Ding Dong Dead by Deb Baker Page A

realigned.
    There weren’t any signs of lipstick markings anywhere. She still hadn’t told her friends about the handwriting on the headstone. If Matt’s intention was to keep that information from the public, she’d support him. But she wanted to ask him about it. She’d have to tell him about the note also.
    April squinted over the top of her reading glasses. “William Hayden,” she read. “Anybody know that name?”
    They all agreed that they didn’t.
    “Sure are a lot of Haydens buried together,” Bonnie observed.
    April read off the names of others buried close by in case Gretchen was mistaken about the specific grave marker. None of the names sounded familiar to any of them.
    “Show us where the body was found,” April said.
    Gretchen had been avoiding the spot, focusing her attention instead on the mountains in the distance or the gravel at her feet. Any place other than where Allison Thomasia’s body had been discovered. When she forced herself to glance in that direction, she half expected to see a body, the blood, the stare. Instead she gazed at more of the same: red earth, white crosses, heavy marble headstones. Nothing to remind her of the other night except for the images seared in her memory.
    “Right here,” she said. The women formed a circle around the plot she was staring down at.
    Cemetery protocol eluded her. Were they supposed to stay off of the graves? She thought the answer was yes. But how? Hard to do considering there weren’t any obvious walkways between them.
    April was standing right on top of the one she had indicated, scanning the ground over her glasses, looking for clues.
    “The ground’s soaked in blood,” Bonnie announced, confirming Gretchen’s silent opinion.
    The sandstone earth did seem slightly redder over the grave. It wasn’t Gretchen’s imagination.
    “Oh my Gawd,” Nina said. “Get a load of this.”
    Gretchen turned to find Nina standing in front of one of the headstones.
    “This is the same man who built the house,” Nina said when April and Bonnie didn’t make the connection.
    But Gretchen had. “We’ve located John Swilling’s grave.”
    “And his wife Emma is buried beside him,” Nina said, reading the inscription aloud. “Wait.” She pulled a small notepad from her purse and flipped through it. “I should have made a copy of the historical records instead of jotting notes, but how was I to know at the time?”
    While her aunt went through her notes, Gretchen read the scant information on the gravestone. John Swilling had been forty-eight when he died in 1946, his wife even younger when she’d been placed in the cold hard earth. She’d been only twenty-four years old at the time and had died the same year the house was constructed. Births, names, deaths were the only part of their story that the gravestone gave away. Side by side for the rest of eternity.
    “I thought so,” Nina said. “Flora’s birth record was in the files at the historical society. According to these dates”—she waved at the headstone—“Flora Swilling was born on the same day that Emma passed away. Emma must have died giving birth to Flora.”
    “How sad,” Bonnie said. “She never knew her mother.”
    While her friends made sympathetic noises over a little girl who never had a chance to experience the comfort of her mother’s arms, Gretchen walked away from the stone and stood at the foot of the graves.
    There was space for at least one more family member, maybe two.
    “Is your friend working in the office today?” Gretchen asked Bonnie.
    “I think so,” Bonnie answered. “Let’s go see.”
    “Let’s leave,” Julie said. “I’ve seen enough.”
    “I told you not to come,” April said. “You’re too nice.”
    “Thanks,” Julie said. “I think.”
    Nina walked over, stopped beside Gretchen, and studied the graves from Gretchen’s point of view. “Look at that!” she said after only a moment, leaving Gretchen to wonder again about her