Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(21)

*

Although Kate wished she was measuring Mason Mound instead of this one down by Cold Creek, it would give her comparison data when she finally did get to the mound on Grant’s property. She had a feeling that Mason Mound was special. As far as anyone knew, it had never been excavated as this one had been. Also, Mason Mound was not near a stream, lake or river, which was unusual. This one wasn’t far from the falls that had been the backdrop for Tess’s wedding.

Kate tried to picture the newlyweds on their honeymoon. The luxury barge on the Loire, drifting through green, glorious France. Gabe had wanted something very different from what either of them had ever done, and he’d found it, all right.

Today Kate was using her notes and the crude map she’d made from an original, amateur Falls County map she’d found filed in the depths of the Ohio Historical Society archives. She’d been recording her measurements of the mound’s circumference. When she’d noticed a measuring wheel in the old garage behind Tess’s house, she’d asked if she could borrow it instead of just pacing off the ground. The long handle with its small wheel at the end was used for measuring skid marks in accidents, Tess had said. Gabe now had a more modern version, so he’d left it with other goods they were storing until the remodeling of their new house was done.

“This has got to be similar to the size of Grant’s mound,” she said aloud. “Bodies and artifacts were found here, so maybe there are some in his, too.”

She knew this mound had caved in from the top when the upright logs or the roof timbers they supported had rotted. Could it be that Grant’s mound, being farther from a water source and underground seepage or even humidity, had not caved in? Could it be intact? She had to get up to the top of Mason Mound, see if there were any signs of a cave-in. But she’d have to be careful or she could start an earth slide or fall right through.

She cautiously climbed this mound and noted where the top of it had settled. She’d read a pioneer-era report written in a fancy, delicate hand that relics and bone fragments had been found in the rubble. Nothing had been brought out intact except a few arrowheads, an ax head, two bone needles and a smashed copper bracelet. Most important, the early settlers had turned up a stone with a carved pattern that showed up on some Adena art. She and Carson had theorized it was used for ceremonial tattooing. The amateur excavators had also found fragments of skulls too small to piece together. If Mason Mound is similar to this one, but has not caved in...

“Oh!” she cried and bent to see what had suddenly glinted in the sun.

Something strange and shiny was standing upright, partly wedged in the grass in the center of the top of this mound, just above the cave-in site.

*

“Boss, we got us a problem outside.” The voice of Keith Simons interrupted Grant’s agonizing as he stood on the steps to his office, watching everyone get back to work. Leaning over the railing, Grant looked down at his forklift driver, who stood on the concrete floor below. Until recently, all three Simons brothers had worked here, but Jonas had been charged with ties to a meth lab and Grant had fired him. He thought he’d lose Keith and Ned over that, too. Ned had resigned in anger, but Keith had always been loyal. The guy was a big bruiser, and Grant sometimes thought of him as his bodyguard. “You’re not gonna like this,” Keith called up to him.

Grant hurried down the stairs. “The reporter’s here?”

Keith shook his big, bearded head. “Out on the road, picketers, about six of them with Save a Tree and Don’t Destroy Our Forests signs and the letter S in the words is a big dollar sign.”

Grant swore under his breath. Picketers from out of state had been around before but not for quite a while. He really didn’t need this right now.

“I’ll go out and talk to them,” he told Keith, keeping his voice calm. “That’s all we need if the newspaper reporter shows up. It will give him a second story, make us look bad, when I’ve been working with state lawmakers on green projects.”

“I got your six, boss,” Keith assured him and joined him as Grant strode toward the big front doors. “One other thing,” Keith said. “This time it’s Green Tree people, and it looks like your ex-wife’s leading the pack.”

*

Kate knew better than to put her weight closer to the caved-in center of the mound’s top but she had to see what that shiny object was. Maybe something the early settlers of the area had dropped, for so many of these mounds had been dismantled by pioneers out of curiosity. Whatever was found inside had disappeared into attics and trunks—a few in museums—long ago. Or if stones had been used to shore up the burial sites, early settlers used them for the foundations of their houses and barns. Maybe it was a marker the professional excavators from the 1950s had left. But would the thing be so shiny if it was old?

She hurried back down the mound and came up with the measuring wheel to see if she could use the long handle to reach the object. With it, leaning, stretching, she managed to pry it loose and slide it toward her over grass and weeds, but not close enough to safely pick it up.

She could see it was a star, about two inches across. At first she thought it was a six-pointed Star of David, but it had five points—each one tipped in reddish-brown. As far as she could tell from this distance, nothing was written on it. What was it? Surely not an artifact. A Christmas-tree ornament? She decided she’d come back later with the fishing pole she’d seen in Tess’s garage, hook it, examine it. But who had left it here and why?