by Terri Thayer
“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?”
Ed stared at Yost, clearly irritated by the officer’s phrasing. “I wouldn’t call them transients. I hire union guys out of the hall. They work for as long as I need them, and then they move on to other jobs.”
“That’s the point. One
of your workers could have died on the job, and you never would have known. If you weren’t so busy in your job trailer, doing God knows what to who knows who . . .”
“Officer Yost . . .” Ed warned.
April felt her heart fall in her chest. They could only be talking about one night.
The night of Rocky’s graduation party. April had gone to the job trailer to find her father. He hadn’t been home much that spring . . .
Ed was seated on the couch at the end of the trailer. Only it had been opened up and was heaped with bed pillows and blankets. A brass lamp screwed into the wall lit the paperback he was reading.
When April pulled open the door of the job trailer, he looked up, startled. No, more than startled. Scared. He pulled off his glasses and sat up. His feet were bare.
She wasn’t scared, she was angry. Angrier than she ever remembered being in her sixteen years alive. Her father had disappointed her for the last time.
“April? What’s wrong?” her father asked. “It’s late. You shouldn’t be out at eleven o’clock. How did you get here? You didn’t ride your bike, did you?”
April let the door slam behind her. She saw him wince as it banged shut. But he stopped talking.
She cocked a hip, her hands resting on her jutting hipbones. “What good is having a father if he can’t even bother to come to see my concert?” She bit back the tears that threatened to ruin her tirade. She really wanted him to know how much he’d let her down tonight.
Her father was bewildered. She could see the wheels turning. He flipped over the pages on his day-to-day calendar. It had been behind a day, on June 12.
Ed clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, don’t tell me I missed graduation.”
April’s eyes flashed. “Yes, and in case you’ve forgotten, I was the only junior to take over a first chair. Deana’s mother said it was so beautiful, she cried. But no one from my family was there.” She was trying not to sound juvenile and pouty, but she felt like stamping her foot. She was determined not to cry.
“You know your mother had to cook for the Women’s League Golf Tournament at the country club . . .”
April nodded. She was used to Bonnie working nights. That was okay. It was her father that she’d wanted there.
In two steps, Ed was in front of her, trying to hug her. She crossed her arms over her chest and held herself stiffly.
“I’m so sorry, hon,” he said into her hair. “Work. You know I’ve been staying at the job trailer because of the vandalism. Officer Yost is on my case about the wild parties being held out here, but this is the last night, I promise. After tonight, all the troubles will be going away.”
She looked around the job trailer. Ed’s familiar blue pajamas were laid out on a chair. Over the sink were his toothbrush and the Waterpik he used to floss his teeth. She realized with a jolt what was going on.
“You’re not working late. You’re living here.”
“Apey, please.”
“Why are you here? Why aren’t you home?”
In the garbage can were the remnants of his microwave dinner.
Outside, a girl giggled and a guy made loud smacking noises. April remembered the couple she’d seen in a tight embrace in the woods as she’d biked in. People were out there having fun.
Loud noises spilled through the open jalousie window. Ed frowned and picked up the phone.
“I’ve been calling and calling Yost. He promised to come out and put an end to the partying going on at the Castle. It’s getting out of hand.”
April didn’t care what was going on outside. She had another terrible thought.
“You’re cheating on Mom. You’ve got another woman. That’s why you’re here.”
She didn’t stop to listen to her father’s excuses. She pushed her way out of the trailer and ran toward the party.
“Officer Yost, my father was with me that night,” April said, but the two men weren’t listening to her.
“Why would I kill one of my men?” Ed asked wearily.
Yost leaned in. “You were pretty far in the closet back then. Maybe someone found out . . .”
“No you don’t,” April yelled at Yost. She put herself right in front of him and shook her finger at him as if she was a babushka-wearing woman from the old country. “That’s not fair—”
Ed took April’s arm and moved her away from Yost. He looked worried that she might strike the police officer.
Mitch took a step away from Yost, as if he didn’t trust himself, either.
Ed’s voice was low. “April, I need you to go up to the mansion. Now.”
“No, Dad. I should stay here. You and Officer Yost—”
“Yost and I will settle things. I don’t need you to help.”
“Dad . . .”
He closed his eyes and rubbed them. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. “The most important thing now is to keep Mrs. H. happy. April, can I count on you?”
She gave Yost another glare. “I just want you to know, Officer Yost, I will do whatever it takes to keep you from railroading my father.”
Yost smirked. He turned his attention to Lyle. “Trocadero, don’t go anywhere.”
Ed took her by the hand, taking her away from Yost. “Forget him.”
“Dad, you can’t let him walk all over you like that.”
“April, please. I’ve been living in this town a lot longer than you have. Let me handle Yost my way. I need your help with something else.”
She felt her anger simmer down. He was right. She was the outsider here.
Ed said, “I’ve got a crew working at the mansion that Lyle was supposed to be supervising.” He glanced at Lyle, who was being led by Yost away from the skull. Lyle was listening to Yost, head tilted, hands in his pockets. Ed looked at his watch. “It’s eleven now. They’re probably breaking for lunch. I can’t afford to have them lollygagging. I need you to go check up on them.”
“I think I should stay here with you.” She glanced back. Yost was watching them carefully over his pad of paper. He wasn’t finished with her father yet. “Won’t Vince be back soon? He could go.” A shaft of light came through the trees, lighting up the skull eerily.
Ed shook his head mournfully. “He’s got the Heights job. He’s going there right after he drops off Curly and Mo.”
April crossed her arms across her chest, hugging herself. She was adding to her father’s stress level by not doing as he asked. “All right.”
“That’s a good girl. Talk to Mike, my foreman. I called him earlier and told him the blast was no big deal. I need you to tell them what’s going on.”
“About the skull?” she asked. She wasn’t sure how far she should go.
“Tell them what you need to. They’re in the north wing.”
Mitch jangled his car keys. “Come on, I’ll take you back to Mirabella.”
April looked at him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the ruins. She decided he was only being polite.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I can walk back the way we came.”
He didn’t protest. April could see he really wanted to stay here and find out what would happen next.
She started to walk to the mansion, but her father called her back.
“April,” Ed said, “please make sure they’re not using the inside toilet.”
She started to laugh, but her father’s serious expression stopped her. She waved and left.
April entered Mirabella through the open kitchen door. No locking of the doors on this side of town. Surrounded by the country club, Mirabella was in a cocoon of safety and security.
She would make sure Ed’s men were working, fill them in on what had happened at the Castle and then get back to Ed. He needed someone to shield him from Yost’s venom.
She went through the plastic-draped door she’d seen earlier and followed a long hallway. The walls were covered in what looked like suede. She touched the surface. It wasn’t a paint treatment; it was fabric. She started to mentally calculat
e the square yardage. This had to be thousands of dollars of fabric. It would be a shame to pull it all down.
She heard laughter and turned into a sunny room at the back of the house. It was long, probably some kind of ball-room in the original plan, with a wall of windows overlooking the slope of the yard into the woods. She tried to get her bearings. The garage wasn’t visible from here, but it was over to the right. The Castle site was to the left, out of view.
Three guys in Retro Reproductions shirts were on a window seat. Another was seated on the floor, leaning against the wall. Next to them was a large yellow Igloo cooler with a red lid. White bags from the deli were tossed on the floor, and each of the guys had a hoagie in hand. She smelled the greasy sweetness of salami and Italian dressing.
Their comfortable chatter died out as she came in the doorway. All eyes scrutinized her as she crossed the wide room. She kept a smile plastered on her face and strode as fast as she could, faking a confidence she didn’t feel.
“Can we help you? Are you looking for Mrs. H.?” a man with chubby cheeks asked, coming out of the shadows. He was carrying a clipboard. The front of his shirt had a fresh stain. He must have finished his lunch already.
“No, I’m April Buchert, Ed’s daughter?” she said, falling into the local cadence of speech, ending a statement with a question mark.
“I’m Mike McCarty,” the chubby-cheeked guy said. He came forward and shook her hand, giving her a nice smile that put her at ease.
A barrel-chested man squinted at her. “Holy smokes, I thought that was Bonnie coming through the door. You look just like her when she was younger.”
April struggled not to blush. Her mother had been Miss Alfalfa at the Bloomsburg Fair in high school. She’d never thought she’d made the grade.
“The spitting image,” another guy said.
“Don’t mind these galoots,” Mike said. “This here is Butch, that’s John, and Carlos and Bernie.”
Butch wasn’t finished. “You the daughter in Californ-i-a?”
April nodded. Living in San Francisco to these people was akin to settling on Mars, except the Martians were considered less alien.
