Page 17 of Deeper Than the Dead

“You’re right.” Beatrice stood. “We should go. My goodness, you’ve barely shaken the dust off from your travels.” She glanced down at her friend before looking to Vera once more. “We’ll pop in again when you’ve caught your breath.”

Vera was on her feet in a heartbeat. She pushed that fake smile back into place and lied, “I look forward to it.”

Florence reluctantly rose from the sofa. She studied Vera a moment. “Mercy, you look so much like your mama.”

Vera managed a real smile this time. “Thank you. I consider that a great compliment.”

“You should,” Florence said. “There was no one else like your mama.”

With that, she followed the route her friend had taken, all the while babbling on about needing more time to catch up. Vera thanked them again for the casserole. Once they were gone, she closed the door and collapsed against it.

Eve came down the stairs. “They gone?”

Vera glared at her. “Thanks a lot.”

Her sister shrugged. “Admit it, you would have done the same thing.”

Vera rolled her eyes. “Maybe.” She laughed then. “Florence Higdon hasn’t changed one little bit. How on earth does that woman keep her hair so high? It’s like a cone-shaped tower—like the one at the Twistee Treat shops we stopped at for ice cream when we went to the beach in Florida.”

Before.

Eve laughed, and for a moment they were lost to the memories together. The seemingly endless hours in the car to get to Florida and then the ice-cream-swirl-topped buildings where they savored the best cones of the summer.

“Good times,” Eve said, her voice distant. “As for the hair,” she added, “you know the old saying. The higher the hair, the closer to Jesus.”

Vera rolled her eyes. Neither she nor Eve had ever been big-hair types. “Maybe that’s where we went wrong. We hardly went to church anymore after Mama died.” They were certainly in a mess—one of biblical proportions.

Eve scoffed. “I don’t think even Jesus could get us out of this one.”

Sadly, Eve was right. They were in trouble here, and all the hard-earned experience and knowledge of fifteen years in the criminal justice system wasn’t going to fix it.

Their only hope was plausible deniability.

7

Boyett Farm

Good Hollow Road, Fayetteville, 11:15 p.m.

Vera had never liked the silence.

She opened her eyes. Blinked against the darkness. Stared at the ceiling.

Everyone else was likely asleep. Luna had come home just before ten and gone to bed. Her mood hadn’t improved much, but at least she was no longer in tears. Eve went to bed before Vera as well. She insisted she needed an early start at the funeral home in the morning.

Since then, Vera had walked the floors. She did some googling, studiously bypassing anything with her name in the lede. She’d avoided the radio and television since leaving Memphis. But past experience with this sort of thing provided plenty of fuel for her imagination.

Oddly enough, the shit show in Memphis now had serious competition for top priority.

Eventually, she forced herself to climb into bed. Then she had tossed and turned.

She threw back the covers and sat up, dropped her feet to the floor. The hardwood felt cool under her bare toes. She pushed her hair back from her face, swiped at her damp forehead with her arm. The damned floor was about the only thing around here that felt cool. Was the air-conditioning broken? She hadn’t stopped sweating since she arrived. She stood. Glanced around the room that had been hers as a kid. The posters of her favorite rock bands and celebrity crushes still lined the walls. The same daisy-covered quilt her grandmother had made when Vera was twelve lay on the bed.

If she looked closely enough, she’d find the scratches in the white paint of the old iron headboard where she’d added her name when she was ten. The books she had loved as a teenager lined the shelves next to the desk her mother had purchased from a tag sale and painted a pale green to match the leaves on the quilt.

Vera dragged her fingers across the top of the desk, memories tugging at her emotions. Life had been good then ... before. Full of hope and possibility. All had gone to hell after her mother died and hadn’t been right again until Vera was far away from here and in college. For a long while she’d come back once or twice a year. Then it was just once a year ... even less, more recently. Work was always her excuse. Of course she and her sisters had spoken by phone regularly. One or the other would usually hand the phone to their father for a quick hello. But coming back just wasn’t something Vera had wanted to deal with any more often than absolutely necessary.

She thought of her father now, lying in that bed at Hillside, not even knowing his own name most of the time. Maybe she’d been selfish to avoid him all those years. But he’d had Luna. She’d stayed home even while attending college.

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