Shallow Graves

ones that some people see right away and others you’ve got to explain it to them.
    This one seemed pretty clear to Pellam. On the side of the camper, in black spray paint, were crude images of the mounds of two graves with crosses stuckin them. Scrawled beneath them was that word again. Goodbye.
    “Oh,” Marty whispered, getting it at last. “Damn.”
    They walked closer, then around the camper, expecting some more damage, but, no, there was none—just the artwork. They looked around the street. Deserted.
    “Who was it, those kids we saw before?”
    “Maybe,” Pellam said.
    They stood for a moment looking at the crude, feathery lines of the bad drawings. Pellam started up Main Street.
    “Where’re you going?” Marty asked.
    “Buy us some turpentine and steel wool. Can’t go driving around looking like an ad for a funeral home.”

Chapter 2
    PELLAM SAID TO Janine, the granny-dress woman, “You’d think they’d come up with some more money for that. It’s going to represent something, it ought to have a little class.”
    He was looking at the tiny, overpainted black cannon, donated to the town by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It didn’t seem capable of lobbing a shell more than ten feet. They sat in the town square, where he’d been sitting, marking Polaroids, when she walked past casually and sat on the bench next to his. He’d smelled minty tea—what she’d been drinking yesterday in Marge’s diner—and when he’d looked up she’d smiled at him. He’d scooted over four feet of bumpy wood and they’d struck up a conversation.
    “Maybe it’s valuable,” Janine now said. “Looks can be deceiving.”
    Pellam liked her outfit today better than what she’d worn yesterday: a long skirt, boots, a big bulky-knit sweater. Her hair—in the sun you could see some red—was still parted in the middle. She was an easy forty, looking older straight-on, though she probably wasn’t. That happened to a lot of these poor flower children; maybe they’re limber and they live a longtime, but sun and fresh air can do harsh things to your skin.
    “Where’s your boyish partner, with the cute little tush, the one who’s probably a year or two under my limit?”
    “He rented a car and went out to the hinterland, checking out some parks. We’ve got a lot of scenes left, so we split the troops.”
    She asked, “What company you work for?”
    “Called Big Mountain Studios.”
    “Didn’t they do Night Players? And Ganges  . . . Oh, that was a great film. Did you go to India for that one?”
    Pellam shook his head.
    “Wow, do you know William Hurt? You ever meet him?”
    “Saw him once in a restaurant.”
    “How about Willem Dafoe? Glenn Close?”
    “No and no.” Pellam’s eyes were scanning the downtown, which almost shimmered in the heat. It was eleven a.m. The temperature was up by twenty degrees over yesterday. Indian Summer.
    “Tell me about the film you’re working on now.”
    “We don’t like to give too much away.”
    She socked him playfully on the arm. “Excuse me? I mean, excuse me? I’m a spy? Like I’m going to sell the story to MGM?”
    Pellam said, “It’s called To Sleep in a Shallow Grave.”
    “Wild. Love the title. Who’s in it?”
    “It’s not cast yet.” It wasn’t for location scouts to give away too much.
    She said, “Come on now. I don’t believe you.” Shetilted her head coyly and her hair fell straight across her face, leaving only her eyes exposed—like a veiled Islamic woman. “Give me a clue.”
    “A few supporting actors you couldn’t possibly know.” He sipped his coffee.
    They always liked details. Who in Hollywood was playing musical beds. Which actresses had had implants. Who hit their wives. Or their husbands. Who liked boys. Who had orgies in Beverly Hills.
    Some people even wanted to know about the films themselves.
    He said, “It’s about a woman who comes back to her hometown for her father’s funeral. But she finds out that he might not have been her father after all and maybe he killed the man who was her real father. It takes place in the fifties, a small town called Bolt’s Crossing.”
    He stood up. She watched him toss the coffee carton into a trash basket painted with tulips, and she scolded, “You drink too much of that. Caffeine. Yuck. Don’t you have trouble sleeping?”
    “Which way’s the cemetery? I want to get some more ’Roids.”
    “Some. . . ?”
    “Polaroids.”
    “Follow me.” They turned east. As