Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

With a screech and thud, the general catapulted the Jeep onto the state highway. To the east were his compound and Aspen Meadow; to the west, the Continental Divide and the high mountains. I half expected to see a dozen police cars lying in wait for us where the dirt met the gravel. But there was only the rain.

“May I see the map?” Marla asked meekly. I handed it to her. She turned the light on over her seat and bent over it.

Incredibly, undoubtedly from habit, I tried to decide what we were all going to have for dinner. I had no idea what foodstuffs General Bo had brought for us. The more I stared at the rain streaking our windows, the more unwelcome, catering-type worries crowded my mind. There was the problem of the Hardcastles’ wood stove-would there be enough dry firewood to keep it going through the evening? And what would we have for breakfast? I almost laughed. Then my mind posed another question: Didn’t the Hardcastles have a caretaker living near the cabin? Would he see us breaking in? If he did, wouldn’t he call the police?

Within thirty minutes we turned onto the road paralleling Bride’s Creek. After following the swollen, turbulent waterway for a few miles, we came to the split rail fence that announced the beginning of the Hardcastles’ extensive property. Arch excitedly pointed to the driveway with its stone pillars. I held my breath as the Jeep rocked over the narrow wooden bridge that barely spanned the muddy wash of the usually idyllic stream.

Peering through the gloom for signs of life at the caretaker’s white house, I quickly realized there wouldn’t be any. Set in a lowlying area near the water’s edge, the diminutive clapboard residence had been claimed by the creek’s overflowing banks. Water rippled around the house, which stood like a beleaguered island.

“So much for the caretaker,” muttered Marla. “It’s just us and the ghost of the bride.”

“Excuse me?” said Bo, his eyes on the road. “When we scattered Adele’s ashes up here, it was because her Episcopal church was still arguing about a columbarium. I never heard any of the history.”

Marla tsked. “They gave us the spiel on the reason for the creek’s name at the historic lands luncheon. There was a popular hotel downstream. Early in the century, the place was famous for luxurious honeymoon cabins.” She sighed, as if renting a honeymoon cabin was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard of: “In the twenties, one newlywed couple came up in their Rolls and took over the most spacious cabin. Under a full moon, and presumably after the marriage had been consummated, the bride stepped out for a stroll. She got too close to the creek, slipped, and drowned. Now people say they see her ghost by the water. Especially when there’s a full moon.”

“We probably won’t be able to see the moon tonight,” Arch commented pragmatically. “Too cloudy.”

“Yeah, well,” Marla said knowingly. “That doesn’t mean she’s not still out there. They couldn’t do autopsies back then, the way they do them now. My guess is her new husband pushed her into the creek and held her down. You’d have to be pretty dumb to fall into the water. Pushing somebody, that’s altogether different. At least, that’s what they kept telling me down at the Furman County Jail.”

“Tell me about the cabin,” Bo demanded as we rounded a stand of evergreens. The rain had once again turned to mist. “I suppose it’s historic, too?”

“Yes, we heard all about it last fall, too,” I said wearily. “Built around… oh, what did they say? 1860. It was a trapper’s cabin by the stream. The cabin became a stage stop and then a schoolhouse – the only one between here and Aspen Meadow. Then it morphed into a general store. Furman County came up about twenty years ago and claimed the cabin was on their right-of-way. They needed to pave the road along Bride’s Creek, and they wanted to tear the cabin down. Mrs. Hardcastle’s mother, Maureen Colbert, stepped in and waved a preservation flag, probably one of the first. Mrs. Colbert, who was also a big benefactor of the Denver Zoo, bought the cabin from the county, purchased this adjoining property, and had the cabin reassembled, log by log, on higher ground. When she died, she left it to her only daughter, Edna, who married Whitaker Hardcastle, a petroleum geologist. They’ve got a daughter, too, and she was supposed to get married up here this spring, but she reneged.” I remembered how much my bank account and I had been looking forward to catering the Hardcastles’ daughter’s wedding reception. Now my bank account seemed like the least of my problems.

“Yeah,” Arch interjected, “but we did that lunch fund-raiser here last fall, after Julian left. It was one of the first times I helped Mom on my own.”

We passed the toolshed, pump, and outdoor shower the Hardcastles had constructed near the cabin. Mrs. Hardcastle’s mother had wanted the cabin not just to be moved but to be restored, so that when you came up to visit, you could stay there and imagine yourself a trapper.

Make that a very wealthy trapper. A real trapper wouldn’t have built a fake well next to the pump. In her desire to make the cabin look authentically rustic, Edna Hardcastle had constructed a cute little well superstructure – the round, roofed type the Disney folks might have put by a cabin in Frontierland. It was in the well bucket, I remembered suddenly as we pulled up, that the Hardcastles kept their spare key. I thanked heaven I’d remembered, and then silently requested forgiveness for felony trespassing.

We all jumped out. Jake immediately lifted his snout to the skies and howled; Arch shushed him. The well crank squeaked ominously as I hauled on the rope, but the bucket popped up, and I fished out the dark plastic container that held the key to the cabin’s massive front door. As the general busily unloaded gear from the rear of the Jeep, Arch continued to reassure a nervous, !barking Jake that he would eat soon. Marla stood apart, refusing to join us. Her arms were crossed, and she gazed into the distance. More than ever, I wanted to get her through this mess.

With a determined shrug – we were, after all, adding breaking and entering to our list of crimes – I put the key into the lock. Before turning it, I noticed deep, new grooves beside the doorjamb. It looked as if someone with a crowbar had preceded us.

Without touching the key, I pushed on the knob. The door creaked on its hinges and opened wide. Immediately a flood of damp, musty air washed out onto the stoop. I said weakly, “Somebody’s broken in.”

“All right, let me check this out,” the general ordered. He assumed a straight-backed military bearing and pulled out his gun. In his free hand he brandished a I high-powered flashlight that made the silver tube affairs I’d known from summer camp look like toys. Skimming silently across the floorboards with the Glock poised, he swept the interior space with the beam of his light. After a few minutes of probing, he seemed satisfied that the place was empty. He put the gun and the flashlight down on a table, fished out matches, and scraped one of the more sturdy-looking chairs into the center of the room. Then he lit the kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling. Light filtered to the far edges of the cabin interior.

The small interior space – about four hundred square feet-was authentically without electricity or telephone. No sign of an intruder was evident. The antique furnishings that came into view were as lovely as I remembered: rocking chairs, a wooden love seat, two small beds, a fireplace that had been put in when the cabin had been reassembled, a spinning wheel, the black cookstove in one corner, an antique corner cupboard in another. There was even a chair that had a bucket underneath-a frontier toilet. But who had broken in? And when?