Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(29)

“BCI? Bureau of Criminal Investigation? No, though I suppose your brother told you he and Kate found a sort of badge on top of your mound.”

“Actually, he asked me if I put it there. I told him he was nuts.”

“The thing is,” Carson went on, “other than natural growing objects, nothing is to be added to a mound, or it’s criminal intent or worse.”

“No kidding?” Brad drained his drink. “He didn’t say that, but then, those two seem to be keeping secrets.” He winked at Kate, which ticked her off. “And they’re the ones who found Paul Kettering’s body, sad to say,” he added. “So you’re an Ohio State professor, Carson? Fight the team across the field, Go Bucks, and all that?”

“Can’t say I take much advantage of college-life frivolities. But I can get good tickets to a football game this fall if you want to come up and go with me.”

Kate rolled her eyes. Carson couldn’t care less even if the Buckeyes lost to their archrival Michigan or never played another game. But she could see the handwriting on the wall—the wall of an Adena tomb. If she didn’t get what Carson wanted out of Grant, Brad would be standing in the wings.

*

Grant was glad he had his steel-toed boots on as he hiked up toward the huge pin oak Todd favored for his climbs. Besides living trees, Grant passed brush with new saplings peeking through, hardwood sprawl and downed trees—the generations of a forest. This was a virgin area, perfect for logging, which Todd would never do. To him this area was sacred.

Todd had by nature what Grant had worked hard to gain—brush sense, an instinctive knowledge of the woods. His lifelong friend was what they called out in the redwood forests of the West a “brush cat.” Although Grant got along with loggers as well as he did senators, he’d never have the guts to climb like Todd did. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, logging was the most dangerous job in America, but Todd would have reveled in that career if it weren’t for his family.

“Hey, you up there?” Grant shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“You here as boss or friend?” Todd called down, though Grant could not spot him.

“Longtime best buddy!”

“I’ll be right down.”

From the lofty canopy of oak leaves, Todd descended on a rope, something like mountain climbers used, winching himself down. When he cleared the lower branches, he bounced his boot soles against the trunk, swinging out, then in until he had his feet on the ground.

“Yellow jackets building a nest way up there,” Todd told him. “I might have to smoke them out.” He started to unstrap his Jumar ascenders and stepped out of his harness. “You gotta come up with me, Grant. The view up there makes things look better.”

“Okay. Sometime.”

“You got things on your mind we should talk about besides Paul’s loss?” Todd asked as he meticulously wound his ropes.

“Are you upset with me?”

“Not you.”

“With Brad?”

“For one.”

“Has he been trying to edge you out, saying things? You’re my foreman on the mill floor, and that’s not going to change, at least not for anything I do.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve heard on the wind that you and Paul had a falling-out.”

He shook his head and hoisted his gear over his shoulder. “That’s a good way to say it, ‘a falling-out.’ In Oregon, I saw a guy fall from a redwood. He was doing a monkey hang, screwed up somehow. Since the top of the human body’s heavier than the lower part, if you’re up over fifty feet, in free fall, you’re gonna end up headfirst, skull crushed like that poor dude. Like Paul, right? I mean, you saw him—that way.”

“We’re getting off the question about you and Paul having a falling-out.”

“Yeah, okay. He threatened to sell his Adena eagle piece, and I told him he couldn’t.”

“Sounds familiar. I told someone else the same.”

“Brad again?”

Grant nodded. “So did you go to see Paul the day he died to continue the conversation?”

“Did you or Brad overhear us arguing at the wedding?”

Grant didn’t answer, but took a step ahead of Todd as they walked through the forest back toward his house. He turned and put a hand on Todd’s shoulder. They stopped walking.

“The point is, did you see Paul the day he died?” Grant asked. “If so, you need to talk to Jace Miller. Maybe you can throw light on how Paul was acting that day. Jace is even considering Paul committed suicide.”

“I didn’t see him that day. I was going to but came up here—way up to the top of my big escape tree. Amber and the kids were at her folks’ place. Her dad is still giving the kids cowboy guns and outfits, ones he liked when he was a kid, but they’re not into that.”

It worried Grant that Todd was not looking at him eye to eye but gazing slightly over his shoulder. He seemed to be struggling for words.

“Anyhow,” Todd went on, “I didn’t go with the family, so they can’t back me up on where I was if I really need an alibi.”

“No, that’s enough for me, at least. I believe you. I’d back you up, my friend. It’s just that I can’t get over Paul’s death—can’t believe it was either suicide or an accident the more I think about it.”