The souls of lost lake, p.13
The Souls of Lost Lake, page 13
Noah studied her for a long moment. Ava squirmed. Finally he spoke. “You’re a deep thinker, aren’t you?”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked. She straightened against the wall from her spot on the floor, ignoring the chair that sat in front of Noah’s desk, empty and ready if she wanted it.
“Yes,” he answered.
Ava shook her head vehemently. “Don’t think so. I just observe. You know? A kid learns to do that when her parents are dead and she’s gotta look out for herself.”
“Mmm.” Noah nodded thoughtfully. He seemed to relax a bit. Maybe it was the distraction of focusing on her life instead of his. “And you don’t recall your family? At all?”
Now it was her turn to squirm. “Little pieces of them, I remember,” she answered, then blanched. Little pieces. Perhaps the wrong description considering what had supposedly happened to them.
“Why did you come to the church last night?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Ava knew Noah Pritchard had been waiting to ask it since he’d found her there that morning. She debated on lying and giving some silly answer, but then one didn’t lie to a preacher, and certainly one didn’t lie in the Lord’s house. At least Ava Coons didn’t.
“Thought I’d see if’n I could find records here. ’Bout my parents. Who they were. Who might’ve known ’em.”
“Marriage records?” He raised his eyebrows.
Ava nodded. “Or baptism ones. For my brothers—for me. Can’t recall much, see, and I figure I better start before I get caught for somethin’ I didn’t do.”
Noah seemed to agree with her as he nodded slowly. “Yes.” He drew in a deep sigh. “They’ve yet to find Jipsy. Matthew Hubbard’s funeral is Saturday.”
“You’re doin’ the funeral?”
“I am. It’s my first one,” he admitted.
Ava drew back in surprise. “Your first one? But I thought you were a preacher?”
Noah offered a small smile. “Even pastors have to have their firsts.”
Ava accepted his response, and a companionable silence descended for a blessed moment before Noah saw fit to break it.
“How did you know Matthew Hubbard?” It was Noah’s narrowed gaze that made Ava squirm again. She made a pretense of trying to fit the broken pencil back together again.
“Didn’t. Didn’t know him much at all.” She knew Noah wouldn’t be satisfied with that.
He folded his hands together as if in prayer, resting his forearms on top of the open Bible. “There has to be a connection. Why would the town think you killed him otherwise?”
“’Cause there was an ax in him?” Ava knew she should probably get all swoony like some of the ladies in town at the idea, but when one grew up hearing folks talk about how your own family was axed to death, one became numb to it.
“Folks assume that’s what happened to your family, don’t they?” Noah raised an eyebrow.
Ava nodded. The pencil wasn’t fitting back together. She flipped it onto the floor. “Sure.”
“But you’ve no recollection of it? They never found your family’s bodies?”
Ava met his eyes then. She was sure hers looked as haunted as his usually did. There was something in Noah’s voice—that gentle soft bit of something that made her melt inside. Not in a nice way either. The kind of way that made her feel little again. Scared. Needing to be protected—no, defended. She wondered if Noah had been around when she was thirteen and emerging from the woods covered in blood, if life might’ve turned out different. Maybe he would’ve taken her in. Avoided Widower Frisk and all his chores and hollerin’, and avoided Jipsy with her shrewish face and bossy attitude.
“Ava?” Noah pressed.
She blinked, breaking their connection. “No. They didn’t. Figure animals or somethin’ got to them.”
“There would still have been some remains.” Noah fidgeted with the corner pages of his Bible. “Some evidence of their deaths.”
“Oh, there was evidence!” Ava sat up straighter. “Folks went out lookin’ and found our cabin by the lake. The cabin was burned up. They found blood all over outside it.”
Noah slouched back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Did they search the lake?”
Ava shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“So then how do they know your family was killed by an ax?”
She lifted her eyes. “Guess they don’t. I was just dragging one behind me and it had blood on it. Stands to reason, I s’pose.”
He stood and paced back and forth behind his desk before pausing and staring down at her. “Those are all drummed-up conclusions based on nothing but circumstantial pieces to the puzzle. There’s no way you, as a child, could have wielded an ax like Lizzie Borden.”
The name stilled Ava. The chanting from the night before made its way through her recollection. That hissing, whispery voice that taunted her, knowing she was there in the office, but instead of seeking her out to do her harm, it toyed with her like Jipsy’s cat toyed with a mouse.
“‘Ava Coons took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.’”
“What!” Noah’s voice was sharp.
Ava stared up at him. “Heard that before?” She didn’t like the quaver in her voice.
Noah nodded. “Yes. But about Lizzie Borden, not you.”
“Who is Lizzie Borden?” Ava ventured, unsure she wanted to know after last night.
Whack. Whack.
Noah squatted in front of Ava, balancing on his toes. He searched her face for a long moment before answering. “Back about forty years or so, she murdered her parents. With an ax. She killed them while they slept. But they did not convict her of the crime.”
“Like me?” Ava whispered.
A shadow flitted across his face. He gave an abrupt nod. “Like you. She lived out her life—a fairly good one, as far as she seemed to portray. But the little song was made up during her trial and it stuck.”
“What if she didn’t kill her parents?” Ava mumbled. “What if’n she was like me and just . . . couldn’t remember nothin’ at all?”
Noah reached out a hand in a gesture meant to encourage Ava to stand with him. She ignored his hand and stood on her own, and he quickly followed suit. “There was supposedly a lot of signs that made most people think she did kill her parents. There was much more evidence in that case than there is here against you. What motive would you have had as a young woman? What motive would you have now to kill Matthew Hubbard? Jipsy?”
“I can’t abide Jipsy,” Ava supplied matter-of-factly.
Noah frowned. “Enough to kill her? Make her body vanish like your family’s did?”
Ava looked away. He kept coming back to the crux of the matter, and that was the worst part of it for her. She simply didn’t know. She couldn’t remember half of what she did. All she knew was that last night someone came to find her, and instead of taking her and turning her in, they left her with the echoing voice of the Borden rhyme, but with her own name inserted, and an unspoken threat that they knew. They knew the truth of it. And they intended on enacting their own sort of justice, but only after they finished making Ava suffer the mental torture of wallowing in the vague memory of her family’s blood.
“Here it is.” Noah hefted the massive tome of church records onto his desk. Dust poofed into the air. There was the distinct smell of musty paper.
Ava sidled up next to him, peering around his shoulder at the records in the hardbound ledger.
Noah held his index finger under the names of Ava’s parents. “Chester and Bertha Sparks Coons, married April fifteenth, 1905.”
“That can’t be right.” Ava bent closer to study the handwriting that had inked her parents’ marriage date into the church records.
“Why not?” Noah gave her a sideways glance.
“’Cause of my older brother—I recall them sayin’ he was fifteen when he got killed. If that was the case, then he was born in 1905. Ain’t enough time for my parents to get hitched and have a baby before it turned 1906, if’n they got married in April.”
Noah cleared his throat. Ava noticed his body tensed a bit. “Well, perhaps—perhaps he was born early.”
“Doubtful.” Ava tapped her parents’ names. “Ma always said he was a big tub of a boy even when he was born. That’s not right if’n he was early.” How she recalled something like that and not something as monumental as her family’s deaths, Ava couldn’t explain.
Noah’s face reddened.
She wondered why for a moment, and then it dawned on her. “Ohhhhhh! You think my ma might’ve already been with child when they up and married?”
Noah choked. Coughed. Cleared his throat. “It’s a possibility.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Nothing much shocked Ava, the least of which that her ma had gotten herself into a bit of a pickle. “Nice church to put my parents in this here record seein’ as they were sinners,” she observed.
Noah turned the pages toward the middle of the book where baptisms were recorded. He didn’t look at her when he replied, “My guess is, the reverend wasn’t aware of your mother’s . . . condition.” He ran his finger down the length of the page, turned it, repeated the process, and continued for the next few pages. “Ah. Here.” He tapped on Ava’s brother’s name. “Arnold Chester Coons. Baptized . . .” His voice waned.
“Baptized Sunday, October eighth, 1905,” Ava finished.
“There you have it, I suppose,” Noah muttered.
“Ma was well on when they got married in April.” Ava looked at Noah. “Think her dress was a tad tight?”
Noah choked again, and this time his cough increased. Ava slapped him on the back a few times before he sidestepped her hand and ran his arm over his mouth. “I’m guessing—” he coughed again—“we’ll not know that detail.”
“Well, it ain’t a small one when you’re a gal getting married.” Ava rolled her eyes at the preacher. The man was a tad dumb, if she was honest. “No girl wants to be as big as a sow when she puts on her wedding dress.”
“No. I would guess not.” Noah accepted her argument and made pretense to investigate the records further. A few pages more and he found her second brother’s name. “Richard James Coons, baptized May twelfth, 1907.”
“Then there’d be a few years between Ricky and myself. So check on 1912. That’s when I was born.”
Noah did so. Every month. Ava’s name did not appear. She felt the weight of his stare. “You’re not in here.”
“I was born, though, we know that.” She attempted to shrug off the niggling hurt that apparently she hadn’t been baptized as an infant. Maybe her parents weren’t much for coming to town by then? Made their place off in the woods and didn’t want to socialize? Maybe they’d lost faith, or tradition, or— “Well, guess I’m for sure goin’ to hell then,” Ava concluded.
Noah drew back, his expression startled and confused. “Why on earth would you make that conclusion?”
Ava tilted her head to the side and looked down her nose at him. “Think on it. Even if I didn’t do a thing to my family, I wasn’t baptized. My parents didn’t see no good reason to save me and get me all washed up in the water, so Jesus sure ain’t gonna stop when He sees me comin’.”
Noah turned, that softness entering his voice again. She didn’t dare look at him. “Ava.”
Nope. Not lookin’ at him.
“Ava.”
She looked at him.
“Ava, you’re not going to eternal damnation because you weren’t baptized as an infant.”
“I’m not?” She half challenged him and half hoped he was telling the truth.
Noah seemed to stumble for words. He wasn’t an eloquent preacher-type, that much was sure. “No. Baptism is just part—I mean, well, there’s an awful lot of doctrine out there about baptism and the role it plays in the condition of the soul before—”
“You’re bumping gums, Preacher. I’ve no idea what you’re tryin’ to say.”
“I’m saying there’s more to it than baptism,” Noah finished in a flurry. He seemed frustrated. Disgusted with himself.
“Oh” was all she had to offer him.
A door in the church slammed, echoing from the sanctuary down the hall. Noah’s head jerked up and toward the door. “Get under my desk,” he commanded.
Ava had no intention of arguing. Church might have a sanctuary, but she didn’t think if the law entered she’d be any safer here than in the road outside.
Footsteps thumped.
“Reverend?” a man’s voice hollered.
Ava heard Noah make his way across his office floor. He met someone at the door, where his attempt to leave the office was thwarted.
“Ah, Mr. Sanderson.”
Ava hoped Mr. Sanderson hadn’t brought his wife.
“Reverend Pritchard. Pleasant morning outside, yes?”
“Most assuredly,” Noah responded politely.
“I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time?”
“Of course.” Noah cleared his throat. “Would you . . . like to have a seat in the sanctuary?”
“We may as well make use of your office here, Reverend. No need to bother the peace of the good Lord with our chatter in the pews on a Tuesday.”
“No. Of course not.”
Footsteps.
Ava squeezed back farther into the darker recesses of the desk’s alcove. She saw Noah’s legs as he took a seat in his chair. His foot bumped her knee. She stifled a yelp. He shifted it a bit.
“I see you’re looking at old church records.” Mr. Sanderson was as nosy as they came, Ava determined.
She heard the book thud shut. Noah must have closed it from Mr. Sanderson’s prying eyes. “How may I help you today?” he asked instead.
Mr. Sanderson shifted in his chair. Ava heard it squeak beneath his weight. She could picture the lean but broad-shouldered man sitting there in his suit, looking dapper and for all sakes and purposes as though he owned Tempter’s Creek and its inhabitants. He practically did. Without his company, most would be out of work and Tempter’s Creek would dwindle into a ghost town.
“I wanted to ask if you’ve seen Ava Coons by any chance?” The man didn’t mince words.
Noah’s response was carefully measured. “Would I not say something if I had?”
“I would like to believe so.”
Noah cleared his throat. “If I may be honest?”
“Please,” Sanderson welcomed.
“I find it a far leap of the town to accuse Miss Coons of anything that may have happened to Jipsy. As well as Matthew Hubbard,” he added.
“Hmmm, yes.” Mr. Sanderson didn’t seem upset by Noah’s observation. “Perhaps it is. But you know how rumors spread and people get riled up into nonsense.”
“Seems to me you have enough influence to put such rumors to bed.” A sternness laced Noah’s words.
Ava nodded to herself in the darkness of the desk’s cubby.
“Perhaps, but then I would need to be convinced myself of her innocence to make such a strong assertion, and frankly, I am not.”
“You believe she murdered two people?” Noah countered.
“I believe anyone is capable of anything.”
“Do you have a vendetta against Miss Coons?” Noah wasn’t backing down. Ava looked at his feet. One shoe-clad foot tapped the floor repeatedly in agitation.
“I’m affronted you would imply such a thing.” There was offense in Mr. Sanderson’s tone. “I’m merely looking at the evidence laid before me. Ava Coons is no stranger to the ax, Reverend.”
“She was thirteen when her family was killed.”
“Yes?” Sanderson’s word was weighted with challenge.
Noah shifted in his chair. Ava heard him sniff in aggravation. “A thirteen-year-old young woman could successfully murder her entire family and not be overpowered by her father and two older brothers?”
“Reverend Pritchard, I was not there when Miss Coons’s family died, so I do not have an inkling as to what did or did not occur. What I do know is that she is the only surviving member of the Coons family, and, incidentally, she was covered in their blood when she was discovered.”
“Circumstantial,” Noah muttered.
“Or damning,” Sanderson retorted. “It depends on how one looks at it. Regardless, I’m not here to debate the guilt or innocence of Ava Coons. I’m merely here to see if you have, in fact, had contact with your charge? You were responsible for her, you know?”
“Yes, of course I know,” Noah snapped.
“And yet you do not know where Miss Coons is now?”
“No.”
Ava clapped her hand over her mouth. The preacher lied with such ease.
Mr. Sanderson’s chuckle showed a reluctant acceptance of Noah’s lie. “Well then, I suppose I’ve nothing else to ask then. I’ve been aiding the police in the search for Jipsy and her abductor or killer, assuming she is dead. So, I felt stopping here to chat with you made sense.”
“You’ve not found Jipsy, then?” Noah ventured to ask.
“No. We have not. Widower Frisk is nigh on losing his mind. Who knew the old man actually could have feelings for that woman.”
“And no one has inquired as to what part the widower may have played in Jipsy’s disappearance?” Noah argued.
“The man is beside himself. Inconsolable. One hardly could accuse him of such a crime.”
Noah didn’t reply.
“And the service for Matthew Hubbard,” Mr. Sanderson continued, “preparations are going well?”
Noah must have nodded. “I need to meet with the family later this afternoon.”
“Yes. Therein lies another mystery. Did Ava Coons have motive to slay Matthew?” Sanderson sounded as though he were baiting Noah.
Again, Noah didn’t answer.
“Yes, well . . .” Mr. Sanderson sniffed. “Everyone in town knew that Miss Coons had a thing for Matthew. If anything spoke to her potential innocence, I would assume it would be that.”
Noah remained silent.
“Well, Reverend, I will let you return to your studies of the Word.” Both men stood. Mr. Sanderson’s chair scraped against the floor. Noah walked him to the door and muttered a proper goodbye.
