The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery (11 page)

“I believe Andrew borrowed this from the college's collection. I'll see that it's returned.” She put the turkey tail in her shirt pocket. “I have to be going now.”

“But . . . what about Yorick?” Brian said.

“And the development?” Roni added.

Jillian shook her head. “Indian Bluff was Andrew's obsession. If it weren't for Indian Bluff, we would be married now. As far as I'm concerned, the bulldozers can have it.”

“But what if it really is an important archaeological find? The cave could be full of important artifacts.”

“I very much doubt that.” Jillian smiled with her mouth, but her eyes were expressionless.

Brian said, “Hey, can I look at the turkey tail again?”

Jillian frowned, then took the turkey tail from her pocket and held it out. Brian snatched the artifact from her hand and took off running.

Jillian shouted, “Hey!” She stared after Brian, open-mouthed, as he ran out the door.

“He . . . he can't do that!” she said after a moment.

“He just did,” said Roni, both shocked and proud of Brian's act. “He's very attached to his turkey tail.”

 

Outside the school Roni looked around for Brian, but he was gone. She shook her head. That kid always managed to surprise her. She climbed onto Hillary and was pulling her helmet over her head when Eric Bloodwater walked up to her.

“Hey,” he said.

Roni narrowed her eyes. “Hey yourself, Poophead.”

Eric laughed. “I guess you got me good,” he said, looking down at his purple-stained shirt and shorts.

“Less than you deserved,” said Roni. “Locking me in that passage.”

Eric shrugged. “I'm sorry,” he said, not looking at all sorry. “I thought . . . you know . . . you're Adventure Girl! I thought you'd think it was fun!”

“I think you just wanted to scare the crap out of me. Not funny. Not fun.”

“Oh.” He looked confused. “Well, anyways, we're even now. So . . . you want to grab a coffee or something?” He grinned.

Roni looked at his white smile, at his ever-so-slightly-crooked teeth. She looked at the sheen of dried grape slushy still on his neck, and she looked into his amazing blue eyes.

And then she thought about how angry and scared and betrayed she had felt when he locked her in the secret passage. Why did boys have to be so incredibly boneheaded?

“Tell you what,” he said. “Since you spilled your other one, how about I buy you a grape slushy.”

So incredibly cute and charming and irresistible?

“Hey, Dad.” Brian, standing in the doorway to his father's office, waited for a response. So many books were piled on Bruce Bain's desk that he couldn't tell if anybody was back there. He raised his voice. “Dad?”

No answer. Brian eased into the office, squeezing between piles of document boxes and file cabinets, and checked behind his father's desk. No Bruce Bain.

That was odd. His father rarely left his office during the day.

Brian went through the rest of the house. He checked his parents' bedroom, the kitchen, the back porch and the basement. No dad.

Expanding his search to the outside, Brian finally found his father behind the house standing on the top rung of a stepladder staring intently at the underside of the eave.

Brian waited, not saying anything. Bruce Bain, when concentrating, had a habit of jumping out of his skin when startled. Brian didn't want to make his dad fall off the ladder, so he stood quietly and waited for him to finish doing whatever he was doing. After a few minutes a black, long-legged wasp dropped from between the eave and the gutter and flew off. Bruce Bain lowered his head, blinking rapidly, and climbed down the ladder. Brian waited until he had reached the safety of solid ground before speaking.

“Hey, Dad.”

Bruce Bain jumped, but only a little. “Brian!” he said, as if it were the most remarkable thing in the world that he would encounter his own son in his own backyard.

“What were you looking at?” Brian asked.

“I was observing the nest-building behavior of
Sceliphron caementarium.
”

“Oh. What's that?” “Oh. What's that?”

 

“The black-and-yellow mud dauber.”

“Oh. What's
that
?”

“A species of solitary wasp.” Bruce Bain pointed up at the eave. “She's building a nest of mud. Quite fascinating, actually.”

“Aren't you afraid you'll get stung?”

Bruce Bain looked puzzled. “That had not occurred to me.”

“Dad, if somebody gives you something, and then you show it to somebody, and they say, ‘Hey, that doesn't belong to you,' and they take it, and then you grab it back and run away, can you be arrested?”

Bruce Bain touched his finger to his chin and thought.

“That would depend . . . ,” he said.

Brian groaned internally. He hated answers that start out with “That would depend . . .”

“. . . upon the legal ownership of the object in question, the laws of the nation in which the event occurred, the intentions of the parties in question, the knowledge possessed at the time of the confiscation by each party and the nature of the object itself. If, for example, the object were a child, and the parties in question were its parents, then the situation would become far more complex than if they had been fighting over, say, a dishrag.”

“Why would anybody fight over a dishrag?”

“I can think of several possible scenarios—”

“That's okay, Dad. I get it.” Brian backed away, hoping to escape before it occurred to his dad to load him up with a stack of law books. He pointed up at the eave. “I think your mud dauber is back.”

“Excellent. Say, have you seen my camera?”

“Umm . . . not lately, Dad.” Brian ducked into the house and ran up to his room, feeling awful. Sooner or later he would have to own up to destroying his father's camera, but now wasn't the time. He traced his fingers along the sharp edges of the turkey tail. Had Dr. Dart really stolen it from the artifact collection at the college? He didn't believe it. Jillian Greystone had to be mistaken. Or lying.

He hoped he hadn't gotten himself in trouble again. If the turkey tail really was the property of the college, he might wind up being arrested by his own mother.

He wondered what Roni thought about his running off with the turkey tail. He picked up the phone and dialed her number. The answering machine picked up after four rings. Instead of leaving a message, Brian hung up, turned to his computer and hammered out an e-mail.

 

Just as he hit SEND, he heard a bellow of pain. Brian ran to the window and looked outside. His dad was hopping around in the backyard holding his nose. Brian opened the window.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Just a little miscommunication with the mud dauber,” said Bruce Bain. “A natural hymenopteran defense mechanism—nothing to worry about!”

“You got stung?”

“Yes, I got stung.”

 

“I guess I just think the bluff should be left the way it is. At least until Dr. Dart has a chance to finish his investigation.” Roni sipped her kiwi-strawberry-flavored iced tea. She had decided against a grape slushy—they were better for dumping on people than for drinking.

“I thought he already did that,” Eric said.

They were sitting at the picnic table in front of the Quik Mart. Eric had bought himself a cherry slushy.

“He wasn't finished. Also, I think condos are ugly.”

“People have to live someplace,” Eric said. “And it's not like nobody ever built up on the bluffs before. There's that development up on Wazoo Bluff.”

“Wazoo Bluff wasn't a one-of-a-kind incredibly old and important burial ground like Indian Bluff.”

Eric laughed.

“What's so funny?”

“You are. Indian Bluff is just another bluff. I don't know where you get this burial ground stuff.”

“I get it from being in that cave and seeing the skeleton!”

“Yeah, well, the cave's gone. Besides, it was probably just some guy crawled in there and died. You don't even know for sure it was an Indian.”

“I know it should be checked out before your dad starts digging into the bluff.”

“I wouldn't worry about it,” Eric said, looking away.

Roni slurped the bottom of her drink. “I
am
worried.”

“Let's talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

Eric looked blank, then said, “I don't know. You think of something.”

“Read any good books lately?” she asked.

“I don't really read much. Not my thing.”

“Oh, what do you like to do?” she asked, giving him another chance.

“Oh, you know, nothing much, the usual. Watch TV, hang out, listen to music, check out babes.”

Roni decided to let “check out babes” slide. “Who do you like music-wise?”

“I don't really pay much attention. Whatever's on the radio. I listen to that one local station. It's pretty good.”

She stared at him. He didn't even know the name of any of his favorite bands. He didn't read books.

“You want another drink?” he asked.

“No, thanks.” Roni sat staring at Eric. Yes, he was cute. But he was also patronizing and annoying, and he had locked her in a secret passageway without being too concerned what happened to her. But worst of all, he was boring. Boring canceled out cute every time.

All the rest she could overlook, but boring was impossible.

“I've gotta get home and do some important laundry,” she said.

As soon as Roni got home, she checked her e-mail, found the message from Brian and called him.

“Watson?”

“Holmes!”

Roni thought of telling him about her slushy date with Eric, but she didn't think he'd understand. Plus they had more important things to talk about. “Has Jillian Greystone shown up to confiscate the turkey tail yet?”

“No . . . do you think she will?”

“She was pretty mad when you ran off like that. But I don't think she'll find you anytime soon. I told her your name was Aston LaRue.”

“You told her my name was
Aston
?”

“It was the first thing that popped into my head. I couldn't believe it when you took off like that.”

“I didn't know what else to do. Dr. Dart made me swear to protect the turkey tail. And he told me that Jillian Greystone will never forgive him. I guess we know why now.”

“It was probably the plastic coffee mugs. Did he say anything else?”

“He was still pretty confused last time I saw him. But I learned something from his doctor. He said it looked like Dr. Dart had been hit on the head with a pipe or something.”

“So he
was
attacked! I bet Fred Bloodwater was behind it.”

“Or Jillian Greystone,” Brian said. “She probably wants to claim the bones of Yorick for her own.”

“If that's what she wants, then why would she blow up the cave? Now she can't get in there, either.”

“Unless she had to seal the cave to cover up evidence that she attacked Dr. Dart. I wish we could get in there.”

“Well, we can't.” Roni felt as if they'd reached a dead end. And only two days till the bulldozers arrived.

Brian said, “Hey, what happened with Eric that made you give him a public slushing?”

“He locked me in a secret passage. Bloodwater House is riddled with them.”

“No kidding? I love secret passages.”

“You would. I think they might once have been for the servants. Or maybe the original Bloodwaters used them to spy on each other. If I hadn't run into Eric's little brothers, I might still be in there.”

“He just left you?”

“That's why I slushed him. And when I tried to talk to him about Indian Bluff, he just laughed. He's such a jerk.”

“You figured that out, huh?”

“I'm afraid he's right about one thing, though—we might not be able to stop the bulldozers. Fred Bloodwater has persuaded the city to invest a whole bunch of money with him. The mayor is totally in his pocket. Even my mom is pro-development.”

“Maybe we should go to the newspaper. Show them the turkey tail and tell them where we got it.”

“That wouldn't help. Without Dr. Dart, we can't prove the turkey tail came from the cave. Do you think there's any chance he'll get better in the next day or so?”

“I wouldn't count on it,” Brian said. “Last time I saw him, he was calling me Dr. Brain. And eating rocks.”

“What is it?” Brian asked.

“Split pea soup,” said his father.

“It looks kind of thick.”

“Yes, the starches in the peas, when exposed to sufficient heat, act as a thickener.” Bruce Bain gave the pot of green semi-liquid a stir.

“How come you decided to make pea soup?” Brian asked. He did not always appreciate his father's kitchen experiments, and this one was particularly
green.

“It was the mud dauber,” said his father, pointing at an angry red knob on the end of his nose. “As I was observing the way it gathered mud to build its nest, I began to think about the various ways water can homogenize with organic solids to form malleable, semi-liquid suspensions such as mud, concrete, glue and—”