Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Florence, Now
The sun had set by the time they stepped out of the shop, and the rain was coming down in sheets.
Though Ink made to follow, as soon he stepped one paw on wet pavement, he turned around and went right back inside.
If it weren’t for the urgency, Florence would’ve done the same.
At least the shop had left two umbrellas by the front door.
“I’ll drive,” Owen shouted over the downpour. He pressed the button on his keys, and the truck parked right out front beeped in response. They made a run for it.
“Thank you for doing this,” Florence said, a little breathless, as she slid into the passenger seat.
“It’s part of my family’s history, too.” Owen wiped his wet hands against his jeans. “Too bad the café’s closed or we could make a copy of the police report and read it over there.”
“Something else to discuss over coffee,” Florence said with a touch of sadness in her voice. She pulled off her glasses to clean the rain from her lenses.
“I’m not sure that would count as me taking you out, but the way you’ve avoided my offers, it might be the only way to get you over there.”
Florence slid her glasses back into place and looked up at him. “I thought you were only asking me to coffee to talk about your aunt.”
“I did want to ask you about her, yes, but that wasn’t all it was.”
Florence flushed, and despite the risks, she couldn’t help the way her heart warmed.
Florence had never had a reason to go to the police station—she wasn’t particularly fond of law enforcement—but if their website was to be believed, they were open to the public at all hours.
After she and Owen made another dash through the pouring rain, she was pleased to find the doors unlocked and an older man sitting at the front desk.
Florence shook out her umbrella and turned.
“Please leave your umbrellas by the—” the police officer cut himself short. “Florence Caldwell.”
“Yes, hello,” she said, her eyes landing on his name tag. “Officer Rollins.”
He crossed his arms as he glanced from her to Owen. “The thirteenth isn’t for a few more days.”
“Don’t worry. If I were reporting another death, I’d call it in,” she said wryly. He’d taken her call when her mother died and let her mother’s body sit inside Honeysuckle House until the fourteenth, too afraid to send any of his men on a curse day.
He broke eye contact and started shuffling a few papers on his desk. “What brings you in?”
“I was wondering if there was a report filed for the car accident that killed Helen and Christopher Caldwell,” she said.
That got his attention. The officer looked back up at her, eyebrows raised. “Those files haven’t been digitized. I’d need the exact date—” he cut himself short.
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments until Florence tilted her head to the side and said, “October 13, 1947.”
“Normally I’d need you to fill out a couple of forms,” he said, still not moving from behind the desk.
“I’m trying to stop it from happening again,” Florence said.
“And a police report is going to help you do that?” the officer asked.
“Where are the forms?” Owen cut in. “We’ll fill them out while you get the report.”
Officer Rollins narrowed his eyes at Owen. “Aren’t you the beekeeper Evie Caldwell hired to work the festival?” He glanced at Florence. “Here I thought you were the sister who wasn’t dragging people into your family’s mess.”
“Tillie Grey was my great-aunt,” Owen said. “I dragged myself into this. Now about that paperwork?”
Rollins gave a long, drawn-out sigh before he pulled out a form from behind the desk and handed it over, then disappeared without another word.
“What was his problem?” Owen asked.
“My sister has done a lot to change the way this town thinks about our family, but there are still plenty of people who don’t want anything to do with us,” Florence said. “It’s easier to keep us at an arm’s length than worry about becoming the next victim.”
They hadn’t even finished filling out the form by the time Rollins returned with a file box marked Caldwell. There were several dates scrawled across the front.
“This is everything we have on the deaths,” he said.
“That was fast,” Owen said. “You made it seem like it was going to take a while.”
The cop raised his brows. “You want this or not?”
Florence finished the form and handed it over.
Rollins led them to an interrogation room.
He flipped the light switch on, casting them in the harsh glare of fluorescents, and Florence found herself wishing she was back at the bookstore with a cozy lamp and a squashy chair.
Rollins dropped the box in the middle of the table with a grunt.
“Don’t take anything out of the station.”
With that, he left them alone. As soon as the door closed behind him, Florence opened the box. Inside she found six file folders, all so thin she doubted they were going to be much help. Still, she pulled them out and opened the first one, labeled 2012.
Inside she found a police report detailing her mother’s death.
Florence’s witness statement had been typed up alongside Evie’s.
The case was labeled closed and cleared.
Cause of death: Accidental injury. Behind the report were the photos the officers had taken.
Florence fanned them out on the table and stared at them for a few moments.
Her mother’s body lay on the floor of her bedroom, neck twisted at an angle, eyes open and unblinking. A metal chandelier pinned her to the ground. Blood pooled from where its iron spikes had driven through her arms, her stomach, her chest.
“You shouldn’t have to see those,” Owen said.
Florence blinked up at him, surprised to find tears on her eyelashes. She brushed them away. “I already saw it in person.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to relive it.”
Florence shook her head slowly as if she could dislodge the grief that had pushed its way out of the hole where she’d tried to bury it. When Owen reached for the photos, she didn’t stop him. He carefully put the report and the images back in the folder, then set it off to the side.
Florence took out the rest of the folders in order. They were much the same as her mother’s. A few short pages detailing the scene of the death. A ruling of accidental injury. Photographs she’d rather not be looking at but couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from.
Her father, dead on the front lawn.
Her grandmother, neck broken at the base of a spiral staircase.
Her great-aunt, impaled on a loose floorboard.
Tillie Grey, drowned in a bathtub.
Like the others, the case had been closed, the death marked accidental.
Unlike the others, Tillie’s folder had a little more weight to it.
Someone had actually investigated Tillie’s death, with both Violet and Regina listed as possible suspects—the only two people in the house when it had happened.
There were no markings on Tillie’s body to suggest anyone had held her down, and Violet and Regina claimed to have been together in another room when the drowning occurred.
On the final page of notes, a single line: Thirteen years to the day after the deaths of Helen and Christopher Caldwell.
The first time the town pieced together what had happened, the reality of what the Caldwells faced.
Florence handed the folder to Owen and picked up the final case in the box: her great-grandparents, pinned by the limbs of an old maple tree then crushed beneath its weight.
She lifted the black-and-white photo. The bodies were barely visible beneath the fallen leaves, the blood a dark shadow. Honeysuckle vines wrapped around the car.
The report was short, an attempt to understand what had caused Christopher Caldwell to lose control of the wheel.
The car had been so damaged by the falling tree, there was little to be gleaned from it.
The windshield, shattered. The roof, caved in.
The brake fluid reservoir, pierced by one of the branches.
There were statements from each of the sisters.
Together, they told the same story. The Caldwells had gone for a weekend trip with the Greys.
They’d returned early after an argument between their father and Tillie’s.
Christopher Caldwell had been driving fast, complaining how the entire vacation had been a ruse, another attempt to get them to sell their shop.
Though Helen had tried to calm him down, tried to convince him to pull over and let her take the wheel, Christopher had refused.
They’d gone around the curve to Honeysuckle House too fast, and instead of slowing and turning up the drive, they’d careened into the yard, colliding with the tree.
When questioned about how they escaped the car, the girls said the house rescued them, pulling them free with its vines.
After she read each page, Florence snapped a photo then handed the report to Owen. By the time they finished, she let out a long groan, planted her hands on the table, and dropped her forehead to meet them.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “The way I learned the story, the tree fell on the car. But this report makes it sound like the car hit the tree first.”
“Why is that a problem?” Owen asked.
“The curse takes someone every thirteen years, and it always does it at Honeysuckle House. But if the car lost control before it was on our property, then it couldn’t be the curse, could it?
” She tapped her fingers against the table.
“I hoped we might find something that would point to why the deaths happened, how the curse started. But out of all of these, this one actually reads like an accident report.”
Owen reached for one of the pages and set it in front of them. “Except for this,” he said as he pointed to the paper. “They tried to find why the car lost control, but it was inconclusive. There wasn’t any brake fluid in the reservoir.”
Florence shook her head. “That’s because of the tree.”
“It says it might have been caused by the tree,” Owen said. He picked up the page and read, “Brake fluid reservoir was empty at time of investigation. Tree pierced the reservoir, but it’s impossible to determine amount of fluid prior to accident.”
“You think someone tampered with the brake fluid?” Florence asked.
“I’m not sure what I think,” Owen said. “But it seems like someone else may have had that thought. Why else would they feel like it was important to include the argument with my family?”
Florence tapped the tip of her finger against her nose as she connected the pieces of Owen’s theory. She flipped through the report and pulled up the transcript of an interview with William Grey. “They even talked with your great-grandfather because he wanted my great-grandparents’ shop.”
“If the police couldn’t determine when the brake fluid was emptied, then it could’ve happened before they crashed into the tree,” Owen whispered.
They sat in silence as the realization hit them: Florence’s great-grandparents may not have been killed by the curse at all. They may very well have been killed by Owen’s family.
Owen dropped his head into his hands. “I wanted the truth,” he said, “but I didn’t want this.”
Florence reached out a hand toward him, almost rested it on his back, but stopped herself. “Do you really think it’s possible? Would your great-grandfather have done something like that?”
He glanced up at her. “I never knew him.”
“Let’s say this theory is right,” Florence said. “How would a murder lead to the curse? I could understand it if maybe it was your family that was cursed, but if they really did kill my great-grandparents, they got away with it.”
“Tillie died,” Owen reminded her.
“Because a Caldwell loved her,” Florence said. “There has to be more to it—something we’re not seeing.”
“I know you gave up your magic,” Owen said. “But maybe it’s time for you to pick up your tarot deck again.”