The Mystery of a Murderer

Title your Story Part

​It was the smell that got me. The sweet scent of cinnamon and pumpkin circled in the air. For once in my life, I actually made a pumpkin pie that was edible. I really needed to put that in my journal. I could picture it in there now......

December 16th, 1951

I made a pumpkin pie without having it disintegrate when it came out!

​​​​​​​~Denise

That's when my son, James, came in.

"Why are you staring at that pie?" he asked.

I snapped back out of my thoughts like a rocket and replied, "I made it without having it disintegrate!"

He laughed as he left to go to work and disappeared out the old, almost-black door.

​Nights always reminded me of him; the way the stars cover the dark sky like a sheet to protect us down here from being swallowed up by it. He always covered up his fears with hope and desire. I was sitting in the kitchen of my old cottage house that my parents built years ago. The front door and cabinets an almost-black color and the walls a simple wood brown. If you looked around the house, and especially on the outside, it would remind you of an old settlers' house. And that's exactly how it was supposed to be. I guess my parents liked it that way. Maybe it was the feeling of adventure that I get when I walk through the dreadfully silent building. Or maybe not.

​But what really struck me about the house was the view out the window. It presented a thin string of mountains with rolling green hills that looked like sea monsters backs when they dive in the water. At night the stars seemed to put a glow in the snow on top of them. That's exactly what reminded me of my husband. He had died of some rare liver problems only a year ago.

​James came bursting in the door, again, but this time almost knocking the door off its hinges.

"Look at what I found!" he exclaimed. "I found these in the shed behind the house!"

"What is it?" I asked, not wanting to touch dust covered papers with dust so thick it looked like it would rip each one down the center one by one.

He gave them to me and I blew off the dust, coughing in the process. Then I looked them over. It read,

May 1950,

She has gone "missing" the towns people told me, it took everything in me not to say, "Good for you!" or "They deserved it!" Those fools.

The paper seemed to be ripped short, as if that person didn't want to waste the rest. James handed me the other paper as I said, "It seems to be a journal entry, a month before your father died." Handing him the one I just read. This next one said,

John's Journal;

made to show everyone my success after I die.

The paper was turned in a portrait angle and had a rip down the side that perfectly matched up with the other half. I was guessing that my husband didn't have enough paper to make a title page, so he just used the rest of the other to make one. I dropped the papers, my eyes widening and filling with tears, shock racing through me. James picked up the papers and read them with a confused look on his face which slowly turned to shock as he tried to get what was written in black ink.

"That explains a lot" he finally said in a calm tone that made me cry more because it was the exact same voice his father had.

"A lot?" I wondered aloud. "What do you mean a lot?"

"Well for one thing he almost was never home and when he was he probably was here for no more than two days. He also left at night. He snuck away."