Just Over The Mountain (9 page)

“I’m behind, but I plan to sell dry-flower wreaths at a booth. Like last year.”

“Is your dad going to sell fresh flowers?” June asked. Justine’s father, Standard Roberts, was the biggest flower grower in the valley. He shipped fresh flowers to flower shops all over the West.

“Same as always.” Sam stepped into the door frame, wiping his hands on a towel. His usually chipper demeanor seemed to be sagging. He simply nodded hello, and June, who had known Sam all her life, knew there was a problem.

“How’s the chemo going, Justine? Have you been feeling okay?”

“Oh, I have my ups and downs, but everything’s okay.”

“What’s the doctor saying?”

“Same old stuff. You know. I’ll just be glad when it’s all behind me.”

“I know you will. Well, how about a nice bouquet for my office. Something with fall colors to get me in the mood.”

“I’ve got something made up in the back. I’ll get it.”

When Justine edged past Sam in the doorway, he barely moved, keeping his eyes connected to June’s, his mouth turned down. It was painful to even look at him, for Sam unsmiling was such a rarity. It meant something devastating. June feared the worst, that treatment wasn’t going well and the cancer was advancing.

Justine brought out a bouquet of yellow and red and brown accented with large maple leaves in fall hues. “Perfect,” June said, her voice well trained in not giving away her concerns. “How much?”

“Twelve?” Justine asked.

“How about fifteen?” June countered.

Justine laughed. “You’re supposed to negotiate me down, June. You’re not doing it right.”

“I’m surprised you’re not out of business, the way you give your beautiful flowers away.”

“I don’t give just anyone the bargains. If it makes you feel any better, Steph Reynolds was in earlier for a centerpiece for that ten-foot dining table of hers and I gouged her good.”

“Well, thank heavens,” June replied, taking the flowers and handing over a five and a ten. “Take care of yourself. If you need anything, Justine…”

“Thanks, June. I’ll be fine.”

June left the flower shop, flirting with ideas about how she’d get Sam alone and ask a few questions. Maybe Elmer could wiggle some information out of him at weekly poker, out of earshot of the others. If the chemo was making Justine extremely ill, there were counteracting drugs, to help her with fatigue and nausea. There was even pharmaceutical marijuana, but she’d have to communicate with Justine’s oncologist. Stoicism, saying everything’s going to be all right and I’ll just be glad when it’s over, is no way to go through cancer treatment.

“June?”

She was almost to the clinic when Sam came up behind her. “Sam! I was just wondering how I was going to get you alone and ask you a few questions about Justine. She’s looking a little peaked. She should tell her oncologist if she’s—”

“She hasn’t been to the oncologist. She’s stopped the chemo.”

June was speechless. This couldn’t be! It was so dangerous. Especially in the case of ovarian cancer, perhaps the most dangerous for a woman. “But Sam, you can’t have let her do that!”

“I didn’t know. She lied about going to the doctor.”

“Oh God. But she doesn’t look so good. She needs to get in right away, let us see what’s wrong.”

“We know what’s wrong, June. Can’t you guess?”

She frowned in confusion. Guess? The woman looked ill!

“Justine is pregnant. She stopped chemo, had her
IUD removed and got pregnant almost immediately. I don’t know that she had even two chemo treatments.”

“But Sam, maybe she’s not pregnant. It was a pregnancy scare that caused John to find the tumor, haven’t you reminded her of that?”

“Believe me,” Sam said tiredly, “it’s hard to know what to do.”

“Let me think about this,” June said. “Let me talk to John. Maybe he’ll have some ideas. But you can’t force treatment on a person, so the options are pretty limited.”

His eyes glistened slightly. “I just hate the thought of being widowed again. So soon after we…” He looked away uncomfortably. “She’s going to kill me when she finds out I told.”

“If she is pregnant, she can’t expect to keep it secret for long,” June said, matter-of-fact. “I don’t think she thought this one through.”

“She didn’t think at all,” Sam said. “It’s like an obsession. She’s driven. Like she needs this more than she needs her own life.”

June touched Sam’s arm in sympathy and commiseration. “I hope she isn’t obliged.”

June put her flowers on the reception counter and Jessie said, “Tom Toopeek called. He said he needs you at the police department at your earliest convenience.”

“Is someone hurt or sick?”

“He wants you to look at some bones, I think he said.”

“Bones? From…?”

“He didn’t say. Can I come?” Jessie asked excitedly.

“You’ll have to ask if Susan will answer the phone. Or even John.”

“John’s not here. He’s gone to the hospital and will be back in an hour, and Susan has gone over to the café. Can’t I put it on the machine? Please?”

June caved. “Sure,” she said, enjoying Jessie’s excitement. “Come along then. We’ll call it on-the-job training.”

“Thanks!”

Jessie was a work in progress. A high-school dropout, she’d taken the job at the clinic to appease her father who insisted that if she wasn’t going to go to school, she had to work full-time. It didn’t take any time at all to see that Jessie was extremely smart; she did the job of five secretaries.

Jessie had a gift for sewing and quirky fashions, so she’d always believed that she’d break into the clothing industry as an avant-garde designer. Her father was an artist, a painter, and Jessie had inherited a beautiful drawing hand and flair for color. But then she’d witnessed some medical treatments and procedures and fallen in love with medicine. Now she was finishing her GED and applying to colleges. She had miles to go, but Jessie wanted to be a doctor.

This discovery had changed her remarkably. Last spring found the girl dressed as a Goth, her head shaved, her lips and nails colored black, pierces all over the place. This fall she was a foxy young lady whose normal hair color was a peachy blond and many of her pierces were no longer in use.

“Do you do this often?” she asked June. “Look at bones?”

“More often than you’d think. People run into old bones in their gardens or cellars and they worry that they’ve stumbled upon some hidden human grave, but the remains are almost always those of an animal. A big dog, a deer. Even a horse or cow.”

“Can’t they tell by the skull?”

“If it’s been a long time and the bones get separated, they can’t.”

The police department was located at the end of the block in a small, brick, three-bedroom house. The living room was a reception-waiting area and the dining room was divided with a counter behind which sat the desk, computer, radios, fax and phones. One of the bedrooms made a good-size office for Tom, and the others were holding cells.

June found Tom standing in the driveway behind his Range Rover. Parked next to him was a tan truck and supposedly its owner, a tall redheaded gentleman with a camera hanging around his neck.

June walked up to them. “Hi, Tom, what have you got?”

Tom didn’t speak. He didn’t introduce his companion, either, but silently went to the back of the man’s pickup. He pulled down the back hatch and drew toward him an old army blanket. He gently opened it to reveal four bones. June picked up the largest. It was old, but she had no idea how old. It was clearly sawed
off on one end, but the other three smaller bones were whole. Unmistakably, they were human.

“Humerus,” she said. “Rib, clavicle, and probably metacarpal.” She tapped the back of her hand. “Palm bone. The humerus has been sawed or hacked through.”

“You’re certain?” Tom asked.

Jessie reached around June and lifted one of the bones, examining it, turning it to and fro, feeling the texture of it.

“I’m certain they’re human bones,” June said. “But old.”

“You have any idea how old?”

“I really don’t, but that isn’t difficult for a pathologist or forensic anthropologist to figure out. Where’d they come from?”

Tom glanced at Jessie. “I’d like this to be confidential.” He then glanced at the tall man. “For now.”

Jessie made a face. “I work in a doctor’s office, Tom. I keep secrets all day long.”

He looked back at June. “They came from your aunt Myrna’s backyard.”

After the shock of the news settled a bit, June was introduced to Paul Faraday, the bird-watcher who’d been poking around Hudson House.

“I didn’t realize how close to the house I was getting, but I did have Mrs. Claypool’s permission,” he said.

“Bird-watching,” June said. “Shouldn’t you have been looking up?”

“Actually, I tripped over the bones. One of them, at
any rate. So I dug around with my hands a bit and unearthed a few more. But I stopped. Didn’t want to let on, you know.”

“My grandfather built that house over eighty years ago, Mr. Faraday. Those bones might have been there many years before that. This area was all part of the gold rush. There were settlers and boomtowns all over the place. Natives, Spaniards, squatters. In any case, years back, people sometimes felt inclined to bury their own dead on their own property. These could be the bones of an Early American from the nineteenth century or even a hired hand or domestic from the early 1900s.”

“Not to mention a Native American,” Tom added.

“Where exactly were the bones?” June asked.

“I believe they were under the rhododendron. We’ll have them examined, won’t we?” he asked.

“I’ll take care of that,” Tom said, taking the blanket from him. “I’ll have it done by the county.”

“But I’d like to know, of course,” Faraday said. “Since I found them.”

Both June and Tom stared at the man in some confusion. What was his interest in old bones, even if he’d found them? “I can arrange to let you know, when the investigation is complete.”

“Very good. How long do you suppose it’ll take? I plan to be around the general area for the next few weeks. Until the weather turns.”

“I have no idea. Leave a number inside with my deputy, Ricky Rios, and we’ll give you a call,” Tom offered. “Now that it’s necessary to investigate the
bones and the area, you are ordered to stay away. Even with permission of the owner, the area will be sealed off. Do you understand?”

“Oh certainly. It’s a potential crime scene,” Faraday said, puffing up a bit.

“That isn’t what I meant. In fact, I find it highly unlikely. I just don’t want the area disturbed.”

“I do understand,” Faraday said. “Shall I go tell Mrs. Claypool that I’ve found bones on her property?”

“Why don’t you let me handle that,” June said. “She’s my aunt, after all.”

“Charming woman, Mrs. Claypool. We had tea just days ago.”

“Did you, now?” June asked. “How was it you had tea?”

“I thought the least I could do was stop by and say hello, since I was haunting the grounds, so to speak. Most understanding. A delightful lady. Quite a sense of humor for an old girl.”

“Hmm,” June said.

“I’ll be off then,” he said. “I’ll check back with you before I leave the area to head for home, Chief Toopeek. If you haven’t discovered anything about the bones by then, I’ll give you my home number.”

Tom nodded.

“Doctor. Miss,” he said, bobbing in each direction. He then got into his truck. Tom and the women stepped out of the way so he could back out of the driveway and leave.

“I’ve already got his number,” Tom said.

“He’s up to no good,” June said.

“Are you going to speak to Myrna right away?” Tom asked.

“Sure. Not only should she know about this discovery, I want to ask her to stay away from this Faraday man. I don’t think I like him.”

“Will you also ask her if, in any of her books, she had a body buried under the rhododendron?”

June chewed her lip. “I think it was in
Dead by Dawn.
”

S
ometimes small towns can nurture their mysteries as affectionately as their secrets or their scandals, and that is exactly what Grace Valley had done with the disappearance of Morton Claypool.

June wasn’t being glib or dishonest when she explained away the bones to Paul Faraday as probably belonging to a settler or Native. She thought it entirely possible. The one tiny glitch was that her uncle Morton had disappeared twenty years ago, had apparently never been heard from, and not long afterward, Myrna’s murder mysteries had grown ever more grisly. This was a
tiny
glitch, because, first of all, no one could imagine Myrna hurting a fly, and second, the entire town thoroughly enjoyed the speculation, and Myrna knew it.

The facts were thus: Morton had been a traveling salesman who spent precious little time in Grace Valley, which seemed to be the preference of Morton and Myrna alike. They were not exactly young when they
married—Myrna herself was already in her forties and had been writing Gothic novels for almost twenty years. She had not been well known in those days, as her books were published in library editions in small numbers. Fame would come much later. But raising Elmer and getting him through medical school had been her first life, writing her second and Morton her third. Though no one ever asked, it was probably convenience more than passion that brought them together in the first place.

Morton was an amiable fellow, well liked by almost everyone even if he was understood by few. He sold office supplies, for which there was very modest need in the valley, far greater need in larger cities. Myrna actually met him in a bookstore in Redding. They corresponded for a time and then married on a weekend trip to Reno. She brought him back to Grace Valley and said, “Meet my new husband, Morton Claypool,” without anyone, even her beloved brother, ever knowing she was courting.

Over time, Morton was in Grace Valley less and less, but who was to notice? June was barely conscious of this, being a young teen with concerns of her own. Elmer and his wife noticed and, of course, asked Myrna, “Is there any trouble between you and Morton?”

“Why in the world would you ask that?” Myrna countered.

“We see him less and less,” Elmer had said.

“And to you, that would translate into trouble?” she wondered aloud.

“Well, he’s your husband. What would it mean to you that he’s here less and less?”

Myrna had shrugged. “More time to myself, I suppose. I have a book due in six weeks anyway. I have little time for domestic fuss.”

Many a family might have pressed the issue, but Myrna was independent, eccentric and, above all, proud. Elmer and Marilyn took that to mean that Myrna and her husband were not as invested in each other as they had been, that Morton had permission to move along if he so chose. When June was a senior in high school, Myrna said to Elmer and Marilyn, “I’ve lost track of Morton altogether. He’s been gone for several months now.”

“Are you worried?” they’d both asked.

“Not in the slightest. If there were bad news, I’d have been notified. And it’s just as well I haven’t been. I must admit, I haven’t been entirely pleased with Morton lately and I don’t feel inclined to waste a lot of money on a fancy funeral.”

“You’ve separated then?” Elmer had asked.

“Well, if he’s not here, I guess we have.”

“What about divorce?”

“Why bother? I certainly wouldn’t want another husband. Besides, wouldn’t I have to dig him up to manage that?”

Elmer really didn’t find anything ominous in her query about digging him up. His gentle sister was a tad dotty, but no murderess. Much later Myrna appeared to kill him off in her books, over and over again.

Everyone in Grace Valley assumed that Morton had wandered off, perhaps found a woman who would make him eggs in the morning, or possibly he’d found a job that was a tish more exciting than selling pencils and typing paper. As for the speculation that she might have had enough of his long absences and done him in? Myrna was not only unanimously loved, she was thought of as gentle, despite the bloody novels. And it was
she
who belonged to Grace Valley. She was an icon. Her father had founded the town. Morton was the newcomer. People who know small towns know that you can be a newcomer for twenty years without ever quite being one of them. People would worry a lot if something happened to Myrna, but they didn’t worry overmuch about Morton.

When the bones were found under her rhododendron at the far south end of her huge yard on top of the hill, June went immediately to her dad and said, “Some bird-watcher found four human bones on Aunt Myrna’s property.”

Elmer got a look near panic and said, “Shoot!” Then, in a soft yet urgent tone he said, “June, I checked under the rhododendron.”

An emotional picture of little, skinny Aunt Myrna in handcuffs and leg irons came to June’s mind and, unbelievably, she got all teary. Her nose pinkened and dripped. “Oh, Dad,” she sniveled. “What if she’s in trouble? Real trouble?”

“June?” Elmer queried, confused. “Are you crying?”

“Jeez,” she said, turning away in embarrassment.
She was so much tougher than this. She didn’t dissolve into tears like some schoolgirl. “It’s just that the picture that came to mind…”

Elmer grabbed both of June’s upper arms and gave a squeeze. “She can’t ever be in so much trouble that we can’t help her, June. Not after all she’s done for us.”

“Sorry,” June said, sniffing. “This is no time to fall apart.”

“That’s for sure. Not with
bones
in her yard, for God’s sake.”

June and Elmer went to Myrna’s house together, mostly as a show of force. It would be nice if eccentric old Myrna would take things seriously for once. Elmer rang the bell.

“I know it’s blasphemous to think this way, but every time I come to this big old house, I can’t help but hope I die ahead of her.”

“Dad!”

“Well, think what an ordeal it’s going to be to clean it out one day,” Elmer said. “I don’t believe Myrna has ever thrown anything away.”

They both gulped and looked at each other. Perhaps not even Morton?

“I used to love to come here as a child,” June said, changing the subject. “It was like playing in a museum. I could stay busy for days and never find the end of the treasures. But I sure don’t want to have to do that now.”

It was Myrna herself who opened the door. Her reading glasses dangled on a rope around her neck, a
pencil was stuck behind her ear and she had a well-worn paperback thesaurus in her hand. Her white hair was electrified, escaping her bun in little springs, and she had two dark spots of rouge on her cheeks that matched the red of her lips. “Well, look at this!” she said, clearly surprised. “If it’s the both of you together, this must be serious.”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” Elmer said. “Who’s on duty today? Endeara or Amelia?” he asked as he entered.

“It’s Amelia, but she’s upstairs watching her soap opera. The hospital one. I hope you don’t want anything too complicated, because if I call her down to the kitchen to work, she’ll be in a foul mood all the rest of the week.”

“Good, let her be. We’ll go in the kitchen and brew some tea or something. We have to talk about this Faraday fellow.”

“I might have known,” Myrna said. She leaned toward June to give her a peck on the cheek. “Hello, dear. Are you upset as well?”

“We’re neither of us upset, Myrna,” Elmer said, but he said it tersely. “Concerned is all. June tells me you’ve had that Faraday fellow in to tea.”

“My goodness, the speed of gossip isn’t getting any slower in this town, is it?” Myrna looped her arms through June’s and Elmer’s and let them guide her to the kitchen.

“You don’t even know him,” June pointed out. “He could be a thief. Or worse.”

“Oh, he’s not a thief. He’s just what we used to call a nosey parker. Now, what’s this all about?”

“In the kitchen,” Elmer said.

The kitchen at Hudson House was huge, originally designed to cater dinner parties for large numbers of guests. Charles Hudson had been a rich banker from San Francisco who fell in love with the area later known as Grace Valley. He built the house for his young wife and expected to entertain many friends who would stay for long periods of time. He had not scrimped on space. Myrna, following suit, had always opened her home to guests for dinner parties, committee meetings, any event that justified the space.

Elmer closed the kitchen door. “This is going to be a shock. Sit down.”

Myrna sat at the kitchen table. June moved to put on the kettle. Elmer sat across from her and said, “Faraday found human bones in your backyard.”

“Oh! Is
that
all,” she said, relieved. “They’re probably the remains of some old prospector.”

“Very likely,” Elmer said. “But Myrna, it’s going to demand an answer to the Morton Claypool question.”

“I don’t see why. They wouldn’t be Morton’s remains.”

“You’re quite sure?”

She leaned forward, a bit impatient. “Don’t you think I’d have
noticed?
”

“They were under the rhododendron,” June said from the stove. “Definitely human remains.”

“A skeleton?” Myrna wanted to know.

“No. Actually, just a few bones. Which leads to the question, did some old prospector die, dismember himself and scatter his remains around the yard?”

Myrna shrugged. “Daddy did not intentionally disturb any graveyard or burial ground when building Hudson House, but that was a long time ago, you know. It’s possible the builders were less than cautious when they were excavating for the foundation. We have an ample cellar.” She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t been down there in years. The steps creak as bad as my knees and I’m not sure which will go first.”

“Did you hear me, Myrna? It’s time to take the question of what became of Morton Claypool seriously. You’re going to have to stop hedging for the fun of it,” Elmer demanded.

“Elmer Hudson, how dare you!” she replied. “You don’t really think I do that on purpose!”

“I’m absolutely sure of it! You enjoy alluding to having done him in. You write about women who kill their husbands all the damn time.”

“Now, that’s simply not true! My last two books had male killers.” She smiled snidely. “You don’t read my books, do you, Elmer?”

“I buy them,” he said.

“I read them,” June said. “And Dad is right, Aunt Myrna. You’re going to be asked a serious question and you’ll have to give a serious answer or there could be problems. You have a missing husband! Human remains have been found in your yard! You may not always write about women bent on revenge who get
away with murdering their husbands, but you have enough times to get the tongues wagging.” June stopped and looked at Myrna, who positively beamed. “Look at yourself! You think it’s fun.”

“Now, don’t be ridiculous. I’m just proud as can be that you read my books.” She sneered at Elmer. “Not everyone does.”

“All right, all right… Talk to me about Morton, Auntie. Please,” June implored.

“May I have tea first?”

“Of course,” June said. Then she realized that Myrna wasn’t being shy or decorous; she wanted time to drum up a story. “No, wait. The water has to boil. I’m fixing the tea and you will have it the second it’s ready. For now, just tell us about Morton before Amelia is finished with her soap opera.”

“My, but you’re impatient.”

Elmer leaned into Myrna’s space. “Hardly,” he said sternly, a tone rarely taken with his sister. “We’ve waited over twenty years.”

Myrna sighed deeply, as if bored. Then she shook a bony finger in Elmer’s face. “You’re the only person I’ll allow to take that tone with me, you know.”

“I might not be, by the end of this. That Faraday fellow turned the bones over to the police, you know.”

“Ach, Tom Toopeek! Well, I daresay he knows the score. He’s not likely to overreact to the extent the two of you are.”

“Myrna!”

“All right, all right. But you’re going to be so disap
pointed. It’s a terribly dull story.” She took a breath. “Morton saw himself as suave, but, of course, if you remember him at all, you know he was terribly boring. Very sweet, but boring. If he hadn’t had his job selling paper supplies to businesses, he’d have had absolutely nothing to drive him. Morton was a sincere man, and smart in his own way. Our favorite thing to talk about were the books we read. He was an incredible reader. He particularly liked my books, which drew me to him, I suppose. I could nearly use him for research—he read so fast and remembered everything. But strangely, he never could apply anything he learned. No matter how hard he worked at his small business, he was never successful. He lost things, mismanaged customers, handled his records badly. He was something of a brilliant dunderhead. You know what he was? He was steady, that’s what!

“We had but one area of disagreement that was serious. I wouldn’t even consider letting him help me manage my inheritance and earnings. He had investment and business ideas, but I
couldn’t!
He was perfectly useless. He’d have bungled it all, so I kept making excuses and kept control. It bothered him. But he seemed to get used to that idea, over time.

“Morton was easily distracted,” she went on, “and no one around Grace Valley seemed to notice that there were periods of time he wouldn’t appear for months. I suppose I contributed to that illusion by saying things like, ‘Oh my, you’ve just missed Morton,’ when in fact he hadn’t been around in quite a while. Then for a period of months
he’d be around every week.” Myrna leaned into Elmer’s space and whispered, “I suspected other women.”

“You should have told me,” he said.

“Why? This didn’t seem to be a problem for Morton and I.”

“Myrna, you’re an intelligent woman. What about things like
disease?
”

Myrna looked stricken. “You don’t imagine I’d sleep with a man who spends weeks, if not months, gone off to unexplained places? Morton was the dunderhead, not I!” She straightened indignantly, brushing invisible lint off one shoulder. “Besides, he wasn’t nearly as accomplished as he thought he was.”

“So…he was not such a good husband?” June asked. “Were you unhappy?”