Grave Deeds (13 page)

I sneezed. “It's dusty. Marilyn's not much of a housekeeper.”

“Have you got your end?”

“Yep. Ready?”

We backed out pulling the box with us. It was one of those metal chests people used to use when they travelled by sea, a steamer trunk I think they're called. Its blue paint was dented and scratched but it was locked with a shiny new padlock.

“It's probably sheets and blankets,” I said. “Your mother is always saying she's going to get a trunk like this for linen storage at their cottage. It keeps the mice out.”

Will rubbed his shoulder. “It's pretty heavy for blankets.”

“I wonder if one of those keys on the mantel would fit the lock?”

“The Holmes theory? The best hiding place is no hiding place at all?”

“She'd have no reason to hide the key if it's just linens and stuff.”

“If that's what it is.”

“Wait a minute. We'll see.”

I brought back the ashtray full of keys. Some were obviously too old, long iron keys with curlicued heads and intricately notched ends. Three were too small to fit the lock. The rest, about a dozen, were assorted door and padlock keys. I tried them one by one. None worked.

“So much for that idea.” Will stood. “It sounds like the rain's letting up again. Let's go phone.”

“I want to see what's in here first. It might be something the police will want to know about.”

“You have murder on your mind.”

“Aren't you curious?”

“I am. But I also think we have enough explaining to do about breaking into the cottage, much less breaking into your
cousin's private possessions. If it's locked and the key hidden, she mustn't want anyone to see what's in there.”

“But that's just the point. What if
she's
in there?”

“Then the police are the ones who should open it.”

“And if they come all the way down here to open it and it is just pillows or something? We'll look pretty stupid.”

“Wait a minute. I think I saw a key somewhere else. Where it didn't belong.” Will left the room. I heard him open a drawer in the kitchen and the clinking of cutlery as he pawed through it. A minute later he was back, brandishing a key in his hand.

“A Chubb. This might fit.”

And it did. The lock sprang apart. I flipped open the catches at each end of the trunk but stopped before lifting it.

“Do you want to open it?”

Will pulled at his beard. “Let's do it together.”

“All right. At the count of three.”

We heaved at the lid. It stuck for a moment, then flung back. “A quilt. “Will sighed.

“It's very old.” I traced the pattern of stitches with one finger. This velvety patch might have been from a red dress my grandmother wore; this striped flannel may have been my great-grandfather's favourite shirt. I lifted it out with care. Underneath were some objects wrapped in newspaper.

“I wonder how old these papers are?” Will read the masthead. “It's last week's
Globe.”

“What's inside?”

Will tore off the paper. Inside was an ugly piece of pottery, dull red in colour. It was part of a broken bowl. “Why would she want to save this?” He unwrapped another parcel. Another broken dish.

“What else is in there?”

I put down the quilt to help with the unpacking. A shoebox yielded a horde of pointed stones.

“Arrowheads.” Will ran his thumb along the blades. “Still sharp.”

Inside a blue Birk's box, nestled in white tissue, was an intact pot, about the size of a kettle. Around its fluted rim and continuing down the curve of its bowl was a series of black lines, etched in repeating patterns of short straight strokes
which leaned one way and then the other.

“There's something inside.” The mouth was wide enough for my hand to fit in easily. I pulled out a handful of corn kernels, blackened and dried.

“This is beautiful,” Will said. He laid the pot reverently in its bed of tissue.

“What do you suppose is in here?” I shook an oblong Eaton's box. Inside, a heavy shape shifted.

“Be careful,” Will warned. “It might break.”

I peeled off the tape that held the lid closed and folded back several layers of green and red tissue. “Look at this,” I breathed. Inside was a bead necklace, its centrepiece a shell the size of my hand. On its shimmering surface, a face had been etched, one eye closed in a monstrous leer.

I laid the shell back down in its nest of tissue and picked up a purple drawstring bag. It held more beads, some made of pottery and shell, some of a reddish metal I guessed was copper. A number of rings of the same metal were strung together on a length of knotted twine.

Will had picked out a shoe box. He posed with his thumbs on the lid before flipping it open. “Ta ra,” he crowed, like a small boy on Christmas morning.

The box contained seven objects wrapped tightly in more coloured tissue paper. He unwrapped them one by one and laid them on the bed: six clay pipes whose bowls were decorated with striated lines much like the pot we'd uncovered first, and one carved out of dull green stone that had been scored with concentric bands.

“What's in this big package?” I peeled back several layers of newspapers to reveal a large object wrapped in a green garbage bag.

“Careful.” Will helped me lift it out on the bed.

It wasn't particularly heavy but its contents rattled as they shifted. The garbage bag had been slit open and taped on one long side. Will used his pocket knife to slice the tape and I peeled back the plastic to reveal a common canvas sack, stencilled with the name and logo of a cereal company. It had been loosely sewn shut with the same twine used to hold the rings. I picked the stitches apart. Inside were yellow bones. Human bones.

“They're not hers,” Will said.

“No kidding.” I stared at the skeleton, the skull sitting on top of a haphazard collection of larger bones, limbs and ribs and pelvis jumbled together. The jaw gaped in a wide, nearly toothless smile. I shivered, and closed the bag.

“This stuff belongs in a museum.” Will sat back on his heels. He picked up the bowl and turned it over and over in his hands. Red dust filtered down. “Or in a grave.”

“Do you think this is the loot from that site she excavated? She could have brought the evidence up here to hide it.”

“How? Smuggled it across the border? Why would she risk getting caught?”

“Where else could it be from?”

Will shrugged.

“We'd better put everything back before she gets here.” I tried to lace the twine through the canvas but my fingers fumbled, trembling and useless.

“Why not confront her with it right away? Get everything out in the open.”

“Because I want to give her a chance to explain herself.” I used the back of my hand to push my hair out of my eyes. “I don't care if it's not smart, or what you think I should do. I've never had a family of my own. She's in trouble, granted, but that doesn't change the fact that she's my only cousin.”

“There's Hank.”

“He doesn't count. He's too young and the relationship's too vague. I just want to meet her and talk to her. There could be some other explanation for these things being here. She's only accused of looting artifacts; she hasn't been convicted yet.”

“Yet,” Will repeated.

“The least we can do is listen to her,” I said. “Calmly and without prejudice.”

“If that's the way you want to play it … but we will have to tell the police about this.”

“On Monday, okay? There's no phone to call from here anyway.” I picked up the garbage bag, then dropped it. “I don't feel right about putting the bones back in this. It seems sacrilegious or something.”

“Here,” Hank pulled a red wool blanket out of the tangle of sheets. “Wrap it in this.”

While I folded the wool gently around the canvas bag, Will began to roll the pipes in their tissue wrappings. “What if these relics are from around here? What if the surveyors stumbled over an ancient graveyard and she's been collecting ever since, planning to use them to finance her court case?”

“Then why would she be so anxious for me to sell the property?”

“Could be there's more wherever these came from.”

“But she only came up north recently, she said. When would she have had time to dig them up? And the survey was done in the fall after she'd returned to the States.”

“If she owned the property, she could dig at her leisure.”

“There's a law about graveyards. What was it Bonnie said?”

“Why were you talking to her about graveyards?”

I sat back, thinking. “A couple of months ago she brought home some articles about aboriginal sites from the museum. I found them on the kitchen table. They were fascinating, although mostly about the States. She didn't want to talk about it, said she gets enough of that at work, but I was really interested. Appropriation of voice and all that. It's a big issue around the English Department these days.”

He put the box of pipes back into the trunk. “So what does literature have to do with bones and pottery?”

“It's a question of what belongs to whom. Some people that Bonnie works with think that repatriation of museum collections is wrong, that too much history will be lost if relics go back to reserves where people maybe don't have the resources or skills to care for them properly. And others agree with native communities who feel that their heritage has been desecrated and stolen, and they want it back. And then there are collectors who don't care one way or the other but who'll pay big bucks for genuine artifacts.”

“And what was Bonnie's opinion?”

“She said it was complicated because sometimes the sites were of people who've disappeared, been killed by war or disease so that there's no one left to claim a relationship to the find except the descendants of their enemies, native and white. That in that case, it should be finders' keepers.”

“Sounds like a license to loot to me.”

“She has a point,” I defended my friend. “Someone has to look after the past. Anyway, I don't remember all the details, but I believe bones have to be left in place or properly reburied by the native descendants. Whatever, there's a lot of paperwork involving different government departments, as well as trying to figure out which native community has jurisdiction over the find.”

“All that paperwork would tie up any development.”

“And who would want to buy a cottage on the site of a graveyard?” I shivered. “Ghosts.”

“Not exactly a place for R and R.”

We contemplated the treasures spread out on the bed.

“I'd think a find like this would be pretty rare, these days,” I said. “All these pieces are in perfect condition. They'd be worth a lot of money to a private collector.”

“How old do you think they are?” Will picked up the big shell and traced the face with one finger.

“Could be hundreds of years,” I said. I slipped my baby finger through one of the rings. It caught at the middle knuckle. “I don't know who all lived in this area, but it's been settled by whites since the mid-1800s.”

“Well, let's put it all back until your cousin gets here and can explain where it comes from.” Will rewrapped the necklace. I poured the rest of the jewellery into the drawstring bag.

Headlights flashed across the window.

“Oh no, it's her. How are we going to explain why we're looking through her trunk?”

“The truth,” Will said. A car door slammed. “You go on out and greet her. I'll clean this up a bit. She's the one with questions to answer.”

“But it's her house. We were sneaking into her things.”

“It's your house,” he corrected me. He pushed me lightly towards the door. “Go on, now. It will be better if you meet her first, before we have to get into all this.”

A flurry of knocking rattled the building. I wondered why she didn't just walk in. I closed the bedroom door on Will, and took a couple of deep breaths. “Hello, Marilyn,” I practiced in my mind. “Who's the skeleton in your closet?”

I was still smiling to myself when I opened the back door.

“Bonnie! What are you doing here?” My shout brought Will running.

Bonnie grinned at me, then bit her lip. In the short walk from the driveway to the house, the rain had plastered her hair to her head and soaked the white fisherman's knit sweater she wore so that it sagged from her shoulders almost to her knees.

“I'm glad to see you, too,” she said.

“You'd better come in.” I opened the door wider and stood back.

Bonnie ducked her head. She fiddled with a strand of hair, then flipped it behind her. She stared at me. “The kids are in the car. Can I bring them too?”

“What's going on, Bonnie?” Will loomed out of the shadows behind me.

From the dark driveway came a faint cry, “Mom? Mom? Where are you? Mom?”

“I'll explain everything. Just let me bring the kids in, okay? Megan's half-asleep and Ryan's terrified of the storm.”

We couldn't very well turn them away, not at this late hour. The presence of the Hazlitt family would make it impossible for us to question Marilyn about the artifacts when she arrived. If she arrived.

“Have you eaten?” I asked.

“Yeah, thanks.” She turned and ran through the rain back down the path.

“You'd better unroll the mattresses on the bunks,” I said to Will. “Bonnie and the kids can share the bunk beds.”

“What about us?”

I shivered. “I don't want to sleep in that room. We can camp out in the living room on the sofa bed.”

The boy came running up the path, head ducked against the rain, a school bag bouncing on his back. He clutched a brown toy bear to his chest. He hid it behind his back as soon as he saw us. “It's my sister's,” he muttered.