I cocked my head, eyeing her curiously. Getting it at last. “In a grave, you mean?”
“That — didn’t occur to me till later.” She sighed. “Memento photos are so rare that I bought it, and listed it in my fall catalog for auction. But then the same picker brought me another one.” She slid me a second photograph. It was the same family, taken at an earlier time. The staring girl was still alive in this shot, standing beside her mother, who was cradling a baby in her arms. The child could have been asleep, but the anguish in her mother’s face told me she wasn’t.
Mom was misting up. “Look at her eyes,” she said, indicating the staring girl. “She looks so... haunted. As though she knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That her own death is coming soon. Look. She’s wearing the same dress she’ll be buried in.”
“She’s definitely uncheery” I conceded. “Who brought these to you?”
“A picker, a teenaged girl. Arlon Hatfield’s oldest, Selena. She’s sold me small items in the past.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Arlon was born in trouble, Ma. He’s done hard time twice. If he’s mixed up in this—”
“I don’t know that he is, Dylan, but put the who aside for now. The real question is how? How did this girl come by them? That’s the big problem for me.”
“Did you ask?”
“Of course. She lied to my face. Said she found them Dumpster-diving behind Redbeard’s shop. I doubted that, but I let it pass. She’s a picker, I’m a dealer. You don’t ask a chef for her secret ingredient. But when she brought me the second mori picture, I checked with Red. He’d never had such pictures, and certainly wouldn’t throw them out.”
“Ma, if you think these photos were looted from a grave—?”
“No! I can’t believe this girl would do such a thing, but—” she continued, waving off my objection “—she has brought me two such pictures now, and the first one is already listed in my catalogue. If she looted them somehow, they’re contraband, and I’m already guilty of possession. And the faintest hint that I deal in stolen goods could destroy my business, Dylan. It’s a stain that doesn’t wash out. I could lose everything.”
“If the girl didn’t loot them, maybe Arlon did. I can talk to them.”
“The girl won’t tell me, so I send my son the policeman after her? No. You would only frighten her.”
“Ma, there’s a lot more at stake here than some kid’s delicate sensibilities. Looting a grave is a five-year felony. You need to back the hell away from this.”
“But I can’t just abandon her, Dylan. Her mother’s gone, and Arlon’s a surly drunk who — anyway, I may not be the only one involved. Auerbach’s Antiques has been listing pieces from the same era, some rings, a pocket watch, several cameos. Too many to be a coincidence, I think. I believe they’re from the same source.”
“Photographs?”
“No, but if someone’s looting graves, discarding the photos would make sense. They could be recognized, and the jewelry and memento pieces are much more valuable anyway. All the pieces are of the same era, though, late nineteenth, the lumber-baron days, and in pristine condition.”
“Do you think this girl is selling to Auerbach as well?”
“I don’t know what to think, Dylan, and it’s not something I can push her on. I’m all she has. I’m holding her money, forgodsake, almost five thousand dollars. If she took it home, Arlon would drink it up in a week. I’m trying to do right by her, but getting mixed up with contraband—?” She shook her head. “I’m in serious trouble here.”
“You could be,” I conceded. “Let me—”
“No,” she said, waving me to silence. “I’ve been giving this some thought.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I sighed, leaning back in my chair. “What did you come up with?”
“In the old days, when the Cree offered their dead to the sky? They raised their platforms in remote areas, but they didn’t abandon them. One warrior would be chosen as le protecteur des morts.”
“Say what?”
“Protecteur des morts. A... defender of the dead. It was a great honor.”
“For doing what? Tending graves?”
“No, the opposite. Le protecteur was a seasoned fighter. He would take vengeance on those who offended the dead.”
“And how do you offend a corpse, exactly?”
“The Cree laid their loved ones to rest with their favorite things, weapons, a calumet, fine beadwork. Even today we bury treasures, from teddy bears to jewelry. To rob the dead of those last, loving gifts is a truly vile crime. For the Cree, the punishment was death.”
“So you want me to murder the Hatfield girl?”
“Of course not. You said you remembered our weekends when you were a boy?”
“The yard sales and flea markets? Sure, Ma. I had a ball, actually.”
“So did I,” she agreed. “And this Selena reminds me of... well, you, Dylan, in those days. She is much as you were; hungry, eager to learn. I’ve made copies of the photographs,” she said, passing me two printouts. “Deal with this, but not as a policeman. Do it as un protecteur. The defender of the dead.”
“And if the girl’s guilty? Then what?”
“I’ll leave that to you.” She sighed, patting my wrist. “Good talk, son. Sorry to eat and run, but I see a customer in trouble.”
She bustled off to aid a plump matron, torn between two Beatles lunch boxes. One was four hundred bucks, the other three-fifty. The large lady bought ’em both. My mother is one helluva saleswoman.
She must be.
She’d just sold me a half share of a five-year felony.
Stepping out of my mom’s shop is like traveling back in time, and not because of the antiques on display in her windows. Claudette’s is in the heart of the Olde Town district of Valhalla, a six-block section lovingly restored to its nineteenth-century roots. Cobblestone sidewalks, globular streetlights, shops with their original facades. It’s a crock, of course: During the logging boom, these streets were mud and boardwalks, seasoned with horse hockey.
The retro look is working, though. In recent years, the village has been growing exponentially, from a quaint little harbor town dreaming on Michigan’s northern shore to a bustling resort mecca, a hundred thousand plus and climbing. The newbies are dot-com entrepreneurs, or downstaters fleeing the cities to get away from it all but bringing most of it with them. Vale County P.D. is a small-town force dealing with big-city crime now, from meth cookers to murder.
Normally, I’d race to a crime scene with lights and sirens, pedal to the metal. Not this time. The victims were in no hurry.
Valhalla Evergreen Cemetery has five separate entrances, wrought-iron gates elaborately marked for Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Baptists, and Methodists. Once inside, the only divisions are the paved lanes between the rows, a democracy of the dead.
I followed a long driveway to the rear of the grounds, where a small fieldstone cottage houses the caretaker’s office.
The day was warm for November, and the door was ajar. I knocked anyway. Two old-timers playing checkers beside a wood stove glanced up as I stepped in.
“Help you?” the older one asked. He was tall, bald as a cue ball, had a beard like a prophet, faded golf shirt, khaki slacks. His buddy was built like a beer keg in coveralls.
“Dylan LaCrosse, Valhalla P.D.,” I said, showing them my ID. “Got a minute?”
“Sonny, I can spare twenty years, if you need ’em,” the graybeard grinned, offering a gnarled hand. “I’m Leon Chabot, the caretaker here. What can I do you for?”