Pearl stood in her backyard and surveyed the change. All her grandmother’s rosebushes were gone. It had been a little over three weeks since the dogs—and then the police—began digging up her backyard. After they were done, there was no way to salvage the roses. She refused to admit that they had been beyond redemption before her neighbors’ dogs had dug up the old bones. As for those bones, the police still did not know who they had belonged to.
Work on the new back patio had been delayed, but Craig had managed to finish it yesterday. Pearl almost regretted having Craig build the new patio. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the area. It was now a big rectangle patch of nothing—a paver patio surrounded by damp dirt.
Turning from the backyard, she headed toward the front of her property, walking along the pathway next to the wrought-iron fence separating her land from the Marlows’. On her way there she picked up a rake she had forgotten to return to the toolshed. When she reached the toolshed, she went inside, leaving the door open.
Rake in hand, Pearl looked down at the wood floor and groaned. Mud from the recent storms had been tracked inside, leaving the shed floor covered in dirt. She set the rake in the corner and picked up the broom.
“That’s the house where the bodies were buried,” Pearl heard someone say. Glaring angrily, she looked out of the toolshed toward the street and spied two women walking down the sidewalk toward the pier. She didn’t recognize them and suspected they were tourists. The afternoon breeze had helped carry the woman’s voice up from the sidewalk. Shaking her head in disgust, Pearl turned her back to the street and began sweeping.
About twenty minutes earlier, next door at Marlow House, Walt and Danielle sat silently in the parlor, each reading a book. The only sound came from the steady ticking of the wall clock. Curled up on one end of the sofa, Danielle turned the page of her book. Walt, who sat across from Danielle in a chair, looked up and set his book on his lap.
“You want to walk down to the pier and get an ice cream cone?” Walt asked.
Danielle looked up from her book and smiled. “Ice cream? That does sound good.” She glanced up at the clock; it was a quarter to three.
Walt looked over to the clock, noting the time. “Doesn’t Lily have her doctor’s appointment today?”
“Yes, after she gets home from school. They’re supposed to find out if it’s a boy or girl today.” Danielle closed her book and tossed it on the table.
“I still can’t believe they’ll be able to find out if it’s a boy or girl so soon,” Walt said, standing up and setting his book on the table with Danielle’s.
Some fifteen minutes later, they walked out the front door of Marlow House, on their way to get ice cream. They noticed two women heading down the sidewalk, walking in the direction of the pier. Beyond the two women was Heather Donovan, walking in their direction.
When Danielle and Walt pushed through their front gate, the two women were already walking by Pearl’s house. A few minutes later, as Walt and Danielle passed by the side gate into their property, a police car pulled up and parked nearby, just as they came face-to-face with Heather. Driving the vehicle was Joe Morelli, with Brian Henderson in the passenger seat.
“Where are you off to?” Danielle asked Heather as she and Walt stopped to talk.
“I’m going to Chris’s house to pick up something. Where are you two going?” Heather asked.
Just as Danielle told Heather they were walking down to the pier for ice cream, the two officers started getting out of their car.
“Hi, Joe, Brian,” Danielle called out.
“Any news on who was buried next door?” Heather asked.
“Not yet,” Joe said, slamming his car door shut.
A moment later Brian joined them on the sidewalk, and they all exchanged brief pleasantries. “Here on official business?” Danielle asked.
“Yes. While we wait to hear back from the lab, we’re trying to get some more information from anyone who ever lived at this house,” Joe explained.
“I have a good idea who one of those bodies might be. But not sure about the other two—if there are really three,” Heather said.
“We only found two skulls, so I suspect it will turn out to be two people,” Brian said.
“So who do you think it is?” Joe asked Heather.
“I think it’s Pearl’s grandfather. Danielle thinks that too. Don’t you, Danielle?” Heather said in a loud voice. “And the other body might be one of his other wives. The guy disappeared about seventy years ago—after his wife found out he had another family. I say Pearl’s grandmother found out and got rid of him. And Danielle looked up Pearl’s family tree online and found out he pretty much dropped out of sight around that time, never to be seen again.”
“All lies!” Pearl shouted when she unexpectedly stepped out onto the sidewalk. She looked as if she might start swinging at any minute. She turned to Danielle and said, “I don’t know what you are doing snooping into my family’s business!”
“There were at least two bodies buried on your property,” Walt reminded her. “You can’t really blame us for wanting to find out who they were.”
“I just bought this house! You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with burying them here!” Pearl shrieked.
“Certainly not,” Danielle said quickly. “And no one was suggesting you had anything to do with those remains. You weren’t even born then.”
“I don’t appreciate you slandering my grandmother!”
“I think we should go,” Walt said. “Brian and Joe came here to talk with Mrs. Huckabee. I think we should let them do their job.”
“I don’t know why you need to talk to me again,” Pearl said five minutes later after she showed the two officers into her house. The three sat at her kitchen table.
“Your family has owned this property for over seventy years,” Brian reminded her. “And Heather is not wrong in suggesting someone from your family—or someone they knew—might be the ones responsible for what we found buried in your backyard.”
“Well, I certainly don’t know anything about it.”
“What do you know about your grandfather?” Joe asked.
Stubbornly folding her arms across her chest, Pearl glared at Joe. She sat in silence for a few moments and then said, “I know for certain he was not one of those unfortunate people buried in my backyard.”
“How do you know that? You weren’t even born at the time he went missing,” Joe asked.
“For one reason, he did not go missing. And for another, I knew him.”
“You knew your grandfather? The one who bought this house with your grandmother?” Brian asked.
Pearl nodded. “Yes. My mother loved her father. She was angry at my grandmother for making him leave and then telling everyone he had died. Mother said Grandma told her and my aunt, your father is dead to us.”
“But your mother saw him again?” Brian asked.
“Years later. Frankly, I understand why my grandmother kicked him out. But I also understand how my mother resented Grandma for so many years—blaming her. She was just a child and didn’t really understand.”
“You say you saw your grandfather?” Brian asked.
“Yes. After my grandmother died, my mother and aunt went through my grandmother’s things. Mother found a letter from her father. She used it to track him down. My father took us to see him—my grandfather was living in Nevada. I imagine they regretted making the trip—taking me to see him. It didn’t work out very well. He wasn’t the man my mother imagined all those years. He was the man my grandmother had kicked out. He died a few years later and was buried in Reno. He was going by another name. That was the name he was buried under.”
“Do you remember what that name was?” Joe ask.
Pearl shook her head. “No. I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember what year he died?”
Pearl shrugged. “No. I can’t even recall what year it was we went to see him. It was so long ago.”
Brian opened his notepad and flipped the page. He read whatever was on the page and then looked up to Pearl. “From what we have, your grandparents purchased this property from the Mortons, and after your grandfather left, it was put in your grandmother’s name.”
“Correct.” Pearl nodded.
“After your grandmother passed away, the house went to your mother and her sister?” Brian asked.
“Yes, but my parents sold their share to my aunt not long after my grandmother died.”
“It then went to your cousins, your aunt’s children, after she died, correct?” Brian asked.
“Yes. After each cousin passed away, their share went to their children,” Pearl explained. “But they couldn’t seem to get along, so they sold it to me.”
“In all those years, was the house ever rented out?” Brian asked. “We haven’t been able to find any information on any tenants of the property.”
“No. It never was, as far as I know. And after my grandmother died, the house became a vacation home for the family members who owned it. No one ever lived here full-time. So anyone could have buried anything on the property during all those years, considering the house was frequently vacant.”
“You know, unless those bones are not as old as the coroner thinks, those bodies could not have been buried in her backyard after the grandmother died,” Joe said after getting back into the police car with Brian and closing the door.
“I know. Unless they were put there right after she died,” Brian said.
“Do you think she was telling the truth about her grandfather?” Joe asked.
“I was wondering that myself. Especially since she conveniently forgot when her grandfather died and what name he was using.”
Walt and Danielle were eating their ice cream cones and walking back to Marlow House when Joe came driving toward them from Pearl’s. Instead of driving by, he pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped. Brian rolled his window down.
“I feel bad Pearl overheard Heather, but I think it could be her grandfather,” Danielle told the officers when she and Walt stopped by their car.
“Pearl claims her grandfather was alive and well when she was a teenager—so if she is telling the truth, then it’s not him,” Brian told her.
“Hopefully you can figure this out when the lab is done with the bones. What now?” Danielle asked.
“We’re going over to one of the previous owners of the property, see what he might know about the house’s history,” Brian explained.
“You mean Andy Delarosa?”
“You know who that is?” Brian asked.
Danielle glanced at Walt and then looked back to Brian. “I should probably tell you something before you go over there.”
“What’s that?” Brian asked.
“Remember that rosebush someone stole out of Pearl’s yard? Well, he’s the one who took it.”
“Maybe, but we can’t prove it. Why do you think he took it?”
“Please don’t say anything to Carla,” Danielle began.
“Carla?” Brian groaned.
Danielle then repeated the story Carla had told her. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it, because I figured it was some family issue, and Carla asked me not to say anything. But the more I think about it, you should probably know as much about that family as possible, if you’re to figure out who was buried in the backyard.”