A Summer with the Dead Read online

  “Uncle Harlan’s face is shadowed by his hat.” Maya sighed, disappointed.

  “I’ll keep looking for more photos. I remember one in particular that shows his face real good.”

  “Elly, do you think the wells that Uncle Harlan bulldozed over need to be filled in, to make them safe?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Sheriff Wimple said the county will take care of that.”

  Maya nodded. “Guess I’ll get busy in the skylight room now.”

  Three hours later, the knotty pine wood paneling in the skylight room glowed from cleaning and polishing. The carpet in the center of the room was shampooed and even though damp, appeared three shades lighter.

  “There’s an odd smell in that room,” Maya told Elly. “Maybe it will fade as the carpet dries.”

  “Odd smell?”

  “Yeah, sort of musty. I don’t know, a little like garden soil mixed with a wet dog smell.” She wrinkled her nose. “But at least that rug is clean. Even the shelves are clean. We sold all the books and knickknacks at the garage sale so the cupboards are empty too. There’s nothing in there. Not a thing. I climbed the stepladder and checked all around the skylight, thinking there might be a leak and that smell could be mold, but I didn’t find anything. If you’ll ask Coty to clean the moss and the pine needles off the skylight, it will brighten up that room quite a bit.”

  Elly nodded. “Will do.”

  “What’s the matter, Elly? You look sad.”

  “Nothing important really. I just keep thinking about Harlan. Cleaning up around here, moving things out, selling things he used to look at … things he bought for the farm … things he touched … they bring back memories. Not all memories are good but a lot of them are. I sure miss him. We were happy together.”

  “Want to talk about it?” Maya asked. “Talking helps. I have someone to talk to when I’m feeling low.”

  “Yeah, sometime soon, honey. Not now though.”

  “It can’t be easy, leaving your home after so many years, but try to think about the good things ahead, like living in that retirement complex with your friend, Judith. You’re looking forward to that, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Judith is a good friend, and she has other friends there too. We might have fun, all of us.”

  Maya nodded. “It looks like the rain has let up and the sun is coming out again. Maybe I’ll go for a short walk.”

  “Stay away from old farmsteads,” Elly said. “Stay on the trails.”

  Maya put away the cleaning supplies and set the rented rug shampooer on the back porch. Coty had offered to get it back to Ace Hardware before the end of the day. She washed her face and hands, pulled on her boots, gloves, and slipped on her hooded jacket.

  “Back in an hour.” Maya entered the basement. She sprinted to the outer door with its opaque window. She held her breath, not wanting to inhale the mausoleum odor. Outside, the big leaves were soggy with rain, beaten down into the corner of the foundation, a slimy pile of brown and green. Maya strode across the yard and then followed the slope to the driveway where it entered the trees. There, the driveway dropped down into the giant firs. Her boots clomped along the side of the driveway, between the grassy center strip and the giant ferns, salal and huckleberry. She planned to walk all the way out to the road and back again, three quarters of a mile each way.

  Nearby, a red-winged blackbird sang. Maya often spotted them where cattails grew, the showy birds clinging to the fluffy cattail heads with the sun reflecting off their indigo-black wings, their shoulders resembling bloodstains. The only other sounds was that of enormous water drops falling from high branches and hitting lower leaves or the muddy driveway with heavy splats. The air smelled washed. It had been a cool May so far, but Maya didn’t mind. She paused and inhaled before she continued walking.

  The previous day’s incident with the well and the crawl through the narrow tunnel seemed more like a bad dream now that the sun was shining so bright and the birds were singing. Maybe all the effort she put into cleaning the skylight room would ensure she slept well later this evening, instead of having to rely on sedatives. She needed to check her med journal again, to keep track of how often she dipped into the prescription, just to cope. She also recorded in the back of the notebook, everthing she and Elly accomplished each day and things they talked about.

  She paused again, the dark image of the well and the tunnel flashing through her mind. She heard the words of the crawler who had followed her. She had not mentioned him to anyone. No one would believe it anyway. Was this the kind of thing that had driven her father to do what he did? Had he seen things like that? Things that can’t possibly be real? “Does Elly?”

  Like everything else in her life, the farm visit was flawed. Her expectations had been high and she was somewhat disappointed. Also, she worried about Elly. Maya had arrived only three weeks ago and in that time Elly had exhibited some bizarre behavior. Especially her sudden, occasional, personality change. Maya and Elly were blood relatives. If her aunt saw Harlan in the house five years after his death, did that explain why she saw a green, glowing, tattooed boy in the upstairs hallway? Was Benson right? Was she nuts? Her own father had committed suicide in an asylum. Elly, her father’s older sister, was disturbed, no question about that. Maya shook her head and continued her walk.

  “Damn you, Benson. I hope you do kick down Elly’s door and I hope she blows you away with her shotgun, and I hope I’m there when it happens.” Maya’s boots splashed to a stop in a puddle. She slapped her palms over her mouth. “No I don’t.” What a horrible thing to wish for!

  It was obvious by the smirk on his face Sheriff Wimple had doubted her story. Did he doubt there were bones at the bottom of the well, or did he doubt her ability to distinguish human bones from animal bones? Did he assume she imagined it? Did he think she was stupid—or crazy?

  “Yeah, right, Sheriff. You and the horse you rode in on.”

  Maya spotted a gap in the undergrowth and narrow deer trail. She followed the trail with enormous drops of water hitting her hood and shoulders. Drenched ferns soaked the knees of her jeans.

  She continued along the path until a glinting light made her blink. The sudden, bright sunlight reflected off something in the undergrowth, from beneath a pile of fir limbs and behind the cattails. The limbs had had been there a long time. They were a gray color and even though wet from the recent downpour, they looked brittle. Maya stepped closer but water leaked inside one boot. She stepped back. Between where she stood and the shiny object was a mushy pond clogged with tall grass. A few wild yellow irises glowed amidst cattails. Her boots would fill with pond water if she tried to cross.

  Maya worked her way around the marshy pond, lifting blackberry vines from her sleeves and pushing away dripping hazelnut branches. She ducked under a vine maple and arrived behind the pile of dead limbs. She halted in surprise when sunshine glanced off rusted metal and chrome. She recognized the rear end of a gray car. The license plate and its frame were gone but she knew the shape of that trunk. It was a 1942 Ford two-door coupe. Back in high school a friend of Maya’s had spent all his time and money restoring one just like it, except his had been candy-apple-red.

  A pile of branches blocked any view of the car’s dark interior. Maya stepped closer but icy water trickled into her boot again. She backed up and returned to the farm. She banged on the bunkhouse door but Coty didn’t answer. Maya pulled her boots off on the back porch and entered Elly’s kitchen in wet socks.

  “Already back from your walk, sweety?” Aunt Elly stood in the dining room entrance, her tiny silhouette framed by the bay window.

  “I came across a car in a pond and came back to get Coty. Maybe he can see if there’s anyone inside, but he wasn’t in the bunkhouse. Should I call Sheriff Wimple?”

  “Oh dear. I don’t know.” Elly put one hand to the side of her face. “Where is this car you found?”

  “In a marshy little pond on this side of the driveway. The entire front end of the car i
s under water. Only the trunk sticks up, and most of that is buried under dead branches.”

  “Oh dear,” Elly said again. “What will people say? Where again? Near the driveway?” Elly asked.

  “It’s right where the driveway drops down toward the stream, but I didn’t see a place where a car slid off the driveway. I guess I should go back and look again.”

  Maya lifted her jacket from the back of the chair and grabbed her gloves.

  “Let me get us both some dry boots and I’ll go with you.” Aunt Elly gathered outdoor clothing from the pantry wall and boots from the stairs closet and followed Maya down the driveway.

  “The car must have slid off the driveway a long time ago, and down into the bog. I can’t get close enough to see if anyone was inside,” Maya said. “Just a step or two off the trail, the water is knee deep.”

  A minute later, Maya pointed to the side of the driveway above the pond. The dense undergrowth had grown back since the accident.

  “This must be where the car went over,” Maya said. “Elly, wait here while I go back down to where I spotted it from below.”

  Maya climbed around behind the pile of branches. She stepped to the car’s bumper and then crawled across the car’s roof. She stretched down and peered through the driver’s side window.

  “It’s really dark inside, but I don’t see anyone.”

  “Climb back here, honey,” Elly said. “I don’t want that pond to swallow the car while you’re on top of it.”

  Maya returned to the driveway. “Should we phone the sheriff?”

  “Maya, I’m not sure. Fedder Prairie is over a mile from here, so I don’t care about what was found there, but I don’t want Sheriff Wimple snooping around this farm. Let’s wait a while before we tell him we’ve found a car in the pond, okay? That car has been there a mighty long time, maybe fifty years?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter if we wait a while.”

  Elly chewed her lower lip. “Let’s give it until the end of summer, Maya. By then, maybe Coty’ll spot it and he can be the one to phone the sheriff. Better Coty than you or me, don’t you agree?”

  It’d been less than twenty-four hours since Maya described finding the bones at the bottom of the well, and she didn’t like the way Sheriff Wimple had looked at her, as if he doubted her intelligence. Or her honesty. She didn’t want to explain a second incident so soon after the first. She nodded.

  “Okay.”

  That night at bedtime, Maya locked the back door, unlocked it, and locked it again. She drew the curtains. The little stove window glowed orange from hot coals, but there were no flames. The kitchen was toasty. She counted six steps to the table and sat down, appreciating the silence. Silence was calming, even when she felt both exhausted and hyper from a day like today. She felt a muscle spasm in her eye. She rubbed her eye but it twitched again. Her left calf quivered, as did her little finger, and right hand.

  Aunt Elly’d left the miniature lamp on in the dining room. Maya remained at the kitchen table for several minutes, appreciating the warmth and silence, and the lamp’s soft glow. She pressed her twitchy eye every few minutes and stretched her calf muscles. The kitchen had become her favorite room. It was the heart of the house. There was heat, food, water—a clock.

  Now her index finger twitched. Maya pressed her palms against the table-top. When she released them, both fingers twitched again. She glared at them. “Oh, just stop it!”

  Maya’d never been in any legal trouble, not even a parking ticket or a traffic violation. She’d been three minutes late to work once. Her boss patted her on the shoulder and said, “I’ve been late before, Maya. It happens sometimes. It’s okay. Calm down.” Were her anxieties so obvious? What did her coworkers see?

  Maya passed through the dining room and counted the eight steps to the landing. Turned. Climbed fourteen more, dreading the green, glowing boy in the upstairs hallway. His pleading eyes and desperate whispers made her feel guilty for some reason. The way he held his hands out, begging.

  She hated to admit it, but she wished he would go away. I can’t help him.

  When she arrived on the top step, the hall was empty. Maya washed her face and brushed her teeth in the bathroom because that’s what she did every evening. The rituals were important. The rituals kept things normal. The rituals gave her a sense of control. They protected her, at least that’s how it felt. Inside though, just beneath the surface, Maya knew they didn’t help at all. Dr. Conover said, “They’re simple performances, Maya, not magic.”

  “Crap happens,” she told the wide-eyed woman in the full-length mirror. Even with the rituals and little ceremonies, crap happened—but what would happen if she stopped the rituals? How bad would things get if she abandoned the little ceremonies? Would she be under investigation by Sheriff Wimple because she’d found a car, maybe with human remains inside? Maya turned and studied her pale reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror and whispered, “I’ve never been a person of interest before.”

  Maya dotted her raw wounds with antiseptic and stretched clean bandages across her elbows and knees. She soothed her face and hands with moisture lotion, threw her clothes into the hamper, and pulled on her pajamas. At the last moment, she opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed the prescription bottle, and rolled a little white pill into her palm. She gulped it down with tap water before glancing at the clock on the counter. Twelve-thirty. Maya tiptoed down the hall and into her room. After locking the hall door she turned on the closet light, left its door ajar and then climbed into bed. She flicked off the bedside lamp.

  There could be a sixty-year old corpse inside that 42-Ford, a corpse with his face and scalp eaten away by rats, his naked skull with a bullet wound, and bloodstains blackened with age on the driver’s seat.

  Why am I dwelling on that? There’s no reason.

  Maya dozed off and awoke with a start, hearing Benson’s distant laugh. She listened again but heard nothing except a low whistle of air through the half-inch open window. With closed eyes she saw sunlight glint off old chrome fenders. She saw dead branches and dripping leaves. She felt her boots fill with icy water.

  She opened her eyes. It had to be the wee hours of early morning. It was as if she had not slept at all. Her shoulders, thighs and calves ached, and when she straightened, her bandages pulled the scabs from her raw knees. She pulled the top sheet up and folded a cuff down over her chest. Her torn fingernails stung.

  “Don’t leave me here.” The whisper came from the hallway, outside her door. “Help me. Please!”

  Maya squeezed her eyes closed. “I’ll try,” she whispered. And then she said it again, louder, “I don’t know how, but I’ll try,” and finally she slept.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  “HARLAN CALLED MY NAME again,” Aunt Elly said. “Twice in the middle of the night.”

  Maya handed Elly a mug of black tea before refilling the kettle and returning it to the wood stove. “Just your name? Nothing else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  The phone rang and Maya grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Sheriff Wimple here. Am I speaking to Maya Hammond?”

  “Maya Pederson.”

  “I stand corrected. I have some news regarding the bones at the bottom of the well—Ms. Pederson.”

  “Okay.” Maya held her breath.

  “As we suspected, they’ve been down there a long time … we’re thinking forty-five, maybe even fifty years, and we’re running DNA tests, but I doubt we’ll learn who they are after this much time. If you recall anything else, anything you forgot to mention before, please jot it down and call me. Talk to you soon.”

  Maya heard an abrupt click as Sheriff Wimple hung up and Maya glared at the receiver. He had a way of insulting her without saying a word. “It’s rude to hang up before I can reply.”

  Aunt Elly said. “I voted for him, ye know.”

  “He makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong. Like I am responsible for the bon
es at the bottom of the well. All I did was find them.”

  “Aw honey,” Elly said. “Everyone is a person of interest until the case is solved. I heard that on CSI.”

  “It feels different when you’re the person of interest, though” Maya said. “I don’t like the way Sheriff Wimple looks at me. Like he’s searching for something … anything … that proves I’m guilty. He even laughed at something I said, when I was completely serious. When I offered my opinion, he smirked. He either thinks I’m a killer or that I’m stupid. Maybe both.”

  “Don’t take offense, honey. Sheriff Wimple told me that everyone’s a sleuth these days.”

  Maya sat back down at the table and sipped room temperature tea. “I suppose everyone is.”

  “An amateur sleuth?”

  “A person of interest.”

  Aunt Elly nodded. “Things are different now than they were seventy-five years ago. It’s practically impossible to kill someone and get away with it these days. I watch Forensic Files too, ya see. There’s ways of trackin’ people now that they didn’t have back when I was young. Ways of linkin’ someone to a crime scene.” Elly’s head motion changed from a nod to a slow shake. “They have these lights that can detect old blood that’s been washed and painted over, and radar that looks underground without anybody havin’ to dig. Gracious. Pretty soon science will be solving crimes that happened hundreds of years ago.”

  “Thousands,” Maya said. “They now know that King Tut had malaria, sickle-cell anemia and a broken leg. He suffered from a hereditary bone degeneration in one foot, a deformity that caused him so much pain he could hardly walk. Can you imagine? He was only nineteen when he died.”

  “That’s what I mean about science,” Elly said. “Killers don’t stand a chance now days.”

  “A prosecutor still has to prove that the suspect committed the crime though, and that it wasn’t an accident. Circumstantial evidence isn’t enough.”

  “I’d rather be dead than locked up,” Elly said. “I couldn’t stand living in a cell.”