A Whisker In The Dark

“Yeah I guess they’re pretty far removed. So that’s it then? Case closed?” I asked.

Seth put the last of the police equipment into a bag and turned to the door. “Yep. The room is officially cleared and you can start working in here again.”

Good thing I’d given Ed the rest of the day off. He’d resisted going home, puttering around the grounds instead, but I knew he hadn’t started in the conservatory yet. This way I could just have him continue in the ballroom. I’d told him he needn’t stay but I kept seeing him around and whenever I asked him why he hadn’t left he simply said he was tending to “this and that”. I guess he felt guilty about going home since I’d given him the day off with pay. Call me an old softy but I knew he was supplementing his social-security income and I didn’t want him to miss a day’s pay just because someone had shoved a body inside my wall three centuries ago.

My phone chirped, and I pulled it out of my pocket. A bright spot in the day! It was my daughter Emma. I couldn’t help but smile. Emma lived halfway across the country and I didn’t get to see her often, so her phone calls were like balm for my soul. I loved hearing stories about her job. She’d recently started working at the FBI, so I figured she would get a kick out of the skeleton story.

“Gram told me you found another dead body,” Emma said as soon as I answered the phone.

Leave it to my mother to spread distorted news as fast as she could. Emma and my mom were close, and that was a good thing, except sometimes they were a little too close. I didn’t mind so much except my mother tended to be overly dramatic and sometimes she exaggerated when she passed on information to Emma.

“Well it wasn’t exactly a body, at least it hasn’t been for quite some time.” I didn’t want Emma to worry. Or think that I was some kind of weird murderer attractor.

“Gram was a little vague.” The tone of concern in Emma’s voice squeezed my heart. It was sweet that she was worried, but it was my job to worry about her, not the other way around. That would come much later in life if I turned out like my mother, I hasten to add. “Turns out there was a skeleton buried in the wall here. Sheriff Chamberlain says he’s been dead almost three hundred years.”

“No kidding. Gram said something about treasure, too.” Emma’s concern turned to excitement. That’s good, it meant she wouldn’t be worried about me.

“Apparently there was some curse about the treasure and now the whole town is going crazy thinking they are going to find it in the yard here.”

“Oh, that sounds messy. What about the investigation?” Emma asked. She’d always been interested in investigations, so it was no surprise when she’d gone to college to study criminology and then jumped at the FBI’s job offer upon graduation. Who knew her mother would end up with a dead body and an old skeleton in her guesthouse? Maybe the abundance of homicides would make her want to move to town. We could use her help if dead bodies continued to crop up.

“There won’t be one. Sheriff Chamberlain pointed out that there are no suspects still alive and no one to arrest. They aren’t even a hundred-percent sure who the victim is.”

“Hmm… still seems like one should get to the bottom of what happened. Maybe he should send it to a forensic anthropologist or something and have them look into it. I could hook him up, but there’s probably a backlog.”

“I could mention it to him. No one here seems interested in it though. Not even the dead guy’s family.”

“Oh, right. They’re staying at the guesthouse. Were they upset?”

“Hardly. More like excited once they concluded the discovery of the skeleton meant his treasure could still be buried outside.” I peered out the window to see if any digging had started. Thankfully not yet. Paula was still asleep in the shrub.

“So things are going good otherwise?”

“Fabulous.”

“And Uncle Tommy’s friend, Mike? How are things going with him?” Emma’s voice held a hint of mischief and hopefulness.

That must have been my mother exaggerating again. “He hasn’t written me up for any building code violations yet.”

“Gram implied he might be inspecting more than just the guesthouse…”

“Gram implies a lot of things that are not correct. There’s nothing going on.” I put that to rest as soon as possible. The last thing I needed was my daughter digging into my love life. Or lack thereof.

“Well if there was, I think that would be great. I mean, I love Dad and everything, but you deserve to be happy.”

“Thanks, honey, I’m glad you feel that way.” At least if I ever did start dating, Emma wouldn’t be one of those adult children who protested their mother ever being with anyone but their father. It made me wonder how she felt about Clive’s many lady friends. A pang of jealousy surfaced. Did Emma like them? Then again, how could she get to know any of them? His bedroom had a revolving door. I assumed Clive still liked to have several on reserve just like he had when we were married.