HARD AS A HEADSTONE

A Portland, Maine, surveyor who insists he’s not a detective investigates the murder of a young Native American woman he finds dead in a graveyard.

The assignment is ghoulish but routine. Water bottler Upland Springs wants to buy a promising plot of land in tiny Platen, Maine, from former pharma vice president Wilma Rockland that happens to include a cemetery whose current population will need to be relocated before the aquifer beneath them can be tapped. So marketing executive Virginia Oakes hires Iraq vet Ardmore Theberge to survey the land before anyone signs the papers for the final transfer. When Ardmore discovers the body of Janey Nightingale beaten to death among the graves, all bets are off. Millicent Feathernight, Ardmore’s friend-with-some-benefits, insists that Maine State Police Det. David Fortier won’t care about the murder of a Passamaquoddy woman and presses Ardmore to look into the death himself. Things get more complicated when Ardmore gets into a fight with ex-cop Fred Routan and has to be rescued by former Platen mayor Cecil Drinkwater, who maintains that he got Upland to hire Ardmore in the first place. What does Janey’s death have to do with her identity as a Native American? Every time that question is asked by Millicent, by Ardmore, or by members of the anti-Upland activist group Water-Maine, it takes on a new spin. Ardmore’s second improbable dive into rural Maine places the riddle of Janey’s identity front and center throughout one twist after another. Even though the killer’s unmasking is anticlimactic, it unleashes one final twist that’s worth the trip.

Cass manages to find brawling, water rights, and racism beneath his cemetery and makes it all seem inevitable.