Thistle and Twigg (21 page)

Even Chalmers and the deadly weapon he held, brought up slowly to point at Phoebe, seemed an orchestrated and inevitable part of it. These flights of fancy were not like me, were not in my training. I gave myself a mental shake yet the sparkling air was still there, and looked thicker as I stared at the AR-15’s barrel and leveled my own gun at Chalmers.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement of orange and of Phoebe moving slightly forward. The air pulsed and glittered around her. I stepped toward her meaning to knock her aside out of the AR-15’s path as I aimed at Chalmers.

In the heavy golden air, three shots fired simultaneously.

I leaned toward Phoebe but I felt a gentle pressure hold me back, ever so slightly just enough that the bullet Chalmers fired at Phoebe missed me by no more than an inch.

When Phoebe fired, her rifle once again gave her a good kick. An accumulation of glistening air thickened at her side like a barrier. She tipped in the opposite direction. The bullet Chalmers intended for her missed and embedded itself in one of the two great trees, the huge oak, behind her.

My shot found its target and lodged between Chalmers’ upper chest and collarbone making him twist away in pain and fall backward.

Phoebe’s shot had an even more dramatic end. I didn’t see it hit a boulder but I heard it ping. As Chalmers fell, I looked toward the sound and when I did I saw the air gleaming in golden strands that caught her bullet and whipped it up with the speed and force of a hurricane wind, high into a limb of the other great tree, the maple, just overhead. The limb, long as a car and its branches as wide, snapped and fell heavily on Chalmers covering him completely with red leaves.

Nothing stirred beneath the massive limb. No part of Chalmers could be seen. Only the barrel of the AR-15 stuck out from underneath the mass of leaves. My heart jumped as I hurried to retrieve it. Phoebe came forward to my side. She stood with her weapon trained on the heap should Chalmers emerge. I did likewise with the AR-15.

We spoke at once. “Are you all right?”

We laughed a moment, both still shaking, but sobered quickly as the sound of running feet came nearer through the woods.

“Police! Hold your fire!” Detective Waters yelled as he came into view.

“Don’t shoot, detective!” I yelled. “We’re putting down our weapons.” I let mine drop and put my hands in the air. Phoebe followed suit.

Detective Waters held his handgun straight out as he surveyed the scene. He paused at the two prone militia men as he came toward us. He saw Shelley huddled behind a tree and ordered a female officer over to help the stunned and silent young woman.

“Chalmers tried to kill us!” Phoebe shouted.

“Where is he? Is he armed?”

“Not anymore,” Phoebe said. We pointed to the fallen branch, now moving a bit as Chalmers stirred beneath it. Detective Waters motioned for his men to cover it.

“How did you know to come?” I asked.

“The patrol officer I put near your house came back from another call and saw Chalmers’ car enter Cal’s place. He radioed me. I told him to follow. He found a man unconscious near the house.”

Detective Waters looked again at the two men on the ground in the clearing. He looked at Phoebe then at me. He grimaced as he took in the bruises and cuts on our faces then he smiled. I shrugged.

In the distance beyond the detective’s head, I saw a man standing in the trees. He was not a policeman. He stared at me with large dark eyes. His black hair fell down over bare shoulders. His skin was a burnished red. One hand with the palm turned toward me came up in greeting. His other arm was disfigured. I wanted to go to him but was stopped by an amazing sight. As he brought down his hand, his body shimmered then became transparent. It morphed into a ball of glittering particles that, in a flash, swooped upward to a pine branch and came to rest as a mockingbird. It trilled, cocking its head as it eyed me. Though able to fly away, it did so with a curious dipping movement, something I attributed to its one damaged wing.

“All right. Everything’s okay now, ladies,” the detective said, still taking in every detail of the area. He holstered his gun while noting the AR-15. He did a double take when he saw Phoebe’s unusual orange rifle.

“Good,” Phoebe said. She strode to the mound of leaves, saw it move again, and kicked it viciously Chalmers grunted.

“Phoebe, don’t!” I said, worried she might be charged with assault. She, apparently, was not worried in the least in spite of being surrounded by police officers.

She kicked again resulting in a louder cry of pain. “I’m not hurting him,” she said to me. “Hey, Rich Boy.” This she addressed to the leaves. “I reckon next time you see a lady with a loaded AK-46 and a half, you won’t call her a floozy.” She bit her bottom lip and kicked harder than ever. “And that’s for your sorry grandmama.”

Detective Waters had made his way to Phoebe. He gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down, Miz Twigg. We’re going to take good care of him, don’t you worry. Now,” he said looking all around the clearing and the nearby woods. “Are there any other bad guys around I need to know about? That y’all haven’t already knocked out?”

T
he next morning, Hank came to my house for breakfast. To our surprise, he was a very nice young man. Phoebe sat close to him and kept filling his coffee cup. “So you and Cal knew each other? Why didn’t Cal tell us?”

Hank patted his lips with his napkin. He’d had a shave and haircut since we saw him last. He looked quite presentable, which made me regret having knocked him unconscious all the more.

“We talked a few times, yes, but he didn’t know I was working undercover. When things got out of hand, he called us at the ATF. He didn’t trust the local police.”

“Were the others in the survivalist group local as well?” I asked.

“No. Chalmers hired the leader, Trent Smith, an ex-Marine from Indiana. They met on a hunting trip in Montana several months ago. He told him to find a few rednecks who wanted to play soldier. I’d been sent in some months before that since ATF wanted to get someone close to him. Trent’s a suspect in several military-base robberies across the country.

“Trent says he was told to lean on Cal hard. We think Chalmers hoped the stress would do Cal in though he hasn’t admitted that yet. So, Trent was being paid to harass Cal, and he also saw an opportunity to extort money from him, not something in the original plan.”

Phoebe took a sip of coffee and said, “So, Chalmers gave the order and y’all took Shelley. You weren’t in on my house bomb, were you?” she said, giving him a stern look.

“No, ma’am. I didn’t know anything about it. Trent took that upon himself, too.”

“What a relief,” Phoebe said. “You sure had me fooled.”

“Treenie Dodd had been buying drugs from him,” Hank said. “She told him you and Mrs. Thistle found the man he killed and that you knew more about it than you were telling.”

Phoebe slapped the table and stood. “Oooh, when I get my hands on that blond-headed little …”

I put a hand on her arm. “Try not to get upset, dear. I’m sure the police will take good care of her. Hank, was the poor young man we found also part of the survivalist group?”

“Yes. Trent caught him stealing guns, guns already stolen from a Navy base, and killed him. Chalmers didn’t like it when he heard but he used the situation to make things worse for Cal. He told Smith to move the body to Cal’s firing range.”

I sighed. “That’s a horrible way to treat a friend.”

“Money does that to you. He needed Cal’s land for several major manufacturers who wanted to come to the area. They were about to choose another site in southern Alabama. Chalmers was offered an easy five million just to smooth out the land deal. Today, we’re bringing in the manager at the Bank of Tulluluh for questioning. We think he was in on the deal, too; possibly he was promised that some juicy financing would go through his bank.”

Phoebe jumped up from her chair. “Chalmers told him to stall Jane! That’s why Roman got all funny about loaning her the money for Cal’s place! Just wait until my next hair appointment. I’m going to give his sister Eileen a piece of my mind.”

“Now, Phoebe,” I said.

“Oh, pooh,” she said. “I know. It’s just so aggravating. Don’t worry. I’ll get over it before I see Eileen. It’s not her fault her brother is a sorry sewer rat.”

Hank smiled a moment then looked very sad. “Chalmers was Cal’s sole heir for years. He didn’t know Cal checked into the rumors of developers buying land in the area. He found out Chalmers had made promises to some influential businessmen to clear most of Cal’s land once it became his. He didn’t want to believe it at first. But he called Shelley Barnette to make a new will.”

“So, that’s what they were up to,” I said. “I saw Shelley driving onto his property.”

“She took a video camera and taped his wishes. Chalmers was furious when he found out in the interrogation room last night.”

I got up for more coffee and topped off my friends’ cups as well. “We have one final mystery.” I told Hank what Cal said at the stream just before he died. “So, you see, Phoebe and I thought Cal meant you were his killer.” Hank looked puzzled. “You don’t know why he said that?” I asked with a touch of disappointment.

His face lit up. “Wait. Maybe I do. Not the tattoo. I think he wanted me to show you something. Come on.”

We clambered into Hank’s truck and drove onto Cal’s land, past the house and around the woods to a place Cal had not taken me. The stream where I found Cal stayed in view to my right as we rode.

We stopped where it ran wider and moved more slowly across a glen. Large mossy trunks lay about beside the water. Banks on either side had the same type of large flat rocks as the bluff and practicing range. Smooth brown stones covered the stream’s bed beneath the cool water.

Hank stepped over to the stream and looked up and down the banks for a moment. “Here!” he said. We looked where he pointed. Phoebe and I walked closer.

“See? I think this is what he meant.” A carving was on a large rock at the stream’s edge. It had only one undulating line drawn diagonally with a circle attached at the top.

A snake.

“Are you sure this is what he meant?” Phoebe said. “All he wanted to say with his dying breath was, ‘Y’all go look at some old rocks’?”

“This has to be it,” Hank said. “I’d left camp only a few hours before Cal was killed to tell him I was with ATF and not to worry. This was where I found him. When I saw the rock, he told me he’d carved the snake when he was a boy.”

“Surely it is much older than that,” I said, as I ran my fingers across the rock’s surface just under the water.

“I humored him. He probably was afraid I might come back and steal it. Or tell someone who might. I don’t blame him.”

Hank walked over and rubbed his palm across the snake carving. “Sorry to disappoint you, but this is all I can think of that Cal might have meant.”

Soon after, we headed home and Hank left us. Phoebe and I watched him drive away. She waved to him then put hands on her hips. “So, what was that all about?”

“What, dear?”

“The squiggly snake thing. You’d think Cal would’ve said ‘Chalmers.’ What could be more important than fingering your killer when you know you’re fixing to die?”

“A very good question.”

L
ater that day, Phoebe returned home. Almost all the work there was finished; only another day or so of paint supervision remained.

Cal’s funeral, a small graveside affair, was the following day. Afterward, Shelley presided over the viewing of Cal’s short videotaped will with only myself, Phoebe, and Detective Waters present.

Cal explained that he offered to sell his land to me because he discovered Chalmers’ plan to destroy the forest. He also explained why he became irate at the police station. Detective Waters had heard rumors of developers buying Cal’s land as well. When he questioned Cal about the body found at his shooting range, he asked about the developers’ plans since he had heard about them from a reliable source.

From the video, Cal said, “I already knew part of what Chalmers wanted to do but I hadn’t really faced it. I couldn’t handle the shame of Dan Waters knowing I had about messed up the most important thing on this earth to me. I was ashamed that I hadn’t been able to take care of everything myself. Pride got the better of me.”

If only Cal had confided in Detective Waters then. He didn’t know that Shelley told Chalmers about his proposed land sale to me. She had called him from my kitchen, just before Cal and I signed our agreement, to tell him the police wanted to question Cal. She also mentioned Cal wanted her to draw up our sales document. She couldn’t have known that by giving him that information, she gave him a reason to kill Cal.

At the video’s end, Cal specified I was to take possession of his land and belongings immediately upon his death. Seeing him that way, so afraid and so very ill, broke my heart.

As much as I loved the land, I hadn’t wanted to come into it this way. I’d have preferred buying it. Having Cal for a friend, a companion who like myself enjoyed both privacy and occasional good conversation, would have been a joy. He had many stories to tell about this place. Now, I’d never hear them all.

Homer came home from the veterinarian’s office that afternoon. He’d suffered a mild concussion trying to save his master and friend. I kept him inside the rest of the day for a bit more rest. Sitting on the front porch, we grieved together that night. The next morning, we went to the gravesite where Cal lay between his son and his wife. Homer lay down across it, whimpering in the long, high-pitched way dogs cry. I did my best to comfort him, sitting with him for a while, then left him alone. I busied myself in and around Cal’s house, not far away, to let Homer know I was still nearby.

After a few hours, he came to find me. I set out a bowl of water for him. He took a drink, then lay down beside my chair in the kitchen, leaning his body against my legs. He goes to the grave every day still but is gradually spending less time there, choosing rather to accompany me during the day as I do my chores and explore the woods. He guards me at night.

I’d been putting off the task of going through the remaining boxes that Cal insisted I bring to my house. They were all covered in dust and they most certainly did not enhance the decor of my cozy book den. I’d finished unpacking my own boxes and had no more excuses to delay taking care of Cal’s.

Resolved to remedy the situation, I dragged the box Cal had labeled with a large red “one” over to my desk. I brought a damp cloth from the kitchen to clean off the cobwebs that covered it from top to bottom.

I lifted the cover on which Cal had scrawled, “Start Here.” While I absentmindedly wiped the underside and corners, my eyes skimmed a loose piece of ruled paper inside the box, taped to the top of a book. Seeing Cal’s handwriting made me smile. So much of his personality came through the shaky loops and jagged lettering. “This here,” it read, “is a list of all special treasures and places of interest (that I know of) and that you need to know about, one box per place. The last box is just little things all put together. More books and papers are at the house, you know that, but these here I didn’t want anybody else to get a hold of.” Below, he’d printed out a list, numbered one through seventeen.

I ran my finger down the entries. “Pirate treasure?”

Homer jumped at the sudden loud exclamation. “Sorry, love. It’s just… he has listed a pirate’s treasure! And has ranked it number four! What in heaven’s name could possibly be above that in the top three?”

When I saw what Cal had deemed the number one treasure, I sat silently, staring at the words, wondering what they meant. My hands scrambled into the box. I stopped myself, willing my heart to stop racing and my head to stop spinning.

I flung the paper aside and looked to the boxes stacked against the den wall. All ragged fruit and vegetable crates.

“Clever devil! Homer, your father was a genius.” Cal may have merely used the boxes out of convenience or thrift but I didn’t think so. He’d hidden what he considered most valuable in plain sight, in boxes of no obvious worth, ones that would not attract the attention of any would-be thieves.

“What’s this?” I asked Homer, on pulling out a strange little book, one obviously handmade. Cal had cut thick manila paper into 4 by 4-inch pages, then sewn together two pieces of leather, front and back, at the edge with leather string. Dirty fingers had leafed the pages many times over, the black marks evidence of many years of use.

It was a dictionary of sorts. Most pages contained single words or phrases; some were proper names in Cherokee or Chickasaw with an English translation. Inside the front cover was a pronunciation guide.

The first word was “
Tsalagi”
in large letters and its English translation, “Cherokee.” In the margin, Cal had scribbled in parenthesis, “No ‘R’ in language.”

About halfway through the little book, the pages changed from words to drawings and symbols, some with question marks and notes, as if Cal had continued research over a long period of time. Beside each, meanings were given.

He had marked a page in this section with a small piece of torn white paper. I turned there to find six drawings. All the figures were of snakes. Some moved upward, others down. One had a severed head, another was coiled. The explanation next to the drawing that most closely matched the one we’d seen in the stream said, “Follow direction of head to next sign or treasure.”

“More treasure!” I said aloud. Homer’s ears pricked up as he raised his head. “What have you and Cal been hiding!” He sat up and cocked his head to the side. He rose and stood next to me to see what I was going on about. I put an arm around him and showed him the picture, as if he were a person. He woofed in answer, as if perhaps he was.

Of course, I was excited. Giddy, even. I immediately went outside to the potting shed with Homer following. About halfway there, I stopped. “Should I call Phoebe?” Homer didn’t answer but sat in the grass. He held very still and gave me his full attention.

It would be wonderful to have my dear friend with me for such an adventure. Yet, I hesitated. “We’ll check it first ourselves,” I said, as I bent down and rubbed Homer’s ears.

On a nail on the shed’s wall hung my old work belt, a leather one I’d used on many a dig. I took it down and, as I strapped it on, a shiver went through me. Silly, I know but it felt as if I were myself again after having been away.

A smile stretched across my face as I chose implements and a pair of old work gloves. We returned to the house for a few more things—a flashlight, my binoculars, a camera, and an assortment of small brushes—then headed out to my car.

“Cal is certainly full of surprises, old boy What fun we shall have!” Homer barked. His tail wagged in double time while waiting for me to open the back door. I drove on to Cal’s place, mine now, I remembered, to the spot Hank showed us.

On the way, I wondered what we might find. Would it be a real treasure or just something interesting Cal had left for me to discover? Like a father creating a game for a child? I smiled, realizing I didn’t much care if it was real or not. If it interested him, I would want to see it. Why not have a little fun? When we reached the spot near the stream, Homer went straight to the rocks, barked and sat.

When I joined him, I looked in the direction the snake’s head pointed and consulted Cal’s dictionary again. “You’ve been here many times I imagine, haven’t you, dear?” He looked up at me, his body still and his tail wagging furiously. “Yes. All right. This way, I think.” I took a step in the direction of the snakehead. Homer jumped up and bounded ahead, as if he only needed the slightest indication to know which path we would take. He touched his nose to the ground once then looked back to me expectantly. “You already know the way,” I said and laughed. “Lead on, my friend.”

I would swear he smiled at me. He turned his thick body with one jump. I watched in amazement as Homer trotted due northeast, the direction of the snakehead. We traveled another several hundred yards through a lovely section of woods. I longed to stop and have a look through my binoculars at birds that flitted by. Homer forged ahead, however, so I followed, splashing across another shallow stream.

Soon after, I saw we had come from yet another direction to the other end of the ceremonial hall. Homer didn’t enter it but made his way around the hall’s crown of rocks. He trotted to an open area some twenty yards away from the hall.

He stopped at an unusual boulder about ten feet square jutting up out of the ground. A ledge of sorts stuck out creating an overhang that angled up and outward. It looked very much like a standing stone with a flat rooflike rock on top. Homer trotted up and crept to its edge, looked around a bit, then retraced his steps and sat in the overhang’s long shadow.

The ledge was just high enough for me to stand under it comfortably. At first, I saw nothing unusual. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, another rock carving, small and in a little indentation, came into view.

This one was a dancing figure with sticks for arms and legs and the head, surrounded on one side with straight lines like hair or a headdress, turned to the right. I quickly opened the little book and ran my finger down the pages containing drawings.

I stopped on a similar figure. Its caption read, “Follow direction of head.”

I was puzzled. The dancing figure pointed inward toward the rock. I walked out, circled it twice more. The ledge gave no further clue. “I don’t understand.”

Homer spoke. It was not a bark or a woof but a soft, muffled sound, the dog equivalent of a whisper. He scooted on his belly a bit and put his front paws up on the rock, a few inches high, and tapped one paw on the rough surface.

I looked closer. There, next to Homer’s paw, I finally saw it. An optical illusion made the rock appear to be solid from all angles except this slim space where I now stood. Here, I could see a second sheet of rock had been hewn and placed about three feet away from the boulder, creating a door like opening about six feet high by three wide. From the smell of the air coming from it, it had to lead to an inner cave.

I flicked on my flashlight. A passageway led slightly down. “Astounding. Good work, boy. You know where we are. After you.”

I followed him around a corner and into a passageway that sloped steadily downward. We traveled only a few feet before we turned another corner where the passage widened and went another ten yards or so to enter a chamber, one I guessed was enormous from the fresh bursts of air that flowed around us. It felt twenty degrees cooler than at ground level.

I shone my light overhead where the ceiling vaulted fifteen to twenty feet to the ground level above. Although there was the heavy smell of earth, it wasn’t musty, for above and ahead of us, roughly fifty yards to the back of the underground room, about a dozen holes in the roof and upper parts of the walls were spaced just so, unquestionably manmade. Other small gaps in the roof revealed leaves and grasses around their edges, with branches and just a bit of sky visible.

Bright specks of dust floated down the light shafts ahead, and the residual light shining down the dark walls made them sparkle with an eerie glow. I moved my light in an arc at our feet. To our left sat an oil lamp with a plastic bottle of commercial oil and a box of matches beside it. I lit the lamp, switched off my flashlight, and carried the lamp by its wire handle.

Homer’s eyes glistened in the soft lamplight that outlined his black coat. He turned and loped toward the back wall. “Oh, dear heavens!” I said. I nearly dropped the lamp as I walked faster behind him. There, illuminated by the lamp and the series of track lights, colorful drawings and engravings in the wall took shape. A native man held a spear, another a bow. The artist painted deer and elk beside water. Turtles, snakes, and other small animals were spread out across the smooth surface to the edges of rough rock.

I held the lamp to the wall for a close inspection. The images were done in a black paint with occasional splashes of red, for example, on one deer’s side and on a cardinal in flight. I had no knowledge of dating such work. I’d participated in native digs in the Southwest, but none of the sites had anything to match this.

I slowly moved the lamp around, first to the back wall. No drawings there, only the bumpy texture of deep roots coming from above. I continued to the right to the wall opposite the drawings. There sat a stone bench beneath four of the small skylights whose shafts of light dotted the bench seat. I moved closer, the breath leaving my body as I stared.

An object about two feet long and a half foot wide lay centered on the bench. It was made of a dark wood, blackened with paint and highly polished to a brilliant shine, carved in the shape of a reclining man. He wore decorations of shells and feathers, all intricately etched in the wood.

On closer inspection, I saw it was a ceremonial pipe. Its craft-manship alone might make it a beautiful find, but its most astonishing feature was something much more unusual. Each carved decoration had been traced in gold, making it look more like something from an Egyptian tomb than from a southeastern tribe of North America. With such limited expertise in this field, I knew I’d have much research to do to be sure. My gut instinct, however, was that this was not only a rare artifact, it was most likely singular. I knew of none other like it.