Big Bones (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 2)

by Jackson, Melanie

  No matter, if we decided that we needed to return the box to the divers, I was certain that they would be much more blind-of-eye when it miraculously turned up if they liked us. They could take credit for the discovery and go home rejoicing to see the last of McIntyre’s Gulch.

  At the end of the evening— the official end— we drank a toast to the men who had died and we all sang Amazing Grace, which made Father White very happy and I think pleased the reporters and the divers who were comfortable with conventional piety.

  We sent Father White off with The Braids and Little Davey and Old Thunder offered to escort the divers back to their tents before walking the reporters back to Wendell’s cabin. They were scheduled to leave with The Wings in the morning after sunrise services, which happen very early this time of year.

  The rest of us remained to ‘straighten up’. We gathered brooms and dirty cups and began to clean.

  I suggested to Chuck that he might want to go back to the cabin and check on Max, and after a long look he nodded. I kissed him on the cheek, which surprised him, and he went off smiling.

  We carefully finished the chores and closed the shutters on the windows and then sat down in the empty chairs we had arranged in a sloppy circle.

  “Tell us,” Wendell said, and so I relayed Chuck’s suspicion about what was in the box.

  There were mixed feeling about what we should do. Some of my neighbors are a bit avaricious and were very interested in the idea that the contents could be worth money. But I talked to them about how Chuck thought it could be something dangerous, failing to mention his doubts about it being some kind of biological weapon. We couldn’t rule it out completely, so it stayed on the table.

  “Let’s think on it,” I suggested, looking at the clock and seeing that midnight had come and gone. “Drop by the pub in the morning and say yea or nay about opening it.” I cleared my throat. This next part would be hard. “In case there is any confusion about our other problem, the two men did not die of bear attacks. Right, doc?”

  The Bones nodded.

  “The first man died of knife wounds or my name is Jezebel.”

  “And the second one?” Big John asked.

  “Damned if I know. Some kind of animal, I think. Maybe a wolverine. A really big one.”

  I glanced at Wendell, but he was impassive. If he wasn’t brining up Sasquatch then neither was I.

  “But you’ve filled out the death certificates as bear attack?” I asked.

  “Aye. And since the reporters say there is no next of kin for the first man, I’ve sent him for cremation in Little Fork. The Wings will stop in town and the nosy-parkers can take the ashes with them when they go tomorrow.” The Bones didn’t like reporters. One of the members of the fourth estate had reported on his drinking and it lost him his post at a hospital in British Columbia.

  “It’s late. I’m away home,” Wendell said, rising.

  The rest of us followed, tucking away chairs.

  “The Mountie doesn’t mind that you stayed behind tonight?” Wendell asked me as he helped me into my windbreaker.

  “No. He knew we were going to have a meeting and would be more comfortable without him.”

  Wendell raised a brow.

  “I didn’t tell him it would be tonight, but he isn’t stupid. He figured out the lay of the land right away. I just wish I could guess if he knows we have the box.”

  “Hm. And he doesn’t care about us?” I think he meant the townsfolk and not that Wendell and I had been intimate once upon a time. I answered that way since I wasn’t up for any emotional heavy lifting.

  “That I can’t say. But the government is watching him because of the Russian thing, and he said that he won’t do anything to bring us to their attention.”

  “Hm. We got lucky there. I may come to like The Mountie after all,” Wendell said and I chuckled.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Chapter 9

  The black box was holding us hostage rather than the other way around. I thought about this the entire fifty yards home. Whatever was in it, could it be worth the troubles we had?

  To give my bench a break, the poor thing being so old Jesus might have built it, I had hung some of my new pots from the eaves of the cabin and in the wind they were creaking, making me think of a gallows.

  So much for putting death out of my mind.

  But there was a light in the window and the smell of mint tea in the air as I walked through the door. That helped dispel some of the built-up worry caused by the meeting.

  “All cleaned up over there?” Chuck asked, handing me a mug. The tea was welcome. Though technically it was summer, the lingering storm-winds had left me chilled.

  “I think so. We’ll vote in the morning.”

  “Vote?” He was asking what we were voting on but I chose to misunderstand the question.

  “Yeah, at the pub. People will drift in for coffee and express themselves to the mayor.”

  “It seems like a good if informal system,” he said, accepting the non-answer gracefully.

  “Not one for the text books, but it works for us.”

  Chuck nodded.

  “Does Wendell Thunder still carry a torch for you?” Chuck asked casually, proving that he was observant.

  “No, but we are still friends. We have to be. It’s a small world and it was a long time ago.” I shrugged. McIntyre’s Gulch couldn’t afford blood feuds.

  I had a question of my own, but didn’t want to be too nosy. After all, we were getting acquainted, not going for an emotional colonoscopy. I was silent a moment then asked my question anyway.

  “So, no past, present or future Mrs. Mountie waiting down in Winnipeg? Not even a facsimile who might be upset by your staying here?”

  “No, nor any facsimiles anywhere else.” He sounded stern, like the Mountie I had first met. Clearly cheating was a serious moral violation, not like theft or lying to the government.

  “Then I guess we are in the clear.” Spousally speaking.

  Chuck nodded and I put down my cup.

  * * *

  Brian O’Shay paced back and forth, wearing a track in his white wool carpet. The television was on but muted, and his eyes were glued to a handheld device that looked a lot like a cellphone, and was one— after a fashion. It just carried some non-standard apps.

  Not opened yet. Not opened, thank God! Had it been lost? Had it been found? How much longer dared he wait?

  Thirsty from his exertions, he poured another glass of wine. He looked once through the bedroom door at the redhead sleeping in his bed. She was pretty and named something wholesome like Jane or Jean. Or maybe that was the girl from last Saturday. He didn’t quite remember. Their names didn’t matter since they were all the same; women sent to watch him.

  Brian finished his wine and then went back to his pacing.

  * * *

  Not too surprisingly, the consensus was divided on what we should do about the box. We didn’t have time to deliberate though because Wendell was in before noon with the news that Old Thunder was missing. He had left sometime in the night taking a spade and ax with him.

  Next came word from The Wings that he had been contacted about bringing in another outsider as soon as he had dropped off the reporters and the anthropologist’s ashes. Of course, his client could be anyone, but we had to assume it was a replacement for Dark Glasses.

  We have a sort of landing signal on the airstrip outside of town but it is notoriously unreliable. That isn’t due to carelessness or poor maintenance. We have turned it off to discourage casual visitors. The Wings doesn’t need it since he flies right into town and we prefer that other pilots just keep flying.

  Fortunately, the weather decided to rain some more and there were harsh winds rising by the hour. We suggested to The Wings that he might want to delay his return by a day or at least a few hours until the worst of the storm went by. Then we organized teams and went to look for Old Thunder.

  Wendell pulled me aside and told me that
he had already been to the cemetery and found a bloody and unfamiliar backpack full of weird bones stuffed into the cairn (the backpack was now gone down a ravine and the bone’s bloodied cloth-carrier was not to be mentioned in front of Chuck). Someone had started repairs to the cairn— probably Old Thunder— but they had been interrupted. There was no sign of fresh gore at the site, but it had been raining hard so none of us were all that reassured by the lack of blood.

  The divers, to their credit— and possibly because of the occasional lightning strike near the lake— offered to help search as soon as they reached the pub. Of them, only Douglas Baxter had any experience with backcountry hiking, but we accepted their offer of help with ready thanks. This was in part because there was a chance that the next government spy would find some other way to get to McIntyre’s Gulch while we were gone, and we didn’t want to have them do any explaining to the replacement spy about Smith’s odd demise, or anything else they had observed during their stay. They were seemingly fooled by our act. There was no guarantee that the next Smith would be so easily taken in by surface appearances.

  The Bones offered to drive Smith’s body to the undertaker at Little Fork and we accepted that suggestion too. The more distance between the officials and the body, the better. The doc, with his game knee, wasn’t good in the outback anyway.

  The woods were comparatively quiet, faded and seemed hunched over the stony ground, beaten down by the rain. The animal inhabitants were wisely hiding in their dens and lairs. The air alternated between cold and oddly muggy. Tornados were rare, but some of the old timers were muttering and looking fearfully at the sky whenever we could see it.

  There were falls and scrapes aplenty among the searchers. Samuel Jones was originally from Quebec and he made use of some creative invective when his pants got ripped on some deadfall. Fortunately, the divers weren’t around to hear him using fluent if idiomatic French. They were to the east with Little Davey and The Braids headed for the bear’s empty den.

  We broke off another group of searchers each time we found a new game trail. Big John and Sasha were last to leave. Chuck, Wendell and I kept on toward the cemetery with Max in the lead. We were convinced that Old Thunder had been there and it was from there that he disappeared, probably under protest. Old Thunder would not have left the bones exposed, not voluntarily.

  None of us speculated about how the bones had gotten into the old man’s possession.

  There is only a thin layer of soil on the sloping ridges where plants cling for dear life, and the heavy rains were carving deep gullies through the shrubs, washing raw earth into the seasonal streambeds along with tangles of roots and branches that created small dams. The walls were slippery for climbing and I prayed we didn’t end up with any sprains or breaks. Our clothes were past praying for, so muddy that there would probably be no saving them.

  The stony ridges were even worse though. We had no protection when we left the gullies and the wind was gaining strength. I felt as though I were riding a whirlwind each time we crested a rim and was grateful for Chuck’s hand which anchored me in the blast.

  I think we fell into a kind of exhausted stupor as we staggered on. It was our third day of hard labor. The brain and ears and even our eyes can only be assaulted for so long and then they begin to shut down. We tucked our chins, clung to our rifles and kept plodding.

  Max’s sudden howl brought us out of our trances quickly enough though.

  A flash and then thunder detonated, in the distance but growing closer with every strike. I promised myself hot chocolate, gallons of it, when we got home.

  We were finally at the deepest ravine and the narrow log bridge. The wind gusted crazily and it was hard to force myself onto that fallen tree. My cramped muscles fought me, making me clumsy as I forced my way across. My hands clutched at empty air as I spread my arms in an effort to stay balanced. I was afraid my trembling would shake the makeshift bridge loose. Had Max not been waiting on the other side I might not have been able to bring myself to cross.

  I didn’t look back to see how Wendell and Chuck were coping.

  * * *

  The Wings was not easily overawed, but the quiet man named Smith— yeah right— was hard to say no to. It wasn’t that he threatened the pilot overtly. But he did have a gun and a badge for some agency Wings had never heard of. He also possessed a voice that gave The Wings the shivers. So he found himself agreeing to fly Smith 2 out to The Gulch, in spite of Big John’s plea that he delay a return trip until the weather improved.

  He postponed taking off for as long as possible, being slow to refuel and check the plane. He hoped that the increasingly hard rain and lightning would cause his passenger to see sense, but Smith just stood there, rain running down his sunglasses and off his hat and trench coat as he watched The Wings’ every move. It was unnerving.

  The Wings had been ready to fake some engine trouble and to fly into bad weather in order to delay even longer, but once in the air he found that there was no need to seek out the storm. It was everywhere and it was stronger than he had imagined. Though insanely confident of his abilities, Danny began to wish that he had listened to another weather report before taking off.

  Smith didn’t ask questions, flinch at the nearby lightning or throw up when turbulence dropped them abruptly. He was pale though and Danny, who was ready to admit that he was frightened, risked a question of his passenger.

  “Are you sure you want to go on? Can anything be worth the risk of this weather?” Sweat beaded his forehead but he didn’t let go to wipe it away.

  “Yes,” the man replied, and The Wings was then and there convinced that Butterscotch had been right when she said that whatever was in the black box, that it was dangerous. If he could have, he would have traveled back in time and changed his vote from ‘open the box’ to ‘dump it back in the lake’. And then he would have decided to stay in Little Fork and not gone on to Winnipeg no matter what fee he was offered.

  * * *

  Old Thunder was dazed, but he recognized Max’s howl and managed to raise his voice in an answering shout. Soon Wendell, Butterscotch and The Mountie appeared. Old Thunder would never again admit it, even to himself, but he was very relieved to see them. He had feared that his last sight on earth might be the grotesque creature who had dragged him from the cemetery. It had roared at him in a voice that was neither human nor animal and it had been loud enough to concuss him. And if the sound hadn’t done the damage, the rocks the creature threw to drive him off surely did. He feared his skull was broken.

  Butterscotch cried out with distress when she saw him and got out the first aid kit so she could bandage his head.

  As soon as she was done, the two men helped him to his feet and they began to follow a deer trail back toward The Gulch. It was steep and the climb was arduous, and they had to avoid the heavy cascades of water that were beginning to pour into the ravines and turn them into rivers. When they got to a clearing, Wendell shot off a flare, telling the others to call off the hunt and go home. The weather was worsening and there was no reason to risk casualties when their lost lamb had been found.

  “I found the pack yesterday,” Old Thunder tried to explain. His swollen mouth didn’t work quite right. “I knew it would be near the one called Smith since he had taken it. It was bloody. He had dumped it out, looking for something, just dropping the bones like they were nothing.” He paused for a few breaths. “I guess the caretaker didn’t appreciate the lack of respect.”

  Old Thunder wondered if they believed him or were thinking he had a head injury and it was making him talk crazy. He did not even attempt to describe the ferocity of the creature who had dragged him from the cemetery, his inhumanness so much more evident and fundamental because he was unclothed and unshorn.

  “I came back later and got the bones. I put them back in their grave and started closing it up, but one of the creatures came…. I thought he would understand that I was trying to help. And maybe he did since I’m not dead, but he drove
me away. The boneyard is off-limits to us now. We must never go there again.”

  After that Old Thunder stopped talking. The repetitive agony of the wind kicking their faces every time they crested a ridge made their breaths ragged and speech impossible. The terrible wind lasted until they had again crossed the ravine and left the forbidden country behind.

  * * *

  I prayed Old Thunder didn’t collapse on us because I was running out of strength. He didn’t look good. In fact, if he hadn’t been bleeding when we found him, I would have thought he was some kind of taxidermy gone wrong. Dead brush and branches pierced his clothes and his skin was abraded and swelling in many places.

  Walking was doubly hard in wet clothes and my skin was numb. Everything looked the same in the downpour which curtained us, causing a feeling like that of claustrophobic safety, but the rain actually caused some visual tricks and complexities that required constant attention. Like was that a shadow under foot, or a crack in the rock that would swallow you to your hip if you stepped wrong? I hate to admit how much I relied on Max to find the safe trail and to get us home.

  Excepting only my arrival as a terrified and weary teen, I had never been as happy as I was that afternoon to reach McIntyre’s Gulch.

  There was news. The Bones was down in Little Forks and maybe stranded for the night because of the storm, but Linda Skywater is a terrific healer and I had no hesitation to leave Old Thunder in her competent hands.

  Chuck and I went home. We were so filthy that we forsook modesty and shed our muddy clothes outside the door. Max couldn’t take off his fur, so I made him wait while I fetched a rag to wipe his legs and belly with.

  I was hungry and I am sure Chuck was too, but sleep was needed more, so we crawled into bed and let Morpheus have his way with us. For about an hour. Then Wendell knocked on the door with some more news.

  * * *