The Buried (The Apostles)

by Shelley Coriell

  Too soon Alex pulled away, leaving her arms painfully empty. He swiped a dirty arm across his nose. “I’m sorry. Man, I’m such a wuss.”

  “No, Alex, you’re a friend, someone worried about a buddy in a bad situation.”

  “Hatch wouldn’t be caught dead crying like a baby, nor would anyone on his team. It’s me who’s the loser.”

  “Stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Beating up yourself. It’s not going to help Linc.”

  “You think maybe we can go out and look for him?”

  Grace normally had a hard time letting others do the work, but joining the searchers in Tate’s Hell would be foolish. She was the Gravedigger’s ultimate victim, and she refused to be an easy target. “I think we should check on Allegheny Blue. He didn’t look too happy when we left him at the shack. Why don’t we knock off for the day?”

  Alex’s fingers tightened around the shovel handle. “Can’t. I promised Black Jack I’d get all the ground prepped today for Mrs. Rubidoux’s bridge.”

  “I’m sure Black Jack will understand.”

  Alex drew a line in the oyster shell path with the tip of the shovel. “Yeah, Black Jack would. Okay, let me put this stuff away, and we’ll go check on Blue.”

  Grace was glad to get out of the cemetery. Too many buried bodies.

  Back at the shack, they found Blue on the front porch curled on his rag rug in a pool of sun. He greeted them with a single tail thump and rolled onto his back. Both she and Alex rubbed his belly.

  Inside her shack, she set out a pitcher of sun tea to brew, cleaned and filled Blue’s water and food bowls, and checked the mailbox, her phone, and both her personal and private e-mails.

  “You’re not good at being still, are you?” Alex asked.

  “No, but I’m working on it.”

  He aimed his chin at the kitchen window and the creek beyond. “We could take the boat out.”

  “After we find Linc.” She had supreme confidence in the team she’d assembled, particularly in the man at the helm.

  Alex took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, after we find Linc.”

  She dug into the mail that had been accumulating over the week. Her fingers slid over the invitation from the older couple who’d bought her dad’s old place, Emmaline and Oliver Lassen. The new owners had found some things that had belonged to her dad, and they’d given her an open invitation to stop by for tea any time this week. “You’re right. I suck at doing nothing. Let’s go.”

  “Are we going to look for Linc?”

  “Nope. We’re going to a tea party.” She tucked the invitation from the Lassens in her purse.

  Alex’s lip curled in one of those half snarls teens had perfected over the centuries. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. But the cool factor is there will be gators. We’re going to my old home, a place called Gator Slide.”

  The snarl disappeared. “Cool.”

  Blue followed them to the SUV, his tail wagging.

  * * *

  Grace pulled into the circular drive of the two-story Victorian with mint-green trim and a giant oak with a tire swing.

  Alex craned his neck out the window. “I don’t see no gators.”

  “They’re usually out back in the grassy area between the house and the river,” Grace explained. “You’ll see at least a dozen glide marks where the alligators get in and out of the river. That’s how it got the name Gator Slide. I remember looking out my bedroom window one time and seeing four gators lounging in the sun on the tennis court. Another time, someone left the garage door open, and when I went to get my bike to ride to school, I found an alligator cozied up next to the dryer.”

  “Cool.” Alex nodded his head. “Nice house, too. All big and fancy. You grew up here?”

  “Yep.” She’d spent the first eighteen years of her life in this house. When her father died five years ago, she’d thought about selling, but every time she picked up the phone and dialed the real estate agent’s number, she couldn’t push the send button. Only when she’d set her sights on the Giroux place could she part with Gator Slide, and even then, it had been hard. On the day she’d removed every last item from this house, including a box of forgotten Christmas ornaments in the attic, she’d had a good cry. With everything packed up, carted off, and cleaned-up, Gator Slide now should only hold memories, which was why she was so surprised to get Emmaline Lassen’s note about the personal items left behind.

  Grace got out of the SUV with Alex. Blue raised his knobby head, looked out the rear window, and went back to sleep. Tired old guy. She scrubbed his head.

  She rang the bell while Alex walked along the wraparound porch. “Hey, there’s a boat and dock out back.” When he walked back he mumbled something about everyone in the world but him having a boat. At a time like this, Grace would take brooding Alex over Alex terrified for his friend. She rang the bell again.

  “Maybe they’re not home,” Alex said. “Can we still look for gators?”

  This time she knocked and peeked through a crack in the curtains on the long, narrow windows on either side of the door. Every shutter and curtain in the house must be closed because all she saw was black. She cupped her hands to the sides of her head and squinted. Through the gloom she could make out dozens of boxes and mounds draped in sheets.

  “Looks like their stuff arrived,” she said. “Let’s take a quick peek out back.”

  When the Lassens first saw the property, they’d fallen in love with the backyard and its river view, tennis court, boat dock, and gardens. Grace was surprised to see knee-high grass and weeds poking up along the walkways. On the day the sale closed, Oliver had visited the home improvement store and brought home a riding lawn mower while Emmaline carted home not one but four different bird feeders. They’d looked so cute, so excited. Grace had known her family’s home would be in good hands.

  “Now that’s the kind of boat I want,” Alex said. “Not too big, nothing fancy.”

  A warm wave of nostalgia washed over Grace. Since her father’s death five years ago, the fourteen-foot aluminum skiff had been stored in the garage. She’d planned to keep the boat and get a new motor because the old one was shot. But when the Lassens offered to throw in a few extra thousand for the skiff, she’d jumped on the cash. She was glad to see them using it now.

  She watched as Alex bounded down the sloping yard to the river. Although the Lassens weren’t home, she’d give him this carefree time. She rolled her head in circles around her neck. She, too, needed a little carefree time. After they found Linc, she’d take a real vacation. She leaned against the porch railing. Maybe she and Hatch would hop aboard No Regrets and sail to wherever the winds would take them.

  Behind her, the door creaked open, and she jumped.

  “Uh, can I help you with something?” A single eye half covered with a sleep mask peeked through a crack in the door.

  “Good morning,” Grace said. “I’m here to see Emmaline Lassen.”

  The single eye squinted. “And you’re…”

  “Grace Courtemanche, the former owner of Gator Slide. Mrs. Lassen sent me an invitation to stop by any morning this week. She said she found some things that belonged to my father.”

  The door inched wider, and Grace made out short blond hair with a sea of frothy curls. The girl was tiny—probably a teenager—and wore a baggy nightshirt with a drawing of a mosquito and the words Minnesota’s State Bird.

  “If this is a bad time, I can come back later,” Grace said.

  The girl slapped the sides of her cheeks, as if trying to wake herself up. “No, no, don’t go. I’ll get the stuff for you. Let me get dressed.” She took off through the darkened kitchen and up the stairs.

  Grace called to Alex, who ran up from the river. “I spotted two gators, including a sixteen-footer. I can’t wait to tell Gabe and Linc…” His grin fell away.

  She squeezed his shoulder. “You will, Alex, because Linc’s going to be okay.” She pointed to his s
hoes, covered in the red, loamy earth found along this part of the river. “Wipe your feet.”

  After they entered the house, she shut the door, a shadow falling over the kitchen.

  “Wow, this place is big,” Alex said as he slipped through the shadows, poking his nose into the dining room, library, and living room. “I bet you didn’t have to share a bedroom.”

  “Nope. Just me.” Must be tough, a thirteen-year-old boy sharing a room with the rambunctious twins. Hatch loved his son and was clearly dedicated to his well-being. Grace wouldn’t be surprised if he helped Alex’s granny into a bigger place. Grace slid her hand along a stack of boxes in the kitchen. And maybe he’d stick around longer.

  “Hey, Grace, this way,” a voice called from just beyond the kitchen.

  Grace jumped. The girl had been so quiet, Grace hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. With Alex in tow, she picked her way through the dark kitchen and laundry room, weaving around packing boxes.

  “Oomph!” Alex cried behind her.

  Grace spun, her arms searching the shadows for the boy. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I bumped into a stupid wall.”

  “Sorry,” the girl said from down the hall. “I had the electric company turn on the power a few days ago, but there’s something wonky with a few of the circuit breakers.”

  “Who are you?” Grace asked.

  A door squeaked, and a murky wedge of light slipped into the hall from the garage. “JoBeth Lassen. Oliver and Emmaline are my grandparents. I came down to help them unpack.”

  Grace reached the garage, which was stuffed with more boxes, lawn furniture, and in the far bay a long vehicle. Someone had taped blackout paper over the narrow windows at the top of the three garage doors. The paper sagged on the nearest window, a sliver of light cutting through the sea of black. The girl, who now wore skinny jeans with her mosquito T-shirt, climbed over a low stack of boxes near the door.

  “Where are your grandparents?” Grace asked.

  “Still in Minnesota. Grandpa took a fall. The doctors wanted him to rest for a few days. They should be here this weekend.” The girl climbed over two lawn chairs and up to another stack of boxes.

  “I can come back then.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Fast and agile, she hopped off the boxes. “I know where the stuff is. Grandma put it in the basement.”

  “Basement? This house doesn’t have a basement.”

  “Sure it does. It’s below the garage.”

  The girl was obviously still half asleep. Grace had lived here her whole life and never went into any basement. The only storage area in the garage was the massive wall of cabinets where her father kept his fishing gear. “There is nothing below the garage. Absolutely nothing.”

  The girl stopped in front of the wall of cabinets and spun toward Grace, her chin lifted. “You’re wrong. Absolutely wrong.”

  Grace edged closer to Alex. This conversation in the dark about basements that didn’t exist was strange. And the girl—there was something not only strange, but familiar, about her. Alex took off and climbed over the boxes and lawn chairs. On the second stack of boxes, he slipped and fell to the ground. “Ow!”

  This was ridiculous. He could get hurt. Grace ran her fingers along the wall until she found the light switch. She flicked, but the shop lights on the ceiling didn’t flicker.

  “I told you, the breakers blew,” JoBeth said, her words snappish.

  “Where are my father’s things?” Grace wasn’t in any mood to deal with temperamental teen theatrics.

  “I told you, they’re in the basement.”

  Grace rubbed at the center of her forehead. “I’ll come back when your grandparents are here.”

  “Or you can get the things yourself. You’re so good at that, aren’t you?” The words came out with a hard, staccato edge.

  “We’re leaving, Alex,” Grace said.

  Alex picked himself off the ground but stopped as JoBeth opened one of the cabinet doors, a tall shallow space that for decades had held her father’s fishing poles. Grace had cleaned out that cabinet six months ago and had given her dad’s fishing gear to the senior center over in Apalach.

  “Now, Alex,” Grace said.

  She was halfway through the door when Alex mumbled, “Cool. A secret door.”

  “Alex, get back here and—” Grace turned. JoBeth had swung out the back panel of the cabinet, revealing a plain brown door. The girl took a key from her necklace, unlocked the door, and swung it inward into a wall of pitch black.

  What the…

  “There are two boxes, one with your dad’s old trophies and the other with books, including a family album from a cruise you took to the Caribbean.”

  When Grace cleaned out the house, she’d searched for that album and sadly hadn’t been able to find it. That album was special because it held the last photos ever taken of her mother who died three months later.

  JoBeth reached into the maw of blackness. Flick. A soft yellow glowed far below. “Good, the basement breakers didn’t trip.” She motioned to Grace and Alex. “Boxes are on the counter.”

  “Wow, a secret room.” Alex loped down the steps.

  Grace hesitated at the top of the narrow stairwell. How could she have lived here all those years and not known this room existed? Rooms, she amended when she reached the bottom of the wooden steps. She stood in an oblong room with a sofa, TV, and computer desk at one end and a small kitchen on the other. Off one wall were two doors, one to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom just big enough to hold a queen-sized bed. On the counter were two boxes, one bursting with gold and bronze and wood trophies.

  “I had no idea all of this was here,” she said.

  “I know.” JoBeth’s voice had lost all sleepy softness. “I’m so glad you finally get to see it, Gracie.”

  Grace turned and stared up the stairwell. JoBeth stood in the middle of the shadowy stairway, but Grace could clearly see the gun in her hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Near Genesee, Colorado

  Deputy Danny Arredondo banged on the door for the fourth time. No one home. He brushed his fingers along the gooseflesh at the back of his neck. Then why did it feel like someone was watching him? He checked over his shoulder. Up here so high in the clouds, it was probably a whitetail deer or mountain lion. He turned to his cruiser and skidded to a halt. Or maybe it was the camera perched under the eve. On boots coated in mountain grit, he spun slowly. Or the camera near the garage. Or the camera tucked into a potted pine near the front door.

  Some strange people lived up here on the mountain. He knocked for the fifth time. Unfortunately, the one he needed to chat with didn’t seem to be home, or if she was home, she was hiding behind a camera. Hayden Reed, the special agent with the FBI’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit, would be interested to know that. Agent Reed had called the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department a half hour ago wanting information on this woman ASAP. Something to do with the Gravedigger murders in Florida.

  Danny maneuvered his car down one switchback and pulled into the driveway of an A-frame with a four-foot elk rack above the door. “Morning, sir,” he said to the man working in a garden on the side of the house. “I’m with the sheriff’s department and I’d like to talk to you about your neighbor.”

  “Neighbor?”

  He checked the name he got from Special Agent Hayden Reed. “JoBeth Poole.”

  “JoBeth Poole? Don’t have many neighbors up here a mile and a half in the sky, but I’m sure I don’t have one by that name.”

  “She’d be the woman in the house just above you on the last switchback.”

  “Okay, sure. Dark-haired gal with the big pickup truck. I know who you’re talking about. Don’t see her much. She’s kind of a hermit.”

  “But you’ve seen her?”

  “Few times.”

  The deputy took out the sketch Agent Reed had sent him. “This her?”

  “Yep. Dead ringer. Has those great big deer ey
es.”

  “Have you seen her recently?”

  “No, not for quite a few weeks, but that’s not unusual.”

  “You said she drives a pickup? What color?”

  “White, I think. Deputy, is my neighbor in some kind of danger or something?”

  “No, but she may be a danger to others.”

  * * *

  Grace slid across the room until she stood squarely between Alex and JoBeth Lassen. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  “Hmmm…that’s two questions. Which one would you like me to answer first? Maybe we should play a game of eenie-meenie-minie-mo.”

  “What the—” Alex started, but Grace shushed him by holding up the palm of her hand.

  The girl’s bare feet shuffled down the steps, the glint of the gun brightening as it drew closer. Grace, with Alex at her back, inched toward the kitchen table.

  The soft light crawled up the woman’s legs, her waist, her neck, and for the first time, shadows did not bathe JoBeth’s face. She was not a teenager but quite a few years older, closer to Grace’s age than Alex’s. She appeared young because she was short and lean. Not skinny. That would denote frailness. There was nothing frail or weak about this woman.

  Grace’s feet turned to ice. “Camellia,” Grace said, her voice a strangled whisper. “I mean CoraBeth. I mean…”

  “You’re zero for two, Gracie. Not impressive. You’re racking up your share of losses these days. My name’s JoBeth. CoraBeth would be my…” She spun her hand in a circle, motioning for Grace to go on.

  “Your mother.”

  JoBeth clapped, her eyes oddly bright. “Good girl. You finally got something right. I was starting to worry about you.”

  Alex reached for her hand, twining his shaking fingers with hers. “Whatever this is,” Grace said, “it’s between you and me. Let the boy go.”

  JoBeth laughed. Her body convulsed, the gun barrel bouncing. “Oh, God, you sound so bossy, just like an older sister should.”

  “Sister?”

  “You seriously have no idea who I am?”

  “Let the boy go, please.”