A Summer with the Dead Page 19

  “Millstone.” Maya studied Sheriff Wimple as he sipped, remembering her first impressions of him. She had been wrong about him. He wasn’t milquetoast nor was he timid. He certainly wasn’t stupid. Close up, the lines around his eyes gave him a serious or wise appearance. She had not noticed that that before. His habit of clenching his jaw made him appear determined. Sometimes small men were tougher than people expected. She would have to guard her words around him. She wasn’t ready to tell him anything about Aunt Elly, not until Elly was done telling everything she knew about Danny.

  “Is your aunt going to join us?”

  “She’s napping. You got a gun under that denim jacket, Sheriff?” Maya asked.

  Sheriff Wimple glanced up before setting his mug down on the table. “I do. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

  “Not at all. I was just wondering what caliber and whether or not you’re a good shot.”

  “It’s a thirty-eight and I usually hit my target.”

  “You had a talk with Coty a few days ago,” Maya said. “He told me the two of you came to an understanding—about what he’s doing here.”

  “We did, yes, but I’d already had him checked out, so I knew what he was telling me was the truth. He is a licensed and bonded private investigator from Seattle. His nephew, Danny went missing over six months ago. Coty isn’t his real name though, it’s–”

  “Wayne C. Matheson,” Maya finished his sentence for him. “He told me. But Elly still thinks he’s Coty, her best friend’s nephew. Elly was expecting this nephew to show up here, and Mr. Matheson’s arrival coincided, so he just went along with it because it was a convenient cover.”

  “I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do … keeping his identity a secret from Elly, but Mr. Matheson isn’t breaking any laws by doing so, and as long as he performs the duties she has hired him to do, and if Elly is informed after his investigation is over, I have no problem with his alias.”

  “That’s how I feel, too,” Maya said. “Right now, Elly seems happy to have a handyman around the farm, and Coty … I mean, Mr. Matheson, is quite handy with tools and making repairs. If Elly’s happy, I’m happy.”

  “Nothing else new?” Sheriff Wimple said. “About your estranged husband or Tony Bradley?”

  “Sheriff, what I know about both men could easily fit inside a thimble. However, Coty told me that Tony Bradley’s real estate office is just a front.”

  “Possibly, although I haven’t yet decided what scam he’s playing. Mr. Bradley was advised to remove his signs from the front door and the realty photos from the windows or apply for a business license. I’d like to talk to him again, but he seems to have made himself scarce. He’s not answering his cell phone and the land phone in his place of business never was connected.”

  “If I see Mr. Bradley, do you want me to call you?” Maya asked.

  “That would be helpful, Ms. Pederson. I’d appreciate it.”

  Maya smiled. She wanted to like this country sheriff but something about him made her uncomfortable. She didn’t know why exactly, but she didn’t completely trust Sheriff Wimple.

  “When your husband, pardon me, ex-husband and I last spoke, I asked him about his arrest record.”

  “What did he tell you?” Maya asked.

  “He claimed all of the domestic violence charges were due to anger issues and that they were your fault, Ms. Pederson. That’s typical. Most husbands who assault their wives claim that. It was his most recent arrest I was curious about, though. He seemed hesitant to discuss it at first, but after a bit, he opened up.”

  “Benson was arrested after I left?”

  “You don’t know?”

  Maya said, “How would I know? Benson doesn’t keep me informed of his activities”

  “Seems he used a glass cutter to gain entry to his mother’s back door and was in the process of helping himself to her jewelry when she woke up and confronted him. I guess he thought she wouldn’t notice the missing jewelry because, as he said, ‘It was just old stuff that she doesn’t even wear.’ I guess she informed him that it was her mother’s jewelry, and just because she didn’t wear it didn’t mean she didn’t want it.”

  “Benson gambles. You probably know that,” Maya said. “And sometimes he borrows from one unscrupulous person to pay off another unscrupulous person.”

  “You mean loan sharks. Yes, I know. That’s in his file too.”

  “Benson may be desperate for cash, Sheriff. He has a good job and earns good money, but he never seems to have enough to support his edgy lifestyle.”

  “He’ll cross the wrong person sooner or later. Guys like him always do.”

  “Can I give you a refill on your coffee, Sheriff?”

  “No thanks. I’ll be going now.” Sheriff Wimple rose, swiped his hat from the counter and opened the back door. “I’ll talk to you again soon.”

  “See you, Sheriff.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  “I’LL DO THE LAUNDRY this time, baby girl. That basement doesn’t intimidate me like it does you.” Elly stood in front of the yellow door with an armload of dirty clothes. “You got anything that needs washing?”

  “I’ll run upstairs and get my things from the hamper.”

  “No need to run. I’ll put these things in and get them going, and then do your things next.” Elly descended into the basement.

  Upstairs, the beveled glass in the morning glory window painted a prism on the hardwood floor. The upper landing glowed with sunlight. Light reflected in sharp angles and distorted shapes on the opposite wall. Maya paused there, expecting Danny’s green glow to appear, or for the door at the end of the hallway to glide open, exposing its black throat. She felt as if the house was holding its breath. She suspected it was watching her.

  “Danny?” Maya whispered. “Are you there?”

  The bathroom clock said eleven A.M. A little early for Danny, but he was showing up more and more often, no matter what the time. Sometimes it was brief flashes of Danny’s green glow or whispers in the night. He kept trying to tell her something, but something or someone was holding him back. At this moment he was elsewhere. He said nothing.

  She stepped into the bathroom and gathered up her things from the hamper. When she returned to the hallway, she halted. Her breath caught in her throat. A gaunt man stood with his back to the morning glory window. His face was sheer and gray and daylight penetrated his entire being. His clay colored hair was dull and straight, sticking out in wisps around his ears. His face was a blur with deep, circular shadows where his eyes would be. His neck was wrapped in a tangled, striped cloth and the cloth hung down across his chest toward his knees. He wore a faded, red striped shirt. He was almost invisible from the waist down but his legs appeared to be bare. He held out one hand and Maya recognized that hand and the gesture.

  “Daddy?” Maya stepped closer.

  He lifted both hands, as if warning her to stay back.

  “Maya.” His voiced sounded strained, as if he shouted from a great distance.

  “Daddy.” Maya took another step toward him.

  “Leave here, Maya. Get away … today … today!”

  A second later a cloud blocked the sun and he was gone in an instant. The soft prisms were gone. The angles of light on the wall were gone. The hallway felt cold.

  Maya dropped her laundry and ran to where he had stood. She searched the spot with her hand and arms. “Daddy?” She stepped into the space where he had stood. Nothing.

  She waited for several moments but he didn’t return. Maya picked up her laundry and hurried down to the landing, paused there, hoping her father would appear again, but he didn’t. She raced through the dining room and into the kitchen. She heard the sounds of the Maytag chugging and sloshing through the open basement door. The sight of the open door made her throat go dry. And then Elly appeared on the threshold. “I need to show you something,” Elly said. “Come with me please?”

  “You mean, into the basement?”
<
br />   “Yes.” Elly waved for Maya to follow. “Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing happening down there right now, nothing except laundry.”

  Maya carried her laundry down the stairs behind Elly.

  “See right here?” Elly crossed eight feet of dirt floor and stopped. She pointed with her toe to a square of plywood at her feet. “When the time comes, tell them to dig here.”

  “What do you mean, when the time comes?”

  “When I can no longer make decisions myself. You know what I mean.”

  Maya nodded.

  “And also over here.” Elly moved further away, into the deep shadows in the far corner. “I’ve put another piece of plywood down here too.” Elly tapped her toe on the board. “Tell them to dig here too.”

  Maya nodded again. “All right.”

  Elly stared at the plywood for a moment and then said, “One more thing. See this board over here against the wall behind the furnace?” She crossed to the concrete walkway and halted in front of the furnace. She pointed to the gray foundation.

  Maya shoved her dirty clothes on the laundry counter and joined Elly on the walkway. She had not been this far into the basement since the door had frosted over and the doorknob grew a coating of ice. She glanced behind, at the small square of plywood, almost expecting skeletal arms to appear and to see bony fingers clawing up through the dirt. She pulled her gaze away and followed the direction of Elly’s pointing finger.

  “Yes, I see the board,” Maya said. “What’s behind it?”

  Elly frowned and turned her back to the furnace, as if she wished she had never mentioned the board. “It’s the opening to a tunnel.”

  Maya felt something icy touch the back of her neck. She shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. She buried her freezing hands beneath her arms. “A tunnel?”

  “It’s an escape route, for people Harlan and I hid here.”

  “You hid people?”

  Elly nodded. “Sometimes the deliveries were alive, Maya. Sometimes Felix sent people here to escape from the police.”

  “Criminals?”

  “Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes they were witnesses … or the family members of witnesses. Sometimes witnesses don’t want to testify, Maya. Sometimes they’re afraid to testify. Sometimes there are consequences if they testify.”

  “Because they’re afraid of the people they’re testifying against. Sometimes, families are kidnapped until the witness forgets everything he saw, right?”

  “Yes, but sometimes testifying means you were guilty too. You’ve heard of that before, right?”

  “You mean when people incriminate themselves, but they get protection from the authorities for telling what they know.”

  “Unless the cops are crooked too. Felix had friends in the police department. He bought them off. He paid them a lot, so sometimes witnesses disappeared before they could testify. But sometimes a witness was family or an old friend, and those people were sent here and Harlan and I hid them until it was safe to get them out of the country, or to a place where no one would ever think to look for them.”

  “They stayed down here … ?” Maya glanced behind her, into the shadows.

  “No, in the attic. The tunnel was just in case the Feds showed up without warning. We were served with a warrant once. They never found this tunnel though. Behind the plywood are concrete blocks. No mortar, so the blocks are easy to move and replace, but if you knock on that plywood it sounds like a solid wall behind it.”

  “Where does the tunnel lead?” Maya asked.

  “Straight out, beneath the driveway, under the bunkhouse and up toward the barns.”

  “You mean, under the hillside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Elly, was the tunnel already here when you moved in?”

  “No, just the house, the big barn and a couple outbuildings. Harlan and I enlarged the living room, built the skylight room and extended the pantry, but …” Elly nodded toward the deepest, darkest corner. “First we extended the basement, to support the extended house. Harlan said we needed a foundation to support that much weight. You should always start with a strong foundation.”

  “When are you going to tell me about those people buried under that board?”

  “Oh Maya, the story doesn’t start with those people. I can’t explain without starting at the beginning. If I told you it was because it was so cold outside … that sounds so callous, so uncaring. But it wasn’t an ordinary cold winter, honey. We had blizzards that year, and Harlan was very ill, and I had to handle things all by myself. Down here it was dry at least, instead of ice and snow. The dirt is soft and the digging was easier. Let’s go back upstairs, get comfortable and tell I’ll you about it.”

  “How about I make us some coffee?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  They climbed the stairs. In the kitchen Elly checked the new digital clock on the counter. “It’s ten-forty,” she said. “Yes, make some coffee, but we have to have everything cleaned up and put away by noon. No coffee pot on the counter, no grounds in the garbage, no dregs in the cups. Harlan can’t tolerate the smell of coffee.”

  “Uncle Harlan is dead, Aunt Elly.”

  “I know.” Elly leaned against the counter with a blank expression. “And that’s what makes it all the more baffling when he complains about such things.”

  Maya filled the new coffee maker with cold water and measured out the ground beans into a paper filter. “When was the last time you saw Uncle Harlan?” Maya plugged in the machine, unplugged it and plugged it in again. Her hands felt cold as she pressed BREW, even though the kitchen was warm.

  “Stephen used to do the same thing you just did there, with appliances,” Elly said. “He did everything twice. He said it was for luck.”

  “I never noticed Dad doing that.”

  “I think he got over it by the time you came along. Your mother used to fuss at him about his little rituals. She called them little ceremonies. If anything, she made things worse by nagging at him all the time. Anyway, I saw Harlan just the other day, when I got back from seeing my lawyer. He was sitting in my rocking chair upstairs, waiting for me.”

  “In your bedroom?”

  Elly nodded. “He wanted to know what the lawyer and I talked about. Harlan’s always been bullish and stubborn. He doesn’t like me making decisions without him.”

  Maya couldn’t help smiling. “Maybe he should have gone to the lawyer, instead of you.”

  Elly giggled. “That’s funny, because that’s what I suggested he do while I was changing clothes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. When I came out of the closet he was gone.”

  “Smell that?” Maya said. “I love the smell of fresh brewed coffee.”

  “I think the smell reminds Harlan of something that happened to him a long time ago. I seem to remember that he was scalded by hot coffee when he was young. He had a red burn scar on his shoulder.”

  Maya said, “I understand that. I’ve never been able to tolerate the smell of cigarettes. I used to get carsick when Daddy smoked, even though he always cracked the window. I still feel sick when I smell cigarettes.”

  “Guess it’s a good thing I gave up smoking,” Elly said.

  “You smoked?”

  Elly paused, two large mugs in her hands and the cupboard door open. “I have a memory of smoking, briefly. But it was a long time ago and maybe I just dreamed it. Sometimes I have a hard time telling a dream from what’s real. Doesn’t everyone?”

  No. Not everyone. Just you and me.

  In the living room Elly set her mug on the coffee table and stretched out on the sofa. She took a deep sigh and eased into the memory.

  “Felix sent four Mexican men to dig the tunnel for us. None of them spoke English. They were here over three months and all we had to do was feed them. They stayed out in the bunkhouse.”

  “They never talked to you?”

  “No, just to each other, and I couldn’t understand a word
they said. One of them ordered the others around so I guess he was the boss. The other three called him, Coatl.”

  “That’s an old Nahuati name,” Maya said. “Ancient Aztec.”

  “Whatever they were, they worked awfully hard,” Elly said. “From dawn to dark. It was a warm summer, so they washed their own clothes and bathed in the stream.”

  “I’m going to ask you a question, Elly … and I hope you don’t think I’m mean. I know nothing about Felix except what you’ve told me—that he helped you, that he gave you a job, but, would Felix have killed those men rather than pay them?”

  Elly stared into the empty fireplace as if searching for an answer in the soot and ashes. She frowned. “Maybe. When the Sheriff’s men found another skeleton in those tunnels, and you found two at the bottom of the old well … the same thought occurred to me. Those bones might be those Mexican tunnel diggers. I never saw them leave. One morning when I got up, they were just gone.”

  “We don’t know for sure that’s what happened,” Maya said. “DNA testing would tell us a lot. We can ask Sheriff Wimple about it.”

  “If it’s true, it was a rotten thing for Felix to do, wasn’t it? Just thinking about how he might have done something like that makes telling this story easier,” Elly said. “And the story needs to be told.”

  Elly reached down and pulled the afghan up over her feet and legs, even though the room felt warm and stuffy to Maya. Elly closed her eyes and was quiet for a moment before she began.

  *

  “Some of the money for this farm came from Felix. Harlan and I used all the money we had saved up as a deposit … half the price of the property, and Felix made quarterly payments to the bank after that, but somehow he got the impression this place was his. We had words about it once and he backed down. I guess he remembered his promise to Dad, to take care of me, but sometimes he’d remind me of all the money he’d given me over the years. Eventually though, we called it even. We didn’t talk about it anymore after he agreed the farm was ours, but I think he always believed I owed him something.

  “Felix phoned one day and said he needed to store something in our attic. I said, sure. He said he was sending four men and that they’d be here for a while. He said for Harlan and me to feed them and to give them someplace to sleep out of the rain. I said, okay. About a week later those four Mexicans showed up. Coatl handed me a roll of paper … drawings … plans for the tunnel, along with a note from Felix, saying what he wanted them to do in our attic.”