She hesitated only a moment before heading toward Conway. If there had been an accident of some sort on her property-on what had once been her property-she wanted to know. She made the right turn, then followed the narrow two lanes around to the entrance of the development.
Welcome to the Estates at Palmers Woods.
Ugh, she thought. She wished they hadn’t done that. Then again, the builder had bought and paid for it. He could call it anything he wanted. She slowed at the foot of the service road and watched the county car disappear in a cloud of dust on the unpaved road.
“Sorry, miss, you can’t- Hey, Lorna, that you? Lorna Stiles?” The police officer walking toward her car removed his sunglasses as he drew near.
“Brad Walker, a cop?” She grinned. “I’d heard the rumors, but of course I didn’t believe them.”
“Yeah, well, it’s sort of the family business.”
“Your dad still chief of police?”
“Still chief.” He nodded and leaned into the car window. “How you doing, Lori?”
“It’s been a long time since anyone outside the family has called me that,” she told him.
“Seems like a long time since you’ve been back.” He patted her on the arm. “Hey, I was sorry to hear about your mom. She was a real nice lady.”
“Thanks, Brad. I appreciate that.”
“Guess you’re home to settle up things?”
She nodded and tried to be subtle about the fact that she was trying to look over and behind him.
“Oh, you’re wondering what’s going on back there?” He turned in the direction of the field.
“Well, yeah. I saw the cruisers out by the field, then the ambulance. But when I saw the medical examiner fly past, I got really concerned. This being our old property and all.” She took a sip of the coffee. Still too hot. She put it back in the cup holder. “Please tell me that no one’s been killed.”
“No, no-well, not recently, anyway. The guy operating the backhoe found a bunch of bones, and he-”
“Bones? Out here?” She frowned. “Human bones?”
He nodded confidently. “Yeah. I saw them myself. They’re definitely human. They’ve been there awhile, though. The clothes are just about disintegrated.”
“How could bones…?” Lorna was still frowning. “There’s a family burial plot on the farm, but that’s way over on the other side, I doubt the bones could be from there.”
She pointed to the opposite end of the field. “And it has a fence around it. As far as I know, no one’s ever been buried outside the fence.”
“No telling how old they are just by looking at them, but the medical examiner is going to take the bones back to the morgue and he’ll look them over.”
“But you took pictures, right? Before the bones were taken out of the ground?”
Before she could prod further, he said, “Oh, wait. Let me guess. You’re a graduate of the CSI School of Forensics. And here I thought you were still an accountant.”
She colored slightly. “Ouch. I deserved that. And you’re right. I watch entirely too much TV. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” He turned back to the field, where someone from the county was trying to slip the skeleton onto a large piece of plastic. “I think I need to check on what’s what back there. Good seeing you, Lori. Maybe I’ll get a chance to see you again while you’re in town.”
“I’ll be around for a while. Don’t forget to give my best to Liz. I’ll try to run over and visit with her while I’m home. I still haven’t met your baby.”
“The baby isn’t a baby anymore. She’s five, going to kindergarten already. I’ll tell Liz you’ll be giving her a call.”
Lorna waved as he walked away, then sat for another minute, craning her neck, trying to see over the crowd of law enforcement and county personnel who’d gathered around the remains of… Who? she wondered.
She drove back to the house, still wondering. How long had the bones been buried on the Palmer farm? Whose bones were they, and how did they get there?
Lorna parked in her drive and emptied the rest of her belongings from the back of the car. She stacked everything near the front door, then took her coffee and walked to the edge of the field. From this vantage point, she couldn’t see across to the Conway Road side, though years ago she could have. Over the past decade, a small grove of trees had sprouted up along the right-side property line, and in order to see past them, she had to walk out into the field.
The weeds were waist-high, and the dirt was dry from lack of rain. She stumbled in the rutted furrows, bumpy reminders of the last tractor to have plowed over the field. After the death of her father, her mother and grandmother had agreed to lease out the back fields to a farmer down the road to put in corn, a popular cash crop. They’d been happy to see the fields productive again, and had welcomed the extra money at a time when money had been tight. Back then, when her grandmother had been alive, there had been no talk of selling off any of the Palmer land.
Lorna paused at the top of a rise and looked down to her left, to where the field sloped gently and row after row after row of white trellises lined up like headstones in an unkempt graveyard. A mass of vines and weeds overgrew all, making Uncle Will’s fabled attempt at establishing a vineyard one big wild tangle.
Lorna had heard the story of the vineyard from her grandmother, Will’s sister, about how a young Will Palmer served in France during World War II, where after having been injured and taken to a nearby farm to recover, he had met the love of his life. The daughter of the owner of a vineyard, the equally young Marie-Terese Boulard, had agreed to marry her suitor and come to the States after the war. Before Will left to return home, Marie-Terese’s father had given him cuttings from several of his prized grapevines, having talked his future son-in-law into trying to establish vineyards of his own on American soil.
It hadn’t been so far-fetched an idea, Will had told his parents upon his arrival back in Callen. He’d done some research, and he’d found that the first commercial vineyards in America had been in Pennsylvania. “Why not now, why not here, in Callen?” he’d asked.
Grateful that their son had survived his injuries, and delighted that the once wild child was not only willing to settle down, but to settle down there on the farm, his father gave Will his blessing and offered him thirty acres to experiment with. Will returned to France to make Marie-Terese his bride, and while he was gone, his father built them a cottage overlooking the future vineyard. Will spent almost two years in France, learning all his in-laws could teach him about grapes and winemaking. When he and Marie-Terese came back to Callen, they brought with them more cuttings and their infant son. The grapes flourished in the southeastern Pennsylvania climate, but in 1948, Marie-Terese and their son were stricken with a dreaded virus that had been making a lot of news. Before the year came to a close, both Marie-Terese and the child succumbed to polio. A broken Will lost all interest in his grapes, and late in the summer of 1949, he lay down on his wife’s grave and shot himself in the head. The would-be vineyard was forgotten, and the thirty acres of grapes soon grew wild.