Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(34)
“I do,” Grant said, touched that Kate had seemed protective of him. “My staff at the mill is collecting funds, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“That’s right good of you,” Jace said, looking a bit sheepish. “As for cause of death, the coroner had to rule accidental. Maybe Paul went a little nuts, messed up his own place—who knows, looking for something—then in his rage or frustration, accidentally pulled that turntable and tree trunk over on himself. Or it was just a freak accident. No way we can judge him suicidal since Nadine says no. Until I hear from BCI that there were prints or DNA of someone else—other than himself, his wife and you two—in there, I have no choice but to close the case. And I appreciate you both giving DNA cheek swabs to help with that.”
Grant nodded, but he hoped Jace wasn’t in over his head with all this, when Gabe had been gone only two days. He still had the gut feeling Paul could have been murdered and that didn’t make mourning his loss any easier.
“We also came to tell you that we found evidence that someone—we think Bright Star Monson—has been not exactly defacing but tampering with two local Adena mounds,” Kate said. Grant watched as she took the dish towel from her big purse and unwrapped it on Jace’s desk.
“Looks like some kind of old sheriff’s badge,” he said, getting up and leaning across his pile of papers to look at it closely. “But it’s not what Gabe or I use these days. What’s that stuff on the tips?”
“We think it’s blood,” Kate said. “But we’d like you to go with us—or with me, since I found them and study the mounds—to the Hear Ye compound and ask Bright Star point-blank if they are his. It’s illegal to tamper with the mounds in any way without permission, but if he admits it, and it has something to do with his warped view of religion, I’d be tempted to let it go—if he swears he’ll stay away from the mounds and from me.”
“He bothered you up close and personal?”
She looked at Grant. “This is going to sound strange, but someone did,” she said. “Let me explain as best I can. I’ve been thinking that since Brice Monson made a big deal of telling me he had access to the internet and knows I’m an Adena specialist—and I threw that in his face—he might have researched the Adena and be the one who harassed me.”
“Explain it to me, then. But I got to warn you about him. The guy is just plain weird, and I wouldn’t put much stock in anything he says. He always twists things around—the Bible, too—to suit himself. After all, his initials are B.S., and that’s what I think he talks most of the time—but I’m sure not gonna tell him I said so.”
11
Kate’s goal was to figure out where the original entrance to the burial vault must have been on the slanted, growth-covered circumference of Mason Mound. Some entrances aligned with the sunrise, but she and Carson thought most were positioned facing rivers or streams. As far as she could tell, there was no water nearby. But she had not promised Grant she wouldn’t look for streams or ponds on her own.
After they’d explained to Jace Miller what had happened in the garage, Grant had gone to work and Kate back to his house. She tried to throw off the strange feeling that she actually belonged here. She could picture herself sending Grant off to the mill, fixing him lunch, waiting for him to come back while she studied or wrote—or excavated the mound. Surely it was the proximity to it, not to this house or the man himself, that beckoned to her.
“You are crazy, Kathryn Anne Lockwood!” she scolded herself as she headed back into her bedroom to get her purse. “You just get out of here before you make his favorite pie or scrub the kitchen floor!”
She locked up with the key Grant had given her and drove to Tess’s house. After checking that all was normal inside, she went back out. She saw no sign of a scrape or bump on the garage door that could have been made by a deer bumping it so that the lock fell into place on its own. She walked slowly, glancing around, giving the building a wide berth as she went out behind it. The idea of someone watching her, knowing when she left the house to enter the garage, gave her the chills.
Nothing behind the garage. Normal. In the daylight, no footprints or hoof prints.
She sighed and shook her head, scanning the vast, young cornfield with its neat rows of green spears stabbing through the ground. Glancing out about a third of the way into the field, she gasped.
Two does and a buck were grazing on grass or wildflowers. The buck had a good rack of antlers. She pictured the ancient Celtic Beastmaster artifact called the Gundestrup Cauldron she’d seen in Denmark. She shuddered at the memory of the close-up photo she’d bought of the demonic-looking beast with its blank, staring eyes and huge horns. She hadn’t shown a picture of its dreadful face to Grant. She wasn’t sure she would. Every time she looked at it, even simply printed on paper, she sensed some sort of curse or threat.
Her legs went weak, and she leaned against the garage to steady herself, bumping the sore spot on the back of her head. All three deer looked up and stared at her across the distance. She could feel their eyes on her, could sense their thoughts. Danger! Intruder! That was exactly what one of her colleagues in England said he imagined the ghosts of the dead whispered each time he entered an ancient grave site.
Could she have seen that buck’s head outside the window last night and then imagined—hallucinated—the Beastmaster? Was she letting her obsessions and desires get to her? She’d been so certain, but maybe she was seeing more than stars. Was being near Mason Mound—or Grant—scrambling her logic, her brain?