Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(38)
Brad bent toward the stones as she stepped out, right on a dry branch. It snapped loudly. Brad spun around.
“Kate! What’re you doing here?”
She was about to ask him the same, but this was his family’s land. Her gut instinct said not to tell him what she was doing. If she was going to tell anyone, it should be Grant. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was going behind his back, and he and Brad weren’t exactly on the best of terms.
“I’ve seen the front of this woodlot,” she called to him as she walked closer, “but thought I’d take a little hike here in back.”
“To see the lay of the land?” he asked with a wink. As she got close, she saw he looked bleary-eyed. She noticed he’d walked a bit unsteadily, not that this was flat ground here. And yes, she smelled liquor on him again, and it wasn’t even noon.
“So, you had the same idea?” she asked.
“Thought I’d clear my head. And relive the days of buried boyhood treasure. Actually, ah—this is where I buried a favorite dog years ago, Max. Silly, I know, but I still miss him—a collie.”
“I understand. It’s a beautiful burial place.”
“For your pet Adenas as well as Max, right?” He shook his head as if to clear it. “It was my dog, not Grant’s, maybe the first thing we didn’t share.”
“So you marked his grave with a pile of rocks instead of a single stone?”
“Kate the curious,” he said, sounding annoyed. “Look, if you’re meeting Grant for lunch, just tell him the babysitter he had drive me home from the mill dropped me off on the back road and someone’s picking me up, not to worry. He told me to head home to sleep off a slight hangover. Big Brother is watching me and didn’t want little Bradley to get hurt by a big bad saw or fall off a catwalk at the mill.”
“It’s nice he does worry about you,” she said. “That means he cares.”
“He worries about you, too, you know. That means he cares—for you and that you keep your hands off the mound. Family tradition to let the dead stay dead. Poor Paul, huh?”
“And Nadine. She stopped by Tess’s house this morning, might even consider buying the place. Lacey was with her, and I got the impression she’s been talking to you—about my staying at Grant’s for a while.”
“Lacey swore off Grant long ago, but I was glad to see her again, that’s all. So, enjoy your walk—your exploration,” he said and, with a glance at his watch, started away without further comment.
Kate gave him a good start then followed him out toward the road. She watched him from behind a bush. Here she’d felt she was being followed and now she was doing the same. Brad paced, looking a bit tipsy at times. Kate gasped when she saw Lacey drive up in her van and pick him up. They headed not toward town but out toward the hills. And they’d exchanged a quick kiss, not on the cheek, but mouth to mouth. Then a second one that was much longer.
*
When Kate finally emerged from the forest, she was tired and hungry. Feeling she owed Grant for his hospitality and wanting to get him on her side about the mound, she drove into town, hit the small supermarket near the Lake Azure area then hurried back to fix him something for a late lunch—he’d said he’d be home around two.
She’d come to some conclusions in her trek around the back forest area after Brad left with Lacey. Though she was certain Brad was up to no good, she herself had made a good discovery—there was a definite shape of a now dry streambed on the back side of the mound, away from the house. Despite overgrowth, she’d followed it for nearly half a mile up toward the hills. She theorized that in the spring and summer, when it rained hard, it used to be full of water. But growth, stones and other debris higher up had diverted the water elsewhere over the centuries.
What had excited her almost as much as that discovery was that she’d seen a bald eagle’s nest high in an oak tree, with what must be a mating pair in it, swooping out now and then to guard it or to find food. She was proud of that discovery, not because the eagle was the national bird, but because the Adena had venerated it as a symbol of spiritual power. She knew it was possible that eagles had nested in that same spot, between the dried-up stream and the mound, for centuries. She couldn’t wait to tell Grant. And she figured she’d have to tell him about Brad and Lacey, too.
*
Grant walked in exactly at two, when she had the chicken quesadillas and iced tea ready.
“Looks great,” he told her. He washed his hands at the sink and sat across from her. They had an awkward moment—she a stranger taking over his kitchen, he not sure whether to help or just sit down to be served.
“Fresh strawberries in clotted cream for dessert. Terribly British,” she said with a touch of accent. “Oh, Grant, I took a walk on the far side of the woods today and saw an eagle’s nest and both birds!”
“You’ll have to show me where. I’ve seen them in the air. I think that pair comes back each year. They mate for life, you know.”
“I took them as a good omen since they were key symbols of spiritual power to the Adena. There’s a site in Georgia, where the Adena built a gigantic effigy of an eagle with white sandstone slabs. In a different burial site, two amateur anthropologists found a stone eagle with the skeleton of a man laid out on the left wing and a female skeleton on the right wing. Both were stretched out on raised biers with rich burial offerings around them of copper, flint and bone. And two smashed human skulls lay at the feet of the man and one at the woman’s feet...” She paused for a moment. “Not such a good lunch-table topic,” she admitted.