by Loretta Ross
Copyright Information
Death & the Gravedigger’s Angel © 2017 by Loretta Ross.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First e-book edition © 2017
E-book ISBN: 9780738751566
Book design and format by Donna Burch-Brown
Cover design by Lisa Novak
Cover illustration by Tim Zeltner/i2i Art Inc
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ross, Loretta, author.
Title: Death & the gravedigger’s angel / Loretta Ross.
Other titles: Death and the gravedigger’s angel
Description: First Edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Midnight Ink, [2017] |
Series: An auction block mystery ; 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2016039127 (print) | LCCN 2016045345 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738750415 | ISBN 9780738751566
Subjects: LCSH: Auctioneers—Fiction. | Private investigators—Fiction. |
Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.O8466 D426 2017 (print) | LCC PS3618.O8466 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039127
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Dedicated to the memory of my nephew,
Christopher VanHoozen,
and his lovely wife, Cindy VanHoozen
CV2 4EVER
Please watch for motorcycles.
Acknowledgments
No book gets written without the contributions of various people along the way and this book is no exception to that rule. I’d like to thank, as always, my family and friends for their continued support and encouragement in my literary endeavors. Also, I’d like to thank them for never reporting me to the FBI when I randomly say things like “you know, I just figured out the best way to kill someone with a plastic spork …”
I’d like to thank the various experts who have gifted me with their advice. Chief among these is, once again, Deputy Jeramiah Sullivan of the Henry County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Department. He’s been extremely generous with his time and expertise.
I’d like to thank my editors, Terri Bischoff and Sandy Sullivan (no relation to Jeramiah, as far as I know), for the work they’ve put in on this book, the design team and cover artist, for making it look so beautiful, and everyone at Midnight Ink.
I’d like to thank Janet Reid, the finest agent a writer could hope for. In addition to what she does for her clients, Janet spends a lot of time dispensing helpful advice for struggling young writers. If anyone reading this is starting out on a writing career, you should definitely look up her blog.
I’d like to thank the 2015 Kansas City Royals, who, while I was writing this, were busy winning our first World Championship in thirty years. You made for a wonderful distraction, fellas!
And, finally, I’d like to thank the readers who have come back to this series. You all mean more to me than you’ll ever know.
Loretta Ross
21 November, 2016
one
“He was dead, but that wasn’t the creepy part.”
Ahead of them, an early morning mist blanketed dense woods. It was barely dawn and sunlight slanted through the trees at an acute angle. Golden rays of light fell across late-summer foliage like a glittering illustration in an old children’s book, or a photo on a motivational poster.
“I don’t want to know the creepy part!”
“I want to know the creepy part,” Randy Bogart said.
His brother, Death, paused to help Wren Morgan navigate a slippery patch of fallen leaves. The path they were on led to the haunted Hadleigh House, a nineteenth-century plantation and local legend. Wren had been dying to get inside since she learned that Keystone and Sons, the family-owned auction company she worked for, had contracted to sell the contents. As an auctioneer, part of Wren’s job included appraising and cataloguing the items to be sold. They hadn’t been able to start work on the Hadleigh House, though, because the place was being treated as a crime scene after hikers found a dead body. An elderly man, who had yet to be identified, had gotten drunk and ridden a stolen horse down this path. In the dark, he’d ridden full tilt into an overhanging branch and been killed.
Earlier that morning, Death had run into Duncan Reynolds, the chief of police in their tiny town of East Bledsoe Ferry, during his coffee-and-donut run. Ever since Death had begun his new career as a private investigator and part-time bounty hunter, the chief had become a close friend and mentor. At Randy’s urging, Death shared the latest gossip now.
Apparently, the old man’s death was causing even more of a sensation than one would expect because of the legends already surrounding the path. It was known as the Vengeance Trail, and the story was that during the Civil War a soldier (Confederate or Union, the accounts varied) had killed an old man and stolen his horse. That night, as he was riding on the Vengeance Trail, the horse had bolted, taking revenge for his master’s death by dashing the murderer against an overhanging limb and killing him.
“Okay, so, you know the dead man was wearing a Civil War cavalry uniform, right?” Death began.
“Like the ghost story.”
“Like the ghost story. Right. Well, the state crime lab came back with a report on the uniform. You ready for this?”
His companions stopped and watched him expectantly.
“The uniform was saturated with formaldehyde and traces of … how do I put this delicately? A substance known as ‘body liquor.’ It’s the result of human decomposition. They think the dead guy got the uniform he was wearing off a recently embalmed corpse.”
“Oh! Gross!” Wren moaned. “That is so gross!”
“Wow!” Randy said. “That’s cool! Where exactly did he get killed, do you know?”
“Somewhere right along here, I think, where the climb gets steep.”
Wren covered her face. “I don’t want to see the dead guy!”
Death laughed. “There is no dead guy!”
“But there was one.” She hung back, hiding behind the muscular bulk of her ex-Marine boyfriend and trying to peek around him without actually seeing anyt
hing.
“There was, yes,” he told her patiently. “But that was, like, three days ago. The police have been here and they took him away.”
“But what if they missed bits?”
He half turned to peer down at her, his right eyebrow cocked up in amusement. “Missed bits? Really?”
“It could happen.”
“No, sweetheart. I promise. It couldn’t. The police are very thorough when it comes to dead guys. They always make sure to get all the bits.”
“What if they were invisible bits?”
“Like dead guy cooties?”
She glowered at him. “You say that like it isn’t a thing.”
“They even took the branch he brained himself on,” Randy said.
He’d ranged a little ahead of them and shinnied up a tree. He sat, now, astride a branch, and indicated the fresh-cut marks where another branch had been removed.
“Get down from there before you fall and break your neck,” Death scolded. He glanced at Wren. “You know, when we were little and we went to the zoo, my brother always used to get switched with a baby monkey. To this day I’m not sure which one we ended up with.”
“Ha, ha.” Randy dangled full-length from the branch and dropped the few inches to the ground. Both brothers were tall and muscular, but where Death was burly and built like a tank, Randy was long and lean. He turned his attention to Wren and spoke kindly. “There really isn’t anything to be afraid of. I’ve been around lots of dead people and they almost never do anything creepy.” Randy was a firefighter and a nationally accredited paramedic. “Except for that one guy whose head fell off, but that’s another story. My point is, there’s nothing to be scared of here and now. It was just some old man who got drunk and had a stupid accident. Tragic, but not dangerous at all.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Wren replied sourly. “The last time some guy did something stupid and got himself killed I wound up getting kidnapped, your brother got beat up, and the guys who did it cut off my hair!” She ran a hand over her still-short cap of red hair, lamenting the braid that had taken her years to grow out.
“She does have a point,” Death agreed reluctantly. “But”—he turned his attention back to her—“you wanted to get started on the Hadleigh House. Unless you’ve got a helicopter in your pocket, we’re going to have to suck it up and go up the path to get there. Here. Close your eyes and take my hand.”
She did, taking his hand in both of hers and allowing him to lead her past the deadly spot on the trail. His heartbeat under her fingers was strong and not racing, and his breathing had evened out. Before they’d stopped to talk he had been gasping, with an alarming wheeze deep in his chest.
Death Bogart didn’t look it and didn’t like to admit it, but he had returned from the war a damaged man. A combat injury had left him with a severely compromised lung capacity and symptoms of PTSD that he denied suffering from.
“Look,” Randy said from slightly ahead of them. “There are stone steps set right into the hillside. The dead guy had to jump his horse down them. You can still see where they landed because the horse’s hooves gouged out divots in the path.”
“Randy,” Death growled. “Ix-nay on the ead-day uy-gay!”
“Right. Because I totally don’t speak pig Latin,” Wren said drily.
Death ignored her, stooping to examine the steps. “This is worked stone. This path must have been heavily used at one point.” Now it was overgrown with moss.
“It probably was. You’d never know it now, but from the mid-1800s to the Second World War there was a whole little community out here. There was a one-room schoolhouse, a flour mill, a smithy, and a general store back that way”—Wren pointed back the way they’d come—“and a church and a bunch of houses up beyond the old boundaries of the plantation, that way.” She gestured ahead. “The church cemetery is still in use, in fact, though the church was abandoned decades ago. A lot of people who’ve never even lived around here get brought back and buried in old family plots.”
“You know, I’m kind of surprised to see a plantation this far north,” Death said.
“There aren’t many,” Wren agreed, “but some of the earliest settlers came to Missouri from Virginia and Georgia and they built the same kinds of houses and outbuildings they were used to down there. The land is good here, but the climate isn’t right for cotton or tobacco. There was never a land rush, but a few of the big old houses remain. Where there were settlers, especially wealthy settlers, little towns grew up.”
“Is there anything out here now?” Randy asked. “The whole area looks pretty desolate to me.”
“Well, it’s not a city,” Wren said with a wry smile. “There are still a fair number of houses, scattered well apart, back in among the trees. The cemetery, as I said, is still in use. And there’s a camp for wounded veterans, Warriors’ Rest, in the northeast corner of the old plantation.” She and Randy exchanged a meaningful look behind Death’s back. “They keep horses, and it’s centered around the old stables.”
“That must be where the … ” Randy paused and cleared his throat. “The ead-day uy-gay stole his orse-hay.”
“You think?”
Death just shook his head and went before them, up the steps and between two enormous lilac bushes at the head of the trail. Wren followed. As she came up behind him, he stepped aside so that she could appreciate the view.
They were standing at the front gate, the Hadleigh House rising from the overgrown garden like it was, itself, a specter from the past.
_____
The wrought-iron fence that enclosed the front yard had been white once. Now the paint was yellowed and speckled with rust. The gate hung crooked from a single hinge. A bolt hole remained where the latch had been, but it was long gone now. A loop of wire held the gate fast to the gate post.
Off to the left, deep-worn ruts marked the upper end of the long driveway, untraveled for so long that saplings grew between the tracks. The ruts led through another, wider metal gate and made a circle through the side yard, passing under a carport. That entrance to the house was blocked now; the roof of the carport had fallen and a small tree grew beside the doorstop.
They had left Wren’s pickup at the bottom of the drive, but had had to take the old path through the woods. An ancient bridge had once carried the driveway across a deep gully with a creek running through it, but it had long since tumbled into the water.
In late summer, almost fall now, the long grass in the front yard of the Hadleigh House was dark green tinged with brown and gold. It was a big, rectangular block of a building with a dozen windows on the front side alone and a front door covered in flaking black paint. Low steps led up to a broad verandah. Six massive columns topped with carved Corinthian capitols supported the porch roof two stories above. A pair of tall, straight oak trees flanked the entryway.
The hill fell away behind the house, so that the house and its attendant trees stood framed against a clear blue sky. It looked, Wren thought, like a ship sailing on the crest of the world.
Death unhooked the small gate, lifted the trailing corner, and pushed. It opened with a dismal creak and they went into the yard. An uneven path, paved with red bricks, led to the steps. Wren could see the green blades of irises, their flowers long gone, massing along the fence line. There was a concrete goldfish pond, filled now with dirt and debris, a broken birdbath, and a trellis covered in sweet-pea vines. Once this had been a well-manicured garden, but now the black-eyed Susans scattered among the weeds and the roses growing in such proliferation along the iron fence were wild.
“So how does this happen?” Randy asked. “A place like this go up for auction, I mean.”
“Usually,” Wren said, “somebody dies.”
At the foot of the steps Death put out a hand to stop her and went ahead, testing the boards to make sure they were sturdy enough to hold his weight.
“That makes a lot of sense,” Wren said, frowning at him. “Using the heaviest of us to see if t
he porch will collapse.”
“I’m a Marine,” he said, bouncing a little to see if it would hold. “Marines always go first.”
“You know what ‘Marine’ stands for?” Randy asked conversationally. “Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential.”
“I’ll kick your ass for that later,” Death told his brother, almost absent-mindedly.
“Whatever, Jarhead.”
Wren followed Death up onto the porch, Randy trailing behind her. The door sat in the center of the facade, with everything else balanced around it. It had a single light. A rural scene was etched into the glass.
“So somebody died,” Randy persisted. “I’m assuming you mean someone other than the dead guy on the path?”
“Key?” Death asked.
Wren handed over the key ring Sam Keystone had given her and continued her conversation with Randy. “Some man out in California, a descendant of the family that built it. He’s owned it all his life, from what I hear, and never even set foot in the state. When he passed away, this was only a small part of his estate. I guess his heirs weren’t interested in it either. We’re supposed to clear out the contents and then they’re going to sell the house and land separately. It’s just the house and a few fields and the woods out front now. A lot of the old plantation was sold off years ago.”
Death was wrestling with the key in the rusted old lock. “Yeah, Randy. You need a house, right?”
Due to a strange set of circumstances, the two brothers had spent the past year each thinking the other was dead. Now that they were reunited, Randy had moved to East Bledsoe Ferry to be close to Death. Right now he was camping on the sofa in Death’s tiny combination office/studio apartment.
“I think this is just a bit more house than I’m looking for. You gonna get that, Scooter? If you need someone more talented to take over, you can just give those keys to me.”
“These old locks can be temperamental.” Wren reached past Death to grip the key. She adjusted it slightly and the knob turned easily under her hand.
“Smartass,” Death muttered.
The door swung open and the three of them stood on the threshold, peering into the dark interior.
“So,” Randy said, “where does somebody find a corpse in a Civil War uniform?”