A Grave Halloween in Lost Haven Page 3

  “So Martin’s lead actress, Dina Polk, was—”

  “Wait!” Jenna pointed a finger at Cabo. “I know what you’re doing. You’re stalling. You think if we sit here jabbering long enough, it will be too late to actually go to the haunted houses.”

  Cabo cursed into his cup.

  “Busted,” Jenna said. She raised her tiny espresso mug, “To a wonderfully terrifying night.”

  “Cheers and fears,” Belma toasted.

  Lawrence lifted one of his pumpkin cookies. “I wish you all a swift and painless death. Except for Belma.”

  They finished their espressos and watched with growing horror as the sludge at the bottom of Cabo’s green smoothie slid into his mouth.

  He slapped the empty cup onto the table. “Let’s see how this one goes.”

  “Ominous,” Lawrence said.

  Jenna stood and zipped her light jacket over her sweater. As soon as they left the aura of the patio heaters the night’s chill would begin to creep in.

  She announced: “Because you tried to lure us into missing our haunted fun, Jay Cabo, we now must take a short cut.”

  “But it’s in the marina,” Cabo said. “We go down Main, take a right on Second. We’re pretty much there. I don’t see…oh, no...”

  “Oh yes.”

  Jenna pointed across Main Street at Lilac Park, where strips of yellow barrier tape rippled in the wind and the shapes of large machines loomed around the open pits of excavated grave sites.

  “We must walk upon the hallowed ground of the Sanctuary Cemetery to begin our night of nightmares.”

  Belma clapped.

  Lawrence pulled a thick hood over his head, preparing for the delightful worst.

  Cabo grimaced and jabbed a thumb toward Jenna. “Is she going to talk like this all night?”

  “All month,” Belma said.

  “Harken!” Jenna proclaimed. “The darkness hides many a terror, and—”

  Lawrence stood. “Okay sweetie, we get it. Let’s go before my espresso wears off.”

  “But I have a whole speech prepared.”

  “Good for you. That’s incredibly sad, but good for you.”

  The heavy scent of damp earth grew stronger as they stepped into Lilac Park. The excavation crew, which consisted of Dr. Angela Taft, the medical examiner from the Lost Haven Lakeshore Hospital, Bob Wedell from Wedell’s Hardware with his new ground-penetrating radar device, and any volunteer with a shovel, had left some of the stone paths open but taped off pretty much the entire northern half of the park.

  The result was an inadvertently creepy haunted trail winding among the leafless lilacs, dark ponds with a skim of mist, and the occasional gaping hole that used to contain a wooden coffin from the Sanctuary Cemetery. The holes were extremely deep, through topsoil and sand down to the original hill that used to be the cemetery, then another six feet to free the buried coffins.

  Jenna led the way past a backhoe loader that, backlit by the streetlights from First, looked like a dinosaur skeleton. Or a giant scorpion.

  “Isn’t this the best?” she said. “Look, who do you think was buried there? A Kavanaugh? A Mink? And how did they die?”

  Cabo sidled behind her and between Lawrence and Belma. “What’s this thing called again? Middle wedge? We should practice.”

  “Another one!” Jenna said, pointing to a seemingly bottomless hole on the left. The coffins were all going to the medical examiner’s office for processing, which included photographs, DNA sampling, and a full autopsy to determine age, cause of death, and, possibly, with all the other collected information, identity.

  “I have a question,” Cabo said, averting his eyes from the open grave. “I assume the teenagers around here like to sneak into this park to get frisky.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Lawrence said. “And not just teenagers.”

  Belma giggled. “We used to call it ‘Lay-back Park’.”

  That dangled in the October air like a spider web full of egg sacs until Cabo said, “Jenna?”

  “No comment.”

  “Pfft,” Lawrence scoffed. “You don’t have to worry about getting caught by the cops when you’re with the cops.”

  Jenna, who had dated Lost Haven deputy Garrett Bower for nearly ten years before catching him cheating, wondered if it was illegal to push someone into an open grave.

  Probably, but what if it’s Lawrence? Is there an exception for that? A jury of peers would certainly understand.

  Cabo said, “My question is, are you freaked out now that you know you were on top of a cemetery?”

  “Well,” Belma said, “if the park was too full of kids making out, we’d just go to the Lost Haven Cemetery and find a spot. So…no.”

  “I hope people come and get freaky on my grave,” Lawrence said. “Maybe I can get some mood music in my headstone. No! A headstone shaped like a headboard!”

  “Forget I asked,” Cabo said.

  They were near the middle of the park, approaching the statue of Marinus Mink, patriarch of the Mink family. The Minks were one of the four founding families of Sanctuary, and the statue portrayed Marinus gazing toward Lake Michigan cradling a child in his left arm and wielding an ax with his right. Jenna knew it represented how the man had help save dozens of people trapped on boats during the marina fire of 1889, but on this night the statue perfectly suited its invented legend of Marinus the Boogeyman.

  The excavation crew had apparently found a Sanctuary grave nearby—a hole had been started near the base of the statue, right in front of Marinus. It was partially filled in with mud and leaves from the recent rains, and someone had the good sense to tie the statue off to some metal stakes to keep it from tipping into the hole should the ground around it give way.

  Belma said, “I heard they might have to move the statue to get to all the graves.”

  “Oh, no,” Jenna groaned.

  Cabo asked, “Not good?”

  “The Minks. They all live in Chicago now, or Vale, or wherever else they need to go to feel important. But they still have homes here, and come back once a year to pay tribute to Marinus and make sure none of us townies forget how great they are. If we have to move the statue, even temporarily, they’ll throw a fit.”

  “So don’t tell them,” Cabo said.

  Lawrence put a hand on his shoulder. “Jay Cabo, you haven’t lived here long, but it’s been long enough to know gossip flies faster than Belma’s blind dates.”

  “Oh, they fly alright,” Belma winked.

  Lawrence gagged. “My point is, if no one tells the Minks, and they hear it unofficially, it’s a whole different kind of mess. Like if I told you, I don’t know…McTavish is out of protein powder.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” Cabo said.

  “See? You’d want to hear it from him. It just adds more drama coming from me.”

  “Listen carefully,” Cabo said. “Is the protein supply okay?”

  Jenna laughed. “I think I found the theme for my Halloween display next year.”

  The light breeze from the lakeshore swelled into a brief, strong wind, sending leaves rattling along the path and blowing the dry ones out of the shallow hole near the statue.

  Something caught Jenna’s eye—an object flapping in the wind but not being carried away by it. She glanced into the hole and thought it might be light rippling off the shallow, muddy puddle at the bottom, but she wasn’t sure. Whatever it was had been on the side of the hole, further up…there!

  The other three kept walking for a few steps, and then noticed she had stopped.

  “Going for a swim?” Cabo asked.

  Jenna didn’t answer. She got her phone out, swiped and tapped the flashlight on, and illuminated the grave.

  “Is that a tree root?”

  Cabo stepped next to her. “Maybe. It looks like landscaping cloth.”

  Whatever it was, it poked out of the packed soil directly in front of Marinus, about four feet below ground level. It looked like the dirt around it had fallen away in
the rain.

  “The crew has to be careful about gas and power lines running through here,” Belma said. “And who knows what the Sanctuary people had strung up. Remember, that used to be above ground.”

  Jenna crouched and pushed the light closer. She could see a rough texture, a slight ridge that ran horizontally with the root, or power line…but why would a root or power line flap in the wind?

  She leaned in just as another gust picked up. The buried object fluttered again, shaking bits of dry mud off.

  Jenna stood and took two large steps back.

  Lawrence took four. “What is it? Gas? Arcing electricity? I’m highly conductive.”

  “It’s cloth,” Jenna said. “I see bits of thread hanging along the ridge there, the seam. I think it’s a dress.”

  “A dress?” Cabo said.

  Jenna used her flashlight to check the dark trees and shrubbery around them.

  “Guys, I think it’s a body.”

  3

  Jenna stood with Cabo, Belma and Lawrence just outside the new yellow tape in Lilac Park. This strip had been run by Deputy Garrett Bowers, and though it was the exact same color as the exhumation crew’s construction tape, the POLICE LINE — DO NOT CROSS printed on it carried much more authority.

  To emphasize this point, Garrett stood on the other side with his arms crossed.

  “Can you tell who it is?” Belma asked him.

  Garrett’s eyebrow twitched. “By looking at a few inches of fabric? Sure. It’s the Queen of England.”

  “She’s still alive,” Jenna said.

  “Maybe.”

  “In England.”

  “So you say…”

  “What happens next?” Cabo asked.

  Garrett hooked his thumbs over his gun belt and puffed his chest a bit, a woeful attempt to level up to Cabo’s size. “Detective Olson from the state police will be here in the morning. My guess is he’ll call in the forensics crew and they’ll get to work with their little shovels and brushes.”

  Jenna said, “And there’s no chance it’s someone from Sanctuary Cemetery? A body that got shifted in the sandy soil and worked its way higher?”

  “Thanks for that nightmare,” Lawrence muttered.

  Garrett pulled out his foot-long flashlight and poked it over his shoulder, flooding the hole with intense blue-white light.

  Without turning around, he said, “You see that button?”

  “No, Garrett, I can’t see anything from here.”

  “It’s on the seam of the dress, or whatever that cloth is. You can just barely see it peeking out from the mud. It says ‘Old Navy’. I know that store’s been around a while—it even has ‘Old’ in the name—but I don’t think anyone who lived in Sanctuary got their clothes by driving to the mall.”

  He clicked the light off and re-holstered it.

  Case closed.

  “Well,” Cabo said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I think it would be pretty tacky to go enjoy ourselves getting scared by fake dead bodies when we just discovered a real one.”

  Jenna had to nod. “Well played Jay Cabo. Now we’ll look like monsters if we still want to go to Ghost Ship.”

  “I mean, if you’re comfortable disrespecting the miracle of human life…”

  “Okay, enough.” She turned to Garrett. “Will you be okay here by yourself?”

  “Of course, Jenna.” He glanced back at the open grave and the barren lilacs, their dry branches clicking in the wind like bony fingers. “And I have backup on the way.”

  “McTavish is open until midnight. I’ll ask him to send some coffee over to keep you guys warm.”

  “Great, thanks. And don’t find any more bodies on your way there, please.”

  They turned and headed back toward Main Street, leaving Garrett and his flashlight to guard the shallow grave.

  “Well, this night took an odd turn,” Lawrence said. “Now what? I’m still jazzed up on the espresso, but Jay Cabo’s right—we probably shouldn’t go have a blast at the haunted houses. Respect for the dead, and all that. Right?” He looked around at the others. “Oh, no.”

  Cabo and Belma froze, staring at the ground near their feet.

  Cabo said, “What? A hand?”

  “Is it a skull?” Belma asked. “If it is-dibs.”

  “No, look at Jenna’s face. She has that town-historian-on-a-mission look.”

  “That’s a look?” Cabo asked. He turned to Jenna. “Oh yeah. I see it now.”

  Jenna ignored them. She was still riding high on the espresso too, but something else had her buzzing with excitement:

  Another buried secret in Lost Haven.

  They reclaimed their table at the Sanctuary Café, warmed by the patio heaters and the hot cider McTavish served with cinnamon sticks and a dollop of hand-whipped cream. Cabo had another green smoothie and requested that it be heated, which made everyone else at the table scoot away a few inches.

  Word had already spread about the dead body, likely from the police dispatch center, which competed with Jenna’s shop as the town’s official gossip hub, and the café was humming.

  One of McTavish’s servers came back wide-eyed from dropping coffee off for Garrett’s team, and the other patio dwellers peppered her with questions.

  “Did you see the body?”

  “Did it have on Chicago boat clothes? You know what I mean…”

  “Is it Amelia Earhart?”

  The poor girl just shook her head. “I put the coffee down about a hundred feet away and yelled for Garrett to come get it. I didn’t even see the hole. Now I have to go wash my hands. Maybe my hair.”

  She disappeared into the café, leaving the poor folks outside bereft of rumor fuel.

  “Well Jenna,” Lawrence said, “I hope you’re happy.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “It was your idea to take the shortcut through the park. If we’d gone around, we’d be screaming, running, and trying not to get peed on by Jay Cabo. Instead we’re sitting here with delicious cider and dry clothes.”

  Cabo frowned. “Hey.”

  “Inacceptable,” Belma added.

  Jenna said, “Guys, that’s someone’s wife out there, someone’s sister, or mother. We’re going to give them closure about a missing person.”

  Lawrence said, “Um, unless that someone is the one who killed their wife, sister, or mother.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Jenna paused with her cider raised halfway, thinking. “Ah. If that’s the case, we’re going to give the poor dead body justice. There. Ha.”

  She sipped in triumph.

  “But we didn’t have to find the body,” Belma said. “The exhumation crew was already digging right next to it. They probably would have seen it in the morning. But no, we had to go traipsing through the dark and scary park on our way to making Jay Cabo pee his pants.”

  “I wasn’t going to pee my pants,” Cabo insisted.

  Lawrence said, “This isn’t about you and your bladder, Jay Cabo.”

  “Then what’s it about? Because that keeps coming up. Like, much too frequently.”

  “It’s about the look in Jenna’s eye,” Belma said. “See? It’s still there. That glitter, that spark, that guilty giddiness over some dark and sordid mystery that’s just going to upset a bunch of people and disrupt everything.”

  The three of them stared at Jenna, who sat back in her chair with a completely innocent, shocked look on her face.

  “You guys, I do not—”

  Then she spotted Garrett emerging from the park and walking toward the café.

  “Okay, you three shut up. I have information to collect.”

  The patio grew silent as Garrett approached. He stopped when he saw the dozen or so pairs of eyes on him, watching and waiting.

  “What?” he said.

  The patio exploded with more questions, the same batch thrown at the server and some newcomers:

  “It’s Amelia Earhart, isn’t it?

  “Is it my aunt Et
hel? She said she moved to Florida but we never hear from her.”

  “Did the Kavanaughs kill whoever it is?”

  Garrett swiped his hands like a conductor, cutting it all off. “I didn’t touch anything. I saw a scrap of clothing, that’s it. We’re not doing a thing until Detective Olson and the forensics team gets here. So, no more questions, and someone please bring me some of those little pumpkin cookies. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Garrett left with a white paper sack full of pumpkin cookies. The hushed speculations on the patio drifted back to mundane chatter, and eventually people began to head home.

  “Well, that’s it for me,” Belma said. “I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be extra busy. An October Sunday is crazy enough around here, but people are going to gawk at the forensics team—and my amazing Halloween window display—and those people deserve better than the pumpkin dog treats we give our law enforcement officers.”

  “Are you going to put the diabetes right in the chocolate,” Lawrence said, “or does that cost extra?”

  “It costs extra.” Belma stood and turned to Jenna. “I assume we’re doing the haunted houses tomorrow night?”

  “Of course.”

  “What?” Cabo said. “I thought we were done with all of that.”

  Lawrence shook his head. “Just for tonight. Good taste expires after about twenty-four hours, much less if Belma’s baked nonsense is involved.”

  “Unless…” Jenna said.

  “No!” Belma cried. “No ‘unless’.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Oh yes we do,” Lawrence said. “Unless that stupid dead body is wrapped in some mystery you need to stick your nose into. Even if that happens, you’ll still have a few hours to run and scream and not get peed on by Jay Cabo.”

  “That’s it,” Cabo said. “I’m not going.”

  “Hush, you’re just making it worse by denying the wet pants.”

  “I didn’t wet my pants yet!” Cabo yelled.

  The patio fell under another silence.

  Wide-eyed, Jenna whispered. “Okay, we’ll do the haunted houses no matter what. But if that body comes with buried secrets, you all have to help me uncover them.”