by Loretta Ross
Death stepped closer and leaned in to look. The can jittered and bounced in fits and starts, dancing toward the edge of the shelf. There were no wires and nothing he could see to account for the phenomenon. Besides the beer can, the shelf held a device that looked like a large ice pick, a silvery metal doodad he didn’t recognize, a circular comb with metal teeth and a heavy wooden handle, and an old horseshoe.
Nothing was moving but the can. It skipped to the edge and toppled over, bounced once, and lay rocking in the dust.
“What would make it do that?” Randy asked.
“Wasp in the can?” Death suggested. “It could have been attracted to the residue in the bottom.”
“Great. I’m allergic to bee stings. Maybe we should go outside now,” Nichelle suggested with just the faintest quaver in her voice.
Death backed out of the stall and swung it closed. The three of them strolled back out of the old barn in the carefully casual manner of people who did not run unless there was a damned good reason.
“My girlfriend is afraid of bees,” Death said, “but she won’t kill them because they’re important for the environment. So if she sees one, she tiptoes and tries to stay out of its line of sight, on the theory that if it can’t see her it won’t sting her.”
“And speak of the devil,” Randy exclaimed.
Death followed his brother’s gaze. Up and to the southwest, the Hadleigh House sat half-hidden behind the trees, silhouetted against a bank of dark clouds that hadn’t yet reached the skies above the valley. Two figures were making their way down the slope. Death recognized Doris Keystone but he had eyes only for Wren, who was smiling at him as she waded through waist-high wildflowers with the sun in her hair.
six
“Fennel … Griffith … Arnold … Zelling … ”
Nichelle had sent them off down a bridle path that skirted the corner of the pasture and led them to the edge of the cemetery. They’d climbed over a short, sagging fence and hopped across a narrow stream that ran through a gully at the back of the burial ground. A row of tombs lined the hillside above the creek, looking like macabre little houses with iron doors and windows protected by wrought-iron grills.
Randy was reading the names on the tombs as they passed.
“Those things give me the creeps,” Wren said. “What if you looked in one of the windows and something looked back?”
“Just think of them as hobbit holes,” Randy suggested.
“Oh, yay. Dead hobbits. That’s okay. I didn’t want to sleep tonight anyway.”
“So, if those are hobbit holes,” Death said with a sly look at his brother, “would that make this creek the Brandywine?”
Death and Randy’s mother had been a literature professor. Randy’s real name was Baranduin, from Tolkien. It was the Elvish name of the Brandywine river.
“You hush,” Randy said.
“And again with the snappy comeback!”
Randy blew his brother a raspberry and strode ahead. “There’s a staircase here leading up to the rest of the cemetery.” He leaned down to examine it. “Um, it looks like the steps are made out of old tombstones?”
“They are,” Doris said. “When the lake came in, there were several cemeteries that had to be emptied and the bodies relocated. Of course, with a lot of the really old graves, there was nothing left of the bodies. If the stones were legible, they put them in other cemeteries, but there were a bunch left over. It seemed callous to throw them away, so someone came up with the bright idea of using them for landscaping. I’m not sure myself that it was a right and respectful solution, but that’s what was done nonetheless.”
If the slope had been less steep, Wren would have climbed it instead of the stairs. As it was, she contented herself with whispering “sorry” on each step. There were a dozen steps and she knew, by the way Death was grinning at her when they got to the top, that he’d heard.
“Now just let me think,” Doris said. She turned around, putting the abandoned church behind her as she got her bearings. “As I recall, it was in the spring. It was the first funeral I’d ever been to, you know. I was only allowed to attend because I was in the choir and we sang for the service.”
“What did you sing?” Wren asked, interested.
“Oh, heavens! I haven’t any idea. ‘Amazing Grace,’ probably. I remember standing with the choir against a bank of lilacs in bloom.”
They looked around. There was an abundance of lilacs.
“It was over this way, I think,” Doris said, and led the way off to her left. They were coming up on the northern edge of the burial ground, which was bordered by a deep, overgrown ditch that separated the cemetery from a narrow gravel road. “This is the older part, but I think there was a family plot here where we buried him.”
The stones in this part of the cemetery were mostly white, dulled with age, and not at all uniform and shiny like the stones in the newer sections. Here and there a wrought-iron fence or a barrier of low landscaping stones separated a group of graves from the others. Larger stones and obelisks were engraved with family names.
In the northeast corner, a life-sized angel, balanced on one bare foot on a pedestal, looked away from them, off across the road. She was positioned to face the rising sun, her wings furled against her back. Her left hand was up by her face, and in her outstretched right hand she held a ladle.
Wren felt chills run up and down her spine.
The angel stood in a plot of land that was set off by waist-high square plinths at the corners, each engraved with the letter H. Wren circled around to where she could see the statue from the front. Doris and the Bogart brothers followed her.
“Of course!” Doris breathed. “That’s where I’ve seen her before!”
“It wasn’t a painting—it was a study for a sculpture,” Wren said. “The girl with the ladle is the angel he carved for his grave.”
_____
“I still want to know who she was. She must have been someone important to him. And if he was only going to carve a statue, why did he draw out the entire scene in his sketch pad?”
Wren and Death were back at Hadleigh House. Doris had returned to town, and Randy was out in one of the sheds with Robin Keystone, looking at the classic car the teenager had discovered. Wren was sitting at the dining room table, packing dishes and books into sturdy boxes to make it easier to carry them into the yard when the day of the auction arrived.
“Did you check to see if he’s on your list of World War One vets?” Death asked, lounging in an old recliner by the window.
“I didn’t have to. I remember seeing him on it,” Wren replied. The gravedigger’s name was Aramis Defoe. “He must have been a Hadleigh on his mother’s side.”
“Then that explains who the angel was. She was a woman who gave him water when he was tired and wounded.”
“But he must have been in love with her. I mean, he carved her image as the angel for his grave.”
“They were in a war together. When you’re under fire with someone, being afraid together and working together to try to survive, that can forge a powerful bond.”
“Oh.” Wren studied the table’s dusty surface, fingering it like a piano, and asked in a carefully casual tone, “So, did you ever have an experience like that with anyone?”
Death studied her profile with a slight smile. “Well, there was this one woman.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I was at her house this one time, working on a project with her. I hardly even knew her at the time. But then some guy came up and started shooting at us. And then I got kidnapped and she came for me, and then she got kidnapped and I went for her. And then she helped me find my brother … ”
Wren turned then and looked at him, and her eyes were shining in the shadowed room. Death thought of Anthony Dozier and how he’d found his own angel, Zahra. He’d saved her and she’d saved him. And he’d married her and brought her safely out of the war zone and then lost her anyway.
He rose and went to Wren
, pulled her up, and wrapped her in his arms. She returned the embrace. They clung together, and he let himself be reassured by the rise and fall of her breathing and the feel of her heartbeat against his chest.
And then Randy strolled back in.
“Death and Wren-nie! Sittin’ in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Death released his girlfriend and stepped back, blinking the moisture from his own eyes. “I wonder what he’s going to be when he grows up?”
“Do you think he is going to grow up?”
“It could happen.”
“Ha ha,” Randy said. “You’re hilarious. I guess you’re not interested in what we found out back then?”
“Not another ‘legless lizard,’ I hope?” Death caught Wren’s puzzled look. “When he was about six he caught a garter snake that he thought was a legless lizard. He smuggled it home and tried to keep it for a pet, but it got loose. Mom was less than happy when she found it.”
“Yeah.” Randy gave his brother a suspicious glare. “I’d still like to know how it got in her underwear drawer.”
“It was a snake! It slithered!”
“The drawer was closed.”
“It crawled in from the back. I keep telling you. It wasn’t me! I swear.”
“Sure you do.”
“I’m sorry,” Wren said, “but are you two really arguing about something that happened twenty years ago?”
The brothers looked at one another and then back at her, questioningly.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay then … ” She sighed and went back to her packing.
“So you found something?” Death prompted.
“Oh, yeah. We found your sculptor’s workshop. It’s in one of the old sheds out back. Blocks of stone, broken and partly finished statues, chisels, hammers. That isn’t the creepy part, though.”
“There had to be a creepy part,” Wren lamented. “Why does there always have to be a creepy part?”
“What’s the creepy part?”
“Tombstones.”
“Tombstones?”
“Yeah. Seems old Aramis liked to make tombstones. There are about a dozen in there, all blank. Well, not blank. They have birds and animals and religious images. Just no names or dates on any of them.”
“That’s not so creepy,” Death countered. “He was a stonemason. He made funerary monuments.”
After finding his tombstone, with his name and death date, they’d been able to locate Aramis’ obituary. He’d been remembered as a talented stonemason and a dedicated member of his church, but the space usually devoted to surviving loved ones was achingly empty.
“What about the other statues?” Wren asked. “The broken and partly finished ones?”
“What about them?”
“Were any of them the angel? Or the soldiers from the drawing?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t think you can really tell. None of them were finished enough that you could see any details. Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. It’s just … ”
“She’s curious,” Death said with a grin. “She’s just curious. Truth to be told, I’m curious myself.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You know how Doris recognized the girl in the drawing, but she didn’t know where she’d seen her before?”
“Until she saw the statue.” Wren nodded. “Then she remembered. She’d seen her in the cemetery.”
“Right. Well, as I said, I’m absolutely positive that I’ve seen the girl in the picture before too, but this was the first time I’ve ever been in that cemetery.”
“You could probably see her from the road, driving by,” Randy said.
“I couldn’t have. I’m not real familiar with this part of the county. I’d never even been out here until we came out with Wren to look at this house, and I’ve never driven down that road. But I’ve seen that woman. I just don’t know where.”
_____
“October 4th, 2011! The Hawkins estate! 211 East Wilson Street!”
Deputy Jackson stood in the middle of Wren’s living room with his hands on his hips and beamed at them. Randy carefully closed the door behind him and tiptoed around the officer, deliberately giving him a wide berth as he returned to his place on the floor. It was a little after seven p.m. that same evening. Madeline had feigned offense, but ultimately she’d taken Death up on his offer to babysit. The two brothers were sitting in the middle of Wren’s throw rug playing trucks with Benji.
Wren was curled up in an armchair with a sack of clothes she’d gotten at a yard sale and a book bag full of craft supplies, turning odd socks into sock puppets. She looked up at Jackson with interest. “Is this some kind of Kabuki theater or something?”
Death shot her an amused grin. “Kabuki theater?”
She shrugged. “Well, I’ve heard of Kabuki theater but I don’t know what it actually is. So I thought maybe it was walking into a room full of people and shouting out random things with no explanation.”
Jackson shook his head and glared at them.
“October 4th, 2011!” he said again. “211 East Wilson Street! The Hawkins estate!”
“Maybe we should call someone with a butterfly net,” Randy suggested.
“Actually, I think Wren has one,” Death told him. “It’s out on the back porch.”
“I got it at an auction,” she agreed. “But I don’t know when or where.”
“Maybe it was October 4th, 2011, at 211 East Wilson Street.”
Orly plopped onto the couch uninvited and waved his hand at them, disgusted. “I found the auction where you sold the uniform that the dead man was wearing.”
“Yeah,” Death said. “We figured that was what you were talking about.”
“So why the comedy routine?”
“You’re just so cute when you’re angry,” Wren grinned.
Death peered at her suspiciously. “Cute how?”
“Cute like a snarly puppy. Not at all cute like a sexy Marine.” She and Death beamed at each other and Randy started softly chanting the “sitting in a tree” song to himself again.
“Will you clowns be serious?” Jackson exclaimed. “I’m trying to identify a dead man here.”
“Yes, we know that,” Wren said patiently. “We just don’t know what you expect us to do. Leona already told you, we don’t keep records going back that far.”
“Well, then, what am I supposed to do with this information? You—” He turned on Death, who was busy helping Benji build a mountain out of throw pillows. “You’re the one who suggested I track down the auction where it was sold. I’ve spent hours looking through old newspapers to find this. Now that I have it, how does it help me?”
Death scooted back against the sofa and pulled Benji into his lap, giving himself time to think. He didn’t really want to admit to the deputy that he’d only suggested that line of investigation to get rid of him.
“Now you need to find out who bought a Civil War uniform at that time.”
“Which is why I’m here asking you. Or, rather, asking Wren.”
“But Wren doesn’t know and neither do the Keystones. So you need to look somewhere else.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to look!”
“Where would you look?” Wren asked Death, interested. “If you were actually working this case and not just being pestered to do it for free?”
He grinned up at her. “I’d ask myself what I would have done if I’d been the one who bought it. Think about it. You’re a Civil War collector and you just bought an authentic, actually-worn-by-a-Civil-War-soldier uniform. What’s the first thing you’re going to do?”
“Brag about it,” Randy said.
Wren’s voice overlapped his. “Authenticate it.”
“You already authenticated it,” Randy objected.
“But he would want to double check, make sure I knew what I was doing and not just making stuff up to get him to bid on it. Actually”—she turned to Jackson—“you know
where I’d show that picture? I’d take it up to NARA.”
“NARA … that was … ?”
“The National Archives and Records Administration. There’s a branch up in Kansas City. And that uniform wouldn’t have gone cheap. Whoever bought it spent some serious cash on it. And if he was that big a history buff, there’s a good chance he spent a lot of time doing research. Some of the librarians might know who he is. Also, a lot of history buffs are into genealogy. You know? Tracing down which of their ancestors served in what regiment on which side and all? The largest genealogy research facility in America is up in Independence.”
“Of course,” Death cautioned, “being the largest in America means it’s going to be a busy place. But there’s still a chance that someone might know who he is. Was. Especially if he acted eccentric.”
“Huh.” Jackson considered their advice, then turned to Randy. “Brag about it where?”
“Online. Where else? Check social media sites. Especially look for places where Civil War fanatics hang out.”
“You know, the dead guy had to have gotten that uniform from the church cemetery,” Death said. “Nothing else makes sense.”
“I know it seems that way, but I searched that cemetery myself. And I talked to the cemetery board and the gravedigger. There have only been a half dozen funerals there in the last year, and four of them were women. I tracked down the families of the two men and both of them were buried in ordinary clothes.”
“Did you check on the women?” Wren asked. “A woman could have been buried in a Confederate cavalry uniform too.”
He sighed. “I didn’t track them down, no. But I did look at their graves and none of them showed any signs of being tampered with.”
“Maybe it was an old grave. It would be marginally less icky to take a uniform off a skeleton and put it on than it would to take a uniform off of a decomposing corpse and put it on.”
Jackson was shaking his head. “The forensic labs say no. If the fabric had been buried more than a month or so it would have started to decay.”
“How did the dead guy get to the cemetery anyway?” Wren asked. “That’s what I wonder. It’s not like he could take a bus. He could have walked, I suppose, but it would have been a really long walk for a really old man. So either he left his car somewhere or else someone drove him out there.”
