Dead Sleeping Shaman (23 page)

Thursday, October 22

5 days to go

No one questioned what
had to be done. The rectangular imprint on the ground not far from where I’d found Marjory was evident to everyone. Maybe I’d outlined it, or cleared it completely; now it stood out so no one could miss the place that had obviously been dug over. The three of us—me, Lucky, and Officer Winston—took only a minute or two and everything was decided. Lucky called the DNR, which monitored the Deward property. There was no permit required, he was told, not if the police were looking for a connection to a murder out there. Only the presence of one of their men was necessary. Everything fell into place for the next morning: DNR man, Lucky, Officer Winston, me, and some diggers from the Gaylord post. Before we left Deward, I asked if I could invite Marjory’s friends out, too. They needed to be there. I couldn’t have said why, exactly, but something about this whole business made me pity Marjory—and whatever had been buried near her. It just seemed right for her friends to be present for this next step in her story.

After another trip to Deward, home was a good place to be. Sorrow and I went chasing leaves and crows—especially one crow that had taken a dislike to Sorrow early last spring and made Sorrow’s summer miserable with surprise dive-bomb attacks. In my garden, the pumpkins were ready for picking, big orange lumps on dying vines. The zucchini was already stored in a place Harry made down in my crawl space. He suggested that I not leave them there long but get busy on my zucchini breads and zucchini spreads right away, which I solemnly promised I would do, as soon as I figured out what a zucchini spread was, and as soon as I could figure out what I’d do with fourteen breads.

The morning at Deward had been overcast. Fitting for our task out there. I think we all had some awful dread in our mind, but nobody said it aloud. Morning would be soon enough. And though I wasn’t looking forward to being there with the men digging into that place, I wasn’t sure what it was I most feared finding.

After I picked the pumpkins and set them on the porch, Sorrow and I went for a long walk, checking out the late toadstools—orange, mostly—and the wildflowers sporting red berries on unbelievably white branches. Sorrow squatted along the way, missing the toadstools but making me wonder, yet again, when the heck he’d learn to lift his leg. I found patches of wild leeks, but they were too strong to pick at this time of year. In spring they’d be young and mildly flavored. Late-season leeks overpowered the taste of soups and stews. Much too oniony for me. I made a mental note of where new patches of leeks were growing—for my next year’s inventory of comestibles. After only four years, I had my own secret patch of morels, my places where purslane grew, my puffball clearing, my milkweed patches, and my places of the leek. Plus recipes to go with them. Most came from Harry, so the recipe was easy: wash ’em, dip ’em, fry ’em up in butter.

Only after we got back to the house—after Sorrow stepped in his water bowl, which I cleaned up as he nuzzled me with his wet nose, needing to see what I was doing down there at his level, on his floor—did I pay any attention to the flashing message light on my answering machine.

I put my finger out to hit the playback button, then pulled it away. There was just too much going on in my head right then. At times, I went days without a single phone call. On those days I moaned about how unpopular I was and why didn’t I just go back to Ann Arbor—where I had friends, and a good job, and nice clothes, and frequent trips to a hair dresser, and my nails weren’t chipped, my fingers stained from digging around in the dirt or chopping the logs into kindling-sized pieces—getting ready for winter, when my little fireplace would back up the furnace if the electricity went out and the cold crept under the doors.

No time for phone messages.

I dug out Crystalline’s number at the motel. When she answered, I explained what we were doing at Deward in the morning and asked if they’d like to be there.

“What do you think it is?” Crystalline asked, after explaining to the others what was happening. I lied and said I had no idea. They wanted to know what time. I told them ten-thirty. Felicia had a reading at eleven but would reschedule. They would be there.

“We’ve been wanting to see the place anyway. Something we feel we have to do,” Crystalline said.

“Let me know if you latch on to anything when you’re out there,” I said. “Any impressions.”

“It’s a ghost town, Emily.” Crystalline sounded like an old lady clucking her tongue. “Of course we’ll pick up impressions.”

“I was thinking more to do with Marjory. Just feelings. You know, pick up what the emotions are out there.”

“Sure. We do that anyway. Can’t help ourselves,” she said. “What did you say they were looking for? Did you tell me already? I mean, what you’re digging for?”

“I said I don’t know. It could be anything, Crystalline. Or nothing.”

That part wasn’t a lie, what I told Crystalline. I didn’t know. I might have had a sinking feeling. But I didn’t know.

Back to the messages. News can’t be avoided forever—good or bad.

The first caller was a woman. I didn’t recognize the voice and so I didn’t listen to what she said, thinking her another nice lady from the phone company or the electric company or the gas company. Or somebody wanting to sell me a timeshare in Boca Raton.

“… got it yesterday, took it home with me last night, and read for most of the night. I’m very excited about your work, Emily. Let me finish the book—I have a few things hanging—and I’ll call you back. I’ve got some ideas. We’ll talk in a few days.”

I pushed the button again. It couldn’t be what I thought it was. It couldn’t be the agent, Madeleine Clark. She must have just gotten my manuscript. I ticked off days on my fingers. Only a day or so ago. And she’d already called.

“Emily Kincaid?” the very pleasant, soft voice said. “This is Madeleine Clark of the Pietroff and Clark Literary Agency. I just wanted you to know about your manuscript. I got it yesterday, took it home with me last night, and read for most of the night. I’m very excited about your work, Emily. Let me finish the book—I have a few things hanging—and I’ll call you back. I’ve got some ideas. We’ll talk in a few days.”

I played it again. Then again. Sorrow and I did a wild dance around the room until I stopped perfectly still, went back, and played it yet again—to be certain I wasn’t dreaming. No. Same voice. Same words. We danced. Who could I call? I wracked my brain. Dolly? Nope. Jackson? Nope. Bill? Nope. He was in Lansing on a story. A couple of old friends back in Ann Arbor—they’d be thrilled for me. But it wasn’t a book sale. It wasn’t a contract. Just another step along the way. It might still take months, or even years, to sell the book. Rapture was a little premature. Maybe I’d just hug the news to myself and surprise everyone when I could point to the framed book contract hanging on my wall. Or maybe that was a little over the top. Still, after all this time, some form of celebration had to be in order. Sorrow agreed. We sat at the kitchen table and carved one of my pumpkins into a big smiling face. I would set it at the top of the drive to grin at everyone. Let them all guess what made Emily Kincaid so happy.

Still 5 days

I was almost finished
with the ghost town article when the phone rang. Two hours to go before I had to get to Leetsville to meet the elusive Arnold Otis. I wanted one thing completed.

After the usual argument with myself—to answer or not to answer—I picked up.

“Emily?” It was Lucky. “Sorry to be calling you but I’m swamped here and with Arnold Otis coming to town this afternoon, everybody’s been calling, wanting to drop by and say ‘Hi’ to him.”

He gave a long, deep sigh.

“The thing is, I got a phone call from Delia Swanson’s mother. You know, Bertha Swanson. Lives out there on Willow Lake Road beyond you.”

“I know the Swansons,” I assured him.

“Well, Bertha says Delia’s been kidnapped.”

“Oh no,” I moaned.

“Yeah, I know. The woman’s got to be seventy-six or seventy-seven years old. Who in hell would be kidnapping her? It’s not like she’s some heiress …”

“What else did Bertha tell you?”

“Seems she thinks it’s your friend, Harry. Says something’s been going on between the two of them. Which—well—that’s all right, but not kidnapping.”

“I think I know what this is about, Lucky.”

“Thought you might. Could you do me a favor? Just get over to Harry’s and see what’s going on?”

I sighed, deeper than Lucky had sighed. I was supposed to be a writer, not a matchmaker, or a referee, or a cop.

“Sure,” I told the overworked man. “I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks. Bertha’s having a fit. Would you tell Delia to go on home—if she’s there at Harry’s—and see to her mother?”

I promised, though I had the idea that if Delia was out of that house and living with Harry, well, more power to her. At seventy-seven (or whatever her real age was), I didn’t think she’d get many offers that good.

Harry let me in and waved me back to the kitchen where his usual pot of road-kill stew bubbled on the white enameled stove. Delia Swanson, all bright smiles on her round face, got up from the table to hug me and wave me to a chair.

“Want to get Emily a cup of coffee?” she called to Harry, dressed in his neat white apron over the funeral suit.

“Sure thing, Delia.” Harry was all smiles. Delia was in charge. I imagined, for a woman who had tended to her mother all those years, this was a pleasant arrangement.

“And maybe some of those oatmeal cookies you baked last night …”

Harry nodded briskly and put the cookies on a cracked plate. He set them between me and Delia, on the table, then went back to the dish cupboard and pulled down two mugs for coffee.

Delia, a Cheshire Cat smile spreading over her happy face, pushed the cookie plate toward me. I took one. She took two, arranging them in front of her on the table. Perfect order. Two cookies waiting for a cup of coffee to go with them.

Harry set down our coffees and went back to stirring his stew. After a while, he turned to me. “What brings you over, Emily? Tree fall? I could come in the morning. Tonight me and Delia got to get into town. Things getting pretty serious, with the world ending and all. We don’t want to miss one of those meetings out to the campground.”

I cleared my throat, washing the last of the cookie crumbs down with a gulp of Harry’s chicory coffee. “I kind of came to get Delia,” I said.

“Oh dear …” Delia fluttered a hand to her lips.

Harry turned squarely around to face me. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Your mother called Lucky,” I said to Delia, “at the police station, to say you’d been kidnapped.”

“Well, of all … Mother knew where I went. And nobody forced me to come down here.”

“She reported it.” I shook my head, hating to be in the middle of this obviously happy couple. “Could mean trouble for Harry. I mean, if your mother presses charges.”

Delia frowned hard. “That’s just Mother. I told her I’m not leaving her alone, just wanted to be with Harry. I left her plenty of food—all cooked and ready to be heated in the microwave. No reason for her to get like this. Just being mean …”

“Maybe, if you went home and talked to her …”

“I was going to anyway.”

“Today?”

She looked over at Harry and then back at me. “I suppose so. When Harry’s stew’s done. We’ll go together. I wasn’t going to live here. We just wanted … oh, I don’t know … one time in our life.”

I looked down at my cracked fingernails. This wasn’t a role I relished, breaking up a Romeo and Juliet moment in the lives of these two lonely people. I finished the coffee and got up to leave. “I’ll call Lucky and tell him you’re going home this afternoon. If that’s all right.”

Harry looked to Delia and then to me. He nodded. “I’ll have her there in ’bout an hour.”

Delia got up to go stand at the stove. She called my name softly. When I turned she was smiling shyly, first at me and then at Harry. She took one of Harry’s well-worn hands in hers and brought it to her wrinkled cheek. “Harry didn’t kidnap me, you know. I wanted to come stay with him awhile. It’s just … oh … you probably wouldn’t understand, Emily. You’re from a different time.”

I thought I understood well enough. About being alone—and needing to be loved.

“What I’d like to do, right here in front of you, is to thank Harry.” She looked up at him, old eyes shining, as he stood rigid and serious in his stiff suit and white apron, grizzled chin pushed down into his Adam’s apple. “If the world does end in a couple of days … well … you never know the truth of these things until they happen, or don’t happen. You just don’t ever take the time to think about your life, you know, until you get afraid you might die. I mean … things you might have missed.” She blushed slightly. “If the reverend is right and I’m going to die … well … at least I’m not going out a virgin.”