Ms. Got Rocks (11 page)

“I didn’t know skin could feel this way, beats the heck out of gel soap,” Rocky told Jasmine. “Did you have that Sea Kelp wrap? It smelled so good, not like I thought it would smell I was expecting salt flats at low tide. But it was soft, and warm, kind of like rain mixed with honey.”

“I love that one, and the facial with the fresh plums and then the warm Calendula oil,” Jazz described. “The only bad thing about going here is they always want to wax my eyebrows,” Jasmine said referring to the single eyebrow worming across her forehead.

"Did you have that hot rock massage? I had to have that one, and it was so good I fell asleep." Rocky faked a little yawn for emphasis. That got a chuckle from Jazz.

It was very early morning when the women moved across the huge main casino room. Even though they have not slept in twenty four hours, Jazz wanted to play Poker and Uncle Michael sent a message to the spa that he had arranged for Rocky to have a Texas Hold 'Em poker lesson.

More than one male head turned away from the gaming tables to watch the intriguing pair cross the floor.

Hours later, Rocky was hungry again and Jazz had won at the tables. They thought that it was dinnertime, but it was hard to tell the time in the casinos. They took a wrong turn and found themselves outside. The sun was mid morning high.

“Yikes, it is so hot, I can’t breathe. I think I’ve been hit in the chest with a baseball, a blazing hot baseball,” Rocky said as she made an abrupt turn around and retraced her steps.

“I remember Dad brought us out here one July and getting out of the building and into the limo I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was six or seven at the time,” Jazz reminisced. “Now I don’t come to Vegas between the end of May and the end of September. Life is too short, and the phone or a local man can take care of business.”

“Can you even imagine living here?” Rocky asked.

“Sure, a lot of people live their entire lives at night. Not that it is any cooler at night; I think they imagine that it is, it is an illusion, like much of Las Vegas” Jazz said as she returned to the cool of the casino.

“My father was discussing sending one of us out here to live. But they did that many years ago and it didn’t work out well, so he changed his mind, at least for now. Thank God,” Jazz had told Rocky more of her family than she had ever told anyone.

Uncle Michael left a message at the restaurant that he had changed the airline reservation for Jazz’ return flight to Boston for two PM. The friends had enough time to eat lunch, pack and leave for the airport.

On Jazz’ recommendation Rocky ordered the Maine Lobster Dumplings. The food was wonderful, and both the women were regretting that Uncle Michael booked this early flight; they would have liked to have shared a pastry at the pastry shop and toured the museum.

As a treat Rocky shopped at the pastry shop while Jazz raced to the suite and packed her gear. Jazz left behind all the clothes, except for the heels.

The to-go pastry was presented in a tiny red and gold box, Rocky was so impressed.

Jazz was pleased with Rocky’s gift, that she had made the effort for Jazz. Her position in the family business guaranteed her a sycophantic retinue, but never a friendly little gift without strings. As she watched Rocky caring for the dogs, she reminded herself how important Rocky’s friendship was to her in such a short time.

Rocky waved Jazz into the big white limo for the return to the airport and Rocky ignored the lure of the casino and the shopping areas in favor of much needed sleep.

*   *   *

“Ya gotta love Monday mornings, Lovie,” Rocky told her big dog as the yellow pajama clad woman set up the coffeemaker.

“A week ago, I’m being waited on hand and foot at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and five short days later I’m in Whiskey Gap, going to fix the leaking roof on a tumbledown cabin,” Rocky commented to Thumper as she set breakfast out for her three pet friends.

“If life weren’t so dang funny, it would be a tragedy to have to live it,” Rocky said, wondering if that would make sense to anyone but her.

Shaking her head, she wandered back into the bedroom, to get ready for her roofing day.

The roof was what Rocky called a lace shawl over the building. She had finished repairing the broken windows in the attic when she got back from Las Vegas. There were so many holes remaining in the roof that the creatures were still able to come in. Rocky, in desperation, used the spray foam insulation in the holes and the rodent problem stopped immediately. Mostly the rodent population stopped through the tireless efforts of Phoebe,the phantom of the attic.

Today there was money in the bank and the metal roofing panels were delivered last week. The roofers should be at the cabin any moment; the new roof should be on by nightfall.

Rocky had to pull the pickup around closer to the cabin so the roofers can throw the debris into the truck. She was going to spend the day ferrying used shingles to the county landfill.

Everyone who knew Rocky had forbidden and pleaded with her to stay off the roof. Margie, her sister in law, reminded her that she could break bones falling from roofs and she could watch the roofing progress as easily from ground level as from the roof.

The light morning breeze was changing directions, by the time Rocky was standing on the porch with coffee mug, waiting for the roofing crew. This new wind direction was bringing the stench of something dead on it. Rocky wrinkled her nose, and looked around the meadow for what died in the past few days, the smell was very strong. The buzzards are circling overhead; the carcass must be close to the cabin.

*   *   *

The two men are briskly walking down a corridor that could be in any large office building in the United States.

There could be no greater contrast in their looks than these two men. The only thing that matched was the intensity of their concentration.

“What the hell was she doing?” The tall, gaunt frail looking man asked with his Louisiana accent warming the sterile office air like honey on hot biscuits.

“Clark, I’ve looked at this from all angles and I can’t get a hook into it,” The medium height, dark, athletic man answered with a melodious Irish blessing in his voice.

“The locals picked Harris up in Phoenix, and then she hooked up with mystery woman and they disappear for twenty-six hours. Then they picked them up again, in Phoenix, with a couple of dogs, yet.” Clark stated.

“And what the heck were they doing? They were going to Vegas on mystery woman’s private clunker plane, not even an exec jet.” Callaghan finished Clark’s thought.

Callaghan passed his badge through the door lock reader and they entered into their tiny, immaculate, and sparsely furnished office.

“But the topper is that the mystery woman turns out to be your neighbor, that Clancy woman,” Clark said giving Callaghan a questioning look, like maybe the Irishman was withholding info from him.

“I still don’t see any connection between the Clancy woman and Harris,” Callaghan continued. “Now that we know who she is, it is not logical.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spock. I know it isn’t logical, but who has ever been around Harris for any length of time that wasn’t involved?"

"No one,” Callaghan stated with feeling.

“Hah, no one that Daddy let live long, anyway,” Clark threw back at him.“Okay, so where are we, right now, and right here?” Clark flopped into a chair and started writing in his notebook.

“Right now, I haven’t clue one where Clancy is, and Harris is holed up at the house in Boston. No one has spotted her since she came back from Vegas. She hasn’t even gone to get her hair done.” Callaghan read from his notes.

“If she follows pattern, Jasmine will be leaving soon. She never stays at the compound for longer than a couple of weeks. We are getting increased phone traffic from Morocco, and that laddie in Mexico City is back in the game again.” Callaghan snapped his notebook shut.

Clark added, “I think the dude in Mexico City isn’t business, he is looking for a date.”

“A date with the Black Widow, now there is an appealing thought.” Callaghan gave an involuntary shudder.

C
hapter 11

T
he roofers drove in and the action on the roof started. The crew of four should have this job whacked out by afternoon.

Rocky watched the buzzards making circles. She watched and tried to come up with something to do today to stay out of the way of the roofers. However, she still had to be close enough to watch the progress.

Taking photos, that was what she needed to do. She got a shot of the first old shingle being tossed into the truck and decided that some general shots from around the place would be fun.

She went to the spring getting several good photos of birds sitting in the barely leafed blackberry bramble that hugged one side of the spring. Rocky had a photography project in mind that would involve as many bird photos as she could take.

By the roofers break time, the old shingles were off the roof, and the first of the metal roofing panels were ready to be hoisted by their lift machine onto the roof.

Rocky brought out a large jar of sun tea and a bucket of ice cubes. The men sat on the front porch in the shade and speculated how big the deer was that was causing the dead deer smell.

One of the men said, “I looked over the meadow from the roof ridge and didn’t see any carcass at all.”

Then they started talking photography and digital cameras. The roofers were taking both cameras onto the roof and getting photos of the place for her. The river, they said, looked great from up there.

She made three trips to the county landfill with the used shingles. On the last trip back as she rounded the top of the driveway, she saw the cabin with the new bright blue metal fireproof roof. The blue was startling bright, the roofers assured her that the summer sun would mellow it out, no matter that the manufacturer said that it would not fade. The boss roofer said that it would soften, not fade. Rocky liked the bright blue color, she was satisfied all the way around.

The roof was complete, the roofers cleaned up, and then Rocky wrote a check that could choke a walrus. The now quiet, warm summer afternoon was close to complete.

Thumper and the dogs were sniffing around the edges of the attic while she admired the inside of the roof.

Rocky and Devlin were planning to put in the insulation that week. It would wait until Dev was back from his work in the Mid East. While they were working on the insulation, Margie would be installing the shelves on the far wall for winter storage of Rocky’s mining gear.

“The sheet rocking will come after the first big nugget this year,” Rocky promised her animal friends who simultaneously perked their ears listening to what she was saying.

The attic will still be toasty hot in the summer but it was done. It was complete for now. Even with the new roof, the attic was too hot to linger for any length of time.

Rocky remembered that she was supposed to pick up the rolls of insulation, on her way back from the dump runs with the shingles. The animals loped to the river for a drink and a swim. While they played, Rocky grabbed her camera from the peg by the door. She spent time by the river edge cooling her feet and watching Thumper play bunny games in the shallows, while the dogs swam.

Rocky was attempting to get a picture of the water ouzels darting above the river. The birds flew faster than Rocky had set the camera.

Rocky was anxious to get back to dredging, the Las Vegas trip and the roofing chores did not give her body the exercise that it needed and she was feeling blimp like.

While wading in the chilly river, Rocky watched the buzzards flying without visible effort over the Big Rock looming on the far edge of the meadow.

She swished her feet in the shallow part of the river, her attention divided between a small school of baby trout curious at the wet fur of Thumper’s rabbit feet, and watching the huge birds circle.

“You know, girls, I should climb the rock and get some close up shots of the buzzards, before they leave,” Rocky advised the dripping wet dogs and very wet bunny.

“Dang, you guys are good. That is a great idea. If I can sell pictures of baby rattlesnakes, I should be able to sell photos of buzzards.” Rocky paced back and forth in the shallows thinking how cool it would be to get the exercise and the shots.

The next morning was cold and crisp, there were clouds coming in from the ocean. The weather report was for rare summer rain in the afternoon. She loaded the cameras, tripod in the backpack.

She threw Dev’s climbing gear into the truck and drove to the bottom of the driveway, then hung a left at the two lane macadam county road. It took two trips across her meadow orchard adjacent to the road to get the gear to the base of the Rock.

Within the hour she was rigged up to climb the west face of the two hundred foot monolith of granite that formed a portion of the far boundary of her property.

Swearing about complaining muscle groups she hauled herself up the side of the big rock, she promised to get a better workout more often.

“How could it even be possible that I’m out of shape?” Rocky yelled into the wind.

There were tiny beads of perspiration breaking out on her upper lip and hairline when she was eye level with the top of the monolith.

The death smell was incredibly strong, as she had ascended the last twenty-five feet of the rock face. She was concentrating so hard on her climbing, that the incongruity of the smell at that altitude had not registered with her brain.

At the top of the monolith, Rocky was facing a shoe sole. It took more than a few double take moments for Rocky to understand that someone dead was attached to the man shoes.

Her brain kept saying, “Why is he lying down?”

The wind shifted and she was hit with a full monty blast of dead smell and that answered all her questions.

Rocky hurriedly re-rigged her climbing ropes and with three jumps rappelled down the rock, stopping at the bottom only long enough to check for rattlesnakes, she sat down hard in the weeds.

Shaking so hard she could barely push the buttons when she called the Sheriff Department, Rocky sat still and listened to the bird song while she waited for the deputies to arrive.

In short order the county road was clogged with what could be all the squad cars assigned to the Whiskey Gap side of the county.

At the very moment, there are five uniforms and two suits standing in a knot. Each of them talked at once in excitement. Her high school boyfriend Deputy Justin Dixon was among them, mostly not talking.

“Ms. Clancy, how do we get up to the top?” one of the suited investigators asked her.

“I climbed the rock,” Rocky said, misunderstanding what he asked.

“No, that is not what I meant, how are we, all of us, going to get to the top?” the investigator replied looking annoyed.

“The top isn’t large enough to have all of you up there at the same time, you will have to climb, the ropes are rigged ready to go.”

“There is no other way up there?” He had his head tilted back, looking at the sheer face of granite.

“Nope, what you see is what you get,” Rocky said.

That comment elicited a sharp look at her from the investigator.

“Oops, that was a mistake,” Rocky thought.

“Hello, Rocky,” said Deputy Dixon shaking her hand. The department has a problem. I’m as close to a rock climber as the department has, and all, well anyway, most of those guys must get up there,” Justin Dixon told her.

“I have the rope already rigged; they can pull themselves up. It isn’t easy but it is doable. You can go around back and go through Myerson’s field and climb the back face, we did that  years ago. It took an hour and actually was physically tougher than climbing up the this west face.” “I climbed it today to get some shots of the buzzards,” Rocky told the Deputy. “That makes me sound plenty nutty.”

“Rocky will you give me a hand?” Dixon asked. Together they rigged him up for climbing and she gave him a refresher course on rope handling and rappelling back down.

“I’ll be pulling the rope as you move up, and that will give you a boost,” she said.

“Epperson, Lincoln, get over here and pull Dixon up,” the lead investigator yelled over at two of the uniformed officers.

Rocky moved away from the ropes and watched the action progress.

Two hours later, each of the Sheriff Department personnel that wanted to look at the body on top of the rock had struggled their way up and down again. The fire department responded with the ladder truck and gave the Medical Examiner a lift up in the cherry picker basket. The ME with the body rode down the same way.

Rocky had told the events and her whereabouts ninety times from Sunday. In self-defense, she invited everyone over to the porch for iced tea. No one seemed to mind that she left for home; though getting her truck out of that snarl of official cars was a pain in the patootie for her.

Rocky surmised that they knew where she lived, if they wanted her they could find her.

“Scratch going to town for the insulation this afternoon, you guys,” Rocky told the pets as they rolled around in the front yard. “I can’t get the truck through the traffic down there. We’ll go tomorrow. Let’s go swimming this afternoon, instead,” she told her little friends.

Shortly however, the clouds opened up and the rain began. Not a tiny, tidy rainfall, but a big, busting, wallows clearing deluge type rain.

Rocky set up her telephoto lens at the kitchen door and focused on the top of the Rock. What she could see through the rain looked every shade of miserable for the two men on top of the Big Rock. After the body came off the monolith and most of the officers left, Rocky watched the    poor men left up in the air and unprotected from the rain.

A car drove onto the meadow; she put the small cotton rug in front of the door for foot wiping. There was only one investigator; he did not stay long. Rocky repeated her story in the time it took the investigator to polish off his mug of fresh coffee.

He admonished Rocky not to go out of the county without letting the Sheriff know where she was going. The investigator told her that Uncle Michael Cole at the Bellagio had already corroborated her whereabouts for the weekend.

“Who is he?” was the only question that Rocky had for the investigator as he left.

“The victim has not as yet been identified. I’ll bring photos by later today, to see if you can identify him,” the investigator said as he stepped over the door threshold onto the front porch.

“Oh, please don’t, I’ll have nightmares forever,” Rocky pleaded.

The investigator turned immediately back to Rocky.

“You have some reason for not seeing the victim?” he asked looking stern and authoritative.

“Yes, who in their right mind wants to look at a dead body?” Rocky was looking at the investigator, like he was the one who was not quite right.

“Yeah, ah, well, right, you do have a point,” he conceded as he stepped off the porch into the downpour.

The excess water was already running down the driveway ruts to the county road, like the rapids in the summertime river.

The squad car did not have an easy time of it getting down through the old ruts and the freshly forming ones.

Rocky watched him leave, watched till she heard the vehicle turn left at the bottom of the driveway and angle toward the highway. She was prepared to pull the squad car with the truck winch, if it got stuck. It would not be the first time that a car or truck became stuck in the driveway.

While she stood on the porch for a few more minutes, she speculated on two things. What horror happened on her property while she was in Arizona? The second was where would she get the money to buy gravel to fix the driveway.

Turning back into the cabin she discovered the pets rolling a coffee can across the living room floor. Lovie was pawing the plastic lid on the can.

“Apparently, Thumper wants a treat,” she said to the crew as she gathered up the can.

The feed store in Auburn had ears of dried corn, which people buy for feeding squirrels. Rocky bought one for Thumper to keep her front teeth worn down to a comfortable length for the young rabbit.

When Thumper was not gnawing on the corn, Rocky found Phoebe or Lovie gnawing at the corn. The dried corn on the cob was now the treat of choice and stored in the empty coffee can to keep it from attracting the wild country critters.