A Summer with the Dead Read online

  “What about the attic?”

  “First, they reinforced the flooring up there and then they put down pads and runners of thick carpeting everywhere. After that, the attic floor didn’t creak or groan at all. People could’ve danced up there and it would’ve been dead quiet down here. Then those dormers were boarded over and black canvas nailed up. Not a trace of light shows from the outside.”

  “Because people were going to stay up there? People you were hiding for Felix?” Maya asked.

  “Yep. One guy hid out there for two months before Felix sent a car for him. Felix said they got him into Canada and set him up with his own small business.”

  “A legitimate business?” Maya asked.

  “Probably, since they didn’t want any more trouble. About a year later Felix sent next two more people, a man and his wife. Poor souls. They were scared out of their minds. They never said one word to me in the three weeks they were here. Not one word. I’m not certain they spoke English. I’d send a tray of food up through the dumbwaiter, and an hour later, clean dishes would come back down. There’s a sink and toilet up there, but I never once heard the toilet flush or water running.”

  “There’s a dumbwaiter here?”

  “I’ve never shown you, have I? It’s inside the utility closet in the pantry. If you look up, you’ll see a bent nail sticking out in the corner of the ceiling. The ceiling of that closet is actually the bottom of the dumbwaiter. Pull down on that nail and the dumbwaiter lowers. The pull cords are behind the mop handles in the corner. They look like wound up clothesline. Anyway, that man and woman were probably the easiest people we ever had here. They never asked for anything, and then Felix sent a car for them and he told me later they ended up in Amsterdam.”

  “They didn’t end up … in the basement?”

  “No, no. I’m getting to that.” Elly opened her eyes wide and stared straight up at the ceiling. “That basement episode happened one winter … and it was such a terrible cold winter. It was January. The warmest day that whole month was twenty-five degrees. Most days it never got above ten. Some nights it was down below zero. We had eighteen inches of snow for Christmas, and the snow turned to ice. The ground was frozen solid. I could have buried them inside the upper barn, but there were already so many buried up there and it would’ve been hard getting them up the hill by myself. Like I said, Harlan was sick.” Elly turned her head and blinked at Maya. “Remember, Maya, about the upper barn … when it’s time.

  “I was afraid to go very far from the house with Harlan so ill. I had forty chickens in the coop to feed and water, a cow to milk twice a day in the shed, and Harlan to nurse upstairs. The driveway was really bad. I slipped and fell just trying to cross it and I wouldn’t have tried driving across that bridge down there for anything. It was coated with two inches of ice. So we were stuck here, and then out of the blue Fritz shows up. How he managed to get that truck across the bridge and up the driveway, I don’t know. Maybe he and the devil really are friends.

  ‘Got a spare for ya, Elly,’ Fritz said. Hell Fritz, I said, take it someplace else, cuz’ Harlan’s sick and the ground is frozen. ‘Not my problem,’ he said, and he had those three bags out of the truck and on the driveway before you could scat a cat. Then he hopped in that truck, turned it around, and headed down the driveway. I watched him from the pasture gate, hoping he’d slide off the bridge and down through the ice, but somehow the bastard made it back to the road. He left that delivery for me to handle all by myself. There I was, sixty-eight years old with arthritis setting in, and he just laughs and drives away.

  “So I dragged them one by one, down the driveway, around the side of the house, and in through the basement door. Let me tell you, honey, you might think it feels cold down there right now at fifty degrees, but compared to twenty, that’s practically balmy.

  “First, I checked on Harlan. He was sound asleep, so I went back down and started digging. The last bag moved a little after I rolled it into the grave. It was the woman. She was in bad shape with a hole in her forehead and her eyes rolled up under her lids. I pressed my fingers against her throat and felt a faint pulse. I went upstairs and got a wool blanket, folded it and put it over her, and then I sat down beside her and waited. I put a few drops of water on her lips, but was afraid water would drizzle into her lungs—she wasn’t swallowing—so I stopped doing that. I checked her pulse again. It was weak and fluttering. I went up and checked on Harlan again. He was sleeping just fine, so I stretched out beside him and dozed off. When I went back down to the basement, she had no pulse, made no breath on a mirror and her skin was cold to the touch, so I closed up her bag and buried all three of them, side by side. I figured they’d want to be together.

  “If there had been just one, I would have dug down six feet, but there were three of them. A four-foot deep hole was all I could handle. It was horrible, baby girl. It was just awful.

  “And when I’m gone, baby girl, dead and buried … or whatever … I want you to make up for some of the things that happened back then.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll know what to do. You’re smart. And you have a kind heart. After everything calms down and people are done snooping around and asking questions, you’ll know what to do. I’m so glad you’re here and that you listen to me. I’m glad you understand.”

  Elly thinks I would have done the same thing? That I would have allowed the woman to lie in a cold shallow grave as her life slipped away like a wisp of smoke—before shoveling dirt over her? Maya leaned back into the armchair with a numb feeling. No. I wouldn’t have done that. Couldn’t have. No.

  “Goodness! It’s eleven-fifty.” Elly threw back the afghan and ran for the kitchen. She rinsed out the carafe, wound up the cord and stored the coffee maker in a bottom cupboard. Maya dumped the coffee grounds and the filter into a grocery bag and dropped the bag into the garbage can outside the door while Elly washed the mugs and dried them. As Elly fanned the kitchen door, wafting fresh air into the room, she giggled. “Harlan will never know.”

  Maya shuddered. Five minutes ago Elly described sleeping beside Harlan while a woman lay dying in the cold dirt of the basement—and now she’s giggling.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  “THANKS FOR MEETING ME here. This place has the best desserts in Graceville.” Hal Neil opened the door for Maya. Inside Louisa’s Bakery, the smells of fresh bread and apple fritters filled the air. Six small tables and chairs lined the wall opposite the display counter, where cakes, pies, donuts, cinnamon rolls and maple bars lined up on trays behind the glass.

  “Why doesn’t your writer’s group meet here?” Maya asked. “Look at all the treats.”

  “Our group did meet here at first, but Lillian complained she gained fifteen pounds that year, and Camille is diabetic so we moved to the bookstore. What would you like?”

  “I’m partial to maple bars,” Maya said.

  Hall waved at the man behind the display case. “Two maple bars and two coffees please, Bill.” Hal slid a chair out for Maya at a window table. From where she sat she had a view of Main Street, all the way up to Ace Hardware.

  “I’ve been thinking about that map at the bookstore,” she said. “It looks like the cemetery used to be–”

  “Where you’re currently living?” Hal nodded. “You’re right. Elly Pederson’s house was a mortuary and the ten acres surrounding it was the old graveyard. Some of those graves were Native American dating back over two hundred years. Special permits had to be obtained before they could be moved, and the graves handled with honor and ritual to satisfy the local tribes.”

  A man approached along with the smells of maple sugar and coffee. He slid the edge of a tray on their table followed by two steaming mugs and two giant maple bars. “Let me know if I can get you anything else.” He smiled and hurried away.

  “Thanks, Bill,” Hal said. “Bill makes the best maple bars in the state, and I’d know because I’m sure I’ve tried them all.”

>   Hal sipped his coffee and said, “On the phone you said you have a question about the Pederson farm.”

  “You answered it already. Sounds like my aunt and uncle bought an old cemetery.”

  “They must have got a heck of a deal on it. It had been on the market for quite a while without any takers. If you want, I can find out how much they paid for it.”

  “I don’t need to know that, but the graves had already been relocated when they bought the place, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Years earlier.”

  “Every single grave?”

  Hal smiled. “That would have been my first question, too. Actually, I can’t imagine buying an old cemetery and living there. I know it’s just dirt and I’m not superstitious, but the whole idea—it’s just not something I would consider doing. I don’t think I’d be able to sleep in a house where bodies were prepared for burial, and surrounded by ten acres of empty graves. Moving them a mile or two away wouldn’t have satisfied me.”

  “I want to know where the boundaries of that old cemetery were, the original property lines. Was it from the top of the hill down to the stream, or from the house over the hill to the Schaff property? And what about that old barn? It’s practically falling down it’s so old. It must have been there back when the cemetery was there.”

  “Yes, it was there according to the records,” Hal said. “It was built the same time as the house. The cemetery included the top of the hill, but not clear to the Schaff property line. The graveyard was ten acres in size, all the way from the top of the hill down to the river, although I don’t think there were graves in all ten acres.”

  “Aunt Elly told me she and Uncle Harlan added on to the house.”

  “I don’t recall reading about a Harlan Pederson.”

  “His name was Harlan Jones. Aunt Elly and Harlan were married, but she kept her own name,” Maya said.

  “Interesting. Thanks for the info.”

  “This is the best maple bar I’ve ever eaten, and this coffee is certainly better than that stuff at the bookstore.”

  Hal chuckled. “Linda doesn’t drink coffee herself, and that probably explains why the stuff she makes tastes like boiled boots.”

  Maya spotted Coty standing on the sidewalk outside the window. They made eye contact before he turned and walked away.

  “Do you know him?” Hal asked. “He looked kind of upset.”

  “That’s Coty, the handyman at the farm. Elly hired him back in February to fix the roof and the bridge because she plans to sell the place.” Maya finished her coffee. “I wonder why he’s upset.”

  Hal shrugged. “Just a thought about selling the old cemetery farm. Potential buyers will find out the history behind that property, so selling the place might not be so easy.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, unless someone wants a lot of acreage at a reduced price. But there is that view property up there on the ridge. That’s got to be worth something.”

  “Yes, that view is outstanding, but there’s no road up to it,” Hal said. “No power, no sewer, no water. It’s not developed. That reduces its value, unfortunately.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  TWO DAYS LATER, MAYA knocked on the bunkhouse door and listened for the sound of footsteps. Earlier that morning she had knocked on Coty’s door and also the previous evening, with no luck. She hadn’t seen Coty since having coffee with Hal Neil at Louisa’s Bakery. She tried the doorknob. The door opened.

  “Coty?” Maya stuck her head inside. The lights were off and the room felt cool. The little window on the potbellied stove was black. The bunk against the wall was unmade, the sheets and blankets in twisted lumps and the pillow was on the floor. Maya backed out and closed the door. She returned to the kitchen. “I haven’t seen Coty in two days, Elly. Have you?”

  “Not since morning before last. I wonder what he’s up to,” Elly said.

  “He mentioned his nephew is missing. Maybe he’s visiting his sister and brother-in-law.”

  “Could be,” Elly said. “But you’d think he’d tell us before leaving, wouldn’t you?”

  Maya nodded.

  Elly washed and Maya dried the dinner dishes.

  “Time for a clean dish towel.” Elly opened the basement door and tossed the used towel and dishcloth to the bottom of the stairs. She left the basement door open behind her as she opened a drawer and selected another towel.

  Maya closed the door. She locked it, unlocked it, and locked it again. She tested the lock. It held, and she rubbed her hands together to stop them from trembling. She feared the day Elly forgot to close that door, a day when she wasn’t around to close it and lock it herself. Who might climb those stairs, and what would he do if he came inside?

  “Are you okay, Maya? You look pale, honey.”

  “I’m chilled,” Maya said. “I can’t seem to get warm.”

  “Go up and take that bubble bath you mentioned. That’ll warm you up.”

  “I meant to do that last night,” Maya said. “But was too tired and just took a quick shower instead.”

  “Well, go take that bath now. There’s nothin’ like a hot bath to warm your joints.”

  Ten minutes later Maya stretched out in the big claw foot tub with lilac scented bubbles crackling beneath her chin. Her neck and shoulders relaxed. The cramps in her calves eased and her hands stopped aching with cold.

  Discovering this house had at one time been a mortuary and the surrounding acreage an old graveyard didn’t bother Maya as much as she expected it would. Hal Neil said it would keep him awake nights, but graveyards didn’t frighten her. Graveyards had never frightened her. Cemeteries were peaceful places, like walking trails and public parks. She had grown up within walking distance of a graveyard. Graves were hallowed ground, sanctified and blessed. Prayers were murmured over graves. It was the one hundred-fifty or so, unnamed, unmarked graves surrounding Elly’s house that bothered her, because no prayers had been spoken over those graves. Those were tainted by murder. Maya had made a promise to those people buried in the basement. She had promised she would help them. And she would. “But how?” Maya slid lower into the tub, until hot water touched her lower lip, and the scented bubbles crackled in her ears.

  “I know where you are,” she whispered. “And I won’t forget my promise to you.”

  When perspiration tickled her upper lip, Maya pulled the bathtub plug, rinsed off with the hand-held sprayer and stepped from the tub. She heard the phone ring downstairs in the kitchen.

  “Hello? Yes,” Elly said. “Coty, is that you? Well … wait a minute. Let me check and see if she’s out of the tub yet.”

  Elly’s footsteps tapped across the linoleum, the hardwood floor in the dining room and then her voice carried up the stairs. “Maya? Coty’s on the phone.”

  “Be right there!” Maya wrapped herself in her robe and slid her feet into her slippers. She ran downstairs and grabbed the phone. “Coty? Are you okay?”

  “Maya, sorry … sorry.” It was Coty’s voice but he sounded drowsy. His words were slurred.

  “Coty, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m hunky dory. How are you?”

  “Where are you?” Maya asked.

  “River Lodge.”

  “Café?”

  “Nope. I’m in’da bar.”

  “What’s going on? Do you need help?” Maya asked.

  “Dey woon’t gimme my car keys.”

  “You need a ride home?”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  It sounded like Coty dropped the receiver. It banged against the wall or the floor before he hung up.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s drunk,” Maya said. “I’ll go get him.”

  “Want me to come with you, baby girl?” Elly asked. “Drunks can be hard to handle.”

  “No, you stay and read your new magazine. I won’t be gone long. I’ll have my cell phone.”

  Upstairs again, Maya slipped into clean
jeans and a shirt, grabbed her wallet and keys and ran outside to the carport. Once inside the Edge, she coasted down the driveway, across the bridge and then climbed the other side of the valley. It was a mild evening, warm enough to drive with the windows wide open. How odd, she decided, that she had been so chilled and achy earlier. Now the air felt muggy and warm.

  She headed straight toward a bright full moon above the tree line. Maya pulled into the River Lodge parking lot and spotted Coty on the big front porch. He sat on one of the rustic benches near the front door, leaning back against the wall of the restaurant with his legs stretched out in front of him. She parked alongside the front steps, leaned over and opened the passenger door.

  “Hey,” she called. “Can you walk?”

  “I walked in by myself.” Coty stood, swaying from side to side. “Didn’t I?” He staggered to the stairs and then stumbled. His knees folded like a wooden puppet’s and he grabbed the log railing and held on while his legs and feet continued down the steps.

  “Aw jeez.” Maya climbed from behind the wheel, ran around and grabbed Coty’s free arm. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I tol’ my sister Danny’s dead.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sis said she already knew. She dreamed it, she said.”

  Coty stumbled again and leaned heavy against Maya. “Fuck,” he said. “Oops. Sorry. Took French in high school.”

  Maya propped him up. “You’re not going to throw up in my car, are you?”

  “Nope. I can hold my liquor.”

  “I can tell. Can you climb in?”

  Coty nodded and crawled into the passenger seat. He fumbled with the seatbelt until Maya snapped the buckle for him and then fastened her own.