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

by Mark de Castrique

  I picked up the questioning again. “Is that why he wanted to live in the old mill?”

  Harvey sighed. “God only knows. That was a terrible place for a sick man, but what else could I do? He’d wanted to see the mountains and I brought him up for a day trip. He fell in love with the spot.”

  “Anybody else come see him?”

  “We had some volunteers from Grace Lutheran in town who checked on him. He didn’t want company, but I made the arrangements. I couldn’t leave him up there for days on end.”

  “How many different people?”

  “Six or seven. They worked out a rotation schedule.” Harvey stroked his goatee with his left hand and eyed me cautiously. “Is there some problem? Believe me, he didn’t want to stay in a hospital. He must have failed rapidly because we would have taken him if we’d found him in the final stages.”

  “No, no problem,” Kevin said. “We’re not second guessing anyone’s decisions. It’s just that Y’Grok said he brought something back from Vietnam for me. And now that he’s gone, it’s even more important to me, but Y’Grok didn’t tell me what he brought. Guess he wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Probably in that ammo case,” Harvey said.

  I caught my breath and locked eyes with Kevin. His jaw trembled, but he waited for me to speak. “Could be,” I agreed. “Was it an old one, like from the war?”

  “Yeah. Those things are indestructible. This one was pretty beat up. I never served so I don’t know what caliber.” He moved his hands to show the size of a small suitcase. “I can take you up there.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We went with Tommy Lee yesterday, but didn’t see an ammo case.”

  Harvey tucked his bottom lip under his upper teeth and gnawed on his whiskers. “That’s right. Last time I saw Y’Grok the case wasn’t in the room. He usually kept it beside a nail keg he used as a nightstand.”

  “We saw the keg,” I said. “You ever ask him about the case?”

  “He had it when I first took him up there. I teased him. Asked if it was his wardrobe chest. He said something about the case was really a circle, coming round to where it began.”

  “Could someone have stolen it from him?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t see how. I think he would have told me. Like I said, the case wasn’t there last time I visited. I noticed it was gone, but didn’t ask him about it. I thought he’d just moved it someplace.” He looked at Kevin. “You think that’s what he wanted you to have? The ammo case?”

  Kevin didn’t answer. He stared at the wall of insignias as if neither Harvey nor I were in the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  “We need to get to that mill.” Kevin spoke the words as an order and then jogged for the jeep.

  I ran behind, knowing that if I didn’t drive him, he’d try to find his own way up there. The rain had picked up and navigating through the fog and muddy roads would be a challenge, probably an impossibility for the Boston native.

  I climbed in the driver’s seat and ran both hands through my wet hair, matting it flat to my scalp. “Shouldn’t we check in with Tommy Lee? Maybe Millen or Weathers deciphered the tattoos.”

  Kevin snapped his seatbelt. “Call him now. If he doesn’t answer, we go and keep calling as long as you have a signal.”

  I unclipped my phone from my waist. “You dial. I’ll have enough trouble driving in this soup.” I told him Tommy Lee’s cell number as I pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Hi, pal, any luck?” Kevin listened and then shook his head to share Tommy Lee’s answer. “So what do they suggest?”

  I continued out of town accompanied by an occasional grunt from my passenger.

  After a few minutes, Kevin said, “I don’t know, let me ask him.”

  I risked a quick glance from the road to see Kevin take the phone from his ear.

  “Everyone’s in the dark about what the tattoos mean. Maybe Franklin will have a clue. He’s coming in at two, but this Archie Donovan and the mayor have him tied up as soon as he lands. There’s evidently some reception tonight and Stormy and Ryan are attending. Tommy Lee says we’re all supposed to go.”

  “Twenty hundred hours.”

  “What?”

  I decided not to get into my late night meeting with Melissa Bigham. “I had a message last night from Archie. Didn’t think about it till now. The mayor’s throwing a cocktail party at the Gainesboro Country Club under the guise of honoring Y’Grok, but it’s really to get his picture made with our dignitaries.”

  “Dignitaries. No one’s ever applied that word to me.” Kevin spoke into the phone. “Can we get Talbert between this afternoon’s bullshit and the reception?”

  I didn’t wait for Tommy Lee’s answer. “We need to get Talbert away from his self-appointed handlers. Surely they’re going to give him some time alone at the condo.”

  “But I don’t want an entourage going there or to the Grove Park. Franklin will treat it like a damn movie junket.” Kevin listened a few seconds to whatever Tommy Lee offered and then answered, “I haven’t asked him yet.”

  “What?” I prompted.

  “Tommy Lee thinks we should get with Franklin, Stormy, and Ryan at the funeral home on the quiet. Maybe you could pick Franklin up, bring him there, and then take him to the reception. We could say we needed to go over things for tomorrow’s service.”

  I thought about how the mayor and Archie could still tag along, and how Mom would feel responsible to host everyone. “I’ve got a better idea. Get word to Franklin Talbert we’re going to meet about the funeral, but I’ll take him to my cabin instead. Tommy Lee can bring the others. Any onlookers will assume we’re going to the funeral home.”

  “I like it.” Kevin repeated the plan to Tommy Lee, who agreed. “They’ll shoot for six,” he told me. “And they’ll arrange for Franklin to be ready at five-thirty.”

  “Tell Tommy Lee what we’re doing now, and that I’ll drop you at his house when we’re finished.”

  Kevin filled Tommy Lee in on our conversation with Harvey Collins and our effort to find the missing ammo case.

  When he finished, he handed me back my phone. “He says to keep an eye on the weather and to remind you the creeks can rise fast.”

  “That’s for your benefit. Don’t get any ideas about body surfing again.”

  We stood across the stream from the mill. The level was up a couple inches from yesterday and whitewater gurgled around the broken spokes of the wheel. I could see from the brush trapped between them that the stream frequently flooded its banks. I didn’t want to get stranded on the other side.

  I’d brought a compass from the jeep’s glove box and umbrellas from the cargo space. Kevin leaned on one as if it were a cane, content to let the fine rain fall on his uncovered head. At this elevation, the clouds enveloped us like a soggy linen sheet and we could hardly see ten feet in front of us.

  “What now?” Kevin asked.

  “I vote we go inside. This time we know what we’re looking for and maybe something from the tattoos will make sense when we see it.” I lifted the open umbrella over my head and slowly crossed the foot-log like a tightrope walker high above a circus crowd. When I safely stepped on the far bank, Kevin mimicked my performance without any comment on how he’d done it back in Boston.

  We spent thirty minutes thoroughly examining every inch of the room. Over the years, the wood had been scarred by insects, animals, and humans. Initials of long forgotten lovers decorated the rough planking. Numbers carved into beams near the millstone bore witness to an operator’s need for an impromptu ledger. None of the figures contained 2000, nor was there a circular drawing like the possible compass. We checked for loose floorboards and shined our flashlights through gaps in the stone foundation in an effort to determine what lay beneath the mill. Nothing.

  “What do you think two thousand represents?” I asked. “We’re talking a lot more money, right?”

  “If we’re talking Raven, we are.” Kevin slammed the flat of hi
s palm against the millstone. “I’m missing something. Y’Grok counted on me thinking like he thought.”

  “How did he use numbers?”

  “Like we all did. Coordinates for longitude and latitude. Distance. Radio frequencies.”

  “What was the common measurement for distance? Yards?”

  “Meters. Y’Grok grew up under French colonialism.”

  I didn’t need a calculator to know 2000 meters equaled more than a mile. “He couldn’t have lugged the ammo case that far.”

  “Then maybe it’s feet. He was in America.”

  “That’s still over a third of a mile. And which direction? I think the lines of the V pointed northwest and northeast.”

  Kevin paced to the far corner of the room. “For all I know he could’ve been drawing a god-damned piece of pie.”

  I looked down at the keg Y’Grok had improvised as a nightstand. We had turned it over once to make sure nothing had been hidden inside it. Its round top matched the circular shape of the tattoo and the rim of the metal hoop had a coat of rust. “Not a slice of pie,” I said, “but a slice of a circle. The V defines an arc with the N point in the middle.”

  “A triangle? You think Y’Grok was using some sort of triangulation?”

  “You tell me. Maybe he got double duty out of his letters to spell Raven and got the N to stand for north.”

  Kevin walked back with renewed energy. “That’d be like him. Make the tattoos work on multiple levels. Triangulation with N at the center of the third side. And he gave us the distance.”

  I shook my head. “Two thousand feet? Two thousand meters? That’s a long way.”

  “But what if two thousand is the combined length of all three sides. We’re looking at a third. That’s—”

  “Six-six-six. A little ominous, don’t you think? Did Y’Grok read Stephen King?”

  “No, but he knew how lousy I was at math. And if N is on an arc of the circle, then the radius will be the same. I’d say his ammo case is buried a little over six hundred and sixty feet from here. Roughly two hundred meters.”

  “North.” I pulled out my compass and took a bearing. The direction went parallel to the stream. “At least we don’t have to cross the log.”

  “Unless that stream turns.”

  “It turns, but away from us. That’s the rickety bridge we drove across coming in.”

  Kevin picked up his umbrella. “Then let’s get moving.”

  We stood with our backs against the mill and I sighted the compass due north. On a clear day, I could have used a distant pine or rock outcropping as a landmark. Today, the fog limited my line of vision to a scrub patch of rhododendron about thirty yards away. I’d have to take frequent bearings or risk zig-zagging off course. Otherwise we could miss the spot by fifty yards.

  “I’ll lead and you count the paces.” I set off at a brisk walk, watching the ground for stones and roots.

  With Kevin muttering his numbers behind me, we crossed a depression in the weedy pasture. At some point in the past, this spot of ground had been the basin of a millpond that controlled the water flow for the wheel. Its simple earthen dam was probably washed out years ago.

  I stopped at the thicket. “Look at this.”

  Kevin held his count and reached out for the broken ends of rhododendron. He looked beneath the plant. “Somebody snapped off some branches. You can see where the bark’s been stripped.”

  I scraped an exposed end with my fingernail. “Not in the past day or two, but I’d say within the past week.”

  “We’re on to something. Y’Grok knew we couldn’t go through the thicket so he left us a sign.”

  His deduction made sense. We’d have to walk around the small cluster and pick up the trail on the other side. I took another compass reading and selected the trunk of a large white pine just beyond the rhododendron. “You’ll have to estimate the distance.” I looked again at the broken branch ends. “I wonder why he carried the limbs away.”

  “Maybe some animal took them.”

  I’d been reared in the mountains, but I wasn’t an expert on wildlife. Still, I’d never heard of animals using rhododendron branches for nesting, and there were no teeth marks of a beaver or signs of a rutting buck.

  We looped around the thicket and checked the plants on the other side. None of them had been broken. We headed for my marked tree and Kevin resumed counting. I felt confident that even with limited sight I’d been able to keep an accurate bearing. My confidence evaporated when the fog dissipated enough to reveal a problem. As Kevin mechanically droned from one hundred thirty three to one hundred thirty four, we walked into a sheer wall of granite.

  “How’d this get here?” Kevin touched the wet rock to make sure the stone bluff wasn’t an illusion.

  “I’d guess something to do with plate tectonics and incredible geo-pressure.”

  He wasn’t amused. “God damn it, didn’t you know it was here?”

  “No, I didn’t. I saw this land for the first time yesterday. And I was concentrating on the mill, not the countryside.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He paced along the base of the bluff, searching for a way up. “Maybe there’s a cave or a crevice.”

  I looked up and saw only gray rock merging into gray clouds. As if to add insult to injury, the heavens opened with a deluge that would have forced Noah to batten down his hatches.

  We huddled under our umbrellas and assessed the miserable state of affairs.

  “Maybe we veered off when we came around the rhododendron,” Kevin said.

  “I don’t see how. The pine stood right on the compass line. We can walk the edge of the rock face and see if there’s a break. But from the condition of his body, I can tell you Y’Grok didn’t have the stamina to do any climbing.”

  We spent another thirty minutes examining impenetrable granite for signs of a crevice or overhang that might yield a possibility. Water poured down the bluff like an overflowing pot. I hung in as long as I could, waiting for Kevin to quit. At last, after having trudged along the same muddy path for the sixth time, I’d had enough. “This is nuts. We don’t even know if we’re interpreting the tattoos correctly.”

  “But the broken rhododendron.”

  “That could have been a hiker. Maybe Y’Grok wanted the branches for something else.” I looked at my wet wristwatch. “It’s one-thirty. We need to get back. There’s no cell coverage here and who knows what’s happened in town. Franklin Talbert lands in half an hour and I want to make sure we’re set for the meeting.”

  Kevin didn’t argue. He turned without a word and headed back to the mill.

  The stream now boiled a foot higher than when we’d arrived. The foot-log had plenty of clearance, but I wouldn’t have wanted to tumble into the rushing current underneath. Wind gusts blew from the south, slamming the heavy raindrops into us like buckshot. We didn’t dare cross holding the open umbrellas for fear of being yanked off our feet. Kevin went first, as fast as he dared, while I stood on the bank ready to fish him out if he fell. Then he took the post on the opposite side. I held the closed umbrella like a balancing pole and stepped onto the log. To hesitate would expose me to the full force of the storm. I was a yard from safety when a sudden shift of the wind caught me. I desperately struggled to regain my footing.

  Kevin scrambled up the bank crying, “Jump!”

  I sprang from the log at the angle of my momentum. With only inches to spare, I reached the side. The steep incline provided no handhold and I started sliding backwards. Kevin reached down and snatched me by the collar of my jacket. He hauled me up like a half-drowned puppy, and we both fell on the muddy ground.

  “I haven’t had so much fun since I sprawled headlong into a Vietnamese rice paddy.” Kevin got to his knees and turned his face to the sky. “Might as well let Mother Nature hose me clean.”

  “At least here no one’s shooting at you.”

  “Not yet, anyway.” He stood up and looked at his mud-streaked clothes. “Well, I’
m wetter than a duck’s butt and not nearly as warm.”

  “I’ll run the heater on high all the way back. You can tell Patsy this time you dove in the water to save me.”

  Three miles later, the rain had turned to a slow drizzle and the interior of the jeep had turned into a sauna. Kevin took my phone and reached Tommy Lee. “No luck here. What’s the status on Franklin?” He listened a moment. “I’ll tell him. See you at the house. Oh, and I might need to borrow some dry clothes.” Kevin hung up before Tommy Lee could ask any more questions.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Everything’s go. Tommy Lee told your mayor to have Franklin at the condo at five-thirty or he’d have to answer to the general and the senator.”

  “That would scare him.”

  “He said your name will be left at the guard gate with directions. One good thing about this rain, Franklin won’t be in the mood to tour some half-finished cemetery.”

  “Not even if he could be the next Daniel Boone?”

  Kevin laughed. “I forgot about that. Franklin’s someone who should definitely have his head jammed up a coon’s ass.”

  Now I had another problem. How could I meet movie star Franklin Talbert and keep a straight face?

  Chapter Twelve

  Democrat whined as I approached my driveway. Two nights away from his beloved woods had made him homesick. As much as he liked the attention from Mom and Dad, nothing beat patrolling his world of squirrels, quail, and raccoons.

  My cabin sat in the middle of five acres of hardwoods, plenty of room for Democrat to roam. He wasn’t a runner like a beagle who’d follow a scent for miles till he dropped. The lab stayed within a safe distance of a quick retreat and never wandered farther than the sound of my whistle. His only major sin was one he’d never repent. The sin had been bred into his DNA. Democrat loved water, and I knew as soon as I opened the jeep’s door, he’d leap for the freedom of the open woods and remain outside until he was joyfully drenched to the skin. I had the option of either letting him roam free while I cleaned the cabin for the evening meeting or carrying him inside. If I let him loose, I’d pay later when I’d have to dry the squirming puppy so that he wouldn’t trash my place with muddy paws and rain-soaked fur.