A Grave Search

by Wendy Roberts

  “I can be there in ten minutes,” he said.

  I could hear the slam of his car door followed by a moment when the tone echoed as the call went from his ear to Bluetooth.

  “I’m finished eating and I don’t want to hang around here. I’m leaving now.” I started up my own car.

  “Wait there a few minutes longer. It shouldn’t take long to discuss Ron Low and—”

  “Look, I don’t want to stay. Why don’t you meet me back at my place? I need to walk Wookie and—”

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” He sounded annoyed.

  “Who were you talking to at Al’s Diner a couple months back? Who do you know with the last name Arsenault?”

  Dead air filled my ear for ten beats of my heart.

  “I can’t talk to you about an ongoing case.”

  “Is it to do with me?” I asked. “Because I don’t know of anyone else with the surname Arsenault. I’m sure it’s possibly a coincidence but I stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago. So if it isn’t about me...”

  Maybe it was about my mom.

  “I really can’t talk to you about this—”

  “Tell me!” I screamed, the panic of my verbal assault spraying spittle on my phone.

  Dead air again and, this time, I thought he’d disconnected. My heart was pounding so loud in my ears that it was making me dizzy.

  “I didn’t meet with anyone with the last name Arsenault but, yes, I met with a guy at the diner to discuss someone with that name.”

  He blew out a breath and I could hear the frustration in his voice. He was talking low and slow, using that placating tone that he used when he felt I was on the edge. I hated it.

  “That someone you were discussing was related to me?” It was just above a whisper.

  “Hey, I’m on my way. Pick a place nearby where we can sit down and talk.”

  “Who?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “Who is the person named Arsenault that you’d drive to Blaine to talk about? Tell me.”

  Again, the pause. As I listened to my heartbeat and the sound of his breathing I could imagine him getting that look in his eyes like he did when he was weighing the outcome of sharing information about a case.

  “I was looking for information on your mother, okay?” he blurted. “The name came up in a case and so I was following up and—”

  “Why would my mother’s name come up in a case you’re working when she’s been dead for at least three years?”

  “Julie, she may not be dead,” Garrett replied quietly.

  The phone slipped from my hand and onto the floor of the car as I covered my face with my hands and let out a guttural anguished cry.

  Chapter Four

  I don’t remember the drive home. I do remember counting all the liquor stores I passed along the way. There were a lot. If I’d had a bottle of anything hidden somewhere in my house I would’ve guzzled the entire thing without breathing. Instead, I snapped a leash onto Wookie’s collar and took him for a hard run. We ran on the hardscrabble weeds alongside the road so as not to burn Wookie’s paws on the pavement. As we ran the air sizzled and languid heat came off the pavement in liquid waves.

  My mother, Molly Arsenault, could be alive.

  Alive and breathing.

  My feet pounded the ground as I tried to conjure up memories of the woman who birthed me and then placed me into the abusive care of my grandparents when I was six. Fifteen months ago, while my life was circling the drain, I’d managed to track down Molly Arsenault’s last known place of residence with a lowlife named Ted in the town of Marysville. He’d filled in some painful blanks. I found out my parents had been married and that’s why I’d had the last name Arsenault. My dad died in the Gulf War just after I was born. Ted also told me that my mom was an addict who’d left me with my crazy-assed grandparents in order to go to rehab. Apparently, she’d returned for me but was told I’d been given up for adoption. My grandmother despised me and there were only two reasons she’d have lied to my mom about me being adopted. She wanted to hurt my mother. And she wanted to continue to hurt me.

  “She tossed you out of her car like a hamburger wrapper,” Grandma hissed.

  “It’s okay to be angry with those who’ve hurt you.” Dr. Chen’s voice echoed in my head.

  I picked up the pace of my run.

  Ted had wrapped up my visit by telling me that my mother was a lifelong drunk who also played with hard drugs. She’d gone out for smokes a couple years before I came looking for her and never returned. They found her car on the side of the road near a fast-moving river and she was presumed dead. Now Garrett was telling me she might be alive, and my heart was breaking all over again.

  Abruptly Wookie put on the brakes, nearly sending me ass over teakettle into the ditch. It was too hot and he was done with running. When a hundred-thirty-pound dog doesn’t want to do something, you aren’t going to make him.

  “You’re right.” I put my hands on my knees, bent at the waist and gasped for air. “Enough is enough. Sorry, boy.”

  We walked back leisurely. I was drenched in sweat and Wookie’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth as he panted for air.

  When we made it back to my driveway I wasn’t the least surprised to see Garrett’s sedan parked there while he sat on my steps. He had a haggard, worried expression on his face.

  He got to his feet and started talking but I held up a hand to get him to stop. I turned on the hose at the side of the house and drank from it and then let Wookie lap up some of the fast-flowing water too. Once we were inside I refilled Wookie’s water bowl and grabbed a Coke. Wookie collapsed onto the cool tile and went to sleep while Garrett and I took a seat at the kitchen table. I drank half my can before I spoke.

  “Talk.”

  “This is still an active case and I’m not supposed to discuss—”

  “Jesus, Garrett, who exactly am I going to tell about your goddamn case? The dead people I find?” I ran my fingers through my damp hair. “You’re the only frick’n friend I have in this world.” My voice wavered a little. “I can go weeks without talking to a single soul besides you and my shrink.”

  “So that’s what we are? Friends?”

  That was an argument for another day.

  “You know what I mean.” I nudged his foot with mine. “You’re all I’ve got. You’re my everything.”

  “That’s really not healthy,” he pointed out.

  I rolled my eyes so far back in my head that I could read my own thoughts and they weren’t kind. “Please. Just tell me.”

  “I guess I can tell you this much,” he began, leaning in to either soften his tone for my sake or to make sure Wookie didn’t hear and reveal all his secrets to the media. “Remember that big drug trafficking investigation I was involved with a few months ago?”

  “The one that hit the news?” I leaned in too in spite of myself. “The one where you and your guys raided a bunch of places at the same time and seized, like, thirty pounds of meth and twenty pounds of coke and lots of guns?”

  He nodded. He was always working on a case, of course, and I heard about the big bust at the same time it became big news in the media.

  “We swooped in and hit a dozen houses and arrested a lot of people but not everyone living at those addresses was home at the time of the raids. We got most of them, but some are in the wind. One of the names that came up as a resident in a house was Molly Arsenault.”

  It hit me hard. I inhaled deeply while I let that sink in. I tried to form a question but all I could feel was the weight of the air around me, heavy and swirling with apprehension. Garrett just waited patiently.

  “Where?”

  “The house was in Auburn.”

  An hour away from where I lived now. I closed my eyes and breathed deep. After a while I leaned back and threw up my hands. �
�I really don’t even know what to do with that information.”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you,” he confessed. “I haven’t even laid eyes on her myself.”

  “That’s not why you didn’t tell me.” I scowled. “You didn’t tell me because you thought it would send me into some kind of psychotic break. That I’d end up back in the loony bin, or, worse, that I’d end up slurping my way through the chardonnay section of the grocery store.”

  “No.” He placed a hand on mine and squeezed. “I just wanted to be absolutely certain before I told you.”

  “Well, are you sure? Is my mother alive?”

  He hesitated and then blew out a long breath. “Until I actually see her for myself, I don’t want to say, Julie. We’ve got her name. Some blurry security footage.” He shrugged. “For all I know, someone has just assumed her identity, okay? That happens a lot. If I knew for sure, of course I’d tell you.”

  I wanted to push him hard for more but I could tell that he’d given me all there was. Or all he could. Either way, I needed to wrap my head around the little that he did manage to confirm. “So you’ll keep me in the loop?”

  “As much as I can.”

  Which is really all I could hope for.

  He got up and took our Coke cans to the recycle bin outside, then went to the fridge and peered in. “You need to stock your fridge with more than cola and iced tea.”

  “If you’re hungry, I think there’s a frozen pizza in the freezer.” I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist and stood on tiptoe to nibble the back of his neck. “I’m kind of hungry myself.”

  He turned around, hugged me tight and murmured “I love you” as I lifted my face to be kissed. His lips on mine were tender and loving until my hands went to the buckle of his belt.

  “Bed?” he breathed against my mouth.

  I shook my head as I fumbled with his zipper. I wanted him here and now and I didn’t want soft, gentle lovemaking in my warm bed. He answered my need with his own as we tore off each other’s clothing and our sweet I-love-yous became loud moans and shouts until we both lay spent, our knees bruised from the hard, cool tile.

  “God, we’re good,” I breathed.

  “You’re amazing,” he said as he sat up and collected his clothing.

  “You’re not bad yourself. For an old man.”

  “Hey!” He played like he was offended as he reached over and pinched one of my nipples.

  Garrett had over twenty years on me and I loved it when he left mister serious FBI guy behind and became my boyfriend instead of my protector.

  “Do you think being with an older man is a replacement for a father?” Dr. Chen asked.

  The idea was absurd since the way I felt when I looked at Garrett had nothing to do with family.

  “We need to do more of that,” I told him as I slipped into my shorts and T-shirt.

  “If you still lived with me we could do that every night.”

  My lips went to spit a scathing retort but he quickly apologized.

  “Sorry. Not trying to guilt you.” He pulled me close. “I love any time we spend together.”

  I sighed against him. I knew what he wanted. Garrett wanted what he’d had with his late wife and son. That kind of domesticity of everyday family. I didn’t know if I could give him that but I did love him with my whole heart. I hoped that was enough.

  My phone chimed and I broke our embrace to reach for it. There was an email with lots of exclamation marks from Ebba Johansson. She’d heard about Rock’n Ron.

  “Ava’s mom knows about Ron Low.” I looked at Garrett. “She has questions.”

  That brought us to the other, more official, reason for Garrett’s visit. Since I was the person who found the body, he needed an official statement from me. I filled him in, adding more details to what I’d briefly told him earlier about my having gone to school with Ron and my conversation with his roommate, Joon Kim, that led me to think of hiking to the Bat Caves.

  “So you had no reason to suspect you’d find Ron’s body there?”

  “None.” I shook my head. “He was an outdoorsy guy. That hike would’ve been a cakewalk for him because he knew it well. I don’t think he took a bad fall and crawled into the cave to die.”

  “You’re right. That’s not what happened. Someone shot him in the head inside that cave. There was a bullet hole in the back of his head and no gun was found nearby so it was not a suicide. Of course, we need to wait for the coroner’s report but the big ol’ hole in the back of his head is bound to be cause of death.”

  “Well, a bullet to the temple could mean he crawled in that hole to kill himself over concern he was going down for Ava’s murder and an argument could even be made a raccoon or other critter made off with the gun. But a bullet to the back of the head means it was an execution.” I dragged my fingers through my hair and thought about it. “I’m guessing you’re back to square one on looking for Ava’s killer.”

  “Not necessarily. He could’ve killed Ava and someone killed him in retaliation.”

  “What’s your gut say?”

  “My gut isn’t involved here and I’m hoping yours won’t be either. I’ve got enough on my plate with another big investigation and you have other bodies you could be finding. Sure you found Ron but let’s leave it at that. This is a hot investigation with at least two deaths now. Let the guys running the show handle it until they find the killer.”

  “I want to help find Ava,” I said. “Finding Ron was an accident but now I feel like I should help to finish this.” I pursed my lips. “Unless you think she’s not even dead? No body, right?”

  “Enough blood left at the scene that it’s certain she didn’t survive.”

  “Okay. I know you’re not involved in this case but, obviously, you know about it. If you had to guess, would you say it was Ron who killed her and then he just got taken out, like you said?”

  “You know we look at those closest first. Ransom note was written on Ron’s computer so he was involved somehow. His roommate was out of the country at the time Ava died but I guess he could’ve hired someone to do it and set up Ron.” He shrugged. “There are a lot of possibilities. Ebba had an insurance policy out on her daughter but it was taken out years ago to benefit the business and she’s now lost a hundred thousand against her business by paying out the ransom, so she sure doesn’t look like she killed her daughter.”

  “Was Ava dating anyone else after Ron?”

  “Investigators looked into a couple other guys she was dating but I don’t think anything came of that. Right now, I’m guessing they’re starting from scratch with the discovery of Ron Low’s body.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “The autopsy will be done and until we have proof about how and when Ron died, the supposition that he was murdered is not to leave this room. Don’t go sharing that with Ebba Johansson.”

  I made a motion to turn a key at my lips and nodded.

  He was on his feet then and making his way to the door. “See you tomorrow, right?”

  When I looked at him blankly he reminded me I had an appointment in town. He’d marked it on his calendar.

  I followed and, before he left, he kissed me long and slow and in a way that almost made me ache for the normal life he craved. I watched his dark sedan back out of my long gravel driveway and waited until it disappeared down the road.

  Rather than email Ebba, I decided to give her a call. Since it was late afternoon I tried her first at the business line listed on her card but the receptionist told me she only came in a couple times a week to that location and today was not one of those days. Next, I dialed her cell number and she answered on the first ring.

  “Thank you so-o-o much, Julie! It means so much to me that you found that horrible Ron. I guess you’ve taken my case and we didn’t even discuss your fee yet,” Ebba a
nnounced, sounding immensely pleased. “I can’t believe you’ve already found Ron! What a coward to take his own life instead of facing up to the consequences. Do you think that Ava’s body could be nearby? Did you search?”

  I asked why she thought Ron took his own life and she said that when the officer called her she asked how he died and they said they found a bullet hole in his head. So much for keeping everything on the down low until after the autopsy report. I patiently explained that finding Ron’s body was purely accidental but she wasn’t buying it. I also told her that I hadn’t searched for Ava at the Bat Caves because if she’d been killed at the state park where the crime scene was, there was no way even a hiker like Ron would’ve hauled her body down that trail.

  “The fact that I found Ron had nothing to do with your request to look for Ava.”

  “Right. You don’t want law enforcement knowing that you’re working for me. I get that. You have no idea how much it means to me that you’re willing to help bring my girl home.”

  “I...um...”

  Part of me wanted to turn her down flat and make Garrett very happy but a bigger part of me wanted to know how my old high school crush ended up dead in a cave and a suspect in the murder of his ex-girlfriend.

  “I will do a little searching but if it looks like there are no leads of areas to look, I’m going to drop the case. Agreed?”

  I told her how to send me an initial deposit of a thousand dollars by electronic bank transfer and she agreed to send me the money immediately.

  “I don’t have a lot to go on,” I admitted. “But I’ll start searching the area where...you know...” My voice trailed off because there was no easy way to say it.

  “Where they found all that blood and where the asshole killed her.”

  “Right.”

  “And when will you go there?”

  “Tomorrow. First thing.”

  “I’d like to be there when you go.”

  “That’s not necessary. The area has already been widely searched. I’m only going there for my own peace of mind and, obviously, I’d call you if I found anything at all related to Ava.”