The Secrets We Bury

by Debra Webb

“Great. I’ll see you then.” Before ending the call, for good measure she threw in, “Hey, if you see my dog, let me know.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Sure.”

  The call ended and Rowan stared at the phone. Whatever Woody had done, it was beyond his usual boundaries of good and bad. He was afraid. The trepidation and distress had been heavy in his tone. Hopefully, her suggestion that she might rehire him and the worry about her dog had confused him about her real intent.

  She intended to take Woody Holder all the way down for whatever the hell he had done.

  Billy joined her, settled his hat into place and pushed the door open. They walked out together.

  When the door had closed behind them, Rowan asked, “Why did she fire him?” She couldn’t wait to hear the real reason.

  “One of the other assistant directors found him groping one of their clients in refrigeration.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack.” Billy shook his head. “The woman, Marla Gifford, had recently undergone knee replacement surgery and her family wanted a full-view coffin with her wearing a minidress.”

  It wasn’t unheard of. Families often wanted all possible steps taken to make a loved one look natural.

  Billy reached for the passenger-side door of his truck. “So Woody was supposed to be covering the scar.” He shrugged. “You know, doing the restoration thing to make it disappear. According to one of the other assistants, he was playing with her leg—not the one with the surgical scar.”

  Rowan waved her cell phone. “Well, that’s not what he told me.” As she settled into the seat, she recounted Woody’s explanation for his firing and for Mrs. Phillips’s complaint.

  Billy walked around to the driver’s side and got in. “You think he’s lying about Phillips.”

  Rowan harrumphed. “He’s lying about everything.”

  Billy reached into his pocket and retrieved his cell. “Brannigan.”

  He started the engine, listening to his caller. “I’ll be there in ten.”

  He glanced at Rowan as he put his phone away. “I have to get to the scene of a drug operation. I won’t be long. Will you be okay?”

  She nodded. “Take me back to the funeral home and I’ll catch up with Herman. I should be there anyway.”

  “We will find Freud,” he promised her again. “And we’ll find Woody. Trust me on that one.”

  Rowan didn’t doubt him for a moment. “I have every confidence.”

  She was only too happy to step back and let Billy focus on finding Woody. He had told Rowan he would come by but she didn’t believe him for a second. At any rate, she had something else on her mind just now...like finding out exactly what Woody had done.

  * * *

  Geneva Phillips’s daughters had agreed to meet with Rowan at their mother’s home. Rowan had considered the best way to approach her proposal, and there really was no easy way to ask, but she intended to give it her best shot. First, she gave them Woody’s side of the story. The response was exactly what she’d expected.

  “My father did not have a special watch,” Patty argued.

  Jenn shook her head. “He wore the same plain old watch he’d worn for as long as I can remember. To suggest he had been overly attached to it is ridiculous. He wore it but he wasn’t attached to it like that and Mother certainly wasn’t. In fact, she gave it to Patty’s oldest. They wanted him to have it.”

  “That’s right,” Patty said as if she’d only just remembered. She made a face. “How could I have forgotten about that?”

  “You’ve lost both your mother and your father in a very short time span. It’s understandable that you would have difficulty remembering every detail of the past few weeks.” Rowan felt their pain. It was not an easy transition at any age.

  Tears welled and the sisters hugged. Regret tugged at Rowan. Even now she missed the close connection she and Raven once shared.

  “I have a very difficult request, ladies.” Rowan braced for protest.

  The two looked at one another, then Jenn said, “We just want the truth.”

  Rowan nodded her understanding. “I believe the only way to be certain about any failing on the funeral home’s part is to exhume your father’s body at the funeral home’s expense and to confirm any potential issues.”

  The two women stared at her for a long moment. Rowan was well aware that she was setting up her own funeral home for a potential lawsuit, but she would not allow this to go uninvestigated. If one or more services were not performed to standard, Rowan wanted to make it right. Geneva Phillips would never have written those letters had she not felt profoundly violated. This was more than some missing watch with mere sentimental value.

  “You won’t do anything...invasive?” Jenn asked. Worry lined her face.

  “Absolutely not. We’ll open the vault, bring up the casket and have it delivered back to the funeral home. The county coroner will visually inspect the body and I will evaluate the services performed here. As quickly as we have done so, we’ll return the casket to the vault and restore the grave just as it was.”

  The two shared a look before Jenn asked, “Is this really necessary?”

  Rowan shook her head. “No. Not at this time. We don’t know that there was any impropriety or criminal act committed. We only know that your mother was disturbed by whatever happened. If it’s your wish to let this matter go, then that’s what we’ll do. I would prefer that any wrongdoing be properly investigated and the appropriate steps taken, but I am looking at this from an objective place. I recognize this is not an easy decision for you.”

  Patty exhaled a big breath. “Momma was upset. We shouldn’t leave this unresolved, especially considering whatever happened at his funeral may in some way be related to her death.”

  Jenn’s eyes widened as if she hadn’t thought of that possibility. “Oh my God, you’re right.” She turned back to Rowan. “We have to do it.”

  “We have to do it,” Patty echoed.

  “I’ll talk to Chief Brannigan and get the request submitted. We’ll try to get this taken care of quickly so that when your mother is laid to rest, her husband will be waiting for her.”

  There were more questions and Rowan was only too happy to answer each one to the best of her ability. As soon as she was outside she made the necessary calls. First to Burt so that he could be ready and then to Billy. Billy assured Rowan that he would get the order signed ASAP. He would give her a call when the exhumation was scheduled. She would meet him at the cemetery.

  It was early. Their chance of getting the job done this afternoon was a good possibility. As the chief of police, Billy had the right connections to make things happen in a timely manner.

  Rowan settled behind the steering wheel of her car. She thought about Mr. Phillips and the woman Woody was accused of groping at Gardner’s, Marla Gifford. The one thing besides Woody the two had in common was some sort of surgery before they died. Shoulder for Phillips, knee for Gifford. There was only one orthopedic clinic in Winchester. Ms. Gifford could have had her surgery done anywhere, but Mr. Phillips had his done right here in Winchester with Dr. Knowles.

  The idea that she was onto something would not let go. A huge body brokering case in Nashville a few years back stuck in her head. A funeral home was literally salvaging body parts without consent from their clients and selling them on the black market. There was a huge demand for all sorts of parts as well as whole cadavers. Testing, training and numerous other uses. Of course, it wasn’t necessary to have an orthopedist to remove the wanted parts. The funeral home in Nashville had been using everything from skill saws to reciprocating saws to chop up bodies.

  Rowan shuddered at the idea. Hoped there wasn’t anything like that going on in her hometown—in her funeral home.

  Before driving away, she sent Billy a text.

  Let’s look at Knowles. He may be
the connection between Gifford and Phillips.

  Rowan hit Send and dropped her cell on the console. She started the car and pulled away from the curb. Her cell vibrated. She jumped.

  “That was fast.” She hadn’t expected Billy to respond so quickly.

  She braked for a traffic light and glanced at the screen. Unknown Number. She tapped the screen to open the text message.

  Meet me at the lake. You know where.

  Her heart thumped. Julian. Who else would text her from an unknown number?

  The light changed and she put on her signal and turned in a different direction. Her self-preservation instincts urged her to call Billy, but he would only insist on coming too and scaring Julian off. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the police cruiser right behind her. Maybe she could convince him that she needed to check something at the scene where Alisha Addington’s remains had been found.

  Whatever she decided, she had to make a quick stop at the funeral home first. She needed her weapon for this meeting.

  Maybe she’d just save the judicial system the trouble of prosecuting the bastard.

  Twenty-Two

  Billy parked at the cemetery gate and climbed out of his truck. He glanced at the other vehicles gathered. The coroner’s van was here. Herman had arrived with the DuPont Funeral Home hearse. He didn’t see Rowan’s car. Maybe she’d ridden with Herman.

  He closed the door of his truck and surveyed the vehicles again. But if she was here, where was her protection detail? He pulled out his cell as he strode through the rows of headstones and put in a call to her. It went straight to voice mail. She’d sent him a text saying they needed to look into Dr. Knowles since he might be the connection between the two victims, Phillips and Gifford. Next, Billy put in a call to her protection detail. That call went to voice mail, as well. What the hell?

  By the time he reached the huddle around Howard Phillips’s grave, he was ready to go back to his truck and hunt Rowan down, but this exhumation was happening now. He couldn’t just drive away.

  The mound of freshly unearthed soil and the vault lid told him the crew had wasted no time arriving on-site and getting the job started. The groan of the lift that was already hauling up the casket reminded Billy that he was running behind. It had been that kind of day.

  “You almost missed the party,” Herman commented with a glance in Billy’s direction.

  Billy set his hands on his hips. “Those Crowder boys are cooking again.”

  Besides finding an abuse or murder victim, nothing riled Billy more than learning a methamphetamine operation had set up shop in his town. Lucky for him, most of those sorts of operations cropped up in the county. Sheriff Colt Tanner was on top of the drug business. He had taken a hard line with folks who dared to make, sell or buy drugs in his county. A few of those who had refused to give up the life had tried setting up shop in Billy’s jurisdiction. Not happening on his watch. Not for long anyway.

  “Those two never were no good for nothing,” Herman grumbled. “Put their momma in an early grave, that’s all.”

  “That no good son of a gun she was married to didn’t help,” Burt added.

  “My daddy always said Axel Crowder wasn’t worth shooting,” Billy agreed.

  “No, sir,” Herman confirmed.

  “Where’s Rowan?” Billy asked since no one mentioned her and she still hadn’t shown up or called him back.

  “She told me she had to stop by the funeral home to pick up something and then she’d be right here,” Herman said.

  She hadn’t mentioned stopping by the funeral home to Billy. “You’ll be heading that way in what? Fifteen or twenty minutes?”

  “Don’t see why not,” Burt said.

  “I’ll be there.” He had a bad feeling. He wasn’t waiting to hear from Rowan. He intended to find her. Now. His instincts were nudging him.

  He walked back to his truck, pulled out his phone to call Rowan again and it rang. “Brannigan.”

  “Chief, this is Officer Trenton.”

  Trenton was one of the two officers assigned to Rowan today. Tension slid through Billy. “I tried calling you, Trenton. You still have eyes on Dr. DuPont?”

  “Well, no. I thought I did but I was wrong.”

  Oh hell. “What does that mean, Trenton?”

  “I followed her to the funeral home. She said she had to go inside and get something and she’d be right back, but she never came back. I went inside and she’s gone. Just...gone.”

  “Then we’ve got a problem, Trenton. I’m going to need you to find her. Right now.”

  “Yes, sir, Chief. I’m working on it.”

  Billy ended the call and sent Rowan a text message.

  Where the hell are you?

  He waited...watched the screen. No answer came.

  He drove to the funeral home and searched the place. As Trenton had said, she wasn’t there. But her car was. That was the part that worried him the most. He checked in with the Phillips daughters. She wasn’t at Patty’s or with Jenn at her mother’s home.

  Maybe she was out looking for Freud again. He doubted she would give her protection detail the slip just to go look for her dog, particularly on foot. His gut tied into a thousand knots. This was about Addington.

  “Damn it, Ro.” He dug out his phone again and put through a call to Dressler as he drove from block to block, hoping against hope he would spot her. Once he’d briefed Dressler, he put Trenton and his partner on patrol looking for Rowan. While he was at it, he issued a BOLO on her just to be on the safe side.

  His cell vibrated before he could get it back into his pocket. Burt Johnston’s name appeared on the screen.

  “Brannigan.”

  “Chief, you should get back over to the funeral home. We have a situation.”

  Worry twisted in his chest. “Is Rowan there?”

  “She’s still a no-show.”

  Damn it. Billy executed a U-turn. “I’m on my way. Did you find something when you opened the casket?”

  “Yes and no,” Burt said. “It’s what we didn’t find that’s the real problem. Just get here as quick as you can.”

  * * *

  Within ten minutes Billy was walking into the mortuary room. He looked from Herman to Burt. “What’s missing?”

  “His feet,” Burt said. “Somebody took his feet from the ankles down.”

  Of all the things Billy had seen in his life growing up on a farm and then being a lawman for nearly a decade and a half, this had to be the strangest. He could damn sure see now why Woody Holder was avoiding Rowan. If the dumb ass had anything to do with this, he was neck-deep in serious trouble.

  “What’re your thoughts on what we’re looking at here, Burt? Besides the obvious, of course.” Billy had it figured for either some sort of bizarre fetish or black market body parts. With the internet, a person could pretty much buy anything. Selling stolen body parts would be a breeze.

  “I’m leaning toward black market body parts. While we waited for you I did a Google search on feet, and a pair goes for several thousand dollars.”

  “You fellas forgive me for what I’m about to say—” Billy looked from one to the other “—but if you wanted to purchase a new pair of feet, why settle for an old man’s feet? No offense.”

  Herman laughed. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Burt angled his head and pursed his lips for a moment. “Bear in mind that the folks who buy this sort of thing have money. To a seventy-five or eighty-year-old man like me, Howard’s sixty-five-year-old feet might look pretty damned good.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that one.” In reality, other than the various uses for cadaver bones, the parts from a dead body weren’t transplantable, but there were numerous other uses like research and as teaching tools. If the seller had permission from the donor or the donor’s family, there was nothing illegal
about brokering body parts. Otherwise, it was stealing and abuse of a corpse.

  Burt grunted a laugh and Billy shook his head. Graveyard humor, yeah.

  Whatever else was going on, Billy had a bad, bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Herman, how long did Woody work here?”

  Herman sighed. “Two years.” He shook his head. “That’s a lot of potential body parts.”

  Billy shook his head. “A whole lot. I need to find Holder before he tries to pull a disappearing act.” If he hadn’t already. “But first I need to find Ro.” He was worried sick about her.

  “I have a feeling,” Herman said, his voice heavy with concern, “if you find Ro, you’ll find Woody. He’s backed into a corner now. No place to go.”

  Dread welled faster in Billy’s gut. “You’re right.” He pulled out his cell. “I’ll need a report with photos on all this, Burt. If anything else is missing, we need to know.”

  “Will do.” Burt shook his head. “Poor bastard.”

  As Billy hustled up the stairs to the first floor he called Lincoln. He gave him a quick rundown on what they’d discovered, then said, “Let’s get a warrant for Woody Holder’s place. Find out where he worked before he started at DuPont. He may have been doing this for a while. And see if we can connect him to Dr. Jared Knowles.”

  Billy walked out into the afternoon sun. This would not go well for Rowan. Holder had been employed by her family’s business. The lawsuits would stack up fast. He settled his hat into place. On top of everything else that had happened, she damned sure didn’t need this. She felt things deeply. This would hurt her almost as much as it did the families of the victims. The fact that Winchester was such a small town where everyone knew everyone would only make the whole situation more difficult. The news would spark rumors and those would spread like wildfire.

  Right now he just had to find her. He didn’t want her hearing this news from anyone else. And he sure as hell didn’t want Woody trying to resolve his dilemma by hurting Rowan.

  When he pulled out of the parking lot, his cell vibrated on the console where he’d tossed it, the sound grating on his nerves and at the same time firing hope in his veins that it would be Rowan.