Dead and Buried

by Karin Kaufman

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Mailing List Signup

  Smithwell Fairies Cozy Mystery Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Secret Santa Murder Cover

  Secret Santa Murder - Chapter 1 Sneak Peek

  From the Author

  More Books

  DEAD AND BURIED

  A SMITHWELL FAIRIES COZY MYSTERY

  KARIN KAUFMAN

  Copyright © 2018 Karin Kaufman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  SMITHWELL FAIRIES COZY MYSTERY SERIES

  Dying to Remember (Book 1) — Out Now

  Dead and Buried (Book 2) — Out Now

  Secret Santa Murder (Book 3) — Out Now

  Drop Dead Cold (Book 4) — Coming Soon

  CHAPTER 1

  On the whole, I was a sensible woman. A little jumpy and sleep-deprived since the death of my husband, Michael, eleven months earlier, but other than that, quite ordinary. An ordinary fifty-year-old in the ordinary town of Smithwell, which was smack dab in the middle of ordinary central Maine. No harbors or quaint coastal villages here. So when I’d first encountered Minette the fairy a few weeks ago, sitting in a teacup in my hutch, I figured I’d lost my mind.

  I hadn’t.

  But three weeks on, I was still filled with wonder whenever I saw her. In October she had spent some nights away from my house—I was never sure where she went—but now she was here all the time, safe from the cold rains that afflicted this part of Maine every November. At night she made her bed in her favorite teacup, the bottom of which I’d lined with cotton balls, and most mornings I made her breakfast, though sometimes she ventured into the woods across from my house on Birch Street to dine on tender roots, reindeer moss, and wild radishes. She declared the latter a delicacy.

  This November morning, she sat atop my kitchen table eating breakfast with me, nibbling at a tiny square of buttered toast and sipping maple syrup from a small measuring spoon while I finished my eggs and tea. I enjoyed her company. In my mind, I likened her presence to having a talking pet in the house—a comparison that would have offended her greatly.

  She wasn’t Michael, of course, but it was astonishing how calming the companionship of another living creature could be. My insomnia was fading fast, as were my bad dreams, just knowing Minette slept in my hutch at night. Trouble was, no one else knew she existed. Not even my next-door neighbor and dearest friend, Emily MacKenzie. And having to keep mum about this flying, talking being in my house had led to some dicey situations. More than a few times I’d had to shield Minette from Emily’s view until the tiny fairy could shoot up the fireplace and out of sight. No doubt Emily was giving thought to my mental health.

  I took a drink of almond oolong tea, staring at Minette over the rim of my Wedgwood cup. “What would you say about me telling Emily that you live here?”

  She gazed up at me, her green eyes alight. “No, Kate.”

  Heaving a sigh, I set down my cup. The secrecy was wearing on me. “You know she would never hurt you.”

  “Yes, I know.” Minette stood—all four inches of her—her blush-colored wings bending backward, balancing her body as she moved. “Someone is walking to your door.” A second later, she flapped her wings forward, went horizontal, and flew for my hutch, landing in her teacup.

  “This is just what I mean. You have to hide, even if it’s Emily.” I rose from the table and started for my front door, telling her we’d talk about the matter later.

  A few feet from the door, I paused, listening for the bell. Minette’s hearing was extraordinary—like all fairies’ hearing, she’d told me. I had to slow my responses to what she heard in order to keep tongues from wagging. Have you noticed how Kate Brewer opens her front door before you even knock? It’s downright spooky.

  When the bell rang, I strode to the door and found Emily staring open-mouthed at me, a glazed, holy-cow look in her eyes.

  “You’re freezing,” I said, waving her inside.

  “No, I’m not.”

  I leaned on the doorjamb. “I saw Laurence leave early this morning. Where’s he off to this time? Liberia? Croatia?”

  “England.” She took a deep breath. “Kate.”

  I straightened. “What’s wrong? Is it Laurence?”

  She shook her head, and lifting her right arm, she pointed at her house. “There a body behind my house.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  She wasn’t kidding. Emily didn’t play pranks, anyway, but standing on my doorstep, she looked shell-shocked and not at all in the mood for kidding around. “Hang on a sec. Let me get my coat.”

  I hurried to the kitchen and grabbed my coat from a chair, and as I slipped my arms in the sleeves, Minette floated down from the hutch and dropped inside my right pocket. “No, not a good idea,” I said.

  “What was that?” Emily asked.

  I looked up just as she peered around the corner of the foyer. “Never mind, I’m talking to myself. Coming.”

  There was no time to argue with Minette, as she was now tucked away at the bottom of my pocket and Emily was looking at me squint-eyed, as though I really needed to get a grip on this talking-to-myself thing, a habit I’d fallen into after Michael died.

  We took off down the flagstone path that Michael had cleverly laid between our two houses a decade ago. Although we were next-door neighbors, our homes were half an acre apart, and because we lived at the top of a broad, gently sloping hill, there were no sidewalks in the area.

  Emily led me through her house and paused at the back door, her hand on the doorknob. “She’s lying face-down, and she’s all . . . I’ll show you.”

  As soon as she pushed the door open, I caught sight of the body. It was a woman, or appeared to be. Short and slim, she wore jeans and an olive-colored barn jacket, and from the top of her head to the soles of her boots, she was covered in dirt.

  “See what I mean?”

  “She’s right here,” I said, “practically at your back door.” I headed down the two back steps and then hesitantly approached the woman. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

  Refusing to budge from the bottom step, Emily said, “Her face is in the grass and she hasn’t moved since I saw her five minutes ago.”

  “This is awful.” I crouched next to the body. “Ma’am?” Putting aside my squeamishness, I touched my fingers to the inside of the woman’s left wrist. Nothing—not a fli
cker of life—and she was as cold as the morning air.

  “She’s dead?” Emily asked.

  I nodded.

  “There’s dirt all over her.”

  When I bent closer to the woman, looking for signs of injury, I saw a patch of blood crusted in her brown hair, almost hidden by the collar of her jacket.

  “Why is she here?” Emily said.

  “That’s a very good question.” I stood. “Do you know who she is? Can you tell?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did you look closely?”

  “This is as close as I’m getting, Kate. She was buried and someone dug her up.”

  “Huh?” I pulled my eyes from the woman and trained them on Emily.

  “Someone dug a body from a grave and put it in my back yard.”

  “No,” I said in my most commanding don’t-be-ridiculous voice. “They don’t bury people in their barn jackets, and even if they did, they wouldn’t dump them straight in the ground. There are things called caskets.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.”

  “Anyway, she has an injury behind her left ear. I think she was hit with something.”

  “Are you telling me she was murdered?”

  I heard a tiny peep from my pocket but kept my eyes on Emily. “Maybe. You need to call the police.”

  “What am I going to tell them when they ask me why she’s here?”

  “The truth. Are you sure you’ve never seen her before?”

  Emily took three small steps forward. “Well, her face is in the grass, so . . .”

  “What about her hair and clothes? If you come closer, you can see a little of her face from where I’m standing.” I threw my hand out. “No, on second thought, don’t come any closer. If she was murdered, I’m making a mess of the crime scene right now.” I backed away, straight out to my right, and then circled well around the woman until I was once again by Emily and the steps.

  “This is crazy,” she said, her fingers to her lips. “I wish Laurence hadn’t left this morning.”

  “Call him after you call the police.”

  “No, he’s taking off for London at any moment. There’s nothing he can do except worry.”

  To my surprise, Emily took a step toward the woman.

  “Don’t go any closer,” I said. “You might destroy evidence. Actually, we should get inside your house right now. Emily?”

  My friend was riveted in place, staring down at the body, scowling. “That watch. The pink face on it.”

  “Yes, I see.” On the woman’s right wrist was a watch with a bright pink face and black hands. “What about it?”

  Emily shrank back.

  “Come on, out of the cold.” I tugged at the sleeve of her black sweater.

  “It gets worse,” she said, turning her eyes to me.

  “How can it get worse than a body in your yard?”

  My lighthearted remark did not cheer her.

  “I know her, Kate. I’ve seen that pink watch before. She was buried. I saw her.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “It’s Patti Albert,” Emily said. “It must be. It has to be her with that pink watch. She’s in my group. I mean, well, not my group. It’s her group, but she let me join because I wanted to give cemetery tours at Mount Hope—you know, the spooky ones they have in November—and I know I saw her there yesterday because at the grave—”

  Detective Martin Rancourt held up a hand, bringing Emily to a screeching verbal halt. “Mrs. MacKenzie, hold on. Let’s sit down, all right? Then you can start from the beginning. Slowly.”

  Emily led Rancourt into her kitchen, and though I was reluctant, what with Minette still in my pocket, I followed them inside. I couldn’t leave my friend to face the police on her own. Not that Rancourt was a bad guy. In fact, I rather liked the man, but he’d brought his crime squad with him, and they were at that moment in Emily’s back yard roping off the scene and taking photos and whatever samples they deemed necessary. It was a grim affair.

  “How about coffee?” I asked as Emily and Rancourt took seats at her kitchen table. I intended to keep Minette as far away from the pair of them as I could.

  “Yes, please,” Emily said.

  “Detective?”

  “Yes,” he said, giving me a perfunctory glance. “Now, Mrs. MacKenzie, from the top. When and how did you discover the body?” His pen was poised over his notebook.

  “I found her about twenty, twenty-five minutes ago, when I looked out my back door. I was looking at the beautiful maple out there, you know? It still has some leaves. And then I saw her. When she didn’t move, and when I saw her face was in the grass, I realized she was probably dead.”

  “What about your husband? Did he see her?”

  “Laurence left at six-thirty this morning to catch a flight from Bangor. It was dark when we got up. He took a shower, I made him breakfast, and he left. Neither of us went outside.”

  “Did you touch the body at all?”

  “No.”

  I turned from the coffeemaker. “I touched her.”

  Rancourt shifted in his chair.

  “I checked her pulse in case we needed to call an ambulance. So I touched her wrist, but nothing else.”

  Rancourt grunted. “Did either of you hear anything out of the ordinary last night or early this morning?”

  “Nothing,” I replied.

  “No, my husband and I didn’t,” Emily said, “but our bedroom is on the other end of the house.”

  “Go on, Mrs. MacKenzie,” Rancourt said, swiveling back to her. “What next?”

  “Next I knocked on Kate’s door.”

  “And how was it that you saw this body in Mount Hope Cemetery?”

  “I was following a tour given by the other members of the society—the first one this month—so I could lead my own tour tonight.”

  “All of them were present?”

  “Except Patti. It was a new routine and new guide words, even for the others.”

  “What time was this?” Rancourt asked.

  “About seven-thirty.”

  Flicking the switch on the coffeemaker, I leaned back on the kitchen counter, and to keep from inadvertently jamming my hands in my coat pockets and hurting Minette, I crossed my arms.

  “What’s the name of this cemetery tour group?”

  “The tours are run by the Smithwell Historical Society. In November, they have a haunted cemetery tour and a haunted house tour at Fairfield Mansion. Both tours are given by the same people.”

  “And what makes you think you know this woman?” Rancourt asked.

  “It’s her pink watch,” Emily said. “You know how sometimes you see dirt mounded over a grave? Like they dug it ahead of time? I saw two arms sticking out from a mound, and that pink watch was on the right arm.”

  For a moment, Rancourt was silent. Then he asked the obvious question. “Mrs. MacKenzie, if you saw two arms sticking out from a mound of dirt, why didn’t you call the police? Or at least point it out to someone in your group?”

  “I’d wandered off a bit. The group was moving on without me, and I only saw the watch because I had my flashlight out and the light must have hit it. I thought I saw a fake bat on the headstone, which wasn’t supposed to be there, so I pointed—”

  “Mrs. MacKenzie, why on earth would you leave a body—”

  “Detective Rancourt, I thought the arms were part of the cemetery tour, like the fake bats we hang from tree limbs. I’m new to the tour, remember? For goodness’ sake, if I’d thought it was a real person I would’ve done something.” Rancourt had questioned Emily’s common sense and she would have none of it. Drawing herself up in her seat, she pushed back a shock of her short, copper-colored hair and gave it to him with both barrels. “I may be a little frantic about finding a body, but I’m not an idiot. Her arms didn’t look real, not in the dark with my flashlight on them, and I didn’t think about the pink watch until this morning. Then I remembered that Patti Albert wore a pink watch on her right hand b
ecause she’s left-handed.”

  As the coffeemaker sputtered, signaling an end to the brewing, I pulled two cups from a cabinet. My back to Rancourt, I smiled while I poured their coffees and he mumbled an acknowledgment that he should have let her complete her statement before leaping in.

  “Do you recall the name on the headstone?” he asked.

  “Dawson. I looked because I wondered if they’d set up a fake headstone with just RIP on it, but it was real. They were violating the cemetery’s rules, actually. That’s what I thought.”

  “Coffee,” I said, taking their cups to the table.

  “Thank you,” Rancourt said. “Please sit down, Mrs. Brewer.”

  I sat at an angle, keeping my right pocket from his view. Minette and I were going to have a talk when we got home. On the one hand, she insisted I tell no one about her, but on the other, she was determined to follow me everywhere, especially when a mystery was afoot. Last month, with her help, Rancourt and I had solved the murder of a friend, a man who had sheltered Minette in his home, and now she wanted to be at the forefront of every crime and riddle we came across.

  “The cemetery sextant called the station at seven o’clock this morning about a vandalized grave site, name of Dawson,” Rancourt said. “He also told us there was an agreement between Mount Hope and the historical society that there would be no decorations on the headstones. No disturbing them in any way.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Emily said, “and that’s why I put my flashlight on it. Someone at the society made a mistake.”

  “Mrs. Brewer, did you know the deceased?” Rancourt asked.

  “Do you know for sure if it’s Patti Albert?” I answered.

  “According to ID in her pocket.”

  “I’ve never met her, but I’ve heard her name in connection with the historical society.”

  “And Mrs. MacKenzie,” he asked, “how well did you know the deceased?”

  “I met her two weeks ago, when I signed up to give cemetery tours. Before that, I didn’t know her at all. I know she was married until five years ago, and she has two older children who don’t live in town. But that’s about all.”