Beneath Winter Sand

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fairly certain.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  While Caleb waited at the curb, the scene became chaotic almost before his eyes. First Brent got there. The police chief, who wore his hair longer than he had when he’d been sheriff of Santa Cruz County, spent a long time staring into the hole in the ground, studying the unmistakable small skull.

  “Those are human, right?” Caleb wondered from some twenty yards away. “It looks like it belongs to a small child, maybe even a baby.”

  “Yep. I’d say no more than a year old,” Brent agreed. “We’d better get in touch with Quentin and let him know what’s about to happen here.”

  “I already called him after I called you. He said he’d be here as soon as he could finish up with Prissy Gates. It seems Prissy took a tumble this morning and hit her head on the coffee table. The wound needed ten stitches to close.”

  “Okay then, I’ll call the county and make arrangements for a forensic team to bring their proper gear for a dig.”

  “How long do you think this will take? I’m guessing a week. They’ll have to dig up the rest of the yard, won’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  About that time, Eastlyn pulled up. She got out, walked to the hole and pulled her sunglasses down her nose to get a better look. “That’s disturbing. Forensics will have this place looking like giant gophers burrowed their way across the lawn, probably before sundown.”

  “They’ll dig that far down?” Caleb asked.

  “On something like this? You bet they will,” Eastlyn stated. “They’ll probably dig up the entire front yard before they release the property back to Quentin.”

  Brent slapped Caleb on the back. “Look at it this way, they’ll likely do some of your work for you.”

  Caleb took off his ball cap, a black and silver Raider hat, and mopped his brow. At the sound of a car engine, he turned and spotted Quentin’s vintage Woodie rolling into the lane.

  Quentin and Sydney made a mad dash over to the hole to look at what was there for themselves.

  “What do you make of it?” Brent asked Quentin. “Take a long look now before the medical examiner gets here, maybe tell me what we’re dealing with ahead of the curve.”

  Quentin squatted down to get a closer look. “It’s definitely the remains of a child, a small one, maybe even a newborn. The body’s been in the ground for a very long time.” A sick thought ran through his head about his uncle. Maybe there was a dark side to the old man that he hadn’t known about. “How long did Douglas live here exactly?”

  Brent scratched his chin. “Thirty years. Maybe more. He built the place after the lot sat vacant for a long while. That was during a time when Pelican Pointe was becoming a ghost town. Everyone was moving out, heading someplace else. I remember my grandmother saying how strange it was to see someone as prosperous as Douglas deciding to settle here. And building a house as grand as this one was almost unheard of.”

  Quentin squinted toward the cliffs. “Makes you wonder why a professor would pick here to retire, to build his house, no academic world around, closest university is fifty miles into Santa Cruz. I’d have to agree with your grandmother.”

  “Yeah, that’s all I recall from her days living here, at least, off the top of my head. Murphy would probably be able to remember more, like who Doug purchased the land from, maybe even why he ended up here. If not, it’s all speculation. As it is, I’ll have to go through public tax records to learn who owned it originally.”

  Quentin stood up and stared at Brent then over Eastlyn. “You know what this means, right? My uncle could’ve been involved in this. Although, I have no idea what ‘this’ is at the moment. The dead body of a child wouldn’t exactly be a boon to the former mayor’s reputation.”

  “It’s way too early to go jumping to conclusions like that,” Eastlyn cautioned. “Let’s at least pinpoint a timeframe before we start accusing anyone of something this despicable.”

  “She’s right,” Sydney said, slipping her hand into Quentin’s. “Let’s try to keep an open mind at least until we find out the history. After all, the land’s accessible to just about anyone. The bones being here doesn’t preclude someone coming here to bury a body, even that of a child.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Caleb tossed out. “Look how close it is to the house. You’d make noise digging that far down.”

  “I agree,” Quentin added.

  Sydney stubbornly held out for false hope. “Maybe it happened while Douglas was out of town or something.”

  “Like I said,” Brent began. “A simple check with the county tax assessor’s office and we should have our answers pretty quick as to who owned the property before Douglas built the house. It’s possible Douglas wasn’t involved.”

  Quentin rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not sure how you figure that. And I just thought of another problem. We’ll have to keep Beckham away from here until the remains have been dealt with and removed. With his grandmother dying last month, he’s already had enough of death to last a lifetime. The kid doesn’t need to come home from school and see this.”

  “Agreed. I’ll go pick him up, make sure I’m there after his last class,” Sydney offered. “That way I can prepare him a little on the ride home.”

  “Good idea,” Brent said. “But you should know the crime scene techs could take a week or more before they clear this area. They’ll want to dig for more bodies. You’ll have to make arrangements to stay away that long.”

  “We’ll be okay,” Sydney stressed. “We’ll stay at my house until the forensic team has done their thing and gone.”

  “Do you still want to live here?” Quentin asked. “Maybe it’s not such a great idea to come back at all.”

  Sydney’s head was beginning to throb. Because she’d rushed out of the clinic in a hurry, she’d left her sweater behind. She shivered in the January breeze. “Do I have to give you an answer right this minute? We’ve put so much time and effort into our ideas for redoing this place, now the yard. I hate to back off all those plans. But…”

  Quentin put his arm around her waist. “I know. Plus, it hasn’t even been a week since we signed the papers to make it ours. What’s the likelihood we could unload it on anyone else, especially after this?”

  Sydney rested her head on his shoulder. “I say we stick it out until we find out more. There has to be a reasonable explanation why an infant is buried in this location. Maybe it’s very old. You know, Chumash old, or belonged to settlers who lived in the area.”

  Quentin exchanged looks with Brent. “Don’t bet on that outcome. For one, those bones haven’t been in the ground long enough to be from a Chumash settlement, or Spanish missionaries. If I had to ballpark a guess, I’d say less than a quarter of a century.”

  “That covers quite a span of time right there,” Brent reiterated. He pivoted to where Caleb stood. “Maybe you could move your machinery around to the side of the house for now. The county will probably want to use it to dig up the rest of the yard and not bother with bringing in their own equipment. Would you be okay with that?”

  Caleb was still having trouble getting the image of that skull out of his head. “I don’t mind. The job’s on hold anyway. Not much anyone can do about it.”

  Quentin ran his hands through his hair. “I’m so glad Beckham is at school right now. After what he’s gone through with his grandmother, I’m glad he wasn’t here to see this. What if he’d come upon that skull—”

  “It’s unnerving even for the rest of us,” Brent added. When his cell phone buzzed, the chief of police went into an all-business mode. “Yeah, I’m standing right here staring at what amounts to a baby’s grave. I’ve got the local physician here with me onsite, and he’s also the homeowner. The doc confirms it’s the bones of a small child. So yeah, I’d appreciate it if you’d assemble your team together and get over here as soon as possible. Thanks.”

  Brent ended the call and stoo
d back near Eastlyn. “Coroner is on his way. Dumb ass actually wanted to know if I was sure it was human remains before he made the trip from Santa Cruz.”

  Eastlyn shook her head. “Same old county response. That’s the very reason we have our own chopper. But this…there’s no getting around the medical examiner. It has to be done by the book.”

  “It is a rather unbelievable find,” Caleb pointed out. “I had to get rid of all those boulders stacked up there just to get down to the dirt enough to dig. What are the odds that the first day I start ripping up the yard I stumble upon buried remains?”

  Sydney latched onto Caleb’s arm. “Oh, my God. Maybe that’s the reason I got the willies every time I got close to that rocky flower bed. It didn’t look right to me. Now I guess I know why.”

  Caleb nodded. “It looked like it didn’t belong here. For an out-of-place tower of rocks so neatly stacked, someone put a lot of effort into piling them up like that on purpose. They didn’t end up shaped in the form of a cairn by themselves. Bradford must’ve had them put there as a memorial.”

  Sydney could only agree. “With no name? What a jerk. First time I saw it, I thought maybe Quentin’s uncle must’ve had a gardener at one time who tried his hand at an artistic flair to give the yard some…pizzazz. I feel silly now.”

  “No need for that,” Eastlyn said. “Think of it this way. If not for you two moving into this place, then buying it, who knows how long that body could’ve remained here under the ground without anyone knowing about it.”

  “Good point,” Brent added. “At least this way there’s hope that we’ll be able to get the child a proper burial, maybe back where he needs to be, not dumped in a flower bed.”

  Caleb stuck around until the coroner got there, mulling over a lead no one else knew about. This skull, these remains, had to belong to Hannah’s little brother. But when the media from Santa Cruz showed up to video the forensic team setting up and picking away the dirt, Caleb got out of there. He went to hunt down Hannah and tell her the news before she heard it from anyone else.

  He found her Suburban parked on Landings Bay in front of the Donnelly house. She was loading up her cleaning supplies into the back.

  “Hey, fancy meeting you here,” she called out as soon as she spotted Caleb getting out of his pickup.

  “Are you done here?”

  “Yep, just finishing up.”

  “How about some lunch?”

  She looked at her watch. “At two-thirty? Sure. Why not? All I’ve had is the apple I grabbed around noon. I could eat.” She noticed he seemed bothered by something. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you start the Bradford House job this morning?”

  “I’ll tell you over a burger and fries. Why don’t you follow me to the diner?”

  But by the time they reached the eatery, word had spread about what Caleb had unearthed. As soon as the two walked inside, all heads turned to stare at Caleb as if he’d dug up the devil himself.

  Hannah took notice. “Did you just rob the bank or something? What’s going on?”

  Caleb took hold of her elbow and scooted her along to a booth near the window. Margie Rosterman, the owner, followed them to the table, throwing down a couple of menus for them to peruse. Margie stared down Caleb. “Worked up an appetite, did ya? I wonder why. Who do you think might be in that grave up there on the hill?”

  A shiver ran up Hannah’s arms. “Grave? Okay, what are you guys talking about?”

  “You don’t know?” Margie bobbed her head toward Caleb. “Since he’s the guy who dug it up, I’ll let him tell you what he found.”

  “How about bringing us a couple of coffees?” Caleb suggested, trying to get rid of Margie long enough for him to let Hannah in on the news.

  “Humph,” was Margie’s response as she turned on her heels and went to fetch the drinks.

  With Margie out of earshot, Caleb squirmed in his seat as he relayed the morning’s events. “The thing is, as I stood there watching the scene unfold to what it is now, I thought of you. You don’t think those remains could belong to your baby brother who got kidnapped, do you?”

  Hannah’s appetite had suddenly vanished. “I don’t know what to think. The guy who brought me here, who’s supposed to have all the answers has gone MIA these past few days. Getting any clear-cut answers out of him is darn near impossible.”

  “I hate it when that happens,” Caleb said, trying to lighten the mood.

  She got the humor, took it in stride, but was clearly upset by the day’s events. “Yeah. Well, when I see Scott again I plan to give him a piece of my mind about that. I can’t believe this is his idea of finding my little brother. Who does that sort of thing? Bring me here so I’ll settle for finding bones? That’s…not fair.”

  “But at least by unearthing the remains, you’d know what happened to him. It would give you some closure.”

  “How? How does closure work when I have no idea who could have stolen him in the first place and brought him here? Now I have more questions than I ever did.”

  “Hold up. We’re both getting way ahead of ourselves. Sydney told Quentin to wait before jumping to conclusions and I think that’s sound advice. We should take a step back before heading down the definitive path that those remains belong to Micah.”

  “Oh really?” She chewed her lip. Her voice took on a more serious tone. “Call it a gut instinct, but they have to belong to him. Why else would I be sitting here? What other baby in the area is missing? I’m prepared to yell at Scott for bringing me all this way, but—”

  She stopped talking long enough for Margie to bring over two steaming cups of coffee.

  “What do you guys want for chow?” the owner asked. “The special is meatloaf.”

  Caleb had only glanced at the menu, but he wanted Margie to leave them alone for longer than a few minutes. “I’ll take a cheeseburger with the works and a side of fries.”

  Hannah wasn’t so eager. “I’ll…uh…I guess I’ll have the tuna melt on wheat.” She dug in her purse for the small bottle of aspirin she kept there. “And could you bring me a glass of water?”

  “Will do. I’ll get your food started.”

  After Margie had gone, Caleb picked up where he’d left off. “You think Scott’s work might be done. He got you here and I found the remains. That’s why he’s MIA now. There’s nothing left of the mystery anymore.”

  “Exactly. Now it’s a wait and see kind of thing and I’m not very good at waiting. How long do you think it’ll be before Brent gets the results back as to the child’s age and how long he’s been in the ground?”

  “Could be months. That’s why I think you should pay a visit to Brent after we eat and tell him the entire story just so he has a better grasp of the situation. You have to let him know that the baby might be Micah, Hannah. There’s no other way.”

  She let out a sigh and turned slightly sick at her stomach again at the prospect of talking to Brent. “I know you’re right, but the idea of this getting out and everyone knowing about it is…I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  “You want answers though, right?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “Brent is your only hope to that happening. You have an obligation now for full disclosure.”

  “I know. But I’m not happy about it.”

  Seven

  While the forensic team shoveled out more dirt, that afternoon Brent called a meeting in his office. He asked anyone who had anything to do with Bradford House to be there. That included Quentin and a slew of friends Douglas had prior to his death. It included people the former professor had known before and after he became a politician. Which left Brent’s office full of former supporters who were there to staunchly defend their friend.

  Jack Prescott, the retired town doctor, emphasized his belief in Douglas by tapping the desk with his index finger…repeatedly. “I want to go on record right now stating that Belle and I never knew Doug to have a mean bone in his body. And I knew the man before he became a teac
her at UC Davis. Doug and I go way back. So don’t even try to suggest those bones happened on his watch. Those remains had to have already been buried there when he built the house.”

  Quentin took exception to that. “No way, Jack. Those bones were buried in that specific spot after the house had been built. That does make it happen on Doug’s watch.”

  Jack wheeled in his chair. “You don’t know that for certain. You’re a physician, not a builder.”

  “That’s true, but digging a foundation requires digging down several feet into the ground. The grave was too close to the house, which says you’re wrong.”

  But the current mayor was also on Doug’s side. Murphy couldn’t recall the people who’d sold Doug the land, at least not off the top of his head. “That’s been thirty years or more and these days I have a tough time remembering what I ate for breakfast. But I’m with Jack on this. Doug had a good heart. Whatever happened he wasn’t a part of it.”

  “I’m working on finding out more about the property owners,” Brent admitted. “So far I’ve turned up records at the county that show a couple by the name of Pryce and Adelia Townsend owned the land. I ran a background check on both. They’re both still alive, living in a retirement community near Sausalito. I called and talked to Adelia. Her husband, Pryce, suffers from dementia. According to the wife, they bought the land with every intention of settling here. But once they realized it wasn’t the thriving little town they’d hoped for, they scrubbed the idea of building their own house and put the property on the market. It sat for almost three years before Douglas snatched it up for a song. To eliminate them, I asked Adelia if she’d ever had kids. She claims she didn’t, which I intend to verify.”

  “I doubt this couple had a kid who died back in the San Francisco area and they decided to drive down here to bury it in a vacant lot,” Eastlyn said, shaking her head. “Long drive just to dispose of a body. But I suppose there’s no logic when it comes to something as sinister as this.”