Digging For Trouble

by K. J. Emrick

  His eyebrows shot up. “I do not sound like that!”

  With a gentle smile I reached across the table to lay my hand over his, letting my voice go back to a nice, smooth, normal Australian. “Well, I might’ve exaggerated a bit. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Kevin. You sound like your father. You try hard not to, but there’s nothing wrong with being who you are.”

  He took hold of my hand, taking his time with what he said next. “Even if Dad left us high and dry? Even if he left you?”

  I felt that old pain rise up in my chest, and purposefully set it aside. It had been a long time since me and Kevin had talked about his dad. Even longer since his sister had mentioned him. This talk was long overdue, I guess. “Yes. Richard left me. He did that to us, Kevin. You and me and your sister. I don’t know why. I’ve given up trying to understand it, truth be told. We can’t dwell on the past. Time moves on.”

  He snorted a laugh when I said that. “Heard that one before, have you?” I asked him. “Look. You’re his son. You have his chin, and his eyes, and his stubborn dedication.”

  A smile crossed my face in spite of myself. There was so much good to remember about Richard. No matter what he’d done to us in the end, he had been a good husband for years. A good father, too. That was what I so desperately wanted Kevin to remember about Richard.

  “But,” I added, “you’re my son, too. That means you got my sense, and my smarts, and my way of thinking. You would never just up and leave someone like he did.”

  “How can ya be so sure?” he all but whispered. “I’ve got my genes from the both of ya. Maybe it’s just the way men in our family do things. What’s this mean for me and Ellie? Mom, how can ya be sure?”

  “’Cause I know you. You love Ellie. You won’t let anything come between the two of you. And, look.” I tapped my hand against his paperwork. “Look at what you’re doing here. You could let this be, leave it for someone else to do, but you won’t.”

  “We both know there’s nobody else who will do this. I let it be, it gets swept away and Arthur’s attacker goes free.”

  “See? That’s who you are. You aren’t the type to just run away.” Not hard for me to tell what was really bothering him, even if he hadn’t already spelled it out. “You’d never leave Ellie the way your father left me, Kevin. She’s got a good man in you. I told her so, you know.”

  That brought out the tug of a smile from him, too. “I know. She told me.” With a deep breath and another squeeze of his hand he let go of some of the trouble he’d been carrying on his shoulders. “Right. Well. Um. Thanks. What brings ya over here in such a hurry, anyway?”

  “Oh, right.” I’d almost forgotten, what with all the talk of Kevin’s father. “A woman came into the Inn today.”

  I told him all about Denice Aldrich. Or, as much as I knew. A lot of it was just guesswork on my part, but still I saw the wheels turning in his head as I mentioned when she came to town, what she’d said about not being here to sightsee, and even the lipstick.

  “Lots of women wear lipstick, Mom.”

  “I know. I wear it, too, I’m just saying that’s what got me thinking. The lipstick on the cup in Arthur’s house had to come from somewhere, right?”

  “Well, sure, but like I said that could’ve just been Arthur’s little bird.” When I looked at him disapprovingly, he corrected himself. “Girlfriend. You know what I mean. Might have nothing to do with this.”

  Typical man. Being a woman, I thought of the obvious question. “Did you find any other signs in the house that showed he had a... bird?”

  He blinked. No, he hadn’t. Figured as much. As a woman, I know what we’re like. No way do we fit ourselves into a space without leaving a little something of ourselves behind. Forgotten bits of clothing, makeup in the lavatory, jewelry in the bedroom. It’s not that we’re forgetful. We just like to mark our territory. I’ve got some things over at James’s house.

  “Okay, so there was nothing else but the lipstick,” he admitted. “The place is a mess, right? I mean, you saw it. Arthur could’ve lost a camel in that place. Just ‘cause I can’t see anything else that shows he had a girlfriend right away—”

  “Not to mention,” I interrupted, “who is this woman? What woman in town can you imagine carrying on a secret affair with Arthur Loren?”

  That stopped him cold. “Right. Well, I mean there’s Tay Gramkow, maybe.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Arthur’s just old and nuts, Mom, he’s not dead.”

  “Kevin. How long did it take you to hear I was dating James Callahan?”

  “Uh, about five minutes.”

  “Right. Lakeshore’s great for spreading the local gossip. So if anyone, Tay Gramkow included, were dating Arthur Loren, don’t you think we’d have heard it?”

  He sighed out a breath through his nose, nodding his head. “You’re right. So, if the lipstick didn’t belong to someone in town...”

  “Someone from out of town only makes sense. That’s what I was thinking, too. Guess that’s why you’re such a good cop. That sharp wit of yours.”

  He stuck out his tongue at me. A good compliment should always have just a bit of sarcasm, I say. His mom will always be smarter than he is, and he just needs to accept it.

  Picking up the paperwork in a thick bundle, Kevin led me toward the door. “Still, I can’t just go up to every female stranger that comes through town and ask them if they’re carrying on an affair with Arthur Loren.”

  “Not an affair if it’s two consenting adults,” I pointed out.

  “Still doesn’t merit police intervention.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, letting him hold the door to the station lobby open for me. “I’ll bet you got a whole bunch of computers in here that’d let you look her up on the sly, though.”

  “True enough.”

  “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Back to the Inn,” he told me. “You owe me a lunch.”

  We laughed together, and I felt like I really accomplished something here, even if we’re not any closer to figuring out who attacked Arthur Loren. I can hear in Kevin’s voice that he’s not as stressed out as he was. He’s more himself now than he was.

  Sure, his Senior Sergeant is still a moron, and Officer Bruce Kay being temporarily in charge isn’t any better, but I was able to make him feel like he mattered.

  Isn’t that what a mother’s for?

  Chapter Five

  We put my trusty Wallaby in the trunk of the patrol car to drive back to the Inn. The streets were busy on this beautiful weekend day. Tourists in Mabel’s bookstore, and Gail Havernathy’s jam shop, or drinking coldies in the Thirsty Roo. Locals wandering about. Kids playing with their dogs. It was a good day to be in Lakeshore.

  Unless you were Arthur Loren.

  “Go on inside,” I told him after we parked in the drive. “Tell Rosie to fix you up something special. She’ll love the challenge.”

  “You coming?”

  “Gotta take care of my bike. Be right there.”

  I took the Wallaby out of the trunk and walked it around the back of the Inn. Time to put her away again for the day. I want her nice and rested for the next time I need her to save my skin.

  Halfway to the storage shed around the back I stopped. The edge of Pine Lake is pretty close back here, through the trees. Close enough to hear the waves lapping when the wind stirs the surface of the water. Like now. Kind of draws your attention, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before.

  Same with the walkways, or the benches. No matter how many times you’ve seen them, sometimes they stand out when you see them again. Like when you see the same exact bench from a dream you had about a scary man telling you cryptic things.

  Maybe it was just a dream.

  I had the feeling it was something more.

  Oh, snap.

  Setting the kickstand on my bike I left it where it was, just for now, and wandered down to the lakeside. The water was rhythmic in its motion, drawi
ng me closer, step by step, almost like I was in a trance. Grebes flew in wide circles a distance out, on stubby brown wings, looking for their next meal.

  And me, I just stood there staring, remembering this exact spot from my dream.

  This exact spot, right here.

  You might ask how I could possibly know one spot of earth from another, or one Monterey pine tree from the next. I know this ground. This Inn is my life. I know every bit of grass and every tree and every stone. It’s my business to know. Once there was a group of teens from town that thought it might be funny to rearrange my benches. Took me most of a day, but I put each and every one of them right back where they belonged.

  That’s kind of OCD, I know, but it’s that same attention to what’s mine that lets me know that right here, where I’m standing, is exactly where I’d been standing in my dream.

  But there was nothing here to see. Nothing I hadn’t seen before, anyway. Trees and grass and rocks. What was it that the scary guy and Jess had been trying to—

  Jess.

  She was there, twenty steps away from me, when I turned back to the water. Her long hair was black today, like she’d had it dyed the last time I saw her alive, and it didn’t stir in the breeze. The sun overhead didn’t create a shadow from her. She was here, but she wasn’t.

  “Oh, Jess,” I whispered, missing her like always.

  Without turning to look at me, she raised a finger to point at the tree right beside her.

  I’m used to ghosts now, like I’ve said. At least, I’m used to Jess’s ghost. Bizarre as it sounds, I don’t mind being around her. That other ghost, the freaky scary one... that might be a different story.

  I walked over to stand very close to her, looking where my friend had pointed. It was a tree. Rough bark. A Monterey pine like most of the trees around Lakeshore. Branches hanging low, dark green needles rustling in the same light wind that couldn’t touch Jess. Its twisty trunk was bigger around than my midsection, so it had been growing here for a while. Monterey pines grow up quickly.

  I looked over at Jess to make sure this really was what she was pointing at. It was. Inspecting the tree again, closer, didn’t help. It was still just a tree.

  And when I looked back, Jess’s ghost had disappeared, along with whatever message she had been trying to show me.

  Great. So what was I supposed to do now?

  I leaned up against the tree to give myself a minute to think.

  Which was when the world fell away beneath me.

  Black, swirling light swept me away from where I was and who I was and then set me back down hard on my two feet, right where I’d been standing a moment before.

  Only, it wasn’t the same. Things were different. The bench wasn’t there, for one, and the line of the lakeshore wasn’t quite where it should be, and even the trees were changed. The one I had put my hand up against was... gone. I could still feel the touch of its bark on my skin, but it wasn’t there.

  In its place were two men, arguing.

  I stepped back quick, three steps, six, a dozen, far enough to be a safe distance away from them as they raised their voices, raised their fists, and squared up. They were ready to start swinging and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Both of them looked angrier than a cut snake, and just as dangerous.

  Then I realized they weren’t paying me any mind at all. It was like I wasn’t even there.

  Like I was a ghost.

  They were dressed oddly, these two men. Both of them wore pants of rough brown wool with suspenders, the straps up over the shoulders of their short-collared white shirts. Old-timey clothes. Like I’d seen in the black and white photographs in the town museum of locals from the 1800s.

  I couldn’t make out everything that was being said. Even though I was right there with them it was more like I was listening to them shouting at each other from opposite ends of a tunnel. A lot of it was muffled and echoey and the words I did hear didn’t make a lot of sense.

  “...don’t go near...”

  “Cut yer lying tongue out.”

  “...the money...”

  “Kill you...”

  “Kill you...”

  “Kill you!”

  A knife flashed, and I covered my eyes rather than have to watch what I knew was coming.

  When I looked again, one of the men was on the ground, laying face up, staring blankly at the bright blue sky overhead. With a gasp of recognition, I realized I knew him. The other man faded into the shadows and dissolved into the background and disappeared. He was gone, and I never got a good look at him.

  But I knew the dead guy. It was the scary man from my dream. The blocky face, the blue eyes, the rust colored hair. This was the man from my dream.

  Only, I wasn’t dreaming now. So if I wasn’t dreaming, then what was happening?

  I caught hold of my unicorn necklace and held it tight, concentrating on breathing, hoping I wasn’t going nuts. Please, God, let this make sense. Somehow, let this make sense.

  The dead man on the ground rolled his eyes to me.

  “Watch.”

  So much for things making sense.

  My heart caught in my throat, and I wanted to run, but I had the feeling there was nowhere to run to. This was a movie playing out in front of me, something I was supposed to see.

  Watch.

  So I watched.

  The ground opened up under him, a little bit at a time, and then covered him back up again. Buried, I realized. This was where the dead man had been buried.

  Time passed, but not on its usual scale. The sun raced by overhead again and again. On the lake, waves rose and fell with such speed that it made me dizzy to watch. The trees around me grew and fell and others grew up to take their place.

  Where the man from my dream had been buried, a Monterey pine grew. Gradually, it took the form of the one I had been leaning up against before all this weirdness had started, tall and gnarled.

  Time stopped again.

  I looked around me. The bench was back, the grass and brush were just like they should be. Pine Lake stood just like I remembered it. I was back.

  This was a lot more than I could take in. I needed to lay down for a bit, rest my brain. Turning around, I—

  The man stood there, right there in front of me, his blue eyes sad. “Now you understand,” he told me, his voice clear and strong.

  He reached for me...

  I stumbled back, putting my hand out to brace myself against the tree.

  And I woke up for real, standing where I had been, my hand up against the trunk of the Monterey pine.

  Not sure how long I stood in that spot, perfectly still, waiting to make sure something else wasn’t going to pop out at me or suck me down Alice’s rabbit hole again. It was a long time, I know that. When I felt like I could breathe again I looked down, at the ground under my feet.

  I wonder what I’d find if I dug up under the roots of this tree?

  In spite of how bizarre it was, I knew the answer. That hadn’t just been some episode I had experienced. I wasn’t crazy. I’d had a vision. A vision of murder. Right here on the grounds of the Pine Lake Inn, over a hundred years ago. Follow that logic through, I told myself.

  A murder. A bad death.

  Looks like Jess isn’t the only ghost hanging around the Pine Lake Inn.

  ***

  The Inn was something of a distraction to me the rest of the day.

  Kevin got his promised meal and then headed back to the station to work on Arthur Loren’s case again. I knew he could tell something was bothering me but he had the good grace not to ask. Smart boy.

  Most of the University kids had checked out already. Two of the twenty-something girls had stayed, and it kind of made me wish I was back in Uni so I could just hang around wherever I wanted for as long as my parents’ money held out. Kelli and her family came through wondering if I could suggest a good place to get a feed up in Geeveston. I gave them a few suggestions. Lots of Asian places in Geeveston, but th
ey were looking for something more like a diner. I’m never insulted when guests want to eat somewhere else even though the Inn has its own dining room. We do plenty of business here. Somebody eating out once or twice isn’t going to hurt our bottom line. Sometimes, tourists want to be tourists. We’re about an hour or more from Geeveston, so they’ll be plenty hungry by the time they get there.

  I smiled at Kelli, remembering how she had been able to see Jess. See her, and play hide-and-seek with her down by the lake, where Jess kept disappearing.

  Oh.

  Snap.

  Jess had been trying to get me down there. Drawing Kelli to the spot where the body was buried so that I could see... what I’d just seen. A man, murdered and buried down by the lake. Fantastic.

  I kept picturing myself with a shovel, prodding down into the dirt.

  Not that I’m afraid of a little physical work but digging up a grave just isn’t my style. Maybe I could have our handyman George do it. Tell him there was a problem with the drainage down by the lake. Rainwater backing up and ruining the shoreline. Something like that. Maybe if I told him the tree was diseased and needed to be removed...

  Or maybe there was an easier way.

  I mentioned my boyfriend is a newspaper reporter, right? People who work for the newspaper know things.

  Before it got to be too late I gave James a call. “G’day, Dell,” he greeted me, just like always.

  I really wish this was a just-like-always kind of day. Between the thing that happened to Arthur Loren, and my vision of bare-knuckled murder down by the lake, I was pretty shook up. The thought of spending the night in the arms of a sweet, strong bloke, cuddled up together on his couch, sounded really good to me.

  “Hey, James. What’s your plans tonight?”

  “Filing a story on the overfishing of the Murray Cod.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “My editor is. I’m bored, is what I am. Want to come over and make a night of it?”

  I sighed. “You have no idea.”

  “Dinner?”

  “You cooking?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “You know it.”