Bone Yard Part 3

I've never known the right thing to say to that.

I excused myself and, pausing a few times to say h.e.l.lo to people I knew, I went over to pay my respects.

The elderly woman was turning away from the casket as I approached, and Pepper patted her shoulder in an awkward attempt at comfort as she wept.She was at least fifty pounds heavier than Annie Mae had been toward the end of her life, but otherwise the resemblance was remarkable. I knew she had to be the sister. "I should have come down to see her more often," she said. " Especially after she went into the home..."

"Now, Aunt Ella, she knew you did your best."

She pressed the tissue hard against her red wet eyes and turned her face to Pepper's shoulder. "Well," she said in a small quavery voice. "I kept our secret. All these years, I kept it, and I guess it don't matter anymore now, does it? But she had to know I loved her."

"Yes ma'am, she did, I know she did." Pepper looked distraught as he tried to steer his aunt away from the casket. "You just hush now."

Neither one of them had noticed me, standing slightly behind them, and when I touched Pepper's arm he started. "Miss Stockton," he said, surprised.

He looked tense and exhausted, vastly different from the big, good-natured man I'd last seen in the cab of a bulldozer, shouting orders to his crew. His shoulders were stooped and his color was sallow. He quickly seated his aunt in one of the folding chairs beside the coffin, and turned back to me.

"I'm so sorry about your mother," I said, extending my hand. "She was such a sweet woman."

"Why, Miss Stockton, that's real nice of you to say so." He shook my hand. "And good of you to come."

I explained how I knew her from my nursing home visits with Cisco, and he told me how much she had enjoyed them. After that the conversation faltered, and I turned to pay my final respects to the dear little old white-haired woman in the pink satin lined coffin. Despite my mother's best efforts, I really am not very good at this sort of thing. In fact, I'm generally not entirely comfortable in any social situation that doesn't include a dog by my side.

When I turned away, Pepper was already engaged in conversation with someone else, so I went down the line of family members who were sitting on either side of the coffin, introducing myself to those I didn't know and murmuring the same few awkward words-"So sorry." "She will be missed." "A lovely woman." Most of the family members were fairly sanguine about it all and responded with "She had a good life" and " She'd been sick so long."--which is what you'd expect from relatives of an eighty-two year old woman who had had three strokes and had been in a nursing home for the past two years. But the aunt was inconsolable. She took my hand in a fevered, claw-like grip and looked up at me with swimming blue eyes that were eerily reminiscent of her sister's.

"We had to do it," she said. Her hand tightened on mine and there was a note of desperation in her voice, "You understand that, don't you?"

Because I didn't know what else to say, I replied soothingly, "Of course I do."

I glanced at the young man sitting next to her, who was texting on his cell phone, and he rolled his eyes in a meaningful fas.h.i.+on. "Grandma," he said patiently, "I don't think this lady knows what you're talking about." And under his breath, "I don't think anybody knows what you're talking about."

With a sudden sharp look at him, the woman snapped, "Of course she does. And you mind your manners!"

I managed to extricate my hand and I said gently, "I know it's hard, but this pain will pa.s.s. I'm so sorry for your loss."

They teach you how to deal with the elderly and the infirm in Therapy Dog training. I couldn't help thinking that the grandson, who was already working his thumbs on the cell phone again, could have benefited from a cla.s.s or two.

I said, "I used to bring my Golden Retriever to visit Annie Mae every Thursday afternoon. They had the best time together. She would save her cookies from lunch for him."

Of course it was against the rules to allow the therapy dogs to eat food from the patients, for a variety of excellent reasons, but I always promised I would save the cookies for Cisco's dessert after supper. I would then let her treat him with dog biscuits from my pocket while he did tricks for her.

"Oh my goodness," she exclaimed softly, and some of the raw grief in her eyes was replaced by cautious grat.i.tude. "You're the girl with the dog? She wrote me about you. She even sent me a picture that you took of her with him. She was so proud that you came every week."

Unexpectedly, I felt tears p.r.i.c.k my eyes. You never know how much some simple thing you do can mean to someone else."We enjoyed visiting with her. Cisco loved her, and she always had such interesting stories about the old days."

A shadow filled her eyes, and her smile trembled. "The old days weren't always that good," she said, "but we did have some memories. We're twins, don't you know. As close as two sisters have ever been. I lived right there on the mountain in that little house on the pond next to hers until I married. Of course, that was after Henry..." Her voice caught and she pressed the tissue against her eyes again. I patted her knee a little awkwardly.

She went on, "I didn't want to leave her then but my husband got a job in Wheeling, and us with a little one on the way... but I should have visited more often. I should have come back to stay with her after my Jimmy died, I thought about it, but it was so far away from my children..." She caught herself, and smiled wearily. "Well, aren't you the sweetest thing, listening to me rambling on. No wonder Annie Mae liked you so much. I wish I could meet that dog of yours. She said it did tricks."

"If you're going to be here awhile I'll be glad to bring him by," I said.

Some of the pained lines in her face relaxed, and her eyes grew soft. "Well, wouldn't Annie Mae love that? Bless you, dear."

I promised her I would try, offered my condolences once again, and said goodbye as someone else came up to greet her. She held on to my hand in a way that reminded me of the way Annie Mae used to do when it was time for Cisco and me to leave. Once again, my eyes p.r.i.c.kled.

I was ready to go.I sought out Pepper to take my leave, and he thanked me again for coming. "It looks like this weather is about to break," he said. "I don't want you to worry about your job. I'm planning to have the concrete poured by Wednesday, latest."

I said, "Oh. About that...."

I'm sure that somewhere in all the manners my mother taught me there was one that covered a situation like this. How did you bring up the subject of unidentified remains buried in an unmarked grave to a man who was standing in front of his own mother's casket? But it would be pointless to equivocate; the man's job depended on me, and the story would be all over the radio by tomorrow morning anyway.

He was waiting, so I blurted, "There's been a little delay. You see, the state police... well, they've got the site cordoned off, so maybe you had better wait till you hear from me before you bring the crew back in."

He stared at me. "State police?"

I glanced around uneasily. "Yes. Well. . ." I lowered my voice. "The problem is, they found bones-human bones-buried under the kennel site." I saw his expression go kind of weird and I knew I'd made a terrible social gaffe, but I didn't know how to remedy it. "It's no one we know," I said hastily. "I mean, they think the remains are old... actually, they don't really know because they haven't even finished digging up the, um, pieces.... Because of the weather, you know...." I was starting to wish I could sink into that hole with the unidentified bones and pull the dirt in over me. I finished a little desperately, "Don't worry, I'll call you in a couple of days. I'm terribly sorry for your loss." And I rushed out of there as though my skirt was on fire.

My mother, G.o.d rest her, was no doubt rolling over in her own grave.

I grabbed my coat and my umbrella and turned the heat on full blast when I got to my car. I had never looked forward to getting home and getting into my flannel pajamas so much in my life.

______________.

FIVE.

The cold rain was beating down on my winds.h.i.+eld, and headlights flashed in my rear view mirror as I pulled out on to Broad Street. I didn't really notice that the headlights were still there until I made the left turn onto the highway, and they followed. After a couple of miles, all the other cars going south on the highway disappeared-it was a Wednesday night in November, after all-- but those headlights remained steady on my tail. I slowed, and so did they. I sped up, and they kept pace.

My throat went dry.

I am not easily spooked, but it had been an unusual day. Murder victims buried in my back yard, a possible serial killer, ma.s.s graves across the county line. I had just come from a funeral home, for heaven's sake. And when I reached across the seat to fish my cell phone from my purse, the headlights were so close that I didn't even have to squint to make sure that the first number on my speed dial was 911.

I didn't push send, though. I had had enough drama for one day.

When I turned into my driveway, however, and the headlights followed, my finger was on the b.u.t.ton.

I have a .38 special in my glove compartment, and I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Buck had insisted upon it when I started doing wilderness search and rescue-apparently a gun in a backpack does const.i.tute a "concealed weapon"-- and it had come in handy on the one or two occasions I had remembered to take it. I had shot a rattlesnake once, and scared off a bear by firing into the air.I popped the glove compartment, locked my doors, and kept my thumb on the speed-dial b.u.t.ton as I pulled up in front of my house and waited until the person in the car behind me turned off his engine and opened his door.

I sighed with relief and cursed with annoyance as the interior light from the car behind me revealed the oh-too-handsome face of Miles Young.

Miles is a super-rich land developer from Atlanta. He showed up a few months ago with some crazy-a.s.sed idea to build a fly-in resort community on top of the mountain that has sheltered my family's land for six generations, started buying up property left and right, raping the countryside, disenfranchising countless forest creatures and threatening the ecosystem in innumerable ways-at least that's what it says on at least three of the law suits filed against him by environmental action groups of which I am a member. The thing is-and I hate this part-he really isn't threatening the ecosystem . He has gone out of his way to meet or exceed every standard that Sonny, who is spearheading the legal battle, has demanded of him. He's actually building a prototype green community, and he's brought jobs that have meant the difference between life and death for a part of the country that could have been crushed by the economic downturn. He practically singlehandedly built what will soon be our new animal shelter. And worst of all, Cisco adores him-probably because he (Miles) keeps bringing him (Cisco) treats.

He drops by every now and then to check on the progress of his new house, and when he's in town, he usually knocks on my door.Sometimes he brings food, which we eat together. In my house. But we are not dating.

When he's in town, he stays in the trailer he had moved to the site of what will one day be the security gate of his complex, which makes him my nearest neighbor. Please, don't feel sorry for him. His doublewide is more luxurious that most stick-built homes around here, with two Jacuzzi tubs and a thirty-foot wrap around deck with a view to die for. Okay, so I've seen it. But we are not dating.

I closed the glove compartment, turned off the engine, and tossed the cell phone back into my purse as I got out of the car and locked the doors behind me. Miles was coming toward me with a pizza box in his hand, the hood of his windbreaker pulled up over his head.Rain pounded on both of us.

"You," I told him raising my voice to be heard over the thrumming of the rain, "almost got yourself shot."

"Thanks for reconsidering," he called back, and hurried up the front steps to shelter.

Cisco was dancing in front of the door when I unlocked it, and Miles made a big fuss over him while I shrugged out of my wet coat and went to let the other dogs out of their crates. By the time I got back to the front of the house, all four dogs were sitting beautifully in front of him while he pa.s.sed out dog biscuits. I've got to give the guy credit: he knows how to work a crowd. That's probably related in some way to how he became a multi-millionaire; I just haven't figured out how yet.

Miles is a good looking man in his early forties with buzz-cut salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetual Bahamian tan. Tonight he was wearing jeans, cowboy boots and an Atlanta Falcons sweats.h.i.+rt, and he still smelled like money.

"This needs to be reheated," Miles said, picking up the pizza box again and starting for the kitchen. The dogs followed hopefully."I waited for you half an hour outside the funeral home."

"How did you know where I was?" I demanded suspiciously.

"Saw you get out of the car as I was driving by." He flipped on the kitchen light with his elbow and headed for the microwave, the dogs trotting attentively behind him. "Who died?"

I've noticed that city people have a much more casual att.i.tude toward death than we in small towns do. Probably because they also have a much more casual att.i.tude toward life.

"A nice old lady by the name of Annie Mae Potts," I replied. "Cisco and I used to visit her in the nursing home."

"Potts," he repeated thoughtfully as he set the box on the counter and opened it. The smell of pepperoni and cheese filled the room and made my mouth water. "That name sounds familiar. Did she have a relative by the name of Durrance... Thaddeus...Terrance, that's what it was. Terrance Potts."

"Her son," I told him. Cisco edged his nose a little too close to the counter and I kneed him in the shoulder. "He's a contractor. I think he works for you." Most contractors in this part of the state were working for Miles these days, since his development was just about all the work they could find. He had done me a favor by sending the crew down to work on my building; otherwise it might have been next summer before I got the work done. "Don*t you dare give my dog pepperoni."

"Yeah, that's right." Innocently, Miles popped the piece of purloined pepperoni into his own mouth and put the pizza in the microwave. "He also just sold me a sizeable piece of property with a spring-fed pond in the middle. We're going to excavate it out to a twenty-acre lake-boating, fis.h.i.+ng, waterfalls. It's going to be gorgeous."

I glared at him. "Do you have environmental permits for all of that?"

He helped himself to another piece of pepperoni before closing the microwave door and setting the timer. "You bet. We'll have it dug out before the first freeze and let it fill up over the spring thaw."

The dogs were starting to make pests of themselves, so I called them all outside for their last potty break. Miles knew his way around my kitchen well enough to fend for himself, and I left him to it. But we are not dating.

I commanded the dogs to hurry up and stood s.h.i.+vering on the porch until they all finished their business and came racing back to me. I dried their coats and paws and got them all settled for the night: the Aussies in their crates and Majesty on her plush velvet bed embroidered with a crown and the script "The Princess Sleeps Here."Cisco, of course, stayed with me. It wasn't that he was spoiled; it was just that he was still in training.

When I returned the kitchen was redolent with the smell of good Italian spices and greasy pepperoni. Cisco licked strands of drool from his jowls and I felt like doing the same. I took a beer for myself and a cola for Miles, who did not drink, from the refrigerator while Miles got the plates and napkins.

"Do you want to eat in the living room?" I suggested. "We could have a fire."

"As long as you build the fire. I was never a boy scout."

I cast him an amused and mildly contemptuous look. "You are such a wuss."

He grinned and tilted the pizza box toward me. "But I can cook."

I had a fire blazing in the fireplace before he finished bringing in the things from the kitchen. We kicked off our boots and sat on the floor around the coffee table, with the pizza-and Cis...o...b..tween us. I was ravenous, and ate the first slice without taking a breath. Miles watched me with thinly disguised amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Good thing I got here when I did," he observed. "You might have starved to death." He took a bite out of his own slice. "So, what's been going on?"

I thought about what had been going on, and then about the expression on his face when I told him, and I couldn't help it: I laughed. There was nothing funny about it, but I laughed anyway. And then I told him about the bones, and the police, and the serial killer and the ma.s.s graves and the skull with the bullet hole, and the expression on his face was exactly as I had imagined it would be.But I didn't feel like laughing any more.

He picked up his now-cold slice of pizza. Cisco watched his every move. " And I used to think I had an exciting life."

"The worst part is I really don't know when I'm going to be cleared to get the foundation poured on my building." That was not really the worst part, of course-knowing that someone had been buried in a trash bag in my back yard was-but at the moment it was comforting to have something practical to focus on. "If they don't find all the bones in the next couple of days they could be looking for months."

Miles chewed thoughtfully. "It doesn't seem to me as though it would be too hard to narrow down the list of victims in a county this size. How many people could there be who died of a gunshot wound to the head?"

I gave him a pitying look. He would never make a detective. "First of all," I explained, "we don't know it was a gunshot to the head. It could have been some other kind of wound. Secondly, if he's been buried in my back yard all this time, no one would know he died of a gunshot to the head. Thirdly, we don't know when he died. It could have been dozens of years ago." I shrugged. "Where do you start?"

He reached for another slice of pizza and regarded me thoughtfully. "So," he said, "what exactly did happen to your last boyfriend, anyway?"

There is something about the use of the word "boyfriend" by a semi-s.e.xy looking guy who's sharing a pizza with you in front of the fireplace that would bring a tingle to any girl's cheeks. But Miles Young is not my boyfriend. We're not even dating. And I held his gaze evenly as I took a slug of the beer and replied, "I shot him in the head and buried him in the back yard."

He laughed.

Cisco's ears shot forward suddenly and he gave a sharp Woof . I thought it was a reaction to the fact that Miles and I were having a good time, or possibly an attempt to distract us from the pizza. Dogs are notoriously manipulative, and Cisco is among the best.I was about to reprimand him for barking, when suddenly all h.e.l.l broke loss.

Cisco sprang to his feet and scrambled over the coffee table, barking madly. Pizza and beer and cola flew everywhere. Miles leapt to his feet, overturning the table. I yelled. Majesty awoke from a dead sleep and added her sharp collie bark and her blur of sable-and-white fur to the cacophony. Cisco tore across the room, his claws scrabbling on the wood floor, his big, fierce bark banging in my ears, toward the kitchen. I ran after him.

Cisco was flinging himself against the door when I arrived, clawing and barking furiously. I knew exactly what that behavior meant."There's someone out there!" I cried, and flipped on the outside lights. I caught Cis...o...b.. the collar and opened the back door. He plunged through, dragging me after him.

"Are you crazy?" Miles grabbed my arm and jerked me backward, and I lost hold of Cisco's collar. Cisco charged down the steps into the glittering curtain of rain, and that was when I saw a movement, the distinct form of a man clearly silhouetted in the haze of the perimeter lights, running across the lawn.

"Cisco!"I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Miles pulled me back so hard that I lost my balance and fell into him. He tripped over me and we both fell in a tangle on the kitchen floor."Get pizza!" I shouted at him, crawling over his legs to reach the back door. "Cisco! Here!"

He stared at me as though I had, in fact, lost my mind. "Get back in here!" He grabbed at my sweater and missed. "There's somebody out there!"

"Pizza!" I shouted at him and stumbled, half skidding across the wet porch, to the back steps. "Cisco, here!"

Then I heard the most glorious sound ever: paws splas.h.i.+ng through mud, happy s...o...b..ring pants, and a soaking wet golden retriever barreled up the steps and into my arms. I grabbed him; Miles grabbed me and dragged both of us back inside and slammed the door. He had a wad of cold pizza in his hand and Cisco gulped it down in two ecstatic bites.

I scrambled in the utility drawer for a flashlight and Miles demanded, "What are you doing?"

"There's somebody in my back yard!"

"Call the police!"

I didn't even spare him my usual withering look for that one. Surely even he could figure out that by the time they got here whoever was prowling around out there would be gone. I pulled on my galoshes and the barn coat that hung on a hook by the door and commanded, "Cisco, stay!" as I charged through.

Miles exclaimed, "Oh for the love of---!" But before I was halfway across the lawn he was splas.h.i.+ng through the mud alongside me, the hood of his windbreaker pulled up against the rain, the beam of his pocket flashlight crossing mine in the dark.

I crossed the yard directly toward the kennel renovation, and I was not at all surprised to see , as I approached the canopy that had been erected over the excavation, that the police tape on one side had been broken away and was waving in the wind. As I moved the flashlight beam down I could see skid marks in the mud, and the plywood over the grave had been moved aside a foot or so. I rushed forward but Miles stopped me with an outflung arm.

"Haven't you ever seen CSI?" he demanded, rain streaming down his face. "Don't contaminate the crime scene."

It would have been a lot easier to mock him had he not been right. I knew better than to go any closer, but it was frustrating. "You saw somebody, right?" I returned, raising my voice to be heard over the rain. I moved my light slowly over the yard, but the beam did not penetrate more than a few dozen feet beyond the security lights.

"He was moving toward the woods," Miles replied, wiping water from his face with the back of his hand. "He's long gone by now. You should call the police."