Chapter Fifteen
Lake
The knock at the door came just as I’d finally managed a paragraph I didn’t hate, after more than an hour of trying.
I grimaced and resolved to ignore it. It wasn’t Verity.
I knew she had a hospital appointment this morning.
And it wasn’t Baxter—he’d said he was going to the gym.
They were the only two people I’d stop writing for.
I snorted softly. Christ! How had Baxter landed himself on the same list as my sister, whom I’d known my entire life, when I’d only known him for a week?
The second knock was louder and more insistent. Whoever it was clearly had no intention of leaving. With an exaggerated sigh, I pushed my chair back and stood. After checking I wore clothes—one perk of working from home being the lack of a need to do so—I headed downstairs.
Two men stood on the doorstep, neither of them familiar. “Bed delivery for yer,” the taller, darker one said, his voice gravelly.
I blinked. “What?”
“Bed delivery.”
“There’s been a mistake,” I said. “I didn’t order a bed.”
The shorter, fairer man squinted at his clipboard. “Are you Lake Larson?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then it’s your bed.”
Satisfied they’d gotten the right address and the right man, they headed to the white van parked in front of the house. Leaving the front door open, I followed. By the time I reached them, one large plastic-wrapped box sat on the pavement, and they were already wrestling a second one free.
“Installation’s paid for,” Tall and Dark said. “You just need to tell us where you want it, and we’ll do the rest.”
“Paid for by whom?” Verity immediately sprang to mind.
She must have seen through my lie about already buying one, which wasn’t beyond the realm of belief.
It was annoying, though, because I’d never hear the end of it.
She might not want monetary reimbursement, but I’d pay for it in other ways only siblings could enact.
Short and Fair checked the clipboard again. “Baxter Canmore.”
“Baxter Stuart Canmore,” I corrected automatically, my mind reeling. All I got for that was a shrug.
It only took them a couple of minutes to lug everything inside, and with an expertise presumably borne of assembling many beds a day, were gone within fifteen minutes. It left me staring at the solid pine bed topped with a memory-foam mattress, far superior to my old one. Ha! Take that, Carl.
Baxter answered on the second ring when I called him. “You bought me a bed,” I said. I hadn’t meant it to sound so accusatory, but that was the way it came out. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because… I don’t know. You just can’t. That’s not what people do.”
“It’s a gift,” he said lightly. “Happy Birthday.”
“My birthday’s in June.”
“Then it’s an early birthday present.” Baxter sounded amused. “Tell me you accepted it.”
I winced. Right. Refusing to accept it would have been the correct move. A bit late for that now. “I accepted it,” I admitted, lowering myself onto the mattress and testing it with a little bounce. It was definitely comfortable.
“Good. I was worried sleeping on the sofa would turn you into a hunchback.”
“The sofa’s fine.”
“I’ve slept on your sofa. It’s acceptable at best.”
“It’s—” I stopped myself, self-awareness kicking in. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back.”
“No, you won’t. Besides…” His voice dipped. “I might have ulterior motives for wanting you beholden to me.”
Something in his voice had my cheeks heating, my imagination running away with itself in conjuring up other ways besides monetary reward I might pay him back. “Can you read my mind over the phone?”
“No. I have to be close to the person.” A pause. “Why? What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” The amusement was back.
“How are you today, Baxter?”
A longer pause that said more than words could. “I’ve been thinking,” he said finally.
I lay back on the bed and made myself comfortable. “About?”
“Stuff I still need to face.” He exhaled. “My grave. My parents. I don’t suppose I can spend the rest of my life pretending neither of those things exist.”
“I don’t suppose you can.” I tried to imagine for a moment what it must be like to know there was a gravestone with your name on it. I couldn’t exactly blame him for avoiding it.
“I thought I might tackle one of those things today,” Baxter continued.
“Which one?”
“The grave,” he said with a short laugh. “Says a lot about my relationship with my parents, doesn’t it?”
“Probably.”
“Will you come with me?”
“Yes.”
“I appreciate that tramping around a cemetery is no one’s idea of fun, so if you really don’t want to, just say so.”
“I said yes.”
“Yeah… But it was missing you actually thinking about it, so I thought I’d give you some extra time. Plus, I know you said you were writing today. You might not have gotten enough done to take the afternoon off.”
“I got loads done,” I lied. “Besides, you bought me a bed.”
“See,” Baxter said, a smile present in his voice. “Beholden.”
“Strange things happened in a cemetery close to here,” I said as we stepped out of the cab. “The papers think it was a prank—teenage boys channeling Thriller about forty years too late. They made it look as though the ground had been disturbed.”
Baxter stopped short of the gate. “That wasn’t a prank. It was John.” He shook his head. “It’s a long story. Remind me to tell you sometime.”
“It sounds like something I might not want to hear.”
“Quite possibly.”
He moved forward, and I fell into step beside him, close enough that our elbows brushed. He didn’t pull away. “Do you know where your…?” I hesitated.
“Where my grave is?”
“Yeah.”
“You can say it.”
“It just sounds wrong when you’re standing here.”
He walked a few steps and then stopped. “Does it make me sound stupid if I admit I don’t have a clue? I only know it’s in this cemetery because Calisto looked it up years ago.”
“No. You were dead.” I pasted a bright, determined smile on my face and headed for the side of the graveyard where less ornate gravestones made it obvious the graves were newer. Nineteen years dead wasn’t Victorian times. “We’ll find it. How hard can it be?”
After thirty minutes of reading names off gravestones and none of them being the right one, I had my answer.
Pretty damn hard. We could keep at this for a couple more hours and still not find it.
By that time, it would be getting dark. And while I wasn’t scared of finding myself in a graveyard after sunset, it wasn’t on my wish list.
“I’m sorry,” Baxter said quietly. “This was a stupid idea.”
“It wasn’t. We’re just not going about this the right way.”
Baxter sighed. “I don’t know much about cemeteries.”
“Neither do I. But I know someone who does.” I didn’t add that calling him only a couple of days after rejecting him would be excruciatingly awkward. If I were lucky, he wouldn’t pick up.
Of course, Sod’s Law being in full effect meant Glenn answered on the first ring. The way he said my name gave zero clues about how he felt about finding me on the other end of the phone.
“I have a question about graveyards,” I said apologetically. “And I couldn’t think of anyone else who might know the answer.”
“For a book?”
“Something like that.”
Baxter drifted away, studying headstones with exaggerated interest. I detailed the problem I faced in as few words as possible, doing my best to make it sound theoretical rather than that I currently stood in the middle of a cemetery while the clouds decided if they were going to hang onto the rain or let rip.
“Graveyards have databases,” Glenn explained. “The plot numbers appear on a map.” Are you at a computer?”
“No. I’m… No.”
“I am. I tell you what. Give me the name of the cemetery, the full name and date of death of who you’re looking for, and I’ll see what I can do.”
The pause once I’d relayed the information stretched. “Problem?” I asked.
“I’m confused,” Glenn said. “One minute you’re telling me you’re seeing a Baxter, and now you’re looking for the gravestone of someone with the same name. And it’s not that common a name.”
“It’s… complicated.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. “I’m getting that about you.” A tapping of keys followed.
Baxter had moved on to another gravestone, giving it the same focus as the previous one. He was far more composed today than he’d been at the car park, which either meant he was hiding his feelings better, or that he didn’t find visiting his own grave as traumatic as the scene of his murder.
“Found it,” Glenn announced with some pride. “Plot three hundred and twelve. I’m sending a map to your phone.”
The photo came through within a minute, scrutiny revealing we were searching the wrong area.
“Thanks,” I told Glenn. “I owe you.” I ended the call soon after, Baxter shooting me a quizzical look when I joined him.
“How did your second date go?” he asked mildly. “I forgot to ask.”
I waved his question away. “Later.”
He nodded, and we crossed the cemetery in silence. I stopped once we got close. “It should be that one,” I said, pointing. It took a few seconds to realize my last few steps had been solo, Baxter having frozen in place.
A man stood at the grave.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
Baxter’s nod was stiff, the color having drained from his face. “That’s Jamie. My boyfriend when I died.”