The Restorer tgqs-1

by Amanda Stevens

  At the farthest corner of the garden something stirred. My heart quickened as I stepped back from the window.

  It wasn’t her. It wasn’t anything. Just a random pattern of shadow and light. A pareidolia.

  I went back to bed and resumed my search. A little after one, the phone finally rang and I snatched it up. “Hello?”

  “Amelia?” The way he said my name sounded very proper. Very Southern. Very controlled.

  I slid down under the covers with a shiver. “Yes.”

  I heard something in the background then—a soft, feminine query followed by Devlin’s muffled reply.

  Then he was back on the phone. “Sorry. Are you still there?”

  My heart had started to beat a very painful tattoo against my chest. He wasn’t alone. He had a woman with him. “Yes, I’m here.”

  “What’s wrong? You didn’t leave much of a message.”

  “I know…” I trailed off, my fingers clutching the cover. This was so awkward. “I thought I’d found something, but…I may have overreacted. It’s nothing that can’t wait until morning.”

  “Are you sure—”

  “Yes, quite sure. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t hang up fast enough. A part of me thought he might call back, but no. The silence from the phone was deafening.

  Falling back against the pillow, I closed my eyes. How funny that I should be so upset by this. I hardly knew Devlin. He was nothing to me. Could be nothing to me.

  And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about that soft voice in the background.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Essie’s assertion that one day soon, he would have to make a choice.

  Twenty-Three

  I didn’t see or speak to Devlin again until the next day at the exhumation and we only had time then for a quick word. I explained about the epitaph posting on my blog and he agreed it was a curious development, though hardly a smoking gun.

  “I doubt it’s enough to warrant a court order to access the ISP’s logs, and I’m willing to bet the poster used an anonymizer service, anyway. That information can’t be subpoenaed because they don’t store it. Or so they claim.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “I’d like to go over the Oak Grove images with you again, though. I think you could be right. You may have captured something in one of those shots that we just haven’t found yet. We need to spend some time with them.”

  “Sure. Whenever you want.” He seemed to be over his anger with me, and I was happy about that, although a part of me had to wonder if his improved state of mind had something to do with the company he’d kept the previous evening.

  He was more casually attired today than I’d ever seen him—jeans, a cotton shirt rolled up to the elbows and a lightweight jacket that he’d removed in the heat to reveal a belt holster and sidearm.

  Carefully, I averted my gaze from the weapon, but I was transfixed by it just the same. It tied in so well with the persona Temple had painted of him as a dangerous man.

  “I’ll also see about getting the patrols in your neighborhood beefed up.”

  “So you do think the killer posted that epitaph,” I said in alarm.

  His eyes were hooded, as though he was trying very hard to disguise whatever concern he might have. “I think it’s always better to be safe than sorry.”

  Hardly a comforting platitude under the circumstances.

  A small crowd had started to gather and Devlin went off then to speak to one of the other detectives. I moved into the shade and watched as Ethan laid out a grid pattern over the grave. Then he and Temple set to work with trowels, easing away dirt from the skeleton, while his assistant manned the screen and Regina Sparks shot stills.

  At one point, she came over to stand beside me, her red bangs plastered to her forehead in the heat, the underarms of her T-shirt stained with sweat. “Another hot one.”

  “Sweltering.”

  “Not a good day to be digging up human remains.”

  “Is there a good day for that?”

  She grinned. “I’ve seen just about every imaginable thing that can be done to a body—and some things you don’t want to imagine—but this business still creeps me out.”

  “An exhumation? That surprises me.”

  “I know.” She fiddled with her camera as we talked. “It’s weird, but if the body is fresh—like the other night—I don’t mind as much. But digging someone up who was planted there by loved ones…prayed over, grieved over…that just seems wrong.”

  “So you’d rather deal with a murder victim than a body that was formally interred?”

  “Told you it was weird.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “You seem pretty cool about all this. Have you ever been to one before?”

  “Yes. When I worked for the state archaeologist’s office, we moved a whole cemetery once.”

  “How many bodies?’

  “Dozens. One of the caskets was cast iron and shaped like an Egyptian sarcophagus. It was perfectly preserved and weighed a ton. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  “Did you open it up?”

  “No, not a good idea. Back in the nineteenth century, embalmers experimented with a lot of interesting fluids, including arsenic.”

  “Now that would make for a nice batch of coffin liquor, wouldn’t it?” she said, referring to the viscous black liquid sometimes found in burial containers.

  It was a little surreal standing there in the shade conversing so casually about something so gruesome, but I supposed it was a fitting enough topic, considering. My gaze went back to Ethan and Temple. They were backlit by the sun so that from where I stood, they were mere silhouettes, a pair of grim reapers with trowels and sunglasses.

  The skull was already exposed and facing me, the stare of those empty eye sockets chilling even in broad daylight.

  All around the grave, cops spoke in hushed tones or watched the excavation in silence. I heard someone laugh and turned to glance over my shoulder. No one was there. It was the oddest sensation.

  “Devlin sure seems to be keeping an eye on you,” Regina remarked.

  “What?” I turned in surprise.

  She nodded in his direction. “He’s always looking over here.”

  It took some willpower not to glance at him. “How can you tell? He’s wearing sunglasses.”

  “Oh, I can tell. I can always tell.” She cocked her head as she regarded me. “You wouldn’t be the first to succumb to his charm, you know. Devlin’s one of those men that makes us women overly aware of our biological clocks. It’s the pheromones, I suspect.”

  “Have you worked with him a long time?” I tried to ask casually.

  “Long enough to know that it’ll take a far stronger woman than I to crack that shell.”

  “Did you know his wife?”

  She eyed me curiously. “I met her once. That was enough.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Hard to explain. It was the way she would look at you…like she knew things about you even if she’d just met you. Strange woman. Beautiful…but strange.”

  I thought of Mariama’s ghostly hands in my hair, the touch of her frigid lips against my neck, and shivered. What did she know about me?

  I was brimming with questions, but I didn’t want to seem too obvious, so I let the matter drop. After a bit, Regina wandered off and I turned my attention back to the digging. I’d worked for Temple long enough to know what she would be looking for as evidence of formal burial preparation: bits of coffin lining and fabric clinging to the bone, tacks or pins that had held clothing in place, and in graves as old as this one, copper pennies that had been placed over the eyes.

  Ethan would be looking for more grisly evidence—soft or mummified tissue, muscle, ligament, insect inclusions, the color of the bones and the odor of decay.

  I didn’t smell anything from where I stood. On such a hot day, I was pretty grateful for that.

  By late afternoon, a partially intact skeleto
n had been recovered, along with teeth, bits of clothing and some jewelry. Everything went into the body bag to be transported to Ethan’s lab.

  Once the remains had been carted away, the crowd began to disperse. Temple and I stayed behind to take stock of the damage to the grave. Then she, too, left and I found myself alone as I opened my bag and removed the tools of my trade.

  Using a soft-bristled brush and a wooden scraper, I cleared away as much of the moss and lichen as I could from the marker without damaging the fragile stone. Then, positioning a mirror to reflect light, I adjusted the angle until I could just make out the imagery and the epitaph:

  How soon fades this gentle rose,

  Freed from earthly woes,

  She lies in eternal repose.

  I read it once, then again more slowly. With each word, I felt something sinister pressing down on me.

  Hands trembling in haste and excitement, I took out my phone, logged on to the internet and opened my blog, scrolling quickly through the comments.

  There it was, published a few minutes after the first epitaph had been posted. I searched through all the other anonymous comments, then logged off and put away my phone.

  I read the lines a third time, the tickle of gooseflesh lifting the hair on my neck.

  The inscription on a grimy headstone could stay hidden for decades, but if viewed in a proper light from a certain angle, the markings would sometimes pop through the layers of crud. It could be quite eerie, in fact.

  But who would know to do that?

  Someone with an interest in graveyards. A cemetery restorer like me. A taphophile like those who posted to my blog. An archaeologist, perhaps.

  Or a desperate man looking for a door to the other side.

  All those thoughts raced through my head in the space of a heartbeat.

  As I stood watching, the light shifted and the epitaph disappeared.

  Twenty-Four

  I found Devlin at the Bedford Mausoleum. His back was to me and he seemed so lost in thought that I didn’t think he was aware of my approach. But then he spun around quickly and if I hadn’t been so adept at concealing shock and fear, I might have jumped.

  “It’s just me,” I said lamely.

  “Force of habit.” His gaze went past me as if making sure no one else tried to sneak up on him.

  I wondered if his job made him so wary, or if on some level he sensed his ghosts. Did he ever feel the frost of their breath? The tug of their wintry hands? The bite of a ghostly kiss?

  My gaze raked over him as he turned back to the mausoleum, and as I studied his profile, my thoughts turned to that soft voice I’d heard in the background last night. I wondered who she was, what she looked like and how well Devlin knew her.

  Had she measured up to Mariama?

  I was a little ashamed of my petty jealousy. Two homicide victims had been discovered within these cemetery walls and I had just witnessed the exhumation of what might well turn out to be a third. Devlin’s private life should be the least of my worries.

  “I’ve found something,” I told him, and he turned with a lifted brow.

  “What is it?”

  “The inscription on the headstone of the grave we just dug up.” I tucked back a strand of hair that had fallen loose from my ponytail. “After everyone left, I took it upon myself to check the epitaph.”

  “But the markings on that headstone are illegible,” he said. “We talked about it the other day with Regina Sparks. How did you manage to read the epitaph?”

  “I used a mirror to reflect light. Full-length works best, of course, but I didn’t have one with me today so I had to make do with something smaller. It’s all about the angle. Directing the light diagonally across the face of a gravestone casts shadows in the indentions and makes it easier to read the inscriptions.”

  “That’s pretty clever.”

  “Yes, but it’s not my cleverness. It’s a trick of the trade. My father taught me how a long time ago. It saves a lot of wear and tear on the stones. You never even have to touch them…” I stopped. “Sorry. I’m rambling again.”

  Nine out of ten men would have agreed and asked that I just get to the point. Not Devlin. He merely said, “Go on,” and then proceeded to hang on my every word as if I were the most fascinating creature he’d ever encountered. Of course, we both knew that wasn’t true.

  “Anyway,” I said in conclusion, “the epitaph from that head stone was published in a comment on my blog just like the other one.” I recited the inscription from memory.

  He waved aside a fly. “When?”

  “When was it published to the blog? A little while after the first one. I thought I recognized the verse so I used my phone to verify the posting.”

  “Anonymous again?”

  “Yes. But I’m certain it was the same poster.”

  I set down my bag and closed the distance between us, coming to stand beside him at the bottom of the mausoleum steps. He waited in silence, watching me intently until I was the one who had to look away. After as much time as we’d spent together, I should have been over my reticence around him, but I thought it a good thing that I wasn’t. I could never allow myself to forget about his ghosts or discount my father’s warning about him. I couldn’t lose sight of the fact that Devlin was a terrible threat to both my physical and mental well-being.

  And yet even now I could feel his pull. Even now my eyes lingered on his lips, wondering yet again what it would be like to kiss him. I’d never felt anything like this before. Everyone always said that in the movies, but for me it was true. Temple was right—I’d always sought out only those men who didn’t threaten the rules or my peace of mind. I’d lived in my own little world, cocooned from reality and sustained by fantasy, until the night John Devlin had stepped out of the mist.

  His gaze on me flickered and I wondered if something of my feelings had shown on my face. Quickly, I turned away.

  “What else can you tell me about the inscription?” he said.

  “It’s not so much the inscription itself that we should be concerned about. As I said, the lettering can only be read under certain conditions. The angle of the light has to be just right. The thing is…who else would know that?”

  He gave me a shrewd glance, comprehending my meaning precisely. “What about the archives? Would epitaphs be included in the written records?”

  “Sometimes they are, along with a description and dimensions of the headstone. But again, one would have to know where to look. And in this case, so many of the records from the original cemetery are missing. But I suppose it’s possible that someone could have stumbled across one of the old church books. I’ve been looking for one in particular in the archives room, but the system there is a mess. Completely disorganized.”

  “Who would have access to those records?”

  “Students. Faculty. And someone like me who has special permission, of course.”

  He eyed me thoughtfully. “You’ve spent some time down there, I take it.”

  “Yes, quite a lot.”

  “Have you ever seen anyone else down there?”

  “Sure. People come and go all the time. The last person I saw was Daniel Meakin, the historian. No, wait. I take that back. Camille Ashby was the last person I saw down there.” I explained to him about having seen Camille underneath the stairwell right after my conversation with Meakin.

  “I had the strangest feeling she was spying on us, but I can’t imagine why. She and Meakin are colleagues. Do you know him?”

  “I know who he is,” Devlin said as he turned his attention back to the mausoleum. “What can you tell me about this place?”

  “The mausoleum? Not a lot. I haven’t been able to find much information about it. I do know that it’s the oldest in the cemetery, built in 1853 by the Bedford family, who donated land to Emerson University. The architecture is Gothic. Beautifully doom and gloom. Mourning became something of an art form in the Victorian South, though nothing compared to their English cousins,
of course.”

  “Have you been inside?”

  “I’ve taken a peek through the door. It’s in terrible shape. Graffiti and trash all over the place. Dust, cobwebs, you name it. The vaults were vandalized years ago and the remains are long gone.”

  He turned at that. “Someone took the bodies?”

  I shrugged. “What can you do? Grave robbery is an age old profession. In cemeteries like Oak Grove, armed guards used to patrol at night to prevent medical students from stealing fresh bodies to use as cadavers. Body-brokering is still a big business.”

  “Pleasant thought.” Devlin placed his foot on the bottom step. “How do you go about restoring a place in this kind of shape?”

  “Scrub away the graffiti, haul off the trash, reseal the vaults. It’s a lot of hard work. Manual labor, actually.” I stared down at the calluses on my hands. “And the sad thing is, without the bodies, the restoration is never going to be truly complete.” I lifted my gaze to Devlin, a troubling suspicion starting to take root. “Is this where Afton Delacourt’s body was found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I didn’t know it then. Since I can’t access the file, I had to track down the detective who was in charge of the investigation.”

  “He’s still on the force?”

  “Retired five years ago. He has a place on Lake Marion in Calhoun County. I finally managed to get an address through a sister who still works for the city. He didn’t want to see me at first…until I told him about Hannah Fischer.”

  “What did he say?” I asked anxiously. “Did he give you any leads?”

  Devlin expertly evaded my novice questions, along with my probing stare. “We’re treading on tricky ground here. I shouldn’t be telling you anything about this case. Things are moving fast…” Absently, he rubbed a thumb across his chin.