Burial Ground by Shuman Malcolm

Author:Shuman, Malcolm [Shuman, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497650251
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2014-07-15T06:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

I crept in late the next morning, hoping the visit to Sam MacGregor had been part of a dream. But when I saw the white Integra in front of our office, I knew better and groaned.

“That woman is waiting for you,” Marilyn pronounced. “If I’d known you were going to be late, I’d have sent her on her way, but she kept insisting you were going out in the boat together and—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll handle her.”

Gator looked up from the table where he was sorting artifacts and gave me a gap-toothed leer.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

I walked into the room that had once been a bedroom but now served as our library.

She was seated in one of our yard-sale chairs, staring up at the shelf.

“Not bad,” she said, “but there are a few big holes. You don’t have a complete set of C. B. Moore …”

She was wearing designer jeans, a khaki shirt, and a red bandanna around her neck.

“Well, next time you’re up East maybe you can find one for us at a rare book store.”

She ignored the jibe and pulled a map tube up from where it had been lying on the floor.

“I thought we should decide where we’re going to put in,” she said. “We can either start upstream and then have to fight the current on the way back, or start downstream and fight it on the first leg.”

“There’s another option,” I said, picking up the map and starting toward my office. She followed and I closed the door. “We might want to rethink going at all.”

“What?”

I told her then what I knew about T-Joe’s murder, the tooth, and what Sam had told me about Willie’s resentment against his father.

“You have a right to know,” I said. “We could be walking into something.”

“Well, it’s nice to know finally,” she said. “Though it would’ve been good to know before now.”

“Sorry. I guess I held out, but I didn’t know you’d be going back with me.”

She nodded. “I’m not about to let some maniac chase me away.”

I shrugged. “Then here’s how I see it. There’s only one trail to the water so far as I can see, without going five extra miles, and that’s right here.” I pointed to a dashed line on the map that came out of the woods about a half-mile above the island and ended at the water’s edge. “We can try that.”

And if we’re lucky, I thought, there won’t be anyplace to put in at all and we can stop this insanity.

“Good.” She rolled the map up again and stuck it back in the tube. “I guess the boat is the metal one with a flat hull I saw behind the house?”

So she’d even scoped out our backyard.

“You didn’t see another one, did you?”

I walked out of the room and called for Gator to help me load the boat.

Fifteen minutes later the boat had been lifted onto the trailer and the trailer hitched to the Blazer. Normally, I didn’t like to pull loads that heavy, but most of the road was four-lane highway.

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