nine

The seven women trudged behind the deputy a quarter mile to the Rock Run parking lot. Charlotte clung to Francine’s arm as they traversed the uneven shoulder of the road. When the women had made it to the blacktop, the deputy pointed to the staging area where one of the stations from Terre Haute had a camera set up. Joy’s crew in the Channel Six van hadn’t been able to go much faster than the women, and they arrived simultaneously. The crew began to set up.

Joy checked her cell phone. “Good news,” she said. “The Internet signal stretches out to here. I need to do some fact checking on this bridge.” She began typing things into her phone.

Charlotte still held onto Francine, her left arm intertwined with Francine’s right. Francine felt unnerved by the dancing flames of the burning bridge, which felt almost hypnotic. The bridge was like a skeleton now, the covering having been eaten away by the fire and dropped into the creek bed below. Steam billowed above the creek as the hot boards met the cold water. The fire department had trucks on both sides of the bridge, the men and women keeping the fire from spreading over the creek bank and into the cornfield. At this time in October, the withered stalks were brown and parched. They could go up like tinder if the fire reached them.

Francine remembered that the cornfield belonged to Zedediah Matthew, but was formerly Doc Wheat’s. The horse barn owner had told Jonathan it was 300 acres. She wondered if it was all farmland. Surely with Big Raccoon Creek running through it there must be wooded areas. If Doc Wheat hid a treasure in it, it would be hard to find.

She would have thought that after so many decades since Doc Wheat owned it, the legend of this treasure would have died out. Maybe it had. Maybe her cousin William had been there for a completely different reason. But what?

“Have you heard from Dolly?” Charlotte asked, yanking Francine out of her thoughts.

“No. Jonathan and I just saw her earlier today. Why would she call me?”

Charlotte shuffled her feet a little, eyes on the ground. “I was thinking maybe his condition had changed. You know, based on the séance.”

She thought back to the séance. Had William’s spirit been reaching out to her? She shook her head at the idea. It was crazy. She didn’t believe in such things. “The fact that I haven’t heard from Dolly discounts the very notion that anything has happened to him.” Francine checked to see if Merlina was within hearing distance, and was glad she wasn’t. Merlina had made a sweep around the bulge of bystanders and stood at the creek bank, staring into the distance. “I know you want to believe in her,” Francine continued, “but I remain skeptical.”

The mention of Dolly tugged at her memory, though. She had promised to look for William’s car, a mission she still hadn’t completed.

The smells of burnt wood doused by water filled the air like sad remnants of a Girl Scout campfire when the last of the s’mores had been consumed. Acrid smoke stubbornly clung to the air. Francine could taste the rawness of it in her throat when the wind blew it right at her.

The news crew completed their setup and gave Joy the cue to begin. They were apparently doing it live, because Joy fielded some questions before she gave her report. Unlike her missteps earlier in the day when it had been so cold, Joy nailed this report from start to finish. She wrapped it up with a summary of the last time a bridge had burned down, the Bridgeton Bridge. “But unlike that bridge, which had a large number of festival events surrounding it and was rebuilt within a couple of years, the Roseville Bridge has no significance attached to it. It may go the way of the Jeffries Ford Bridge, which was destroyed in 2002 and replaced with a conventional bridge. Time will tell. I’m Joy McQueen, RTV-6 News.” She held her pose, her tiny frame against the backdrop of the smoldering hulk of the bridge until the cameraman said, “And we’re out.”

Marcy was ecstatic. “Great job! Will they be coming back to you?”

Joy looked at her watch. “They said to be ready in another half hour for the opening of News at Five.”

“This is giving you terrific exposure.”

Detective Stockton made his way through the crowd, which parted for him. He came to the press area where Joy stood talking to Marcy. He leaned in to say something as though it were for her alone, but his voice was loud enough that Francine heard it. “Would you ask the camera crew to do a slow pan of crowd? I’d like for them to capture as many of the faces that are here as possible.”

“I guess they can do that. Why?”

“I know,” Charlotte volunteered. “Arsonists usually are at the scene of the fires they start because they want to see their handiwork.”

Stockton eyed her. “I guess we can’t put anything over on you, can we?” He gave her a crooked smile. “We appreciate your station’s cooperation. There are only two stations here, yours and TWTO from Terre Haute. I have one of my men filming it, too, but you can’t cover everything. The more footage we have, the better. For the very reason Mrs. Reinhardt stated.”

He took off again.

Charlotte stood a little taller. “He knows who I am.”

“So do members of any police force after they meet you,” Mary Ruth said. “And not always for reasons you’d like to believe.”

Alice huffed. “You know what follows the five o’clock news, don’t you? The six o’clock news. If Joy has the lead story at five, she’ll be doing it at six too. Maybe even eleven.”

Everyone realized what she was saying. Mary Ruth groaned. “We could be here a long time,” she said.

“Yes,” Alice replied, “and we don’t have the luxury of time. Even with the food already prepped, we need to get back. I want to put my feet up and relax. Maybe fall asleep at a decent hour.”

“You mean like eight o’clock?” Charlotte asked.

“Don’t start on me, Charlotte. You’d fall asleep as early as I do if you didn’t take those long afternoon naps.”

“We should tell Joy,” Francine said.

“Tell me what?” They discovered Joy standing right outside their little circle. Marcy was with her.

Francine took the lead. “Tell you that we are so proud of what you are doing, but we can’t stay until the station finishes having you file reports. You could be here until after eleven.”

Joy grimaced. “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t even want to stay until then.”

“You’ll have to,” Marcy said. “That’s the nature of the news business.”

“I know.” She turned to Mary Ruth. “I understand that you need to go.”

“We’re going to leave you in Marcy’s hands, and those of your news crew,” Francine said, deliberating including Marcy so they wouldn’t have to deal with her. “You’ll have company and a way back to Rockville.”

The women hugged Joy goodbye and returned to the car. As they got there, they found Merlina standing there. Her dark eyes seemed preoccupied. “I’d like to go with you,” she said in a flat voice.

Alice glanced from Francine to Mary Ruth to Charlotte. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is a small car. We don’t have a lot of room.”

“Nonsense,” Charlotte said. “The car has five seat belts. We’ll make it.”

“What about your aunt?” Francine asked.

“I’ll text her and let her know I’m with you.”

“There’s no cell service!” they all said at once.

“Then I’ll send her an email.”

Francine didn’t like this turn of events because of the one-more-thing she needed to do, even if the Roseville Bridge had burnt down and they needed to get back to Rockville to get ready for the next day. She certainly didn’t want to be carting around someone she didn’t trust when she did it. But she didn’t have a choice. “We may not be going back to Rockville right away. We need to try to find my cousin William’s car.”

The dismay was evident from everyone’s reaction except Charlotte’s. “Do we have to?” Alice whined.

“It won’t take long. Or shouldn’t. The car should be somewhere around here.”

Francine unlocked the Prius, and they all got in. Alice sat up front with Francine, leaving Charlotte, Merlina, and Mary Ruth in the back seat. Francine got on the phone and called OnStar. It didn’t take but a few minutes for Francine to convince the OnStar people she was Dolly, but she’d had to go into more of the story than she wanted to. They gave in and provided directions, guiding her as she drove there. She had been correct in that it was only minutes away, on a road the OnStar people gave a county road number but which she knew locally as Wheat Farm Road.

The car would not have been easy to locate without navigational help. They drove down the chip-and-seal road until they passed a gravel driveway on their left. Francine put her foot on the brake just after they’d gone past. She realized what she was looking at.

“Why are we stopping?” asked Charlotte.

“This is Doc Wheat’s farm. I suddenly realized the name of the road has nothing to do with the grain.” She gave a short laugh. “I told you I was only around here as a child. How funny that I thought this led to a wheat farm.” She studied the driveway, which had been carved out of a thick forest. There was no mailbox to indicate whose place it was, but she knew anyway. Must go to the post office to preserve his anonymity, she thought.

The OnStar person seemed to be waiting for her, so she moved on. He guided them about a hundred feet where they turned onto a bumpy bare-ground road on their right. The road descended into a hollow, turned to the right again, and went into a strand of trees. Hidden in that strand they found William’s blue Lucerne. Francine pulled up behind it. The OnStar people offered to unlock the vehicle, but she assured them she had the key. She felt guilty about having lied she was Dolly, and she found herself trying to prove she was the owner.

They probably didn’t care one way or the other.

She also assured them the group was perfectly safe. Which she thought was true. They were surrounded by a forest of maple trees whose leaves had turned a flaming red color. Beautiful. But it was also secluded. She was glad to be in a group. She unlocked the doors to her car and got out. She glanced around. She saw no one.

Charlotte was the next one out of the car. She stabbed her cane into the ground as an anchor and leveraged herself out of the back seat. Merlina got out next, then Alice and Mary Ruth. Merlina walked back along the road but stopped short of the enclave. Alice and Mary Ruth hung around Francine’s car, while Francine and Charlotte circled William’s.

William’s vehicle looked undisturbed. Francine unlocked the car and scouted around the front seat for anything that would indicate why he’d been there, why this particular location.

“Find anything?” Charlotte asked.

“Nothing. Looks like William keeps a very neat car.”

Charlotte opened the passenger door. “It might be detailed on a regular basis. What’s that smell?”

Francine sniffed. The inside smelled like one of those artificial scents used to cover up disagreeable odors. “Raspberry death,” she said, and laughed. “That’s what my son Chad calls it.”

Mary Ruth cleared her throat like she needed to get their attention. Francine jerked her head up, hitting it on the roof. “Oww!” she said out loud. She pulled her head out of the car.

A man in a red plaid shirt and worn jeans stood at the entrance to the copse of trees studying the women. He seemed surprised to see them, but she wasn’t sure if it was them, William’s car, or that there were now two cars back here. She wondered if this was the first time he’d noticed William’s car, and if it was his land they were on or someone else’s. No matter. They were trespassers.

He seemed to make a decision. He waved and walked toward them. Francine noted that when he came to Merlina, he nodded at her as though he knew her.

His smile was wide and friendly. However, the heavy build, bushy beard, and his height, which Francine estimated to be six-two, gave him a rugged mountain man appearance. He didn’t give off signals that led Francine to believe he was anything but curious. As he neared the car, she could see that his eyes were a medium brown, like hers, and that his beard, which had looked dark from a distance, was speckled with flecks of gray.

“Hello,” he said. “I’ve seen the owner of that vehicle, and you don’t look like him.”

Francine has not expected him to speak so properly. “He’s my cousin,” she said, surprised. “Do you know him?”

“Not well. I’ve explained to him that I’m a private person and don’t like him sneaking around my property, but he still did it. I’ve had to run him off a few times.”

Francine felt a tinge of fear. There was no question in her mind it was Zedediah Matthew. She wished she’d kept the OnStar people hanging on the phone. She checked the inside of William’s car for a button that would hail them, but she didn’t see it. She forced herself to turn and face him and make sure he was unarmed.

“You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you. What happened to William? And do you know anything about the smoke and sirens coming from over there?” He pointed in the direction they’d come.

“He fell down the embankment at the Roseville Bridge and now he’s in the hospital. That was earlier today. We just came from Roseville Bridge as it was burning to the ground.” She spoke of the two events as though they were related; she hoped they weren’t.

“Is William going to be all right?”

“He has a concussion. The doctors are concerned.”

The mountain man shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, but Francine wasn’t clear which part of the news he was sorry to hear about. He extended his hand to her through the open window. “I’m Zedediah Matthew.”

Francine chilled a bit in the intense shade. But her manners, not to mention her curiosity, kicked in. He was being hospitable; it behooved her to return that cordiality. She shook his hand. “Francine McNamara. William’s wife, Dolly, is at the hospital with him, and I told her I’d go look for the car. These are my friends.” She introduced everyone. She could tell they were uneasy, too, but they came up to meet him.

“Francine McNamara,” he repeated. He peered into her eyes like he was looking for confirmation of something. “I thought you looked familiar. You and your friends. You’ve been on television, haven’t you? Weren’t you the Skinny-Dipping Grandmas?”

Charlotte stood up taller. “We still are.”

Francine gave a short laugh, but his knowledge only made her edgier. “Guilty as charged. You have a good memory, though. It’s been several months since we were featured on Good Morning America.”

“But your friend Joy is on the show regularly. She talks about your group.”

“That’s true.” Francine found it difficult to believe this man watched Good Morning America, but she had no idea how else he would recognize her. “Mr. Matthew, I’m sorry if William has bothered you in the past. I don’t know why he would do that, but … .”

“Please call me Zed. And I know why he did it. Same reason a lot of others have done it.” But he didn’t elaborate.

Francine was stymied. Did she want to pursue what William and the others had been searching for? Check that. Of course she wanted to pursue it. It was an almost unspoken dare that she ask.

But she didn’t want to play games with him. “We’re sorry to have disturbed you this afternoon. We’ll just take his car and leave.”

“That’s fine.” He backed away from the women. “I’ll just head on back to the house. Good luck on completing your Sixty Lists.”

The fact that he could remember the name they gave their bucket lists stopped her. One of her items was to take chances more often, and for some reason it came to mind. But before she could say anything, Charlotte butted in. “What do you think William and the others were looking for?”

He regarded her. “Charlotte. You’re the one who figured out who killed Friederich Guttmann. I’m not surprised you would ask. But the answer I have isn’t a simple one to explain.” He let that hang there a moment and then asked, “May I invite you all back to my house to discuss this over a cup of tea?”

Francine hesitated, but Charlotte was all over this. “Of course. I could use a good cup of tea.”

Francine decided to be the voice of reason. “May we have a moment?” Without waiting for an answer, she took Charlotte by the arm and led her off to the side of the car, as far as she thought necessary to be out of earshot. He seemed friendly enough, but the idea that he’d run William—and presumably others—off his property made her nervous about being alone with him.

The other women took Francine’s hint and they gathered in a circle.

“Charlotte,” Francine said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

She seemed astounded at their cluelessness. “How else are we going to get to the bottom of this if we don’t question him now? You think we’ll have another chance? And we have safety in numbers.”

Alice fingered her cross pendant, a clear sign she was on edge. “Not necessarily. He could feed us poison and kill us all at once.”

Mary Ruth put her hands in her jacket pocket. “I’m torn between thinking you sound like Charlotte with her conspiracy theories and thinking you are one hundred percent correct.” She hesitated. “If we go in, I’m not eating anything, just in case.”

Merlina stepped in and joined their circle. “I know Zed. Not well, but well enough to trust what he says. I think it’s safe.”

Everyone looked to Francine.

“Your call,” said Mary Ruth. “He’s courting you, not us. You can tell that by the way he directs his comments to you. And you drove.”

Zed called over to them. “It’s an invitation. Admittedly, I look dangerous, but that’s a deliberate choice. I’m actually very considerate, especially when I invite someone into my house. If it makes you feel easier, call your husband and tell him where you are. I wouldn’t suggest someone do that and be a bad host, would I?”

Mary Ruth poked Francine in the arm. “See, what did I tell you? He wasn’t talking to the rest of us.”

“Wait a minute,” Alice said. “How is he getting a signal out here if we weren’t able to get one at the Roseville Bridge? This location is every bit as remote.”

Francine checked her phone for a signal. It was surprisingly strong. “He must have some kind of signal booster on his property.” She didn’t know how such things worked, but she could believe Zed could figure it out. She was grateful they apparently had the same carrier. “You really think it’s okay for us to stay?” Even as she said it, she was already reminding herself she could check #42 (Take More Chances) off her list if they had tea with him.

“Of course it’s fine,” said Charlotte. “We should go in and cross-
examine him. If it makes you feel better, call Jonathan.”

Surely he wouldn’t tell me to call Jonathan if there were any danger. “Give me just a minute.”

She called Jonathan, catching him at the office. She briefed him on the situation. “So he’s been a gentleman?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes.”

“And it’s you, Charlotte, Mary Ruth, and Alice?”

“And Merlina.”

“Who?”

“The medium Charlotte hired.”

“What’s she doing there?”

Francine began to stutter out an explanation, but even to her it sounded confusing.

“Never mind,” Jonathan said. “I’m not sure I want to know. Shouldn’t a medium be able to sense if there were danger coming?”

“Be serious.”

“What does Charlotte think? Or is she even giving you a choice?”

“She’s lobbying heavily for us to go in.”

“Do you think you’re in danger?”

She took a deep breath. “No, I don’t. He seems to want to make a connection with me. I don’t think he would hurt me or any of us if he were trying to do that.”

Jonathan was silent for a moment. “I trust your judgment. Plus, I know what you’re like when you’re investigating a mystery. In some ways, you’re as bad as Charlotte. Just be careful. At the first inkling of any danger, promise me you’ll get out of there. And keep your cell phone handy.”

“I will. I’ll call you as soon as we’re done, so you’ll know.”

“I’m calling you in a half hour if I don’t hear from you.”

“Good idea. It’ll help us wrap up the conversation if it goes too long.”

“Do you want me to head back to Rockville? You know I will if you need me.”

“Let’s keep that an option for now. I’ll talk to you soon.” Francine disconnected. “Okay,” she told the others. “Let’s have tea.” The women moved toward Zed, hanging together as a group. Francine clutched her purse containing her cell phone.

Zed was talking to Merlina. Though the conversation seemed cordial, there was some point of contention between them. Francine wondered if they had made the decision to accept his invitation too quickly.

But Merlina apparently knows him, she thought. She wouldn’t go in if there was any danger.

Just then, he caught sight of them approaching. He smiled. “Good. I’m glad you trust me. I think we have much to discuss.” His words were clearly directed at her. But he included the others as he added, “Let’s go in and have tea.”

Have tea while the Roseville Bridge burns. It felt bizarre to think of it that way, even weirder to find herself starting toward Zed to do it. The women moved with her. Francine clutched her purse containing her cell phone.