Big Bones (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Big Bones

  by

  Melanie Jackson

  Version 1.2 – May, 2011

  Published by Brian Jackson at KDP

  Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Jackson

  Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at: www.melaniejackson.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Chapter 1

  I was planting a garden, a container garden. Not such an unusual thing, except that I live in a part of Canada that has very short summers and the selection of plants that can thrive are limited, even if I bring them indoors for the winter and baby them with grow lights which I have to run off a generator.

  Still, I was determined. The Flowers grows a garden every year. I could too. Especially if I read the instructions with the tiny pots of plants and seed packets very carefully. I had Munstead Lavender (it looked like the unfortunately damp growing guide that came with it said ‘hates wet feet’— wet feet?), Lily of the Valley, lantana, yarrow, and a pretty thing called Sneezewort which has tiny white flowers and looked a bit like a plant my mother had called Feverfew. The nursery in Winnipeg had promised The Wings that all these plants would grow quickly and easily if I just followed the planting guides.

  Max yawned and thumped his tail once, telling me company was near.

  “Hey, Butterscotch.”

  I looked up from my seed packet and smiled at Fiddling Thomas. Our musical genius had been rebuilding his truck engine and smelled of solvent. I didn’t mind. I’ve always kind of liked the smell.

  “Slan leat. Nice day, eh?” I said by way of greeting, noticing for the first time that his auburn hair was going gray.

  “Grand,” he agreed, but I could see his mind was on something else. “Have you heard that Old Thunder saw Sasquatch again?”

  “Not again.” Old Thunder saw our version of Bigfoot at least twice a year. His nephew, Wendell, had never seen anything, but then Wendell was busy raising wolf hybrids and not hiking the wilderness, searching for legends.

  “Ayup— and this time he’s found some bones too. Says it’s a Sasquatch cemetery.”

  This was new.

  “Are they real? Or just a bunch of bear bones he’s wired together for his friends at Sasquatch Watch?”

  “Looked plenty real enough to me. Wendell thinks so too. I’d wait a bit and ask The Bones to look at them, but Doc’s gone to the rez with Linda Skywater and who knows when they’ll be back. I’m off to see Big John.” Thomas sounded grim.

  “Why?” I asked warily. “Sasquatch didn’t attack Wendell’s dogs, did he?” Or she. We weren’t real certain about the gender of Old Thunder’s beast. We weren’t sure of the species either but leaned toward bear.

  “Because the bloody dumb bastard went to Sasquatch Watch in Little Forks and gave them pictures of the skeleton for their newsletter. The tabloids picked it up as soon as it was published and are now offering him a lot of money for an interview and more pictures. Wings will be flying in a couple of reporters tomorrow. And an anthropologist the paper hired is coming the day after. Wendell is fit to be tied since Old Thunder has offered to put them up at his house.”

  “An anthropologist? Well hell.” An imaginary Sasquatch in newspapers that claimed Elvis was a Venusian star-pilot wouldn’t impress anyone, but if the bones were proclaimed real by an actual scientist….

  “Exactly. The mayor needs to get the word out so people can go fishing for a spell. Damned fool. It isn’t like he needs the money.”

  None of us did. Thanks to a modest lifestyle and the windfall of drug money left us by the Russian mafia last spring, we had for the first time both a paved main street in town and enough spending cash to take care of necessities, and even extras like potting soil and seeds.

  But this wasn’t about money. You would think, given our humble estate, that we would be a people largely free of conceit and worldly ambition, but that isn’t so. In fact, pride is all some Gulchers have. A steady diet of derision about the local Bigfoot had made Old Thunder stubborn as well as obsessed about proving us wrong. These bones were vindication for a man that most people thought crazy.

  “This isn’t good. The government keeps sending divers to look for the plane’s cargo and the newspaper guys are bound to pick up on that story too if they stay long. And if word gets out about that we’ll have treasure hunters here too.”

  Not to mention the fact that at least half the town was living under assumed identities— the Jones half. Like me. We are pretty good at living our new lives, but some of the press are like bloodhounds and we couldn’t chance being discovered if they scented deceit and started digging. And it could happen. Names are easy to lose— not like an arm or leg— but personality and habits was another matter. We are who we are. We can monitor behavior, but at the end of the day a leopard is still a leopard even if he dyes his spots. My old life of seventeen years is buried somewhere under my new skin. Sometimes it peeps out and betrays me.

  “Ayup. And they will hear unless we drown Whisky Jack too. You’d think after what happened with the Russians he’d have learned to keep his mouth buttoned, but nothing short of the undertaker sewing his lips shut will keep him quiet.”

  Whisky Jack was like a parrot who had learned words that you wished he’d forget. Unfortunately, liquor has ruined his brain and he is no longer as bright as your average macaw. Nor was he showing any sign of dying soon. The World Life Expectancy tables say Canadians will live an average of 80 plus years. Whisky Jack was following the statistical norm and going for a new record.

  I sighed and got to my feet. Max hopped up happily. Sleeping in the sun was fine, but a walk was better.

  “I’ll come along too. I need to see The Flowers anyway.”

  “I don’t suppose there is anything your friend can do to help us.”

  This explained Thomas’s visit to me. My ‘friend’ was Inspector Chuck Goodhead of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I had some doubts that Chuck would use this word to describe our relationship.

  “About Sasquatch hunters?” I asked doubtfully as we stepped onto our very smooth, but what still seemed to me a very indiscrete, tarmac. “I don’t think so, but I can ask.”

  It would give me an excuse to speak to Chuck. We had been in touch a couple of times since his official stopover last winter, but he said that he had been unable to get away from work to come for another visit since then. And I hadn’t pressed him. After all, he’s the law and I’m a fugitive, and some things even strong attraction cannot overcome. Love and relationships, as most commonly practiced by those outside McIntyre’s Gulch, were not an option for me. I lead a simple life but it had complexities.

  Still, it was a good life and all I wanted. I tried to imagine surviving in the outside world, getting a job, pretending to have friends. My resume wasn’t impressive and I didn’t think I’d be good at lying around the clock. There were a lot of hungry people out there. People, at least some of them who wanted to go on television and spill their guts about their guilty secrets. There were some who wanted to go on television and spill other people’s guilty secrets too. People who wanted more than just material sufficiency and the satisfaction of a job well done, and who chase after gossip like some people chase the Holy Grail. These were called reporters. We don’t have them in The Gulch.

  I shuddered.

  “Think it will rain?” Thomas as
ked, looking at the narrow strip of sky allowed by the walls of the gulch where we lived. I was happy for the interruption of my thoughts.

  “It wouldn’t dare. Not until I get those plants in their pots.”

  He smiled.

  “The Flowers is helping you?”

  So, he sensed my insecurities about this gardening venture. Was I so lacking in nurturing instinct that I feared being able to keep plants alive?

  “I hope so. There is more to this gardening thing than I reckoned. Did you know different plants need different food?”

  Thomas grunted.

  Like me, The Flowers was out in her flower patch, getting plants in the ground and probably praying that we wouldn’t get a late snow or pounding rain that would destroy them.

  Also like me, Big John’s daughter was involved in an equally improbable affair with a man called Sasha, a former Russian Mafioso most commonly known as The Butcher of Minsk. Though hardly rejoicing at the connection, our mayor was at least relieved to discover that Sasha had been a purveyor of meats and not the mass murderer his nickname and previous company had originally suggested. We hadn’t much need for a butcher shop in the village, but Sasha made a modest living dressing hunters’ kill for those who would rather not do the dirty work themselves. He was also great at sharpening knives and saws. Most importantly, he treated The Flowers well.

  Of course, he was no longer called Sasha. He had chosen the name Michael Jones and in the spirit of unity had henna tinted his hair. Locally, he was known as The Knives. The nickname sounded sinister to me, but no one else minded so I kept my opinion to myself.

  Sasha’s outlaw colleagues had also opted to remain in Manitoba under assumed names rather than returning to face the wrath of their former employers, who were missing a small fortune in cash and jewelry. The very fortune which had paved our one town road and brought so much interest from the government.

  The Canadian authorities, outside of Chuck, were under the impression that the other Russians had perished in the explosion which killed their psychotic leader and sank the plane containing the missing treasure. We didn’t see a lot of the other guys, who were off making their fortunes in larger towns, but they dropped in from time to time and were always welcomed when passing through. As I said, we are a town of fugitives, founded by fugitives, and we don’t discriminate because of nationality. Nor do we hold a grudge when someone has seen the light and repented of their old ways, because sins tend to carry their own punishments and those are heavy enough.

  I don’t think this makes us bad people, just lawless ones. After all, we don’t carry the usual hateful prejudices you read about in newspapers, and we understand, as few people do, that charity actually does begin at home.

  To the outside world, we are amiably, though only nominally, Christian and swaddle ourselves in religious respectability twice a month when a visiting minister stops in to preach and run a game of bingo. The rest of the time we are Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist or plain old agnostic, but above all we are pragmatists who look out for one another. Blood may be thicker than water, but we have found something thicker than blood.

  “Slan leat,” The Flowers said and frowned immediately when she saw our faces. She is very perceptive. “What’s wrong?”

  She touched the ladybug tattooed on her wrist, a souvenir from her year in the city. I think it is a kind of good-luck charm. The Flowers is a bit exotic. Up here we have some sun-damaged skin and a lot of wrinkles, deserved after years of outdoor living, but few tattoos or body piercings. If things get stuck through our skin it is usually an accident. We have enough real pain and internal scars from our old lives that we don’t need to bother with physical branding to prove we’re different from other people.

  “Old Thunder has found a Sasquatch skeleton and reporters are coming tomorrow to see it,” I said as Fiddling Thomas waved but continued into the pub where Big John was likely working. “And I need to know what wet feet are and why they would be bad for lavender.”

  She blinked.

  “Oh, it means don’t leave the plants sitting around in a pool of water. It’ll rot the roots. Just hang the pot and you’ll be fine,” The Flowers explained and then asked what I had upon hearing the news of Old Thunder’s find. “Is it a real skeleton?”

  I shrugged. “Fiddling Thomas says it doesn’t look like a fake. And a good fake is as much trouble as the real thing, at least as far as the reporters are concerned. A fake would get rid of the anthropologist though— and that would be handy, I guess. What we don’t need are a bunch of observant, scientific types, hanging around indefinitely while they wait for the discovery of the decade.”

  “Good heavens, no! Those morons from Sasquatch Watch are bad enough.”

  Like I said, we are pretty good at acting like natives, but sometimes we still give ourselves away. For instance, Surfer Jones sounds very Californian when he ends his sentences with ‘dude’ instead of ‘eh’. He might be one of the people who left for an extended hunting trip this week. And maybe he could take Whisky Jack with him. Surfer Jones was laidback enough not to find Whisky Jack annoying.

  “Are you going to call The Mountie?” Like I said, she’s perceptive.

  “I may. At least he might know when the next batch of government divers is coming. It would be really handy if the régime’s underwater snoops didn’t meet up with the tabloid journalists. It would be throwing oil on a fire.”

  Judy sighed and tucked her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears. Everyone in McIntyre’s Gulch who isn’t already gray has red hair of one shade or another. Except Wendell Thunder and The Bones’ wife, Linda, but they are part of a local tribe and red hair would be pretty improbable on them.

  “I need aspirin and some chamomile tea. Want some?”

  “Yes, please. And then, if it’s free, I’ll use the phone.”

  We don’t have regular phone service outside of the pub and cellphones won’t work here either. For in-town communication we have a system of crank phones that work more or less like soup cans and string. For outside calls you use the landline phone in the pub, or the long-range radio at the grocer’s. Neither was very private, but Big John was less nosy than The Braids. That made him the lesser evil.

  Chapter 2

  Chuck frowned. Butterscotch was being unusually circumspect. Understandable, given that she was calling from the Lonesome Moose and probably had an audience, but it made it harder to guess what she really wanted.

  Of course, he might well have an audience, too, so maybe her caution was a good thing. His superiors and their superiors were still searching for something mysterious that the Russians had had on their plane, and it was possible that they would be listening to more than the calls that came in on the rat-out-your-neighbors-for-spite line he had been assigned to man.

  He could picture the scene clearly and a bit wistfully. Big John would be sitting at his old desk, pretending to do paperwork but really worrying about how to get rid of the reporters that were coming to town. The Flowers would be pretending to wipe down the bar but would be lingering by the open door taking it all in.

  Chuck didn’t think it would take long to get rid of the reporters if people put their minds to it, but was hesitant to say so since it might sound insulting and he had no wish to offend Butterscotch’s civic pride. But facts were facts. McIntyre’s Gulch had four buildings that weren’t private residences. There was no motel, no restaurant to eat at except what little food was served in the pub. There were no cross streets with theaters or museums, no T-junction with a bowling alley or gift shop with postcards and t-shirts, just a narrow street that ended at a pub that had no parking lot and whose only attraction was half a leprous moose standing on the bar. There were no welcome mats on the few cabins’ front porches. There was no industry, no agriculture, no nine to five jobs. No regular jobs at all, discounting the husband and wife who ran the combination grocer, post office and gas station, and the barkeep who was also the town mayor, although never elected by formal ballot.<
br />
  All in all, McIntyre’s Gulch looked like a town suffering a fatal economic downturn, which was not correct since— until recently— there had never been an up to come down from. But it would serve the citizens well in this instance. That was probably why they let it remain in its outwardly decrepit state.

  All Big John needed to do was to close the bar, refuse the strangers beds and the press would get bored and leave.

  But there was the matter of the skeleton someone called Old Thunder had found. It was probably just some animal, but if it were human, someone besides the anthropologist on the newspaper’s payroll should investigate.

  “Has the doctor looked at the skeleton?”

  “The Bones is out on the reservation this week. There’s been… an emergency.”

  An emergency that involved a week long party. The Bones did love to drink. And smoke. And who knew what else.

  Chuck weighed his next words before speaking since he knew that he was listening to a siren’s call and it was affecting his judgment.

  Things had been tedious at work. Because there was no work. His new boss was keeping him on a short leash, probably on orders from higher up, and he had had little to occupy his mind beyond marveling at the ongoing awfulness of the coffee in the break room and how many snitches there were in the world. He had become little more than a repository for grudges, usually huge grudges caused by minor things. And, what was worse, he wasn’t even allowed to do anything about the so-called tips that were phoned in by these people whose first language was profanity, with truth running a distant second. Or third. Or not at all. In short, his job didn’t belong to him anymore. This was hard on a can-do guy who was used to a certain amount of autonomy and action. Mental discipline had broken down after weeks of boredom. He was ripe for mischief and now this tempting call.

  Butterscotch Jones believed that there were no final no’s, except death, and that life was about creative exchange. You traded one thing to gain another. It was all barter and bargaining, and everything was on the table for negotiation.