always early — and she watched as the mayor came in, followed by the Planning Board, the town attorney, and other officials whose names she did not know. Hard on their heels came a contingent from The Heights, led by Mrs. Kermode, her coiffed, layered helmet of blond hair utterly perfect. She was followed by her brother-in-law, Henry Montebello, and several anonymous-looking men in suits.
The main item of the meeting — the agenda was routinely published in the paper — involved a proposal from The Heights regarding where the Boot Hill remains were to be reinterred. As the meeting opened, with the usual pledge of allegiance and the reading of minutes, Jenny’s thoughts drifted to the woman she had met — Corrie — and what had happened to her. It sort of freaked her out. She had seemed so nice, so professional — and then to be caught breaking into a warehouse, desecrating a coffin, and stealing bones. You never could tell what some people were capable of doing. And a student at John Jay, too. Nothing like that had ever happened in The Heights, and the neighborhood was still up in arms about it. It was all her parents talked about at breakfast every morning, even now, ten days after the event.
As the preliminaries went on, Jenny was surprised to see just how many people were filing into the public seating area. It was already packed, and now the standing-room area in the back was filling up. Maybe the cemetery thing was going to erupt into controversy again. She hoped this wasn’t going to make the meeting run late — she had a dinner date later that evening.
The meeting moved to the first item on the agenda. The attorney for The Heights rose and gave his presentation in a nasal drone. The Heights, he said, proposed to rebury the disinterred remains in a field they had purchased for just such a purpose on a hillside about five miles down Route 82. This surprised Jenny; she had always assumed the remains would be reburied within the town limits. Now she understood why so many people were there.
The attorney went through some legal gobbledygook about how this was all perfectly legal, reasonable, proper, preferable, and indeed, unavoidable for various reasons she didn’t understand. As he continued, Jenny heard a slow rising of disapproving sounds, murmurings — even a few hisses — from the public area. She glanced in the direction of the noise. The proposal was, it seemed, not being greeted with favor.
Just as she was about to turn her attention back to the stage, she noted a striking figure in a black suit appear in the very rear of the public area. There was something about the man that gave her pause. Was it his sculpted, alabaster face? Or his hair, so blond it was almost white? Or his eyes of such pale gray-blue that, even across the room, he looked almost like an alien. Was he a celebrity? If not, Jenny decided, he should be.
Now a landscape designer was on his feet and giving his spiel, complete with slide show, images on the portable screen displaying a plat of the proposed burial area, followed by three-dimensional views of the future cemetery, with stone walls, a quaint wrought-iron archway leading in, cobbled paths among the graves. Next came slides of the actual site: a lovely green meadow partway up a mountain. It was pretty — but it wasn’t in Roaring Fork.
As he spoke, the murmurings of disapproval, the restlessness, of the gathered public grew in suppressed intensity. Jenny recognized a reporter from the
And now, at last, Mrs. Betty Brown Kermode rose to speak. At this, a hush fell. She was a commanding presence in town — even Jenny’s father seemed intimidated by her — and those who had gathered to express their opinions were temporarily muted.
She began by mentioning the exceedingly unfortunate break-in of ten days earlier, the shocking violation of a corpse, and how this demonstrated the need to get those human remains back in the ground as soon as possible. She mentioned in passing the seriousness of the crime — so serious that the perpetrator had accepted a plea bargain that would result in ten years’ incarceration.
The Heights, she went on, had been taking care of these remains with the utmost attention, deeply aware of their sacred duty to see that these rough miners, these pioneers of Roaring Fork, were given a burial site suitable to their sacrifice, their spirit, and their contribution to the opening of the American West. They had, she said, found the perfect resting place: on the slopes of the Catamount, with heartbreaking views of the Continental Divide. Surrounding the graveyard, they had purchased over a hundred acres of open space, which would remain forever wild. This is what these Colorado pioneers deserved — not being jammed into some town lot, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of commerce, traffic, shopping, and sport.
It was an effective presentation. Even Jenny found herself agreeing with Mrs. Kermode. The grumbling was no longer audible when she returned to her seat.
Next to stand was Henry Montebello, who had married into Kermode’s family and, as a result, gained instant power and respectability in the town. He was an older man, gaunt, reserved, and weathered looking. Jenny did not like him and was, in fact, afraid of him. He had a laconic mid-Atlantic accent that somehow caused every observation he made to sound cynical. Although he had been the master architect for The Heights way back when, unlike Kermode he did not live within the development, but rather had his home and office in a large mansion on the other side of town.
He cleared his throat. No expense had been spared, he told the gathered crowd, in developing The Heights — and not that alone, but also in ensuring that it conformed, not only with the spirit and aesthetic of Roaring Fork, but to the local ecology and environment, as well. He could say this, Montebello continued, because he had personally supervised the preparation of the site, the design of the mansions and clubhouse, and the construction of the development. He would, he said, oversee the creation of the new cemetery with the same close, hands-on attention he had given to The Heights. The implication seemed to be that the long-dead occupants of Boot Hill should be grateful to Montebello for his personal ministrations on their behalf. Montebello spoke with quiet dignity, and with aristocratic gravitas — and yet there was a steely undertone to his words, subtle but unmistakable, that seemed to dare anyone to challenge a single syllable of what he’d uttered. No one did, and he once again took his seat.
And now the mayor rose, thanked Mrs. Kermode and Mr. Montebello, and called for public comment. A number of hands went up, and the mayor pointed at someone. But as that person rose to speak, the man in the black suit — who had somehow slipped all the way to the front — held up his hand for silence.
“You are out of turn, sir,” said the mayor, sternly, rapping his gavel.
“That remains to be seen,” came the reply. The voice was as smooth as honey, an unusual Deep South accent Jenny could not place, but something about it gave the mayor just enough pause to allow the man to continue.
“Mrs. Kermode,” the man said, turning to her, “as you well know, permission from a qualified descendant is required to exhume human remains. In the case of historic burials, both Colorado and federal law state that a ‘good-faith effort’ must be made to locate such descendants before any remains can be exhumed. I assume that The Heights made such an effort?”
The mayor rapped his gavel. “I repeat, you are out of turn, sir!”
“I’m happy to answer the question,” Mrs. Kermode said smoothly. “We did indeed make a diligent search for descendants. None could be found. These miners were mostly transients without families, who died a century and a half ago, leaving no issue. It’s all in the public documentation.”
“Very good,” said the mayor. “Thank you, sir, for your opinion. We have many other people who wish to speak. Mr. Jackson?”
But the man went on. “That is strange,” he said. “Because in just fifteen minutes of idle, ah,
A silence, and then the mayor spoke. “Just who are you, sir?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment.” The man raised a piece of paper. “I have here a letter from Captain Stacy Bowdree, USAF, just back from a tour in Afghanistan. When Captain Bowdree heard that you people had dug up her great-great-grandfather Emmett Bowdree, dumped his remains in a box, and stored them in a filthy equipment shed on a ski slope, she was exceedingly upset. In fact, she plans to press charges.”
This was greeted by silence.
The man held up another piece of paper. “Colorado statute is very strict on the desecration of cemeteries and human remains. Allow me to read from Section Ninety-Seven of the Colorado Criminal Codes and Statutes:
(2) (a) Every person who shall knowingly and willfully dig up, except as otherwise provided by law with the
