A Summer with the Dead Read online

  “How’d you learn truck repairs?”

  “My father. He was a mechanic here–”

  “Your father worked here?” Teisland asked. “Pederson. Oh, yeah. The guy with crotch cancer.”

  “Well, okay,” Zoebek said. “Here’s where you clock in. You’re employee number six and that’s all you’ll need to know. We don’t use names on the books or records. If the Feds show up, you wouldn’t want ‘Elly Pederson’ written down anywhere.

  “This here’s the garage. All six trucks go in and out this one door. After every delivery, you bring the truck back here, clean it up from top to bottom and park it inside, stall number six of course. The cleaning routine is posted over there on the wall. Follow it to the letter. Wear the rain gear hanging on the wall hooks, including a mask, rubber gloves and goggles because the chemicals are strong. There’s a watchman on duty at all times to open up the doors and allow you in and out. His name’s Ed. Honk twice, wait and honk twice again.”

  “Ed is here twenty-four-seven?”

  “As far as you’re concerned, yes,” Teisland said. “The watchmen’s name is always, Ed, no matter what he looks like. Got it?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Ed’s the only one without a number. Always wear gloves while driving. No fingerprints inside or outside the truck. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Over here, through this door, is the loading dock. Your truck will already be loaded when you arrive. If it isn’t, wait until it is. You never do the loading. When you arrive at the delivery point, there’ll be more men to unload it for you. Stay inside the truck. Got it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Come back here. Clean up the truck. Park it in the garage and get the fuck out. Okay?”

  “Yeah, I said, and they stared at me, like they were waiting for something. I remember thinking there was something they weren’t telling me, like I was the one who should be waiting for the punch line.”

  “Hey, Angel!” Zoubek shouted. “C’mere. Meet the new driver!” And Angel Sonosa strolled over, eyeing me like a petite filet at the deli. He was well over six feet tall and it was obvious he lifted weights or worked out. He moved like a boxer in the ring. You familiar with the way they walk?” Elly asked Maya. “Boxers?”

  Maya nodded. “I went to some boxing matches with Benson, before I realized he was betting on them.”

  “Well, Angel moved like a boxer. Not really dancing so much, but rolling up on the balls of his feet when he walked, springy and quick, like he was ready to jump one way or the other. He sauntered up to me and stopped less than a foot away. Too close, you know? Looking down at me like … I don’t know … like he didn’t care if God knew what he was thinking. ‘You’re old enough to drive?’ he said. ‘What are you, fifteen?’

  “Eighteen.”

  “Hmmm,” Angel said. “When Felix told me he might hire a female he didn’t mention she’d be a spinner.”

  Elly shrugged. “I’d never heard that term before and didn’t know what it meant. He patted me on the head like a dog, and then he slid his hand down the side of my face, pausing on my cheek and then down my neck to my collarbone. I shoved his hand away and he laughed.”

  “Sweet,” he said. “I heard you know your way around a cherry picker.”

  “Careful,” Teisland said. “She’s Felix’s niece, remember?”

  “Angel just grinned like he didn’t care who my uncle was.”

  “Come on, Miss Pederson.” Teisland tapped my shoulder. “We’ll get you a jacket, boots and coveralls and show you where your locker is.”

  Maya frowned. “I’ve known guys like that, Elly, free with their hands and so certain they have already impressed you, just by breathing.”

  “It was more than that, Maya. Now, I’d recognize what he was. He was a predator. If I met Angel Sonosa today I’d kill him on the spot.”

  “Aunt Elly!”

  Elly looked tired. “It’s true, honey. If I’d killed Angel that first day, maybe things would have turned out better than they did. Maybe Harlan would have been a happier person. I know I would have been.”

  “But what did Angel do that was so horrible?”

  Elly tilted back, rested her head on the rounded arm, and stretched her legs out. “Anything he felt like doing. For instance, one rainy morning I arrived early, before my truck was loaded, so I went inside to wait. There was a man inside, leaning against the wall, smoking. I didn’t recognize him and I knew all the other drivers. Angel came around the corner and the man yanked his hand out of his pocket and handed Angle some money. Angel said, “Next time, asshole, you pay first.” The guy squirreled out through the door before it shut, but I heard him shout, “There won’t be a next time, Sonosa. Your goods are dirty.” Angel caught the door and yanked it open. “Hey, Mariccello! What the fuck do you expect for ten bucks?” Angel hadn’t spotted me yet. I was sitting on a stool between the time clock and the office door. A few seconds later a storage room door opened and another guy came out, tucking his shirt in and zipping up his pants, and I got this awful feeling, a sick feeling. Behind him, in that storeroom, it was dark but I saw something on the floor. Something pale, something moving, and then the door closed. That guy nodded toward Angel and headed out through the warehouse. Angel walked over and opened that storage room and stood there, long enough for me to see the edge of a mattress on the floor. “You saved some for me didn’t ya, honey?” he said, and the door closed behind him. I heard someone crying, so I got up and I ran over and yanked that door open. Angel was kneeling on the mattress. There was a girl there, cowering in the corner and she couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. I told Angel I had already called Uncle Felix and that he was on his way. It was a lie, of course, but Angel jumped up, pulled the naked girl to her feet and shoved her toward me. “Take her with you then, bitch. Let her go outside’a town somewhere. Your rig’s ready.” I grabbed some coveralls from a hook on the wall and tossed them to the girl. She pulled them on. Her right eye was swollen shut and there was blood crusted around her mouth. She limped and I saw a dozen burns on her toes and the tops of her feet. They looked like cigarette burns. We climbed into my truck and I drove away. I asked her what her name was, but she just stared straight ahead. I asked her where she wanted to go but she didn’t say anything. I said, hospital? Police? She didn’t say a word, but about a mile away at the first intersection, I stopped at a red light and she opened the door and jumped out. I never saw her again. I never heard what happened to her.”

  “What did your Uncle Felix say about it?” Maya asked.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Why?”

  “I was just an eighteen year old girl, scared out of my mind by what I saw. And embarrassed. I should have said something, but I didn’t, and I’ve always regretted that. It was one of my worst mistakes, an unfixable mistake. I could have told Uncle Felix—should have—but I chose not to and I felt guilty. That poor girl was the first person I thought of when Angel showed up here all those years later.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “RIGHT HERE, MAYA. THIS here’s the place.” Elly pointed to a recessed door in a two-story stone building at the south end of Graceville. “You can come upstairs and wait for me if you want, but my lawyer doesn’t have much of a waiting room. The magazines are all old and the coffee is awful.”

  “I’ll just walk around Graceville. I’ll get a couple clocks at the hardware store, check out the bookstore and Jim’s Mercantile. Those can be fun places to browse. I spotted an antique shop too. I love antique shops.”

  Elly opened the passenger door and stepped out. “I’ll be looking for your car around eleven o’clock then,” she said. “He said it’d take two hours and he’s always right.”

  Maya parked the Ford Edge in front of Ace Hardware, locked it, and went inside. She picked up a shopping basket and headed up and down the aisles. She found the digital clocks on the fourth aisle and bought three. She picked up
extra batteries and another big flashlight. As an afterthought, she bought a dozen plumber’s candles, because, if Elly’s old house could mess with electrical clocks, it could mess with battery operated clocks too. After paying, she placed the sack on the back seat of the Edge and locked the doors again.

  A light rain fell as she hurried down the sidewalk toward the bookstore, regretting that she’d forgotten the umbrella. Her footsteps slowed as she passed Bradley Realty. She paused and peered through the front window. Coty was right. It looked abandoned. A taupe-gray dust coated the chairs, the desk and the filing cabinets. The photos of local properties had been ripped from the front window, leaving spots of tape residue.

  Maya dashed from the shelter of one store awning to the next and finally to a third before reaching the bookstore. The door opened with the ring of a brass bell.

  “Hello,” the woman behind the counter said. “Looks like you just escaped the rain.”

  “Just barely,” Maya said.

  Outside, the black clouds opened up and flooded the street and sidewalks. The torrent lasted for a full minute and then let up as suddenly as it started, leaving the gutters rushing like little creeks, pouring into the corner drains.

  “I just made a fresh pot of coffee,” the woman said. “Help yourself.”

  Maya’s mouth watered at the smell. On a small table chugged a Krups coffeemaker, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of sugar packets. Behind the sugar bowl stood an old café-style napkin dispenser and a stack of paper cups. She poured cream into a cup and filled it the rest of the way with coffee. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  “I’m curious about the history of Graceville,” Maya said. “Have anything like that?”

  “Yes, up there in the front right corner area of the store. Originally, Graceville was a fort. Later, the town grew up around the logging industry. There’s a map on the wall, too. It shows the location of that fort, the wood mill, the hospital, the company store and the old cemetery.”

  Maya headed toward the map.

  “Are you familiar with the area?” the woman called.

  “Not much,” Maya said. “I’ve only been here eight weeks.”

  “Are you a writer?”

  “A writer? No. Why?”

  “I thought maybe you were a new member of the writer’s group. They meet here every Wednesday. They should be showing up any time now. They sit over there at that big table and do timed writings.”

  Maya glanced toward the table and six chairs at the back of the store.

  “Only two of them are real writers—published I mean,” the woman said.

  “What do they write?”

  “Lillian is writing her memoirs. She’s an old maid and mainly writes about gardening and canning. There’s a romance writer. Her name is Camille.” The bookstore clerk frowned and shook her head. “Silly stuff. And then, believe it or not, there’s George, who writes awful stories about dead people.”

  “Oh, biographies?”

  “No, it’s fiction.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “No, the kind of dead people who are falling apart but keep walking?”

  “Zombies?”

  “Yes! I can’t imagine even thinking about such things, but I find myself eavesdropping, whenever he reads his stuff aloud. Another guy is writing about Graceville. You might want to talk to him. He knows a lot of the history of this town. The other two women are writing mysteries I think.”

  “I’ll check out that map you mentioned,” Maya said.

  “It’s right over there on the wall above the newspapers,” the woman said. “Speak of the devil, here come the writers.”

  The brass bell clanged and six people filed in. She expected to see men wearing rain hats and smoking pipes, or sweaters with leather elbows and the women to have long, graying, untrimmed hair, dressed in ankle length denim skirts with clogs on their feet, but they looked like anyone Maya might pass on the street.

  One by one they dropped stenography or yellow legal tablets on the big table before gathering around the coffee machine. They stuffed dollar bills into a tall paper cup.

  “Kill anybody else off since last week, George?” One of the women asked.

  “Nope.” A man grinned.

  Maya studied the big map on the wall. It took a minute to identify landmarks. She spotted the river, the quarry, the old hospital which had been torn down, and the fort. Maya’s eyes settled on the legend and measured a square of land three miles from the northeast corner of the fort. The script writing labeled the square, Cemetery.

  “That can’t be,” Maya whispered.

  “Hello.” It was a man’s voice.

  Maya felt someone touch her sleeve. It was one of the writers. “Hello,” she said.

  “Linda told me you’re interested in Graceville’s history.” Close up, he looked older than his thick hair suggested. Crow’s feet starred the corners of his blue-gray eyes.

  “Who is Linda?” Maya asked.

  “The woman at the counter,” he said.

  Maya glanced over his shoulder and spotted the woman he called Linda gawking in their direction. “Well, I am confused by this map,” Maya said. “This shows the cemetery much closer to town than it really is.”

  “That’s the old cemetery. It was moved about sixty years ago, every grave and headstone dug up and relocated to a level piece of property three miles farther out.”

  “Why was it moved?”

  “That was a mystery for a while, but I finally dug up the old city records—pardon the pun. It seems the river has changed course several times in recorded history. Some people felt that the graveyard was too close to the river to begin with and … how can I say this tastefully … residue from the graves was leaking into the stream. People were terrified at the thought, since quite a few draw their drinking water from that stream. Can’t blame them for worrying.”

  Maya offered her hand. “I’m Maya Pederson. I’m new here.”

  He nodded. “I’m Hal Neil. Are you a writer?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” Hal said. “I was hoping for another non-fiction writer for our little group. I’m the only one, unless you count Lillian. And I strongly suspect her memories are embellished. I’ll deny I said that, though.”

  “Your friends are staring at us,” Maya said. “I’m probably holding things up.”

  “No, I am.” Hal dragged his wallet from his hip pocket, flipped it open and slid a business card out. “If you have any other questions about Graceville, just call. I’ve been reading and writing about this town for the last ten years. I’m on my second book, and there isn’t much I don’t know about this place.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Neil,” Maya said. “I might do that.”

  “Please, it’s just Hal.”

  “Thanks, Hal.”

  He returned to the table and sat down. “My turn to draw the first start line, right?”

  “Yes. It. Is,” someone answered in an impatient tone.

  Hal drew a small, folded piece of paper from a yogurt container in the center of the table. He unfolded it and read aloud. “The dirt road was the color of blood.”

  “Aw jeez. Another one of George’s start lines,” someone said.

  One of the women set a timer on the table and everyone around the table attacked their tablets with ballpoint pens. Except for the occasional cough or squeak of a chair, the store was silent.

  Maya leaned closer and studied the map again before spotting a table against the next wall, loaded with paperbacks. ‘All Books $1’ the sign said. Maya spotted a book by Victoria Holt, a gothic mystery with the original copyright date. It was in excellent condition, so she picked it up, paid for it at the counter, and exited the store. She tossed her half full coffee cup in the garbage at the street corner and checked the time on the old street clock. Ten-fifteen. She jaywalked at an angle, spotted a CLOSED sign in the antique shop window and entered Jim’s Mercantile instead. Inside,
the place smelled old. The wood plank floor angled upward toward the back. The wide planks groaned and snapped as she perused the aisles.

  “Let me know if I can help you find something,” the clerk called.

  “Thanks. Just browsing.”

  He went back to reading his magazine.

  Forty minutes flew by and Maya paid for a bottle of lilac bubble bath, a couple light bulbs, and a new Krups coffeemaker. She hurried back to her car, stashed her purchases in the back, and pulled up to the lawyer’s office door at exactly eleven o’clock. Elly ran across the sidewalk and opened the car door as enormous raindrops hit the windshield. She slid inside the car and said, “I won’t need to see him again for a whole year. Hey, I see sacks on the back seat. Buy anything fun?”

  “I’m going to treat myself to a bubble bath and I also bought us a coffeemaker.”

  “Let’s stop at the Red Apple and get us some fresh ground coffee then,” Elly said.

  “Good idea.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  SHERIFF WIMPLE DROPPED HIS hat on the kitchen counter and himself into a chair at Elly’s table. “Thought I’d catch you up on some things,” he said. “And I’m hopin’ you’ve thought of some details to fill me in on, too. How’s that sound?”

  “Fine,” Maya said, and made the immediate decision to not tell Sheriff Wimple about Harlan’s dark past, nor Elly’s dark history. Not yet anyway. When she knew more, maybe then. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

  “Plain black, please,” Sheriff Wimple said. “I’ve spoken several times recently with your estranged husband, Mrs. Hammond.”

  “I’d appreciate being called either Maya or Ms. Pederson. My lawyer has assured me it’s just a matter of hours before my maiden name is re-established.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, Ms. Pederson”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to Benson since I left Tacoma,” Maya said. “That was over eight weeks ago. If you plan to tell me that Benson is involved in something shady, it won’t surprise me.” Maya shoved a mug of steaming black coffee on the table and Sheriff Wimple sniffed the steam. “Ahhh. Starbucks?”