Digging Up the Dirt

by Miranda James

  “I’ll lend it to you,” Dickce said. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Hadley is expecting us,” An’gel said. “We’d better get going. Why don’t you come with us, Benjy, and bring Peanut and Endora. They can explore the grounds with us.”

  “Are you sure it would be okay with the owner?” Benjy asked. “He might not want these two running around.”

  “Nonsense.” Dickce stood. “Hadley always loved animals, and I’m sure he’ll love these two rascals.”

  “Awesome,” Benjy said. “I’d really like to see his house.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Dickce said as she, Benjy, and the two animals followed An’gel out the back door to the garage. “At least, it used to be. There’s no telling what kind of condition Hadley’s brother let it get into.”

  “We’ll soon see,” An’gel said as she backed the car out of the garage.

  Eight minutes later the car topped a rise in the driveway to Ashton Hall, and An’gel stopped the car to allow them all to look down toward the house.

  Dickce pointed to the side of the redbrick, three-story structure. “There’s one of the trees that went down. Oh, I hate that, it’s one of the old oaks. Must have been as old as the house, if not older.”

  “Hamish abandoned the gardens,” An’gel said. “Look at the overgrown mess. Hadley has made some progress, but it’s going to take months to get the grounds back in shape for the pilgrimage.” She put the car in gear and drove them down the rise to the front of the house.

  Hadley came out of the front door before they were all out of the car. Peanut bounded up to Hadley and woofed at him, tail wagging.

  “Hello there, handsome.” Hadley smiled and rubbed the dog’s head. “You’re a pleasant surprise.” He greeted the humans, with kisses on the cheek for the sisters and a handshake for Benjy. He held up his fingers to allow Endora, perched on Benjy’s shoulder, to have a sniff. To his obvious pleasure, she rubbed her head against his hand.

  “You have quite a job on your hands,” Dickce said.

  Hadley offered them a wry grin. “Yes, my brother really let things go, as you can see. My plan is to restore the gardens to basically what they were in my mother’s time. Do you remember what they looked like then?”

  An’gel nodded. “Yes, your mother had the most incredible green thumb. She could get anything to grow.”

  “Our mother was always jealous of her.” Dickce giggled. “She loved to garden but she didn’t have the knack Mrs. Partridge did.”

  “Mother loved her garden, I think, even more than she loved her family.” Hadley smiled. “I’ve found pictures from that period, but I confess I don’t know the names of all the plants. I’m sure you can help me identify them.”

  “We’d be glad to,” Dickce said. “An’gel is the real expert, though. I mostly do what she tells me when she needs help with weeding or planting.”

  Benjy startled them all by yelling, “Peanut, you come back here!” Benjy turned to their host. “If you’ll excuse me sir, I’d better go after him. He might try to dig up something.”

  “By all means.” Hadley laughed. “Though I doubt he can do much damage.”

  Benjy nodded, then took off after the dog who had headed toward the side of the house where the massive oak had fallen. Endora clung to his shoulder.

  “Come on in.” Hadley turned and gestured toward the front door. “It’s a bit damp and chilly out here. After we’ve looked at the pictures, perhaps we can come out and have a look at the grounds.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Dickce climbed the few steps to the small porch and walked through the open door, followed by An’gel and Hadley.

  When their host had shut the door behind him, Dickce asked, “Is Mrs. Turnipseed still the housekeeper?”

  Hadley shook his head. “No, she retired when Hamish died. He left her a nice pension.” He grinned. “She never liked me, and the feeling was mutual. She always reminded me of that ghoulish woman in Rebecca.”

  Dickce and An’gel laughed, then Dickce explained, “That’s what I said before we came over.”

  Hadley chuckled. “Well, great minds and all that. Come, let’s go into the parlor. I’ve got a fire going in there. The new housekeeper I hired will bring us hot coffee in a few minutes. I hope that’s fine, or I could ask her to make hot tea.”

  The sisters assured him that they were happy with coffee and followed him into the parlor.

  Dickce noticed that the room appeared clean, though the furnishings were shabby from years of neglect. Such a shame. This was such a beautiful house. The drapes appeared threadbare, as did the furniture, and there were holes and dark spots in the antique carpet. Fire burned brightly in the fireplace, however, and Dickce approached it, grateful for its warmth. The room felt a bit damp away from the fire.

  Hadley had set three chairs near the fireplace, and he seated the sisters in turn, An’gel first as befit her status as the elder sister, before retrieving an album of photographs and seating himself beside her. He opened the album and turned a few pages.

  “Here,” he said as he handed the album to An’gel. “There are four pages of photographs of mother’s gardens taken not long before she died forty-two years ago.”

  An’gel accepted the album and set it in her lap. Dickce inched her chair closer in order to view the album along with her sister. Dickce pointed to one photo. “Here are roses. I’m not sure what the varieties are, though.”

  “Hybrid tea,” An’gel said. “The inner ring are grandiflora.”

  Before An’gel could continue identifying more plants in the photos, Benjy burst into the room with an excited Peanut alternately barking and whining.

  “Benjy, what on earth is going on?” Dickce said, alarmed by the young man’s strange expression.

  “I think you’d better come outside.” Benjy paused for a couple of deep breaths. “Peanut started digging around that tree that came down, and he found bones.”

  CHAPTER 10

  As the first shock of Benjy’s announcement began to pass, An’gel said, “They’re probably quite old. If they were under the tree, they’d have to be. That oak is at least a hundred and fifty years old.”

  Hadley nodded. “I think it was planted by the ancestor who built the house, and that was in 1827.”

  Benjy looked confused for a moment. “I don’t think the bones were actually under the tree. Not under the roots, anyway. More like beside them. Come look.” He turned and led Peanut out of the room.

  “That’s odd.” Hadley rose from his chair. “I’d better go have a look. Why don’t y’all stay here where it’s warm.”

  “No, I think we’d better come with you.” An’gel lay the album aside on a nearby table and stood. She was concerned by Benjy’s assertion that the bones were in the ground beside the tree. That brought an unsettling thought to mind. “Come on, Sister.”

  Hadley shrugged before he turned and strode out of the room. An’gel and Dickce followed right behind.

  “Who do you think it could be?” Dickce whispered her question near to An’gel’s ear.

  An’gel shook her head. “Not now.”

  Hadley quickly outdistanced them, and when they caught up with him and Benjy, the two men and the dog stood staring at the ground near where the magnificent oak had once stood.

  “The wind must have been really strong to bring it down like that,” Benjy said.

  “Had it been healthy, it might not have fallen,” Hadley replied. “But it was dying, and it had evidently been hit by lightning at some point in the past few years.”

  An’gel saw the massive trunk had snapped about four feet from the ground, and the fall had shifted the stump at a thirty-degree angle. The ground near the stump was disturbed, and An’gel understood what Benjy meant.

  “Here are the bones.” Benjy, his hand firmly on Peanut’s collar, stepped closer
and pointed down at a spot twelve inches or so from the exposed root.

  An’gel and Dickce came nearer, while Hadley squatted for a closer look. “That’s a hand,” Hadley said, his tone subdued. “A human hand.”

  An’gel saw the delicate bones of the fingers jutting out of the soil and felt a wave of sadness. She thought immediately of Callie Partridge. Then a flash of movement caught her eye, and she turned to see Endora on the ground nearby playing with an object of some kind. She hoped fervently that it wasn’t a bone.

  “Dickce, look at Endora,” she said. “See if you can get whatever that is away from her.”

  Dickce turned to see what her sister was talking about. Endora was slapping at something in the grass a couple of feet away from them on the other side of the tree stump. She made her way around while the others watched, talking to Endora the whole time.

  “You clever kitty,” she said in a soothing tone. “You found something, didn’t you? You’re such a smart girl. Will you let me see what it is?”

  When Dickce, still talking, reached the cat, Endora stopped playing with the object and meowed. Dickce bent down to retrieve the cat’s erstwhile toy. She stood, her palm extended toward the others. On it lay a ring.

  “Let me see that.” Hadley’s harsh tone startled An’gel. He reached for the ring and almost snatched it away from Dickce. An’gel watched while he examined it and would have sworn he paled under his tan.

  The ring was a small band of what looked like gold, and there were stones mounted on it. They were encrusted with dirt, however, and An’gel couldn’t tell what they might be. Hadley pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed some of the dirt away. An’gel caught her breath as the sun hit the now exposed stones.

  An emerald, surrounded by diamonds. She recognized the ring.

  Hadley closed his eyes and clutched the ring to his chest. His words came out with a sob. “It’s Callie’s.”

  An’gel’s gaze shifted to the finger bones sticking out of the earth, and her eyes filled with tears. Sarinda Hetherington might have been right after all, she realized.

  Callie Partridge perhaps never left Ashton Hall alive.

  An’gel stared dully into the fire in the front parlor at Ashton Hall. Her back ached, and she wanted to be at home. She’d had to feed the flames several times in the nearly two hours they’d been waiting in the parlor. Dickce sat nearby with Endora curled up in her lap. Benjy occupied one end of the sofa, and Peanut lay at his feet. Their host was in the library across the hall, talking to Kanesha Berry, chief deputy from the Athena County Sheriff’s Department. They had each already had a turn with the deputy, but she had asked them to wait for a while longer.

  “Just because her ring was found there doesn’t necessarily mean those bones are Callie’s.” Dickce stroked the cat’s head. “She could have lost it there. Maybe those bones are two hundred years old. The grave might have been there when Hadley’s ancestor planted the tree, and he never knew it.”

  “I would give a lot if that were indeed the case,” An’gel said. “It would be a whopping coincidence, though, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Dickce replied. “But I’m certainly going to hope and pray that’s the truth of it, and it’s not poor Callie lying there in the ground.”

  An’gel cast a quick glance at the sheriff’s deputy who stood right outside the open door of the parlor. She got up from her chair and sat next to Benjy on the sofa. In an undertone she said, “Could you see Hadley’s face when he first looked at the bones?”

  Benjy nodded. “He looked shocked to me.”

  “Shocked as if he was upset the bones were found, or shocked as if he had no idea they were there?”

  Benjy considered that a moment. “Shocked like I don’t think he knew the bones were there, but I don’t know him at all.”

  “We don’t really know him ourselves, not anymore,” Dickce said. “Forty years ago he was a carefree, irresponsible playboy. The man who came back could have changed a lot.”

  “He did seem stunned when he realized he was holding Callie’s ring,” An’gel said. “I would swear that was a complete surprise to him.”

  “Do you remember when Hamish gave Callie that ring?” Dickce asked. “I do.”

  “Yes,” An’gel said. “It was for their tenth anniversary.” For Benjy’s benefit, she added, “Hamish threw a lavish party here at Ashton Hall, and he gave her the ring in front of everyone.”

  “Three years before Hadley disappeared from Athena,” Dickce said.

  “Hamish sounds like a romantic kind of guy,” Benjy said.

  “He was, where Callie was concerned,” An’gel said. “He loved her deeply, so deeply that at times I think it frightened her.”

  “She was the center of his life.” Dickce picked Endora up and cradled the cat in her arms. Endora yawned and stretched before settling down contentedly against Dickce’s chest.

  “He must have been pretty devastated when she disappeared,” Benjy said.

  “He never got over it,” An’gel said.

  “If that’s really her out there by the tree,” Benjy said after a brief silence, “do you think he could have killed her?”

  An’gel shuddered. “I’d hate to think so, but he was so obsessed with her. If he thought she was in love with someone else, well, I suppose he could have killed her in a fit of jealous rage.”

  “What about Hadley?” Dickce asked in a low voice. “If he killed her, that might be why he disappeared and stayed gone so long.”

  “But then why would he come back?” Benjy said. “If he did kill her, wouldn’t it be safer for him to stay away?”

  “Yes, it would be safer,” An’gel said. “But there’s the matter of Ashton Hall and whatever money Hamish had. Hadley probably inherited a fair-sized fortune on top of the house and the land. That might have been a powerful enough lure to bring him back even if he murdered his own sister-in-law.”

  The sound of a voice coming from the hallway ended their conversation. An’gel turned her head to observe Kanesha Berry advance into the room. Since her earlier conversation with the deputy she had debated whether to bring up the death of Sarinda Hetherington. She decided that she ought to share her ideas and suspicions with Kanesha.

  Kanesha regarded them with her habitual calm expression. “Ladies, and Mr. Stephens, I’m sorry to keep you waiting this long, but it was helpful to have you here in case I needed to talk to you again. But you can go now. I’ll follow up with you soon, once we know more about the identity of the remains.”

  Peanut walked over to the deputy and stared up at her, waiting to be noticed. She had been friendly before, and he now expected some attention from her. Kanesha frowned at him for a moment, then patted his head. “Nice to see you, too, Peanut.”

  The dog barked and wagged his tail. Happy now, he returned to Benjy’s side. Endora paid the deputy no attention whatsoever.

  An’gel rose. “We’ll be happy to get home. But there is a matter I’d like to discuss with you. Do you think you might have time to come by Riverhill for a few minutes?”

  “We could talk here,” Kanesha said. “Mr. Partridge is allowing us to continue to use his library for as long as we need.”

  An’gel shook her head. “I’d really rather discuss this away from Ashton Hall. I would consider it a great favor if you could come by Riverhill sometime today.”

  “Very well, Miss An’gel,” Kanesha said. “I’ll come by right after I leave here. It may be another hour.”

  “That’s fine,” An’gel said. “Now we’d better take our leave of Hadley.”

  Kanesha said, “He went upstairs a couple of minutes ago. I don’t think he’ll be back down for a while.”

  “Poor man,” Dickce said. “I can’t blame him. This has been a terrible shock to all of us.”

  “I’m sure it has,” Kanesha said. “I will
be working hard to find out exactly what happened here.”

  An’gel nodded. “I know you will figure it out.” She turned to Dickce and Benjy. “Come now, let’s go home.” She headed for the door, her heart heavy and her mind troubled.

  Back at Riverhill ten minutes later, they shared the shocking news with Clementine while Benjy took Peanut and Endora outside for a walk. The housekeeper shook her head. “Lord, to think Miss Callie might’ve been lying there all these years, and nobody knew.”

  “We can’t be completely certain that the remains are Callie’s,” An’gel said. “My heart tells me they are, though.”

  “If they are Callie’s, then the person who put her there certainly knew,” Dickce said. “It makes me angry to think that someone might have gotten away with murder all these years.”

  “Kanesha will see to that,” An’gel said. “I’m expecting her to come by to talk to me in the next hour or so, Clementine.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the housekeeper said. “What would you like to do about lunch?”

  An’gel glanced at the kitchen clock. Ten minutes to eleven, she read. “Let’s say twelve thirty. Is that okay with you, Sister?”

  Dickce nodded. “Yes. I hate to say it, after the upsetting morning we’ve had, but I know I’ll probably be really hungry by then.”

  “It’ll be ready,” Clementine said. “In the meantime, would you like coffee or some hot tea?”

  “Tea would be nice,” Dickce said.

  “Yes, it would. We’ll be in the front parlor,” An’gel said. “Thank you, Clementine.” She headed out of the kitchen, followed by her sister.

  When they were seated comfortably in the parlor, Dickce asked, “What is it you want to talk to Kanesha about?”

  “Sarinda,” An’gel said. “If those remains are Callie’s, then I think it’s likely Sarinda might have known who put Callie in that grave.”

  “And that person killed Sarinda because they thought Sarinda was going to expose them.”

  “I think it’s possible,” An’gel replied. “Maybe I’m indulging in a wild flight of fancy, but I think there has to be a connection.”