Footprints to Murder

by Marcia Talley

  ‘You can ask yes or no questions,’ she told me. ‘Go on. Ask me something.’

  ‘Like a Ouija board?’

  ‘Sorta. Divining is guided by intuition, you know. Everyone has intuition – I’m just able to focus it.’ She moved the map to one side where it curled up obediently, clearing a space on the tablecloth. ‘Make your question specific, Hannah.’

  My big opportunity and my mind drew a complete blank.

  Will I marry someone tall and handsome? Got that. Live long enough to spoil my grandchildren? Managed that, too. Win the lottery? Ha ha ha. You gotta play to win.

  My mind inevitably wandered to the question that must have been on everyone’s mind that morning: who, or what, had killed Martin Radcliffe? I took a deep breath. Yes or no, she’d said. ‘Was Martin Radcliffe’s death an accident?’

  Prairie Flower didn’t even blink. Her face remained calm, serene. The pendulum began circling, eventually swinging from side to side. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Did Bigfoot kill him?’

  Side to side, the pendulum swung again. ‘No.’

  Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. I tried again. ‘Was Martin killed by someone attending this conference?’

  As I watched, holding my breath, the pendulum circled then gradually changed direction, swinging first toward me, then toward Prairie Flower and back again to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whoa,’ I said.

  Spelling out the killer’s name would have been helpful, too, but that, sadly, wasn’t a yes or no question. Should I start at the top of the list of conference attendees? Was it Aaronson, yes or no? Was it Barton? Was it Collins? We could go through the whole roster, all the way down to Yasinsky, but we’d simply be banking on Prairie Flower’s intuition, focused or not.

  Prairie Flower opened her mouth to say something but just then Susan breezed by, hooked her thumb toward the doors and said, ‘Catering office. No rush.’

  ‘Sorry, but I have to get back to work,’ I apologized after Susan had trundled on.

  Prairie Flower began rolling up her map. ‘Stop by again, any time. Or visit my shop in Sisters. It’s on North Fir Street.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Who knows, I might need to buy that statue of Bigfoot over there.’ The garden statue, nearly thirty inches high, was – according to its sign – made out of ‘quality designer resin.’ It could me mine, all mine, for a mere $195.

  ‘Ships in five to seven business days,’ Prairie Flower assured me.

  I pictured Bigfoot in my Annapolis garden, in the far corner near the wall, emerging from the rhododendron. I managed to escape into the hallway before doubling over with an attack of the giggles.

  ‘Hannah! Are you all right?’ Someone had come out of the dealer’s room just behind me.

  I felt my face flush. I was embarrassed to be caught laughing, this day of all days. I coughed, cleared my throat and coughed again, flapping my hand in a just-a-minute way. ‘I’m fine, Jake. Something went down the wrong way, is all.’ I straightened and leaned back against the wall. ‘After visiting the vendors, it seems to me that the best tool for finding Bigfoot is a credit card.’

  ‘Ha!’ he snorted. ‘Seeing Jim Davis’s video, half the people here think Bigfoot’s wandering around the woods just outside this hotel.’

  ‘With murder on his mind?’

  ‘Bigfoot are notoriously shy,’ Jake said. ‘There may have been a Bigfoot out there today but I very much doubt that it did Radcliffe in.’ He reached into his shirt pocket and came up with my iPhone. ‘Thanks for this, Hannah. Do what you want with the pictures.’ He pressed it into my hand. It was still warm from riding so close to his chest.

  ‘I doubt they’ll be much use to me, Jake. Just thinking about them kind of creeps me out.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure where to find you so I left your jacket with the concierge. Hope you don’t mind.’

  In all the excitement I’d actually forgotten about my jacket. ‘No, no. That’s perfect. Thank you.’

  It was then I noticed Jake was carrying a seven-pound bucket of UltraCal30 gypsum cement. The last time I’d seen it, the bucket had been sitting on Marty’s table between a pair of hiking boots and a backpack, some of the ‘more’ among the rugged ‘mountain gear’ that Marty offered for sale.

  My heart flipped over. ‘You found footprints, didn’t you? You’re making a cast!’

  Jake beamed. ‘Remember the marshy area near the riverbank?’

  I did. Jim’s video had shown the creature walking on two legs toward the river, then turning around before hightailing it into the woods. ‘What do the prints look like in your professional opinion? Ape or man in a monkey suit?’

  Jake’s eyes shone like a child’s on Christmas morning. ‘Fifteen and a half inches long, according to the techs.’

  I spread my hands, estimating the size. ‘Big,’ I said. ‘That guy should play basketball for the New York Knicks.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Do you suppose there are living humans with feet that big?’

  Jake, it turns out, was an expert on that, too. ‘The largest feet in the world belong to a twenty-year-old from Venezuela. Sixteen inches. He’s over seven feet tall and wears a size twenty-six shoe specially made in Germany. But I can’t believe that anyone featured in the Guinness Book of World Records is going to hike all the way from Venezuela to Oregon just in order to stomp around the woods in a monkey suit. And where would you find a monkey suit to fit a guy that big?’ Jake shifted the bucket from his right hand to his left. ‘This stuff’s heavy. Better get a move on.’

  As he stepped away, I followed. ‘Have you been deputized or something?’

  ‘There are enough footprints to go around.’ He hefted the bucket. ‘I’m saving the locals a trip back into town.’

  ‘Do you think the footprints belong to the murderer, Jake?’

  ‘Could be, but as I told you earlier, there were no footprints around the body. When we found Radcliffe he was lying on the forest floor in a bed of pine needles, twigs and bark. Once the creature reached the edge of the forest, the footprints disappear. He could have gone anywhere after that.’

  I halted, grabbed Jake gently by the elbow and pulled him back. ‘It all depends on the timing, doesn’t it? If the creature everyone saw on Jim’s video made those footprints, he couldn’t be the murderer because Martin was already dead.’

  ‘Precisely. What I plan to determine …’ he hefted the bucket to illustrate his point, ‘is whether the footprints belong to an ape or to a man pretending to be an ape. If we’re dealing with a man, he may be able to tell us something.’

  ‘Aren’t you dissing the local talent?’

  ‘Lieutenant Cook seems comfortable with my kibitzing. It’s not like I don’t have experience with crime scenes, Hannah.’

  ‘Speaking of crime scenes, where’s Harley?’

  ‘He’s resting up in the room, watching Judge Judy.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘You’re making that up.’

  ‘I am not. It’s Harley’s favorite show. That and Storage Wars, especially when the bidders break out in brawls.’ With his free hand, he tipped an imaginary hat. ‘Hope to make it back in time for the afternoon sessions. If the casting goes well I should have something for show and tell. The toes are well-defined in these prints, indicating flexible midtarsal joints. That’s not the usual case with fakes.’

  Leaving me to ponder the significance of flexible midtarsals, he straight-armed it through a side door market ‘exit’ and hustled away.

  ELEVEN

  Boonville, Indiana, August 18, 1937. ‘A stranger who declined to identify himself strolled into the newspaper office here today and declared that the weird, mysterious beast whose screams and prowlings have terrified residents of the Ohio river valley is simply a giant sloth. The man said he and his uncle were returning home from Mexico two years ago with the sloth, which they had captured on a game hunting expedition. He said they lost it near Evansville and never had found a trace of it since.’

/>   Hammond Times (Hammond, IN), August 18, 1937

  Leah sidled up to me in the hallway. ‘You have photos of Martin Radcliffe?’

  Damn! Where had she been hiding?

  ‘I’m sorry you overheard that, Leah,’ I said as I tucked the iPhone into my pocket, as if shoving it down deep might get rid of the evidence.

  ‘Would you be willing to share them with me?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  ‘The newspaper would pay you for them.’

  ‘Leah, I’m sorry, but I just can’t.’ When she didn’t say anything for a moment, I added, ‘Besides, Jake says they’re too graphic for publication.’

  ‘Nothing is too graphic these days, Hannah. You know that. Once somebody posted the autopsy photos of JFK online all pretense of decency flew straight out the window.’

  While I knew that was true, and worse – what ghoul thought post-mortem photos of a five-year-old beauty queen belonged online? – I still didn’t feel the photos were mine to share.

  ‘You’ll have to ask Jake.’ Tap dancing as fast as I could, I added, ‘He used my camera phone because it was handy. I told him to erase the photos after he was done with them.’

  She frowned, clearly disappointed. ‘He’s a cop, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Active duty?’

  ‘Retired.’

  ‘Then why is he sticking his nose into Martin’s murder? Won’t he be stepping on local law enforcement’s toes?’

  ‘Probably, but that’s Jake’s problem, not mine.’ I thought for a moment. ‘If the locals are smart they’ll listen to what he has to say. He’s been tracking Bigfoot for years. It’s kind of a hobby.’

  While we talked, I moseyed in the direction of the catering office. Just outside it, I paused with my hand on the ornate brass handle and said, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got a meeting. See you later?’

  She wagged a finger. ‘Count on it.’

  I had the feeling Leah didn’t believe my story about the pictures. She’d come back to the topic later, I felt sure, sailing in on a different tack.

  Susan, it turns out, simply wanted to make sure the conference room was ready for the police who would be arriving, she’d been informed by the hotel manager, promptly after lunch. After I confirmed the arrangements she sent me off to mingle with the masses. Chat to them. Keep everyone happy.

  By the time the doors opened on the dining room at noon, in spite of any official word on the subject, it seemed to be common knowledge that Martin Radcliffe had been murdered by Bigfoot. They’d all seen Jim Davis’s video – some of them many more times than once. Jim had uploaded a copy to his website – the original having been turned over to Detective Lieutenant Barbara Cook – where it had been playing in an infinite loop for anyone who bothered to click on it. Jim’s website traffic was up one thousand percent, Athena reported proudly as I waited in line behind her at the salad bar, and KGW Channel 8, the Portland NBC affiliate, had picked up the story for the five, six and seven o’clock news.

  Bigfoot had definitely been at the scene of the crime. No doubt about that, people were saying. But so had Athena’s husband, Jim, I wanted to shout. And so had Jake and I. Not to mention the dog.

  As I ladled some thick, country mushroom soup into my bowl, I thanked my lucky stars that I was thoroughly alibied. I’d been in the company of someone ever since I took my first bite of donut that morning, and one of those someones was a retired Minneapolis cop.

  Nobody I knew was eating lunch that early, so I sat down next to a young couple who were tucking enthusiastically into their cheeseburgers and fries. ‘What brings you to Flat Rock?’ I asked. ‘Have you had an experience?’

  ‘Gosh, no!’ the woman said. ‘We just come for the stories. They’re so interesting! Who cares if Sasquatch is real or not.’

  ‘We even brought the kids,’ her husband added. ‘They have all these cool activities for children.’ He grinned at his wife. ‘It’s a mini-vacation for Carla and me.’

  ‘How old are they?’ I asked. ‘The kids, I mean.’

  ‘Seven and nine.’

  ‘Same age as two of my grandchildren,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll bring them along next time. What kind of activities?’ I asked a few seconds later, genuinely curious about how anyone kept youngsters busy in a hotel primarily designed for grownups. You couldn’t exactly send a seven-year-old off to the spa for an all-day mani-pedi and an oil and hot rock special.

  ‘Yesterday morning they told Sasquatch stories,’ the husband said. ‘The kids thought they were kind of scary but in a good way.’

  In my opinion, nothing could be scarier than the fairy tales I’d grown up on before Disney sanitized them. Cinderella’s sisters chopped off their toes trying to fit into the glass slipper, as I recall, and Rapunzel’s prince had his eyes scratched out by thorns. In the original Sleeping Beauty the besotted prince had sex with her while she slept. After a blissful hundred-year nap, the princess wakes up as a rape victim and the mother of twins. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

  I had scooped the last of the soup out of my bowl when a child raced up to the table dressed in jeans and a ‘Bigfoot Doesn’t Believe in You Either’ T-shirt. The face she turned to her parents had been painted white like a cartoon cat, complete with a tidy, pink Hello Kitty bow over her left eyebrow. The girl clutched a piece of paper and waved it in her mother’s face. ‘I have to find a plastic fork!’ Hello Kitty cried, sounding desperate.

  Her mother grinned at me. ‘They’re on a scavenger hunt today,’ she explained, patting her daughter’s pigtailed head. ‘You’ll probably see all the little rug rats wandering around the lodge.’ She smiled down at the girl who was bouncing impatiently on tiptoes. ‘Have you tried the snack bar, Kylie? The place Daddy bought you ice cream yesterday?’

  ‘Do they let seven-year-olds loose in the hotel all by themselves?’ I wondered aloud.

  The girl’s mother bobbed her head in the direction of the doorway where a young woman dressed in jeans and a shirt identical to Kylie’s, but several sizes larger, stood holding the hands of two even more juvenile rug rats. ‘That’s Shannon. One of the Bigfoot Camp counselors. There’s another counselor, too. Colin. He usually takes the boys.’

  After Kylie raced off to join her campmates, I asked, ‘How many children are attending the conference, do you know?’

  ‘Around ten, I think. Wasn’t the face-painting amazing? You should see Kylie’s big brother, Jason. Shannon turned him into lizard man, all green and scaly. She painted scary red eyes right on Jason’s closed eyelids. Spooky as hell. Now I’ll never get that kid into a bathtub.’

  After a bit, I excused myself and made a brief circuit of the room so I could truthfully tell Susan I’d looked after business, then slipped out of the hotel in search of a quiet spot to check my email for a message from Paul. I had a lounge chair by the swimming pool in mind, but surprisingly four people were using the pool and three were already sunning themselves in said loungers. I recognized Randall Frazier – his bare, fur-covered midrift was not, in my opinion, ready for prime time. His mentor, a fully-clad E. Gregory Gilchrist, occupied the adjacent chair. As Gilchrist shouted at the cell phone held in his outstretched hand, there couldn’t be anyone within a five-mile radius who didn’t know the details of his multi-million dollar negotiations to add Mining Amerika-Mexico to his considerable portfolio. Propped up on one elbow in the lounger next door to Gilchrist’s, wearing a cut-out tankini, her fair complexion protected by a broad-brimmed floppy hat, Jackie-O sunglasses and a smear of white sunscreen, was Nicole Baker. As her boyfriend talked she toyed with his tie.

  I scooted past the pool area, hoping not to be noticed. A woman waved from the diving board and called cheerfully, ‘Come on in, Hannah! The water’s great!’

  Carole Pulaski.

  I stopped, smiled, leaned down and tested the water with my hand. Except for polar bears – and Canadians – the water was far too cold for me. ‘It isn’t heated!’ I called
back. ‘Barbaric!’

  ‘Sissy!’ Carole laughed, bounced once on the end of the diving board and executed a perfect, ten-point, one-and-a-half somersault in the pike position. By the time her head popped up in the shallow end I was well away from the pool, hurrying along a path that led past the snack bar (Opening July 4! Make Your Reservations Now!), past the adjoining spa and fitness center and toward an area marked on the map of the hotel grounds as ‘Meditation Garden.’

  Long before I reached the garden, however, I heard what sounded like the call of an alpine horn. Maybe the lodge was getting to me – the bear rugs, the colorfully painted woodwork, the mounted deer heads with lanterns hanging from their antlers. I followed the sound, expecting at any moment to encounter a guy in lederhosen standing in a field of edelweiss, tooting his horn. As I got closer, I recognized the tune: Siegfried’s horn call from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

  Do doo-doo-doo, do, do.

  Do doo-doo-doo, do, do.

  Auditory hallucinations. Stress can do that to you, I’d heard.

  A sign at the side of the path directed me to the right. When I made the turn I nearly collapsed with relief. I wasn’t losing my mind after all.

  On a park bench at the far end of the garden, her hair a nimbus of gold in the midday sun, sat Professor Cecelia Cloughly, looking like a dandelion in full bloom. She held a French horn to her lips. I froze for a moment, breathing through my mouth. Was it a mirage? Cloughly played the familiar horn call once, twice and a third time. I waited until she had finished and lowered the horn.

  ‘Doctor Cloughly. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  ‘Call me Cecelia, please.’ She patted a spot on the bench next to her. ‘You’re probably wondering what I’m doing out here with this.’ With her right hand still inside the bell, she raised the horn.

  ‘Just a little, although nothing would surprise me when it comes to this particular conference. Jim and Athena Davis were abducted by space aliens, somebody had told me, and Sasquatch is probably a time traveler from the future. That’s why they leave no bodies, but you probably knew that.’ I sat down. ‘Makes playing a French horn in the middle of a garden seem positively normal.’