Bone Deep (30 page)

The day after Owen’s funeral, I finally got my chance to dive what Leland, on the phone, referred to as “Toby’s Pond.” Just me. The man had no knowledge of diving’s “buddy system” and even less interest.

The invitation wasn’t negotiable. Leland, a loner all his life, tried hard to sound in control, which told me he was agitated. My guess was, he had no one to talk to—no one he trusted anyway.

“A news helicopter spotted vultures over a woods near the interstate,” he said. “They’re sending people to check. The cable networks are all over it, of course.”

For nearly a week, “three killer rogue elephants” had been on the loose, and the national media couldn’t get enough. Should the animals be euthanized or rehabilitated? And how could three adult pachyderms evade detection in a state that was as densely populated as Florida?

Every time I heard that—and I’d heard it a lot—I rolled my eyes.

Leland said, “Even if they’re wrong about the vultures, there’s something I want you to see. Bring your scuba stuff—that’s up to you—otherwise, jeans and boots. I’m the only one here.”

“Have you gotten any sleep?” It was a polite way of asking how he was holding up.

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Try to get here by noon. I won’t put the backhoe away until you see what I’m talking about.”

He had dug Toby’s grave. Why else would the heir to the Albright fortune be alone on his ranch using a backhoe?

I had been sitting on the deck with coffee, waiting for Tomlinson to arrive. On a nearby table was an envelope that contained the retriever’s DNA results and a newspaper.

Not my newspaper. I avoid the damn things, even when “killer elephants” aren’t running wild. Palm trees and tropic June mornings are too fragile to compete with a litany of the world’s woes. Choose one or the other. I made my choice long ago.

Today was different, so I’d walked to the mailbox, then the marina, and returned with the paper folded to a small headline:

FWC STING NETS “BONE HUNTER” RING,
UNDERCOVER AGENTS POSE AS COLLECTORS

My name wasn’t included in the story, which was the only reason I’d bothered checking. But my cop friend from Tallahassee was mentioned several times:

In charge of the operation was Capt. Shelly Brown, a twelve-year FWC veteran who spent months working undercover before staging a “relics sale” on public land north of the Peace River.

Fallsdown had guessed correctly about the woman with the cute chin and marathoner’s body. Shelly, a former jogging partner, had
drafted me to help after we’d struck a deal about the contents of the duffel bag.

The sting had taken place three days ago—Saturday. I had accompanied Mick but slipped away before cops descended on dozens of bone hunters and dealers, who were convinced they were safely gathered on private property.

Among those arrested was a tall blonde. She had arrived in a VW van adorned with peace signs and belching smoke because the radiator was overheating. After money exchanged hands, the woman was charged with selling stolen property, and with more than a hundred felony counts of “violation of historical resources.” The collection she had brought included mastodon ivory, a bezoar stone on a gold chain, and the hilt from a Conquistador’s sword.

Ava Albright had been cuffed and taken to jail. Now she and her attorney Dalton Sanford were claiming entrapment.

It wasn’t true.

Tomlinson had made good on his vow to produce the person responsible for Lillian’s death and he had done it all on his own. Didn’t say one word to me. The proof was that he, too, had spent the night in jail.

Before hanging up, Leland, the cuckolded husband, paid mild tribute to Tomlinson’s cunning.

“I figured your friend for a harmless flake. Tell him thanks.”

•   •   •

WHILE I LUGGED DIVE GEAR
from the house to my truck, the harmless flake followed the dog walking at my side. Tomlinson saying, “The woman cop might be an old jogging buddy, but that doesn’t mean she won’t arrest you. She’s doing her undercover cop routine again. I’m afraid Dunk’s going to find out the hard way.”

I said, “Shelly? Stop worrying. Has he called since he got back to Montana?”

“Let me finish. Remember asking where he disappeared to this weekend? Shelly drafted his tracking skills as an excuse to take him camping—you know, search for Toby and the other two elephants. Dunk took his drum, which tells me the trip turned into a sex fest, John and Yoko doing the Little Bighorn thing, while she infiltrated his redskin brain. Shelly drove him to the airport last night. And get this: She plans to fly out there next week.”

I said, “Then you have spoken to him.”

“
Yes.
Dunk’s worried she’s falling in love, but the whole time what she’s really doing is gathering evidence. You know, pay a visit, meet Rachel. While they’re not looking, she’ll get video of the Little People you stole from Dalton Sanford’s lockbox thing.”

It was true that before police and EMTs had arrived, I had opened the box and removed two owl stones. One was the crested carving in the photo Harris Sanford had sent. All possessed a pearly white sheen around the eyes.

By now, the owls were with Rachel Fallsdown.

I smiled. “Your feelings are hurt because Shelly cuffed you instead of inviting you to go camping. Maybe if you owned a drum, things would’ve been different.”

“Like that’s going to help find a dying elephant,” Tomlinson scoffed. “The moment Dunk told me, I knew.”

“I think some of Ava’s ego rubbed off on you,” I said. “Too much time doing that yoga mind-link business. What color was her aura the day you led her into your little trap? Check the mirror, ol’ buddy. Or do you use a prism?”

“Hers was greenish gray,” Tomlinson said after thinking back. “But you’re wrong. Vegas dancers are like honest men—they can’t
be tricked. Ava hung herself. All I did was zone in on her objectives and steer her back into the web. Doc, you should know by now my instincts are about ninety percent right on.”

“Only because you don’t remember the times you’re wrong,” I said. I swung a fresh tank into the truck, secured it, and walked toward the house while Tomlinson prattled on about fears that only illustrated his police paranoia . . . but stopped me cold when he said, “What’s Hannah going to think if Shelly nails you for theft? I’m pretty sure she knows about the saber cat skull.”

“How?”
I asked him, which sounded like an admission, so I covered my tracks. “I took pictures of the thing and moved it. Big deal.”

“All I know is, Shelly asked Dunk what you took from the river that day. He’s the one who brought it up. Let’s hope Shelly doesn’t get him love-drunk and trick him into spilling the beans.”

I continued walking, and told the dog, “Go swim.”

The dog did. Tomlinson moved up beside me and watched him catapult off the walkway, where a cormorant dived for its life, then slapped the water until airborne.

“You’ve got to admit it’s weird,” Tomlinson said. “I’ve still never heard him bark.”

I replied, “You never will,” then changed the subject.

•   •   •

I WAS STILL ON THE PHONE
with Hannah when I parked beside Leland’s Escalade, so ended our conversation, asking, “Can I call you later?”

The way she fumbled around told me she had plans for the night, but the woman recovered nicely. “How about I call you in the morning? I still owe you a fishing trip.”

Because of confidential paperwork on the sting operation, I’d
had to cancel our date on Monday. My wobbly excuse hadn’t meshed with the woman’s iron morals, but on the phone she had been cheery and sweet and quick to laugh—Hannah’s normal self.

Another reprieve . . . or maybe we actually were becoming friends again.

On the floor of my truck, passenger side, was a five-gallon bucket covered with a towel. It had slopped water because of the bumpy road—distilled water to which I had added a careful amount of a chemical, Acryloid, after using a meter to measure the amount of soluble salts.

I was sopping up the mess when Leland exited the office door, so I poked an arm out the window and held up a finger:
Give me a minute
.

He was dressed like a gentleman farmer, wearing baggy pants and Wellingtons, his khaki shirt dark with sweat. With a shrug, he walked toward the pond and waited.

I looked into the bucket and, once again, wrestled with my conscience. A saber-toothed tiger stared back through eons and the eye sockets of a skull. I couldn’t let Leland see the thing—an obvious flaw in my hasty plan, a plan that was unraveling fast.

Before leaving, while in the systemized certainty of my lab, I had made two tough decisions: No, I would not tell Leland about the petroglyph. The mastodon tusk would soon be returned to him. That was enough. The man was in financial trouble and the temptation to auction a priceless artifact would only add to the trauma he had suffered—or so I rationalized.

I had also convinced myself that, yes, I would return the saber cat skull to the pond where snakes and gators and, possibly, an old elephant on the mend would return to guard it.

Now, however, in a place where chaos had reigned so recently, I
was certain of nothing. Plus . . . by god, I wanted that skull with its lethal ivory fang. Forget the lies I had told Tomlinson, I felt
something
each and every time I touched the thing.

So I covered the bucket and reached for my dive bag but then left it all, thinking,
Do what you always do, Ford—make it up as you go
.

•   •   •

WHEN I JOINED LELAND,
he referenced the flowers piled where Owen had died, saying, “I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I had hopes for him. You know? I wish you could have seen the way he stood up to Harris that day. He was . . . He reminded me so much of . . .” Leland cleared his throat, his hands shaking.

I helped him out by mentioning his late wife, then let him talk for a while before asking, “Did you hear anything about what the helicopter spotted?”

“Oh . . . the vultures.” He shook his head, then surprised me with an ironic smile. “Over the last few days, I’ve gotten to know the manager of the Elephant Rescue facility pretty well. Gwen. She’s very sharp but as baffled as me about what happened. And she sees a kind of weird humor in it. Three very old, very large Asiatic elephants disappear without a trace. Well”—he glanced toward the flowers—“that’s not entirely true.”

He talked about the search still under way—that was the ironic aspect: helicopters and telemetry foiled by beasts from the Ice Age—then addressed a subject I couldn’t bring up. “I don’t have any hard feelings toward Toby. He was reacting to a situation—probably confused Owen with Harris. Or maybe Harris had already wounded him when Toby did what he did. I don’t know, I was still unconscious. Gwen has been working with elephants for years and we talked about it. She agrees.”

I didn’t agree, so was relieved when he said, “There’s something I want to show you.” He looked at my feet. “Good. You’re wearing boots. We don’t have to take the road.”

On the other side of the pond, the hill sloped downward into swamp, then flattened into a tractor path that cleaved through the trees. Harris and Owen, in the red Dodge, had disappeared into those trees before returning—and dying.

Leland led me around the pond toward a backhoe, a pyramid of black dirt piled high beside it. On the way, he caught me off guard, saying, “Your Indian friend is a pretty nice fellow. Duncan—I didn’t feel comfortable calling him Dunk. He’s a little strange, but so what? I was disappointed you weren’t with him the other night.”

I said, “He was here?” then amended, “Oh—that’s right. He and a woman I know spent a couple of nights in the area. Shelly Brown. I haven’t talked to him for a few days.”

“I liked her, too. Monday late, he built a fire and did a little ceremony for the elephants. Gwen grew up in South Africa, so she’s more tolerant of that sort of thing. The twins were there to encourage him, of course.”

“I heard that Duncan brought his drum,” I said.

“Brought his
what
?” Leland was confused for a moment. “
Oh.
No, that would have been too much for me. I wandered off anyway, figured he would take the hint and leave. Nothing against Duncan—Owen’s funeral was yesterday, you know, and I wanted some time alone. But somehow he found me and we had a nice talk about . . . about various things.”

Awkward, the silence that followed, me walking beside the man. Something was on his mind. He finally got to it by offering an apology that was a setup. “I have to admit I was wrong about him
and your other friend Tomlinson. I made a snap judgment.” He slowed but didn’t turn. “Which makes me wonder if I was right about you, Ford.”

“Oh?”

“I’m learning to be cautious. Thank Ava for that.”

“If something’s on your mind, Leland, out with it.”

The man was sweating and used a handkerchief before he replied, “Okay. For one thing, Duncan knew I tend to drink more than I need at night. I’m not the sort who lets strangers get close enough to smell my breath, and I hold my liquor pretty damn well. So it was more than a guess.”

The insinuation that I had blabbed was offensive but I let it go. “Why not ask him?”

“I did—but that part of our conversation is private. I’m more interested in the photos you took of the mastodon tusk. You
did
take them, didn’t you? You had part of our collection the whole time.”

“Duncan said that?”

“No, but it makes sense.”

“I can’t tell you how it happened, but, yes, I had some things I believed were yours.”

“Had to be. That’s why you thought I was being too hard on my father.” He didn’t wait for a response, kept talking. “Which might be true, but there’s something unusual about that tusk my father never bothered to notice. I don’t know how Tovar got it, but the fact my father parted with the thing sums up his whole . . .
Sloppy
, I guess is the word. His sloppy approach to life.” Now Leland did stop, eyed me for a moment. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

I said, “Your grandfather must have had a very good magnifying glass.”