The First Ladies Club Box Set

by J B Hawker

  Judy was crouching beside the box. Upon seeing the mummified figure inside, her legs gave out and she sat down with a thump.

  Pulling herself to her knees and looking again to be sure she wasn’t mistaken; she took the phone from her skirt pocket and called her husband. Ken would know what to do. She didn’t want to leave a message with gossipy Mrs. Wilson, so she’d agreed to call back later.

  She wanted to run away from this chapel of decay, but she couldn’t just go off and leave her discovery. The mummified remains in the box had once been a living, breathing person and shouldn’t be left to rot in the woods like so much trash.

  Judy supposed the body had been brought to this tiny chapel for a funeral, but she couldn’t imagine what chain of events had resulted in its abandonment. It seemed to have been here for many years, but sneakers were a fairly modern style of footwear. They obviously belonged to an era with laws against DIY funerals.

  Standing in the ruined chapel with the phone in her hand, her mind whirled with conjecture until a clear thought popped out of the confusion. She needed to call the police. This wasn’t exactly an emergency, but the authorities needed to take charge of the body and give it a proper burial.

  A member of her church, Lyle Williams, was a deputy working out of the Bannoch Sheriff’s substation. She had his number in her phone’s contacts list.

  When Lyle answered Judy’s call, she relayed her story and gave him her GPS coordinates from the map app on her phone. He advised her to remain on site until he arrived.

  “It looks like you are on private property, you know, Mrs. Falls,” he said. “Those woods are part of the old Haleby Estate. I’ll bet you stumbled onto the family chapel.”

  “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to break the law! I didn’t see any signs,” Judy responded.

  “That’s okay. As long as you weren’t doing any hunting, you should be okay. That land’s a nature preserve, now. Just take it easy and I’ll be there right away. I think I can drive up the old road almost to where you are. Oh, and don’t touch anything.”

  “I already did, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep my hands to myself until you get here,” Judy said.

  It seemed a little silly for Lyle to act as though this was a crime scene. Nevertheless, she obeyed his wishes and remained at the site, keeping her hands in her pockets, as promised.

  *

  The harsh clangor of an electronic bell echoed, and the wide hallways of Bannoch High School were soon clogged with an outpouring of equally noisy students.

  Judy’s daughters, identical twins, Paisley and Astilbe, walked toward their next class.

  When they were younger, the two girls were practically indistinguishable, with carbon-copy red-gold curls and rosy cheeks, but now the pair of high school seniors had developed individual styles more in keeping with their very different personalities. Astilbe’s bohemian tastes and impulsive personality closely mirrored their mother, while Paisley reflected their father’s more sedate style.

  “How do you think you did on that English test, Patsy?” Astilbe, whose curls still rioted around her usually smiling face, asked, using her private nickname for her sister.

  “Good. It was pretty easy, after all,” Paisley replied.

  Paisley chose to tame her locks into loose waves every morning and tucked them behind her ears to reveal her features.

  “Easy for you, maybe, but I can never get my head around all the grammar rules and tenses,” Astilbe said.

  The girls stopped beside their shared locker to drop off books before heading to the gym for an assembly presentation.

  “What’s this one about, Tilly?” Paisley asked her sister as they jostled through the mass of their classmates.

  “I think it’s another anti-bullying lecture. At least that’s what it sounded like on the loudspeaker at morning announcements, but it’s always so hard to understand what the speaker is saying,” Astilbe replied.

  “Oh, joy,” Paisley moaned. “These things always turn into anti-Christian tirades. Remember that last one? We were warned about being bigoted, close-minded homophobes if we didn’t agree with every crazy LBGTQXYZ idea and PC concept. I wanted to get up and leave, but I knew I’d get in trouble.”

  “Me too. Is that why you wouldn’t let me say anything during the question and answer time?” Astilbe asked.

  “Yeah. You are just like Mom and I never know what you’ll say next. I didn’t want you to get detention again.”

  “Thanks, I guess, but I was only going to ask why it’s always okay to bully Christians, but not anyone else.”

  When the girls joined their friends in the bleachers, conversation turned to who had dates for the up-coming Junior/Senior prom. Hairstyles, fashions, and, of course, boys, were discussed until the assembly was called to attention.

  Chapter 2

  While waiting for Deputy Williams to make his way to the chapel, Judy called Ken, again.

  This time he answered.

  “First Presbyterian Church, this is Reverend Falls.”

  “Oh, good!” Judy said. “Where’s the dragon lady?”

  “Judy, please...what if someone were to hear you call Jane that?” Ken chastised, before adding with a grin, “She had an appointment to get her hair done, so she’s taking an early lunch.”

  “I don’t know how she keeps her sculptured coif in place between appointments,” Judy said. “She must sleep sitting up. All that fluffy white hair piled atop her head reminds me of swirly soft-serve ice cream.”

  “Me too,” Ken chuckled. “But you didn’t call to discuss Jane’s hair. She told me you rang earlier. What’s up?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m stuck up in the woods, so I won’t be home to fix your lunch today.”

  “Stuck? You mean your car has broken down again?”

  “No, the car’s fine. I have to hang around until Lyle gets here to take care of the mummy before I can leave,” she said.

  “Mummy? Did your mother go with you, today? When did she fly in? Why didn’t you tell me she was coming? I could have planned to go on sabbatical.”

  “Not my mother, silly! I found a mummified body in an old chest. It was pretty decrepit, though.”

  “You found an actual mummy in the woods? I thought you were picking mushrooms and herbs today, not going on an archaeological dig,” Ken said.

  “I was. That’s how I found it. A lovely clump of sorrel was growing in the doorway of this old abandoned chapel. Lyle said it was probably the Haleby’s family chapel from the olden days.”

  “You hiked clear into the nature preserve? I’m surprised you climbed all that way. I’m glad you at least had the presence of mind to call Lyle. But, why would a mummy be at the old Haleby place?” Ken asked.

  “Who knows? It’s in a box. At first, I thought it was an old blanket chest, but it must be a homemade coffin. It’s too rotten to re-purpose, though; the chest, I mean. People don’t re-purpose bodies. Well, except for fertilizer, I guess. Maybe the body was laid out for a funeral and something happened, like an earthquake or an Indian attack or something, and the people sort of forgot about it in all the confusion. I think it’s been here a long time, well, maybe not long enough for an Indian attack, that was just silly. Anyway, I got a nasty surprise when I unwrapped it.”

  “This is bizarre. Stay where you are, and I’ll come up to you as soon as I can. Can you give me directions?” Ken asked.

  He left a note for Jane, locked the office and went to see what his scatter-brained wife had gotten herself into this time.

  *

  Judy perched gingerly on the splintery beams of the chapel steeple planning the soup she would make from the sorrel and mushrooms, when Deputy Williams came crashing through the brush from uphill.

  “Hi, Lyle!” she chirped, jumping up and once again upsetting her basket of wild produce. She immediately dropped to her knees and began gathering up her finds.

  “Hi, Mrs. Falls. Where is this alleged body?”

  After popping the last of her treas
ures back into the basket, Judy stood up, stepping on the flounced edge of her skirt. She stumbled briefly, frowning at the ripping sound, walked over to the casket and lifted the lid.

  Lyle looked inside, peeling back the tapestry with gloved hands. Once convinced the object inside was indeed a human corpse, he stepped back and called in a report to the station.

  “You did right to call me, Mrs. Falls. We need to investigate whenever human remains turn up like this.”

  “Oh, do you find mummies in the woods, like this, very often, Lyle? I’m surprised,” Judy said.

  “Not exactly like this. I meant that whenever we find a body, we have to find out who it was and how they died and all,” Lyle explained.

  “I see. That makes sense.”

  As the pair were talking, Ken Falls broke through the brambles into the clearing, picking pine needles from his suit. He had followed Deputy William’s trail through the overgrown path from the old Haleby property.

  “Ken! You got here so quickly,” Judy said, rushing over to her husband and brushing leaves from his hair.

  “I drove up the old Haleby access road. It was rough going,” Ken said.

  “Not as rough as when I drove it, Pastor Ken,” Lyle said. “I had to drag a couple of trees off the roadway, so the cruiser could get through.”

  “Probably not many people come up that way these days. I guess most folks are not even aware the road exists,” Ken said. “I heard about it from some of the old-timers in our congregation. They say the Haleby estate was quite a showplace before the fire.”

  “Doc Haleby couldn’t face rebuilding after losing his whole family in that fire. He was just a kid in college when it happened. This town is lucky he was away at school that night, or we wouldn’t have such a great doctor here today,” Williams said.

  “I don’t suppose he can do much for this fellow in the box, no matter how good a doctor he is,” Ken said as he stooped over to see the body, grimaced and quickly stepped back.

  “No, sir. This guy is beyond all earthly help,” Williams said.

  “Well, we’ll leave you to it, then, Lyle. I think I’d better get my wife back home where she isn’t likely to stumble across any mummies.”

  “No werewolves or vampires, either,” Judy quipped as she started to head back down the hill toward the highway.

  “Come with me, dear. I’ll drive you around to get your car. Here, let me take your basket,” Ken said.

  Judy handed over the basket, now brimming with sorrel, along with her earlier pickings, then surprised Deputy Williams with a quick hug of thanks before she followed her husband.

  Williams sat down on Judy’s vacated perch to await the coroner and the rest of the team. He picked up an overlooked mushroom and idly turned it over in his hands.

  Being here, after passing the charred foundation and chimney stack of the burned-out mansion, reminded Lyle of all the stories he’d heard about that tragic night over forty years before.

  The wealthy Haleby family had been made up of the businessman father, the faded socialite mother, and three children.

  The oldest child, now Bannoch’s long-time town doctor, Cassius Haleby, was staying in student housing at Oregon State at the time, studying pre-med. His teen-aged brother and crippled ten-year-old sister, born with cerebral palsy, remained at home. The family members were asleep when the fire broke out and none of them escaped. The fire started in the kitchen as the result of faulty wiring and spread rapidly in the wood frame structure. Smoke suffocated the family in their beds. There were no smoke detectors in the large home. It was a great tragedy for the family and the community.

  After the funerals and the fire investigation were over, Cassius Haleby simply locked the gate to the property.

  When he’d finished his medical residency and returned to set up a practice in Bannoch, the townsfolk were grateful. Even more so when he turned the mountain estate into the Haleby Family Memorial Nature Preserve, with hunting and development strictly prohibited.

  He’d lived in a rented apartment before building a beautiful beach-front home after he married.

  Lost in his thoughts, Lyle was momentarily confused when the very man he was thinking about walked into the clearing, followed by another deputy and technicians carrying a stretcher.

  “So, what have you got for me, this time, Williams?” the doctor asked in a voice almost too hearty for the circumstances. Dr. Haleby was in his early seventies and reminded many of his patients of former President Bill Clinton.

  Lyle jumped up and greeted Dr. Haleby, who also served as the assistant County Coroner for the Bannoch area.

  “Mrs. Falls, you know, the Presbyterian pastor’s wife, was in the woods foraging for wild mushrooms or something and came across these human remains,” he said, indicating the body in the box.

  “Hmm, curious,” Haleby said. “Well, we’d better see what we have here.”

  He approached the box and, after a cursory look, instructed the mortuary assistants to take the body back to the morgue. Without a backward glance, he turned and walked back the way he’d come, leaning heavily on his cane in the rough terrain.

  “The doc seemed sort of upset,” one of the techs observed, as they transferred the chest with the body inside onto the gurney.

  “Coming in past the place where he lost his whole family must be pretty hard on him, even after all these years,” Williams replied and joined the other deputy in stringing up crime scene tape.

  There were regulations in cases where the cause of death is unknown, even when there couldn’t be much evidence to disturb, after all these years in the woods. No one was likely to wander into the area, either, but Williams knew the regulations had to be followed, even when they didn’t make much sense.

  *

  On the drive to retrieve her car, Judy sat in the passenger seat carefully picking over the herbs and fungi in her basket, anticipating the lovely soup it would become. The ruined chapel in the woods, the chest and even the mummy had flown from her mind as soon as she realized there was nothing salvageable in any of it.

  Judy was disappointed not to have been able to give that tapestry rug wrapped around the body a thorough going over, though, as some parts appeared to have been in fairly good shape, all things considered. She’d thought about asking Lyle to save it for her when the authorities were through with it, but decided it probably belonged to the family of the deceased, if they could be found.

  “You’re quiet,” Ken said as they pulled up to park behind Judy’s car on the side of the highway. “I hope you aren’t too upset about finding those remains.”

  “Remains? Oh, yes. No, I’m not upset. I was surprised and a bit queasy at first, but a bunch of old bones and dried flesh don’t get to me, not much more than finding a discarded banana peel,” Judy replied.

  “That sounds a little unfeeling, dear. The ‘banana peel’ was once a living person,” Ken chided.

  “Of course! Sorry. I’m sure it was very sad, and all, but whatever happened was a long time ago. The only thing that does trouble me a little, is why was the poor fellow abandoned and never given a proper burial?” Judy said.

  “I suppose the authorities will sort that out. As you say, it was a long time ago. Still, I think we should show a bit more respect, don’t you?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t think...I’m fixing the most delicious sorrel soup tonight for dinner. Will you at least taste it?”

  “Is that what you were doing in the woods? Grubbing up tonight’s dinner? Well, if you provide me with some proper meat and potatoes to go with it, I will try some of your vegan wilderness nonsense, if it doesn’t look or smell too vile, anyway. We’ll have to say a special prayer over the meal, so it doesn’t poison us all,” he said.

  “Oh, you are such a tease!” Judy said, planting a quick kiss on her husband’s cheek before hopping out of the car and catching the torn ruffle of her skirt in the door. She opened the door to release the fabric and held it carefully out of t
he way before slamming the door shut again and getting into her vehicle.

  With a wave to Ken, she made a quick U-turn and drove back toward town, causing an on-coming car to swerve and squeal to a stop.

  Ken sighed, shook his head, and, after carefully waiting for the highway to clear, followed his lovable, exasperating wife.

  Chapter 3

  Deputy Williams followed the van to the morgue in Tillamook where the County Coroner took custody of the remains.

  “Where’d this one come from?” the morgue technician asked as he wheeled the squeaky gurney along the green tiled hallway toward the autopsy room.

  “The hills above Bannoch. Looks like it was there a long time, maybe five or six years, according to old Doc Haleby,” Lyle replied. “Good luck identifying the body.”

  The technician unzipped the body bag, grimaced and said, “I see what you mean. Well, don’t hold your breath waiting. We’ve got lots more current cases ahead of Sleeping Beauty here.”

  Williams signed the custody form for the body and left, feeling immediate relief when he stepped into the sunshine. No matter how often he had to come here for his work, the morgue always gave him the willies.

  *

  Back in Bannoch, Dr. Haleby had returned to his office and was reporting to his curious staff about the body in the hills which had temporarily taken him away from his practice.

  Dr. Haleby’s receptionist, Gwennie Barthlett, the local Nazarene pastor’s wife, swiveled away from the reception window and perched on the edge of her chair, eager for all the details.

  “Leave it to Judy Falls to uncover a mummy! She’ll probably want to turn it into a lamp,” she commented with a snort.

  “This is really nothing to joke about, Gwennie,” Bitsy Owens, Dr. Haleby’s nurse, scolded, shaking her head and setting her double chins aquiver. “I hope you don’t say anything like that when the Work Experience girl from the high school is here.”

  “Of course not, I...” Gwennie began to defend herself, but she was interrupted by Dr. Haleby.