Secret of Stone Creek

By Natalie London

Jennifer Cameron arrives in Stone Creek, Wisconsin to sell her grandparents’ large Victorian home. While going through the contents of the house, she finds an old newspaper describing the discovery of a girl’s body behind the school in 1951. When Jennifer learns the murder was never solved, she decides to investigate it as something to occupy her time. Several women in town, including the charming real estate agent, Laura; the lovely and mysterious librarian, Diana; and the murder mystery all vie for her attention.
As Jennifer becomes involved in the mystery and a budding romance, other unexplained deaths occur in Stone Creek.
In a dramatic confrontation on the night of July fourth, Jennifer’s life is in danger when the identity of the killer is revealed. Will her love interest figure out that Jennifer is in trouble before it’s too late?
Follow this suspenseful whodunit to its conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Affinity Ebook Press NZ Ltd
• Release date: Dec 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780947528102

Natalie London

Natalie London lives in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, spent three years in Thailand with the Peace Corps and then lived in Katmandu, Nepal and Laos. After nearly three decades of scientific work she is now a Master Gardener, Certified Beekeeper and plays the French horn and flute.

Book preview

Chapter One

1951

Stone Creek, Wisconsin

Kit awoke in the darkness of her bedroom with the familiar feelings of dread and fear. The taverns had just closed, and her parents were home, sitting together in the kitchen. Now that she was eleven, her parents left her alone when they went out. They had written the number of the tavern in the front of the telephone book for her, just in case anything happened while they were gone. It didn’t.

The refrigerator door slammed shut, and she knew they were having another beer and arguing. Her mother’s voice rose in pitch like a bad record. You didn’t talk to me all night. Too busy with that woman you think is so wonderful. A slut, that’s what she is. Everyone noticed you two, with you hanging around that coffee shop where she works. Why don’t you run off with her? You don’t care about me or your daughter.

She heard her father’s angry muffled reply but couldn’t quite make out the words. Then it grew quiet. This had happened before, and she knew that they were too tired to argue any longer. Soon they would fall either on the bed or the couch before passing out. Kit tried to burrow down under the covers, pulling the thin blanket and chenille bedspread over her head.

Her name was not Kit really. She disliked her own name, but thought Kit sounded strong and different. One evening, when they were in the kitchen making supper, she had asked her mother if Kit could be her nickname.

Her mother took a mixing bowl from the cupboard and plopped it on the counter. What’s wrong with your name? It’s lovely. Besides, it would be too confusing to have two names. She cracked an egg into the bowl. What a stupid idea. Just forget it.

But she didn’t. From then on, Kit was her secret name. Only she knew it.

Just as she drifted off to sleep, her father shouted, Shut up, you fool, before she heard furniture crashing. Kit waited. It was silent.

Kit’s bedroom door swung open, banging against the wall. Her mother stood framed in the doorway and then was at her bedside, pulling her arm.

Come here, help me. Your father fell and hit his head.

Kit sat up, trying to find her slippers.

Never mind those. Hurry up. Her mother hung back, as Kit shuffled down the hall to the kitchen.

Kit blinked in the glare of the light and saw her father sprawled on the floor, his body partly under the table. His eyes were open, and blood had run out of his nose and ears. Kit had never seen a dead person, but somehow she knew he was dead.

Kit looked down at his body. He’s dead, you know. It was simply a statement of fact.

Her mother rushed into the living room where she sank onto the worn, brown couch. It was an accident. What if no one believes me? What if they say I killed him? I’ll go to prison and then who will take care of you? Who wants an eleven-year-old?

Kit looked around at the faded, floral wallpaper and ugly, mismatched furniture. She hated this room. As long as she could remember, they had never had anything new in the house.

They won’t believe me. What if they say I did it because he planned to leave us? Her mother nervously raked her fingers through her hair.

Curious, Kit asked, Was he going to leave us?

Oh, I don’t know. How do I know now? Should I call the police? No, I can’t. We have to put him somewhere. Just wait, while I think of what to do. Her mother stood unsteadily. Come help me, hurry up.

They entered the dingy kitchen together.

Take his leg, her mother commanded.

They each grabbed a leg of his body entangled in the chair and table legs. Gasping for breath, her mother pushed the chairs aside, tipping them over. The chairs crashed to the floor while they lugged him toward the basement door.

Although he was not a large person—skinny from years of drinking too much and eating too little—they struggled as they dragged him to the landing. They pulled him down the steps after them, his head banging with a loud thump on each step.

When they got down to the bottom of the stairs, her mother stumbled as she hurried over and threw open the heavy door of the fruit cellar, a small room off the basement. Kit didn’t know why they called it that. Inside the room was junk, gathering dust. Old canning jars on a shelf, a discarded toaster, and a rusty piece of chain lying on the floor.

Outside the fruit cellar door sat her father’s large, wooden tool chest. Kit watched, wide-eyed, as her mother jerked open the cover of the chest and began wildly throwing the tools out. Planes, awls, a sledgehammer, and files flew in all directions. After emptying the box, her mother pushed it into the fruit cellar.

Kit stood paralyzed, watching her mother as her dyed-red hair fell over her eyes and stuck out in all directions. She was meticulous about having it done every week at a shop run by Pauline out of her home—Pauline’s Beauty Shoppe. Kit hated going there with her mother. The women all had the same tight little curls, and they gossiped about anyone who wasn’t there that day.

Kit looked at her mother who had perspiration running down her face and her blouse hanging out of her skirt. She gestured to Kit with a quick wave of her hand.

Get over here and help me. If I go to jail what will you do? You’ll be an orphan, and some strangers will get you. His family wouldn’t want you.

There had always been some unpleasantness about her father’s family. Her mother always referred to them as scum. Kit’s mother had been an only child. Kit vaguely remembered her grandmother as a feeble, old woman sitting in a chair, covered with a blanket, and calling Kit by the wrong name.

Kit obediently went over to her father’s body, grasped his arms, and pulled him into the fruit cellar. When they had him folded into the chest, her mother grabbed a piece of canvas lying nearby and threw it over him. She pushed the corners down and, with a bang, slammed the lid of the chest. Once they emerged from the fruit cellar, she threw her body against the solid, wooden door to close it before turning the key in the lock.

Upstairs, they took turns in the small bathroom washing their face and hands. They went into the living room and sat in the two shabby, brown, overstuffed chairs.

Kit looked at her mother and numbly asked, Was he going to leave us?

Her mother lit a cigarette, and the smoke billowed toward Kit. That woman was trying to catch him and take him away from us.

What woman?

More smoke puffed toward Kit. Her mother tapped the cigarette rapidly on the green, ceramic ashtray. You know the one who works in the coffee shop. Her daughters go to your school. That Jensen divorcee.

Kit tried to place this woman. Then she remembered she had seen her at the parent-conference day. More stylish than the other mothers, she wore newer, up-to-date clothes and more makeup with darker-red lipstick. She didn’t have those tight curls, and her hair flowed longer and fluffier. She seemed confident; bold, her mother called it. So this woman was trying to steal her father and make him leave them. Then she realized he had left them. She and her mother were alone now.

They sat in the living room until daylight arrived. That morning, Sunday, they got dressed and went to church. Her father never went with them, so no one missed him.

When they came home from church, her mother went into the bedroom and fell asleep on the bed. Kit went into the living room and fell asleep in a chair.

In the early evening, her mother woke up and, instead of the usual Sunday dinner, she made tuna fish sandwiches. Her mother must have forgotten to add a necessary ingredient when she threw some canned tuna into a bowl, because the sandwiches were not very good and tasted fishy. Neither of them finished theirs, and her mother dumped both in the garbage. She took a bottle of brandy from the cupboard, went into the living room, and sat in the dark next to the radio with the music playing.

While her mother drank, Kit sat in her bedroom, on the edge of her bed, thinking about their future. Fearful thoughts crowded her head. Her mother would go to prison somewhere far away, and where would Kit go? Maybe to an institution. Or, she would be sent to live with strangers who only wanted someone to clean and wait on them. She, too, would be a prisoner. She thought about the person who had caused all this trouble. The Jensen woman. Maybe she would demand to see her father. If they had really planned to run away together, she would look for him.

The luminous dial on the bedside clock showed fifteen minutes to nine. She knew, from a previous shouted exchange between her parents, that the woman worked at the coffee shop until nine.

With her mother snoring in the living room, Kit got her plain, dark-gray cloth coat from the closet, carefully opening and closing the closet door to avoid the squeak it always made.

Being out alone at this time of night exhilarated Kit. She rapidly walked the eight blocks to the coffee shop without meeting anyone. On the way, she passed the site of the old post office. Yesterday, they leveled it after the completion of the new one, built two blocks away. Tomorrow, they were going to push the rubble in and fill the huge hole.

She stayed across the street in the shadow of a barbershop and peered over at the coffee shop. Two customers, both men, talked with a waitress but not the waitress Kit had come to see. She waited. Then she saw her coming out of a back room, wearing her coat and carrying her purse. The waitress didn’t leave right away, but hung around talking and laughing with the others.

Not wanting to be caught watching, Kit started walking back home, but as she walked she grew angry. Her father was dead, her mother probably would go to prison, and she would be left alone. All this happened because of the woman who was merrily chatting and enjoying herself.

She walked faster until she arrived at the old post office site. She went over to the edge of the hole. Several scrawny bushes grew in a place between the sidewalk and the hole. Kit stood behind the bushes and looked down into the pit. Nearby, strewn around, were many bricks and pieces of rubble. Kit bent down and picked up a large, sturdy brick. She practiced swinging it, letting a nearby tree have a good hit. When she heard heels clicking on the sidewalk, she retrieved her brick and crouched down behind a bush. She held a small stone in her other hand. When the person approached, she saw it was the Jensen woman.

In a movie, she had seen a trick where you threw a stone to divert a person’s attention to that spot, and when she threw the stone over to the far edge, sure enough, the woman stopped. After looking around, the Jensen woman went over to the edge of the pit with her back turned to Kit. This woman wasn’t afraid like some women who would have run away screaming at a noise.

An overwhelming rage against this person overtook Kit. The woman had tried to take her father away and leave them all alone with nothing. Kit flew out from behind the bush and swung the brick. The body crumpled and fell partly over the edge of the hole. Kit pushed at it with her foot, and the woman tumbled out of sight. She threw the brick in and climbed down, falling to her knees on the rubble. When she got to the woman’s body, she began grabbing pieces of board, masonry, and hunks of concrete, pulling them over her. She didn’t worry about her fingerprints on the brick. Tomorrow, it would be buried with the rest of the rubble.

Back home, she let herself into the house, careful not to make any noise. Her mother still snored in the same position in the chair.

In her bedroom, she pulled off her clothes, grabbed her pajamas, and went into the bathroom. She closed the door, turned on the light, and saw that her knees and the palm of her hands were bleeding. After Kit washed and put first-aid cream on the cuts, she went back to her bedroom and got into bed. Dizzy and exhausted, she couldn’t remember if she had really gone out this night. As she lay there, her stomach rumbled with hunger, but she ignored it and soon fell asleep.

On Tuesday, the second day her father did not appear at work, his boss, Mr. Krause, called their house. Kit listened from the kitchen, hearing her mother on the telephone talking to him. He had not come home Saturday night, and she had not heard from him since. She thought he might have gone to work even if he hadn’t come home. Now, she was so upset she didn’t know what to do.

Kit heard her mother agree with Mr. Krause that maybe some emergency had come up, and he would be back soon. She thanked him for offering to ask around about him and to keep in touch with her. When the conversation ended, she slammed the phone down and went to pour herself a drink.

By now, the main topic of interest in town was the disappearance of Betty Jensen. She hadn’t shown up at the coffee shop on Monday, and so Betty’s sister had come from out of state to look after her two daughters. There was speculation that Betty Jensen had run off with some man and, since Kit’s father had also disappeared, the rumor was that he was the man. On the other hand, no one could believe she had left her two daughters alone. It was a puzzling time for Stone Creek.

†

Friday night, the Stone Creek School held their annual Halloween celebration with a costume party in the gym followed by a bonfire outside in the schoolyard. On the way to the party, Kit and some of her friends were going trick-or-treating. She wanted to dress up as a pirate, but her mother didn’t want to take the trouble to sew a costume and thought Kit should wear something more feminine. In the end, she wore an old party dress of her mothers. Her mother hemmed it to floor length and made a headband with stars and a silver wand with a star on the end. She went as a fairy godmother. To complete the look, Kit got to wear some of her mother’s rouge and lipstick.

By the time Kit got to school, candy almost overflowed her trick-or-treat pail. She had wanted a real Halloween bucket. Some of the kids had orange pumpkins or skulls with handles, but they cost too much so her mother let her use a cleaning pail, and they put orange and black crepe paper around it.

Orange and black paper streamers, along with filmy bats, spider webs, and cardboard skeletons dangling from the ceiling, decorated the gym. The students played games, and the happy winners were awarded prizes. The prize for the best costume went to a boy wearing long, black underwear painted with the white bones of a skeleton. Kit would have loved to receive a prize, but didn’t think her costume was unusual enough to win.

Later, they went outside for the bonfire. Kit loved watching the flames that warmed her arms and face in the cold night air. Just when she was enjoying herself with all the activity around her and the fire crackling, she looked across the flames and saw the older Jensen girl, her face covered with white makeup. She stared at Kit with a look of hatred. Pretty in a flamboyant way, and dressed as a queen or princess, she had four boys crowding around her, vying for her attention. The exchange lasted only a few seconds, and then the Jensen girl laughed and turned away from the admirers that surrounded her.

A chill rippled through Kit. The fun had left the evening. As she walked away from the bonfire and turned the corner of the school building, someone came up behind her.

You little sneak.

Kit swung around and saw the Jensen girl standing there. She tried to remember her name; she had seen it on a homecoming poster. Sherry.

Don’t you dare think that my mother went away with that drunken, no-good father of yours. She came closer to Kit, her mean-looking face distorted and no longer pretty.

Everyone knows he ran away from you and your mother. He couldn’t stand you. My mother laughed at him. She had a name for him and all those idiots who hung around the coffee shop. She’s going to send for us when she gets a job where she is now, probably California.

As she talked, Sherry came closer and closer, forcing Kit to back up against the building. Near the foundation, Kit stumbled on some stones.

In the darkness, Sherry’s face loomed eerily over her. My mother didn’t go anywhere with your stupid father. Understand? Sherry turned and started walking away.

Kit bent down and closed her fingers over a large, round stone. Anger overwhelmed her, as she sprang forward aiming the stone at the side of Sherry’s head. She heard a crack and Sherry’s body crumpled to the ground. Just in case Sherry got up and said those horrible things about her father again, Kit brought the stone down heavily once more.

She waited, listening, but heard nothing except for faint laughter and shouting in the distance. Kneeling, she wiped the stone on the grass and then looked around. What if her fingerprints were on the stone? She still gripped her trick-or-treat pail and the fairy’s wand in her left hand, so she set the pail down and dropped the stone in it, carefully pulling the candy over to cover it.

As she turned to leave, her foot caught on something and she stumbled. Regaining her balance, she looked back and saw that her foot had become entangled in the bottom of Sherry’s skirt, and the skirt had been pulled up over Sherry’s head, exposing her legs. Kit hurried off, clutching her pail and thinking that it was a good thing she had that sturdy pail and not a flimsy, plastic one.

Walking home, she passed by a big, old house with a low, stone wall next to the sidewalk. The stones were in piles, some of them tumbling down. Kit reached into her pail and, without stopping, added her stone to the wall.

Her mother was stretched out on their worn couch in the living room, with a pillow under her head and reading a copy of Reader’s Digest. Most of the families in town were buying television sets. Her father had boasted that they would be getting one soon. Kit knew they probably wouldn’t have.

A glass of brandy and water sat on the end table next to her mother. Tell me all about the party. Did they have dancing? Did you dance with anyone?

Kit shook her head. No dancing. It was a Halloween party.

At your age, we didn’t have all these parties and entertainment. She reached for her glass. Who were you with? I like to know what you’re up to.

Just a couple of girls from my class.

Her mother picked up her glass and eyed her critically. One of these days, we’ll have to cut your hair and get you a permanent. Make a little lady out of you.

I like my braids. Kit put a hand to her hair.

We’ll see. Her mother emptied her glass.

As soon as she could, Kit escaped to her bedroom, took off her costume, and put on her pajamas. When she went into the bathroom to wash off the makeup, she had a moment of fright when she looked in the mirror. She saw the strange face with bright-red lipstick and rouged cheeks.

Later, lying in bed, she remembered that Sherry Jensen had a younger sister. Maybe she too would go around school saying those things about her father. She would look for her in school on Monday. She needed to do something about her too.

†

When Kit arrived at school Monday morning, everyone talked excitedly about the discovery of Sherry Jensen’s body behind the school. Some children, playing at the school, had found her Sunday morning.

Students gathered in little groups, whispering and spreading the stories they heard from each other. The teachers were seen talking together anxiously in their classroom doorways, while the police were installed in the principal’s office, planning to interview students. Several of the boys who had hung around Sherry Jensen and previously bragged of their intimacy now looked worried and denied any close connection to her. The rumor had it that she had been found with her clothes torn off.

What an exciting day. No schoolwork. One disappointment was that Kit never had a chance to track down the other Jensen sister. After the funeral, the aunt took her away, and no one saw her after that.

†

A few weeks later, Kit came home from school to find her mother in her bedroom in front of the mirror and wearing a new dress. She adjusted the collar, cocking her head to examine her reflection.

Guess what? I have a job. You know Mr. Sorenson, who has the insurance agency. Well, he needed someone in the office. His last girl quit to get married and moved away.

Kit vaguely remembered Mr. Sorenson from their church, a jovial widower. He always seemed to leave the church when they did and would hang around and exchange small talk with her mother.

Kit’s mother turned away from the mirror. "He called yesterday to ask if I would be interested, so I said I had to think it over. Today, I called him, and he had me come down to his office. When