A Summer with the Dead

by Sherry Decker

  “Got your own money, huh?”

  “No, but I can get a job when it comes time.”

  “I think you’re lying, Maya. I think your crazy Aunt Elly is leaving you a fortune and you just don’t want to share it with me. I’m being generous though. I’m willing to share my inheritance with you.”

  Maya smirked. “You think Aunt Elly has more than your mother? Didn’t you tell me your mother was worth a couple million?”

  “Yeah. How much is Elly worth?”

  “I have no idea and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it matters. If I sign the divorce papers now, you’ll get nothing.”

  “Sign the papers, Bens. Sign away,” Maya said. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

  Benson studied the kitchen. “Old places like this often had safes built into the walls, or even under the floor somewhere.”

  “I’ve been here since April, cleaning and scrubbing and painting, and I haven’t come across any safes. Or money. Or jewelry. Aunt Elly is just an old farmer and she’s ready to sell this place and move into a retirement home. I agreed to help her. End of story, Bens.”

  “Oh, it’s here somewhere. I guarantee you. It’s in the attic, a back bedroom … the basement.”

  “There’s nothing in the basement.”

  “Is that so? You said that awfully quick.”

  “There’s nothing of value in the basement. The Maytag washer and dryer are twenty years old. The furnace is five. And that’s it. That’s all that’s down there.”

  “What about the attic?”

  “The attic is interesting. Elly and Harlan housed farmhands up there during cold weather back in the fifties, because the bunkhouse was already rotten and falling apart. Want to see the attic? We’ll have to tiptoe through Elly’s bedroom while she’s napping, though.”

  “Nah. I’m more curious about the basement.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re so determined to keep me out of it.”

  “No, I’m not. Really. It’s just that there’s nothing down there.”

  Benson rose to his feet and drained the last of his water. He set the glass on the counter and pointed to the yellow door. “That’s it, right?”

  “Don’t go down there, Benson. I promise, there’s nothing down there you’d want to see.” Maya stepped toward the yellow door, blocking Benson’s path.

  Benson grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. He shoved her backwards and she fell against the front of the cook stove, landing hard. He twisted the black enamel doorknob. He tugged. The door rattled but refused to open.

  “It’s locked,” Maya said. “Just turn the t-shaped lock.” She massaged her elbow where it had struck the oven handle.

  The lock clicked and Benson opened the door.

  “Is there a light?” he asked.

  “To the right.” Maya pushed herself to her feet as the basement light flashed on and the eight steps appeared. The top step was ecru with dust. The bottom step was half hidden in charcoal shadows.

  “Coming?” Benson asked.

  Maya shook her head.

  Benson descended the stairs and halted beside the Maytag washer and dryer. He leaned down, palms on thighs, peering into the shadows. “Dirt floor. It’s probably buried somewhere down here,” he said. “Look at all the nice, dry, fluffy dirt.”

  “There’s a shovel, over by the furnace,” Maya said.

  Benson strode down the concrete path, beyond the glow of the single lightbulb. She closed the door. Locked it.

  “Yes, I come from a long line of loonies.” Maya counted down from ten.

  “Maya!” Footsteps pounded up the basement steps. “Maya!”

  “I’m right here in the kitchen, Bens.”

  The black enameled doorknob twisted. The old yellow door rattled in its frame. “Open the door! There’s … something down here.” His voice sounded more like a squeal. “Let me out.”

  “What did you find … a safe full of money?”

  “Maya! Open the door!”

  Maya pictured the top step and Benson standing there, pressed against the door. She pictured something gray moving in the shadows below, something squirming in those shadows, inching toward the steps. Something pale. Something bizarre—an undulating pile of human parts—one arm where a leg should be, the other arm around a headless neck like a flesh scarf, one severed leg facing backward, the head carried in one bloodless hand, blond hair streaked with black, rancid blood, the scalp pulling away from the skull like cheap plastic, the eye sockets—round holes filled with pus.

  “A thing. A man … a thing,” Benson stuttered.

  “Make up your mind, Bens. A thing or a man?”

  “Open the door!” Benson screamed.

  Two seconds passed.

  “Maya!” Benson shouted. “He’s … coming up the stairs.”

  “You said Elly and I were loonies, but you’re the one who sees a thing in the basement.”

  Benson pounded on the kitchen door and then he screamed her name one last time.

  “Ma-ya!”

  Maya mopped up the little puddle that had formed on the linoleum in front of the yellow door. One small island of ice slid down and she caught it with a paper towel and threw the towel into the garbage under the sink.

  “Is someone here?” Elly stood in the entrance to the dining room. “I thought I heard talking.”

  “Benson. He went down into the basement, convinced he’d find a safe full of money.”

  “I would like to have met him,” Elly said. “You know … to put a face to the name. Too late now though, right?”

  “Yes, I’m pretty sure it is.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “SHERIFF WIMPLE IS ON his way over,” Elly said. “He’s said he has something he wants to discuss with me. I invited him to stay for dinner, but he said no. Guess he doesn’t want to socialize with a suspect.”

  “I’m no longer a suspect,” Maya said. “They decided those skeletons had been there since before I was born.”

  Elly said, “I’m the suspect.”

  “He said that?”

  “No, but I could tell by his voice. He said he has a warrant to search this place. We both know what that means.”

  “That depends on what they’re looking for.”

  “Doesn’t matter what they’re look for. There’s a fifty-year-old corpse inside a freezer, buried in the basement along with the skeletons of three more people buried nearby—not very deep either.”

  “What should we do?”

  “There’s no time to do anything, Maya. If I was going to do something, I should have done it fifty years ago.”

  “What about Angel’s Cadillac in the old barn?” Maya asked.

  Elly’s eyes widened. “You know about that?”

  “Coty found it. I mean Wayne. He showed me. There’s a lot of old blood in that car.”

  “I don’t know why I kept Angel’s car. I didn’t need to. I’ve got Angel for a trophy, down in the basement.”

  “Elly?”

  “Yes, baby girl?”

  “You’d better tell me about Danny,” Maya said.

  Elly wore a defeated expression. She finally nodded and said, “Never even knew the boy’s name. Fritz picked him up out there on the county road and brought him to help make that last delivery. Poor kid. Fritz never intended to pay him.”

  “But that was only six months ago. You said you weren’t in the business anymore.”

  “I wasn’t, and Fritz knew it, too. He showed up here anyway, because he had a spare in his trunk and couldn’t find a place to get rid of it. He said he crossed the Agate Pass Bridge at 2:00 AM and thought he’d have time to toss the body over, but every time he opened the trunk, headlights appeared. One guy even stopped and asked if Fritz was having car trouble. So Fritz drove over the Hood Canal Bridge and pulled over to the side, but a Coast Guard boat pulled up and aimed a bright light on him, so Fritz drove on up here to Gracev
ille. As it turns out, the body was a big one. Some guy who was swelling up from an entire week in the trunk. It took all three of us to drag him out.”

  “Where?” Maya asked.

  “You mean, where’d I bury him?”

  Maya nodded.

  “Right where Coty’s been parking his truck. Fritz and that kid, Danny, moved three cord of wood and I dug a hole with the backhoe. We rolled the body bag into the hole, spread the dirt back over him and restacked the wood over the grave. Fritz told the kid he’d give him a ride into town and they left while I finished restacking the woodpile. By the time I got back to the house, Fritz had suffocated that boy with a plastic bag. The kid was on the landing upstairs. I guess he had tried running through the house to get away from Fritz, but Fritz caught him. Take the kid with you, I said. But Fritz said, I make deliveries here. I don’t take deliveries here.”

  “So you buried Danny?”

  Elly nodded. “I tried to revive him first because I’ve always felt bad about that woman in the basement. Didn’t want another one like her. And I thought the boy was breathing at first, but then I realized he wasn’t. I waited until I knew for sure he was dead.”

  “Where is he? Where is Danny?”

  “He’s in–”

  Sheriff Wimple’s car rolled to a stop outside the kitchen. His engine was already off.

  “Well …” Elly said. “He sort of snuck up on us, didn’t he?”

  Sheriff Wimple stood in the open door. “Hello Sheriff,” Elly said. “Come on in.”

  “Here’s the warrant.” The sheriff dropped an envelope on the kitchen counter.

  “What is it you’re searching for?” Maya asked.

  “Ask your aunt,” he said.

  Coty appeared behind the sheriff. “My nephew, that’s what,” he said. “He’s here somewhere, isn’t he, Elly?”

  Elly stared at Coty for a long minute and then turned her gaze out the window. “Search all you want, fellas.”

  “Dammit, Coty. She was just about to tell me.”

  “She’s been ‘about to tell you’ for three months now. I’m done waiting.”

  “What can you tell me about that forty-two Ford in the pond?” Sheriff Wimple asked.

  “Which pond?” Maya asked. “There are several.”

  “Ms. Pederson, we checked your record out previously and you were cleared of doing any wrongdoing, but don’t try to protect your aunt by lying or playing dumb. Don’t involve yourself with Elly’s activities or you could find yourself in a real mess,” the sheriff said.

  Elly said, “Maya has done nothing wrong, sheriff. Nothing.”

  Coty held the bottle of Luminol in one hand and the black light in the other. He and the sheriff crossed into the dining room.

  “Distract them, Maya,” Elly whispered.

  “How?”

  “Follow them. Pester them with questions. I just need a few minutes.”

  Maya leaned against the entrance to the dining room. The top surface of the dining table glowed blue. “This house is over a hundred years old. How can you tell if blood is old or new?” she asked.

  “Forensics will know,” Sheriff Wimple said.

  “Well then, let’s check that spot in the skylight room again, Coty,” Maya said. “The one right up against the wood paneling. Remember?” Maya hurried through the living room and around into the skylight room. As she had hoped, they followed. She pointed to the spot on the hardwood floor. “Right there.”

  Coty nodded. “Yeah, but that wasn’t much blood.”

  “No, but this room is relatively new. So the blood has to be new too. Samples from here can be compared to samples from other places in the house, right Sheriff?” Maya said.

  “She’s right,” Sheriff Wimple said.

  Coty sprayed the spot and under the black light, a spatter glowed blue.

  “Where’s your aunt?” Sheriff Wimple asked. He hurried back into the living room and around through the pantry. “She’s not in the kitchen. Where did she go?”

  Maya shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in the skylight room with you guys.”

  Coty unlocked the basement door and shouted down the stairs. “Elly? Elly!”

  Sheriff Wimple headed upstairs. His footsteps on the wood floors revealed his hurried travels through the second floor, room after room. His footsteps returned to the top of the stairs. “How do we get into the attic?” he shouted.

  “Through a ceiling trap door in Elly’s closet,” Maya shouted back. “I can show you.” When she reached the top of the stairs she found the sheriff already inside Elly’s closet. “I doubt she’s up there, Sheriff. I don’t think she can handle the folding stairs by herself anymore,” Maya said. “She’ s got a bad back, you know. She hasn’t been out of the hospital that long.” Maya was surprised at how easy it was to lie.

  “I’ve spoken with Dr. Framish. He seems convinced she’s capable of many things.” Sheriff Wimple strode to the window and shoved the lace curtain aside. “Your aunt is up there on the hill! Hell! She’s setting fire to the barn!”

  Maya peered over the sheriff’s shoulder. Flames were already thirty feet high and black smoke mushroomed into the sky. “Is she destroying evidence up there?” the sheriff asked.

  “You keep asking questions, Sheriff. Again, how would I know? I’ve been cleaning and scrubbing and painting for three months now, not searching for evidence.”

  “I just phoned the fire department.” Coty stood in Elly’s open bedroom door. “That’s where the old Cadillac is, in that barn, Sheriff!”

  “How long have you known about the car?” Sheriff Wimple asked.

  “Who, me?” Maya asked. “Coty showed me the car a few days ago. Why don’t you ask Coty?”

  “Actually, I was asking Mr. Matheson,” Sheriff Wimple said. Coty stepped into the room.

  “Maya, you said you knew it was old blood. Fifty years, you said.”

  “You took me to the barn, Coty, because you said you had seen a ghost there, back in February. The car was secondary. That’s all I know, sheriff.”

  “A ghost?” Sheriff Wimple fixed critical eyes on Coty. “You didn’t say anything about seeing ghosts, Mr. Matheson.”

  “Ghost. Singular,” Coty said. “Doesn’t matter, does it? I discovered the Caddy, recognized the bloodstains, and then saw something unexplainable. It doesn’t change the fact that there’s a bloodstained car up there and it’s likely a crime scene.”

  “Ghosts. Plural,” Maya said. “You also saw your nephew’s ghost in the upstairs hall.”

  “Aw hell,” Sheriff Wimple said. “Your testimony won’t hold water in court if the defense attorney gets hold of that.”

  A sound like coyotes became sirens as they got closer. Maya headed downstairs to the kitchen, followed by Coty and Sheriff Wimple. Elly strode in through the back door at the same time.

  “Who left the basement door open?” Elly said.

  Maya’s mouth went dry at the sight of the yellow door. It stood wide open and the black air of the basement yawned wide within the frame. Had Angel escaped this time?

  Elly closed the basement door and turned the little t-shaped lock.

  The sirens grew louder as two fire engines crossed the stream and the bridge and started up the driveway toward the house.

  “Well,” Elly muttered. “Look at that. The old bridge held more than I thought it could.”

  “What’s in the basement?” Sheriff Wimple asked.

  “Nothing, as far as I know,” Coty said. “I’ve been down there many times and never saw anything out of the ordinary.”

  “We’ll check it out later.” Sheriff Wimple said as the two fire engines rolled by and up the grassy track to the barn.

  The barn was aglow by then, a raging framework of ancient beams and timbers engulfed in flames. The roof collapsed and sparks and glowing ash exploded into the air. A boiling column of gray smoke rolled upward, higher that the tops of the tallest trees.

  “She used an accelerant,” Sherif
f Wimple said. “That’s a damn hot fire. Won’t be any bloodstains left to test. But you said it’s in the house that we’d likely find your nephew’s remains, right?”

  Coty nodded. “Upstairs in the hallway. At the far end.”

  “Don’t leave this house again, Ms. Pederson,” Sheriff Wimple said. He pointed directly at Elly.

  Elly’s smile was as sweet as a child’s. “I don’t plan to, Sheriff. Did I ever mention, I voted for you?”

  A county car appeared outside the door. It halted beside the sheriff’s vehicle. Two officers climbed out.

  “Elly Pederson is under arrest for obstruction of justice. One of you men stay here and keep an eye on her. The other, come with me.” Sheriff Wimple headed back through the dining room toward the stairs. Coty hurried with them.

  “Destruction of what evidence, Sheriff?” Maya asked.

  “The barn. The old Cadillac. The blood.”

  “All you have is Coty’s story. There’s no proof there was blood, and there’s no crime in storing an old friend’s Cadillac in your barn, is there? Elly told me an old friend stored it there, years ago.”

  “You wait here with your aunt, Ms. Pederson.” Sheriff Wimple nodded at the young officer. “Make certain the younger Pederson remains in the kitchen with the older Pederson.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Sheriff Wimple, Coty, and one young officer, climbed the stairs, rounded the first landing and headed toward the second floor.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE I KISSED Coty,” Maya said. “He lied to me.”

  “Ahh, don’t be angry with Coty, Maya,” Elly said. “He’s searching for his nephew. Can we blame him for wanting to find out everything he can?”

  Maya stared at Elly. “That’s very open minded of you, since you’re the only one who knows anything about Danny.”

  “But I understand how Coty feels,” Elly said. “That’s his blood kin who’s missing.”

  “It’s noon. That’s when Danny is usually in the hallway. There is a chance they’ll find what they’re looking for upstairs.”

  “They won’t find anything upstairs.” Elly lifted the teakettle and turned on the faucet. She smiled at the police officer. “Young man, would you care for some herbal tea? My niece and I always have some around noon.”