River Bones (Sara Mason Mysteries Book 1)

by Mary Deal

  “So Tripp thought you had lots of gold?” Daphine asked.

  “I'm not sure what the disagreement was over, but I remember it was bitter,” Esmerelda said. “I wish they could have made amends. I think that's what's been bothering Tripp all these years.”

  Chapter 11

  Sara stood at the north end of Main Street in Locke. Built in 1912, the town burned down and was salvaged and rebuilt in 1915. It was the only surviving town in the west built by Chinese agricultural workers. Historically, it was a town of gambling, booze and opium. As a reminder of its past, the town maintained a gambling museum established for visitors.

  Looking down the four single lane blocks known as Main Street, the two-story buildings were old, their dark wood frames sagging from dry rot. Second floor balconies sagged over the sidewalks. The structures stood in the same condition as far back as she could remember. When some of the buildings were leased out, the shop owners repainted. Some of the sidewalls still held faded patches of soft drink and other product logos from nearly a century earlier. The names of many on the buildings were faint, though discernible. What Sara presently viewed was a rekindled memory. She wished to find that identical scene in an oil painting, the right size, the right wood tones and hues. She wanted it for Talbot House.

  Daphine had left her on her own to ogle. Sara peered into windows of empty storefronts and down damp narrow alleys leading to similarly aged residences adjoining Key Street and Locke Road at the rear of the nearly deserted town. In the middle of Main Street, she stared up at the sign for the gallery. It was made to look old to blend with the surrounding architecture. The name Virtuoso and artistic logo was painted in blues, greens and whites with splashes of red. She paused in front of one large painting showcased in the window to the left of the doorway, and then studied the one in the window on the right.

  Sara had twice driven past but was too late to catch the store when it was open. Today was the day she would share what Daphine had done with her talent and life since she, too, was left alone. Daphine's parents were buried in the Franklin Cemetery. They were from the town originally, back when Franklin was nothing more than a scattering of farmhouses, one general store, and a tavern. It hadn't changed much from the past. Suddenly a thought came that maybe Crazy Ike could have dug holes in Daphine's parents' graves. She shook her head to dispel the bothersome images.

  “Get in here, girl!” Daphine said, calling out from the counter at the rear of the long, narrow store. “Lock that door. I'm not open till ten.”

  The store backed up to the embankment with the upstairs portion of the building being at the level of the top of the levee entering the town. That made the lower street level floor dark and shadowy. Seductive lighting above certain paintings in the alcoves gave the shop a certain mystique.

  Soft jazz music came from a stereo on a shelf behind the counter. Daphine lit an incense cone. It had an aroma much like Sara had smelled at a séance once attended in the Caribbean. Unsuccessfully, she sought to find that particular fragrance for sale in local stores. Leave it to Daphine to locate anything rare.

  “You don't practice voodoo in the back room, do you?” Sara asked, teasing and gesturing with her eyes to the closed door behind the counter.

  “No, we do that upstairs,” Daphine said, laughing. “I've never attended one of those séance things.” The way she spoke about anything revealed how much interest she had in the subject. She would have been a great friend to tromp around with in the Caribbean.

  On the back wall behind the sales counter hung numerous breathtaking nature paintings in various sizes. Several exquisite portrait paintings behind the counter were of a young Chinese woman with enigmatic eyes. D. Kuan had signed them all.

  Daphine smiled. Her face glowed. “Beautiful, isn't she?”

  “This is Jade?” Sara had lost touch with Daphine over the years. Sara was surprised to learn that her friend had such an exotic looking daughter.

  During one of their first conversations after Sara returned, she learned that Daphine had married Kuan Ying, a tall husky classmate and all-round athlete. His given name translated to Hawk. His parents disowned him for marrying a white woman. After Jade was born, his parents insisted she carry a Chinese name. Kuan Qiong meant Jade and Daphine felt it befitting. Jade had inherited her sea green eyes.

  “My in-laws never treated Jade as if she were half-American. To them, she was Chinese. Never mind that half of her genes came from me.” Daphine needed to get something out of her system and Sara let her talk. Once Daphine and Hawk divorced, he began teaching English in China with a group of other American-born Chinese from Sacramento. He spent most of his time in China. Jade used to travel back and forth between college trimesters.

  “Used to?”

  “She has her Masters in Geology.” Daphine didn't sound that elated. “Jade could hire on with the EPA restoring wetlands and protecting levees here in the Delta, if she'd just come home.”

  “She lives full time in China?”

  “A consultant for the Yangtze River Dam.” Daphine swallowed hard. “Too much influence from her relatives.” Daphine turned away pretending to be busy.

  Sara began to peruse the art pieces and noticed the style of art seemed vastly different from one side of the shop to the other.

  “Not your everyday stuff, eh?” Daphine asked, joining her across the room. “I had to come up with something to exhibit that wouldn't compete with the gallery down the street.”

  Much of the art in half of the gallery seemed surreal, otherworldly, bordering on the paranormal, with names Sara did not recognize. Other pieces were lighthearted, of fragile looking fairies and angels; another alcove contained a series of small paintings of New Age people traveling through the universe on magic carpets; more pieces at the back were grotesque, of people suffering in the throes of what would be anyone's guess. “Looks like the stuff Fredrik has in his room.”

  “He scared me when he first came here,” Daphine said. “I didn't know him. He started right off talking about people floating between this reality and the next before they died.” She shuddered. “Made me wonder if he was that sociopath and got off on watching his victims cross over.”

  “You have a vivid imagination.”

  “Well, when he showed interest in Fleeing Hell, I didn't want my painting going to someone who might be a killer.” She smirked and didn't seem serious.

  “You sold it to someone else?”

  “No, I painted it for myself.” Daphine tapped her chest. “Turns out Fredrik truly comprehends what his patients talk about and how they feel before they pass on.”

  “That's interesting, but his appreciation seems limited to this type of art. Doesn't that feel creepy?”

  Daphine only shrugged. “Wanna see the painting?”

  Chapter 12

  The rear door opened to a steep, dimly lit stairwell. Dusty cobwebs canopied overhead. At the top, the doorway leading outside to a rickety, planked walking bridge to the levee road was boarded shut. The windows hadn't been cleaned in ages and could well have been the original glass installed when the town and buildings were rebuilt in 2015 after the fire. The upper floor smelled musty, like an old house attic. It contained a lot of small rooms big enough for a bed, probably never having been changed from the original floor plan. Many rumors flew in the old days, about Locke having several houses of ill repute.

  “With Locke's history, I wonder what kind of bawdy tales these cubicles might tell if they could speak,” Sara said.

  Daphine disappeared through a doorway. Sara followed and watched as she picked through wrapped art leaning together in stand-up bins. She pulled out a large one and gently removed the brown wrapper.

  “Oh my!” Sara said after catching her breath. Pain on the face of the haunting image in the picture was clearly evident. Versions of the face in torment rose swiftly up in successive overlays, from a hint of a grave in the lower left corner to the upper right. The facial expression cleared and finally looked at
peace as it passed upward into brilliant light.

  “That mean you like it?”

  “That's exceptional, Daphine.” Sara reached to turn the picture more toward the light. “Far better than anything Fredrik has on his walls.” She looked closer at the signature. “DEW. For Daphine Ella Whelan, right? Couldn't Fredrik figure that out?”

  “He knows me as Daphine Kuan.” They both laughed. Daphine studied the painting momentarily. “I'm tired of it now. You like?”

  Sara couldn't see herself owning such a painting. “What I want are Delta scenes.” She glanced at the many pieces wrapped and stored. “You are so talented. I always envied you. Did you know that?”

  “Me? You envied me?”

  “You had something special to do with your life. I became an idiot tour guide for snow birds who came looking for sun.”

  “But the games, Sara. That took brains.”

  “Hey, yeah. Computers and me did find one another.”

  “I meant to ask,” Daphine said in her straightforward way. “I know you made a bundle off selling the copyrights.” It was only a matter of time till Daphine's bold and playful curiosity prompted her. “How much?”

  Sara rolled her eyes. She was tempted to keep the truth something of a mystery for herself. “A little.”

  “Oh, sure. Just enough to scrimp together and buy a mansion.” Sara had never told her about having paid cash for Talbot House.

  “Well… a little more.” Sara hesitated and they stared at one another. Daphine had never told secrets and hadn't changed. “Low seven figures,” Sara said, clearing her throat.

  Daphine caught her breath. Her eyes opened wide. “I'm in the wrong business.”

  They enjoyed a hearty girlfriend laugh. Still, Sara did not disclose the programs she was presently creating that could bring her yet another windfall. She didn't wish to convey wealth to neither the locals nor friends. People in the Delta were not that well off. While a few landowners got rich, most Delta residents struggled to eke out a living from working the crop cycles. Sara didn't want to be known as a person who made good and then came home lauding it over others, expecting recognition and special treatment.

  She had also endured a difficult lesson from her first business manager in Puerto Rico whom she trusted. He had been a personal friend for years, yet tried to cut in on her profit by demanding a whopping twenty-five per cent representing advice contributing to her success. A cease and desist order, and measly buyout of his consulting contract, put an end to his greed and replaced the generous bonus she secretly planned to give. She and she alone came up with the idea for her first two computer games. She alone designed them into existence, having nothing to do with who took phone calls, set up appointments, and kept her books. From now on, Sara would protect herself. She would share neither her ideas nor progress with anyone. Her privacy had nothing to do with how much she loved a best friend.

  “I'm not sure what to do with this.” Daphine re-wrapped the painting and then stopped short of squeezing it back into the storage slot. She looked at Sara.

  Sara stared back. Could Daphine be thinking the same thing she was thinking?

  Daphine finally shoved the painting back into the slot. “I've got some new pieces beside the counter I want you to see before I put them on display.”

  As they carefully made their way down the staircase, Sara said, “I wouldn't have guessed Fredrik to be that strange. He's wholesome looking and his mannerisms exhibit a lot of class.”

  “They did a big write-up in the local paper about him years ago.”

  As far back as Sara remembered, her dad would say if anyone read the Delta Gazette long enough, they would come to better understand life along the river.

  They reached the first floor and Daphine closed the door behind them. Street noises out front said the sleepy town was waking.

  “Evidently Fredrik sits at the bedside of each and every one of the patients at the hospice as they're dying. Attentive any hour of the day or night.”

  A kid riding a bicycle threw a newspaper that smacked against the door. Daphine went to retrieve it and came back to lay it on the counter.

  “He sounds preoccupied with death,” Sara said. That alone seemed strange.

  “The news article painted him as someone who understood it, and who could put patients at ease in their transition.”

  “But how could anyone see so much death and not go a little whacko?”

  Chapter 13

  After perusing the paintings that Daphine had set aside, Sara chose nothing. “Maybe it's not time to buy. I need to get some furniture in there first.”

  Daphine unwrapped the newspaper and spread it on the countertop and gasped. “Another one,” she said, sounding exasperated.

  Sara looked over Daphine's shoulder. A photo of men digging in the ground sat center front under the bold headline:

  Another Victim of Serial Killer.

  “What do you know about this?”

  “Don't you listen to the news?” Daphine asked as they continued to read.

  A wetlands ecologist counting birds near Stone Lake South, northeast of Courtland below the Hood-Franklin Road, discovered another human skeleton buried with animal bones.

  Sara didn't remember reading anything on the Internet about remains being found that far south of the Sacramento metropolitan area. Her thoughts ran rampant. Her face heated. “Stone Lake South? That's less than two miles behind my house—just over the old railroad grade.”

  “Some rancher leased the land and lived out there before it was turned over to the Wetlands people.” Daphine nudged her. “Look what it says.”

  Sara paced. She didn't want to read. “Tell me about these… these…,.” She waved her hand across the paper. “How many?”

  “Says here, this one makes twenty-eight. The first to be found outside of the major Sacramento area.”

  “So the idiot didn't go away.”

  “Serial killers never quit.”

  “I read about that killer on the Net,” Sara said. “Now they find remains out by my place?” It was no wonder people claimed Talbot House was haunted.

  “Maybe he relocated to the Delta. Says here the body was found in what used to be a cow pasture.” Daphine leaned down placing her elbows on the newspaper, still reading. “Says that as water levels in the lake rose and fell, it must have washed away the hard pack that cows trampled over the body.” She straightened up from the paper. “Said this ecologist guy saw the skull sticking up like a dome in the dirt in the field.”

  “Gruesome!”

  “You know these fields have been worked to death,” Daphine said. “Most of the Delta from Courtland all the way down to Union Island west of Lathrop sits as low as seventeen feet below sea level.”

  “We're sinking?”

  “No, compacted, maybe. From farming and such.” Daphine shrugged. “Not up by your house though.” She smirked again, like she was making light of the situation. “Yet.”

  “What's that got to do with these bodies?”

  “The soil is wearing away. Says here they think that's how the remains got uncovered.” Daphine stared out toward the front windows and shook her head. “They've already reclaimed some of the lowest Delta islands for water storage. Who knows how many more bodies lay in the mud at the bottom of those lakes?”

  “So why haven't they caught this person?” Sara dared to look at the article.

  “The people who work up killers' profiles,” Daphine said. “They say this perpetrator is meticulously clean about his kills. He buries all the belongings with the bodies. Leaves no telltale evidence above ground.”

  “The killer doesn't bother to hide who the victims are?”

  Daphine smiled facetiously. “Oh, yeah, he does. He buries 'em deep.” She reached back and turned down the volume of the radio. “One other thing.” She pressed a thumb and forefinger against her throat and felt around. “You know this bone in here. The hyoid bone?” Daphine would now about that, having studied
anatomy in art classes. “They always find it broken. Everyone of these people was strangled.”

  An old pickup passed on the narrow street and the sound of its muffler rumbled off the buildings.

  “That's all they know? No forensic evidence?”

  “Absolutely nothing. The only thing they can do is bag any remnants of the victims and take lots of photographs,” Daphine said. Evidently, clues were few or non-existent if the cold case detectives hadn't solved any of the murders. Some of the bodies had been in the ground so long, the only items found to help identify the person were their larger bones and teeth and credit cards fragments, maybe jewelry. Bugs had eaten any paper or clothing.

  “I hope they take a good look at the rancher who owned that property,” Sara said. A serial murder victim found close to her dream home was unsettling. “The profilers can't point a finger at anyone?”

  Daphine shrugged. “Someone else owned that property and leased it out. Doesn't point a finger directly at the rancher.” She only glanced at the other headlines as she turned pages. “Just when they think they've got someone nailed, there's a new twist and something else jumps up and bites.”

  “Sounds like trying to hold a snake still with one hand.”

  The comment must have stirred Daphine's memory. “They caught a vagrant once,” Daphine said. “He was wringing a cat's neck.”

  “Ugh!” Sara said as she cringed.

  “They thought they had their man because he fit the image the profilers once drew up. White, stronger than he looked, maybe a homeless person,” she said. “But he proved that he lived in Nevada till after the first skeletons began showing up.”

  “Maybe he visited here from time to time to do his dirty work. Nevada's not that far.” She wondered how much police kept track of suspected perpetrators. “The cat, why would he kill a cat?”