Portrait of Death: Uncovered

by Isabel Wroth

  They were carelessly strewn left and right, the soft dirt clawed back in a surprisingly large hole. I stood there, staring at what I'd uncovered, glad I hadn't taken a sip of coffee or so much as a bite of food. I would have thrown up for sure.

  As it was, I turned away to cover my eyes, sucking in desperate gasps of air as though I could unsee the gruesome sight behind me.

  Callum said my name, his worry and confusion plain as the nose on his face. I pulled my hands down to my mouth, swallowing the bile I could taste at the back of my throat and heaved a ragged breath, pointing a shaking finger behind me.

  “Right there. Reason five hundred and twelve for why I will never risk having a baby.”

  I pushed past him, rushing away from the withered, skeletal hand reaching up through the wet earth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After following me back to the house, Callum brought his parents up to speed on what had happened the night before and what I'd uncovered.

  The four of us agreed the local cops wouldn't be very understanding of my latest episode and decided on our story: Callum and I had gone for a morning walk, found the flower bed disturbed, seen the hand, and called the cops.

  We opted not to say anything about my early morning escapade to Nigel or Helena, so as far as they knew, they'd awoken to a horrible shock, just like the rest of us.

  However, neither of them seemed to buy it that an animal or a person just happened to unearth a body buried in the garden the night after my interview.

  They looked at me like they knew what I’d done, but thankfully didn’t call me out on the omission.

  When they arrived, it took the crime scene techs three hours to carefully unearth the skeleton from the flower beds.

  Sheriff Paul Davidson stood over me. I sat in the den, huddled in a blanket, held up by the edge of the plush couch while he took my statement.

  I didn't have to feign my shock, and thankfully, the Sheriff took most of his cues from Callum, who was calm and collected. Perks of being a homicide detective. Dead bodies came with the territory.

  “Sheriff? We found this with the remains.” A deputy in his starched khaki uniform came in and offered his superior a plastic baggie with a tarnished gold chain inside it.

  After giving the jewelry a look, Sheriff Davidson held it out to me. “You recognize this, Miss Beauchene?”

  I recoiled so far back into the couch I could feel the wood frame dig into my back. Callum saved me from having to explain why there was no way in hell I was touching that baggie.

  “It's okay, baby. The bag will keep you from coming into contact with the victim's biologicals.”

  Callum took the bag from the Sheriff with a nod and sat down beside me, tucking me under his arm while he held the evidence bag in his palm for me to look at.

  My shock became confusion, because yes, I did recognize the necklace and the small gold crucifix.

  A memory surfaced of a bright, smiling face. The young woman with strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes sat at the kitchen counter, working in a notebook and studying hard while she sucked on the crucifix like it was a pacifier.

  “Jo?” Callum prompted gently.

  I nodded woodenly. “It belongs to Katya Siyankova. She was my brother's nanny.”

  Sheriff Davidson tipped his tan cowboy hat higher up his forehead, exposing a receding hairline in such juxtaposition with his thick, shiny beard, and dubiously said,

  “Katya Siyankova. The same nanny your parents claimed had the night off the day your brother drowned?”

  “The same nanny,” I confirmed, feeling a hollowness take over me as I looked out the window in time to watch the dirt-covered remains of a twenty-six-year-old woman be lifted out of the flower bed behind my childhood home.

  Sheriff Davidson's voice turned hard with suspicion. “Without a child to care for, my predecessor told me Katya was sent home to her family in Russia.”

  I could feel him staring at me but was too busy watching the skeleton of a woman I'd cared about be wrapped in garish yellow plastic.

  “I don't know anything about what my parents told the previous sheriff. I was in the care of a psychiatrist upstate, but I do know Katya didn't have any family in Russia. She was an orphan.”

  “Jo, don't look,” Callum murmured, urging me out from under my blanket and into his lap so my view of the garden was blocked.

  Sheriff Davidson finally took a seat, his dark navy eyes steady on my face as we began a whole new line of questioning.

  “Sheriff Robbins handled your brother's case; I was just a lowly deputy then. You good to tell me what you know about Katya?”

  I used the sleeve of my favorite sweater to wipe the stream of confused, frustrated tears from my cheeks.

  “My parents hired her before my brother was born, though I don't remember exactly when. They told me Katya was here to help my mom with the baby.”

  The sheriff's pencil made a consistent scratching sound as he diligently took notes.

  “Would you say she was happy being your brother's nanny?”

  “Yes. She was wonderful with Elliot. I used to sneak into Elliot's nursery late at night, just to listen to Katya sing Russian lullabies while she rocked him to sleep when he fussed or while she fed him his last bottle of the night.

  “The only time I ever saw her upset or frustrated was when she was trying to understand the English she was reading in her school books. Katya wanted to be a nurse.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “The day my parents took me to the nuthouse. I turned around in my seat as we drove away, and Katya was standing on the front stoop with Elliot in her arms.

  “He was crying, like he knew we were never going to see each other again, and Katya looked worried as she tried to get him to wave goodbye to me. It was the last time I saw either of them.”

  I didn't want to fall apart in front of strangers, but the memory of that last day was too much to bear—too crisp and clear, as though it had happened yesterday. So was the anguish that came with my guilt and grief.

  I'd only been ten, and though I knew I'd been truly helpless to do anything, part of me still felt responsible for my brother's death.

  “When was the last time you were here, Jo?” Sheriff Davidson asked gently, plucking a clean square of linen from his pocket to hand to me.

  I took it gratefully, wiping at my eyes and smelling the Old Spice on the cloth. “I left for the city when I was seventeen and haven't been back since.”

  “So why are you here this weekend?”

  “My parents have been in the news quite a lot lately, telling some fantastical tales meant to portray me as a villain in their tragic story. Ms. Helena Markowitz kindly came out of retirement to do my rebuttal interview.”

  Helena came striding into the room, as though she'd been waiting to hear her name, hitched her hip up on the arm of the sofa nearest to me, and confirmed my story.

  “My camera crew and I arrived yesterday morning, we completed our interview around two p.m. yesterday, the crew went home, and aside from the storm, the evening was uneventful.”

  Sheriff Davidson wasn't much older than Callum, but he lacked the hard edge Callum and John both had. He seemed kind, good at his job, but I wondered ...

  “Sheriff, why wouldn’t you release my brother’s case file to John Graham when he called and asked for it?”

  My question made the small-town sheriff look up from his notebook with a confused frown.

  “No one that I know of has called to ask about your brother’s file. Who’s John Graham?”

  “My father,” Callum answered, jerking his chin out the open door. “He’s retired NYPD, just got his PI license and is helping Jo get some answers.

  “He’s called your shop a handful of times and gone twenty rounds with some woman who refused to release anything to anyone without the proper identification.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat and gave a rueful bounce of his brows. “That’ll be Mrs
. Melman. She’s the station secretary and ah ... meticulous about our files.”

  “She’s a damn fire-breathing dragon,” John announced, heading my way with a cup of coffee. “Only reason I finally got the file was cause one of your deputies happened to pick up the phone and was very understanding when I explained why it was in his best interest to keep me from having to come up here and put my boot up his ass.”

  I took the cup, appreciating the gentle stroke of his hand down my hair.

  Leave it to John to find a way to bring some levity into a terrible situation.

  Davidson found it kind of funny too, but not enough to risk laughing out loud. “I'm glad you didn't have to make that trip. I'll tell Mrs. Melman if she gets a call from you again, to play nice. You don't think Elliot Beauchene's death was an accident?”

  John looked to me for direction, I guess because I was sort of his client, and I nodded. The more information we could gather about what had happened all those years ago, the better.

  To Davidson, John bluntly said, “No. Don't know how things work around here, and no disrespect to your office, but if someone slid that ten-page case file across my desk while I was still on active duty and said ‘case closed,’ I'd have ripped that person a new one.

  “It's about six hundred yards from the kitchen door to the fountain. That's a hell of a long way for a baby to crawl—over gravel and dirt—to climb up into a fountain.

  “The onesie Elliot had on would have been filthy from top to bottom, and the water in the fountain isn't churning around in there any faster than a slow bubble.

  “It wouldn't have washed the dirt off, and the single photo of the boy in that file? The pajamas were clean. Not one speck of dirt on them.”

  This was news to me, and I was relieved to see the flare of anger cross Davidson's face.

  He pulled his hand down over his mouth, giving the six inches of his smooth beard an agitated tug.

  “I was brand new to the department when that call came in. Didn't like the way it all went down, but I was just a rookie, what the hell did I know?

  “Your brother's death, Miss Beauchene, and that skeleton the techs just pulled out of your flower beds aside, the worst cases we get up here are vandalism from tourists at the Airbnb's, the occasional run-in with wildlife getting into garbage cans, and Old Man Harvey running through town in his wife's lingerie shouting about witches and the latest alien invasion.”

  “That sounds like fun,” Helena commented wryly.

  Sheriff Davidson gave a bark of humorless laughter.

  “Oodles. Look, I'm not ashamed to say I don't have experience with homicide. I had to call in a team of techs from two counties over, so I wouldn't mind some insight from both of you.”

  He nodded to Callum and John, which seemed to surprise both the Grahams.

  I guess the rumors about the lack of cooperation between different departments was true, but Davidson seemed eager to put his pride on the sidelines in favor of solving Katya’s murder.

  It made me like him a little bit.

  But the fear of being left alone in a house that suddenly seemed to be a magnet for murder overwhelmed me. I didn't want Callum to leave, and I didn't care how weak or insecure that made me.

  He must have felt the way I stiffened because he didn't take a finger off of me. “My old man taught me everything I know, all I'd do is get in the way right now.”

  “Kiss ass,” John muttered fondly, openly grinning at his son.

  Callum shrugged, clearly unashamed to be taking care of me. “It's the truth. You have any more questions for Jo, Sheriff?”

  Davidson shook his head, offering me a gentle smile. “No, if I do, I have your number.”

  “Retirement is boring,” Helena announced, hopping up with the agility of a woman half her age to purposefully stride from the room.

  Callum snorted a soft laugh, turning his head to press a kiss to my temple. “You ready to get the hell out of here?”

  “Yes.”

  “ALL I DO IS BRING TROUBLE and death into your life.”

  My body felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds as we bumped along the country road toward the main highway.

  With my cheek resting on the cool glass of the car window, I didn't see the beautiful trees, only a blur of color.

  Everything ran together, the gray skies overhead releasing the fat drops of rain promised last night by the weatherman.

  “Baby, I'm a homicide detective. Trouble and death are my life, and you bring a hell of a lot more good shit into it than bad.”

  “You know what I mean.” I sighed, watching the droplets hit the window and slide down like tears. The sky wept, but I didn't shed a single drop.

  I'd felt this way before, drowning in so much feeling my brain simply couldn't take the overload and shut down in an attempt to spare me.

  It would come out in my art, and when others gazed upon the tattered and torn remnants of my soul, they would cry for me.

  I knew myself. I could feel the depression already sinking insidious talons into my flesh, anchoring me to the shadowy recesses of my own despair.

  I would go home, lose myself in my art, eat if Nigel put food in front of me, bathe when I could no longer stand my own stink, sleep like the dead ... I couldn't take Callum down that path with me.

  “If you're about to do something stupid, like try and tell me I'm better off without you, save it. You're in shock, Jo. We'll get through this, so long as you keep your promise.”

  “My promise?”

  When Callum reached over and took my hand, his grip was sure and strong. The numbness receded just long enough for my heart to trip and remind me of the love I felt for him.

  He raised my knuckles to his mouth, kissing each one before pressing the back of my hand to his chest, near his heart, and holding it there.

  “Wherever you are right now, baby, come back to me. I don't care how many bodies you dig up or how much trouble you think you're responsible for bringing my way. I'm not going anywhere. I'm moving in, remember?”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.” Decisive. Resolute. Unwavering.

  My lover was all these things, and he wouldn't give up on me until I made him. I planned on making him but had neither the strength nor the will to do it right now.

  I sighed, letting my head loll back onto the seat, and closed my eyes to avoid looking at his handsome face.

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I didn't want to get up.

  Leaving the warmth and safety of my bed meant facing the new reality that was my life and facing the fact that sweet, beautiful Katya had spent the last twenty years buried in the flower garden of my childhood home.

  Beneath the blankets where Callum tucked me in last night, I was safe. Getting up meant questions I wasn’t prepared to hear the answers to.

  Staring at the ceiling, I pretended there was no reality other than this moment, where I felt warm and safe, but the male voices coming from the other side of the door alerted me to the fact I wasn't alone.

  Callum's familiar timbre reached my ears, and though I couldn't hear the individual words, there was anger and annoyance in his voice.

  Nigel wouldn't have been busting Callum's balls after everything that had happened yesterday, so whoever was out there giving my man a hard time wasn't someone I wanted to deal with right now.

  The tone of confrontation was either personal and had nothing to do with me—or Katya—or it was all about me and the newest round of death-shrouded mystery my curse had unleashed.

  I rolled to my side in an effort to drown out some of the sounds, trying to ignore the demand of my bladder, confused to see my bedside clock read: 6:15 p.m.

  No wonder I have to pee so bad.

  I'd slept hard for over twenty-four hours. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I wasn't so lethargic and depressed as to not get up to pee.

  Throwing back the covers and sitting up felt like a monumental task, and shuffling acros
s the floor was a marathon. I felt mildly better after relieving myself— lighter, at least.

  I paused to look at myself in the mirror, surprised to see a piece of paper taped at eye-level with Callum's familiar scrawl written across it.

  ~I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up, baby. I had to go to work, but soon as I punch out, I'll be back. Text me when you wake up so I know you're alright.

  I love you, Jo.

  Immediately, the warmth spread through me, like the feeling of putting on my favorite sweater fresh out of the dryer.

  I hugged the note to my chest and took it to my dresser, slipping it into one of the drawers of my jewelry box to keep when I needed another pick me up.

  I got dressed and left the bubble of safety that was my bedroom in time to hear Callum's red-headed partner let loose an inappropriate comment I'm sure I wasn't supposed to hear.

  “You do not move in with women like Josephine Beauchene. You fuck women like Josephine Beauchene until you get them out of your system, and once you do, you settle down with a normal woman.

  “One who doesn't have a basement filled with pictures of dead people and who won't send your career crashing to the ground with all this psychic bullshit.”

  Up until this point, I'd been on the fence about whether or not I liked Dale Moran.

  The few times our paths had crossed over the last six months, I'd felt ... uncomfortable, like he was smiling to my face and talking trash behind my back.

  I'd brushed it off as general discomfort at having another person who knew my darkest secrets, but now it is confirmed:

  The guy is a dick.

  Hearing him say I was a woman to be fucked out of a man's system was certainly hurtful, but considering the current state of affairs, he wasn't wrong.

  Callum was glaring at his partner with such fury, I was somewhat surprised the two of them hadn’t come to blows.