Ashes and Bones (19 page)

So I pointed out that I could do the afternoon’s work by myself, gratis, if Meg got her day, with a “friends of the historical society discount,” of, say, twenty percent. If anything of importance came up, I’d be back with a full crew, at the usual rates.

Bray twitched nervously as he tried to recall my reports about what might be located on that section of the property. He quickly realized it was a good bet, hemmed and hawed
and allowed that he might be able to see his way clear to fifteen percent.

And I allowed as that would be fine. Of course, I was taking a big risk, I’d pointed out, by wedging this last bit of work into my schedule, I could put the finish dates behind on a number of projects he’d asked me to do on other properties. “The work at the Crane Farm, for example,” I said, “after all your hard work getting the permits from the city, the state, lining up the contractors, the grand opening…I’d hate to think that I would impede that by taking on this other work.” I looked him straight in the eye. “And I know you would never dream of doing that work without an archaeologist.”

“But…delay that project?” he said. “We can’t, you couldn’t…” Bray twitched again, then his eyes narrowed. It took a weasel to recognize a weasel’s tricks, but he got the message. “But it would be just one day…”

“One afternoon,” I corrected. “Plus my time to do the artifacts and report.”

“One afternoon isn’t so much. And if it was understood…between us…that this sort of arrangement…was just for this once…maybe you could work it out?”

“Well…I could only do this kind of favor once. Just for you.” Damn straight; there was no way he was getting any other freebies from me. This was a special deal.

And so I found myself outside on a gorgeous afternoon, watching over the shoulders of the alarm installers. Every once and a while, I’d stop them, and noted what was there when I saw a bottle or sherd poking out of the ground, but luckily, as I’d suspected, there were no features, no unmixed stratigraphy. Under the grass mat, there was a little topsoil that was probably put down in the sixties when the site was turned into a tourist attraction, and then debris from the widening of the road about the same time.

Once I stopped them; there appeared to be an assemblage, a cache, of artifact fragments clustered together. The
excavators, not thrilled with my presence, had soon learned that I wasn’t automatically going to cause trouble, and were grateful for the twenty-minute break they got, on the clock, while I took a few quick measurements and a photo, just in case. It turned out to be a late-nineteenth-century flowerpot that had landed in a divot in the pathway alongside the house; the fragments on the bottom were smaller and closer together, those on top were larger and scattered, and some of them seemed to be broken in situ. I looked up and saw that we were almost directly under a window and envisioned the scene: A strong wind or a careless gesture knocked the pot off the windowsill, it fell beside the house on a narrow pathway between the house and the fence that delineated the street that wasn’t often used at the time. Someone walked past—no, better yet, make it a kid skinny enough to squeeze through the narrow space, a game of hide and seek—and stepped on the larger surviving fragments, breaking them in place. The pot is left there because it wasn’t in the way, wasn’t noticeable, or perhaps it was left because it filled in a low space in the pathway.

I scraped away the soil around the shards with my trowel, enjoying the ringing noise of metal on rocky soil, the smell of the dirt, and satisfied myself that there was nothing else going on. I wrote down my notes, got the guys back to work, and we were finished an hour later. It was actually a lot of fun to be there by myself, doing the work myself, building my own stories from the evidence. I had no other demands on me except to do what I did best. The noise of the powered entrenching tool aside—and it was an earsplitting racket—just helped hide me in my own blissful little world, which was more precious than ever. Never doubt the benefits of denial.

It even had the benefit of annoying Claire Bellamy across the street, who’d been a thorn in my side before this. Bray had straightened her out—I had no idea how—and she no longer protested my every move on the site. When I saw her glowering at me, I waved to her, shrugged, and held my hand
up to my ears, shaking my head. We’d be done soon enough and then she and her pampered dogs could return to their carefully considered lifestyles. The dogs, Monet and Matisse, were giant standard poodles, black as coal and possessed of sinister demeanors. I was pretty sure they had it out for me, though Bucky assured me that they were just big intelligent dogs with too little to keep them amused.

I finished up, and was surprised to see that the alarm guys were packing it in for the day. Pikers. I could have gone on for hours, even in an area as unpromising as this, the dirt smelled so good.

I was delighted to find that my stomach was growling. I was really hungry, for the first time in what felt like weeks. To hell with Brian’s lectures about fast food: besides, the entire time we were in San Diego we were running from Jack in the Box to Rubio’s, all in the name of recapturing his California junk-food fantasies. And his mother cooked like a dream, so this made even less sense to me.

I was hungry, and by God, I was going to celebrate that fact with fries and a Big Mac.

I snaked through the drive-through, got my order, and pulled over. Wondering briefly what the guy at the window would have said if I’d tried to order it “animal style” the way Brian did at In-N-Out, I opened the box the way that Indiana Jones might have opened the Ark, with awe and reverence. The smell almost made me weep—it was late enough in the day that they’d had to make the burger fresh, and the grease was still sizzling. I took a big bite, feeling the lettuce and sauce squish out the back of the sandwich and onto my jeans. I didn’t care, grabbed a fistful of fries, scooped up the sauce, and jammed them in my mouth. Mmmm-mmm, I was humming along as I munched, and the old prayer came back to me: “Some would eat, and have no meat, and some can’t eat that have it. But we have meat, and we can eat, and so the Lord be thanked.” I swallowed a big sip of Coke and hiccupped, giggling to myself.

My cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen—so much more high tech than my home phones—and I saw a New Hampshire number I didn’t recognize.

Huh. “Hello?”

No one answered.

“Hello? Someone there?”

Still nothing.

Just as I was going to end the call, I heard low laughter. A man’s voice, I was willing to bet. The skin crawled along my back.

“Look, I don’t know who this is, but the police are involved, they’re looking for you, don’t—”

I knew as soon as the words left my lips how inane I sounded. The laughter didn’t stop, and cold, I finally found the “end call” button. I pressed the call log, found that the caller’s name was withheld.

The sight of the food on my lap, the smell of the salt and grease, made my stomach contract. The thought of actually eating was now revolting. I bundled it up, got out of the car, and threw out the remainder, then rolled down all of the windows to get the smell out faster.

I had to give my old ex Duncan a call to find out how the weather was in New Hampshire and just how badly he’d taken the loss of the job he blamed me for.

I drove home in a haze, climbed to my office, my good mood blown. I found my ASAA phone directory and called Duncan.

“Hello?”

“Duncan, it’s Emma Fielding.”

There was a long pause. “Hello, Emma,” he said cautiously.

“So just how big a grudge are you holding against me?”

“Nice to hear from you, too. What the hell’s your problem now?”

“I want to know just how bad you’re feeling against me. Because I didn’t give you that letter. You didn’t get the job.”

“Damn, you think well of yourself. I got a raft of letters, from scholars who…how shall I put this? Have a lot more pull in the field than you do. I decided not to take the job because it wasn’t a good fit.”

That was a lie, I was sure of it. “Still. You don’t like it when things don’t go your way.”

“Can you name one person who does like it when things don’t go their way?”

“So what’s the deal with you and Noreen McAllister? Why is she lurking around Caldwell College?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ask Noreen. If you haven’t got anything important to discuss—”

“Oh, trust me when I say this is important. You’re not having an affair with her?”

“That is none of your damned business.”

“Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me.”

“As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I’m not, not that it’s any of your business, either. What’s this all about?”

“And where have you been all summer? Any little trips to Maine or Massachusetts I should know about?”

“I’m going to hang up now. You take care, Emma. And you can look under ‘Psychotherapists’ or ‘Psychologists’ in the yellow pages, okay?”

I hung up before he could. Well, that didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped. Duncan sounded confused, surprised, a lot of things, but not like he’d been expecting my call. Not like he had something to hide.

He was good at concealment, though, there was no one who knew it better than I. I made a few calls to his department and found out he’d been away for days at a time. Couldn’t rule him off the list, but I had nothing else to pin on him either. I clenched my hands, wishing there was something more I could do, anything, to stop feeling so powerless. So off balance. Crazed.

Downstairs, the kitchen screen door slammed; I couldn’t hear it, but I recognized the vibration. After a couple of years,
I’d learned all the creaks, noises, and shudders of the old house and where they were. My computer beeped, and small screen popped up.

“I’m home,”
Brian IM’d.

“K, brd,”
I responded. Okay, I’ll be right down.

“CCOS,”
he typed. “Caution, Cats on Stairs” was a joke with us, after having discovered the hard way that both cats played on the stairs.
“What dinner?”

“Don’t care,”
I typed back.
“Not hungry.”

T
HE DAY OF
M
EG
’
S WEDDING THE
S
ATURDAY BEFORE
Labor Day was gorgeous, sunny, and warm. We were lucky to be down on the lawn overlooking the harbor at the Chandler site. We got there early, about 9:30, ostensibly to help Meg, who’d been on ‘red alert’ for the past week; I wanted to keep an eye on things.

Brian and I had already argued about clothes once that morning, when he’d announced that if he was going to suffer in the heat with a noose and shoes, then I wasn’t allowed to go with dress pants and flats. Now I was wearing a floral print silk dress, vaguely 1930s in appearance with its short sleeves and narrow silhouette. My shoes, strappy sandals, seemed to be made for sitting. I’d thought a pair of flat shoes and trousers would be more serviceable if someone tried something at the wedding, but Brian refused to go if I didn’t wear the dress I’d bought for the occasion.

“So why is it that you’re not more worried about the wedding?” I asked, finally. “Why are you taking it so lightly, when you seem to be so anxious about everything else?”

“Because I’ll be there,” Brian said, as if that made all the sense in the world.

Maybe it did, for him, but it didn’t reassure me all that much. I bit back a hundred logical retorts, and found my purse.

We got there to find Meg had beaten us, and she was in a tizzy. Her dress was exquisite, even more lovely than it had seemed in my office—now that she had the appropriate foundation garments, and stockings now covered the legs that had been unshaved and scratched from fieldwork. Her hair was its usual platinum, but the spikes had been tamed beneath a small headdress, a golden crown of laurel leaves with a short veil. Two stray locks found their way up through the leaves, and the effect was altogether charming. Although she’d taken out her eyebrow ring, her many earrings fluttered festively. Someone had pinned her down and got just enough makeup on her to accent her eyes and yet not make her look like a clown. Meg was stunning, but the effect was ruined by her high color and the dangerous look in her eyes.

“What the hell do you mean, no one’s set up the seats?” Her fiancé, Neal, a good foot taller than she, stepped back under the impact of her words. “All that miserable bastard Bray had to do was to have the groundskeeper open up the shed and set up forty chairs! How hard is that?”

“It’s not hard, I’m sure he’s just late—” he began. Neal looked as though he was about to sweat through his plain black tuxedo, though more anxious about his volatile bride than his approaching vows. But he didn’t look any happier in his tie than Brian did.

Meg wasn’t having it. “Bull! It should have been ready an hour ago.”

I couldn’t help but agree; this seemed like the start of another nasty surprise.

Brian volunteered to check whether the shed was open.

“We’ll get it sorted out,” Dian said. She was in the sleeveless, drop-waist lilac bridesmaid dress, which suited her
dark hair so that she looked even sultrier than she did ordinarily. More baggable than your average bridesmaid, even. Perhaps the corporate world agreed with her, and I realized that she was responsible for Meg’s bachelorette party. I was curious as to what that had been like.

“Yeah, well…” Meg wheeled on her friend, and Dian stepped back, but Neal was already working on containment.

“Hey, Emma,” he said quickly. He began to carefully rub Meg’s shoulders. “Did you have any problems when you got hitched?”

“Well,” I said, “not problems like this. Trust me, this will be a great story tomorrow, Meg, don’t worry about it. But what did happen was my mother got a little crazed, possessed by the same angry, suburban demon that drives the competition for space in the
New York Times
wedding pages. I was about to choke her when my sister took things in hand. Bucky’d come prepared for just this emergency.

“Bucky told our Maternal Parent that she needed to look after herself and eat something. Didn’t she have to pay attention to her blood sugar? Of course, Mother loved the attention, and scarfed down a brownie from the batch that Bucky’d so thoughtfully prepared.”

It was working. Meg was starting to get some of her normal color back, and Neal was grinning. Dian looked as though she wouldn’t bolt just yet.

“I’d thought of having a brownie too, until Bucky gave me a warning look and said something stupid about not wanting me to break out. What she didn’t say, and what you’ve probably already guessed, was that there was a generous helping of hash in the mixture. Ma got so stoned she didn’t know what to do with herself.

“We had to hide the rest of the brownies before the army of aunts showed up, and worse yet, Mother got the munchies: If she’d eaten all the brownies she wanted, we would’ve had to scrape her off the ceiling. I felt like a rat and could have killed Bucky, of course, but I will admit, it improved my life dramatically for the next several hours. It was honestly one
of Mother’s more pleasant moments. By the time the ceremony was over, everyone remarked on how…composed…she was. Like a Zen garden stone.

“Bucky laughed her head off the whole time. Mother keeps pestering us for the recipe. I finally told her that we lost it. But every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, and at all the wakes and weddings, Bucky threatens to rediscover that recipe.”

I checked Meg, who was breathing normally now, and her color was better. “See? It wouldn’t be a wedding without a story.”

“Right,” she said, and she stuck her bouquet into Dian’s hands. “But now I’m going to break into the shed and get the chairs myself.”

“You can’t do that, Meg!” I pleaded. “Your dress! The dirt is still loose where I was working.”

“I’ll take it off, then,” she said, and began reaching for the hem to pull her gown over her head.

“No, wait! We’ll take care of it,” Dian said. “Don’t be an idiot.”

I might have been curious to hear Meg’s retort, but I was suddenly wondering whether we were going to find the groundskeeper in the shed as well….

Brian came around to the side. “The shed’s locked up tight. But it’s not a great lock. If anyone has a Swiss Army knife—?”

I immediately reached into my purse, and at the same time Neal and his best man, his brother Craig, searched their trouser pockets. All three of us simultaneously pulled out our knives.

Brian chivalrously took mine; he felt my hand shaking, and held it tight a moment. “Everything will be fine,” he said. He opened the hacksaw blade. “Trust archaeologists to come armed to a wedding,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Meg, come sit in the car for a minute,” I ordered. “I’ve got some water. Brian’s going to indulge in a spot of B&E, then he, Craig, and I will set up the chairs. What time do your folks get here?”

“Everyone is supposed to arrive in forty-five minutes. Neal’s folks are getting his grandmother and they’ll be right along, too,” Meg said a little dizzily. Neal patted her hand again, but he too looked a little dazed.

“Plenty of time,” I reassured her. “Brian, could you…?”

He leaned over and kissed me. “You take me to the best parties. None of the other husbands get to break into anything. C’mon, Craig.”

I led Meg over to the Jetta and sat her down. She looked like she was going to pass out, so I tried a joke. “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t whip out your knife too, Meg.”

She leaned over, and for a minute, I thought she was going to put her head between her knees to stave off a faint. But then she lifted up her skirt and showed me a tiny white satin holster on her garter. “I just brought the small one with the corkscrew,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d need a hacksaw on my wedding day!” Her face began to crumple.

“And so you don’t,” I said. “We’ve got it under control.”

I made sure she drank some water, then Brian came back. He was sweating and his face was the picture of consternation.

“What’s wrong?” I stood up, believing the worst had come to pass.

“I’m sweating my ba—” He caught himself. “I’m very warm. The shed is open, now, the chairs are there. Em, would you hold my jacket?”

“I’ll help you.” Good; no dead groundskeeper.

“No, you won’t. Not in that dress and shoes. You just cool your heels a minute, and we’ll get it all set up in a jiffy.”

It didn’t take long to do so but the first guests—and the groundskeeper—began to show up as they finished. I was glad for the moment to collect myself after the excitement.

“Everything okay?” Brian was at my side.

“I’m fine,” I said, though my heart refused to stop pounding. “Let’s go get our seats.”

After a short and remarkably pretty ceremony, Meg and Neal were married. We all smiled when the minister asked if anyone had any reason they shouldn’t be married, and there were a few giggles when Meg turned and glowered, daring anyone to speak up. At one point during his vows, he seemed so determined to get it right that Neal began to stammer. He almost stomped his foot, in a gesture more like Meg’s than his own, trying to get hold of himself. Meg stood on tiptoe and kissed him, whispered something in his ear that made him blush and smile. He had no trouble after that. When they were finally pronounced married, their kiss—Meg on tiptoe again, Neal stooping—elicited an “ah” from the guests.

I turned and saw that Brian was looking back at me, the two of us remembering our own wedding day. I leaned over and quietly kissed him on the cheek.

“I love you,” I whispered.

He took my hand, and whispered back, “I love you, too. And you look really, incredibly hot in that dress!”

I laughed and felt my shoulders relax slightly.

People were milling about, drinking champagne while the pictures were taken, and I watched Meg, her four brothers—all taller than Meg and mercilessly bullied by her—and her father as they posed for the family shots. Although her father was in a tuxedo for the wedding, and through the years, Meg had referred to him variously as “the lieutenant,” “Ghenghis,” “the admiral,” “Kaiser,” and “the sarge,” after a short conversation I was finally able to determine that he was probably properly called Colonel Garrity.

But I couldn’t sit still or make polite conversation. I paced about, hoping that locked up chairs were the least of our worries. I scrutinized the guests carefully. My gaze lit on the treeline where we’d discovered a body, several years ago, but I saw nothing there. I knew there was no one in the house, after a quick circuit, and there was no one by the water. That left the road and the trees where someone could come in.

“Here,” Brian said, handing me a glass of champagne. “Settle down, there, killer. You look like a guard dog running the perimeter.”

I nodded. “Yeah, well. Don’t forget, Meg was the one responsible for stopping Tony that night at the Point.”

“Drink the wine, Em. Try to have a good time. I’m here, we’re both keeping our eyes open, it’s okay. I’m going over to see if Meg needs a glass of water or a snack to keep going.”

“She’d probably prefer a beer,” I called after him.

There was so much hubbub at the tree line on one side of the lawn, where the buffet was, that I went over to see if I could help. I found Fee, Fiona Prowse, there, run off her feet. She was so often the picture of the unflappable and competent accountant that I knew she was in trouble—one of her ringlets had escaped its lacquered fastness and stood up like a question mark over the rest of her helmet head. She looked like a character for Dr. Seuss that I had to stop myself from staring.

“Emma…?” She wasn’t greeting me, and not really asking what I wanted. She didn’t trust me, though long ago, I’d kept secrets for her.

“What can I do to help, Fee?” I really didn’t like her, but I would do almost anything to keep the wedding going smoothly. Once in charge of the books, she now also managed the Chandler house property. Something was bothering her, as she hadn’t even gotten the groundskeeper there on time.

“The caterer. She’s got several more trips. Just wait here to answer any questions she might have. And she’s arrived late.”

“Fine, no problem.” As if I knew anything about the plans.

“Excuse me, I’ve got to make a few quick calls.” And she was off, without another word.

I looked at the tables. Beautifully simple, ivory cloths with pale lilac plates that were the colors Meg chose for her “backup,” as she called her bridesmaids, darker purple flowers in simple-to-the-point-of-starkness arrangements that
suggested formality, kept from being flouncy or stuffy, and yet were gorgeous. Meg had succeeded in keeping her wedding from looking like what Bucky had once described as “an explosion at the potpourri factory.”

There was one thing that didn’t match, I noticed. One of the platters didn’t match the others. Pretty enough, white china, but wrapped in plastic wrap and not the little mesh tents, or silver chafing dishes, or plastic containers that the caterer was using. Frowning, I went over to check it out.

I had just picked it up when I heard a sharp voice. “Can I help you?”

A harassed young African-American woman in immaculate chef ’s whites was behind me, setting down a large blue plastic insulated box.

“Uh, I was just…”

“You can’t leave that here, I’ve already discussed the set up with Ms. Garrity, the bride. Perhaps you could keep it at your table; but I don’t have enough space for guest’s dishes.” Her name tag said
CHEF VICTORIA
.

I shook my head. “It’s not mine. I wanted to check it…” Shit! What the hell could I tell her? “I’m worried someone’s trying to hurt the bride.”

She looked at me, her face immobile, clearly assessing my sanity. “Oh?”

“Look, it sounds crazy, but…” I told her briefly about the situation at the site. No reason to go into elaborate detail. “I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for her. I just didn’t want anything to spoil today. This didn’t fit here, but it could be…I dunno. Aunt Minnie’s Swedish meatballs or something. I just don’t want anyone to eat it, until we know for sure.”

She cast an expert eye over the plate. “It looks like phyllo to me. It might be Aunt Melina’s spanikopita, but I don’t want it here, you don’t want it here. I’ll stick it in the hot chest, and when someone squawks, I’ll pull it out, say I was keeping it warm. But only if it looks like Aunt Melina, and not some head case.”