Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(45)
“Kate,” Grant said, his voice hard. “Head to your room, please. Brad and I need a discussion that’s been coming for a while, and not just about Lacey.”
Kate was only too glad to scurry away. She went into her room and closed her door but could hear an occasional shouted word—mostly Brad’s slurred ones, because Grant pretty much kept his voice down. She heard Lacey’s name, but they were also arguing about Todd remaining foreman at the mill. She tiptoed to her door and opened it a crack.
“Didn’t blood used to be thicker’n water?” Brad demanded.
Grant finally started shouting, too. Somehow they’d gotten on the fact that “Tarzan Todd” had invited Kate to climb trees to spy on Bright Star.
“Yeah, well, I’ll go ’long, too!” Brad insisted. “And I’ll lay off the booze before I do, so hope that suits you. Course, you’d prob’ly rather have me just fall out of a tree and out of your hair for good! And don’t start in with me ’gain about whether I’m bugging you by planting metal stars on the Adena mounds round here! If Mason Mound was mine, I’d let Kate and her college cronies dig stuff up in a second if it meant I could get some funding from what’s there to restart my mill and get the hell out of here!”
“Would you keep your voice down? It’s not your call! And you’d damn well better sober up before you drop Paul’s coffin at the funeral in the morning. It’s only a few hours away, so go sleep it off!”
That was the last thing she heard before two doors slammed.
*
The day of Paul’s funeral had beautiful weather, although Grant felt a storm would have been more appropriate. In the church, he sat between Brad and Todd in the second row behind Nadine, her sister and Paul’s relatives, a couple of whom were also pallbearers. Of course, it was a closed casket. No way could the funeral director have made Paul’s head presentable. He still couldn’t understand what had happened. Grant had learned from Jace that Paul’s wallet was on his dresser, untouched with money and credit cards in it. Paul’s guns weren’t taken, and there had never been any hint of drugs in the house.
The funeral service, led by Pastor Snell, was emotional but blessedly brief. Still, Grant’s eyes burned with unshed tears, especially when he saw the tree trunk Paul had been working on for the church. It depicted angels with swirling robes flying toward heaven. It must be incomplete since the angels’ faces were blank, and Paul always did great, detailed faces. Or could he have meant to leave them that way? But what really bothered Grant was that he kept imagining the terrible Beastmaster face on the angel that had arms stretched upward, because that reminded him of antlers.
What else had Paul been working on besides this angel carving and the one of the Adena shaman? Where had he secreted his eagle pendant—the symbol of Adena spiritual power, as Kate had put it? Maybe Paul saw that beautifully carved artifact as inspiration for his artistic talents. That would make it logical that he’d hide the pendant inside one of his carved tree trunks—inside that one with the angels or even the Adena carving Kate wanted. Maybe during the lunch here later, he’d slip away to come back into the sanctuary and take a close look at this carving, at least.
At the end of the service, the six pallbearers rose and carried the coffin out. Grant saw Kate sitting partway back in a pew with Amber, her sons and Amber’s parents. Kate had said at breakfast she was going to watch Todd climb his favorite tree tomorrow after he got off from the mill and maybe go up with him in a tree overlooking the Hear Ye compound. Brad still said he’d go, too, so Grant would reluctantly join them, just to observe, at least.
Lacey was here, with her elderly parents. He’d seen her talking to Brad outside the church. Both Lacey and Kate got under his skin, but in very different ways.
Above all, Grant scanned the rows of faces for a stranger. He and Jace had talked about the fact that some murderers were drawn to attend their victim’s funeral, even to visit the grave. Could such a person have dared to come here? Worse, was it not some stranger, but someone Paul—and Grant—knew?
The coffin was heavy, his thoughts, too, as they approached the waiting hearse, which would lead the funeral procession the short distance to the cemetery. After they slid the coffin into the hearse, Grant went to his car and got in line with others, all sporting magnetic blue and white funeral flags. He drove with Kate beside him and Brad in the backseat.
The cemetery staff had erected a green canvas tent to shade the grave, though the sun felt warm and the breeze gentle. He pictured the dusty, log-lined and covered roof over the interior of the Adena tomb, dank with earth smells and dark but for his and his friends’ darting flashlight beams.
It had been this kind of weather the day the four of them had dug their way into the mound. Gabe—who always did things on the up-and-up—was away that week, and Grant and Brad’s dad and grandfather had gone to a lumberman’s association meeting in Cincinnati. The boys would probably not have dared to check out the mound otherwise.
The horizontal entry shaft had been mostly cleared decades before when Grandpa had gone in for a look. According to what Grant had overheard, he’d really had to dig his way in. He hadn’t refilled the narrow passageway when he’d backed out and resealed the tomb. A pile of dirt and stones had been outside the mound for years, until it had been carried away for various uses. In front of the entrance, he’d planted prickly hawthorn trees. The four of them had belly-crawled under the reach of the lower limbs.