The Buried (The Apostles) (11 page)

“Any accomplices?” Grace asked.

The lieutenant pointed to the footprints. “Only one set. Looks like he made two trips. One dragging the coffin, the other dragging the girl. He made no attempt to cover any impressions, so he could have been in a hurry or not worried about someone finding him because this place is so far off the beaten track.”

“Or more likely, he wanted us to find the body,” Grace said. “Because this is some kind of game.” She still couldn’t get her mind wrapped around such warped thinking, even though as a prosecutor she faced insanity and evil on a daily basis. But this was different. This insanity had become grossly personal.

Lieutenant Lang pointed to the footprints. “Techs already made casts. Appear to be some type of wading boot. Size eight.”

Hatch didn’t seem interested in the muddy prints. Instead he was gazing at the cattails and water lilies near a rock outcropping. No, not gazing, studying. Grace joined him on the rock, her shoulder brushing his tense, rock-hard arm. “What is it?”

Hatch pointed to the gouge in the earth, including a single silvery shaving next to a rock protruding from the riverbank. “He drove a flat-bottomed skiff with a boxed bow, aluminum, not too big. Probably a fourteen- or sixteen-footer. What do you think?”

Hatch rarely talked of his childhood, but she knew he’d spent a year on a boat with his great aunt Piper Jane sailing around the world. She, on the other hand, knew swamp boats. “Fourteen footer tops.”

The lieutenant took out her phone and made notes. “That fits the description of hundreds of boats around here.”

Hatch hopped off the rock. Squatting, he whisked away slime and rotting leaves floating at the water’s edge. He ran his finger along the still water and brought it to his nose. “No fuel residue. So we have two scenarios. One, we’re looking at a hand-propelled craft, which given this remote location, would indicate someone nearby.”

“Or, two, this boat had an electric motor,” Grace offered.

Hatch nodded. “If that’s the case, I assume we’ll be looking at a considerably smaller pool of watercraft?”

“Definitely fewer electric motors around here,” Grace said.

“I’ll send a man to the harbor and rental boat places to poke around for fourteen footers with electric motors,” Lieutenant Lang added.

Hatch stared at the grave where the deputies were shouldering the coffin and carrying it through the tangled brush, a perverted reversal of the burial process, Grace couldn’t help but think.

“Any witnesses?” Hatch asked.

Grace had been waiting for this. Hatch was a people guy, one who talked.

“I’ve got guys going door-to-door, but no leads yet,” Lieutenant Lang said.

“What about the owner of this place?” Hatch asked. Ida Red had tracked Lia’s scent to land owned by Lou Poole, a woman who ran a small apiary. “Did she see or hear anything?”

Lieutenant Lang’s lips flattened. “No.”

“You think she was lying?”

“Not sure. She’s old and half batty.”

“But?” Hatch prompted.

“But someone who still runs an apiary and roadside honey stand has more than a few functioning brain cells. Her house is less than two hundred yards away, and her back porch hangs over the slough. It seems to me she would have seen or heard something.”

Grace pictured the bloody tracks raked across the top of Lia’s coffin and bruised flesh of the doomed woman’s hands. She replayed the girl’s screams captured on her phone. “Lia’s death wasn’t fast or quiet.”

“When I pressed Ms. Poole,” the lieutenant added, “she got agitated, and when I sent Deputy Fillingham for a separate interview, she threatened to send her bees after him.”

Grace had seen the frazzled deputy in action. He was green and clearly rattled by this gruesome death. Perhaps someone with a bit more finesse, someone who knew how to talk to people, needed to question the old beekeeper. She turned to Hatch, but he was already heading down the path toward a rickety shack two hundred yards down river.

She caught up with him. “You’re going to talk to Lou Poole.”

“No, I’m going to build a bridge.”

O
kay, Princess, tell me what you know about the crazy old bee lady.”

“She’s old and crazy,” Grace said as she walked alongside him on the path winding from Lia Grant’s grave to a wooden house perched on stilts above the brackish green water.

Despite Grace’s deadpan delivery, Hatch laughed. On some days, like today, he needed a good laugh. This morning he and Grace had learned Lia Grant’s killer purchased three phones.

What happened if Grace struck out three times? Did the killer have plans for the
loser
? He walked faster. There were so many unknowns at this point.

“I’m serious,” Grace said. “Lou Poole’s probably close to eighty years old and talks to bees.”

He had no problem with a woman who talked to bees. The question was, would the woman who talked to bees have a problem talking to him? Lia had been buried alive near the beekeeper’s home. The old woman would have to be deaf, blind, or comatose not to have noticed anything. “Have you ever met her?”

Grace nodded. “Most everyone in Cypress Bend knows Lou. The Poole family has been making tupelo honey on this land for more than a hundred years.” She motioned to the stacked bee boxes near a stand of tupelo trees. “When I was young, Momma and I would make a trip to Lou’s honey stand at least once a year.” A smile hovered on Grace’s lips.

He stopped in the middle of the path. “You have a story on your mind, one about a crazy old beekeeper.”

Grace walked past him but slowed and eventually turned. She was itching to go, to talk to the beekeeper, to make any kind of headway in the search for a killer, but his strong-willed, let’s-get-the-job-done former wife also knew the power of stories. As a prosecutor she spent her days weaving tales and creating emotions and eventually desired responses from judges and juries.

“One year Momma and I went to Lou’s roadside stand to pick out a jar of honey for Christmas for one of my school teachers. I took forever, poking through the display of mismatched jars. I’d hold a jar up to the sun and weigh it in my hand before moving on to another. I don’t remember what I was looking for, but it was a big deal to me. As usual, Momma was anxious and worried about bad people following us and swore she’d seen someone with wild, dark hair ducking between the trees on the other side of the slough and watching us. But old Lou, she patted Momma’s hand and reminded her the bees would let us know if anyone bad was lurking.

“When I finally selected my honey, Lou carefully took the jar from my hands and set it on her lap. Then she snapped a length of grass from the ground, tied a bow around the jar’s neck, and tucked a dried twig between the loops. ‘That thar’s my de-lux gift wrap for special customers,’ she’d said. I remember reverently taking the honey and thinking it was the most beautiful gift in the world.”

“Nice memory,” Hatch said. “Sounds like a nice lady.”

“Nice.” The creamy plane of Grace’s forehead wrinkled. “But different. Lou comes from old-time swamp people. She rarely travels to town, pretty much lives off the land. As far as I know, she’s the last of the Pooles.”

“No husband? No kids?”

“Not that anyone knows of.”

“Friends?”

“Just the bees.”

“Just the bees,” Hatch echoed softly.

With the story tucked in the back of his head, they continued down the path until they reached a fence made of hand-tied barbed wire and cypress sticks. A gate on the fence held a crooked black slate that read:
NO honey 2 Day—Go Away!

The hinges creaked as Grace opened the gate. The ground beneath their feet grew damp and more uneven, but Grace trudged on. Nothing could stop this woman when she set her mind to something. Hatch’s feet slowed. Like her decision to divorce him. Grace had made up her mind and
wham
, done. But in this case, Grace was using her tenacity to track down a killer. A half smile settled on his lips. And that killer better be shaking in his size eight wading boots.

Hatch followed Grace along the slough under the dappled shade of tupelo trees until they reached a raised wooden walkway hugging the water’s edge. A dozen more boxes squatted on the weathered boards, the air above peppered with bees.

A sun-dried woman hobbled along the walkway, a smoking stick in her hand. When Grace stepped onto the walkway, the old woman called over her shoulder, “No honey today!” She jabbed the smoking stick at them then waved it over a bee box.

 “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I saw the sign on the fence. We’re not here for honey. My name’s Hatch, and I’m a friend of Grace’s.”

The old woman squinted. “Little Gracie?”

“Yes, Miss Poole,” Grace said. “We’d like to talk to you about the girl they found up river.”

“We’re trying to find whoever hurt that girl,” Hatch added.

“No honey today. No honey today. Take Little Gracie and go away.” Her voice was as soft and gritty as the curls of ashy black snaking from the stick. She went from box to box, releasing waves of smoke.

Hatch leaned against the walkway post. “Something wrong with the bees?”

“Yep, they’re mad and sad.” Lou sent another wave of smoke over the bees.

“The smoke helps?” Hatch asked.

“Smoke soothes the bees. Makes them eat. A tummy full of honey calms ’em down.”

A gray haze hung over the area, and a sweet, charred odor wafted on the wind rustling through the trees. Grace angled her body toward the slough and squinted. “Water’s high this year. That’s good, right?”

Lou Poole nodded enthusiastically. “Good for the trees. Good for the bees.”

“And the bees are happy now,” Hatch said. Building bridges between people was a simple matter of joining bits and pieces of building materials, and there were so many different types of building materials: words, silence, memories, shared looks, shared friends, even if they were of the insect variety.

“They’re happy now,” Lou said with a toothless grin.

“But the bees weren’t happy before?” Hatch asked.

“Nope.” Lou’s lips smacked off toothless gums. “They was spooked.”

“Because of the girl in the ground?” Grace pressed.

“Of course not,” Lou said. She crooked her finger at them, inviting them closer. “Because of the ghost.”

Grace’s shoulder, pressed against his, slumped.

Hatch kept building the bridge, hoping to get past the crazy. “Did the ghost hurt the bees?”

“Nah, just spooked ’em.” The old woman’s eyes widened. “Ain’t every day they see someone back from the dead.”

Grace shifted, her pumps snapping a branch while he remained still.

“Nope, doesn’t happen often,” he said. “Was the ghost here with the bees?”

“’Course not. The ghost was burying the dead girl.”

Grace stopped fidgeting. “Dead girl?”

Lou jutted her dried apple chin in the direction of Lia Grant’s grave. “Yep, a dead girl floated down the river. We saw her face, still and white as a salt lick. And we saw that button pinned to her shirt,
How Can I help you?
So sad. Nothing could help that sweet-looking little girl. Me and the bees said a prayer for her.”

Hatch caught Grace’s gaze over the smoke. The old woman clearly had seen Lia Grant if she knew about the button. But the girl couldn’t have been dead, given the phone calls to Grace. Probably drugged.

“Can you tell us more about the ghost who frightened the bees?” Grace asked. “What did it look like?”

Lou scratched at the wild wisps of snowy white hair escaping a dirty bandana tied around her forehead. “Wrong, it looked wrong. After being dead so long, it should have been bones, just bones.”

“The ghost was more than bones?” A sharp buzz shot up his spine. “Was the ghost big or little, old or young, man or woman?”

“Bodies buried in the ground should rot after all those years. They give back to the earth because earth gave them life. That’s the way of the land.” Lou waved the stick in faster, longer arcs, as if hoping the smoke would bring more calm, but the stick flew from her hand and fell into the water, hissing and sputtering before finally extinguishing. She looked up from the stick and glared. “No honey today. No honey today!”

Hatch dropped his chin to his chest so the old woman couldn’t see him swallowing a curse. He’d lost her, and there was no way he’d get her back, not today. He raised his face and nodded at her. “Yes, ma’am. No honey today, but maybe tomorrow.”

Lou Poole hobbled down the walkway, muttering something to the bees. Hatch tucked one hand in his pocket and slipped the other hand around Grace’s waist as he pulled her along the path.

Grace dug in her heels and forcibly removed his hand from her waist. “That’s it?” Grace asked. “Did you not hear her? She saw Lia Grant. She saw the killer. And you’re leaving. Are you crazy?”

“The bridge collapsed. We aren’t going any further today.” He walked down the path.

“Lives are at stake here.”

He stopped and turned. “Yeah, Grace, including yours. Tell me something I don’t know.” At her booming silence he jabbed a hand toward Lou Poole’s home. “Yes, that woman saw something, and I could drag her into the sheriff’s station and grill her. Hell, I could even threaten to take away her beloved bees, but that’s going to get us nowhere.”

“It could get us one step closer to a killer. Dammit, Hatch. We need to do everything we can to prevent a second abduction, and that means pressing harder, not giving up.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong. I am not giving up. I’m simply giving an old, frightened woman the time she needs to process the fact that she witnessed a murder.” He took a step toward Grace. “Do you doubt me?”

She opened her mouth to argue, to build her case like the successful prosecuting attorney she was, but her hard face softened. “Okay,” she said.

Grace, soft? Not in this decade. “Okay, what?”

“You”—she straightened the already straight pearls at her neck—“win.”

He tucked his hand in the crook of her arm and escorted her down the path. “It’s not about winning or losing. The goal is simply to keep everyone alive. But rest assured, I’ll be back here tomorrow and the day after until I get Lou Poole’s story.” Because Grace was right; lives were at stake.

When they left the canopy of oak and sycamore, Hatch squinted at the sky and let out a curse. Dusk had slipped in on him. He checked his watch and grabbed Grace’s hand.

“You have a watch?” Grace asked with a puzzled frown. “You swore you’d never wear a watch.”

He pulled her along the path to the main road where he’d parked the SUV. “We need to go.”

“When did you start wearing a watch?”

“We’re late.”

“For what?”

He dragged her through a tangle of creeping nettles and grinned.