Bud looked right through me to the pictures on the wall. “What happened? How did she . . . ?”
“She was found at the old Erickson barn down on the lake and it looks like that’s where it happened. She was attacked by someone with a knife and she died from a chest wound.”
Bud sat perfectly still through the whole description while Mona kept shaking silently.
“You said you couldn’t identify her by her face.”
God damn my mouth. I’d been trying to keep it as simple as possible, to spare them from something.
“The attacker got to her face with the knife, too, but that may have been after she died. We won’t know until the autopsy’s finished.”
Mona let out a low kind of howl. Bud woke up from his trance and reached for her, but she threw him off.
“Get away from me!”
She stumbled up and back into the kitchen, hitting walls and choking on her own sobbing. The farther away she got, the louder her grief poured out. Mona wasn’t a hard woman, but she was as no-nonsense as they came. I don’t think I’d ever seen her spill so much as a tear in all the years I’d known her. Listening to those wrenching cries come from a woman like Mona was just about the worst thing I’d ever heard.
I leaned in toward Bud, who was still frozen on the couch.
“Bud, what was Hattie going to do after the play on Friday? I need to know as much about that night as you can tell me.”
He didn’t act like he’d even heard me, but after a minute he passed a rough hand over his face and cleared his throat, staring at the floor.
“Going out, she said. She was going out with some of the kids to celebrate opening night.”
“She didn’t say who specifically?”
“No. We figured it was the whole crew of them. They’d all gone out the weekend before, too, after they finished building the set.”
“She wasn’t standing with anybody in particular?”
“She was standing with us.” His voice broke and he swallowed. “She was right there with us.”
The crash made us both jump. I ran through the kitchen toward the back bedroom that Bud and Mona shared. Mona lay on her side on top of the remains of a small spindle table. It looked like her legs had buckled underneath her. Her back shuddered uncontrollably among the mess of tablecloth and books and wood. When I tried to see if she was hurt, she started wildly hitting at me and her cries changed into a high, keening sound. I walked back to the living room to see Bud hadn’t moved. His hands were turned palm up on the couch, fingers curled in like a baby’s.
“Bud.”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were unfocused. There was a smear of flour in his hair where Mona’d shoved him.
“Bud.”
Woodenly, he stood up and walked into the bedroom. He bent over Mona, covering her sobbing body with his own. I wiped my eyes and let them alone.
Pine Valley High School was a one-story brick building on the south side of downtown, marking the point where the storefronts on Main Street turned into houses and gas stations. It hadn’t changed since the sixties, when they put on the addition of the new gymnasium.
Pulling into the half-full parking lot, I met Jake outside the front doors and we followed the signs to the “new gym,” where the play was already under way. Three weeks and a lifetime ago I’d promised Hattie I would come to the Sunday matinee performance. Now here I was.
Jake skimmed a program. “Says Hattie was playing Lady Macbeth.”
We sidled inside and took some empty chairs in the back. Two kids were on stage, both wearing white costumes and standing in front of some castle scenery. I recognized the Asian girl, Portia Nguyen, but didn’t know the boy. They were talking in that flowery Shakespeare language I never cared for, but eventually I tuned in to what they were saying. She was trying to get him to kill somebody and he seemed on board with it. At the end of the scene, she crossed over to him, plotting their reaction after the murder.
“We shall make our griefs and clamor roar upon his death.”
He took her hand. “I am settled and bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show.”
He led her offstage, speaking to the darkness.
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
Afterwards I pulled the teacher in charge aside and told him I needed to talk to the whole cast and crew. He went pale, but didn’t ask me a thing. Peter Lund was his name, a young guy with glasses and no dirt under his nails.
Lund told everyone he wanted to do a “quick wrap,” and called them into the music room. After the doors closed, it was dead silent as the kids waited.
“Great show, uh—everybody. Portia, you . . . you did well. We’ll break the set down in a minute, but Sheriff Goodman needs to talk to all of us right now.”