Grave Undertaking

by Mark de Castrique

  “Like a lot of the pompous assholes I lock up, except these guys behave better in their cage.”

  Tommy Lee walked to the side of the coop and opened a screen door. He stepped in with the tumblers and began breaking the thin ice on the water trough.

  “So, you want to talk about birds or people?” he asked.

  The wire mesh between us provided a psychological barrier that kept his question safe, like the screen in a confessional. The distance helped me relax. We were having a conversation while he did some chores.

  “I want to talk about a body.”

  “One that’s at the funeral home?” He stopped fooling with the water trough. I had gotten his attention.

  “No. One that was dug up out of the ground at Eagle Creek Methodist Church. Only it wasn’t the expected resident. The grave had been sublet as a duplex.”

  “In the coffin?”

  “On top of the vault. Appears to be a bullet wound to the skull. The body is nothing but a skeleton and remnants of clothes and cowboy boots. Sheriff Ewbanks came up to investigate.”

  “Hard-ass Hor-ass.” Tommy Lee undid the wall of wire separating the two breeds and stepped in with the pouters. As he cleared their water, several males strutted around his feet as if giving an ultimatum.

  “What kind of sheriff is he?”

  “Good enough, I reckon.” Tommy Lee let a wide grin break through. “Not as good as me, of course. Horace Ewbanks is old school. Been there since the Sixties and pretty much runs things his way. Lets the mountain boys make shine as long as they don’t sell so much he has to do something about it. Doesn’t have much use for Yankees, though he knows their tourist dollars get more important each year. He and I stay out of each other’s way. Worst thing you can do with Horace is tell him how to do his job. You’ll have to give a statement, but after that, you can put it out of your mind.”

  “I wish it were so easy.”

  “Why? Is there something else?”

  “Mobile crime lab found a pistol. Might be the murder weapon. They also found a wallet. Samuel E. Calhoun, assuming the wallet belonged to the skeleton.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Tommy Lee.

  “Ewbanks had. New York P.I. evidently trying to get work down here. Had a North Carolina driver’s license recently issued.”

  “Recently?”

  “I mean recently related to when Ewbanks thinks Calhoun’s body was buried. The original grave had been dug in the spring of ’97. It would make sense that whoever shot Calhoun put the body in a fresh grave where no one would notice turned earth. The driver’s license was dated February ’97.”

  “That’s good. Gives Horace a point to backtrack.”

  “There was also a picture in the wallet the sheriff will backtrack.”

  Tommy Lee stared at me through the wire. A few flakes rested on his black patch, but his good eye was clear and curious. He sensed we had come to the reason we were standing out in the snow. “Whose picture?”

  “Susan Miller.”

  For a few seconds, all I heard was the cooing of the pigeons. Tommy Lee stood as frozen as the snow around us.

  “I haven’t said anything to her,” I added.

  “Well, you’re going to have to. I take it you didn’t tell Ewbanks.”

  “No. He didn’t know who she was. Reverend Pace was there for the grave transfer, but he’d gone up to talk to the reporters before the photograph was discovered.”

  “Reporters?”

  “A NEWSCHANNEL-8 crew arrived. I doubt if Ewbanks told them much of anything. The lab men took the photo along with the other evidence. Then I came here. The sheriff wants to sift all the dirt before we move the vault. That might be after the storm.”

  Tommy Lee looked up at the sky. “Could be a couple days. Now that we’ve broken the ice, let’s get by that fire. I want to hear everything that happened.”

  Chapter 4

  Susan opened the door before I had a chance to ring the bell.

  “I’m so glad you came over.” She stood smiling on the threshold wearing a long-sleeved denim shirt hanging over black jeans. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her face glowed with a vitality impossible to capture in any makeup bottle. She held up her hands and puckered her lips, a kiss-but-don’t-touch gesture. Tufts of white feathers sprouted from her fingers.

  “Are you molting?” I asked, giving her a quick peck on the mouth.

  “I’m feathering my nest.” She looked past me to the swirling snowflakes visible in the light spilling from her open door. “Isn’t it wonderful? I couldn’t help myself. I had to stop.”

  She was giddy. I felt sick to my stomach. My news would melt her joy faster than an August sun. “Stop from what?”

  “You used to be a cop,” she teased. “Figure it out.” She pointed to her Subaru Forester in her parking space and then down at the ground.

  I could see a depression scooped in the snow from the rear of the Subaru to her front door.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” she said. “It’s not a body.”

  She didn’t know I had a body on my mind. But, that was what it looked like—a body dragged up the sidewalk and into her condo. Then I noticed scattered green needles peeking through the white powder.

  “You got a Christmas tree.”

  She clapped her feathered hands together like a six-year-old. “Lying on a sheet in front of the fireplace. That’s how I dragged it in. Old lady Grimshaw across the way was peering from her window. Probably thought it was a victim of my surgical skills. She’s as much as told me women should have babies, not careers.”

  I looked back across the parking lot to the opposite condo. A sliver of light winked out as the nosey neighbor yanked closed the crack in her drapes. “And now the undertaker shows up,” I said. “Well, let’s hope she stays awake all night wondering if she’s next.”

  Susan stepped back and beckoned me into her living room. “Come on. I want to introduce you to a Miller tradition.”

  I stomped my feet on her welcome mat and followed her into the condo where the heavy scent of evergreens hung in the air. I heard an a cappella version of “White Christmas" and thought this could be The Mormon Tabernacle Choir meets Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. In front of the gas fireplace, a blue-green Fraser fir lay on a damp white sheet with its aromatic limbs bound in a mesh straitjacket.

  “Usually the nest goes in the tree, not the other way around,” I said.

  She plucked feathery strands from her fingers. “And usually these are stuck on the bird.”

  Her glass coffee table had been shoved against the sofa so that the fir could be pulled into the room. Three unopened boxes of Christmas tree mini-lights were stacked on the hearth along with a shiny red tree stand and a tinsel star. A new CD case was propped up on the mantel, and the title A Mormon Tabernacle Holiday verified I’d been half right.

  “While I was at the hospital, I realized Christmas is less than three weeks away, and I haven’t done one thing to get ready. Not an ornament, a wreath, or even a sprig of mistletoe. After my rounds, I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought some instant traditions. Except for the tree decorations which I’m making myself. Rather, I was until you came to help me.” She gestured to the dining table just off the kitchen. “Angels in a bag.”

  Newspapers covered the top of her table. The jumbo-size container of Elmer’s Glue sat beside a clear plastic bag which overflowed with fluffy white feathers. A smaller bag contained wooden beads. Clothespins spilled out of an overturned box. Behind the box, a row of angels had come into being from glue, wood, and feathers.

  I walked over and examined the six-foot tree. Sap oozed from the severed trunk, and I guessed no more than a day ago it had been on a mountainside within fifteen miles of here. Next to apples, Christmas trees were the largest crop in Laurel County.

  “You didn’t buy this tree from a rustler, did you?”

  “I got it from the Boy Scouts’ lot on Church Street, but now that you mention it, they did look
a little shifty.” She held out her hands. “Here, give me your jacket. It’s dripping. I’ll put it in the sink before it ruins the feathers.” As she walked to the kitchen, she asked, “You serious about rustlers?”

  “Tommy Lee told me Earl Statton lost two acres of trees last night,” I said over the sound of the opening refrigerator. “Must have been a well-organized theft with trucks and laborers. He figures they hit between midnight and five. Those trees are probably already on lots from Charlotte to Charleston.”

  Susan returned bearing a glass of chardonnay and a mug of Newcastle Brown Ale. Her festive spirit wasn’t making my mission any easier.

  “That’s despicable,” she said. “How long did it take to grow those trees?”

  I took the ale and sat at the table, careful not to disturb the pile of feathers. “From twelve to fifteen years.”

  “Those creeps. They not only stole the trees, they stole all the time some poor family put into raising them.” She slid into the dining room chair beside me and took a healthy sip of wine. “And at Christmas too. It’s almost sacrilegious.”

  “And in a few weeks, those trees will be worthless. It’s nearly impossible to recover them and get them back in time to salvage any profits.”

  “Did Tommy Lee call you for help?” she asked. Then she mimicked a Texas drawl. “You in a posse fixin’ to ride the range in search of them rustlers?”

  “No.” Suddenly, I felt closed in. Susan was right beside me. She was getting ready to make Christmas decorations on her dining room table, and I was ready to get a buried body out on the table.

  “Good,” she said. “Then we can get started on these angels. Stevie taught me how to make them. The clothespin’s the body, the wooden bead is the head, and two white feathers are the wings. Then you clip them on the tree. The Miller tradition is a tree with nothing but lights and white-feathered angels.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  “It is.” Her voice lost its bright edge. “The first craft I remember learning. We used to decorate a fir by Stevie’s grave with them each Christmas. I guess Dad stopped after I went to New York and I never picked it back up.”

  I had learned about Susan’s brother on our second date when I asked her if she had any brothers or sisters. “Only Stevie,” she had said. “He died a long time ago.” The way she had said it kept me from pressing for more information and she had offered none.

  Susan twirled a feather between her fingers, and then stroked the plume across the back of my hand. “You would have liked him,” she said.

  “If he was anything like his sister, I’m sure I would have.”

  Susan shook her head. “He wasn’t like me, but I sure wanted to be like him. Stevie was the adventurer, the first to jump off the wet rocks into the darkest creek waters, the first to climb white pines so high the limbs became thin as fingers.”

  “He was older, right?”

  “Seven years. I was only five when he was killed.” She took another sip of wine, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “Late one afternoon, Stevie took me out to a lightly traveled, narrow two-lane blacktop that ran at the end of our dirt road to teach me how to ride his bicycle. He thought if I could get the feel of my balance without having to pedal over gravel or dodge roots, I could master it. He couldn’t do anything about the seat set too high or the boy-style crossbar, so I had to mount the bike like a pony, throwing my leg over the saddle and then pedaling while standing up.”

  “Must have been a challenge for a five-year-old.”

  “I guess, but if Stevie could do it, then I wanted to learn. He had me stand by the edge of the road as he demonstrated how to get the bike rolling downhill while swinging a leg up over the crossbar. He’d just pushed away when I heard the sputter of an engine behind me. A pickup crested the hill, weaving and swerving as it sped down toward us. I screamed at Stevie, and then jumped across the ditch to hug the fence post on the other side.”

  Susan took a deep breath. She looked down at the feather. “I can still see him looking back over his shoulder, squinting against the fireball of the setting sun and trying to balance as the bike slipped onto the dirt shoulder. The truck veered away from me, crossing over into the other lane. Then the driver must have realized he was on the wrong side of the road and cut back sharply, sending the pickup straight at Stevie. He tried to jump off the bike, but it was too late. He was in mid-air when the right fender caught him on the thigh and slammed him against the strands of a barbed wire fence. The driver spun the truck out of the ditch, dragging the mangled bicycle under the rear axle. He never stopped.”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. I said nothing, knowing she had more to tell me.

  “The state police found the pickup truck a mile away, sideswiped against a tree. The driver was unhurt and so drunk he couldn’t remember how he got there. Stevie died at the rural clinic because there wasn’t a surgeon able to get to him in time.” She laughed bitterly. “The backwoods of North Carolina wasn’t a lucrative place to practice. So, here I am, the rural surgeon who wasn’t there for him.”

  I wasn’t surprised those clothespin angels had become a tradition. Amid the joy of the Christmas holidays, Susan would always grieve for Stevie. I stared at the feathers, beads, and clothespins and knew I couldn’t wait another minute. I stood up, crossed to the bookshelf and turned down the stereo.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Susan. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Tommy Lee didn’t call me about tree rustlers,” I said. “He told me about them when I saw him this afternoon. I needed his advice.”

  Susan set the feather on the table and gave me her full attention. “About what?”

  “About what was found this morning up in the Eagle Creek Methodist Church cemetery.”

  Susan didn’t ask the obvious question. She patiently waited for me to tell her. I skipped all the preliminaries and jumped right to what concerned me. “Did you know a Sammy Calhoun?”

  She looked away and reached out for her glass. I sensed she was stalling for time. Whether it was to try and remember Calhoun or decide what to say, I didn’t know. The tremor in her hand sent a ripple through the wine as she brought it to her lips. She swallowed, and then whispered, “Sammy Calhoun, I haven’t heard that name in a long time.”

  I waited.

  “He used to work in Asheville. I met him through my Aunt Cassie. He was a detective. Last I heard he moved to Texas. Why? Is he back?”

  “I’d say he never left. This morning a skeleton was found buried on top of a vault. The original grave was dug nearly seven years ago.”

  The blood drained from Susan’s face. “And you think it’s Sammy?”

  “The sheriff of Walker County found a wallet with the bones. Contained a driver’s license for Samuel Calhoun. He was buried with moldy cowboy boots and a green windbreaker.”

  Susan’s gaze wandered around the room, never lighting on anything in particular. “I’m sorry to hear he’s dead.” Then she made the connection. “If another sheriff is handling it, why did you see Tommy Lee?”

  “Because there was something else in the wallet. Your picture.”

  She flinched, as if my words slapped her. “My picture?”

  “Yes. I didn’t want to say anything to Sheriff Ewbanks till I talked to you, and I didn’t want to talk to you till after I checked with Tommy Lee.”

  “I met him through Cassie,” she repeated. “I can’t help who has my picture. Was it just me?”

  “Yes, a close-up smiling at the camera. I only saw it for a second, but it was long enough.”

  Susan stood up and started pacing in front of the kitchen. “Could you tell where it was shot?”

  “No. Looked like some buildings behind you. What difference does that make?”

  “Just that it could have been taken by anybody. Sammy could have gotten it from my aunt. He’s not in it, right?”

  “No, but it’s still in his wallet. Tommy Lee says you should come forward. I can
tell Ewbanks I saw it but wasn’t sure it was you.”

  “Why get me involved in something like this?”

  I was surprised at her defensiveness. To me the easiest way to get uninvolved would be to make a simple statement to Ewbanks and let him follow other leads. “Look, Susan, I went to Tommy Lee because you are involved. Like it or not, yours is the only photograph in a murdered man’s wallet.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes,” I said, letting my exasperation get the better of me. “He didn’t bury himself.”

  Susan started to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m upset that you’re upset. Maybe you’re right. We can wait a day or two and see what happens. Maybe they’ll get a lead off the gun.”

  “Gun? What gun?”

  “They uncovered a pistol that could be the murder weapon. Rusty but they might get a trace on it. Little Colt semi-automatic. Twenty-five caliber.”

  Susan reached out and steadied herself against the wall. “Excuse me,” she managed to say as she headed for the bathroom.

  I turned up The Mormon Tabernacle Choir until I could no longer hear her vomiting.

  Chapter 5

  Susan waved to me from the front door. I honked a goodbye like everything was normal, like a shadow hadn’t fallen across our relationship, a shadow cast by a skeleton.

  She had emerged from the bathroom, shaken and apologetic, claiming to have been stunned by the fact that someone she once knew had been murdered. She begged me not to say anything to Ewbanks. “I don’t want to be dragged into an awful crime I know nothing about,” she had said. “If I could help, I would.” I had looked into those tear-filled brown eyes and melted.

  Now, driving through the snow-filled black night, I felt uneasy. Had I made a mistake involving Tommy Lee? Would he feel obliged to talk to Ewbanks? Or was I letting Susan’s emotional reaction cloud my judgment? The real problem was that my own curiosity had been aroused, but I had no business prying into a past Susan wanted closed.

  One thing I did know—the bodies of Pearly Johnson and Senator Hugh Richards wouldn’t be going anywhere tomorrow. Sheriff Ewbanks would be dealing with snow on the grave and snow on his county roads.