by Jamie Blair
"Probably for the best," he said, and headed to the tent with the photo.
The fire eater had given Roy her flaming stick thing, which was alarming. I jogged over to intervene. "He shouldn't have that," I said. "He's literally playing with fire. Next thing you know the tent is up in a ball of flames."
Roy waved the burning stick in my direction. "Always so dramatic, Cameron Cripps Hayman! Can't a man have a little fun without you raining on his parade?"
"Not when that man is you and your waving around a stick on fire! Give that back to her!"
"Roy, you old coot!" Johnna called, hustling up to help. "If you were fifty years younger that wouldn't be a good idea."
"You're just jealous," Roy said.
Ginger backed up and barked at the fire. She was afraid.
"Don't be scared, Gingie," he told her. "Daddy's learning a new trick."
"Daddy?" Johnna snorted. "More like grandpappy."
Ginger barked and whined.
"Okay, okay," Roy said, handing the fire stick back to the fire eater. "I don't want to upset my best girl."
He thanked the fire eater and approached Ginger. "All right now, it's okay." He bent down and cupped her face between his hands. "You want to go home and have some ice cream and watch Mash reruns?" She licked his cheek and he kissed her nose.
“First,” I said, pulling him aside so Johnna didn’t overhear, “you tell me what you know.”
Roy frowned and stuck his hands in his pockets. "So I talked to them fellas at the Cornerstone, and it wasn't what you and me wanted to hear."
My stomach sank. "What did they say?"
"There were a couple bones scattered on the ground and the one guy picked them up and tossed them in the dumpster. You know, he though they were bones from baby back ribs that got thrown away with dinner and the coons got into them."
"Maybe it was the raccoons. The body had some ribs missing."
"That don't explain what Soapy was doing out in the middle of the night cleaning out his shed, though, does it?" He shook his head and called to Johnna, "Take us home, Jeeves."
She pressed her lips together. "One of these days I'm going to dump your old bones in my trunk and accidentally forget you're back there."
"Cameron, you heard that," Roy called to me. "If I go missing, here's your first suspect."
Johnna chuckled. "Suspects would be lined up around the block if you went missing."
I watched them bicker all the way to Johnna's car, their dogs nipping and teasing each other as much as their owners.
14
I slept in the next morning having stayed up all night the one before. I'd painted faces until almost ten o'clock and Cass juggled her heart out. She was good, too. I knew she could play any string instrument she got her hands on, but her talents seemed to be many and varied. Andy came out when he got off work and was so surprised to see her performing alongside the fire eater, he got out his camera and started filming. I wasn't sure what direction his documentary was taking these days, but Metamora was filled with, well...as Steve would put it, odd and strange things to get on film.
Cass seemed to have renewed faith in his interest in her after that. Anyone could look good in a tight dress and heels, but Alexis Hartline didn't juggle on air.
"Look who's finally awake," Ben said, as I strolled into the kitchen.
"Yeah, what are you doing home?" I sniffed. "Wait. Is that coffee I smell?"
"I knew you'd want a cup when you got up."
I threw my arms around him. "You're the best."
He sniffed. "I know, I know. And the news will go better with coffee, anyway."
"News?" I didn't want news that had to be delivered with coffee.
"My mom and dad are coming home today."
"Today? They're supposed to be gone all week!"
"After Fiona's little breakdown yesterday, Mom thought it would be best to come home and manage things." Ben made air quotes around the words, manage things.
"Does that mean me? She's coming home to manage me?"
"I don't know what it means other than Ellsworth is getting picked up in a few hours."
"Oh, poor Liam will miss his little buddy." I glanced over to the couch where they were snuggled together taking a mid-morning snooze on a blanket.
"Maybe we should get a cat," Ben said. "You know, for Liam."
"For Liam, huh?" I rolled my eyes at him. "You're not fooling anybody."
"I'm not kidding. They were playing all evening. That cat thinks he's a dog. They were playing tug of war with one of Liam's bones."
"Irene said he thinks he's a dog. Guess she wasn't exaggerating."
"I need to get back to work," he said. "I'm hoping Pamela gets DNA results today."
"That would be fast. I thought that a DNA profile could take months to get back from a lab."
"With Pamela working with Franklin County, we got a rapid DNA test, but it'll take a lot longer to get the entire sequence."
"So this rapid one could tell you who the bones belong to?"
"It could tell us if they match anyone in the crime database."
"And if they don't?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," he said. "I'm not hoping for miracles, but one step at a time."
He gave me a kiss and headed for the front door. "I'll stop at the hardware store and get heavier wire mesh for the attic vent. I kept thinking I heard the raccoons in the attic again last night."
"I'll go up there today and see what kind of mess we're dealing with."
After he left, I poured myself a huge mug of coffee. Ellsworth was awake and stretching. I sat beside him and Liam's cuddle pile on the couch and pet them both. "What good boys you are. I hear you played together all last night."
It was nice for Liam to have someone his size to pal around with. I'd have to give some thought to getting a cat, or even another small dog. I knew as soon as the other dogs got home I'd stop considering it. They were a handful, and even I knew it would be crazy to get another pet.
"Hello!" Monica called from the foyer.
"In the family room," I said.
"Still in your pj's?" She plopped down on the couch beside me.
"I played catch up with sleep," I said. "What's on your agenda today?"
"Not a thing. Since Friday I've baked treats, I've painted, I've cleaned and unpacked. There are a million things I still need to do, but I'm not doing anything today. I'm taking the day off."
"Who's running Dog Diggity? Don't say Elaina."
"Elaina." She laughed. "Grandma Diggity is in charge."
"She's going to give away the farm. There won't be one treat or dog sweater left."
"She'll be okay. Old Dan's in there helping her."
"Both of them? That's the blind leading the blind. Speaking of Old Dan, that reminds me. I have to talk to my bees."
"Too bad they can't talk back. Maybe they can tell you something about those bones."
"I bet they could. The more I look into the Fiona angle, the more I get sidetracked down rabbit trails that lead me to the 1930's and I still have no proof of anything other than her having an in-ground pool. Anybody in this town could've dumped those bones in that trash can."
"You have been a little fixated on her," Monica said, flinching in preparation for my bad reaction.
"I know," I said, defeated. "I don't want to look into any other options."
"Do you have other options?" She gave me the side-eye. "I know you and Roy were up to something at the Cornerstone."
"Nothing I want to admit to myself." I still couldn't believe Soapy and Theresa had anything to do with this craziness.
"How about you run it by me and I'll tell you what I think."
I took a big chug of coffee and pinched my eyes closed, trying to make this situation go away.
"Cam?" Monica said. "Out with it."
"Okay, fine. I'll tell you, but you're sworn to secrecy."
"Roy knows and you're worried about me?"
"H
e won't breathe a word to anyone about this. It goes against every fiber of his being to look into this suspect."
"Who wouldn't he rat on? He's not loyal to anyone accept--" Her mouth dropped open in a gasp. "No. You can't be serious. Not Soapy?"
I told her the story of Ben and I finding him tossing things in his dumpster in the middle of the night, and what Roy found out.
She squinted her eyes in confusion. "So...what? He had a skeleton of some old guy hanging around in his shed and one night at three AM he decided it had to go and ran it over to the middle of town instead of popping it into his own dumpster? That makes no sense at all."
"The mayor can't have that old guy's bones in his dumpster. What if the trash men saw it?" I laid my head back on the couch cushion. "Which they did, anyway. He might not be a direct link to anything, but his activity is more suspicious than Fiona and Jim getting a pool."
We sat in silence for a couple minutes thinking, then Monica started to fidget. "Is this what you're planning on doing today? Sitting in your jammies driving yourself nuts trying to figure this out?"
"No, there's avoiding Irene who's coming home from her vacation early to manage me."
"What do you mean manage you?"
"I don't know, Ben said that after yesterday's tribunal fiasco that she felt she needed to be here to manage things."
"So your Daughter trouble isn't over after all."
"My Daughter trouble is never going to be over." I sat forward and stretched. "Other than that, I need to get up in the attic and see what kind of mess I'm dealing with from those raccoons that got inside."
"And here I was thinking we could do something fun today."
"What did you have in mind?" I asked.
"Maybe a trip over to Nashville? We could do some browsing in the shops and get dinner later."
Nashville was about an hour and a half west of Metamora. It was an art colony and tourist town filled with shops and bed and breakfasts. It was bigger than our town, but still less than one thousand people.
"I don't know, Mon. I was hoping for a day spent lounging around the house, maybe doing a load or two of laundry."
"Well, ride along with me anyway. I need to pick up some samples from a woman in Nashville. She makes leather pet collars and tags that are really amazing from what I've seen online. You don't even have to get dressed or get out of the car."
I groaned. "All right, but first you're helping me in the attic."
"Fine," she said standing up and grasping my arm. "Let's get this over with. If we hurry, we can get to Nashville by two."
Liam and Ellsworth jumped down from the couch and followed along behind us as we trotted up the stairs.
"He likes that cat, doesn't he?" Monica asked, watching them.
"He does. He doesn't seem to miss the other dogs with Ellsworth around."
"Don't get any ideas," she said. "We're not keeping your pack of misfits."
"Are they behaving for Quinn?"
"He says they're doing really well, especially Colby and Jack."
"No way! Those two are doing well? I figured they'd be running around wild and distracting Gus."
"No. Gus is doing good too, but Quinn says Colby and Jack are really taking to the agility course."
"Wonders never cease."
I reached for the attic door and paused. "I don't want to know what those little buggers did up there."
"It's probably worse in your mind than in reality," Monica said, turning the doorknob and opening it for me. "Let's go look."
I followed her up the stairs into the attic. It was already getting warm up there. In the summer it was like a sauna.
"That's where they come in," I said, pointing to the vent. There was a hole in the screen Ben had put up.
"Looks like there's some insulation torn out of that wall over there," she said, pointing to the far wall. "It's all piled up like a nest."
"There better not be babies over there.” I slowly crossed to the gathered pink fiberglass insulation.
"I don't see any," Monica said, beside me. "They have some clutter over by that box."
To my right there were a few stacked boxes of old Christmas decorations that were most likely older than I was. On the floor there was a gold angel, a couple broken red glass ornaments, and a few white ceramic things that looked like icicles.
"Not too bad," Monica said. "They didn't really tear anything up or leave you a nasty mess."
"No, not bad," I agreed, kneeling to pick up the Christmas decorations. I put the angel back in the box and began collecting the icicles. I'd have to come back up with a broom for the broken ornaments. "Mon, take a look at these icicles," I said. "I thought they were ceramic, but I think they're ivory maybe."
She came over and I handed her one. She turned it back and forth, studying it. Then she squealed and tossed it half way across the attic. "Cameron! Those aren't icicles! They're bones! Rib bones, or finger bones--some kind of bones!"
I dropped the ones in my hand. "Oh, good gravy. I think we found the rest of our mystery man."
15
The bones in the attic put a damper on our trip to Nashville. We called Ben and he came home and waited with us until Walter and Pamela could come and collect them. In the meantime, I'd changed out of my jammies and made myself presentable and the three of us sat around the kitchen table.
"The raccoons must have brought the bones here from the park," Ben said. "The little plague spreaders. I'm surprised everyone in this town isn't sick."
"They aren't spreading the plague," I said. "That was rats in London or New York or somewhere. Anyway, we have antibiotics now."
"Carl made me chase them out of the church basement," Ben said. "You know how I feel about basements."
He hated basements. I figured with Irene as his mom, she probably locked him in the basement when we was a kid and traumatized him for life.
Who was I kidding? She'd never do that to her baby boy. She was only rotten to everyone else.
"I'm glad you survived that ordeal," I said. I'd been in that church basement a hundred times and there was nothing scary down there but black mold from all the times the basement had flooded from the canal overflowing.
"When is Irene picking up Ellsworth?" Monica asked. "I can get his things together."
"Thanks, but I'll do it," Ben said. "She'll be here in an hour or so." He looked over at Ellsworth sitting by the patio doors watching Liam outside. "He's waiting for his buddy to come back in."
Ben got up, went into the family room, and began to collect the cat's toys. "He's a cat person now," I explained to Monica. "That's what happens when you're an only child and your mother adopts a feline brother for you."
"I'm glad he's not alone anymore," she said, smiling.
"They shared a room the other night."
"The night I was on your couch?"
"Yeah. They had a brothers slumber party."
"Stop making fun in there," Ben said. "He's a good kitty."
Ellsworth stood on his back legs and batted at the patio door. "Looks like Liam wants in," I said, standing up to get him.
When I let the dog in, he and Ellsworth bounded up and down the hallway, chasing each other.
"Tell Irene her cat got out and you lost him," Monica said. "He'll be happier here with you guys, anyway."
"He probably would be, but I couldn't do that, not even to Irene."
"Maybe I should expand into making cat treats and selling sweaters for them," Monica said, eyeing the canvas tote Ben carried into the kitchen packed full of Ellsworth's belongings.
"The only problem with that is your store name," I said. "Dog Diggity."
"A lot of dog owners have cats, too," Ben said.
"And you've been angling to be one of those people," I said, grinning at him. "Your mother will never let you keep her cat."
"We can watch him more. He can come play and then go back home with her."
The doorbell sounded. "That must be Walter," Ben said. He sat the tote
bag beside the table and strode down the hall toward the door. "Soapy," he said after tugging it open. "What a surprise."
Monica's eyebrows shot up, and I put on a big smile, despising that I felt suspicion for him and guilt for feeling suspicious. "Come sit down," I called, as they walked down the hallway toward us. "Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?"
"Nothing, thank you, Cameron," he said. He stroked his long, white beard and twisted the ends. The corners of his eyes were circled with dark shadows, and deep lines puckered between his brows.
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
"I need to confess something to you and Ben," he said. "Monica, you can hear it, too. Everyone will know anyway."
My pulse ratcheted up to the speed of The Road Runner after Wile E. Coyote. Was he about to tell us who the bones belonged to and how he disposed of the murdered man?
"Go ahead and sit down," Ben said, gesturing to the remaining chair at the round table. "What's this about?"
Soapy sat down and noticed he was tugging at his beard. He let go and folded his hands on the table. "I want you to know that Theresa had nothing to do with this."
He looked from one of us to the next, waiting for acknowledgement. We all nodded and he went on.
"The other night I heard some clattering around out by the dumpster. When I looked out I saw someone running away. It was just their shadow. I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman, heck it could've been a kid for all I know. Anyway, I went out to see what was going on and found a bag of bones in my dumpster. There were some scattered in among the bag too, just loose like. I saw the skull and knew it wasn't an animal I was dealing with. Someone had dumped a human skeleton in my dumpster."
He began picking at his beard again. "I should've called you or Reins and told you what happened. I guess I was afraid I'd be implicated somehow. I've never found remains before. I didn't know what in heavens name I should do. In the end I decided to put the problem somewhere else, and I moved the bag and the bones I could see in around it to the trash can in the park."
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry. I've caused more trouble than necessary. I promise you though, I don't know how the bones got in my dumpster, but I didn't want you spending any more time trying to figure out how they got in the park."