P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

There was more than a hint of exasperation in Spera’s voice. “I got a bunch of strange bones with no casket,” he went on, “and a bunch of rusty cans with no names . I got the cops telling me I can’t do any more digging in the cemetery because now it might be a crime scene. I got a developer calling me every day wanting to know when I’m going to be finished. I got reporters nosing around.”

He stopped just long enough to pull in a breath. “And now I got this DeFoe guy coming around.”

“Rodney DeFoe came here?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, Rodney, that was his name.” Spera shook his head. “He came by two days ago wanting to know where your friend Mr. Lawrence lived.”

“You told him?”

“Not me. I wasn’t here. But he told my son he was an old family friend of Mr. Lawrence and wanted to get in touch, so Andy looked up the address.”

Louis suppressed a sigh. Well, that explained how Rodney got to Phillip.

Spera was shaking his head. “Kind of funny, don’t you think. First the guy wants nothing to do with his sister’s remains and now he tells Andy that if we find her he’s the only one we should call.”

Louis thought about what Rodney had told Phillip yesterday: She’s not your problem. Mother and I have decided to take care of it.

Louis’s eyes swept over the tent, to the lines of cans, back to the muddy caskets stacked like cordwood. The white coffin that Phillip had bought for Claudia was still sitting alone on a table in the corner covered with plastic. The rain was whipping the flaps of the tent, bringing the swirling smell of dead earth to his nostrils.

She’s not your problem . Then why in hell did he feel like she was?

“Hey, you okay?”

Louis looked at Spera. “Yeah. I just don’t know where to go next with any of this.”

Spera pursed his lips. “Hold on.” He ducked out into the rain and pulled down the back of the truck and locked it. “Come on inside and let me get you some coffee,” he said.

Louis followed him through the rain and into the office. Spera shook out of the slicker and went into the bathroom, tossing a towel at Louis when he came back out. “Have a seat while I make a fresh pot.”

Louis rubbed his face dry with the towel and wandered over to the bulletin board where the plans and diagrams of Hidden Lake were displayed. There was a new one posted, a copy of the grave plot map that Spera had shown him out in the cemetery yesterday.

About an eighth of the cemetery plots were shaded black, the rest left blank. The black ones were all toward the back of the cemetery where the bones had been found, except for a handful scattered throughout.

“Are these black ones the graves you’ve already dug up?” Louis asked, turning to Spera.

“Yeah,” Spera said, coming out of the bathroom with a pot of water. “We started at the back so access would be easier as we went along. Except for the ones we dug up first because families asked for the remains.”

“Where is Donald Lee Becker buried?” Louis asked.

Spera turned, a bag of coffee grounds in his hand. “Why are you asking about him?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said quietly, still looking at the map.

Spera set the coffee brewing and came over to Louis. He pointed a grimy finger at a plot in the far bottom corner. “This is him. I’m not going to get to him for weeks yet at this rate.”

“You sure that’s him?”

“Sure I’m sure. I looked him up not more than an hour ago.”

“Why?”

“Some reporter was here asking me about him.”

“Was his name Delp?”

Spera went back to the coffee machine. “Yeah, you know him?”

“Unfortunately.” Louis was still looking at the black plots. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Hell no. How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, lots of sugar.”

Louis came over to the desk where Spera had set out a Garfield ceramic mug and a pile of Sweet n’ Low. Louis took a seat and stirred in the sweeteners.

“That Delp guy was asking me about you, too,” Spera said, sitting down behind the desk.

“He wanted to know what you were doing here.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That it wasn’t any of my business. I’m just the lowly grave digger. I’m just here for comic relief in this little drama.”

Louis smiled.

Spera was toying with his coffee mug. “What are you really doing here, Mr. Kincaid?”

“I’m just trying to find Claudia DeFoe,” Louis said.

“Was that her bones we came across?”

Louis shook his head slowly.

“That reporter thinks Becker is alive,” Spera said. “He thinks Becker killed the nurse they found last week.”

Louis picked up the mug and took a drink of coffee.

“I remember when Becker was here,” Spera said. “Everyone around here was talking about it, scared he’d escape. And rumor was he didn’t really die, that he really did escape and the hospital just said he died to calm the local folks down.”

Louis looked up at Spera. “Don’t tell me you believe he’s still alive.”

Spera leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “If you’d asked me that a week ago, I’d say you were crazy. But with all that’s going on, I’m almost ready to believe anything is possible in that place.”

Louis’s eyes went back to the wall map of the cemetery plots. Spera was quiet for a moment, then he disappeared into the back room and returned with two tubes of rolled paper and a set of stapled papers.

“What’s that?” Louis asked.

“A copy of the cemetery layout, a map of the hospital, and the log sheet of names of who’s in what plot.”

Louis was confused.

Spera gave a sad shake of his head. “This whole job is starting to get to me,” he said. “All I want is for it to be over with. It’s my job to put these poor souls to rest, but things have gotten so messed up, I can’t even do that.”

Louis’s gaze dropped to the papers Spera was holding out. “I don’t know how I can help you.”

“I don’t know either,” Spera said. “I got a feeling no one is going to be at rest until your lady Claudia is. So take a look at these. Maybe it will help, maybe it won’t.”

The rain had turned to sleet by the time Louis pulled out of Spera’s place, and as he turned east, he found himself stuck behind a slow-moving semi. He was only doing about thirty when he rounded the last curve out of the Irish Hills and saw the rusted Civic in the parking lot of the Sand Lake Inn.

He pulled into the muddy lot, facing the large front window. Through the swipe of the wipers, he spotted Delp’s red-tipped spike hair. He went inside.

Delp was sitting at the counter and looked over when he heard the door.

“Well, well, look what the wind blew in,” he said, then swung back on his stool to take a drink of his beer.

Louis went to the counter and stood directly over the reporter.

“Hey, you’re dripping on me, dude.”

“I’m going to do more than that if you don’t knock it off,” Louis said.

Delp leaned back, holding up his hands. “Whoa. What’d I do now?”

“You were bugging Spera, and I’m getting tired of you bugging people,” Louis said. “And if you got a question about me, you ask me.”

Delp just stared at him for a moment, then nodded toward the empty stool next to him. “Fair enough. Sit down. What you drink? I’m buying.”

Louis hesitated, glancing around. The place was one big room backed by an old-fashioned soda fountain counter and a scattering of tables covered with red-checked tablecloths. Back when U.S. 12 had been the major highway from Detroit to Chicago, the place had probably been humming with hungry travelers. It reminded Louis of roadside diners he had seen in the South, places where the cars didn’t stop anymore but the slow ebb and flow of life kept going.