Death & the Gravedigger's Angel

by Loretta Ross

  They followed an erratic path weaving along the edge of the cemetery until they came to the point where the ground dropped away above the creek. Here at the east end, opposite the broken tombstone stairway, there was a more gradual slope. Whoever had mowed the lawn had skipped this part and a flattened trail led up through the weeds.

  “He must have crawled up on his hands and knees,” Wren said.

  “You know where this is headed?” Jackson asked. “It’s headed right back toward that camp.”

  “It couldn’t be,” Death countered. “The dogs searched all the property that belongs to the camp. They would have found it.”

  “But there’s nothing else down there.”

  “What about the tombs?” Randy asked.

  “Tombs?” Jackson frowned at him. “What tombs?”

  “There are tombs cut into the side of the hill. I thought you searched this cemetery when you were looking for an open grave.”

  “I did, but I didn’t go down by the creek. I stood at the edge and looked over, but I didn’t see anything but a stretch of empty grass and the cemetery fence. What kind of tombs?”

  “Dead hobbit houses,” Wren offered unhelpfully.

  “Hobbits aren’t real.”

  “Then it’s probably not really hobbits buried there,” Death said. “The stairs are over this way.”

  Down below the cemetery, they walked slowly from tomb to tomb, looking for some signs of Jones’ passage. Death was the first to reach the third tomb from the east. He stopped and stood looking down.

  The tomb was built of dark red sandstone that nearly hid the bloodstains on the door and down the front. There was a circular patio of the same stones in front of the door and blood pooled there, the stain extending under the door and into the tomb. The door was a heavy iron affair, bolted and locked with a heavy padlock. There was a decorative wrought-iron grill in it, and from within came the stench of decay and a buzzing of flies.

  “Oh, this is lovely,” Wren said, dismayed.

  “We’re looking for a murder scene,” Randy said, nudging her with his elbow. “What were you expecting?”

  Jackson had a flashlight on his belt. He stepped up, avoiding the blood, and shone his light through the grill. Wren and the brothers Bogart crowded close to peer over his shoulder.

  Beyond the door was a small, dark cavern. A coffin had been pulled from its niche in the wall, and a rotting corpse, clad only in tattered long johns, dangled out at an awkward angle. There was a pile of clothes in the back of the tomb and a beer can lay on its side against the wall, below the defiled corpse.

  There were blood spatters everywhere.

  twelve

  “The tomb belonged to a man named Gilbert O’Hearne,” Wren said.

  “Gilbert?” Leona said. “Really? Damn. I didn’t even know he’d passed.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Not really, but he was a regular years ago. Any auction that had a lot of antiques, he’d be there. I haven’t seen him in a long time, now you come to mention it. I can well understand him being the one who bought that uniform, though. Do we have any idea who stole it from him?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. After we looked in the tomb, Jackson chased us out of the cemetery and called in the crime lab.”

  Leona gave her a look. “Rives County has a crime lab? Really?”

  Wren laughed, then held her thought while Leona assigned a number to a late arrival. Outside the cash tent, an auction was well underway. It was a glorious autumn morning, with a light breeze dropping red and gold leaves into the green grass.

  “I think the city sent down a team. This is still their homicide investigation, even though it’s all tied up with Orly’s accidental death case now too. Dozier’s lawyer told Death that if they could find where the murder happened, it would change the jurisdiction, but apparently it’s not that cut and dried. To be honest, I’m confused by the whole thing. But she and Death are working at cross purposes anyway. She wants to convince a jury that Dozier was crazy when he killed Jones, and Death doesn’t think Dozier’s the killer at all.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I trust Death. If he’s that sure about it, then I’m sure he’s right.”

  Another customer arrived, a Mennonite woman with two little girls. They wore long homemade dresses and bonnets and the girls had braids. The woman carried a purse over her arm and a smartphone in her hand. Wren waited while Leona issued her a number, then waved at the girls as they left the tent.

  “Death asked me something last night,” she said, broaching the subject tentatively.

  “Oh?”

  “You know how he can’t sleep in the same room with me, because he’s afraid he’ll have a nightmare or flashback and hurt me accidentally?”

  Leona nodded. The older woman was one of Wren’s closest confidants. The Keystones were family to her and she knew Leona would never gossip about a friend.

  “Well, I guess he’s been talking to Kurt Robinson. This whole thing with Dozier, falling in love with Zahra and then losing her the way he did, it’s really affected Death. Robinson told him that you can’t wait for everything to be perfect. You have to move ahead with your life. Do what you need to go forward, any way that you can. So last night he asked me if I’d be willing to let him move in with me and sleep on my couch until and unless he gets to the point where he’s able to share a bed.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I asked him to let me think about it.” Wren frowned down at her hands, unhappy. “I think I hurt his feelings. But it’s not that I don’t want him to move in with me. I’d love for him to move in with me. But my house is so tiny. Just one bedroom and nowhere to add on. I mean, it’s a nice quiet neighborhood when no one’s shooting at me, but the houses are all so close. And I’m just not happy with the idea of him sleeping on the couch. It can’t possibly be as comfortable as a real bed. And the living room is a public space, sort of. I don’t want him to live somewhere where he feels like an outsider, just camping out because he doesn’t have a place of his own. I want him to belong.”

  “And did you explain this to him?”

  “Not really. I didn’t quite know how to put it.”

  “Words are a good place to start.”

  Wren sighed. “I know, but—”

  “You have to communicate! Neither one of you is psychic. Listen, I’ve been married for over thirty years, but when I want Roy to change his socks, I don’t go around dropping hints and hoping he’ll pick up on them. I say, ‘Old man, go change those stinky socks!’”

  Wren laughed. “I do kind of have an idea,” she said, “but it’s pretty big and I don’t want him to feel like I’m pushing him.”

  “That’s why you have to talk. Good Lord, Wren! You’re an auctioneer. Talking is something you shouldn’t have a problem with.”

  Matthew Keystone poked his head in the tent. “Hey, Wren. They’re getting close to those antique toys. Gramps wants to know if you want to come sell them.”

  She hopped up. “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

  He ducked back out and she turned to Leona. “I guess I’ll talk to him when I see him tonight. Thanks for the advice.”

  “Don’t mention it. Telling people what to do is my specialty.”

  _____

  “O’Hearne lived in Independence.” Death refilled his coffee, offered the carafe to Randy, who waved it away, and returned to his seat behind his desk. “He died in a nursing home in Lee’s Summit a week before Zahra’s accident and his body was shipped down here for burial. His family had settled down here before the Civil War and they had a plot in the church cemetery. That crypt was originally built for an umpteen-times-great uncle, but he was never buried there. During the Civil War, guerrillas robbed a Union munitions train and the uncle was caught trying to smuggle guns and ammunition to rebel troops in southern Missouri. He was sent to a Union prison, died of smallpox, and was buried there.”

  “So how come Jackson
didn’t find any of this when he was asking about recent burials?”

  “Because no one contacted the local cemetery board about it. The family already owned the crypt and, because it was a crypt, they didn’t have any need for a grave dug. And there was no funeral service. There was a memorial service up in the city, then the funeral parlor brought the body down and put it in the crypt. No one from the family even accompanied it down.”

  “That’s cold.”

  Death shrugged and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s not what we would do,” he allowed. He and his brother had had too much experience burying loved ones. “I talked to O’Hearne’s grandson. They weren’t close. The grandson is mixed-race and I gather O’Hearne was an ass about it. Anyway, he had no idea who the dead guy on the path was.”

  “So how are we going to find out?”

  “I’m working on that. This is what we know so far: According to the funeral parlor, the dead guy on the path attended O’Hearne’s memorial service. He didn’t sign the guest book. He did stay after to talk to the funeral director and ask about burial. He told the funeral director a story about an illicit love affair between his dead sister and O’Hearne and convinced the funeral director to leave the crypt open so he could, he said, slip in and put her picture in the casket without the family finding out and being distressed by an old scandal.”

  “He just said, ‘Hey, leave the crypt open so I can sneak in’ and the funeral director said, ‘Sure’? Just like that?”

  Death laughed. “Oh, I’m sure that money changed hands. Not that the funeral director is admitting it.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No, the police did. I just got the scoop from Chief Reynolds. The funeral director left the padlock inside the crypt, on the ledge with the casket. He thought that, if he left it hanging on the hasp, someone might come along and close it. The agreement was that the guy sneaking in would put it on before he left.”

  “Ah.” Randy leaned back and kicked his feet up on the desk.

  Death allowed himself a moment to savor the sight. For the worst part of a year he’d thought his brother was dead, and now he had him back again.

  “So how do you figure the whole thing played out, with O’Hearne and the murder and everything?” Randy asked. “Was the dead guy on the path involved in the murder of August Jones?”

  “No, I don’t think so. This is the way I figure it. The dead guy on the path wanted O’Hearne’s Civil War uniform and arranged for the crypt to be left open so he could get in to steal it. The day of Zahra’s funeral, August Jones hitched a ride down to the veterans’ camp with Dexter Wallace because he’d gotten a phone call to meet someone down there.”

  “He got a call from someone in the vicinity of the camp, right?”

  “Right, so possibly one of the vets, even though I hate to think that. Anyway, he got a call and they arranged a meeting in the church cemetery. He met the killer, either by chance or design, near the open crypt, and the killer stabbed him and left him for dead. The killer closed him in the crypt, but couldn’t lock him in because they didn’t know where the lock was.”

  “You know,” Randy said, “whoever stabbed him would have gotten covered in blood. Stabbings are messy. Trust me. I know.”

  “I know. The killer could have washed the blood off their skin in the creek, but they’d have needed clean clothes and a place to change.”

  “There are cabins at the camp.”

  “But there were also a lot of people there, moving around. I have to think that, with that much blood, someone would have noticed. If they didn’t see it—they’d covered it up, say—they still would have smelled it. And the killer would have had to leave traces in the cabin where they’d changed clothes, and if they did, the dogs should have alerted on that.”

  “But the dogs were just pups and not fully trained yet.”

  “Yeah.” Death sighed. “For every argument, there’s a counter-argument. For everything I think I should be able to deduce, there are a dozen alternatives.”

  “Okay, so anyway, the killer leaves August Jones for dead,” Randy prompted.

  “The killer leaves him for dead. But Jones manages to get out of the crypt and goes off in search of help. He makes it to the edge of the road below the angel, where Dozier finds him, like we talked about earlier.”

  “Right.”

  “That same night, the, um, other dead guy—or soon to be dead guy—gets drunk and comes down to steal the uniform. He drove down on the motorcycle that Robin Keystone found hidden in the falling-down building behind the Hadleigh House. He made his way to the cemetery, went into the crypt, and stole the uniform and put it on. In the dark he didn’t see the bloodstains from the murder so he didn’t know anyone else had been in there.”

  “Here’s a question,” Randy said thoughtfully. “How did he find his way through the woods to the cemetery in the dark? And wasn’t there a storm brewing that night too?”

  “Yeah. That’s why Kurt had the horses in the barn, where the dead guy was able to get to them and steal Sugar. It was a dark and stormy night.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “But you know, that’s a good question.” Death sat back and thought about it, drumming his fingers on the surface of his desk. He sat up abruptly and reached for his phone.

  “Hello, Jackson? Hey! I’ve got an idea for you.”

  He put the phone on speaker and set it on the desk, and the deputy’s voice came across the line. “Of course you do. You’re full of ideas. And then, after I spend eight hours in the library squinting at microfilm or waste an entire day and two tanks of gas driving up to Independence and back you’re all, ‘Oh, I guess that wasn’t such a clever idea after all.’ I’m not buying any more of your ideas, Bogart.”

  “It took you two tanks of gas to make it to Independence and back? You should get a tune-up.”

  “Don’t change the subject. What’s your stupid idea this time?”

  “Actually, it’s more Randy’s idea.”

  “I had an idea?”

  “Trying to shift the blame already?” Jackson asked.

  “Shaddup and listen. Your John Doe parked his motorcycle at the Hadleigh House and made his way from there to the cemetery through the dark woods at night. Drunk, even.”

  “He probably wasn’t that drunk on his way in. He took plenty of liquid courage with him. When we got into the tomb there were four more beer cans with the plastic holder that a six-pack comes with and an empty bottle of Jack.”

  “Okay, but he still found his way through the woods and to the cemetery at night.”

  “So?”

  “So the chances are that he’d scouted it out ahead of time. How much gas was in the gas tank on that motorcycle?”

  “It was over three-quarters full. You’re thinking he filled the tank when he was scouting out the location of the crypt?”

  “Yeah, and if it was that full, he had to have gassed up somewhere in this general vicinity. So if you ask around at all the local gas stations and maybe watch their security video for the time between O’Hearne’s memorial service and the night that John Doe fell off his horse, maybe you can find where and when he stopped. If he paid with a credit card, boom! You’ve got his identity. And even if he didn’t, maybe he wouldn’t have taken the tags off his bike yet and you could get his license plate and run it.”

  “Huh.” Jackson hummed thoughtfully over the phone line. “That’s actually not a bad idea. And it would only take me, what? A week to interview gas station attendants between here and the city and study hundreds of hours worth of security video?”

  “I never said it would be easy.”

  “No, you didn’t, did you.” The deputy laughed abruptly. “His name was Jack Harriman.”

  “He … wait. What? You know who he was?”

  “Yeah. He left his wallet in the pants he took off to put on that uniform. He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in the city. No family. No friends. No pets. Huge collection of Civil W
ar crap. Apparently he and O’Hearne were rival collectors. O’Hearne was buried in that uniform specifically to keep Harriman from getting it. Harriman thought he’d have the last laugh. Would have been really funny if he hadn’t ended up dead. He was running around the countryside in a dead man’s clothes with all his stuff locked into the vault with the corpse. I guess it never occurred to him to take his clothes.”

  _____

  Randy had gone back to the apartment to change, and Death was hunched over his desk studying photographs taken at Warriors’ Rest the morning of the funeral when his phone rang. He had it set to vibrate, and it shuddered and skittered on the edge of the blotter. He caught it up and looked at the readout before answering

  It was Wren, and his heart stuttered a bit with a dread that he was unaccustomed to feeling where she was concerned.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, sweetheart. What are you doing?”

  He sighed. “Going around in circles mostly. You?”

  “I came back out to the Hadleigh House after the auction to get a little more work done.” Her voice took on a dry, wry tone. “Tyler Jones came back. He’s still looking for his son’s phone. I can understand him wanting to find it, and I kind of feel bad that I don’t feel sorrier for him, but he is such an ass.”

  “What did he do this time?”

  “Oh, just the usual. I told him Proverbs 3:15 and he gave me a hateful look and went away.”

  “What’s that? The Proverbs thing, I mean.”

  “It’s what Doris told me to say if he bothered me again. Something like ‘God’s watching you,’ I think.”

  “Ah. Good for Doris. I’m glad she’s on our side.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. For probably the first time since they’d met, the conversation felt awkward and constrained between them. Death kicked himself for causing this and determined to make it right.

  “Listen, I shouldn’t have asked you that. I know we’ve only known each other a few months and I understand if you’re—”

  She cut him off. “Death! No! I want to live with you. And I understand you needing your own space to sleep in to feel secure. The only thing I have a problem with is you sleeping on the couch. Couches aren’t for people who live there to sleep on. Not as a regular thing, I mean. They’re for dogs and drunk cousins and friends who forgot their wife’s birthday again.”