Deeper Than the Grave (15 page)

Chapter Thirty

Richard sat in a rickety wooden folding chair next to the kerosene lantern, his shadow a flicker on the white canvas walls. “I'm sorry I didn't get your messages until an hour ago. I have a strict “no technology” rule on my site—no cells phones, no computers, no music—so it wasn't until I made a check-in that I saw you'd called.” He gestured toward a stack of matching chairs. “Drag up a seat.”

I unfolded a chair and eased my butt into it. “Your men must respect you an awful lot to stick to those rules.”

“That's true, yes. But I have ways of making sure they follow orders.”

Trey closed the tent flap behind himself. He refused to sit, preferring to stand, as always, with a clear line to the exit. Outside I heard the crackle and hiss as damp logs hit the campfire.

Richard clapped his hands to his thighs. “So tell me what you need. We're thirty minutes from lights out.”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“About what?”

“I suppose you heard it was Lucius Dufrene's bones that tornado scattered all round.”

“I heard. The cops told me. Of course I figured it out when they showed me that coffin.” He leveled a look at me under his eyebrows. “One look and I knew something besides dry bones had been in there.”

I put that image out of my head. “How well did you know him?”

“Well enough. He was a member of our unit, plus he worked odd jobs for me at the Amberdeckers'—landscaping, construction. He built that flagstone path at the chapel, planted the rosebushes, helped get things in order for the reburial.”

“Did he help with the stained-glass windows?”

“Oh no. Evie wouldn't let anybody but the restoration team near them. Lucius only did outside work.” Richard picked up an ash-stained percolator, sloshing it a little to test how much coffee it contained. “I suppose you've figured out about the windows by now.”

“I have—I saw the real ones at the History Center. But I don't blame you for keeping that secret, not one bit.”

“Rose'll find out Saturday. There will be hell to pay then. But it's for the best.”

Hell to pay
. Evie had used the exact words. I wiggled in my chair, which creaked in protest, so I gave up trying to be comfortable.

“Did Lucius have contact with any other family members?”

“Rose? No. She keeps to herself.” Richard's eyes narrowed. “But you don't mean Rose. You mean Chelsea.”

“Since you mentioned it.”

He shrugged. “I think those two had a little something going on for a while, sure. Not that either of them told me. I'd have put a stop to it.”

“But you knew.”

“I suspected. I gave him a stern warning about the dangers of such, pointed out that Rose had a mantel full of marksmanship trophies and wasn't slow on the pull. Either he got the hint or Chelsea got bored and that was that. I never had any problems with him.” He gestured with the percolator. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Got no cream or sugar, of course.” Richard filled two tin cups with the dark brew. “Lucius was the one with me the day I found Braxton's remains over by the ravine. He was a good worker. Strong, fast, didn't complain. A little mouthy, but he was learning. That's why I let him be a part of the honor guard.”

I accepted the coffee Richard handed me. “The what?”

“The night before the reburial, our unit formed a four-man honor guard to keep watch at the cemetery, each one of us taking a turn watching the chapel. Lucius had the three-to-six shift. But when Dexter showed up to relieve him, he was gone.” He tapped the spoon on the edge of the cup. “We didn't think it was a disappearance, though. We thought he'd abandoned his post. And then we thought he'd skipped town. Nobody thought he was…”

Richard's voice trailed off. Outside around the campfire, raucous laughter erupted. No doubt a tin flask of moonshine was being passed hand to hand. A circle of men, connected by booze and bravado, a rough-and-tumble camaraderie very much like the one shared a hundred and fifty years ago.

“Only one person at a time watched the chapel?”

“Right.”

“Where were the rest of you?”

“We pitched camp in the clearing next to the greenhouse and sent one guard to the chapel in three-hour shifts. Evie wouldn't let us set up in the cemetery. She was worried about the campfires messing up the graves. When Dexter got to the chapel that morning, Lucius was gone, but the chapel door was still padlocked. Nothing disturbed. So we went ahead and held the dedication ceremony at nine.”

“You didn't open the casket and check?”

He shot me an angry look. “Why would we? We'd closed it sacred and solemn the night before, with the minister's blessing, and we had no reason to disturb those remains, so don't try to blame—”

“I'm not trying to blame you. I'm just trying to figure out what happened, and not only for me. For Dexter. He's looking pretty bad right now.”

Richard cursed under his breath. “Fine. Go ahead then. Let's get this over with.”

I tried to keep my tone non-accusatory. “Who had keys to the chapel's padlock?”

“There was a key in the house, so anybody in the family had access. Rose, Evie, Chelsea. And your uncle had one, of course.” Richard frowned, suddenly remembering. “Except that all his keys went missing. He blamed himself for dropping them in the field, but…you think Lucius took them?”

I remembered the afternoon Detective Perez had shown me the key ring with my uncle's initials and the keys that did not fit. I remembered especially the short jagged one, like a padlock key. And I remembered the other thing I'd learned about Lucius from multiple sources—he was a gifted pickpocket.

“I think that's exactly what Lucius did. That would explain how Dexter's key ring ended up on Lucius' body.”

“Damn.” Richard stirred his coffee with a flat tin spoon. “I hate being wrong. I knew the boy had a wild streak, but I thought all he needed was a firm hand.”

“I've also heard he had a mean streak.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Does it matter?”

His eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Of course it matters. Some people don't understand. You smell that stew? That's squirrel we got ourselves, this morning. We're crack shots, every single one of us, even on these old rifled muskets. But we eat what we kill, and we kill it clean. No point messing up an animal just for target practice.” Richard lowered his eyes to his coffee mug. “But Lucius didn't always mind the mess.”

I glanced at Trey and saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. He didn't approve of messes.

Richard stared at his coffee. “Lucius was smart. He'd egg the new guys on. Now boys will be boys, but not everybody came through college, you know? Ain't no cause to go making a man feel stupid.”

I bit my tongue on that one. I knew some of the kinds of stupid that flourished around these parts. Some of it needed flushing into the open and taking down. But sometimes people like Lucius bit off more than they could chew.

“Any of those boys have reason to shatter his skull and stuff him in a coffin?”

Richard shook his head. “Being an asshole's not a killing offense. Pardon my French.”

At that moment, a young man stuck his head inside the tent. He wore oval glasses rimmed in blue steel—period perfect—and pulled his slouch hat down low over his pale forehead. When he saw us, he blushed and ducked his head.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Richard, I didn't know you had company.”

Richard waved a hand at him. “Come on in, Kenny. I want you to meet somebody.”

The young man came inside the tent, removing his hat as he did. He wore the worn butternut of an infantryman, a wood-handled revolver holstered at his hip. The lamplight revealed a teenager's cheeks, rough with a smattering of acne, and fawn-brown hair cut military-short. Richard introduced me as Dexter's niece, and the young man's eyes flared with recognition.

“Mr. Dexter was a fine man. I'm so sorry for your loss, ma'am.”

My throat contracted, but my voice held steady. “Thank you.”

Richard poured whiskey in his coffee. “She's got some questions about Lucius. You heard it was his bones we found, didn't you, son?

“Yes, sir. But I didn't know him that good.” His head bobbed in my direction. “Sorry, ma'am.”

“You don't need to ma'am me. Tai will do.”

“Yes, ma'am. I mean, yes, Miss Tai.”

I held my coffee between my hands. “You were a part of the honor guard the night before the reburial?”

“Yes, ma'am. Midnight to three.”

“Did you see Lucius acting suspiciously?”

“No, ma'am.” His eyes flickered with anxiety, but all it took was a nod from Richard, and he continued. “Lucius came to relieve me at three, just like we'd planned. And then I went back to the campfire with Mr. Richard and Mr. Dexter.”

I held the coffee to my nose, thinking hard. Lucius had obviously stolen Dexter's keys before that, including the one that would open the padlock to the chapel. He'd come with a plan to empty the coffin. Getting murdered had ground that plan to a halt. But where were Braxton's bones and the burial goods? Somebody had to have them, and it hadn't been Lucius.

“Did you see anybody else out here that night? Anybody you didn't recognize?”

“No, ma'am. Just me and Lucius, Mr. Dexter, and Mr. Richard.”

“Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to kill Lucius?”

He shook his head, scuffed at the earth with his toe. “No, ma'am.”

“Did he and my uncle get along?”

“Mostly. Lucius liked to push things. He got in trouble the night of the reburial for wearing a NASCAR belt buckle. Mr. Dexter made him take it off, and he didn't argue. He stuck it in his pocket. But he shouldn't have worn it in the first place, and he knew it.”

Outside, another round of laughter erupted, and the first rounds of a ribald drinking song began. Richard looked annoyed.

“Kenny? Take some firewood out to the perimeter. And tell everybody I said lights out.”

“Yes, sir.” Kenny put his hat back on and left, the cold air rushing it after him.

I watched him go, then turned back to Richard. “You seem right fond of him.”

“He's good people. His daddy left them three years ago, but his mama does her best, and I try to help out best I can.”

I slid a glance at Trey, whose expression never wavered. He could hear a story without forcing his own backstory into it, but I couldn't. Everything felt like the same story to me, playing out over and over again, nobody ever getting it all right, just making fresh kinds of wrong.

Richard kept his eyes on the tent flap. “He's got a scholarship to Georgia Tech for the fall. I may have been wrong about Lucius, but not Kenny.”

In the dark distance, a shot and a series of whoops rang out, and Trey's head snapped around. The cold, the soldiers, the dark pressing wilderness were becoming too much for him. He needed to get back to the city, to the amber glow of streetlights, the buzz of electricity.

I stood. “Thanks for seeing me.”

“Sure thing.” Richard rose slowly, his hand pressed to the small of his back. “When you get back to civilization, go take a look at our website. I have some pictures of your uncle and me up, back in the glory days when we were the young-uns at the front instead of the old guys barking orders at the back.”

“Look at you, getting all techified.”

He made a rueful face. “Not me. Kenny. The boy's a computer genius. Makes me glad he's such a good kid. Otherwise he'd be off hacking into the White House or something.”

I threw Trey a look. He caught it. But he had something else on his mind.

He cocked his head, looked at Richard. “One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you kill Lucius Dufrene?”

“You're not seriously…” Richard stared at Trey, eyes flickering in the lamplight. “Of course not.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No, I don't. But it sure as hell wasn't anybody with me that night, especially not Dexter.” He said it flatly, then turned his face to me, his expression hard now. “It's time for lights out. Be careful on your way back to the parking lot. You don't want to get lost out here.”

Chapter Thirty-one

I was grateful to see my Camaro parked right where I'd left it, next to Richard's black pickup. We climbed in quickly, and I cranked the engine, revved it a couple of times. “You just had to accuse Richard of killing Lucius, didn't you?”

Trey sounded insulted. “I did not. I simply asked—”

“Yeah, I heard you. And then you accused him of covering for Dexter. And then he threw us out of the tent—”

“We were already leaving.”

“—and now he's not going to be volunteering any more information because you pissed him off.”

Trey rubbed his gloved hands together in front of the heater. “Those were important points to establish, especially since—”

“Don't say it.”

“—your uncle had means, motive, and opportunity, and Richard was with him almost the entire night when Lucius presumably died.”

“Dexter didn't kill Lucius. And neither did Richard.”

“I was relieved to hear nothing that made me believe otherwise.”

He kept his eyes on the dashboard. Now that we were back in a vehicle, his shoulders weren't quite so hunched, even if the furrow on his brow remained.

I cranked the heater up to full blast. “Did you catch the other part? That Kenny's a computer genius?”

“I did.”

“Who didn't know Lucius real well.”

Trey shook his head. “That part isn't true.”

“I suspected not. But I'm glad you verified it.” Despite the heater, my breath still made puffs of fog. “What about the rest of what Kenny said?”

“He was telling the truth when he said he relieved Lucius at the chapel at three, and that that was the last he saw of him. But he was lying when he said that Lucius wasn't acting suspiciously.”

“Uh huh. And Richard?”

Trey considered. “Mostly telling the truth.”

“Technically true but deliberately evasive?”

“Yes, that. Somewhat. But not exactly. He seemed to be…I can't explain. But he wasn't lying.”

I checked my phone. No messages. No service either, not surprisingly. I stuck it back in my pocket.

“You know what I think? I think Lucius filched Dexter's keys so he could get into the chapel. I think he took the bones and burial goods and delivered them to someone else—”

“Who?”

“I don't know yet, but everybody I've interviewed so far—Cat, Chelsea, Fishbone—they've all said the same thing, that Lucius had been working with a new partner, somebody he met online. And I bet that partner was up there that night, to take the loot off Lucius' hands. Because Lucius himself never left the chapel. He died in there. And I bet this secret partner is the one who killed him.”

“But how would this partner get on the property?”

“There's a million ways—you saw that as we came in. Duck through someone's backyard, park in a commercial lot and sneak in.”

“But your uncle was also there, and—”

“Jeez, Trey, whose side are you on?”

“I'm simply trying—”

“I know, I know. I'm sorry.” I tilted my head back against the seat. “I'm tired and frustrated and it's like the answer is hovering two inches out of reach.”

Trey fastened his seatbelt. “So what do we do now?”

“Now we go home. We'll figure it out in the morning.”

Trey looked relieved. He was an urban creature, accustomed to the cycles of rush hour, at home in the steel canyons of Buckhead. Atlanta was by most standards a green city—I'd seen it from the air, coming down into Hartsfield, the dense emerald canopy of Piedmont and Centennial and a hundred smaller parks. But it was a tame green, civilized and domesticated.

Not like the mountain woodlands, with a night sky so deep black it had texture, and stars so bright they seemed cut from crystallized light. The wild wasn't a metaphor out here. It was real, and close. I could feel it pressing against me, and while it wasn't the salt-rimmed wild of the Lowcountry, I knew it nonetheless. Like an old lover in a new bed.

I took the car into a three-point turn and headed back to the park entrance, driving slowly, letting the tires feel their way down the dirt path. Trey was exhausted, in desperate need of the order and discipline of his black-and-white apartment, his safe space, his recovery zone. He kept his eyes on the windshield as if he couldn't wait for Atlanta to appear in the headlights.

I flicked on the high beams, and a long low shape hurtled across the road. I slammed the brakes just in time to avoid a collision. A coyote. It froze at the edge of the road, facing us head-on, yellow eyes gleaming. Trey locked his door, then reached across me and locked mine with a hard slap, like we were confronting a carjacker.

I shot him a look. “Seriously?”

He huddled in his seat, double-checked his seatbelt. “Keep moving. There's probably more of them.”

“And not a single one has thumbs.”

He ignored me. I honked, and the coyote loped into the underbrush without a backward glance.

***

Once we got back to the shop, Trey said goodnight at the door. “Call me tomorrow. I'll be presenting the resiliency design paper at two, so call before that.”

“I will.” I reached up and tucked his scarf tighter around his neck. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. And this afternoon. I had a good time.”

And I had, even when I'd been holding the trash can for Chelsea or pursuing Fishbone across the park or tromping after a faux Confederate in the woods. And I hadn't felt a single pang of panic. Not one. And Trey had managed to keep his gun in his holster the entire time.

“It was…interesting,” he said.

“Come on, it was more than that.” I adjusted his collar, his skin warm beneath the wool. “Your head may want things calm and boring, boyfriend, but your heart is a tricky beast. It has completely different wants.” I patted his chest. “And it
does
want.”

He didn't drop his eyes. “I know that.”

“Because every time I call you with a problem—snake problem, surveillance problem, uncooperative witness problem—you show up. And you stomp around and scowl and lecture me incessantly. But you show up.”

“I do not stomp around.”

“Come on, Trey. You're a former SWAT team leader, a Red Dog roughhouser. You're not gonna convince me that you're happy sitting behind a desk pushing paper. You come alive out there, in the wild.” I moved closer, close enough to feel the heat of him. “With me.”

His eyes dipped to my throat, then further down, and it was as if he could see inside the ivory armor of my ribcage, right into my shivering red heart. And the only thing between us was a threshold. I stood on one side of it in the warm low-lit shop, and he stood on the other in the cold, still night.

And all he had to do was reach for me—one finger, one word, one step—and I would drag him upstairs into my brand new bed and not let him out until we were both sated and spent. But he stood unmoving, his expression sheared clean on the surface, a layer of ice on a frozen river with whitewater roaring underneath. His raised his eyes to mine again, and the yearning in them was so fierce I caught my breath.

“Trey?”

His voice was rough. “Yes?”

“It's the wanting that's hard, isn't it? Because it's all tangled up together—who you are, who you were, when to act, when to hold back.”

“Yes, but…” He shook his head. “I don't understand why I can't…I'm trying, please believe me. But I have to figure it out before I can change it. Do you understand?”

I thought of the words that still trembled behind my tongue, the words that no act of will could force to the surface, no matter how hard I pushed.

“Yes,” I said. “I understand. With all my heart.”