Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  At the moment I had something else in mind. I knew Kathy from somewhere even if she didn’t remember me, and I wanted to dig a little deeper.

  Although I had the odd feeling it might be more that she didn’t want to remember me.

  Chapter 2

  IVY

  Kathy had put on glasses and changed into leggings and a tunic decorated with somersaulting kitties when she returned to the living room. She was toweling her hair dry, and the swingy auburn bob had a nice shine. If I’d had that kind of result with hair coloring, maybe I’d be tempestuous titian instead of possum gray.

  “Brian knows I color my hair, of course, but I always take care of the actual process while he’s not around.” Kathy laughed. “It’s like when I make smoothies for him. I never let him see me put in the kale. He hates kale. But it’s good for him, and he never realizes it’s there. Coffee or tea? It’s no bother,” she added quickly, as if anticipating my response.

  “Tea would be nice.” I went into the kitchen to join her.

  Kathy put the almond milk in the refrigerator and pulled several cartons of tea from a cupboard. “Is this a full-time job with you and your husband, traveling around doing articles about interesting places?” she asked as she filled a copper kettle and put it on the stove.

  “Mac started doing it mostly because it was a good reason to keep traveling all around the country. He’s also very good at it and enjoys it.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful to have a competent husband? Brian has such creative ideas and big-thinking concepts. He knows so much about computers and can do so much with them. He opened ours up and fixed something inside last week.” She frowned. “But luck does seem to play such an unfair part in so many situations.”

  I wondered what that meant. “Creative ideas” and “big-thinking concepts” didn’t seem necessary to manage what appeared to be a rather run-down dinosaur park. Was that part of the unfairness of luck? Or maybe the stack of pamphlets from other parks and that sketch of a dinosaur with a basket for riders meant Brian had bigger things in mind for the park?

  “Actually, right now we’re looking for a good place to settle down and live,” I said.

  “What kind of place?”

  I told her what Mac and I had already discussed. “Not too big but not too small. Not too cold but not too hot.” I didn’t mention another requirement. No murders or dead bodies. “Just some place comfortable and friendly, with nice weather.”

  “I love it here. But I guess I mentioned that, didn’t I? We’re not far from the beach, and I like to go over there and pick up shells and rocks. There are awesome flowers out in the park in the spring.”

  “Some people might think you’re rather isolated here. No close neighbors at all.”

  “That’s true. But I’m not into gossipy clubs and playing bridge and all that, so it’s fine with me.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  “A year or so.”

  “You mentioned you don’t go out in the park much—?”

  “Well . . . I don’t.” She took an almost furtive peek out the kitchen window and then laughed. “I know it sounds foolish, but the dinosaurs and even some of the huge plants out there feel so . . . hostile. Once I even thought I saw one of the ghost goats. A mean-looking old billy goat with big horns staring at me out of the brush. And there’s a cliff on the far side of the park. The only time I was up there I kept thinking that old goat might shove me right off the cliff.” She laughed and twirled a finger against her head to suggest her mind might be a little wonky with such thoughts. “But don’t mention any of this to your husband, okay? I wouldn’t want anything about aggressive ghost goats in his article for the magazine. Brian thinks I’m ridiculous.” She laughed. “Just wait until one of them butts him and I’m saying, ‘See? I told you so.’ I think his attachment to the Porsche is a little ridiculous too. It’s just four wheels and expensive insurance, but he waxes and polishes that thing more often than I color my hair.” She laughed again, but I had the feeling this might be a point of real contention between them.

  “Do you enjoy working in the gift shop?”

  “Oh yes, that’s fun. I have a Dolly Dinosaur costume with a frilly apron and a horn that makes a foghorn beeping sound. The kids love it. I still have some of my ghost goat and dinosaur cupcakes in the freezer. Would you like one with your tea?”

  “That would be great.”

  She pulled a plastic-wrapped carton of cupcakes out of a chest-type freezer under a kitchen window. “They’re popular with our gift shop customers in the summer.”

  The cupcakes were delightful, each one topped with a frosting figure of a dinosaur or goat. I pointed to a purple one with a thick tail. “That looks good.”

  She put my cupcake on a plate and popped it in the microwave for thawing and warming.

  “You’re not having one?”

  She planted a hand on a generously padded hip. “Do I look as if I need a dinosaur on my hip? I have been on—and off—every diet known to womankind since I was a teenager. Although if you know of a good new one, I’m always open to suggestions.” Her eyebrows lifted hopefully.

  I’ve always been on the petite side (well, okay, to be technical, more like scrawny) and never needed to diet, but, since I popped a seam on my wedding dress, perhaps I’ll soon have to start thinking about one.

  I dismissed the subject of weight and diets. Kathy looked healthy and energetic, although I noticed a string of prescription medications lined up at the back of the kitchen counter. Hers or Brian’s? I studied her again. “You know, you do look so familiar. I’m sure we know each other from somewhere.”

  She didn’t ask questions or offer suggestions about where that may have been. She simply rejected any possibility with another shake of head. “I have one of those ordinary faces and overweight bodies you see everywhere,” she declared. “Crowds are full of us. A few weeks ago I was approached by a teenage girl in Eureka who thought I was an aunt she hadn’t seen for a while.”

  “Where did you and Brian live before you came to the dinosaur park?”

  “Oh, here and there. Texas. Southern California. Actually, we haven’t been married all that long.”

  “Really? I’d have taken you for a long-married couple.”

  “No, just a few years.”

  I was curious that she wasn’t more specific. What woman isn’t proudly aware of exactly how many years she’s been married? And the anniversary date as well.

  “How about you and Mac?” she asked. “Have you had your fiftieth anniversary yet?”

  I was flattered that we looked like a couple wed fifty years, but I had to admit we were somewhat short of that. “Actually, we’re newlyweds. We haven’t even had a one-month anniversary yet.”

  She gave me a surprised inspection. “Really? Congratulations! So how come you’re here instead of honeymooning in some place moonlit and romantic?” She sounded mildly indignant.

  “Honeymoon is a state of mind, not a place.” It was a spur-of-the-moment thought, not some noble philosophy I’d arrived at after deep consideration. But I decided I should keep reminding myself of the thought on this dinosaur detour.

  “I like that. But we did have the most marvelous honeymoon in Tahiti.” She touched her fingertips together, and her smile was almost rhapsodic. “Brian’s idea. He’s such a romantic.”

  Mac and I hadn’t been able to leave Mac’s son’s place in Montana for a honeymoon as soon after our wedding as we’d planned. Mac had a bad head injury just before the wedding, and the doctor insisted he stick around until the danger of seizures was past. And now, of course, we were on this dinosaur detour. “You’re sure we’ve never met? The Dallas area in Texas?”

  “No. I haven’t been to that part of Texas.”

  “Maybe it was an RV park somewhere.”

  “We’ve never had an RV.”

  “I was in Arkansas before Texas. My niece lives there. And then Oklahoma?”r />
  She shook her head again and offered me a selection of teas. I chose orange spice. She poured water from the kettle over the tea bag in a cup and changed the subject. “Where are you going after you leave here?”

  “Arizona. Maybe the Bullhead City area. Or Yuma. Perhaps we knew each other before I ever left home back in Missouri,” I persisted. “Madison Street?”

  “No, I’ve never been to Missouri.”

  I was still curious, of course, but I sensed a definite chilling in Kathy’s friendly attitude and, a bit reluctantly, I dropped the inquiry. I broke off the dinosaur’s head and tasted it. “This is really good.”

  “Thank you. I make everything from scratch, not a mix. I do dinosaur and goat cookies too, but they’re all gone. I’ll start baking them again when the park opens in the spring.”

  “Being Dolly Dinosaur sounds like fun. Where do you get a dinosaur costume?”

  “I make my own. I’m working on a new one right now. But what I’d really like to have is a baby dinosaur puppet. Brian and I went to this exhibit that travels around the country and has an awesome display of all kinds of dinosaurs. Unlike our dinosaurs, these move. Heads, tails, legs, everything! And they roar.”

  “They didn’t feel hostile to you?”

  “Oh, no. Maybe I’ll try to make a baby dinosaur myself.”

  I admired her talents, but I was more interested in Kathy herself. Not asking nosy questions is difficult for someone with what a law officer friend once rather grumpily called my mutant curiosity gene.

  I was still sure I knew her from somewhere, and her stiff insistence we hadn’t met simply agitated that gene. Why didn’t she at least want to explore the possibility we may have known each other at some earlier time?

  MAC

  Brian Morrison led the way across the parking lot to the gate into the fenced area. A ticket booth with another Closed sign stood beside the gate. He pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock. The swing of the tall gate jiggled the overhanging foliage, which showered the back of my neck.

  “The fence isn’t to keep the dinosaurs in, of course. They’re a rather docile herd. We haven’t had any problems since I’ve been here, but Duke says in the past he had trouble with vandalism and graffiti. So he finally had the front and part of the sides of the park fenced in. The back part of it is so steep that a fence didn’t seem necessary.”

  I picked out the name he’d mentioned before. “Duke?”

  “Duke Lancaster. He owns the dinosaur park.” Brian motioned to the travel trailer set back in the woods at the end of the parking lot. “He managed the park himself for years, after he inherited it from his uncle Hiram, but he doesn’t get around too well now. Nice old guy, but, you know, set in his ways. Behind the times.”

  Ghost Goat Dinosaur Park didn’t have a website, but I’d run across the Hiram Lancaster name when I researched the park earlier. Hiram had started the park years ago. I’d assumed Brian managed the park for current out-of-area owners, and the information that the owner lived right here was a pleasant surprise. “Can I meet Duke?”

  “I’ll have to check and see what kind of day he’s having. He has to take pain pills and sometimes his mind gets a little—” Brian’s wavy wiggle of fingers suggested Duke’s mental processes might also have some squiggly areas. “Great guy, though. He’s dedicated a lot of years to the park.”

  Brian held the gate open, and I stepped onto the walkway leading through the jungled growth.

  “Be careful of the puddle,” Brian warned.

  Right. A muddy puddle nearly straddled the pathway. The winding path, outlined with a rather prim white picket fence that was at odds with the dinosaur statues and rough, tangled foliage, had an occasional narrow log bridge more in tune with the lush vegetation. The ground outside the path was rough and steep, cut with ravines and covered with fir and pines and brush. Big ferns lined the pathway, and exotic-looking, shoulder-high plants with oversized leaves filled the ravines. Water trickled under them. The air smelled of damp growth. Vines clambered over boulders and big trees fallen long ago. The skeleton of a dead tree loomed on the hillside. We paused on a log bridge with water visible below. Brian puffed from the climb.

  “That’s Hungry Man Creek.” Brian smiled. “I’m not sure if the name came from hard times in the early history of the area or if old Hiram named it from his own experiences. As you may have guessed, the park isn’t a big moneymaker.”

  The brontosaurus—a plaque identified it—stood close by, but all I could see of it through the overgrown foliage was its feet at the bottom and that towering neck above. “Are all the plants here native to the area?”

  “I don’t think so. I think Hiram brought in some exotic plants to make the park look more dinosaur-era authentic.”

  He’d certainly succeeded in that. The area outside the park was thickly forested, with heavy undergrowth, but the park itself looked like something out of a Jurassic Park movie. Except for that incongruous picket fence. I asked about it, and Brian said all he knew was that old Hiram had built it that way and Duke hadn’t changed it. I gave a prolific species of plant with enormous leaves along the creek a wary glance. “I hope none of this vegetation is of a man-eating variety.”

  Brian laughed. “Me too. Although we get an occasional park visitor that I’d be happy to toss to a hungry plant. Those big plants down by the creek may look as if they came from some exotic jungle, and I tell tourists it’s cabbai giganticus. Actually, it’s skunk cabbage, native to the area. Which isn’t exactly exotic.” He sounded pleased with how he hoodwinked park visitors.

  We strolled along the path winding around the side of the hill. Brian puffed some more and stopped to catch his breath a couple times. I didn’t say anything, but it certainly looked to me as if Brian was shirking his duty taking care of the park. A little ditching with a shovel would drain the puddles on the path, and some prudent pruning would offer a better view of the dinosaurs. All I could see of one creature identified by a plaque as an Archelon, a giant turtle of the late Cretaceous period, was part of a huge, curved shell and one baleful eye.

  Perhaps Brian planned a big cleanup and repair job before reopening in the spring.

  “Were the dinosaurs constructed here, or were they moved in?”

  “Duke’s uncle Hiram built them right here. By himself. Though no one seems sure how he did it alone, especially that one with the long neck. I’ve heard he liked to tell people he just found these big eggs and hatched them out.” He laughed again. “Concrete eggs, I assume.”

  “That’s what the statues are, concrete?”

  “Duke says they’re concrete and wire over a metal framework underneath. Other dinosaur parks show much more realistic ones now. Kathy and I went to an exhibit last fall with movable dinosaurs. Much more interesting and exciting. I suppose I could add realistic sounds like they had at the exhibit, but here, with the dinosaur statues just standing around, sounds would probably just make them seem more unmovable than they are.”

  “Are they scientifically accurate?”

  “I think so. Full-size too. Although I’m not as knowledgeable as ol’ Duke about dinosaurs.”

  I wasn’t impressed with that area of his park management, either. Why didn’t he educate himself about dinosaurs and their lives so he could talk knowledgably with park visitors?

  “If the uncle wanted to attract tourists, he could have chosen a more accessible spot,” I suggested, as Ivy had earlier.

  “I’m not sure old Hiram cared much about tourist business. I think the dinosaurs were more a labor of love thing for him. A family trait, I guess, because Duke has them all named, as if they were pets.”

  I wasn’t into naming inanimate objects, but the brontosaurus back there—definitely a Benny.

  We followed the steep, winding trail through the park, past dinosaurs identified by a metal plaque for each. Many of the plaques were tilted or fallen. I set one upright that was lying face down on
the ground.

  “How big is the park?”

  “Four or five acres, something like that.”

  “Duke lives here alone? Except for you and your wife, I mean?”

  “Duke’s wife took off for parts unknown not long after he inherited the place. I guess she didn’t care for life among the dinosaurs and skunk cabbage. They didn’t have children, but Duke has a couple of nephews who live back East somewhere.”

  “Do they come visit?”

  “One was here a couple months ago. He said he might move out here after he retires. Duke also has a lady friend who visits and takes him for an occasional outing. She’s quite a bit younger than he is, but I guess you’d call her a girlfriend.”

  I jotted bits of information in a notebook I always keep in my shirt pocket. I’d have to make another trip through the park to take photos. Maybe bring a pair of clippers to get a better view of the dinosaurs.

  As we circled back to the starting point at the gate, Brian told me about a little girl who had found a big, slimy slug in the park. She thought it was a baby dinosaur and proudly handed it to her mother. Mom screeched and tossed it in the air. It landed in another woman’s hair.

  Brian smiled. “And let me tell you, you’ve never heard a shriek until you’ve heard one from a woman with a slug in her hair. Some visitors really enjoy the park, but others find it a waste of time. I heard one teenage girl say, ‘You see one of these dumb dinosaurs and you’ve seen ’em all. Bor-ing.’ In that tone only teenage girls can manage, of course.”

  He locked the gate again when we went out. “I’ll take Duke’s almond milk over to him and see how he feels about a visitor.”

  “Thanks.” Out of curiosity, never having even tasted almond milk, I had to ask, “Does Duke need a special diet?”

  “No. But Kathy says almond milk is better for him. She’s into all that health and diet stuff. A while back it was coconut oil and chia seeds for both herself and Duke. Personally, I’d rather have a good steak.”

  “That’s good of her to be concerned about his health.”