Beastly Bones

by William Ritter

  “I wouldn’t be so confident,” I said. “Hudson’s typical fare includes a bird that can cut brass like butter. He’s no stranger to impossible creatures, and he’s eager for more of them. Too eager.”

  “So, I’m an impossible creature, now?” Charlie teased gently.

  “She’s right,” Jackaby cut in. “He’s already looking for you, Charlie. I’m fond of the fellow, but it would be wise to stay on two legs for a while.”

  We came through a copse of trees and reached our destination. Charlie’s house was small, built into a mossy little clearing not far from the road. In the bright moonlight I could see that it had a rustic charm.

  Charlie coaxed a fire to life in a short potbellied stove, and soon the cabin was pleasantly warm. It had only two beds, his own and one for a guest, but he offered them to Jackaby and to me, insisting he was more than comfortable enough on the floor. He gave me fresh linens and bade me good night, leaving me in his chamber while he set Jackaby up in the room adjacent. I thanked him and shut the door, playing over the impossible events of my day as I changed into my nightgown. With the excitement of the surprises waiting to be uncovered in the morning, I was sure I would not sleep a wink.

  The room did not feel like Charlie’s. He had not lived in the house for long and had not properly furnished it with any personal effects, but as I lay my head on his pillow, the scent of the policeman, like a gentle sandalwood, swept over me. The rest of the world melted away, and sleep came for me, after all.

  In the morning, I awoke to the rays of sunlight cutting through the curtains and the sound of a teakettle whistling in the kitchen. I tucked my hair up into a loose bun and pulled on a shirtwaist and a sturdy skirt—another I had borrowed from Jenny. I slipped on my shoes and emerged to face the day.

  Charlie greeted me with a smile and a cup of tea. I hated him just a little bit in that moment, pressed and shaved and lit from behind like some angel in a Renaissance painting. An errant lock of hair flopped into my eyes, and I blew it to the side with a puff. It didn’t matter, I reminded myself. This was my adventure. In short order I would be up to my waist in dirt and dinosaur bones, not drinking English tea with an insufferably perfect policeman.

  “The tea is not very good, I’m afraid,” he said as I accepted the cup and saucer. “It’s the only tin I could find in the house. I have coffee if you prefer.”

  “No, no, this is lovely. Thank you.” I took a sip. It was probably the worst tea ever brewed. I took another sip.

  “Would you care for some breakfast?” Charlie asked. “Mr. Jackaby was content with just a bit of toast before he left, but I would be happy to make some eggs or—”

  “Jackaby left without us?” I interrupted, shaking the last of the morning fog from my eyes and setting down my cup.

  “Just a few minutes ago,” Charlie said. “Although I gather he has been up since well before the sun.”

  “Does that man ever sleep? Would you mind terribly if we went after him right away? I’m keen on getting back to the dig site, myself, and I’d rather not leave those artifacts and my employer alone together.”

  “Of course.” Charlie fumbled the teacup and saucer into the sink with a clatter as I fetched my coat. I was soon mounting a dappled brown-and-white horse that Charlie called Maryanne. I would have given anything for a pair of riding breeches in place of my skirt, but I had not packed any trousers. I nestled in a bit clumsily behind Charlie, feeling awkward and unsteady as I perched sidesaddle on the mare. As Maryanne hastened to a gentle trot, I held tightly to Charlie’s waist. His uniform smelled faintly of starch and cedar, and the trip back to Brisbee’s flew past in a warm blur.

  In almost no time at all, the roof of the old farmhouse came into view beyond the trees. “It is a beautiful valley,” Charlie was saying as we cantered up the last leg of the journey. “I’ve explored a great deal since moving here. Perhaps sometime you would let me show you the south hills. There are beautiful waterfalls down that way.”

  “Charlie,” I said, “please remember Jackaby’s warning. Mr. Hudson seems friendly, but . . .”

  Charlie nodded, sinking into his shoulders a little. “No more transformations. I know. I will try.”

  “Is it so hard to give up?”

  “It’s difficult to explain,” he said. “It tingles. You know that . . . that prickling sensation you feel when you sit too long and your foot falls asleep? It’s like that, except that it runs through my core. I can contain it, but the longer I suppress the hound, the more my senses grow numb and restless. It has been a blessing to be out here, where I could occasionally . . . stretch.” He sighed. “I do appreciate your concern, truly—but please don’t worry about me, Miss Rook. I am used to being careful.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Charlie tethered Maryanne to Brisbee’s hitching post, and I slid down to solid ground. As we rounded the side of the farmhouse, I could see that Jackaby was only halfway up the rugged hillside. He had paused, leaning against a rocky outcrop to watch an angry scene unfold before him. I could hear Owen Horner farther up the hill. “This is absurd,” he was arguing. “You have no right—”

  “Gentlemen, if you please,” Hugo Brisbee’s voice chimed in.

  “On the contrary,” came a third voice. “I have every right, and a legally binding contract as well.”

  Charlie and I hastened up the path and joined Jackaby on the hill. Brisbee and Horner were on their way down, keeping pace with a stuffy-looking middle-aged man in a slate-gray suit and a Panama hat. The stranger held a slim briefcase, waggling it meaningfully at Brisbee, but he did not slow his pace toward the house.

  “That miscreant should never have been allowed near the discovery,” groused the man. “It is sadly unsurprising that he has already absconded with priceless artifacts.”

  “How dare you—I was the one who reported the stolen fossil!” Horner threw up his hands in exasperation.

  The man ignored him and went on. “I have communicated with the police in Gadston that Mr. Horner is not to be permitted within a hundred yards of my property. I’ve been assured I have the full support of the department—ah, and I see they’ve sent someone out already.” The procession had come to us, and the gray man drew to a halt in front of Charlie.

  Charlie stepped forward. “I’m afraid I’ve heard nothing of the order, Mr.—?”

  “Lamb. Professor Lewis Lamb. I spoke with Commander Bell in person.”

  “I’m sure you did. It’s possible that word from the commander has been delayed. In the meantime, I believe we can all behave ourselves.”

  “Behave? Have you met Mr. Horner? Should he trespass again, see that he is incarcerated immediately. From this point on, the site of this excavation is to be considered private property and kept free of any outside interference.”

  “Even if he’s coming up there as my personal guest?” Brisbee asked.

  “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Brisbee.” Lamb turned to face the farmer directly. “We appreciate your efforts thus far, but now that I have arrived, there is no need for you to be directly involved in the excavation. The site is to be restricted exclusively to my employees and to me.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “He’s kicking you out, too,” Horner informed the farmer with a grunt.

  “You can’t do that—this is still my land!”

  “Actually I can, Mr. Brisbee, according to the very explicit parameters of the contract you signed. Amateurs will not jeopardize the integrity of this discovery. Speaking of which, who are all these people?” Lamb finally seemed to notice us, surveying Jackaby and me with suspicion.

  “Oh, um, good morning, folks.” Brisbee raised his battered old hat in a polite greeting. “This is Lewis Lamb. He’s here to . . . um . . . He’s here about the fossils. He arrived first thing this morning. Lamb, this is Mr. Jackaby and Miss Abigail Rook. They’re the ones I mentioned earlier. You’ll be interested to know Miss Rook is the daughter of another dinosaur fellow. Daniel
Rook, was it?” I nodded. “She was a big help yesterday with the bones, and Mr. Jackaby is a first-rate private detective, too. He’s been in the papers. I’m sure if you’d just rethink this nonsense, you’d find there are a great many people here ready to help.”

  I gave Lamb a smile and extended my hand. “Delighted to meet you, sir.”

  Lamb looked as though he had tasted something foul and was deciding whether to swallow and be done with it or spit it out. “This is precisely the sort of unprofessional mismanagement I am here to prevent,” he said, and carried on walking past me.

  I let my hand drop and exchanged a glance with Owen Horner. He rolled his eyes.

  “The site is no longer open to every semiliterate rube with a shovel and every doe-eyed pair of pigtails that wanders up. Mr. Brisbee, in the interest of maintaining a professional working relationship, I will overlook the amount of time Mr. Horner and these amateur hobbyists have already been permitted to traipse about my excavation site—but I trust that, from this point onward, you will honor the agreement laid out between us to the letter. I have a team of exceptional lawyers. I should hate to see you lose this farm outright should they find you in breach of contract.”

  Brisbee’s face fell, and his hands flopped to his sides. Lamb stalked toward a carriage parked in the shade of the barn and rapped sharply on the door. “Wake up, you laggards,” he called. “It’s time to start earning your keep!” The carriage rocked, and out climbed a pair of bleary-eyed men. The first was a tall, thin man with mahogany-brown skin and black hair, who yawned and stretched as he moved to the back of the cab. The second man was pink faced and pudgy, like an overripe peach, topped with a splash of beet-red freckles and a mess of orange hair. He rubbed his eyes and strapped a bulky burlap satchel to his back. Clambering to hold on to a bundle of long aluminum poles, he dropped several of them before finding his grip, and they clanged loudly against the cart.

  Lamb groaned in annoyance and started off again up the hill without issuing any further instruction. The redheaded man collected his things and wordlessly shuffled past us, following Lamb back toward the foothills behind the farmhouse. The other man hefted a collection of pickaxes and hammers over his shoulder and moved to join his colleagues. He paused on his way and shrugged apologetically. “The professor doesn’t make a great first impression, but you get used to him.”

  “Does he make a great second impression?” Horner asked skeptically.

  “Mr. Bradley! Now!” Lamb yelled from halfway up the hill.

  Mr. Bradley took a deep breath and shifted the tools on his shoulder. “You get used to him,” he repeated, and hurried away.

  Brisbee turned from the departing procession and back to us, his mouth opening and closing “What just—?” he managed at last.

  “You backed the wrong horse,” said Horner. “I told you you should’ve signed the site over to me.”

  The farmer looked as if he might cry.

  “Well,” I said, “nobody is bleeding or pressing charges—at least not yet—so I suppose that actually went better than I might have hoped. I noticed that you didn’t throw rocks at anybody, Mr. Horner. I do appreciate your restraint.”

  “Least I could do, beautiful.” Horner gave a halfhearted wink, and then looked back up at the foothills moodily. “But the day is still young.”

  Brisbee brewed a pot of bitter American coffee, and we watched from the back porch of the farmhouse as a wide canvas wall gradually rose to shroud the entire dig site. From a distance, all that was visible of our evening’s hard work were a few piles of loose sod around the perimeter.

  “I wish I hadn’t sent that telegram yesterday,” the farmer said glumly, taking a swig of the black brew. “Seems a shame to have that nice reporter come out all this way for nothing. Won’t be much of a story for her to report now that Lamb’s sealed everything up.”

  Horner was nursing his own mug, glaring moodily at the dirt. I knew how he felt. Brisbee took notice and looked more wretched still. “I’m sorry it turned out like this for you, Mr. Horner. You did so much good work. Will you be leaving right away?”

  Horner breathed in deeply and straightened up. “I don’t think so. As you say, it would be a shame to come all this way for nothing. I might just take in a bit of the countryside for a day or two, if you don’t mind the company. After all, I would hate to repay your kindness by leaving you alone with that killjoy.”

  Brisbee nodded and looked slightly buoyed.

  “Don’t go doing anything foolish,” I said. “Remember, you assured me you would play nice, however it turned out.”

  “Did I say that?” Horner chuckled. “That doesn’t sound like me. All right, all right—you have my word. Nothing foolish. Don’t count me out entirely, though. I am remarkably charming.” He gave me a cheeky grin, as if to illustrate his point. “That stuffy old Lewis Lamb may warm up to me yet.”

  “Be careful,” Charlie told him. “I would hate to be the one called to take you to lockup. Professor Lamb did not sound very open-minded.”

  “What about you, Miss Rook?” Horner said. “You’ve lost the site as much as I have.”

  “On the contrary,” Jackaby answered for me, sounding jarringly cheerful. He leaned on the railing and looked genially out across the countryside. “We’ve lost nothing. Now that your little side-project up the hill is out of the question, we can focus our attention on the real reason we’re out here.”

  “The real reason we’re out here?” I said, glancing warily to my employer. With a reporter having been summoned just that morning, now was the wrong time for Jackaby to forget about his promise to keep our investigation of the murders discreet. “The real reason we are here is to investigate the bones behind that barrier, isn’t it, sir?”

  “In point of fact, Miss Rook, the reason we’re here” — Jackaby raised his eyebrows in my direction—“is to investigate the one that isn’t.”

  “He’s right,” Charlie said. “There is still a fossil missing, even if its rightful owner has changed. It is time we directed our attention to pursuing the culprit.”

  “Maybe it was just a wolf or some other creature?” Brisbee suggested.

  Jackaby scowled. “Yes. It is a distinct possibility that our perpetrator was not human at all. Trust me, we are considering that scenario very seriously.”

  “Your reporter will love that,” Horner put in cynically. “The crime was plenty to spice up the story. She’ll paper the Eastern Seaboard if you hand her a big bad wolf to go with it.” Charlie kept his face stoically blank.

  “I don’t think it’s worth bringing up wolves,” I said. “The prospect is doubtful, anyway. Fossils wouldn’t generally attract scavengers.”

  “Of course they would,” Jackaby said. “Especially the sort of scavengers who read newspapers. I think it is high time we got to know the rest of the neighborhood.”

  Neighborhood was not the right word for the environs of Gad’s Valley. Charlie, Jackaby, and I had to walk half a mile before we reached the nearest farm.

  The front walk was unpaved and the house was modest, just a bit smaller than Brisbee’s by the look of it, and its paint had faded to a peeling beige. Charlie and I stepped up to the door, but Jackaby sauntered around toward the back of the house.

  “Sir? What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Investigating,” Jackaby replied flatly.

  “Well, you can’t just walk into someone’s yard unannounced. Besides, doesn’t investigating usually involve questioning people?”

  “I’ve nothing against people as a general rule, but people don’t tend to have the sort of answers I’m looking for.” The fence post just above Jackaby’s head exploded in a spray of splinters with a resonating BLAM! A woman stood in the open doorway across from him, a plain white apron tied around her waist and a fat-barreled rifle in her hands. “Of course, people do have a way of surprising you from time to time,” my employer added.

  The woman held her chin up high and stared down the barrel at
Jackaby. It was not the most intimidating glare, but her rifle more than compensated. “You’re on my property,” she said.

  “I am indeed,” Jackaby replied. “And you noticed. Well done.”

  From inside the house came the sound of excited barking. The woman held the rifle steady as a black-and-white sheepdog bounded past her and into the yard, circling my employer repeatedly and sniffing him in all of the customary awkward places before rolling over and awaiting a scratch on the tummy.

  The woman sighed and shook her head. “If you’ve come to steal the world’s least intimidating guard dog, I’m real close to just letting you have him.”

  The dog flopped his head back to look at his mistress upside down.

  “Nobody’s impressed, Toby.”

  “Please lower your weapon, Mrs. Pendleton,” said Charlie, hurrying forward and holding out his badge. “The gentleman is with me.”

  Mrs. Pendleton nodded to the policeman and let the rifle down gently.

  “You know this woman?” Jackaby asked.

  “We met recently,” said Charlie.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Pendleton said. “Just last week. Mr. Barker here put my Abe in lockup overnight. My old man can get a little goofy when he’s had a few too many.”

  Charlie nodded. “Mr. Pendleton was heavily intoxicated, singing loudly and brandishing a firearm in the middle of Gadston’s Goods and Grocery.”

  “He was celebrating,” she explained with a hint of a smile. “It was our anniversary.”

  “Which does account for his choice in love songs,” Charlie said. “He has a fine tenor voice.”

  “Doesn’t he just?” Mrs. Pendleton loosened and leaned on the door frame. “I know he can be a handful, but he’s a good man underneath. Oh, did his pants ever turn up?”

  “You will be the first to know. Mrs. Pendleton, please allow me to introduce my associates, Detective Jackaby and his assistant, Miss Rook.”

  Mrs. Pendleton nodded toward Jackaby. “Detective, huh? What’s that thing on his head?”