Ellen Crosby - The Riesling Retribution

“Rubbish.” He waved an arm at Tyler and kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t believe him. But go see it.”

After B.J. left, I said to Tyler, “What are you talking about?”

“All those scattered bones,” he said. “When the army finally built a proper cemetery after the war, they filled the twenty-five coffins with the body parts of fifty-four soldiers, since no one was still…intact.”

“You mean, random body parts in the same coffin?”

“Yup.” He sounded cheerful. “Except for one guy. James Allen. But based on the number of casualties, it’s a known fact that there were more soldiers out there whose remains never made it inside the cemetery. Their ghosts still haunt the place.”

“Hogwash.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I swear to God. People see lights, like candles, in the woods after dark. And tree branches shake when there’s no breeze. Some of the sheriff’s deputies who get assigned to patrol the area don’t like it because they’ve seen things, too.”

A light breeze blew up. I found myself glancing at the villa to see if there were unexplained lights shining in the windows.

Tyler followed my gaze. “I’m not making this up.”

“There’s got to be a rational explanation,” I said. “I agree with B.J.”

Though I, too, had heard stories about Mosby sightings. Folks who swore they’d seen the Gray Ghost on moonless nights returning to look for Union soldiers. Some even said he haunted our ruins, and Eli had teased me about it when I was a kid.

“Suit yourself.” Tyler grinned. “Want to visit the place at dusk? We could see who’s right.”

“Are you trying to spook me?”

“Maybe.”

He walked me over to my car, which I’d left in the lot, and I slid into the front seat.

“I wonder if the spirit of whoever was buried out by the vineyard is still wandering around,” he said. “No one knows who it is, and whoever killed him got away with it. That would be reason enough to still roam the earth, don’t you think?”

“You really are trying to spook me.”

He smiled again and got in his car. “Nah. It’s a good ghost story, though, isn’t it?”

Tyler pulled out first and I followed him down Sycamore Lane. At the split in the road, he went right and I went left. I watched his brake lights in my rearview mirror until they disappeared around a turn. The road felt odd and exposed without the sheltering branches of the old sycamore. My headlights caught stacked piles of wood moved off to one side.

Tyler was right. Whoever had lain out there in that field was an unknown soul. If he had been murdered, his killer had never been brought to justice.

I drove back to my still-dark, quiet house. That thought alone was enough to haunt me.

That night I slept in my own bed, instead of in the hammock on the veranda. The last time I remembered looking at my alarm clock was just after three. When sleep finally came, I dreamed about the cemetery at Ball’s Bluff and the grave on my land. I woke when a fox began crying in the middle of the night. It sounded like someone was strangling a baby. I sat up, seeing figures in the shadows that I could not persuade myself were imagined.

At five o’clock I quit pretending I’d sleep if I kept my eyes closed long enough, and got out of bed. The now-familiar absence of sound, like the house had stopped breathing, was a letdown. Another day without power. If we didn’t have electricity, and especially air-conditioning, restored by tomorrow, we needed to think about implementing Plan B for the weekend and our anniversary celebration.

I went downstairs and threw out the contents of my refrigerator and freezer, unplugged it, and propped the doors open. I found a box of baking soda in the pantry and put it on one of the refrigerator shelves, hoping it would absorb the sour odors of spoiled food.

The pantry search had also turned up a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts left over from the last time Eli’s daughter, my two-year-old niece, Hope, had visited. The sell-by date had passed, which wasn’t a surprise. Brandi once called my house a living mausoleum and made no bones about how much she disliked coming here. If I wanted to see Hope, the mountain went to Mohammed. But then, Brandi didn’t much care for me, either, since she knew I disapproved of her profligate ways. Mostly I saw my niece when her mother went on a shopping spree up to New York or spent the weekend in Washington with one of her girlfriends.

I brought a foil-wrapped packet of Pop-Tarts back upstairs and started my post-tornado routine for getting ready for work. Another cold sponge bath from a bottle of water followed by rooting through the laundry basket to find my least dirty pair of jeans. Too bad I hadn’t washed my clothes before the tornado, but the previous weekend at the winery had been hectic and I’d never gotten around to it. At least I still had clean T-shirts. We’d be back out in the fields today removing debris, so whatever I wore would be filthy by tonight.

Quinn called from the barrel room as I was trying to decide what to do with my hair. The last time I washed it had been Sunday, four days ago.

“I figured you’d be up,” he said.

“I couldn’t sleep. Tossed everything in my fridge. The cupboard is officially bare. I’ll be over in a few minutes. I just need to braid my hair. It’s getting disgusting.”

“You could wash it here,” he said. “There’s hot water in the barrel room.”

I picked up a strand of light brown hair that looked and felt dirty. “Maybe I will.”

“Come on over now and you can have the other half of my breakfast while it’s still hot. I picked up two fried biscuit sandwiches at the convenience store off Route 17. Egg, ham, and cheese. And an extralarge coffee.”

I was in the middle of opening the package of Pop-Tarts with my teeth. “I can’t eat your breakfast.”

“You just said the cupboard was bare. I bet you’re down to eating whatever old stuff is still in your cabinets, aren’t you?”

“Of course not.”

“Ha! Knew I was right. Come and get it before the grease congeals. The biscuits are great, but if they get cold they sit in your stomach like cannonballs.”

“Give me five minutes.”

I threw the pastry in the wastebasket and got my shampoo and a towel from the bathroom. If Quinn had any unclogged arteries before he reached his fiftieth birthday, someone should write about him in a medical journal.

He was sitting on the courtyard wall drinking coffee when I arrived. I set my cane down and joined him. The early morning sky was the color of a robin’s egg and sun-gilded wisps of clouds dotted the sky. A breeze riffed the flowers in the hanging baskets and the halved wine barrels and the air was fragrant with wild honeysuckle. From here the vineyard looked serene and pastoral. Who would guess that just out of view a bulldozer sat amid enormous piles of rotting fruit, splintered posts, and trellis wire lethal as razors?

“Gonna be nice today.” Quinn handed me a white paper bag with stains on it.

“Looks like it.” I pulled out the sandwich, which was wrapped in more stained white paper, and opened it up. “Someone took a bite already.”

“That would be me. It’s only one bite.”

“You’re still hungry.” I tried to give it back to him. “I can’t take this.”

He waved me off. “Sure you can. Trust me, I’m full. It may look small, but one of those things will keep you going all day.”

The sandwich, I had to admit, tasted terrific. “You ever find the dodine?”

“On the floor next to some barrels in one of the bays. I almost stepped on it. If I find out who did it, heads will roll. How’d your evening go with B.J. and the other guy?”