CnC 4 A Harvest of Bones (15 page)

My work done, I headed into the alcove that nestled our tearoom and staked out the staff’s table. Larry had delivered two types of soup—chicken noodle and pumpkin—along with sandwiches befitting the season. I dished up a big bowl of chicken soup and thumbed through the sandwiches until I found a pastrami on rye. I’d had just settled in when Harlow strode through the door, all five-foot-ten of her.

Her hair gleamed in golden cornrows that hung down to her shoulders, and her flawless lips broadened into a huge smile. She carried a Louis Vuitton handbag in one hand, a diaper bag slung over her shoulder, and was pushing a snazzy stroller. Little Eileen, just two months old and bundled up like a butterball, snoozed away in the seat. Harl had already lost every ounce of pregnancy fat, but I had the feeling she would never return to her pre-pregnancy gauntness. Her curves were in all the right places, and while before she had been a beauty, now she was stunning.

She parked the stroller next to me and hurried over to the counter, where she asked Lana to bring her a bowl of pumpkin soup and a turkey on whole wheat. By the time she returned, I was engrossed in a staring match with the sleeping Eileen. A real cutie, all right. Harl had given her Randa’s middle name, an honor and a gift, considering that Randa had helped her deliver the baby on my kitchen floor.

Harl plunked herself down in the chair and began to nibble on her sandwich. “I’m beat. We’ve been shopping for the past two hours. Eileen is such a good girl—she didn’t fuss at all. But I think this motherhood stuff is taking more out of me than I want to admit. I need a nap and I still have to work out today. And my feet are swollen—that ticks me off.” She held out one foot and I saw that the narrow Prada shoe was playing tight squeeze today. Like most tall, thin women, Harlow had long narrow feet and could pull off the designer look without a hitch.

I grinned. “Lily helping any?” Lily was Harlow’s baby nurse. It would have been nice to have a baby nurse when my two were young, but those days were long ago and far away, thank heaven.

“Oh, yeah. I’m just worn out.”

“I remember that bone-weary tiredness,” I said. “You never forget it.”

Harl shook her head. “How did you do it, Em? You raised two children without any real input from Roy, no nurse, no time to yourself. I don’t know if I could have managed it. You’re amazing.”

A warm glow rushed through me. Harlow was so perfect in so many ways that it felt good for a change to hear her admit that she admired me.

“So, what did you find out about the Brunswicks?” I poked at her shopping bags. “And then tell me what you bought.” Harl’s shopping trips were notorious for their length and scope. She seldom ever left a store without a handful of bags and boxes.

She pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. “Did I tell you that I’m going back to work next month? Professor Abrams wants me back as soon as possible. He said I can telecommute without a problem. And I’m signing up for a class in antiquities come winter quarter. Next fall, I’ll ease into half-time.”

So she was going through with her plan to go back to school. I had to hand it to her—she was a trooper. Though I had my B.A., the thought of returning to school at this time in my life would have overwhelmed me. Harlow was thirty-five, only a couple of years younger than I, and here she was, just stepping into motherhood and planning a return to college to get her degree.

She pushed the notebook in front of me. “It wasn’t hard to find out the basics about the Brunswicks, but I also dug up a few skeletons that were hidden.” With a satisfied smile, she sat back and ate her soup while I glanced over the material.

“Normal rich family?”

She gave me a lopsided grin. “Eh, normal is as normal does. In many ways yes, but there are a couple things you should be aware of. Everything seems fine with the mother, father, and daughter, but the son had some serious problems. The family told everybody that he went overseas, but he actually had a breakdown and was committed to Fairhaven Psychiatric Hospital. The kicker is, he’s still there. Almost fifty years after he was first locked up.”

I jerked my head up. “The son? Brent Brunswick? Irena’s brother?”

Harlow checked over her notes. “That’s the one. They were twins. Irena married a banker named Thomas Finch and they’re still married. The parents moved back east and both died there some time later, the father from a heart attack, the mother from booze.”

Hmm … something was wrong. Irena had specifically said her brother lived overseas, and that he had refused to sell the property. She was obviously lying about the former, but what about the latter? Had Brent even heard of the deal? Or was he just a convenient excuse to keep hold of the lot? And if so, why?

“Does it mention why Brent’s there? And when did they commit him?” I finished my sandwich and picked up my cup of soup, slurping it down much to Harlow’s dismay.

She grimaced. “Try a spoon, babe. Anyway, let me see …” She flipped through the pages. “Here it is. Brent was committed when he was twenty years old. A few days later, his parents told everyone in town that he’d run off overseas. Given his family name and their place in society, nobody ever questioned the matter. A month or so after that the house burned down, Irena got married, and Mr. and Mrs. Brunswick moved back to the east coast.”

A warning bell rang in my head. Something was off. “Is there any mention of a cousin or anybody named Brigit O’Reilly?”

Harl snorted. “Not likely. The Brunswicks are old money. They can trace their family origins back to Henry the Lion, a powerful German prince back in the 1100s. I doubt if they’d even admit to cousins from Ireland—from what I gather, Edward and Lauren Brunswick were hoitytoity types. Edward especially. Irena took after him. Lauren was a lot nicer, I gather. So nice, she turned to drink in order to keep her mouth shut around her husband, according to Patricia Jones, who knew the two after they moved. I made a few calls.”

So where did Brigit fit in? Was she an exchange student? A friend? A maid? Her clothes suggested genteel poverty; her journal, youthful angst.

“Okay, thanks. Can I keep all this?” I gathered up the papers.

“Sure, as long as you let me know when you find out what happened.” Harl then launched into her morning’s shopping, pulling out all of the baby clothes she’d bought, including Eileen’s miniature leather jacket. I stifled my amusement and let her prattle on. After awhile, the baby woke up and I held her, breathing in the smell of baby shampoo, burp-up, and Ivory soap, then transferred her to Harlow and led them back into my office where she changed the baby and fed her. By one, they were ready to head out.

As she kissed my cheek and waved, pushing the stroller toward the door, I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful. Whether it was because I missed the days when Harl and I could hang for hours together, or whether it was because I missed the days when my own children were babies, I didn’t know. And maybe, I thought, it was better that way.

 

 

BY THE TIME I got home, Joe was gone. He’d left a note. Robert Kindle, from the station, called in sick and they needed a substitute. Since Joe had been on vacation and all the other men had worked long shifts lately, it was only right that he take up the slack. He warned me he might not be back for a day or two, depending on how busy they were, and asked me to call him down at the station.

I put in a quick call to reassure him that everything was fine. I also filled him in on the fact that Irena had lied to him about her brother and spelled out exactly what I’d learned. Joe was furious, but right then he was called out—a small brush fire had got out of hand—and I stood holding a silent receiver. I puttered through the house, thinking I should start dinner. The kids would be home soon.

We had a quiet evening of macaroni and cheese and broccoli, and then Randa retreated to her room and Kip headed upstairs to play. I read for a bit, glanced over the info that Harl had found for me, and decided to make an early night of it. After making sure the kids were asleep, I crawled under the covers. The bed felt so big without Joe. We spent every night we could together now, and it was hard for me to sleep without his strong arm curled around my waist, but fall asleep, I eventually did.

At some point, I awoke with the feeling I was being watched. I sat up and saw the ghost cat on the bottom of my bed.

“Well, hello,” I said softly, trying to avoid startling her.

She looked at me and mouthed a “meow” and I had the strangest impulse to follow as she hopped off and headed for the door. I hurried into a sweat suit and chased after her. In the darkened night, every sense seemed heightened, every nuance of perception clarified.

She silently padded down the stairs and through the front door as if it didn’t exist. Without a second thought I followed, into the rainy night, flashlight in hand as the cat led me under the cloud-covered sky. The wind was whipping around my shoulders, stirring up a granddaddy of a storm.

The calico led me next door, through the maze of roots and branches, into the darkened lot. I wondered where the corpse candles were, but was grateful for their absence. I was getting tired of my unwelcome neighbors.

We stopped near the back of the lot where the ancient yew rose out of what had been a huge patch of brambles, but was now reduced to roots and scrub. Its branches were gnarled and bent as if the weight of a thousand years rested on them. The massive trunk was woven of many smaller trunks that twined together to form the whole, calved off the main root. Mother and children bound together forever. I could almost see faces etched within the burled bark, filled with pain and anguish, with hope and trepidation, and the entire area felt prickly, as if there was deep earth mana flowing here.

I stood there for a moment, then turned, uncertain what to do next. My flashlight beam caught a puddle that had formed at the base of the tree from the rain. As I glanced into it, the reflection of a woman stared at me from the water. Brigit, her eyes closed in endless slumber. My breath caught in my throat and—without thinking about what I was doing—I dropped to my knees and began clawing at the thickly layered mulch around the trunk.

After a few minutes, I uncovered a depression leading under the trunk—a hollow at the base of the yew that was deep and wide. As I pulled away another clump of old branches and leaves, I began to wonder what the hell I was doing. A spider ran over my hand and I stifled a scream. Enough! Time to go home. As I started to stand, I happened to glance at the excavated cavity beneath the tree again, and my flashlight caught something in the beam. I paused, unwilling to believe my eyes. But there it was—stuffed into the hole beneath the yew, reaching out from what looked like a swath of tattered material still covered by compost.

A skeletal hand. Bones. Gleaming ivory bones.

At that moment, I knew that I’d found Brigit. She’d rested beneath the yew in a long night’s slumber of almost fifty years. Unclaimed and missed by no one, she had remained hidden from the world until we awakened her by opening the door to her secret world.

Eight

 

 

I SCRAMBLED BACK and slipped in the mud, falling on my butt. I grunted, then pushed myself onto my knees, staring at the skeletal hand that glistened in the beam of my flashlight.

A trickle of rain started again, plopping down around me in fat droplets. As I gingerly peeked back in the cavity, I saw a simple gold band on one of the fingers of the hand—the right hand. The roots of the yew had entwined around the bones, like a mother holding a child. Could this really be Brigit’s remains? My gut told me yes, my mind waxed uncertain.

I slowly pushed myself to my feet, exhaustion weighing heavily on my shoulders. A glance at the sky told me that the rain was about to turn into a downpour. I’d better call Murray before it got any worse. Bones buried in old trees usually meant that whoever put them there hadn’t wanted them found.

After four rings, Mur’s voice grumbled over the line. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Emerald. I need you to get dressed, get a couple of your men, and come over here.”

A pause. Then, “Em, it’s three in the morning. What the hell’s going on?” Even as she said it, I could hear her moving around and I knew she was grabbing her clothes.

“I found Brigit … or at least, I think it used to be Brigit. Buried in a hole beneath the yew tree next door.”

Another brief pause, then Mur exploded. “You what? Oh good God, you found a body?”

“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that I seemed to be destined to discover death in an all-too-congenial manner. “Well, a skeleton.”

“And you say she’s buried by the yew tree?”

“Not so much by the tree, as
in
the tree. I found her in a hole beneath the roots. So, you coming over?”

“Of course I am. I’ll get hold of Deacon and we’ll be there in twenty minutes. Meanwhile, you get back over there and make sure nobody goes near that skeleton. I doubt if anybody will even notice, but you never know.”

I debated calling Joe at the station, but there was nothing he could do except fret, so I nixed that idea. It wasn’t like I had just stumbled over a fresh corpse with a murderer on the loose. I slipped upstairs and quietly woke Randa.