Stay Dead (Elise Sandburg series) by Anne Frasier

Author:Anne Frasier [Frasier, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Elise stared at the dried-up corpse inside the box. Someone had killed this man because of her.

“We were all swimming in the river,” Anastasia said from the doorway. “And Scott took you inside. I heard shouting from upstairs, and the sound of breaking glass. I told the others to stay where they were, and I tossed on a shirt and hurried to the house. There was no electricity up here then, so I brought a lantern with me. And when I got here—” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, Elise. I blame myself. I blame myself for all of it. There you were, on that filthy mattress, your nightgown pushed up to your armpits, and . . . and . . .” She covered her face.

Elise finished for her. “And Scott dead on the floor.”

“Yes.” Anastasia let out an anguished sob. “Yes. I took you downstairs, and I tucked you in my bed, and I gave you a sleeping pill. I just wanted you to stop thinking about it. I wanted it to go away for you. And you slept like death until the next evening. I think I gave you too much. But when you woke up, you never said anything about the previous night. You just acted like it hadn’t happened, so I didn’t say anything either.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you report it?”

“I was scared, and cops didn’t much like what was going on out here anyway. One of the men helped me, because, let me tell you, a dead man is really heavy. We lined the trunk with plastic and we put the body inside. We were going to carry it downstairs and bury him, but then I got the idea to just leave him here. To fill the box with lime and sawdust and kind of mummify him. It was just supposed to be temporary, until everybody left, or until the police quit looking for him. But the police never came. For a while people talked about the dead rat smell, but I kept adding more lime, and burning more incense, and it finally stopped. And then I just quit coming up here. Until now.”

Elise got to her feet. “And you never found out who killed him?”

“Oh, honey. I was drunk and high. I’d even dropped a little acid that night. I can’t be a hundred percent sure about anything.”

Elise had experienced cases of selective amnesia, or trauma-based amnesia, but she’d never been completely convinced it was real. Now she knew. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think he did anything to me. I mean, I think whoever killed him got there before he could hurt me.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“What about the man who helped with the body? Was it someone named Joe? Or maybe Sam?”

“I don’t remember. You have to realize it was a different time back then. People came and went, and after he left I never saw him or heard from him again. And I was relieved about that, because he would have been a reminder.

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