“A wonderful thought, but it is four days before Christmas.” Fair lifted his feet to put them on the hassock, then thought better of it.
“Go ahead. I don’t care if your boots are wet.” Cooper didn’t either. “I’ll be at St. Luke’s. Actually, the department is pretty well divided up among the churches. If someone attends a church, it made sense for them to help with deliveries that day. Tomorrow is going to be a long, long day, and there’s no way we can get back up there without you two.”
“True. GPS is no help.” Fair nodded.
“Neither is the weather,” said Harry. “The mountain road is treacherous even when it’s dry. Plus, you can’t reach the switchbacks.”
“Why not?”
“Trees down.” Harry knew the mountains. “Those fall windstorms, and now all this snow. You know, trees have to be blocking the switchbacks. They are closer to the top, more wind.”
“It’s good to have open access from a few directions, in case there’s trouble,” Cooper prudently mentioned. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it for now.”
“The killer isn’t coming back anytime soon, I expect,” Harry flatly stated. “I mean, this has to be a murder victim. People don’t get buried at the base of trees.”
“I actually enjoy cold cases.” Cooper inhaled the aroma of hardwood. “Makes me think.”
“You’ve got so many more tools now,” said Fair. “Things like DNA.”
“DNA helps, but we’d need to find a living relative of the deceased to be sure. And if a body has been long buried and can’t be identified, then you have a problem.”
“Dental records?” Fair queried.
“We send out the information, pictures of the teeth and jaw, and hope local dentists will check their records. And we hope whoever the dentist was for the victim isn’t retired or dead. Even today, there are unclaimed corpses in every morgue in every city. No one knows who they are. Some of those people most certainly have been murdered.”
“No matter how bad it is here, imagine living in Argentina, years ago—all those people who just went poof,” said Harry. “Never to be found and no records.” She thought this incredibly sad.
A flicker, and the lights came back on. The refrigerator hummed.
“That’s a record.” Fair grinned.
“It really is,” Cooper agreed. “I’ll call the boss. We’ll get up there after tomorrow’s delivery day, and once the weather cooperates. It’s important, but it’s not pressing. We will get up there, though, with your help.”
“That skeleton isn’t going anywhere,” Harry remarked.
December 20, the snow continued but was light. However, the blustery wind demanded alert driving, especially on the back roads. As the plows first cleared the interstates, then the big state highways like Route 29, the back roads often piled up with snow. No one in their right mind would be out in anything but four-wheel drive.
At seven-thirty in the morning, cars lined up at all the churches, often a police squad SUV among them to pick up the cartons, the food, the toys.
At the door to the St. Luke’s meeting room, Susan Tucker checked off people and cartons as they carried out boxes for delivery. Each table also had a St. Luke’s person checking who took what box. If anything, Susan had overorganized, but she was determined not to overlook anyone in need. Even with all the early deliveries, everyone there knew this would go on until sundown. They hoped not much beyond, but you never knew.
Susan had called her counterparts at the other churches. Managing her husband’s campaign for the House of Delegates burnished her already formidable skills. Difficult as that was, this day was also a lot to handle, compressed by time.
Strong and willing, Harry helped carry out boxes for some of the other ladies. Fair did the same, along with Brian Hexham, who’d closed his office to help.
The clergy present—priest, pastors, reverends, rabbi—all were astonished at the labor and how many parishioners had closed offices or taken the day off, doing whatever they could to help the poor. Everyone understood that these were hard times, and everyone also understood that one day a year can’t begin to address the problem. So they worked with full hearts and frustrated minds.
“Harry,” Susan addressed her dearest friend as she came back into the meeting room for another load, “go out in the hall and bring in the extra dog and cat food and all the animal treats.”
“Did we already load up all that we have in here?” Harry’s eyebrows rose.
“We did.” Susan showed her the clipboard and then Harry looked at the back table.
“Okay. Everyone has to have a Christmas present.”
By nine, everything was on its way—except for the last loads that Harry and Susan were taking. Fair had already left with an entire truckload of horse cookies, for the horses at the rehab centers and retirement places, many awaiting homes. There was little hope in the winter. He also carried some boxes for Almost Home Animal Shelter in Nelson County, as well as the sparkling, large Albemarle County SPCA.
Next to Susan, Harry rode shotgun in the Audi, list in her lap. “First stop, behind Miller School, and then we can work our way up Dick Woods Road, all those little side roads. And then—”
“Harry, I drew up the list.”
“Right.” Harry realized Susan had been putting out brush fires for weeks, each day more intense than the one before, and she was one minute away from cranky.
“I brought those nutrition bars you like. Want a chocolate one?”
“I would kill for chocolate.” Susan held out her hand.
Harry reached into the small cooler at her feet, retrieved a bar, unwrapped it halfway, handed it to Susan. Then she launched into everything that had happened last night.
“I was going to call you last night, but I know how busy you are and it was getting late. You know I tell you everything.” Harry finished the story.
“Most times.” Susan smiled. “God knows it’s bizarre. When the sheriff finally gets up there, call me, I’ll come up, since it’s on my land.”
Susan’s late uncle, a man who retired to a monastery, had willed her the huge acreage on the side of the mountain that abutted Harry’s acreage. The difference was that Susan’s side contained the large stand of black walnut, along with other hardwoods. One black walnut could fetch thousands of dollars. The market slid up and down, but one lone tree could add considerably to the comfort of one’s bank account. Harry managed the timber, a job she loved. Anything involving timber, farming, or animal husbandry, and Harry reveled in her element.
“Seeing a human skeleton suspended, tree roots growing through it, it’s awful, but at the same time I think, well, the body was put to good use,” Harry said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean?”
“What good does it do to put people in a box where decomposition doesn’t enrich the soil, or if you put them out, wild animals could eat them? It really is wasteful.”
Tension evaporating, Susan laughed. “Harry, only you.”
Harry laughed, too. “Well—”
They chattered on about everything, the deaths of the two men, the skeleton, the fingers in the pencil cup, the bills currently on the floor of the House of Delegates, who was an idiot in Richmond and who was not.
After delivering a box, Susan hopped in the Audi, Harry closing the back door, and they rode toward the last of their drops. Susan returned to a never-ending fund of gossip, much of it about sex. “Ned says most of those guys in Richmond are cheating like mad and lying through their teeth. The more righteous they present themselves, the bigger the whoremaster—his words.”