A Welcome Grave

by Michael Koryta

  “Yes.”

  “I imagined it would make a long drive a lot more fun. Getting kind of tired of working alone.”

  “So you want me to be your surrogate Joe?”

  “What? No.” I shook my head and stepped away from her. “I imagined we’d have a good time, because we usually do. Thought it would add some laughs, a little banter, turn a boring road trip into an enjoyable one.”

  “I’m a source of banter, then.”

  “Amy.” I looked at her hard. “What the hell is this about? We hang out together all the time, but you think it’s odd I’d ask you to go along on this?”

  “I don’t want to be Sundance to your Butch,” she said. “Not just on this case, or on your little trip. In general.”

  I gave a short laugh and spread my arms. “Where is this coming from? We’ve been friends for almost two years. Now you’re having some sort of identity crisis with it?”

  “How many lasting relationships have you had in the last two years, Lincoln?”

  I dropped my arms. “Roughly? Zero.”

  She didn’t smile. “And me?”

  “You’ve dated a few assholes.”

  “Lasting relationships?”

  “Zero.”

  “Right.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Can you tell me that’s unrelated? Do you think it is, at least?”

  “Probably not.”

  She smiled sadly. “There ya go. And I know the story—you’re not good with relationships, and the friendship’s too important to jeopardize. But here we sit.”

  “So you’re disagreeing with—”

  “I’m not disagreeing with anything, and not saying anything other than that I need to think a few areas of my life over and maybe redirect them.”

  “Kind of comes out of nowhere this morning.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “If you think this comes out of nowhere, then your agency is really hurting for detectives right now.”

  Someone pulled into the parking spot beside us. It was one of my regulars, and when he climbed out of his car, he decided it would be a good opportunity to talk sports and weather for about five minutes. I smiled and nodded my way through it. After a while, Amy dropped her sunglasses over her eyes and stood up.

  “I’ll catch you inside,” I told the guy, holding a hand up to interrupt him. “Okay?”

  He went in, and I turned back to Amy. She had her hand on the door handle.

  “Amy . . .”

  “I’ve got to get to work, and you’ve got to get to Indiana, of all places. We’ll talk when you get back, okay?”

  I didn’t answer. She got in the car and pulled away, and I swore loudly and sat down on the parking block. A second later the door opened and Grace stuck her head out.

  “Everything okay, boss?”

  I turned to her. “Any idea what it means when your friendship starts making a thwackity thwack sound that progresses to a clankity clank?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It means you screwed up.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding. “And how to fix it?”

  “Stop being scared,” she said, and she went back inside.

  “You’re fired,” I told the closed door, and then I stood up and got into my truck.

  ______

  The third time my truck dipped down a steep hill and left my stomach at the top, I got the idea that this portion of Indiana wasn’t what I’d expected. About five hours out of Cleveland, I’d passed through Bloomington and turned back to the east, heading for Nashville. The highway between the two towns was a winding two-lane, cutting through hills with a cruel sense of humor. One minute I’d be laying hard on the accelerator, coaxing the truck up a hill that made the motor grind; the next, I’d be hard on the brake, trying to keep from alarming the driver in front of me on the steep downgrade. The road twisted too much to let me take my eyes off it for long, but when I did, the views were spectacular. Hills rolled away from the highway across sprawling fields and into dense woods lit with colors so vibrant I doubted even the best camera would be able to successfully capture them.

  After about thirty minutes of driving along a highway that was clearly designed by the forefathers of the roller-coaster industry, I ran into a backed-up line of traffic so long that I assumed it was the result of a car accident, or maybe some late-season road repair. It turned out to be the wait to get into Nashville. It took ten minutes just to pull onto the one main street that cut through the little town, which, ironically, was called Van Buren, while Main Street was a little offshoot to the side.

  There appeared to be a construction code for the town, and it involved a lot of logs and old wood siding and shingles, everything having the look of a New England village at about the turn of the century. In case you missed the point, a number of the little shops incorporated the word “old” into their name, often underscoring it with an e at the end: Ye Olde Fudge Shoppe. Ambience.

  The sidewalks teemed with people laden with shopping bags, and small public parking lots were filled and had waiting lines. I saw license plates from North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Ontario. I hadn’t gotten around to making a hotel reservation, figuring they probably didn’t fill up too often in a place like this, but now it occurred to me that could have been a mistake. I stopped at the first hotel I found, a building halfway up the hill above the town. The parking lot was jammed, so I pulled into the entrance and left my hazard lights on while I went inside and asked for a room. The question produced a smile from the receptionist.

  “You don’t have a reservation?” she said.

  “No.”

  “It’s October.”

  “So it is.”

  Her smile widened. “You don’t know the area, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You want to stay in Nashville in October, you make a reservation.”

  I looked around, thought about the little street I’d driven through, wondered what great draw I could have missed.

  “No offense,” I said, “but what brings so many people to this town?”

  “Leaves.”

  “Leaves?”

  “The kind on the trees,” she said.

  “People come from all over the country to see leaves?”

  “Drive around a little bit. Look up. You’ll be impressed. There’s shopping, too.”

  “Of course there is.” I looked back out at my truck. “Well, can you tell me where the nearest hotel with a vacancy would be?”

  “Bloomington, probably. That’s about thirty minutes up the road. You aren’t going to find anything closer tonight. I’m sorry.”

  If staying near the town was going to be such a hassle, maybe I’d try to get in and out in a night. All I had to do was find Jefferson’s son and give him the news, then head home. The drive wasn’t that bad, and it beat bouncing from hotel to hotel, hoping to find one with a room open.

  “I’m just here to pass a message to someone,” I said. “He lives on Highway 135. Is that nearby?”

  She nodded and pointed. “Just keep going up the hill. Van Buren turns into 135.”

  I thanked her and walked back out to my truck, drove to the front of the parking lot, and saw that it was going to be about a five-minute wait just to pull back into the traffic.

  “All this for leaves,” I said, looking around.

  But, damn it, the leaves were spectacular. Crimson, orange, and burgundy splashes everywhere you looked, climbing the hills and surrounding the town. The crisp air smelled of them, too, and of rain and wood smoke. I’m not much of a country boy, and in places surrounded by pavement I’ve always been able to find the kind of moments of beauty that other people find deep in the woods, but I do acknowledge that if there’s one season that the city really kills, it’s autumn.

  Matthew Jefferson lived less than a mile up the road, his home one in a cluster of four log cabins off a circular gravel drive. The mailboxes were bunched together at the end of the drive, and I didn’t see any numbers on the cabins themselves. I’d
gotten out of the truck and was standing in the driveway, looking for a hint to the numbering system, when the door of the largest cabin opened and a gray-haired woman walked out and headed for a Honda parked nearby.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you live here?”

  She looked at me warily. “I rent here, yeah. Don’t own it, though.”

  “I’m looking for one of your neighbors.”

  “Oh.” She smiled and shifted a purse that must have weighed sixty pounds from one shoulder to the other. “Most people that stop by this time of year are trying to buy the place. Doesn’t matter if there’s no For Sale sign, they stop. We just rent, and we still get about ten offers each year.”

  “Won’t get one from me. I’m just looking for a guy named Matt Jefferson. You know him?”

  “Matt? Sure. He lived in Number Two for a long time.” She pointed at the cabin directly behind me.

  “Not anymore, though?”

  She shook her head, and I wanted to shake my own, having just made a six-hour drive to check out a dead address.

  “You wouldn’t have any idea where he went?”

  “Sure. He moved into a little apartment where he works.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Picks apples.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”

  She nodded. “Up the road, near Morgantown. Big orchard there, and Matt runs the—what do you call it?—harvesting?”

  “Harvesting,” I echoed. “He runs the apple harvesting operation.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  When last heard from, Matthew Jefferson had been in law school, the son of a prominent and wealthy attorney, his stars appearing perfectly aligned. Now he was running the apple-picking operation in a small Indiana town? That was an interesting detour.

  “Can you tell me how to find the orchard?”

  She gave me directions, and after the sixth time she said “make another left” I decided I’d better go back to the truck for some paper and a pen.

  Even with the written directions, I was almost an hour finding the place. Intersections were spaced out conveniently at about every six miles, so if you missed a turn, you were a while figuring it out. Fortunately, many of the roads were also lacking signs, so missing a turn was easy. There were no gas stations around, either, so I took comfort in knowing that if I didn’t find the place soon, I’d have to venture ahead on foot. I thrive under pressure.

  Eventually, though, I rounded a bend in the road and spotted a hand-painted sign that said: THE APPLE EMPORIUM—THREE MILES, TURN LEFT. These people were wise enough not to even bother with a street name, no doubt knowing that the corresponding sign would inevitably be missing. I went three miles, hung a left, and found the orchard.

  The main building was a long red barn, the doors slid open to reveal rows of barrels and crates overflowing with apples, a stack of pumpkins on the front porch, everything shaded by tall trees. Overhead, clouds were building, the sun that had been out at the start of my drive now tucked behind a thin veil of gray. I walked down to the barn and through the big open doors. Inside, women were holding apples up to the lights and frowning at them, checking for any slight imperfection. Two teenaged girls were working cash registers at the front of the barn, but the lines were long. Surely, there was a manager or supervisor around. I moved through the rest of the barn, then followed a sign that said CIDER MILL and walked outside.

  Rows of late-season flowers bordered a stone path that led down to a gazebo overlooking a large pond. Across the pond, the trees spread over the hills, their hues somehow seeming even brighter now that the clouds had gathered. No one else was outside; the whole place was still and private, and I looked down at the gazebo and thought it would probably be a hell of a nice spot to kill an afternoon and a bottle of champagne. Good thing Amy had decided not to come along, or I might have been tempted to do just that.

  I walked around the rear of the building, still in search of the cider mill, and as soon as I rounded the corner I ran into a tall metal machine making a soft churning noise. A redheaded woman turned to me, holding a tray of small paper cups filled with a walnut-colored liquid.

  “Try a sample.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for—”

  “Try a sample,” she repeated, and the look in her eye suggested she could arrange to have something bad happen if I refused—have me dipped in caramel and covered with nuts, maybe.

  I grabbed a paper cup and took a sip.

  “Good, isn’t it?” she said, watching my face.

  “My knees almost buckled.”

  “Day-fresh,” she said. “Now, what can I help you with?”

  “I’m looking for the manager, or owner?”

  “I’m both. Kara Ross.” She couldn’t shake hands because of the tray, but she made a little bow with her head. “What can we help you with?”

  “I need to speak with one of your employees. His name’s Matt Jefferson.”

  “Really?”

  “Doesn’t he work here?”

  “Oh, yes, he sure does. I just never see any visitors for him. Matt’s a pretty quiet guy. He runs our picking operation.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “He’s actually out working right now. We’ve had to expand to another growing site a few miles down the road. Supply and demand, you know?”

  “Can I find Matt at this other growing site?”

  “It would be better if you could wait an hour or two. Unless it’s urgent.”

  I shook my head. “It’s important, but I can wait. He’ll be coming back here?”

  “Yes, he lives here. Follow me.” She walked past the cider mill and into a dim hallway. An old dog was sleeping in the middle of the hallway, but Kara Ross stepped over it as if it didn’t exist, and I followed suit. Back in the barn’s main room, Kara Ross set the tray down on the counter and turned to me.

  “I’ll leave a note on the door for Matt if you’d like,” she said. “I’ll be gone when he comes back.”

  “When will that be?”

  “He’ll work until sunset,” she said. “Come by around, oh, seven. He should be here by then.”

  She found a pad of paper shaped like an apple and held her pen poised over it. “What should I write?”

  It didn’t seem appropriate for Jefferson to find out his father was dead through a note written on apple-shaped stationery and stuck to his door. Finding out he was a millionaire would be a little better, but, still, I thought I’d just hold off and tell him in person.

  “Just write that a man from Cleveland is here to see him,” I said.

  “No name?”

  “The name wouldn’t mean anything to him,” I said. “It’s family business, but I’m not family.”

  She wrote:

  Matt—

  Man from Cleveland here to see you.

  Will return tonight.

  Family business.

  “Good?”

  I nodded. “Perfect.”

  “I’ll leave it on his door. When you come back, this part of the building will be closed. I’ll show you where his apartment is.”

  “Great. Thanks for the help.”

  “No problem.” She smiled up at me. “You know, we sell that cider you liked so much.”

  “Give me ten gallons and a long straw.”

  I bought a quart of the cider and a bag of honey crisp apples. A wise tactical move—always keep the locals happy. Then Kara Ross took me around the side of the building again to leave the note on the door to Jefferson’s apartment, which apparently occupied the loft room of the converted barn and looked out on the pond and woods beyond. Not bad.

  “Man from Cleveland here . . . family business,” she read aloud and then laughed. “I bet he’ll be intrigued.”

  It was an obvious hint that she wanted to know details, but I wasn’t giving them out to anyone but the junior Jefferson. It wouldn’t hurt him to be intrigued for half an hour or so until I showed up.

  “Sure that note won’t
blow away?” I said.

  Kara Ross carefully applied tape all around the apple-shaped piece of stationery, until the wind could no longer work on a free edge. Then she stepped back and looked at it with satisfaction.

  “No way he’ll miss it now.”

  “Good,” I said. The wind had picked up, stirring dry leaves around our ankles, and I was glad the note wouldn’t end up in the middle of the pond. I wanted to be sure Jefferson’s son would know I was coming for him.

  5

  I drove to Morgantown along a road that embodied autumn the way only a painting or postcard usually will for people who live in the city. Crimson and auburn trees lined cornfields gone weathered and broken, a pale gray sky hanging over it all. The clouds had thickened even in the short time I was at the orchard, spoiling the chance for a nice sunset. The wind was cooler, but no rain fell.

  Morgantown was more of what I’d seen in Nashville, only without the obvious design toward tourism. As I sat at one of the two stoplights, waiting for a green light, I thought that if you snapped a black-and-white photograph of the street ahead of me, and captured the stone buildings with their colored awnings and plate glass windows, only the modern cars would clearly separate it from the 1950s. One business sign boasted about handmade furniture; another offered shagbark syrup. It was one of those places that made you glad to be off the beaten path, away from interstate exits with seven chain restaurants and two truck stops.

  I killed some time walking around the little town, checking out shops and nodding at passersby, then found a restaurant and wasted forty more minutes on dinner. Dusk settled as I drove back to the orchard, the brilliant shades of the trees fading into muted browns and casting long shadows over the road. I left the windows down, but the air coming into the cab of the truck was cold enough to make me wish I’d asked for another cup of coffee for the road.

  The big barn at the orchard was dark—the doors shut, the parking lot empty except for a few farm vehicles. Floodlights near the parking lot entrance lit up displays made from dried cornstalks, haystacks, and gourds, and a scarecrow hung from a post beside the barn. I parked the truck and rolled the windows up, the windshield fogging immediately as the interior temperature warmed.