Ms. Got Rocks (12 page)

C
hapter 12

I
t was well after dark on the east side of the country. This agency never closed, and there were no set work hours for this group of men. Paul, Clark, Callaghan and the department honcho were perusing the data collected this week on their main person of interest.

“Why would they plant him on top of a rock out in the middle of Deer Dropping, California, for the love of Mike?” Paul Crane asked the office in general, thinking aloud.

“Why wouldn’t they? It is as good a place as any,” Clark Fanucchi said.

"Cause it is too far away, why drag the body from Boston to there, when they could have stuck him on a rock in New Hampshire, for instance,” Paul said then returned to gnawing on his cuticle.

“Was she thumbing her nose at Clancy or hey, wait a minute, she was flipping the bird to Callaghan,” said Clark looking bright and shiny at his longtime partner.

“Thanks buddy, that thought will allow me to sleep soundly, but that isn’t even close to my property,” Callaghan said.

“Sure it is, it is right next door,” Paul Crane commented.

“Moving right along,” said Callaghan in his most engaging Irish brogue he changed the subject away from himself.

“Let’s recap what the bloody hell substantial we received this week,” he requested.

“Yeah, let’s get this over with, I want to get home in time to have birthday cake with the kid,” Paul said looking longingly at the office door.

“Okay, to rush this through for cake sake, Clancy shows up from where ever the hell she has been, the body on the top of her rock is ID’d as Miklos Petrovich who is a longtime runner for the Don and now for Jasmine Harris, and la femme Harris is still firmly at home in the compound in Boston,” Clark reported. “Voila, nothing.”

“Callaghan, I want to know everything you can get on the Clancy woman. Jazz Harris doesn’t make friends willy nilly out of the family loop,” the Boss said. “Find out what is going on with that.”

“I can do that, she was at the strike and with the body turning up on her property there may be some connection.” Callaghan added. “Also, no one has actually seen Harris since she came back from Las Vegas more than two weeks ago. Is there any possibility she isn’t there?”

“That somehow she slipped out on us?” Clark grimaced at the thought.

“Sure, that possibility always exists and since she has her own plane she could be anywhere, except we are getting phone intel from the compound that is definitely from her. There is that dude from Mexico City, let's not forget Romeo,” Clark reminded them.

After batting this around for five minutes the group agreed they were still spinning wheels and called it a night.

*   *   *

Lovie and Thumper spent the day on the lawn. Lovie guarding the area as Thumper hopped around under the big dog’s watchful eyes. Phoebe, uninterested in the baby rabbit, went back to hunting rodents and Rocky set up the soup for dinner in the crock pot and went back to her underwater search for gold for the rest of the day.

Spending a few hours every afternoon that week dredging, she chastised herself that it was not enough. She was feeling she should be able to organize her life to work full days underwater.  It was such heavy, hard work that realistically Rocky thought she could do three full eight hour days a week, and four partial days. The hours away from the river could be used for doing dredge maintenance and cleanup.

The tiny vial of gold on the kitchen table had grown into a small jelly jar that was not full by any means. But it was a respectable amount at the spot price for gold that week.

“I need to stop screwing around and get serious with the gold dredging,” Rocky again admonished herself.

The season was so short she should be dropping all the interruptions and concentrating on it.

“My credit card balance is another very good imperative reason to get to it,” she told the adoring dogs.

Underwater the dredging is always noisy. The river water moving,the rocks thumping up the dredge hose, the dredge pump's muted chugging, the air bubbles escaping from the hookah mouthpiece. The underwater sounds were peaceful in a bustling, busy, raucous sort of way. For quite awhile, there were some respectable rattling sounds going up the dredge hose as she worked the underwater grid today. The sound could be little nuggets or could be some nice size pebbles making the racket. No miner drops the dredge hose to surface and find out. This grid had an intriguing vein of white quartz mineral peeking through the dark sand in the far right corner. The quartz was probably gold bearing, but Rocky would never give up taking all the sand and little rocks in the whole grid square. Whatever is there will still be there when she and the dredge hose get there.

For the quantities of gold Rocky needed, she could not pick and choose the best looking spot. Production dredging does not work that way.

The sampling in the grid map that her Dad had pinned up in the living room showed that every bit of that grid was gold bearing. Even the tiniest flake should be going up the dredge hose nozzle. Those little fine flakes were worth the same amount per ounce as the bigger flakes and tiny nuggets. There were many more fine dust flakes than nuggets in any gold bearing river.

Rocky would be over to the quartz corner in an hour and then she was going to take a break. Dredging underwater made her thirsty. A tall iced tea would taste wonderful.

The dredge was working perfectly when she came up to that quartz vein.

She got out the dental picks first and worked at the contours in the bedrock to get the feel of it. Her air bubbles were loud, but she was getting an echo from somewhere. That was peculiar, and amused she looked up for her phantom dredge. Rocky could only see the lovely blue surface of the river. Enough fooling around, she turned back onto her belly and concentrated on finishing that section, that afternoon. When she took a moment to check her dive watch; it was after three. She wanted that tea break.

That was a bit of gold peeking out of where she had swept the area of black sand with the dredge nozzle. It was bigger than anything Rocky had seen this week and who knew how far under the compacted sand it was buried. Rocky worked her dental pick around it, scratching at the sand, gouging to see what was holding the nugget so firmly.

“Mother Nature does not readily give up her prizes,” Rocky thought, as she continued scratching around on the other side of it. Rocky gave it a good blast of the eight-inch dredge suction. Even that did not loosen it.

However, now she could see what she was going to have to do to get that lovely piece out of there. It was going require some major hand digging to retrieve.

Rocky brought underwater the big stuff from her arsenal on the dredge pontoon. The steel pry bar, the twenty pound hammer, her trenching tool and proceeded to give the surrounding cemented sand a couple of good hard smacks. That was not good enough to do the job, Rocky surfaced and dug around in the toolbox for the cold chisel. As she jackknifed back to the river bottom, she vaguely registered hearing the echo of a dredge over her own dredge motor. Rocky chalked it up to water in her ears, and kicked down the fifteen feet to the bottom and back to the nugget. The cold chisel was doing the job. Rocky was working the area with the picks and a little wire brush. This nugget was like an iceberg, it was oval and what could be seen of it had a lovely crease and a few pits on it. It was going to be jewelry quality, if, Rocky did not scratch it up too badly getting it free.

Inserting the cold chisel into where she picked a big enough hole, Rocky gave it a few more good hard whacks until her arms ached. The hole had progressed to a good size crack. She waved her hand in the water to get the free floating sand dust out of her field of view.

She took a small wire bristled brush to the underlying rock to scour away the little stuck bits.

Whisking everything loose up to the surface with the dredge hose, she managed a clear look at it. That gorgeous nugget was still embedded into the riverbed.

Another go at it with the chisel from the other side of the nugget, and she managed to make another crack opening away from the gold nugget. The pry bar just fit into the little crack and Rocky moved out to the end of the bar and poured all her weight onto it.

“I’m getting an underwater camera, that is that, I’m buying it,” she informed herself out of nowhere.

Back at the nugget, Rocky wrapped her gloved fingers around it and gave it a gentle wiggle. The sweet little nugget popped right out into her fingers. Her underwater scream and whoop could be heard from Whiskey Gap to the Carquinez Bridge.

The thing was a monster nugget. This was the kind of nugget you saw in Tiffany. It was lovely, each side was more interesting than the last. It was approximately two inches long and a quarter inch in depth. At the widest point that was in the rock, it was an inch wide.

Rocky sat on the bottom of the American River and hollered with joy around her mouthpiece.

The group of crayfish swam close to her attracted by the shouting. Rocky showed them the beauty that they have been swimming around all their lives. This was the biggest nugget that she would probably see ever in her dredging career.

“Hell, no, I don’t get to keep it,” speaking around her mouthpiece, she told the craw daddy crowd.

“This beauty will put running water into the cabin,” she yelled against the river current.

Reining in her excitement over the rare size nugget, she finished dredging the remainder of the grid. There were no matching pieces to what she had in her dive pouch.

Having finished dredging that grid, and so excited she could not wait another moment, Rocky tied the dredge to the riverbank. She pulled the miners moss and the indoor outdoor carpet from the dredge flume as quickly as she could. She dragged the washtub full of it and the gold caught in it up to the porch. Then she heard that sound again.

The dredge motor was shut off, but she could hear another motor running. That was strange as there was no one closer than the Tyler's over beyond the rock and down the river.

“I’m going to call Dev right now,” she told the dogs who are catching her excitement. “He will be happy about the nugget.”She speed dialed his geology office and while waiting to connect, she pulled the big nugget out of the pouch and dried it off. The prize nugget was now in the spot of honor on the windowsill, with the warm sun dazzling upon it.

“How much does it weigh?” that was the first thing Dev asked.

“I don’t know I can’t find the scale. I haven’t seen Dad’s scale anywhere,” Rocky answered and she was puzzled. Miners always have a scale. That is the first piece of equipment they invest in.

"What did Dad do with his scale?"

“I don’t know, but the nugget is heavy and beautiful,” Rocky was holding it between her thumb and forefinger, the piece was back lighted through the clean kitchen window.

“Margie and I will come over after work, I'll bring the camera and my scale,” her brother said.

Devlin was raring to go dredging; Rocky could feel it through the phone. Rocks were his life. He would be thrilled to see the section where it came from and to hold the nugget. He will document it, make drawings and have a wonderful time. They would dive back down to the riverbed before dark.

For a while, the nugget was hers to hold and love. It was a warm and friendly feeling. She sat in a lawn chair situated in the sun beaming in the living room. She held her nugget to the light.

Later when it was full dark out, the family gathered around the kitchen table where the light was better. Rocky got the large nugget out of the refrigerator and proudly handed the pouch to Devlin.

While Devlin was enjoying weighing, measuring and photographing the monster nugget, Rocky set up coffee makings and Margie cut the cherry cobbler she brought.

“When are you going to put the furniture back into the living room?” Margie asked. “Do you want us to help move it before we go?”

“What furniture?” Rocky was sounding and looking puzzled.

“What you see is what I got," Rocky threw her arms wide indicating a living room empty except for the lawn chairs and the computer Margie dropped off earlier in the week.

“Where are Mom’s chairs? I thought you moved everything in the back room so we could clean,” Margie was also looking puzzled.

Mom’s chairs were always called Mom’s chairs, even though their Mother passed away thirty years ago. She and their Father found these pressed back wooden chairs somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska, when they were first married and driving to California. They tied the four chairs all over the truck, wherever they would hang. Thereafter, they were known as Mom’s chairs.

“Mom’s chairs must be in the same place as Dad’s scale and Dad’s tools. I have looked everywhere on this place and can’t find any of them.”

“I can’t find the glasses or the good plates, either, now that you mention it,” Rocky announced.

“That funny red and blue old rug isn’t here either,” Devlin said looking around at the bare wood living room floor.

“I thought maybe you threw that out, when Dad went to Auburn the day you cleaned out the fridge,” Rocky said.

“Do you think someone came in the broken windows and helped himself while Dad was in the hospital?” Margie asked.