Unfortunately, the police department is housed in a building of its own. Fortunately, it is just up the street. Within five minutes of my call Lowell and my ex-boyfriend Mitch were squatting over the partially unearthed skull, snapping pictures and speculating.
“It’s pretty strange that you ended up striking this with so little work done, isn’t it?” Mitch sounded like he was on a tear, already looking for someone to blame for what had happened. I didn’t like Russ but there was no reason to think he had anything to do with the body other than being the poor guy who came upon it. I mean, who’d want to find a buried body anyway but certainly no one would if they were alone in a gloomy basement and the body in question was reduced to skeletal remains.
“I hardly think he would have called you if he was up to no good, Mitch. He was digging it up, not burying it.”
“And what are you doing here, Dani? I can’t seem to think you’re much good with the heavy lifting.” Which was unfair. I may weigh 103 pounds soaking wet but I can certainly hold my own when it comes to physical labor. What I lack in strength I make up for in willingness to just keep at it until the job is complete. Which is mostly why I don’t respect Russ.
“I called her so she wouldn’t complain I’d cut out of work early. You know how she is.” Russ gave Mitch one of those man-to-man looks that mean women are a pain in the butt. Mitch nodded in agreement. That sort of thing was just one of many reasons we weren’t still dating.
“Sounds reasonable.” Mitch just had to contribute his two cents. Lowell stood up and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Thanks for calling us in. I think it’s safe to say there is no more work for you to do here today, Russ. Why don’t you head on out. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to anyone just yet.”
“I won’t.” Russ tugged at his ball cap and shuffled out.
“Dani, I think you’d best tell Emerald the work on the opera house is at a standstill for the time being. You can tell him why but ask the family to be discreet, please.”
“Grampa isn’t going to be pleased to hear this. You know how he is when he gets all worked up about a project.”
“I think he’ll understand. We’re going to work this as a crime scene until we discover for some reason it isn’t, so even if he doesn’t, he’ll have to live with it.” Lowell was a lifelong family friend. Telling my grandfather to like it or lump it was not going to be easy for him. Especially since Grampa was the closest thing Lowell had to a father since his own parents had died in a house fire when he was a young man.
“I’ll tell him. Maybe he’ll be so pleased not to have to pay Russ to excavate the coal room that he’ll forget all about the schedule.” A girl can hope, can’t she?
Three
I was wiped out. Not only was there too much on my plate, there was no food in my stomach. A lot of people might have been put off from eating by the sight of a skeleton in a basement but I figured the poor guy didn’t care. Just because he was long past his last meal didn’t mean I should be, too. I left the car where it was and crossed the street for the Stack Shack. Besides, I figured the Stack was probably where Graham and Hazel would be having lunch. Leaving him to fend for himself with her was not the best way to keep him around.
Coffee and bacon and cinnamon roll smells filled the air but there was no sign of Graham or Hazel. The only person in the place besides Russ and Tansey was Piper. Even the cook seemed to have taken a break. Russ perched on a stool next to Tansey, gesturing more animatedly than I had ever seen. His back was to me and he didn’t notice my arrival.
Usually, anyone in the Stack swivels in their seat to get a look at new arrivals and to say hello if they’re a mind to but not this time. Both Tansey and Piper were straining toward Russ. He had their full attention like nothing I’d ever seen. They looked like kids round a campfire listening to a ghost story. Tansey especially had her ears a-flapping. Both her hands wrapped round her coffee cup and she was holding the thing halfway to her mouth but had forgotten to take it to her lips.
“So I scraped away a bit more and there was a long whitish thing kinda bright against all the dirt and the coal dust. I bent over and scratched at it with my work glove.”
“What was it, Russ?” Piper asked. “What did you see?”
“It was a bone. A human leg bone.” Piper gasped and then pulled back as if she’d been hit with a live electrical wire.
“What made you sure it was a human bone? Couldn’t it have been a dog bone or a cow bone or something like that? Couldn’t it have been left from some pastureland before the town hall was built?” Tansey crossed her arms across her chest and looked smug.
“Well, I thought the same thing at first. I didn’t want to get all lathered up over nothing so I thought I’d check a bit more before calling the Greenes. You know what a tartar that Dani can be.” I was relieved not to see Piper’s head nod in agreement. “So I poked around a bit more and eventually found another bit that confirmed my worst fears.”
“Which was?” Tansey asked.
“A human skull. About the right size for a grown man, I’d say. Explain that, why don’t you?” Russ looked at Tansey.
“Did you find anything else? Anything to suggest the identity of the body or how long it’s been there?” Piper asked. Piper may look like a rebellious teenager with her purple hair and her multitude of tattoos but she is really one of the most practical people I know. Leave it to her to ask the pertinent questions.
“The leg bone and the skull were all I needed to see to know I wasn’t the right guy for that job.” Not that Russ seemed to be the right guy for any job other than potato chip taster but that was just one woman’s opinion. “Now you mention it, there was one other thing I found just before I unearthed the leg bone.” Russ reached into his pocket and pulled something out which he slapped on the counter with a clank. I stepped forward for a look. Everyone else leaned in, too, and then Tansey gave a little squeak, slid off her stool, and fainted dead away on the floor.
* * *
It took all of two minutes for the ambulance to arrive and whisk Tansey away. I was glad I wasn’t going to be involved in explaining to her that the ambulance had been called. Tansey prided herself on her health and the thought of a public collapse was bound to wound her pride. Not to mention what the cost of an ambulance ride would do to her wallet. Not that Tansey’s financials were any of my business but I knew she didn’t have much to spare.
Russ had cleared out as soon as Tansey hit the floor. I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought he would be blamed for upsetting her or if he thought he’d be asked to help with the stretcher. In his haste he had left his findings on the counter. Piper had sensibly not pointed this out to him as he exited. Everyone else had been so focused on Tansey that she was able to stick the items under the counter until we could speak privately.
Within minutes of Tansey being hauled away the fervor had died down and Piper retrieved Russ’s objects, placing them on the counter atop a paper napkin. After all, a health inspector could drop by at any minute.
“Spoons?” I asked, scratching at the coal dust and dirt encrusting one of them.
“Looks like it. Why on earth would Tansey get so worked up about spoons?” Piper wondered.
“They don’t look particularly valuable. Not silver or anything. They just look like ordinary spoons to me.”
“Me, too. They don’t look new but they aren’t antiques I shouldn’t think. I’d call them vintage.” And Piper should know. She was a collector of all things vintage. Whenever she got a spare moment from the Stack, which wasn’t often, she loved nothing more than a ramble through a local flea market or garage sale looking for more vintage kitsch to decorate either the Stack Shack or her RV. Piper loved vintage with a passion that outshone all her other loves. She wore vintage waitress uniforms and wore her purple hair in complicated styles of years gone by.
; The walls of the Stack were covered in old board games, posters from classic movies, and framed baby clothes from long ago. The dishware at the Stack was vintage, too. From the juice glasses to the water tumblers, she had gathered up enough odds and ends to make the place feel like it was the resting grounds of a thousand grandmothers’ kitchens. It was utterly charming.
“So what are vintage spoons doing in the town hall basement and why would they upset Tansey so much?”
“Why are there two of them? Why would they be with a body? Were they really with the body or was it a coincidence?” Piper looked over at the door as a new flood of customers flowed in. “I’ve got to get back to work. If I hear anything about the mystery spoons I’ll let you know.” Piper wrapped them in the napkin and handed them to me. “I wouldn’t want these to get mixed up with mine.”
“I think I’d better get these right over to Lowell. He ought to include them in whatever it is he is doing for an investigation.” Piper nodded. I headed back out the door without a single morsel having passed my lips but I had a mission and didn’t want to be delayed. I ignored the rumbles from my stomach as they shook my entire frame and walked the block and a half to the police station.
* * *
Housed in a small building near the center of town, the police station is one of the prettiest buildings in Sugar Grove. In the summer the window boxes spill heaps of flowers on either side of the main entrance and the butterflies and hummingbirds seem drawn to the place. When we were dating, Mitch had grumbled a bit about the station looking more like a quilt shop than a place to investigate crime. He had a point but since crime never worked up the energy to be a wave around here it hardly mattered.
Myra Phelps, the police dispatcher and all-around bearer of gossip, manned the front desk. As usual, she got right down to business.
“Tansey collapsing, what a to-do. I always said that woman’s diet of fried eggs and bacon grease was going to catch up with her one day. But to do it just as the sugaring season starts, well, I can’t imagine her bad luck. Poor thing. And a body in the basement of the town hall. What a morning we’ve been having.” Myra leaned toward me, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. Did I have anything to add to her knowledge bank? Anything worth getting on the horn to her cousin in the next town about? No, I did not. There was no way I was going to link the spoons with Tansey’s collapse if Myra hadn’t heard about it. And I certainly wasn’t going to let her know about the spoons being near the body before Lowell got the chance to hear about them. Even telling Mitch first would be preferable.
“I’m sure she’ll be right as rain in no time. Tansey has a lot of bounce. Maybe she just stood up too quickly. People at the Stack were saying the body is probably left from a burial ground the town fathers didn’t know about when they built the town hall, nothing more sinister than that.” Myra sank back in her chair, all anticipation wiped from her face.
“Well, what can I help you with this morning?”
“Lowell isn’t back from the town hall yet, is he?” I tightened my hand on the strap of my purse, feeling like Myra could guess there was something interesting in there.
“Nope. He’s still over there as far as I know. Maybe if you just tell my why you’re here I can give him a message.”
“I’ll check back later.” I waved at Myra and made my escape. I walked slowly past the town hall and I thought about going back in, I really did. But when I caught sight of Mitch stringing yellow crime scene tape across the front door of the building I convinced myself to wait until later to tell Lowell about the spoons. He had to be busy and I just wasn’t up for a confrontation with Mitch. Besides, I told myself, Grampa needed to hear about what had happened. As the chair of the restoration committee he needed to know that the project was going to be on hold for a bit and if I didn’t get on home to tell him, someone else in town surely would.
Four
I found Grampa out in the sugar bush looking at tubing strung from tree to tree. His gnarled hands were giving it a little squeeze like he still wasn’t quite sure of what he was seeing. The family had been resistant to the idea of changing to tubing for moving the sap to the sugarhouse and the evaporator but the increased efficiency had thoroughly won over everyone except Grampa. I think he missed the old way.
“Well, Dani, your newfangled tubes sure don’t look too pretty weaving their way through the woods but they do hold a lot of sap.”
“I know you miss the buckets and the horses carrying the sap back for us. But we can make so much more syrup this way and that benefits all the causes we support. You know that better than I do.” Which he did.
Our family has money and a lot of it. I’m not bragging, it’s just a fact like I’m short and my mother is a bit kooky. Since we have had far more than we need for longer than anyone can remember, we give to charities. Our initial wealth came from land ownership and it is to land trust and environmental causes that we give the most.
Everyone in the family has charities they support the most enthusiastically. Mine are environmental ones. My dream for increased production was to have more money to contribute to environmental innovations of all sorts. All post-tax profits from Greener Pastures’ sugarhouse went to those causes and Grampa had always been right on board with that even when he grumbled about the way I increased the profit margin.
“Don’t pay me any mind, kiddo. I’m just feeling nostalgic. It goes without saying I miss your father most at sugaring season.” Grampa pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and honked his nose. A startled jay flew up out of the tree above us.
“Of course you do, Grampa. We all do.” I felt my eyes start to sting and the back of my nose burned like I’d snorted up some cayenne pepper by mistake. My father had been gone over five years and the memory of him still felt raw sometimes, especially during sugaring season. I felt him hovering around us constantly as the sap began rising. I kept thinking I caught sight of him just beyond a distant tree and my heart would give a little lurch then a thud when my eyes adjusted to the woods and I knew they had been fooling me.
My mother said he was really there, visiting us in the space between here and wherever there might be. She claimed to be on frequent speaking terms with him. The fact that he had been a man of very few words during his time on the mortal plane did little to strengthen my belief in her claims. It was all well and good to receive messages from the other side. He had given me a hand with advice on a number of occasions. Him visiting, that I could credit. It was his transformation into a chatterbox that beggared belief.
I patted Grampa’s arm and waited quietly while he wrestled his emotions back under control. He missed his son and made no bones about it. We stood looking out over the woods and the sparkling snow, each of us thinking our own thoughts. After a bit Grampa blew his nose again with finality and tucked his handkerchief into his back pocket.
“So what brought you out here? I know it wasn’t to hear me snuffling,” Grampa said.
“A problem’s come up with Russ and the basement at the town hall.”
“Of course it has. I’m feeling pretty sore at whoever it was snagged Wesley for the general store project. Hopefully it will be done soon and he can give a hand to the restoration so we can really get moving,” Grampa said.
“Wes isn’t going to be able to help with this slowdown. There’s no good way to say this. Russ found human remains in the basement under all the coal.”
“You mean like a body?” Grampa stopped scanning the treetops for birds and gave me his full attention.
“A skeleton. Russ called me over to see it for myself before he called the police. He had cleared off what looked like a leg bone and part of a skull by the time I arrived. I’m not sure what Lowell and Mitch found after we left.”
“You’ve had quite the morning, haven’t you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do they have any idea who it could be?�
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“Not that I know of. Lowell hustled us out of there pretty quickly after I called and there wasn’t a wallet just lying there on the ground with a license in it or anything.”
“What would a body be doing in the town hall under the coal? It must be thirty years since that space was used at all.”
“And what were the spoons doing there?”
“Spoons?” Grampa leaned even closer.
“Russ found a pair of spoons near the leg bone. He didn’t bother to tell Lowell but he blabbed about them at the Stack just as soon as he could cross the street.”
“Did you see them?”
“I’ve got them right here. Russ left them on the counter in a hurry when Tansey fainted dead away when she saw them.” I pulled the spoons from my jacket pocket and peeled away the napkin wrapper.
“Spooner Duffy.” Grampa gave a long, low whistle and shook his head.
“What?” I had no idea what he could be talking about.
“I bet the body belonged to a guy named Spooner Duffy. He always carried a pair of spoons in his pocket that looked just like those.”
“Why would he do a thing like that?” There are some strange characters in Sugar Grove but I’d never heard of anyone with an overfondness for flatware. Unless you counted Marcella Petrie’s light-fingered ways where other people’s valuables were concerned.
“He played them. He played the spoons like people play other instruments. You should have heard him. Boy, was he some good!”
“How did he end up in the town hall basement? And why did Tansey take it so hard when she saw them?”
“Did she?” Grampa’s usually open face shadowed over with an unusual guardedness.
“She did. Any idea why that would be? She is usually such a stoic woman. She swayed and keeled over right there in the Stack. From the looks of things she hit her head on the floor when she fell.”
A Sticky Situation Page 3
