frustrating he was.
“Hey, you’re having a party—with a bar! I see my timing’s good. I’ll go up to my old room and clean up a bit. Clothes in the car, but I’ll jus’ borrow somethin’ of yours, like in the old days. So, what’s the occasion?”
“A pre-wedding party for Gabe McCord, Tess Lockwood and guests.”
“Todd coming, then?”
“And Paul, as a matter of fact.”
In addition to Gabe McCord, Todd McCollum and Paul Kettering had been the Mason boys’ best friends growing up. Gabe had been away that fateful summer when the rest of them had taken a blood oath, swearing never to tell anyone else about what Grant always thought of as “the death chamber.”
“Gabe’s deputy, Jace Miller, and his wife are coming, too,” Grant went on, trying to keep calm. “And a veteran detective he’s close to from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. If any of them knew you’d driven in here drunk—even a couple of miles—it wouldn’t be pretty. Gabe’s mother, who lives in Florida, will be here, too, and one of Tess’s sisters...”
“Okay, okay, I get it. Steer clear. Don’t embarrass the lord of the manor. Bet you don’t even want me to stay here for a while, right, bro?” His voice rose, and he stood unsteadily. “Look, I won’t beg, but I’m telling you I need a tide-me-over job or maybe an investment for a new path—and if I don’t get some help somewhere...”
“You’re welcome to stay here for a while, but I can’t free any capital right now, not the kind you’d need to start another business or bail out the paper mill. The digital age would have taken the lumber mill under if I hadn’t diversified into things like mulch and log-cabin kits and concentrated on sales to hardwood-furniture stores and some other side projects.”
“I don’t need that lecture again. I’ll go on upstairs,” Brad said, holding up both palms as if to fend him off. He suddenly seemed sober, steadier, and his voice turned hard and cold. “Look, Grant. I only have one real big financial asset left, and I’m getting desperate enough to sell it—rare, precious and mysterious as it is. Wonder how much it’s worth? Prob’ly priceless.”
Grant’s head snapped around. “The four of us swore never to do that or even tell others. I wish we could put all that back, erase what we did and saw.”
“It’s just I need some help right now. So how much you think that big arrowhead would go for on the black market, huh?”
“Keep your voice down. I’ve got caterers here. Brad, there are laws now that would put you in prison and mean huge fines if you got caught.”
“Yeah, and then what if I blabbed about where I got it, right? But I said ‘black market.’ What did Dad used to say? ‘Let the dead stay dead’? Well, my paper mill’s dead, but I’ve gotta find a way to survive and thrive.”
“We can discuss it later. I’m sure there will be a place for you at the mill until you get on your feet.”
“Cleaning up the back lot? Driving a forklift? Hey, did Gabe catch those timber thieves around here yet? Stealing good hardwood offa people’s lots, but for sure, not selling it underhanded to you for the mill, right?”
“That’s right, and I don’t want you implying anything else, whether you’re drunk or sober. I just heard a car door slam outside. I’ll be sure you get some food and nonalcoholic refreshment upstairs after you get a shower, and we’ll talk in the morning, but I’ve got to greet my guests. You need help on the stairs?” he asked, taking Brad’s upper arm to move him along.
Brad shook loose. “The only help I need’s a job from our fam’ly business till I can find a buyer for the industrial rollers, dryers and big, dead building I still own. Go greet your guests, man. Don’t look at me that way, like I’m a zombie from the mound out back.” He snorted a half laugh. “’Member that old movie with Boris Karloff as a walking, murdering mummy from some old tomb? But listen, I can still think and plan. I’m not an idiot. I may have my life smashed in right now but not my skull!”
Grant’s stomach tightened at that final comment and at the nightmare memory that would always haunt him, but he buried it as he hurried to answer the front door.
Kate was really impressed with Grant Mason’s house and its setting. The contour of the landscaped front lawn, the curved driveway and the surrounding forest embraced the sprawling wood, stone and glass building. Their car had startled a doe and her fawn, which darted away. Like the deer, the house seemed to have emerged from the woods as if it could disappear back into it at will.
She hoped she’d be able to see the Adena mound from inside the house, but dusk was falling. And she’d dressed up even in her one pair of really high heels; though if Grant would show her the site, she’d go barefoot through the woods for a mere glimpse of it. As with other Adena mounds in the area, the foliage probably obscured it, just as the people themselves were so mysteriously hidden by the centuries. She was getting obsessed again, caught up in the mysticism of the Celts and the Adena, but studying them and their amazing cults of death demanded passion as well as reason.
“I said, what do you think of the place, Kate?” Tess’s voice pierced her thoughts. Tess twisted around in the front seat as if to see if Kate was still there. Gabe came around to open their doors for them.
“Really handsome.”
“Like I said, wait till you see its owner.”
“Now, Tess,” Gabe scolded. “No matchmaking. Kate, I’m sorry your Ohio State professor friend couldn’t be here for all this, because he would have been welcome.”
“Carson’s had it on his calendar to speak at the Smithsonian for over a year,” she explained as she got out of the backseat. “Very prestigious. It’s his topic, for sure—Early Indigenous Civilizations of the Americas—but I hope to get him here soon. He knows a lot about the mounds in this area. Maybe we can visit you two once you get back from the secret honeymoon site and get settled.”
Gabe had sold his house. Tess’s place, their old family home Mom had left to Tess in her will, was next door to his old one on Valley View Road. It was still on the market. The soon-to-be McCord family had bought a place on the old-town edge of Cold Creek and were renovating it as well as adding a three-room addition for the day-care center Tess would open in September. Since the old Lockwood house had not sold yet, Kate was staying there with Tess. Gabe was overseeing the work at their new place, when he wasn’t busy trying to bust marijuana growers and, lately, a gang of timber thieves in the area. But he’d said that was like being on vacation after the search for a kidnapper and killer.
Gabe rang the doorbell, and a tall man opened the door. Tess was sure right about Grant Mason, Kate thought. He looked dynamic and just plain solid. He smiled at her in a flash of white teeth against his tanned face as he extended his hand after Gabe’s introduction. And for once, it was great to see a clean-shaven man. She’d never liked the scruffy style of half beards so popular these days. Maybe Gabe was shaved close because of his job, but Grant had obviously done so by choice. She should not have been expecting a Paul Bunyan woodsman look just because Grant owned a lumber mill.
His hand was big and warm—just like this house. He lightly touched the small of her back as they stepped in. She
