Nobody Can Say It’s You: A Hadley Pell Cozy Mystery (7 page)

A
graveyard
at midnight is not exactly a warm and welcoming place. Shadows abound and sounds seem magnified in the presence of the dead. The air is filled with a sinister feeling. The darkness has a palpable, eerie quality.

Something is coming.

Something is waiting.

Something is watching.

That something may or may not be human.

It is a feeling that cannot be shaken off in a cemetery in the late hours of the night.

A small crowd had gathered in the gloom. They stood silently by the gravesite. Coy Noel and Dee Dee Noble were there. So was Florine Aurelia and Elda Mandy. All the old timers had come down from the hills to pay their last respects to Button Dudley. How did they get here, Hadley wondered, on such short notice. It wasn’t as if all these old folks were wired to the Internet or had phones. Most of these people didn’t have indoor plumbing or even electricity.

It was another of life’s inexplicable mysteries.

Granny Dilcie and one of the Elanor twins were there. Hadley didn’t know which one. Impossible to know, unless you asked her. They were all dressed in black. Solemn men in black suits. Somber women in long, flowing black dresses. Black bonnets and black hats. Black brograns and sturdy work shoes. They stood quietly with their hands folded in front of them. Waiting. Waiting.

The scene was like something out of a Shakespearian play. The night was as dark as ink. The cool winds whipped off the mountains, chilling to the bone. Each old timer held a burning torch, and the light from the end of their wooden firebrands flickered in the infinite obscurity of the sky above them. The small knot of mourners stood in a circle around the hole where Button’s coffin rested.

It was a full moon night, but the heavy cloud cover dimmed any light the moon cast down upon the gathering. The illumination from the torches danced in the gloom throwing macabre shadows on their faces.

“Lou Edna!” Hadley whispered. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I was at that festival, too! Remember?” Lou Edna said. “I saw Button Dudley drop dead at your feet. And of course, I told everybody who came into the shop every gruesome detail that I could remember. Even some I couldn’t. I just mixed up everything I saw with everything everybody else was telling me and let ’er rip, like I always do.

“I been thinkin’ about it. That must be why somebody is mad at me. Something I’ve said has rankled somebody’s feathers. You know, spreadin’ all that gossip is what I think caused someone to go to such drastic measures. It’s the only reason I can come up with. But, I’m takin’ that curse seriously, Hadley. I done what I needed to do to unhex myself.

“I peed on a brick and tossed it into the dump. Drove all the way out there yesterday. All by myself. I hate that place. Even when it’s cold, that site stinks like all get out. There was nobody out there but me ’n’ Booger Ray.

“He’s ran that dump for a coon’s age. Still looks the same. Must be something in the water out there that’s like a fountain of youth. Garbage ginger ale. Who knows? The stink’s enough to pull every wrinkle out of your skin. Like this.”

Lou Edna pulled back her skin at the temples and grimaced.

“Anyway, I wanted that brick located as far from my house as possible and in a spot where it belonged. The hex is broken. I can breathe easier. I heard that they were buryin’ Button, tonight. I just had to come ’n’ see who showed up.

“Just look!

Why, it’s a who’s who of the Ancients, Hadley. Well, except that Elanor twin. She’s the only one in the bunch who’s blood ain’t sludge and who ain’t seen 75 years old about 75 years ago! Huh! Sure ain’t many of them left though, is it?”

“I wouldn’t joke about them, Lou Edna,” said Hadley. “They’re the elders of these mountains. The knowledge of the generations past is in their keeping. Maybe the Elanor twin is their chosen one. Who knows? Or maybe, she’s just making sure Granny Dilcie gets back home okay. Boy, it’s a rough night out. Not fit for man or beast. That wind cuts right through you.”

“Yeah, it does. Glad I layered up before I stepped out of the house. Where’s the preacher?” Lou Edna asked.

“I don’t know,” said Hadley.

There wasn’t one.

Was Button an atheist? Impossible to know. He was a recluse, a bit of an outcast. He came into town once in a blue moon, but he never had much to do with anyone. He came, picked up whatever supplies he needed, and then disappeared back into the hills again.

Hadley could not remember one instance of Granny Dilcie talking about Button. Strange, she thought, for Granny seemed to know and talk about so many of her other neighbors.

It was as if Button Dudley was only a shadow in the community and not a real person. Did he love his privacy at all costs? Was too much privacy a bad thing? Had he committed some act that banished him from the elders, done something so long ago that only they would remember?

Hadley didn’t know.

Only the Ancients and Beanie, Lou Edna and Hadley, and a couple of other brave souls had come out at midnight to bury the dead old man who had come screaming down the street like demons were biting at his heels.

A car drove up. Hadley recognized it. It was a familiar sedan with a sheriff’s star on the side. Bill cut the motor and switched off the lights. He didn’t get out. He just sat in his car nearby. The orange glow from the torches’ light reflected off the side of his car. Hadley breathed easier.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was just a feeling, a very uneasy feeling, that something or someone was watching the small group from the edge of the woods.

Nerves, she thought. Just nerves. How often had she gotten up in the middle of the night and dressed for a funeral. Not once. Ever. And those torches made her wonder if they weren’t all in a dream right out of the Middle Ages. Creepy. The whole scene was surreal.Why was she standing here, with the ghouls and the spirits, freezing her patoot off?

She didn’t really know Button Dudley. He wasn’t a dear friend. More like an acquaintance. He wasn’t a relation. Not even distant.

She glanced over at Beanie.

That was why.

Beanie was standing by a large tree. His shovel was by his side. He looked like one of the Queen’s guards, minus the big fuzzy hat and the fancy red and black uniform. But he stood ramrod straight.

The shovel might have been a long gun the way Beanie held it close to his body. There wasn’t any chance of Beanie falling asleep tonight and tumbling down into the black hole he’d dug earlier in the day. His eyes were round, white orbs. Hadley could just make them out in the light cast by the torches.

Beanie was present and accounted for, but it was obvious he was scared to death.

He glanced her way. Hadley smiled and hoped she looked calm. That was the feeling she wanted to covey to her friend. She wanted him to feel like he’d be all right. All right. All right.

“Hadley,” Lou Edna said, jolting Hadley from her almost trancelike state.

Maybe it was the late hour or the flicker from the torches, but Hadley’s mind had been drifting somewhere else. Now, her senses were on high alert.

“What,” she whispered.

It felt like she journeyed through a dense fog. What had she missed? Nothing, she hoped.

“Do you think Button Dudley’s body is really in that box?” Lou Edna asked.

“What! Well, that’s something I hadn’t thought about. I don’t know,” whispered Hadley. “But Harvey’s a good man. I’m sure he put Button in the box.”

“Why was Button buried in the cemetery and not on some special place on his land?” Lou Edna asked. “I thought all the old ones still did that. I drive by some old house and there’s a headstone on display out in the front yard.”

“I don’t know, Lou Edna,” Hadley said. “What I know about Button Dudley you could fit on the head of a pin.”

It was a mystery. Why hadn’t Button Dudley been buried in the woods, on some favorite spot on his land at the top of a ridge overlooking a valley. Why had not one of this small circle of remaining Ancients insisted his body be washed by the mountain folk and planted in the family cemetery?

Had Button outlived all his family?

Probably.

There didn’t seem to be anyone here that Hadley didn’t recognize. Just the elders and the Elanor twin.

Hadley was sure Button was related to one or two of the Ancients. This area of the country had remained isolated longer than other parts. And the rumors of inbreeding were certainly true. Hadley knew from her own family history. There were instances of double-first cousins and who knew what else.

Was there no family cemetery on his land?

Unlikely, Hadley pondered.

But the younger generations might not know exactly where it was located. Some of the oldest family burial grounds were merely marked by “spar grass,” or asparagus. Some by small field stones. Perhaps, she thought, memorizing the faces present, this was the easiest way to handle the whole situation.

The way Button died was a mystery. Bill said that it would be weeks before the toxicology reports came back from Bowey Hill. The old ways were dying. Modern burial customs had taken over here just as they had everywhere else. The funeral home did, for a fee, what the family members used to handle for free.

Convenient. Quick. No muss. No fuss for the rest of us.

But still, Hadley had never attended a burying quite like this.

Had something in the way Button died cursed him?

Not that she believed in the old ways all that much. But having been born here, they were as much a part of your childhood as crackling cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. Even if she didn’t put much stock in the traditional beliefs of the Ancients, many around here still did.

Superhuman feats had been accomplished because of adrenaline and the belief that one could accomplish a task. Just look at Lou Edna. She had been terrified when she visited Hadley that morning in her kitchen.

The “toby” she’d found on her door went to the dump, too. Good thing Lou Edna had all those rubber gloves at her home. She was forever bringing a pair home in her pink uniform pocket. She’d pull the pair out of her uniform at night in her laundry room and toss the gloves into a cardboard box she kept by the washing machine.

She’d handled that conjure bag with gloves, and the brick, too.

Hadley looked at Beanie again. He seemed to have calmed a little. Perhaps both the signals of peace and calm she was sending him were working somehow. She wondered how Beanie would see to fill the grave after the service.

Not so long ago, graves and coffins and matters surrounding the death of a loved one were handled by the family members. It could be a hard task to bury a body.

The rocky soil was often frozen in the winter. It was impossible to simply take a shovel and dig a hole in the ground. Hadley remembered hearing stories when she was younger about men taking TNT and blowing holes in the frozen dirt to help the men get started on a grave.

Of course, there was always the danger that too much explosive was used, blowing not only a fair-sized hole in the ground, but also disturbing the bodies in the graves near where they were working.

Dynamite was no longer used, and modern grave diggers could rely on equipment. Beanie was able to operate the small back hoe used at Memorial Gardens to dig the holes for the coffin. Harvey had made sure that his employee was well-trained. And for some reason, Beanie had taken to the machine like it was a third arm.

But Hadley knew that her friend always liked to fill the graves by hand. To Beanie, this was a final act of respect that he performed for the deceased. Nothing like a shovel, Beanie would say. And Harvey didn’t mind. It wasn’t like there was a backlog of bodies awaiting burial.

The system seemed to work for both Harvey, who had owned and operated Memorial Gardens for over 40 years, and Beanie. Beanie did all the summertime mowing and caretaking that the cemetery needed. Harvey handled the bookwork end and was the mortician, too.

One of the old one’s coughed. It brought Hadley back. Why was her mind drifting so? Must be the magic of the hour. More like the lateness of it. Hadley was usually in bed and snoring by ten.

Dilcie Pickle stepped forward.

“We come hyar to pay our respects to you ’n’ yer mem’ry, Button Angus Dudley. You lived a long, long life on these mountains. Like the leaves we spring out, green up, and now it’s your turn to drop back to the ground.

“Like ever’thin’ else in this old world, we pine fer yer awhile, then we’ll fergit. ’N’ soon, we’ll teke our places ’long side ya somewheres on this ridge where we too may be mourned fer a season, then forgotten.

“Ash ta’ ash ‘n dust ta’ dust. Rest in peace, Button Dudley. Rest in peace,” Granny Dilcie said.

Each member of the Ancients sprinkled a small handful of dust atop Button Dudley’ coffin, a pine box tapered to fit his body.

Hadley heard the hollow sounds as the clods hit the top of the pine box.

Is he in there? She wondered.

Silly thoughts. Of course he was. She’d seen him when he dropped dead at her feet at the festival.

Hadley soon had her answer as to how Beanie was going to see to fill Button’s grave. The Ancients took a few steps back from around the site, enlarging their circle. Granny Dilcie nodded her head in Beanie’s direction. Solemnly, Beanie took his place beside the pile of dirt and began to fill the hole. He worked quickly, one shovel full at a time.

When it was over, Granny Dilcie pulled a small bottle from her coat. Dilcie’s chant echoed over the lonesome cemetery. Hadley was sure the Ancients understood every word that Dilcie said. It was a foreign tongue, an aged language that only the wise ones could decipher. Granny poured the bottle’s contents over the fresh dirt. The service was over.

As if they’d been instructed aloud, the Ancients, along with the Elanor twin, turned silently in unison and walked toward an old pickup. It was a very old truck and looked like it had rolled right out the Great Depression.

The tailgate was dropped and a crate was placed on the ground for Granny Dilcie to step up on. She was assisted to her place in the back of the truck. She whispered something to the Elanor twin, who immediately descended from the bed of the truck and walked over to Hadley.