A Grave Search

by Wendy Roberts

  I found Tracey red-eyed and sniffling about half a block away from the garage where I’d dropped her.

  She opened the door, wordlessly climbed inside and buckled her seat belt.

  “I take it that the anniversary celebrations didn’t go as planned?”

  She shook her head and hiccupped as she tried to hold in a sob.

  “I’m sorry about that. Are you hungry? Want to stop for burgers up the road before we head home?”

  “I need a drink.” Her voice hitched on the words. “A lot of drinks.”

  Damn, it would be so-o-o easy to pull into a pub and spend the day there even though I knew one day would turn into many. “I’m going to just take you home.”

  She didn’t reply and, instead, sat sullen and sulky in the passenger seat. In spite of her refusal, I went through a burger drive-through and got us both milk shakes.

  “Thanks,” she said with a sigh after sipping on her shake.

  “You’re welcome. Wanna talk about what happened?” I asked. “Sometimes talking helps.”

  At least that’s what everyone always says, especially if they can charge you a ton of money to listen.

  “We broke up.” She sniffed. “Apparently, he thinks I’m too needy. What the hell does that mean anyway?”

  It means you feel you have to celebrate a two-month anniversary. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  She shook her head and concentrated on her milk shake while I steered out of Marysville and back toward home.

  “You know what you could do? You could let me help you with your investigation,” she said eagerly.

  “Um...” I struggled to find the polite way to say no way in hell.

  “I need a distraction and maybe having someone else listen to all the clues about Ava would help you too! You know what they say, a second pair of eyes and all that.”

  “In this case there have already been a lot of eyes. Cop eyes. FBI eyes. Search party eyes and all that too.”

  “So another pair won’t hurt one bit.”

  I looked at her sideways and was torn between wanting to blow her off and wanting to make her feel better. “I need to go home and take Wookie for a walk.”

  “Oka-a-ay, well, I can wait for you in the car or something while you do that and then we can get to work.”

  I found myself nodding in agreement, and a few minutes later I snapped Wookie’s leash on his collar and jogged down the road with him while Tracey sat in my vehicle listening to music at a decibel that would loosen her fillings. The ring on the chain around my neck had come out of my T-shirt and bobbed against my chest as a light thumping reminder of both my own abandonment and the spark of a chance maybe someone at one time loved me when I was still Delma Arsenault.

  I tried to push thoughts of my mom and dad out of my head as my feet rhythmically hit the gravel and Wookie kept pace beside me. I breathed in the clean country air and thought about nothing but my feet on the ground and the warm air swirling around me. On the jog back, my concentration turned to Ava Johansson. The pulsing beat of my feet on the road cleared my mind and helped me sort through what I knew. So many things about the Ava case felt like a tangled mess of knots and I couldn’t seem to untie them in my head. Maybe Tracey was right and talking it through with someone else would help. Normally I’d work through something like this with Garrett but sometimes his analytical FBI brain got in the way of creative thinking.

  When Wookie and I turned the corner of the tree-lined street back onto my driveway I stopped short.

  “Son of frick’n bitch.”

  My Jeep was gone.

  I tore inside the house looking for my cell phone on the counter in order to call police. Snatching it up, I immediately noticed a text from Tracey.

  Gone for beer. Back soon.

  “Oh goddamn hell,” I cried out, slamming the phone onto the counter.

  I took a quick, cooling shower to clear my head and clean my sweaty body. She’d be at least a half hour since it took that long to get to town and back. I knew that Tracey was back when Wookie started barking his head off.

  “Relax.” I patted Wookie’s head. “I’m pretty sure she’s crazy but the harmless kind of crazy. At least I hope so.”

  With a sigh I grabbed a Coke from the fridge and met her outside.

  “Don’t do that again,” I told her.

  “What?” Tracey asked as she reached into the back seat for her purchases.

  “Don’t take my car without asking.”

  She straightened with a look of surprise and proudly held up two sacks. “But I bought enough for both of us. I figured, you know, investigating would go better with a couple cold ones.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t...” I cleared my throat. “I don’t drink.”

  “Oh-h-h.” She slowly put the sacks down on the ground. “You should’ve said something.”

  “I just did.” I nodded at the bags. “That doesn’t mean you can’t.” I raised my Coke. “I’m good.” I pointed to the back of the house. “I’ve got a picnic table out back where we can sit to talk about the case.”

  “Well then I’ll have a Coke too. If you don’t mind.”

  I wanted to tell her to grab her beer because it didn’t bother me if she drank but, honestly, I didn’t know if I was strong enough to watch someone drink on my own property without feeling the bite of temptation at every sip she took.

  She fell into step beside me as I walked to the back of the house and then, abruptly, she linked her arm in mine. “We’re going to be like Sherlock and Dr. Watson, right?”

  “Oh I doubt that very much.” I laughed at the idea. “Probably more like Laurel and Hardy.” I bumped her hip with mine.

  “Or Thelma and Louise,” she said.

  “Don’t they both die?”

  We both burst out laughing.

  The faded picnic table was under the shade of a huge cedar tree only a few feet from the back patio door. Tracey took a seat at the table while I went inside and snagged her a Coke. I made a couple trips, grabbing my laptop and also the box of Ron’s belongings. I figured that, if nothing else, Tracey could busy herself going through the box while I answered emails. At least, that was the plan.

  Unfortunately, Tracey’s plan was to rant and rage about her now ex-boyfriend, and when she grew tired of that, she asked me a million questions about Garrett. When I didn’t give in to satisfy her curiosity about our relationship, she started asking questions about dowsing.

  “I don’t know why I’m able to find people using dowsing rods. I just can.” I clicked open another email.

  “Okay, so why don’t you do that divining thing where you hang a crystal on a string and ask questions? Isn’t that a kind of dowsing?”

  I looked at her from over the screen of my laptop and answered her patiently. “Pendulum dowsing doesn’t work for me.”

  “But how do you know if you never—”

  “I’ve tried it!” The words came out on a shout. So much for patience. “Look, it worked for me once but, since then, I’ve tried it many, many times on practically every case but I’ve never had so much as a tremor. So I’m sticking to what works and not wasting any more of my time on pendulum dowsing.”

  She finished off her can of Coke with a gulp and a loud belch and then put it down. “Why do you think it worked that one time?”

  “I’m not really sure.” I blew out a hot breath. “Maybe it was just one of those things. A fluke. Or maybe it was because I was personally connected to that particular situation.”

  “Oh-h-h.” She nodded and looked at me with wide eyes. “That was the case in the news. The one about you and your friend and your grandfather and—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” My voice came out low and soft with a little beg on it. “Want another Coke?”

  “Yeah, and you got anyth
ing to eat? I could use a sandwich or something.”

  “Sure.”

  My own stomach was also growling. I went inside and my phone beeped. A text message from Garrett saying he was glad I was having fun with my new friend.

  Ugh. The cameras.

  I replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

  Was I having fun? I thought about that while I put together a couple grilled cheese sandwiches. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of club and partying kind of fun I used to have with Katie. It was definitely more relaxed and casual with Tracey. There was something to be said for that, and I had to admit I liked Tracey. She was different. An oddball. But then so was I so it made me more able to relax around her.

  Wookie tried to come with me when I walked back outside balancing a couple plates.

  “Sorry, boy, you have to stay here.” I closed the patio door behind me and left Wookie staring at us with sad eyes.

  Tracey was sitting cross-legged on the ground next to the picnic table. She’d opened the box of Ron’s stuff and was spreading the various books and random packages and other things out on the grass next to the table. I put her sandwich on the ground next to her but she didn’t even look up.

  I sat back down at the table, scrolling through emails. The one thing missing from my inbox was an email from Ebba. She hadn’t called, texted or emailed me again to ask about my plans to find Ava. It felt out of character for her to give me space, even though I appreciated the time. I sent her an email telling her the truth. I was spending the day doing more research on her case and hoped to follow that up with action soon.

  I ate my sandwich as I looked at messages for media requests and people wanting help finding their loved ones. A mother in Australia and an aunt in Alaska both got a form regret email in response. The locations were just too far to go. I replied to one in California and one in Idaho asking for more information. Maybe Garrett and I could book a B&B somewhere for a weekend. I could find a body and then we could hole up in a hotel room, order room service and make love night and day like we once did. The idea made me smile.

  Sitting outside at the picnic table with my laptop had been a great idea. A light, grass-scented breeze chased the heat away and had me daydreaming of time away with my guy. When Tracey spoke, it startled me. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I was just looking through the yearbook. Funny how I can look at faces and not even remember the girl I sat next to in a class for an entire year.”

  “Wait. You went to that high school?” I pointed at the book in her hand. “That one where Ron and I went?”

  “Sure but only for a year.” She held up the book and pointed to the thumbnail-sized picture of herself.

  “We’re the same age so we would’ve been in the same grade?” I frowned. “Did we know each other?”

  “I had some surgeries in eighth grade so I was behind a year,” she admitted, tossing the yearbook to the grass. “I wasn’t there long enough to get to know anyone really. Except maybe Wes.”

  “Abel’s grandson?”

  “Yeah. We went out a few times back then but he had a bit of a mean streak.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he liked to play practical jokes on people. One time he brought a box of cream-filled donuts to school except he’d replaced all the filling with mayonnaise.”

  “Ew-w-w.” I shuddered. “That’s nasty.”

  “Yeah, that was gross and, at the time, I kind of laughed but then when a teacher gave him a really bad grade he made it his mission to get revenge on her, and eventually she just up and quit.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He started with stupid stuff...petroleum jelly on her classroom door, dowsing her car with hot sauce. Silly things that everyone still thought were funny but then someone gave Wes her home address and next thing there was a rumor going around that he’d broken in and poisoned an aquarium filled with exotic fish.”

  “Wow. Do you think it really was Wes?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him. When I told him I didn’t want to go out anymore, he left a long message on my home answering machine talking about how great I was at giving BJs. Of course he knew my mom and dad would hear the message before I did.” She shook her head. “So, yeah, the guy is a big dick.”

  “Abel tried to convince me to go out with him,” I said.

  “Jesus. Good thing you got yourself a hunky FBI guy to tend to your needs.”

  “A very good thing.”

  We laughed.

  I went back to looking at my laptop and a few minutes later Tracey started talking again.

  “You know, I was just wondering if all these comments Ron made in his hiking books might help,” Tracey said.

  I got up from the table and joined her on the grass. She was bent with her legs in a W shape and grunted when she rearranged her body to allow me next to her. She held open a book and pointed at scribbled notes in red ink in the margin. I took the trail book from her and began reading Ron’s handwritten notes. Mostly, Ron seemed to rate the trails with various one-word comments throughout the pages: hard, steep, long, rocky, wet and the occasional trail rated a few stars next to the description.

  “It would take me a lifetime to check every trail for Ava’s body.” I put down that book and picked up another.

  “Yeah, too bad there wasn’t a way to narrow it down.”

  “Yeah. Like if he wrote a description that said: this would be a great place to dump a body.”

  We laughed until we snorted.

  I flipped through the pages of another hiking book, pausing wherever Ron wrote comments. Toward the end of the book, just as I was about to toss it to the ground with the others, I stopped on a page that described hiking in Oak Lake.

  A paragraph describing the relatively short trail had been circled. On the side of the page in red ink was a large heart, and written inside the heart was Ava + Ron forever.

  I got chills.

  Chapter Twelve

  Within a few minutes I’d tracked the location of the trail on the map on my phone.

  “Oak Lake is about an hour away. It sounds so familiar,” I said to myself as I looked at the area on my screen. “Why does it sound like a place I should know?”

  “You hike, right? Maybe you’ve hiked there,” Tracey chimed in.

  “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  The trail itself didn’t seem like the type of place Ron would go for a hike. It wouldn’t be a challenge at all for him.

  “It’s rated as an easy day hike in a cottage-like area,” I said. “It’s not the type of trail Ron would do on his own for a challenge but maybe it was a place the two of them enjoyed. Joon Kim told me Ava wasn’t much of an outdoorsy person but she tried hard to be like that for Ron. She could’ve suggested an easier hike just so the two of them could have something to do as a couple.”

  “I think we need to do a field trip and check it out.”

  “We?”

  “Of course. You need backup.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t need backup.”

  “Your superhero sidekick.”

  “You’re going to be the Robin to my Batman?” I smiled.

  “Navigator then. Who doesn’t like someone riding shotgun who can tell them when to turn so they don’t have to take their eyes off the road.”

  I wanted to tell her that was what the navigation system in my car was for but the look on her face was so hopeful that I couldn’t stand it. “We’ll see...”

  Another hiking book caught my eye and I grabbed it off the grass. Best Hiking Trails of the World. The book was hardcover and looked expensive. A page in the center had a corner folded at the beginning of a chapter titled “Trekking in Argentina,” and across the top of the page was the same loopy handwriting as in the other trail book: Soon this will be us! There were lots of Xs and Os after
it.

  “They were planning a trip.” I was talking to myself but Tracey snagged the book from my hands to read the note.

  “Or just dreaming of traveling. I buy travel books all the time but I never go anywhere.”

  She had a point. I’d just been dreaming about going to a bed-and-breakfast with Garrett. Didn’t mean it would happen even though I wished it would.

  When she tossed the book back onto the grass, a receipt slipped out and I picked it up.

  “If they’d broken up a couple months before she was kidnapped, why would she be buying him a book and writing a note like that?” I held up the receipt for the book that was dated about a week before Ava’s kidnapping.

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “Exactly.” I used my phone to take a picture of the page.

  Ava reached for the foil packs that had come out of the box along with the books and a few knickknacks. “What are these?”

  I started to tell her that they were something medical to do with Ron’s condition but she’d already torn a package open and dumped the contents on the ground.

  “Weird. So he was stockpiling his own phlebotomy kits?” She pointed to the tourniquet, alcohol pads, needles and gauze pads. Everything you needed for drawing blood.

  “His dad told me he had a medical condition where his body made too much iron. Hemochromatosis. I looked it up later and one of the treatments is to go for regular blood draws. Ron was a young guy and got regular treatment for it. Got blood drawn every so often and that took care of it.”

  “But he wasn’t just drawing his own blood at home himself, right?”

  “Why not? Maybe he got sick of going somewhere to have it done if he could do it himself.” I shrugged. “No different than someone with diabetes learning to give themselves shots, right?”

  “I guess, but then what would he do with the all the blood? Just dump it down the sink?” Tracey visibly shuddered.

  “Or dump it in the woods,” I murmured. I pulled out my phone and dialed Garrett.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Tell me when they found all that blood on the ground that’s how they knew Ava was dead, right?”