Free Risky Undertaking by Mark de Castrique Page A

flow. She’s lost her grandson, and you’ve talked to more grieving families than Hector and me combined.
    As we neared, the Cherokee woman cocked her head and her dark eyes scrutinized us.
    Romero cleared his throat. “Emma, this is Sheriff Wadkins and his investigating officer, Deputy Barry Clayton. They’re doing everything they can to find who killed Jimmy.”
    â€œWe’re very sorry, Miss Byrd,” Tommy Lee said. “And we appreciate any help you can give us.”
    â€œLet’s walk.” Her words came out as a whisper on a single breath. Without waiting for us to follow, she started up the slope away from the farmhouse.
    Romero looked at us and shrugged. He fell in step behind her.
    We entered the woods on a well-worn path that arced to the right in a gradual ascent above the stream. We hiked in silence, like one of Tommy Lee’s Vietnam patrols, with the war veteran bringing up the rear. After a quarter mile or so, the trail leveled onto a natural terrace created by the underlying rock formation. Two dwellings perched near the edge. One was a single-story rectangle with bark-covered walls and a thatched roof that extended about six feet beyond the front to form a porch. The second was a conical structure of clay that looked more like a beehive than a house.
    Emma Byrd stopped in front of them.
    â€œJimmy lived here?” Romero asked.
    â€œYes,” the old woman replied. She pointed with a slender hand to the more traditional building. “Here when it’s warm.” She gestured to the circular one. “And in the asi when it’s cold.”
    Asi. I wasn’t familiar with the term and made a mental note to remember it.
    â€œCome. We can sit in the shade.” Emma Byrd walked to a split-log bench that ran along the front wall to the right of the door. Two plastic chairs faced it. She and Romero sat on the bench. Tommy Lee and I took the chairs.
    â€œThis is good,” she said. “Better to talk about Jimmy here than in my house.”
    â€œI agree,” Romero said. “May my friends ask you some questions?”
    Her thin lips formed a wry smile. “Isn’t that why we climbed here?”
    Romero nodded, and then turned to me.
    I leaned forward, striving to show sincerity without escalating the encounter into an interrogation. “We’re trying to retrace Jimmy’s activities yesterday. See if there was anything unusual that might explain what brought him to the cemetery.”
    â€œNothing would have brought him to that cemetery.” Emma Byrd looked at Romero. “Not at night.”
    â€œDid you see him yesterday?” I asked.
    â€œTwice. Breakfast and dinner.” She bit her lower lip in an attempt to stave off her rising grief. She gazed down the trail. “Jimmy could smell my cooking no matter which way the wind blew.”
    â€œDid he seem particularly troubled at either meal?”
    â€œTroubled? You mean was Jimmy upset?”
    â€œYes. Or behaving differently.”
    The old woman stared up at the porch’s roof. Her fingers drummed against the bench. Romero, Tommy Lee, and I sat waiting, listening to the arrhythmic tapping. Two minutes passed.
    â€œHe was happy.” She whispered the words to the air above me.
    â€œHappy?”
    Her dark eyes focused on me. “Yes. At breakfast and supper.”
    â€œAnd normally he was unhappy?”
    She shook her head and the long white hair rippled like a windblown cape. “Happy in the sense of contented. Unhappy in the sense of agitated, obsessed with his fight against termination.”
    â€œPreservation, not termination,” I said.
    Emma Byrd glanced at Romero. “Did he hear that from you?”
    The policeman shook his head.
    â€œJimmy spoke the words to me,” Tommy Lee said. “At the site of the remains we unearthed in Laurel County.”
    â€œAnd when he blocked Eurleen Cransford’s funeral procession,”