her car out of the driveway onto the road to town, another car pulled in. She backed up until she was parallel to the other vehicle. Ava opened her driver side window so she could say hello to the car full of men heading up to the house. “How long did it take for Evan to text you and tell you I was going out?” she asked.

  “Hey, don’t blame Evan, it was him,” Craig said, pointing to Sam sitting beside him in the passenger seat.

  “Sam texted Evan and the rest of us as soon as he heard about your council meeting tonight. Guess he didn’t want to be alone.”

  “It was just Sam that didn’t want to be alone?” Ava asked.

  Craig looked down sheepishly. “Okay, it was all of them. With all the women not home on a Friday night, it seemed like a perfect night for some game watching and beer drinking!”

  Ava laughed. She knew that the beer drinking would probably be mostly coffee drinking and the game watching would probably be a talk session. But, she went along with the pretense of it anyway.

  In the back seat of Craig’s car, Pete winked at her, and Tom, Mira’s twin brother, gave her a mock salute.

  Ava was glad to see that Tom was back in town. Sure, the murders happened a long time ago, but until they found out who had done them, she was happy to have all the men paying attention.

  “Okay, boys, have a good time. I left food in the refrigerator for all of you.”

  As Ava pulled out, Sam said, “Hey, how did she know we would be here?”

  Tom snorted, “Still don’t know much about women yet, do you, Sam?”

  “Obviously not,” Sam said. “Heck, I could have brought food. Didn’t think of it.”

  “I rest my case,” Tom said.

  “What case is that?” Sam asked as he pulled up to the front door.

  “Sam, between you and my sister, in your house, which one of you takes care of the practical things of running the house, at least most of the time? Which one of you makes sure you eat and look nice when you go out the door?”

  “Point taken,” Sam laughed, along with most of the rest of the men in the car.

  Pete just smiled to himself. He used to take that kind of thing for granted. Now he made sure he was doing at least half of those practical things for his wife, Barbara.

  Tom looked back at Pete as they stepped out of the car, “Okay, I take it back. At least one of us is wiser. Pete, we need to take lessons.”

  “Not going to dispute that, young Tom,” Pete said.

  Evan opened the door just in time to hear what Pete said. “Not going to dispute what?” he asked.

  “That Pete has a lot to teach us all about how to be a good man for a good woman,” Craig answered.

  “Great. Get yourself in here, and start teaching. Ava left us food.”

  All the men started laughing, leaving Evan to wonder what was so funny.

  “Tom slapped him on the shoulder. Come on. We’ll tell you over a beer.”

  This time they all laughed and trouped into the house bonded by all that they had gone through and the knowledge that there was more to come. They knew they would need each other to get through it.

  *******

  This time the council met in Grace’s apartment. When Sarah had arranged the meeting, Grace told everyone that
she was making food. She admonished them not to eat before the meeting.

  Since Eric had left to go to the Forest Circle, Grace had lost weight for the first time in her life. She didn’t do it on purpose. She had just lost her appetite.

  When she looked in the mirror, she no longer looked like a short, stocky old lady. Now she was just a short, tired-looking old lady. She didn’t like the look.

  Although Grace had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she was now called elderly, it didn’t give her an excuse for looking so drawn and thin.

  Too thin, she decided. So for the meeting, she cooked up a big pot of pasta, some garlic bread, and brought some of Mandy’s cookies up from the coffee shop. Mandy hadn’t bothered to go home. Instead, she stayed in the coffee shop to clean up and prep for the next day.

  “What is that delicious smell, Grace?” Barbara asked as she came in the door, unbuttoning her peacoat. It was Pete’s. She often borrowed it. Pete would grumble about it missing when he needed it, but Barbara knew that secretly he was delighted to have her wear it.

  Barbara had changed since moving to Doveland with Pete the summer before. She freely admitted that the move had been a godsend for her. Barbara had often dreamed of a life with friends that understood her, and something to do that made getting up each day worthwhile. Now she had both.

  When Evan and Ava offered to help them buy the Diner, it was a miracle. A prayer come true. The offer had saved her from what she saw as a slow death. A life lived without ever becoming herself. Although it had taken them a few months to get into the swing of running a business, Evan had provided them with plenty of help. It pleased them both to know that just over three more years and they would own the Diner completely.