The Burnt Island Burial Ground Part 2

Chapter 3.

"Is my wig on straight?" Lindsay's great-grandmother folded down the sun visor in Lindsay's car and flipped the mirror open.

"You look great," Lindsay rea.s.sured her for the tenth time.

Dull, gray mist, a remnant of an earlier rainstorm, hung around Lindsay's mint green Honda Civic. It was shortly before 11 a.m. on the morning of Lindsay's thirty-first birthday, and Lindsay and Chrysanthemum "Simmy" Bennett sat in the parking lot of the Southern Correctional Inst.i.tution for Women. The gigantic, yellow brick facade of the prison sprawled out before them, looking as if someone had set out to build the most architecturally uninteresting building the human mind could conceive, and then ferociously safeguard it with miles of chain link fence and unspooled razor wire.

"You sure I look all right, honey? Did I draw my eyebrows on too high? I don't want to go in there looking like a geisha girl who's just seen a ghost." Simmy scrutinized her reflection in the tiny visor mirror.

"Relax, Simmy," Lindsay said, taking the older woman's hand. "You look fine."

Simmy returned the gentle pressure of Lindsay's squeeze. "You're right. I don't know why I'm so nervous. It's a jail visitation, not the junior prom. I'm being an old ninny."

"It's normal to feel a little nervous. You haven't been out in public for a while, and visiting your granddaughter in prison isn't a very relaxing first outing."

Despite her outward rea.s.surances, inwardly Lindsay shared some of Simmy's concerns. The elderly woman had taken a fierce beating during the same kidnapping and robbery attempt that had left Lindsay and her mother near death a few months before. Like Lindsay, Simmy had initially been paralyzed by anxiety, afraid to leave the confines of the rehab center where she'd been staying. She had only recently worked up the courage to make the visit to Sarabelle. Lindsay wondered if Simmy would ever again be the self-reliant, age-defying octogenarian Lindsay had previously known. In place of that spry, zippy woman, the Simmy sitting next to her now was a slower, more cautious elderly lady-p.r.o.ne to falls, worries, and aches of unknown origin.

"Should we go in?" Simmy asked.

"They won't start letting people in until 11 o'clock on the dot," Lindsay said. "Then they'll have to do all the search and screening procedures on us."

Simmy began to drum her fingers impatiently on the door's armrest.

"We can get out and stretch our legs if you want," Lindsay offered.

"We'd better not. It's so humid." Simmy cast a surrept.i.tious glance at Lindsay's hair, as if it were a Gremlin that might turn from soft and fuzzy to downright diabolical at the mere touch of a raindrop. Which, as it happened, wasn't too far from the truth. Simmy caught her eye and smiled, seeming to read Lindsay's thoughts. She reached up and smoothed Lindsay's curls. "You're gonna make such a pretty bride, honey. Have y'all talked about a date yet?"

"I told you we're not planning anything yet-not for a long time," Lindsay said.

Simmy raised her eyebrows, which were in fact drawn on just a smidge too high and did, in fact, give her a quizzical, geisha-like expression. Lindsay realized that her reply to Simmy's question had tumbled out of her mouth with unexpected sharpness, and she s.h.i.+fted her gaze to avoid Simmy's questioning look. Long accustomed to feeling her way sensitively around other people's hot b.u.t.ton issues, Lindsay silently noted the emergence of this new hair-trigger emotional topic of her own-her engagement to Warren Satterwhite.

Simmy settled back into her seat and s.h.i.+fted the conversational gear into neutral. "Are you looking forward to getting back into your own house?"

"Yes," Lindsay answered, grateful that Simmy wasn't the kind of person to blunder blindly into uncertain emotional territory. "It'll be nice to sleep in my own bed again." Lindsay had spent the last three months staying with her father while the extensive renovations on her house were completed. A new addition, with a handicapped-accessible bedroom and bathroom had been built to accommodate Simmy, and all the old hardwood floors leveled out to prevent the already-wobbly older woman from falling.

"I know it must be tough for you, living at your daddy's house," Simmy said. "I really can't thank you enough for what all you're doing for me. All this upheaval!"

"I want to do it," Lindsay said, and she meant it whole-heartedly. Despite all they had been through, Simmy seemed to wake up each day determined to move steadily forward, even if those movements were slower and wobblier than they used to be. Lindsay had never known anyone so disinclined to judge others and so quick to accept people and situations as they were. When Lindsay was a child, she'd often wished that Simmy-fun-loving, affectionate Simmy-could've been her caregiver, instead of her wildly mercurial mother Sarabelle, her often-critical and sometimes-pigheaded father Jonah, or her frosty Aunt Harding. Ever since she'd found out that Simmy was in fact her long-lost great-grandmother, she'd latched onto her with both hands. Simmy returned the affection, seeming to revel in finally having real family ties.

"Still," Simmy continued, "you and your daddy haven't always seen eye to eye. It can't be easy for a grown woman to be sleeping in her childhood bed."

"Living with my dad hasn't been as bad as I thought. He's really mellowed. And it helps a lot that I'm not going out every night in a miniskirt to raise h.e.l.l the way I did when I was a teenager. If anything, I feel like I'm cramping his style. He seems to have a very active social life."

"Is he seeing somebody?" Simmy asked, her eyes lighting up with interest.

"To tell you the truth, I wouldn't know. For a middle-aged preacher, he sure seems to have an awful lot of late night phone calls and meetings, but if I ask anything about it, he just dodges the question. Maybe he's trying to pay me back for all the sneaking around I did when I was a teenager. Anyway, I think we can tough it out for a few more days."

Simmy smiled. "I promise I'm gonna think of some way to pay you back. And I'm gonna get myself better just as soon as I can so I can get out of your hair and back to my own house."

"There's no rush. You know I'm glad to have you," Lindsay said.

"You're young, and you and Warren have got to get on with your lives. You don't need a little old lady doddering around underfoot."

"Warren loves you, too."

"Y'all are too good to me. Did you know Warren stopped in the other day with a box of Krispy Kremes for all the nurses at my rehab place? He's a sweetheart." Simmy smiled. "I don't know what I'd have done without you. Ever since the accident, I feel like I'm not myself. Everything's so caddywumpus, I don't know which end of the hog to feed."

Lindsay noticed the way Simmy used the word "accident" to describe the series of terrible events that had befallen them a few months before. It seemed an odd euphemism, but Lindsay couldn't really find the right words either. What words could describe her great aunt's violent death and the exposure of the painful secrets the old woman had tried so hard to hide? What simple phrase could sum up the savage attack that followed-an event that still made Lindsay sit bolt upright in the middle of the night and clutch her heart to keep it from pounding right out of her chest?

"Do you want to talk about it?" Lindsay asked gently. She had tried to coax Simmy into talking about those terrible days so many times she'd lost count. Talking through other people's crises and traumas had formed a large part of her chaplaincy work, and had become almost second nature to her. Following the incident with Swoopes, Lindsay herself had undergone several intense weeks of crisis counseling before she'd been able to return to work. And even in spite of receiving professional help, her emotional state had remained precarious. Simmy, by contrast, had always been the kind of person who marched relentlessly forward through life, without pausing for nostalgia or deep reflection. She'd made it clear that psychoa.n.a.lysis didn't interest her in the least.

"You know, I hardly remember anything from that night, which is a blessing. I can't see why you keep wanting to hash through all that mess again. It's morbid." Simmy flipped open the visor and checked her wig again. "We've got happier things to talk about anyway, like your birthday and your wedding and moving back into your house."

Lindsay sighed. A part of her wished that Simmy would open up to her. If the older woman could share her feelings about what happened, Lindsay selfishly hoped she might at last be able to heal some of her own psychological wounds. But she'd have to resign herself to defeat on that score.

"How's Kipper doing, honey?" Simmy asked.

"Kipper's great," Lindsay answered. "He's coming to stay next weekend."

"Oh, I'd clean forgotten about that shared custody arrangement y'all have. Is that working out all right?"

"I suppose so. Kipper always has trouble settling for the first day or so when he visits me. I don't know if it's all the table sc.r.a.ps Tanner feeds him, or the stress of being around those weaselly little Pomeranians. And then, just as soon as he's back on track, I have to take him back there."

Lindsay's part-owned dog, Kipper, had come into her life a few months before in the most roundabout way imaginable, but he was now such a firmly entrenched part of her life she couldn't imagine being without him. The large, black-and-orange Doberman had become her most loyal companion, and had even taken a bullet trying to save Lindsay's life. The dog had originally been owned by Warren's father, but when Warren Sr. pa.s.sed away, Kipper ended up in the care of Warren's sister, Tanner, and her husband, Gibb. It was never entirely clear what happened next. To hear Lindsay's mother tell it, Sarabelle had rescued Kipper from death's door after a hurricane. Tanner's version cast Lindsay's mother as a dog-napper, who used the hurricane as cover to abscond with him. Whichever version hewed closer to the truth, somehow the dog wound up living with Lindsay's great aunt and her mother on North Carolina's Outer Banks until "the accident" had left her great aunt dead and her mother in jail. Lindsay brought the Doberman back to Mount Moriah in the aftermath and reunited him with Tanner, who insisted that she was his rightful owner. Knowing how much the dog meant to Lindsay, Warren managed to negotiate a joint-custody arrangement that allowed Kipper to stay a part of her life.

"Oh, look," Simmy said, pointing excitedly. "They're letting everybody in."

Twenty-five minutes later, Lindsay and Simmy sat in the prison's waiting room, perched on the kind of b.u.t.t-numbingly uncomfortable plastic chairs that seem to exist only in government buildings. They'd heard Sarabelle Harding's name called over the intercom several minutes earlier, but she had yet to emerge from the metal door that led to the prison's main living and working areas. Lindsay silently marveled that even in an environment that was regimented down to the minute, her mother still managed to be late.

At long last, the large metal door clanged open and Sarabelle emerged. They each gave her the brief hug permitted by prison policy and took their seats opposite each other.

"Honey, you look wonderful," Simmy said to her. And indeed it was true. Sarabelle had always possessed a fine-boned beauty, but in recent years, her bad habits-excessive smoking, drinking and sunbathing-had begun to catch up with her. However, an unexpected silver lining of the brutal beating she'd endured at Leander Swoopes's hands was that her facial injuries necessitated extensive surgery. The two reconstruction procedures had restored a large measure of her youthful good looks. Lindsay's mother also wore full makeup, which looked strangely at odds with her shapeless, dun-colored prison clothes.

"I been trying to make a little bit of an effort to look good, even though the only men you see in here are the guards." Sarabelle lowered her voice to a whisper. "You know I used to have a thing for men in uniform, but I swear I ain't never seen a more pig-ugly collection of the male species than what's on display here."

Simmy gave a deep, hearty laugh, but Lindsay twitched her eyes around the room, wondering if the "pig-ugly collection" had a way of eavesdropping on them and punis.h.i.+ng Sarabelle for her comments. She had visited Sarabelle a few times during her incarceration, and had found that, just as in the outside world, she could never be sure which personality her mother would present. A few times, Sarabelle had been pathetic and needy, bemoaning the unfairness of her fate and sniffling into her sleeve like a small child. Other times, she sat with her arms tightly crossed, her face full of resentment. But usually, like today, she was the happy-go-lucky, good-time girl, determined to show that she was still having fun despite how The Universe had wronged her.

"And speaking of ugly," Sarabelle continued, "most of the girls in here could be men."

Sarabelle and Simmy's m.u.f.fled snickers sounded nearly identical, and the same impish glow lit up their faces. Lindsay smiled, too, but she felt a familiar wall of exclusion emerging. She knew it wasn't intentional, but any time Simmy and Sarabelle got together, it became clear that while the two of them naturally surfed along on the same carefree wavelength, the more introspective, a.n.a.lytical Lindsay would be left dogpaddling in their wake. They were just built differently. Having grown up with only her aloof great aunt and her distracted, disciplinarian father in her life, Lindsay still found herself at sea when trying to understand the intricacies of family dynamics. It was something she'd always felt she had to study, like algebra. And as ever, she was astonished by her mother's capacity to be so totally self-centered that she failed to notice Lindsay's sparkling engagement ring, or even mention the fact that today was her only child's birthday.

When Lindsay s.h.i.+fted her attention back to the conversation, Simmy and Sarabelle had moved on to a new subject.

"While I'm thinking about it," Sarabelle said, snapping her fingers, "I meant to tell y'all something. I have a pen pal. You'll never guess who." She waited for a moment, allowing the suspense to build. "Christopher Sikes."

Simmy and Lindsay looked at her blankly. "Who's Christopher Sikes?" They asked in unison.

Sarabelle's eyes widened and she leaned closer, like a little girl about to whisper a secret. "Lydia Sikes's son."

"Who's Lydia Sikes?" Simmy asked.

Lindsay almost didn't hear the question, though. The sound of her own blood pumping through her body seemed suddenly deafening. Lydia Sikes's murder the previous Christmas had launched a chain reaction of terrible events. The mention of her name stiffened Lindsay's spine and caused her to grip the edge of the table for support.

"Don't you remember that woman who shacked up with Leander? The one that died?" Sarabelle said. "Well, her son, Christopher, wrote to me."

"What did he want with you?" Lindsay asked, recovering the power of speech.

"I can't be sure. His letters were real nice at first. Asked me if I was doing okay, and if they were treating me good in here. But I think that was all just b.u.t.tering me up, because eventually, he got around to asking me if I knew something about where Leander might be hiding out. I wrote back and told him point blank that I hoped to G.o.d that Leander was at the bottom of the ocean, and that's the honest truth."

"Did he write again?" Lindsay asked.

"Yes, but I'm not sure he believed me." She held her hands to her chest and frowned, looking at them for sympathy, as if the idea of someone not believing a convicted felon and serial liar like her should strike them as utterly improbable. "He was still real polite and friendly, but I got the impression that he thought Leander was just waiting in the wings, and he and I would run off together as soon as I got out of here. Course I told him that I ain't seen a trace of that rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d since that whole mess."

"That's terrible for him to think that after what that man did to you," Simmy said.

"I know!" Sarabelle agreed.

Lindsay interrupted. "If Lydia's son followed your trial, he'd know that a big part of your defense, and the reason you got off so lightly, was that you said Leander had you under his thumb completely. And he'll also know that you stayed in touch with Leander even when he was in prison and the entire time he was living with Lydia Sikes."

"Well, that doesn't mean I'm still in touch with him," Sarabelle said. "There's no reason to think he's even still alive."

"No, but he's been known to go underground before when the heat was on him. And you're in prison right now, serving a sentence for helping him get and then dispose of a gun that was used to kill Christopher's mother," Lindsay said flatly. "You can see where he might get the wrong idea."

Sarabelle slumped in her chair, crossed her arms, and pouted. "Did you come all the way here just to be mean to me? I thought we were gonna have a nice visit. Can't you just try to be nice to me for once? It's your birthday, after all. We should be celebrating instead of arguing. I just wish I wasn't cooped up in here so I could've made you your favorite red velvet cupcakes. I know how much you love them."

Lindsay refused to go on her mother's guilt trip. Leave it to Sarabelle to acknowledge her birthday in such a manipulative way. "I'm not being mean," Lindsay said firmly. "I'm just wondering what he really wanted. Don't you think it's a little weird that he got in touch with you? Especially if he thinks you're in league with the man who killed his mother?"

"He's harmless," Sarabelle said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Poor, white trash, just like his mother. I know the type."

Lindsay raised an eyebrow, but managed to refrain from pointing out the irony of the insult, coming from a woman who'd spent the better part of her adult life living hand-to-mouth on the fringes of polite society.

"Let me know if he gets in touch again, okay?" Lindsay said. "Anything that has even the slightest connection to Leander Swoopes gives me a very bad feeling."

Chapter 4.

At 10 o'clock that night, Lindsay was splayed out on her father's couch watching WWE wrestling. As if the visit with Sarabelle hadn't been exhausting enough, after Lindsay dropped Simmy off at the rehab center where she was living, she'd ended up working most of the afternoon and evening, covering a s.h.i.+ft at the hospital for her friend and boss Rob, who had come down with a stomach virus. The afternoon had been among the most miserable she could remember-two long-time patients, including a young mother in her thirties, had died, and she'd been required to help one of the hospital's oncologists break the news to a teenage patient that his latest round of chemotherapy had failed to check the fast-growing tumors that were destroying him from the inside. While her own body might have come away from the s.h.i.+ft unharmed, Lindsay felt like her soul had been on the losing side of a fistfight.

Although Warren had swung by the hospital briefly to bring her dinner during her s.h.i.+ft, he was busy that night helping out with the investigation of an armed robbery case in the neighboring county. She had yet to see her father, who still wasn't home after conducting the evening service at his church. All in all, she was totally drained of energy and lacked the mental capacity to watch anything more taxing than a bunch of greased-up gym rats hurtling themselves around on a rubber mat. Neither she nor her father had had time to do the dishes that day, so she also lacked clean bowls and spoons, which meant that when the phone rang, she was eating Apple Jacks straight from the box.

Even before the word "h.e.l.lo" was fully out of Lindsay's mouth, Tanner's voice screeched, "You need to come and get the dog. Something's wrong with him!"

Lindsay snapped to attention, overturning the cereal box that had been perched on her lap. "Are you at the vet?"

"It's not that," Warren's sister said. "Just get over here."

Lindsay began to ask another question, but the sound of the dial tone let her know that Tanner had already hung up the phone.

When Lindsay pulled up in front of Tanner and Gibb's house twenty minutes later, Tanner immediately emerged from the front door and accosted her as she stepped out of the car.

"What took you so long?" Tanner demanded.

"Well, my dad's house is nineteen minutes' drive away from you, and it took me 60 seconds to get my keys and coat," Lindsay said irritably. "What's going on with Kipper? Is he okay?"

Tanner's coal-black eyes flashed at Lindsay. "Why didn't you tell me he'd been corrupted?"

"Corrupted?"

"Yes, corrupted. He peed on Ringo." Ringo was the yappiest of Tanner and Gibb's quartet of Pomeranians: John, Ringo, George and m.u.f.fin. "I let them out in the yard to do their business and I saw him lift his leg and aim right for Ringo."

"Are you sure? I mean, Kipper's a lot taller than they are. Maybe Ringo just wandered into his line of fire." At times like these, Lindsay was immensely grateful for the years of chaplaincy experience that allowed her to maintain a neutral expression even when she was talking to someone unhinged by grief, anger or, in Tanner's case, a natural tendency toward melodrama.

"This is the last straw! I've suspected that something was off with him ever since he came back. It's bad enough that him being in my house endangers my life, but since that wasn't his fault, I was willing to try to overlook it."

Lindsay leaned wearily against the hood of her car. "Tanner, please try to help me understand what we're talking about. How is the dog endangering your life?"

"Obviously, him spending six months in the company of hardened criminals was going to have an effect." Tanner's eyes darted from side to side as if to ensure that no invisible person on the totally empty street could overhear them. "But I think he might have Swedish Syndrome."

"Swedish Syndrome?" Lindsay repeated. "Do you mean Stockholm Syndrome?"

"Yeah, that thing where the kidnapped person starts to identify with the person who took them. I think he has that. Ever since he came back, he just mopes all the time. He never really played with the other dogs, but now he'll go in the bedroom and actually close the door behind him to keep them away. It's awful. They just stand there and bark and scratch and cry, like they're trying to ask their big brother what's wrong and how they can help him. But he just ignores them! And I don't like the way he looks at me lately. Like he's plotting something."

"Maybe he just got used to a quieter lifestyle when he was on the Outer Banks. It'll probably just take him a little more time to readjust," Lindsay said.

"It's been four months. If anything, he's getting worse."

"I still don't understand what you mean about him being dangerous. He'd never hurt any of us," Lindsay said.

Tanner sniffed. "How can you be so sure? He's got that big scar on his side from where he got shot. It looks just awful, and I don't like having to explain to everybody who sees him about him being kidnapped and forced to live with criminals. After all, your mother was in league with that murderer, Leander Swoopes. She was basically his Bonnie."

Once again, the sound of Swoopes's name made Lindsay almost physically sick. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice steady. "His Bonnie?" she asked.

"Yeah, as in Bonnie and Clyde. Your mother already stole the dog once. For all I know, she might be on the phone to Swoopes right this minute telling him to kill me so she can keep him for herself."

"Sarabelle's in jail, and will be for a long time. Swoopes is probably at the bottom of the Atlantic. Even if he's alive, there's no way that Sarabelle would be in touch with him. He tried to kill us both," Lindsay said, working hard to convince herself of something that was by no means certain. Too many times before, she had placed her trust in her mother, only to see her nave belief torn to shreds by betrayal.

Tanner crossed her pale, freckly arms over her chest. Her skin seemed to glow in the porch light. "My mind's made up. You need to take him. Permanent." Tanner turned on her heel and led the way into the house. "I'll get his stuff packed. He's in there," she said, walking past Lindsay and gesturing to the living room. Tanner's husband, Gibb, slumped on the couch in front of the TV. He wore a stained Carolina Panthers sweats.h.i.+rt, which had inched up to reveal the pale, hairy expanse of his lower belly. With his fat-fingered paw of a hand, he shoveled cereal into his mouth straight from the box. Gibb grunted a greeting and held out the box to offer some Cap'n Crunch to Lindsay.