Upstate Uproar

by Joan Rylen

  “I’m not even pregnant,” Wendy said. “This is ridiculous. That’s it, no more chocolate. No wait, I can’t give that up. No more queso at Chuy’s.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Lucy said as she did a few lunges. “The air is thinner up here. You have to get used to it.”

  They kept going, managing to find the blue dots, and soon reached a bigger, swifter-moving stream than the one earlier in the day.

  Lucy walked back and forth on the bank and tested a few of the rocks before saying, “We’ll have to pull up our pants legs, but this is the best place to cross.” She looked at Kate. “You up for this, momma?”

  Kate took a minute to study the stream, then said, “Yep, and I want to have lunch right over there.” She pointed to a big rock across the way.

  “You got it,” Lucy said, then helped Kate across.

  Vivian and Wendy splashed in and then joined Kate on her rock. Lucy set the CamelBak and the backpack on the ground and started pulling out an assortment of goodies. Trail mix, Kashi bars, Tracy’s sandwiches. Austin rushed to her, wagging his tail. Lucy broke off a piece of her sandwich and fed it to him. He then ran to Vivian and she did the same.

  He ran back to Lucy, wanting more. “I just gave you some,” she laughed and threw a stick for him to fetch instead. “Maybe that’ll distract him while we eat,” Lucy said. “Such a beggar. Bad dog.”

  “Brandon sure made a big deal out of Tracy breaking that platter this morning,” Kate said between bites of her turkey, ham and Swiss cheese sandwich. “He sounded like a bully from what I could overhear.”

  “I heard them arguing but couldn’t make out the details over the crunch from my bacon,” Vivian said and then took a sip of water.

  Lucy juggled a handful of trail mix. “I couldn’t hear what he was saying, either, but he sounded pissed off. He shouldn’t have been too upset, though, that platter is replaceable and not terribly expensive. It’s not antique.”

  “He said it was from Grandma Turlington,” Wendy said. “That’s the name of the farm. I bet that was a gift from his first wedding.”

  Kate swallowed a big bite. “That would explain it.”

  Vivian finished her sandwich and started playing fetch with Austin. She tossed the stick across the stream and Austin splashed through it with enthusiasm. He trotted back and shook off close enough to Vivian that she got a few drops. She threw the stick uphill as far as she could, then said to Kate, “So tell us more about your pregnancy. Any concerns?”

  “None, everything really does look good.” Kate handed Lucy her trash. “The first time I heard the heartbeat, I couldn’t stop smiling. It made it real, this was happening! I’ve been in a nesting phase ever since.”

  “Wow! That’s a long time to nest,” Vivian said. “You still have four months to go.”

  “I want to be prepared, and there’s so much to know. Are there any foods I should avoid while I’m pregnant and nursing, what kind of diapers are best, first foods, day care, schools, college savings?”

  Vivian laughed. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. All they do at first is eat, sleep and poop. You’ll have time to figure it all out.”

  Wendy stood up from her perch on the rock and called Austin. Turning to the girls, she said, “Doesn’t it seem like he’s been gone a bit too long? I hope we didn’t lose him.”

  Vivian looked in the direction she last threw the stick. “No kidding, we should go look for him.”

  Lucy zipped up her backpack. “I don’t think we need to get off the trail. The blue dots are too hard to see to be wandering around loose out here.”

  Vivian called Austin, and a moment later, he came racing through the trees with a stick in his mouth, kicking up a flurry of leaves. He held his head high as he approached and offered his stick to Vivian but didn’t drop it.

  “We thought we lost you, silly boy!” Vivian scratched behind his ear. “What did you do to that stick?” It protruded from his mouth and wrapped around his nose.

  Austin ran in a circle around Vivian, then circled Lucy before stopping in front of her, looking proud. Lucy reached for the stick, but he pranced over to Wendy and offered her his prize instead.

  Wendy held her hand out and shook with Austin. “Oh, all right. I’ll play with you as we hike.” She tried to grab the stick out of his mouth but he held it tight. She tried again but he wouldn’t let go. “I can’t throw it unless you let go, goofy dog.”

  Austin loped back to Vivian. She finally relented and reached for the stick, and this time he was willing to give it up. She started to throw it, but a glint caught her eye and she stopped mid-toss.

  “What the heck?” she said, looking at the object in her hand. Then it registered what she was holding. “Ew ew ew! Gross! He brought me a bone.” Vivian tossed it on the ground, then jumped up and down, trying to shake the germs and the heebie-jeebies from her hands.

  Wendy leaned over and looked at it. “He sure did. Nasty, it’s got teeth.”

  “Is it from a bear?” Lucy asked from a safe distance.

  Kate crouched down and poked at it with a real stick. “I don’t think so.” The sun glinted again off the jaw. She stood up slowly and took two steps back. “I don’t know of too many wild animals that get silver fillings.”

  10

  Vivian’s jaw dropped as she and the girls looked down at the jaw. A chill passed through her. “I touched a dead person! Oh my god! I touched a dead person! I need hand sanitizer! STAT!”

  Kate gathered herself, then used the stick to maneuver the bone as Austin pranced behind them, wanting to continue with his game of fetch. “It looks like it’s a bottom jaw.”

  Lucy shivered and handed Vivian a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her backpack. “This is so wrong. I’ve had a weird feeling for a while, but I didn’t say anything. I just figured it was because we couldn’t find blue dots, but this… this is… ugh, I don’t even know.”

  Vivian jumped up and down, rubbing her freshly alcoholed hands together. “It’s disgusting! I just touched a piece of a dead person!”

  “Calm down, Viv. It’s not dripping in blood or anything.” Wendy reached for Lucy’s backpack. “We need to call the police. There’s probably more of this body out here somewhere.”

  “Oh, please god, no,” Vivian wailed and leaned against a tree, sliding down it. “I thought the double rainbow from yesterday was a good sign. This is definitely not good.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Lucy said. “We don’t have much of a story to tell. It won’t ruin our vacation, just mess up our hike, which was already messed up because the trail isn’t half marked. We would have probably gotten lost.”

  Vivian felt like Lucy was just trying to ease her nerves, but it wasn’t working. Finding some person’s bone, partially covered in dirt and now dog slobber, had Vivian on the edge.

  Wendy’s signal was weak, but she managed to call 911 and put it on speaker. It took her a few minutes to explain their location and situation, and she had to repeat “human jawbone” three times.

  “Are you in a safe location?” the operator asked.

  “As safe as can be out here,” Wendy responded. “I don’t think we’re in any imminent danger.”

  “As long as the porcupine doesn’t come back,” Lucy spoke up.

  The operator informed them that it could take an hour for the sheriff to reach them and to please not go anywhere. Wendy clicked off.

  Vivian groaned. “Why us? It’s always us! And now we’re stuck here with it.” She cringed and looked down at the u-shaped bone.

  “I’m sure they need us to stay here so they know where to start looking for the rest of the body,” Kate said.

  “Rest of the — ” Vivian’s stomach flipped and she needed to put her head between her knees. “I’m gonna pass out.”

  Lucy sat next to her and handed her the CamelBak. “Have some water.”

  Wendy put her phone in the backpack and said, “We ought to go look for the rest of the skeleto
n. I don’t like this stuff, but it could speed up the process later when the sheriff gets here. Get us back to civilization and our vacation faster.”

  Kate sat next to Vivian and leaned against the tree. “I’ll be right here. Someone needs to stay with the jawbone. If y’all find something, don’t touch it. Leave that to the experts.”

  “No way I’m going. Besides, buddy system,” Vivian said, then looked at Lucy. “You’re it.”

  Lucy threw her head back. “This is a bad idea. I’m only looking for blue dots. That’s it. My eyes are not looking at the ground.”

  “Come on, chicken,” Wendy said, then looked at Austin. “You, too, buddy.”

  He jumped up and ran in a circle.

  She rubbed his head, loving the feeling of his soft fur. It reminded her of her flat-coated retriever, Radar.

  Lucy caught up with Wendy as they walked uphill. “This is definitely a really bad idea. What if there are other scavengers, bears or something?” She looked around, eyes off the ground. “I’m pretty sure they have mountain lions up here. And bears. Big ones.”

  “Austin will fight them off for us,” Wendy replied and watched Austin run ahead, nose to the ground. “He’s on to something. Hurry!”

  Austin weaved between the trees and definitely off trail. The girls lost him for a minute, then saw him in the distance at a shallow ravine. He paced up and down the bank but suddenly stopped and started digging at the base of a tree.

  “Austin, stop!” Wendy shouted as she and Lucy raced to catch up with him.

  No use. Austin had dirt flying everywhere and kicked it all over Wendy and Lucy as they tried to stop him. They finally managed to pull him away from the turned up ground.

  Lucy led him a few feet away while Wendy took in the scene. The ravine meandered through the trees and only had a trickle of water. Leaves covered the banks and were bright red on the tree Austin had dug under. Flooding had washed away the dirt from the ravine side of the tree, revealing a tangle of roots and leaving a cavity big enough to bury a large treasure chest, or something much more sinister. If more soil were to wash away, the tree would topple.

  Lucy released Austin and joined Wendy and pointed to the base of the tree. “Is this where you think he got it? How would someone wind up underneath there?”

  Wendy looked at a tree across the bank. A pile of logs, leaves and mud partially surrounded the base. She hopped across the stream and kicked at the closest log. It gave way and rolled into the ravine with a splash. “Oops, I didn’t mean to do that. The ground is really soft.”

  “You think someone got caught in a flash flood and this is where he was deposited?” Lucy asked.

  Wendy hopped back across the ravine and bent to get a closer look at where Austin had been digging. “I’m no expert, but that sounds like a good theory. This tree could have had a pile of logs and leaves like the one across from it, and that could have packed in around the person and no one knew he was here until another flood washed away the pile.”

  “Or maybe no one is buried here and someone somehow died and his body was scattered to the wind, compliments of animals and, like you said, flooding,” Lucy said. “Maybe, it wasn’t a man who died. Maybe it was a woman.”

  “I swear to god, if you start talking about aliens and shit I’m going to FLIP out.”

  Austin splashed in the ravine and hadn’t sniffed anything else out since they stopped him from digging. Wendy had a feeling that whoever there was to be discovered lay under the tree. She grabbed a stick, making sure first that it was, in fact, a stick, and scratched at the dirt under the tree.

  “I don’t think you should be doing that,” Lucy said.

  “Whoever’s jaw that is, he’s missing. Someone has spent hours searching, hours worrying, wondering if he’ll ever come home.” Wendy squatted down and started scratching a little faster. “What if this was your loved one, you’d want him out of here.”

  Lucy laid a hand on Wendy’s shoulder. “Wendy, I understand you’re upset, and I know why, but trust me, we should leave this to the experts.”

  Wendy kept scratching away at the soil.

  Lucy squeezed Wendy’s shoulder. “Wendy, you need to stop. Wendy.” No reaction, so finally Lucy squatted down beside her and gently grabbed her hand and stopped her from digging. “It’s not Jake. You’ll find him, but he’s not here.”

  Wendy sank to her knees and started crying. “I don’t know how to help him. He’s got to come home. He’s got to.”

  “We’ll figure it out, I promise,” Lucy said and held Wendy’s hand. “But for now, we need to leave this to the police.”

  Wendy wiped her tears on her sleeve and straightened up. “Let’s go back to where Viv and Kate are.” She dusted off her hands on her pants. “I know all too well what this person’s loved ones went through, and it caught me off guard.”

  Lucy called Austin and then led the way down the mountain. Though they didn’t have blue dots to mark a trail, the girls had no problem finding their way back to Vivian and Kate.

  Vivian took in Lucy and Wendy’s somber expressions and mud-splattered clothes. “What happened?”

  Lucy pointed to Austin, who was sniffing the jawbone. “He flung dirt everywhere when he was digging under the roots of a tree.”

  “Did y’all find anything else?” Vivian asked and grabbed hold of Austin’s leash before he could grab hold of the jaw.

  Wendy and Lucy looked at each other before Wendy responded, “No, but Austin went crazy around a tree base up there.”

  “Maybe there was another animal’s scent,” Kate said, still sitting against the tree. She twirled a bright orange leaf between her thumb and pointer finger.

  Wendy reached for Lucy’s CamelBak. “It got me thinking about Jake.” She started crying again and sat down, burying her head in her hands.

  Vivian sat down beside her. “You need to cry about this. It’s good for you to get this emotion out.”

  Wendy sucked in a ragged breath. “Y’all don’t know everything.” She really started sobbing and could hardly catch her breath.

  Lucy dug in her backpack and walked over with a pad of gauze. “I ran out of tissues, sorry.”

  Wendy took the gauze and blew her nose.

  Kate gave her a shoulder hug. “What else is there to know?”

  Wendy sobbed a couple of more times before taking a deep breath. “I found something really weird when his parents and I were cleaning out his apartment last week. I didn’t show them because I didn’t want to freak them out, but I’m sure it has something to do with his disappearance.”

  “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s totally explainable,” Lucy said.

  “All guys have porn, Wendy,” Vivian said.

  “It wasn’t porn.”

  “What was it?” Kate asked.

  Wendy looked up at the trees. “I think Jake had another identity.”

  11

  Vivian, Kate and Lucy glanced at one another after hearing the shocking information about Jake. Wendy just stared at the trees, almost in a trance, and then wiped more tears from her eyes.

  Vivian touched Wendy’s arm. “Excuse me? Did you say Jake has another identity?”

  “I know, crazy, right?” Wendy said.

  “You need to tell us exactly what you found,” Lucy said.

  “It was when his parents and I were cleaning out his apartment. His lease was up, and they told us to come get the stuff or they’d put it on the curb. I was working in his bedroom, and I went to pack up his autographed basketball. It’s in a Plexiglas display case and it felt way too heavy. Basketballs are full of air, but it shifted in the box funny. I opened up the case, took out the ball and found a slit had been cut into one of the back seams. I pulled it open and couldn’t believe what I found.”

  “What was it?” Vivian asked.

  “A passport with his picture but under another name, Paul Vaughn. Money from different countries, all in South America. A lot of money, based on the currency exchange.”
<
br />   “How much?” Kate asked.

  “Close to $50,000.”

  “Holy cow,” Kate said. “It’s times like this I wish I could have a glass of wine.”

  “Did you tell the police?” Vivian asked.

  “No, I didn’t know what to do. I was so freaked out I hid everything at my house. I have crazy scenarios running through my head. Is he a spy? A criminal? I feel deceived.” Wendy blew her nose again. “Maybe he wanted to start another life somewhere? Maybe his name isn’t even Jake.”

  “We’ll help you sort it out,” Kate said. “Are you sure it’s real money?”

  “Yes, I went to the main branch of my bank and got some to compare it to. It’s definitely real.” She paused. “There’s something else. I found another cellphone.”

  Austin jumped up and started barking. Vivian didn’t hear anything at first, but a few seconds later she heard the buzz of engines. Soon after, two people in tan uniforms on dirt bikes raced up the mountainside in their direction.

  They pulled to a stop 10 yards away, and the shorter of the two took off her helmet, revealing a French braid. “I’m officer Cheri Stokola with the Essex County Sheriff’s Department. You the ones who called about a bone?”

  “That’s us.” Vivian introduced herself and the girls, then pointed to the jawbone on the ground. “We haven’t touched it since Austin dropped it.”

  Austin barked in confirmation.

  The other deputy walked up and Stokola introduced him as Brad Young. He looked down at the jaw. “Yep, that’s human.” He reached for his walkie-talkie. “This is Deputy Young, we’re going to need the coroner.”

  Vivian’s heart sank at Young’s request for the coroner, even though she knew that would, and should, happen. A gust of wind swirled around her, sending chills through her body.

  Stokola removed her sunglasses, showing off inquisitive green eyes. A few freckles accented her face. She pulled a pen and a notebook out of a leather bag on her bike. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  Lucy and Vivian gave her a brief explanation of playing fetch with Austin and him returning with the jaw, and then Lucy said, “Wendy and I followed Austin up the mountain where he started digging frantically at the base of a tree. We think that’s where he got the jaw. We can show you.”