Digging Up the Remains Read online

  “I’d be happy to,” Lilly said.

  “We got in another huge shipment of fall plants—see them back there?” Ernie and Lilly started to walk toward the back of the garden center.

  “I do; I noticed them when I came in. Lovely. You know, I’m always sad when my garden starts to go fallow and I need to move back indoors, but mums help make the transition easier. What glorious colors. It’s late in the season to sell these many plants, isn’t it? Halloween is in a week.”

  “There was an order mix-up. I didn’t explain well enough. Anyway, I’d rather try and sell them than have them all rot. So I need help enticing customers.”

  “Well, you could do a lovely display—”

  “Exactly, that’s why I need your help. Mary has been a godsend; really, she has. With her working in the store I don’t have to worry about what’s happening on the floor. She handles it all.”

  “I’m so glad she’s working out. It was kind of you to give her a job when she moved to town,” Lilly said.

  “Listen, when Ray asked me to give his daughter a job I may have thought I was doing him a favor. But Ray was doing me a favor. She’s a hard worker and I think she’s beginning to relax a bit.” Ernie and Lilly exchanged a glance and Lilly nodded.

  Ray Mancini was the former chief of police of Goosebush and served on the board of selectmen. He and Lilly had gone to school together, so they’d known each other for almost sixty years. Ray and his wife, Meg, had four children. The first three had been born right after they got married, and then Mary came along ten years later. It wasn’t easy being the police chief’s daughter and it didn’t suit Mary well at all. She left Goosebush as soon as she could and barely came back for visits. In fact, no one had seen her for years. Lilly had stopped asking after her, noticing the look of sadness that crossed her parents’ faces whenever she did. Mary had married young, very young, and Ray did not hide the fact that he disliked his son-in-law. As it turned out, Ray’s judgment was sound. When Mary returned to her parents’ house in late September, she was a shadow of the girl that Lilly remembered. Lilly didn’t ask—no one did—what had happened. When Ray asked Ernie to help his daughter, the answer was an immediate yes.

  “As I said, Mary is a godsend. But she has no sense of plants.”

  “What do you mean?” Lilly asked.

  “Well, what quantities you should order, for starts.” Ernie smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “She can’t tell a mum from a marigold, has no sense of how to group them for display or for pricing. When I asked her to sort the plants this morning I thought she was going to cry, so I told her to watch the front of the store instead.”

  “Her mother’s one of the best gardeners I know,” Lilly said. “I’m surprised that Mary didn’t inherit some of that knowledge.”

  “I don’t remember Mary well, but what I do remember is a young woman who wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of wanting to learn about gardens.”

  “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. She was, what we would call back in the day, a troubled youth,” Lilly said.

  “It seems now some sort of trouble has come to her, which is unfortunate. She’s settling in here and is a great worker. But we’re going to need to teach her about plants.”

  “That we can do, that we can do. Tell me. How can I help?” Lilly asked.

  * * *

  Lilly spent a half hour working with the plants. At first she sorted them by size so that Ernie could price them. Then he gave her free rein to create a couple of displays in the garden center, which she did. She put large mums in the middle and smaller mums around them using milk crates and other boxes. She made sure that the display was able to be reached with the misting hoses and showed Ernie how he could swap plants out as they were sold. She’d added a couple of gnomes and other garden ornaments that Ernie had in stock but didn’t sell that often.

  “Personally, I love the gargoyles. If I didn’t have so many I’d buy this one right here. Maybe making that the centerpiece of the display will help it find a home,” Lilly said. She took off the apron Ernie had lent her and walked over to the sink area. She put the apron on the stool beside the sink and washed her hands. She had dirt under her fingernails, but she usually did. She looked at her watch. She had time to go home and clean up before dinner. But maybe she’d make a stop at the Star first.

  “This looks great, Lilly. Thanks for your help. I could have done it by myself, but I never would’ve thought of the way you show the plants off. All the levels, the color combinations. You have a real talent for this, but of course I knew that.”

  “Ernie, you know how much I love plants. I’m happy to help you with this sort of thing any time, really. It relaxes me. Maybe I’ll help Delia with this blasted haunted house—make a garden arrangement on the front yard of plants that people could take with them. I’d love to find them all a home.”

  “You could do some sort of raffle,” Ernie said. “You know we need to raise some more money for the garden by the elementary school.”

  The two friends looked at each other and both shook their heads at the same time.

  “Bad idea,” Ernie said.

  “If I volunteer for one more thing I want you to put tape over my mouth,” Lilly said.

  “As long as you do it for me too. I’m not sure how this whole festival got so out of hand, but it’s really huge. I had to buy a second order of T-shirts; did I tell you that? We’ve got so many runners in the 10K already, and the registrations keep pouring in.”

  “Who knew that a race would be so popular?”

  “Since Nicole made it a scenic run around town, and included the bridge in the run around the beach parking lot, it’s become much more of a social activity than a real run. Nice thing is that folks who don’t want to run, or walk, are volunteering to take care of the registrations at the elementary school, the entertainment break at the beach, and the end party at the Frank lumberyard. It’s going to be a great day, but I’ll need to go to sleep for a week after it’s over.”

  “You’ve gone above and beyond, for sure. Making the Triple B the hub for people to pick up their race paraphernalia was very kind of you.”

  “No big deal, really. There are a lot of volunteers working on this. You should see the bags we’re putting together for folks who want to participate in the rest of the Fall Festival next week. Lots of good stuff. Speaking of which, I have your T-shirt and Delia’s. Now, don’t look like that, Lilly. You’re on the committee. The committee has purple T-shirts, different than the others. You have to wear it on Saturday. If you break ranks, chaos will ensue.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll wear it, though I’m not really a T-shirt person” Lilly said. She’d already decided she’d wear it over one of her dresses, and that she’d don running shoes instead of her typical tennis shoes. She knew she’d be quite a sight, but that didn’t worry her. Lilly’s trademark had become shirtdresses with full skirts and bold patterns. She wouldn’t disappoint on Saturday.

  “Good. Now, let me get to those leaves. My helpers are going to meet me at the dump. You know on Saturday morning, before the race—”

  “We should go and check the path again before the runners come and make sure that there aren’t more leaves,” Lilly said. “We’ve already added that to our to-do list for the day.”

  “Great minds, we think alike. See you tonight at dinner.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Normally, Lilly would run more errands while she was at the Wheel, but she was tired. And achy. She wanted to get home, take a short nap, and clean up before dinner with her friends. But first a cup of tea and a cookie to sustain her on her walk home.

  Goosebush, Massachusetts, was full of rotaries, as many New England towns were. The Wheel was the center rotary in town, where many businesses were located and most roads fed into. It was called the Wheel because it looked much like a ship’s wheel—or at least that had been the initial design before more people had encroached on the territory with businesses that disrupted
the tidy spokes the founders had envisioned. While some might consider the traffic to be slow, for Goosebush the three cars making their way around was as busy as the town got on a weekday afternoon in the fall. Summer was a different story. Fall was definitely quieter, since most folks went north to look at the foliage. In Lilly’s opinion, Goosebush’s fall colors against the ocean were a special kind of stunning. But she was just as happy that the rest of the world hadn’t figured that out. She liked the slower pace.

  Lilly walked to the edge of the rotary and decided to go to her right to get to the Star. The Star Café was the creation of Stan Freeland, a young entrepreneur who had seen the underused old Woolworth building and fallen in love with it. He took the four stories and carved out space for a bookstore, a coffee counter, a restaurant and bar, a theater space, and some artist studios. Lilly was forever grateful that Stan hadn’t gutted the building completely, but had instead decided to use the old bones and modernize them. Whenever she walked in and looked to her right she could picture the ice cream fountain that was there when she was a young girl. When she walked through toward the restaurant her mind would flash to the lunch counter that had been back there. Stan’s business was booming, and for good reason. Good food, lots of seating, dozens of reasons to go to the Star. A perfect, and vital, combination for a small town like Goosebush.

  When Stan had first opened the Star he took a loan from some angel investors who offered him a very low interest rate. He never knew who the investors were, and Lilly never told him that she was one of them. Lilly loved her town and did whatever she could to help ensure its future. Supporting new businesses was one way she did that. Gardening was another.

  As Lilly walked slowly around the rotary she heard a noise and glanced to her left. She saw Tyler Crane shout to the woman hurrying ahead of him. The woman turned to confront Tyler, and Lilly recognized that it was Nicole Shaw. Tyler grabbed her upper arm and she pulled away, yelling in his face. He leaned down and yelled at her. The spectacle went on for a few seconds and then Nicole looked around, realizing that people were staring. Nicole was new to town and working for the school system as one of the coaches in the physical education department. She worked with Warwick O’Connor, who sang her praises. Lilly had trusted Warwick’s opinion of people, including Nicole, although the young woman tried so hard to please that Lilly could never fully get a sense of what she was like as a person. One thing was certain: she had a temper and it was on full display. Lilly wondered what Tyler had done. She had little doubt he deserved Nicole’s reaction, whatever it was.

  Nicole turned away from Tyler and he grabbed her again. The next thing Lilly knew, Tyler was flipped over onto his back and Nicole was staring at his prone form. She screamed at him, “Leave me alone!”

  Nicole hurried around the rotary. She passed Lilly on the crosswalk. “Are you all right?” Lilly asked her. The young woman nodded her head, but the tears streaming down her face belied the nod. She looked down so that her dark hair hung over her face and rushed past Lilly.

  Lilly sighed. She’d never been one for drama in public. Or drama in private, for that matter. She made a mental note to tell Warwick about what had happened so he could check in with Nicole. Lilly didn’t like the way Tyler had grabbed her, even though Nicole had obviously been capable of taking care of herself. Lilly wanted her to know that she didn’t have to take care of Tyler herself, but wasn’t sure how to have the conversation. Since Warwick knew her a bit more, it was better left to him.

  Lilly looked over and saw Tyler stand up and brush himself off. To her chagrin, he walked into the Star Café. She almost decided to forgo her visit, but the thought of hot tea and a kitchen sink cookie convinced her to stay on her course.

  * * *

  As Lilly walked around the Wheel, she couldn’t help but notice the orange, green, and purple posters for the two-weekend-long Fall Festival. The posters added pops of color everywhere. Delia had done a good job of creating a buzz for the festival. She’d found a designer to create posters and arranged for volunteers to distribute them. Every shop had at least one in the window. They were on every lamppost. And some industrious person had even strung a banner with the details across the Star Café for all to see.

  GOOSEBUSH FALL FESTIVAL: FROM 10K TO HAUNTED HOUSES OCTOBER 23–31

  Lilly wasn’t sure how Delia was keeping all of her balls in the air these days, but she was managing. And adding to her plate with ideas like the poison garden in a coffin. Lilly smiled to herself and shook her head. Delia was one of the most organized people Lilly had ever met. Of course, that wasn’t really surprising. After all, she’d been trained by the best. Lilly’s late husband, Alan, had hired Delia as his grad assistant and entrusted her with finishing his work after he passed on. He couldn’t have made a better choice. Not only had she seen his work completed, she had been helping Lilly organize her papers and treasures, was a fixture in the Goosebush Historical Society, and was still the part-time clerk for the town. Goosebush had needed Delia’s attention to detail in the last few months, what with the fallout from Merilee Frank’s death and the bodies found in Alden Park. Granted, the bodies were over 150 years old, but still. What a mess.

  Lilly gave herself a shake. The dark days were behind them all now. Since the unfortunate events of the end of the summer the town had regrouped. Lilly wondered if the robust attention to the festival was partly in reaction to all the unpleasantness. It gave people a reason for the town to celebrate.

  Lilly felt the phone in her pocket vibrate and took it out. It was a text from Delia.

  Tyler’s going live in a few minutes. He says he’s got a scoop about trouble with the 10K. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?

  No idea. Do you think we should be worried?

  With Tyler it’s always a good idea to be a little worried. Check with you later.

  Delia was absolutely right. Tyler Crane was a piece of work. He had come to town supposedly to do a profile of Goosebush as it neared four hundred years. But it soon became evident that his focus was more on the recent murders and the corruption that surrounded each. He’d moved in right after Labor Day and had become a fixture ever since. A fixture that Lilly purposely avoided at all costs. She had no interest in talking about the challenges that Goosebush had faced in its recent or distant past. At least not to an outsider. She’d barely said two words to Tyler since he’d been in town, and was determined to continue that practice. Something about him had rubbed her wrong from the outset.

  She’d been drafted to the committee that was planning the Goosebush quadricentennial, though she’d tried to get out of it. But as one of the town elders, she found she didn’t really have a choice. Besides, her best friend Tamara O’Connor wasn’t about to let her off the committee since Tamara had already agreed to serve.

  As Lilly walked along the circle she glanced into the stores, just as happy not to see anyone she knew or knew well enough to stop and talk to. She’d go in and get her cup of tea. As cranky as Lilly tried to pretend she was, she loved going into the Star, trying out one of the amazing baked goods with a pot of tea, and settling in near the bookstore to read and to observe her fellow citizens. As she approached the Star she looked to her left. Coast was clear. No one would enter at the same time and insist on joining her. She did not suffer fools gladly and enjoyed her own company. That was truer as she got older.

  She walked into the vestibule and saw that Stan had already hung the heavy black velvet drapes that kept the chill from blowing into the building. It hadn’t been that cold yet, but it was windy. Lilly put her hand in front of herself and pushed the drapes back to the right so she could get through. No sooner had she emerged than she heard someone calling her name.

  “Ms. Jayne? Lilly? Do you have a minute?” a smiling young man called out to her.

  Lilly took a deep breath to gird her loins: Tyler Crane, looking none the worse for wear after his confrontation with Nicole. He was standing by the coffee counter, undoubtedly waiting for on
e of his overly complicated coffee concoctions he was always posting on social media. She looked him over, with his scruffy beard, brown bomber jacket, and well-worn jeans. He was handsome and charming, two traits that had gotten more than one citizen of Goosebush to open up to him and tell the town secrets. Lilly was glad, for the umpteenth time, that handsome, charming men had little effect on her. Her first husband, Pete Frank, taught her that difficult lesson.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Lilly said. “I’ve got a meeting that I’m running late for.” Lilly was lying, of course. She was never late. And she didn’t have a meeting, though she would ask Stan to order a book if she needed to come up with an excuse.

  “That’s a shame,” Tyler said. “I guess I’ll have to go with the story as is.”

  “Story as is?” Lilly said. If there were some issue he was going to create a hubbub around perhaps she could thwart his efforts, though for the life of her she couldn’t imagine what he could be referring to.

  “I’ve got a story that I’m going to run on Saturday evening as part of a ‘what does family mean?’ series. I’d like to get a quote from you.”

  “A quote?”

  “About the bodies in your backyard.”

  “Bodies?” Lilly asked. She blinked twice, but didn’t avert her gaze.

  “I’ve heard that your garden has memorial stones in it, and there are bodies underneath that famous garden of yours.”

  “First of all, I can’t imagine where you’ve heard this or what possible interest it could be of yours. Second of all, I’d be careful about what I print, Mr. Crane. You’d better be very careful of your facts.”

  “Well, you see, this actually isn’t going to be a story in the paper. This is one of my social media posts—Live From Goosebush. That’s a hashtag. Do you know about hashtags? Social media stories don’t go through the same vetting.”

  “And yet they can still cause harm to people’s reputations,” Lilly said.

  Tyler shrugged. “Life can cause harm to people’s reputations. My job is to tell the truth about this town of yours. If one of its leading citizens has a graveyard in her backyard, that’s of interest. Of course, I don’t have to post the story. Instead, I could post an interview with you about . . . well, say Merilee Frank’s murder. The true story behind your relationship, that sort of thing. Seems like a fair deal to me.”