Sinking Suspicions

by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

  “Hey, Lance, can you hurry up? My wife's probably got breakfast on the table by now, and I've got a million things to do, including finding some men who are willing to waste their day looking for a needle in a haystack in this heat.”

  Lance copied the information from the notepad into his spiral-bound notebook and placed it back into his shirt pocket. He nodded his thanks to the sheriff as the two men got in their respective vehicles and drove off in opposite directions.

  Lance traveled the short distance to Sadie's house to make sure everything was still locked up tight. In the early morning light, he could see her paint horse Joe grazing in the pasture, but her dog Sonny was nowhere in sight. He rolled down the truck window, whistled, and called his name. Nothing.

  He got out of his truck and stood in Sadie's yard, hands on hips, visually searching the nearby pasture, then walked to the barn and looked inside. Empty. In his estimation, Sonny was unpredictable, and that spelled trouble to his way of thinking. The wolf-dog was smart all right, but he thought it unlikely the animal would ever be completely domesticated, no matter what Sadie said. It was quite apparent that the wolf-dog didn't like him, either.

  Lance didn't relish the idea of telling Sadie her dog was missing, so he rationalized. Maybe Sonny was kind of like Buck, refusing to answer to anyone right now. Lance pumped fresh water, then retrieved a container of dog food from the barn, and dumped it near the porch where he thought Sonny would eventually show.

  Lance's cell phone rang. It was O'Leary calling to tell Lance the search for Buck Skinner had been called off. A neighbor who had heard they were searching for Buck had called and left information about a vehicle they'd seen parked in front of Buck's house the morning he went missing, so the sheriff concluded the old man had simply gone with the driver of the unidentified vehicle. There was no crime in that, O'Leary said, and he was sure Buck would turn up sooner or later. O'Leary's tone annoyed Lance.

  He returned to his truck, gathered the stack of letters from the front seat, and entered the screened-in porch of Sadie's farmhouse. A row of empty flowerpots lined the far wall. What's the use in planting flowers in pots, he thought, when you've got an acre of yard space? He scooted the corner pot over with the toe of his boot and uncovered the key Sadie had left for him, picked it up, and unlocked the kitchen door.

  The quiet house smelled like Sadie, a combination of vanilla sugar cookies and the subtle fragrance of lilacs that hung in the air after she tossed her long raven hair behind her delicate shoulders. It was as if she had just walked through the room, beckoning him to follow.

  He made a pot of coffee and pushed the awareness of Sadie's presence away, allowing his thoughts to return to her neighbor. After pouring a cup of coffee, he sat down at the kitchen table to examine the old envelopes he'd found in the abandoned house. They were letters Buck had sent home during the war, arranged in order by date and tied together with strong twine. Unable to loosen the knot, Lance slid out the top letter and opened it. He sipped coffee as he read.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  You wouldn't believe how many boys showed up to fight in the war. Training has been rough, but not too rough for me. We've got a baseball team and I've hit the most home runs so far. I don't know where these boys learned to play ball, but our team in Eucha could beat them all. I'm ready to go. I can shoot better than anyone else in my platoon. I told them it was because I'd been shooting since I was a kid. Tell Jake it's okay to use my rifle while I'm gone. One of the men told me his brother died in France a few weeks ago. His parents want him to quit and come home, but they say we can't come home until the war is over.

  Love,

  Ben

  Buck's letter stirred something deep inside Lance. Buck had obviously been very young when he went off to war, and his words reflected the same feelings Lance had had when he joined the Marines and headed to Vietnam—a lot of fear and adrenaline.

  Lance returned the letter to the stack and poured another cup of coffee. Something didn't feel right. He couldn't forget about Buck. Maybe a little unofficial snooping wouldn't hurt, he thought, and even though the information he'd gathered at Buck's house was limited, it might be all he needed to find an identity thief. If Buck was indeed out riding around with some unknown person or persons, so be it. Lance could at least help the old guy out with his problems with the government. After what Buck had done for his country, as a fellow Marine, it was the least Lance could do for him.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Sadie's cell phone. No answer. He hated being out of communication with her. He hung up and mentally reviewed what he knew so far.

  A California woman was in a panic because she couldn't reach her Uncle Buck on the phone. Buck answered to no one and had a tendency to go wherever and whenever he pleased. His old truck was sitting in the middle of his property, but no one seemed to know whether it was running or if it had been there for a day, a week, or a month. Ten men had searched Buck's ranch all day and all night and had found no sign of him. But Lance knew it would take a hundred men a month to cover two hundred acres of heavy woods and dense underbrush, and it would take a lot more than that to find someone like Buck if he didn't want to be found.

  What else did he know? The IRS was getting ready to take everything Buck owned. Obviously, someone had been using Buck's social security number illegally and reporting income to the Social Security Administration.

  Knowing what little he did about Buck, Lance didn't think Buck would take too kindly to anyone stealing his ranch. The expected response, however, wouldn't be for Buck to disappear. It would be more in tune with greeting visitors on the front porch with a loaded shotgun.

  Lance's final conclusion was that Buck might be missing, and on the other hand, he might not. Either way, Lance would follow the money trail and see what he could find.

  He picked up the phone and dialed Maggie Whitekiller, the woman who answered the phone for the Liberty Police Department when no one was around. Lance had grown to depend on Maggie for sundry things, one of which was her computer skills. She answered on the first ring.

  “Hi, Maggie. Everything under control?”

  “Hey, Chief, of course,” she said, and then broke into song, “It's a Sunday morning sidewalk.” She chuckled and said, “I just heard that song on the radio. Don't you just love Kris Kristofferson?”

  Lance shook his head in silence.

  “Did Sadie get off okay?” Maggie continued.

  “Yes, she's fine. In fact, I'm up here in Delaware County at her house now trying to help locate her missing neighbor, Buck Skinner. Can you look something up for me on the computer?”

  “When are you going to get with it, Boss? This is the twenty-first century. Even my grandson can use a computer.”

  “Come on, Maggie. Don't give me a hard time. You know the City of Liberty can't afford to buy me a computer to carry around in my back pocket.”

  Maggie laughed. “Okay, what is it?”

  Lance pulled the spiral-bound notebook out of his shirt pocket, fed questions to Maggie, and waited. After a few minutes, he began to take notes as she recited information to him. Lance thanked her and made her promise she would call him on his cell phone if anything catastrophic happened. She promised she would, and he hung up.

  Next stop would be Sycamore Springs.

  Chapter 5

  Ga do da jv ya dv hne li ji sa

  O ga je li ja gv wi yu hi

  O ga li ga li na hna gwu ye hno

  Jo gi lv hwi sda ne di yi

  When Sadie woke up, it took a minute for her to recall where she was. She had dreamed about someone singing a mournful Cherokee song and the melody still hung in the air around her. She sat up in bed and listened to what sounded like a million chattering birds. They were either arguing over something important or exclaiming the glory of the early morning. She smiled when she remembered the “No Parking—Bird Droppings” sign she had seen the night before under the huge banyan tree in the parking lot. At least it's better than waki
ng up to the sound of an obnoxious alarm clock, she thought.

  Sometime during the night she had undressed, left her clothes on the floor, and slid between the clean sheets. She had slept soundly, giving her renewed vigor for her first full day on Maui. She jumped out of bed, fished her swimsuit out of her luggage, and pulled it on.

  She stepped out on her third-floor balcony to the same ocean air she had succumbed to the night before. The lawn chairs below had been magically arranged in a straight row across the luscious green lawn. The empty kidney-shaped pool glistened in the predawn hours. No one seemed to be out and about. Must be the time difference, she thought. Once again she made the mental calculation: if it's 5:20 a.m. here, it's 10:20 a.m. in Oklahoma. Her internal clock still ticked in the Oklahoma time zone.

  She grabbed her cell phone to dial Lance's number. No signal. Her battery was dead. She groaned and dug in her bag for the phone charger. When she found it, she plugged in the phone, threw it on the couch, and headed for the beach.

  She walked a few hundred yards to the end of the street, passing lots of thick, blooming shrubbery, a manicured greenbelt, and several condominium buildings. On the other side of the road lay a huge sugarcane field. She stopped and watched a couple of birds, the likes of which she had never seen before. They looked like redbirds or cardinals, except they had gray bodies and crimson heads. She watched as they picked at seeds on the side of the road and then flitted to a safe distance.

  When she got to Haycraft Park, she made her way in the early morning light toward the sound of the surf. When she reached the beach, she stood and stared. The sun had begun to creep over the same mountain she had seen when she landed the day before. The moon hung low on the western horizon. It was the most beautiful morning she had ever seen. She felt exhilarated as she walked.

  The beach, listed as Sugar Beach on her map, began at the park and extended as far as she could see around Ma‘alaea Bay. For a while, she thought she must be the only living soul out at that time of the morning. But before she knew it, several walkers, joggers, and a couple of fishermen came into view.

  She carried her flip-flops and let her toes sink into the fine sand that looked and felt like brown sugar. The gentle surf crawled around her feet as she stopped for a moment and looked across the water. In the distance a tour boat sailed toward the tiny island of Molokini. The magnificence of it all caused her to think about Lance and how thankful she was to have him in her life. If he wasn't so stubborn, they could be walking this beach together, holding hands.

  The faint odor of seaweed rose from massive brown and green clumps that lay strewn across the beach. In small natural pools of water, stranded minnow-sized fish waited for the tide to return and wash them back into the ocean.

  Sadie had been walking about thirty minutes when she noticed six pyramid-shaped concrete objects sitting in the water near two rows of large lava rocks. The rocks appeared to mark an entrance onto the beach, perhaps into the brackish pond that lay under a boardwalk not far away. She wondered if these indestructible man-made objects were perhaps remnants from the war, placed deliberately to keep small watercraft from landing on the beach. She made a mental note to look for related information if she ever made it to the library to do any local research on the war.

  She glanced back at her footprints. They had already begun to fade by the water's continual washing of the sand. In a few more minutes, all proof of her existence on this stretch of beach would disappear, erased by the ocean.

  Suddenly, the song from her dream returned—“One Drop of Blood”—a sacred song her ancestors had sung on the dreadful, long walk from Georgia to Indian Territory known as the Trail of Tears. It reminded her of her friend and neighbor Benjamin “Buck” Skinner. She'd heard him singing that song to himself so many times before. Where could he be? Could he just disappear without a trace the way her footprints had? He had probably gone somewhere insignificant, she thought, and when he gets home in a few days everyone will have a big laugh. He was quite a character.

  Sadie found a comfortable place to sit on the beach, sink her toes in the sand, and think. She had known Buck for as long as she could remember. He had been a friend to her father, to his father before him, and now to her. His land butted up against the Walela land on the south side of the road. He was a good neighbor, a quiet, steady Cherokee man who kept to himself.

  Sadie could remember returning home on more than one summer day to find a brown paper sack stuffed full of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, or whatever the day's harvest from Buck's garden had been. In return, she would bake his favorite treat, a batch of oatmeal cookies or a pan of double-fudge brownies, wrap the goodies in aluminum foil, and drop them by his house. Buck would carry on over her tasty gifts and make her sit down and have a bite with him while he reminisced.

  The stories often centered on the first time Sadie's grandfather balanced her on the bare back of a paint horse. According to Buck, Sadie's mother had thrown a fit. No one knew why she got so upset, because it seemed evident to everyone else that Sadie was a natural-born horse lover. Throughout the years, not even her mother would be able to convince her it was unbecoming for a lady to spend all her time in the barn brushing horses and mucking stalls.

  Sadie enjoyed listening to Buck, amazed at his talent for creating those slight embellishments that eventually morphed the delightful tales into his own personal version of her life. Sometimes she actually began to question her own recollections. Only occasionally did he venture into any of his own personal history.

  Buck was known in the small community of Eucha as “Buck, the rider of wild horses.” As the story went, there wasn't a horse in Delaware County that hadn't bucked, kicked, or rolled over the old man at one time or another unless it had arrived in the county already suitable for riding. He had a multitude of scars and had suffered countless broken bones during his lifetime working with horses, but it had never stopped him from climbing back on long before the throbbing stopped. Those days had long passed, but he still talked about his favorite stallion as if he was a member of the family. Now he settled for the enjoyment of watching wild mustangs roam on his land, and sneaking carrots to Joe when he thought Sadie wasn't watching.

  Only once had Buck mentioned a wife and child to Sadie. The baby had come early during a terrible spring rainstorm, the mother home alone while Buck fought swirling flood waters to rescue a new colt. The foal survived; the mother and baby didn't. Buck never forgave himself.

  The conversation had been Buck's attempt to comfort Sadie when she had suffered a miscarriage during a brief teenage marriage. They shed a few tears together and the subject never surfaced again.

  According to Sadie's father, Buck had endured every bloody battle fought by the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific theater during World War II; that is, until he was badly wounded and had to return to the States. Buck rarely spoke about those lost years at war. Even when Sadie studied history at the university and tried to interview him for a paper, he refused. Instead, he looked off into the distance, grinned as if he knew the world's biggest secret, and then politely walked off.

  Sadie felt helpless, but she knew one thing—Buck was a survivor. The crusty old man might be hurt, but he wasn't lost. Maybe he had fallen and hit his head or broke something. She knew if Buck was alive, the old war hero would hang on until someone could find him.

  She turned and headed back down the beach to her condo. She had a lunch meeting in a few short hours with Mr. Yamaguchi in his Kihei office. Besides that, Lance might be trying to call.

  Hoping no one would notice that she was late for work, Priscilla Blackfox hurriedly swiped her magnetic card at the seldom-used side entrance of the Sisson Farms chicken processing plant in Sycamore Springs, Oklahoma, and pushed on the door. It was stuck. She used her left shoulder and all her strength to push again, only to gain a couple of inches and uncover a dirty sneaker blocking the way. “Open the door,” she yelled through the small opening. When no one answered, she pushed with all her migh
t, creating barely enough space to step through.

  Once inside, it took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the darkness before she discovered the problem. One of her coworkers lay on the floor against the door.

  “Get up, Hernandez,” she growled. “Go somewhere else and pass out.” She nudged him with her foot and then noticed blood on his shirt. “This isn't funny, man. Get up.” Suddenly, realizing her friend couldn't hear her, she gasped for air, ran to the door leading into the plant, and screamed as loudly as she could.

  Chapter 6

  Lance locked up Sadie's house and started to replace the key under the flowerpot, then changed his mind and dropped it into his pocket. The dog food he'd left by the back porch remained untouched. He called out Sonny's name and waited. Still no sign of him. Joe, Sadie's paint horse, stood under a shade tree near the barn, brushing flies away with his tail. Lance climbed into his truck and headed toward Sycamore Springs.

  He drove past the Eucha cemetery and followed the road to Highway 20. As he drove, Lance could see the heat radiating from the asphalt. It was going to be another scorcher.

  Lance's thoughts turned back to Buck. He hoped the old man really was off on an adventure somewhere and not in trouble. More than that, he prayed Buck wasn't dying a slow death somewhere in this heat. The number he'd copied from the notepad near Buck's phone didn't make any sense until Maggie used her magic on the Internet and came up with the phone number of a chicken processing plant in Sycamore Springs. Lance couldn't imagine what business Buck would have at a processing plant that only sold frozen chickens wholesale to grocery stores. That led Lance to wonder if it had something to do with Buck's predicament with the IRS. Before long, he'd know.

  This stretch of highway had become so familiar to Lance he thought he could drive it blindfolded. He hardly noticed the familiar houses along the way, the tree-covered landscape mixed with cleared pastureland dotted with horses and cattle. When he reached the highway, he unconsciously surrendered to the lonely ribbon of curves for the next several miles to the small community of Jay, Oklahoma.