Digging Up The Dirt

“What do you mean?” Reba asked.

Dickce ticked them off on her fingers. “First, you have to presume that Hadley was in love with Callie, and second, that Hamish told his brother to leave Ashton Hall because of it. Third, that Callie was so in love with Hadley that she was willing to run away from her husband. Fourth, that Hamish was in such a tremendous rage that he killed his own wife when she said she was leaving him, and, fifth, buried her practically in his own front yard without anybody noticing.” She paused and looked at her fingers. “I think that’s it. Five things you have to presume.”

“Did anyone ever ask Hamish Partridge what happened to his wife?” Barbie asked. “I don’t remember seeing him around much, once word got out that both Hadley and Callie were gone.”

“I talked to him a couple of weeks after everyone realized Hadley was gone, and by that time, we realized no one had seen Callie around during that period,” Reba said. “Poor man. I asked about Callie, and all he would say was that she was gone. No other explanation, and I didn’t feel that I could question him further.” She shrugged. “I took it to mean she’d run away with Hadley, and that was the end of it.”

“Except now we know that maybe it wasn’t,” Barbie said.

Dickce waggled her fingers in Barbie’s direction.

“Yes, that’s presuming a lot,” Barbie said in response. “But surely if Ashton Hall were built on a Native American site, they would have found evidence of it when they were building it.”

“But that was nearly two hundred years ago,” An’gel said. “At the time, if they had discovered anything, they might not have thought too much about it. They didn’t have a lot of respect for Native American culture in the early nineteenth century.”

“That’s true,” Dickce said.

Clementine brought in the fresh pot of coffee then, along with extra cups. She accepted their thanks and withdrew.

An’gel poured coffee for Reba and Martin first. Martin had been so quiet that Dickce had forgotten he was in the room. She noticed now that he had his phone out, and his gaze seemed focused on it, even as he accepted his coffee.

An’gel offered refills to Barbie and Lottie, but they declined. An’gel set down the carafe and leaned back in her chair.

“How long is it going to take before they decide who was buried there?” Barbie asked.

“Several weeks at least, if not two or three months,” Dickce said.

“Can’t they match up dental records?” Lottie asked. “I’ve heard of that, and surely it can’t be that hard.”

“If they have access to the records,” Barbie said, “it probably isn’t all that hard. But that was forty years ago. Who knows what could have happened to any dental records Callie might have had?”

“I hope it does turn out to be a Native American burial from centuries ago,” Reba said. “That would mean poor Callie might still be alive somewhere.”

“There ought to be one way to tell,” Lottie said. “Grave goods.”

Dickce stared blankly at Lottie for a moment. The she realized Lottie was right. Native Americans, from what she knew, did bury their dead with objects of different kinds.

“Did you see any grave goods?” Barbie asked.

An’gel answered. “No, all we saw were a few bones.”

Dickce had not mentioned the ring Endora found, and An’gel apparently wasn’t going to mention it either. Had the ring, however, been the grave goods buried with Callie? She shivered at the thought.

“They might have been looted by the Partridge that built Ashton Hall. So all they could have found was the bones.”

Dickce glanced toward the front window in surprise. Martin evidently was paying attention to the conversation, though she had assumed he was focused solely on his phone. After those two sentences, though, he turned back to the device.

“That’s an excellent point, darling,” Reba called out. “Thank you.” Martin did not appear to hear his mother, Dickce noted. Perhaps he’s used to tuning her out. They had an odd relationship, or so it seemed to Dickce. Martin acted more like a henpecked husband than he did a son, but he appeared content to let his mother run his life.

“We can speculate all we want among ourselves about those remains,” An’gel said. “But I think we should all be careful around Hadley and not bring them up unless he does.”

“Yes, it must be terribly upsetting to him,” Lottie said. “To think that your own brother might have killed his wife and buried her in the garden.”

“We’ll have to rally around him and give him all the support he needs.” Barbie assumed a doleful expression. “Poor Hadley.”

Dickce could picture it now. A steady stream of casseroles and various delicacies making their way to Ashton Hall, all borne there by women eager to offer solace to the master of the house. She permitted herself a brief smile. Hadley might actually enjoy the attention, unless he had changed dramatically in the past forty years.

“How did they find the bones in the first place?”

Once again Martin Dalrymple startled them all by speaking from his seat at the desk.