Picked to Die (An Orchard Mystery) (6 page)

The hose resumed its racket again, cutting off conversation. Meg was looking away from the site, admiring the view of the green, its stately maples just beginning to turn color, when she heard shouting. She looked first at Jeffrey, who was gesturing wildly and yelling, “Stop,” which she could hear even over the noise of the machinery. Someone cut it off, and then Jeffrey beckoned to anyone and everyone to come over to the truck.

When they were only a few feet away, he said, “Is this what I think it is?” He pointed to the tray.

Seth was the first to clamber up into the bed of the truck. He looked down at the tray then shook his head. Then he called over to Art Preston. “Art, I think we have a problem.”

“Oh no! What is it?” Gail burst out, climbing up toward the truck bed. Seth stopped her with a hand, and kept her still until Art had joined him next to the tray.

“Crap,” Art said. “I should have known trouble would follow you two. Why are things never simple when you’re around?”

“What is it?” Meg called out.

Gail approached tentatively. “Oh, dear. That looks like part of a skull.”

“It is,” Art said grimly. “Which means it’s time to call in the state police. Sorry, Gail, but for the moment I have to declare this a crime scene.”

Work came to a standstill as the news of the gruesome discovery spread among the workers and spectators around the Historical Society building. Luckily, having the chief of police on-scene meant that Art Preston had known immediately what to do.
He must have the state police on speed dial
, Meg reflected. Even to Meg’s inexperienced eye, though, the chunks of skull looked like they had probably been in the ground for a very long time. She wasn’t surprised when Jeffrey asked the same question of Art, who took the time to explain to him that, “Even though it’s pretty likely that this body has been under the building for at least a hundred years, in Massachusetts any unexplained death must be investigated, by law.”

“That’s interesting,” was all Jeffrey said.

When Art went off to make the call, Meg walked over to join Gail and Seth next to the truck, staring at the bone fragments. Jeffrey was still standing on the bed of the truck, looking stunned by his find. “Are you okay?” Meg asked him quietly, concerned that he might feel a bit traumatized.

But when he turned his attention to her, he looked more excited than upset. “Yeah, sure! Wow, I never expected anything like this! One minute I’m looking at dirt, the next minute I’m looking at, well, something that used to be . . . someone. Really weird.”

Apparently teenagers are very resilient
, Meg thought. “Do you need to call your folks?” she asked.

“Why would I do that?” He looked perplexed by her question.

“So they can pick you up?”

“Why would they need to do that? Anyway, I’ve got my own car,” Jeffrey said. “So what happens next? Do you know?”

“As Art just said, in Massachusetts, any time a body is found—and I’m guessing we’ll find the rest of the skeleton under there—if the cause of death can’t be determined, the site has to be treated as a crime scene until it can be proven otherwise. Now, with a body this old, they may want a forensic anthropologist to look at it, along with the medical examiner. And then somebody is going to have to excavate the rest of the area very carefully to see if there’s any evidence left after all these years.”

Gail and Seth had drifted closer to the edge of the partially dug hole, deep in conversation, but now Gail came back toward Meg and Jeffrey. “Gail, how’re you doing?” Meg asked.

Gail shook her head, clearly frustrated. “I’m trying to figure out how on earth I explain this to the society board. Uh, construction was delayed by the discovery of a skeleton? At least it’s an old one, right?”

“I’m not the person to ask,” Meg said. “Have you worked with any archaeologist types at the university or somewhere else?”

Gail shut her eyes for a moment, as if to collect her wandering thoughts, then straightened her back. “I can probably pull up a few names. But won’t the state police do that?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Meg said. “Normally if this was a modern death they would have their guy take a look at the remains, and a forensic team would come in and pick up what they can from the scene, and then they’d all pack up and go their own way. If this is a really old burial, they may take a quick look and dismiss it. But for you, if this burial has any historic significance, you might want to handle it differently. This is an eighteenth-century building, right? Was the land ever a burial ground?”

“Not that I know about,” Gail said. “But that’s not to say there weren’t family burial plots on individual properties, although often they were marked with some kind of stones, even if they weren’t inscribed. Sometimes the location wasn’t recorded because the family just figured they’d remember where they put great-grandmother. Sorry if that sounds kind of thoughtless, but this has me rattled. As I remember it, the land here was given to the town for the specific purpose of building a meetinghouse, back in seventeen-whatever. The sons of the original landowner donated it after he died—one of them should have known that the body was here, if it was family land. Heck, there may be more bodies under there. I bet the police are really going to love checking that out—it’s not like they can just crawl under there and start digging willy-nilly because the building might fall on their heads. I’d
really
rather not have to deal with that.”

“Let’s take one problem at a time, Gail,” Meg said, trying to sound reassuring. “Art was here when the body was found, and he’s calling the state police. Nobody has touched anything. You’re here on behalf of the Historical Society, the official owner of this property, so you can explain to the state police exactly what was going on when we found the . . . skull. Maybe you should take some pictures while you still can?”

“Oh yeah, right. Good idea. I’ll do that. What’ve we got?” Gail confronted the bits of skull. Once Jeffrey had noticed the first piece, an unmistakable chunk of cranium, they’d cautiously gone through the rest of the dirt and found some smaller pieces as well. Meg could see Gail shifting into a more analytical mode. “I see some teeth, although I really doubt there were dentists handy when whoever-it-was died, so it’s not like we can use them to match dental records. Nothing to indicate gender from this end, but there may be other bones or personal artifacts still under the building. From the size of the skull pieces, it looks like an adult, which is better than the alternative. Jeffrey, how you holding up?” The boy was still staying close to his find.

“This is so cool! I mean, it’s like
CSI
meets American history.”

“Speaking of history, we’ll have to look into the history of this site a little more closely—maybe you can help us with that, Jeffrey.”

“I’d love to help. You know, I was watching the soil as it came through the tube pretty closely, and it looked uniform. No changes in texture or color, and I didn’t see any other big pieces of bone fragments. Maybe we were lucky and started at the head end, and the rest is still in there?”

“We really shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves,” Gail said, “but write down what you saw, okay? It might be useful. Anyway, I’m sure the police will ask the right questions.”

Meg wasn’t as sure, but then she’d never seen them in action with an antique body. Would anyone be able to identify it? And whether or not they did, what did you do with a centuries-old body, with no family to claim it? Although, she reminded herself, there were a lot of families in Granford now who bore the surnames of people who had lived in the town from the beginning. Maybe it wasn’t so absurd to think there might still be a local relative around.

“You guys mind if I hang around?” Jeffrey asked. “I mean, I’m kind of the one who found the body, or at least part of it. The police are going to want to talk to me, right? And I bet I’ll learn a lot more here than in class today.”

Oh, to be so young again
, Meg thought. For him these bone fragments were an interesting puzzle, not remnants of a human being who’d lived and died here. Of course, Meg had to admit she too was curious about why a body had suddenly turned up in the middle of their routine building project. She was happily surprised not to have found any burial plots on her own property—yet—and she wasn’t about to go looking for any. Besides, she could account for most of the Warrens whose genealogy she knew about, since their tombstones were all lined up in the town cemetery. She’d have to ask Seth if he knew about any Chapin plots scattered around the land he and his mother still held.

Seth made one last comment to the crew still standing around the excavation, then walked over and stood beside the truck, watching for a state police car coming from Northampton. “I told the crew to stop whatever they were doing but to stick around until they could talk to the police,” he told them. “They weren’t exactly happy about it, but they all understood why. You okay?”

“Oh, sure, I’m fine,” Meg said with a false cheeriness. “I take a day off, and the first thing I find is a body. At least I’m just an innocent bystander.”

“That you are,” Seth agreed. “Gail, you holding it together?”

Gail was busy snapping pictures of the remnants of the skull. “I’m staying busy so I don’t have to think about it. Won’t our next newsletter be interesting?”

“This was Moody land originally, wasn’t it?” Seth asked her.

Gail stopped what she was doing and faced him. “Yes, it was. Seth, you consistently embarrass me by knowing as much or more about my town than I do, and I’m the official keeper of its history. How do you do that?”

“I ask him the same question all the time, Gail,” Meg said with a grin as Seth shrugged. “Seth, are there any Moodys around that we could talk to?”

“Um, excuse me,” Jeffrey broke in. “Like I told you, I’m working on my Scout genealogy merit badge. Maybe I could do some research on who gave this land to the town back then? And what descendants are still around?”

“That’s a great idea!” Gail said. “I’d be happy to sponsor that, or oversee it, or whatever you need. I know the town has some of the original documents right up there in the town hall,” Gail said. “But I don’t want it to interfere with your schoolwork. Or get you in trouble with your parents if it takes up too much of your time.”

“I’m sure they’d want me to assist the police,” Jeffrey said, trying to look serious. Meg suppressed a smile and avoided looking at Seth. Knowing what she did about some of Jeffrey’s uncle Rick’s activities, the family could hardly object to a few innocent inquiries into Granford’s past. And from the way Jeffrey looked, it might be hard to stop him. He’d caught the history bug.

“I think once the state police take a look at this, they’ll decide it’s not a crime scene pretty fast,” Seth said. “Besides, it’s going to be hard to find evidence over two hundred years old.”

Jeffrey looked disappointed. “Well, I’ll stick around for today, anyway.”

“Fair enough.” Seth nodded toward the road. “Looks like the state police have arrived.”

The state car pulled up alongside the green, and Meg immediately recognized Detective William Marcus, whom she’d met before. More than once. Their current relationship might best be defined as a bit prickly. But this time around, he really couldn’t accuse her of any illegal involvement. Meg watched as Art went to meet him; they paused out of earshot, and Meg assumed Art was bringing him up to speed on what had been uncovered so far. Then they walked over to the truck, where the pieces of skull still lay.

“Who’s this?” Detective Marcus looked at Jeffrey.

Jeffrey stepped forward quickly, his right hand outstretched. “I’m Jeffrey Green, sir. I’m working on a Scout merit badge in archaeology, so I was here to participate in the excavation of this historic building. I was the one who first saw the, uh, victim.”

Detective Marcus looked taken aback by Jeffrey’s speech, but he shook his hand cordially enough.

Then Gail stepped forward. “Detective, I’m Gail Selden. I’m the director of the Historical Society, and I’m representing our board at the construction process here.”

“Not quite what you were expecting, was it?” Marcus said with what might be considered a smile.

“No, of course not. This building was erected sometime around 1762, before the town of Granford even officially existed. We had no reason to think there might be any kind of burial on the site.”

“I see. Seth, what are you doing here?” Marcus turned his attention to Seth.

“I’m serving more or less as general contractor for the Historical Society. I brought in the excavation crew here.”

“Fill me in on the project, one of you? You planning to move the building or something?”

Gail spoke quickly. “No. We need room to house our collections. We looked at our options, and digging out beneath the building and creating climate-controlled storage space there seemed to be the best solution. That way we could preserve the historic integrity of the building’s profile.”

“Huh. Never heard of anything like that, but it sounds interesting. How far did you get before you found . . . this?” He waved at the skull fragments.

“We’d just started. There may be more bones under there,” Gail said.

“The crew stopped digging as soon as we saw the skull fragments,” Seth added. “Is the ME on his way?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Hey, wait a minute, please, Detective,” Gail said quickly. “You can’t just grab the bones and whatever else you find and haul it off to Northampton. This could yield important information about the town’s earliest years.”

“You have an alternate suggestion?” Marcus countered. “Because if you don’t, it’s the ME’s call.”

“Yes, I do.” Gail exchanged a look with Meg. “I can make some calls, see if I can find a forensic archaeologist nearby.”

Marcus sighed. “So you’re going to tell me this is an historic site and this should be treated as an archaeological dig? Good luck with that.” Then he added, “Let’s see if you can make that happen today, unless you want your project to stall while we analyze the, uh, remains.”

“Right away,” Gail said. “I know someone I can talk to right now.” She pulled out her cell phone and walked to the middle of the green to call. She was back in three minutes. “Got her!” she crowed. “I’ve got a friend who teaches at UMass who’s an archaeological anthropologist. She’s on her way!”