Mary Brady - Better Than Gold

“Hey, Charlie, you really know how to find ’em,” Rufus said, slapping his impossibly thin thighs, sending up a puff of dust.

“You gonna run away like you did when you found that rat?” Stella teased the big man.

“Wait, let me get your skirt and frilly apron,” Rufus tossed out.

“You can’t make me be a wench,” Charlie almost squeaked out.

“Charlie, nobody’s going to make you dress up like a wench for the restaurant opening. And hush, you guys. Leave him alone.” Mia wanted to glare at the pair of hecklers, but all she could do was stare at the skull, a bit horrified herself.

Slowly Mia closed the distance between her and the column of stone and crouched for a better view.

Rufus, named well because of all his red hair, hunkered down beside her. “Hey, boss, not much of a treasure, heh?”

“There’s a body in the wall of my new restaurant.”

“Seems appropriate for a place that’s gonna be called Pirate’s Roost. Nice and creepy,” Stella added.

Creepy was right. Mia shrugged off the feeling.

“You suppose anyone wondered where he went when he didn’t come home?” Rufus asked with a chuckle that sounded more like bravado than anything else.

“Come on. Somebody died. Let’s have a little respect.” Mia knew this skeleton was going to cause her all sorts of trouble with the remodeling, more delays, more cost, but it was a person, after all.

“Died a hundred years ago if you ask me,” Rufus muttered, straightening and stepping away. “Wall’s probably been here that long.”

The building had been part of the frenzied construction that went on during Maine’s early statehood and incomplete records had the building as a hotel. The only available plans for the building did not show this wall or the closets.

Mia looked from Rufus to Stella. “You two take Charlie and get out of here for a while.”

“With pay?”

“We’ll see.”

“Good enough.” Stella nodded back.

“We’re gone,” Rufus added, tugging Charlie away with Stella’s help.

Murder? Mayhem? Death?

The skull looked old. Old bones were good, weren’t they? She rubbed her plaster-coated hands on her dusty jeans.

“Rufus,” she yelled after the fading voices of her workers, “call Chief Montcalm.” The chief of police in Bailey’s Cove for the last five years was a hands-on kind of guy, a real good law officer, and he’d want to know about this.

“Ah-yuh, boss” came the distant reply.

She stared into the hole.

Are you just a skull or a whole skeleton? If this was just a skull, maybe the column of rock was a sacred place, some beloved relative’s shrine. Please don’t let it be some murdered guy. She didn’t have time for intrigue. She had a restaurant to open before the tourists began to head north; hungry tourists.

Inching closer, she leaned down again. Darkness filled the recess and made it impossible to tell if there was more than just the skull, and her flashlight didn’t help much.

If she could just get a better look...

She tugged a small chunk of loosened rock away with the tip of one finger. A prickle up the back of her neck made her look over her shoulder, sure the chief would be standing there, fists on his hips. When she saw she was still alone, she extracted another of the pieces Charlie’s hammer knocked loose.

Through the enlarged hole, she could see there were other bones in the confines of the stone-and-mortar coffin, more of the skeleton. The column was a crypt.

Carefully, she placed the chunk on the floor and straightened. “Sorry, buddy, whoever you are. I’m sorry you’re in a wall. I hope it’s just some kind of weird burial and that nothing evil happened to you.”

Keep it simple. No muss. No fuss. Get the bones out. Get the demo finished. Get Pirate’s Roost open and ready for the tourist flood in a few weeks—six and a half, if she had her way, the first week in June. If that happened, she’d keep her shirt and her house, too.

And maybe the town of Bailey’s Cove could capture a few of those tourist dollars to help plump up the coffers of the failing small town, population fourteen thousand and shrinking.

She jumped as her phone began to chime from her pocket.

“Hello, Monique. How’s your day going?”

Her best friend since, well, practically birth, half of M&M, sighed big before she answered.

“Mrs. Carmody just left the shop.” Monique huffed. “She wants to sue us because we can’t get the stains out of her fake Persian rug. How about yours?”

“Nothing special. I have a skeleton.”

“Don’t we all. I told her she should keep the cat out of that room or at least change its food.” Monique continued her thread about one of the dry-cleaning business’s customers.

Mia chuckled. “Mrs. Carmody’s lonely. Maybe she feeds the cat that food so she can haul her rug back in to you. She likes you.”

“She could spill chocolate on one of her wool blazers or something.” Monique paused and then let out a small shriek.

Mia laughed.

“What do you mean you have a skeleton? Of course you have a skeleton, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”

“Turns out there’s a column of granite in that dividing wall in my future dining room.”

“And?”

“And Charlie knocked a hole in the column.”

“And he found a skeleton? A people skeleton?” Monique gasped exaggeratedly. “Who is it? How’d it get there?”

“I don’t know any of that but it looks old. The granite’s a crypt, a tomb, I guess.”

“A tomb?” Monique swallowed loud enough for Mia to hear.

“Weird, huh?” Mia ambled out into the storefront area, lowered herself to sit in the dust and leaned back against the wall letting the sunshine filtering in through the dirty window warm her.

“You win,” Monique said after a thoughtful pause. “I won’t complain any more today. Any idea how he, she, it died? You find a musket ball or a hatchet or anything?”

“I don’t even want to think about how this guy died. It’s all too—”

“Spooky and gross,” Monique said, concisely defining what Mia was feeling.

Mia rubbed at the dust on her forehead. “You probably called for a reason, Monique.”

The sudden close blare of a siren wailed practically at the front door. Mia pushed up and brushed off her butt. “The chief is here.”

“Don’t hang up yet. I called because I wanted you to come over later. Granddad brought us a lobsta.”

“I was planning to work until—”

“Six-thirty. Be here by six-thirty-five.”

“I’ll be there.” Mia would have stayed every night until she couldn’t lift a hand or the pry bar if her friend didn’t look out for her.

“I want all the details tonight. You and the chief have fun, now.”

“Thanks for the dinner invite.”

“Somebody’s gotta keep you alive. We’re depending on you, ya know. Bye.”

Mia said goodbye, wondering if the undertone of melancholy in her friend’s voice was real or coming from her own panicked emotional filter.

A moment later, the police chief and two officers strode in and her three workers came stumbling after. One officer stayed at the front door, the other headed straight for the back of the old stone-and-clapboard building.

Chief Montcalm marched toward her, a purposeful expression on his face. He looked about fifty years old. Steel-gray hair, penetrating dark eyes with salt-and-pepper brows, almost creaseless forehead, nose slightly crooked. Fetching in a middle-aged sort of way and hadn’t changed an iota in his nearly five years he’d been in Bailey’s Cove.

“Ms. Parker?”

Mia straightened. His words felt like a command and she almost saluted, but tucked her curly shoulder-length light brown hair behind her ear instead.