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Beverly turned her car onto Blessing Lane and counted down the house numbers. It started with 900, but when she’d reached the 600 block, the row of houses suddenly ended, replaced by a rolling field hemmed in by a low stone wall. A few feet further down, rows of headstones popped into view. She pulled her SUV in front of the wrought-iron arch marking the pathway into the cemetery and looked at the sign on top. It read Deer Park Cemetery, 101 Blessing Lane.
Had Imelda Forsythe given her the wrong address? Beverly got out of the car and walked under the arch, looking at the various inscriptions on the stones. Several Buels, Howes, and Lathrops. All family burial plots, if she wasn’t mistaken.
It was an eerily beautiful setting for a cemetery. Ash-gray stones dotted the field of brown grass like monolithic soldiers, and vivid red trees bled against the cloud-shrouded hills in the distance.
Beverly wandered down the rows and stopped in front of one grave that was newer than the others. The name on the headstone read “Kannan Hendrick.” What had Imelda said? “If you ever want to dig up dirt on Reggie Forsythe, you should look up Kannan Hendrick. Now there was a man who had no sense. Guess that’s why he ended up where he did.”
The death date on the tombstone was fifteen months ago. What had Imelda meant by the man had “no sense?” Whatever it was, Reggie’s ex-wife believed it had landed him here.
One thing that stood out was a lack of flowers or a flag on Hendrick’s plot unlike other grave sites. Beverly reached down to brush off a piece of withered grass clinging to the edge of the stone. As she straightened up, a voice from behind her almost made her jump out of her skin.
“You didn’t bring no flowers.”
Beverly spun around to face the man. His long white hair spun a tangled web like spider silk down the middle of his back, and the skin stretched over his emaciated frame hung as if pasted there by sheer will. He looked like he’d crawled out of one of the graves.
She wasn’t superstitious, but this man who’d popped out of nowhere was giving her the creeps. Even with the gun hidden in her purse, she was acutely aware of how isolated it was out here. Just her, a few squirrels, and this cadaverous stranger. She gaped at him, then said, “Excuse me?”
“Flowers, I said flowers. You’re the first person I seen here visiting old Hendrick since he was planted. The man should have some flowers.”
“Oh. I uh, I didn’t have time to stop at a florist. But I’ll do that later. Are you the caretaker here?”
“Yep. You kin?”
Beverly thought fast. “Distant. A third cousin. I don’t know much about him other than family gossip.”
He scratched his chest. “Gossip followed old Hendrick around like a cloud of smoke. After his passing, too.”
Beverly bit her lip. “Yes, I believe I remember something. It’s sort of hazy.”
“They said it was a robbery gone bad at his house. But robbers don’t usually bash in somebody’s skull like that, do they? They got guns or knives. Or they turn tail and run if they’s cowards.”
“The police don’t know who did it?”
“Damned if they know. Damned if I know. And if I did, I’d keep my mouth shut. Wouldn’t want to end up like poor Hendrick.”
“If not burglary, then surely there was some reason for him to be murdered.”
The caretaker lowered his voice, even though they were the only two people there. “I heered Hendrick was in thick with some powerful people. People with lots of secrets they want kept. And old Hendrick, he was into drugs. Not only weed but some of that harder poison. And those powerful people thought he couldn’t keep those secrets to hisself if he was all drugged up half the time.”
“Maybe it was a drug buy gone bad?”
“They didn’t find none in his house. So I haveta think something else was going on. Seems to me someone wanting to cover up his tracks to keep those secrets I told you about would just plant something to frame Hendrick. Even if only a little bit of weed.”
Beverly couldn’t argue with his logic. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to know my cousin better.” She took a wild guess. “I mean, he didn’t have many close friends, did he?”
“Guess I shouldn’t speak ill of your kin, Miss . . . “
“Ginny. And it’s okay to speak freely.”
“I had a great-aunt name of Ginny. Not near as pretty as you.”
Beverly hadn’t missed the caretaker giving her the eye. She hoped it was the look of a man admiring a filly he wasn’t planning on riding. But she moved her right foot in front of her, in case she needed to heave a quick knee to his groin. “You were going to tell me about cousin Kannan?”
The caretaker reached under his shirt and pulled out a chain with a pendant on the end. No, not a pendant, as she got a closer look. More like a Spanish silver coin. The caretaker said, “Got this from him. He was into collecting old things.”
“He had an antiques store?”
“Not a store, no. Just collecting. He did some buying and selling, too. That’s where those powerful people come in.”
“If he gave you that, you must be his friend.”
The caretaker poked the chain back under his shirt. “Didn’t exactly give it to me, you see.”
“Oh?”
“After the police was done with him, he ended up in Smithson’s Funeral Parlor. No one claimed the body. Sat there in the freezer like a side of beef.”
Beverly looked over at his grave. “Then how—”
“An anonymous cashier’s check came in. Said it was for his burial. But there weren’t no talk of what to do with his personal effects.”
“You helped yourself, I take it?”
“No, no, what type of ill-bred lout you think I am? Smithson gave it to me.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t see what you mean. Why would the funeral home director give it to you?”
“Not so much gave it, as lost it. As in poker.”
Beverly didn’t know whether to laugh or to play the shocked relative. She compromised with a noncommittal, “Oh, I see.”
The caretaker rubbed the corner of his mouth. “I guess if you’re family, I should—”
“You keep it. You won it fair and square.” She wasn’t an expert on antique coins, but she’d seen enough of them to have a ballpark estimate of what this one was worth, no more than three or four hundred.
The muscles on the man’s face relaxed. “That’s mighty kind of you. What can I do you for, in return?”
She wasn’t sure she liked where the conversation was heading, so she turned it back to her “cousin.” “You can pay me back by telling me more about cousin Kannan. He sounds fascinating. How did he get into buying and selling antiques?”
“I’m not so sure he bought ’em if you get my drift.”
“Stole them?”
“Not so much stole ’em. Repossessed ’em.”
Like the younger Reginald Forsythe did several times over, closing down competitors’ shops, then carrying off the loot. Was that what Imelda meant when she said Hendrick had dirt on Reggie? That would mean Kannan Hendrick, currently lying under his own pile of dirt, was a literal dead end as a source of proof detailing Forsythe’s shady activities.
She said, “One of those people whose antiques he’d ‘repossessed’ decided to get back at him?”
“Could be. Or worse.”
“Worse?”
“One rumor had ole Hendrick involved in a setup that snaked a path all the way to the Statehouse up in Montpelier.”
“Surely you don’t mean a member of the government killed him?”
“Naw, they’re too sissified. They get others to do their filthy business. To take care of their messes.” The caretaker pointed over at Hendrick’s grave. “And to make sure they’re good and buried.”
“I had no idea my cousin was so colorful. He must get it from his mother’s side of the family. I mean, the rest of the Hendricks are so deadly dull. Like me, for instance.”
The man cackled. “Everyone’s always shocked when their relative-whoever ends up in Sing Sing.”
“If you’re right about that rumor and the Statehouse, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. I don’t suppose you got any names? I might get a book deal out of all of this.” Beverly smiled and batted her eyelashes. First a magazine article, now a book deal. Beverly-the-writer, her second career.
“No names. If I did, I wouldn’t say so. Don’t want to end up like ole Hendrick.”
Beverly was disappointed he didn’t have any additional info, and since his leer was getting leerier by the minute, she decided she’d better cut and run. But first, she eyed a freshly dug gravesite nearby that was covered in dozens of bouquets and walked over. She picked one of the baskets with pink and purple flowers and carried it over to Hendrick’s grave and planted it on top. “They won’t miss it.”
The man grinned. “A little flower theft, ay? Well, now, maybe you ain’t so far from Hendrick’s line of work as you thought.”
Oh, you have no idea. Beverly smiled again and made her excuse of having “to get back to work,” and left the grave, the place, and the man, as soon as she could.
The deeper she dug into the whole Forsythe affair, the uglier things seemed to get. First theft and profiteering, then murder, and now shady dealings that could involve a person or persons in the Vermont Legislature. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
