Forbidden Ground (12 page)

A little smile lifted Nadine’s lips. “Actually, I believe she and her cohorts were considering putting up a sign on several of the mounds to promote their cause, but they wouldn’t dare. Grant could use someone on his side, like you. I’ll tell Jace Miller—or we may have to deal with Gabe when he gets back—that the Adena tree trunk is yours.”

“For a good price, Nadine.”

“I just— I hope you’ll be able to get past the fact I think it was a weapon. I can’t even stand to say the word
murder,
but I think it was.”

They both jumped as Lacey honked the van’s horn. Ignoring that, Kate said, “I’ll be honored to have it. Paul’s imagination was unique, and I’ll treasure it. You think someone ransacked the house and killed him?”

“Maybe not in that order. I’ve got to get going now, and it’s obvious the coroner and even Deputy Miller might not agree with me.” Nadine turned toward the car, then back again. “Lacey has a meeting with her friends at a restaurant uptown. That’s why she honked, I’m sure. See you at the funeral then and later.”

Kate headed for her car, too.
If you stay...later.
How long would she stay here to pursue her dream of excavating and studying an untouched Adena grave site, hopefully working with Grant, instead of against him? And if there was a killer loose in the community, she hoped it had to do only with a random theft at Paul’s place and didn’t tie in to a stolen tree out by Mason Mound.

12

K
ate had the strangest feeling she was being watched, even followed. Crazy, of course, yet she kept looking in her rearview mirror as she drove toward Grant’s house. She refused to turn into some scared woman who couldn’t live life to the fullest and pursue her dreams. She’d watched Tess battle lingering fear after she came back from being kidnapped. Kate knew the signs, and she wasn’t going to give in to such destructive feelings.

She drove past Grant’s house and turned onto the road that looped around behind his woods. Nadine had mentioned that Lacey and her cohorts had considered putting up signs on some Adena mounds to promote their cause. Nadine thought they wouldn’t dare, but would they? Had they somehow picked stars with blood-tipped points to leave there instead of a sign that would identify them? And what was the link between the mounds and their environmental cause? No, Kate scolded herself, she was letting Lacey’s hostility get to her, just as she had Bright Star’s.

She parked on the curving road that ran behind Grant’s property line. Surely, he wouldn’t get upset if she just looked around for a possible water source, or remnant of one that could hint at the direction of the entrance to the mound. She wouldn’t go near the mound itself, although it drew her like a magnet.

After diagramming the mound on her laptop, she thought its relatively small size might indicate just one burial chamber. Since the mound hadn’t caved in, the chamber could be intact. In that case, the entry and covered passageway would go horizontally into the mound, not down or up at a steep angle from a ground-level entry. But she hadn’t seen any hint of an entry at ground level just walking around the mound. Finding a water source, even an ancient one, could save a lot of work to locate that shaft.

As she entered the dense, shaded forest, she saw that the narrow walking trail Grant or his family had made was the route the timber thieves had used to drag the big bird’s-eye maple tree out four days ago. The path of destruction was obvious with snapped saplings and trails through the thick litter of last autumn’s dry, matted leaves. She also saw an occasional hoof print from the horse team that must have pulled the huge tree trunk away to a waiting flatbed truck. The careless destruction here reminded her of Paul and Nadine’s ransacked house.

Looking around, she wondered if the ancient Adena had walked this path to bury their dead in the mound. Did the mourners carry them or drag them on a cloth and two-pole travois like historic Indians who didn’t have the wheel?

She went off the path in a zigzag pattern, searching for a dip in the ground where a stream might have run. Rills taking waters down to Cold Creek—which was really a small river—from the surrounding hills were common around here. Folds in the earth, dips and ravines abounded, so the terrain didn’t make for easy going. Maybe a water source once ran where the house stood today or the street or—

She jerked to a stop. She wasn’t the only one rustling through dead leaves in the rhythmic pattern of human feet. She heard the slight shuffling sound again, then another step. Maybe she
had
been watched and followed. It didn’t sound like a deer or other animal would walk.

In a slight depression, she hunkered down behind a thick tree trunk. Her breath seemed incredibly loud. She had the urge to sneeze. She jammed her finger above her upper lip and pressed so hard her nose went numb.

Brad strode into view. Although she wasn’t sure how she’d explain herself, better him than Grant or some stranger. If he saw her, she didn’t want to appear to be hiding.

She started to move, but before she could call out, he veered away. She watched him from behind the tree. He headed for a knee-high pile of rocks that reminded her of some she’d seen in England and Scotland. They were called cairns, used to mark boundary lines or a historic spot. This was probably just a place Brad and his friends had played as kids, maybe the remnants of a little fort. Stones like that were common around here—ones, no doubt, the ancients had used to shore up the big logs that supported more logs for the roofs of tombs inside their mounds.

Brad bent toward the stones as she stepped out, right on a dry branch. It snapped loudly. Brad spun around.

“Kate! What’re you doing here?”

She was about to ask him the same, but this was his family’s land. Her gut instinct said not to tell him what she was doing. If she was going to tell anyone, it should be Grant. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was going behind his back, and he and Brad weren’t exactly on the best of terms.

“I’ve seen the front of this woodlot,” she called to him as she walked closer, “but thought I’d take a little hike here in back.”

“To see the lay of the land?” he asked with a wink. As she got close, she saw he looked bleary-eyed. She noticed he’d walked a bit unsteadily, not that this was flat ground here. And yes, she smelled liquor on him again, and it wasn’t even noon.

“So, you had the same idea?” she asked.

“Thought I’d clear my head. And relive the days of buried boyhood treasure. Actually, ah—this is where I buried a favorite dog years ago, Max. Silly, I know, but I still miss him—a collie.”

“I understand. It’s a beautiful burial place.”

“For your pet Adenas as well as Max, right?” He shook his head as if to clear it. “It was my dog, not Grant’s, maybe the first thing we didn’t share.”

“So you marked his grave with a pile of rocks instead of a single stone?”

“Kate the curious,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Look, if you’re meeting Grant for lunch, just tell him the
babysitter
he had drive me home from the mill dropped me off on the back road and someone’s picking me up, not to worry. He told me to head home to sleep off a slight hangover. Big Brother is watching me and didn’t want little Bradley to get hurt by a big bad saw or fall off a catwalk at the mill.”

“It’s nice he does worry about you,” she said. “That means he cares.”

“He worries about you, too, you know. That means he cares—for you and that you keep your hands off the mound. Family tradition to let the dead stay dead. Poor Paul, huh?”

“And Nadine. She stopped by Tess’s house this morning, might even consider buying the place. Lacey was with her, and I got the impression she’s been talking to you—about my staying at Grant’s for a while.”

“Lacey swore off Grant long ago, but I was glad to see her again, that’s all. So, enjoy your walk—your exploration,” he said and, with a glance at his watch, started away without further comment.

Kate gave him a good start then followed him out toward the road. She watched him from behind a bush. Here she’d felt she was being followed and now she was doing the same. Brad paced, looking a bit tipsy at times. Kate gasped when she saw Lacey drive up in her van and pick him up. They headed not toward town but out toward the hills. And they’d exchanged a quick kiss, not on the cheek, but mouth to mouth. Then a second one that was much longer.

* * *

When Kate finally emerged from the forest, she was tired and hungry. Feeling she owed Grant for his hospitality and wanting to get him on her side about the mound, she drove into town, hit the small supermarket near the Lake Azure area then hurried back to fix him something for a late lunch—he’d said he’d be home around two.

She’d come to some conclusions in her trek around the back forest area after Brad left with Lacey. Though she was certain Brad was up to no good, she herself had made a good discovery—there was a definite shape of a now dry streambed on the back side of the mound, away from the house. Despite overgrowth, she’d followed it for nearly half a mile up toward the hills. She theorized that in the spring and summer, when it rained hard, it used to be full of water. But growth, stones and other debris higher up had diverted the water elsewhere over the centuries.

What had excited her almost as much as that discovery was that she’d seen a bald eagle’s nest high in an oak tree, with what must be a mating pair in it, swooping out now and then to guard it or to find food. She was proud of that discovery, not because the eagle was the national bird, but because the Adena had venerated it as a symbol of spiritual power. She knew it was possible that eagles had nested in that same spot, between the dried-up stream and the mound, for centuries. She couldn’t wait to tell Grant. And she figured she’d have to tell him about Brad and Lacey, too.

* * *

Grant walked in exactly at two, when she had the chicken quesadillas and iced tea ready.

“Looks great,” he told her. He washed his hands at the sink and sat across from her. They had an awkward moment—she a stranger taking over his kitchen, he not sure whether to help or just sit down to be served.

“Fresh strawberries in clotted cream for dessert. Terribly British,” she said with a touch of accent. “Oh, Grant, I took a walk on the far side of the woods today and saw an eagle’s nest and both birds!”

“You’ll have to show me where. I’ve seen them in the air. I think that pair comes back each year. They mate for life, you know.”

“I took them as a good omen since they were key symbols of spiritual power to the Adena. There’s a site in Georgia, where the Adena built a gigantic effigy of an eagle with white sandstone slabs. In a different burial site, two amateur anthropologists found a stone eagle with the skeleton of a man laid out on the left wing and a female skeleton on the right wing. Both were stretched out on raised biers with rich burial offerings around them of copper, flint and bone. And two smashed human skulls lay at the feet of the man and one at the woman’s feet...” She paused for a moment. “Not such a good lunch-table topic,” she admitted.

During that gush of information, Grant’s eyes went wide, and his lower lip dropped. “Crushed skulls? But—those grave sites—sound amazing,” he stammered, then took a big swallow of his iced tea.

“That last one I mentioned is near the little town of New Benton, between Youngstown and Akron. That Ohio mound was owned by a private family, but thank heavens, they let it be studied.”

He put his glass down on the table with a thud. “I hear you, Dr. Lockwood.”

“I didn’t go near your mound. I’d like you to be with me when I do—with your permission.”

“Was that Ohio site a small mound you just described?”

“No, it was quite large, but it had a single entrance, and I think Mason Mound does, too.”

“You surely don’t think you’d find something spectacular like that here? Eagles, skeletons, skulls?”

“I’d like you to talk to Carson Cantrell about the importance of the possibilities. But, not to ruin your lunch, there’s something else while you’re sitting down. Maybe you know this already. Brad’s evidently been telling people, including Lacey, that I moved in with you. I might as well tell you—I saw Brad when I was in the woods. Lacey picked him up on the back road and they drove off toward the hills. He was with her last night, I think, and when he got in the van with her, they looked...cozy.”

A frown creased his forehead, but he surprised her by keeping calm. “Putting on a show for you maybe, so you’d tell me.”

“I was hidden. He’d just been in the forest, and we’d talked briefly. He was visiting that pile of stones where he buried his boyhood pet collie, Max.”

Grant’s eyes widened. She could almost hear his mind working but didn’t know what he was thinking. He cleared his throat and took a sip of his iced tea. “He was drunk at work midmorning,” he told her, glaring down into his glass as if there were tea leaves to read. “We had words, especially when I took his car keys and had someone drive him home.”

“I’m sorry. Yes, he did seem...unsteady.” But, she thought, that was definitely not the first time he’d been with Lacey lately; it wasn’t some retaliation for a scolding at work.

“Him and Lacey, huh? Can’t say I like the sounds of that and not for the reason you’re thinking.”

“You think she’s out to turn him against you?”

“It wouldn’t take much. So—big news day, and on top of your fixing this great lunch for me. I’d better eat fast and get back to work in case the two of them are planning something there. As for Carson Cantrell, I’d rather deal with you, because I’m hoping you’ll understand. And I wish I could go with you and Jace to talk to Bright Star this afternoon, so you don’t get all the blame. Maybe we should just let Jace go question him alone.”

“I want to be there, see if I can read him. I’m the one who found those stars.”

“And you want to find much more than that or eagles or where Brad put his dead dog. So, that pile of stones must have been off the beaten path, right? Just like him to hide it from me.”

“Yeah, it was,” she said, surprised to realize he didn’t know where that old dog was buried. Had the two brothers not gotten along as kids, either? “The pile of stones was kind of west of the main path about a quarter mile in from the back curved road, behind some kind of bramble thicket.”

He nodded. “Kate, I just don’t know about a dig in the mound, and I’m hoping you won’t try to go around me on this. I need you—I want you—on my side.”

She nodded, too, before she realized he might think she was giving in to him. Nadine had said much the same about Grant needing her. She loved the sound of that, but hated it, too. If anyone could seduce her out of what she wanted most in life right now, unfortunately, it was Grant Mason.

* * *

Kate was much more nervous than she’d thought she would be when she and Deputy Miller were finally escorted in to speak with Bright Star Monson in a room their guide had called “the retreat.” To her amazement, both her cousin Lee Lockwood and his wife, Grace, were in the room. Monson himself sat behind a large glass table that must serve as his desk, although it didn’t have a book or paper on it. The entire room was white with only glass objects, maybe to give the appearance of light, even of weightlessness. Some sort of lighting system through the thick glass walls made the room seem to glow. Well, she thought, this phony hadn’t chosen the name Bright Star for nothing.

Even Lee and Grace were dressed in white instead of the down-home, prairie look. Lee stood like a sentinel in one corner, and Grace, a marble statue, in the corner near the door. Kate, not caring if she was defying some rule, went over to hug Grace, who hugged her lightly. “How are the children?” she asked.