“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.”
28
bat-poop breeze
“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—”
Brian interrupted. “You were thinking about glue, so you decided to make soup?”
“Yes,” said Bruce Bain.
Brian’s mom came in through the back door, tipped her head back and sniffed.
“Mmm. What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“It’s one of dad’s science experiments,” Brian said.
“It smells delicious!” Mrs. Bain always praised her husband’s cooking, no matter what.
“Look,” said Mr. Bain, “I can insert the spoon into the soup and the viscosity holds it straight up and down. Remarkable!”
Mrs. Bain said, “Hmm. When will this viscous concoction be ready to eat?”
Mr. Bain tried to take out the spoon and nearly lifted the entire pot off the stove. Holding the pot down with one hand, he extracted the spoon with a tremendous sucking sound.
“I might need to thin it down a little,” he said. “Give me ten minutes.”
Smiling and shaking her head, Mrs. Bain began to set the table.
“Hey, Mom,” Brian said. “You know that cave?”
“You didn’t go in there again, did you?” she said as she set out three plates and three soup bowls.
“No! But it’s not there anymore.”
Mrs. Bain stopped what she was doing. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody blew it up.”
Mrs. Bain put on her stern, efficient detective face and waited for more.
“Roni and I went up to Indian Bluff this morning to . . . to look for Indian artifacts.”
Mrs. Bain raised one eyebrow and crossed her arms.
“And while we were there, we heard this explosion. We went to check it out, and the cave was gone. The entrance is completely collapsed.”
“I see.”
“It was, like, dynamited or something.”
“Dynamited?” She frowned. “How do you know it didn’t just cave in?”
“It was really loud.”
“Hmm. Maybe the contractor was getting a head start on the development. I’ll have to call Bob Necropoli, our forensics expert. He was planning to drive down from St. Paul to take a look at that skeleton you saw. I suppose we’ll have to wait until next week and get an excavation crew. We can find out then whether the cave-in was natural or not.”
“Next week is too late! They’re going to bulldoze the bluff on Friday!”
“I don’t see how the one thing affects the other.”
“They’ll be ripping into the bluff. They could cause the entire cave to collapse!”
Mrs. Bain took a moment to digest that, then shook her head wearily. “We’ll just have to take a chance on that. Mayor Berglund will pop a blood vessel if we halt construction on his pet project. As for the skeleton, from what you’ve told me it was quite old. I don’t see what difference a few days will make.”
“But Mom, Dr. Dart thinks the whole bluff is really important! It could be a burial ground or something.”
Mrs. Bain was shaking her head in a way that Brian knew meant he had hit a brick wall.
“Just a second,” he said, and he ran up to his room. He was back half a minute later with the turkey tail. “Dr. Dart gave me this. He found it in the cave. It’s really old and valuable.”
Mrs. Bain took the stone and examined it, then gave Brian a look he did not like at all. “We got a call a little while ago from the college,” she said. “They called to report the theft of a valuable artifact from the college’s collection.”
Brian had a bad, bad feeling.
Mrs. Bain said, “The woman who called said the missing item was a type of projectile point called a turkey tail, and that it was last seen in the possession of a boy named Aston LaRue.” She placed the stone carefully beside her soup bowl. “I don’t suppose you know Mr. LaRue?”
Roni, sitting at her computer, frowned at the list on her screen.
Lie down in front of the bulldozers
Chain self to tree on bluff
Threaten to jump off bluff if they start bulldozing
Pull up all surveyor’s stakes so they don’t know where to dig
Kidnap Eric Bloodwater
Was there anything there that would work? None of the tactics she imagined would do more than delay the development for a few hours. Kidnapping Eric might slow them down for a few days, but eventually she would get caught and thrown in jail and they’d build the condos anyway. Violence, vandalism and self-sacrifice would not solve the problem—but what else was available to her?
She typed another list.
Information
Imagination
Intelligence
Persuasiveness
Those were her tools. With the right Information she could use her Imagination, Intelligence and Persuasiveness to persuade them to stop—or at least delay—the ground breaking on Friday. But who was “them”? Who had the power to stop the bulldozers?
She opened a new document and began a third list.
Fred Bloodwater
Buddy Berglund
Bloodwater College
The Bloodwater Police
Roni stared at each of her lists, clicking from window to window, waiting for inspiration. She kept going back to the middle list, her list of tools. She couldn’t make herself any more Intelligent or Persuasive—not by Friday—but she could use her Imagination to get more Information.
It sucks being a kid, Brian thought. He laced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the hundreds of Pokémon cards glued to the ceiling of his bedroom.
If he were an adult, they would have to listen to him. Not that his mom didn’t listen—but she didn’t listen. Sure, she believed him when he told her that Dr. Dart had given him the turkey tail. And she had believed him about the skeleton in the cave. And she half believed him when he told her somebody had caved-in the cave on purpose.
What she didn’t believe was how important it was. She thought the bulldozers were no big deal, and that he was getting hysterical over nothing. She heard what he was saying, b
ut she just didn’t get it.
Because he was a kid. And because she hadn’t taken a solemn oath with her hand on the skull of a long-dead Indian. His hand still remembered the smooth, moisture-sucking dryness of that old yellow skull.
He scowled at the cards stuck to his ceiling. When he’d been about eight years old, he’d had the idea to glue all his Pokémon cards up there. He had borrowed his dad’s glue gun, hauled a stepladder up to his room and started gluing. When his mom had seen what he had done, she had said, “You’re the one who’s going to have to look at them every night for the next ten years, kiddo.”
Stupid Pokémon cards.
He closed his eyes and thought about all the skulls he had seen. The petrified skull of a dinosaur. The skull and crossbones on a pirate’s flag. The skull of a tiger with its three-inch teeth. What would be really cool, he thought—better than Pokémon—would be skull cards. Cards with the skulls of famous people and interesting animals. Like anteaters. What would the skull of an anteater look like? Or a bat. Bats probably have really cool skulls.
Bats.
What about the bats?
A sick feeling hit him right in the stomach. He imagined the thousands of bats trapped in the cave slowly starving to death. How long could a bat go without food? He imagined them dropping from the ceiling, one by one. Plop. Plop.
Plop.
Maybe the bats weren’t trapped. They would need only the tiniest crack. Maybe they could squeeze out past the rubble.
He remembered standing up there staring at the pile of rock where the cave entrance had collapsed. It had looked as if the entire passage had collapsed in on itself. He didn’t think there were any cracks at all.
Then he thought about the first time he had stood on that ledge looking into the cave. He had felt a cool breeze coming from the cave’s mouth. A bat-poop-scented breeze.
Brian sat up in bed.
The bat-poop breeze! If air came rushing out of the cave, it had to be getting in somehow.
Somewhere on Indian Bluff was a second entrance to the cave.
29
information
Roni opened her favorite search engine and typed in “Eric Bloodwater.”
Nothing.
She tried “Poophead.” Nine thousand forty-six hits.
“Fred Bloodwater” produced only a few articles from the Bloodwater Clarion—the same old news items about the development.
That was odd.
Eric had told her that his dad had done all sorts of developments. If that were true, she should have gotten more hits. Developers usually made the local news.
She tried entering his name as “Frederick Bloodwater.” No hits.
F. Bloodwater. Nope.
She tried Frederico, Fredwick and Freddie. Zippo, nada, zilch.
She sat back in her chair and thought hard. Had Eric been lying about his dad’s real estate experience? It seemed unlikely that Fred Bloodwater’s name hadn’t popped up anywhere. She wondered if the city council had checked out his background before investing all that money with him.
She found her mother watching Antiques Roadshow and eating popcorn in the den. Roni helped herself to a handful of popcorn.
“They just valued a pre-Civil War slave quilt at a hundred thousand dollars,” Nick said. “Maybe we have something like that in the basement.”
“Are we descended from slaves?”
“I don’t think so. Oh! Would you look at that vase!” She grabbed Roni’s arm. “It’s so ugly, it has to be Lalique.”
Roni extracted her arm from her mother’s grasp. Nick could get a little weird during Antiques Roadshow.
“Nick, I just did an Internet search for Fred Bloodwater and—”
“Those Lalique vases can be worth tens of thousands of dollars.”
“I am on the edge of my seat,” Roni said in a flat robot voice.
Nick laughed. “Gimme a break, kiddo. I have to listen to that stuff you call music.” She looked at her daughter. “Did you need something?”
“Yes. I was wondering if anybody checked into Fred Bloodwater. I mean, I couldn’t find anything about him on the Net. Did anybody do a background check on him?”
“There was no need, dear. The man had a suitcase full of news clippings about himself and his company, as well as several letters of recommendation. One of the letters was from the governor of California! Besides, he’s a Bloodwater. Why do you ask?”
“Because—”
Nick gasped and grabbed Roni’s arm again. “It’s a counterfeit! The poor woman thought she had a fifty-thousand-dollar vase and it turns out to be a fake!”
“You’re hurting my arm, Nick.”
“Oh!” Nick released her. “Sorry. I just get upset when I see that. There are so many frauds and liars in this world. I’m sorry, dear, what were you asking me?”
“Never mind,” Roni said as a new thought struck her. “I’ll get back to you.”
Brian reached the bluff road just as the sun disappeared below the horizon. Several large yellow machines were lined up along the dirt road—two bulldozers, a backhoe, a road grader and two dump trucks. Tomorrow morning they would be tearing up the bluff. All that weight and vibration might cause the caverns in the bluff to collapse. Tonight was his last chance to put a stop to the development.
He walked his bike to the edge of the precipice, sat down and looked out over the shadowed river valley. If they built those condos, whoever bought them would have a spectacular view.
“Fancy meeting you here!” It was Jillian Greystone.
Startled, Brian jumped straight up.
She stepped toward him, and her hand clamped hard on his arm.
30
bat patrol
“Careful! It’s a long ways down,” said Jillian.
“What . . . what are you doing here?” Brian asked.
“Trespassing, same as you.” She released his arm. “Actually, I thought I’d take one last look around, since Andrew isn’t able to do it for himself.” She kicked one of the orange-flagged surveyor’s stakes. “After tomorrow this will all be torn up.”
“Did you find anything?”
Jillian shook her head. “Not even a piece of pottery. And certainly not a turkey tail.” She gave him a hard look. “It seems you have the only one in Bloodwater.”
“Not anymore. My mom took it.”
“I hope she is planning to return it to the college.”
Brian nodded.
Jillian smiled. “Good. I really don’t know what Andrew was thinking. I’m lucky I found out how obsessive he was before I went ahead and married him.” She kicked at the dirt. “Indian Bluff—what a joke! You know, nearly all the bluffs in the area have—or rather, had—burial mounds or other signs of Native American presence, but not this one.” She laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it? That they named it Indian Bluff?”
“I guess so.”
“And what about you, Aston LaRue? What are you doing up here? Looking for another turkey tail?”
For a few seconds, Brian considered telling her about his theory, but he decided he couldn’t trust her.
“Just hanging,” Brian said, giving her his best all-purpose answer. Jillian seemed to accept it.
“I’m heading back,” she said. “It’s getting too dark to see much. Do you need a lift?”
“No, thanks.”
As soon as Jillian was out of sight, Brian felt the confidence drain out of him. Suddenly his great idea did not seem so great. The other entrance to the cave could be fifty feet away, or half a mile. And even if he found it, the opening might be too small for him to squeeze through.
But not too small for a bat.
Brian slowly turned in a circle, scanning the sky. It was still light out, but growing darker by the minute.
A flicker of movement caught his eye—but it was only a bird.
He kept searching, rotating like a radar dish. Again he saw something in the air, but it disappeared into the coulee. There. A black shape fluttered
by like a scrap of crepe paper in a whirlwind, in and out of sight in a heartbeat. Definitely a bat. But where had it come from?
A few seconds later, he saw another one. It had seemed to come from down in the coulee. Brian turned his attention in that direction.
There was still light in the sky, but in the shadows of the coulee it was as dark as night. Brian switched on his flashlight and lowered himself down a tumbled slope of mossy boulders. Every few seconds he stopped and shone his light around, hoping to see a bat emerge from some crack or crevice.
In the end, it was his ears, not his eyes, that led him on. A faint chittering and squeaking drew him into a treacherous tangle of fallen trees and slippery boulders. He recognized the enormous boulder he’d been standing on when the cave had been dynamited. He circled the boulder, moved farther down the coulee, then stopped and listened again.
Now the high-pitched sounds seemed to be coming from above him. He started back up, going around the boulder on the opposite side, but was blocked by a second boulder almost as large as the first. Could he fit between them? He sent the beam of his flashlight into the space between the boulders and was startled by two bats coming straight at his face.
He let out a yelp and ducked. He could hear the whisper of the bats’ wings as they skimmed over his head.
Making his way around the smaller boulder, Brian climbed onto it from the uphill side, lay on his belly and shined his light straight down into the opening. It was a zigzag crack about four feet long by a little more than a foot wide—big enough to squeeze into—but from what he could see, the shaft dropped straight down, like a well. Easy to get into, but not so easy to climb back out of.
He watched several more bats emerge in ones and twos, then took out his dad’s cell phone and punched in Roni’s number.
31
back door
Roni began by Googling Eric’s secret name, “Fenton Bloodwater.”
Zero hits. She tried entering just “Fenton” and got 2,600,000 hits, too many to sort through.
The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery Page 9