The Dead Husband by Carter Wilson (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

back to Wisconsin. And no, I don’t really believe she’d be so bold as to directly mimic a murder scene from one of her books. I’m not even as convinced as I was before that she did it. But the amount of Ambien and Valium in Riley McKay’s system was clearly enough to put someone at the very least in a coma, even without alcohol. And I’m having a hard time seeing this as suicide. Especially given that he confirmed weekend plans with a friend that same night.”

Her voice jolted Colin from his thoughts. “Only idiots and junkies mix alcohol and medications.” She sipped her gin.

“And murderers,” Colin added.

She fell silent for a good thirty seconds before remarking, “It’s the Day of the Dead.”

“What?”

His mother finally looked over at him, her eyes now only half-open. “Today. It’s Day of the Dead. November 1.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“The dead all rise today.”

He took her creepy statement in stride. “Well, there’re just a few hours left in the day. They better get to it.”

“Cheers to that,” she said, taking another sip of her drink.

The idea of the rising dead made Colin think of Caleb Benner, the sixteen-year-old who went missing in Bury over twenty years ago. Caleb was certainly dead, Colin figured. There’d been no trace of him, no real leads, and it had been so long. Caleb Benner was surely one of the rising dead today.

Colin began telling his mother about that case and how it was the only unsolved missing-persons case in the past half century in Bury.

“High-school senior. Jock. Popular kid, a bit of a reputation, but sounds like he was well liked overall. Went to a party on a Friday night and left early. He was never seen again.” He rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension that’d been building up more and more over the past few weeks. “All the kids who had been at the party were interviewed, but no one remembered much of anything. The police thought maybe he left early with someone else, but no one could say for sure. Or maybe he left alone and just ran into the wrong person on his way home. But Caleb didn’t sound like the kind of kid just to leave a party early.”

He turned to his mother, whose eyes were now closed, drink still in hand. “And here’s the thing,” he said, “the only thing that stands out to me on this. There were fifteen kids at that party, all of them interviewed. And one of them was Cora Yates, the sister of Rose.”

That thought bounced around in his brain as it had been ever since he learned of that fact. Seventeen-year-old Cora Yates was interviewed in connection with the disappearance of Caleb Benner over two decades ago. Now, the younger sister, Rose, was a person of interest in the overdose death of Riley McKay. Rose wrote about a similar overdose murder in one of her novels.

Was there a connection, or just mere coincidence?

Then something clicked in Colin’s mind. Something that hadn’t clicked until this very moment.

Had Rose Yates, J. L. Sharp, ever written about a sixteen-year-old boy? One who went missing or was murdered?

Before he could mull over this question any longer, he heard the front door opening.

A voice called out, “Hello?”

Meg.

“In the dining room,” Colin called out. He expected his voice to jolt his mother, but her eyes remained closed. He reached over and grabbed the drink out of her hand, setting it on a coaster. She mumbled a soft and sleepy thank you.

Colin’s wife walked into the dining room, nearly knocking over a stack of boxes.

“Didn’t expect you to come over,” Colin said. He glanced at her seven-month-pregnant belly. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I just felt like getting some air.”

Colin nodded at his mother. “Just about to get her to bed. You ready to go up, Mom?”

She sighed. “I suppose so.” She fluttered her eyes open and looked at Meg. “Well, hello.”

It was such a distant-sounding greeting, Colin thought. He wondered if, in this moment, she even knew who Meg was.

“Hi, Jackie.”

“Okay, Mom, let’s get you upstairs,” Colin said.

Jackie began to stir as Meg looked around, taking in the house and seeming to sense the true chaos of it for the first time.

“We need to get this place cleaned up,” Meg said.

Colin thought the comment a pebble in a canyon. “Ya think?”

“I mean it. Even just a little bit.” She turned her head to her mother-in-law. “Jackie, how about I help you organize your place. How does that sound?”

His mother walked past her and slowly ambled up the stairs, carefully stepping around the obstacles on each riser. She never answered Meg’s question.

Colin turned to Meg. “What’re you doing? You can’t help her clean up this place. You’re almost eight months pregnant.”

“Not me. I mean, I could help direct things, but maybe she’ll let me bring a cleaning crew in. You know, like those Got Junk? guys.”

“She tells me no every time I suggest it,” Colin said.

“Which is maybe why I should be the one making the suggestion. Maybe she’ll respond better to me.”

“I don’t know, Meg. I don’t think you should—”

“She needs her dignity,” Meg said. “She’s lucid in the day. Do you know how awful it must be when she’s sober and lucid and sees what her life’s become? It’s not safe with all this mess, but moreover, it’s no way for the woman to spend the last part of her life.”

Colin let her words sink in, and after he did, he felt a good degree of shame that he’d never considered his mother’s dignity as part of the whole equation.

“Well, I suppose if you can convince her, that’d be great,” he said. “And very appreciated.”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow.” Meg nodded at the staircase. “Make sure she gets to bed. I’ll wait here… I’m not navigating those stairs.”

“Agreed.”

“Then let’s walk around the neighborhood,” she said. “I just want the air and…I don’t know. The stars. I don’t want to just sit on the