“Well, hi there,” they both shouted too enthusiastically.
I waved a quick hello.
“What brings you in here today?” asked the one striding toward me. She was clad in a beige sweater, blue jeans, and red designer glasses. Did these people not know how hot it was here?
“I just moved here and I need a bunch of stuff.”
“He just moved here and he needs a bunch of stuff,” she yelled to the other woman.
Turning back to me, she asked, “Where’d you move in?”
“The Old Humphries Farm.” I hadn’t anticipated adding the “Old,” but after seeing the place and sleeping a night there, it seemed necessary.
“He just moved into the Humphries place,” she echoed.
The other woman started clapping.
I pondered running to my car and driving back to Seattle.
As if sensing this, the woman grabbed my arm. “Now, what all do you need?”
I told her I needed a lot of the necessities, towels, bedsheets, and “all that jazz.”
Annie, that was her name, gave my arm a tug and said, “Well, all right then.”
An hour later, I walked out with two sets of bedsheets, three pillows, a quilt, four towels of different dimensions, a blender, a toaster, and an invitation to attend both women’s church revivals the coming weekend.
My next stop was the hardware store. The two men working were busy with other customers, and I got out of there quickly with a deluxe toolbox and some bolt cutters.
As I was putting the tools in my car, my phone rang. It was the cleaning service. I scheduled to meet two cleaners at the farmhouse in an hour. The woman on the phone didn’t ask for an address. The Humphries Farm seemed to suffice.
After the call, my phone rang a second time. It was the electric company confirming the power had been turned on, which meant I could buy some groceries.
I decided to walk to the grocery store rather than drive, hoping the short stroll would help loosen up the stiffness in my leg.
I remembered seeing the grocery store a block and a half past the traffic light and headed in that direction. After a block, I reached a small park, which I hadn’t noticed the previous day. The park was located on the corner of the busiest intersection on Main Street. It would have been a prime location for commerce, possibly even the most sought after lot in all of Tarrin. The park was as out of place as the espresso machine in the farmhouse kitchen.
There was a stone bench, a couple small trees, two rectangular flower beds, and a large rock. Leaning against the rock was a handful of yellow flowers.
The rock was twenty yards from the sidewalk. The sun reflected off its shiny surface. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t the rock reflecting the sun, it was a bronze plaque.
I stepped onto the grass and approached the rock. It was four feet wide and came up to my waist. It was granite, a kaleidoscope of gray, white, and black. The face of the rock sloped down gently where the plaque was secured.
Inscribed on the plaque was:
In Loving Memory:
Peggy Bertina
Will Dennel
Neil Felding
Tom Lanningham
Odell McBride
October 9, 2012
You will never be forgotten
I leaned down and looked more closely at the flowers propped against the rock.
Tulips.
Five of them.
The park was a memorial.
My brain started whirring. The first theory that popped into my head was that the park seemed so out of place because there had previously been a commercial business there. Then something happened.
A fire.
There must have been a fire and five people died.
I gave the memorial a departing nod, then found my way back to the sidewalk. A half block later, I came to the town grocery store, Harvest Food & Market. Though it was half the size of the Whole Foods where I shopped in Seattle, it had a decent selection. I pondered buying health food, but I was in no shape to exercise, and I decided to postpone Operation Fitness at least a few more days.
The checkout clerk was an acne-faced kid with dark hair.
“You guys don’t have any chocolate chip waffles,” I informed him.
“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows jumping. “I don’t think we have those.”
“Yeah, you don’t. Who do I talk to about ordering them?”
“Travis, but he’s not here right now.”
“Well, if you can get Travis to start carrying chocolate chip waffles, I’ll give you fifty bucks.”
He smiled and said he’d see what he could do.
While he was bagging my groceries, I asked, “What’s the deal with the memorial down the street? Did a business burn down?”
“You aren’t from around here?”
“No, I’m not.”
He took a deep breath and said, “It wasn’t a fire. There used to be a grocery store there, but then some guy came in and shot up the place.”
“And five people died?”
He nodded, then sighed. I could tell he knew at least a couple of them. Heck, in such a small town, he probably knew all five.
I asked, “What was the name of the place?”
“Save-More.”
Chapter Five
The next day was May 31st.
The two women who cleaned the house were there for close to six hours the previous day. With the layers of dust gone, the cobwebs cleared, the tile floor scrubbed, the carpets vacuumed, the windows cleaned, and the electricity, gas, and water working, the house was a stark contrast from when I first entered just a day and a half earlier. The house had been hit with a defibrillator. Brought back from the dead.
Just like me.
I’d put the clean sheets on the bed but I slept fitfully. Finally, at around 3:00 in the morning, I gave up.
Part of the reason I couldn’t sleep was my aching ribs. The other part was that I couldn’t turn my brain off. My brain was a dog with a bone, the bone being the five people murdered four years earlier.
What happened?
