A Grave Peril Read online

  In the Jeep, I started up one of my self-help books. As I cornered off my street the audio book narrator spoke lyrically about loving yourself being the key to letting go of the past. The author had probably been thinking more about the past of bad relationships than my brutal upbringing. Still, I found peace in the words even though they didn’t ring precisely true.

  My phone rang just as the narrator started the ten steps to moving forward. I answered when I saw it was Tracey.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, what are you up to?” she asked.

  “Driving.” I slowed as I approached a red light.

  “I don’t suppose you’re driving anywhere near Sixteenth and Baker?”

  “The grocery store where you work? Why?”

  “My car kinda won’t start.”

  I frowned and signaled to turn in the opposite direction of where I’d been headed.

  “You don’t have to come,” Tracey added quickly. “I can, you know, just walk home or something.”

  “You live five miles away and you’ve got a bad knee,” I pointed out. “Stay put. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  When I pulled up alongside Tracey’s beater of a car she had the hood up and was staring inside.

  I rolled down the window. “We both know you aren’t going to fix it by looking at it.”

  She slammed the hood down, then walked over and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “One of these days you’re going to have to invest in a car that actually runs.”

  This wasn’t my first or even fifth time rescuing her from her bad choice in automobiles.

  “As soon as I get a little money saved, getting a good car is like fifth or sixth on my list,” she said. “I left the keys with one of the guys I work with. He’s going to arrange for his brother’s garage to have it towed and looked at. Fingers crossed that the repair costs less than twenty-five dollars because that’s all I have in my checking account.” She glanced over at my backpack in the back seat. “Oh my God! Were you on your way to find another body?”

  “Not really.” I steered out of the parking lot onto the main road. “I’m going to that old cemetery in Marysville to practice.”

  “Oh! Can I come?”

  “Sure.” I glanced over at her skeptically. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s a nice day. Might as well spend some time outside. Even if it is in a graveyard.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “But first, let’s do something about this.” She reached over and turned off the audio book. “I don’t know why you listen to those.” She clucked her tongue. “You ever want advice, you should just ask me.”

  That made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt and while I was laughing Tracey got an insulted look on her face, which made me laugh even harder until, finally, she was joining me. We stopped, at Tracey’s insistence, to get a couple of coffees for the road. When we pulled up across from the old cemetery, I turned off the Jeep and grabbed my bag.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Tracey asked as she walked alongside me. “Your rods are just going to be crossing all over, aren’t they? I mean they cross every time there’s a body, right? It doesn’t seem like much of an exercise for you.”

  We were standing in the middle of the small cemetery now and I put down my pack. “What I’m trying to do is get a little better at reading my rods. They can cross with a different intensity depending on how long ago the body has passed so I’ve been going to different cemeteries just to keep in touch with my, uh, skill.”

  “That’s good. And I know exactly how to help you and make this fun.”

  I wasn’t quite sure if fun was the word that should come to mind when traipsing through a graveyard. “Most people wouldn’t think this was going to be such a good time.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe not exactly a party but at least I can help make it more interesting. I’ll pick graves that are old or new and I’ll cover up the markers and you’ll have to guess.”

  “Okay but hopefully I won’t be guessing.” I hoisted my pack onto one shoulder and followed her. “Try to pick a marker that’s not surrounded by a dozen others close by, so I can zero in on it.”

  This cemetery was made up of mostly flush, lawn-level stones. I always felt it was bad form to just step right on top of graves, but Tracey didn’t seem to have an issue with walking right over the dead instead of keeping to the path. Eventually she came to a stop on the outskirts of the cemetery and held up her hands so that I didn’t come closer. She took off her light jacket and draped it on the ground over the marker.

  “Okay, do your thing,” she told me.

  I took the rods out of my pack and could feel their vibration between my fingers. They wanted to point in every direction but when I centered myself in front of the grave where Tracey was standing, I gained some control. I walked forward slowly, and the rods hesitated. There was barely a quiver as I walked back and forth but eventually they crossed. This wasn’t new. Since I was a little girl I’d been finding bodies when my dowsing rods crossed. The new part was getting a feeling for the strength of the almost magnetic pull and an impression of the speed of the crossing.

  “Old,” I murmured. “This person has been gone maybe eighty or ninety years.”

  “Eighty or ninety? Is that your guess?” Tracey asked.

  “It’s as close as I’m going to get,” I told her. “This isn’t an exact science.”

  “Ta-da!” She whipped her jacket off the ground.

  The engraving on the marker was faded from the elements:

  Virgil Smith.

  1924—1933

  “You were right!” Tracey said. “The grave is, like, eighty-six years old.”

  “He was just a kid,” I said sadly. “Nine years old.”

  But Tracey didn’t hear me, she was off looking for the next marker. We did a few like this with her using her coat to block the dates and making me guess. Mostly I was accurate.

  “Why don’t we practice your pendulum dowsing now?” Tracey suggested.

  I shook my head.

  “But isn’t that more accurate? You hold up an object on a string and ask it questions and you get answers, right?”

  “First of all, it’s not quite that easy and, second, it’s not my jam. It’s only worked for me a couple times. I need to have a personal connection to the object I’m using and the case I’m working on.”

  We ran through the grave marker exercise a couple more times and, although I would’ve liked to spend more time on some of the older graves, it started to rain so we returned to the Jeep.

  A couple blocks from Tracey’s apartment my phone rang and the display in the Jeep said it was Garrett’s number. I accepted the call with:

  “Hi, sweetheart, just letting you know Tracey’s in the car with me.”

  There was some rustling noise, as if fabric was rubbing against the phone, but no reply.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Some voices grew louder but indistinct.

  “Sounds like he butt-dialed you,” Tracey remarked.

  I agreed and was about to end the call when Garrett’s voice shouted at someone. He was furious. I’d never heard him ever raise his voice in anger and it was unnerving. Before I could think to concentrate on what was being said, I reached and ended the call.

  “Wow,” Tracey said. “He’s really pissed. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat nervously as I pulled up behind her apartment building. “Any word on your car?”

  “Yeah,” She looked through her phone. “My work friend texted that it’s some kind of doohickey that needs to be replaced. It should be ready for me to pick up tomorrow.”

  “Good. Hope the cost of doohickeys isn’t too high these days,” I mumbled distractedly.

  “Are you okay?
” she asked me. “Don’t be worried about your guy. I mean, FBI guys gotta use their mean voices all the time, right? Sort of in his job description I bet.”

  “Of course. Sure.” I picked up the chain I wore around my neck with my father’s wedding ring on it. I fingered the band nervously and forced a smile. I didn’t want to tell her that Garrett wasn’t even supposed to be working now.

  She thanked me for the ride and suggested maybe we could get together when it didn’t involve dead people. I nodded, and she waved as she headed inside her apartment building. As soon as she went inside I redialed Garrett’s number and it went straight to voicemail. Instead of leaving him a message I sent him a text: I think you called me by mistake. What time do you think you’ll be home?

  A few minutes later, as I was pulling into our driveway, I received a reply.

  Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.

  Don’t wait up? It wasn’t even six o’clock. He said he was just going to talk to someone. What the hell was he up to?

  I let Wookie out in the backyard to pee and avoided making small talk with Bald Neighbor—Preston—by pretending I was on the phone. He waited patiently on the other side of the fence, but I just offered him a polite wave and headed back inside. I made myself a bowl of popcorn for dinner and dealt with an intense craving for a bottle of cold, crisp wine to go with it by having a Coke instead. I munched my dinner through the begging stares from Wookie and Fluffy and thought about Garrett. I didn’t like the feeling that something was wrong. He was not supposed to be the unstable one in our relationship. I didn’t like it.

  “He’s been called back on the case,” I told Fluffy, who’d saddled up beside me on the couch. “That’ll be why he’s gone out.”

  The cat was purring, so I reached out to stroke his back and my attempt was met with an angry swat that nicked one of my fingers.

  “Ouch! You’re so mean.”

  His reply was to leap off the sofa and try to catch a fly.

  I busied myself answering a few emails and looking through requests to decide on the next body to look for, but my mind was on Garrett. Maybe I could convince him to do a weekend trip to Vancouver. I could search for the body of a lost skier during the day and we could see the sights during the evening. I went to print off the details of the case, but the wireless printer decided it wasn’t going to communicate with my laptop.

  The printer was kept in Garrett’s office, so I wandered in and played around with it for a minute or two until it spewed out the page I wanted. I sat in Garrett’s chair, surprised to find the top of his desk was pristine. There were usually file folders and notes scattered all over. I guess being taken off the case, he’d cleared off the area. No doubt tomorrow it would be covered again in cryptic notes and reminders.

  I whirled around in his chair and my gaze landed on a nearby bookshelf where there was a framed picture of his son, his face now for eternity frozen into a wide smile. It made my heart ache for the pain Garrett must’ve gone through—was still going through—at losing his family.

  I took my page from the printer only to discover the ink was so faded the words were illegible. The tiny screen on the printer told me the ink was low. I looked around for a spare ink cartridge.

  I went to open the top drawer of his desk and found it locked. I frowned at it, then gave it a little wiggle in case it was just jammed. Definitely locked. Although I was curious why he’d lock it, I wasn’t one of those insecure, snoopy girlfriends. He worked at a job that was wrapped in all kinds of secrets, and locking things was probably just a habit. But I’d come in this office before and retrieved a stapler from this very drawer. It had never been locked in my memory. The first time I’d been inside his apartment in Seattle, before we were even a couple and I was just a person hired to find bodies, his coffee table had been littered with files and paperwork and he’d made no attempt to hide any of it. Locking stuff up was new.

  I found an ink cartridge in a lower drawer and managed to get my page printed. Still, the locked drawer felt strange. Something was off about Garrett’s behavior and maybe it was time we had a little heart-to-heart about it. Even though Garrett said I shouldn’t wait up, I was determined to do just that. For the rest of the evening I curled up on the sofa with Wookie’s head taking up residence in my lap and Fluffy giving us a stinky look from afar. I watched an old romantic comedy and sometime after a late-night talk show host’s commentary I dozed off. I woke up with a start when I heard something fall in the kitchen.

  Wookie also jumped and ran, barking in the direction of the sound.

  A quick look at the guilty party showed Fluffy on the counter and my house keys now on the floor. My head was still fuzzy with sleep as I reached for a spray bottle I kept nearby. I walked over and sprayed a stream of water at Fluffy to get him off the counter, but he just hissed at me.

  “Stop it. Seriously.”

  I pushed Fluffy off the counter and rolled my shoulders in a stretch. My neck was stiff from being slumped over on the sofa. As I blinked in the bright sunlight coming in through the drapes it occurred to me that Garrett hadn’t come home. A glance in the driveway confirmed that his vehicle was still gone. I hurried back to the sofa and found my phone had slipped between the cushions. I looked through, but he hadn’t called or messaged. His last text was still:

  Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.

  He said he’d be late. There was no mention that he’d be gone all night. There were many times he was on a case that required him to work through the night or even, like lately, be gone for days at a time, but he always told me if he wasn’t coming home, and he always texted or called me to say goodnight. Always.

  I called his number, but it went straight to voicemail.

  “Call me back. I’m worried,” I said. Then fired off a text saying the same thing.

  I paced the floor and tried to keep my worry from ramping into panic. The fact that he’d called me when he’d been in the middle of a heated conversation with someone also caused me anxiety and now I wish I’d listened more intently to the call. I wish I at least knew where he was or if he was back working. If he was at work, he’d have backup and other agents around to help him if needed.

  I let Wookie out to pee and watched to make sure he didn’t disappear into Preston’s yard. As soon as the dog was inside I headed back to Garrett’s den. I was filled with a need to know where he was, and maybe notes about what he was working on were hidden in that locked drawer.

  “Don’t do it,” I told myself as I stared at the drawer from his chair. “You have no business going through his stuff.”

  Chances were good he had the key with him on his keychain anyway. But he’d have a spare and, most likely, that extra key would be around here somewhere. Even as I told myself I was being silly for worrying, I couldn’t stop myself from searching the den, but I had no luck finding a spare key for the drawer. I even checked the table next to his side of the bed but nothing.

  “He’s going to walk in any second and he’ll be all apologetic about not calling and you’re going to feel like an idiot,” I told myself.

  Wookie and Fluffy both looked at me like they agreed. I took a seat at the kitchen table and did a deep breathing, mindfulness exercise. Afterward, I made some coffee and had a piece of toast. I was still worried, but I did feel marginally better.

  A couple hours later, though, the feeling of dread and worry began to boil in my stomach. I tried Garrett’s phone once more, but it still went directly to voicemail.

  “So, he ended up working all night and his phone battery died.” I smiled at Wookie.

  Still, the curt text from him telling me not to wait up and the angry conversation he’d been having with someone, combined with the lack of further contact from him, weighed heavy on my mind. The day was already getting warm and, for the first time this spring, I wanted to change into a pair of shorts. All my summer clothes were in a box in o
ur closet. Switching out my winter clothes for summer would be a nice distraction. I dragged the box of summer clothing from the closet, snagged an old pair of cut-offs from it and tossed them onto the bed.

  My side of the walk-in closet was a jumbled mess of boxes still unpacked from our move and a hodgepodge of things I should probably just get rid of. Garrett’s side held half a dozen nearly identical dark suits and dress shirts. The shelf above his dress clothes was nearly vacant except for one shoebox. Curious, I stood on tiptoe and grabbed the box. Immediately I knew by its light weight it didn’t contain shoes. I snatched the lid off, convinced I’d finally found where he kept the spare key to his desk drawer. Instead I discovered a black velvet ring box. My hands trembled just a little as I lifted out the jewelry box and let the shoe container fall to the ground as I popped the lid.

  Inside was a beautiful emerald ring surrounded by diamonds and, when I slipped it on my ring finger, it fit perfectly.

  Chapter Four

  I stared at the ring on my finger. My breath came in hard and fast until I felt so dizzy I thought I’d faint or throw up. Finally, I yanked it off as if it was a painful vise wanting to splinter the bone.

  “This isn’t good.”

  I jammed the ring back into the small box and then into the shoe box and stuffed the works back on the closet shelf.

  “We’ve talked about this.”

  I didn’t want to get married. Not now and maybe not ever. I’d told him that before we moved in together. I’d wanted to be completely open with him about the idea because if a marriage license was a deal breaker for him, I’d rather break up than feel I was leading him on. It had taken a lot just to get me to the point of wanting to live with Garrett. He’d said he could live without a slip of paper between us, but he still might want kids. That scared the hell out of me too, but I hadn’t said never to that; only we’ll see.