by Neil Plakcy
She wore a scoop-necked black sundress and matching ballet flats. Her exuberant auburn curls streamed around her face, and her upper body was deeply tanned.
“Don’t believe that angelic look,” I said, as I spread our lunch out on my desk. “He might hurl again at any minute.”
“Gee, that really boosts my appetite.”
Rochester jumped up and put his paws on the desk, and she hauled him down with a firm hand on his collar, then pulled a chair up across from me. “So what did you want to talk about?” she asked, beginning to unroll the paper around her sub.
“I met with Babson this morning. He wants me to take on a new job, and he’s going to shift responsibility for press relations for the campaign to the News Bureau,” I said.
She picked up the sub. “What are you going to be doing”
In between taking bites of my own sub, and draughts of black cherry soda, I explained to her about Friar Lake. “What do you think?” I asked when I finished.
“Are you sure it’s the right move for you?” she asked. “Since you got out of prison you’ve been like a pinball, bouncing around. Tech writing, adjunct teaching, then public relations. Now this. Have you ever even been on an executive education course?”
It was hard not to sound defensive, but Lili was right, and she was just voicing the fears I had myself. “My boss sent a couple of us to a two-day seminar to learn HTML, back when nobody knew what it was,” I said. “But we met in an office building and went home at the end of the day.”
“I think Babson is trying to make this seem a lot easier than it’s going to be,” Lili said, sitting back in her chair. “Not that you can’t handle it—I know you, you’re smart and you work hard when you need to. But I think you need to take a day or two and think this through before you jump blindly into it.”
“But if I don’t take the job, then I’m unemployed again, scrambling to piece together a living from freelance work and adjunct teaching. At my age, with my background, I’m not going to get too many opportunities.”
“Slow down,” Lili said, reaching out for my hand. “I’m not saying you should turn the job down, and even if you did I doubt you’d be out on the street. Just slow down and look at all your options.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re right. I don’t even know where this place is yet.”
“Then let’s check.” She nodded toward my computer, and I turned the monitor so she could see it. I pulled up Google Maps and searched for the property’s address, on Birch Road. There was no indication of it on the map view; I had to switch to the satellite view to figure out where along the road the buildings were.
Leighville sat on a bluff overlooking the Delaware, halfway between Stewart’s Crossing to the south and Easton to the north. The college’s buildings occupied most of the hilltop, while the town was spread on the flat plain between hill and river. Friar Lake was about five miles north of campus, along a country road that passed behind the town and then dipped down toward the Delaware. It was about a mile inland from the river.
I zoomed the computer’s display and saw the abbey proper, laid out as I’d seen in the plans. A two-lane road curved from the hilltop church down to the lakefront where a suburban-style ranch house hugged one shore. The roadway continued to the street through a stand of trees.
“That must be where the mendicant friars lived,” I said, pointing.
“I didn’t think mendicants ever got this far out of the city,” she said.
“You know what they are?”
“Of course. Didn’t you?”
I shook my head. “I’m Jewish. What do I know from friars, mendicant or otherwise?”
“I’m as Jewish as you are. Just better educated, I guess.”
Rochester was sitting on his haunches so peacefully that I rewarded him with a piece of fatty roast beef. Better his cholesterol than mine. “I got my degree from Eastern College,” I said. “That should tell you something.”
“Back when I was doing photojournalism, I did a lot of inner-city shoots,” she said. “I ran across friars in a bunch of different places, living among the poor, providing education and medical services.”
“When they get too old to mendicate, or whatever the verb form is, they retire to abbeys, according to Babson’s report. The monks lived in the dormitory on top of the hill, next to the church, while the friars needed more modern quarters, all on one floor.”
“Where are the monks and friars now?”
“They relocated to an abbey in western Pennsylvania after the property was sold.”
She looked at her watch. “I’m done with class for the day. Want to drive out and look at the place?” Though she didn’t have to, she was teaching one class during the summer session, because that cut one course from her load during the regular term, which gave her more time for her own photography.
“Sure, as long as Rochester’s up to it.”
The big goof heard his name, raised his head, and nodded it once, his metal collar and rabies tag jangling.
“Let me go back to my office and close up for the day,” Lili said. “I’ll meet you in the employee parking lot in fifteen.”
I took Rochester on a circuitous route behind Fields Hall, hoping that if he had anything inside he needed to evacuate he could do it outdoors rather than in my car. But all he did was sniff a lot and pee a couple of times.
Lili was standing by my car as we approached. She had a digital SLR camera slung around her neck and a cargo vest over her sundress. I knew that the pockets contained extra lenses, filters, and a rubber lens hood.
She had pulled her curls into a ponytail and exchanged the ballet flats for a pair of duck boots—a smart move, given how marshy the college property had become after the week of heavy rains. Who knew how bad it would be out at Friar Lake, especially if the property had been abandoned for a while.
We hopped into the Beemer and headed out. “I didn’t tell you before,” I said, as I navigated my way through the campus to the road that would lead us down to Friar Lake. “But I got roped into this College Connection thing. Have you heard about it?”
“I was in the meeting, Steve.” She leaned against the door and looked at me. “I slipped in late, and I waved to you as we were walking out. But you were busy talking to Jackie Conrad and you didn’t see me.”
“She lent me a brain cell for the meeting.” Before I could explain, though, we reached the bottom of the hill, where the swale on both sides of the road was underwater, and I had to focus on driving. The Beemer’s rattle startled a couple of mallards who lifted gracefully and winged away.
I drove carefully, staying to the center of the country road as much as possible. “I don’t need the extra aggravation of this College Connection thing,” I said. “I wish there was a way I could duck out of it, but I’m sure Babson will be on me all the time about Friar Lake and he’ll definitely notice if I drop out.”
“You’ll have to come up with something that doesn’t take a lot of effort on your part,” she said. “We can brainstorm once you read the book.”
“Yeah, my homework,” I grumbled.
She elbowed me. “You sound just like a student.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love to read,” I said. “I just hate having my books chosen for me. I had enough of that getting my master’s degree. I remember after I graduated walking into a bookstore and realizing that I could pick any book I wanted and have plenty of time to read it.”
The land along the road was flat and the water table high. A hedgerow of mature oak, maple and sassafras framed the farms we passed. It looked like the kind of place Peter Rabbit would live, and as I drove I longed for the easy days of childhood when all I had to worry about was when my library books were due.
We came to the turnoff for Friar Lake and I pulled to a halt at the access road. It was blocked by a rope tied around a pair of leafy green maples. A sign that read “Private Property No Trespassing” hung from it.
I stepped gingerly out of t
he car. The ground underneath my feet was spongy, but the gravel road seemed in pretty good shape.
“Not much of a deterrent,” I said, as I undid the simple half-hitch knot on one end of the rope and dropped it to the ground. I returned to the car, kicking the dirt off my soles before I got back in.
The road wound through a stand of trees and then branched in two. The right fork led to a low-slung ranch house, and beyond it the sparkling waters of Friar Lake, with a couple of ducks paddling near the shore. To our left, the road climbed up the hill to the monastery. “Might as well start down here,” I said, turning right. I pulled up in the gravel lot in front of the ranch and we piled out.
Rochester immediately took off for a tree at one side of the house and lifted his leg when he reached it. Lili and I began to walk carefully around the exterior of the building where the friars had lived. She’d been smart to switch to boots; I was still wearing my deck shoes, which had a good sole but were already getting mucked up.
I recalled from the report that the building had been acquired by the monastery in the 1970s to serve as housing for the friars. It looked like it had once been a standard suburban ranch, with a clapboard extension on the right, a series of windows implying that the bedrooms were down there. On the left was what looked like a large workroom or assembly room, and then a double-wide garage.
I looked around for Rochester. “Where is that dog?” I didn’t see him, but I could hear him. It sounded like he was digging. “Oh, no. Rochester! Don’t you eat anything!”
I took off running around the side of the house, my shoes desperate for purchase on the slippery wet grass. Rochester was a few hundred yards away, down near the water’s edge, digging at something.
“He’s going to eat some dead thing and then throw up again, I just know it,” I called back to Lili, who was following me at a more careful pace.
I slid on a muddy patch and lost my balance. But I was able to windmill my arms and catch myself. “Rochester!” I yelled. “Bad dog. Stop that right now!”
He ignored me. Not a surprise. I stepped more carefully toward him, my deck shoes covered in mud and squelching as I walked. “You’re in big trouble, buster!”
I finally got close enough to grab hold of his collar and pull him back. Looking down, I saw what he’d been digging up.
A decomposed human hand, palm up, attached to partially skeletonized arm which continued down into the ground.
6 – Deerstalker Hat
Lili was right behind me. Neither of us screamed or shrieked, but I caught my breath and heard Lili do the same thing. We’d both been around dead bodies before. Lili had been a globe-trotting photojournalist, and I’d already followed Rochester’s nose for death a couple of times. But each one still represented a human being who had lived once, and now lived no longer. It was a sobering thought. I reached for Lili’s hand and squeezed.
I bent down and tugged at Rochester’s collar, and he reluctantly turned away from his new discovery.
The ground beneath our feet was mucky, and Lili stepped carefully forward and then leaned close to the body. “It’s been here about three months,” she said, after taking a look. “You can tell by the level of decomposition.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, still holding tight to the dog’s collar.
“I’ve seen a lot of bodies,” she said. “In war people tend to bury their dead by hand, in shallow graves. The body starts to dry out after a couple of weeks as maggots eat the flesh. When all that’s left is tendons and ligaments, like we have here, the beetles take over.”
“That is truly creepy,” I said. “I mean, that you know that kind of thing.”
She shrugged. “Bodies often rise up like this if they aren’t buried deep enough, especially when we get rains like we’ve had lately.” She looked at me curiously. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Are you some kind of death magnet?”
“Not at all. I just happen to run across bodies.” Not that I enjoyed seeing them; the first one I discovered was that of Rochester’s former owner, my neighbor Caroline. Since then—well, it wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. But I did have a kind of insatiable curiosity that drove me to snoop into places I didn’t belong. That’s how I had discovered my ability to hack into websites – which led, in the end, to my incarceration.
“And this could be perfectly innocent,” I said. “The Benedictines were in a hurry to move to Western Pennsylvania, and they didn’t take the time to bury this guy properly.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be sarcastic. I don’t think he’s a friar. If the Benedictines had buried friars back here, this body would have been in a coffin, and there would be a headstone or a marker.”
“Well, it could be he or she died naturally and the family or whoever couldn’t afford a funeral. They might have thought this was sacred ground, because of the abbey nearby. The property’s been deserted for the last few months, so anybody could have gotten in here and left the body.”
“It doesn’t matter right now how the body got here, Steve. Even if this person died naturally, it’s not right that he or she was dumped out here. The police need to figure out who this was and what happened. And you don’t need to have any part of that. Let’s get out of this mud and call 911.”
We turned and trudged back up to the house where the friars had lived. I had left Rochester’s leash in the car, so I was forced to walk like a hunchback with one hand around his collar. Mud was seeping into my shoes, and I’d lost my interest in exploring the property.
“Why don’t I call Rick Stemper directly?” I said. “I don’t think this is his jurisdiction, but he’ll know what we should do.” And because I had helped him in the past, he might let me snoop around in the investigation, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Lili.
“Fine. Whoever. Just make the call. I’ll keep the dog busy.”
She took Rochester’s leash and walked off as I dialed Rick’s cell. My hands were shaking; I guess seeing the dead body did bother me. But I tried to keep my tone light when Rick answered.
“Hey, Steve, what’s up?”
“I’ve got a little problem and I need your advice.”
“Please tell me this isn’t a criminal problem. Rochester isn’t snooping around somewhere, is he?”
“I’m afraid he has been. And he found a body.”
There was a silence on Rick’s end. Finally he said, “A human body?”
“Yeah. At least, I’m assuming there’s a body attached. Right now there’s only a hand sticking up from the dirt. Kind of like some creepy horror movie.”
I heard a slight quaver in my voice and resolved to steel myself. It was just a body, after all. And a stranger. There was probably an innocent explanation why his hand had risen up from the grave for Rochester to find.
“Does it look fresh?” he asked.
“Not really. A lot of the flesh is gone. Lili says it looks about three months old.”
“I’m not even going to ask you how your girlfriend knows that,” he said. “Where exactly is this body? Or this hand.”
“At Friar Lake. The monastery I was telling you about. Lili and I took Rochester out here to look around. Before we could get far he started digging and going nuts.”
Rick sounded like he was thinking out loud. “If the dog found a hand, then that means the body wasn’t in a coffin,” he said. “That’s not a good sign.” He took a deep breath. “Here’s what you do, Steve. Don’t touch anything. Call 911. And then call Tony Rinaldi. The Leighville PD covers that area.”
I still had Tony’s cell number stored in my phone from the last time Rochester had found a body, on the Eastern campus. “Will do.”
“And Steve? Try and stay out of this one. Even a cat only has nine lives.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, keeping it light. But I knew that there was no way my curiosity was going to let me ignore a dead body dumped at my feet.
Since there was no imminent emergency, I decided to call Tony Rinaldi first, r
ather than 911. “Hey, it’s Steve Levitan,” I said when he answered. “Does your jurisdiction cover Friar Lake?”
“That’s unincorporated Bucks County, but we respond,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Rochester dug up a body. Or at least a hand that looks like it’s still attached to a body.”
“You let your dog disturb a crime scene?”
“Hey, we had no idea it was any kind of scene,” I said. “We were walking out behind the house by the lake, and after all the rain lately it looks like a lot of the dirt covering a grave was washed away. I pulled Rochester away as soon as I saw what he was digging around. I called Rick Stemper, and he told me to call 911 and then call you. But this isn’t exactly an emergency, is it? So I just called you.”
“I’ll be there in a half hour. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Do we need to stay here with the body? Or can we go up the hill and look at the monastery?”
“Is the scene secure?” he asked.
“There’s nobody else here,” I said. “And we’re pretty far off the road.”
“Just stay in the area, all right?” he said.
“Will do.” I hung up, then took my shoes and socks off and wiped my feet reasonably clean. I finished up as Lili and my dog returned.
“What did Rick say?” Lili asked.
“He told me to call Tony Rinaldi. Tony’s going to come out here and take a look. I told him we’d wait up at the monastery.”
I kept a couple of old rags and a roll of paper towels in the trunk of the BMW for Rochester emergencies, and I managed to do a quick clean up of his paws, then lay the towels on the back seat. Rochester scrambled in the back while Lili slipped into the front seat next to me.
“You do realize that this body is no business of yours,” she said, as we drove about a half-mile up the curving, tree-lined road. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still strong, dappling the roadway and dancing between the leaves of the ancient oaks and maples.
“What do you mean?”