Grave Concern (42 page)

Raw-Raw was aghast, completely disheartened. Well, if only the Walking Ones would go, Raw-Raw could perhaps pull the shinies out. But no. The Walking Ones did not leave, but took the stick tool and pushed all the new earth back into the old hole. The shinies were
disappearing
. They were gone!

This was too much for Raw-Raw. She flew into the sky and flapped about in despair and desperation. Through many lights and darks, Raw-Raw stayed at the pine tree — sleeping, feeding when necessary, flying over to the gone hotel and back again to the pine.

One time, in the darkling, she was moved to caw her sorrow to the world. Tiring of that, she stopped. Had something moved in the bushes below? Raw-Raw shuffled sideways down her branch and cocked her head. She let out a soft “I'm here” sound. Something
was
there, rustling in the ground foliage. Raw-Raw said, “I'm here” again. The thing, with a long tail — the biggest cat Raw-Raw had ever seen — continued to prowl. Raw-Raw heard a liquid stream against leaves. Then the cat pawed the ground a few times, throwing leaves high in the air, and slunk off.

Raw-Raw flew down to the shinies place. An odd little tree grew right on the spot. The tree was not normal, perhaps not a tree at all. Raw-Raw put her beak around it and pulled. Nothing. The thing would not move. She wiggled it back and forth. There was a little movement at the base. Gradually, over many lights and darks, Raw-Raw wiggled the thing loose. One day, as she flapped about the place, she took a dive, grabbed the thing, and pulled it out. It was heavy, and fell from her beak not far away. Not long after, at that very place where the tree dropped, Jaypee's Old One, the male, came and used a stick tool to dig. But he found no shinies and went off again.

Most distressing by far was the Walking One who lived at the nearby stone garden. This Walking One would come to the true shinies place, sometimes with one or two others, and lurk about. Raw-Raw did not like how the Walking One acted like she owned the place.

Kate stopped typing, pleased with herself — not least for finding a use for the word “darkling.” What a word — as delicious in your mouth as the buttery penny candies she used to get once a year at the summer fair.

So everything was explained. Kate looked back over the list of Knowns and Unknowns. No, not everything. She had done a convincing job, perhaps, of bringing the strongbox into the senior Marcottes' hands. But there was still the question of Nicholas and his culpability, including a strong likelihood that he, in fact, had found the thing. Suppose she substituted Nicholas for the volunteer firefighter she'd made up. Link could easily have taken the box to J.P.'s mom and dad. But wouldn't that have come out in court? And Nicholas had said nothing about it to her. Then there were the ongoing mysteries of what Adele knew and the role of Guy Marcotte, both of which still eluded Kate. And none of it took into account the most dramatic possibility of all: the true identity of Extraordinary Wayne.

Well, if nothing else, Kate could settle one thing. She packed up the laptop and practically ran back up the trail to her car. She was torn: should she take John Marcotte with her, assuming he was willing? Morally, yes she should. Morally, perhaps even legally, they shouldn't be doing the thing she envisioned at all. But if the next of kin said it was okay … Kate roared through town to the highway with its dreaded stoplight. The story of her life: one light in town, always red.

At Marcotte's place, Kate's nerves nearly got the best of her. But she forced herself to the doorstep, forced herself to ring the bell. Which didn't work. She knocked. Nothing. She knocked again, louder. She put her ear to the door and listened. Yes, someone was coming.
Please, Kate, don't collapse
.

The piercing green eyes took her in. “Kate Smithers.”

“Y-yeah. Me again. Sorry to bother you. I — I have a proposition.”

Marcotte smiled. “Been long time since I got dat.”

“I — I mean … Monsieur Marcotte, I'm afraid there's been a terrible mistake. Remember when I took you to the grave?”

“Couldn't hardly forget.”

“We were at the wrong place. Well, not far away. But the marker was moved from its original spot. I'd like to show you the real place, if I could. I feel terrible about it. And taking your cash — ”

“Ah, forget the cash. Me, I got some coming. Bought a car, even.” Marcotte pointed down the long driveway toward the back of the house. “See?”

Yes. Kate did see. Nothing super fancy. Solid. New-ish. Japanese. Did “got some coming” mean what she thought it meant?

“So, uh, would you like to come with me to the grave? I'm going up there now, well, to the graveyard, I mean. To do some work.”

“Uh. Sure. Sure. I'll just turn off the TV.”

Marcotte disappeared into the back of the house. Kate got into her car and waited. And waited. What, had he forgotten what he was doing? Was his memory going? Had he, heaven forbid,
croaked
in there?

At long last, Marcotte appeared, not from the front door but via the garage at the rear of the house. He made his way around the new car —
holding a shovel
.

“Never know what you could find. You look pretty strong. Don't t'ink I could do it myself.”

And so, thought Kate, the meeting of the minds. She and Marcotte, for different reasons, thinking the same thought. And Kate barely able to admit the plan — to herself, let alone her companion in crime. An unlikely pair, off to dig up a grave.

8

The Ring

Except for his breathing, which was worryingly ragged, Marcotte remained mum as Kate dug. The physical work was welcome, though not enough to quell the squad of hummingbirds in her stomach, steadily sipping at her resolve.

Unused to the heavy work, Kate rested often. At one such hiatus, Marcotte made a quick beckoning motion. “Hand over the shovel,” it meant. Did he think her too slow? Perhaps she was. A powerful guilt, like the weedy vine that had finally choked off what was left of her mother's perennial garden, was squeezing the life out of her. With relief, Kate handed him the shovel, and Marcotte dug in to the work, heedless of the awful rasping of his breath.

Kate heard the clunk first. Or so she thought. But Marcotte kept going at it, as though still bringing up dirt, which he wasn't.

“You've got it! You've got it!” Kate said. “You're hitting something.” She moved around in front of him, so he would see her lips moving, in case his hearing aid wasn't picking her up. But Marcotte just kept on digging — with renewed vigour. Perhaps he'd hit a rock and was trying to loosen it. Kate retreated, and waited.

Soon she understood. No change in the shovel's position. No shift of his foot or back to get a better angle. The look in Marcotte's eyes was mad, she saw that now. Mad as in crazy — and angry. In frustration and anguish, the old man was beating on his son's ashes.
Or not.

“Hey, hey! Hold on!” Kate shouted, and grabbed the shovel. It took everything she had to keep it still. Worn out from his exertions, Marcotte suddenly let go. Kate staggered backwards, dropping the shovel, and Marcotte slumped to the ground, spent. With as much dignity as she could muster, Kate recovered herself. Picked up the shovel. Moved to the hole. Looked in. Not much to see, but it was definitely there. An urn, like an undecided swimmer, half in, half out of the earth.

Kate inserted the shovel and gently pried the urn loose. She had to get down on her knees to pull it out. Its sinuous metal shape was cool in her palms. Dirt obscured what would once have been an attractive sheen. The thing was surprisingly heavy. Something, some
one
, definitely in there.
Well, what do you know
, thought Kate.
J.P. finally here in my grasp. Oh, God.
She went to set the urn on the ground, but Marcotte held up his hands as though begging for food. She gave it to him and turned away, a mixture of tears and sweat etching clean lines down her filthy face. Swung the shovel back into the hole.

Raw-Raw cruised soundlessly over the Shinies place, the tips of her wing feathers undulating in the breeze. Jaypee's Old One was below — with the Walking One from the stone garden. They were probing the special place with their stick tool, turning the earth inside out. Raw-Raw banked and turned, banked and turned, catching glimpses now and then through the trees.

Raw-Raw turned her black eye again and again to the Walking Ones and the dug-out place. No shinies. Nothing thrilling. She banked out of the turn and flew off to the gone hotel. There she circled twice, slowly, rising higher and higher on the rising wind. Far below, from the great stone barrier, the river escaped in a bubbling froth. Farther along, it raced in a muddy wash, then settled and smoothed in a long silver trough. Shiny. But not for Raw-Raw's taking. She knew what the river was. Water, life-giver. Not for the treasury. Tricksy and soft.

With the urn out of the way, Kate's furious shovel found the metal box. Again, she knelt down to retrieve what the earth had so long kept to itself. The lock was rusted out. Kate looked at Marcotte, who neither met her eyes nor spoke a word, but tapped the shovel and beckoned as before. She handed it to him. Still seated, Marcotte held the shovel and stared into space, as though gathering strength. Then, in a quick motion, he reached up and struck the lock with the shovel edge. The latch popped open, and the box fell from Kate's hands, spreading its contents on the ground.

Dumbstruck, the grave robbers watched as twenty-, fifty-, and one hundred-dollar bills, like caged birds released, sprung from their rotted elastic band and fluttered off. Marcotte got up on his knees and began grabbing those nearest him. Kate joined in, and soon they were raking up money like autumn leaves.

Something else, not money, had flown out as well. Kate strode over and plucked the thing from where it flapped against a bush. Newspaper. Soft, almost cotton-like, now, extremely weak where it had been folded. The sheet hung like tissue in her hand, ready to rip at the slightest touch. Afraid to open it fully, she was turning it this way and that, when an air current caught one corner. Kate glimpsed something familiar, and gently turned the paper over. While faded, the picture was obvious. The bold strokes, the snarling mouth — the newspaper photo of J.P.'s poster: the piece on the Legion art winners — and runners-up.

So, it
had
meant something to J.P., after all.

Kate counted the twenties, and Marcotte counted the fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. It all came to $18,260, a tidy sum to a Depression kid like Marcotte, maybe, but hardly a comfortable retirement for his son. Kate arranged the bills by denomination while Marcotte fished around in his pocket for something to clip them together. He came up with a huge pin used to fasten Scottish kilts. No doubt he owned a host of trinkets like this from his days of selling antiques. Kate drove the point of the pin through the bills, two and three at a time, and handed the wad to him.

“Pay for the car, anyway,” she said.

“Yeah, and some left over,” he said. “Car's second-hand, only eight grand up at Croker's. I think it was that guy Bailey's — you know him?”

Kate nodded. “Chuck. Town clerk. Big taupe leather chair.”

“Taupe?”

Wasn't “taupe” a French word? “Grey. Brown.”

“Ah,” Marcotte said, “that's him,” and managed a tiny smile. But his voice was weak. He seemed to have aged ten years in a couple of hours. He still sat on the ground, and it crossed Kate's mind he might not get up without help. Neither of them looked at the urn, sitting muddy and forlorn at the edge of the hole, as though of a mind to dive back in.

“So what should we do with it, do you think?” It was all Kate could do not to grab it and open it up.

“Excuse me?” said Marcotte, pretending he hadn't heard.

“The urn. Should we put it back, or what?”

“Give it here,” said Marcotte, and nodded towards it.

Kate retrieved and placed it in Marcotte's lap, leaning it in toward his chest. If it was indeed J.P.'s remains, they sure didn't want a spill. Marcotte put one hand tentatively on the urn's lip, and then the other, while still holding the pinned wad of bills. After a couple of minutes, in which Kate literally did not know what to do with herself — taking a few steps this way and that, stretching her arms out, putting her hands on her hips — Marcotte said, “Here, help an old man on his feet.”

He shifted the urn under one arm, shifted the bills to that hand and held up the other. Kate hauled him up, and without another word, they walked back to Kate's car, one holding a shovel and an old piece of newspaper, the other a filthy urn and a wad of bills in a kilt pin.

In the car, Marcotte set the urn between his feet on the floor and began to fiddle with the bills. He peeled off a couple of hundreds and held them out to Kate. “Here, for your help,” he said.

Kate was aghast. “No thanks. You paid me already. Keep it yourself. It's yours.”

“You're all dirty, tired from digging. I never paid you for dat. Here, maybe you want more.” He began peeling off more bills. “Maybe two hundred is an insult? I never know. Everyone has so much, now.”

“No, really,” said Kate. A feeling of physical revulsion washed over her. “Glad to help.”

“Okay, okay, I don't argue with a woman with her mind made up,” he said and folded the money into his shirt pocket.

As they drove past town on the highway toward Marcotte's place, Kate began to feel her refusal as a kind of failure. Did Marcotte think she considered the money somehow dirty? And, by extension, himself? Had she insulted him? Or was he somehow testing her?

“It's just,” Kate urged as they passed McPhail's Dairy, “your son's money is really none of my business. You're his
family
. I'm sure you have lots of good uses you could put it to.”

Marcotte grunted and looked out his window. Until they got to his driveway, he said not another word.

Kate pulled off the highway into Marcotte's place, suddenly bone-tired. She couldn't wait to get home, get the urn gone, have a nice, long bubble bath, and decompress.

Marcotte turned to her. “I suppose you're wondering how I knew there was the money.”

Kate's face turned bright red as though with that comment he'd revealed her inmost self. “Uh, yeah.”

“Well, I tell you. After the fire, that boy, his dad was the dentist, you know …”

“Enderby. Nicholas. Nick. The boy, not the dad.”

“Yeah, him. Friend of J.P. Came over sometimes. Nice guy. Anyway, he come over after the fire, eh. Found this box outside the hotel, eh. On the ground, he said. Like I said, nice kid. Anyway, Rita and I, we didn't ask no questions. By the time the damn lawyers got through with it, there wouldn't have been nothing left. You know what I'm saying.”