“What else was going on when he had this episode? Did something happen to upset him?”
“No, I don’t think so. At least not while we were talking. We had this long discussion about rootwork.”
“Rootwork?” She gave me a look. “Don’t tell me he thinks someone has put a root on him.”
“A root? You mean like a spell or a hex?”
“Did you notice anything else out of the ordinary about him? Any peculiar smells in his office?”
“Now that you mention it, I did notice a sort of musty, herbal odor even before he had his tea. And someone had sprinkled a line of salt outside the terrace doors. I assumed it was to keep the garden slugs away from the plants.”
“Did you see any iron or silver lying around?”
My mind flashed back to the iron bolt beneath his desk and the silver letter opener in his hand. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Why? What does all this mean?”
“The herbs he put in his tea? The salt line at the door? He’s trying to protect himself.”
“From what?”
“Probably nothing more than his imagination. Rupert can seem perfectly reasonable at times, but he has always had strange notions.”
“Just for the sake of argument, if someone did put a root on you, how would you go about removing it?”
“You’d go to a root doctor for a protection spell. In essence you’d be buying nothing more than illusion, but in the hands of a true believer, the power of persuasion can be a potent tool,” she said. “I once had an interesting experience with a root doctor.”
“What happened?”
“We were called out to move an old cemetery where a highway was going through. There was a woman…I’ll never forget her…Ona Pearl Handy. She lived just down the road from the property and her ancestors were buried in that cemetery. She was convinced they’d come back to haunt her if she allowed those graves to be disturbed. Our first day on the job and there she was, planted in a lawn chair at the entrance with this white powder sprinkled all around her. She’d put it on the graves, too. Called it law-keep-away dust.” Temple chuckled.
“Did it work?”
“Of course not. But she was convincing enough that it played with our heads. All sorts of weird things happened on that job, and it really started to freak people out. Phones wouldn’t work. Car batteries died. Equipment malfunctioned. The worst thing, though, we dropped one of the coffins. The lid popped open, exposing the remains, and Ona Pearl went into hysterics. She was terrified that once the remains had been desecrated, her great-aunt Bessie would come back at night and try to mount her.”
“Eww.”
“Sounds kinky, but in that context she meant possessed.”
“Did you get the graveyard moved?”
“Eventually, yes. Her roots weren’t strong enough to keep us from doing our job, albeit shoddily. But she had us all wondering there for a while.”
“Sounds like an experience.”
“Oh, it was.” Temple shook her head on another chuckle. “Poor Ona Pearl. Last I heard, she got busted for drugs and was doing some time. So much for her law-keep-away dust. Which proves my point. Rootwork is all about smoke and mirrors. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Rupert’s affliction turns out to be nothing more serious than the power of suggestion.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
But I didn’t think the scene I’d witnessed between Dr. Shaw and Tom Gerrity had anything to do with perception. From what I’d heard, it was straight-up blackmail. And
Chapter Twenty-Two
Temple had just left that afternoon when Regina Sparks, the Charleston County coroner, dropped by. I hadn’t seen Regina since the first two exhumations the previous spring, but I would have recognized her red hair anywhere. Like me, she wore it pulled back in a ponytail, but curls had popped loose all over her head, and the tiny bronze corkscrews shimmered charmingly in the dappled light.
I had lingered at the gate, perhaps to prove to Temple and to myself that I wasn’t afraid to be alone in Oak Grove. The sun was just sinking below the treetops, but there was still plenty of daylight left. Even so, my heart had tripped when I first spotted someone plowing through the weeds toward me, so it was a relief to recognize the flaming hair, as well as the logo of the coroner’s office emblazoned on her navy shirt.
She gave a pleasant wave as she approached. “A little bird told me you might be out here today. I found myself in the vicinity, so I thought I’d stop in and say hello, see how everything is going.”
I eased the mace back into my pocket. “Who is this little bird? I only found out myself yesterday afternoon that I’d be here.”
She shrugged as she swiped back those wiry curls. As always, she seemed tightly strung, as though it were a struggle to keep her restless energy constrained. “This is Charleston. The one thing you can count on is that everybody knows your business before you do. It’s annoying, but what are you going to do?”
“I’m just surprised that anyone would care enough to talk about it,” I said.
“Are you kidding? After everything that happened here? There was even an article about it in the online edition of the paper this morning.”
“That was fast.”
“It ran with lots of photographs, including one of you, and a link to your blog. You’ll be happy to know they spelled your name right.”
“That is good to know.” Someone on the Committee had obviously pulled strings to get a story planted so quickly. I could hardly blame them for wanting to shift the lurid publicity associated with Oak Grove to something more positive like a restoration, particularly since Emerson was in the midst of its bicentennial celebration.
“I emailed the story to my aunt,” Regina said. “She’s still over the moon about our having worked together last spring. You’re a celebrity in Samara, Georgia, you know. They think that ghost video put them on the map.”
“Even after it’s been so ruthlessly debunked?”
“They don’t care. They believe what they want to believe.”
The video in question had been shot by a news crew that had come to interview me during a restoration, and for months the clip had made the rounds on ghost-hunting sites. Paranormal aficionados were convinced that lights floating over the cemetery behind me were otherworld entities. I’d known better, of course. There were no ghosts in Samara Cemetery, but it had taken a digital imaging analyst to convince the diehards that the lights were, in fact, reflected glare from embedded glass in one of the headstones.
“I thought everyone had pretty much forgotten about that video,” I said.
“Not in Samara. My aunt was so excited when I mentioned your name, she and her Bunko cronies actually talked about catching a bus to Charleston just so they could meet you. No worries, I put the kibosh on that little scheme. Bless their hearts, they mean well, but I can only take Aunty Bitty in small doses and Loretta is a dipper. The whole crew reeks of Bengay and Youth-Dew. Need I say more?”
“I get the picture.”
“Anyway, I don’t mean to keep you. Looks like you’re heading out.”
“You aren’t keeping me. I still need to lock up.”
She stepped up to the gates and peered through the rungs. “I don’t mind saying, I’m happy to have seen the last of this place.”
“I can imagine.”
“Helluva way to spend a summer,” she muttered.
“At least it’s over now.”
“Is it?” I saw a shudder go through her. “I don’t know what it is about Oak Grove. This place still gives me chills.”
