by Lisa Wingate
“It’s a nice dog, Collie,” I interjected, and both of them blinked like they had completely forgotten I was there. “It … uuuh … it is,” I added uncertainly, feeling like the dorky girl in the cool girls’ section of the locker room. “Sweet, I mean …” Why were they looking at me that way? “It’s very sweet … the dog. It’s very sweet.”
Collie’s brows went so high they practially touched the wispy red ringlets at her hairline. “That’s public enemy number one around here.” Waving a finger toward the doorway, she indicated the dog. My dog. Mr. Grits, my friend. “You can’t even imagine. He’s becoming a legend—the biggest thing to hit this area since Billy the Kid. He’s been raiding chicken coops and breaking into houses everywhere. He stole an entire leg of beef from the locker plant in San Saline and crashed the potluck supper at the Baptist church. One lady found him in her bathtub trying to pry the lid off a container of cottage cheese. It almost gave her a heart attack. The newspaper has been tracking his movements all over the county—like UFO sightings, or something.”
“Really?” I said, trying to picture the poor, lazy creature who was afraid of my GPS system terrorizing an entire county.
“The sheriff’s been trying to catch him for a month.” Collie made it sound like serious business. “Nobody has even been able to get close to the thing.”
“He walked right up to me,” I said, picturing the scene with the umbrella and the stadium seat, and trying not to laugh. “I loaded him in the car, no problem.”
Jocelyn seemed impressed. “Amazing.You must be an animal person.” Beside her, Collie gave a mystified frown. She knew I wasn’t an animal person.
“Actually, no,” I admitted. “I don’t do well with animals, at least not ones that aren’t fossilized. My daughter’s guinea pig hides in his shoe box every time I walk into the room.”
“Hmmm.” Jocelyn shrugged. “You should have an interesting time in the horse psychology class then.”
I gaped at her with what was undoubtedly a completely confused look. Apparently, Collie had failed to explain my presence here. Jocelyn thought I had come for some offbeat therapy session. “Oh, didn’t Collie tell you? I’m here to help her with the story on the dinosaur tracks. I’m the paleontology lab supervisor at the Colorado Museum of Natural History.”
Jocelyn didn’t seem surprised by any of that information, but at the word paleontology her bottom lip pulled to one side, and she checked the barn aisle like she was afraid someone might be listening. “Collie told me.” She lowered her voice. “But there’s a little bit of an issue with it, so we’re keeping it quiet. Basically, I think someone who works here must have been in on stealing the dinosaur tracks, and I want to find out who before anything else disappears. Zach and Pop don’t agree, and they want me to drop it. They’re more trusting than I am, I guess. They think that just because everyone has either been here a long time, or is local from town, they couldn’t be involved. Anyway, it’s a bone of contention—sorry, bad pun—among us, and then right after all the fuss about the tracks being stolen, Pop had a minor heart attack, and Zach wanted to drop the issue about the theft completely, so as not to upset Pop any further. Pop’s memory is fuzzy, and some days he doesn’t even remember the tracks are gone. Zach thinks it’s better that way. Denial works well in Zach’s usual scheme of coping mechanisms.” Snapping her lips shut, she glanced at Collie, indicating that she hadn’t meant to add the last line. “Anyway, while we were driving back from the therapy camp, Collie came up with a good idea.”
“I did,” Collie piped up a little too quickly, as if she’d rehearsed the next lines. “When we were down at the camp, I thought, Wouldn’t it be great for the horse psychology article to have the perspective of someone actually going through the sessions? Someone who didn’t know anything about it and didn’t have any preconceived notions? I thought, since you’re on vacation anyway, maybe you could stay a few days, attend some of the sessions, check out the dinosaur track site, discreetly look around and see what you can find out.”
I turned to Collie with my arms and jaw hanging slack. “You want me to go undercover as a therapy patient so I can investigate a fossil theft, which was possibly an inside job?” I summarized. “What is this—an episode of Scooby-Doo?”
Collie shoulder-butted me good naturedly. “Come to think of it, it does kind of sound that way, but it really is more serious than that. There’s a man at the general store in Loveland who has spent the last several years photographing fossils and petroglyphs all over Texas and New Mexico. They’re disappearing like crazy. He said that nearly half of what he’s photographed in the past five years has disappeared, either stolen or vandalized. It’s a much bigger story than people think.”
“Hmmm,” I mused, sensing a sudden awakening in the part of me that lived to solve old mysteries. “OK, now you’ve got my attention.”
“You wouldn’t really have to spend much time at the horse therapy camp. Just enough to make it look good, and maybe help Collie with her article a bit,” Jocelyn chimed in. “And you wouldn’t have to stay at the camp with the other campers. Actually, this week I have a group of psychology students from UT, and they’re very sweet. You’ll like them. Last week I had businessmen from Taiwan, which was kind of crazy, so it’s a good thing you weren’t here then. Anyway, there’s a separate cabin about two miles from the camp. It’s just up the hill from the dinosaur tracks, so it would be perfect. It was the original homestead house on the place, completely restored for guests, of course, but it’s kind of neat and historic, a little rustic. It’s in a beautiful setting overlooking the river.”
“Sounds nice,” I said, picturing the scene—a pioneer cabin on a hillside beneath the sheltering limbs of overhanging trees. An old rock fence around the yard, crumbling slightly, built from white limestone that the homesteaders would have harvested by hand from the riverbed. “But I really have to … I should …” Should what? Hang around the honeymoon house with Laura and her new husband? Go to the farm and rearrange my dad’s life when Laura claimed he was doing just fine? Spend my vacation days sitting in the Lone Star Café, waiting for Laura to come by on her way home from work, watching Dad do odd jobs and talking to the waitress about my troubles, eating grits and obsessing about Sydney?
Or studying dinosaur tracks, staying in a quaint, historic, rustic cabin by the river, tracking down fossil thieves and attending horse psychology camp. Hmmm … Not much of a decision, really.
Go for it, ten-year-old Tomboy Lindsey said.
Think about what you might be getting into, Mommy Lindsey warned.
It’s a completely unpredictable situation, Control Freak Lindsey complained. Ask more questions.
Live a little. I didn’t know which Lindsey that was.
It’s close to Zach, Romance Lindsey chimed in, sending Mommy Lindsey into a spasm of what-if scenarios.
“I don’t know …” I muttered.
Collie’s hopeful expression turned to a worried scowl. She knew I was on the fence, so she pushed me to her side with a little verbal nudge. “Come on, Linds, a vacation is just what you need. I promise I won’t work you too hard on the horse therapy thing.”
It occurred to me that, since I was hearing voices in my head, maybe I needed some kind of therapy, horse or whatever. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Great!” Collie and Jocelyn both exhaled the word at once, as if they had been holding their collective breath, hoping I would agree. They gave each other quick, triumphant smiles. I couldn’t help wondering why this was all such a big deal. It seemed like more than just an idea Collie and Jocelyn had dreamed up that morning. “With any luck, you can help break open the fossil theft case,” Collie added. “The deputy sheriff is waiting down at the fossil site and can fill you in on the evidence so far. There’s very little—just some tire tracks and a cigarette butt left at the site.”
“That’s not much to go on,” I agreed, as we left the barn and climbed into a pickup truck. I took the backseat and
let Jocelyn and Collie sit in front. They chatted about the sheriff’s inability to solve the case, which led to a discussion about lack of funding for the sheriff’s department, the latest city council election, and how the price of gasoline was affecting sales of farm equipment at the Friendly’s Tractors dealerships.
“The big farm equipment sales are down right now—the economy and all that,” Collie said. “But then, we’re selling tons of smaller tractors and hydrostatic mowers over at the Llano dealership, and quite a few in Lampasas, too. Seems like we can hardly keep up over there. Lots of people moving out from Dallas and Austin—gentleman farmers, buying ranchettes and weekend places, recreational lots on Inks Lake, things like that.” She gazed out the window, the breeze combing the amber ringlets of her hair. “Guess people are starting to discover our secret out here.”
Jocelyn ducked her head between her shoulders like a turtle. “For heaven’s sake, don’t mention that to Pop or Zach. You’ll get them started on their half-hour tirade about people moving in and dividing up the old ranches and selling the property to out-of-towners. The other day a real estate agent came by, and Pop chased him off with a shotgun. Can you believe that? I had to catch the man at the gate and tell him Pop just got home from the hospital, and he wasn’t himself. The poor salesman wasn’t even trying to get a listing. He was lost, for heaven’s sake.”
Collie chuckled. “Guess your horse psychology customers had better watch out, huh?”
Jocelyn made an irritated sound in her throat. “Don’t even get me started. Pop’s not so bad about it, but Zach … Gee whiz, you’d think I’d destroyed the ranch by moving back here and starting the therapy camp. It’s ridiculous. In the first place, the camp has always been there. Years ago, when it was a kids’ summer camp, Pop used to supply the riding horses. The camp land wasn’t even part of the ranch until Pop bought it when the camp went belly-up. It’s perfect for me because it has its own entrance, and it’s self-contained, but to hear Zach talk, I’ve moved home and taken over the ranch. This from Zach, who hasn’t stayed here for more than two days at a time in the last six years. And then there’s Dan. He thinks I’m trying to take over his foreman’s job and kick him off the ranch, which isn’t true. He’s an ornery old turd, but he’s been here a long time. Both he and Zach think the whole horse therapy thing is a bunch of malarkey.”
“I thought Zach was a horse psychologist,” I interjected, and instantly I wished I had kept silent. Collie and Jocelyn both jerked in the front seat, looking over their shoulders.
Jocelyn winced guiltily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought all that up. It’s a family thing. Sibling rivalry, territorial boundary issues, and all that. Zach and I grew up competing with each other in just about everything—sort of a brother-sister thing, even though we’re cousins. Collie understands, because she’s close in age to her brother. It’s all perfectly normal, but sometimes … well, even therapists need to vent. Moving back home and starting up my practice here has been a transition.”
Collie swiveled in her seat and quirked a brow. “Did you say you thought Zach was the horse psychologist?”
“That’s what Laura told me. When she gave me the newspaper article with his picture in it, she said she thought he was a horse psychologist.”
Collie coughed like she had a bone stuck in her throat. “Well, she must have been in another world. Zach’s a horse doctor, not a horse psychologist. He’s a veterinarian. Laura knows that.”
“I probably misunderstood her.” I was so frazzled this morning, there was no telling what Laura had said. “After driving all night, I think I’m running on fumes.”
Jocelyn frowned sympathetically. “You must be really tired.” She gunned the truck through a mud hole and the three of us bounced around like pinballs. “Tell you what, after we go by the track site, we can show you the cabin. It’s fully furnished, so you should have everything you need.You can catch a little nap this afternoon, eat or whatever, and enjoy the evening. I have a session with this week’s campers later today, but there’s no need for you to be there. We’ll just tell everyone you arrived late, and you can join us for the first horse therapy session tomorrow morning.”
“That sounds good.” No, it didn’t. I was just starting to realize the ramifications of what I had agreed to. If I hadn’t been on a natural high after rescuing lost dogs and having splash fights, I would have thought about it earlier. I didn’t like horses. In fact, I was terrified of horses. Me masquerading as some kind of a horsewoman was going to be about as convincing as trying to pretend I was a brain surgeon. “I don’t know anything about horses,” I hedged. “I don’t even like them. They scare me. It might be better if—”
“Oh, no, that’s the point.” Jocelyn clipped off my objections with one quick snip. “Horse therapy is all about learning to react constructively to unfamiliar and sometimes unpredictable situations. You’ll be a perfect subject for Collie’s article.”
“I just don’t think—” horse therapy is for me.
Jocelyn went on like she hadn’t heard me. “I promise not to take up too much of your time. You can come to the morning sessions, and we’ll tell the group you’re spending the rest of the day on individual contemplation, journaling, and completing the personality patterning workbook. That will give you plenty of time to investigate the tracks. From the cabin, you’ll be able to go back and forth to the track site as much as you need to. Collie mentioned you’ll probably be wanting to get on the Internet and things like that, which might be a little complicated, since … well, we don’t have phones in any of the cabins. It’s part of the therapy. We take up all the cell phones and PDAs at the start of the week, so clients can focus on actual face-to-face relationships for a change.”
Glancing in the rearview, she must have noticed I looked concerned, because she added, “But don’t worry. I have a computer in my office at the house, and there’s never anyone there during the day, so you can have access to that. Also, if you have a PDA or laptop and cell phone, you can walk up the path to the scenic overlook behind the cabin and connect to the cell tower across the valley. That’s top-secret, of course. If the clients knew, they’d be sneaking off to the hilltops to do business and check voice mail while they’re here.”
I chuckled, trying to imagine some of the people I knew in Denver, who were accustomed to speed-of-light access to everything, trying to cope with life deprived of e-mail, and voice mail, and satellite news. “So this is like detox for tech-toy junkies.”
Jocelyn winked into the rearview mirror. “You’d be surprised how much clarity can be achieved when all the distractions are stripped away. Modern life has people on stimulation overload. We don’t function as well as we could at home or at work. We’ve lost the ability to communicate, to sense other people’s needs and respond in appropriate and productive ways. Horses are a useful tool, because they react instinctively to what we do, rather than to what we say or how we look. The way you form a relationship with an animal says a lot about how you form relationships with people.”
Collie pulled out her notepad and jotted that down. “That’ll be perfect for the article,” she remarked, then craned to see out the window, and pointed as we topped a hill, winding toward a clear-running river in the valley below. A sheriff’s car was parked beneath the trees. “There’s the track site. You can see the white spot where they chiseled the tracks out of the limestone.”
Scooting forward, I took in the riverbank. The displaced square was clearly visible, a man-made shape in an otherwise natural landscape. “They took that out with a diamond saw.” That much was clear, even at a distance. The lines were too clean to have been made by a chisel. “These were definitely not amateurs. They knew what they were doing.”
SEVEN
ISPENT A HALF HOUR EXPLORING THE CRIME SCENE WITH THE sheriff’s deputy. Gracie Benton was not at all what I’d expected in a small-town law enforcement officer. I’d pictured a big man in a cowboy hat and Western boots, with an overhanging
stomach, a large belt buckle, and a Texas drawl that made it seem like nothing could possibly be urgent. Gracie Benton was tall and willowy, with thick blond hair rubber-banded into a bun like she didn’t have time for it. She moved like a basketball player on her way down the court with the ball and talked like a Harvard lawyer. Every time I looked up, she had changed locations—ahead of me, behind me, across the river, back, climbing a pile of boulders near the track site, checking for evidence. Like a hyperactive bloodhound, she followed me up and down the riverbank even after Collie and Jocelyn gave up and went to sit in the shade.
“I keep thinking I’ve missed something,” she said, pulling off her hat and mopping her brow as we walked back to the track site. “There’s something more here, and it’s right under my nose, but I’m not seeing it.”
“They knew what they were doing and which tracks to take,” I said, squatting beside the white scar in the rock. In the golden afternoon light, the remaining tracks were as clear in the mottled Edwards limestone as if they had been made yesterday by some ancient creature stalking through soft, wet earth. “There’s a fairly long trackway here, but most of it is ambulatory—the animal was walking, so the tracks are spread apart and not as deep. But in this spot”—I pointed to the cutout—“the animal stopped momentarily, so there was a right and left track close together, more deeply imprinted. These were made by a theropod. Judging by the size of the remaining tracks and the spread of the digits, probably an Acrocanthosaurus, a meat eater with three long, thin toes. These are Triassic or Cretaceous period, most likely, though without an index fossil to date the rock formation, it’s hard to say for sure.” At the edge of the rock shelf, there was a compressed formation of coquina, filled with the fossilized shells of tiny sea creatures, Texigryphaea marccoui, Lima wacoensis, and Anchura mudgeana, which would undoubtedly date to the Lower Cretaceous. The tracks were several feet above that level, probably somewhat more recent.
