Now, it finally got to a point where the ice blocks had melted so much that the towels were soaked and dragging, we were soaked and dragging, and basically, we just couldn't ride anymore.
And that's when Billy says, “Hey! Where's me bucket o' bones?”
I look around, then remember. “Oh, yeah! I left it by the fence.” I point toward the Stones' house. “Up there.”
So he Billy-goats up the hill to get his bucket o' bones, but when he returns, not only does he have his bones, he has the Stones' shovel. “Mateys, it's time for a proper burial!”
“Uh …,” we all say, sort of eyeing each other.
“The Hummer turns into a pumpkin in about ten minutes,” Danny says, checking his watch. “Can you do it quick?”
“Aye, aye, Cap'n!” he says. “Follow me!”
But when he starts down the hill, Marissa asks, “Where are you going?” because it looks like he's heading straight for the baseball diamond.
“Home base!” Billy laughs, pointing.
“No way!” Marissa and I cry, because we both play softball, and digging up home base to bury a bunch of chicken bones seems really sacrilegious.
Casey shakes his head. “Besides, we'll be too visible.” He points to the trees on the back side of the sports complex. “How about over there?”
So we wring out Marissa's soggy towels, stuff them in a plastic bag she's brought along, take one last look at the shrinking ice blocks, and cut over to the spot Casey had pointed out.
Danny makes Billy hurry up and pick a spot, and as he starts digging, Marissa whispers, “You want to change pants?” because our soggy jeans and the lack of activity are making us cold.
“You brought extras?”
“I told you I would.”
“Yes!”
“Let's go over here,” she says, heading behind a group of trees. Then she calls to the guys, “Don't come back here!”
So there we are, hiding in the trees, peeling down our jeans, when all of a sudden a fierce growl comes out of the darkness behind us.
Marissa screams and yanks her pants up, and believe me, I choke on a scream of my own.
“Are you okay?” we hear Casey call.
I grab Marissa's flashlight and shine it toward the sound, then about collapse from relief. “We're okay!” I call back, then tell Marissa, “It's just Captain Patch!”
Marissa's hyperventilating, and her eyes are enormous. “That's Patch? He looks like a wolf.”
He did look pretty spooky with the light glassing up his eyes like it was. But I knew it was him, so I wasn't scared at all anymore. I took a few steps toward him. “Hey, boy! You got out again?”
Trouble is, Patch doesn't seem to recognize me. He growls again, this time louder.
“Get the light out of his eyes!” Marissa says. “You're blinding him.”
So I lower the beam, but now it's shining on something between his paws. Something he's been gnawing on. Something long and white. Like a thick, bleached stick.
And then I hear Danny say, “Forget it, Billy, we don't have time for you to dig down six feet.”
“Ye can't be rushin' a proper burial, matey! Else sea dogs'll sniff 'em out and dig 'em up! We'll be haunted forevermore by the souls of crispy chickens!”
My heart landed with a thunk in the pit of my stomach, then tried to lurch out my throat. My knees were suddenly shaky, and I started shivering so hard I could barely stand.
“Oh my God,” I panted. Suddenly my lips felt like they were going to crack off of my face. I licked them. Licked them again. Tried to catch my breath. Tried not to shake into a puddle of fear. “Oh my God!” It came out strangled. Quivery. Like I was about to cry.
“What?” Marissa asked. “What's wrong?”
The flashlight shook like crazy as I shone it between Patch's paws. And like a time-lapse scene in a movie where clouds morph across the sky, turning black and heavy before erupting with rain and thunder and bolts of ripping lightning, the odd little events of the past few weeks tore through my brain, then zapped my soul with the truth.
Everything suddenly made sense.
Horrible, bone-chilling sense.
TWENTY-FIVE
I wanted to explain everything all at once, but it's like I couldn't quite believe it myself. So what came chattering out of my mouth was, “Did you bring gloves?”
Marissa cocks her head a little. “Shouldn't we first—”
“I need gloves. Or one of those towels …” Patch was ignoring the light now, gnawing on his prize.
Marissa digs through her duffel bag and hands over a pair of mittens, whispering, “Sammy, why are you being so intense? Are you afraid he's going to get away?” And while I'm pulling on the mittens, she adds, “He's not going anywhere—he likes that stick!”
“It's not a stick, Marissa,” I say, moving in closer to Patch.
“So… so what is it?”
Patch lets out a low growl as I get within grabbing distance. “It's a bone.”
She takes a few tentative steps closer. “A …bone?”
There's no way Patch is letting me get any nearer. Even when I tell him, “Hey, boy, it's me! How are you? Come here … thata boy, come here!” the only thing that budges is the tip of his tail, slapping the ground like a little part of him wants to, but not enough to give up his prize.
Then I get an idea. “Hey, Billy! I need a couple of those chicken bones!”
“Arg!” he calls back at me. “Ye can't have 'em!”
“It's an emergency!”
“That is a bone, huh?” Marissa says.
Crunch-crunch-crunch. Patch keeps a watchful eye on us as he works his jaws over the end of it.
“Billy!” I call down the hill. “We need those bones! NOW!”
Casey and Danny come running toward us with the bucket o' bones, Billy in hot pursuit, shaking the shovel at them.
“What's the deal?” Casey asks, all out of breath. Then he sees Patch, chomping away. “Whose dog is that? What's he got?”
“It's Captain Patch. Mrs. Willawago's dog.” I grab a chicken bone out of the bucket and offer it to Patch, going, “Here, boy—check this out. Mmm, mmm, chicken!”
“Chicken bones aren't good for dogs,” Marissa says. “They splinter and can get stuck in their throats and—”
“Shhh,” I tell her as I wiggle the chicken bone a few inches from Patch's nose. “Come on, fella. Yum-yum. Much tastier than human.”
“Than human?” Casey asks.
“Did she say human?” Danny whispers.
“Arg!” Billy cries. “Now that'd be booty worth sacrificing me bucket o' bones fer!”
Danny says, “Aw, c'mon. How can you tell? It's probably just a deer bone or a soup bone or a—”
“It's a human bone,” I tell him. “I'm sure of it.”
Just then Patch takes the bait. He stretches forward and stands, letting go of his hard-earned prize. And while he reaches for leftover morsels of Crispy Chicken, I reach forward and grab the bone.
And as I pick it up, Marissa screams and jumps into Danny's arms, because on the end of the bone is something dangling and dirty.
Something creepy and gross.
Something Patch hadn't gotten around to picking clean.
A hand.
“Ohmygod,” Marissa squeals. “Oh my God.”
“Put it down, Sammy,” Casey says.
Patch is in hound heaven now—there are bones, bones everywhere! He's yip-yap-yowling, spinning around and tossing chicken parts around like he's hit the crunchy-munchy lottery.
And between me shouting for diversionary bones, Marissa squealing to God, and Patch's yippy-yappy happiness, we gave away our location, because as I turn to tell them that I can't just leave this arm here—that I know whose it is and where it came from—through the misty darkness I see a figure moving toward us.
A figure in blue coveralls.
Work boots.
A safari-cloth ball cap.
Glasses and a mousta
che.
Carrying a hoe.
Coming at us with the hoe. “Stop!” I shout, holding the arm up. “We know what you've done!”
But the hoe comes whacking through the air, hitting the ground. Swish, whack! Swish, whack!
Marissa screams. Danny pulls her away to safety while Billy abandons piratese and yells, “Everyone meet back at the Hummer!” and takes off running.
But I can't leave. Not yet.
Swish, whack! Swish, whack!
I keep my distance from the hoe and shout, “Stop! It's over! Don't make it any worse than it already is!”
Swish, whack! Swish, whack!
“Sammy!” Casey's pleading, staying with me as I get chased across the grass. “He wants the arm. Put it down!”
Just then we run by the shovel. So I toss aside the arm and snatch the shovel off the ground, and instead of retreating, I hold the shovel like a samurai pole weapon and charge forward, deflecting the hoe as it comes slicing through the air.
Then I lunge forward, tear off the cap, and shout, “It's over, Mrs. Stone! I know your husband's buried in the compost heap!”
And just like that, she drops the hoe and wilts into a blubbering heap of denim, sobbing, “I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry.”
“That's a woman?” Casey gasps.
I nod, and after she cries for a minute, Mrs. Stone peels off her glasses and moustache and looks at me, whimpering, “I wouldn't have hurt you, Sammy. Honest, I wouldn't have. I was just tryin' to scare you away.”
I crouch beside her. “I guess I don't need to ask why you killed him.”
“He was a beast!” she wails. “A cruel, heartless beast!” She wipes tears from her face, saying, “How many times did he almost kill me in one of his drunken rages? How many times should I have been put in the hospital?”
I watch her cry for a minute, then ask, “But why didn't you just leave him?”
“I was afraid to! Over and over he told me I was worthless, and I don't know…after a while I believed it. ‘Who'd want to hire you, Teri—you're stupid. You're homely. You've got hands like a man.’ He got between me and my friends, between me and my family. A few years with him and I had no one. No one! Just him and his terrifyin' mood swings.”
“But … why'd you cover for him? Mrs. Willawago told me you always denied he'd hurt you.”
She gave me a pathetic shrug and shook her head. “He was always sorry after. Always beggin' me not to leave him. And I thought if I could just be a better person somehow, he'd quit gettin' so mad. But then one night I was fixin' supper and he came at me with a chair.” She snorted. “Why? Because I'd made him toast instead of biscuits. Before I knew what I'd done, I'd run him through with a knife.”
“So you panicked and buried him in the backyard.”
“I was afraid no one would believe me! I'd never once called the police on him! So I buried him quick, only I didn't put him down deep enough.”
We were both quiet a minute, then I said, “But there was also the disability money, right? I mean, if he was dead, his disability checks would stop, but by pretending he was alive, you still had money coming in.”
She looked so miserable. So broken. “He never let me have any cash. I always had to beg for every nickel. And since we were cut off from everyone, I thought I could pretend and just go on the way I had been for a while. But then that whole mess with the city council came up and I was trapped. I couldn't unbury him. Not in the state he's in now.” She shivered. “I had to wait 'til he was nothin' but bones. And if they took the property, they'd for sure find him when they did the gradin', and I'd wind up in jail!”
“So you don't really want to live there, you just didn't want them to find the body.”
“I hate that shack! Bein' there gives me nightmares! It's haunted with hateful words and deeds.” She shivered, then said, “Why I thought jail would be so much worse is beyond me.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “No one wants to lose their freedom—especially not after finally gettin' some.”
I thought about that, then said, “You know, maybe you won't have to go to jail.”
“Oh, I'm going. After what I've done?”
“Well, maybe it won't be for all that long. Mrs. Willawago's a witness—she knows how mean he was to you. And if you just tell the jury the truth, maybe it won't be so bad.”
Her eyes welled up, but then she sniffed back the tears and said, “So what gave me away? How'd you know it was Marty in there?”
I sort of cocked my head at her. “A lot of things—but specifically? Your socks.”
“My socks?”
“Remember when I ran into you in your backyard? You were dressed up as Marty, getting ready to put your boots on? Your socks were dirty in a weird way. On the toes, mostly. Then tonight when I saw you were wearing your husband's shoes, something sorta clicked. But we got busy ice-blocking, and I didn't put it all together until I saw Patch with the arm. That's when it hit me that the socks were dirty like they'd be after doing some gardening in your sandals. And then it clicked that I'd never seen the two of you at the same time, and how troubled you'd been about my, you know, trespassings, and that the big changes in Marty—no more beer cans, no more shouting, him shielding himself from the sun—those weren't changes in him, those were changes because he was gone. And then, of course, those threats made total sense—you were trying to get the public on your side.” I shrugged. “And being upset enough about Patch to get rid of him made sense, too.”
“I was desperate! I knew he'd reach Marty if I didn't do something. So the night everyone was at the council meeting, I dug him a way out.” She rubbed her forehead. “That was a terrible thing to do, I know, but that dog wouldn't quit! And tonight he finally reached his mark.”
“Did you know he'd gotten away with … part of Marty?”
She shook her head. “I feared so. He'd dug that whole corner of my yard up, clear under my back fence. So I figured he was on the loose, and I did look all over for him, but I had to get back and hide Marty again.”
I checked around for Patch—he was having a golden time demolishing chicken bones, but Marissa was trying to get them away.
“So tell me this — was Mrs. Willawago in on the threats?”
Her eyes bugged a little. “The Church Lady? You've got to be kiddin'.” Then her eyes sharpened down on me a little and she asked, “Why would you think so?”
I gave a little shrug and said, “Let's just say she hasn't always lived by ‘Thou shalt not lie.’”
“Oh?” she asked, and let me tell you, it was a very interested oh.
So I laughed and said, “It's kind of funny, actually. You tried real hard to convince people that your husband wasn't buried in the backyard, and she tried real hard to convince people that hers was.”
She hesitated. “You mean to say Frank's not scattered in her backyard?”
“That's right.” I sort of grinned because I couldn't really help it. “Last I saw he was scattered all over her closet.”
She started to say, “What—?” but just then we heard Billy's voice going, “Right over here!” and saw flashlights bobbing along the tree corridor.
It was Billy with the Hummer driver, and bumbling right behind them were Squeaky and the Chick.
“Where's the perp?” Squeaky says, hand at the ready on his holstered gun.
“There he is!” Billy says, pointing to Mrs. Stone.
Billy is totally amped—ruddy faced, out of breath, wide-eyed—he looks a lot more like a little boy than a swashbucklin' pirate, that's for sure. So I tell him, “It's okay, Billy—the he's a she, and she's all done fighting.” Then I take Marty's grotesque arm and put it down in front of Squeaky, saying, “I don't think you want the remaining remains to remain staying where they're presently harbored at this time.”
“Eeew!” the Chick squeals when she sees what it is. And when Squeaky realizes it's part of a corpse, he backpedals like crazy, shouting frantically into his radio for backup.
??
?No need for that,” Mrs. Stone says wearily. “The rest of him's in my backyard.” She heaves a sigh, then stands and says, “I'll show you.”
“What about … the arm?” the Chick chokes out. She looks at Squeaky. “We can't just leave it here….”
Mrs. Stone sighs and waves it off, saying, “Aw, let Patch have it.”
“Eeew!” we all say.
She lets out a bitter laugh. “It's the kind of end that hand deserves.”
Squeaky's pretty green around the cheeks as he looks at the arm, but he says, “No, we need to, uh, properly execute the collection of this, uh, physical and material evidence.”
Marissa pulls another plastic bag out of her duffel and holds it out for him. “Does this help?”
He nods and swallows hard as he accepts the bag, but it's obvious he doesn't know how to get the arm inside the bag. And really, who wants to touch a corpse arm?
Well, besides Patch, of course.
So since I still have Marissa's mittens on, I decide to help him out. I pick up the arm, shove it in the bag quick, and say, “There you go.” Then I peel off the mittens and eye Marissa like, Wash or dump?
“Get rid of them!” she says, wrinkling her nose.
So I shove them in the bag, too, and Squeaky doesn't seem to mind. He nods and says, “I appreciate the help.”
So Marty's gross arm is now out of sight and, apparently for Billy, out of mind. “Ahoy then, mateys!” he says to the cops. “Carry on!”
So the cops follow Mrs. Stone back to her house, and after Marissa gathers the rest of our stuff, we get Patch to follow, and we traipse along behind.
And somewhere along the corridor of trees, the driver shakes his head and says, “I've had some wild nights in that Hummer, but yo ho, man, nothin' compares to this.”
Then Casey waves the Jolly Roger flag a little and grabs my hand. “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me,” he sings softly, looking at me with a smile.
But Billy overhears and starts the song in earnest. And there's something about that song that makes it impossible not to join in. So there we are, in the middle of the night, waving the Jolly Roger, marching along behind cops and a killer, laughing and singing at the top of our lungs.