Mighty Old Bones (23 page)

P
hoebe raised her coffee cup to her lips. She blew across the top and batted her eyelashes at Detective Waters. “So, you think you can keep those mean thieves in jail for a while?”

We three sat together a week later, at my kitchen table.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Detective Waters said. “We found plenty of evidence, for what they did here and a good many other places. Dr. Draughn has been busy. We think he will be a big help in busting up a few thief rings.”

The detective told us they’d found plenty of evidence in the garage of Edward’s rented house. His smuggling activities apparently included taking artifacts from South America and Italy, as well as stolen items from several Native American sites.

“You two sure pulled a good one on him,” he said to Michael and me.

Michael protested. “I had little part in the deception,” he said. “Jane thought of it. She dug the fake site and supplied it with a few buried treasures. Most realistically, I might add. I might have been fooled myself.”

“I had to do something,” I said. “My only worry was the thieves might notice the dig wasn’t precisely in the right place, according to the maps they had stolen. I counted on their desire to hurry.”

Detective Waters laughed. “It may be awhile before I can return your ‘artifacts.’”

“Please feel free to keep them if you like,” I said. He referred to a flat stone I inscribed myself to look like the one we found in the actual burial pit and a brand new blue tumbler I found at the dollar store. I knew how these thieves worked. They don’t want to risk excavating properly when they steal. They’re in too big of a hurry. They cut the earth away from around an object, if it is buried, and clean away the dirt at their leisure, well away from the site. I made the fakes appear to be easy to shovel out so they would take the easy bait. Still, they had to be covered well enough so Edward wouldn’t spot right away that they were fakes.

It helped that he already knew what we had found. He expected to see a stone tablet and blue glass. Two of his accomplices had hacked into our computers you see. One had been our mugger at the Pig who had been killed earlier. The other was the stocky fellow Phoebe calls “Bulldog.”

Between the two hackers, they retrieved information from Dr. Norwood’s office computer, including her bone analysis and the location maps and records. Bulldog later tapped into Michael’s e-mail program, where he found details about the artifacts. Michael had e-mailed that information to a colleague, an expert in ogham writings. This news was most unwelcome after Michael promised me he would not share any information about our dig or my land.

Edward Draughn originally hired his associates to look for Native American sites to plunder. Jeff Byrd, a Tullulah native, alerted him to Cal’s land and its potential. When Draughn’s hackers showed him our findings, he had too much experience to ignore the implications. He knew they might add up to an exceedingly profitable venture, more than an endeavor where only native artifacts might be found.

Michael wasn’t involved. It was such a relief. He and Draughn knew one another, of course, from earlier years. Draughn knew Michael was here after he read Dr. Norwood’s report. That was why he called out his name at the site.

Phoebe set her cup down. “Will he get a reduced sentence, after squealing on the other thief rings?”

Detective Waters shrugged. “Some. Maybe. He’s under suspicion in two murder investigations, Brody Reed and another man in West Virginia. If those go the way I think they will, he may be behind bars for the rest of his life.”

“You know what I don’t get?” Phoebe said. “He met up with and killed Brody Reed before Jane and Michael even found anything. It wasn’t in a computer yet. How come? How did he know to be here ahead of time?”

“Jeff Byrd,” Detective Waters said. “He worked for Dr. Draughn ever since college where Draughn was one of his professors. Jeff knew about Cal’s land, of course, since he grew up in Tullulah. He told Draughn about Cal’s place a long time ago, how it must have all kinds of native artifacts since every generation of the Prewitt family always kept their place off limits. When Cal died, Jeff contacted Draughn. That’s why Jeff moved back to town. They’ve been planning to come for a while. Your mugger took your keys so they could search your house for any pointers on where to start.”

“He must have hired Brody Reed for that reason also, to get information and perhaps lead him to locally known native sites,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we think. We believe when they heard about the movie production company filming not far away, they got the idea to pretend to be part of that crew. They could park their trailer in any remote location without creating suspicion. People would think they looked for possible shooting locations, when they were really looking for artifacts to sell. When they heard about Brody and how he knew the forest like nobody else, they thought they’d found a gold mine.”

“Only he found out their true intentions,” I said.

“And it got him killed,” the detective said. “Grant McWhorter from the tribe went with me to the spot where we believe Brody was killed. He showed us a cave nearby from which we have good reason to believe Dr. Draughn took artifacts, ones that have been there for hundreds of years. Brody probably saw him do it, tried to stop him.”

Before Detective Waters left, we showed him the photos captured by the motion detector cameras I had installed on trees at the dig site. They had worked quite well. Ruby Alice looked striking on top of the dig site mound. I cringed at my own pictures. They were rather silly, with my arms akimbo in most, and my facial expression much too serious. The detective was particularly impressed by the one of Phoebe, flying through the air, holding her AK, and kicking her legs out while she screamed.

Phoebe was quite proud of it. “I’m having an eight-by-ten made,” she said.

Later on, after Detective Waters left, we relaxed in the den by the fire. Michael’s colleague, the ogham expert, e-mailed more photos of the ancient writing system for our use in comparing our tablet and the inscriptions on the shelter overhang. We saw nothing conclusive, but a few carvings in Ireland and Wales, dating to the thirteenth century, had similarities to our alleged native carvings, some of them quite strong.

Phoebe sat on the couch with Jenette in her lap and Homer at her feet. After she witnessed Homer’s heroic actions at the dig site, her attitude changed toward him. Jenette, however, certainly is due the most credit for converting Phoebe to a dog lover. She snuggled in Phoebe’s arms like a child, behind the book Phoebe was reading aloud to Jenette and Homer.

“See the picture of the little puppy?” she said. Jenette touched it with her nose and sniffed. “It says here that in ancient times, Lhasa Apsos guarded monasteries, way up in the snowy mountains of Tibet. They let their masters know when strangers were coming, and if there was any trouble, they barked first and then stepped aside for the big dogs to do the fighting. Now that is smart.”

She continued to read. I enjoyed the lilt of her voice in the house and seeing her as the children of Tullulah saw her, the funny lady who reads to them at the library.

While Phoebe read, I noticed that Homer, who had been watching Phoebe’s face all along, looked away as if something else caught his attention. His ears pricked up. They relaxed a moment later and his tail began a loud thumping on the rug. His eyes closed with contentment, over and over again. He got up to look at Jenette and away again, then back to her with a friendly nudge of his nose on her leg. It wasn’t until Jenette repeated Homer’s odd behavior of lazy contented eyes and wagging tail that I realized what was happening.

Boo was petting them. A gentle soul when in his earthly body and still a gentle one now that he is free of it, my resident ghost loved children and animals. He and Homer were old friends, and now Homer introduced him to a new one. It gave me an idea. I should have a tea party for children. The two little boys who stay with Phoebe could invite friends and we would have a grand time. It would be a small thing I could do for Boo, something that would give him such joy.

A certain measure of happiness, if not complete joy, has come to my visiting ghost in the basement through reading as well. Actually, as he has roamed my property much longer than I’ve been here, he might view me as the visitor.

The audio recording I made of him in the basement verified Riley’s group’s own conclusions from data they obtained on Halloween night. Their digital camera’s sound and the separate recorder that Callie used on their Halloween excursion captured similar words and phrases as mine.

The one that made Riley happiest was the most clear, leaving no doubt in any of our minds that the ghost soldier said, “They’re coming! The Yankees are coming!” With that, he had a new mission. He no longer saw himself as a mere ghost hunter, but also a ghost counselor. He proposed a strange therapy that seems to be working. He comes out regularly, sweeps his ghost detecting devices over the toolshed and around the basement, and once satisfied as to where the ghost is, proceeds to read from Civil War diaries or selections from a large volume of the Official Records of the war that contains officers’ reports. This seems to console our young soldier. I no longer hear him cry in the night.

I walked to the bookshelf where I left the arrowhead and the ogham stick from Cal’s box, and also the red-orange rock and the tiny blue flower Boo had given me. I set the four in a row on the coffee table, with the rock on one end. Had I not done so, I might never have discovered its significance.

Phoebe’s purse had spilled earlier that day when Jenette and Homer, in a rambunctious mood, knocked it over while playing chase in the den. We thought we put everything back, but as I stood there that evening, I saw a glint of something shiny in the rug. It was a safety pin.

“Phoebe, this must belong to you,” I said.

“Just put it on the table. I’ll get it when Jenette gets up.”

I did so, and it moved. It slid as pretty as you please about an inch over the tabletop and adhered itself to the rock. Why had I not realized it before? I knew very well, somewhere in the recesses of my brain, that the red color would be from iron oxidation. This was magnetite. A lodestone.

I stared at it for some time. Cal’s voice, through the notes he left in box #2, sounded as if he were standing there next to me, speaking into my ear. His father found the arrowhead and the stick with writing on it in an old bowl. In the bottom, something metal, a few inches long, had rusted to nothing. If my theories ran in the right directions, the rusted metal could have been a needle of some sort, one used with a lodestone or on a leaf floating in a bowl of water to find true North. From another dusty corner of my mind, as I remembered the view into Reese’s old barn and the dirty blackened half-globe that hung on the wall, large enough for a man to fit in, several cogs clicked together to form an idea that wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be proven. Other explanations would be said to be more likely. I agreed wholeheartedly. Yet with each small bit of discovery, an unlikely explanation might be the one that is eventually found to be true.

Michael stayed on for several more weeks. It had not been easy at first. We kept up a jolly front as we readjusted to our work following Edward Draughn’s arrest. We only spoke of the e-mails he sent to his colleague once. He apologized for acting against my wishes. I understood how he justified doing so, because his colleague was one hundred percent trustworthy. Not in his wildest imaginations did he consider the possibility of e-mail theft, or that the information obtained would be used to violate our work and my home.

But you see, I must consider every wild imagination. I had already determined that no one should be told until I was satisfied it was absolutely essential and the person trustworthy. I must keep one step ahead of those who might destroy, for their own gain, what has been given to my trust. Michael betrayed me, however unwittingly. Though all the villains’ information did not come solely from his e-mails, Michael’s disregard for my wishes did contribute to the endangerment of what I hold most dear, something irreplaceable and priceless that must be preserved. Through his trusted contact, word could still spread to another who might yet endanger the forest due to Michael’s dismissal of my request.

I miss my husband. When Michael was here, the loneliness that creeps over me and into my bones at times evaporated completely. Our common interests gave us much to talk about. The excavation certainly provided a special bond. His sense of humor and his intelligence made each day a pleasure.

In the clearing, at the moment Edward tossed the flame into the leaves, the danger made me realize how deeply my love for this land runs through me. As I watched the leaves burn, in those few horrible moments, it was as if I burned, curling and withering with the thought it might all be lost due to the cruelty of one man.

Michael had not been cruel. He is a wonderful companion. But when I fell upon the burning leaves, all else became trivial, everything narrowed. In relationships, men often dismiss the requests of their women and go against their wishes because they think they understand the big picture and the little wife does not. This is something I understand very well after so many years with the Colonel. It is something I have been willing to accept in the past. I cannot accept it now, not when it involves the forest and the treasures, such as the current dig, that it holds. I cannot allow this thinking, even from a man I care for very much, to jeopardize it again.

The DNA results from the tooth found at the site came back the day Michael went home. They confirmed the bones belonged to a Caucasian male of approximately forty-five years at the time of death. Though we were somewhat prepared by the corroborating finds, the true age of the bones still stunned us. They were found to be more than eight hundred years old, more than two hundred years before Columbus came to North America, a time when no known Caucasians were here.

Michael already suspected it, from the time he took the first skull measurements. His years of experience told him at first glance that the skull looked too small for the man’s apparent age. Medieval skulls, however, fit his measurements perfectly, due to the proportions of the smaller cranial vault and jaws that are a good bit larger in modern man.