Buried [Completed]

Chapter eleven

Saturday morning Dougal tossed his luggage into his trunk, then went to settle the bill with the manager. Holly gave him a cheeky smile.

"You leaving town before the wedding?"

"No. I'm not leaving."

Not that the wedding had anything to do with it. He'd phoned Monty last night to see if keeping Borden for a few extra weeks would be a problem. The older guy had assured him they were getting along well and he should stay as long as he needed.

"I'm moving into the Librarian Cottage."

"The one on Forestry Road?"

Holly looked at Dougal like he was crazy.

"That place must be run down to the ground by now."

"Charlotte Hammond and I checked it out last night. It's not that bad. It'll be a good place for me to work. Nice and quiet."

The place was more than not bad, in his opinion. It was damn perfect. He'd known the second he stepped inside that he wanted to live there. Seeing that picture of Shirley wearing the red scarf had cinched matters. He couldn't believe it was a coincidence.

Both of the librarians who had been murdered back in the seventies had been strangled by a red silk scarf. The women had to be linked in some way, beyond their jobs as librarians.

"Hope you're not afraid of ghosts. Last person to live there was Shirley Hammond."
Holly leaned across the counter, lowered her voice to a whisper.

"You know she hung herself?"
In an equally quiet voice he responded,

"I heard about that."

"I know it happened a long time ago. But I always thought it was quite a mystery."

Dougal checked the total on the Visa receipt before signing.

"It's always difficult to understand why someone chooses to take their own life."

"That's not what I mean. I guess she had her reasons. But why'd she hang herself at the library? Seemed like her isolated cottage would have been a better location."

* * *

Dougal had arranged to meet Liz Brooks at the cottage at ten o'clock. That left him forty-five minutes to grab some breakfast. Rather than head for one of the cafés on Driftwood Lane, he drove to the trailer park on the eastern edge of town.

He stopped his car out front of the doublewide where he'd grown up. He stared at the door, remembering all the times he'd seen his mother standing there—there— calling out for him and Jamie to come in for dinner. He could also picture her at the mailbox, hand on one hip, frowning at the bills. And watering the geraniums she always planted in the front window box.

Red blooms flowered there now. Jamie must have kept up the tradition. For some reason Jamie never minded growing up dirt poor the way they had. She'd laughed off taunts about living in a trailer and wearing cast-off clothing.
He had always admired, and slightly envied, his sister's sunny attitude. He'd tried his best to adopt it. But he'd hated feeling different— inferior. It wasn't just that they were poor.

But his father was bad. Evil. Dougal had been sixteen when his father had gone to jail for killing his second wife. He'd seen the looks in the eyes of his teachers and the parents of the other kids at school.

He'd known what they were thinking. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He couldn't wait to finish with school so he could leave this place. But the trailer, itself, wasn't as awful as he remembered.