Never Forgotten (15 page)

“My mother always told me the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” she replied.

“I wonder if her cooking was what killed me?” Sam mused.

“Sam,” Mary said. “Have you heard of the Stephenson County Curse?”

Sam cocked his head and thought for a moment. “Yeah, I remember some of the officers talking about it. We lost some good officers. Why?”

“Sounds like you might have been another victim.”

“Sam was a victim of the curse?” Dorothy asked, her voice raising an octave, as she backed away from Mary. “Was it catching? Could he still spread it?”

“Really?
I was killed by the curse,” he said. “Well, you know, that makes sense.”

“I’d like to ask you about it, if you don’t mind,” Mary said.

“Mary, I’m going to go back to my desk,” Dorothy said, hurrying to the door. “You take all of the time you need with Sam.”

“And Sam,” she shouted to the room. “I’ll love you forever.”

She slipped out of the room and closed the door firmly behind her.

“Can’t buy that kind of love and devotion, Sam,” Mary said.

Sam chuckled. “What is it about some women and cops, Mary?”

“It’s the uniform, Sam, it just drives us crazy.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I can believe crazy. There was this one woman in town who just about stalked me. Matter of fact, we had finally come to an understanding just before I died. She was a looker, all right, but, believe it or not, I loved my wife.”

Mary stood up and walked over to Sam. “I believe you. You’re a good man, Sam Rogers.”

“Thanks, Mary. So why am I still here?”

“Well, I guess that’s for me to figure out. Tell me about your symptoms before you died.”

“Stomach pains, cramping and I was really tired.”

“Did you see a doctor?”

“No, it was the holidays. Things were busy. We were short-staffed at the time,” he said. “I figured it could wait.”

“When did the pains start?”

“Towards the end of the month, maybe after the 15th,” he said.

“Do you know if your calendar is still around?” Mary asked. “Maybe I could check on that and see if something seems to be important.”

“I’m sure Dorothy has it,” he said. “She kept a shrine of all of my belongings. I have to tell you, it’s a little spooky.”

Mary nodded. “Yes, yes it is.”

With Sam’s calendar in hand, Mary decided to make one more stop before she went home and rescued Bradley from Rosie and Stanley. She took Galena to Highway 26 and turned north, heading up towards Orangeville. The roads were clear and the day had warmed up to about 30 degrees.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was already beginning its downward trek to sunset. The farmyards on either side of the roads were covered in a blanket of snow and Christmas decorations still hung on porches and windows. Mary turned left onto Buckeye Road and immediately the smooth pavement she had been driving on turned to rough gravel. There were pits in the roads where large vehicles, like tractors, had pushed through the semi-frozen surface. The lane was narrow, with a snow-filled ditch on either side. Whenever possible, Mary drove in the center of the road, avoiding the car-rattling pits and holes.

She turned right on another country road, praying that she remembered the path Stanley had driven. The road teed into another road about a mile ahead and Mary turned left. This road still had patches of ice and snow on it, so she slowed the Roadster and traveled down the road at a crawl. She was gratified to see the Thompson Farm ahead.

Mary drove past the farm and continued to the lane with the cemetery. She followed that road and found the same spot Stanley had cleared with his car. Parking the Roadster, she pulled a backpack from the rear compartment. The backpack contained hiking boots, a camera, some bottled water and a Swiss Army knife. Mary kicked off her current shoes and slipped into the hiking boots. She put the camera into one pocket of her parka and her knife into the other. She slipped the keys into her pants pocket, but left the door unlocked in case she needed to leave quickly.

The cemetery sat on one side of the road. Mary scanned it, but didn’t see a sign of Shirley anywhere. She turned to her side of the road. The wire fence was a standard throughout the area, but the extra line on top wrapped around white porcelain knobs generally meant it was electric. The fencing was stretched between round wood posts set about six feet apart.

This is going to be tricky, Mary thought. She looked up and down the line for a break or a gate, but saw nothing in the area. Turning back to the car, she fished the keys out of her pocket and unlocked the trunk. She pulled out the set of twelve foot jumper cables her dad had given her for Christmas the year before; they were still wrapped tightly in their plastic carrying case. She unwound the cables and climbed through the drifted snow in the ditch, finding herself sinking to knee level. Why can’t all crimes happen during good weather?
she
wondered.

Pulling leather gloves out of her pockets, she squeezed the handle on the cable to open the jaws and then clamped them tightly over a porcelain knob and wire near one wooden post. Then she walked to the next post and clamped onto the knob on the opposite side of the fence, bypassing the two knobs that made the connections for the center piece of fencing. She opened up her knife and pulled out the wire cutter. Slipping the rubber guards from the other set of cables, she slipped her fingers through it for protection and then cut electric wire between the two posts.

Waiting for a moment, to see if any alarms were activated, she breathed a sigh of relief, slipped the knife back into her pocket and climbed over the fence.

Landing on the other side, she sunk into knee-high snow and jogged down the fence line to a wooded area near the road. The snow had not been as deep near the woods, and the warmth of the day had melted a path just inside the tree line. The ground was soft, covered with a deep layer of pine needles and leaves, and Mary moved noiselessly toward the house.

Stopping at the edge of the woods, Mary scanned the area. All of the buildings were situated on a large gravel driveway that had been plowed, so snow stood in large piles on the circumference of the clearing. The house was closest to the road and the woods. A narrow path led from the house to the collection of bird feeders next to the woods. The path was clear and the feeders looked like they had been recently filled.

The large red barn was about ten yards behind the house. Attached to the side of the barn was a large wooden split rail fence that encircled a smaller farmyard and opened out into the pastures. Large black and white cows ambled toward the open gate to the farmyard and waited alongside the fence for their turn through the open barn door into the milking parlor. From the sounds coming from inside the barn, Mary assumed Paul Thompson was busy in there doing the afternoon milking.

About twenty yards beyond the barn was a large corrugated metal-sided building, like a giant garage, with a twenty foot high sliding access door for tractors and combines. The smaller, regular door was propped open, but the lights were off. That would be the place to start her search.

Mary dashed down the path from the woods to the house. She pushed herself up against the side of the porch and waited for a moment. Everything looked normal; the noise from the barn was constant. Mary crept around the porch, trying to keep to the graveled area so there were no footprints in the snow to give her away. She followed the circumference of the cleared area, ready to dive behind the large snow piles if needed and then ran to the metal building.

Slipping inside, she took a moment to let her eyes get used to the darkness and then moved into the cavernous building. Large mammoth farm machines waited in hibernation for the call of spring. Workbenches along each wall were filled with parts and pieces of machines. Tools hung from pegboards and random hooks. The late afternoon sun shone through a series of rectangular windows near the top of the wall, casting shadows that disappeared when a cloud drifted by.

She walked through the middle of the building, passing tractor tires that were taller than she was and mechanisms that would have been more at home in a medieval jouster’s arena, than a farmer’s cornfield. She noted that each piece of equipment was meticulously cleaned; all of the dirt and plant material from the previous harvest was gone. She walked by two hayracks, also cleaned off for the season and finally found the piece of equipment she had been looking for.

A smaller tractor with a back hoe attachment was in the back of the building near a smaller garage door. Mary examined the shovel portion of the scoop bucket; it was caked with several inches of mud. She broke off some of the mud and found that the next layer was still moist. The three foot wide and two foot deep bucket was too high off the ground for her to see inside.

She looked around and found a small step ladder. Dragging it over to the tractor, she positioned it between the rear facing bucket and the front of the tractor. Holding on to the front grill, she climbed up and looked down into the bucket.

The inside was also covered with mud. She reached in as far as she could and scraped up a sample. This time, the mud had steaks of reddish brown in it.
Blood.

Slipping the clump of mud into her pocket, Mary jumped down from the ladder and hurried to the back of the building.

A small door next to the garage door led to one of the pastures. Mary slipped out the door. The sun was beginning to set, but Mary could plainly see a set of tractor tracks leading out to another stand of woods behind the house.

She closed the door behind her and looked around. The woods were at least a half mile away from where she stood and it was definitely getting darker. She turned and could see her car in the distance, another mile across the field. If she left now and it snowed tonight, she might never be able to find where they had dumped Peggy. She made up her mind.

Slipping back into the building, Mary unlocked the garage door and slid it up noiselessly. Then she walked over to the snowmobile she had seen parked alongside the tractor. She found the key in the ignition.
Much easier than hot wiring it.

She turned the key and the machine purred to life. Pushing the snowmobile out of the garage, she hoped the noise from the condenser in the milking barn would cover the sound of the motor. She pulled the garage door closed, hopped onto the snowmobile, put it in drive and carefully followed the tractor tracks, bending over to keep her body as low as possible.

She kept the snowmobile in first gear, slowly and quietly following the tracks to a narrow road into the woods. Because this section of woods was hidden behind a ridge, the snow was still deep. The snowmobile glided easily further into the darkness. Tall thin pines planted in close rows swayed in the wind, their top branches brushing against the sky. White birch trees and majestic oaks grew in small groves, their bare branches intertwined. Tall grass, pale and brown, lay on its side creating a carpet for woodland animals. The trail twisted and turned, until it finally opened up to a manmade ravine.

Mary turned the snowmobile sharply to the left to avoid driving into the ravine. Putting it in park, but leaving it idling, she walked to the edge. A collection of old appliances, furniture, garbage and other refuse lay in the bottom of the gully. Some were covered with snow, but more recent additions lay on top. Mary followed the tractor tracks around the ravine and down a shallow incline. There, at the base of the gully, was a freshly covered hole. It was about ten feet in diameter and Mary was sure that she would find Peggy’s body beneath the dirt.

She looked up to the sky and saw the night was coming soon and the clouds on the horizon looked dark and menacing. She climbed down into the gully and carefully made her way through the junk to an old broken kitchen table. She pulled the edge of the table, tugging to free it from the refuse around it. Once free, she dragged it back and put it over the fresh dirt to protect the spot. “I’ll be back, Peggy, I promise,” she said.

She scurried back up the side of the gully, slipping on the icy ground several times, but finally made it to the top. By now it was too dark to see several feet in front of her. She felt her way to the snowmobile, flipped on the headlights and cautiously made her way out of the woods. As she exited the woods, she saw that the garage door of the larger building was open and a light was shining brightly from inside. She could see two people standing at the edge of the door. One stood next to another snowmobile.

“Crap, I should have taken the keys,” she thought.

She had no option now but to run for it. As she moved pass the shelter of the trees, she heard one of the people call out. “Hey, you, stop!”

Mary turned the snowmobile in the direction of her car and throttled up to full speed. Standing as she drove, she flew over the small drifts, sending snow careening around her. She slalomed around large drifts - not knowing if there were rocks hidden beneath the snow. The wind whipped around her and her cheeks burned with the cold, but she knew she couldn’t slow down.

She heard the sound of the other snowmobile starting up, but didn’t take the time to look back, only drove faster through the rolling hills of the pasture. She noticed there was a small gully between two hills to her right, she turned the machine and sped through the small channel, whipping back to the left behind the shelter of the hills, hoping to mislead her pursuer.