by Margi Preus
“T.J. disappearing for long sojourns. Related?”
“Could be nothing but kid stuff.”
“Do you think he’s been back there digging, too?” she said. “That would explain the dirty clothes. The first day I was here, Ginger teased him about digging, um, something silly. Elephant bones.”
“I used to dig up elephant bones when I was a kid,” Nels said, devouring the last of his cone.
Francie looked at him. “Around here?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
“Find a lot?”
“I think they were mostly moose bones,” Nels admitted.
“So do you think T.J. is digging up moose bones?”
“Kid who reads National Geographics?” Nels said. Francie remembered the stack of them next to T.J.’s bed. Nels was observant, she thought. “He might actually know an elephant bone when he sees one.”
“But, come on. Seriously. Elephant bones?” Francie said.
“Sure. The biggest elephants that ever lived: mammoths. During the Pleistocene era, there were mammoths running all over the place around here. Or lumbering or whatever they did. Mastodons, too. They’re the two main elephant types during the Ice Age. It’s conceivable they could be found around here.”
Francie stared at Nels. What was he doing with one of those sparkly-haired, friends-of-Latice who populated the Fredericksons’ party? Guys! A smart girl wouldn’t fall for a dim guy, but the reverse was not always the case.
“So you think he’s digging up mammoth bones?”
“I’m just saying,” he said. That adorable smile played on his lips. Francie couldn’t stop staring at his lips. Fortunately, he started swinging, pumping his legs to make himself soar into the air, his tie flying behind him. “Come on,” he said. “Keep up!”
“But why in the dark? In the middle of the night?” Francie wondered aloud. She pulled herself and her swing back as far as she could, then flew.
“Impossible to say,” Nels said. “You need to talk to T.J.”
“Yeah,” Francie said. “I’ll go talk to him this afternoon. But, anyway, about Buck Jr.: don’t you think that’s worth following up on at least?”
“Buck is usually not that hard to locate. Just find his boat.”
“Ah, yes, the boat.”
“If you want, I’ll come with you. But I gotta work until five.”
“Naw,” Francie jumped off the swing. “I’m just going to go see if I can find him.”
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Nels said. “Frenchy?”
She turned back.
“Did you hear me?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, but she already knew she would do whatever it took to find out what was going on.
23
A Secret
Buck’s boat was not at the dock.
“Sandy!” she said, barging into the store. “Is Buck out on the lake?”
Sandy looked up from the cash register, his face flushed with a curious mix of surprise and anger. “Buck Jr.?” he growled. “Yeah, he’s out there. Why?”
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Just a minute,” he said.
While she waited until he finished with his customer, Francie looked around the store at the old maps, pictures, posters, an arrowhead collection in a glass case, and an ancient illuminated Hamm’s Beer sign with a picture of a red canoe on a shimmering, somewhat mesmerizing lake.
“Mesmerizing, isn’t it?” Sandy said, his voice in her ear.
Francie jumped. “I don’t remember that arrowhead collection,” she said. “Has that always been there?”
“Seems like it’s always been there,” Sandy said.
“Are you mad at Buck about something?” she asked, as they walked to the shore.
“He’s up to something.” Sandy put a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “See that island? I’ll bet anything Buck is on the other side of it. I’d like to know for sure what he’s doing out there.”
“Wait. What? He’s on that island?”
“No, in his boat on the other side of it. I don’t like it, and I don’t trust him.”
This didn’t make sense. The island was miles from where she’d been last night when she’d heard the shoveling. “Can we go check it out?”
Sandy shook his head. “I can’t. I’m the only one here right now.”
“I guess I can go look for him in the boat,” Francie suggested.
“No,” Sandy said. “Take a kayak. You can sneak up that way: quiet, small, low in the water, not very noticeable. If you take your boat, he’ll see you coming. Keep yourself behind the island, so he can’t see you, then pull your kayak up on this side and walk over to the other side. You might be able to see what he’s up to. Do it so he can’t see you, though, or he’ll quit. He’s being supersecretive. Here, take these.” He handed her the binoculars.
A customer called to Sandy from the store.
“Help yourself,” Sandy told Francie, gesturing to the kayaks, paddles, and life jackets. “You know how to paddle a kayak, right?”
“Uh . . . huh,” Francie answered, but Sandy was already gone. Well, how hard could it be? She’d seen pictures of people kayaking. She looked again at the island. How long would this take? Maybe ten minutes to paddle out there, five minutes to see what he was doing, ten minutes back. Half an hour, total. She could afford that. It might be worth it.
She tucked her purse and the shopping bag with the cute dress wrapped up in scented tissue paper into the storage compartment and shoved the little yellow kayak out into the water. How were you supposed to get in? she wondered. Keep your center of gravity low, she surmised. Butt first.
She slid gracelessly into the boat and was immediately struck by how tippy it seemed—like it might flip over any minute, and then what would happen? Would she be stuck in it, upside down?
She didn’t think about this for long, because the paddle was in her hand and the island was in her sight, and as she paddled, she got used to the tippy feeling. And she became captivated by her loon’s-eye view of the world. It was not so much being on the water as being in it, almost like being part of the water—the way a duck or a loon is, half the body submerged.
A light breeze kicked up small, friendly waves that sparkled so fiercely she could imagine herself paddling in an enormous vat of diamonds. It was so quiet. The waves tapped softly against her craft; somewhere in the distance gulls squabbled like fussy toddlers; a boat motor droned far, far away as if in her imagination, yet she felt surrounded by silence. It almost made her anxiety dissolve. Almost.
At the island, Francie beached the boat, got out awkwardly, and pulled the boat up onto the shore. She suspected it had taken longer than she’d thought to paddle to the island; she’d have to keep this surveillance mission short.
She hurried as much as she dared while still trying to be stealthy, creeping over the rise of the island and down the other side, finally ensconcing herself behind a tree. She didn’t really need binoculars; she could see well enough an orange flag attached to a buoy—it looked like a diving flag. Buck’s boat was anchored nearby.
She could see the head of someone in the water and a person standing in the boat who, she noticed, was pointing at her. The boat turned and aimed right for her hiding place.
Great, she groaned, I am one stealthy babe.
“What are you doing anyway? Are you spying on me? You seem like you’re spying on me,” Buck said, unzipping the top of his wetsuit to his navel.
The other guy, the boat guy, who looked like he’d spent way too much time way too deep underwater, eyed her in a slack-jawed yet thuggish way.
“No, I’m not spying on you,” she said.
“What are you doing then?”
“Okay, I am spying on you.”
“Aha!” Buck exclaimed, as if he had just pried this information from her by inserting bamboo shoots under her fingernails.
“I’m just curious, for cry-eye,” she said.
Buck appeared w
ounded by this remark. Still, Francie plunged on. “I mean, what’s all the secrecy about? Can’t you just tell me what you’re up to?”
“What makes you think we’re ‘up to’ anything?” He sounded like the villain in a bad spy movie, only with the nasal twang of the local accent, which spoiled it somewhat.
“Because I heard you telling your dad . . .” Suddenly it occurred to her that Buck Jr. was out here goofing around with his dad freshly dead. “Sorry about your dad,” Francie said.
Buck grunted.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but shouldn’t you be home with your family?”
“Not really my family. Buck was kind of my stepdad. My mom’s ex-husband.”
“Right,” Francie said. “But your name is Buck, too.”
“It isn’t, really. It’s Gerald,” Buck Jr. said. “When Buck married my mom—”
“Rose?”
“Yeah, Rose. Buck thought Gerald was a sissy name so he started calling me Little Buck. It stuck. I hated it. So then it got to be Buck Jr.”
“And that’s okay with you?” Francie asked.
Buck shrugged. “I guess I don’t want a sissy name.”
“So you and Buck Sr.,” Francie said, “you weren’t close?”
“Not particularly. Are you interrogating me?” Buck sounded irritated.
Francie ignored the question. Keep moving, she thought. “Listen, you told your sort-of-stepdad that you found something. Also, your girlfriend at the realty office says you’ve been bragging about finding treasure out here.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Buck said bitterly. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“Come on, Buck,” Francie said, “just tell me what you’ve found. Or show me. I mean, it’s not illegal or anything, is it?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll show you, but you’re going to have to be blindfolded.”
Before she could protest, a bandanna was wrapped around her head. “How can I see anything if you blindfold me?” she cried.
“We’re just blindfolding you so you don’t know where we’re taking you.”
The boat whapped over the waves, jarring her spine. Without being able to see, there was no way to anticipate or brace herself for the worst of the waves, and she clattered about in the boat like a loose bait bucket, knocking her knee, shin, shoulder, elbow. How had the waves that had seemed so placid in the kayak become so violent in the boat?
As they bounced along, she started thinking that maybe she wasn’t taking him seriously enough. He could be the killer. He had a motive—bang, ouch—his stepdad’s money. He probably stood to inherit—bang, ow—something. He had opportunity. He would have easy access to his stepdad and would know his eating habits and choices and—ouch, bang—she forgot whatever else it was she was going to think.
Oh, and one other thing: he needed money to fund this treasure hunt—if that’s what it was—desperately enough to go through the realty office drawers for loose change.
The boat slowed, the motor cut out, and she felt and heard the hull scrape against sand. Then she was lifted out of the boat (apparently thuggish sidekicks are useful for this sort of thing, she thought), set down, and led along something that sounded and felt like gravel and eventually onto uneven ground and into the woods.
The whapping of the boat on the waves was replaced by the whapping of branches against her face. Thwack—ouch—she was whapped in the face by something whip-like, jabbed by something pointed, poked by something sharp. More Mamma Mia, what have I done thoughts as they marched through the woods. What if they’re planning to do away with me and leave me back in the brush to rot?
She reflected on opportunity lost. If she got out of this alive, she would not be so impulsive anymore, she told herself. She would think things over more carefully. Look before leaping, etcetera, etcetera. She was sorry she hadn’t made more of an effort to get in touch with her brother. Would he even come home for her funeral? Too bad she wouldn’t get to see him.
They came to an abrupt stop—ouch again, as her shin struck against something hard.
“Ready?” the thug grunted.
24
Under Enchantment
“All right,” Buck said, sliding the blindfold off Francie’s face.
She blinked in the sunlight, and once her eyes adjusted, saw that they were standing next to a pile of brush in the middle of the woods.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Francie asked when her heart subsided enough to allow her to talk.
Buck ceremoniously lifted some dead branches off the brush pile to reveal . . .
“A log?” Francie said.
“A really, really big log.” Buck patted it proudly.
“Are you kidding me?” she said. “This is a joke, right? I mean, you don’t blindfold someone and submit them to beating by boat hardware to show them a dumb log.”
Buck sighed. “Okay, you’re a city girl. We can’t expect you to understand this.”
Francie couldn’t believe she’d actually taken him seriously, when she could see what a buffoon he was. He and his mouth-breathing sidekick, Bluto.
“These are big logs and old logs, and one of these things is worth, like, eight dollars per board foot, and there’s probably almost six hundred board feet in this baby. Multiply that by hundreds of these ‘dumb logs,’ as you call them, that are under the lake. Dozens, anyway.”
“Hmmm,” she said, trying and failing to do the math in her head. “Why?”
“Why are there so many logs under the lake, or why are they so valuable?”
“Both.”
“Okay, back in the old days this whole area was covered with pines. Big, old white pines, this big around.” He spread his arms wide. “All this area—for hundreds of miles around—nothing but big old white and red pines. They say a squirrel could run from here to Chicago on the tops of those trees and never touch the ground. They say you could have ridden a bicycle from here to there because the forest was so ancient that there was no underbrush. It musta been amazing!”
Francie stared at his glowing face. He was really quite articulate when he started talking about this subject, she thought, impressed that he cared so much about the forest.
“But then the loggers found them,” Buck went on. He had started back down the path and Francie followed. She didn’t bring up the missing blindfold. “They cut down pretty much everything. They loved these trees ’cuz they floated. They called it cork pine, in fact; it was easy to transport if there was water. They’d float big rafts of logs and send hundreds—no, thousands—of them downriver to sawmills to be milled into lumber. There was so much of it, and it was so cheap, that some towns had sidewalks made out of it. You know how much of that old-growth forest is left now?”
Francie shook her head.
“Less than 2 percent.” Buck shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at the ground. “It’s a tapestry. It really is.”
“Travesty?” Francie suggested.
“Yeah,” Buck agreed. “So now the big trees are pretty hard to come by, so these logs are really valuable.”
“If it floats, why did you have to pull this log off the bottom?”
“Some of them got waterlogged. They’ve been down there for over a hundred years.”
“Okay, I get it,” Francie said. “The treasure is the logs, then?” She was kind of disappointed. What had she expected, she wondered—gold doubloons?
They had come out onto the boat landing when Buck realized the blindfold mistake. “Craparoma!” he said. “The blindfold!”
Francie shrugged and smiled.
“Now I’m going to have to kill you,” Buck said.
The sidekick, Bluto, let out a guffaw. Francie did not find it funny; her stomach seized up.
“Geez,” Buck said. “I’m just kidding. You look like you just swallowed a ghost or something.” He had his stepdad’s way with words, Francie noticed. “Come on, get in,” he said, gesturing to the boat. “I wouldn’t kill you here, anyw
ay, would I? At a public boat landing?”
Francie couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but as it was a really long walk back to her aunts’ cabin—if it could even be walked—she climbed into the boat and hoped he was joking.
“Do you want a ride back to your grandma’s place or what?” Buck shouted over the motor.
“No, thanks. I’ve got a kayak on the island.”
“I figured you didn’t get there by flying,” Buck said. Bluto grunted. Another laugh, Francie assumed.
“What’s that?” she asked, and pointed to a strange-looking vessel some ways distant down the lake.
“Geologists,” Bluto said.
Francie turned to him. “Huh?”
“They’re taking core samples of minerals.”
Core samples. Where had she heard someone talking about that before? “That’s weird, isn’t it?” she asked. “How would they ever get the minerals out from under the lake? What kind of minerals, anyway?”
Buck and the hulk shrugged. “They’re looking all over here,” Buck said. “On land, too. Wherever they can get to. Supposed to be some kind of, I don’t know, copper, I think.”
“Just drop me there,” Francie said, pointing to the island. “There’s still enough daylight to paddle back.”
Buck pulled up to the beach where they found her. “Where’s your boat?” he asked.
“Other side.”
“Oh. Now, listen,” he said. “Just because we forgot to blindfold you on the way back, doesn’t mean we’re not serious about keeping this secret—”
“—if you know what we mean,” Bluto put in.
“I get it,” she said.
“You better,” Buck said, darkly. “There are others who would like a cut of this action.”
Sandy, Francie thought, as she stepped out onto land. That’s why he didn’t like Buck.
After Buck pulled away, Francie took a look at the barge through the binoculars. It was a strange-looking piece of equipment. She supposed a mining company could afford to build a road if they wanted to. All they probably needed was a permit. What Sandy said came back to her again: seems like everybody wants something other than forest from this forest.
