Foolish Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery (Buryin' Barry Series Book 3)

by Mark de Castrique

  I almost laughed out loud. The petunias had certainly not been on my list of priorities. “All right, but if Tommy Lee calls, I’ll want to talk to him.”

  I rose from the table and headed for the back stairs. A rap on the kitchen door stopped me. Kevin Malone stood on the back porch, grinning through the small panes.

  “See if he wants coffee or tea,” Mom said.

  Kevin wanted neither. “Sorry to bother you. Patsy let me borrow her car. I just have a question or two for Barry.”

  Wayne started to leave.

  I waved him to stay. “That’s all right. We can talk in the parlor.” I led Kevin down the hall toward the front rooms.

  “Actually I wanted to look through Y’Grok’s things.”

  I stopped and turned around. “Do you want to take them back to the department?”

  “No. Examining them here is fine.”

  We went through the viewing room and its connecting door to the operating wing. A smaller room was across the hall. That room contained lockers and drawers where the personal items of the deceased could be stored. Y’Grok’s belongings had come in a plastic bag from Laurel County Hospital. I handed the bag to Kevin. He took it to a counter under the window and carefully extricated the contents.

  A pair of dirty gray workpants had been tightly rolled up. Instead of unrolling them, Kevin first checked the cuff of each leg, sliding his finger around the circumference in search of anything that could be tucked inside. Finding nothing, he rolled out the garment until he reached the waist band.

  A worn brown leather belt fit loosely through the loops. Kevin pulled the belt free and examined the inner side.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything. A note. A sign. Y’Grok’s letter said ‘come see’ so that meant he had something to show me.”

  He curled the belt, set it aside, and then went through the waist band as carefully as the cuffs. When that yielded nothing, he turned the pockets inside out. Finally he completely reversed the pants, checking the pocket pouches and inner seams meticulously.

  Finding nothing, Kevin unfolded a ratty green sweatshirt. The cuffs were frayed and elbows threadbare. Cracked remnants of a logo for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte showed the shirt had been through multiple owners. At the bottom of the hospital bag, he found a wadded pair of boxer underwear. The elastic band had lost all tension. He began putting the clothes back in the bag. “No shoes or socks.”

  “I guess Harvey Collins found him dead in bed.”

  “Who?”

  “The social worker from Lutheran Family Services.”

  “Guess we should talk to him. Is he in town?”

  I started putting the clothes back in the bag. “He was with Pastor Hucksley. They’re both staying at the VFW with the Montagnards.”

  Kevin stared out the window for a few seconds. Then he leaned against the counter and looked at me. “You know where this place is? Where Y’Grok had been living?”

  “Not exactly. Somewhere in the northern part of the county. Near Winkler Creek.”

  “That means nothing to me. Can you find it?”

  “I’d want to get specific directions from Tommy Lee. Otherwise we could wander over a hundred miles of back roads.”

  “How about this Collins guy? He knows.”

  A prickle of suspicion tingled down my neck. “Why are you going around Tommy Lee?”

  “I’m not going around him. He’s got his hands full. The lab report’s on fast-track, he’s got deputies checking vans and SUVs for a body, and he’s in constant contact with Ryan and Randall back at the hotel.”

  I refused to give ground. “Tommy Lee’s heading the investigation, Kevin. I’m not going to a key scene without telling him.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll appreciate it.”

  “Then he won’t hesitate to give me directions, will he?”

  Kevin couldn’t keep his annoyance from showing, but he had no choice. “All right, all right. We’ll do this however you want.” He straightened up and gave me a mischievous grin. “Guess I’m just used to working things my way.”

  “My office is down the hall.”

  Kevin sat in the red leather chair beside my desk. I dialed Tommy Lee’s direct number from memory. He answered on the first ring.

  “Kevin’s at the funeral home with me. He wanted to look through Y’Grok’s clothes.”

  “Find anything?”

  “No. But he thinks there’s a chance Y’Grok might have left some information at his place and he wants me to take him there.”

  “Why didn’t he ask me?”

  I didn’t answer. Kevin frowned. He knew what the sheriff was saying.

  Tommy Lee let us sweat a few moments before speaking. “Well, I had the same idea. I’m heading out now. Have Kevin sit tight and I’ll pick him up.”

  “No. You’ll pick us up.”

  “And when are you supposed to be recovering from that blow to the head?”

  “When we’ve recovered Y’Grok.” I looked at Kevin and made my next statement for his benefit. “Meanwhile, neither one of you is going to leave me in the dark.”

  Tommy Lee laughed. “In the dark? Buddy, you’re not alone.”

  It was nearly three thirty when Tommy Lee’s patrol car turned onto the dirt road by Winkler’s Creek. Although the sky was clear, the sun had fallen behind the steep western ridge of Redman Gorge, leaving us in the cool shadows of the gorge’s depth. Occasionally a driveway branched off to one side, marked only by a cluster of mailboxes. The farther we traveled up the gorge, the fewer the turnoffs and the number of mailboxes at each junction.

  Finally, the clusters dwindled to single boxes. There were no names, only rural route and box numbers.

  “Should be the next one,” Tommy Lee said. He pointed to a mailbox with a hand-written number forty one. “Less than a quarter mile.”

  The route number had long ago faded off the mailbox. The road forked to the left, crossing the rushing stream over a wooden slatted bridge of questionable strength. This section of the gorge bulged into a wider diameter as the steep ridges on either side curved away from each other. If Redman Gorge were a long python, we were in the globular lump that was swallowed prey.

  Tommy Lee braked the car at the edge of the bridge.

  “Are we crossing that thing?” Kevin asked.

  “The ambulance made it.” Tommy Lee looked over his shoulder at his friend in the backseat. “You can get out and walk across.”

  “No thanks, Lieutenant. You know I’ll follow you anywhere.”

  The timbers creaked and buckled under the car’s weight, but the old bridge held. We rounded a bend and came to a dead end in front of a rundown house. A bold feeder stream flowed between the shack and a weathered building on the other side.

  Tommy Lee opened the car door. “I haven’t been up here in years.”

  Kevin didn’t take his eyes off the moaning bridge. “I thought you said you’d seen him before he died.”

  “In town. The social worker brought him into the hospital. We both tried to get him to stay, but he refused. That was less than two weeks ago.” Tommy Lee shook his head. “I meant to get up here.”

  We followed Tommy Lee up a dirt path to the front door. Cement and stone created the single step to the threshold. Tommy Lee jiggled the doorknob. “Locked. Hate to break in.”

  The three of us walked into an overgrown flower bed and looked through the gap in the dingy sheer curtains that years ago might have been white. Tommy Lee used his flashlight to pierce the gloom of the interior. The beam played across a table, and I thought of my high school English teacher, Miss Stephenson. She had read aloud the scene from Great Expectations where the banquet hall is discovered, readied for the wedding reception which never occurred, and left undisturbed for years except for the rats and flies who dined on the rotting feast.

  Although there was no food to be seen, the place settings, serving bowls, and drinking glasses were set for the next meal
. The homey scene lay smothered under a layer of dust, and spiders had spun a gossamer shroud from the wrought-iron chandelier to the natural wood planking of the table surface. A chipmunk, aroused by the pounding on the door and the invasive beam of the flashlight, scurried across the floor. The chipmunk was nothing more than a Dickens’ rat with a cuter wardrobe.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s lived here in years,” I said.

  Tommy Lee stepped away from the window. “This was the old Woosley place. They were killed in a car wreck about five years ago. The guys from Hickory bought the property from the estate. They only use the land for hunting.”

  Kevin and I followed him around to the rear of the house. He stopped at each window, but every room appeared coated in dust.

  “He couldn’t have stayed here.” Kevin looked across the stream to the structure on the other side. “What about that building?”

  The late afternoon shadows had not yet grown dark enough to hide the round paddle wheel hanging off the stone side of a building’s wall. It was a gristmill shut down long ago when the family and their neighbors no longer needed to grind their own corn. The old waterwheel remained a testimony to the isolation of the gorge in those bygone days when the first settlers scratched out their homesteads.

  We walked down to where the ground became rocky and flaked with mica. The sounds of our footsteps were swallowed by the steady roar of the strong current that once powered the mill. Tommy Lee stopped at the lip of the steep bank and looked for the best way across. We trailed him along the edge until he came to a fallen oak that stretched to the far bank. Limbs were cleared from the top side and the bark had been worn down from countless journeys over it.

  “Somebody’s been using this footbridge.” Tommy Lee started across. “Just be careful. It’s slippery. I didn’t plan on going swimming.”

  I followed his lead with Kevin behind me.

  “When I was a kid, we dared each other to walk the seawall at Boston Harbor. You never forget how. Just like riding a bicy–” Kevin’s word was choked off as he tumbled into the stream.

  The backsplash soaked my shoes. I watched the swift current bounce the detective over the slick rocks until he grabbed onto the overhanging branch of a rhododendron. He stood up, spewing water like a surfacing whale.

  We hurried across and stood on the bank above him.

  “You were saying.” Tommy Lee couldn’t hide his grin.

  “Come on in. The water’s fine.”

  I found a long willow limb and we pulled the soaked Irishman up.

  Tommy Lee held Kevin by the back of his sweater. “He’s kinda small. Maybe we should throw him back.”

  Kevin pulled off his sweater and wrung it out. As he turned around to spread it on a rock, I noticed the thirty-eight revolver holstered in the small of his back. A Smith & Wesson Special, the same pistol I owned. “I’ve got a handkerchief if you want to dry your gun.”

  “Thanks. Glad the damn thing didn’t go off. I always keep the hammer on an empty chamber.” He wiped down the weapon, released the cylinder, and swabbed the barrel.

  Tommy Lee looked to the meadow beyond the mill. “Afraid I don’t see a sunny spot. If you’re chilly, you can run the heater in the car.”

  Kevin holstered his pistol and squeezed his hands down his pant legs. Water poured over his feet. “I’m fine. I’ll try not to drip on the evidence.”

  Tommy Lee led the way to the other side of the mill, where we found a door unlocked. Inside, a large room had been swept clean. The old axle shafts of the mill’s inner workings were still in place. The circular grindstone held a variety of tins and utensils and served as an open pantry.

  “Here’s where Y’Grok must have stayed.” Tommy Lee walked around the room. He lit the kerosene lamps hanging from vertical beams in the stone walls. As each flickering flame intensified, an illumined portion of the room revealed something of the final days of the Montagnard.

  An army cot was set up along one wall and an olive drab blanket lay folded across its foot. A small keg, which had once held penny nails, served as a night stand. In the middle of the keg, as if centered upon an altar, lay an old Bible. The gilt edges of its open pages worn by the years. In another corner of the room, a wooden dowel rod was fastened catty-cornered between two walls. Along it, a few coats, shirts, and pants hung from hangers. Adjacent to this makeshift closet was a three-drawer bureau whose stripped surface was bare of any photographs or keepsakes.

  The only other furniture was a small eating table and a single straight-back chair. Tommy Lee lit the kerosene lamp on top of the table. The glow showed the black wood-burning stove behind it. The sheer size of the cast iron monstrosity indicated it worked for both cooking and heating.

  Here existed a one-room universe that sufficed for the needs of body and soul. An empty copper basin beside the stove suggested a lack of running water. I walked over to the Bible open on the keg. The Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” Perhaps, for Y’Grok, it was as simple as that. The Lord was all he had left. When I picked the Bible up, I made a discovery.

  Three Bic ballpoints had been snapped in the middle. Blue ink stained the rough wood beneath them. An open pocket knife and a large needle lay alongside, their tips coated with thick ink. Smudges of fingerprints dirtied the red plastic casing of the knife.

  “Look at this.”

  Tommy Lee and Kevin came over.

  “Prison tattoos?” Tommy Lee took a handkerchief and picked up one of the pens by the end. “Looks like he extracted the ink from the broken barrels.”

  Kevin bent closer. “Traces of dried blood on the blade and needle.” He looked up at me. “He left the message on himself.”

  “What message?” Tommy Lee stared at Kevin, his one eye unblinking.

  Kevin looked surprised. “Didn’t Barry tell you?”

  I bristled. “It’s not my story.”

  Tommy Lee set the broken pen back on the keg. “I’ll get some evidence bags later, but first we’re all going to have a little chat. Unless both of you prefer to find your way out of these hills on foot?”

  “Until now I didn’t have anything to tell.” Kevin looked at me for support. “I told you Y’Grok had something to show me. I’m not hiding anything.”

  I was in no mood for semantics. “Then tell Tommy Lee about Raven and about the ransom possibility.”

  “That’s the second time today I’ve heard that word.” Tommy Lee pointed to the chair. “Have a seat, Kevin. I’m sure your wet pants won’t do any damage.”

  Kevin repeated what he’d told me about Operation Raven. He said he hadn’t told Tommy Lee because Y’Grok’s secretive note implied the information was only for him. Y’Grok had had opportunity before he died to tell Tommy Lee, if Raven was something he had wanted him to know.

  Tommy Lee paced the room. “So you think stealing Y’Grok’s body is about money, not politics. That’s your story now?”

  Kevin’s face turned red. “God damn it, I’m not making up stories. I’m trying to deal with the facts. You know the drill as well as I do. Facts first, theories second. I got the letter, Y’Grok said ‘Raven’s come home,’ then his body’s stolen and now I learn he might have left me a tattooed message. I don’t know what else it could be. Y’Grok must have found a way to get the money out of Nam.”

  I followed Kevin’s sequence of events but they didn’t make sense. “So someone steals a body and plans on ransoming it back?”

  “And exactly who does this body snatcher think has the money now?” Tommy Lee asked.

  “Either someone who was involved in Raven or his son, Y’Suom.”

  I still didn’t get it. “Who’s going to give up a million dollars for a dead body?”

  Tommy Lee fixed his eye on me. “Someone who owes his life to Y’Grok and doesn’t want to see him humiliated, even in death.”

  “Amen,” Kevin said.

  I stood outside the bonds forged in battle and felt about two inches tall. “All right. I unders
tand.” I turned to Kevin. “Why would Y’Grok want you to have the money?”

  “Because he knew what I’d do with it.” He smiled at Tommy Lee. “No offense, but you weren’t part of Raven. Y’Grok knew he could trust me to put the money to good use.”

  “Doing what?” Tommy Lee asked. “Earning interest?”

  Kevin jumped to his feet. “To keep their resistance alive. These people never got out of the god-damned war, Lieutenant. Their families are persecuted. Their young men are taken away to be re-educated, and then never return. Y’Grok knew I hadn’t forgotten them.”

  Tommy Lee remained calm. “And the rest of us?”

  Kevin looked back and forth between us. “You tell me. He sent me the letter.”

  Tommy Lee said nothing

  Kevin walked back to the keg. “What better way to make sure a message isn’t lost?” He turned toward me. “Did you see anything?”

  “My uncle prepared the body.” I wasn’t ready to tell him about the tattoos, not until I talked to Tommy Lee alone.

  “Did your uncle say anything?” Kevin’s eyes were hopeful.

  “He said Y’Grok had ink under his nails and he had to use Soft Scrub to get them clean.”

  “Well, then we need to talk to him. Right, Tommy Lee?”

  “We need to know what he saw.”

  “The idea of a ransom might be a moot point,” I said. “If there was a message explaining where the money is, the guy might have already found it. Then he’ll just dump the body.”

  “Maybe,” Kevin replied. “But if I know Y’Grok, the message will be in code. Only somebody familiar with Raven will be able to figure it out. Damn, I hope your uncle can remember.”

  “We’d better get back.” Tommy Lee looked at the needle and pens. “First I’ll get some evidence bags and take this stuff.”

  I forced a laugh. “I’ll help you across the log, ol’ timer.”

  Kevin stayed to nose around the room some more.

  As Tommy Lee and I walked along the stream, I whispered, “I saw the tattoos.”

  Tommy Lee stopped. “You did?” He looked back at the mill. “I admit he’s acting strange, but I’d still trust Kevin with my life.”