[Anthology] Close to the Bones

by Martha Carr

  Another mumble but this one seemed to go on longer. She took one step closer to the side of the bed, skirting around the overstuffed chair that had found a permanent spot, at least for now, right by the bed.

  “What?” she asked again.

  “Have they found where the bodies are buried?” he asked quietly, the familiar stern tone in his voice.

  “Are we talking scandals…” asked Amy, knitting her hands together in front of her. “You worried about a few things before you cross over?” Amy wasn’t sure what she believed in, and she would not have pegged Mr. Fallow for someone worried about what God might think of him, but the at last moments you never knew.

  “I left strict instructions. The maps are not to be touched until after I’m gone. They’ll direct you to the right places,” he muttered, some of his words slurring together.

  “Buried treasure?” Amy perked up. Of course, if she came across some hidden cache of jewels, or even better, cold hard cash she would turn it over to the family. But maybe there would be a reward in it for her. Certainly, this must be what Natalie had been searching for all this time. Clearly, this would be seen as something that was reward worthy.

  Amy was finally willing to lean in closer, to make out more clearly what Mr. Fallow was saying. “Great risk brings great reward.” She braced herself, ready to jump back in case things went badly.

  “Where are the maps?” She said it slowly and deliberately trying to reach him in his drug-induced stupor and hoping this would help him carry on a brief conversation.

  “The hidden drawer at the bottom of the Louis XV wooden box,” he said, clear as a bell.

  Amy whipped herself around and stared at the box at the other end of the room. She knew exactly which one it was, even in the dim light. He had already pointed out to her several times before when it popped out of her mouth more than once that what he owned was probably more valuable than the house itself. At the time, he didn’t disagree with her.

  “It’s in an addendum to my will,” mumbled Mr. Fallow. “I don’t care to take the secret to my grave and beyond. It’s a distasteful thing that I’ve done,” he said, scrunching up his nose as if he smelled something rotten. “These urges, they were just a part of me. I blame no one else. Nothing to be done about it now. Water under the bridge.”

  The most remarkable thing to Amy was that he had made this confession of sorts entirely with his eyes closed. As if he could see something inside of his head that was depicting the scene around him.

  Amy stood stock still, right where she was planted as the minutes ticked by. She glanced over at her bag that she had left in the chair and thought about taking out the Kindle and sitting down and reading as if nothing strange happened this morning.

  Well, nothing stranger than usual.

  She looked over at the door and listened for any sounds of Natalie scurrying up and down the hall, but heard nothing. These days she made a point of avoiding Amy, as if Amy had some psychic ability to know what was going on.

  She still wasn’t sure what was going on, but if TV had taught her anything, and it had taught her quite a bit, nothing good came from someone mentioning urges and blame. Mix in a wealthy, powerful old man who was a prosecutor and it could mean anything.

  “Fuck,” she said, not caring who might hear. She had been able to control her swearing at least while she was inside the house since she had started the job. But this was over the top.

  “I may be a lot of things but I don’t carry around other people’s secrets. Hell, I don’t carry around my own very well.”

  She balled up her hands at her side, turning them into fists. She was pulling together her courage to do what she saw as the right thing. “I know the difference between snooping and confirming something,” she said hesitantly. “This is more like a detective looking for evidence or clues,” she said reasoning it out while she stood there clenching her fists.

  She listened again for any sounds from the hallway and realized it was still quiet. There was nothing stopping her from doing something about her own urgency to know what Mr. Fallow meant by blame and urges.

  “A treasure map to the dark side,” she said, quietly.

  She took what felt like a long walk across the room and stood right in front of the box, not touching the box that measured two feet around, making a perfect square. It was inlaid with scenes that Amy had decided must have been from the French palace.

  “Are you booby-trapped? It just sounds like the sort of thing old French people would do,” she said, looking at the box from every angle without actually touching it.

  She finally picked up the box and was surprised to find out that it was lighter than she expected. It almost flew out of her hands and she fumbled for a moment, twirling it around in her hands before pulling it close to her chest and hugging it tight.

  “Thank goodness you weren’t a booby-trap or I think that would have set it off for sure,” she said, breathing harder, sweat forming on her forehead.

  She looked for a drawer on the box and saw nothing. The only opening was a lid on the top and when that was opened there was nothing in there. It was empty.

  “Hmph,” she said, frustrated.

  She gripped the edges trying to come up with an idea and wondering if there could be more than one Louis XV box in his house. “That’s possible, she said quietly to herself.

  But then a different idea came to her. She remembered the puzzle box that her Aunt Clary had brought her back from her trip to China. It had all sorts of hidden drawers that were invisible to the eye at first, unless you knew how to access them.

  She put the box back down on the highboy where it had been resting and carefully placed her fingers on the sides, gently squeezing.

  Nothing.

  She did it again, moving her fingers around to various spots, giving a gentle squeeze, waiting for something to push back.

  Still nothing.

  She stood back for a moment, hands on her hips, studying the box, wondering what she was doing wrong. Mr. Fallow had been very clear about where the map was to be found. “This box,” she said.

  The only place she hadn’t tried were the sharp corners of the box. She placed her thumbs and fingers on the various four corners and squeezed inward gently, at the same time. Out popped a drawer with a soft click.

  She gasped, smiling at her cleverness.

  “A regular Nancy Drew. Thank you Aunt Clary.”

  Nestled in the center of the drawer was a piece of linen stationary carefully folded in half. She gingerly reached in with her thumb and forefinger carefully sliding it out, still half expecting an alarm to go off. Most of Amy’s imagination was created by movies and TV and she was always expecting something fabulously dangerous to happen. It never did on a regular basis.

  She unfolded the piece of paper and walked closer to the window to get more light, squeezing herself behind the heavy wooden drape. On the piece of paper was a carefully handwritten list of names numbered one through seven with coordinates for latitude and longitude.

  “Thank goodness for apps,” said Amy, as she took a picture of the page. She carefully folded the paper back up and crossed the room, putting it back in the drawer and slid the drawer shut with the same soft click.

  “Just like Mission Impossible, Amy style,” she said, pumping the air with her fist.

  She ate lunch as usual in the kitchen, munching on her Cheetos, being careful to lick each fingertip after each Cheetos so she didn’t leave a mark anywhere. Natalie came through the kitchen once and took a hard look at her but didn’t say a word. It was hard to know what was upsetting her now, there was a perpetual invisible list.

  Amy had decided to give up on trying to be friends with her and smacked her lips loudly, imitating her, knowing that would drive Natalie out of the kitchen that much faster. Worked like a charm.

  At the last moment, just before she was about to leave Mr. Fallow’s side she decided to ask him a question. He had been in and out of consciousness all day a
nd didn’t seem to hear her reading to him but she was going to give it a try. This is the only time she would have risked asking and for all she knew, by tomorrow he would be his old dying self again and she wouldn’t have the courage to ask. Not this question.

  “Do you have any regrets?” she asked, leaning close to his ear to say it, so that no one who might be creeping right outside the door would hear her.

  She had grown used to having enough money to barely pay the bills and wasn’t ready to give up on a job or a gruesome treasure, wherever this was leading.

  Mr. Fallow slowly opened his eyes and cocked his head slightly to the side to get a better look at her. Amy froze right where she was, wondering if she’d gone too far at last, their eyes only inches apart.

  “I did the best I could, given the circumstances,” he said. “Regrets are worthless. It’s a weak man’s way of saying you would’ve done it differently. I’ve made peace with this as best I can and I know I could not have done anything differently, so why bother.”

  He took one last long look into her eyes and turned his head back, closing his eyes.

  Amy felt the hair stand up on her arms and her breath caught in her chest. “I do not have a good feeling about this,” she said.

  She waited that night until she had driven home and was safely inside of her apartment before she took out her phone and used the app to determine where the latitude and longitude landed. The app gave her detailed directions from right where she stood that led to the middle of the nature preserve on the far side of town. She got the heavy silver flashlight her father insisted on buying her and went next door to offer to take her elderly neighbor’s old brown Labrador for a walk. The old woman would never realize they went for a drive before they went for a walk and even though the dog was old, it would be hard to tell he was useless protection in the waning light.

  Besides, having the dog with her made her feel better.

  The app on her phone spoke to her as she drove across town, giving her directions in a friendly female British voice. It helped calm her nerves. “You know this could be nothing,” she said, half hoping it was leading nowhere, and half hoping it was the start of an even better adventure. “First adventure that actually turned into something,” she said. It was about time.

  She parked the car in the empty parking lot and ignored the sign that said closed at sunset, putting the leash on the dog and pulling him out of the car behind her, as she held up her phone to look at the map. There was a quarter-mile left to the destination that amounted to a walk deep into the woods. To the left was a well thought out gravel path for hikers and joggers but the small red ball on the map on her phone was clearly pointing in a different direction.

  She looked down at the old sneakers she was wearing for this part of the enterprise and decided these would have to do.

  “Come on,” she said, turning on the flashlight. The dog lumbered forward, dutifully following her. They set off into the woods, as Amy pushed away branches and stepped over logs. “What would you hide out here?” she asked. “Rich people do some weird shit.”

  Her toe hit a root and she stumbled forward knocking into an old oak, scratching her arm but it stopped her from falling all the way to the ground. The dog didn’t seem to notice, beyond stopping and waiting for to gather herself and start moving again.

  They got within a few feet of the exact latitude and longitude as the red ball on the phone started pulsing.

  In the end, it wasn’t Amy who discovered the secret that the forest was holding. It was the old dog, who seemed to pick up on a scent and started digging. At first, he pawed gently at the ground, turning over the top layer of dirt.

  “What you doing?”

  The dog ignored her and started digging more furiously, his face disappearing into the hole. Amy pulled on the leash trying to get him to stop, while still holding onto her phone, wondering what made these woods so special.

  “Maybe it’s a land deal. Maybe he just owns this piece of property and refuses to sell it. It could be that simple,” she said, remembering what Mr. Fallow had said about regrets.

  She was having a few, adding up the scratch on her arm, the dirt on her shoes and the stubborn dog who refused to listen.

  Suddenly, the dog started barking and jumping back, quickly stepping forward again to take another look at what he could see or smell, and repeating the whole thing all over again.

  “You still have some life left in you, old girl,” said Amy, as she swung the flashlight around and pointed it into the hole the dog had made. Clearly outlined in the dirt were the delicate bones of a human hand.

  “This is not good,” said Amy, gasping. The flashlight shook in her hand, making the light tremble across the bones.

  The dog pulled on the leash in a different direction so hard that Amy had to take a few steps forward. Before she could stop her, the dog was digging again with an intensified ferocity.

  “No,” said Amy, softly. The dog managed to dig down at least a foot before starting the barking all over again.

  Amy took a few deep breaths before she could get herself to shine the flashlight into the new hole, hoping it was going to be an old dead squirrel or a partially chewed rabbit. That would be bad enough and she would have nightmares for days about it, but it would be better than what she saw.

  The top half of a human skull stared back at her, the empty sockets stuffed with dirt. Before she had a chance to catch her breath, the dog pulled away from her again, the leash slipping out of her hand. He ran to an entirely new spot and repeated the exercise. It happened two more times before he slowed down. Even then, Amy wasn’t sure if it was because of his age, and not because there wasn’t more to be found.

  By now, the sun had completely set and the woods were so dark that without the flashlight Amy had difficulty making out her hand in front of her face. She pulled the dog closer to her feeling his warmth against her leg, his body heavily panting.

  “This is going to take a lot of explaining,” she said, standing in the center, surrounded by the holes.

  She picked her way carefully through the woods, back in the general direction of the car, hoping that in her state of mind she wasn’t accidentally walking further into the woods. She felt an enormous sense of relief and realized she had been holding her breath when she got close enough to the edge to see the one streetlight that stood over the parking lot.

  “Thank God,” she said, with a shudder.

  She got the old dog into the passenger side of the car, shut the door and came around to her side opening the door and sitting down, trying to get a better sense of what to do next. She saw the options as calling her parents and quickly ditched that one. Somehow, they would blame her and would bring lawyers into it and things would get quickly out of hand.

  “They are already,” she said, chewing on her lip.

  Telling Natalie was out of the question, too. This explained all her odd behavior. “Distant cousin, what do you know? Another shudder passed through her.

  “Accomplices,” said Amy, to the dog. “Money will buy you a lot of things like a good shovel and a few people willing to do the dirty work.”

  Her list of who she could call was short. She didn’t really have any lifelong friends left in town. Most of them had moved on to bigger cities. She stared at her phone, knowing what she had to do and wondering how this was going to change her life.

  She glanced back at the old dog and said, “I think I just got myself fired,” letting out a small halfhearted laugh. She dialed nine-one-one, and held the phone up to her ear, swallowing the bile that had suddenly risen in her throat.

  “People are dead and buried in the forest,” she said, with more drama than she had intended.

  “What?” The operator was already on the line, startling Amy. “Who’s dead, ma’am? Are you in danger?”

  “Huh? No, well, hopefully not.” Amy was scrupulously honest, which often got her into some kind of mess with someone’s hurt feelings. This level of trouble
was a new high, though. “But there are dead bodies everywhere,” she blurted out. “I think I found three or four so far,” she said.

  She was about to add that the dog had really found the bodies, wanting to keep the facts straight. It would be important to be as honest as possible. But the operator cut her off before she could say anything else.

  The operator was just interested in the basic facts. What was her name, what was her phone number, what was her address and where exactly was she?

  “Sit in your car and lock your doors. Do not move until the police arrive. You’ll see the red and blue lights flashing when they get there. Will you be able to show them what you found?”

  “Definitely. I have an app,” said Amy, her hands beginning to shake. “There are dead bodies in the forest,” she said, as it started to sink in exactly what she had found, and what it all meant. She dashed out of the car shutting it behind her and ran to the edge of the woods, where she threw up her lunch from earlier.

  She spit a couple of times on the ground trying to get the taste of regurgitated food out of her mouth before getting back in the car, shutting the door and locking it behind her. She put one hand on the dog trying to steady herself and the other hand on the wheel as she waited for the blue and red lights to pull up behind her.

  It wasn’t long before one loan car showed up and a police officer ambled out of the car, slowly walking over to her window, knocking on it with his flashlight.

  “So, you want to show me what you found?” asked the officer in a businesslike tone that still betrayed that he didn’t expect to believe her.

  Amy slowly got out of the car, bringing her own flashlight.

  “Have you been drinking?” asked the officer.

  “No I have not.”

  “Well, then you want to tell me what brings you out here at this time of night digging through the woods?” he asked, as he started to trudge through the woods. Amy left the dog in the car with the window cracked.