Chapter One
July 1, Present-Day
I sat on the brick foundation of Miss Maggie's outside cellar door,swatting at the mosquitos feasting on various parts of my anatomy.My scalp, still wet from a quick shower, was the only coolpart of me. The night was so hot I might as well have beenstanding in front of the ovens at my cousin Angelo's pizza parlor.At least there, the heady aroma of pepperoni was a perk.
Out in front of the house, one of two patrol cars the color ofmilk chocolate still had its lights on, twin beams of red and whitepulsing across the edge of Bell Run's forest every half second,giving me that queasy feeling my stomach always gets when I lookat strobe lights.
I tried gazing up at the sky instead, which was violet-blue inthe last glow of twilight. Stars were trying to cut through thehaze, their light flickering like fluorescent lamps in need of newstarters. A solitary bat fluttered by, headed for the river and supper.The dope. All the mosquitos were right here, eating me alive.
Across the side yard, Deputy Dwight Pearson turned on aportable floodlight, washing out sky and stars and attracting aninstant cloud of moths. The beam silhouetted the sheriff's precisebut ineffectual-looking posture and Miss Maggie's bent-over butdynamic one. Dynamic even in baggy shorts with her bony kneesshowing.
"Use your head, Dennis," she was saying. "This ground hasn'tbeen disturbed for as long as I can remember." She jabbed anarthritic forefinger at the small strip of churned-up dirt betweenthem—churned up nearly three hours earlier by me, using onlya gardening fork and visions of juicy homegrown tomatoes. Thetwo-foot-deep hole at one end of the strip was my doing, too,after unearthing what I'd thought was a piece of odd-shaped treeroot. Until I noticed that it had teeth.
"That skull belongs to a life lived at least nine decades ago,"Miss Maggie concluded, her estimate based on the fact that she'dcalled this piece of real estate home all of her ninety-one yearsand she had a black hole of a memory. "Considering all the actionBell Run saw during the Civil War, we've probably got a soldierhere. I'm not going to let you ruin a possible archaeological site."
"We'll wait to hear what the M.E. says, Miz Shelby," Brackinreplied, being above all a man who liked to form his own opinions.I'll allow that's not a bad trait for the guru of local lawenforcement, but Stoke County had a low crime rate and Brackindidn't get to form opinions often enough to stay in practice. Hisstubbornness tended to be less motivated by objectivity than bya desire to stall, so as not to resume his Maytag-repairmanlikeexistence any sooner than he had to.
I stood up, hoping the mosquitos wouldn't be able to find thepart of me farthest from the ground, which worked for all of fiveseconds. From my new vantage point, I surveyed the county'stwo deputies, now leaning against the side rail of our front porch,shovels in their hands, waiting for the go-ahead. From this distance,Dwight Pearson and Brenda Owens looked like twins—bothtall, blond and big-boned, wearing identical uniforms,which tonight were equally wilted with the heat, though Brendahad come on duty for the night shift less than fifteen minutesago. Neither deputy appeared terribly anxious to do hard laborin this weather.
During Miss Maggie's lifetime, she'd taught eighth-grade historyto just about every native of this part of Virginia, includingBrackin, and now she gave him one of her teacher glares, guaranteedto make any kid admit to throwing spitballs. Brackindidn't admit to anything, but he did shut up. And luckily, thecell phone hanging on his belt let out an electronic cackle at thatmoment. He walked a dozen steps away from her as he answered.
Miss Maggie turned her attention back to the hole, grinningdown into it like a proud parent. "This is so cool, Pat." I'd lostcount of how many times she'd said that in the last two-plushours. If I'd struck gold, I couldn't have made her happier. Historiansare odd that way. I should explain that Miss Maggie hadspent the past thirty years researching the history of her estateand tracking down the last descendant of the Bell family, who'dlived here until the Civil War left Bell Run in ruins. I was thatlast descendant. Long story short: Miss Maggie had brought mehere in May. I stayed.
Anyway, tonight, when I'd spotted the teeth on the jawbone—afterdropping it in horror, then gingerly scooping it into mylittle trowel and holding it at arm's length—I'd taken it inside toshow Miss Maggie. She'd hauled me back outside and had meshow her the exact position of the bone as I'd found it, whichprobably wasn't as accurate as I could have been because I wasn'twilling to touch the thing with more than two fingertips. Thenshe'd made me help her get down on her knees—not an easymovement given her arthritis—where she took up the trowel andgently scraped the dirt away until a bony face seemed to float tothe surface. That's when she'd said it was time to bring in experts.
"I still don't understand why you called the sheriff," I said,inching closer. My Italian superstitions were warring with mycuriosity and my superstitions were the odds-on favorite, so Istopped inching when I could see the raised eye ridges of theskull. They were almost the same shade of gray-beige as the surroundingsoil.
"Law says you have to file a police report if you find humanremains. Figured I'd get the formalities out of the way beforeEmmy shows up."
Emmy was Dr. Emmaline Brewster, an anthropologist fromthe University of Virginia and another former student of MissMaggie's. She'd phoned Emmy first to give her the details, andwithin the half hour we'd gotten a call back from her that everythingwas arranged. She and one of her lab assistants would behere later tonight.
I glanced up at Brackin, but he, still on the phone, was headingover to his deputies. "You didn't tell the sheriff you alreadycontacted the university, did you?"
"No use complicating the matter. I'll tell Elwood when heshows up." Elwood was the doctor the sheriff summoned wheneverhe needed a medical examiner. For Miss Maggie, everyonein the county was on a first-name basis.
Miss Maggie let a spontaneous giggle bubble up out of herinsides, a pretty scary sound coming through her raspy old vocalcords. "This is the first historic find for the Julia Bell Foundation,Pat. Aren't you excited?"
I hadn't thought of it that way. The whole concept of theFoundation—that is, setting aside the majority of Bell Run's acreageas a historical and environmental classroom—was only sixweeks old. The ink had barely dried on the preliminary paperwork.Yet here we were with our first project. It was exciting, butI wished I'd found something more along the lines of a lost city.Finding bones had to be a bad omen.
"Once word gets out," Miss Maggie was saying, "this is boundto bring in donations—"
My ears pricked up. Bad omen or not, the Bell Foundationneeded bucks. I wondered if Yorick would take offense at beinga poster child.
"I can't get over it," she continued, a regular motormouth inher enthusiasm. "All the years I've lived in this house and neverknew this was here. Then you come along and—what made youdig here, Pat? Weren't you going to put your garden on the otherside of the house?"
I nodded. "I thought I wanted a spot that gets sun most ofthe day." And, I didn't say aloud, the lazy couch-potato insideme wanted a bare piece of ground, where I wouldn't have to chopup sod now or fight weeds later on. "But I couldn't get my forkmore than a few inches down into the soil over there."
"Well, what with the drought we've been having these lastthree weeks, the ground's probably baked into adobe."
Too true. When I'd come here to Bell Run in May, wildflowershad been at high tide, filling every inch of clearing betweenthe house and the surrounding forest. Now only tidal pools ofwhite clover and buttercups remained in the shadier areas, likehere on the east side of the house. Everywhere else was mattedbrown straw.
Miss Maggie had been tolerant of my gardening whim. Afterliving in an apartment all my adult life, I'd felt almost obligatedto plant a few tomatoes and peppers, though it was way late inthe season to expect much of a crop, even down here in Virginiawhere the first frost might hold off an extra week or two.
A cynical little inner voice kept whispering that I was reallymarking my territory.
I justified it by telling myself I was honoring my Italian heritageby continuing one of my family's traditions. Thing was,where Dad put his veggies had never been decided by soil or sunor drainage. No, Mom said he had to plant down at the end ofour small yard because the garden attracted sparrows—they nibbledthe lettuce and took daily dust baths between the rows ofbasil sprouts. And Mom didn't want birds pooping anywhere nearher clotheslines.
This, I explained to Miss Maggie, was the extent of my landscapingknowledge. "Then this morning I realized that if the wildflowershad dried up and died out back, my plants probablywould, too. Actually, I had this recurring dream about it the pastfew nights: I'm trying to loosen up the hard ground when one ofthe local farm boys comes up the path from the creek and tellsme I should dig over here instead. So I decided to see if mysubconscious knew more about gardening than I did."
Miss Maggie raised her eyebrows. "Good thing it was yourdream. I wouldn't take farming advice from any of the local kids.Football advice maybe. Or drinking and girls."
I shook my head. "No, he wasn't anyone I've met. He wasyoung—eight, ten maybe. A black kid. Real skinny, light complexion.Big mole over one eyebrow."
"Mole?" Magnolia Shelby wasn't easy to shock, but that madeher jaw go slack. She grabbed at my forearm, but our combinedsweat made her hand slip to my wrist. "This boy in your dream,what was his name?"
Her reaction spooked me and my stomach rolled from morethan the strobe effect of the siren lights. "I don't know. He didn'tsay."
She let go my arm, but now I got her teacher look. "I guessBeth Ann must have told you."
Beth Ann Lee and her father, Hugh, were our closest neighbors,over on the other side of the creek. Even though I was nearlythree times her thirteen years, Beth Ann and I had a sort of bigand little sis relationship. "Told me what?"
Miss Maggie shifted her eyes from me back to Yorick. "Toldyou about Mance. Because if she didn't, it means Bell Run hasitself another ghost."
Copyright © 2001 Elena Santangelo. All rights reserved.