The Eulalie Park Mysteries Box Set 2

by Fiona Snyckers

  “It is an odd-looking thing, I must say. A real curiosity. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “I’ve heard it was regarded as unusual even in the deep forest. That’s why I want to get a look at it.”

  They had arrived at a steel security gate with an electronic lock. Manny entered a code and the lock released. Then he took out a set of keys and unlocked the steel door behind the gate.

  “I remember a time when the items in here used to walk in and out on their own two feet, or so it seemed.” He released the final lock. “It wasn’t so much an evidence lock-up as an evidence takeout. Your Chief Macgregor put a stop to all that. Yessir, he did.” Manny gave a nod of satisfaction.

  “He’s not my Chief Macgregor,” said Eulalie.

  Manny just smiled. “You see this electronic lock? There’s only three of us that have the clearance to unlock it. And we each have our own separate codes. It downloads information to Chief Macgregor’s computer once a day, so he can see exactly who has accessed the evidence room and when. It’s a good system.”

  Eulalie agreed it was a good system. Still hackable, but better than what they’d had before.

  Manny opened the steel door and turned on a light.

  “It’s a bit of an Aladdin’s Cave. You can see why we needed to improve the security.”

  Eulalie looked around at household items, jewelry, artworks, and electronics ranging from old and obsolete to so new that she had only seen them on gadget websites. One side of the room was devoted to weapons. Every gun had been meticulously bagged and tagged, but there were enough of them to start a small war.

  “Is that a safe? What do you keep in there when the guns are all out here in the open?”

  “Drugs,” said Manny. “Only one person has the code for that, and that’s Chief Macgregor.”

  He walked across to a collection of knives and home-made weapons.

  “Here’s your arrow. You must either look at it inside the bag or put on these.” He held out a pair of latex gloves, and Eulalie put them on.

  “I learned to make these when I still lived in the village.” Eulalie slid the arrow out of the bag and held it between two hands.

  “Is that right?”

  “It is. I was either going to be a hunter or a fletcher. The arrows are all handmade, so no two are exactly alike.”

  She held it loosely in the fingers of one hand to test its weight and balance.

  “This was made by a master craftsman. It’s one of the most well-balanced arrows I have ever felt.”

  “The head is metal, and the shaft is wooden? I was wondering about that – about whether the wood would be strong enough.”

  “It is ancient heartwood from the rain forest, so it is definitely strong enough. But the interesting part is here. Do you see these carvings on the metal arrowhead?” She held the arrow up to the light as Manny slipped on a pair of spectacles. “And also, here at the back of the arrow where grooves are cut for the feathers.”

  “Yes, I noticed that. That’s what makes it such a curiosity. Also, the way the knock has been carved from the wood of the shaft.”

  “It is more than just a curiosity. The village fletchers carve their arrows as a way of putting their stamp on them. It’s a matter of personal style, but also of fashion. When you look at an arrow you will either recognize the style of the fletcher who made it, or the era in which it was carved. I’ve never seen anything like this one.”

  She took out her phone to take photos, focusing particularly on the carvings. Then she slid it back into its evidence bag and handed it to Manny.

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Anything that helps to catch the guy who killed our John Doe, is worth it.”

  “Have they still not identified him?”

  Manny shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  She was one of the last of her kind.

  Her efforts to find a mate had been fruitless for years. She was a herd creature without a herd. Food and water were plentiful. All day long, she browsed and grazed, using her tusks to dig up the most succulent grasses and to uproot trees whose leaves were just out of reach.

  The ancient memory of her kind remembered a time when this island had been part of a greater land mass. Herds had roamed freely across huge plains teeming with life. Then the ice had come and carved a portion of the land away. That broken-off fragment had drifted steadily south to warmer climes, taking with it a large herd of her kind.

  For centuries, the ice had almost completely covered the fragment of land. It had gouged a deep gorge that almost bisected the island.

  There had not been enough grazing and browsing for all, and many of her kind had died off. Now the grazing and browsing were plentiful, but it was too late. There were too few of them, and the chances of meeting up to mate were infinitesimal. When she died, she would be the last of her generation.

  The ice was receding fast now. A huge rain forest had grown in its place. The climate had become uncomfortably warm. Her thick, woolly coat was matted and threadbare as she molted continually to cool her body down.

  Herd memory told her that the ice had been there in the gorge, and so she sought it out. But the ice was all but gone and she wasn’t able to find it. She made do with water instead – wading in it, rolling in it, and sucking it up in her trunk to splash it all over herself.

  As the weather grew steadily warmer, she never strayed far from the river.

  The rains came. They were harder than ever this year. The torrential downpours swelled the river until it overran its banks and roared like a beast along its course. And still the heat continued.

  After the rains, the sun came out, fiercer than ever. Desperate for relief, she stepped into the river, aware that it was more powerful than before. Lured by the relief this brought her, she stepped in deeper, and deeper still.

  Suddenly, the current picked her up so that she was floating instead of standing. She was a good swimmer, so she didn’t panic. She kept her trunk above the water and waited for the chance to regain her footing.

  The current carried her faster and faster. It was stronger than anything she had felt. Familiar landmarks on the riverbank flashed past as she was carried along at dizzying speed. Now there were rapids that whirled her around and tumbled her upside down, so she could hardly catch her breath. Sharp rocks cut and gouged at her, piercing her thick coat.

  She was beyond panic and moving into exhaustion.

  The river picked up speed and power and soon she was being drawn down into a phantasmagoric whirl of light and shadow where she didn’t know which way was up and her lungs filled with water instead of air.

  As the last spark of life left her body, she sank down, down, down until her body came to rest on the riverbed.

  In the years that passed, the abundant and diverse fish life picked her bones clean. As the years turned to centuries, even those bones disintegrated.

  Only her tusks remained, covered by layer upon layer of silt from the river bed. This silt was no ordinary mud. Some strange property caused it to preserve and mummify whatever fell into its embrace. And so, her tusks remained preserved through the millennia, waiting to be brought up to the light.

  Eulalie woke to the feeling of something tapping at the cheek.

  She opened her eyes and saw the cat Paddington sniffing her face. When she sucked in a breath, he settled back down on her chest. Her hands came up to clutch at his warmth, to thread her fingers through his thick fur. He purred and kneaded the duvet.

  Panting as though she had run a marathon, Eulalie lay and stared at the ceiling as scenes from the dream flashed before her. She must have stopped breathing again. That was what seemed to alert the cat. He had become her apnea alarm. His weight against her chest slowed her racing heart and smoothed out her breathing. She scratched his head and stroked him all the way down to his tail, soothing herself just as much as him.

  When she was calm - her breathing even and regular - he jumped off the bed. He g
ave a crackly meow and looked pointedly towards the kitchen.

  “Okay, okay.”

  She hauled herself out of bed and went to feed him. While he ate, she wrote down her dream. Then she went to take a shower. The water pounding against her body washed away the stench of river water and the bone-penetrating cold she had been fighting since she woke up.

  After the shower, Eulalie poured herself a bowl of Marshmallow Bitz – a new cereal she had discovered. “Every mouthful contains a taste sensation,” promised the box. She added milk and a topping of pure cream. Then she consoled herself by reading the nutritional information, which promised that the chewy things inside were fortified with nine vitamins and iron.

  As Eulalie ate, the cat lay in a patch of sunlight, giving himself a thorough wash. Soon, she knew, he would disappear out the window to go and do mysterious cat things in the large courtyard behind her office. Only when Mrs. Belfast arrived for work, would he settle down again for a morning nap.

  Eulalie wandered into the bedroom to choose her outfit for the day. Thanks to the dream, she had woken up earlier than usual, and now had time to play with. She would use it to blow-dry her unruly mane of hair that fell past her shoulder blades.

  Village life was lovely, she decided, but she couldn’t survive without a hairdryer.

  She pulled on a pair of black skinny jeans, a white tank-top and an olive-green blazer. Her tan ankle boots were lightweight and flexible, allowing her grip and complete freedom of movement.

  She had the perfectly coiffed and made-up image of Stephanie Autry in mind as she applied her makeup with more care than usual. Dr. Autry’s face might have been the last thing Chief Macgregor saw before he went to Madagascar, but hers would be the first thing he saw on his return, and she would make damn sure it was memorable.

  The sound of her phone buzzing caught her attention. She looked down at the dressing table and saw it was Chief Macgregor phoning.

  “Morning.”

  “Good morning to you. We know who the dead man was.”

  “Good,” said Eulalie. “Because I think I know why he died.”

  Chapter 7

  “His name was Sawyer Blakely. He was a real estate developer from New York.” Chief Macgregor showed Eulalie a series of photographs of the man on his iPad. “Here’s his Linked-In profile.”

  She leaned across the desk to read it.

  “Sawyer Blakely has particular experience in the field of sensitive negotiations to open up previously protected areas of wilderness for development.” She looked up at Chief Macgregor. “Please tell me he was here on vacation.”

  “I’m afraid not. Every indication is that he was here to survey land in the deep forest for development into a jungle theme-park.”

  Eulalie eyebrows shot up. “A theme-park? In the forest?”

  “With a hotel, a waterpark, a casino, and a soft-play area for the little ones.”

  “He’s lucky he didn’t meet me in the forest. I’d have put an arrow through him myself.”

  Chief Macgregor swiped at his iPad. Then he handed it back to Eulalie.

  “Here’s an artist’s representation of what the theme-park would look like.”

  Eulalie gaped at the image. It was worse than she’d feared. It was Disneyland on steroids. She took a deep breath.

  “The forest of Prince William Island is a protected heritage site. He could do all the surveying he liked, but he was never going to get permission to build this monstrosity, right? Right?” she added when he didn’t reply.

  “Not in theory, no.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve been doing some research on Sawyer Blakely. He has quite a reputation for getting permission to develop environmentally sensitive areas. He’s regarded as a magic bullet in the world of international real estate. You point him at the problem, and the problem goes away.”

  “You don’t have to sound so calm about it.” Eulalie stood up and paced in a tight circle around the room.

  He followed her with his eyes. “I don’t know how to react in a way that will make you happy.”

  “Nothing will make me happy. I can’t be happy about a situation like this. The only thing that makes me a little bit happy is the thought that he’s dead, so the problem has been solved.”

  Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. Where one developer appeared, there were always five more waiting to take his place. The scent of money was in the air. They would keep on coming. Her temper flashed and raged. She knew she needed to calm down. She would be no good to anyone if she let fury get the better of her. She would be no good to the forest or the village.

  Eulalie made herself stop pacing. She forced herself to calm down - to channel her anger into something productive.

  When she turned back to Chief Macgregor, he could have sworn her eyes had changed color. They were no longer pitch black.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I needed a moment. I’m okay now. What more can you tell me?”

  “I’m wondering what you can tell me. You said on the phone that you knew why our John Doe had been killed.”

  “Right. I’m not sure if it’s still relevant.” But it was - otherwise she wouldn’t have dreamed about it. “About a mile north of the village, there’s an old, dried-up riverbed. It’s actually an ox-bow lake that shows where the river used to flow before it changed course. It’s very muddy and treacherous. There are patches of quicksand. A child nearly drowned there once. The Council of Elders declared it a no-go zone and it has been pretty much abandoned for the last ten years.”

  “It sounds like it should be drained, or at least boarded over. We could help with that.”

  “Thanks, but you know what the villagers are like when it comes to accepting help. Besides, the forest is one big hazard. To make it safe, you’d have to get rid of the crocodiles, the snakes, the scorpions. It’s just not viable. We choose to live there because it’s our home, and we do what we can to keep ourselves and our children safe.”

  Chief Macgregor nodded. “You’re right. Continue.”

  “The thing about the mud is that it contains something that retards decay. Things that fall into it become petrified, almost mummified.”

  “Like the peat bogs of Ireland.”

  “Exactly. I found a perfectly preserved bat in the mud once. It was my pride and joy for years. Once, when we were about ten, some friends and I were playing in the mud, looking for petrified objects, when we found more than we had bargained for. It was the tusk of a mammoth. It must have been twelve feet long. We took it back to the village and everyone was very excited. One of the elders explained to us that it was the tooth of a creature that had wandered this island many thousands of years ago.”

  “Mammoths?” said Chief Macgregor. “On Prince William Island? I thought they lived further north?” He turned to his computer and started Googling.

  “The island was once part of a much larger northern land mass,” said Eulalie. “It broke off due to glacier activity and drifted further and further south before it bumped into the continental shelf that it is currently fused to. It took a small population of mammoths with it, but they died out as the ice receded and the climate became too warm for them.”

  “You’ve clearly done your research.”

  “When Angel and I got to the village a couple of days ago, a little girl told us that she had seen two strangers to the north of the village. She didn’t want me to tell anybody because she was somewhere that she wasn’t supposed to be. I immediately knew she was talking about the dried-up riverbed. My friend Rael and I went to check it out and found that someone had been digging a trench down the middle of the riverbed. The only thing I can think is that they are looking for mammoth tusks.”

  Chief Macgregor’s face was a picture of confusion. “Looking for mammoth tusks? Why would anyone…” Then he got it. “For the ivory. Of course.”

  “Exactly. There’s more ivory in a mammoth tusk than in an elephant tusk because they are so huge.
One tusk could be worth eighty thousand dollars. They call it ethical ivory because the creatures are already long dead.”

  “Who buys it?”

  “Mainly the Chinese. The carving of ivory figurines is highly prized in China.”

  Chief Macgregor tapped at his keyboard. “I see here that hunting for mammoth tusks is a thing in Siberia.”

  “Yes, I also saw that. Apparently, mammoth tusks disintegrate over time, just like bones, unless they are preserved somehow. In Siberia they have been preserved through being packed in ice, and here on Prince William Island, it’s the riverbed that has done it.”

  “It says here that hunting for mammoth tusks is illegal in Siberia, and everywhere else in the world too.”

  “That’s right. They are regarded as historical treasures, not sources of revenue. Also, the tusk-hunters tend to destroy the environment. They’ve already made quite a mess of the forest, and they’ve only got started.”

  Chief Macgregor sat in silence, thinking.

  “This is all very interesting, and if it were our only lead…”

  “You’d be all over it like a rash,” she suggested.

  He smiled. “I would. But the fact that Sawyer Blakely came here as a fixer for a theme-park consortium, changes things somewhat. You are familiar with the principle of Occam’s Razor?”

  “That the simplest explanation is the most likely to be true.” Eulalie had done a year of philosophy at college.

  “That’s it. I have to assume that Blakely was killed because of who and what he was. The fact that mammoth tusk-hunters may also be active in the area is interesting, but I don’t see how it’s connected yet.”

  She had to admit that she didn’t either.

  On her way to the office, Eulalie stopped off at La Petite Patisserie to pick up coffee for herself and Mrs. Belfast. The smell of fresh pastry in the bakery enfolded her like a velvet blanket. Before she knew what she was doing, she had added two almond croissants to the order.