Stamped Out

by Thayer, Terri

  “Look, Yost, don’t start with me,” Ed said, sputtering.

  Vince put a calming hand on Ed’s arm and said “Sorry, Officer Yost, but everything is under control now.”

  Yost continued to speak just to Ed. “You certainly know how to shake things up. That racket was heard all over the valley.” He held up his cell phone. “I’m getting reports of mortar fire from the vets, and old Mrs. Billheimer is holed up in her tornado cellar.”

  Ed said, “Lyle was a little overzealous with the dynamite.” He glared at Lyle.

  Yost squinted at him from under the brim of his hat. “I’m going to assume you have the necessary permits. I’ll leave that to the building inspectors. If not, you’ll face a hefty fine.”

  He sounded as if nothing would make him happier. He took off his sunglasses. The skin on his face had darkened except for the area around his eyes. It was obvious he hadn’t thought about the raccoon results his favorite eye-wear were causing.

  Lyle said, “We were cleared. I had a verbal okay.”

  Ed looked worried. April knew not having permission in writing was the same as not having permission at all.

  Ed tried to sound tough. “No big deal. We were commissioned to take down the Castle, and we did.”

  His bluster didn’t ring true to April.

  Vince said, “I hear you’ve been raiding these woods. Did you find a meth lab? Maybe that’s why it blew the way it did.”

  Yost shook his head. “The Castle was clean. The kids weren’t even partying here. They were closer to the main house.”

  He looked toward Mirabella. Two of the chimneys were visible from here. April wished she was back there, prep-ping the walls for her stamps. The dance between her father and Yost was tying her stomach in knots. She remembered Officer Yost as a guy who picked on teens. Clearly, he’d moved on. Ed was in his sights now.

  Yost said, “Let’s take a look at what you’ve done here. My main concern is safety. Walk with me, you two.”

  Ed and Vince had no choice but to follow him. Lyle leaned against a tree, marking their progress without seeming to look at them. April suspected he wanted Ed to forget he was there.

  “Uh-oh,” Mitch said.

  On the trail Mitch had used, Barbara Harcourt arrived in a Ralph Lauren golf cart, complete with yellow and white striped, fringed surrey top. Her high heel tapped the brake. She didn’t bother to get out but let the cart get to within inches of the clearing and surveyed the damage.

  Yost moved to her side, offered her his hand and helped her out of the cart. With his uniform and hat and deferential manner, he looked like a limo driver.

  A woman used to being heard, she didn’t wait for an explanation. Her voice carried. “Well, that certainly did the trick. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from some of my neighbors’ lawyers. They don’t like to be awakened by sonic booms.”

  Mitch said to April, “Don’t worry. Her neighbors are just like her. They never sue each other. They’ll just take their revenge on the golf course. Or force her to pay too much at the next charity auction for the Gstaad ski trip.”

  Ed began, “Mrs. H. . . .”

  “No need to explain, Ed. The Castle is gone. I’m happy about that. Just clean up and get the mess out of here. I don’t want any more fuss about this place.” She glowered at him. “I’ll be gone for the rest of the day. I have a hospital board meeting to attend. When I get back, I expect to see this gone. Understood?”

  Ed nodded morosely. “Mrs. H., we will do our best to get rid of the debris from this job as soon as we can. I’ll get some men on it right away.”

  “See that you do, Ed. See that you do.” She took one last look, shaking her head as she got back in. Mrs. H. pulled hard on the little steering wheel, nearly causing the cart to tip over. As she drove off, a strong breeze rattled the pine trees. A shower of pink insulation pieces fell down upon the cart, creating the illusion of a sylvan bride being pelted with rose petals.

  Yost and Ed and Vince continued to walk the grounds, arguing about the best route to take out the debris. Ed’s hands were moving in wide circles. He was getting agitated again. Yost was still going on about safety.

  April moved away from Mitch. Curly was telling him a convoluted story about the way the blast had made him deaf for several minutes.

  April couldn’t watch Yost continue to berate her father, so she took several steps into the shady woods. The trees thickened, a combination of old- and new-growth pines with an underpinning of mountain laurel. The waxy dark green leaves and woody trunks seemed too bulky to hold the delicate pink flowers that were just beginning to bloom.

  Somewhere back here was where her father’s job trailer had been sited, fifteen years ago. Searching for any sign of it, she thought she saw a faint path, leading away from the Castle. The play of light on the green forest floor attracted her. Shards of glass from the blast captured the sun’s rays, making little rainbows on the ground. She bent down to move a branch so she could see the ferns beneath. A startled cardinal flew out of the tree. Tiny fiddleheads curled their way out of the brown leaves mulched under the mountain laurel. April noted their delicate violin shape. She could use that curve in a stamp. She described the shape in the air with her finger, trying to memorize it. This was an image worth preserving. Too bad she hadn’t brought her sketchbook. It was in the car, back at Mirabella.

  She felt her phone in her pocket and remembered its camera. April balanced herself, squatting, and snapped a shot of the fern. She looked at the picture she’d taken. She snapped several more. The lighting wasn’t great, but the fern was there.

  She straightened. Immediately she felt a tremor under her feet. She glanced toward the earth. It didn’t seem to be rolling. Still, she’d been in enough earthquakes to send her running away from the trees back to the clearing.

  “Dad!” she yelled, heart pounding.

  Ed was frozen in place, watching the Castle as though it was possessed by an inner demon. When she came into his peripheral vision, he grabbed her and tried to protect her head with his meaty hand. Vince moved closer to her on the other side.

  As if one body, everyone took a step back. Mitch was behind her. Lyle looked worried, as though expecting to be blamed for this, too. Yost positioned himself, arms spread wide, in front of the two old men. They peeked around him like kids on Christmas morning trying to get a glimpse of reindeer on the roof.

  The rumbling was not coming from a fault in the earth, but from the fireplace as it threatened to disassemble, the mortar crumbling, some inner flaw about to reveal itself. The noise grew louder as the rocks began to slide. The two old men chattered like disturbed blue jays.

  Stones dropped from the top first. The bottom tier began to slide forward. There was a hesitation, and the forest was unnaturally quiet. Then, as though tapped with an invisible mallet, the entire structure tumbled down, stopping just in front of April and her father.

  The sigh could be felt as well as heard when the stones finally came to rest. Now nothing of the Castle remained standing.

  After a moment, as the dust literally cleared, Ed said to April, “You okay?” His voice was throaty and deep. When she nodded, he asked loudly, “Everybody okay?”

  Mo was wheezing. Yost pounded his back as the old man’s face turned white.

  “Let’s get him out of this dust,” Yost said. Ed’s face grew more concerned as the old man hacked. Vince put a hand on Mo’s arm, watching him closely. He led him away and Curly followed.

  April could not take her eyes off the fireplace rubble. Something looked out of place. Her artist’s eye was always drawn to anomaly. She took a step forward, willing the swirl of dust to stop so she could identify what she was seeing. Amidst the stones were bricks. The fireplace must have had a brick interior.

  As she was making sense of what she was seeing, an object tumbled to the foreground.

  The words burst out of her mouth. “That’s a skull.”

  Yost heard her and in several long strides was at he
r side. Ed was right behind him.

  “Stand back,” Yost yelled. Mo’s wheezing lessened, and he and the others moved back to the Castle.

  “The Castle gives up its dead,” Curly said.

  The hair stood up on the back of April’s neck.

  Ed spoke first, head cocked. “Mitch, do you know where your father is?”

  “Bora Bora. Doing missionary work.”

  “Are you sure?” Ed said.

  Officer Yost was quiet, staring at the skull as though it was going to talk.

  Mitch threw up his hands. “That is not my dad, for crying out loud. I took my mother and him to the airport last month myself.”

  “Perhaps it’s a friend of his then,” Ed persisted.

  “This place has been empty for years. You know it was never used.”

  “Except by partying kids,” Ed said.

  “It could be anyone.” Mitch’s voice was not as sure as it had been a moment ago. “The Appalachian Trail’s not that far from here. Maybe a hiker took shelter.”

  Ed finally said, “Maybe it came from a cemetery grave. Someone’s idea of a sick joke.”

  Mitch shook his head. He picked up a stone and tossed it from hand to hand. “I know these woods. There’s an old Polish cemetery on the Upper Mountain Road. There’s no other graveyard within a mile of here.”

  Curly and Mo were watching the exchange, their eyes bright with excitement. “I think they found Judge Crater,” Curly said. “Or maybe Amelia Earhart.”

  Yost was quiet. He squatted down next to the skull and studied it. He seemed to be impervious to the speculation buzzing around him.

  “A homeless person?” April suggested.

  “This ain’t no big city,” Ed said. “We take care of our own here.”

  She looked to her father. Ed was mopping his face in earnest now, his large hand starting at his forehead and down to his chin over and over, distorting his features alarmingly. April wanted to stop him, grab him and hold him still. Vince touched his elbow gently. Ed shuddered once and stopped. Worries about Ed’s health reentered April’s consciousness.

  Ed was a guy who could have written the worst-case scenario books, but even in his worst nightmare, he couldn’t have imagined this. A skull floating out of his job site.

  April peered over his shoulder. The skull was tipped on its side, presenting just one vast open eye socket. She felt a shudder rush through her body. The idea that this had been a live person—walking, talking, arguing—washed over her. A son, brother, sister, daughter. Someone must be missing this person.

  Yost was gathering up the two old men, insisting that they leave. “Go wait for me in the cruiser.”

  “Are you nuts, Yostie? We’re not going to miss this,” Curly said.

  Mo’s mouth worked without noise for a moment. Finally he said, “I was here when this job was built. I want to be in on this now.” He coughed violently.

  Yost barked, “I’ll arrest both of you for obstruction if you don’t get out of here.”

  The two men grumbled.

  Yost said, “Somebody drive them home.”

  He was watching as Mo bent over double, unable to maneuver the steep path. Ed walked up behind him, taking his arm, then opened his mouth, but Yost cut him off. “Not you. I need you and Mitch to stay here. And Lyle. I’m going to want to take statements from you three.”

  “I can’t drive them. My car is back at Mirabella,” April said.

  Vince volunteered. Yost and Ed joined in to help the men walk up the steep embankment to the road where the car was parked. Mo’s coughing grew fainter as the men moved out of view. April turned back to look at the site.

  “What do you think?” she asked Mitch.

  Mitch was on all fours, staring at the skull. “It’s definitely human. I’ve been digging in these woods all my life.” He pointed through the woods, toward the base of the mountain that rose up behind them. “The Sugarloaf Massacre site is just over there. I’ve found plenty of arrowheads, even bullet fragments. I’ve come across the occasional deer carcass and once a bobcat skeleton, but never anything like this.”

  Deana, too, had a collection of arrowheads. Maybe this was a historical artifact. She would want to see this, April thought. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and flipped it to camera mode. She didn’t want to seem like a voyeur. Holding it low on her leg, out of Mitch’s line of vision, she snapped a shot of the skull.

  She turned away and looked at the picture. Not bad.

  The three planes of the head were visible, and she was surprised at how distinctly the stitching lines showed up.

  Mitch’s cell rang and he stepped away for some privacy.

  April took advantage of his distraction to snap two more pictures of the skull. She circled the object, getting pictures from all angles. The skull was the color of a tea-stained mug. She could see a broken indentation in the side just above the hole where the ear would have been. It was cracked like an egg that’d been dropped.

  She moved the camera closer and snapped a few more pictures.

  Lyle caught her just before Ed and Yost returned. Mitch was still on the phone. She heard him talking about measurements and wood grain.

  “What’s the idea? Need a few pictures for your scrapbook?” he asked.

  She stuck her camera in her pocket, guiltily, then looked up, but he was smiling.

  He said, “I know how you stampers are. My wife is always making me stop on the side of the road to take a picture of tiger lilies or some decrepit corn crib.”

  April wondered how he knew about her stamping, then remembered the man who’d dropped his wife off last night at the barn. “Tammy is your wife?” April asked. Certainly there couldn’t be more than one Lyle in this small burg.

  “Fifteen years,” he said proudly.

  “That’s nice,” April said, but she was thinking Tammy was awfully young to have been married that long. Lyle looked to be at least forty, so maybe ten years older than she was. Tammy must have been one of those girls that had married right after graduation.

  “Have you worked for my dad long?” she asked him.

  He took off his hard hat and put a hand through his hair. It was surprisingly thick, and long, coming past his collar. “Since I was an apprentice carpenter. Twenty years.”

  “So you worked for his old company?” She’d spent some time on her father’s jobs when she was a kid, but she didn’t really remember any of the guys who worked back then.

  Raised voices came from the other side of the clearing. Ed and Yost were arguing, on their way back down from the road.

  “This is a job site, Henry,” Ed said.

  Yost’s voice was strong. He carried a roll of yellow tape in his hand. “Not anymore. No one falls in a fireplace on their own. Until I figure out what happened, this is my site. A crime scene.”

  CHAPTER 5

  April looked to Lyle. His face had shuttered. She felt bad for him. She was sure that when he’d woken up this morning he’d had no intention of unearthing human remains. And his wife certainly had her own problems, with people dying at the nursing home.

  Ed followed Yost as he walked the perimeter. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Henry. You heard Mrs. H. She wants this area cleaned up. Today.”

  “Not going to happen. Mitch, your father never used this place, right?”

  Mitch shook his head. “It was never finished.”

  “So someone could have died in here, decomposed and no one would have been the wiser,” Yost said as he tied yellow tape around a small tree and walked toward the west.

  “I would have known if someone died,” Ed replied pointedly. “We were building the place. I was practically living on the premises.”

  Yost said, “Exactly. And when you left?”

  Ed shrugged. “We never came back.”

  Mitch said, “The place was boarded up the day after Rocky’s graduation party.”

  Yost looked at Mitch. “Would it surprise you that someone died that night?
”

  Mitch’s mouth was set in a straight line. “Didn’t you do enough to my family back then? Do you have to keep it going by trying to tie this in?”

  “I’ll take this wherever it leads me,” Yost said. “I’m not out to protect anyone’s family. But I don’t think it was a random kid from the party. That parent would have reported their precious Jimmy or Connie missing.”

  Mitch shrugged. “For all we know, it was a hiker.”

  “More likely it was one of Ed’s men,” Yost said. “You hire a lot of transients, don’t you?”