Amateur Hour

When they reached Will, he had already unloaded the trailer, and fired up the tractor, with its backhoe attachment. Lisa had never paid any attention to tractors or similar machinery, before, so she was surprised to note that the backhoe wasn’t just an arm, on the front, where the bucket would otherwise be. It was almost an entity unto itself, with its own seat and controls, attached to the rear of the tractor.

Will would have to back into the site, where he was to dig, plant a pair of bracing legs onto the ground, and switch seats, entirely. At least, she hoped Will was going to be the one to do this. She couldn’t see Tuck operating all the pedals, with one good foot. To her relief it was Will who took the controls.

She didn’t have to be an expert to see that the younger man was skilled. He dug neatly and delicately, about a foot in depth, at a time, careful to avoid the marker. When three feet of dirt had been removed, Tuck motioned for him to shut it down with a swiping palm-down “cut” gesture, at his own neck. Will joined him at the edge of the excavation, both of them too close, for Lisa’s taste. Tuck thrust a shovel into the center, and they all heard the hollow thump, as its blade made contact, with the box.

“Now what?” Liam asked, also standing too close to the edge. “It’s got to be too rotted, to stand on.”

“Maybe I could pry up and lift the cover, with the bucket, after we get some more dirt off it?” Will pondered.

“It’ll crumble…” Tuck said. “But that may be the only option. We don’t have a clue how close the other coffins might be.” He nodded toward the other Lovejoy headstones. “Widening the hole might disturb other graves. Can’t lengthen it much more, at the top, or we’ll take out the headstones.”

“Do you gentlemen need to stand right there, to discuss it?” Janice demanded.

Obligingly, the three men stepped back from the verge of the hole. Lisa mouthed a “thank you”, in Janice’s direction.

Aloud, she said, “Maybe we should take a break.”

“We’re burning daylight, as it is,” Tuck observed. “At the risk of sounding like a chauvinist–”

“Come on, Janice. Let’s throw some lunch together,” Lisa sighed, with a light tug at Janice’s sleeve. We can walk the dogs, first.”

They weren’t twenty paces away, when they heard the tractor rumble to life, behind them.

“I’m not sure I want to see the next part, anyway,” Janice remarked.

“I just hope Tuck doesn’t fall in, and hurt his good leg.”

“No, that’ll be Liam. He’ll get all up in there, trying to help, and end up coming to grief.”

The lid of the casket gave way with a crunching sound, as it splintered into three fairly large fragments. Will stopped immediately, and drew the backhoe’s bucket out of the hole, swinging it well out of the way, before shutting it down.

Liam leaned over, for a closer look. “Looks like you called it, Tuck,” he said. “Sandbags.”

Indeed, a couple had ruptured, spilling their contents into the bottom of the box.

“That’s not all, though. Look,” Tuck said, pointing.

Liam peered into the casket, again. He saw something dark,with a convex curve. It had been positioned between some of the sandbags, presumably to prevent it from rolling.

“Is that a bottle?” he asked. Then, he spied a second on, partly obscured by a portion of the broken box lid. “Did you bring any rope, Will? I want to check that out.”

Will walked away from the graveside, and returned in short order with a length of rope that he kept in his truck box. He secured it to the tractor, putting his full weight on it a couple of times, before tossing the loose end to Liam.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Tuck asked, while Liam tied it around his waist.

“It’s not that deep. I’m only doing this, in case of emergency.”

Will also tossed him a pair of leather work gloves, which Liam donned with a nod of thanks. The edges of the box proved to be sturdier than the top, and Liam planted his feet as best he could on their two inch wide surface. He grabbed the pieces of the lid nearest him, and began handing them up to Tuck, who chucked them off, to one side. Tuck had discarded his crutches, and was placing most of is weight on his good foot, but he seemed steady enough.

Will had taken up the slack in the rope, passing it behind his back, and it was a good thing, because Liam nearly lost his balance, fishing objects out of the casket. Will’s action saved him from two or three face-plants.

There was more in the box than the two bottles of wine he handed Tuck. There was also a small sack containing something that felt like large seeds or beans and a mortar and pestle fashioned of stone. This seemed to be all, but just as he was maneuvering himself to climb out, a dull glint caught Liam’s eye. He bent once more to retrieve the object. It was a thin, with a clasp like a locket, but a shade too large, and with no means of being worn as an item of jewelry. He stuck it in his pocket, and clambered out of the hole, with Will’s help.

“What is it?” Tuck asked, when Liam handed it to him.

“A miniature, if I had to guess,” Liam replied. “The metal looks like silver. It was precious, to someone.”

The metal was also dented, as if someone had stomped upon it, and it resisted when Tuck tried to gently open it. Finally he managed. There was no picture inside, but there was an inscription, opposite where it would have been.

“My Precious Beatrice”, he read aloud. “There’s a mystery for Toni, maybe. I reckon we’d better head back to the house. We can examine this stuff more closely, there, and the gals will want to see it.”

“Maybe you should think about getting a bigger table,” Janice opined, with a glance at the array of cold cuts, bread, chips, and drink options clustered on the small surface .

“Probably,” Lisa allowed. “This is barely just enough eating space for two, isn’t it? I hadn’t planned on entertaining, much. I had every intention of being a semi-anonymous hermit.” She shook her head, at her own folly, and Janice laughed.

“So much, for that. I can easily picture quiet dinners with Tucker, and friends dropping by, at all hours.”

Lisa’s grin was rueful. “I don’t know whether you’re being an optimist, or ill-wishing me. But, really– aren’t there ever times when you just want to be left alone?”

“Of course. Just not for such great lengths. We’re built different, that’s all. I can feel like I’m being left alone, when I’m being allowed to do my own thing, even when there’s someone else in the room who isn’t wanting my attention, while I’m doing it. Liam’s very good, that way. Self-sufficient, you know?”

“I don’t know. He used to prank me half to death, when we were kids. Even I know that’s attention seeking.”

“Oh, he still does that. Spike doesn’t really pee on my shoes. Liam just dribbles a little bit of water on them, once in a while.”

Lisa barked a startled laugh. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. It’s never my good shoes, just my sneakers. I have lots of pairs of sneakers, so it really doesn’t matter. There’s never any staining, but sometimes he mixes just a hint of ammonia into the water, for realism. Plus, Spike has a bladder worthy of a St. Bernard, and it’s never more than a tablespoon, on each shoe.” Janice plucked a chip out of a bowl, and munched on it, with an air of satisfaction.

“Then, why on earth are you playing along?” Lisa demanded.

“Oh, I’ll get him back, one day. In the meantime, it amuses him to think he’s fooling me, and it amuses me to know he’s not.”

“Well… I just hope he’s not playing out of his league.”

“Not to worry. I believe in a proportional response,” Janice chuckled. “He’ll get what he deserves, but no more than that.”

The front door opened, then, and the men came in, with their trophies.

“You found something,” Lisa stated the obvious.

“Several somethings,” Liam said, with a disappointed glance at the table, seeing that there was no room.

“Let’s just put it all over here,” Tuck suggested, with a nod toward the coffee table. “We can eat, and go over them.”

“We can eat and go over them, when you’ve all washed up. Especially you,” Janice eyed Liam sternly.

No one wanted to touch the items on the coffee table, as they ate. Instead, the men filled the ladies in on what had taken place, after they had gone.

“So, Tuck was right, about the sandbags,” Liam said. “But I didn’t really expect to find all of this other stuff, too.”

“It has to be evidence,” Tuck shrugged. “It’s the only explanation.”

“Poisoned wine? Isn’t that kind of penny dreadful?” Lisa asked.
“Tropes exist, for a reason,” Tuck said. “My guess is that the poison is in that bag.” He indicated the small burlap pouch beside the mortar and pestle.

“And, the frame, with no picture?” Will questioned.

“That would be motive,” Tuck smiled. “Or part of a motive, at least. I hope Toni will be able to find some clue as to who Beatrice was.”

“Why part of a motive? Couldn’t it all have been just simple jealousy?” Lisa asked.

“Well, my main suspect is still Noah Lovejoy. Beatrice, whomever she was, may have factored in, but so far, Noah had the strongest motive.”

“Why not Lovejoy’s wife? Maybe Beatrice was the ‘other woman’. They say poison is a woman’s weapon,” Janice observed, playing devil’s advocate.

“Who helped her drag the Judge’s body up the hill and bury it?” Tuck countered, amused. Clearly, he enjoyed kicking theories around.

“Well, I’m ready to see what the alleged poison is,” Lisa said, collecting their empty plates. “Does anyone have any gloves? I have some, for cleaning.”

“Probably no need,” Tuck said. “Looks like whatever it is, it has to be ground up, for it to work.” He nodded toward the mortar and pestle.

Lisa had the gloves with her, when she returned from the kitchen, but Tuck stubbornly ignored them, as he reached for the bag and untied it.

“You’re so reckless!” she declared, as he shook some of the contents into his hand.

Will leaned closer to his father in law. “Pinto beans?” he asked, in disbelief, eyeing the little mottled brown beans in Tuck’s hand.

“No,” Liam intoned. “Castor beans. Harmless, unless you grind them up, and ingest them. I guess that explains why port wine was used. To disguise the bitterness. What do you want to bet that those are two bottles of death, right there?”

Janice picked one up. “Too bad,” she said. “Ferreira, 1840. That would have been a nice port. It was well aged, even back in the Judge’s day. What?” she answered Lisa’s look. “I like wine.”

“Should they be analyzed?” Will asked.

“I don’t see any reason,” Tuck said. “If this were an official cold case, yes. As it is, the complainant is the murder victim, himself, and the perpetrator is long dead. The only logical reason to bury the bottles would have been to get rid of the evidence. They’re surely tainted.”

“Speaking of the victim,” Lisa said, “where are you planning to place his remains, while you wait for a casket?”

“Toni had an old trunk, from college, that she cleared out and cleaned up. I was thinking to put them in that, lock it, and place it behind the altar, in the sanctuary. If you don’t object,” Tuck added.

“You did come prepared, didn’t you? Not on principle, but, what if Kelly stumbles across it? She’s still got a few tasks left in the church. I only got the green light to hire a cleaning firm, today.”

“Kelly wouldn’t touch it, if we slapped a sign on it, asking her not to. Or, we could tell her the truth. She wouldn’t betray a confidence.”

“Not that I don’t trust her,” Lisa said, “but I think the fewer people who know about this, the better.”

“I’ll leave it up to you, then,” Tuck acquiesced.

The obvious path for the backhoe was along the old horse and buggy road, that ran past Lisa’s well. Will took the lead, with the tractor, with the other four following in his truck. Lisa sat in the cab with Tuck, but Janice had opted to share the truck box, with Liam.

The road was wide enough, and the going was relatively easy. Once in a while, Will would lower the bucket, to knock over the odd seedling pine, before running over it, clearing the way for the truck, as well.

“Penny for ’em,” Tuck said, breaking the silence in the cab.

“I was just thinking that the last time I was up there, I ran down like my head was on fire, and my ass was catching,” Lisa said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared. Now I don’t know whether to be scared, again, or just embarrassed.”

“Well, you’ve met the Judge. Did he scare you?” Tuck smiled at her, and squeezed her hand. It was cold.

“No. At first, he annoyed me. In the end, he seemed affable enough.”

The grudging admission made him smile again.

“You’re not alone now, and you know a lot more than you did, before. It’s going to be fine.”

“Do you think using a backhoe might be a bit heavy handed? Something tells me he’s not in a protective box.”

“Probably not, but Will has a nice touch, with that thing. I figure, if he scrapes away two feet of dirt, we can gently remove the rest, with hand tools.”

They pushed through to the clearing, a few moments later, and everyone disembarked.

“Do you remember where the marker is, Miss Lisa?” Will asked.

Lisa scanned the area. “It’s–” she began, then gasped. She had spotted something very familiar. It was a certain red travel mug, sitting upright, among the leaves. “–over there, I guess.”

“Are you okay?” Janice asked. “Did you put that–”

“No. I lost that cup, the day I ran out of here.”

“Well, I guess the Judge wants you to have it back,” Liam asserted, cheerfully. He went to retrieve it, as Will mounted the tractor again. He picked it up, peered at the ground, for a second, then gave Will a thumbs-up.

Lisa scrubbed her face, with her hands. It was too much. She was reluctant to accept the mug, when Liam offered it to her. It was only slightly dirty, and the lid was still on it.

“Take it, Lis,” Liam urged. “He wants you to have it. I think it’s a goodwill offering.”

Slowly, she took it, feeling unaccountably offended. Had someone asked her why, Lisa wouldn’t have been able to articulate the reason. If she had never seen the mug again, she would have been perfectly content. She carried it to the truck, and opened the door to place it into one of the cup holders. Closing the door, she turned, only to find Tuck at her elbow.

“How does a man on crutches manage to sneak up on people?” Lisa demanded, trying to laugh though she was angry and startled.

“Want me to drive you back down to the house?” he asked, with a worried face.

“No. You’d only insist on staying with me, while you’d rather be here.”

“I think I can trust those two, with Janice to supervise. She won’t let them get careless,” he added. “Besides, my knee is starting to ache.”

Lisa could see that he actually did look a little pale and pained. Very likely, his knee had been aching, all day.

“I can drive,” she offered.

He handed her the keys.

“Darlin’, I’d like to get off this knee, for a while,” Tuck said, to Janice. “Lisa’s going to drive me back to the house. Would you mind keeping an eye on all of this, so that those two don’t get too enthusiastic, with the digging?”

“She’s reached her limit, hasn’t she?” Janice smiled, but she was concerned. Emotionally, Lisa had been all over the map, today.

“For this part, yes. I think that damned cup reminded her of her trauma, here. But, I’m not kidding about my knee. I could use about half of a pain pill, right now.”

“Sure– I’ll keep my eyes peeled for…” she trailed off, unsure of how to phrase it, without sounding crass.

Tuck smiled, and gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Thank you, dear,” he said.

She watched him crutch his way back to the truck and climb in, before joining Liam where he stood, well out of Will’s way, at the base of the tree.

He was gazing up at the branches.

“What are you looking for?” she laughed.

“Well, it’s morbid, but I was just wondering which branch was used, for the execution. It couldn’t have been too far off the ground.”

“You’re right. That is morbid. Snap out of it,” she agreed, patting his cheek.

Liam pulled his gaze from the tree, to laugh at her.

“Where did Lisa and Tuck go?”

“Back to the house. Tuck’s knee was sore. The good news is, I’m in charge, now.”

“Not Will? Well, better either of you, than me. My game is decidedly off, today.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Did you see Lisa’s reaction, when I tried to give her back her mug? I might as well have handed her a dead bird. I thought she might have seen the situation the way I did, but I was wrong.”

“Why is that a ‘you’ problem, and not a ‘Lisa’ problem?”

“I don’t always understand my sister, but I can usually read her, in the moment. I’m not saying it’s a big deal—I’m sure it’s not. Just that I’m off, today.”

“I think Will and I are the only ones not on overload.”

Just then, Will swung the arm of the backhoe out of the way, climbed down, and walked around to cut the tractor’s engine. “I don’t dare go any deeper,” he said, when they joined him by his very shallow trench. “If it was just one man, doing the digging– or even two, they couldn’t have gotten much farther, in this soil. Too many rocks.”

“So, now we go with shallow shovel scoops?”

“After a water break,” Will nodded.

“It was in the cooler, on the truck,” Janice began.

“Miss Lisa pulled it off, while Pa was talking to you,” Will said, pointing.

Sure enough, there it was. Evidently, Lisa was less self-absorbed than Janice gave her credit for being. Immediately, she scolded herself. That wasn’t fair. Lisa would probably still be here, if not for Tuck’s knee.

“I hope you have some of your pills with you,” Lisa remarked, as they headed back down the buggy trail.

“I stashed some, in the Jeep. I’ll grab them, if you swing past it.”

“Easier for me to get them. Are they in the console?”

“Yeah, but it’s locked.”

“So, lend me the key, or tell me the combination.”

He was reluctant, but he pulled his own keys out of his jacket pocket, and took the console key off the ring.

When they reached the lot, Lisa pulled up next to the Jeep, put the truck in park and set the brake. In a moment, she was back with the pill bottle, which she handed to Tuck, along with his key. She didn’t mention the .38 revolver, but she did laugh, when he shot her a look, and shook her head.

Gil reacted to their return as if Lisa had been gone, for a week. Spike welcomed them, in a more restrained way. He seemed to be wondering where his own people were. He hopped up onto the sofa, next to Tuck, while Lisa busied herself with getting him a glass of water.

“Do you want a heating pad, or maybe something cold, for your knee?” Lisa called. “I have frozen Lima beans.”

Tuck laughed softly, stroking Spike’s head with one hand, and patting Gil’s shoulder, with the other. “I just need to rest it, I think,” he called back. “Come and save me from this wolf pack.”

“You look like you need rescuing,” she scoffed, handing him the water glass. “Hop down, Spike, or move over.” She found Gil’s toy and tossed it across the room, drawing both dogs away. “So,” she settled next to him. “Does anyone really need a revolver, in his car console?”

“Does anyone really need food in a freezer?” he retorted. “It’s always better to have it at hand and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

“Can’t argue with that, I guess. Have you ever used it?”

“That one? Only at the range. Have you ever fired a pistol?”

“No. I shot a .22 rifle, once, at some soda cans. I hit two out of six.”

“Not bad, for a beginner.” Tuck swallowed his pill, and stretched his leg out, onto the coffee table. He accidentally nudged the empty miniature frame off the edge, onto the floor.

He huffed a sigh of disgust, but Lisa was up in an instant, to retrieve it.

“That reminds me,” he said, “I should text Toni about Beatrice. If we’re lucky, she’s one of the nuts on the family tree.”

Lisa studied the frame in her hands, while Tuck tapped out a quick message to his daughter. She was still tilting it, this way and that, when he finished.

“This was definitely the Judge’s,” she said, at last. “You’d have to polish it, to see them clearly, but his initials are there, in the lower right corner.” She handed it over, to let him see, for himself.

“Good find,” he remarked. It was hard to make them out, but the initials were there.

It took less time than any of them expected, to find what they were looking for. They weren’t three inches into their digging, before Janice spotted a dark swatch of cloth, poking out out between a layer of fist sized rocks. It was obvious that these had been deliberately placed, and covered, perhaps with some notion of minimizing any visible depression in the ground, over time. Janice had to wonder when the marker had been added, and by whom.

As much as she hated to get dirt under her neatly manicured nails, Janice pitched in, to help the men remove the rocks.

They exposed the bundle, at last. It appeared to be something rolled into oilcloth, about five feet, nine inches in length. The strips that had once bound the cloth had decayed to fragments, some of which still adhered to the roll.

The diggers leaned back, eyeing each other.

“Don’t look at me,” Janice said. “I’m not unwrapping it.”

Will bit the bullet, leaned forward again, and tried to pull the cloth away from the remains, beginning at what they all assumed would have been the face. The cloth proved to be sticky, gummy and weak, all at once, and Will’s expression was one of pained revulsion.

When he separated the wrappings from the head, they were all shocked. The bone exposed was clearly a skull—but it was face down.

Will jerked away, with a hiss, and scrubbed his gloved hands against the ground.

He tried to speak, failed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I don’t know how we’re going to get him out of there,” he managed. “Not sure that cloth isn’t too degraded to pull him straight up and out.”

“We have to try,” Liam said. “if it doesn’t work, well, we can cover him with a tarp or something, until we come up with a new plan.”

“What can he weigh?” Janice asked. “He’s not a giant. Say, twenty pounds? If one of us lifts at each end, and another gets his arms under the middle to keep all the weight from going to one place…”

“It might work,” Will allowed. “I need another drink, first.”

“You should both put your jackets back on, too. You’ll catch a chill.”

The men humored her, and they all adjourned to the base of the tree, to re-hydrate. They had each polished off half a bottle of water, before Will spoke.

“Buried face down,” he mused. “That’s cold.”

“Or superstitious,” Liam observed. “It was supposed to be one way to keep the dead from coming back, in medieval Europe.”

“That’s so much better,” Will snorted.

Liam gave him a shrug and a sheepish smile.

“How are we going to keep him from getting all…scrambled, in transport?” Janice asked. The notion made her shudder.

“We won’t,” Will said. “We can bind him into a tarp, but whatever shifts, shifts. Besides, Toni’s trunk isn’t long enough to lay him out in. He’s going to have to be…uh…rearranged, anyway, until he has a casket. But, I’ll guarantee you one thing– he won’t be face down, anymore.” The younger man’s expression was grim.

It was Will who supported the skeletonized remains in the middle, since, as he joked, he had already been up close and personal with them. Janice lifted the feet, and Liam the head. There was one bad moment, when the cloth at Liam’s end began to rip, but he managed to get up under the disintegrating ribcage, just in time, while still supporting the head.

It was a relief to them all, when the Judge finally rested on a canvas tarp, on the ground.

Janice found her eyes stinging with tears, for a man she’d never known, and she had to turn away, for a moment. Fortunately, the two men were busily folding the tarp firmly but snugly around the oilskin wrapped form, and didn’t notice.