Sleep Softly. Gwen Hunter

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      “Effective technique. Exactly who were you channeling just now?”

      I closed my eyes hard for a moment and took a deep breath before turning to face Jim. “My mother. Josephine Hamilton Caldwell. She’s a debutante socialite in Charlotte.”

      “A what?”

      “Well, she’s a socialite who thinks she’s still a deb. Josephine is sixty-something going on sixteen, with a mouth so sweet, candy won’t melt in it.”

      “And she’s why you get sugary as rock candy when you’re pissed off?” He was laughing at me, staring down from his nearly six feet in height, brown eyes glinting.

      “As a technique for getting my way, it seemed just as effective as grabbing the sheriff by his privates and has fewer side effects than violence. Being Mama has never resulted in a lawsuit or my being arrested. At least, not so far.”

      Jim barked with laughter, the sound startling Mabel, who jerked up her head and blew hard. She wasn’t happy about the stable hand being on her back and was looking for a reason to startle or kick. “Be good, Mabel,” I said. The mare flattened her ears and looked around at the human planted on her back, as if pondering how much effort it might take to dislodge him.

      “I said, be good.” She rolled her eyes at me and seemed to consider my command. With a grunt, the mare lifted her tail and dropped an aromatic load, seven distinct plops before she moved away, into the sunlight, and headed toward the barn. The cops found it funny, but I knew when I’d been dissed. “Thank you, Mabel,” I muttered. But at least she did as she was told.

      “You want to tell me about the land around here?” Jim asked, controlling his laughter admirably as we walked deeper into the shaded wood.

      “The better part of valor?” I asked.

      “Retreat isn’t a cowardly action. Not when dealing with a woman who can channel her mother.”

      I decided I should let that one go and moved with Jim to the first orange paint mark, set waist-high on a poplar. Behind us, the cops shouldered equipment and followed. One cop complained about having to walk when there was a perfectly good four-by-four right there. C.C. handled that one, growling that the deputy needed some exercise and if he didn’t take off a pound or two, he’d be out of a job.

      I didn’t know what Jim was asking about, so I decided on a tutorial. “We’re at the edge of Chadwick Farms, heading toward the eighty acres, give or take a few, of Hilldale Hills. The property between the farms is partial wetland, marked by a sandy riverbed left over from the Pleistocene Age, I think. Anyway, the Chadwicks haven’t farmed this area in decades and the Hills acres were left to go fallow for ten years.”

      “Why?”

      I told Jim that Hoddermier Hilldale had lain fallow himself in a nursing home, the victim of a stroke that had left him in a vegetative state. His son lived in New York and was less than interested in being a farmer. “Hoddy died in early winter,” I said, “about sixteen months ago. The son, Hoddy Jr., came home and leased out most of the acreage to my nana, who bush-hogged it and put it into half a dozen crops. Hoddy Jr.’s in the middle of investing heavily in the house, outbuildings and grounds as part of a bed-and-breakfast-slash-spa he and his gentleman friend think they can make a go of. Why do you want to know?”

      Instead of answering, Jim asked, “Any graveyards nearby?”

      It wasn’t an idle question. The man who walked beside me had morphed into a cop as I spoke, his face unyielding, warm eyes gone flat.

      “Graveyards? I’m not…Wait a minute.” I stopped and turned slowly, looking up the old riverbed and back down, orienting myself. “I wasn’t thinking about where I am, but yes. This land’s been a family farm since the 1700s. The first Chadwick settled here because of the access to creeks and several spring-heads. When the original cabin burned down, the family moved closer to where Nana’s house is now. Somewhere near here are the old foundations and a small family plot. Why?”

      Jim glanced back at C.C. and the men nodded fractionally. The cops seemed abruptly tense, as if I had said something important, but I had no idea what part of my soliloquy it might have been. Why would my family plot make them react? I pointed off to the left and jumped over a ditch, leading the crew to the next mark, this one on a low boulder buried in the earth. “What’s up, Jim? Why are you here?” I asked softly.

      “The sheriff asked me in on this.”

      “And?”

      He seemed to consider what he wanted to say. “The red sneaker.”

      “You’ve got a missing child, one who was wearing red sneakers?”

      “Something like that.”

      I figured that was all I was going to get from him so I just pointed to the next marker, but Jim surprised me. “You might remember that Amber Alert in Columbia last September?” When I shook my head no, he went on. “We’ve had four preteen blond girls go missing in Columbia in the last twenty-four months. The girl in September was one of them. Blond. Wearing red sneakers.”

      Which explained why the coordinator of the Violent Crime Squad was traipsing through the countryside with mud on his polished black shoes. The air in the shadowed woods grew colder as I again considered what a body buried here might mean. “Why are you looking for a graveyard?”

      “We found one of the missing girls in December, buried in a Civil War-era graveyard. So I was just curious,” he said as we rounded the pile of lichen-covered boulders.

      “Putting together a profile,” I guessed.

      “We’re working on it.” His voice lost inflection. Cop voice, giving away nothing.

      “But keeping it out of the media,” I suggested.

      “Not so much keeping it out as not sure whether we have a serial thing going here. Other than the general hair coloration and age, the missing girls have nothing in common.”

      “I was trying to stay away from the evidence. I didn’t get up close to the burial site so I’m not sure if it’s near the old homestead. I looked one time and backed away. But it may be. And if so, we’ll see a family burial plot, gravestones lying on the ground where they were washed by a big storm before I was born.”

      We moved the rest of the way in silence, the birds flitting through the trees as we walked, chasing one another in spring courtship, preparing for nesting time, an occasional squirrel making a leap from tree to tree. A hawk circled overhead in lazy spirals, searching for prey.

      Not far beyond the fallen tree, its bark ripped away by lightning, we caught the smell of old death carried on the breeze. It had been bad before, but with the rising heat, the putrid scent had grown fetid and pungent. One of the cops swore, and I had to agree.

      4

      I stayed behind the two old oaks when we arrived; Jim stood at the edge of the grave site only a few feet away, hands on his hips while cops ran crime-scene tape from tree to tree at the sheriff’s direction. Though the scene was far from pristine, Jim obviously wasn’t going to add tracks or evidence to it until the photos were finished. Skye and Steven, another deputy, set up cameras and began to take digital and 35mm shots. Steven was giant, an African СКАЧАТЬ