by Maddy Hunter
“Emily? Did we get cut off?”
“No…I’m here.” As I watched them amble toward the waterfall, I realized that my decision had been made for me. “All right. I’ll wait for you, Etienne, but —”
“Say no more. I love you, bella! You won’t be sorry. Thank the gentleman for the use of his phone. Sei piu bella d’un angelo. Voglio essere con te per eternita.” And then he disconnected.
“Etienne? Etienne! What does that mean?” Damn. I got goose bumps when he spoke Italian to me, but I hated not knowing what he was saying. If I could remember any of the words, I could ask Duncan to translate; he was fluent in five languages. But how tacky would it be to ask the competition to translate the sweet nothings of the front runner?
Nuts. What was I going to do about Duncan?
I boosted myself to my feet, a little unsettled about what might be in store for me, but feeling good about having gotten a few things off my chest. The muscle shirt guy was in the back forty, heaving chunks of moss over his head, so I headed off in that direction with his phone, making a detour along the way.
“Have you reached China yet?” I asked the cheerleaders as I hovered beside their ever-deepening hole. The blonde paused, sank back onto her haunches, and gazed up.
“What?”
“China. Didn’t you ever see that Bugs Bunny cartoon where he dug a hole and ended up in China?”
She looked me up and down, her eyes pebble hard in her ultratanned face. “Is that what you do in your spare time?” she asked condescendingly. “Watch cartoons?”
I flashed her a benevolent smile. I wasn’t the one who was going to look like a thousand-year-old raisin by the time I reached forty, so I could afford to be pleasant.
“My brother watches cartoons,” the brunette volunteered, still digging. “He’s actually done an analysis that draws a striking parallel between Elmer Fudd’s relentless pursuit of Bugs and the path our current administration is taking in its foreign policy.”
Where else but in America could you watch Looney Tunes for a semester and earn credit toward a college degree? “Where’s your brother studying?” I inquired.
“Miss Clukey’s Nursery School. He’s five.”
My youngest nephew had attended nursery school. We’d been pretty impressed when he learned to count to ten. “I’m Emily, by the way,” I said in introduction. “And you are?”
“Shelly Valentine,” said the brunette, bobbing her head.
“Busy,” said the blonde, returning to her excavating duties.
“Dammit, Jen,” Shelly complained. “Will you watch what you’re doing? You’re contaminating my quadrant.”
Dissension in the ranks. Oh, goody, I loved it when that happened. I looked blithely from one to the other, ever the cordial observer. “If I’m not mistaken didn’t I see the two of you at Professor Smoker’s lecture yesterday?”
“So?” Jen grumbled, never looking up.
“So, you must be really broken up about what happened to him after the lecture.”
“We’re crushed,” she said sarcastically.
“It was a horrible blow.” Shelly brushed a strand of hair off her face with her wrist, leaving a smudge on her cheek. “I don’t understand how anyone could hurt Dori. He was so lovable.”
“Dori?” I asked.
Shelly looked faintly embarrassed. “That was our pet name for him. Everyone in his inner circle called him Dori.”
“So how did one go about getting admitted to Professor Smoker’s inner circle?”
“By sleeping with him,” Jen said matter-of-factly. She looked up, spearing me with her eyes. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Yup. Tilly had sure hit the nail on the head with that one. “Hey, it’s your life.”
Jen let out a derisive snort. “Your generation is so sexually repressed. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve moved out of the Dark Ages. University professors don’t live in ivory towers anymore. The really hot ones sleep around, and in case you weren’t aware, no one was hotter than Dori.”
“Did he sleep around a lot?” I ventured.
“ ‘A lot’ is an empty term,” Jen lectured smugly. “It’s a measurement of exactly nothing. It’s unspecific. It’s not quantifiable. It’s —”
“Did he sleep with all his female students?” Maybe that was specific enough for her.
“Not at the same time!” Shelly piped up. “He was hot, he wasn’t kinky.”
“I have a question of my own,” Jen fired back at me. “Who the hell are you?”
I gave her a palms up. “Just someone who’s out looking for buried treasure, like you. I saw that map and I couldn’t resist. How many times in your life do you run into an honest-to-goodness treasure map?”
“Not often,” Shelly said affably. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for, but I guess we’ll know it when we see it.”
“That’s what I figure, too,” I agreed. “Where’d you get your map?”
“From — Ow!” Shelly dropped her spoon and cradled her hand against her chest. “Watch what you’re doing, will you?” She glowered at Jen. “That hurt! Look, you broke the skin.”
Jen expelled an exasperated sigh. “So hit the infirmary when you get back and ask for some Neosporin.”
“She can even show you where it is,” I informed Shelly, then redirected my attention to Jen. “Talk around the watercooler is that you went ballistic on Bailey when she was leaving the infirmary last night.”
Her eyes lengthened to unfriendly slits. “Who told you that?”
I shrugged. “It’s a confined space. Word gets around.”
“Listen, Sherlock, whatever I said to Bailey is my business, so why don’t you go dig a hole someplace and do us all a favor by jumping into it.”
To borrow a phrase from Nana, “I don’t think we’re going to be here that long.” I smiled and gave her an impish wink, but as I turned away, I was struck with an impulsive thought that caused me to turn back. “Was Professor Smoker sleeping with Bailey, too?”
Jen studied me evenly. “Bailey never made the cut. Dori had this…rule. The women he slept with?” Her lips curved into an icy smile. “They had to be viviparous.”
“Warm-blooded,” Tilly explained a few minutes later, her voice uncharacteristically dull. “Or more technically, bringing forth living young instead of eggs. Nearly all mammals are viviparous.”
So Jen was implying that Bailey wasn’t warm-blooded? Euw. That wasn’t very nice.
We were sitting on a craggy rock near the flowage from the falls, Tilly in a near depression as she observed the chaotic methodology of the treasure hunters. “I hope they realize they can’t leave those holes exposed like that. They have to fill them in. This is a state park. All park entrants are required to leave things exactly the way they found them.”
“Are you going to do any digging yourself? That’s why you’re here. That’s why Nana’s packing stolen flatware. Come on, Tilly. It’s your treasure.”
“There’ll be nothing left to dig when these scavengers finish their assault. Look at them. How could any treasure survive this kind of destruction?”
I could think of only one way to console her. “Have you eaten lunch yet?” Carbohydrates worked wonders for depression.
She waved off my offer. “I’ve lost my appetite.” Her eyes flitted toward the flattened white box I dug out of my shoulder bag. “They must have provided us with more than one lunch option. My box doesn’t look like that.”
I raised the crushed container to eye level. “That’s because Jonathan didn’t step on yours.”
Halfway through my mashed peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I glanced at the three Norwegians to find Ansgar and Gjurd high-fiving Nils, then hunkering back down to observe something in their hole. Uh-oh. Looked as if they might actually have found something.
Their wide backs formed a protective shield as Nils fussed with his backpack. He removed a towel and handed it to Ansgar, who glanced cautiously over his shoulder,
obviously on the lookout for prying eyes.
“I say!” I heard Basil call out. “I’ve found it! I’ve really found it this time.”
Percy smacked him on the head as groans and hisses filled the air. I watched people fling clumps of earth toward them, followed by moss, leaves, and what looked like a rusty engine part. “We don’t believe you!” a woman yelled.
“You ever heard of the boy who cried wolf?” the guy in the muscle shirt yelled.
Basil and Percy tented their arms over their heads and knelt protectively over their pothole while the Norwegians shrugged into their backpacks, tamped all the soil back into their hole, and headed out. Considering that their ancient ancestors hadn’t gotten beyond the pillage and burn stage, these guys were proving to be real neatnicks. The evolutionary process at work.
“Another false alarm,” Nana complained as she ambled our way with Jonathan in tow. She stopped in front of us and handed me her Magic Marker. “You wanna sign Jonathan’s cast? He’s still got some space open.”
“Have a speedy recovery,” I wrote, signing my name. I checked out what other people had written. “This cast is full of germs. Avoid contact with your eyes and mouth after touching it. Margi.”
“I broke my arm once, too, and I bet it was a lot worse then yours. Bernice.”
“There’s something about you that reminds me of my Sam,” penned Nana.
“Get lost!” read another message in huge block letters. The sentiment had no name attached, but instinct told me the author was probably dear old Jen.
“EEEKKKKK!!!” A scream rang through the trees. “IT’S BIGFOOT!”
Pandemonium broke out as a hideously fat beast swathed in leaves bounded down the hill.
“EEHHHH!” shrieked the newlywed in the Aloha Princess T-shirt as she pelted through the trees away from it.
“Somebody shoot it!” her husband yelled as he pelted after her.
Nana whipped out her camera and squeezed off a quick shot, pondering afterward, “You don’t s’pose he meant with a gun, do you?”
“Holy crap!” cried Jonathan. “That thing could be a carnivore!” At which point he took off down the trail like a streak of chain lightning.
“Bigfoot is a phenomenon indigenous to the Pacific Northwest,” Tilly expounded as the beast thrashed through a stand of saplings. “I’m rather perplexed why it’s making an appearance in the South Pacific.”
“Maybe it’s lost,” said Nana.
Tilly pointed to it with her walking stick. “Naturally, the legend of Bigfoot has expanded over the decades. In Canada it’s known as Sasquatch. The Lakota Indians call it Chiye-tanka. The Sioux refer to it as Big Man.”
The ground shook as our fellow kayakers charged past us like stampeding wildebeest. Basil. Percy. The guy in the muscle shirt. Over rocks, around trees. Through ferns, moss, and mud. Screaming. Shrieking. Yelling.
“But I’m not sure if the Hawaiians have a comparative humanoid ape in their mythology.”
The beast flailed its arms, bounced off a tree, then staggered dizzily. “It sure is fat,” observed Nana. “Probably hard to find nutritious food in Dumpsters these days.”
Tilly waggled her walking stick at it. “The cranium is extraordinarily large. It must boast a massive brain to have a head that big, which means its intelligence level could be well above that of a typical anthropoid ape. The leaves have me puzzled, though. Bigfoot is reputed to be a furry creature — a great, solitary, gangly beast who’s been walking the earth for six thousand years. Why is this creature’s epidermal layer covered with mulch instead of fur? I hope it doesn’t have jungle rot.”
“Them other ones might be solitary,” Nana announced, nodding toward the hill. “But this one’s not. He’s got relatives.”
Three more fat, leaf-covered creatures came tumbling down the slope behind him.
“Looks like they all been eatin’ outta the same Dumpster,” Nana observed.
“A nuclear family,” marveled Tilly. “Astounding. I wonder if they’re grouped into matriarchal or patriarchal units.” She heaved herself to her feet. “Perhaps I’ll ask.”
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” I seized her arm. “You can’t go near that thing! Look at it! It’s vicious. It might be rabid. If you get anywhere near it, it might —”
It stumbled into a pothole and fell flat on its face with a painful WOOF.
“Ouch.” Nana winced. “That had to hurt.”
“I’ll be fine,” Tilly assured me, removing my hand from her arm. “I faced down the Abominable Snowman near the summit of Mount Everest. This creature is small potatoes in comparison.”
“Yeah, but he brought along the whole family!” I paused stupidly as her words caught up to my brain. “You’ve seen the Abominable Snowman?”
“Actually, it turned out to be an unnaturally tall Sherpa guide who’d lost his way in a storm, but if you ever visit Nepal, you’ll discover that I’ve become something of an urban legend.”
The creature dragged itself clumsily to its feet and in a fit of wildness and rage, pounded its way straight for us.
“Um, I think we better move,” I said, grabbing Nana, but Tilly strode brusquely to intercept him.
“You there,” she yelled, utterly fearless as the thing stopped, growled curiously, then catapulted toward her as if she were the Big Mac he’d ordered for lunch. Faster. Closer. Faster. Closer. Oh, my God! He wasn’t going to stop!
THWACK! She clubbed him in the midsection with one swing of her walking stick. BOOM! He went down like a six-ton sack of flour.
“She’s somethin’, isn’t she?” said Nana.
Circling the moaning carcass, Tilly nudged leaves from its face with the tip of her cane, then peered down at the thing with such blatant disappointment, I had to call out, “Bad news?”
“The worst.” She glanced back in our direction. “It’s only Dick Teig.”
I guess the good news was, at least he wasn’t on his way to Tahiti.
“How much time before the bus leaves?” Jonathan asked worriedly.
Riiiight. Leeeeft. Riiiight. Leeeft. The wind that had pushed us upriver was now in our faces, so we were bucking a powerful head wind as I paddled back downriver. I checked my watch. “Forty-five minutes.”
“We’re going to miss it, aren’t we?”
“I can’t be sure,” I said breathlessly. I figured we had another mile to go, but my shoulders and arms were burning so much from the exertion, I didn’t know if I could make it all the way back. Riiiight. Leeeeft. Riiiight. Leeeft. “Maybe Nana will ask the driver to wait.”
I had no one but myself to blame for our late start back. After deleafing the Teigs and Stolees, who’d taken the wrong trail to the Secret Falls and ended up traipsing through hikers’ hell, I’d sent them down the correct trail under the watchful eyes of Nana and Tilly, then stayed behind to tamp all the upturned soil back into its proper place. The Vikings had set such a good example, I felt obligated to follow suit. I hooked up with Jonathan back at the kayak, but by the time I arrived everyone else had already taken off, leaving us to navigate back on our own.
Riiiight. Leeeeft. Riiiight. Leeeft.
As I navigated a wide turn around a bend, a gust of wind slammed into us like a class-three hurricane, lifting our bow out of the water and driving us back as if we’d hit a giant deflector shield. My hair flat-lined. My eyebrows nearly blew off my face. My cheeks stung. I bowed my head against the force of the gale, realizing with horror that the river was now acting as a wind tunnel.
“My hat!” cried Jonathan. “My Bill Gates hat!”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Leeeeeeeeeeeeft.
“Over there! To the right! Hurry, Emily! Right, right, right. You’ve gotta save my hat!”
TOOOOOOT! TOOOOOOT! The horn from the Fern Grotto tour boat blasted behind us. I whipped a look over my shoulder to find it suddenly within spitting distance, its flat little bottom and canopy bearing down fast.
Forty yards.
Thirty yards.
&
nbsp; Holy shit.
Rightleftrightleftrightrightrightleftright.
TOOOOOOOT! blared the horn. OH, GOD!
Twenty yards.
Ten yards.
Rightleftrightleftrightrightrightleftright.
“Turn around!” Jonathan screamed, grabbing his paddle and plunging it into the water like a rudder to stop me. “That hat is one of a kind! The only one ever offered on eBay. A collector’s item! You’ve gotta turn arou —”
CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUNCH!!!
Chapter 8
“Peas will help bring down the swelling.”
“Peas?” I peered at the female doctor in the emergency room cubicle. “Dried or frozen?”
“Frozen. Preferably in a bag. Without butter sauce. Just keep refreezing them.”
“Baby or snow?”
“Whichever is cheaper. Don’t make the mistake of eating them afterward.” She stuck her pen in the pocket of her lab coat and offered me a warm smile. “You’re done here, Miss Andrew. Ice that lump for a few days, and you’ll be fine. But I’d advise against any more kayaking trips on the Wailua. Next time, you might not be so lucky to escape with only minor bruises. Be thankful you were wearing your life jacket.”
“Do you know anything about the condition of the man who came in with me? Jonathan Pond?” I tested the matzo ball of a knot over my eye, hoping the swelling might have gone down already, but no such luck. I looked down at myself, assessing the damage. My clothes were damp, my shoulder bag was waterlogged, and my new short, sassy, ridiculously expensive, frizz-free hairdo was in ruins.
In other words, I was a mess.
On a brighter note, at least I’d been wearing waterproof mascara.
“I don’t know anything about Mr. Pond, but I can check for you.”