In Too Deep

by Andreas Oertel

  “What’s up?” Eric asked. “Why’d you stop here?”

  I pointed to an old turn-of-the-century house, sitting across from the Kilmeny River—a lazy, winding river that hugged the eastern edge of our small town as it wound its way north. “That building,” I said, “used to be the headquarters for the MCC.”

  “That’s right,” Rachel said. “Someone years ago donated it to the Manitoba Council of Cree.”

  I lowered my bike on the grass curb and indicated that my friends should follow me onto the trail in front of the building.

  “So?” Eric said. “They moved their HQ to Pine Falls a long time ago. Now this is a bed and breakfast.”

  I waited for him to catch up. “Well, the article Mr. Provost showed us said that the MCC were ready to mount the statue just before it was stolen. Right?”

  “Yeah, so?” Eric looked at the park-like yard.

  “If they were going to mount it here, there must have been something on which they were going to mount it. So let’s take a look. Maybe we can still set things right.”

  The front yard was half the size of a football field. Shrubs, hedges, and flowerbeds broke up the perfect grass surface. We headed in three directions, weaving around the landscaped features.

  Five minutes later, our paths collided. “Anything?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Eric said. “But then, I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

  “Well, if I were going to put up an expensive bronze statue . . .” Rachel looked around. “I’d put it near the side-walk, or the road. Somewhere people could see it.”

  We walked back to our bikes and looked at the yard again. Nothing. A flowerbed here, shrubs there.

  “Come on, you guys. Let’s go.” Eric lifted his bike. “I could use a pop.”

  “Hang on a second.” I jogged down the sidewalk and looked back across the property one more time. It had to be here: a steel platform. A stone base. Something.

  But there was nothing.

  I made my way back to the road where Eric and Rachel were waiting. Behind them, a man and his Labrador retriever were just starting down the trail that twisted its way along the river and wrapped around town.

  And that’s when it hit me.

  CHAPTER

  10

  “I DON’T THINK they were going to put the statue on the property,” I explained to Rachel and Eric. “I think they were going to put it somewhere along the community trail. It starts right here and winds all the way around Sultana.”

  Rachel nodded. “And more people would see it on the trail than in that yard.”

  Eric lowered his bike again and reluctantly led the way down the path. “Enough chatter. Let’s just find the stupid thing.”

  It wasn’t long before we came to the first bench on the trail. Here the river widened and carved a gentle arc through the clay. I had to admit that it was a good spot for a park bench—except the bench was facing the wrong way. Crazy planners!

  We walked around the next corner and I saw two more benches in the distance, but they were facing the river, as they should.

  “Hey,” I called out to Eric and Rachel. They were ten paces ahead of me. “Come back here.”

  “Now what?” Eric hollered.

  “Look.” I pointed to the bench. “If you were going to put a park bench in a spot like this, would you have it facing the river, or an ugly cluster of shrubs?”

  “You’re right,” Rachel said, eagerly clawing her way into the dense hedge. “Ouch! My toe.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “There’s something here,” she said. “Something hard.”

  Eric and I peeled back the tall branches where Rachel stood. And there it was: a concrete pillar. The pillar resembled a cement tree stump cut waist-high off the ground.

  “Is that it?” Eric asked. He sounded disappointed.

  “It must be.” Rachel ran her hand over the top of the weathered base. “Look at these.” Her fingers touched four thick steel bolts that protruded from the surface.

  “Those are the mounting posts for the bronze,” I said. “They go through the holes in the feet, and then get bolted down.” I leaned over the shrubs and felt the nearest bolt. It was gritty with surface rust, but even after twenty-six years, the threading felt undamaged.

  I let go of the branches and they snapped back, concealing the concrete post. I sat down on the bench and watched Eric and Rachel step back onto the trail. They brushed spiderwebs and leaves from their clothes and plunked themselves down next to me.

  Eric watched a mosquito land on his thigh. “So now what?”

  “It’s all coming together, isn’t it?” Rachel said. “This morning we knew nothing. And now we know almost everything. We know when it was stolen, we know how it was stolen, and we know from where it was stolen.”

  “And,” I said, “if we look at the evidence, we also know who stole it. The Filthy Few—either all of them, some of them, or just Scolletti.”

  Eric smacked the mosquito with enough force to kill a bat. “Speaking of evidence, didn’t that guy in the picture—the kid on the left—look kind of familiar?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, a bit, I suppose. We should have asked if we could make a photocopy.”

  “Maybe we should just tell the police,” Rachel said.

  I shook my head. “We can’t. We don’t have any proof. Everything we know is whatchamacallit—circumstantial.”

  She nodded slowly. “I suppose. But we could put the statue back.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

  “That seems like a lot of work, you guys,” Eric said.

  I looked at the area around the base of the statue. “Yeah, it’d be a tricky operation,” I admitted.

  “How about this,” Eric said. “We phone Scolletti and tell him we have it. But we won’t use the words ‘bronze’ or ‘statue.’ Then we tell him that he can have it back if he pays us. Pays us—oh, I don’t know—a thousand dollars.”

  Rachel laughed, thinking he was joking.

  I wasn’t laughing. “That’s pretty clever,” I said. “Then, if he agrees to do a deal, we’ll know that he knows we’re talking about the statue. And if he knows that, it can only be because he’s the guy who stole it and ditched it in the lake.”

  Eric clenched his fist. “Yeah, and then we’ve got him.”

  “I just hope he takes the bait,” I said. “Otherwise, someone else is guilty. Probably my—”

  “Your dad is not involved in this,” Rachel said with finality. “So stop it. Remember, there were five guys in the Filthy Few. Any one of those other boys could have stolen the statue too.”

  “We’d still have to get Scolletti to admit his involvement in the crime,” Eric mumbled, ignoring his sister. “Or maybe we can record him talking about the statue. Something like that, anyway. Otherwise he’ll just deny everything, and we’ll be nowhere. We have to do this right the first time. I don’t want that nut loose once he knows we’ve tricked him.”

  “That’s for sure,” Rachel said. “He may already have killed one person, so who knows what he’d do to stay out of jail.”

  I stood up and stretched. “Okay, then. Let’s make that Plan A—for now, anyway. And our Plan B can be returning the statue and mounting it on its base.”

  We walked back to our bikes and rode to the Rivercrest to buy some pop.

  “Maybe Brad would help us,” I said after swallowing a mouthful of root beer.

  We were sitting near our bikes at the edge of the parking lot. Rachel and Eric had done their best to convince me that Scolletti had acted alone, without the other members of the Filthy Few. And I accepted that—well, I at least wanted to believe my dad wasn’t involved.

  Eric picked his drink off the curb and took a long pull. “Why do we need Jerkface?”

  “Because he would make a credible witness. He’s a cop. And cops have guns. If Scolletti freaks out, it’d be nice to know someone is there with a gun.”

&nbs
p; “I hate to break it to you,” Eric said, “but Brad doesn’t carry a gun. He’s a special constable—remember?”

  Rats! I’d forgotten that. “Yeah, but he’s still a guy in a police uniform.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Eric said, changing the subject, “but shouldn’t you guys congratulate me for my keen powers of observation?”

  “Remind us again what you keenly observed,” I said.

  “Ghost-Keeper,” Eric said. “I totally called it. Our statue of Simon Ghost-Keeper is a descendent of the elder we met hundreds of years ago. Just like I—”

  “Quiet!” Rachel said suddenly. “Listen!” She pointed up at the speakers mounted under the awning of the store-front. They always had the radio station set to the local country music channel, and now someone was reading the news:

  . . . these mysterious tracks lead from the water hazard to the adjacent access road and then stop. Employees reported the damage to the RCMP early this morning. Golfers are joking that the tracks are from a Loch Ness– type monster, who, fed up with the steady bombardment of golf balls, decided to leave Smoke Lake. Police, however, are treating the incident seriously and are continuing their investigation. In sports today, the . . .

  “So much for secrecy,” Eric said. “The whole town knows now.”

  “No one knows anything,” I said, trying to sound rational. “The only person who’s going to be nervous is the person who dumped the statue. And if that’s Scolletti, we want him to be nervous.”

  “And don’t forget it was your idea to tell him that we have it,” Rachel reminded her brother.

  Eric squinted into his pop can, like a fortune teller staring into a crystal ball. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It was just a shock hearing it on the radio. I guess I thought we’d be able to sort this out before the cops got wind.”

  “Don’t worry about the police,” I said. “There’s nothing in the lake for them to find. We have the statue.” The door at the rear of the restaurant suddenly opened, and Creepy Calvin emerged. He glared at us for a few seconds and went back inside. Jeepers, he is weird!

  “And the sooner we get rid of Ironman, the sooner I’ll be happy,” Eric said. “This whole statue thing is causing me a great deal of stress. And I never get stressed out.”

  “Unless,” Rachel said, “you can’t find anything to eat.”

  It was almost 5:00 by the time we got back to Eric and Rachel’s house. And as soon as we walked into the kitchen, their phone rang. Rachel and I looked at each other anxiously. I think we both had a bad feeling it was Scolletti. The thought of talking to him again (or whoever it was) made the little hairs on my neck stand up.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t answer it,” Rachel said, her voice quivering.

  I nodded. “Yeah, maybe we should just let it ring.”

  Eric walked to the charger stand. “Jeepers, you guys! It could be anyone. Could be Mom.”

  “And if it’s not Mom. . . ?” Rachel said.

  Eric reached for the phone. “Then we can get this over with.”

  “Remember,” I said quickly, “Plan A.”

  He took a deep breath, flicked the phone to speaker and said, “Hello?”

  “You punks think you’re pretty clever.” The voice sounded similar to the first caller—who might have been Scolletti—but it also sounded slightly different.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Eric said boldly.

  Rachel froze—eyes as big as Frisbees.

  The caller screamed, “You filthy—”

  Eric switched the phone off.

  “What’re you doing?” I said. “He’s gonna go ballistic!”

  “Exactly,” Eric said. “We might as well make him really mad. Maybe he’ll slip up and do something stupid.”

  “Like kill us?” I mumbled, pacing the room like a lawyer.

  Rachel snapped out of it and shook her head. “You watch way too much TV, Eric.”

  “He’ll phone back,” Eric said. “Don’t worry.”

  Rachel and I looked at each other. Clearly, we were both worried—worried he’d phone back, and worried he might not phone back. A lose-lose situation, if ever there was one.

  The phone rang again and Eric switched it on. But he didn’t say anything; he just listened.

  “Hello?” the caller said.

  “If you want to talk to us,” Eric said, “you better talk nice. No more yelling, or. . .”

  “I’ll wring your neck if you hang—”

  Click. Eric hung up again.

  “You got guts,” Rachel said.

  I shook my head and resumed pacing. “Just tell him this time. I can’t handle much more.”

  The phone chirped for the third time, but Eric was ready.

  “We have it,” Eric said. “Do you want it back?”

  There was a long pause, and the silence was torture. I cringed involuntarily.

  “You have what?” the man asked cautiously. He seemed to have regained his composure.

  “If you don’t know, then I guess you don’t want it. We’ll just sell it to someone else. No big deal.”

  Another long pause.

  And then the caller asked, “Where is it?”

  Got him!

  Eric held up his palm to high five Rachel, but Rachel scowled and pointed at the phone. Eric said to the speaker, “It’s safe.”

  “How do I know you really have it?” the man asked.

  Eric said, “Go see for yourself. It’s not where you dumped it, and that’s because we have it.”

  “How much?”

  Eric grinned. “We want three thousand dollars for it.”

  “Who else knows about this?” he asked.

  “Just us—the three of us.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said. And then he added, “Keep it hidden.”

  “This is what we’re calling a limited-time offer,” Eric said. “If we don’t hear from you in two hours, we’re selling it on eBay.”

  The man snorted and said, “Give me two days.”

  Eric agreed and hung up the phone. “It worked,” he said.

  “Why did you say we want three thousand dollars for the statue?” Rachel asked.

  Eric shrugged. “I thought it would be nice for us each to make a thousand dollars. You know, for our troubles.”

  “But we’re not selling it to him, you dummy!” she said.

  “I know that,” Eric said. “But I had to come up with an amount he would believe. And three thousand dollars splits nicely three ways.”

  Rachel changed the subject. “So now we know for a fact Scolletti was involved.”

  “To be honest,” I said, “I’m not sure that was him. I mean, I still think he’s involved . . . It’s just that this caller didn’t sound like Scolletti.”

  “Naw,” Eric said, “that’s just your imagination. It had to be him.”

  I shrugged.

  Rachel looked at me anxiously.

  “If it wasn’t Scolletti . . .” Eric said.

  “Don’t even think it,” Rachel scolded her brother.

  “Huh?” Eric looked perplexed.

  “Cody’s dad is not a suspect,” she said.

  “What?” Eric said. “No. That’s not what I was getting at.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “When I see my dad, I’ll ask him about the Filthy Few myself.”

  “You will?” Rachel said.

  I nodded. “I have to know if he was involved.”

  Eric sat at the kitchen table and sighed.

  “So, what now?” Rachel looked to me for guidance.

  “I guess we can call the cops,” I said, “and tell them everything we know. The statue has been found, they can re-open the investigation, and so on.” Although, after all those years under water, I didn’t think they’d find much evidence on the bronze. Plus, Rachel and I had probably polished away every last fingerprint when we cleaned the statue.

  “And they can trace those phone calls,” Rachel said, “and arrest whoever you just made t
hat deal with.”

  I nodded, wondering again who had really called us.

  CHAPTER

  11

  ERIC SAID, “I’LL bike over to Brad’s place. If he’s home, I’ll bring him here.”

  As soon as Eric left, Rachel and I went out to the shed to check on the statue. I don’t think either one of us imagined it would be gone—and it wasn’t—but if someone was going to haul away our discovery, we wanted to spend as much time with it as we could now.

  “Do you think the RCMP will be able to sort everything out?” I asked, peeling back the tarp that covered the face. We were kneeling on the ground again, on opposite sides of the bronze head.

  Rachel said, “I’m sure they can trace those phone calls to either the golf course, or a cell phone, or someone’s house. I think that’ll be the key to solving everything—finding that person.”

  A car door slammed in the driveway.

  “Must be Eric and Brad,” I said. “I guess he was home.”

  A minute later, a shadow in the doorway of the shed caught my attention and I froze. I had a gut feeling it wasn’t Eric. A glance to the door confirmed it. But it wasn’t Scolletti, either. It was Creepy Calvin, the cook at the Rivercrest. And he had a gun aimed at us.

  It was warm in the shed, but I was instantly chilled to the bone. Rachel turned and saw him too. We both slowly stood up.

  He took two nervous steps into the shed. His eyes darted all around the space—stopping on the statue. A twisted grin slid across his face. I tried to picture his bald head with hair, and knew immediately that I had identified another member of the Filthy Few. Calvin Frippley was the first kid in the picture.

  I would have held up my hands like in the movies, but he didn’t ask us to. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything. He just stood there like a crazed zombie.

  “Who’s laughing now?” Calvin finally said, breaking the silence.

  I realized then that Rachel was holding my hand and squeezing the heck out of it. I think it was the gun that scared her—black, menacing, lethal. Now, obviously a lot was happening just then, and one’s memory probably gets a bit muddled over time, but I do remember being happy that Rachel was holding my hand, and I remember not wanting to let go.