Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(37)
As they stepped apart, Kate gave the woman’s shoulder a squeeze. “Tess will be back in about ten days, but if you want to see the house before that, just call me. Here—my business card, and please don’t share it with Lacey. I’d rather not have my office on campus or any of the mounds around here picketed by greeniacs.”
A little smile lifted Nadine’s lips. “Actually, I believe she and her cohorts were considering putting up a sign on several of the mounds to promote their cause, but they wouldn’t dare. Grant could use someone on his side, like you. I’ll tell Jace Miller—or we may have to deal with Gabe when he gets back—that the Adena tree trunk is yours.”
“For a good price, Nadine.”
“I just— I hope you’ll be able to get past the fact I think it was a weapon. I can’t even stand to say the word murder, but I think it was.”
They both jumped as Lacey honked the van’s horn. Ignoring that, Kate said, “I’ll be honored to have it. Paul’s imagination was unique, and I’ll treasure it. You think someone ransacked the house and killed him?”
“Maybe not in that order. I’ve got to get going now, and it’s obvious the coroner and even Deputy Miller might not agree with me.” Nadine turned toward the car, then back again. “Lacey has a meeting with her friends at a restaurant uptown. That’s why she honked, I’m sure. See you at the funeral then and later.”
Kate headed for her car, too. If you stay...later. How long would she stay here to pursue her dream of excavating and studying an untouched Adena grave site, hopefully working with Grant, instead of against him? And if there was a killer loose in the community, she hoped it had to do only with a random theft at Paul’s place and didn’t tie in to a stolen tree out by Mason Mound.
12
Kate had the strangest feeling she was being watched, even followed. Crazy, of course, yet she kept looking in her rearview mirror as she drove toward Grant’s house. She refused to turn into some scared woman who couldn’t live life to the fullest and pursue her dreams. She’d watched Tess battle lingering fear after she came back from being kidnapped. Kate knew the signs, and she wasn’t going to give in to such destructive feelings.
She drove past Grant’s house and turned onto the road that looped around behind his woods. Nadine had mentioned that Lacey and her cohorts had considered putting up signs on some Adena mounds to promote their cause. Nadine thought they wouldn’t dare, but would they? Had they somehow picked stars with blood-tipped points to leave there instead of a sign that would identify them? And what was the link between the mounds and their environmental cause? No, Kate scolded herself, she was letting Lacey’s hostility get to her, just as she had Bright Star’s.
She parked on the curving road that ran behind Grant’s property line. Surely, he wouldn’t get upset if she just looked around for a possible water source, or remnant of one that could hint at the direction of the entrance to the mound. She wouldn’t go near the mound itself, although it drew her like a magnet.
After diagramming the mound on her laptop, she thought its relatively small size might indicate just one burial chamber. Since the mound hadn’t caved in, the chamber could be intact. In that case, the entry and covered passageway would go horizontally into the mound, not down or up at a steep angle from a ground-level entry. But she hadn’t seen any hint of an entry at ground level just walking around the mound. Finding a water source, even an ancient one, could save a lot of work to locate that shaft.
As she entered the dense, shaded forest, she saw that the narrow walking trail Grant or his family had made was the route the timber thieves had used to drag the big bird’s-eye maple tree out four days ago. The path of destruction was obvious with snapped saplings and trails through the thick litter of last autumn’s dry, matted leaves. She also saw an occasional hoof print from the horse team that must have pulled the huge tree trunk away to a waiting flatbed truck. The careless destruction here reminded her of Paul and Nadine’s ransacked house.
Looking around, she wondered if the ancient Adena had walked this path to bury their dead in the mound. Did the mourners carry them or drag them on a cloth and two-pole travois like historic Indians who didn’t have the wheel?
She went off the path in a zigzag pattern, searching for a dip in the ground where a stream might have run. Rills taking waters down to Cold Creek—which was really a small river—from the surrounding hills were common around here. Folds in the earth, dips and ravines abounded, so the terrain didn’t make for easy going. Maybe a water source once ran where the house stood today or the street or—
She jerked to a stop. She wasn’t the only one rustling through dead leaves in the rhythmic pattern of human feet. She heard the slight shuffling sound again, then another step. Maybe she had been watched and followed. It didn’t sound like a deer or other animal would walk.
In a slight depression, she hunkered down behind a thick tree trunk. Her breath seemed incredibly loud. She had the urge to sneeze. She jammed her finger above her upper lip and pressed so hard her nose went numb.
Brad strode into view. Although she wasn’t sure how she’d explain herself, better him than Grant or some stranger. If he saw her, she didn’t want to appear to be hiding.
She started to move, but before she could call out, he veered away. She watched him from behind the tree. He headed for a knee-high pile of rocks that reminded her of some she’d seen in England and Scotland. They were called cairns, used to mark boundary lines or a historic spot. This was probably just a place Brad and his friends had played as kids, maybe the remnants of a little fort. Stones like that were common around here—ones, no doubt, the ancients had used to shore up the big logs that supported more logs for the roofs of tombs inside their mounds.