Stitches in Time, page 32
Earlier they had investigated the upstairs apartment together, fearing Phil might have left some unpleasant memento. They found nothing out of the way until Rachel opened her closet door and saw the pink peignoir lying crushed on the floor.
“Your mother must have paid a pretty penny for it,” Kara said, after Rachel had explained its origin and restored it to the hanger from which it had…fallen? The possibility that Phil might have handled it, thrown it on the floor in a perverse fit of rage or jealousy, made her skin crawl.
The gun had not been fired. Rachel kept telling herself that as she lay awake, listening. She hadn’t mentioned that particular nightmare to Kara because she knew it was ridiculous. Adam wasn’t lying dead on the street, with the rain beating down on his open eyes. The gun had not been fired. They would have heard a shot. Her car was gone, he hadn’t returned.
Where could he have gone? The errand must have been important or he wouldn’t have behaved so irresponsibly—though she had to admit that Adam’s definition of important might not be the same as hers. A list of possibilities, some logical, some wildly fantastical, circled endlessly through her mind. A secret conference with Pat? Surely not. Adam wouldn’t have to leave the house, they could talk on the phone. Another meeting of the witches, or a private consultation with Stargazer? He had taken so much kidding on that subject he might be embarrassed to admit resorting to Wicca…but he had said he’d be back by midnight. A shopping trip, for more magical supplies? There were all-night drugstores and markets…but he’d have been back by this time, he wouldn’t chase all over the county late at night trying to track down something stupid like purple candles or esoteric herbs.
There are other things. Things that don’t come from stores.
The inner voice might have been hers or the voice of That Other. They shared the same knowledge. Graveyard dirt, coffin nails, other ingredients even more obscene…They were obtainable, if one knew where to look. Adam knew. “Plenty of them around here,” he had said. Thanks to the advice in the book from which he had read to her, he also knew what equipment he would need—ropes, flashlights, pliers, shovels—and a sweatband. “Digging is hard work.” He had said that too. The author of the book had recommended taking several friends along, but Adam wouldn’t—couldn’t—involve anyone else. He was strong enough to do the job alone. Or so he would believe.
Rachel got up and tiptoed to the front window. The rain fell harder now, a solid veil of transparency through which she saw no moving object. It was a quarter past two in the morning.
She slept, finally, out of sheer exhaustion—a troubled sleep shot with disturbing dreams. When she woke, nudged into consciousness by a cold nose in her face, sunlight lay bright across the bed and the massive bulk of Figgin lay heavy across her chest.
Then she remembered and shot out of bed, dumping Figgin unceremoniously onto the floor and moving so fast his lunge at her bare ankle missed.
Adam’s bed had not been slept in. Rachel scrambled into jeans and shirt and headed down the stairs, without brushing her teeth or washing her face.
Adam wasn’t in the family room either. Stretched out on the couch, coffee in hand, Kara was watching the news. Normally she didn’t do that. Rachel knew why she was doing it this morning.
“Anything?”
“No.” Kara waved the remote at the set, which went black. “I’ve watched the same local news twice. Not that I expected anything had happened.”
“Yeah, right. I’m calling the police, Kara.”
“Let’s discuss it first. Now, Rachel, another five minutes won’t matter. Have some coffee. I agree, I completely agree, we must notify someone. The only question is, who?”
“The police.” Rachel reached for a cup.
“What police? The station? You tell the typical sergeant your boyfriend has been out all night and he’ll giggle behind his hand. Tom? Maybe. If we can locate him. But I’m not sure Adam would thank us for dragging him into it. I’d rather talk to Pat first.”
“Pat,” Rachel repeated. “He’s not a policeman.”
“Drink your coffee,” Kara said, trying not to smile. “I’m not taking this lightly, believe me, but I’m sure Adam is all right. If he had had a serious accident it would have been on TV. The local news broadcasts adore car crashes.”
“It might not have been a car accident. If he went somewhere isolated and remote—it was dark, not even starlight—the rain pouring down—muddy and slippery underfoot—if he fell…”
“Dark and muddy?” Kara’s level brow furrowed. “What sort of place did you have in mind? Have you remembered something?”
“No.” The idea was insane, the product of worry and fevered imagination.
Kara’s forehead smoothed out. Men do this sort of thing, you know. Mark has done it to me, every husband and every son has done it to some poor damned worrying woman. When they finally turn up they get all wide-eyed and indignant when you scream at them. They couldn’t find a phone or they didn’t have a quarter or they didn’t want to wake you in the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, right,” Rachel repeated. “When I get my hands on him…”
“Good. Normal reaction. Even if we convince the cops there is cause for alarm they won’t have the faintest idea where to begin looking for him. Pat will be here pretty soon. If he doesn’t know where Adam went—and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they were in cahoots—he may be able to hazard an educated guess. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Rachel said. “Right.”
“Go wash your face.”
Rachel had just stepped out of the shower when she heard the dogs. Pat was early. Or could it be…She scrambled into her clothes and went running downstairs, her hair flying out behind her.
It wasn’t Adam. She could hear Pat’s voice, raised in a shout. When she reached the family room she saw that Ruth was there too. The older woman’s smile and outstretched hands were eloquent, but she was unable to express her sentiments because Pat was still bellowing.
“No, dammit, I haven’t the ghost of an idea where he might have gone. Some wild goose chase, I suppose. He has no goddamn business chasing off on his own without consulting me! So help me, I’ll tear his head off when he shows up. Of all the stupid, useless—”
“Shut up,” Rachel said. She didn’t raise her voice, but Pat stopped talking and stared at her in astonishment.
“We waited for you because Kara thought you might have a sensible suggestion,” she went on cuttingly. “I might have known you’d just yell. I’m going to call the police, as I should have done a long time ago.”
Pat gave her a malevolent look. Before he could reply, Ruth said, “We must do that, certainly. But first—have you looked in his room to see what he might have taken with him? Did he say or do anything last evening that would indicate where he might have gone?”
“A sensible suggestion at last,” Kara said. “No, we didn’t look. We had a busy night.”
“You certainly did,” Pat muttered. “Why didn’t you call the police then? Oh, hell, this is no time for Monday morning quarterbacking. That little encounter can’t have any bearing on Adam’s disappearance; he had gone before Whatsisname entered the house.”
Ruth looked troubled. “If he was angry enough to lie in wait for Adam…”
“Not without his gun,” Pat said contemptuously. “He wouldn’t tackle Adam barehanded. Anyhow, the car’s not here. Come on, girls, think. Adam must have said something; reticent he ain’t.”
“He kept mumbling about the change in the weather,” Rachel said. “It seemed to bother him.” Rain on untrimmed grass and weeds, water trickling down in the excavation, turning dirt to gluey mud…This time the grisly image would not be dispelled: Adam facedown and motionless in the hole he had dug, mud blocking his mouth and nose, water rising around him. She was about to speak when the dogs rose and hurled themselves howling at the door.
No one else moved. When the door opened four pairs of eyes focused on the unspeakable object on the threshhold.
His face and hands were clean, scrubbed pink as those of a baby, and he had made some effort to smooth his hair. Every other part of him, shoes, pants, jacket, was covered with a layer of dried mud that reminded Rachel horribly of the gray film on the quilt. Her pent breath went out in a gasp that seemed to empty not only her lungs but her entire body.
Pat was the first to move, and Rachel realized he had been more concerned than he had admitted. Grabbing Adam by the shoulders, he shook him violently. Flakes of mud rained onto the floor.
After a few incoherent epithets, Pat got to the point. “Where the hell have you been?”
“In jail,” Adam said. It seemed to dawn on him, somewhat tardily, that he was in disfavor. Looking at Rachel, he inquired hopefully, “Were you worried about me?”
“It was the rain,” Adam explained, when they finally let him talk. Kara had refused to let him trail mud through the house, so he had stripped in the pantry and put on the clean clothes Pat hurled at him, along with a few well-chosen adjectives. Kara had added her comments, and even Ruth had said severely, “It was very thoughtless behavior, Adam.”
The only one who had not spoken was Rachel, and Adam kept glancing at the sofa where she sat, hands folded, face expressionless.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, for the fourth time. “I didn’t think you’d even notice I was gone. I expected to be back by midnight, but I had to get right out there, because of the rain.”
“Out where?” Pat inquired. His voice was ominously mild.
“The cemetery. Pat, you’ve got to—”
Rachel was incapable of speech, but Pat seldom suffered from that difficulty, and he was as familiar as she with the literature of the supernatural. His voice rose to a pitch that rattled the windows. “Jesus Christ, Adam! Have you lost your mind? If the newspapers find out about this you’ll never get tenure. Desecrating a grave? Tell me that’s not what you were doing. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” Adam said. “Rachel, don’t look like that. Did you think…”
“I’m wrong,” Pat repeated.
“Yes. Listen to me, will you, this is important. We’ve got to stop them. An injunction or a restraining order or something. It’s Saturday, but they may—”
“Stop whom from doing what?” Pat took hold of his head with both hands. “No, don’t answer that; start at the beginning. Dammit, boy, didn’t anybody teach you how to organize a report? God knows I tried!”
“Okay.” Adam pondered, his eyes fixed on the cup he held almost hidden in his big hands. “It started the day we went to see Miss Ora’s house. The lot next to it was under construction, or about to be. Mrs. Wilson said it had been sold—the last of the original property to go—and it was a reasonable assumption that the builders were going to put up more little crackerboxes like the other houses on the street.”
He stopped to sip his coffee and Pat said impatiently, “You’re overdoing the organization. Get to the point.”
“Well, I like watching construction crews,” Adam said. He sounded meek and looked repentant, but there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. “All those great big machines. So I wandered over to see what they were doing. Had to stretch to look over that high fence. They weren’t encouraging rubberneckers.
“Nobody was working that day. The ground was frozen solid, and I suppose the holidays had disrupted the normal work schedule. Something caught my eye, though. They had covered it with a tarp, but there was a strong wind blowing. One corner of the tarp had come loose.”
He took a dainty sip of coffee, watching his mentor over the rim of his cup. Pat growled, and Adam continued, “I went back another time for a closer look. What I saw confirmed my hunch, but I didn’t have a chance to investigate. The ground was still too hard to dig, and some guy came along and ran me off.”
“Dig,” Pat repeated. All at once he looked very thoughtful.
Adam put his cup down. There was no sign of suppressed amusement on his face now; it was set and anxious. “It’s a cemetery, Pat. An old cemetery. You’ve got to keep the construction crew away till we can check it out. The State Code says burials must be shown on site plans, but it doesn’t demand a preliminary survey. Builders don’t like to report finding cemeteries because they know it will halt construction; they have to remove the remains or leave the site undisturbed, and either one could cost them money. There isn’t much visible; they could claim they didn’t notice it until afterward, and once it’s gone, there’s no way—”
“Are you sure?” Pat asked.
The question sounded reasonable to Rachel, but it infuriated Adam. “God damn it, Pat, are you questioning my expertise? I worked at Annapolis and Williamsburg, not to mention Turkey and Guatemala and God knows where else. I know a goddamn cemetery when I see one! I’m an expert on cemeteries!”
“You are,” Pat admitted. “I apologize. So you went back last night—I know, I know, it was the rain. Warmer weather, a thaw, the ground softening. If the temperature holds, they could start work next week, after the holidays.” He grinned. “So what happened? You got caught?”
“They had a night watchman. Not much of one. He was about this tall.” Adam held his flattened palm an improbable three feet above the floor. He went on in an aggrieved voice, “I didn’t think he’d come out of his nice comfortable trailer in that filthy weather and in the dark, and I was absorbed in what I was doing, and the rain made so much noise I didn’t hear him, and…Well, the little son of a gun tackled me.”
“A little son of a gun three feet tall overpowered you?” Pat inquired.
“I didn’t want to hurt him.”
“Oh.”
“Anyhow, he had a gun. And as luck would have it, a police cruiser came along while we were arguing. They took me in to the station.”
Pat’s grin faded. “And you sat there in the slammer all night? Why, for God’s sake? Even if they wouldn’t release you on your own recognizance you could have called me or Kara, or mentioned Tony, or demanded to see Tom, or—”
“It was late. I didn’t want to bother anybody.”
I couldn’t find a phone, I didn’t have a quarter, I didn’t want to bother anybody. Rachel wondered if Adam realized how pathetic that excuse sounded: I didn’t think anybody would care enough to worry about me. She got up, crossed the room, and slapped Adam resoundingly on the cheek.
“Don’t ever do that again!” she shouted.
Adam’s face lit up.
“This is stupid,” Pat grumbled, resisting Ruth’s efforts to help him into his coat. “Everything is closed, it’s not only Saturday, it’s a holiday weekend. The builders won’t be able to start work before Monday, if then.”
“It has to be done.” Adam’s voice was as inflexible as steel. “Five minutes’ worth of action from a backhoe or bulldozer and there won’t be anything left except rusty nails and rotted scraps of wood.”
“And splintered bones,” Pat murmured.
“If that. They disintegrate quickly in that kind of soil.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll give it my best shot. But I’m damned if I’m going to waste the whole day on this. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Don’t do anything till I get back! Is that clear?”
“Loud and clear,” said Adam.
After he had gone the others sat in silence for a time. Kara was the first to speak.
“Why is this so urgent, Adam? Do you think that old cemetery has some connection with our problem?”
Adam looked at her in surprise. “I’d have done my best to halt construction anyhow, on general principles. But—well, yes, I do think there may be a connection. Remember what Pat said when we were talking about why Rachel should have been affected just now—that there might be another factor we knew nothing about? Work began in that vacant lot a few weeks ago. It disturbed graves that had been untouched, forgotten, for over a century. No—” he held up his hand, stilling Kara’s incipient objection—“let me finish. The connection is unproven, I admit. But that property has been in the same family for three generations or more, and that takes it back a long way. Miss Ora was almost ninety. Her grandfather, who built the house, could have been born as early as 1850. The quilts date from approximately the same time, if we can believe Miss Ora’s account of their origin.”
“Grandpa didn’t build the house until about 1890,” Kara objected. “Surely the cemetery is older.”
“Not only older—abandoned, overgrown, and forgotten by that time. There was a war, remember? I assure you,” Adam said soberly, “the Southerners I know remember. A lot of men died in that war, a lot of things were destroyed. But the land itself endured. There must have been an older house on that property. After it had been destroyed, by the ever-popular damn yankees or by natural causes, Grandpa built himself a new house in a new location, but on land that had been part of the original grant—as was the cemetery.”
“Wait a minute,” Kara said. “There’s a gap in your reasoning. What makes you think that land was part of the property that had belonged to Mary Elizabeth’s husband? We don’t know where the King plantation was located. Gerhardt wasn’t related to the Kings, he came from out of state. He needn’t have bought the land from them.”
“There’s a gap,” Adam admitted. “But it’s not as wide as you think. I can bridge it logically, and if we search in the right places we can probably find the proof.”
“Gerhardt was related to the Kings,” Rachel said. “Is that it?”
“Foiled again.” Adam clapped a dramatic hand to his brow. “I keep trying to impress you and you keep anticipating my brilliant deductions.”
“Stop being cute,” Kara snapped. “The names aren’t the same. How could Gerhardt be—”
“By marriage,” Rachel said. “It’s difficult to free ourselves from traditional patrilineal thinking, isn’t it? The quilts came down from mother to daughter. Why not the land, or part of it? In many cases it would pass directly from their fathers to their husbands as part of their dowry, so the deeds wouldn’t list their names.”
