by Donna Ball
Cisco swished his tail politely in greeting, but his real attention was focused on the sheriff’s car behind him. “I figured he would,” I agreed, and gave Buck what I hoped was a perfectly neutral glance as he got out of the car behind Lee’s.
Cisco gave Buck a happy bark of greeting, and began to dance on his toes with anxiety. I couldn’t help it; I “accidently” let go of the leash and Cisco, muddy paws and all, bounded into Buck’s arms. Buck was a good sport about it; I have to give him that. He greeted Cisco with an ear rub, casually brushed the mud off his trousers, and caught the leash as he came to join us.
Smoothly I turned back to Lee Sutter. “How’re you doing, Mr. Sutter?”
“I could use better weather, to tell the truth.”
“Well, I’ll try not to keep you standing out in it too long.”
Buck handed me Cisco’s leash. “Morning, Raine.”
My ex-husband is a good looking man in his mid thirties, with mild hazel eyes and thick chestnut hair, highschool quarterback, everybody’s hometown hero. Today the smile lines around his eyes seemed deeper and they weren’t smiling; the creases in his cheeks were more pronounced than I remembered. He looked tired, probably from running back and forth between two counties to see his girlfriend.
“Hey, Buck.” My tone was noncommittal, and I absently patted my leg to bring Cisco into heel position. “It’s back here.” I flipped my hood up over my head to keep the mist off, and led the way around the house. “I still think it could be a deer bone, but Maude thought I should call.”
“Are you sure he dug it up here, and not out in the woods somewhere?” That was from Buck, walking beside us with his collar turned up and his shoulders hunched against the cold.
I replied briefly, “Yes.” And I didn’t look at him.
Things had been a little awkward between us since I had filed for divorce.
I had left the leg bone—or, I should say, what Maude insisted was a leg bone—on the back porch for them to look at. I’m not squeamish about such things, so I got it and brought it back down the steps for Lee. “Deer, right?” I prompted as I handed it over.
Lee Sutter looked at the bone for a moment, turned it over in his hands, scraped away some of the mud. “It’s been there awhile,” was all he would offer as he handed it off to Buck.
Buck examined the bone, his expression equally unforthcoming. But when I held out my hand for the artifact, he did not return it to me. “Where did you say Cisco found this?”
So I led them down the gravel path from the back porch to the scarred piece of dug-up ground that had once been my kennel.
Before I turned it into a kennel, the area had been occupied by a horse barn that had been there at least a hundred years. The old wood had sustained significant water and structural damage in the fire, more than we had suspected at first. Of course, the concrete kennel area had survived intact, but after all the insurance adjusters and contactors got finished with their estimates, it had turned out to be cheaper to tear everything down, clear it out, and start from scratch. Target for completion was spring. But that was if we had good weather.
So far we had had enough good weather to do the demolition and haul- off, and had just gotten the new foundation dug when the rains set in. A big ugly bulldozer had been sitting in my backyard, all but mired in mud, for two weeks. What would one day be the foundation of my building currently looked like a six-inch deep swimming pool. No wonder the dogs had been unable to resist it.
Even before I put the first dog in the bathtub, I had gotten dressed and walked out in the rain to examine the scene of the crime, so to speak. It wasn’t hard to find. At the end of the pit furtherest from the house, piles of mud had been scattered around a depression almost three feet deep at its deepest part—which was of course why Cisco had been covered with mud from toe to ear. I had taken a small garden shovel and poked around a little bit, but it was too cold and wet to spend more than a couple of minutes crouching in a puddle up to my ankles pushing mud around, so I gave up before finding anything. Not, I was certain, that there was anything to find.
Buck noticed the shovel that I had left stuck in the mud on the side of the pit, and gave me a disapproving look. I ignored it.
Lee said, “Looks like you got yourself quite a project going on here.”
I sighed. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Buck picked up the shovel and began to gingerly move the mud around.“Guess the weather held things up.”
Way to go, Sherlock, I thought, but didn’t say. After all, there was no need to let things deteriorate to a grade school level between us—which, as a matter of fact, was just about how long I had known Buck. It wasn’t his fault that he was a shallow, insincere cheater who was no more capable of keeping a commitment to a woman than I was of raising my hands to the sky and making the sun shine. It was my fault for marrying him.
Twice.
He turned over a careful if desultory shovel of mud. “How long would you say the barn stood here?”
He knew the answer as well as I did, having spent almost as much time at my place as he had at his as a kid. I wasn’t going to bother answering, and was surprised when I heard a voice behind me reply, “A hundred and thirty seven years.”
“Uncle Roe!” My face lit with delight and I hurried to give him a hug. Cisco, always eager to welcome a friend, wiggled his way between us for a petting. “What are you doing out here?”
He was only six weeks out of the hospital, and I suppose we were all a little protective. The heart attack had persuaded him to retire, but Uncle Roe’s idea of retirement was a little different from most people’s. He did not like to be kept out of the action. And to tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely convinced retirement had been as good for him as everyone had expected.
He bent to rub Cisco’s head and answered, “Aunt Mart sent me over with some leftover roast beef for that pretty little collie of yours. She might have put a slice or two in for you, too.” Majesty was Aunt Mart’s favorite of all my dogs, and she made no secret of that. Fortunately, since the treats were all distributed equally around my house, no one knew that but me.
I grinned and slipped my arm through his. “You were listening to the police scanner again.”
He wasn’t even embarrassed. “I recognized the address.”
He greeted Lee and asked, “So what do you think?”
“It looks like a leg bone to me,” admitted the coroner. Like everyone else in this county, he still thought of Uncle Roe as sheriff. “You’ll have to send it off to the state to find out anything more.”
I groaned out loud. I wasn’t entirely sure about all the details involved when human bones were found on private property, but I was pretty sure that construction on my kennel had just hit another snag.
Uncle Roe skirted the pit and squatted down beside Buck. “Wasn’t there a family cemetery on the property somewhere?” Buck said.
Uncle Roe was already shaking his head. “It’s way on the other side of the hill.”
“Maybe there was an earlier one.”
“Maybe. Not likely the family would forget about it and just build over a grave site.”
“Maybe there was a flood or an earthquake that moved some of the bones,” I suggested. It was a desperate theory, and not very likely, but better than thinking there had been a body buried beneath my barn all these years.
“Well, you’re not going to get anywhere this way,” Roe said.“Who knows how far the body might have settled. Need to get in a crew, maybe pump some of this water out.”
“I reckon.” But Buck’s tone was absent, and he scraped away at the mud with the tip of the shovel, carefully. Roe leaned in closer to look at what he had uncovered. I thought, Oh crap , as Buck reached into his pocket and took out a pair of gloves and an evidence bag.
Cisco and I reached him in time to see him scrape off enough mud from the stick-like object to reveal the white of a bone. “Oh, come on,” I said, but I sounded as unconvincing as I felt. �
��It could be a rabbit or a possum.”
“Or a finger,” said Lee, bending close and adjusting his glasses.
Uncle Roe gave one of those thoughtful grunts that I had learned to recognize meant he was very interested . “Lot of history around these parts. Could be Indian.”
“Terrific,” I muttered unhappily. “Now I get to have my backyard turned into an archaeological dig.”
Buck dropped the finger bone, if that was what it was, into the evidence bag and sealed it. He stood, stripping off the muddy gloves. “I’ll get some tape from the car and seal off the area. You got any garden stakes, Raine?”
I glared at him briefly, but he was just doing his job. Really, I was trying to be mature about this. “In the shed,” I admitted. “But how long is this going to take? I mean, how long before I can get cleared to pour the concrete? You know how much trouble I had getting somebody down here in the first place, and as soon as the ground dries these men are going to want to get back to work.”
Buck said, “I don’t have any control over that. With no open case, we can’t ask for a state investigator. We’ll send these samples to the lab, maybe they’ll send out a forensic guy, maybe they won’t. Could take some time.”
Uncle Roe pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll go get the stakes.”
I said, “But if they are Indian bones…”
“You might talk to somebody out at the university,” volunteered Lee. “They might be able to give you some idea of the odds. Maybe even get a fellow out here to have a look.”
“That’s possible,” allowed Buck. “I guess I could make a call.”
“But—“ I began helplessly, and then the leash was tugged from my hand. I heard a splash. I whirled. “Cisco!”
While we had been debating, Cisco had wandered further and further toward the end of his leash, toward the area where Buck had been digging. The splash I heard was the sound of the soft earth giving way beneath him, plunging him happily back down into the muddy pit. His freshly bathed, conditioned and blow-dried coat was once again mud-spattered, and now free of his restraint, he had buried his muzzle in the hole again and his paws were going madly.
I lunged toward him. “Cisco!”
I thought I caught Buck’s grin out of the corner of my eye as I grabbed the end of the leash with one hand and Cisco’s collar with the other. I hauled Cisco upward and of course I slipped in the mud and landed flat on my backside. I did not find anything amusing about the situation at all as all three men came to help me to my feet—completely unnecessarily, since by that time I was already brushing at my soaking wet jeans and trying not to use words no young dog should hear.
“You okay, there, Rainbow?” my uncle asked.
I replied through gritted teeth, “I’m cold and wet and muddy and I’m going to put that dog in a time-out that may well last the rest of his life.”
“That would scare me,” Buck observed, deadpan, and I could tell all three of them were trying not to laugh.
Cisco had returned to his happy digging, and I grabbed his collar once again. “Cisco, wrong!”
He knew that word all too well, and his tail dropped. He looked up at me unenthusiastically.
But by that time I was no longer looking at him. I knelt down in the mud and reached out to touch what he had uncovered. It was a corner of black plastic, still weighed down by earth and who knew what else.
Buck, who could read my body language almost as well as Cisco could, knelt beside me and confirmed my suspicion. “A plastic garbage bag,” he said. He glanced across the pit at Uncle Roe. “There goes your Indian theory.”
“And there goes your graveyard theory,” Uncle Roe replied. “This body has been moved.”
______________
THREE
By noon my yard was crawling with police officers. Every county deputy who didn’t have anything better to do had shown up with a shovel, and the state police had sent a car with two officers and a photographer. One of those officers, a good looking lieutenant, spent forty-five minutes with a notebook and a cup of coffee in my kitchen, interviewing me. I think he just wanted to get out of the cold.
Maude made a pot of coffee and passed it around in Styrofoam cups, but after awhile even she got tired of standing around watching a bunch of men do nothing. I had my hands full just trying to keep the dogs quiet, since every time another car drove up they charged the door, begging to be a part of the fun. Aunt Mart called three times, advising me to “send that fool husband” of hers home, and there was no use trying to explain to her that I had no more control over Uncle Roe than she did.
“I swear, I’m gonna get that man a dictionary for Christmas so he can look up what the word “retired” means,” she said. “He spends more time down at the office now than he did when he worked there, and he’s about to drive Buck crazy. If I didn’t think he’d just go out and buy another one, I’d bust up that radio thingy of his with a hammer.” She sighed. “How much longer do you reckon he’ll be? I’m roasting a chicken for supper.”
“When I tell him that, he’ll be home for supper,” I assured her, peering out the back window to try to see if any progress at all was being made.
“What in the world do you suppose is going on, somebody burying a skeleton in your back yard?”
I started to point out that it probably wasn’t a skeleton when somebody buried it, then thought better of it. “I wish I knew,” I said. Mostly I wished I had my back yard back.
“Did you hear about Annie Mae Potts?” she asked, making an entirely logical leap. “Poor thing. The sweetest woman you’d ever want to meet. Her husband was mean as a snake though. Used to treat her something horrible, then up and left her with that little boy to raise all by herself.She was only 82.”
I wondered what it would feel like when I was old enough to say “only 82”. “She was one of my favorite patients at the nursing home,” I replied. “I thought I’d stop by the visitation tonight.”
“That’s sweet of you, honey. I’ll bet she just loved that pretty little collie.”
That pretty little collie was lying on the threshold of the kitchen with her head between her paws, watching every move I made as I took from the refrigerator the container of roast beef Aunt Mart had sent and set it on the counter. I propped the phone between my cheek and shoulder to free up my hands for lettuce, mayonnaise and mustard, and took a package of whole wheat bread from the bread box.
“Actually, I took Cisco on those visits.”
“Oh. Well, he’s sweet too.” Again she sighed. “Well, let me get on. I’ve got an apple cake in the oven. You tell that rascal I am not happy with him.”
My mouth watered. Roast chicken and apple cake. My uncle was crazy if he missed that meal. “Yes ma’am, I will. Bye now.”
I set the remaining ingredients for the sandwiches on the counter and returned the cordless phone to its holder. I gave Majesty a wry look, glanced around to make sure no other dogs were watching, and returned to the refrigerator for the container of cubed ends and fatty pieces of beef that Aunt Mart knew I liked to use for training treats. Majesty’s ears shot forward alertly.
“Well, she did send it for you,” I told her, and turned with a piece of meat between my fingers. “Okay, sit pretty.”
Majesty shot to a sitting position and lifted one paw, just like Lassie. That always made me smile, and kids loved it. “Good girl.” I tossed her the treat and she caught it midair just as Maude came in, followed closely by a freshly bathed and dried Cisco. He gave me a reproachful look. Apparently he could smell the roast beef on Majesty’s breath. I ignored him. After his behavior today, he was lucky he got to live in the same house with me.
Maude said, dusting off her hands, “As much as I’d love to stay and see the outcome of this little drama, my dear, I must be off. I have a few stops in town to make, and dogs of my own who are waiting at home.”
“I’m making lunch,” I said. “You should stay. I promise you won’t have to wash any more dogs.”
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br /> A corner of her mouth turned down in dry amusement. “As tempting as that sounds, I think not.” But the smile faded into an uncomfortable little frown. “Raine, heaven knows you have enough on your mind right now, but there was a particular reason I stopped by this morning—aside from wanting to know how progress was coming, of course.”
I turned with the mayonnaise knife in my hand to watch her take her bag from the coat hook by the door, and withdraw a manila envelope. “You don’t have to look at this right away,” she said, handing it to me. “But I took the liberty of pulling some figures—our profit thus far compared to where we were this time last year, how much we stand to lose if we remain closed for the winter…”
I took the envelope reluctantly. “Somehow I get the feeling this is not great news.”
She gave a small shrug. “Not entirely unexpected, of course, but you should stay abreast.”
“But we always close in the winter,” I protested, as though arguing with the facts could change them.
“Training classes, yes, but the holidays are our heaviest time for boarders and grooming. The revenue has been significant some years.”
She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. I glanced worriedly out the window. “Maybe reconstructing wasn’t a good idea after all,” I said. “Maybe we should have just done repairs.”
She patted my shoulder briskly. “No point second guessing now. But you should be aware of the situation and make adjustments if necessary. We’ll talk later, yes?”
When she was gone I tossed the envelope on the counter with a grimace and turned back to making sandwiches. I could only deal with one disaster at a time.
The rain had stopped when I went back outside – with Cisco securely on a leash beside me, of course, because I’d be a fool to leave him inside with a platter of sandwiches—but the progress appeared to be minimal. Lee Sutter was at the bottom of the steps on the phone, and he apologized to me as he hung up. “I’m sorry we’re all in your way here, Miss Raine. The police want us to bring out a canopy to protect the site from the weather, but I told the boys to be as quick about as they could.”
