TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (12 page)

“He’s out by the barn,” Sunny said heading around the front of the truck to the passenger side. “I’ll ride with you.”

White squatted by the footprint and studied it in silence. He stood and looked off towards the woods, squinting again. “Hill Man,” he finally said. Punch jerked a quick nod and looked back at Sunny with a smug smile, glad to have an expert corroborate his findings.

Sunny stood to the side while White made his examination. She shook her head and looked at the sky. When she saw Gale looking at her she rolled her eyes. “White, now tell me the truth. Did you make this footprint?”

White gave Sunny and Punch an astonished look. “What? Whadda you mean did I make it?” He held up his booted right foot. “How could I of did that?” he asked. White was a wiry, smallish man. His shoe size couldn’t have been more than a nine C.

“Well, maybe you have some kind of big plaster foot or something you can make these prints with? You know, to fool people.”

“Fool people?!” White went from puzzled to mad. “Why would I want to fool people about the Hill Man?”

“I don’t know.” Sunny answered. “It’s just... you and Gale like to tease and scare people... especially me, and I just thought—”

“Listen, missy,” White said. “If there’s one thing I don’t tease about it’s the Hill Man. I don’t need to go around making fake footprints to scare people. That sumbuck is real, and I got me a movin’ picture to prove it.”

“Oh, White,” Sunny said. “Now don’t get all worked up. It’s just... well. This Hill Man stuff has always seemed so silly to me. I’ve always considered it some kind of hoax.”

“Well, now, let me tell you something,” White said. He looked her square in the eye and shook his finger at her. “That Hill Man ain’t no hoax. I’ve come in contact with him too many times for him to be a hoax.

“No, sir. Now you need to know how to use that pistol you got from me, and keep practice shootin’ it. You need to be able to protect yourself; a woman like you out here all by herself.” White looked at Punch. Punch looked at the sky.

“I did fire it last night,” she said. She sounded a little defensive.

“You think you hit it?” asked White.

“No, I fired into the air. It’s like you said. I think the noise scared it... him... or whomever, off.”

White continued. “If the Hill Man was here once, more’n likely he’ll come back. Must be something here he’s interested in.” He looked over at the little stock pen.

Sunny considered the two men as they continued to look about the barnyard, with those serious and concerned looks on their faces. But she didn’t buy any of it.

* * *

A little over three weeks past Sunny’s barnyard meeting with Gale and White, she started into her
kimchi
making. White was right about her needing to protect herself, but she didn’t think it was the Hill Man she needed to worry about. No, whatever had been out at her barn that night were more likely real men, not the Hill Man.

Something had been gnawing at Sunny ever since Buck’s death. The day he died, and about three hours before Jo Lynn called her with the news, Goat had called her sounding somewhat distraught. He’d told her he was leaving town.

“Leaving town?” she repeated. “Where’re you going?”

“I don’t know, babe. I just got to get out of here.”

“Well, are you coming back?” The old cold loneliness enveloped her heart. She was an eleven-year-old girl again, hearing her father say goodbye.

“I don’t think I am, darlin’. I may head out to California to see if I can locate your mom.”

“What happened, Goat,” she asked plaintively. “What’s wrong?”

There was a hesitation at the other end. Then he said, “It’s just the company I’m keeping, Sunny. I’ve got to get away or I’m going to end up back in prison. And the next time, I’m thinking it’ll be for good.

Sunny didn’t know her dad’s associates very well. She’d met them one time, a couple of years back. One was a giant, dark, scary-looking guy with a shaved head and multiple tattoos. The other was a creepy little guy who openly leered at her. Both of them exuded badness, and she immediately disliked them.

Sunny closed her eyes, and thought the worst. “Goat, are you doing drugs again?” She had visions of convenience store heists and backroom meth lab operations.

“Naw, Sunny. I ain’t into that again, I promise,” Goat said. “I just think it’d be best if I moved on.”

Sunny and Goat each kept their phones to their ears for a while in silence, neither knowing what to say next.

“Sunny,” Goat said at last. “You got to promise me you won’t ever make any contact with the two guys I been working with.”

Sunny waited a few seconds before she answered. “No problem there, Goat. Why would I even want to?”

“I don’t know. None, I guess. I just wanted to tell you... well, they’re bad news; the worst kind. Just stay the hell away from them, that’s all.”

Sunny felt a shiver and sudden fear. “Okay,” she said.

After she hung up with Goat, she spent the next twenty minutes making sure all the windows and doors in her apartment were securely locked. Goat’s call had really spooked her. During her brief stays with Goat and Squeaky, she’d been around all kinds of unsavory characters, but none had ever seemed a threat to her.

She curled up on one corner of her sofa with Cornflakes and Igor to watch TV, keeping the volume low, listening for even the slightest sounds of intrusion. A couple of hours later, when the phone rang again, she jumped, causing the cats to leap away from her.

The caller ID on her cell phone displayed Buck and Lorene’s number. “Hello,” she answered with relief.

“Hello, Sunny,” a woman’s voice said. “This is Jo Lynn Roundstep.”

A sudden chill went through Sunny’s heart. The thought, “Mom’s had a stroke,” crossed her mind.

“Hi, Jo Lynn. Is everything all right?”

“Well, no, it ain’t, hon. I’m afraid Buck’s had an accident.”

“What happened?” Sunny’s heart sank. “Is he alright?”

“No,” Jo Lynn answered. The weep in her voice was unmistakable to Sunny. “He’s... He’s passed on, Sugar.”

As she spent the time mixing up all the
kimchi
ingredients and its sauce, Sunny recalled that night with crystal clarity, its memory having that property that makes them so when life-altering events take place. It was the only time in her life she could remember Jo Lynn being nice to her. Funny how she thought of that. At the time, she made no association with Goat’s leaving and Buck’s death, but as time went by, she started to wonder. She had heard some talk that Buck’s accident wasn’t really an accident. At one point, about a year after Buck’s death, she went to the sheriff’s office and asked for a copy of the coroner’s report. It stated very clearly that the cause of Buck’s death had been blunt trauma to the head.

When Sunny talked to Sheriff Bluehorse about it, he admitted that, yes, there was a possibility that there had been foul play, but there wasn’t much evidence to support it. He hadn’t been robbed, there was no sign of a struggle, and they found nothing at or near the scene that could be identified as a murder weapon. He very likely, the sheriff pointed out, could’ve fallen from the tractor and hit his head on something before the implement ran over him.

If that was the case, Sunny had pointed out, how come the tractor was stopped and the motor switched off not more than ten feet past his body? The sheriff nodded for a few seconds and finally acknowledged he didn’t have a good answer for that. Sunny nodded back, then thanked the man and left.

She had mixed emotions about the whole thing. On the one hand, she wanted to seek justice and a resolution to Buck’s murder, that is, if he had been murdered. On the other hand, she kind of feared pursuing it any further with the authorities, because the trail to Buck’s killer very possibly could lead straight to Goat.

Thinking back on their last phone conversation, there was no mistaking Goat’s agitation, nor his eagerness to get the hell out of Dodge. She really didn’t want to think that he had been involved in Buck’s death, but she couldn’t help remembering how he wanted to go find the lost treasure of Belle Starr, and the key was getting the Ed Reed letter. Getting that letter from Buck would certainly seem like a good motive for a murder to take place, but Buck had made a photocopy of the letter and sent it to Goat encouraging him to have a happy hunt. Why would Goat want to kill Buck if he already had the letter? It just didn’t make any sense.

Sunny decided it didn’t take a great leap to figure out Goat probably didn’t act alone in any murder. In fact, she convinced herself, he probably didn’t have anything to do with it. Remembering Goat’s entreaty to stay away from his two co-workers, and remembering the gut fear she had when she first meet them, it wasn’t hard to imagine they were the real perpetrators. She pictured a scene where the big scary guy and the little creep confronted Buck trying to get more information out of him, then killed the sweet old man. She hoped Goat tried to stop them.

Sunny had poured the potent reddish sauce into the big plastic tub containing the salted cabbage and the other vegetative ingredients of the
kimchi
, and had mixed all of it together just as she’d been instructed in the video. She was ready for the final step: pouring the concoction into the large terra cotta jar she’d also purchased, and setting it in a cool dark place to ferment.

The instructional video she’d watched on YouTube featured a middle-aged Korean woman who spoke with a heavy accent that seemed to alternate between her native tongue and barely understandable English. Fortunately, for Sunny, most of the instructions were outlined in English subtitles on the lower portion of the screen. She had to keep re-cueing the video to get it all written down.

Sunny already had a spot picked out to place the jar. To the right of barn, between it and the tool shed lay an old root cellar. She would place the
kimchi
pot in there at the high corner in the back where it would drain well. Now all she had to do was wait for Gale to get there to help her with the manual labor. That was the only other thing he was good for, she told herself as she sat waiting in the kitchen by the
kimchi
pot. If this stuff can ward off evil spirits, maybe its magical powers would be potent enough to ward off Gale, too. She smirked at the thought.

Twenty minutes later, when Gale came through the back door and into the kitchen, he stopped, screwed up his nose and asked, “What’s that smell?”

Chapter 12

Artie Comes Home

Even though he had a cast on his left arm from wrist to bicep, a cast on his left foot and ankle, a big white bandage around his shaved head, and two black eyes, Artie looked better than the last time White Oxley had seen him, which is what White told him.

Galynn had pulled her car into a diagonal parking spot on the shady side of Main Street, and walked across to Applegate’s to get Artie’s prescriptions. White, coming up Main Street in his pickup, spied Artie sitting on the passenger side of Galynn’s car, waiting. He shot a U and pulled into the space right next to Galynn’s car.

“Well, how you doin’ Artie?” White said through his open side window.

Artie turned his head to his right and upward as much as he could to look at White. He sort of smiled, and said, “Hey, White.” Then he turned his head back to face the windshield when the stretch on his sutures started to pain him. “I’m doing pretty good.”

“Well, I tell you what, son, you sure look a whole lot better than the last time I seen ya.”

Artie said, “Yeah.” Still not looking up at White. he started to nod a little, but that hurt too much. Artie didn’t recall the last time he’d met up with White, but others had told him he had been the first on the scene.

“How many stitches did you get in your head,” White asked.

“Enough to keep what’s left of my brains from falling out, I reckon,” Artie answered. After a couple seconds, he added, “Course it wouldn’t uh taken much.”

White grinned and laughed.

Galynn came up to the other side of the car with one of Applegate’s prescription sacks in hand, and got in behind the wheel. White ducked and looked in at her. “Hey, Galynn,” he said.

“Hey, White,” she returned. She stuck the key in the ignition and fired up the car.

“Well, listen, boy,” White said taking his cue from Galynn. “You need anything you just let me know. Ya hear?”

Artie half-nodded in White’s direction.

Despite the fact that Galynn had been there when he returned to consciousness in the hospital bed, and her coming back each afternoon the other three days of his stay and then bringing him home, they probably hadn’t exchanged more than thirty words during all that time. The long ride home from the hospital in Tulsa had been pretty quiet, too.

“That Maxine Applegate is such an old biddy,” Galynn said. Most people said something to that effect after any encounter with Maxine. As she backed away from the curb, she asked Artie, “You hungry?”

“I guess so,” Artie replied.

“I’ll do the drive-thru at MacDonald’s, and we can take it on out to your place to eat.”

While they waited in the drive-thru line Galynn asked him, “How long are you going to be like this?”

Artie looked at his left arm and leg. “Doc said I’ll probably get my casts off in about three or four weeks.”

“That’s not what I meant, Artie.”

Artie shifted a little in his seat. “Then what did you mean.”

“I mean mad at me. Not speaking to me.”

“I ain’t mad at you,” Artie said. His face clouded and he looked out his window.

Galynn handed the teen-age girl at the pay window a ten in exchange for the bag of food and her change.

“Well, I’m sure glad to hear that,” Galynn said. “Because if this isn’t mad, I wouldn’t want to see it.”

Artie continued to look out his window and said nothing.

Galynn pulled forward and turned right onto the highway. When she pulled into Artie’s drive, she angled the car to the front yard putting the passenger side as close to the porch as she could. Artie opened his door and hopped out, putting his good hand and arm on the car roof to steady himself while he retrieved his crutch.