The Double-Jack Murders: A Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery (Sheriff Bo Tully Mysteries) (12 page)

“Three seconds?” Pap said. “I’m pretty slow now that I’m
old, but it used to take me only three seconds to be half a block away. I’ve always found fleeing to be the best defense.”

“I come from a family of warriors,” Tully said.

“To tell the truth, I kind of like the idea of fleeing myself,” Dave said. “Those little guys beat me until I couldn’t crawl, let alone flee. And then they charged me big time for all the pain they caused me.”

“What were you doing in Japan anyway?” Tully asked. “Government work I bet.”

“Afraid not. Strictly private enterprise.”

Two men at a nearby table got up and headed for the door. They seemed to be having an argument. “You got to be kidding me!” one of them said. “You heard a loud screeching and then a monster came flying through the air and splashed into the pool you were fishing? Give me a break!”

“I’m not lying! The face on the thing was horrible!”

Pap and Dave watched the men leave and then turned to Tully.

“I don’t recall any screeching,” he said.

“What about the horrible face?”

“That kind of hurts my feelings.”

The waitress brought their food.

“Wow,” Pap said. “Looks like my favorite dish—Canadian stew!”

Bev laughed. “Next time you boys come in you can have Canadian hash. Jake changes the name on the stew whenever it’s more than a week old.”

Just then a young couple came through the front door,
both of them wearing floppy sandals. Suddenly, the man grabbed the woman by the shoulders and tried to turn her back out the door. The woman said, “Bo, it’s you!”

“Aha!” said Tully. “If it isn’t my trusty deputy Ernie Thorpe and Miss Bunny Hunter!”

“It’s like this, Bo,” Ernie said. “Bunny—Miss Hunter—had to run a few errands in town, and I thought I’d better come along and protect her, in case Kincaid was around and like that.”

“What about Agatha and Bernice?”

“What about them? Those are the toughest old ladies I’ve ever seen. They’re armed to the teeth. If Kincaid should stop by, he won’t be leaving, at least not under his own power. I take it he is still on the loose.”

“He’s up in the Snowies,” Tully said. “Anyway, join us for dinner. It’s on the county.”

“I recommend the Canadian stew,” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Tully said. “But by all means don’t ever order the Canadian hash.”

Bunny and Ernie sat down directly across from Tully, which improved his view enormously, at least in regard to Bunny. Several times she gave him a nice smile, for no reason at all, except maybe to let him know that Ernie wasn’t a serious entity. Pap got up and wandered back toward the kitchen. Bev came rushing out, and he squeezed some bills into her hand. Before she could protest, he returned to the table. Tully nodded at him and gave him a smile. That’s when he felt a foot slip up the bottom of his pant leg and rub up and down on his leg. Bunny was looking at Ernie, pretending
to be interested in some stupid story he was telling. Tully, Dave, and Pap finished their after-dinner beers and reluctantly, at least for Tully, headed back to the truck.

Driving to the mine, Tully couldn’t help but smile. He still had it. Why he ever thought an oaf like Ernie could beat him out with Bunny, he’d never know.

“Why you smiling, Bo?” Pap asked.

“No reason.”

“Good. I was hoping it wasn’t because I ran my foot up your leg during dinner. Almost gave myself a cramp getting my boot off without you noticing.”

Dave shouted, “Cripes, Bo! You almost ran us into the ditch!”

Pap cackled and started to roll himself a cigarette.

“You better roll a cigarette,” Tully growled. “It could be your last. On second thought, I think I’ll wait and kill you right after I kill Ernie Thorpe.”

“Oh, if you’re thinking of killing me, I’d better come clean,” Pap said. “On my way back from the kitchen, I noticed Bunny slip off her sandal under the table. I figured she was up to no good. A minute later, I saw your eyes bug out and your face light up like a Christmas tree and Bunny was grinning like the Cheshire cat while she pretended she was listening to Ernie babble on.”

“You better not be lying, Pap!”

“Cross my heart.”

“And hope to die?”

“I don’t think I’d go that far.”

THE NEXT MORNING
, Tully hated even the thought of rolling rocks for one more day. The fact they had found one drilled rock would keep him at it but not for much longer. There could be no reason for anyone blasting a cliff in this particular area, except to conceal something. “I’m losing all interest in Tom and the boy,” he told Pap and Dave. “They’d both be dead by now anyway. So what’s the point?”

“I’m getting a little short on curiosity myself,” Dave said. He was peeling one of the oranges they had bought in Angst. Tully watched him. He thought the best part of oranges was the peeling of them. Dave said, “So, Bo, you come up with any idea about what we might be looking for?”

“Not a clue.”

“Can’t be a campsite,” Pap said. “There are a lot easier ways to conceal a campsite than blowing up a cliff.”

“We’ll give it today,” Tully said. “If we don’t find something by five today, we’ll go pick up the tent and head in.”

“You’re apparently not too worried about Kincaid,” Dave said.

“No, he’s had his shot and I’m getting so tired of roughing it I’d appreciate a little interruption by old Lucas. It’s pretty inconsiderate of him to leave us alone for so long. I’m much more concerned about Brian.”

“Yeah,” Pap said. “I’m surprised you would put him up against Kincaid.”

“He’s the best I have,” Tully said.

“Ain’t good enough.”

They went back to rolling rocks. Then Dave found a hollow under one of them. Smaller rocks slid down and vanished through a tiny hole. The hole grew bigger. A few minutes later, he uncovered a sharp edge of rock with an opening below it.

“It’s the mine!”

Tully scrambled across the scree and looked at the opening. “Tom and Sean’s mine!” he shouted. “Has to be! It looks more like a rabbit hole, though. Can’t be more than three feet from bottom to top.”

Pap said, “If you want to hide it, maybe under a pile of sticks, a small entrance makes it a lot easier.”

Dave took out his handkerchief and mopped sweat from his forehead. “I think you’re right about that. If we clear a few more rocks away, we should be able to drop down in front of it.”

“I ain’t going down in there without a flashlight,” Pap said. “A hardhat wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.”

“I don’t have any hardhats,” Tully said, “but I’ve got some flashlights in the truck and a lantern. There’s a good rope there, too. I’ll climb up and get them.”

“Don’t bother with the lantern,” Pap said. “Going into an old mine with a flame of any kind ain’t a good idea.”

Dave said, “I don’t think going into any old mine at all is a good idea.”

“Probably not,” Pap said.

Tully was already climbing up the scree toward the cliff. He was happy once again the blowdown hadn’t reached this far down the drainage. Before gathering up the rope and flashlights, he leaned his head against the truck canopy and gasped for breath. He hadn’t felt this excited in a long time. It felt good, but he didn’t want to kill himself. He was on the ultimate treasure hunt, this time for an actual gold mine. Going back down the scree he angled over a ways so as not to send an avalanche down on Pap and Dave. He could see Pap sitting on the rocks above the mine opening. He was smoking one of his hand-rolleds. Dave was climbing back up the scree from the creek, a small log over his shoulder. He threw it down on the rocks. Coming down to them, Tully said, “Glad to see you’re both hard at work. What’s the log for, Dave?”

“We’re going to need something to tie the rope to, Bo, unless you know one of those Indian rope tricks where it just stands by itself in the air.”

“Well, let’s see, an Indian rope trick would work as well as that log. We’d just pull it in after us.”

“Dang! I wish I’d thought of that!” Dave said. “On the other hand, maybe we can tie on the rope and then pile rocks on the log. Do you suppose that might work, Bo?”

Tully smiled. “Might work.” He handed each of them a flashlight and then tied the rope to the center of the log. He laid the log a few feet from the opening, which Pap and Dave had enlarged in the scree. They piled enough rocks on the log to hold an elephant, as Pap pointed out.

“Okay,” Tully said, “which one of you wants to go first?”

“Pap’s smallest,” Dave said. “I vote for him.”

“And the most expendable,” Tully said. “He’s got my vote, too.”

Pap responded with an obscenity. “If you guys are too chicken, I’m happy to go first. Never have been able to stand the company of pantywaists.”

“What’s a pantywaist, anyway?” Dave said.

“Beats me,” Tully said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pap took the rope, wrapped it around his shoulder and back between his legs, and began walking his way down through the scree. Dave and Tully peered down at him from the edge. He reached bottom, knelt down, took a flashlight from his pocket, and directed the beam into the entrance hole.

“See anything?” Dave shouted down.

Pap looked up. “The only way I can see anything is to get down on my hands and knees and crawl through the hole.

And stop shouting! I suspect if there’s any support timbers down here they are pretty well rotted. The hum of a mosquito could bring the whole thing down.”

Dave looked at Tully. “You’re next.”

“Thanks.” Tully grabbed the rope and slowly worked his way down through the scree to the hole. He noticed that he was standing on crushed rock, apparently tailings that had been excavated from the mine. He looked around. The mine was scarcely more than a hole in the side of the mountain. Pap had already crawled inside. Tully followed. Inside, the hole grew larger, but the ceiling was barely high enough for him to stand. At most, the mine was wide enough for two men to walk abreast, if they were both thin and excessively friendly. Tully shined his flashlight down the tunnel. A wooden wheelbarrow with a metal wheel leaned against one wall. A dozen or so feet beyond it, the mine curved to the left. “Find anything?” he whispered to Pap.

“Just a bunch of rags over there,” Pap whispered back, pointing to a row of rags at the edge of the tunnel.

“Let’s wait for Dave. I see what you mean about rotted timbers. There aren’t that many timbers to begin with. I guess Tom and Sean weren’t too concerned about such niceties.”

Dave came down. “Glad you waited for me.”

“Whisper!” Pap whispered. He pointed at an overhead timber.

Dave looked at the timber and then back at the entrance hole. “It might be a good idea for one of us to wait topside, in case there’s a cave-in or something. I volunteer.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Tully whispered. “We’ll let Pap do it, though.”

“But I wanted to see the rest of the mine,” Pap said.

“You can see it later. We need somebody up top.”

Grumbling, Pap got down on his hands and knees and crawled back out of the mine.

“How come you picked me to stay instead of Pap?” Dave said. “He’s the one who knows something about mines, although this appears to be nothing but a narrow tunnel blasted through solid rock.”

“Because Pap isn’t scared enough. He’s liable to strike a match and light one of his hand-rolleds. There could be a box of dynamite rotting away down here all these years. Maybe all the nitroglycerine would have evaporated or whatever nitroglycerine does when it oozes out of dynamite. I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Well, I’m scared enough, Bo. You don’t have to worry about me.”

They worked their way back into the mine, Tully sweeping the beam from his flashlight back and forth ahead of them. The mine seemed surprisingly dry, but odd smells drifted in the stale air, none of them pleasant. Dave held his finger to his nose, as if he were about to sneeze. Wide-eyed, Tully glared at him and pointed to the ceiling. The sneeze went away. Tully sighed in relief. Various rusted tools leaned against the walls. They came to an open wooden box, the dynamite inside having deteriorated into a spongy mass. Tully pointed to it and shook his head. Dave rolled his eyes.

The mine ended at a wall of white quartz. Tully shined his flashlight on it. He spit on his hand, wiped a spot clean, and examined it closely. The wall was threaded with veins of gold. Tom and Sean had hit it big. He motioned toward the quartz. Dave mouthed, “Wow!”

“Hey, looked at this,” Tully whispered, pointing to a long-handled sledgehammer and a set of chisel-bit steel drilling rods lined up neatly against the wall. “Tom and Sean intended to return to work. No miner would ever leave behind a set of steel drills, let alone the gold. I think we’re looking at a double-jack setup.”

“What’s a double jack?”

“It’s two guys, the miner and a helper, in this case Tom and Sean. The miner got a person with a low IQ to hold the steel while the miner hit it with the long-handled sledge. I suspect O’Boyle was the fellow with the low IQ. A single jack was basically a one-man drill. He held the drill bit with one hand and hit it with a short-handled sledge in the other hand.”

“Sounds labor-intensive.”

“No kidding! After the smart guy in the double jack hit the drill bit with the big sledge, the dumb guy gave the steel a quarter turn and the bit chipped out about a quarter inch of rock. Once the hole got too deep for the first steel, they replaced it with the next longer one and so on. To get a blasting hole deep enough, I’ve heard it took a hundred swings of the sledge.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Dave said. “This place is too spooky for me.”

“We haven’t found any bodies. I don’t know if that’s bad or good.”

“It’s just that I don’t ever want to get so close to that much work.”

“Me, neither.”

They made their way back to the opening. Dave got down on his knees and crawled out. He grabbed the rope and started working his way up through the scree. While he waited, Tully picked up a stick and poked around in the rags at the edge of the mine. Then he climbed out.

“No bodies, huh?” Pap said.

“A box of dynamite,” Dave said. “And a double-jack setup and other tools.”