Free Nobody Can Say It’s You: A Hadley Pell Cozy Mystery by Jeri Green Page B

Hadley said. “What I know about Button Dudley you could fit on the head of a pin.”
    It was a mystery. Why hadn’t Button Dudley been buried in the woods, on some favorite spot on his land at the top of a ridge overlooking a valley. Why had not one of this small circle of remaining Ancients insisted his body be washed by the mountain folk and planted in the family cemetery?
    Had Button outlived all his family?
    Probably.
    There didn’t seem to be anyone here that Hadley didn’t recognize. Just the elders and the Elanor twin.
    Hadley was sure Button was related to one or two of the Ancients. This area of the country had remained isolated longer than other parts. And the rumors of inbreeding were certainly true. Hadley knew from her own family history. There were instances of double-first cousins and who knew what else.
    Was there no family cemetery on his land?
    Unlikely, Hadley pondered.
    But the younger generations might not know exactly where it was located. Some of the oldest family burial grounds were merely marked by “spar grass,” or asparagus. Some by small field stones. Perhaps, she thought, memorizing the faces present, this was the easiest way to handle the whole situation.
    The way Button died was a mystery. Bill said that it would be weeks before the toxicology reports came back from Bowey Hill. The old ways were dying. Modern burial customs had taken over here just as they had everywhere else. The funeral home did, for a fee, what the family members used to handle for free.
    Convenient. Quick. No muss. No fuss for the rest of us.
    But still, Hadley had never attended a burying quite like this.
    Had something in the way Button died cursed him?
    Not that she believed in the old ways all that much. But having been born here, they were as much a part of your childhood as crackling cornbread and buttermilk biscuits. Even if she didn’t put much stock in the traditional beliefs of the Ancients, many around here still did.
    Superhuman feats had been accomplished because of adrenaline and the belief that one could accomplish a task. Just look at Lou Edna. She had been terrified when she visited Hadley that morning in her kitchen.
    The “toby” she’d found on her door went to the dump, too. Good thing Lou Edna had all those rubber gloves at her home. She was forever bringing a pair home in her pink uniform pocket. She’d pull the pair out of her uniform at night in her laundry room and toss the gloves into a cardboard box she kept by the washing machine.
    She’d handled that conjure bag with gloves, and the brick, too.
    Hadley looked at Beanie again. He seemed to have calmed a little. Perhaps both the signals of peace and calm she was sending him were working somehow. She wondered how Beanie would see to fill the grave after the service.
    Not so long ago, graves and coffins and matters surrounding the death of a loved one were handled by the family members. It could be a hard task to bury a body.
    The rocky soil was often frozen in the winter. It was impossible to simply take a shovel and dig a hole in the ground. Hadley remembered hearing stories when she was younger about men taking TNT and blowing holes in the frozen dirt to help the men get started on a grave.
    Of course, there was always the danger that too much explosive was used, blowing not only a fair-sized hole in the ground, but also disturbing the bodies in the graves near where they were working.
    Dynamite was no longer used, and modern grave diggers could rely on equipment. Beanie was able to operate the small back hoe used at Memorial Gardens to dig the holes for the coffin. Harvey had made sure that his employee was well-trained. And for some reason, Beanie had taken to the machine like it was a third arm.
    But Hadley knew that her friend always liked to fill the graves by hand. To Beanie, this was a final act of respect that he performed for the deceased. Nothing like a shovel, Beanie would say. And Harvey didn’t mind. It wasn’t like