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She returned in a remarkably short period of time, holding a white index card which she passed to me. There wasn't much on the face of it, but it was all pertinent. I soaked up the typed information in a flash. Surname, Chapman. Given name, A
Ah. Date of death, January 8, 1940. That was interesting.
Date of interment, January 12, 1940. The space allotted to the funeral director had been left blank, but the lot number and the plot number were filled in.
"What's this?" I asked. I held the card out, pointing to the bottom line on which the word cenotaph had been handwritten in black ink.
"That's a commemorative headstone for someone who's not actually buried in that plot."
"She's not? Where is she?"
The woman took the card. "According to this, she died in Tucson, Arizona. She's probably interred there."
"I don't get it. What's the point?"
"The Bronfens might have wanted her remembered in the family plot. It's a great comfort sometimes to feel that everyone's together."
"But how do you know this woman's really dead?"
She stared at me. "Not dead?"
"Yeah. Don't you require any proof? Can I just come in here and fill out one of these cards and buy somebody a gravestone?"
"It's hardly that simple," she said, "but yes, essentially…"
She had launched into an explanation of the particulars, but I was on my way out.
I drove to the board-and-care in a state of suspended animation. All I'd really wanted was corroboration of Bronfen's tale, and here I was with another possibility altogether. Maybe Agnes Grey and A
I parked the Porsche at the curb and got out. For once, there was no little twitch of the curtain as I pushed through the gate. I went up the porch steps and rang the bell. I waited. Several minutes passed. I moved over to the porch rail and peered toward the back of the house. At the far end of the driveway, I spotted a single-car garage. Attached to it was a lath house and a dark green potting shed with a big handsome padlock hanging open in the hasp.
Behind me, I heard the front door opening. "Oh, hi. Is that you, Mr. Bronfen?" I said, turning my attention back.
The man in the doorway was someone else-a frail old fellow with an air of shuffling indecision. He was thin and bent, his shoulders narrow, his fingers twisted with arthritis. He wore a much-washed plaid fla
"Do you have any idea what time he'll be back?"
"About an hour," he said. "You just missed him."
"Oh, gee, that's too bad. I'm the contractor," I said in this totally false warm tone I use. "I guess Mr. Bronfen's thinking about an addition to the shed out back. He asked me to take a look. Why don't I just go on out there and see what's what."
"Suit yourself," he said. He closed the door.
Heart thumping, I made a beeline for the backyard, figuring my time was going to be limited. Patrick Bronfen was not going to appreciate my snooping, but then, if I were quick about it, he'd never know. The shed was perched haphazardly on a concrete foundation that did a sort of zigzag between the single-car garage and the house. This looked like the sort of work that was done without permit and was probably not up to code. Given the slope of the side yard and the retaining wall at the property line, Bronfen probably should have had a team of civil engineers out here before he opened that first sack of Redi-Mix.
I removed the dangling padlock from the hasp and let myself in. The ulterior was probably eight by ten, smelling of loam, peat moss, and potting soil, overlaid with Bl and fish emulsion. There were no windows and the light level had dropped by more than half. I felt around in the gloom, trying to find a light switch, but apparently the shed wasn't wired for electricity. I groped through my handbag till I came up with a penlight and shone it around. The beam illuminated a large expanse of wall-mounted pegboard, hung with gardening tools. A mower leaned against the wall, its blades flecked with grass clippings. There was a six-foot workbench, its surface littered with clay pots, trowels, spilled potting soil, and discarded seed packs. Damp air clambered over my ankles and feet. Under the bench, I could see a gap in the rotting wood where a board had been pushed out.
To the right was an oblong wooden bin with a hinged lid, knee-high, the sort of unit where tools are stored. A square of newly cut plywood had been nailed across one end. Big plastic bags of bark mulch and Bandini 101 were stacked on top. One of the bags had a rip in the bottom and a trail of bark extended across the cracked cement floor. A pie-shaped wedge of track suggested that the bin had been dragged forward and then pushed back again. I thought about Agnes's torn knuckles and broken nails.
I lifted my head. "Hello," I said, just to check the sound level. The word was muffled, as if absorbed by the shadows. I tried again. "Hello?" No echo at all. I doubted the noise carried five feet beyond the shed. If I'd abducted a half-senile old lady, this would be a neat place to stash her till I decided what to do.
I balanced the penlight on the workbench and removed the twenty-five-pound bags from the top of the bin, stacking them to one side. When I'd cleared the lid, I opened it and peered in. Empty. I retrieved the penlight and checked the rough interior surface. The space was easily the size of a coffin and constructed so poorly that the air flow could probably sustain life, at least for a brief period. I ran the penlight from corner to corner, but there was no evidence of occupancy. I lowered the lid and restored the bags of mulch to their original positions. On my hands and knees, I checked the area around the bin. Nothing. I'd never be able to prove Agnes Grey had been here.
As I backed out of the space, I caught a whiff of foul air, musty and sweet, like a faint wisp of smoke. I felt my skin contract with recognition, hairs standing at attention along the back of my neck. I could feel my lips purse with distaste. This was the odor of dead squirrel trapped in a chimney, rotting gopher parts left on the porch by your cat, some creature guaranteed to perfume your nights until nature had completed the process of decomposition. Jesus. Where was it coming from?
I raised myself up on my knees and fumbled across the workbench until I found the trowel. I ducked under the bench again, ru
I tried the light again, working my way to the right where I could see two horizontal cracks. I began to chop away at the concrete, doing more damage to the trowel than I was doing to the footing. I pulled myself to my feet again, searching the workbench for a more effective tool. Up on the pegboard, I spotted a short-handled hoe with a pick on the backside of the blade. I crawled back to my little strip mine and began to hack in earnest. I was making so much damn noise, it was a wonder the neighbors didn't complain. A hunk of cement fell away. Tentatively, I scooped some of the debris off, using the pick to excavate. I felt resistance, some sort of root perhaps, or a length of rebar. I turned on the penlight again and peered into the space.