Writ on Water (5 page)

“No way,” Chloe muttered. “That is all just
bull
. All you need is about fifty years of psychotherapy to sort out your family problems.”

These words failed to convince her, though finding a therapist was probably a good idea. Chloe was haunted by her past life, whose ghosts refused to fade away. She had few clear memories of her mother and grandmother together, but those that stayed with her were not pleasant and overshadowed a lot of her life. It was amazing how little time it took to damage a child. The first and maybe worst of their encounters had happened around her fourth birthday. Her mother had taken Chloe to visit her grandmother for the first time then; and it had caused the first and only fight her mother and father had ever had in her presence.

No one had promised Chloe a cake and presents, but a part of her had half expected that there would be one or the other waiting for her at her mysterious granny's house. After all, she watched TV and had friends with grandmas: It was obligatory, that's what grannies did.

The ride into the backwoods had been a long one, and no cake or gifts were in evidence when they arrived, not even a pink envelope that might hold a card. But Chloe hadn't fussed. In fact, Chloe had enjoyed herself, in spite of her initial disappointment about not having a second birthday party. Granny Claire lived in an old cabin with a sod roof where birds foraged for lunch and a dirt floor which would have been great for making mud pies—something she never got to do indoors at home. Of course, one didn't just blurt out such a
request, and Chloe thought that if she was good all the way until lunchtime, perhaps she could bring the idea up then especially since her grandmother had forgotten her birthday and would probably be feeling bad when this was pointed out.

However, it didn't take long for Chloe to sense that all was not well between her mother and Granny Claire, and that the chance of mud pies in the kitchen was becoming rapidly more distant. There hadn't even been time for the tea kettle to boil on the fire's grate before her mother was beside her, leaning down and asking her if she was ready to go.

“Is Mommy's angel ready for another ride?”

Chloe wasn't ready, but she knew how to answer.

“Angel?” Granny Claire had loomed over both of them, not bothering to bend down to Chloe's eye level. “I have never seen a child so lacking in curiosity. I left all these things out for her but all she's done is stare at the floor. She must be feeble-minded.”

“She's four, not feeble-minded.”

Chloe wasn't sure what feeble-minded was, but it couldn't be a good thing, because it made her mother's mouth get tight. It had been an unfair accusation as well, she'd realized later when she asked her father about it. Chloe had noticed the many weird things her grandmother had left strewn on the room's one round table, but her mother had warned her not to touch anything of her grandmother's and so she had been
a good girl
.
And anyway, Gran's collection of the arcane had been pretty gross—bones and a crow's wing and some scary tarot cards laid out in the pattern of a cross. Mud pies and the big spider cleaning up its web in the corner were way more interesting.

“And I see that you left that stuff out—in spite of my asking you to put it away. You know how Aaron feels about this! And Chloe didn't touch any of it because I told her not to. And now we're leaving,” Chloe's mom had said, her voice flat and for once unhappy.

Chloe shot the old lady a so-there look. This would teach her to forget her granddaughter's birthday. But Gran's eyes got narrow and hard.

“Look at her! I think you brought the wrong child home from the hospital. I don't know why you had to have a baby in the city anyway.” The words were aimed at her mother, but the old lady's gaze never wavered from Chloe's face.

Chloe dropped her eyes, frightened by this old woman who suddenly looked about twenty feet tall and as unfriendly as any fairy-tale giant. Sensing that her daughter was paralyzed by the criticism she didn't understand, Chloe's mother had taken her daughter's hand and tugged her toward the door.

“Goodbye, Mother. We'll try this again after the millennium.” She'd added under her breath, “Don't mind the venomous asp, sweetie. They can't help being the way they are.”

“Go, then! I should wash my hands of both of
you!” Gran had shouted before slamming the cabin door behind them.

But of course she hadn't washed her hands of them. Feeble-minded or not, Chloe was her only grandchild, and Chloe's mother hadn't been unkind enough to order her grandmother away forever, not when the old lady had claimed to be ill and contrite. They had tried meeting annually until Chloe's mother died, without any real success at forging a loving relationship. After that, the family meetings stopped.

It was too late, though; the venomous asp had injected enough poison to affect Chloe's mind, and her father's distant rationalism hadn't been enough of an antidote. And now it seemed like the old woman was really sick. Her last letter had been written in a hand so shaky that Chloe had barely been able to make it out.

Trying to distract herself from thoughts of her grandmother, Chloe turned on the radio and reviewed once more what she knew about her client and destination. Reading between the lines, she gathered that Riverview was owned and lorded over by one MacGregor Patrick, an unrepentent sexist who was “maybe one day younger than dirt and just as ugly,”—this according to her boss, who was himself a slightly sexist sexagenarian and homely as a Mississippi mudhen.

Neither her boss's friendship with the man nor the plantation would have been of professional interest to Chloe except for the fact that MacGregor
Patrick was also the proud owner of one very strange cemetery, which he wanted inventoried—immediately—and added to the statewide database of funerary monuments that was being compiled by law enforcement in Virginia. The state's cemetery files would eventually be added to the secure databases in other states to make up a nationwide catalog of pre-twentieth-century funerary monuments.

This was the part of the assignment that had Chloe shaking her head. Many genealogists wanted pictures of family headstones and monuments, and she had done several shoots for various genealogical organizations that were putting their information onto Web sites—she had even been sent to Europe for six weeks by a wealthy consortium that marketed photos of the graves of famous musicians and poets. But it wasn't genealogists or taphophiles that were making work for her now and causing headaches for law enforcement; it was interior decorators. The latest fashion trend was for something called “funerary chic,” and interior designers were getting thousands of dollars—yen, pounds and deutsch marks too—for bits of American antique wrought-iron fence, statues and urns. Modern copies apparently just wouldn't do. The true trendsetters had to possess the authentic grave goods. They had been in
People
magazine and on CNN.

Naturally, tomb-robbing entrepreneurs were happy to fill this market niche of authentic—and
stolen—grave goods. In spite of the five-hundred-dollar punitive fee a and year's jail time that went with a conviction for grave robbing, the thieves had grown so blatant that they were denuding old cemeteries of everything except their shrubberies—and that would doubtless follow as the fashion spread into the world of funerary horticulture, which was growing now that these criminals had moved out of New Orleans's stone cemeteries and into the lush countrysides of states like Virginia.

More distressing than the thefts themselves had been several incidents of contact between thieves and grieving relatives. So far, no one had died or even been too badly hurt, but police figured that it was only a matter of time before there was a confrontation between a greedy tomb-robber and some outraged guard who was intent on defending Granny's headstone at any and all costs.

Savannah and New Orleans had been especially hard hit by these robbers, but there had been problems in Williamsburg and as far north as Boston, and all the way out in California. The cops were doing their best to intercept and retrieve these unusual stolen goods, and were having some success, but they were soon stuck with warehouses full of unidentifiable tombstones and monuments, and left with no way to return the confiscated boodle to the rightful owners.

That was why, in an effort to aid future efforts at property restoration, various cities' famous, historic
cemeteries were being photographed and added to a government database. But time and money for the project were both in short supply, so concerned owners of private cemeteries were left to take care of their own graveyards. To do that, they hired firms like Digital Memories, who specialized in such pictorial databases.

At least, Digital Memories had done pictorial monument databases for genealogists and Civil War historians. This living and working for a private person in his own home—and a reputedly eccentric home at that—was new territory. Usually they worked for small companies or nonprofits who could not afford to invest in expensive equipment. But as the plum jobs were already taken by the company's old-timers, and D.M. wasn't presently larded with job opportunities for their newest hire—in fact, it had been this gig in a private cemetery in Virginia for Chloe or a university-funded plant spore study in the pest-infested Everglades—she had bowed before the force of nature that was Roland Lachaise and accepted the job. She figured that old bones and thieves were better than live alligators and malaria, and the weather might be marginally superior at the more northern latitude—something to think seriously about, given that it was near hurricane season.

Besides, the Virginia job had come with access to the latest in the company's digital cameras, with wide-angle lenses and other toys. And she would only be an hour's ride from a metropolis
where they would have Slurpees, fast food, and even foreign films, if such an urge for culture should overtake her.

Chloe wiped the sweat from her brow and checked her mirror to be sure that her lipstick wasn't running. She would have to get her air-conditioning fixed before the late summer heat arrived! The high temperatures and humidity were bad for the PC and her darling cameras, and it didn't do much for her complexion either. She grimaced and looked away from her image.

It was heresy to admit it, but most of what she did in her job was not that hard. The equipment was expensive, but anyone with a computer, the ability to learn a few image manipulation programs, and a reasonable ability with a camera could handle the job, if one was only after technical competence, not art. But she had discovered along the way that many people had a dislike of the technology that could help them, and the timid were willing to pay fairly big bucks to stay away from something that frightened them. This left the way clear for her, allowing her the scope to practice her art and still earn a decent wage.

And, she reminded herself, her work was top drawer. She knew her funerary history, and the people she had worked for in the past were beginning to request her for repeat jobs. It was strange, but she was the top dog in the cemetery photography biz. Roland Lachaise had even admitted that
she was the biggest fish in this small but growing pond, and had given her a raise! Sure; it was a small one, but it was still a raise, which was something very rare at Digital Memories.

The great stone gates to Riverview Plantation eventually crawled into view. A sleepy Chloe gave her fellow travelers a toot on the horn and a last wave before turning off onto the gravel road.

And, she fell down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Her first inkling that she had entered a new world was the drawbridge suspended over a sluggish brown moat. In point of fact, it was merely a suspension bridge, but with its rusty chains strung from a buttress that looked a great deal like a giant cargo container of the type used on ocean liners—though, being overrun with honeysuckle vines, it was difficult to tell just what was lurking down below the emerald runners—the resemblance to an abandoned drawbridge was fairly strong. There were even thick wooden planks unevenly laid along the course, and evidence of horses scattered about.

Chloe braked before venturing out onto the swaying structure with her car. The automobile was expendable, but the cameras were not. Like the warriors of old, she knew that she had to return with her shield or on it—either was probably fine with Roland, so long as he got his cameras back unharmed.

Sighing, Chloe hung her head out the window and squinted into the sun-reflecting water. The
bridge looked solid enough to her untrained eye, but she had never fancied herself as Alan Quarter-main or Evel Knievel. However, it was clearly the only path to the house, and she could see traces of dusty tire tracks on the graying planks, so she knew that other vehicles had traversed the bridge and survived to tell the tale.

Unfortunately, it looked like she could carry on after all.

She proceeded cautiously onto the causeway and was rewarded with a smooth ride and a safe conveyance the other side of the turgid stream, though the feeling that she had left the twentieth century behind on the paved highway remained strong.

The drive to the house after the bridge was an increasingly odd one. The road was long and narrow, and lined with a plethora of plaster, blue-shirted, green-hatted gnomes that were only inches from a hit-and-run accident with the sides of her car. The driveway looked like the entrance to a cut-rate theme park, or one of those roadside attractions like the two-headed mummy or the world's biggest ball of yarn, and she thought at first that it was some sort of a landscaping joke pulled by the local hoodlums. But after passing fifty or so of the squat gnomes, she concluded that this was too expensive to be a prank. Some garden statue aficionado had actually bought out the garden centers for the entire state and used his haul as curbstones for the drive.

Chloe stopped counting gnomes and started
watching her odometer. The colorful plaster chorus line went on uninterrupted for a half mile. Eventually the formal gardens came into view, and she slowed to a halt so that she could take a long look beyond the gnomes at the peculiar mulch that had been laid under the ancient azaleas and hydrangeas. The color was an unattractive liver brown and sported a waffle pattern that was visible even in the crepuscular light that had filtered under the giant shrubs.