by Ellen Riggs
After a pretty much flawless drive, I pulled up in front of the manor and parked. Now the sun was starting its downward slide into the trees, although it was barely four p.m. I’d intended to make this trip the next morning after the guests left. But now I was following Keats’ lead and today was obviously the day.
“Alright,” I said, jumping down. “Fan out, boys. We’re looking for the security camera the police couldn’t find. Maud Burnett at the central post office confirmed Portia received one a few weeks ago. She chose not to have it shipped through Mandy’s Country Store, so she was keeping this quiet. But I’m betting it’s here somewhere and that’s how she knew we peeped on her that night. Honestly, I can’t blame her. With Silvio the butcher coming by to threaten her and people breaking her windows, she was right to worry. It wasn’t just paranoia.”
I walked around the house, evaluating the best sight lines. If I were trying to monitor this place, I’d have two or even three cameras, placed high enough to see all movement on four sides.
Thinking back, I realized Percy had given me a clue the night before. And sure enough, when I turned, he was up in the tree house again.
Walking to the base of the old “ladder,” I cringed. “Oh no. These are just sticks hammered into the tree and they’re decades old. It’s fine for you Percy, but they look like they’re rotting out. I wish I’d brought a ladder.”
Keats ran back to the truck and barked.
“Right,” I said. “Rope. Good thinking.”
At some point I’d thrown a good length of nylon line into the back in case one of the animals escaped, or we came upon another rescue. Now it came in handy in another way. It took half a dozen tosses before I finally got it looped over a branch above the tree house and used my phone to look up how to tie it off properly. Then I knotted it around my waist. It wouldn’t be pleasant swinging from this rope—I might squish a few organs—but it was better than coming down the harder way.
The best part about the rope was that it cut my fear by half as I slowly and carefully scaled the old ladder Michael had probably scampered up in his childhood. Finally I hoisted myself onto the platform and sat for a moment to catch my breath. I could see why this place held such warm memories for that lonely boy of long ago. It had a commanding view of both the front and two sides of the house. He would have had complete privacy to create his imaginary world while his mother and aunt talked about their eccentric brother.
Percy was sitting on the ledge of one of the three walls. He reached down and swatted at my hair.
“Right, moving on.” After checking that the boards were solid, I stood. “Where is it, Percy?”
He traipsed along the ledge without a care in the world. No tying off needed for this athlete.
At the front, looking over the house, he braced his paws on a broad tree and meowed.
“This one?” I leaned out to get a look around the trunk. “Oh no. No no no.”
Percy meowed again. A definitive yes. Above us, there was a hole in the tree, created either by a boy long ago or another critter. It wasn’t fresh, but it did look like the perfect place for a security camera.
Even with the rope, this maneuver was going to be tricky. I’d have to climb onto the slim edge of the tree house wall that looked barely wide enough for Percy’s orange paws. Then I’d have to reach inside the hole and hope I didn’t record a spectacular fall for posterity.
Rubbing my hands through my hair, I thought hard but couldn’t come up with another solution, other than calling out a cherry picker.
I looked down and saw Keats staring up. The white tuft of his tail swished once. Affirmative.
“Fine,” I said, carefully hoisting myself into a sitting position on the edge. “Don’t look down. Eye on the prize.”
Standing took more courage—and flexibility—than I thought I had. Thank goodness I’d worn sneakers instead of my usual work boots. I pivoted to hug the tree for dear life with my left arm and reached up and into the hole with my right.
“Bingo,” I said, when my fingers touched cool metal. I groped around a little to get a sense of its dimensions, and then… “What the heck?”
A minute later, I’d pulled not one camera but two from the hole in the tree. Both looked relatively new, and one was small and no doubt high end.
“Why didn’t I bring a bag or something?” I said, slipping the larger camera into the kangaroo pouch on my overalls. The smaller one I tucked into my bra. It was the only way to keep them from clanking together and possibly damaging the footage during the climb down.
The relief flooding through me made getting down even harder than getting up. It felt like my arms and legs had become limp spaghetti and I nearly took a spin on that rope twice.
Percy had disappeared over the side before I even started, so I was surprised he wasn’t waiting at the bottom. Neither was Keats.
“Boys!” I called. “What are you… Keats! Stop that digging. What did I tell you— Oh. Oh my gosh! Is that a—?”
My scream startled the dog and he struggled to regain his balance for a second. But he didn’t drop the femur—the longest bone in the human body—as he ran toward me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Drop it. Drop it!”
Keats had already dropped the bone, so he looked up at me questioningly. Now it was really more about what to do with it.
The first thing was to get it off my sneakers. Obviously. I slid one foot out from under the bone and then nudged it gently off the other. I didn’t know who this femur had belonged to, but it was best to assume the person deserved some dignity and respect until I learned otherwise.
“Keats, show me the rest,” I said, gesturing to the garden where he’d been digging. It wasn’t much of a garden, and probably hadn’t been for decades. There was a huge prickly rose bush that had somehow bloomed last summer despite—or perhaps because of—the circumstances. I knew a lot about fertilizer now, but this particular brand seemed too old to be feeding the roses. Unfortunately, I also had experience with old bones from the circumstances around meeting Keats. His horrible former owner had buried someone under the sunflowers in the backyard. The dog had unearthed a skull and things spiralled out of control after that, leaving me with both the pup and a concussion.
Now Keats had uncovered another skeleton, it seemed. If it hadn’t been my second rodeo, I don’t think I could have looked into the hole he’d dug. There was only so much even a manure-friendly farmer could take.
On first glance—and it was going to be my only glance—it appeared that the rest of the individual in question resided under the rose bush as well. My thoughts were as scattered as the bones seemed to be, so I looked up at the sky and pulled in a breath to the count of nine. If I could have made it to 19 it still wouldn’t have calmed me. Nine would have to do.
Reaching into the pocket of my overalls, I fumbled around the security camera for my phone. Then I snapped a few photos, taking a second or two to get the right light and perspective so that the police could find the remains easily.
In each photo, orange paws busily scratched dirt back over the bones, as if burying something in a large litter box.
“You go, Percy,” I muttered. “But now we have to go. It’s getting dark.”
I jogged to the femur in the dried grass and said, “What do I do with that?” I could put it back where it currently belonged or hide it somewhere. Picking it up, I looked around for a likely spot to conceal it.
That’s when I heard a motor in the distance. Not a car or a truck. Perhaps an ATV. Regardless, it was coming our way and it was picking up speed.
“Boys, run,” I whispered, tucking the femur under my left arm. I used my right hand to press the cameras against my chest. The delicate technology likely held answers to Portia’s demise.
We got to the truck without mishap and never had I been so happy to slide behind the wheel.
“Okay. We’re okay,” I said. Both animals settled in the back seat, and I realized Keats did
n’t want to share the front seat with the bone. I didn’t either, but there was no help for it. I gingerly placed it in the footwell of the passenger seat and shook off my gloves, muttering another apology. “Sorry, whoever you are. You may be in for another rough ride.”
The pickup cooperated rather nicely, considering how jittery I was. Rolling down the window, I managed to turn it around and start down the lane. I put the window down and slowed just enough to hear the vehicle still approaching. It was on the ATV trails Jilly and I had taken not long ago. If I stuck to the lane, I wouldn’t run into them, literally or otherwise.
Keeping the lights out, I used my phone to show the way, minimizing the chance that the approaching vehicle would see the truck through the dense bush and change direction. It took a little doing to steer with one hand and light the way with the other and I had to stay in first gear almost to the highway. Only then did I flick on the headlights and gun it as I never had before. It made Edna’s wild drive the night before look like a kiddie ride at a theme park.
By the time I reached the police station downtown, I was huffing like I’d run the entire way. Instead, I’d mainly held my breath. I was afraid of stalling, afraid of being tailed and afraid of smelling something worse than manure if I let my nose do its job. Logically I knew that bone was far too old to smell of more than soil but my roiling stomach couldn’t be convinced of reason. It wanted to toss the fish tacos Jilly had left for Caroline and me to reheat at lunch. If there was a worse meal than fish before an expedition, I didn’t know it.
“Liver, maybe?” I said aloud, and Keats stuck his head through the seats to stare at me. “What? You think I’m losing it, don’t you? Well, I’m not. This isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with a skeleton and I can handle it better this time. I ran away from the threat, not toward it, right? Total improvement in my judgement. Here we are at the police station, where I can just drop this stuff off. Then we’re all going home to take a long bath.”
Keats shuddered and I said, “Well, maybe not you, buddy. It would seem like unfair punishment after some excellent sleuthing.” I looked over my shoulder. “You too, Percy. Good job, team.”
Shuddering myself, I put my gloves back on and picked up the femur. “I can’t just walk in there carrying it, can I?” Keats mumbled a decided negative. “I could trigger some kind of statewide alert. But there’s no way I’m leaving it out here. So…” I looked down and sighed. “There goes another perfectly good bag. I lost my favorite to a skull and now its replacement to a femur.” Stuffing it in the big leather bag, I said, “A grim reaper farmer just can’t have nice things.”
I looked around carefully and then opened the door of the truck. “Come on, you two. No way am I leaving you behind, either. Someone’s after me and they can take the truck if they want but they’re not getting my animals or my femur.” I shook my head. “That didn’t come out right. But you know what I meant.”
Keats panted nervously, herding me up the front steps of the police station. Percy circled me, nearly tripping me at the top with his figure eight weave through my sneakers. It was as if the cat didn’t want me to go inside. Yet where else would I go? This made the most sense.
“Come on, hurry,” I said, opening the door with one hand and concealing the knobby top of the femur in my armpit. “We’ll just find Kellan and drop the goods. Nothing to it.”
Only Kellan wasn’t waiting to greet me at the front desk, because I hadn’t thought to call ahead. Instead, a prim-looking older woman with an elaborate bun stared at me as I walked across the short foyer.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” she asked.
Maybe it was the ma’am that threw me off, or maybe it was the thinly veiled look of contempt. All of a sudden I realized exactly how I must look. It was like I was given an aerial view of farmer Ivy in her overalls, bulky with a camera in one pocket, another in her bra, and the longest bone in the human body tucked into her armpit. My hair was windblown and my makeup streaming from tears I only felt now. On top of all that, I was flanked by a dog on one side and a cat on the other. The latter took the liberty of leaping on the counter in front of the plexiglass and meowing loudly into the speaker.
“Ma’am?” the woman prompted me. “How can I help you?”
“Kellan,” I whispered. “I need to see Kellan, please.”
“Chief Harper? I’m afraid he’s busy, ma’am. And he doesn’t take random callers.”
“I’m not random,” I said. “I’m his girlfriend.”
“You’re his…?” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head in disbelief.
Percy leaned into the speaker and released a yowl. It was deafening even from my side of the glass. “Percy, stop.” He sat back on his haunches and scratched at the glass with both paws, trying to dig his way in.
“Stop that right now,” the woman said. “Or I will have you removed.”
I didn’t know if she meant me or Percy, but I slid my hand under the cat and dropped him gently to the floor.
“Sorry,” I said. “If Kellan is busy could you please call my brother? Asher Galloway.”
“Oh,” she said, recognition dawning. “Are you the Galloway sister with the…?”
Again she trailed off. She was annoying enough that some of my spirit came flooding back, starting around the region of the fish taco and moving up into my chest. “Ma’am,” I said, tossing the word back at her, “I’ll ask one more time. I need to speak to Chief Harper or Officer Galloway right now. It’s an emergency.”
“Is that a…?” She picked up the phone quickly with her right hand and pointed with her left. The femur had slipped out of my armpit when I moved Percy, and now it hit the counter with a loud thunk.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s a femur. The longest bone in the human body. And I’d really like to hand it over to someone better equipped to deal with it than I am.”
Percy jumped up to add another meow for punctuation.
But he didn’t get to hum many bars before a door to my left opened and two uniformed officers came out.
Neither was Kellan or Asher. Instead, two rather brawny women pretty much picked me up and transported me inside without any need for my sneakers to move. I looked down and saw Keats holding one of them by the cuff with his four white brakes on. Percy took a leap and landed lightly about mid-back on the other. I knew how that felt… exactly like a big burr you couldn’t dislodge. Neither woman even slowed down. At some point, there was a rather loud clatter as the femur fell to the floor, but even then they kept on moving. It was like being caught in a tractor beam and I had no idea where it would drop me.
So when Kellan happened to step through a doorway, it’s really no wonder that his jaw dropped. “Ivy? What on earth…?”
It was all sentence fragments around here. But I had a complete one for him.
“We found Aaron Bingham.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Well. That was certainly embarrassing,” I said, putting my boot on the spade and kicking it rather aggressively into the manure pile. It was dark, now, but enough light flooded through the wide double doors of the barn to let me take out my frustrations in the usual way. “I’m pretty sure I’m no better than dung to Kellan now, boys.”
Keats and Percy sat together on the side closest to the barn. From my vantage point, they looked like toy soldiers on night watch.
“I can’t figure it out,” I muttered, tossing manure down the other side. “I should know this. I should know.”
Keats glanced up and his eerie blue eye confirmed it. I should know by now. He knew.
“What am I missing?” I stuck the spade into the pile, crossed my arms around the handle and stared around.
My eyes fell on the golf cart and suddenly everything fell into place. Because the cart was parked on an angle. Someone had taken it for a ride when I was gone.
“Boys, I hate to tell you this,” I said, “But we’ve got to head back to the police station. Now.”
Four eyes stared up
at me. Only the brown one didn’t glow. They blinked once. They blinked twice.
“Don’t say no,” I pleaded. “This is our chance to—”
“To do what?”
I jumped and nearly dropped the spade. Caroline Bingham was standing in the rear doorway of the barn wearing a pretty dress and heels. She’d told me earlier that she was joining Michael and Hazel in town for their final dinner. After a long rest and a bath, she looked like a million bucks. Meanwhile I looked little better than the crap I stood on.
“To make things right with Kellan,” I said. “I embarrassed him rather spectacularly earlier.”
Caroline laughed. “Don’t worry. He’ll forgive you. I saw the look on his face the other day when he was here. He thinks you’re a doll.”
I pulled the spade out of the manure and took another savage stab at it. “Not after today. Unless you count that demonic little doll with the red hair. You know the one?”
“Chuckie,” she said, laughing again. “I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Not to mention the manure pile. You’ll excuse me if I stand well back to avoid splatter.”
“Of course.” I stuck the spade into the pile and leaned on it again. “You look wonderful, Caroline. Michael stares at you as if you’re a precious gemstone. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
She smiled and then it faded. “Sometimes I notice, but then I have doubts. He’s such a sweet man. I really don’t deserve him.”
“Of course you do. Why on earth would you say that? Hazel says she’s never heard a single harsh word out of you. That means something, trust me. I barely get through a day without a harsh word or five.”
“You’ve been under a lot of pressure, Ivy. I couldn’t quite believe the stories I heard in town. Hazel never said a word about it, and honestly I’m not sure we’d have stayed here if we’d known what’s been happening at Runaway Farm.”
“I’m sorry. I guess we should have filled you in but I thought most of the clouds over the farm had passed.”
