Sometimes Dead Men DO Tell Tales!

by David W. Smith

  Mitch looked at him oddly but tried his best to recall anyone by that name. All he could come up with was a little local girl named Sunny, but she certainly didn’t fit the clue.

  Explaining a little more, Lance said this person might have been involved with Walt Disney a long time ago as Walt’s wife, Lillian Bounds, had been born in the area. Could there be a connection, please?

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Mitch asked with a smile. “Mrs. Disney was born back in the town of Lapwai, thirty-five miles north. Just follow the road you came in on.”

  Thanking Mitch, Lance took a last look at the picture of Chief Joseph. Maybe he would have some time to learn more of their history after his drive to Lapwai.

  Retracing his route, driving north on the 95 highway, the fields of Camas ended and the hills turned a dusky blue, inviting the explorer to come search there. Another kind of riches lie hidden out there—the history and culture of a proud people.

  The town of Lapwai had just over a thousand people and was the seat of government of the Nez Perce Reservation. Lance found the courthouse as any records he might need should be there. Again he was met with friendly warmth and this time he began with the Disney family connection. Yes, the records state she was born here in 1898 but it was just an outpost then. With only a passing interest in the history of the town, Lance needed different information.

  He returned to the subject of a Chief Sunnee or some other important person of that name. The blank looks he had continually received began to discourage him, making him think twice about the clue and Beth’s interpretation of it. Lance learned there was nobody associated with the Nez Perce named Sunnee who could have been used by Walt for such an important clue.

  He bit back his frustration and asked where he might plug in his computer, not wanting to go back to his awful motel room. He was directed to the public library in town.

  After a quick lunch, he did what he realized he should have done before he ever rushed onto a plane and flew for two and a half hours to Idaho—with a five hour layover in Boise, no less! Could have walked here quicker than that. He found a well-worn school desk in its own little cubicle and started researching the name “Sunnee” in the quiet, air-conditioned—and nearly unoccupied—library of Lapwai.

  “How in the world do you research a dog, Adam?” Beth was getting flustered. “This was a beloved family pet. How could a dog have the key?”

  After the initial discovery, she and Adam were frustrated trying to locate any connection between the dog and the key. In addition, both were fighting sleep deprivation and fatigue. By 3:30 a.m., the two finally curled up on the sofa and dozed off with no real answer.

  Adam had been the first to awaken at 9:30 in the morning. Looking over at Beth, still fast asleep, he moved the comforter over her and went to the adjoining bathroom to take a long, hot shower. By the time he came back, the clothes Beth had fallen asleep in were neatly folded on the chair and she was wearing one of his mother’s robes. A cup of coffee in hand, she stood staring at the computer monitor.

  “Good morning, Beth,” Adam greeted her when she didn’t notice his return. He had wrapped a towel around his waist and was drying his hair with another.

  Beth looked up, eyeing the towel-clad Adam with a raised eyebrow. “Good morning back. Leave me any hot water?” She took a sip of coffee to mask her purely female reaction to the sight before her.

  Adam chuckled to himself as she brushed past him, her cheeks pink.

  After Beth had showered and put on some fresh clothes, she returned to the couch. “I don’t get it, Adam.” She was still no closer to understanding the connection between Sunnee and their quest.

  Adam didn’t either. They had watched Lady and the Tramp with his parents and a lot of popcorn. Other than the hatbox scene, there was nothing of any help. “Sunnee was a chow but I didn’t notice any chows in the movie. Is the clue that the dog was a chow, or just that it was a dog? Or is it that particular dog? I wonder where Sunnee was buried….”

  Beth was shocked. “Adam! We aren’t going to dig up a dog! That’s awful!”

  “Well, the clue says ‘Sunnee Holds the Key.’ Maybe it was on his—her?—collar or something. We don’t really know if it was male or female, do we?” Adam spread his arms apart as he rambled, not really expecting an answer. “Hey, maybe it is some kind of doggie jewelry.”

  “I really don’t think so.” Beth shook her head as she thought back. “Based on the keyhole in that door, I’d say it would have to be a pretty big key. And that’s only if Walt means a key in the literal sense.”

  “I know! It was a tattoo Walt had put on the dog, and the coat grew back and hid it.”

  Beth had to laugh at his joke. “Only way that would work is if Walt had the dog stuffed after it died or the tattoo would be long gone by now.”

  “Like Trigger, Roy Roger’s horse.” Adam was glad to see some of the tension had dissolved. “Wonder where the dog would be? Think they would let us shave ol’ Sunnee?”

  She threw a pillow at him. “Poor dog. You’d better just let Sunnee rest in peace!”

  Adam clutched the pillow and joined her on the sofa. He really hadn’t been serious. She was a lot more fun to work with than Lance, and certainly a heck of a lot more fun to look at. Not wanting the lightened mood to disappear by thinking about Lance, he began to reason out loud about the dog. “So, is it the dog or the chow or the key she is supposed to have? Walt always loved dogs. Maybe this points to some other dog we’re supposed to find.”

  Beth remembered some of her findings. “Well, there were some standard poodles later in the family. One of them, I think named Lady, was a frequent visitor to the studio. There was even a blanket for her in Walt’s office. He was crushed when she died.”

  “So you think it might be pointing at a dog, not the dog Sunnee?”

  “Hey, I am still new at this clue-finding stuff. My specialty is Disneyland, if you remember.”

  Adam stood and paced around the room, taking the little pillow with him. He just nodded. “It still might be Disneyland—considering it was Walt’s pride and joy. How many dogs are there?”

  “Six,” she replied immediately, hiding a grin.

  He was impressed by her quick response. “Really? Wow. How in the world.…”

  “I don’t know!” Her confession was mixed with a laugh at the expression on his face. “I just made it up. You seemed to want a number.”

  He threw the pillow back at her. “Well, since it’s all we have to work with right now, let’s list the ones we do know.” He took up a pen and paper and looked at her expectantly.

  “Oh, you want me to do it.” She shrugged. “Okay, dogs are as good a place to start as any.” Beth stopped and gave a quick grin. “Hey, good thing we don’t have to figure how many mice are in the Park!”

  “Yeah.” Adam had to agree to that. “There’s probably thousands of Mickey Mouses throughout the Park.”

  Beth and Adam were silent as they thought about the dogs found in Disneyland. Beth broke the silence. “Well, we already saw Nana in the Peter Pan Flight. There used to be a dog in each scene of the Carousel of Progress, but that’s in Florida now. Goofy is a dog, sort of. Pluto. The gravedigger’s scared dog in the Haunted Mansion...I always felt sorry for that dog. He didn’t ask to be there.…” She broke off as the odd look he gave her. “Fine. You name some.”

  “Isn’t there a dog at the Friendly Indian Village in Frontierland?”

  “Yes, it was part of my Keel Boat spiel. The little boy next to him is fishing in the River.”

  “Oh, and there’s the dog kennel just outside the main entrance. There would be keys for the cages.”

  Beth looked up from the notes she was making. “There are some dogs inside Pirates. I always liked the one singing with the Pirates right before the burning town. Are there any in Splash Mountain?”

  Adam had to shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t ride it enough. Somebody I was with didn’t like to get her
hair wet…” He broke off and accusingly looked at Beth.

  That surprised her. “You haven’t ridden it in five years? Didn’t you go back to the Park more often than that?”

  “Only to get ready for the Mouse Adventure race. We’d do a quick run through the Park and familiarize ourselves with the changes since the last time we raced.”

  Beth just said, “Hmm,” and let it go for now. “What about Storybook Land? Any dogs there?”

  “If there are, they’re too small to be seen by the human eye. And I ain’t riding it again to find out!”

  “Then I think we have our dog list. I can’t think of any other ride that would have been there in the 1960’s. Can you?”

  “Nope.” He suddenly grinned at her.

  The look made her wary. “What?”

  “Looks like somebody’s going to ride Splash Mountain.”

  “I could just wait while you go on it.”

  “No, no. Two sets of eyes are better than one!”

  “Great,” she mumbled. She really wasn’t looking forward to it.

  The next day, back at Disneyland, Adam and Beth first checked the dog kennel. Other than two lonely dogs extremely happy to see them, there was nothing to find. It was just a kennel. Air-conditioned—but still a kennel.

  Adam used their annual passports to get FastPasses for Splash Mountain. It was Thursday and there were more people in the Park than on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays. The FastPass would probably save them an hour wait time. “Let’s ride the Mark Twain while we wait for our pass time to come up. Okay? We can check that dog near the village.”

  Beth agreed as she bit down the nostalgia that overwhelmed her whenever she got near “her” River and the sights that were so familiar. Adam understood better this time. When he had first called her to meet him at the Park, he simply didn’t think of the memories it would bring up—memories both of him and those of her favorite job.

  He rubbed her arm as they retraced their route along the River of America towards the Mark Twain landing. The Columbia Sailing Ship was loading so they didn’t have to hurry.

  “You want something to eat first?” Adam realized it was nearly noon.

  Her nose wrinkled. “I’d rather wait until after Splash Mountain. I don’t like the drop at the end.”

  “Aww, it’s only fifty-two feet long.”

  “At forty miles per hour,” she mumbled in an undertone.

  Standing on the top deck of the Mark Twain, they slowly made their way around Tom Sawyer Island. The big paddlewheel made a soothing, rhythmic swoosh, swoosh, swoosh in the water as its slow rotation pushed the white steamboat around the island.

  “I miss the Burning Settler’s Cabin.” She gave a sigh after they sailed by the remains of Fort Wilderness. “It looked so cool with the flames shooting out of the roof. And Uncle Jed with the arrow sticking out of his chest. ‘And there’s Uncle Jed out in the front yard wearing his new ‘Arrow’ shirt. Oh my, it looks like the natives gave him a ‘house warmin’ party.’” It always surprised her how easily her old spiel came back to her. Beth paused as she viewed the Island with a nostalgic, critical eye. “It looks so plain now.”

  “When we ran the Mouse race, we had to ride the canoes and go through Keel Boat Rapids. Only there were no white-water rapids. We had to make our own with the paddles. The ducks sure didn’t like it.”

  “There’s our dog,” she pointed off to the left. On a protruding log, a little boy squatted down as he stared into the River to see if there was anything in his fish trap. The shaggy white dog slowly wagged his tail as he stood guard.

  Adam studied it for a minute as they sailed past. “Well, the only way to know if there’s something on the end of that fishing line is to get a canoe and check it out. Want to ‘borrow’ another canoe?”

  She gave a grimace. “Let’s just save that plan as a back-up, okay?”

  In another few minutes they were back at the loading dock. As they headed for Splash Mountain, Beth was not what you would call ‘excited’ about the ride.

  As they floated and bumped around through the different scenes, Beth told herself it wasn’t that bad. Every time their log was captured in a gate and raised to a higher level, she told herself it wasn’t that bad. Right before they got to the drop, in the few remaining moments of peace, she remembered something.

  “Adam?”

  Sitting in the seat right behind her, he was really enjoying the ride. “Yes?”

  “I just thought of something. Splash Mountain wasn’t built then. We didn’t have to ride….” Her last words were cut off by her piercing scream as they plunged down the steep flume. A wave of water crashed over them at the bottom.

  “Woo hoo!” Adam yelled. “I’m soaked!”

  “Did you hear what I said before the drop?”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard it.”

  She wiped the water out of her eyes. “Well?”

  “I guess you didn’t hear me over your screaming. You scream like a girl, you know.”

  She actually growled at him. “Well?”

  “I said yes, I know that. I just wanted to ride it again!”

  Adam had become savvy enough in the past few weeks to hit Splash Mountain’s exit gate running.

  Since Adam felt he had better treat Beth to something really special, they had lunch at the Blue Bayou and rechecked their dog list. Adam crossed off Splash Mountain and ignored her glare. “Haunted Mansion?”

  “Walt started on it in 1961 and planned on opening it to the public in 1963. But, after the work with the World’s Fair in New York in ‘64 and then Walt’s death in ‘66, the Imagineers pushed it back until ’69.” Seated at a table on the water’s edge, Beth turned back after watching a boat go by. “The entire attraction significantly changed after the first conception.”

  “Didn’t they build the mansion and let it sit unused for years?” Adam thought back to something he had read and mentioned the book.

  “Yes. I read that too. Wow, this is good.” Beth took another bite of her Chicken Cordon Bleu. After swallowing, she took a sip of Mint Julep and got back to the discussion at hand. “I believe building the ride created problems and additional costs they weren’t willing to spend just yet.”

  Adam looked thoughtful and crossed the Mansion off their list. “That doesn’t sound too promising for what we need. Carousel of Progress was in Disneyland in 1964 after it finished at the World’s Fair. Unless you’re up for a quick trip to Walt Disney World, we can leave that for later, too.”

  Beth smiled at a special memory. “I haven’t been there since the 1999 Intercontinental Canoe Races. My team didn’t do well. Their river is so much longer. I still have the special pin we were awarded.”

  “So, that leaves Goofy, Pluto, and Pirates, right?”

  She took another sip of her drink. “You have the list.”

  He caught her tone and wondered if taking her on Splash Mountain would fit on his dad’s list of ‘boneheaded things.’ Probably. He chose to ignore it for now. “Let’s go on Pirates again and see if there are more than just the two dogs we know about, okay?”

  After lunch and after a short wait in the queue, Adam and Beth boarded a boat on Pirates, both thinking back just a few days when Lance had pulled a gun on them. Pushing the thought out of their heads, they just focused on locating dogs.

  After the ride, they sat on a bench facing the River. Adam jotted down a note in the pad he had brought and then read off the locations of the dogs they found in the ride: A dog singing with the pirates, a dog barking at the girl hiding in the barrel, and a dog holding the key to the jail cell. Adam counted off the three locations again. When he read the third one aloud, they could only stare at each other.

  No, that can’t be it. It’s right out in the open. What kind of key was it? Isn’t there a lock on the jail cell?

  But…

  The map with the X had been in plain sight under the big skull and crossbones on the Captain’s bed matching the coin.

  T
hey found the secret door under the Treasure Cache.

  Hidden in plain sight.

  Brilliant. Adam and Beth stared out over the sea of people and the River toward Tom Sawyer Island. Both of them were completely unmindful of their surroundings…both focused on one thing:

  They needed to see that key again.

  Beth pulled out her digital camera and flashed several pictures of the dog as they went past it again. “No flash photography, please.” The disembodied voice came over the hidden speakers as a few of the other passengers glared at her. She didn’t care.

  Within the mouth of the smiling dog was indeed a large, round brass ring holding one large, black key.

  It was a skeleton key.

  They were silent as they headed to Adam’s parents’ house in Yorba Linda. Silent, thoughtful, and extremely excited. The key had to be the answer to the clue. The dog wasn’t a chow. It looked like a mutt with shaggy white fur with large black spots, but it was holding a key.

  They printed copies of Beth’s photos of the dog and the key. She managed to get three angles without too much distortion—straight on, side view, and from the back.

  Adam asked the question they had both been pondering: “How do we get the key?”

  “Well, as much as we would like to, we can’t grab it as we sail by. It’s probably locked in the mouth.” She paced the floor of Margaret’s office. “Any way to get a copy of it made from a picture?”

  Adam studied the pictures again and shook his head. “Nice idea, but I don’t think we could get the correct measurements. Skeleton keys were pretty exact.”

  “Want to try?”

  He shrugged. “I’d need a blank key. Something that old isn’t just lying around. My locksmith might be able to do it, but he’d have to have a blank. That could take a long time to find. We’d have to search antique stores….” He broke off, realizing that wasn’t the answer. But he had something else in mind. “You up for a midnight raid?”