I dashed out the front door and across the street. I knocked on Dorothy’s front door.

“It’s Tish. Let me in.” Please be home. Please. Please.

Jack opened the door. I shoved past him and headed toward a couch in the corner of the enclosed front porch.

“Thanks, Jack.”

“Tish. What’s up?” Jack shut the door behind me.

I stared across the street at my house, watching for David to cross the yard and go back home, but I couldn’t see the back porch from my seat at the Fitches.

“Jack. Hey. I’m just getting a head start on my campaign for the vacant seat on the Historical Committee. Is your mom around?” A raspberry thorn worked its way into my thigh. I scratched at it.

“Yeah. I’ll tell her you’re here.”

While Jack was gone, I kept an eye on my house. Still no sign of David. Maybe he got inside. Maybe he was flinging my cot and dirty clothes around in my bedroom, looking for stuff. I squinted, trying to see any movement through the glare. Nothing.

At least I didn’t have anything to hide. The only thing that might incriminate me was the floral card I’d plucked from his trash. But it was safely hidden in the pocket of my other jeans. I doubted he’d look for something small enough to fit in pants pockets. He probably figured I’d swiped something useful, like a file with incriminating evidence.

And why I hadn’t grabbed Dietz’s file was beyond me. Everything I needed to exonerate myself for Dietz’s murder was in that file. It might be circumstantial, but it could definitely lead to David’s conviction. Especially once they uncovered Rebecca’s body in my cellar.

Dorothy walked in. I barely glanced at her, afraid to take my eyes off the Victorian.

“Tish. Nice of you to stop in.” She sat on the opposite end of the sofa. “Jack tells me you want to fill Martin’s place on the Historical Committee.”

I smiled in her direction, still looking out the window. “Yes. I think it’s a shame we historic-home owners have to be confined to old-fashioned applications for our homes.” I spotted David going down my back porch steps. He rounded the back of the house. “Take my cistern, for example. Its use is completely outdated. Nobody needs storage for rainwater anymore.” I saw David cut between my house and the museum house. Phew. He was going home. I looked at Dorothy. “That cistern is a danger to the homeowner. I’d hate to see a little kid get trapped back there. Maybe get hurt and not be found for a while. I ought to be allowed to remove it.”

“Have you thought about walling it in?” Dorothy asked.

I took a deep breath. “Absolutely not. It needs to come out. That’s the only option.”

“So you’re becoming a member of the committee so you can get your project through?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m happy to help others, as well. We can find a balance between historic preservation and comfortable, modern living.”

“Don’t suppose my opinion counts for much, but I’d say you’re better off leaving that cistern alone. Old houses can get mighty particular if you start cutting them up.”

I waved off the comment. “I don’t believe in that stuff. Houses are inanimate objects. The only life they have is what we give them in our own imagination.”

I adjusted the denim around my thigh, dislodging a thorn. “You mentioned that the Ramseys and Martin Dietz were close at one time,” I said. “How close was close?”

Dorothy sighed. “Birds of a feather. Dogs in a pack. Fleas in a circus. Every one of them expert at getting what they want and using each other to do it.” She shook her head. “Just glad Sandra got away from all that.”

There had to be more to the Main Street Triangle than met the eye. Life insurance policies, fake appraisals, fudged tax returns. I had the feeling I’d merely scratched the surface.

I was only sorry to see Tammy Johnson getting involved. There were more than her finances at stake if she got too wrapped up with David and his services.

“So,” I said, getting to my feet, “please vote for me in January.”

“Stay for soup, Tish. There’s chicken noodle on the stove,” Dorothy said.

I had no place better to go. Home wasn’t an option right now. I had no idea what course of action to take as far as David went. If I called the cops, I’d be blowing stuff out of proportion again. They’d need a warrant and hence, good cause. Which my word alone didn’t seem to provide.

As much as I hated the thought, the only proof I could get on David that would put him behind bars required an excavating party. Me and a hammer and chisel.

Tonight. I’d do it tonight. No more guessing, wondering, lost sleep, or nightmares.

Tonight I’d know.

37

“I’d love to stay.” I looked at Dorothy standing across from me in her living room. “Soup sounds good.”

We went into the kitchen together. A lace runner hid the Formica tabletop. Baskets stuffed with unopened mail, multicolored hankies, seasonal napkins, and various fingernail and letter-opening accessories littered the dining area.

I stepped toward a wall of photographs. Judging by the quality and hairstyles, the pictures had been taken in the ’70s. Two girls and one boy. The boy had a big-toothed smile and sticky-out ears. He was no more than eleven. He must be the one that got killed on the tracks.

I wondered how Dorothy could have stayed put in this house with a tragedy like that happening so close to home. Every day when she heard the train go by, she must think about that little cutie playing chicken with a metal monster. And losing.

I swallowed with a tight throat.

The two girls had at least made it to their high school graduations. Both wore the same powder-blue sweater. Their hair was pulled back in buns. They wore sweet but sorrowful expressions on Farmer’s Daughter faces. A few more framed photos documented boyfriends and husbands in laughing embraces. Then nothing. No grandbabies in bibs, on bikes, or in Grandma’s lap. Just nothing. End of the line. End of the family.

I searched the wall again. “Where did you hang Jack’s pictures?”

Dorothy stared at the wall of pictures. “Look at them. They’re all dead. Adored them, raised them, hung their pictures on the wall, and they died. But not my Jack. Never wanted pictures of him on the wall.” She tapped her temple. “Keeping him up here.”

Tears coursed down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop the flow. My whole body shook, and next thing I knew, Dorothy cradled my head against her shoulder. She sat me in a chair and let me cry. I sobbed a trash can full of tissues before I could control myself again.

“Don’t fuss on my account,” Dorothy said. “Loved those kids. But they were God’s to do with as he pleased. Now all of them are safe in heaven.”

I sat up and wiped my nose. “How do you do it? How can you keep going after everything that has happened to you?”

“Take it one day at a time. Get up. Put on my shoes. Say a prayer. Eat. Work. Live another day. Go to bed. Then do it again.”

“But how do you handle all the thoughts and emotions? Sometimes it’s too much for me. And I’ve barely lost anything compared to you.”

“Every day you tell yourself that God loves you. He’s going to take care of you. He’ll take everything that’s wrong and make it right. And when your time’s up, he’ll take you.” She wiped a teardrop from my face. “Woke up alive today, didn’t you? Then put your shoes on and get to living.”

I sniffled. “But what about a person who didn’t wake up alive today? What if they’re dead . . . and it’s not their fault?”

“Can’t do anything for them.”

“But what if they’re dead because of something I did?”

“Get it right with God. Then get on with life.”

If only it were that simple. How many times had I tried to get it right with God, only to crawl away and hide in shame?

Dorothy set a bowl of soup in front of me. The hot broth started my nose running again, but somehow made me feel better. When I’d scooped up the last spoonful, I thanked her for her hospitality and let myself out.

I paused on her porch, not really feeling like hitting the campaign trail, but too scared to go home. I walked along a wet sidewalk to the house next door, and directly across the street from David’s.

I stood on the front stoop of a completely modernized circa 1920s home. Cream vinyl siding erased any architectural details the home had once worn. Boring concrete steps took the place of a covered porch that had previously graced the home. The only evidence of the former porch was a plain swath of white trim halfway up the facade. Houses like this one were the whole reason the Historical Committee existed. The brutal mutilation of historic architecture had to be halted.

I rang the doorbell, then turned to watch for signs of activity across the street at David’s.

No answer.

I walked to the next house. The brown shake-and-brick two-story was the blight of the neighborhood. I stepped over a muddy pothole in the driveway on my way to the back door, which apparently was the only way to gain entrance. I swerved around a girl’s banana bike and picked my way up crumbled concrete steps. The storm door was missing its glass, so I reached through to knock on the dented metal exterior door.

“Yeah?” said the woman who opened the door. She had long, thin hair on her forty-something head. I knew by the guarded look in her eyes that my coifed hairstyle and trim figure posed some imagined threat to her oversized sweatshirt and baggy jeans.

I introduced myself.

A smile crept over her face. “I’m Kay. Come on in. I’ve been wanting to meet you. Anybody with the guts to kill a guy like Martin Dietz deserves a toast. How about a glass of homemade rhubarb wine?”