Yasmine Galenorn - Chintz 'n' China 04 Page 12

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

  From Brigit’s Journal:

  The Missus is crying today, so she’ll be wanting her martinis, and I never can seem to fix them right. I’ll have to have Angela teach me how to make them properly. I don’t think Maggie knows how.

  I think Mr. Edward slapped the Missus. He went into a fury when B. came home from the university. He gets terribly mad when his family won’t follow his orders. I still say there’s no call to go and take your anger out on a woman. I wouldn’t ever stand for it, myself.

  And Miss Irena is all aflutter over her young man and what B.’s homecoming will do to their wedding plans. She and her father are two of a kind, mean as spit. Sometimes I thank my lucky stars I’m not from fine folk. Poverty isn’t the worst curse that can plague a family. Madness and anger are far more dangerous than a little bit of hunger.

  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.
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  “Huh? Whaa—?” She blinked against the light filtering in from the hall.

  “Honey, I have to go next door for awhile and wait for Murray. I just wanted you to know in case you or Kip need me for a bit. I’ll be right over there, though, and if you yell out your window, I should be able to hear you.”

  I smoothed her hair back and she nodded sleepily, then turned over and promptly fell right back to snoring. I scribbled a note, reiterating what I’d told her, and left it plastered to the bathroom door in the hall. That way both Kip and Randa would know where to find me if they woke up before I returned.

  After gathering several flashlights and—just because I just felt better with a weapon—a handy little switchblade Jimbo had given me on the sly, I headed next door. The tree remained undisturbed, as did its ghastly contents, though the rain was starting to blow in. I scrounged around and found a piece of tarp that we’d used to protect the tools and covered the hole with it to prevent any storm damage to the skeleton.

  Ten minutes later, Murray jumped out of her truck and hurried across the lot. “Deacon will be here in a few. Let me see what you’ve got.”

  I knelt down and pulled back the tarp. “Mur, those are Brigit’s remains. I know it.”

  She gazed at the skeletal hand for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Well, you’re right about one thing. It’s a skeleton. Okay, let me put in a call to the station. We’re going to have to cordon off the area. We’ll do our best to find out whoever she—or he—was, and if this was a murder. God knows, I doubt if she crawled in there and died by herself. We’ll need to preserve all the evidence that we can. Where’s Joe? Is he around? I’d like his permission to search the property, just for formality’s sake.”

  Oops. Of course there had to be fallout over him losing ownership of the lot. The universe wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “There may be a problem with that.”

  “Why? He working tonight? I can have Deacon drop over there—”

  No, that’s not the problem.” I cleared my throat. “See … uh … Joe is no longer the legal owner of the property. Irena revoked the sale.” I quickly filled her in on all that had happened.

  “Shit, that means I’m going to need a search warrant. Even if Irena gave us permission, she could rescind it at a later date if she got huffy later on. With a warrant, there’s not much she can do.”

  She sighed. “Okay, when Deacon arrives, I’ll send him over to the station and have him ask Judge Chambers for a warrant. The judge has always looked kindly on me and I think he’ll be willing to help. Then I’ll send someone to notify Irena. However, Judge Chambers—and my boss—are going to want to know how you came across the skeleton, and I don’t think that saying ‘A ghost cat led me to it’ will do.” She gave me a long look. “Anyway you could reword things? Without asking you to lie, of course.”

  I glanced up in the tree above us, where the corpse candles swarmed. “How about this: I saw what I thought was my missing cat. I tried to catch her, she ran next door, right up to the yew tree. I fell on my butt and disturbed some of the leaves.” I pointed to a small space under the roots that bordered the cavity. “And that’s when I found the skeleton.”

  She snorted. “Actually, that’s plausible enough to work. And since Sammy’s still missing, it makes sense.” She glanced up at the treetop where the bare branches were starkly silhouetted against the cloud-covered sky. She sucked in a deep breath. “Autumn is the loneliest time of the year, don’t you think? The night always feels so ancient, and the days so barren.”

  As I turned my face upward, a few drops splashed on my cheeks. Yes, the rain was about to start again. “This year seems particularly harsh.”

  Mur nodded and pulled out her cell phone. She flipped through the stored numbers, then pressed the dial button, moving off to one side. I could hear her explaining to someone why she needed a search warrant and asking if one could be issued right away. Apparently whoever was on the other end was short and to the point, because within five minutes she’d hung up and turned back around.

  “Judge Chambers said no problem. He told me to send Deacon over when he gets here, and we’ll have the search warrant in just under an hour.”

  “There’s Deacon now.” I pointed to the Honda Accord that pulled up in the driveway. Deacon hurried over to us with a worried look. I’d developed a distinct fondness for the officer; he was a good cop, and it didn’t hurt that he was handsome—his eyes and skin as brown as warm chocolate. He was pulling the Yul Brenner “do.” Bald looked good on him.

  He gave me a quick smile, then turned to Murray. “What have you got, Detective?” He always gave Mur her due, and I knew she was planning to recruit him onto her team as soon as she could do so.

  “Take a peek in that hole under the tree,” she said and he knelt down and flashed his light in the cavity.

  “What the hell—?” The look on his face told me that Deacon Wilson had caught a glimpse of the skeleton. “Now I see why you called me out of a warm bed. Whoever that is has been there awhile.” He glanced up, nodding at me. “Emerald, good to see you. How’s Joe?”

  “On duty right now,” I said. “Good to see you too.”

  Murray cleared her throat. “Okay, here’s the deal. Deacon, you need to run over to the courthouse. Judge Chambers will meet you there with a search warrant for this property. When you have it in hand, bring it back to me. After that, I’m sending you over to let Irena Finch, the owner of the lot, know what’s going on. Under no circumstances is she to be notified before we have the warrant. I want to get excavation underway before she shows up, complaining.”

  “Anticipating trouble?” he said.

  She shook her head. “I hope not. But this will eliminate any problems down the road. I’m headed over to Emerald’s to grab a cup of coffee and call the M.E.” He saluted her, waved at me, and took off.

  Murray and I replaced the tarp and she surrounded the area with crime tape. After that, we returned to my house, where I stuck the kettle on. “What’s your poison? Apple spice? Mint?”

  “How about caffeine? I have the feeling I’m going to need it by the time Deacon gets back with that warrant.”

  Caffeine. Now that was a good idea! I pulled out the grinder and beans and went to town. “Triple espressos on the way,” I said.

  “I’m going to call Jimmy. He’s at my house and I don’t want him to worry.” She pulled out her phone.

  I grinned. “You guys have been spending a lot of time together. Any hope for an engagement?”

  With a snort, she said, “Right. Em, you should know by now that when—if—we get married, it’s going to rock the status quo at my job. It’s hard enough dealing with—hold on.” Jimbo must have come on the line, because she said, “Hey, it’s me. I’m at Em’s and it looks like I’ll be here until morning … yeah, there’s something weird going on next door. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Okay … Well, if you have to take off before I get home, would you make sure that Sid and Nancy are firmly locked in their cages? Thanks, babe. Love you too.” Sid and Nancy were her boas—one a congenial red tail boa, the other a nasty-tempered nocturnal green tree boa.

  As she hung up, I had to ask. “What about his cats and chickens and goats?” I knew that he brought Roo, his three-legged dog, with him when he stayed at Murray’s, but I wondered how his other animals were faring.

  She grinned. “Snidely and Whiplash are living at my place right now—they’ve adjusted to life in my house and as long as we make sure the snake cages are securely locked, the cats are safe. Jimmy spends a lot of the day out on his land and he takes care of the goats and chickens while he’s there.”

  I set the espresso maker to brewing and fixed us piping hot triple mochas with a slathering of Redi-whip. As we settled in at the table, Kip came padding into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.

  “What’s goin’ on? Is something wrong? Is it morning yet?”

  I pulled him to me and gave him a hug. “It�
�s real early, kiddo. You still have a couple hours to sleep. What are you doing up?”

  “I heard you guys and wanted a glass of water, so thought I’d come downstairs to check.” He yawned and I grimaced. He’d obviously been into the candy stash, his tongue was a brilliant blue. Thank God his teeth were still white, but we’d have to have a little talk about not eating after brushing his teeth. That would keep, however.

  I poured him a glass of water and said, “Murray and I need to talk. Listen, in a little while, I’m going to go next door with her. Both Randa and your alarms are set, so you guys will wake up in time for school. You’ll remember where I am, right?” My hands on his shoulders, I guided him back to the stairs.

  He leaned against me briefly, then trudged back up the stairs without complaining. I listened as his door opened and closed. He’d be back to sleep in no time. When I returned to the kitchen, Murray had her hand in the cookie jar. She grinned at me, sheepishly wiping peanut butter crumbs away from her mouth.

  “I’m sorry, I was hungry—”

  “Sorry? What have you got to be sorry about? You’re family and you know it.” I slipped back into my seat and finished my mocha. “Mur, I have something to show you. Brigit’s picture and journal.” I reached across the table and pulled them toward me. “She was in love with somebody, and from what I’ve read, she had a hard life and more than a few secrets, though it doesn’t say what they were. But it sounds like something she was ashamed of and afraid for people to find out. It also looks like she missed her mother and father, and the man she’d been in love with. Appraently, they were all dead.”

  Mur shook her head. “This is all very strange, Em. If we can prove that the remains are hers—and I’m not promising anything because it’s harder to identify old bones—then what the hell happened? Why was she stuffed in a tree, for God’s sake?”

  “Murder?” I said, thinking for a moment, although I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were going. “Irena stopped the sale on the lot. She said her brother, who supposedly owns joint custody of the family land, refused to sell. She also told Joe that her brother lives in Europe. Harlow found out that Brent does not live overseas. In fact, Brent isn’t even really living in this world—he’s been in an asylum outside of Bellingham since he was twenty. Which means, chances are he wasn’t consulted about the land sale. Which means …”