Buried Threat
Autore
Susan Gee Heino
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Capitoli
19
Chapter One
Caralee Patterson flicked her sunglasses out of her shirt pocket and quickly slid them on. The late springtime sun was bright after the past hour she’d spent in her grandfather’s dim hospital room. It didn’t help that her eyes stung from the tears she still fought to conceal. The last thing Grandpa would want was to see her crying over him.
The cancer had taken a toll, and now he was in the hospital with pneumonia. But he was slowly getting better and his desk was still waiting for him at the police station. He’d promised her he’d be back on the job soon, and she could only pray that would be true. He was the best police chief that Blossom Township had ever had, and Caralee felt woefully inadequate to be taking his place while he was out.
Grandpa had always been a larger-than-life figure. Growing up, Caralee had spent nearly as much time at his house as she had in her own. It was no secret how much she adored the big, bubbly guy. In fact, it was his influence that had led her to pursue a career in law enforcement. Following in his footsteps, she’d attended the academy and then gotten hired on here with the Blossom Township Police. Two months ago, Grandpa had had to take a leave of absence to start his cancer treatments. As the longest-serving member of their small local force, she’d become the youngest acting police chief in township history.
She had to admit that at twenty-seven years old, she didn’t really feel qualified to take over his position—even if it was only temporary. Then again, it wasn’t as if there was a lot of excitement here in Blossom Township. There were only six of them on the local police force, and none had been here longer than she had. Most of their officers saw Blossom Township as just a stepping stone to working in a more metropolitan area. Young people were hired right out of the academy, put in a couple years here, then went on to Cleveland or one of the larger forces nearby.
Caralee stayed because she couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. She loved her quiet little town and didn’t want to let anyone down. What if she couldn’t handle things right as police chief? What if she made some mistakes? It would all be a lot easier when her grandfather was back on the job and things felt more normal again.
Her radio cracked on, the dispatcher calling for her attention. She quickly replied and let herself into her cruiser parked in the visitors’ lot outside Blossom Memorial Hospital. She started the engine, put the windows down to get air moving and waited for dispatch to advise. Even with the breezes off Lake Erie, the sun was heating up now that it was early June.
“Officer DeKalb requests assistance,” the dispatcher said.
“What’s going on, Vicki?” Caralee asked, surprised she hadn’t been told what sort of assistance was needed.
“He says he’ll inform when you get there,” Vicki said. “I’ll send the address. You available?”
“Yeah, I just got done visiting Grandpa. He’s feeling stronger and says hi to everyone.”
“Glad to hear it. He’s sure been in our prayers. We all miss him around here.”
“So do I,” Caralee said, putting the car in gear and backing out of the lot. “Anything I need to know before going on call?”
Vicki hesitated. “DeKalb will catch you up.”
The computer lit up with the address. Caralee read it twice before recognizing it.
“He’s at the old Viveners place?” she asked, just to be sure.
“Yeah. The quicker you can get there, the better.”
She signed off, feeling an unexpected sense of concern. Violet Viveners had been dead for six years now, her house sitting vacant on Maple Street that whole time. It had become an eyesore, for sure, and Caralee hated to think what might’ve happened to motivate her young officer to call her out there.
Clearly it wasn’t a dangerous situation—she would have certainly been notified of that. Most likely it was a case of vandalism. It was impossible for a house to sit empty this long without drawing attention from local kids with too much time on their hands. She sighed, wondering what had been done to the place this time.
Last year someone had expressed their artistic talents by spray-painting obscene images on the tall brick wall surrounding the backyard. The residents of Maple Street complained until the village council stepped in and paid to have the wall power-washed. Over the years, there had also been reports of things being thrown through the boarded windows, wild animals taking residence under the porch and attempted break-ins.
Worst of all, though, was the destruction to the landscaping. While Mrs. Viveners was living, she’d been renowned for her green thumb. The brilliant perennials, lush shrubs and waves of vivid annuals around her home always made Violet Viveners a local celebrity. Her daylilies especially were award-winning. The woman was a genius when it came to cultivating and creating beauty.
She had not been known for being friendly, however. With no living relatives and a husband who’d abandoned her years before, she’d seemed perfectly content to keep to herself. She doted on her gardens and was suspicious of visitors. While the front of the house was a showplace for the neighborhood, Mrs. Viveners’s backyard oasis behind the high walls was hers alone—her own secret garden.
Only a select few Blossom Township residents had ever been invited to view the enclosure. Caralee had been one of them during her childhood—her mother had made friends with Mrs. Viveners, and the older woman had taken a special interest in young Caralee, who had been privileged to visit many times. They’d have tea in the garden, and Caralee would gawk in awe at the explosion of color and fragrance. Mrs. Viveners would walk with her, telling her in loving detail about each and every bloom. As Caralee got older, Mrs. Viveners had allowed her to help with weeding, watering and transplanting. Caralee had learned a lot from her afternoons in Mrs. Viveners’s garden.
But that had been a long time ago. As Caralee had grown up, she’d spent less and less time in that secret garden. Mrs. Viveners had become more reclusive, then passed away six years ago. Caralee still felt a tinge of remorse any time she drove past the place and saw what it had become—dead, dreary, uncared for and unloved. She prepared herself for the worst as she approached the address.
As she pulled alongside the curb, the first thing she noticed was Officer DeKalb’s cruiser parked out front. The second was the huge, rusted pickup truck parked in the driveway. And the next was a stack of lumber, freshly delivered, with miscellaneous power tools on the front porch and fresh panes of glass where the broken and boarded windows used to be.
Someone was working on Mrs. Viveners’s old house! How long had this been going on? She hadn’t heard of anyone buying it—hadn’t even heard that the issues with the estate had been cleared up. Last she knew, the property was tangled up in legal matters since Mrs. Viveners had no heirs, and her estranged husband could not be located. Had that finally been resolved? Caralee quickly notified dispatch of her arrival and hurried up to the house in search of her officer.
DeKalb was waiting for her under the ornate brick archway between the garage and the house. The iron gate swung shut behind him as he came toward her. He seemed visibly relieved by her arrival.
“I’m glad you got here right away,” he said, then his voice dropped as he glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ve been careful not to leave him alone back there.”
Caralee frowned. “Who’s back there?”
“The owner of the place, Willard Viveners.”
Caralee caught her breath. She recognized that name—Mrs. Viveners had spoken of her missing husband more than once over the years. She hadn’t had nice things to say about him.
“Willard Viveners is here?”
“Yeah, he’s doing renovations. He says the old lady sure let everything go and he’ll be lucky to get his money back out of it.”
Caralee fumed. “He said that, did he?”
“He isn’t really happy about having us here, actually, so...”
Caralee pushed past the officer and headed toward the imposing iron gate that protected the garden. If Mrs. Viveners’s wandering husband was inside that garden, Caralee wanted to talk to him. What kind of man would leave his lonely, aging wife all alone like he had? Poor old Mrs. Viveners had struggled to keep up with everything on her own. How dare the old man complain about the condition of the place now!
DeKalb was saying something behind her, but Caralee was too busy with her own thoughts to hear him. What had happened to this house was a real shame. After Mrs. Viveners passed, several locals had wanted to buy it, to care for it and preserve the garden, but it couldn’t be sold. The husband’s name was on the deed, and it technically belonged to him. While he was off enjoying his golden years, his poor wife had died alone, and her beautiful garden was destroyed.
But he was back. Willard Viveners must be over seventy now, as his wife had been nearing it when she finally passed away. Why did he wait so long?
She would have kept right on marching into that backyard to find out, except that when she reached the iron gate, it swung open. She had to jump out of the way to avoid being smacked in the face. It caught her quite off guard.
So did the man who came striding through. This was not some elderly geezer. He wore a tight blue Penn State University T-shirt, jeans that seemed to have earned their ripped knees and work boots heavily caked in mud. His shaggy brown hair was uncombed, and he could use a shave.
This tall, broad-shouldered laborer who nearly flung the gate in her face couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than she was. She eyed him, trying to reconcile his appearance with her expectations. He eyed her right back.
“You’re not Willard Viveners,” she said bluntly.
“I certainly am,” he countered. “Who are you?”
At this point, DeKalb trotted up next to her to make a quick introduction. “Mr. Viveners, this is Chief Patterson.”
The so-called Mr. Viveners looked doubtful. “Chief Patterson? No, you’re not.”
“I certainly am!” she replied, borrowing his own words. “Just what are you doing here on this property?”
“I own this property,” the man said. “I’m renovating it, or at least I was. Your officer here told me to stop. He said he needed to call his chief and...that’s really you?”
“It is.”
“Is there anyone on this police force who is legally of age?”
She bristled under his dubious gaze. “I assure you that Officer DeKalb and I are both old enough to do our respective jobs. Now, how about you just produce some kind of identification for us, Mr. Viveners, so we can get this situation sorted out.”
“I don’t think it’s my ID you need to be worried about, Chief,” the man said, holding the gate open as if to usher her inside. “It’s the guy in the backyard you need to investigate.”
Caralee didn’t like the smug grin he gave her. She glanced over to Officer DeKalb. He looked admittedly pale.
“Who’s in the backyard?” she asked him.
“That’s why I called you out here, ma’am,” the officer replied nervously. “I didn’t want to put it over the radio until you were here to tell me how to proceed, but...”
“What’s going on here, DeKalb?”
“Um, well... Mr. Viveners was working on clearing the brush and debris from the garden, and—”
The gruff man seemed to run out of patience. He interrupted the hesitant DeKalb to continue. “The place is a wreck. I was digging out some dead shrubs in the backyard, and...well, there’s dead stuff I didn’t plan for. It seems someone planted more than just daylilies out there.”
She waited for him to continue. He was infuriatingly confident, staring back at her as if his cryptic words should’ve made perfect sense. They didn’t. Angrily, she shrugged at him.
“And? Who am I supposed to investigate?”
“The corpse!” he said, rolling his eyes in frustration. “The person I just dug up in my backyard!”
She did not expect him to say that.
“You found a body in your backyard?” Hopefully her voice didn’t betray the horrified shock she felt. “A dead one?”
“No question about that,” the man assured her. “Whoever it is has been dead a long time, judging by the appearance of the remains and the size of those shrubs growing over that spot.”
“What do we do now?” Officer DeKalb asked her.
Her first instinct was to run immediately to her grandfather and ask what he would do with something like this. People simply didn’t find bodies buried in gardens here in Blossom Township. But no, she couldn’t trouble Grandpa in his current condition. She had training for all sorts of scenarios; she could handle this.
“We’ll do exactly what we’re supposed to,” she instructed her officer. “You’ll continue to keep the scene secure, and I’ll call the county sheriff’s office. They’ve got a CSI unit.”
“And what about me?” the unhappy workman grumbled. “I’m on a schedule here. I’ve got to get this place done so I can put it on the market.”
“Your schedule went out the window the minute your backyard turned into a crime scene,” Caralee informed him. “The only thing you’ll be working on here is explaining to me how you can be Willard Viveners, when I know for a fact Willard Viveners is an elderly man.”
