Picked to Die (An Orchard Mystery) (7 page)

As if there hadn’t been enough people crowded around before—between the excavation crew, the construction crew that had planned to shore up the building, and onlookers Seth, Meg, Gail, Art, and Jeffrey—now the state police had joined the fray, soon followed by the medical examiner’s van. When the ME, Dr. Elijah Bartlett, parked and climbed out, Gail set off at a brisk trot to intercept him before Detective Marcus could get there. She snagged Bartlett in conversation even as he tried to walk toward the group. When they were a few yards away, Meg could hear Gail pleading, “. . . and if you could just wait a little longer before you disturb the body . . .” Gail looked up to find Marcus blocking her path.

“Ms. Selden, let the man do his job, will you?”

“But he could be destroying valuable historic evidence!” Gail protested.

“I strongly suspect that he will concur with your preliminary assessment that the body has been in the ground for a very long time, and therefore how it got there is not a concern of ours. Although the ultimate disposal of the remains might be.”

“Oh,” Gail replied, losing steam. “Okay. I can live with that. But my anthropologist friend is on her way over from Amherst now. Can you wait a few minutes? Please?”

Detective Marcus looked reluctant but did not protest. Meg wondered if he had nothing more pressing to do and simply couldn’t bring himself to make up an excuse. It was, in fact, only around five minutes before yet another car pulled up and a slender woman about Meg’s age climbed out. If this was the expert from UMass, she must have broken a lot of speed regulations to arrive so quickly. Meg wondered if the woman hoped that there were more skeletons waiting to be uncovered.

Gail hurried over to greet, and no doubt warn, her friend about where she might find herself in the pecking order for access to the bones. But the newcomer was smiling as she approached the detective. “Well, if it isn’t Bill Marcus!” she said. “I haven’t seen you for a couple of years. Most of your recent cases have been far too young for me to worry about.”

He smiled reluctantly. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to entertain you lately, Miranda. But it appears there are others to do that for me.”

Miranda turned to the rest of the small group. “Hi, I’m Miranda Melvin. What’ve we got here? Gail didn’t have time to give me all the details—just told me to get my butt over here ASAP. Who are all of you?” She beamed at everyone, and Gail hurriedly made introductions, ending with Jeffrey. “And this is the young man who first spotted the skull. Maybe you should include him on your next dig. He has a sharp eye!”

Miranda looked him over. “You must, young man, if you can pick human remains out of a mass of flying dirt.”

“I guess,” Jeffrey said. “Can I talk with you, whenever we’re done here? See, I’m working on a Boy Scout merit badge and—”

Miranda laughed, but not unkindly. “One step at a time—Jeffrey, is it? Let’s figure out who our mystery guest is, and then we can make a plan. Well, well, Elijah,” she said, turning to the ME, “where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

The medical examiner responded, “Down among the dead men, of course, Miranda. I’m glad you’re here. We should have fun looking at this one.”

“Then let’s get started,” Miranda said quickly. “Okay, what’ve we got? Most of one skull, in pieces, check. I see a few teeth, too, but no major bones—yet. Sucked out from under that building over there? What is this, a vacuum excavation system? I haven’t seen one in action before. Of course, it would wreak havoc on any scientific dig, but you weren’t expecting to find anything here, now, were you, Gail?”

Gail shook her head. “Nope. Just dirt. This was a complete surprise.”

“Surprises are what make life fun. So, young Jeffrey, did you see any other bits of bone?”

“I don’t think so, but we shut things down quick, and we found a few bits and pieces since. But we haven’t gone near the building.” That last statement was accompanied by a look at Detective Marcus.

“Is it safe to crawl under there? Is the building stabilized?” Miranda asked no one in particular.

“We’d barely started,” Seth told her. “But if you want to check with the excavation crew, they’re all right over there.” He pointed.

“Mind if I join you?” Detective Marcus drawled.

Miranda swatted his arm. “Now, Bill, you know this is your show. I’m just here to make sure you don’t break anything. You other good people mind staying back here for a bit? Because it looks pretty crowded already. Thanks!” Without waiting for a response, Miranda set off at a brisk clip toward the Historical Society building, and Marcus and the ME had to hurry to keep up.

“She’s a bundle of energy, isn’t she?” Meg said to Gail. “How did you happen to meet her?”

“She teaches at the university, and I attended a lecture she gave on Indian burial grounds a couple of years ago. Not too many of those in Granford, but you never know. Anyway, we got talking, and now we’re friends, more or less. She’s pretty well known in her field, I gather. We’re lucky that she was in the country at all—she’s just back from a sabbatical—but I guess she had classes starting up.”

Seth wasn’t about to leave, since he had a responsibility to the construction crew. Meg didn’t have that excuse, but she was certainly curious. She looked at her watch and felt a pang of guilt, and decided to call Bree.

“Where are you?” Bree demanded, and she didn’t sound happy.

“I came over to the center of town to watch a little of the excavation under the Historical Society, but we ran into a bit of a snag.”

“What excavation? Oh, right, that thing Seth got dragged into. What kind of snag are you talking about?”

Meg sighed. “There was a body buried under the building.”

Bree greeted that with a long moment of silence—and then she burst out laughing. “Well, of course there is! What was I thinking? If you and Seth are there, there must be a body. Anybody we know?”

“No, thank goodness. It appears to be a few centuries old, and we’re pretty sure it’s been there since before the building went up. All we’ve seen is parts of the skull so far, but the experts are on the scene. Did you know the Historical Society building used to be a church?”

Bree was still laughing. “Aw, heck, digging up bodies is a lot more interesting than picking apples any day. We’ll manage without you okay, so long as you can make up for it tomorrow.”

“Will do. Thanks. Are we all good with the pickers for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah, they’re coming. I guess I’ll do the food shopping for everyone.”

“Thank you. I’ll pay you back. I told you we can keep it simple. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Would it be wrong to offer beer? I want them to relax.”

“They’d probably appreciate it, I guess. Well, you go back to your bones and I’ll head over to the supermarket. See you in a bit!”

Meg hung up to find Seth watching with a smile. “What?”

“Just noticing how you always need to get Bree’s permission to stay. I know, don’t bite my head off. She’s on top of things, and she’s doing a great job.”

“I just wanted to let her know what was going on—and be sure she knew I wasn’t just slacking off,” Meg defended herself. “Anyway, I think I forgot to tell you that we’re planning to have a cookout with the pickers tonight.”

“What’s that about?” Seth asked.

“Well, I’m working with these guys for a second season now, and I realized I don’t really know much about them—as people, I mean. We’re kind of between ripening of a couple of varieties, so I figured this might be a good time. And, um . . . do you mind not coming? Because I want this to be just about me and Bree and the crew.”

“Not a problem—I’ll have dinner with my mother. But see you after?”

“Of course.” Meg changed the subject. “Anything new here?”

“The ME and Gail’s friend have crawled under the building, or as much as we managed to clear out, hence the feet sticking out. They’ve been there a few minutes now. Marcus is pacing and fuming, but I’m not going to ask him how things are going. Gail is having kittens trying to keep everyone happy and take pictures. Just another normal day in Granford.”

“Your crew got a lot cleared in a short time.”

“It’s a fast process—that’s one reason why we went for it. The soil is sandy and not too compacted, so it shifted easily. The body was at least a couple of feet under.”

“What about Jeffrey?” Meg nodded toward where he stood next to Gail, watching the people under the building.

“Jeffrey seems to be having the time of his life. If you’re going to find a body, this is the best kind, I guess—it’s clean and dry, and it’s nobody you know.”

“Speaking of our mystery guest, what do you think happened back then, that this poor soul ended up buried under there? You think anybody missed this person, or wondered where he—or she—went?”

“It’s a little hard to say without some more information,” Seth pointed out. “Maybe Jeffrey can fill in some of the blanks, if he goes forward with the research. He’s a bright kid.”

Finally, the ME wiggled his way backward from under the building, followed by Miranda. They both stood up and brushed damp soil off their clothes, then Elijah Bartlett gestured to the others, gathering them in.

“I don’t want to repeat myself, so listen up, everyone. The skeleton appears to be that of an adult male. Looks like it’s possible that the rest of him is still there under the building. It’s hard to determine the cause of death, but I might—repeat, might—be able to tell you more once I get him to autopsy. But let me warn you, I have several autopsies in the queue ahead of this one, and in those cases there are grieving relatives, so they take precedence. But for your purposes, I believe I can say that he was buried where he was found, and his remains were not disturbed when the building was erected over him, so if you know that date, then you at least know how long ago he died.”

“So no criminal investigation is necessary,” Detective Marcus said. The ME shook his head.

Miranda was quick to speak up. “Since there’s no evidence of a crime here, I can do the autopsy and report back to you. If you don’t mind? And if you release the scene, Bill, I can go over it and see if there are any other artifacts that might be useful or interesting.”

“Knock yourself out, Miranda,” Detective Marcus said. “I hereby declare that the state police see no reason to investigate this site.”

“Thanks, Bill. Hey, young Jeffrey—you want to be my assistant?”

Jeffrey’s eyes lit up. “Sure, yeah, cool! I’ll ask my mom.”

“Tell her it will be a good educational experience and will look great on your college applications.”

“Awesome, that’ll help. When and where?”

“Here, and the sooner the better,” Miranda said. “I assume these good people here want to move on with their construction. Tomorrow morning, say, eight o’clock?”

“I’ll be here.”

“And wear grubby clothes, because I expect you to do a lot of the crawling and digging. I’ll bring some of my students along, as well. It’s good fieldwork for them. Gail, thanks for inviting me to the party. I’ve got to run. Will I see you in the morning, too?”

“Of course. I’m as curious as anyone about this. The poor man—I know I’d like to know who he was and why he was there. Meg, you taking off now?”

“I’d better; I’ve got plans for this evening. But I’ll stop by tomorrow sometime, if Bree will let me. Nice to meet you, Miranda, and happy hunting.”

Seth said, “I’m going to check the timetable, and I guess I can let these guys go home for the day, since Marcus doesn’t need to talk with them. And then I’ve got to do everything else I was supposed to be doing today. Like I said, I’ll go see my mom for dinner. I don’t know when I’ll get home.”

“Do what you have to do. I’m going back to the orchard.”

“See you later,” Seth said, then he and Gail walked over toward the building.

Meg wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed that her role in this investigation seemed to be ending so soon. It was good that the preliminary review of the body and the site had been carried out so quickly, and that Detective Marcus was on his way back to Northampton, after releasing the site. But Meg realized that, like Gail, she wanted to know who the bones they’d found belonged to, and why he was there.

Meg sincerely hoped that Jeffrey would find out something in his research. Assuming there was anything to be found. She knew from personal experience that eighteenth-century documents were hard to come by. Unsettling and unresolved, the whole mess.

She returned home in a somber mood; thoughts of death—and, worse than death, being forgotten by everyone—weren’t exactly uplifting. She enjoyed visiting her ancestors in the nearby West Cemetery, but she viewed that more as a remembrance of them rather than mourning for them. She had never known them, nor would she, except by their works: she could run her hands over the boards and carvings that a couple of Eli Warrens, father and son, had made well over a century earlier, planed on a sawmill in the backyard, from trees cut from the family woodlot. Their work lived on in her house, and in so many other homes in Granford.

Instead of going straight inside when she arrived home, Meg walked over to the enclosed field where her two goats were grazing.