Rosalind (8 page)

"
What? Jesus Christ. I didn't figure her for that kinda girl."

"Excuse me? You don't know everything about
the situation. Don't you dare judge that poor girl," Nancy scanned the hallway again and when she was convinced that no one could hear her, she continued. "She ain't been runnin' with no boys, Joe. Her father did this to her."

Sheriff Joe Hanes had seen a lot
in his life in the military and as a policeman. Since the war ended, and he'd come back, he'd only seen petty crimes and the occasional car accident (which always turned his stomach), but never in his career as sheriff had he heard about or seen what Nancy was telling him. He stepped back and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I snapped at you, Joe. But this little girl ain't done nothin' to nobody to deserve that opinion from no one."

"Jesus Christ," he said.
"You'll forgive me right now or else I won't forgive myself, but this raises some questions. The family that burned in the fire a month ago…they were her parents. And there was a baby that died in that fire. If she had something to do with that, I got to go where the evidence takes me. Do you think she'll run?"

"Sh
e ain't got nowhere to go, Joe. I'm gonna get her things and bring her home. And from now on, she ain't leavin' my sight."

"And Hank'll be alright with that?"

"He'll have to be," she said.

The next day, Nancy picked Rosalind up at the hospital. They drove to Mrs. Peterson's house to collect Rosalind's things. Mary was sad to see her go, but she and Nancy had agreed that it would be better for the tenants and Mrs. Peterson's blood pressure if she didn't have to worry about Rosalind's health. The sheriff also liked the arrangement because it gave him an opportunity every morning when he went to the diner for coffee to keep tabs on Rosalind. He preferred to call it 'concern for her welfare' but Nancy knew it was motivated more by his police instinct. Hank, to Nancy's surprise, didn't mind the arrangement at all, and since he was going back out on the road, it didn't affect him anyway.

"If she can clean and cook, she can stay," he had told Nancy. "And don't give her a goddamn dime
. The room and food is payment enough," he added before hopping in his truck to go out on another haul.

"Just ignore him, baby," Nancy said to Rosalind. Rosalind was just fine with that.

That evening, Rosalind sat on the couch and watched the television. She didn't know what the program was, but she liked how clear the picture was. While Nancy was knitting something in the chair to the side of the couch, Rosalind reached into her panties and pulled out the picture of the pretty woman in the dress. It was showing more signs of wear since she'd run away from the blaze, and still smelled of smoke, but she folded her knees up to her chin and smiled as she drug her fingers across the page.

"Watcha got there, sweetie?" Nancy asked.

Rosalind folded the paper back up and started to put it back into her panties, but Nancy spoke again. "Honey, it's okay, you can have things here. I was just curious is all."

She pulled the page back out. She tried to think of how to describe the thing and what it meant to her, but instead she got up and walked it over to her, handing Nancy the picture of the woman. Nancy unfolded it and looked at it. "Oh my. Now that is a
handsome dress. I bet you'd look something lovely in it. Where'd you get it?"

"My
daddy brought home some big magazines sometimes. I tore it out before he threw it in the fireplace, 'cause I liked it." Nancy cringed when she said the word
daddy
and wondered how the girl could even stomach it herself.

"This looks like
it's from a Penney's catalog. Says here it costs eleven dollars. That's a lot of money for a young girl to save up." Rosalind shrugged. "What, you don't like the dress?" Rosalind shook her head. "The woman?" Rosalind nodded. "Now what about the woman do you like, if it ain't the dress?"

"
I wanna be pretty like her," Rosalind replied.

"Honey, girls like this don't exi
st. I mean they do, but they're all made up to sell dresses. I bet when she's at home cookin' dinner she looks just like me or you. And don't you ever think you aren't pretty. You've got the most pretty hair and those freckles on your face make you just cute as a button."

When the man in the truck had called her pretty, she recoiled at the thought and didn't trust him. When he'd stolen her money, her distrust of him and anyone who would do such a thing was justified and she figured that that extended to his telling her she was pretty.
But this time, when Nancy had said it, her face blushed and she smiled. She smiled because for the first time in her life she believed it.

"I tell you what, let's do this," Nancy said, putting her knitting
needles and yarn away and grabbing a pen from the end table that sat between the couch and the chair. She slid off of the chair and down to her knees and put the page on the coffee table. "You're gonna write your name underneath her picture, and we'll just pretend that it's Rosalind wearing the pretty yellow dress and not this faker. That sound like a plan?" Nancy said.

Rosalind nodded, but Nancy could tell that something was bothering her. "What is it, Rosalind?"

"I don't know how to write," she replied.

"Well, that's just what we're gonna teach you right now." She handed her the pen, and Rosalind held it like a knife. "Okay, first let's work on how you hold it. You ain't gonna stab anyone with it, so open your palm and then place the pen in it." She did as Nancy instructed. "Now, put your index finger…that's the one closest to your thumb…put the tip on the middle of it. Now grip it on both sides using your thumb and middle finger until it sticks out of the
gap your fingers have made in your hand." Rosalind obeyed. "Now, let's start with your first letter, which is an R." Nancy guided her hand, but let Rosalind do the work. The vertical part of the letter was too long, but Nancy said, "That's fine, now make a half-moon at the top of it and to the right." She did so, although it was jagged and went over the line at the top and the bottom. "Now where the bottom of that hoop meets the line, draw a diagonal line away from it and to the bottom right." Again, she did so, this time stopping the line well short of the elongated one she drew at first. It was an odd looking R, but goddamnit, it was an R and Rosalind looked up at Nancy and smiled. She damn near thought that the girl was going to laugh.

Rosalind waded through the rest of the letters with amazing speed and clarity, each le
tter an improvement on the last. When the D was complete, Nancy grabbed the page and held it up to her. "You're a goddamn genius, honey." She handed the page back to Rosalind and she took it back with her to the couch and sat down. Nancy hopped back into her chair and continued her knitting.

Twilight Zone
was playing on the television, but Rosalind had no interest in anything that was on the set. She just stared at the picture of the woman, the new Rosalind, and forced back the tears. She was happy.

Joe Hanes sat at his desk with the folder in his hands. He read the contents of the letter from the coroner, but now he had a decision to make. Paul Stump had been killed by a knife to the throat, that one was a no-brainer, but Henrietta had died from smoke inhalation, as well as being burned alive. The baby, however, showed no signs of distress on the lungs, which left the coroner clueless as to how he died. He put down the envelope and grabbed the photos from the crime scene. He came to a picture he had seen a thousand times and sure enough, the gas can was sitting there in what was left of the living room. He'd known then that it was the delivery method for the fuel that was used to start the fire, but his humanity did everything it could to shrug off the possibility that someone could have done this to another person, and that it might be a young girl. He still wasn't sold on that idea.

He tried to think back to that morning at the diner. He'd come in and sat down at his usual booth. Rosalind had been there, sitting at the counter and sipping on a soda. What was he missing? He
had walked over to her, patted her on the back and then left. Did he notice anything out of place?

A
ny burns?

And smell?

That was it! The smell. The amount of gasoline it would have taken to burn that room in the fashion that it'd been burned would have been a half-f to full can. Then there was the wood around Paul Stump—deliberately placed there. It was definitely arson, any rookie cop could just look at the scene and see that, but anyone who'd handled that much gasoline would surely have smelled of it after the fact. When he patted Rosalind on the back, he had gotten close enough to smell her and from what he could remember, she did smell like smoke. But anyone and everyone who used a wood-burning stove smelled like that. What he didn't remember smelling was gasoline.

Good.

H
e didn't want to think of an innocent like Rosalind of being capable of something like a triple murder. But he'd better call Nancy and double check. She was with her for an hour before he'd gotten there, and the smell of gasoline could have dissipated before he got there. He grabbed the phone and then put it down. It was still early enough for coffee, even a second cup. He grabbed his coat and walked to the diner.

Nancy and Rosalind were at the counter, Rosalind sipping at her soda.
Sheriff Hanes walked in and sat down next to Rosalind and put his hat on the counter. "Coffee," he said. Nancy poured him a cup and then set it in front of him.

"Rosalind, I'm glad you're here." He thought about the road he was getting ready to take. He wasn't positively sure that Rosalind
wasn't
the murderer, and if he said the wrong thing, she may bolt. He hoped that living at Nancy's had calmed her down and made her feel safe, but with what had been done to her by her father, he didn't think there was any place on the planet where Rosalind would find any real comfort. "We know that the people who died in the fire last month were your family." Rosalind squirmed in her seat. He could see that she was getting anxious, so he tried another approach. "It's alright, honey. I just needed to ask you a few questions, you know, so I can close the case and we can all just move on from it. Is that okay?" Rosalind didn’t look at him, but nodded. "Now this is the hardest question I will ever ask you and I don't want you to be scared, I just need to ask it. Did you have anything to do with setting the fire?"

Rosalind turned to the sheriff. This was an easy one. She had come out of her room with the suitcase her mother had packed for her and the living room was already on fire.

This isn't so bad
, she thought.

She shook her head back and forth.
He scanned her face for the usual tell-tale signs of lying, but found none.

"See there, the worst is over," he said. "Just a few more. Did you see anything strange that night? Was your mommy mad at your daddy?
Was there an argument?" Nancy shook her head back and forth at the sheriff, pleading for him to stop. At that moment he realized that he might be going deeper into some of the details that she shared with him when Rosalind was in the hospital. "You know what," he said shaking his head, "I don't need to know that." He took a drink of his coffee and grabbed his hat, stood up, and walked to the door. "I think we can close this case up just fine, but young lady, unless you want trouble, I'd never again tell anyone your last name is Stump. And from what I know about your daddy, that might just be the best thing you could do. But, you didn't hear that from me." He tipped his hat to a smiling Nancy and left.

Nancy leaned in and said, "I told you he was a
sweetheart. If I wasn't married, I'd hop right on that train, if you know what I mean."

Nancy and Rosalind left the diner and drove past the sheriff's office on the way to Nancy's house. Susan stood at the window inside and watched Nancy's car disappear down the road. Her eyes never left it.

Earlier that morning Hanes had
told Susan the reason Rosalind had been in the hospital. At the time he said it, he had completely forgotten about Susan's own inability to conceive a child. When Susan heard the news, she bowed her head and sat down at her desk, wondering if she was the only woman on earth who couldn't get pregnant. Sheriff Hanes, still focused on the young, red-headed girl, didn't notice her anguish and went about his day. So Susan stewed for the rest of the day and cursed herself. She also cursed Rosalind. Sure, she had lost the baby, but God damn her for being able to get pregnant at all when there were respectable, mature women who deserved it more. Women like Susan, for instance. She was practically royalty in Whispering Pines. It was true that she hadn't earned the right to be called a princess or a queen or anything like that, but she, like any would-be princess, had married into it. She had attained a certain status in this town and it was all due to her choice in husband: a man named John Byrd.

John
Byrd was the owner/operator of Regional Tire. What started out as a small delivery service from an old bus to customers around the county landed him the distinction of Salesman of the Year in 1956 and from there, his own franchise which now serviced Lincoln and the surrounding counties. His farm, however, hadn't produced a thing since the business took off, and he was considering selling it and buying a house in town. The truth was that he hated farming. His parents had left it to him in the will, and when his father was killed in the Big One, and his mother passed suddenly of a heart attack three years after the war ended, he took it over reluctantly. He hated farming, and didn't like his father much more than that, so he shelved the idea and fired the farmhands, leaving the barn to whither season after season. Besides, he had once told Susan, if the tire business didn't take off, the fields would still be there.