The Bloodwater Mysteries: Skullduggery (10 page)

 

“That was
not
funny!” Roni said, touching the fresh bump on her forehead.

Sam and Owen giggled. They were all standing in the narrow passageway, now illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Roni could see that there was a bulb hanging every ten feet or so, each with a pull-cord switch hanging just above head level. If she had known they were there, she could have turned them on at any time.

“It's not nice to scare people,” Roni said.

“But it's
funny,
” said Owen. Or Sam.

“How does your mom tell you apart?” Roni asked.

“She calls us both SamOwen,” said SamOwen.

“Sometimes she calls us OwenSam,” said OwenSam.

“Your big brother is an ass,” Roni said.

“She said
ASS
!” squealed SamOwen. The twins collapsed in a giggling fit.

Roni waited for the hilarity to subside, then said, “I just meant he isn't very nice to have locked me in here.”

“He locked us in here once, too,” said one of the twins. “Only we figured out how to escape. Now we have a special name for him. Do you want to hear it?”

“Uh, sure,” said Roni.

“POOPHEAD!” shrieked the twins.

Roni laughed. “Good name,” she said.

“We have other names, too. Do you want to know what Poophead's secret name is?”

Roni braced herself for another shriek.

“Fenton,” said SamOwen.

“Fenton?”

“Yes. We all have secret names. My secret name is Tyler, and his is Preston.”

Roni smiled. When she was their age, she'd had a secret name, too. She'd called herself Zenoba, Queen of Glymmerland.

“You want to know what our dad's secret name is? It's Fitzroy!” said the twin on the left.

“And our mom's secret name is Camillia,” said the other.

“Now your secret names aren't secret anymore,” Roni said.

“You won't tell anybody, will you?”

“Your secrets are safe with me. Now, how do we get out of here?” she asked.

“You can get out lots of ways,” said SamOwen.

“How about the closest way?”

One of the twins ran a few yards down the passage and slid open a panel similar to the one by which she had entered. Roni quickly followed and found herself standing in the front foyer.

“Now,” she said, “where's your brother?”

“He's gone,” said Sam. Or Owen.

“Gone where?”

“I think he went to school.”

On the way to the school Roni stopped at the Quik Mart and bought a megasize grape slushy. It was a little tricky transporting it on her Vespa. She had to hold it between her legs as she drove. By the time she got to the school, her thighs were practically frostbitten, but she hadn't spilled a drop. Carrying her backpack in one hand and the slushy in the other, she walked in and scanned the classroom for Eric Bloodwater. It took her a second to find him slumped in a desk near the back of the room. Without hesitating, Roni walked up behind him.

“Hey, Poophead,” she said.

Eric looked around, startled, as Roni popped the plastic lid off the slushy and poured it over his black curls.

Eric let out a yelp and jumped straight up out of his seat.

Roni turned her back and went to the far side of the room and sat down, her face burning. Everybody in the room was staring at her. She didn't care.

Purple and completely soaked, Eric stalked out of the classroom, nearly colliding with a startled Professor Bloom in the doorway.

Brian, sitting at the next desk, leaned over to Roni and asked her, “How did it go?”

“Shut up,” Roni said, not looking at him.

A few rows over, Gennifer Kohlstad and Franny Hall were talking and giggling and looking at her, no doubt enjoying the fact that this beautiful summer day they were forced to spend in Dullsville had been interrupted by a moment of drama.

Professor Bloom, checking his watch, looked over the rest of the class and nodded. “With the exception of Mr. Bloodwater, we all seem to be here,” he said. “As you may know, Dr. Andrew Dart was supposed to be here today to discuss the archaeology of Bloodwater Locality.” He cleared his throat. “However, because of his unfortunate accident, Dr. Dart will not be able to join us. Instead, we are fortunate to have one of Dr. Dart's illustrious colleagues—” He nodded toward the back of the room.

Roni turned to see who he was looking at.

“—Miss Jillian Greystone.”

 

Jillian Greystone had changed her clothes since Brian had last seen her. She was now dressed in ragged jeans with dirt ground into the knees, and a rather dirty and sun-faded chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Several turquoise-and-silver bracelets hung from her wrists. On her head was a floppy, wide-brimmed canvas hat with a feather jutting jauntily from the band, and over her shoulder hung a beat-up leather satchel.

Brian thought she looked great—like a warrior woman in denim and turquoise. And he was relieved to find out that she worked with Dr. Dart. Maybe she wasn't the mad bomber after all.

On the other hand, Dr. Dart had said that she hated him. Maybe they were professional rivals.

He had brought the turkey tail with him, hoping to show it to the anthropologist from the college—but he hadn't known that the anthropologist would be Jillian Greystone.

“Thank you, Professor,” said Jillian Greystone as she strode toward the front of the room in her battered Red Wing boots. Professor Bloom got up from his desk and offered her his chair. Jillian Greystone, a good two inches taller than the professor, shook her head. Instead, she plunked down her satchel, sat down on top of his desk, then drew up her long legs and crossed them Indian-style.

Professor Bloom started to say something, changed his mind and withdrew to the side of the room, scowling. Jillian Greystone ignored him. She propped her elbows on her knees and looked over the class. Her eyes stopped on Roni and Brian, and her face did the same thing it had done back at Indian Bluff: her eyes went big, her forehead rose and her mouth formed an O.

Brian waggled his fingers at her.

Jillian Greystone's expression returned to neutral and she looked over the rest of the class. Satisfied, she cleared her throat and spoke.

“My name, as Professor Bloom mentioned, is Jillian Greystone. Please call me Jillian. Now, what do you think of when you hear the word
archaeologist
?”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Then Gennifer Kohlstad raised her hand and said, “Old bones.”

“Old bones,” repeated Jillian. “Very good. What else?”

“Indiana Jones,” said Brianna Wipsted.

“T. rex!” shouted Liam Dressler, a sixth-grader.

Brian liked Liam. It was good to have someone smaller and more immature in the class. Took the pressure off.

“Very good,” said Jillian, “although Indiana Jones is more of a grave robber than an archaeologist. As for the dinosaurs, that is a specialized branch of archaeology known as paleoarchaeology. But today I'm going to talk about a very specific area of archaeology—the study of graves, buildings, tools and pottery from past human cultures here in the Bloodwater Locality. Oh, by the way”—she smiled and spread her arms—“I wore my working clothes today so you could see what a real archaeologist looks like. We spend a lot of time on our hands and knees digging in the dirt. Now, I'd like to begin by talking about the Native American peoples who lived in the Bloodwater Locality about one thousand years ago . . .”

 

Jillian Greystone was big, beautiful, confident and smart—everything Roni admired in a woman. But that didn't make her any less boring. Five minutes into the lecture Roni's attention began to fade.

“. . . from approximately nine hundred A.D. up into the thirteen hundreds, the Native American peoples in this area . . .

“. . . influences from the Woodland peoples, the Oneota peoples and the Mississippians, an advanced culture centered in Cahokia, five hundred miles to the south . . .

“. . . artifactual evidence gathered at the Silvernale and Hamlin sites offers a distinctive . . .”

Soon Roni was watching Jillian's mouth moving, but the words had ceased to penetrate. She looked around at the other students. Only Brian seemed to be listening. Everybody else, including Professor Bloom, looked as if they were slipping into a coma.

“. . . the Altithermal period significantly affected previously grendalboffer wisthammers, and undleratherflxzbff—”

Roni was fading fast. The situation called for desperate measures. She raised her hand.

“Yes?” said Jillian.

Roni scrambled for a question. “Umm . . . what about Indian Bluff? Aren't they about to build condos on an important archaeological site?”

“I don't believe so,” said Jillian. “Despite its name, Indian Bluff shows no evidence that it was ever occupied by Native Americans.”

“Not according to Dr. Dart,” Roni said.

Jillian blinked and took a moment before answering.

“Dr. Dart is mistaken,” she said. “I visited the bluff this morning, as you well know, and saw nothing of interest—other than a rather large patch of toxic vegetation. The bulldozers will be breaking ground on Friday, and without solid evidence of Native American habitation there's nothing anyone can do about it.”

“But—”

“I think that rather than explore Andrew Dart's unproven theories, we should concentrate on what we do know. Now, as I was saying, precontact cultures in the Bloodwater Locality left considerable artifactual evidence, including—”

She frowned and looked at Brian.

“Young man, what is that you have in your hands?”

“Nothing!” Brian quickly put the turkey tail back in his pocket. He had taken it out because it was poking him in the leg, and Jillian had caught sight of it.

She uncrossed her long legs and walked up to his desk.

“Let me see.”

Brian handed her the turkey tail.

Jillian returned to her perch on the desk and examined the stone. “It's beautiful,” she said. “A nearly perfect specimen. Wherever did you get it?”

“Dr. Dart gave it to me,” Brian said. “In the cave.”

“Why would he bring an artifact such as this into the cave?”

“That's where he found it,” Brian said.

Jillian shook her head. “Unlikely. This type of point is extremely rare in our area, and quartzite does not occur in the Bloodwater Locality. I suspect that Andrew—Dr. Dart—borrowed the item from our collection at the college, though why he would . . . oh, dear. You don't suppose . . . no, Andrew would never do such a thing.”

“Such a thing as what?” Brian asked.

Roni thought she knew what Jillian was thinking. “You think that Dr. Dart was planning to plant the turkey tail in the cave?”

Jillian seemed to forget that she was standing in front of a classroom full of students.

“Andrew was very upset about the development,” she said. “He was at the point where he would do anything to stop it—even blow off his own engagement party. He might even plant false archaeological evidence. I wouldn't put it past him.”

“Yeah, but would he have hauled an entire skeleton into the cave?” Roni asked.

“Skeleton?”

“A
human
skeleton,” Brian said.

“This is the first I've heard about any skeleton. Are you certain?”

“Yeah. It had a skull and everything. Dr. Dart called it Yorick.”

“Yorick? I guess you must be telling me the truth. Andrew called all his bods Yorick. It's from
Hamlet.
”

“What is ‘his bods'?” asked Brian.

“Dead people. More properly, human remains. Some field anthropologists call them bods. Andrew always addressed his bods as Yorick. Andrew was a little strange even before he got bonked on the head.”

Roni asked, “What's your relationship with Dr. Dart? Do you just work together?”

Jillian suddenly realized that twenty sets of eyes were on her.

“We are not here to discuss my personal life,” she said.

“I'm an investigative reporter. Reporters ask questions.”

“You may ask me your questions after class.” She set the turkey tail on the desk. “Now, as I was saying, artifacts left by precontact cultures are . . .”

 

Roni and Brian stayed behind after class to talk to Jillian.

“So what's the deal with you and Dr. Dart?” Roni asked, going right to the heart of the matter.

“As you know, Andrew and I both teach archaeology at the college, and we have worked together on research projects.”

“Are you friends?”

Jillian's smile flattened. “I would not say that, no.”

“Rivals?”

Jillian lowered her eyes and did not answer right away. Then she shrugged. “I guess it's no secret—everybody at the college certainly knows. Until a few days ago, Andrew and I were engaged to be married. Until he decided that dead people mattered to him more than the living.”

Roni waited for details, but Jillian had gone back to examining the turkey tail.

“It's not like Andrew to be giving away valuable artifacts,” Jillian said. “On my last birthday he gave me a set of plastic coffee mugs. Even my engagement ring was a fake diamond. He would never give away an artifact this valuable.”

Brian said, “I don't think he was actually giving it to me to keep. I think he wanted me to take care of it.” He reached out to take the stone back, but Jillian held it out of his reach.