Played by the Book (A Novel Idea Mystery 4)

by Lucy Arlington

  A broad smile played across her face. “Are you kidding? A new author in the area, and a celebrity to boot? Think of all the possibilities for Jay and his bookstore.”

  “Okay, then.” I gratefully relented. “You’re hired. We’ll have a meeting of the heads early next week and get everything planned out.”

  “Everything what?” I looked over to see Trey coming out of the back. He had on an apron and a long dish towel draped over his shoulder. He looked so young and vulnerable that I fought hard not to jump up and hug him. I stayed put, teasing him instead. “If the girls could see you now.”

  He snapped the towel in my direction and flashed a good-natured grin. “What’s up, Mom?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  His dark brown eyes lit up. “You bet!”

  “Careful now,” Makayla warned. “She’s setting a trap.”

  Trey eyed me suspiciously. “A trap?”

  Makayla and I exchanged a glance and laughed.

  “No, not really,” I replied, feeling a sense of warmth at my son’s youthful gullibility. “I thought maybe I could make you a trade. Your muscles for a couple of large pizzas.”

  His chest puffed out at the compliment, but he remained hesitant. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  Makayla turned over the Closed sign in the front door and busied herself with wiping down tables.

  “I need you to help me remove those three hawthorn bushes in the back garden.”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “You know, the ugly brown bushes under the windows,” I explained.

  “Oh sure. Why?”

  “Our house has been added to the Annual Garden Walk and we need to spruce things up a bit.”

  “The Annual Garden Walk? Us?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s something I have to do for work. It’s important, Trey.” When I purchased my charming little cottage on Walden Woods Circle, I’d harbored fantasies about converting the gardens into a scene worthy of the great Impressionists: van Gogh’s soft irises, Matisse’s dahlias, and splatterings of Manet’s pastel roses. Unfortunately, life—and a few bad memories—had got in the way. What I had now was something that might inspire a painting more along the lines of Munch’s The Scream.

  Trey shifted his feet, dipping his chin and shoving his hands into his jean pockets. “Is anyone else coming to help out?”

  “Grandma.”

  The corners of his mouth tipped upward and his brown eyes gleamed mischievously. “In that case, throw in a couple more pizzas and I’ll see if I can round up a few friends to help. I’ll tell them to bring their shovels.”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. I leapt from my chair and engulfed my son in a huge bear hug. Not an easy feat since his normally thin frame had filled out during his time at college. “You’re the best, Trey, you know that?” I said, planting a kiss on his cheek and ruffling his chestnut brown hair.

  He stiffened, immediately wiping his cheek and mumbling something under his breath as he disappeared back into the kitchen area. I stared after him affectionately before draining the last bit of my latte and bidding Makayla good-bye.

  *

  TALK ABOUT GOOD timing—the pizza and the extra help arrived simultaneously. After filling the stomachs of Trey and three of his buddies, I put them to work digging out the roots of the damaged shrubs. I planned to replace them with a combination of spirea and barberry. I was thinking that the deep red barberry foliage would contrast nicely against the light green leaves of the Gold Mound spirea.

  As they dug away, I got to work on weeding my flower beds. I hadn’t made it far when my efforts were interrupted by the sound of my mother’s truck rumbling down the street. Her turquoise 1970s C10 pickup, complete with Patsy Cline blaring out the windows and two magnetic signs boasting Amazing Althea’s Psychic Services, always seemed to announce her arrival with an air of slightly eccentric flamboyancy. Well, maybe more distinct than “slightly.”

  She climbed out, tossed me a wave, and shouted, “Come give me a hand unloadin’ this stuff, boys. Show me what you’re made of.” She slammed the door and moved around to the back of the truck to open the tailgate.

  “Holy crap!” I heard Trey exclaim from his digging site.

  I spun around to see him stooped over, staring at something in the ground.

  “Mom, come here!” he added, waving frantically.

  Both my mother and I rushed to his side, pushing our way through his huddled friends. “What is it, darlin’?” my mother asked, wrapping a protective arm around Trey’s trembling shoulders and peering down at the upturned earth.

  Although she didn’t have to ask. It was obvious. Trey’s digging had unearthed a skull—a human skull.

  Chapter 3

  After the gruesome discovery, the first person I thought of was Sean. Not only because he was a police officer and I knew the authorities should be informed, but because the sight of the skull completely unnerved me. I needed him there. So I borrowed Trey’s cell phone and after a few shaky attempts, managed to dial Sean’s number. For the second time that day, I couldn’t reach him. Half disgusted, I hung up without leaving a message and dialed 911.

  As I waited for the call to be picked up, I glanced over at my mother. She seemed as upset as I was. Trey, on the other hand, now seemed okay. He and his friends had moved away from the hole and were huddled together talking. Bits and pieces of their conversation told me they were speculating about the origins of the skull.

  “Ma’am?” I heard the 911 operator on the other end. “What’s your emergency?”

  “We’ve dug up a dead body in our yard,” I replied, cringing. Couldn’t I have thought of a better way to put it? “I mean bones. Actually a skull. I think it’s a human skull. Can you send the police to look at it?”

  I glanced back over to where my mother was hanging on my every word. Even from where I was standing, I could see that she’d begun shaking. I gave the 911 operator my address, disconnected, and went to my mother.

  “Mama? You all right?” I placed my arm around her shoulders, her trembles unnerving me. My mother was the strongest person I’d ever known. She was my rock, always there to see me through the difficult times: my divorce from Bill, Trey’s adolescent stunts, losing my job, and even all the craziness that I’d been through since moving to the Valley. It just wasn’t like her to be so shaken. “What is it?” I asked again.

  “Oh, Lila. I’m losin’ my touch, that’s what.” She pointed down at the skull. “Somethin’ as awful as this … well, I should have seen it comin’. I should have been able to warn you.”

  “Don’t be silly. How could you have possibly predicted that we’d dig up a skull this afternoon? Besides, it could be a hundred years old, for all we know.” Although, even as I said it, I knew that probably wasn’t true. My cottage was built in the 1960s during the Illumination days when all the houses on Walden Woods Circle were built as rentals for a New Age retreat site. Since the town’s reinvention, they’d been renovated and turned into quaint little cottages. Unless my house was built on some sort of ancient burial ground, this body was probably buried sometime in the last thirty to forty years. The thought of it made my stomach churn. My eyes darted to my neighbors’ homes and then back to my own. Could this be the remains of the previous owner, or someone who lived nearby? Why would it be under my hawthorn bushes?

  “Lila, don’t go tryin’ to sugarcoat this.” She shook off my arm. “It’s simply a fact that I’m losin’ my abilities. This poor soul, lying right under my nose and I didn’t even sense it?”

  We both looked down at the skull and then backed away. I glanced around at my garden, once a place that I dreamed about renovating, a space full of hope and marked by ambitious goals. It was quickly becoming my least favorite part of my home. I let my eyes wander to the maple tree in the corner of the yard where, just a couple of months ago, I’d had a confrontation with a ruthless murderer. In a small way, today’s project was a step toward reclaimin
g the sense of tranquillity that I’d once felt about my garden—before a killer’s abhorrent actions had tainted it with dark memories. Now, I had to wonder if I’d ever feel at peace again in my own yard.

  My mother had started pacing, a worried expression on her face. “Oh, hon. It’s not just this thing today, there’s been some other things, too. Like, just yesterday Fannie Walker came by for a readin’. She comes by every year about this time to have me predict whether or not her roses will take a prize in the garden walk competition. For the past ten years, my predictions have been spot-on, but this time when I laid out the cards they were all a mumble jumble. I couldn’t make neither hide nor hair out of them.” Her shoulders shriveled inward. “Then, of all things, I forgot to add the baking powder to my banana bread batter. It came out as flat as a pancake. Why, I don’t think I’ve ever messed up a batch of banana bread.”

  That was troubling. My mother was a banana bread artisan, her baking skills finely honed over the years. Even as a youngster, I was fascinated by watching her expertly whip together ingredients without even using a measuring cup: “A pinch of this and a smattering of that,” she used to say, her graceful hands flying over the bowl. Then, for my seventh birthday, she got me a miniature-sized apron and a tiny loaf pan of my own and invited me to bake with her. It was one of the best memories of my childhood. In fact, that little apron still hung on a hook inside my pantry and I couldn’t look at it without recalling Mama’s hands guiding mine as I practiced cracking eggs over the banana bread bowl.

  “How am I gonna to take care of you all if I don’t have my gift?” she continued, still pacing. “You know, Lila, some people take care of their loved ones with their physical strength, some with their money, some with their smarts. Well, I ain’t never been big on any of those things, but I’ve always had my gift. It’s how I care for y’all.”

  Her words struck a chord and caused me to dip my head in shame. I’d always been half embarrassed by my mother’s gift; I’d never stopped to think of it as the way she’d shown her love all these years. Isn’t that the way it always is with parents and children? Trey had always hated my worrying and fussing, but I’d been telling him all this time that it was just the way I loved him. Why had it taken me so long to realize that my mother’s often dramatic predictions and warnings were the way she loved me?

  I looked over at her, really looked at her, and noticed that the fine lines around her eyes were deeper than I’d remembered. “You haven’t been feeling ill, have you?” I asked, but before she could answer, the first of the police cars pulled in front of my house. I gave her a little squeeze and a peck on the cheek. “Take the boys inside, Mama, and get them some soda or something. I’ll be in as soon as I’m done out here. We’ll talk more then.”

  She successfully herded the boys back into the house just as the two officers approached. The first, a young guy with close-cut dark hair, a strong jaw, and an enthusiastic bounce in his step, shot me a quick greeting before placing gloves on his hands and stooping over the hole to examine the skull.

  “My son was trying to pry out the roots of that hawthorn bush when he dug it up,” I told him. “It looks human, so I called right away.”

  Both of the officers were kneeling now, peering down into the hole with interest. “Did you dig up anything else, ma’am?” the other officer asked. He was much older than the first guy, maybe in his midfifties, with a round shiny head and robust stature.

  “No. That’s it; just the skull.” Thank goodness. The skull was bad enough. I was probably going to have a whopper of a nightmare as it was.

  The officers remained silent as they stood and began examining the rest of the ground around the hole.

  “How do you suppose it got there?” I asked.

  Neither one of them answered that question. Instead they began asking questions of their own, like: How long had I lived in the house? How old were the hawthorn bushes? Did I know the previous residents? All questions that gave me the willies yet simultaneously incited my sense of curiosity. Nonetheless, I did my best to answer their questions and was still doing so a half hour later when Sean arrived on the scene.

  He crossed the yard quickly, approaching with a concerned look. It had been a few days since I’d seen him and I wanted nothing more than to run into his arms, but the presence of the other officers made any display of affection seem inappropriate. “One of the guys recognized your address and called me,” he said, standing next to me and placing his hand on the small of my back. Then looking at the officers, he asked, “What’s going on?”

  After getting the initial rundown, Sean sent me inside the house while he remained outside to assist the officers. Once inside, I found the boys in the family room playing video games, eating cold pizza, and finishing the last of the soda. I was glad to see they were carrying on, seemingly unfazed by their macabre discovery. Although I had no doubt that once word got out, I’d be spending most of tomorrow fielding questions from their concerned parents.

  I worked my way around them and back to the kitchen, where my mother was. She was at the table, a set of tarot cards laid out in front of her. “Come over here and look at this, darlin’,” she beckoned.

  Glancing over her shoulder, I saw that she’d laid out several cards. I wasn’t an expert on tarot reading, but I did recognize one of the cards, the Magician, sometimes known for his deceptiveness. “Who are you reading?” I asked.

  “You, sug. And, the cards are finally speakin’ to me.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That must mean that you’re not losing your touch, right?”

  She glanced up at me, her eyes dark with concern. “Hon, there ain’t nothin’ good about this. Nothin’ at all.”

  I sighed, pouring us each a finger of Jim Beam before taking up the seat across the table and sitting back to indulge her latest prediction. I’d spent my whole life torn between brushing off my mother’s so-called gift as an eccentric obsession and being amazed by her sometimes uncannily accurate predictions. Tonight, I knew I had to appease her fears over losing her gift. Because in the big picture, it didn’t really matter if my mother’s abilities were real or not, they were what made her the Amazing Althea, an identity that she’d be lost without.

  I remembered a line from Patrick Rothfuss’s book, The Name of the Wind: “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” That was so true of my mother. And I, for one, loved the quirkiness of her personal story and never wanted to see the identity she’d built torn down by her own doubts or that of some naysayer.

  So we sat together, our heads bent over the table, sipping Jim Beam and trying to reason with the cards. “It just doesn’t seem right, sugar. Either I am way off, or you’re in serious danger. You see the Magician? The way he’s reversed like this tells me that there’s going to be some trickery comin’ your way.”

  I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. “Well, that may not be all bad. Actually, that could mean anything.” I rolled my eyes upward, trying to come up with something plausible. “Like, maybe Trey’s going to try to pull something over on me. Boys his age can be so mischievous. Or, maybe one of the other agents at work is going to play a prank on me. Probably Zach. You know how he is. Or maybe—”

  My mother placed a wrinkled hand on my arm, her eyes boring into mine. “No, darlin’. This is more serious than all that. I can feel it.”

  As if on cue, the front screen door slammed and heavy footsteps brought Sean into the kitchen. His face wore a troubled expression. I stood and went to him, this time wrapping my arms around his neck and leaning in for a hug and quick kiss.

  After we separated, he placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke with a concerned tone. “The forensic pathologist has determined it’s a human skull. He can’t really tell much more until we have more of the skeleton. So we’re sending for an anthropologist to come and unearth th
e rest of the remains. He’ll be able to determine the age of the bones, whether it’s male or female, and maybe even the cause of death. I should be able to tell you more later.”

  I rubbed my fingertips against my temples where I could feel the beginning of a dull ache. “All I really want to know is who that poor person was and why they’re buried in my yard.”

  “That’s what we’re going to try to determine,” he replied, his demeanor shifting noticeably. I recognized the change in his expression. He was wearing his she’s-not-going-to-like-this look. I’d become quite familiar with this look over the past year or so. After all, I’d seen it quite a few times. The first time was when he came to my home in Dunston to inform me that Trey and some of his friends had landed in trouble. Then, more recently, I noticed “the look” when I came home from work to find he’d halfway burned down my kitchen in an ill-fated attempt to make a romantic dinner for our nine-month anniversary. And lately I’d seen that very look every time he had to cancel a date due to some sort of work demand.

  I narrowed my eyes. “What is it that you’re not telling me, Sean?”

  He drew in a deep breath, shifting again and staring down at my glass of Jim Beam as if he’d like nothing more than to have a stiff drink. “This whole thing might become a little disruptive,” he finally said.

  “Disruptive? What do you mean?”

  “Well, this process could take several days and the anthropologist will have to excavate other parts of the backyard, maybe even the whole yard. I don’t know how much they’ll actually dig, but it’ll be inaccessible for a while. Hopefully they won’t find any other skeletons buried out there.”