Murder at Spirit Falls

by Barbara Deese

  He clambered down and stuck out a sooty hand, then withdrew it. A black streak covered his forehead. “I’d help you with your stuff, but as you can see—”

  “That’s okay, George. I didn’t bring much.” She slung her camera bag over her shoulder and got groceries from the back seat.

  He watched her, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “Can I make you some iced tea?” She beckoned him inside, but he shook his head.

  “Too grubby,” he said, making no move to leave.

  She reached into the grocery bag, fished out two lukewarm bottles of spring water and handed one to him. “Is everything okay?” She sat on the picnic bench.

  He stood, uncomfortably, in front of her. “Don’t know if I should mention it, but I heard something last night. Probably nothing, but I figure it came from around here. By the falls, kind of.” He scratched his neck, didn’t meet her gaze.

  Robin waited. After all these years he was still an enigma to her, charming and laid-back one minute, edgy and awkward the next.

  He made an odd grimace, as if preparing for the sting of a hypodermic needle. “It was kind of a scream, like. Just raised the hair on the back of my neck, I can tell you.”

  Robin’s mouth had gone dry, but she smiled. “Don’t tell me you believe in the ghost of Spirit Falls,” she said in a teasing voice.

  He rubbed at the soot on his hands.

  “Was it like a woman screaming?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Nope, not human, I think.”

  “A bobcat? Sometimes when somebody’s cleaned fish at the creek, they carry on like that, screaming and yowling.” She stopped, seeing him shake his head even more determinedly.

  “That was no bobcat. I’m sure of it. It was like a real loud hissing, but as soon as I say that word, I know that’s not it. Sorry, Mrs. B. I’ve been trying to come up with the right words, but I just can’t. Thing is, if I say what I first thought, you’ll really think I’m bonkers, but I thought it was the devil himself talking.”

  Robin wrapped her arms around her and stared at him. Was he trying to scare her? Maybe she should have paid more attention to Cate’s reaction to him. Was there some reason he didn’t want her here?

  “Aw, dang it all,” he said, thumping himself on the side of the head. “When am I ever going to learn to keep my big mouth shut? Just forget I said all that.” He gulped down the last of his water and carried the ladder to his truck.

  When he’d left, Robin sat on the back porch overlooking the falls and plugged her laptop computer into the outlet. After a couple hours, a warning message informed her that the computer was low on batteries and should be shut down immediately. She checked the cord. It was still plugged in. She turned the knob on the floor lamp. Nothing happened. Grabbing a flashlight, she headed to the back room to check the fuse box.

  Her hand was on the master switch when she noticed two fuses were missing. A search of the tool drawer turned up no replacements.

  That’s odd, she thought as she hopped in the car and drove down to George’s trailer. Though his truck was there, nobody was home. Through the screen, she saw a small brown bag with the blue lettering of the hardware store on the counter.

  Opening the door, she went inside. The bag contained, as she’d expected, her replacement fuses. Of course in his telling her about the “devil’s voice” he’d forgotten all about the blown fuses. She put the bag in the pocket of her denim shirt and looked around for a pen. In the second kitchen drawer was a pencil and as she snatched it out, she noticed a bracelet peeking out from a stack of papers on the counter. She eased it out. It was lovely, a broad and irregularly shaped band of gold and silver. It looked oddly familiar. One of George’s roadside finds, no doubt.

  She wrote him a note on a paper towel, thanking him for buying the fuses and telling him she would replace them herself.

  Although the moon was bright that night, Robin left lights on. It was after midnight when she finally fell asleep with a Janet Evanovich book in her hands, but two hours later she was awake again. She kicked off her covers, read a few more pages, slept again, only to wake, her mind buzzing with ideas. She padded into the living room and turned on her computer, trying to capture the phrasing that had struck her as so profound when she’d thought it in her waking moments.

  Several minutes later, nothing had come to her. She felt the sweat on her upper lip, felt the warmth rush into her chest and start her heart beating harder. A classic hot flash, according to her gynecologist. She closed her laptop and, stepping out onto the back porch, she let the slight breeze blow through her thin cotton pajamas.

  When she heard it, she knew instantly it was the sound George had tried to describe and it took her breath away. It came from high up, either on the bank across the creek or in the trees overhead.

  The writer in her tried to put it into words. “I froze at the sound, a horrific rasping scream,” she wrote in her mental journal, “like a lion with laryngitis.”

  The next series of shrieks came, and she stared into the nearby trees, silver-edged by the moonlight. Again she tried to capture it in words. “It had an eerie, rasping quality, like a banshee being strangled.”

  Maybe George’s description was the best.

  She guessed it was a bird of prey—something big. As she stood in the pale light, her hot flash subsided, and she shivered in her sweat-dampened pajamas for a few more minutes before ducking back inside to wrap herself in an afghan.

  Back on the computer, she plugged in the phone jack and logged onto the Internet. After typing the words “eagle, hawk, owl,” she pressed the search button and followed the links. Before long, she found the culprit when she clicked on the picture of a barn owl, and a now familiar sound screeched from her computer.

  She began clicking on more links, intrigued by this bird with its white, almost human face, and found that she and George were not the first to be unnerved by its ghastly sound.

  “More than one culture believes that the barn owl’s call invites Death,” she read, “and the mere sight of a barn owl means somebody is about to die or some Evil is nearby.”

  The idea excited her. It would be a great addition to the book—the text drawing on folklore and superstitions. The photos, moonlit, would suggest the mystical quality of the woods. She grabbed her hooded sweatshirt and slid into a pair of scuffs in order to set up her camera on a tripod outside, then went back inside to do more research.

  When the owl called again, she slipped out and shot a full roll, fairly certain she’d gotten a couple keepers of the ghostly creature perched in a pine, and several more of it gliding in silent flight. She reloaded and waited, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. A pine bough bobbed, but before she took a shot, something else caught her eye, somebody slipping through the trees away from her cabin. And toward George’s trailer.

  It was dawn when Robin fell asleep again. Her dreams were chaotic and troubled—wandering the streets of a strange city, alone and afraid of shadows. Or having the sole responsibility of several impossibly small babies that kept getting into a filled bathtub, one after the other so that while she was saving one, another would fall in. Or her cat Delilah running away and her other cat Samson barking at her.

  She woke slowly, her eyelids too heavy to lift until she recognized Molly Pat’s bark, accompanied by another, a bellow, actually. Groaning, she hoisted herself to look out the window just in time to see Catherine with what appeared to be a dirty white yak on a leash, the terrier leaping around it, yapping. And there was Foxy trying to get her little dog under control, but the yak circled Cate twice, three times, the leash binding her legs.

  “Oh, Lord, now what?” Robin muttered. She quickly threw the sweatshirt over her pajamas and rushed outside. Cate, now untangled, but far from free, was being dragged toward the open cabin door at an astonishing speed. Foxy, weak from laughing, leaned against a tree.

  The yak was making straight for Robin and would have toppled her if Cate hadn’t jerked
on the leash.

  “What on earth is that?” Robin asked.

  “We think he’s a sheepdog/Great Pyrenees mix.” Cate didn’t look directly at Robin when she answered. “I got to thinking how much safer you’d feel up here with a dog.”

  “Dog?” She had the feeling this was still her dream.

  “He’s a sweetie, really. He’s housebroken and neutered and really smart. You can’t help but fall in love with him. Just look at those eyes.”

  Robin winced. “Cate, you can’t keep doing this.”

  Just then, the dog bunched his shoulders, gave a mighty tug and was off, the leash bouncing behind him. Molly Pat raced after him and they disappeared behind the cabin.

  “Grover! ” Cate yelled, breaking into a run.

  Robin turned to Foxy. “You’re in on this, too?”

  Foxy, holding her sides, nodded, tears of laughter in her eyes.

  Grover reappeared, bounding and tugging as if pulling a sled. Cate had the reins again and wasn’t about to let go.

  Closing her eyes, Robin slumped onto a canvas chair by the side door. “Good Lord, Catherine, what were you thinking?” she asked, and dissolved into laughter.

  Cate and Foxy sat too. Grover whined and rolled his eyes.

  “He’s just excited,” Cate said lamely. “He’ll settle down after he’s checked the place out.” She cupped the dog’s huge jowly face in her hand and said, “Won’t you, baby boy?”

  “You mean he’s not full grown?”

  In non-answer, Cate turned to Foxy to ask if Molly Pat was okay off on her own and Foxy assured her that the smaller dog could be trusted to obey.

  “Doesn’t he just have the most luscious coat?” Cate asked, finger-combing Grover’s fur. “And those eyes! Can you believe his owners just dropped him off at the shelter like he has no feelings?” Cate continued. “He’d do anything for you. You can see it in those eyes.” She scratched his domed head and he flumped to the ground, rolled over to expose his belly, and moaned in ecstasy when Cate scratched it.

  “What time is it, anyway?” Robin asked. “You must have gotten an early start.”

  Foxy looked surprised. “We woke you up, didn’t we? It’s a little after noon.”

  Cate looked at Robin with obvious concern. “What’s with the dark circles?” She hardly missed a beat before adding, “See? If you had a dog here to protect you, you’d sleep. What time did you get to bed?”

  “Which time?” Robin asked, then told them about George and the owl. She went in and got her spiral notebook and read to them some of her more interesting finds:

  “The barn owl has been called ghost owl, death owl, hissing owl, hobgoblin owl, demon owl. Because of its human face, it has been thought to be a witch’s familiar.”

  Catherine broke in. “Oh, nonsense. In Indian lore, owls embody wisdom and prophecy. They’re considered helpful.”

  “Right, it says that, too. Owls have always been associated with magic and shamanism.” She read from her notebook, “Egyptians and Mayans and Aborigines used owls in their art to be deities of death or wisdom. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, has an owl on her shoulder, and in one of Michelangelo’s sculptures, a barn owl stands at the feet of a naked, sleeping woman to guard against the darkness.”

  With a groan, Grover flopped over on his other side so that his big head came to rest wetly on Robin’s foot.

  “You slimed me,” she said, easing her foot out from under the weight.

  “Here comes Molly Pat,” Cate said. “Come here, girl.”

  Grover sat up, suddenly alert.

  Molly Pat, far less energetic after her romp, approached them, her tail swishing proudly as she dropped something at Foxy’s feet.

  Foxy patted her dog’s head. “Where have you been? You’re all wet.”

  Molly Pat sat and smiled her terrier smile.

  “What did you bring me, girl?”

  Molly Pat kept her eyes on her owner’s face as Foxy bent, picked up the dog’s gift, and began to inspect it.

  Robin and Cate saw Foxy’s expression change suddenly from one of curiosity to revulsion. With a strangled scream, she flung the object to the ground.

  11

  Perched against the top of the picnic table, Catherine angled her long legs down, her heels digging into soft dirt, her fingers fidgeting with the cord of her windbreaker. Robin, slumped on the bench, stared into the trees as if in a trance.

  A few feet away, Foxy did a strange dance, her head and feet shifting to get a better vantage point to look up the cabin’s driveway. “What time is it now?” she demanded.

  Glancing at her watch, Cate answered, “One seventeen. Two minutes since the last time I checked.”

  “Foxy, come sit with us.” Robin tried to keep the panic out of her own voice. “It’s going to take the sheriff at least fifteen minutes to get here.”

  “I can’t. Not when there’s a dead body down there. Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Her voice had gone up several notes.

  “We did. We got the dogs away. At least they won’t do any more damage.” Cate looked back at the two dogs whining and pawing to be let out of the cabin.

  “And we called the sheriff. What more can we do?” Robin asked. “Wait, that might be them now.”

  A siren wailed and the dogs started barking wildly. A few minutes later a sheriff’s blue and white came into view, the siren dying to silence. A man hoisted his bulk out of the driver’s door. He smoothed sparse, blondish hair back before putting on his hat, tugging it slightly to secure it. Giving the vehicle’s door a shove, he made a futile attempt to hike up his pants under his protruding belly, then glanced quickly at the dogs, who were still causing a commotion. Out of habit, his right hand rested lightly on his revolver’s handle as he walked toward the anxious women.

  “This the Bentwood residence?” he asked laconically.

  “Bentley. I’m Robin Bentley.” She stuck out her hand.

  “And I’m Sheriff Harley. Now what’s this about a body?”

  Just as Robin opened her mouth to respond, the canine chorus began a new refrain to announce the appearance of a second official vehicle skidding to a stop behind Sheriff Harley’s car. A small but muscular woman in uniform emerged and purposefully strode toward them. Robin couldn’t help noticing her wide-shouldered bearing, as if by affecting an exaggerated man’s walk, she would exude confidence.

  “Sheriff,” the woman said, ginger curls bouncing as she nodded to Harley, “I caught the call and thought you might need some assistance.”

  “Ladies, this is Deputy Brill.”

  Deputy Brill’s expression remained unchanged as the women nodded acknowledgement. Extracting a notebook and pen from her pocket, she flipped several pages and stood poised to record.

  Harley put one foot on the picnic bench and rested his forearm on his thigh. “Why don’t you start from the beginning. What are you all doing here?”

  This is my property,” Robin said.

  “And your name again?”

  “Robin Bentley.”

  The deputy looked over the top of her sunglasses. “Robin, like the bird?”

  “Yes, and Bentley, like the car.”

  “Middle name?” the deputy paused, pen ready to jot down the answer.

  Robin shifted uncomfortably. “Hood,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  All eyes but Cate’s turned to her. Foxy’s eyes were wide and full of mirth.

  “My mother’s maiden name,” Robin muttered.

  Sheriff Harley stuck a piece of gum in his mouth. “Okay, let’s move on. Now who discovered the body?”

  “Molly Pat did,” Foxy answered.

  “And which one of you is Molly Pat?”

  “Oh, that’s her. The smaller one.” Foxy pointed to the now silent Molly who stood with her front paws resting against the screen door.

  “The dog?” The sheriff glanced in Molly’s direction.

  “Uh-huh,” Foxy answered.

  “And you are—?”
<
br />   “Foxy Tripp.”

  Brill slid her sunglasses up, headband-like. “So the dog’s name is Molly Pat and your name is Foxy?”

  “Frances M. Tripp, actually, with two Ps.”

  “Okay, Frances,” Harley continued. “Did you actually see a body?”

  She grimaced. “Well, at first it was just the finger. Molly had it in her mouth. We thought it was just a twig or something, but when she dropped it at my feet, literally, we could see that it was a finger … well, part of one—mostly just the bone.

  “Are you sure it isn’t just a chicken bone?” Brill began to close her notebook.

  “It’s not!” Cate almost yelled. “Look for yourself.” She gingerly held out the Ziploc bag.

  Brill took a quick look and handed it to the sheriff. “And your name would be?” She turned to Cate, who spelled her name for the deputy.

  “Catherine Running Wolf,” Brill mumbled as she wrote. “So, all of you have animal names?”

  Cate’s eyelids lowered a notch.

  “And who owns the dog—the one with the person’s name?”

  “I do,” Foxy said, and the deputy scribbled again in her notebook.

  Sheriff Harley, apparently done with his cursory examination of the finger, hoisted himself upright and handed the plastic bag to his deputy. “Record this as evidence,” he instructed.

  While his deputy put the plastic bag in a cooler, Harley asked, “So where’s the body now?”

  Cate pointed toward the creek. “We asked Molly to show us where she found the finger and she led us through the woods to the edge of the creek, down where it makes a bend.”

  “We could see an arm through the brush,” said Foxy, looking uneasily toward the creek.

  Robin massaged the space between her eyebrows. “I suppose you want us to show you.”

  “Yup.” Harley nodded. “Let’s take a look.”

  Brill rushed to join them, pushing her way through the undergrowth as they clambered down the bank. “Yow!” she yelled as her curls caught on a bramble. She extricated herself and caught up with the others.