by Donna Doyle
“Good,” she answered briskly. “Because I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. I don’t want anything bad to happen to anybody. But if Chief Stark is involved in what’s going on, things are going to continue to happen. We have the option of pretending that we don’t notice, or we can try to stop it.”
“I’m not sure we can stop it, Kelly,” Troy said.
“Are you giving up before we’ve even started to fight back?” she demanded incredulously, staring at him with brown eyes that looked like they’d set off fireworks if anyone lit the fuse.
“It’s not a book or a movie, Kelly. This is real.”
“Don’t patronize me, Troy. I know the difference between fiction and nonfiction, okay!”
He started to argue with her, then had to laugh. “That sounds like a unique form of defense,” he said. “One that only a librarian could come up with.”
“Blame the Dewey Decimal System,” she said, still annoyed with his judgment but willing to negotiate.
“I do,” was his fervent answer.
“So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“I say we talk to Doug. Then we meet with Leo and Mia and Skip Krymanski to figure out what we can do next.”
“Doug’s a reporter not a cop. We can’t meet with Leo and Mia until we can be sure that the kids won’t be put in harm’s way. And there’s no reason to meet with Skip. He’s upset over Sean; he’s not going to be objective about this.”
“And you are?”
Chapter Twenty-Six The Cemetery
Doug couldn’t meet Kelly until Sunday. He suggested that they meet at the cemetery. She was puzzled by his choice of a meeting place until she realized that he was doing a photographic story of the graves in the Settler Springs Cemetery and the soldiers who were buried there.
She met him at the tomb of General Porter, a Civil War hero who had fought with distinction at Gettysburg, come home from the war, and become one of the town’s most notable citizens. The monument was impressive—a statue of General Porter astride his horse—but it was also located in a shady spot where they could see the road leading into the cemetery grounds. So soon after Memorial Day, it wasn’t likely that anyone would be tending to the graves, but she was impressed that Doug has chosen a strategic place to meet.
They sat down on the bench in front of the monument. “What’s up?”
She told him about the meeting the previous day at the police station. As usual,
Doug listened intently, asking questions only when he wanted clarification.
“You think Kavlick was sent here to cause trouble for Mia Shaw,” he deduced when she had finished. “And then he got into a little more trouble, and now he’s hiding out.”
“I don’t think he’d just disappear into thin air.”
“No . . . the break-ins have stopped.”
“Chief Stark wanted to blame Sean Claypool for the break-ins. As if he’d come all the way from Texas just to be a petty thief.”
“It doesn’t add up,” Doug agreed, “but Chief Stark isn’t concerned with filling in the details. He’s okay with broad strokes.”
“I didn’t have time to meet Sean Claypool, but I don’t believe he came to town to steal. Now he’s dead and he can’t defend himself.”
“Suicide is going to be hard to refute. Not because it’s untrue but because there has to be some proof that murder took place. Small town police forces don’t have the people to chase down criminals who haven’t been accused of a crime.”
“I know that. But something has to be done.”
Doug just nodded, his eyes looking to the highway that led to Cemetery Road. A car was turning into the cemetery. He watched as it turned to the other side of the cemetery, far off from where General Porter had been buried.
Then he slid down from the bench onto the grass, pressed against the base of the monument. “Kel,” he said, “come down here.”
“What—”
“Just come down. Off the bench.”
Mystified, Kelly did as he told her, sliding down, as he had done, so that she was on the ground.
“Why are we doing this? There’s no law against visiting the cemetery.”
“I’ve seen that car here before,” he told her, his voice low. “I’ve been working on a cemetery story for almost a month. It’s for the paper’s Fourth of July edition. I’ve seen the car. And then other cars.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Why would someone come to the cemetery, not bring flowers, not pull weeds, not pay any attention to the gravestones?”
“I don’t know. What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just curious.”
“Won’t they think it’s strange if they see us?”
“They won’t see us here,” Doug said. “General Porter’s monument curves around and we’re hidden inside the angle of the base. This is a pretty good vantage point if you want to see and not be seen.” He grinned. “Even in death. Old General Porter knew how to command a defensive position on the battlefield. Ten.”
“Ten what?”
“Ten cars in twenty minutes. All heading to the same spot, not staying very long, then leaving.”
“Whose grave are they at?”
“The graves over there are old and they aren’t taken care of. Probably no living relatives.”
“But—” then Kelly’s eyes widened. “They aren’t coming to look at the gravestones.”
“Nope.”
“Drugs?”
“I don’t know. But it’s a Sunday; that’s usually a day when families come to tend to graves. Graves that had families to do it. They’d probably come earlier in the day. Most people who do that probably took care of it over Memorial Day, so this is a good day to come out here if you don’t want to be seen. You stay here, okay? I’m going down closer.”
“What if you’re noticed?”
“I won’t be. The cars are on the other side, the grass is higher on that side of the cemetery.”
“Doug, don’t take chances.”
But he was already sliding down the grassy slope from the monument, closer to Cemetery Road, traveling from tombstone to tombstone. She could see him but knew that he was correct; he would not be visible from the other side of the cemetery.
She leaned back against the base of General Porter’s monument and watched the road as gradually, cars turned out of the cemetery onto it. Had Doug figured out where the drug dealing had moved to after Travis Shaw had been arrested? Jimmy Patton said that drugs were still being dealt in town; he knew it because his ambulance crew had overdose calls. Would they have chosen a cemetery?
She didn’t know. But she knew someone who might be much more aware of activity in the cemetery. No one knew more about cemeteries than widows. Little old lady widows who noticed everything. It was time to talk to Mrs. Hammond.
She waited by the monument until Doug came back an hour later. He was smiling in triumph as he handed her a sheet of paper. “Why don’t you have Officer Kennedy run these license plates,” he suggested. “See if there’s any past criminal activity for the owners.”
Kelly smiled. “I’ll do that,” she promised. “When can we go?”
“Not until they do. I’ve been coming up here and spending a fair amount of time. I don’t want them to notice us.”
Both Kelly and Doug had walked to the cemetery rather than driving to it. It was a long walk, but Kelly liked the exercise and Doug was used to a lot of travel by foot.
“What are you going to do? Do a story on the tombstones and happen to mention that there’s a lot of interest in old graves?”
“First, have your policeman run the numbers and see if anything unusual shows up. Then we’ll see what to do. We’ve got some time until the story has to be finished; the Fourth is still over a month away.”
By the time the last car left the cemetery, Kelly’s muscles were stiff, and it was a relief to be walking again. Sh
e promised Doug that she’d let him know if Troy found anything of note from the license plate numbers after she gave him the list.
She walked to the police station, hoping that Troy would be there and not out patrolling. But when she got to the station, the door was locked. Disappointed, she began walking toward home. It was almost evening, still bright out. Summer had begun. The sound of lawnmowers was everywhere as homeowners took advantage of the dry weather to tend to their yards. When she passed the elementary school, she saw kids playing basketball on the playground. She remembered, not far in the past, when she had found Mason Shaw’s bicycle, and then the boy had appeared. If Mia had wanted to, she could have pressed the issue of her son’s abduction. But she hadn’t done so. Not because she didn’t want the abductor caught, Kelly realized, but because she didn’t want to put her kids in harm’s way. What a terrible dilemma for a mother, Kelly thought.
Then she saw the police car slow down as it approached and she turned around, smiling, to tell Troy her news.
But it wasn’t Troy. It was Chief Stark.
“Hello, Kelly,” he said, putting his window down. “There’s not an ordinance against it, but I thought you might want to know that the backside of your shorts is covered with grass stains.”
Kelly felt her face redden with embarrassment. Chief Stark laughed. “I just wanted to make sure that Officer Kennedy wasn’t cheating the taxpayers of Settler Springs and spending horizontal time with you out in his back yard when he’s supposed to be on duty.”
“That’s certainly not the case!” Kelly retorted. “I was sitting on the grass reading.” The lie came easily to her. She didn’t want him to know that she’d spent the afternoon in the cemetery with Doug Iolus who had been recording license plate numbers.
Chief Stark laughed again. “That’s what they all say,” he said and put the window up, then drove away.
26
Mrs. Hammond’s Observation
As soon as she got home, she texted Troy. Her fury at Chief Stark’s crude comments had not subsided, but the walk had given her the time she needed to put aside her ire so that she could think rationally. She wasn’t going to tell Troy what Chief Stark had said; instinctively, she knew that Troy’s reaction was likely to be volcanic and she didn’t want to do anything that would cause him more trouble with the police chief.
Dinner?
It took a few minutes before he replied.
Where?
Anywhere out of town. I’ll shower and change first.
Pizzaria?
It wasn’t as far out of town as she’d have liked, but she knew that when he was on duty, Troy couldn’t travel far from his patrolling area.
Okay. I’ll be there in a half hour.
She was right on time, although her hair was still damp from the shower when Troy came in and sat across from her in the booth by the window. It was where they usually sat. She realized, as she watched him approach, that after seven months of what she supposed was simple friendship, they had their own designated booths in their favorite restaurants; their Saturday run on the Trail was so much a part of their routine that others were aware of the pattern as well. Servers at the restaurants could predict what they would order; they no longer needed menus. And yet, there was a chasm between them. Sean Claypool’s death had brought to light what had been latent; Troy wanted a relationship that began with physical intimacy and would evolve—perhaps—into marriage. She wanted an emotional relationship that would lead to marriage and everything that marriage entailed. Troy could not reveal his emotions about his friend’s death, not because he didn’t feel deeply, but because he did not know how to share those feelings. Kelly expressed her feelings readily, without barriers. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground.
“Pizza, half with mushrooms and green peppers, half pepperoni?” Sheri, the server asked.
“I think I’ll skip the pepperoni,” Troy said.
Both Sheri and Kelly stared at him.
“Oh? Watching your cholesterol?” Sheri teased.
“I figure I’d better watch it now before it starts watching me.”
After Sheri left with their order, Kelly gave Troy a quizzical expression. “What’s
that all about?”
“Maybe I Googled the ingredients of pepperoni. So what do you have for me?” he asked.
Kelly leaned forward and handed him the list of license plate numbers that Doug had written down. “Check these out,” she said.
“Why?”
“Just check them out. And tell me if you find anything interesting.”
She wouldn’t say anything more, not sure if Troy would be dismissive of Doug’s speculation about what might be going on in the cemetery. The next day, she told Carmela that she would take Mrs. Hammond her weekly book delivery.
Carmela’s sideways glance in the direction of Mrs. Stark revealed her thoughts on being left alone with the police chief’s wife, but she just nodded. It had been a busy morning, but with the afternoon had come a lull, making it the ideal time to deliver books to the homebound.
Mrs. Hammond wasn’t, strictly speaking, homebound. But she couldn’t get out as often as she used to and that was reason enough to bring her books to her.
As was always the case, Mrs. Hammond was delighted to see Kelly and had tea and muffins waiting. Her neighbor had baked the muffins, she told Kelly. For Mrs. Hammond, moving into the senior citizen high-rise had provided her with a ready-made community, a busy calendar of social activities, and enough gossip to make half the residents of Settler Springs notice that their ears were burning.
Deftly, Kelly worked her way around to her subject. “I was at the cemetery for Memorial Day,” she said, “and I noticed that the section of the cemetery that’s next to Cemetery Road is really in bad shape. Have you noticed?”
Mrs. Hammond had noticed. She went to church with a group of ladies, who visited their dead husbands’ graves after the service ended, then went out to lunch. “We like to make sure everything is nice, you know,” Mrs. Hammond said. “But those graves on the other side . . . I think they’re attracting the wrong sort of people.”
Kelly refrained from asking what sort of people a cemetery attracted other than the deceased. “What do you mean?”
“Twice when we’ve gone there, we’ve seen cars going in and out over by those gravestones. I don’t know who goes there, but Rosa thinks they’re having wild parties.”
“On a Sunday afternoon?”
“That’s what I said, but Rosa thinks there’s something fishy about it.”
Rosa Dereskewicz, Mrs. Hammond’s nosy neighbor at the senior center, had an alert interest in the goings-on around her. She had been attentive in surveying the senior center’s parking lot from her apartment window when Travis Shaw had been selling drugs and she had not lost her affinity for observation. “Rosa thinks something’s not right.”
“Why does she think that?”
“Because they’re too young to have dead relatives on that side of the cemetery. You know that the graves on that side are from a long time ago.”
“The graves aren’t well tended at all,” Kelly commented. “The grass is high, and I never see fresh flowers on the stones.”
Mrs. Hammond sighed. “I know,” she admitted. “We’ve brought it up to Hugh, but he says he isn’t paid to take care of that side. I suppose he isn’t. There aren’t any living relatives to kick up a fuss.”
“You said that you’ve noticed cars there several times?”
Mrs. Hammond nodded. “I suppose if they’re partying there, it’s a perfect place. Who is going to notice?”
“Well,” Kelly grinned, “you and Rosa for two.”
“Oh, we all notice, but no one is going to listen to us complain. There’s no one to pay attention.”
“It’s a shame that the graves are left to ruins. Maybe the Historical Society could take it up as a project,” Kelly suggested. “Aren’t some of the graves from the American Revolution?”
&n
bsp; “Not that far back, dear; Settler Springs wasn’t incorporated as a town yet. But there are graves from the eighteenth century in that part of the cemetery. I don’t know if the Historical Society would take it up as a project, though. At least not now. They’re busy planning the re-enactment for the Fourth of July. It’s something to consider for the future, though. I’ll ask Mabel Walters what she thinks. She’s a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and, just between you and me, I think she’s rather vain about knowing her family tree that
far back. I could grave-shame her,” Mrs. Hammond said with delight.
“Or maybe you could just have her complain to the borough council.”
After leaving Mrs. Hammond’s apartment, Kelly got into her car and checked her messages. There was one from Troy.
Text me when Mrs. Stark leaves the library.
There was no telling when that might be, Kelly thought gloomily. Still, this was Kelly’s late night and Mrs. Stark rarely stayed past five o’clock.
At five-thirty, Mrs. Stark followed Carmela out the door. There were patrons in the library; several at the computer stations, one in the reading lounge, and a mother with her toddler in the children’s room. Kelly estimated that by seven o’clock, the library would be empty except for people who would come in after work to check out books and then leave.
Troy arrived at seven-thirty, entering the library just as a patron was walking out. He looked around as he walked to the circulation desk.
“Interesting list,” he commented after scanning the main area and confirming that no one was there.
“Oh?”
“Three of the license plates belong to people with Punxsutawney addresses. Most of the plates belong to people who’ve done time. All of the people were arrested, years ago, by Chief Stark.”
“Really? You mean there was a time when he actually arrested people who were guilty of something?”
“I checked the records. There’s a connection. Maybe it’s tenuous, but it’s something. And one of the license plates is registered to Edward Kavlick.”