Many Bloody Returns

“Stella…”

“I’m not brooding. There’s just something about Jane that’s not right. Or rather about Norcomb’s explanation of what she was doing in Allenville.”

“How so?”

“He figured she was tied into drug dealing, but all we really know is that a girl who looked like a runaway came to Wal-Mart and bought new clothes. If she wasn’t disguising herself, why the makeover?”

Mark thought about it. “Could she have been doing the same thing you are?”

She cocked her head at him. “Meaning what?”

“You were sort of a runaway but eventually you wanted to come home. Right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Hear me out. When you came back to Allenville, suddenly you had an accent again. You kind of reverted to who you used to be. Maybe Jane was reverting, too. She’d been this Goth creature of the night, but now that she was coming home, she wanted to become a normal girl again. So she stopped at Wal-Mart, dressed like her old self, and threw the Goth identity away. She wanted to go home.”

Stella looked at him, eyes wide. “You’re a genius!”

Mark tried to look modest and pointed out, “Of course, that doesn’t really help us figure out who she was.”

“It might. Jane only bought one set of clothes, and she put them on right away. That means she expected to get home that night or the next day at the latest—otherwise the new clothes would have gotten dirty. She may not have been from Allenville, but she was local. This could narrow Norcomb’s search enough to find her!”

“It must be hereditary—you’re a genius, too! Shall we call in another anonymous tip?”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Stella got ready in record time, and they took yet another trip to Allenville. It took a while to track down Norcomb, what with his working the biggest case of his career, but once they found him, it didn’t take long for Stella to bespell him and plant both the idea about finding Jane and the conviction that he’d thought it up himself. As Stella put it, it was the least she could do for family.

They stuck around Raleigh for a while longer as the police continued to find bodies, celebrating when two of the victims were identified by personal effects kept by the killer. But the big celebration came when Norcomb a

The next day, the newspaper reported that an anonymous donor was paying for Leah’s body to be moved closer to her family and that a tasteful granite monument would be included. Mark was among the many who attended the funeral, making sure that Leah finally got back home.

Stella was ready to head back to Boston, maybe stopping in New York to see some shows, but Mark put her off, pointing out that the state fair was still going on, and they hadn’t ridden all the rides. Though he knew that she knew he was up to something, she played along.

The next night, Mark drove them back to Allenville, and parked outside the Spivey family plot.

“Okay, why are we out here?” Stella asked.

“I want you to show you something.”

He led her through the gate toward where her parents were buried, and she couldn’t resist looking over toward Jane’s, or rather Leah’s, former grave. “Why did they leave the tombstone?”

“Let’s look.”

He was watching her face as she got closer and realized it was a different stone.

She turned to him. “You bought me a tombstone?”

“I was going to,” he admitted, “but somebody beat me to it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I went to see Bob Henry. He’s the man who donated Jane’s tombstone, and I thought a little karmic payback was in order, so I was going to order one for you from him. When I told him where it was to be placed, he mentioned that his family had been in the business for several generations, and that they’ve done all the monuments in this plot. And when I told him the name to put on the stone, he told me the story.”

“What story?”

“Do you remember the tree that used to be over your grave? Lightning hit it years after you were buried and knocked it down.”

“So?”

“So it fell on the tombstone your mother had put up for you and broke it.”

“Then she did get me a stone?”

He nodded. “She had Bob Henry Senior take it back to repair it, but she was already ill and died before she could finish paying for the work. It was still in the storeroom. All I did was pay the balance and a rush charge to get it out here tonight.”

“Then Mama bought this?”

“It was her last gift to you.”

Stella knelt down on the grave and ran her fingers over the stone’s inscription. Not her name, or the dates of her birth and death, but the two words under her name:

Beloved Daughter