Mighty Old Bones (17 page)

E
arly next morning, I saw the news that old Mr. Reed had been found. He was on up there in years, but still, it was a terrible thing. Since the newspaper didn’t say how he died, I hoped it was some kind of natural cause. I knew that it must mean something else, something bad, or they would have said. I couldn’t help but cry. He was a nice old guy and from a mighty fine family.

The rug rat trotted over to the side of my chair to see if I was all right.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine…uh…what am I going to call you now, huh?”

Sissy Breedlove had dropped a bomb on me when I went to pick Rowdy up at Smoochie Poochie. I took one look at him when the assistant brought him out for me to see his new hairdo and knew something was severely wrong.

He looked like a completely different dog. All the knots were cut out, and all the hair left on him was smooth and sleeked down. The coat was shiny. The big difference was I could see his face and the hair around it was either cut pretty or tied up on top of his head.

“Hey, Sissy,” I said. “Now, granted, you’ve sure done a great job here. I’d even say it’s close to miraculous. But remember, I told you I didn’t want any of this frou-frou stuff like ribbons and toenail polish. I’m not sure I can afford it all, and besides, it’s not right to embarrass the poor boy and make him look like a girl.”

She laughed so hard she dropped her doggie comb. “Phoebe, darling, I don’t know how to break this to you, but ‘he’ is a ‘she.’ She’s supposed to look like a girl. Surprise!”

I was surprised, all right. Surprised at myself for being dumb enough to take my sister’s word for anything when I know better.

“The bow and the toenail polish are freebies. Isn’t she gorgeous? You ought to enter her in a dog show. I’m serious. She’s beautiful. I want to show you some pictures in this magazine. Look at that. This one here, same breed, wins dog shows all over the country. And Rowdy, or Rowdy Anne, or whatever you’re going to call her, is much prettier, don’t you think?”

I thought I’d never get out of there. Sissy wouldn’t let me go without giving me suggestions on what dog clothes would look good on Rowdy. She knew I wouldn’t buy any, but that I might want to make some myself like the ones in her shop. Sheesh. When we got home, I tried to get work done around the house but couldn’t quit looking at Rowdy. The sex change was going to take some getting used to.

You know, the little munchkin wasn’t so bad after all. She had started to get to me with the good manners and all. Never barked unless there was a good reason. Since Sissy Breedlove dolled her up and made her coat all shiny and smelling good, I didn’t mind when she got lonely and wanted to get snuggly in my lap while I watched TV. Which was most of the time.

In fact, she was a right princess compared to the only other little-bitty dogs I’ve ever known. My brother Gerald’s wife Lila has had two teacup Chihuahuas, and I mean both of them belonged in the doggie insane asylum with straitjackets and padded kennels.

The first one would bite anything that moved by it, like my ankles or shoes. Thank goodness its teeth weren’t big enough to do any real damage because that little thing was flat out vicious. Its daughter, Lila’s next Chihuahua that is fourteen years old and still alive, would go berserk anytime anybody came over to visit. She wouldn’t attack their shoes like her mama. She’d make a beeline to the living room coffee table and run around and around it so fast she was nothing but a blur, yapping and squeaking at the top of her lungs. She wouldn’t stop, either, until the person left. Sometimes Gerald or Lila could catch her but not often. That thing was as slippery as she was fast. She could wear out a braided rug in six months, no lie. I would not put up with that mess, let me tell you.

So I knew I was lucky that Rowdy had a completely different personality. She didn’t seem to mind going places with me, either. She didn’t fuss a bit when I took her with me to the library.

I had finished the last alterations on Grace’s costume. She likes to be a witch every year. She has this wig of white hair that’s thick and sticks out all over, so she never wears a pointy hat. We like it because it makes her look more like a half-witch, half-voodoo woman.

This year, I added some things to her dress to make it look different from last time. When I ordered the brain mold from McPhee’s, I also got some stick-on blood drops and a bony, withered-up hand to hang out of a pocket. At the fabric store, we found rhinestone patches in the shapes of the moon and stars. I sewed those on the top of the shoulders along with a black cat with green glow-in-the-dark eyes.

“And who is this?” Grace said when I took Rowdy out of the wicker basket. Grace held out her arms to take her. She did the very same thing Sissy did, gave Rowdy an Eskimo kiss on the nose, then cuddled Rowdy up under her chin and started rocking her like a baby. “Aren’t you the pwettiest wittle doll? Aren’t you? Yes, you are.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, not you, too,” I said, though it did make me proud that Grace liked her.

“You just missed your boyfriend.” Grace took Rowdy over to the counter and set her on it so she could walk around.

“To what boyfriend are you referring, madam?”

Grace slapped my arm. “You know exactly who I mean. That old white man I introduced you to in here the other day.”

“The one from Ohio? He wasn’t that old.”

“Indiana,” Grace said. “And he is old. Extremely. He’s so old, he makes Colonel Sanders look like a spring chicken. Which makes him just right for you.”

“Very funny. He didn’t trip my triggers. Help yourself.”

She threw her head back and laughed real loud. That made Lucy, who has always been a stickler about keeping the library quiet, give us dirty looks. “No way,” Grace said. “He’s much too long in the tooth for my young blood.”

“Too long in the tooth, huh? Maybe he would agree to come be Dracula in the Trail of Terror.”

“Ha ha!” Grace laughed even louder. Lucy set her mouth in a line and turned on her heels to go shelve some books. “He’s sure white enough to be Dracula. He’d make a good one, as pale as he is. You know, when I mentioned it, he sounded like he might come to the haunted house. Probably wants to see a cute little redhead who happens to be in his age group. I don’t think he has made any friends down here yet. He acts like he’s lonely.”

“Well, I’m sorry for him, but the last thing I need is a man up under my feet and in my way all the time. I’m too busy. See if Lucy wants him.”

We both looked over at her, rolling a squeaky cart across the marble floor at approximately .00001 miles per hour. Otherwise, the whole library was dead silent.

“I imagine he’d rather have somebody more lively,” Grace said.

“Don’t let Lucy fool you. She’s liable to jump into warp speed any second now.”

We watched until she finally made it to her destination and gathered her strength. Her arm moved more slowly from the book cart to the shelf than her feet had moved across the room. Grace stared. “Her hyper-drive must be in the shop.”

“Here,” I said. I handed her the bag I was carrying. “Try this on to make sure I took it in enough. That way I’ll still have time to fix it if it’s not right. Otherwise, I’ll see you on Halloween. I’ll get here early to help get things set up, okay?”

M
ichael and I had finished our breakfast when he asked if he could borrow my car. “Just to get out for a while. You sure you don’t mind?”

“No, of course not.” I went to the den for my purse.

“I thought I’d drop into the drugstore for a few things, drive about town. We can still get to the dig site plenty early enough.”

I tossed my key ring to him, then we walked out together and to the car. Homer passed us and set out across the road to attend to his own schedule. As I watched the car disappear around the bend, another car came into view, headed toward my house.

“Good morning,” I said to Detective Waters when he stepped out of his car. “You’re out early.”

He shut his door and smiled as he walked toward me. “Morning. Yes, ma’am.” His red eyes and tired-looking face told me he had been up for most of the night.

“Would you like to come in for coffee? Or could I make you some breakfast? It’s no trouble, I assure you.”

“No, thank you. I grabbed a bite on the way here. Was that your friend Mr. Hay I just passed?”

“Yes.”

He nodded as he looked down the road, though Michael was long out of view. “Does he have some other friends here?”

“No. He’s only going for a drive to see something of the town. Did you need to speak with him?”

“No. Just you. If you have a few minutes.”

“Come. Have a seat.” I motioned for him to join me on the porch, where we each took rockers. “I saw the newspaper this morning. I was sorry to hear about Mr. Reed.”

Detective Waters rocked slowly and spoke in a low voice. “He was a fine man. The best hunter and tracker there ever was around here. He just had his eighty-seventh birthday.” He rocked in silence for a while, deep in thought. “Never said a harsh word in his life.”

“You were good friends?”

“Not really. He was good to everybody, though. Took a lot of time with kids. Knew how to make them feel good about themselves. Always teaching them about the woods, how to survive, how to appreciate nature.”

As Detective Waters talked, he looked out across the road over what was Cal Prewitt’s land not so long ago. Without saying it, I could tell we both thought of Cal, another who had spent his life preserving the beauty of nature. His ancestors, white and native, had lived on this piece of land for many centuries.

The cool morning breeze swept across our faces and down the porch as I said, “You must have been up very late with the investigation.”

“I was up late,” he said, “but for another reason. I felt like I needed to let you know about it.” The determined set of his jaw brought out Detective Waters’s own native heritage. He gathered his thoughts and in a moment, he turned his dark eyes toward me. “There was another call. From Huntsville. A man was found dead in an alley, outside a rough night club known for fights.”

“That’s quite a distance outside your jurisdiction, I should think.”

“It is. The detective in charge there called me after his team searched the deceased man’s motel room. He had been living there for several weeks. Inside, they found a number of stolen goods. Including your credit cards and driver’s license.”

“My word! I never expected to hear about them again. And he lives, or rather lived so far away.”

He nodded and began rocking again. “I’m afraid they won’t be released to you for some time.”

“That’s quite all right. I understand. New ones are on the way. It’s so kind of you to come all this way to tell me.” I said the words, though I knew he surely had more on his mind. He could have telephoned to tell me about the cards.

“Mrs. Thistle, you’re a tough lady. You’re a direct person. I appreciate that. So I’ll be direct with you and won’t try to sugarcoat what I have to say.”

I waited. He looked at his shoes a moment before he brought his head up to look me squarely in the eyes. “Your purse was found in the motel’s dumpster. He had taken out the cash. All the other items, except for one, that you reported as being in your purse at the time of the theft, and the purse itself, were found intact. What I mean by that is, it looks as if the thief hardly gave anything in there a look. Nothing was disturbed. All still very neat. Usually, what I see with petty thieves is that they dump the contents to look for anything valuable. This guy didn’t do that.”

“How very odd. What was the missing item?”

“Your keys.”

We stared at each other a while as he let the implications sink in.

“Mrs. Thistle, we didn’t find them in the dumpster or anywhere in his room.” He slowly shook his head left and right. “It could be that the thief dumped them somewhere else. Threw them out the window somewhere between here and Huntsville. It’s a possibility.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“But if so,” I said, “he would most likely also throw away the entire purse after taking the cash.”

Detective Waters smiled and nodded. “That’s right. At least, that’s how I see it. Might not have happened like that. I thought you should know. Just in case you might want to change your locks.”

“Detective, since he’s dead, he won’t be able to use the keys now. He didn’t take them with him.”

“You’re right about that. No, he didn’t.” His smile faded. “But I left some things out. One thing is, this person had a record of small-time thefts and one charge of computer hacking that was dismissed. The second thing is, this person had a job. He had a custodian job on the night shift at Dr. Norwood’s office building. Coincidentally, computer records show that, during that same shift, someone accessed Dr. Norwood’s work files and printed out a few things.”

I felt my breath catch in my chest. “Are you able to know specifically what things were printed?”

He nodded. “Her preliminary report of findings on your property. These pages included maps and directions to the site. None of those pages were found on the deceased or in his room. So we have missing keys to your house, and missing maps to your house and to the gravesite, and one very dead guy.”

“You think he gave them to someone.”

“Yes, ma’am, I do.” He stared at me and confirmed that we both thought of the same thing. “It’s likely that he was your burglar the other day, or he had already given the keys to someone else who used them to enter your house.”

“You didn’t mention anything about finding my statues among his belongings at the hotel.”

“They weren’t there.”

We sat in silence, listening to the songs of morning birds, each alone in our thoughts. After a while, I said, “The thing is, my purse was taken before the storm, before anyone knew there would be a dig site with bones at all. Before Dr. Norwood became involved.”

Detective Waters’s broad smile relaxed his stone-like face. “I didn’t say I had it all figured out. Too many coincidences. I don’t like it. In your place, I’d change my locks, just in case he handed your keys off to someone. That someone might have been his killer and might have an interest in you and your house or your old bones in the woods.”

A chill made me shiver. I did my best not to show the fear that was slowly taking hold and thanked him for his concern. It was only later, after the shock of it all had worn off somewhat, that it occurred to me he had slipped a few innocent-sounding questions past me. He had wanted to know when Michael arrived at the Huntsville airport, and if I’d picked him up there myself.

When Michael returned, we made the trek to the dig site and worked companionably the rest of the morning. I assisted him, mostly recording what he did by taking more photos and jotting down his thoughts as they came to him. When he was more settled, I began my own recordings of a feature we had discussed, a promising one that looked like the tip of a buried artifact, about four feet from the skeleton. Though I had all the opportunity in the world to bring up the subject of Detective Waters’s visit, I didn’t do so. I can’t really say why.

I found that, wherever I happened to be at the site, my mind took particular notice of the surroundings. An old familiar feeling was getting stronger in my subconscious. It spurred the sort of thoughts I had in my previous life, when my government work involved evading—and sometimes constructing and implementing—security measures.

While I studied the site’s access by road, places where traps might be concealed, areas from which a sniper might find cover, and other precautions to protect the dig site should I decide to take them, a heavy weight descended upon me. How was I to protect something so remote and so vulnerable? Was it time to buy a good tent from which I could stand guard at night? My one comforting thought, if it came to that, was Homer. There was no better alarm system.

I was brought out of my musings by a sudden chirping. It was not from one of the many bird species here in my woods, but from my cell phone.

It was Phoebe.

“Jane, may I come over and shoot out there at your rocks? You know where I mean. Where we found that poor dead boy last time.”

“Of course. Would you like to come in the morning? I’ll make breakfast. We can take a nice walk near there before Michael and I go out to the site.”

“No, hon, I need to come right now. I mean, I appreciate the invitation to breakfast and all. But I’d really like to come on before long. If that’s all right.”

I noticed a faint huffing in her voice as she spoke, as well as a slight tightness in her words. “Is everything all right, dear?”

“Everything’s fine. Smokahontas is a little restless. She needs to take care of a little business, that’s all.”

“Right, then. I’m at the site now. Meet you at the house?”

“I’ll be right there.” The phone clicked in my ear.

When she drove up, she saw me standing on the porch with a rifle, a canvas bag for my handguns, and a mesh tote filled with bottles and cans that I’d saved for targets. She waved with a half-flip of her hand out her window to indicate I should get in her car.

Without a word between us, we crossed the road and into the field that once belonged to my benefactor. We carried on down the road through the field to the place Cal had used as a practice range. He’d set small boulders, about waist-high or higher in a row several yards from the edge of the bluff.

Phoebe parked and got out of the car, taking long, quick strides to its trunk. From the trunk, she took her rifle bag, one made from sturdy canvas in a camouflage print, and unzipped it to reveal her pride and glory, Smokahontas, a smaller version of an AK-47 rifle. She put the AK’s strap over her shoulder, reached in the trunk once more, and retrieved a small paper bag.

She gave the bag an odd look of distaste. Her lips pressed together in a tight line. I could see her jaw muscles twitch as if she ground her teeth. As preposterous as it seemed, it looked to me as if she were angry at the bag. She slammed the trunk lid down.

The slam reverberated in the air, bouncing and echoing in the stillness of the countryside. Birds, frogs, and crickets halted their songs momentarily in the wake of the loud noise before resuming, though with noticeable trepidation.

All this time, Phoebe hadn’t looked to me again, so intent was she upon her task. I found myself walking softly and slowly. I said nothing, waiting, until Phoebe raised her head, her eyes closed. As they opened, she said, “I appreciate you letting me come on such short notice.” Her voice was soft. Scarily so.

“Not at all. You know you’re welcome here anytime.”

“Well. You’re sweet. And I do appreciate it. This won’t take long.”

Phoebe and I walked to the rocks first. I reached in my tote and took out the tins and bottles I’d brought and began setting them up in a line for our targets. Phoebe reached in her bag, as well. I’m not sure what I expected. More tins, I imagine.

Instead, I was quite surprised when she drew out a paperback book. She walked to the far rock at the end. She took the book in both hands and, about every fifty pages or so, gripped each side of the book tightly with her fingers and cracked each section back to the spine, then proceeded to the next. Each crack was done with a quick and sure motion, as well as a certain tightening of her facial muscles that indicated a perverse pleasure. A story Phoebe told me once about watching her grandmother wring the necks of chickens came to mind.

Thus fanned, the book stood upright on top of the rock’s flat surface without a quiver, though in its place, I had no doubt I’d be shaking down to my shoes, considering Phoebe’s poorly concealed anger. She walked past the line we used for handgun practice, going farther out and turning where we usually stood to shoot the larger guns.

“Isn’t that the book you were raving about just yesterday?” I took out my handgun. I’d only brought the one this time, a Walther PPK. Phoebe had mentioned she might like to try it since it was associated with James Bond.

“That’s the one,” she said.

“I thought you said you were enjoying it immensely.” I popped the magazine in the PPK and racked the slide.

“I was.”

I was perplexed. “You said the beginning was the most exciting you had ever read.”

“It is.” She snapped the fully loaded cartridge up into her rifle and gave it another hard smack for good measure. “That boy can write up a storm. There’s no doubt about it. The first four pages of him describing how awful the villain is—and I’m not talking about a weenie villain, I’m talking about the most disgusting, godforsaken, lawless, heathen sub-human ever known—blew me away.”

She stared at me the way she always did when loading the AK. She loved the sound of it, more than actually shooting the rifle, I suspect. The distinctive clicks of the loading mechanism gave her a thrill and her face always reflected it as now, like a naughty cherub smiling with the macho pride of being cool.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “I had a little problem with page five.” She gave me the look as she pulled the bolt back and let it go to snap into place with a
slick slock
. Her grin widened. She took aim, squinting, with her cheek against the gun’s body, and fired.

The barrel roared as she fired three successive shots. Pages fluttered in the wake of them, but the book did not take a direct hit.

“Because on page five, when the disgusting, heathen subhuman spoke for the first time…,” She adjusted her aim and squeezed the trigger again.
Boom. Boom
.