The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (7 page)

Obviously there wasn’t much sense in dowsing where the soil had already been dug-and the dowser might well have been wondering why some of the diggers were excavating trenches in which a person could bury a cow standing up if the purpose was merely to plant vegetables-but Pollicot James didn’t say anything. He merely held the divining rod out in front of him at waist level, eyes straight ahead, chin up, mouth firm but not disagreeably tight, until he was sure Therese had quit snapping her shutter.

Then, with deliberate, almost stately tread, he began to pace.

He paced directly across, starting from the nearward string that Zilla and Minerva had strung to define the garden area. When he reached the opposite string, he performed a smart quarter-wheel right, stepped one pace ahead of where he’d last stridden, executed another quarter-wheel right so that he was facing his original point of departure, and began pacing back across the field without once losing his stride.

Dittany knew she ought to be at the beauty shop luring Hazel out from under the dryer for a quick consultation, or breaking in on Minerva and her genealogy-minded incubus, or trying to pry Arethusa loose from the eighteenth century long enough to send Mr. Glunck a yea or a nay, or even going home to cuddle the twins and speak words of cheer and comfort to her elk-bedeviled spouse.

But there was an odd fascination about Pollicot James’s measured tread. She’d known it was possible to tread a measure, but this was the first chance she’d ever had to watch somebody treading measuredly who wasn’t in a marching band or a Decoration Day parade.

Pollicot James was a tall man. His long legs appeared, as far as Dittany could judge, to be treading at the rate of precisely one meter per stride. Zilla and Minerva hadn’t gauged their measurements all that accurately, he didn’t always come out just right at the end of a row. However, he took these minor annoyances appropriately in stride and kept on going: eyes front, hands at belt level, rod pointing straight ahead. The suspense was building almost to the point of agony, even the most zealous diggers had paused to watch this human automaton march over and back and over again. And still the tip of his rod hadn’t so much as quivered.

But wait! Now! Sudden as a hiccup, the tip plunged, and stayed. With one accord, the shovel brigade dashed to where the dowser was standing, each determined to be first to uncover the spring. The rush could have become a melee, but Pollicot merely held his pose just long enough for Therese to snap her shutter twice, then stuck his divining rod into the top of his boot and politely asked his nearest onlooker, who was Zilla, for the loan of her spade.

With an expertise that belied the slight foppishness of his attire, Pollicot set the point of Zilla’s spade in the earth directly at the spot toward which his rod had pointed, poised a rubber-booted foot on the top of the spade, and pushed. He turned the sod that the spade had loosened, a faint smile began to play about his lips, he thrust again, and again. At the fourth thrust, water began to trickle slowly into the hole that the spade had left.

Now was the time for a wild “Huzzah!” Had Arethusa been present, they’d probably have got one. As it was, Pollicot had to settle for a “Wow!”, a “Hey!” and a “What do you know about that?” along with an assortment of grunts and murmurs, Canadians, by and large, being zealous guardians of their reputation for playing it cool.

Therese did go so far as to snap his picture again.

“Well, eh, isn’t this nice?” was Zilla’s contribution to the furore. “Thanks a lot, Mr. James, we’re greatly obliged to you.”

“On behalf of the disadvantaged citizens of Lobelia County and environs,” Dittany added smartly before some lamebrain could start gabbling about buried treasure.

“You’d better zip on over to Arethusa ‘s and get washed up for tea, Mr. James. I’ll ride with you if you don’t mind. I have to talk with her for about thirty seconds on a matter of museum business, then she’s going to bake you some scones. With currants.”

“Currants?”

A moue of distaste flickered for barely a trice across Pollicot’s normally bland countenance. Aha, thought Dittany, a potential rift in the lute. Once Arethusa had got Pollicot to map the water mains and decided she couldn’t stand having him underfoot any longer, she had only to start putting currants into everything she fed him. Arethusa herself wouldn’t find the ruse any sacrifice, she could eat currants till the cows came home.

But currants were hardly germane to the present issue.

What counted here and now was that Hiram Jellyby’s spring had been found. Now if Zilla could only keep all those treasure seekers from digging too close to where the gold must be! Dittany hadn’t thought of the possible ramifications, but she’d darned well better think of them now.

Arethusa would have to manage entirely on her own.

Abruptly, she said to Pollicot, “I’m sorry, Mr. James, I’ve just thought of something, I need to stop at my house.

You won’t mind going on to Arethusa ‘s without me, will you? Just drop me at the corner of Apple wood Avenue.”

“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Monk, I don’t mind a bit.”

No doubt he meant it, currants or no currants. He even offered to drive Dittany straight to her door but she said, “Never mind, it’s the first house in,” and jumped out before he could go around and open the car door for her, as he assuredly would have done if she’d given him half a chance.

By the time Pollicot got rolling again, Dittany was already home and sounding the alarm. “Osbert, you’d better get out there.”

“Out where, darling?” Osbert had obviously been spending some quality time with his family, there were empty nursing bottles on the kitchen table and a twin on his lap. “What’s happening?”

“Look at this.” She thrust the platinum print under his nose. “That’s Hiram Jellyby, it says so on the back. And Zilla says so too. So he really did exist. So does the spring, Polly James just dowsed it. And we’ve got a slew of people out there digging and I’m not sure Zilla can keep them away from the spring, and I think this is a case for Deputy Monk.”

“Darling, you do? Then here, take Annie. Rennie’s asleep in his crib. He was awake when she was asleep and then he went to sleep and she woke up and you don’t mind, do you, dear? Maybe you’d better call the sergeant.”

“I’m not sure whether-” Dittany was beginning, but Osbert was already out the door and making excellent time down Cat Alley. He was probably right, at that. This could well be a two-man job if the wrong person happened to dig up that boxful of gold. She gave Annie a kiss and picked up the telephone.

Crime couldn’t be very rife in Lobelia Falls just now, Sergeant Mac Vicar sounded as if he might have been taking a little snooze in his chair. He woke up fast enough, though, when he heard who was on the line.

“Ah, Dittany lass. How are the wee bairns?”

“Fine. Listen. Osbert’s off to the community garden and he said I’d better call you, just in case.”

“Oh, aye? In case of what?”

“In case the wrong person digs up the gold. Pollicot James just dowsed the spring and we have documentary evidence* that Hiram Jellyby existed.”

“Have you indeed?”

“He was alive and driving mules on October 2, 1889,”

Dittany replied impatiently. It was not like Sergeant MacVicar to be so obtuse. “Sergeant, don’t you think you’d better quit making idle conversation and get over there before people start banging Osbert with their shovels? I’d go back myself if I had anybody to leave the twins with.”

Aye.

The line went dead, the sergeant was on his way. Dittany relaxed and wondered why she’d developed a craving for cookies. Then she realized that, what with one thing and another, she’d never got around to eating any lunch and that somehow the time had worked itself around to half past three. Maybe a small cheese sandwich would tide her over till suppertime.

Now she was going to worry about whether Osbert would wind up having to sit out there all night guarding the spring. Or had she better worry instead about whether Osbert was already digging up the gold and setting off a riot? First, the sandwich. She’d got Annie snuggled down and was cutting bread and cheese for herself when not one but two Mac Vicars knocked and came into the kitchen.

“Officer Bob’s minding the desk,” said Margaret Mac Vicar. “I’m going to stay here with the twins while you take Donald out to Hunnikers’ Field and tell him what’s going on. Are they fed and changed?”

“Yes, Osbert fed them. Rennie’s asleep and I just put Annie in her basket. Maybe you ought to go with the sergeant instead of me. We’ve never left the babies with anybody before.”

Margaret MacVicar was an eminently sensible woman.

“Dittany, I have raised three sons and babysat seven grandchildren.

I know all about babies. I know nothing about this latest mess you’re dragging Donald into. Go.”

a riot or even a melee in Hunnikers’ Field. Most of those who’d come to find hidden treasure were still digging in the wrong places. Only a few were standing around watching Osbert enlarge the hole that Pollicot James had begun and these were behaving themselves, partly because they were generally nice people and partly because Zilla was standing guard with her hatchet.

Excitement was not altogether lacking, however. Water was seeping into the hole, enough to fill a teakettle, then enough to splash in, then enough to provide drinks for a team of thirsty mules. Surely this must be the spring where Hiram Jellyby had discovered the gold that had got him into such a pickle with the Akashic Record. Dittany could feel it in her bones.

Which reminded her, nobody had dug up Hiram’s bones yet, although one diligent delver had found what appeared to be part of a buffalo skull and another had unearthed a tin pannikin that was long past any earthly use, unless Therese might have a spot for it in one of her artistic flower arrangements. But Osbert wasn’t finding anything except water. Maybe Dittany’s bones were playing her false. Maybe this wasn’t the place at all. Maybe this spring was just one of many. Her stomach was beginning to knot itself up again, the way it had a little while ago when she’d been waiting for the dowsing rod to dip.

Then suddenly Osbert quit shoveling dirt from the waterhole and began feeling around gingerly with the tip of his borrowed spade. “I think I’ve hit something.”

The words came out in a kind of prayerful whisper. He bent down and began scraping the dirt away a bit at a time until he could catch sight of whatever it was that the shovel had struck.

It was a box, an old box from the look of it, covered in canvas that might once have been white but was now the color of mud. Not a particularly large box, perhaps about the size of a crate of canned peaches. Zilla kicked off her shoes, jumped down into the water hole, and began using her hatchet blade as a scraper to free the lid while Osbert worked to loosen the dirt around the other side.

People were beginning to notice what was going on, to drop their picks and shovels and rush to the scene of the action, to be caught by Sergeant MacVicar’s basilisk eye and fall back meekly to a respectful distance. Zilla was flinging out the dirt in a steady stream, clearly itching to get her hands on the box. Once the top was free, she lost patience and tugged at the lid. It wouldn’t budge.

“What’s got into the thing? It can’t be locked. Hir-“

She caught herself just in time. “Here, Osbert, you try.”

“Zilla, I’m not sure this is-” Osbert too made a quick recovery. “Whether this is locked or just stuck. Lend me your hatchet, will you?”

Using the tail of his shirt, to Dittany’s chagrin, he rubbed at the spot from which, according to Hiram Jellyby’s tale as repeated by Zilla, the lock ought to have been knocked off a century ago. The lock was however still in place, not rusty, just tarnished; not broken, but whole.

Osbert was good at locks; he whipped out his trusty Boy Scout knife and jimmied this one with only a small amount of difficulty and that little due mainly to the dirt that had been clogging the keyhole.

Even as he released the catch, however, Osbert was puzzling. Here was a curious anomaly. The box, which was actually a small trunk, had turned up just where Hiram had said it was. It was the proper size as far as a person could tell who hadn’t been around long enough to know the exact dimensions of the crates that canned peaches had come in a century ago. It had the right kind of cover, but the cover was in oddly good repair considering its presumed centurylong proximity to the spring. The iron bands Hiram had mentioned were not present, Osbert could see no sign that they ever had been. On the other hand, there were ornamental brass doodads at the corners-doodads was probably not the correct term for them, but it was the best one Osbert could think of in the confusion of the moment-that Hiram hadn’t mentioned at all.

But this was no time for pondering. An inexperienced ghost couldn’t be expected to remember details with any great degree of accuracy and the cries of “Open it” were mounting to a crescendo. Osbert moved back and, with as courtly a bow as he could manage without falling into the water hole, gave Zilla the honor of raising the lid.

The hinges still held and still worked, albeit a trifle stiffly as was only to be expected. There was a mass holding of breath among the onlookers as she pushed the lid back, and a mass whooshing of exhales as she reached in to dislodge the crumple of brown canvas that hid whatever might be lying inside. Instinctively, everybody took a giant step forward, nor did Sergeant MacVicar glare at anyone for having done so. His eyes, like all the others’, were on the box.

And well they might have been. The box was packed solid, not with antique gold pieces but with heavy sacks covered in clear plastic. And inside the sealed sacks were small packets, many of them, each sealed up in its own little Zip-locked plastic bag. And inside each little bag was a neat stack some three inches thick. And these stacks appeared to be made up entirely of crisp, clean, Canadian one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Well, flip me for a pancake!”

Zilla Trott had clearly voiced the mood of the gathering.