Page 14 of Amazing Grace
Molly was waiting in the living room, her coat draped across her lap.
“Ready?” Grace asked. She shrugged into her jacket.
Molly nodded and stood up, slipping her arms into her coat. “Ready.”
After locking up the house using the electronic lock and code given to them by Zoe, they got into the Silverado.
Grace looked at Molly. “How do you feel about driving down to the maze and picking up your truck? We can park it here at the house.”
“You want to check out the maze, too, don’t you?” Molly smirked.
“I won’t lie. I’m curious to see if they’ve destroyed it.”
Molly’s smile turned grim. “Okay. I’m not crazy about returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak, but…okay. I do need my truck anyway.”
Grace turned the Silverado right, and they headed down the twisting roads that led out of town and to the field where the maze had been built.
Everything looked the same aside from the yellow police tape crisscrossing the entrance. Somehow, that yellow tape just got to Grace, making her realize her season was over for the year.
“Jesus,” Grace said. Then the tears came and became sobs. She shook with them and felt Molly’s arms encircle her. “It was all for nothing, Molly. All those hours of planning and designing and working, all that money invested in manpower and hay bales, the decorations...”
“You’ll reopen,” Molly whispered. “As soon as this is all over, or next year at the latest. I’ll bet when you rebuild it, it’ll be better than ever.”
Grace shook her head. “It’ll always be stained by the murder. People will always whisper, ‘This is the maze where that guy got killed.’ No matter how many times I rebuild.”
“No. They’ll forget. They always do. And if not, it’ll become an urban legend and add to the spookiness of the experience.”
Grace’s sigh seemed to come from her feet to her head, it was so deep. “Okay. Let’s get your truck. You have the keys?”
Molly jangled them in her hand.
“Okay, follow me back to the house.”
“Um, Grace? Look.”
Grace looked where Molly was pointing. Her Blazer was covered with yellow police caution tape, too. Grace got out of her truck and stood next to Molly.
“What the hell?” Grace stalked toward the Blazer. “What are they doing?”
“Protecting evidence. What are you two doing up here?” Deputy Aldridge stepped out from behind the Blazer.
“We came to get Molly’s truck.”
Deputy Aldridge looked as if he might argue with her, but he didn’t. He just moved to the side so they could pass. He would know by now thattheir alibis checked out, and besides, a warrant would be needed to impound the car, and there was no reason to get one.
She and Molly quickly ripped off the yellow caution tape, and they each drove back their own vehicle back to town and to Zoe and Emily’s house. Molly left her truck there and jumped into the Silverado.
Grace drove onto Third Street. About halfway down the block was a tiny boutique, Second Time Around Vintage Clothing. Finding a parking spot across the street, she successfully parallel parked — not her favorite thing to do, especially in the large Silverado — and they exited. They stood watching the shop for a few minutes from across the street.
The shop seemed normal. It had a sign hanging over the door proclaiming its name, and two big picture windows, oneon either side of the door. In the windows stood mannequins dressed in vintage clothing, mostly eighties leftovers — lace gloves, parachute pants, and padded-shoulder jackets in neon colors. One blonde mannequin was dressed like Madonna in a pointy-boobed corset and leggings. In another glass case were older antiques that seemed to stem from the forties and fifties — an old gun, a bayonet, and a WWII knife.
“Ready? Just follow my lead.” Grace led Molly across the street to the store. When she pulled open the door, a delicate bell dinged.
Inside the store, it looked as if the eighties had exploded. Music from the eighties was playing from an honest-to-goodness boombox. At the moment it was, “Don’t Stop Believing,” by Journey.
If it was made in the eighties, it seemed it had found a home on a shelf or a hanger in the store. Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, Rubix cubes, a few Care Bears, several Cabbage Patch dolls, and a Teddy Ruxpin, and lots of things Grace didn’t recognize were on one shelf. In a glass case below the shelf, there were several Nintendo units including the original one, Ataris, Segas, and a TurboGrafx 16, along with an array of games for each of them.
On the other side of the store, the shelves held jewelry displays featuring lightning earrings, bangles, jelly bracelets, headbands, large bow barrettes, and other eighties jewelry treasures.