The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery (5 page)

She walked down the hall and looked into room 313.

Andrew Dart was stretched out in a hospital bed with only a thin blanket over him. She could see his pale blue hospital gown. His head was tilted back; his eyes were closed. An IV tube fed into his right arm. Why was he on an IV? She moved closer, almost touching the bed.

He looked so pale. Andrew always pushed himself too hard. Wouldn't take a moment to enjoy life. That had been one of their problems.

The last time she had talked to him they had argued. A horrible, screaming argument. Jillian shuddered, recalling the things he had said. Andrew could be a hateful man. He cared more for his dead Indians than he did for her. Maybe he deserved to get bonked on the head.

She was glad he was alive. But she was also glad he would now have to give up his ridiculous campaign to stop the development on Indian Bluff. The construction would begin any day now, and there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe then he would focus on his other work—and on her.

She had never seen him so motionless. He looked so vulnerable lying there.

Andrew Dart's eyes snapped open.

“Sweetie Pie? Is that you?”

Jillian looked into his eyes and forced herself to smile.

“Yes, Andrew,” she said. “It's me.”

“You'll never guess what I've got in my hand,” Brian said.

“A telephone?”

“My
other
hand.”

“Never mind that. How are your legs?” Roni asked.

“Let me check.” Brian looked down at his legs. “Still attached.”

“I mean, do they itch?”

“No. Why?”

“Mine are completely covered with poison ivy.”

“Oh!” Brian suddenly remembered seeing Roni wade through the patch of poison ivy at the base of the bluff. He had meant to tell her so she could give herself a good scrubbing when she got home, but then they'd heard Dr. Dart calling for help, and things had started happening, and it had slipped his mind. “I did see some poison ivy out there,” he said. “You must have walked through it.”

“I'm afraid it's terminal,” Roni said.

“Don't die just yet. I have something to show you.”

“I can't believe how much this itches.”

“I have a suggestion.”

“What? Calamine lotion? Hot compresses? Amputation?”

“Dairy Queen.”

Roni didn't say anything.

“Hot fudge sundae,” Brian added.

After a couple more seconds, Roni said, “I guess it can't hurt.”

 

After the unfortunate demise of Roni's pink bicycle, Imelda, Nick had helped Roni buy a used Vespa motor scooter.

Roni loved her scooter. She had named it Hillary after Hillary Clinton, who had a lot of spunk and just kept on going. A lot of people said Hillary Clinton was too pushy. Too pushy? Roni thought. How are you supposed to get anywhere in this world if you don't shove once in a while?

Roni careened into a spot right next to the Dairy Queen. Brian was waiting for her with his skateboard under his arm. He mainly carried the thing around. Brian wasn't very coordinated, but occasionally he would push himself along on a nice flat stretch of sidewalk.

Brian patted the Vespa's front fender as if it were a dog. “How's good old Hill?” he asked.

“She's toodling along just fine, thank you very much.”

“I waited for you to order.”

“How thoughtful!”

“Actually, I'm kind of broke. I was hoping you'd buy.”

“Figures,” said Roni.

They stood in line behind a family of five kids who were ordering dinner.

“What are you getting?” she asked him. Brian was variable. He ordered as the mood struck him. Roni had two things she liked. She was always torn between them—a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts, or a chocolate dip cone with sprinkles.

“I'm going for the Three Musketeers Blizzard,” he said. “Or maybe a banana split.”

“Since I'm on a diet I'm just going to get a small—”

Before she could finish Brian butted in, “—chocolate dip cone with sprinkles.”

Roni laughed. “Precisely, Watson.”

“Hey, nice socks!”

“Socks?” Roni looked down at her legs. They were bright pink from ankles to knees. “That's calamine lotion,” she said. “For my poison ivy.”

“I was just kidding.”

“Thanks a lot. I'd actually forgotten about it for ten seconds. Now it itches like crazy.”

“Think chocolate dip cone with sprinkles,” Brian said.

Amazingly, as soon as she started thinking about ice cream again, the itching subsided.

They both ordered. Brian changed his mind at the last second and got a Buster Bar. They brought their ice cream over to a picnic table and sat down. After the first bite, Brian reached into his pocket and handed her a flat, whitish stone.

“What does this mean? Are we going steady?” she asked.

He cracked up. Roni had to smile. One of the things that made Brian tolerable was that he thought she was funny.

Roni took a closer look at the stone. “Is this like an Indian thing?” she asked.

“Very good, Watson.”

“You're Watson; I'm Holmes. Where'd you get it?”

“Dr. Dart gave it to me. I just figured he was totally out of it, but last night I looked it up. It's a really old Native American artifact. I mean
really
old, like four thousand years. It's called a turkey tail because of the way it's shaped.”

Roni held the stone in her hand and touched the sharp, scalloped edge. “What did they use it for?”

“Nobody knows for sure. It looks like a spear point, but it's too thin and delicate. The book I read said they were used during ceremonies or as grave furniture.”

“Grave furniture?”

“Yeah, like to bury people with. So they can hunt buffalo or whatever in the afterlife.”

“Cool.”

“Only a few have ever been found in Minnesota. I think it's really rare.”

Roni set the artifact carefully on the table. “So the cave might be some sort of tomb? This could be really important! Remember what Eric Bloodwater was telling us on the bus?”

“You mean about his dad owning that land?”

“It's true,” Roni said. “My mom filled me in. His dad owns the development company that's going to put up all those ugly condos. Dr. Dart was trying to stop the sale, but he couldn't find any proof that the bluff was an important archaeological site.”

“And when he finally found something, he got bonked on the head.”

“Do you really think he was attacked?”

“Sure.” Brian laughed. “By a ghost.”

Roni looked down at the turkey tail. The pale, translucent stone glowed in the evening sun. “This might be just what he needed.”

“That, and the skeleton. What do you think we should do? Go to the college? The newspaper?”

“How about your mom? She's a cop.”

“She said the police would be talking to Dr. Dart tomorrow, when he got better.”

Roni grinned. “Why wait?” she said.

Eric Bloodwater's mother insisted that Eric and the twins, Sam and Owen, sit down and eat dinner together with her every night. They usually ate on the late side because that was the only way his father could ever join them. Tonight they were having her lasagna, very cheesy and rich, one of Eric's favorite meals.

Often, Mr. Bloodwater didn't even bother to eat with them, even when they had waited for him to get home. He would just pile his plate high and wander off to his upstairs office to make more phone calls. Fred Bloodwater liked to think of himself as a mover and a shaker. He was definitely a mover, Eric thought. They'd moved six times in the past five years.

Eric hoped they would be able to stay put for a while. He liked Bloodwater. Not too small, not too big. A couple of movie theaters, a skateboard park, a good bakery and a decent-size mall. If his father's new development succeeded, he might even be able to finish high school here. Just one more year.

His mom asked him how his class had gone.

“Not bad,” he said. “We went for a walk along the Bloodwater River. Kinda boring. But then this really weird thing happened . . .”

Just then his dad walked in and said hi to everyone, giving his wife a kiss on the forehead and mussing the twins' hair. Eric guessed he was too old for his dad to muss his hair anymore.

He smiled inside, thinking about how he was about to blow his dad's mind.

Mr. Bloodwater sat down at the table and said, “Mmm. Lasagna. My favorite.” He always claimed everything was his favorite, then wolfed it down like it didn't matter how it tasted.

Eric waited for his dad to finish loading his plate. He could tell his father was about to head upstairs to do some work.

As his father pushed back his chair, Eric said, “Hey, Dad, you hear about what happened at Indian Bluff today?”

His father looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“A couple of kids found a cave in the bluff.”

Mr. Bloodwater frowned. “Cave?”

“Right where the development is going. They went inside and found an old skeleton.”

“Cool!” said the twins together.

“Eric, dear, please let's not talk about skeletons at the dinner table,” said Mrs. Bloodwater.

Mr. Bloodwater's frown had deepened into a scowl. “I hope that won't hurt our land deal. We're supposed to break ground Friday!”

Eric reached down and scratched at his leg, which had begun to itch. He said, “You'll never guess what else they found in the cave.”

Mr. Bloodwater stared at him.

“What?” he finally asked.

“That archaeologist from the college.”

“Dart? What was that busybody doing there?”

“I don't know. He was in pretty bad shape when they hauled him out of the cave. I think they took him to Mercy Hospital.”

His father stood abruptly and headed toward his office, leaving his astonished wife, his sons and his lasagna behind.

“I bet I can pop a wheelie in this thing,” Brian said. He was sitting in a wheelchair that had been left near the hospital entrance.

“Brian, get out of the wheelchair.”

“Push me. I don't feel like walking.”

“No.”

“Come on. It's a hospital. Wheelchairs are the primary mode of transportation.”

Roni was ready to walk away, then decided to call his bluff. “Okay, you want to be transported?” She grabbed the wheelchair and started to push it straight toward the street. Brian came scrambling out of it. Roni stumbled and lost her hold on the wheelchair. The chair continued on its own, bounced over the curb and rolled out onto the street. Before Roni or Brian could retrieve it, an orderly came running out of the hospital and grabbed the chair.

“Don't you kids have anything better to do?” he growled.

“Sorry,” Roni said. “It was an accident.”

“We're here visiting a friend,” Brian added.

“Visit, then. But keep your mitts off the equipment!” He parked the chair and went back inside.

“Good one, Watson,” said Roni.

“Hey! I wasn't the pusher.”

“Come on—we have work to do.”

Dr. Dart's room, they learned, was on the third floor. They took the elevator up.

“I could be relaxing in the deluxe comfort of a wheelchair,” Brian pouted.

“You're lucky I don't put you in a wheelchair for real,” said Roni. “Turkey trot or no.”

“Turkey
tail,
” Brian said.

“Here we are.” They stopped outside room 313 and looked through the open door. Dr. Andrew Dart was lying in bed staring up at the ceiling.

“Hello? Dr. Dart?”

The archaeologist turned his face toward them.

“Come in! Come in! I've been expecting you!”

 

Andrew Dart had almost forgotten this meeting with his colleagues. In fact, he couldn't even remember their names, or what they were supposed to be discussing. They looked so young. Perhaps they were graduate students. He hoped they would overlook the fact that he wasn't dressed for the occasion. For some reason he was still in bed. He tried to act composed. He would just have to make do.

At least they had brought in a lovely stone tool for him to identify.

“Very nice,” he said, turning it in his hand. “As you can see, it is far too delicate to actually be used for anything. This particular artifact is known as a turkey tail. Where on earth did you come across it?”

“You gave it to me,” said the boy.

“I did?” Dart searched his scrambled memory, but encountered only confusion and murk.

“You found it in the cave,” said the young woman, who appeared to have a heavy layer of pink makeup on her legs. Young people indulged in such curious fashions these days.

“I'm sorry, what was your name again?” he asked her.

“Roni.”

“Yes, of course. Professor Ranee. I must say I'm not sure what you're talking about. This turkey tail appears to be made from Hixton quartzite, which comes from central Wisconsin. I've seen only one like it before, in the collection from the college.”

“You found this one in a cave above the Bloodwater River,” Professor Ranee insisted. “Don't you remember
anything
?”