Judgment of the Grave (4 page)

A boy of about fifteen or sixteen, his dark hair cut into a spiky almost-Mohawk, came into the dining room, looking warily at Quinn. He had the half-grown, too-skinny body that Quinn remembered despairing about when he was that age. A neon green backpack sagged from his shoulders as though it were full of rocks. He had one pierced ear, Quinn saw. A little blue penguin rested on his pale right earlobe.

“This is Detective Quinn,” Beverly Churchill said. “My son, Marcus.” He noticed that she said “my son,” not “our son.” He made a note to himself to check that out. Might have made it easier for Churchill to leave if the kid was a stepson.

“Hi, Marcus,” Quinn said, standing up and shaking the boy’s hand.

The boy shook it unenthusiastically and didn’t say anything.

“Why don’t you go upstairs while we talk,” she said, sitting down at the table again. “You can watch TV in my room if you want.”

Marcus nodded and headed up the staircase. They both watched him go.

“You were saying…” Quinn was hoping that she would pick up whatever she had been about to say.

But she just smiled nervously and said, “My husband was very devoted to us. Even though he was obsessed with his research. No, there was nothing…like that.”

He made a note on the legal pad. “Have you looked through his things, to see if he took a lot of clothes with him?”

She blanched. “It was supposed to be a five-day trip, anyway. So, yes, he took a lot of things with him.”

“What about business-related things? Laptop, research materials?”

She thought for a moment. “He would have taken all that kind of stuff with him.”

“How about money? Have you checked your bank account? Have any unusual amounts of money come out of it in the last week? Any credit card charges?”

She looked panicked. “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know. I’ll check this afternoon. Do I just call them?”

“Yes. I can call if you want. You’ll need to authorize them to release your account information.”

“That’s all right. I’ll do it.”

Quinn thought of something. “Where was he staying out there?”

“Well, he was camping. I mean, that was the point.”

“But what about after the encampment was over? He was going to be doing research, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know. A couple of times he’d stayed at the Minuteman Inn, but I called and he wasn’t there. I don’t know where he was going to stay.” As though she’d read his mind, she said, “I have his cell phone number in case of emergencies. And, yes, I’ve been calling it, but he doesn’t pick up.”

Quinn put the legal pad down and looked steadily into her eyes. “Mrs. Churchill. Have you considered that your husband may have gone away voluntarily?” He felt like a hypocrite even as he said it. If Kenneth Churchill were a fourteen-year-old girl, no one would be asking if he went off voluntarily. And even if they were, they’d be doing everything they could to find her right now. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Kenneth Churchill wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl. And when it came right down to it, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do until some evidence of foul play showed up. He couldn’t subpoena phone records, and it was going to be hard to get the Concord cops to make much of a stink about a guy who was probably off balling a student.

Tears came into her eyes, and he found he was almost relieved to discover that she wasn’t as calm as she’d seemed at first, that she did in fact appear to miss her husband.

“Maybe he did! Maybe he did!” she choked out. “But if that’s the case, shouldn’t there be someone who can
do
something? It doesn’t seem right that he should be able to just…go off.”

He told her he’d be in touch and left her with her anger. She was right. There should have been something he could do for her but, of course, there wasn’t.

They brought Sweeney in for the third time on Monday.

“Tell us again what you were doing in the woods,” Chief Tyler said. He was the local cop, the one who had arrived on Sunday after she’d stumbled out of the woods to the road and flagged down a passing car. The second time, later that night, there had been a couple of state homicide investigators there too. She had told them them whole thing from the beginning, and Detective Lynch, a cocky young guy with copper-penny hair and a boxer’s crooked nose who now seemed to be in charge of the investigation, had seemed suspicious when she’d said she’d met Pres for the first time only that day.

“And you followed him into the woods?” he’d asked, as though she were a child molester planning to ambush him like Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf.

“He seemed weak. He had already told me that he was undergoing chemotherapy. He wouldn’t let me drive him home, but I felt funny about letting him go without making sure that he got there okay, so I thought I would just follow him, to make sure.”

“Even though he had already said he didn’t feel comfortable having you drive him?” Detective Lynch had looked at Sweeney with his small, ironic eyes and she had wanted to punch him for his insinuation.

And now, sitting in the dingy, claustrophobic room at the Concord police station on a bright, lovely Monday morning, Sweeney went through the story again of meeting Pres in the cemetery, trying not to let her exasperation creep into her voice. “He seemed very weak. He had already told me he was undergoing chemotherapy. He didn’t want me driving him home because he didn’t know me, but I thought that I could follow him and at least make sure that he got home okay.”

“All right,” Detective Lynch said as though he was giving her a pass. “So he had already found the body when you arrived.”

“Yes. I told you. He found the neighbor’s dog and then he found the body. I walked up and he was kind of standing there, looking strange, and as I walked toward him, he told me. It was like he wanted to stop me from seeing the body or something. And then he fainted. It was getting dark. So I carried him back to the road and I flagged down a car for help.” She leaned back in the hard plastic chair, trying to get comfortable. It was very warm in the room and she wished she hadn’t worn a wool sweater. For some reason, she didn’t want to take it off in front of them. She fixed her gaze on a poster on the opposite wall picturing an ice castle and a man dressed as a maple leaf. “
SEE QUEBEC
,” it read in bright red script.

“And neither of you touched the crime scene? Do you know what he did between the time he found the body and the time that you saw him?”

Sweeney hesitated. Did she know? It had all been a strange kind of dream, her impressions of what had happened infused with her confusion when she’d come upon him standing there, and the adrenaline that had run through her blood when he’d said those words: “No, don’t go there. There’s a dead man there.” But she was sure that there was a shadow of something there, a memory of walking up and seeing him first through the trees. She thought maybe she’d seen him coming out of the clubhouse. Not around the side where the body had been, but out through the door. She couldn’t be sure, though, and she had the feeling she’d had in the cemetery, that she wanted to protect Pres, wanted to do anything she could to keep him from harm.

“It wasn’t very long,” she said. “I was following pretty closely. I don’t think he would have had time to do much of anything.”

Lynch had noticed her hesitation, and she saw him study her for a minute. “Okay, Ms. St. George, can you tell us what you were doing earlier that day? Up until the time you started talking to the boy.”

“I drove out to Concord around two and then I was in the graveyard, looking at gravestones.”

“That’s right,” Lynch said, looking over at one of the other state cops. “You study ’em or something, right?” She could see what he was thinking. Some kind of freak, spending all her time in cemeteries. She probably
is
a child molester.

“Yes. I’m an art historian and I specialize in gravestones and other funerary art.”

“Funerary art,” Lynch said, pronouncing it “foo-ner-ary.” “How do ya like that? I didn’t even know they had a name for it like that.”

“Look, I’m sure you realized this too, but there isn’t any way either of us could have had anything to do with the guy’s death,” Sweeney said. “He had been dead quite awhile before we got there.”

“How do you know? I thought you said the boy found the body and you just carried him out of there and went and got help.”

“No, I said that I went over to make sure that the man really was dead before I went and got help.”

“You said you didn’t get a good look at him,” Lynch said, as though he’d caught her in a lie.

“I didn’t. His face was…all eaten away. And there wasn’t much light. So I couldn’t get a look at his face, but it was clear that he had been dead for a while.”

She was afraid he was going to ask her how she knew that, but instead he scrawled something in his notebook and looked up at her again.

“So, you didn’t know who he was? You’d never seen him before?” Chief Tyler asked in a more kindly voice. She shook her head. “But what did you think about the…uh…the costume he was wearing? It must have seemed strange to you?”

“It did at first but then I remembered that Pres told me about the reenactments and that his grandfather sometimes holds them on his land. So I think I just figured it was somehow related to that. The woods…where the body was found…is pretty close to his grandparents’ place.”

“Do you have any connection to these reenactments?” Tyler asked. “Do you ever go to them?”

“No. I’ve heard about them. I think my father once took me to one out here when I was about ten. But beyond that, no.” She raised her eyebrows and held her hands out as if to say, “Sorry. Nothing else I can do for you.”

Lynch looked annoyed. “Okay, Ms. St. George, you can go now, but we’ll probably need to speak to you again. So don’t go too far.”

When she walked out into the hallway, Sweeney stopped for a minute and blinked to be sure she wasn’t seeing things. Sitting in folding metal chairs along one wall were a trio of Colonial Minutemen completely outfitted in breeches, blue vests, and tricorner hats. They even, Sweeney noticed as she walked past them, smelled like Colonial Minutemen, or what she imagined Colonial Minutemen smelled like.

“Well, of course we had to check our firearms, Jack,” one of them was saying. “This is a police station.”

At the other end of the hallway, Pres Whiting was standing with a slight dark-haired woman who had an arm around his shoulder. He was speaking to her in low tones and she was looking down at him with a concerned expression on her face. When he caught sight of Sweeney, he broke into a broad grin and said something to the woman, who looked up and smiled.

“Hey, Pres,” Sweeney said. “How are you feeling?” She hadn’t seen him since they’d taken him away in the ambulance while she waited for the police.

“Okay,” he said, bashful suddenly, looking down at his shoes. “This is my mom.”

“Cecily Whiting,” the woman said, shaking Sweeney’s hand. “Pres told me all about you. And the police told me what you did. I wanted to thank you yesterday, but in any case, we really appreciate your concern.” She was a slim, angular woman who knew how to dress for her body type, realizing that anything more than the simplest, most beautifully tailored clothes would look garish on her boyish frame. She was wearing simple black pants and an eggplant-colored cashmere sweater that hugged her small waist and nearly flat chest. Her auburny brown hair was cut short and close to her head—the only possible hair style for her small, sharply boned face—and her eyes were Pres’s eyes, large, dark, haunted.

Sweeney smiled and said it was no problem. Ha. Take that, Lynch. Pres’s mother didn’t think following him was creepy.

“So, you study gravestones?” Cecily Whiting asked her. “Pres told you about Josiah Whiting, didn’t he?”

“Yes, the one stone I’ve seen is really interesting. I’m thinking about looking into him some more.”

There was something overly eager in her voice. “Well, let me know if you need any information. I have quite a bit on him at the museum. Just stop by sometime.”

“I’ll do that,” Sweeney said. “It was nice to meet you. Pres, I hope I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Oh, there’s Dad.” He seemed nervous all of a sudden, and Sweeney followed his gaze to the front door, where a tall dark-haired man and a much shorter young woman with curly blond hair were walking hand in hand toward them. Sweeney could feel the tension in the little hallway, and she saw Pres glance at his mother. Cecily Whiting pressed her lips together and turned away as the man hugged Pres and the blond woman reached over to rub his shoulder.

“Hi,” the man said, reaching over to shake Sweeney’s hand. “I’m Bruce Whiting.” She looked up into a rugged, sunburned face, well lined and pleasant, and remembered what Pres had said about his father having gone to Vietnam. He had to be a good fifteen years older than Cecily Whiting and another ten years older than the woman he was standing next to.

“Sweeney St. George,” Sweeney said.

“Sweeney was with Pres when he…in the woods,” Cecily Whiting said, glancing very quickly at Pres’s father and then away.

“That’s right. Thanks for taking care of him,” Bruce Whiting said, looking at Sweeney curiously. “Oh, this is my wife, Lauren.”

They shook hands, Lauren Whiting saying that it was wonderful to meet Sweeney and flashing her small, perfectly white teeth in a friendly smile. Sweeney heard a small, almost silent exclamation of annoyance slip from Cecily Whiting’s lips. Cecily turned away from them and fumbled desperately in her purse for a moment, but came up empty-handed, letting the purse fall back against her hip.

“Well, I’m going to get going,” Sweeney said. “Bye, Pres. I’ll see you soon.”

“Don’t forget to stop by the museum,” Cecily said, falsely bright.

“Right, thank you. I will.”

As Sweeney walked away, she heard Bruce Whiting say, “Why does she want to stop by the museum?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t. I just—”

“She’s interested in Josiah Whiting, if you want to know. Other people can be interested in your family members, Bruce.”

As the door closed behind her, Sweeney turned to find Pres staring after her. She heard Bruce Whiting say, “For God’s sake, Cecily…” And she shivered as she stepped out into the cold.

*   *   *

She was driving back through town when she saw the inn. She’d seen it on her way in, a large, well-kept Colonial on Lexington Road, painted a dark blue accented with shiny black shutters and trim that matched the black-and-gold sign out front reading,
THE MINUTEMAN INN. FOUNDED BY JOHN BAKER
1762.

She turned impulsively into the drive, parking her old Volkswagen Rabbit next to a gleaming Land Rover, and sat there for a minute, thinking. The police had said that she shouldn’t go far and she did have research to do in Concord. She thought of her apartment in Somerville. It had been a while since she’d cleaned it and, as she hadn’t been teaching this fall, she spent virtually all of her time in her four modest rooms. She pictured a pristine rented room, cleaned daily by someone else. It wasn’t that far out to Concord, it was true, but maybe a little vacation would be good for the soul. Besides, there wasn’t anyone counting on her. She lived alone, didn’t have any pets. Actually, she didn’t even have any live houseplants, just an aloe vera in the kitchen that appeared impossible to kill, no matter her level of neglect.

That was it, then. She would just see if they had any rooms. She got out and gave the Rabbit an affectionate pat. The lime green paint job, dull in some places and pocked with large patches of rust and a sampling of other cars’ paint jobs in others, seemed somehow sad. Sweeney had bought the car almost two years ago from the woman whose apartment she moved into when she came back from England. The woman, a psychology graduate student who had fallen suddenly in love with a Turkish physicist who lived in San Diego and was leaving town, had offered Sweeney the car for $400, an offer that had seemed too good to pass up. The car was over twenty years old, but the engine had held up fairly well and Sweeney didn’t worry much about security. No one wanted to steal it. Still, the time was approaching when she was going to have to start thinking about replacing it.

The lobby of the Minuteman Inn perfectly re-created the feel of a 1770s lodging house, the foyer and guest lounge painted a burnished orange and furnished with Colonial antiques. A glass cabinet near the reception desk held a collection of Revolutionary War–era silver, including, Sweeney noticed, a piece by Paul Revere. A wide fireplace blazed in the library, and a few guests were taking advantage of the shelves of books and games that lined the walls. The room smelled of woodsmoke and applesauce.

“Can I help you with something?” A tall man with thinning blond hair, beautiful hazel eyes, large behind thick glasses, and a prominent Adam’s apple stood behind a high desk. He was wearing, Sweeney noticed, a vaguely anachronistic ensemble, woolen trousers and a white collarless shirt. He smiled eagerly.

“Yes. I was wondering if you might have a room for about a week.”

“Let me see. This is our busy time, what with foliage, but I had a couple of cancellations, so you just may have lucked out. Let’s see, yes. How long did you say?”

“I think about a week,” Sweeney said, taking a deep breath. “But I’m not really sure. I’m doing some research here in Concord, so it kind of depends on how things go.”

“Okay, good.” He tapped away on a keyboard discreetly tucked into a drawer in the desk, and Sweeney watched his eyes move across the slim computer monitor. “Here we go.” She handed over her driver’s license and credit card and he noted them down and handed her a printed receipt and a key card. “My name’s Will Baker. I own the inn and I’d be glad to help you with anything you might need while you’re here. Breakfast is served in the dining room from seven to ten
A.M
. and dinner is served starting at five. We have a very good dining room and there’s the tavern for more casual dining. If you’d like to eat in your room, we’d be glad to bring it up to you. May I help you with your luggage?”