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NOLA KNOX
Monday, June 15, 2020
Nola pressed her back to the closed front door. She honestly didn’t think it would have taken them this long to start looking for Eve’s killer again. Her mother pushed it for years, but the response was always the same: no new leads.
Nola tried to remember when her mother gave up fighting for Eve. Was it after Charlotte had written the letter to the editor a few years ago going after the sheriff’s department and Grotto PD, specifically Chief Kennedy? That’s when some people really turned on them—started publicly going after Nola, accusing her of hurting Eve. That had hurt her mother badly. Ignore it, Nola had told her. People will always talk.
Now Maggie was talking about looking for new DNA. As a doctor and a scientist, Nola knew all about the advancements in forensics, though she wondered if the Ransom County Sheriff’s Department could say as much.
It was a long shot, getting any meaningful DNA. It all depended on how well preserved the evidence was. After twenty-five years there could be cross contamination and degradation.
She should probably go to the hospital and tell her mother that Eve’s case was reopened but the thought of it made her head ache. Her mother would cry and ask questions that Nola didn’t know the answers to. She would make a scene.
Nola shoved aside a pile of newspapers from the sofa and they fluttered to the floor. She’d tie the papers together with twine later, add them to the others. The look on Maggie’s face when she got a peek into her mother’s living room was priceless. It’s probably what the entire town was expecting though. Nutty Charlotte Knox and her daughter buried alive in a house filled with junk.
Nola hadn’t wanted to come home to Grotto fifteen years ago. After graduating vet school with zero debt because of scholarships Nola moved to Louisiana but ran into a little bit of trouble at the lab she worked at in Baton Rouge. There were some research results and necropsy reports that were called into question and rumors of an inappropriate relationship with a supervisor. Nola had to admit they had her on the falsified data. The affair with her married boss, not so much. But the suggestion of a lawsuit got her out of there with a sterling letter of recommendation and a decent severance.
Now she was back home and Nola had to admit she was comfortable here among the clutter. Maybe clutter was too kind a word. To be fair, Nola thought, most of the garbage belonged to her mother but over the years Nola added her own collections.
Dusty rolls of carpets sat against the walls, plastic garbage bags stuffed with random items filled corners, their black mouths gaping open as if vomiting mildewed clothing, board games and VCR tapes. The living room was covered with newspapers and magazines stacked neck high forming a rat’s maze. It had gotten a bit out of hand, but her mother would freak out if Nola tried to purge the house. Nola liked having her things nearby; how could she begrudge her mother the same? Besides, it was good cover.
Nola reached for the television remote, wanting to see if the local news station had a story about Eve and the new investigation. She flipped through the channels and found nothing.
She stood and followed the labyrinth of rubbish through the living room, passing a bucket filled with acorns, a dressmaking mannequin and tangles of extension cords up the steps to the second floor. Nola paused at her sister’s bedroom door and turned the knob.
The room was dim, the plastic shade drawn, light seeping through only at the corners and edges. Eve’s bed, a narrow twin, was made up with a pieced quilt stitched together with scraps of fabric in shades of pink, orange, green, yellow and blue. One of Eve’s thrift shop finds. Nola remembered their mother being irritated when Eve brought it home. Why did you bring that dirty thing home, Eve? God knows who’s slept under that thing. Funny, considering the state of the house now.
If Eve could see their house now she would be mortified. She was the one who always kept it clean. After she died their mother gave up on day-to-day activities like cooking and cleaning and taking the garbage out. Nola had other things on her mind. She didn’t have time for housework.
Over the years, Eve’s bedroom stayed the same. No newspapers or garbage bags filled with junk encroached the sacred space. Nola and her mother never spoke about it. Eve’s same grunge-band posters still hung on the walls along with a mosaic of photos of Eve with her friends pinned to a large bulletin board. Since her mother had difficulty getting up and down the steps, a thick layer of dust covered every surface. Nola didn’t like coming in here, but she had run out of space in her own room and had resorted to storing some of her collection in Eve’s room.
After Eve died, the sheriff’s department came through and searched for any clues or evidence as to who might have killed her. They were respectful. Dressed in booties and white gloves, they went through every drawer and pocket and looked at each scrap of paper. When finished, they tried to put everything back where it came from.
Nola plucked a snapshot of Eve and Nick from where it was tucked into the corner of Eve’s mirror. Eve was sitting on Nick’s lap, his arms around her waist. They were both smiling into the camera. Smiling at Nola. Nola remembered how Eve had handed her the black-and-yellow disposable camera and Nola grudgingly took the picture. Through the lens, they looked so happy, but Nola knew better. She knew what he did to her. At the time Nola wasn’t sure whom she hated more. Nick for hurting Eve, or Eve for putting up with it.
Less than a month after the picture was taken Eve was dead. Not long after that Nola pushed Nick Brady into a glass trophy case at the high school. They both ended up with scars. Nick needed stitches on his arm and Nola had to have a shard of glass extracted from her lung. It had been worth it, worth the scars, worth expulsion and counseling, Nola thought, just to see his blood pool onto the tiled floor. Of course, they charged Nola with the assault. No one would have believed her if she had told them what really happened.
Nola had always thought they would end up arresting Nick for Eve’s murder. It never happened. Maybe it was time that changed. Nola finally told her mother about the bruises that she suspected Nick gave Eve. At first Charlotte protested, couldn’t believe that someone like Nick would be abusive but over time she came around.
Her mother once tried to throw the picture of Eve and Nick away, but Nola stopped her. It needs to stay, Nola insisted. Charlotte argued with her, said she couldn’t stand looking at the picture of the person who killed Eve but Nola was insistent. It stays, she said with such ferocity that Charlotte jumped. The photo stayed. It fueled Nola’s anger.
Nola wandered to Eve’s bookshelf and ran her fingers along the spines and retrieved one of the books. The pages were stained and dog-eared. Nola replaced the book and chose another, The Thorn Birds. Most of Eve’s books were swollen and warped from a number of reading sessions in the bathtub. Eve would light scented candles, fill the tub with hot water and bubble bath, lock the door and disappear. This book had been cared for. No dog-eared pages, no food stains. Nola had been waiting for just the right time to pull this book out and use what was inside. It looked like the time was now.
Nola peeked inside Eve’s closet. The hatbox was right where she’d left it. She didn’t think that the police would need to search the house after all these years. If they did, they’d get an eyeful, Nola thought, that was for sure.
Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam and REM looked down on Nola from the walls and she suddenly felt closed in, claustrophobic in the cleanest room in the house. Nola hurried from the bedroom and into the hall, book in hand, and opened the door to her own room.
Nola’s room hadn’t changed much over the years either. The dresser with the sticky drawers, the lamp and rickety bookshelf filled with vet textbooks and journals occupied the exact same spots. More books overflowed to the floor and were stacked flush against the walls.
Where Eve had her band posters, Nola had her drawings. Sketched directly onto the plaster walls were brightly colored diagrams of a cat, a dog, a finch, a horse and dozens more that she’d added as recently as last winter. All anatomically correct with realistic depictions of hearts, lungs, livers. Nola wondered what Maggie would think when she saw the cross section of Winnie, the Harpers’ corgi mix.
But it wasn’t the sketches that Nola was worried about. Pressing her back to the wall, she sidestepped along the perimeter to the closet door. She turned and pulled on the knob, opening the door just enough so that she could squeeze inside.
Nola reached into a corner of the shelf, shifting books aside until she found what she was looking for. An old tackle box that Charlotte said once belonged to her father. The tackle box, painted a deep hunter green, was chipped and corroded in spots with a clasp that didn’t work any longer. Nola carefully removed it from the shelf, eased it through the small opening in the door and set it on her bed.
Nola opened the tackle box and inside were over a dozen small clear museum-quality display cases stacked neatly on top of each other. Nola chose one that she acquired years ago and opened it. Sitting inside were three tiny bones, each not much bigger than a grain of rice. The ossicles: malleus, incus and stapes. Hammer, anvil, stirrup. The better to hear you with, my dear, Nola thought.
Nola doubted that Maggie Kennedy, or anyone else for that matter, would know what they were looking at if they came across her tackle box, but still, questions would arise. Nola closed the box, replaced it with the others and shut the tackle box lid. The Knox home appeared to be in total chaos, but she knew where everything was. Everything.
Besides, it wasn’t the tackle box Nola worried about. She inched her way to the other side of the room where buried beneath a pile of vet journals and unfolded laundry was an old oak cedar chest. Nola cleared the surface, tossing the journals and socks and underwear onto the bed. She lifted the lid with a rusty squeak and the bite of peroxide filled her nose.
What was inside the cedar chest would be much more difficult to hide.
