by Stacy Green
THE END
Skeleton’s Key
A Delta Crossroads Novel
by
Stacy Green
Copyright © 2013 Stacy Green
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Readers love Skeleton’s Key
“Evocative, first-rate mystery that will keep you guessing to the end!”
—Stacey Joy Netzel, NY Times bestselling author of the Italy Intrigue Series.
“An antebellum home with skeletons and secrets, characters who heat up the pages…this book pulls you in and sticks to your soul like a sweat-soaked shirt in the Mississippi heat. Loved it!”
—Shannon Esposito (Author Pet Psychic Mysteries)
1
Cage Foster wasn’t afraid of the dark. He didn’t believe in creepers going bump in the night, and he could deal with the occasional nasty critter. But something about Ironwood Plantation’s cellar made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. And he’d already been down there once today.
The cellar stunk. It reeked of mold-covered earth, stale air juiced up with God knows what dead animal carcasses, rotting wood, and several decades’ worth of dust. Like so many antebellum homes, Ironwood’s cellar was made of earth and bricks with some decaying Mississippi cypress thrown on top. Late afternoon sun shined in the kitchen windows and cast a shadow down the basement steps. An old light bulb and an equally ancient string hung somewhere past the bottom step, but since the entire fuse box had crapped out, Cage had to fumble down the rickety steps and hope he didn’t end up landing ass over backwards on the dirty cellar floor.
“Wiring up to code my ass.” His nose curled at the odor. “If it were, that cheap sander wouldn’t have blown the fuse.”
“You gon’ go down with me?” Harvey Lett, a square–shaped man with tobacco-stained teeth and a graying beard that desperately needed a trim, stood behind Cage. The only electrician willing to hurry out to an abandoned plantation house with old wiring and a fuse box from the Cold War era fixed Cage with a hawklike stare. “Or you gon’ stand there?”
Cage raked his hand through his hair–he’d been letting it grow the past couple of months as some sort of gesture to his supposed new start on life–but so far he wasn’t feeling any more carefree. Only irritated.
He avoided the basement as much as possible. The creaky stairs trembled at every step, and the layers of dust set fire to his allergies.
Plus the stinking hole gave him the creeps.
Fortunately, nothing important to Ironwood’s renovations was stored in the basement. In the last three months, he had only been down there twice. But now he’d sent the whole house into darkness, and he was on a tight schedule. After all, he had to have Ironwood up to par for the damned Yankee invader.
Smaller than some of the prized antebellums in Roselea’s historic district at just under 8,000 square feet, Ironwood was one of the few pre-Civil War era homes in Adams County that hadn’t been restored into a showplace. Adams County Baptist had done its best to keep the home from falling down, but the last decade had seen lousy renters and years of emptiness. A year ago, the church hired Cage to act as caretaker. Being a sheriff’s deputy didn’t rake in the big bucks, and the job offered cheap rent in a decent place: Ironwood’s carriage house, the only part of the plantation that had been properly restored.
One of the church members had called Ironwood a lost cause. The mansion had been neglected for too long until Cage arrived.
The plaster on its columns was cracked, the porch badly weathered, windowsills rotting. Inside, dust nearly an inch thick decorated nearly every surface. A previous tenant had left food in the 1930s refrigerator, and bits of garbage had been scattered about by whatever animal had used the back screened–in porch for its personal bathroom. He’d spent weeks just cleaning the 8000-square-foot home.
He knew all about lost causes. He’d spent years waiting for the only woman he’d ever loved to finally open her eyes and see what she was missing, and then she’d gone and fallen for his ex-brother-in-law. If his sister were alive, he might have had a shot. But Lana was dead, and Nick and Jaymee had moved on together. Leaving Cage stagnant and alone.
Sometimes he wallowed. Drank, too. Figured he’d be alone and bitter about it for the rest of his life.
Then one night he got sent out on a trespassing call to the old Ironwood Plantation–or what was left of it. Most of the land had been parceled off and turned into subdivisions, but the old house and nearly three acres still sat empty and wild, and an apparent hangout for teenagers.
Cage and another sheriff’s deputy broke up the party, and Cage found a new love. The old home, silent and dark and still breathing, called to him. He’d contacted the church about purchasing it. Couldn’t afford the price tag, but he’d jumped at the chance to be caretaker and had spent the last several months slowly making the big house livable.
He’d been semi-happy until three weeks ago, when he’d received the call from Adams County Baptist informing him that Ironwood Plantation had been sold–and to a damned Yankee, no less. Danny Evans, some rich Northerner set to come down here and make a mint off restoring one of Roselea’s last antebellum relics. Evans, a fancy restoration expert from Indiana. What did some Midwesterner know about the South and her plantations?
Cage had been kept on as caretaker and was now tasked with getting the big house decent enough for Evans to live in. The Yankee would arrive in a week, and Cage had too much left to do. And naturally, the fuse box was in the basement, and Cage would rather eat dirt than venture down there.
“Let’s get to it, then,” Harvey said.
Cage switched on his flashlight and stepped onto the first shaky step. “Be careful. These suckers aren’t exactly in top condition.” Ironwood had been built in 1835, and he had little doubt these stairs were original. He reached for the railing before he remembered it had rotted and fallen off.
Dust particles danced in the beam of his flashlight and then dived for Cage’s nose. He sneezed. The entire stairwell trembled.
Cage quickened his pace, trying to ignore the moldy stench and pressure of the encroaching darkness. He reached the earthen floor and cast his light around the black space. Like so many houses of its time, Ironwood only had a partial basement. The winter kitchen, or what was left of it, dominated half of it.
“The fuse box is under the stairs.” Cage shined his flashlight toward the area. Ducking massive spider webs, he hurried to the box, yanking on the rusty handle to the lid, and then flipped the switches. “Made sure I tried them before I called you.”
“Step aside.” Harvey busied himself at the fuse box. “Keep the light focused for me.”
“Right.” Cage peered over his shoulder, easy to do as he was a good six inches taller than Harvey. Of course, Cage was taller than most people. “Thanks again for coming out so quickly. The other two guys didn’t want to mess with the place.”
“Nice to know I was your third choice.”
“Yeah well, I’d have preferred to go to the hardware store and handle it myself, but electricity isn’t my strong suit. Figured I’d better call a professional.”
Harvey grunted, dropping his toolbox on the floor. He rummaged around the greasy tin box. “Fuse needs replacing. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“Good deal.” Cage
kept the light focused as Harvey worked. “The wiring in this place is supposed to be up to code. You see anything that says otherwise?”
“Not so far. Sometimes you blow fuses.”
Harvey retrieved his own flashlight from the pocket of his overalls, shining it around the murky basement. “Wiring’s copper. That’s good. I don’t see anything that stands out, but I’d have to do a full inspection to be sure.”
“No thanks,” Cage said. “Church had one done before the place was sold last month, so I’ll have to take their word for it.”
Another grunt from Harvey, and then his flashlight stalled, the beam now shining against the sinking foundation. A deep crack running all the way to the ground had splintered the brick and mortar.
“Looks like you got varmints down here.”
At the base of the brick, the earth had been turned up as though something had been digging. A rat? Raccoon, maybe?
Cage shone his own light into the disturbed earth.
At first, he saw only white. Not bright white, like an untouched piece of paper, but a bleak gray-white. Aged.
Bone, he realized. Some critter had died down here–probably more than one.
He stepped closer, using the toe of his boot to shovel some of the dirt aside.
Behind him, Harvey emitted a sound resembling a frightened dog. “Is that what I think it is?”
Cage’s heart tightened into an iron-like fist, jumping at first into his throat and then dropping into the pit of his stomach.
An empty eye socket and cavernous smile protruded out of the earth.
A human skull.
2
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
Half-buried in the dirt, it had the weathered look of the skeletons he’d seen in an exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Science. And on the Discovery Channel.
Harvey stepped forward, hands outstretched. Cage caught him by the arm. “Don’t touch the damned thing.”
Cage yanked his handkerchief out of his pocket. It was damp with sweat but would protect him from getting fingerprints all over the skull. He knelt down, balancing on his heels, careful not to touch the earth around the skull. Fingers protected by the thin cloth, he ran his hand over top of the gray bone.
Above him, hovering and breathing through a stuffed nose, Harvey angled for a better look. “What’s it feel like?”
“Brittle.” Cracked along the top, a gaping hole in the back. Cage’s cop-trained brain immediately thought of murder, but he quickly dismissed it. Who knew how long the thing had been here?
He collected the flashlight, shining the beam around the perimeter of the skull. Something had been digging all right. Clumps of earth splattered the brick foundation, and smoother, gray objects peeked up from the earth.
“Shit.” Cage swore again.
“Knew’d it though, didn’t you?” Harvey inched closer.
“Knew what?”
“That the story was true. About old John James and what his crazy daughter did with his body. Daddy’s little girl lost her marbles when he died. Kept his body in this house.”
“He’s buried in the Roselea cemetery.”
“So she said.”
Cage didn’t have time to listen to crazy Ironwood legends. He cast the light over the skull again. “No idea what time period this skull is from, or if it’s even a white person. Could be a slave. Could be a Natchez Indian. Could be any damned body.”
He toed the loose earth around the skull. He didn’t see any more bone, but Cage had a feeling it was there. Skulls don’t just end up in the earth all by their lonesome. Irritated by the intrusive light, a fat black beetled scuttled across the top of the skull and disappeared into the earth.
Cage straightened, swiping another cobweb aside. He’d better call the sheriff. His boss would love this.
“You finished with the box?”
Harvey’s mouth hung open, eyes slightly glazed. “If that’s John James, then I wonder if the secret room really exists after all.”
The best of the Ironwood legends. If any secret room existed in the shabby mansion, Cage hadn’t seen any evidence of it. More stories from centuries-old gossip mongers. “Please finish up so we can get out of the dark, and I can call the sheriff.”
“Yeah, all right. But if I were you’d I’d start searching this old place. Tear it apart if need be.” Harvey reluctantly turned back to the fuse box but kept glancing over his shoulder as he worked, as though worried the skull might start crawling toward him.
Cage sighed with relief when he heard the window air conditioner crank up. He yanked the string hanging from the bulb. It flashed briefly, and then the bulb died.
“Fantastic. Come on upstairs. We’ll settle up so you can get back to your other jobs.”
Harvey didn’t look ready to leave, but Cage directed him back up the rickety steps, reaching again for the missing handrail. He needed to fix that ASAP. Cops and probably the county coroner would be slogging up and down the stairs. Last thing he needed was for someone to break a neck.
He glanced back in the direction of the skull lying invisible in the darkness. A cold tremor slid down his spine.
Who the hell was buried in the basement?
* * *
Cage’s boss, Sheriff Jim Robards arrived with the county coroner in tow. Seeing the two men together always reminded Cage of the old comic, Mutt and Jeff. Robards was tall and mostly slim except for the generous padding around his middle. He regularly blamed his wife’s cooking for his going to seed, but the sheriff’s love of sweets didn’t help. In contrast, Jeb Riley was short, thin, and sporting a head of gray hair. Pushing seventy, Jeb had been the Adams County Coroner for more than twenty years, and his experience as a funeral home technician gave him more knowledge than many of the state’s elected coroners.
Cage shook hands with Jeb as Robards strolled through the foyer. The large, open space had once been a showpiece, but the marble floors were faded and cracked, as were the plaster walls. The church had refused to put any money into restoration, but they had allowed Cage to do minor repair work. Under his care, the big house had received a major clean up with the Adams County Historical Foundation footing the bill. Most of the original furnishings had either been sold during the plantation’s lean years or donated to the historical foundation, but many of Ironwood’s original features remained: built-in hutches, fireplace mantles, wooden doors, china handles, and windows. After getting rid of renters’ trash, Cage had cleaned every room until all resembled their original states, and he hoped to help in the restoration once the Yankee expert arrived.
“It’s clean at least,” Cage said. “No more mountains of dust, and you can see the crown molding. It’s not in too bad of shape. Most of the hardwood floors are decent, too.”
Jeb eyed the double staircase, Ironwood’s most elaborate feature. Made of rich mahogany and standing more than thirty feet high, the dual staircase curved gracefully up to a balcony overlooking the grand ballroom. “What kind of shape is the stairwell in?”
“Hard to tell,” Cage said. “Some of the stairs are rotting, and I haven’t gone up there. Who knows what the Yankee expert will say.”
Robards snorted. “Damned rich Yankees, coming down here to buy up stuff cheap. Suppose he’ll be educating us illiterate Rednecks, too.”
Cage had tried to keep an open mind about his new employer, but the idea of a Northerner being in charge of Ironwood’s restoration tied him up in knots. Restoration expert or not, what did Danny Evans know about Southern history and tradition? Nothing more than what he’d read in history books, and that didn’t do Mississippi any justice. People didn’t know what life was like down here until they experienced it for themselves. So how could Evans fully care for Ironwood without a true understanding of what the place meant to Roselea?
“You ought to at least give the Yankee a chance,” Jeb said. “Don’t be judging someone before you even met them. Maybe this Evans will do Ironwood justice.”
“We’ll see.” C
age shrugged. “Can’t imagine he’ll be thrilled about the new development. Ready to see what I’ve found?”
Sheriff Robards descended behind Cage, with Jeb bringing up the rear. “You tell Harvey Lett to keep quiet about this?”
“Yeah.”
“Means it’ll be all over town by tonight,” Jeb said.
“I hate these old basements.” Sheriff Robards grumbled as the men gathered in the dank cellar. “All of them smell like centuries of piss and mold.”
“Careful on these steps,” Cage warned.
He’d replaced the light bulb and set up a camping light on the rotting shelves. The additional light made navigating slightly easier, but it also made the heavy cobwebs shine like silver mist. He raked his hands through his hair and across his shoulders and then scratched the back of his neck. He hoped to God there weren’t any black widows down here.
“Skull’s over there.” Cage pointed to the back corner. It sat exactly as Cage had left it, partially hidden in the dirt. The additional light made the bone even creepier.
“You look for any more of the skeleton?” Robards asked.
“No,” Cage answered. “Figured I’d let Jeb do that. You know, protocol and all.”
Jeb knelt down to inspect the area. He breathed deeply and then coughed, waving his hand in front of his face. “Too bad CaryAnne never managed to put a concrete floor in. She was John James’s daughter and the last of the original family.” Jeb ran his gloved fingers carefully over the skull. “She probably ran out of money.”
“What makes you say that?” Cage asked.
Jeb shrugged. “My grandmother knew CaryAnne. Used to have tea with her in the evenings before CaryAnne’s health took a bad turn. That was in the late forties, after World War II and during the industrial boom. This place was never one of the giant cotton producers, but the family kept things going pretty well until the Great Depression. You know they come from the Evaline Laurents?”