Flash Fiction Friday, Week 16 - Missing

This week’s prompt was You bought a new house, over the winter. It was a great deal, heavily discounted after months, maybe years on the market. It’s an older place, a ‘fixer-upper’, but has great potential. Supposedly there had been a garden in back, too, buried under all that snow. It’s spring now, most of the snow has gone, and you’ve scraped off most of the old leaves. What will start pushing its way through the warm dirt first? Sometimes Spring brings up more in the garden than flowers…

Missing

I couldn’t believe the house was mine. I waited years for old lady Nash’s estate to be officially closed so her home could be sold. She had vanished years ago, and it took time to get her declared legally dead. She had family who didn’t want it, so a sale was a strong possibility. Jimmy Beasley and I made a pact that we’d buy it when we grew up, but when he turned 15, Jimmy wound up on the wrong side of a drug deal. He’s resting at Seven Gables Cemetery; although, probably not in peace. I became Director of Marketing at a farm implement manufacturing company. A few years ago, I married the company President’s daughter, Rachelle, so I was set for life. Still, over the years, I continued to follow real estate sites hoping that someday, 77 Lansing Lane would be on the market. That day came, and when I showed it to Rachelle, she immediately fell in love with it, and urged me to make an offer right away. I did, and it was accepted.

We closed during an afternoon blizzard in January. The attorney was surprised we wanted to move in right away considering the shape it was in. Most folks fix up a fixer-upper before they move in. Rachelle had lived in high-rise apartments all her life, and welcomed the opportunity to live out in the country. She also wanted to have a garden. I wanted that house so I could search for the cash hidden within its walls. I also needed to make sure what was buried in the garden out back stayed buried in the garden out back.

I never told Rachelle that I had already been inside our new home. Mom’s Cousin Melvina had a place down the road from it, and I had spent my summers with her until I was 16. I met Jimmy Beasley during my first summer there when I was 11, and we became best friends. He spent his summers with his Gram, who lived in town. We used to break into homes in the area looking for cash or valuables we could hock after we went back home. We never got caught, and usually ended up with quite a haul. The house at 77 Lansing though – that’s the one we drooled over. We knew the rich widow Nash lived there, that she didn’t trust banks, and that she kept large amounts of cash stashed in the house.

That summer when we were 12, we decided we could handle an old lady. We brought baseball bats, and snuck in late one night. We made our way to her bedroom, and grabbed some jewelry. We were on our way out, but she woke up and started hollering. We hit her with the bats until she stopped screaming, and kept hitting her until she stopped breathing. We dragged her outside and dug a deep hole in her garden. We covered her grave with weeds and left. When she disappeared, nobody thought anything of it since Jimmy and I spread rumors that when we were out playing ball, we saw Mrs. Nash get in a car with some man. Folks thought she just took her money and left town with some guy. Jimmy and I never did think about pawning what we took from her. I kept it all in a box with some books in the attic. Murder tends to change your priorities. I often wondered what happened to that box.

When Spring arrived and the ground was soft, Rachelle got to work outside in her garden, while I got to work inside tapping the walls looking for hatboxes full of fifties. Jimmy and I put the widow in real deep, so I wasn’t worried about Rachelle’s petunias disturbing her. Last Monday morning, I heard my wife calling frantically for me, and I ran outside to find her kneeling in the dirt staring at something sparkly in her hand. It was a necklace, with diamonds set in small gold squares.

“When I started digging to plant some seeds, this was just under the surface,” she said. “What would a necklace be doing buried in our garden?”

What, indeed. I recognized it as one of the pieces I had taken that night so long ago.

On Tuesday afternoon, my wife’s soil shifting revealed the old lady’s ruby ring. Jimmy had grabbed that. On Wednesday morning when Rachelle unearthed the tiara, I ran to the downstairs bathroom and threw up. Someone knew, but who? Jimmy was 6 feet under, and I knew how to keep a secret. I couldn’t remember what had happened to that box of books in my parents’ house. Garage sale, maybe, and it was sold to a relative of the widow Nash, and they recognized the jewelry? But, how would they link it to me? She’s got to be moved, but where? Basement floor isn’t finished yet. Rachelle’s visiting her mom on Saturday, so Saturday night it is. I went out and bought a burlap bag.

As I was relocating the widow’s bones from the ground to my burlap bag, the backyard’s flood lights came on, and there on the patio, stood Rachelle, the Chief of Police, and several patrolmen.

“Katrina Nash was my Great Aunt. I visited her often, and knew every piece of jewelry she owned. I was told she ran off with a man, but I knew that was a lie. She would never just disappear like that. After your parents passed and we went through their house, I found the box with your name all over it and her jewelry inside. They were treasured gifts from her husband, and she would never part with any of it if she were alive. I needed to find out what you did with her body, so I pretended to find her jewelry in the garden. It seemed the best place to start. You bastard.”

So, that’s what happened to that box…