Bury the Hatchet in Dead Mule Swamp (11 page)

In the middle of the floor,
a metallic wedge shape reflected the beam. Surrounding the hatchet
was a large pool of a dark substance, curled and flaked at the
edges, but which was smooth and shiny near the middle, and cracked
into irregular polygons. It looked like a pool of dried liquid. I
was stunned.

“I think we’ve found where
Jared Canfield was killed,” I finally said. My voice caught in my
throat. I’d never seen so much blood. I turned and buried my face
against Jerry Caulfield’s comforting chest.

Chapter 15

Jerry kept one arm around
me, and I didn’t try to escape. With the other hand he produced a
cell phone and deftly thumbed in some numbers. “I’m calling Tracy
Jarvi,” he explained. “It looks as if the city police will have the
lead on this now. Let’s go wait in the break room.”

We retraced our steps down
the hallway, and sat at one of the tables in the dank, chilly room
with the lockers. Jerry flicked off the flashlight.

“Bob? Let me talk to Chief
Jarvi will you? It’s important.” In the glow of the phone’s screen
I could see Jerry’s eyes, which seemed filled with concern. The
phone squawked. “Tracy? Jerry Caulfield here. I’m in the basement
at the old Cherry Hill school building. Ana Raven is here with me.
We’ve found a hatchet and what appears to be a pool of
blood.”

“Tell her it’s all dried
up,” I said.

Jerry nodded at me while
speaking into the phone. “No, it must have been here a while. We
didn’t touch anything in that room, except we’ve walked down the
hallway, and someone else had also done that recently. We’ve
touched light switches and walls. Oh, and door handles.” He paused.
“All right. We’ll do that.”

He pushed a button to end
the call, leaving us in darkness except for the dim light filtering
from the high window. Its glass was nearly black with dirt, but a
single ray from the high sun shone through the broken panel and
illuminated a spot on the floor. It was too small to reveal any
information about the room.

Or the
truth
, I thought. “What happens now?” I
said aloud.

“She wants us to meet her
at the front door. And we’re supposed to try to stay out of the
tracks in the dust, even though we’ve been through them
once.”

I stood up. “We’ll need
light to do that,” I said.

Jerry produced the
flashlight again, led the way back upstairs, and around to the main
entrance. We arrived there just as a Cherry Hill police cruiser
pulled into the block and parked behind my Jeep. Both Tracy—the
Chief, and Officer Kyle Appledorn, stepped from the car; they’d
only had to drive a few blocks. Tracy’s Finnish bone structure gave
her a look of solid competency, and her tightly plaited blond hair
indicated a no-nonsense attitude. Kyle was dark and spare, always
appearing a bit anxious, but ready for action.

“Show us where you were,”
Tracy began.

“Do you have extra
flashlights?” Jerry asked. “The electricity isn’t on.”

“OK. Then we’ll wait right
here,” Tracy said, opening the rear door of the police car and
motioning us inside, all business. She nodded at Kyle. He knew what
she wanted, produced his phone, and in a few seconds we heard him
demanding that the electric service be restored
immediately.

We began to explain where
we’d been in the building and tried to remember anything we might
have touched. When Jerry described unlocking the basement door, she
wanted to know who else had keys. That led to an explanation of all
the various people who'd suddenly been interested in the school
after decades of being ignored. Any number of people could have
gotten keys or been given tours.

In less than half an hour,
a Mid-State Electric truck pulled in behind the police car and Kyle
went off to talk to the driver.

“Let’s go in,” Tracy
said.

By late afternoon, crime
scene tape had been strung around the school. A Sheriff’s car had
taken the place of the electric company truck, and a State Police
Crime Lab van had also arrived. Detective Milford came in an
unmarked car. A knot of children on bicycles gathered in the empty
lot across the street, and the casual traffic on the usually empty
Liberty Street was much heavier than normal. The drivers craned
their necks as they passed, trying to discover the secrets
constrained within the yellow tape. A few of the older boys kicked
a soccer ball around the field, but most of the younger children
just stared at the school, not trying to hide their
curiosity.

Jerry and I had a lot of
time to observe all this, since we hadn’t been allowed to leave,
even after showing the police where we’d been. We’d led Tracy and
Kyle back to the basement. With lights blazing everywhere, the
building seemed only sad rather than spooky, but the dark stain on
the basement floor remained genuinely sinister.

It didn’t take a specially
trained crime technician to see that one edge of the blood pool was
feathered and smeared as if something had been dragged out of it
and then onto something else, perhaps a tarp or a big piece of
cardboard. From that point, leading out the door and on down the
hallway, beyond where Jerry and I had walked, a wide pathway
striped through the dust. It led to a stairway which opened
directly to the outside of the building.

We’d seen that much, but
then Kyle had escorted us back outdoors. He’d driven us to the
police station where we’d been fingerprinted. “For elimination
purposes only,” he’d assured us. Jerry took it in stride, but
pointed out with some pique that they should also compare Jared
Canfield’s and probably the realtor, and city council
members.

We’d been allowed a
bathroom break but then were taken back to the school where some
hot dogs, bags of potato chips and bottled water had been
delivered, probably from the Pine Tree Diner.

Time dragged on. Jerry and
I still sat in the back of the police car. Kyle had asked us to
stay there rather than to sit in our own cars. We kept the window
rolled down since the afternoon had warmed, and also so we might
hear of any new developments. I closed my eyes and attempted to
nap, but sleep didn’t come. I finally quit trying, but we continued
to wait silently. Apparently neither of us could think of anything
to say. Jerry fiddled with his cell phone, but I couldn’t tell if
he was playing a game, texting someone, or making notes for a news
story.

A city truck pulled up at
the end of the block and removed a small cover plate from a pipe at
the curb. The workman inserted a long bar with a handle into the
opening and began twisting it.

“Nothing like an emergency
to get the utilities turned on in a hurry,” Jerry said dryly. “If I
work this right, maybe I can get the city to pay for the boiler
inspection too.”

“You’re joking, aren’t
you?” I asked, suddenly aghast at the possibility that Jerry had
just played a huge trick on us all. In response, he smiled, raised
an eyebrow and settled deeper into the seat.

One or two at a time, the
children began to leave and even the rubbernecker traffic thinned
out.

Tracy came by and told us,
almost apologetically, that so far, no fingerprints except ours had
been found, which looked suspicious, and could have been taken as
an indication that one or both of us was there to confuse the
evidence. Obviously, the murder had taken place days earlier, but
if one of us had killed Jared Canfield, putting new fingerprints
over old ones was quite clever.

I gave her a look that I
hoped made her think she had two heads. She shrugged and said, “I’m
just offering commentary. We certainly don’t have enough cause to
arrest either of you.”

Just after five, a light
green sedan pulled up across the street and Adele emerged, carrying
a white box and a thermos.

“It took me forever to get
someone to come watch the store,” she began, as if she assumed we’d
been waiting for her. “I brought you carrot cake and coffee. Why
are you still here? Surely they don’t think you’re suspects? What
were you doing at the school?”

Adele’s rapid fire
questions were always startling, and I hardly knew which one to
answer first. Jerry took over.

“Ana was helping me inspect
the building,” he said. “I’ve bought it. It’s about time this town
did something to preserve its heritage.”

“Oh, my!” Adele said. “You
were together?” She glanced from Jerry to me and back again, rather
pointedly, I thought, but perhaps I was feeling guilty.

“Yes, we were together,”
Jerry admitted. It seemed as if he was going to stop there, but
then he added, “We’re planning something. Something big.” He smiled
at Adele and somehow winked at me, simultaneously. I
winced.

Adele lowered her voice.
“There’s really a big pool of blood and a hatchet in the
basement?”

“And a wide drag mark
leading to the parking lot,” Jerry expanded on the basic facts,
smiling broadly now. He crossed his arms and stared directly at
Adele. He seemed pleased to be able to produce a fact she hadn’t
already heard, and was almost challenging her to some sort of duel
of information.

I wasn’t feeling
confrontational at all, and tried to take the conversation in a
different direction. “Thanks for the dessert. All we’ve had is some
hot dogs from the Pine Tree,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Adele
said with a smug look on her face. She was about to win the
information war. “Those weren’t from the diner. I heated them up in
the back room at the store. Jack Panther put a sign on the Pine
Tree’s front door this morning instead of opening for breakfast.
‘Closed until further notice.’ Didn’t give anyone a heads-up. Just
locked up and walked away. No one’s seen him since.”

Chapter 16

By Friday noon, the town
was buzzing with the news of the discovered crime scene at the old
school and Jack Panther’s disappearance.

I knew this because I was
in Cherry Hill, at Jerry’s house, drinking a perfectly brewed cup
of coffee and munching on a turkey pastrami and provolone sandwich.
His well-appointed kitchen was nicely insulated from the gossip,
but before arriving there I’d been to the Post Office, the drug
store, and Volger’s Grocery. Almost everyone had stopped me and
asked if I’d really seen the bloody floor. I assured each person it
was no joke. This exchange was usually followed by a comment like,
“Why do you suppose Jack left town?” delivered with waggling
eyebrows.

I even drove past the old
school again. The yellow crime tape bellied outward in a light
breeze from the north. There were still people across the street
staring as if they thought the tape restrained secrets that were
about to burst forth into public view. One couple had even brought
a thermos of coffee and lawn chairs in which to wait for the
revelation. The day was cloudy and the building dark. It had seemed
radiant in yesterday morning’s sunshine; now it only looked
dirty.

Adele had called me at
eight in the morning and asked me to stop by the store. I certainly
didn’t need groceries, since I’d just stocked up in Emily City on
Wednesday, but a good dose of guilt over my cart-full of IGA
betrayal sent me to Adele’s dairy case for something small. I chose
a carton of cottage cheese. I approached the checkout where she
waited.

“Ana, I wanted to ask you
what’s going on,” she began as she ran the bar code of the tub over
a glass panel and the cash register beeped.

“You know as much about it
as I do. You’ve got the police scanner,” I replied.

“No, not the murder. I mean
with you and Jerry.”

I shifted uneasily from one
foot to the other. Jerry and I never had agreed on what to tell
Adele.

“Why are you so jittery,
Ana?” Adele continued. “I’ll tell you what I think. You’re dating
him!”

“Not really.”

“’
Not really!’ What does
that mean? I saw the way he was looking at you in the car. There’s
certainly something going on between you.”

I couldn’t tell Adele the
whole truth. She’d blab it all over. “We did go out for dinner. He
wants me to help him plan a community event.”

“Hell’s bells. You don’t
expect me to believe that do you?”

“It’s true. You can believe
it or not.” I was feeling defensive and unsure of myself and I knew
my voice betrayed my emotions, but I smiled at the old-fashioned
expletive. Apparently that softened my tone a bit, and I was able
to continue calmly. “He wants to host a Harvest Ball in the old
schoolhouse. But now I don’t know if the police will clear it in
enough time to fix it up. Jerry is really impatient. He wants the
gala to be in mid-October.”

“October? That’s only a few
weeks away. Even Mr. Old-Money might have trouble pulling that
off.”

“It was pretty amazing to
watch him get things accomplished yesterday. He certainly has a lot
of authority,” I said. It had seemed like Jerry had been in
control, even though it was the police who had gotten all the
utilities turned on.

Apparently I’d diverted
Adele’s attention. She mused, “A Harvest Ball. That sounds
interesting. People will like the theme. Corn shocks. Apples, and
cherries and pumpkins. Pies! We need to call Janice and warn
her.”