Owl Dreams Page 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Not what I expected.” Robert silently read the note for the second time. “Not what I expected at all.” He handed the paper to Sarah and slumped in his folding chair like a marionette with broken strings.

  “It might be enough.” Sarah held the note between her outstretched hands, turning it delicately to take advantage of the minimal illumination inside Big Shorty’s living quarters. Most of the page was taken up by a drawing of an owl. A list of names formed two columns on the left hand margin.

  “Names of missing children, if I’m not mistaken,” she said. “And this owl is identical to the one on the Maytubby bonehouse door.”

  “Cherokee never cared too much for owls,” Big Shorty said. “Not owl feathers or owl calls or even pictures of owls. None of the tribes from the old Indian Territory could abide night birds.”

  “Tribal superstition.” Sarah folded the paper carefully and put it into a zippered compartment of her shoulder bag.

  Easy words. Sarah knew next to nothing about the so-called Civilized Tribes.

  Not my fault, she told herself. The Five Tribes spend more time with politicians than anthropologists. She wouldn’t let those excuses find their way to her lips.

  “Death’s emissary,” Big Shorty said. “Odd to see something like that painted on a bonehouse door.”

  “What now?” Sarah’s mind had trouble finding traction.

  “We need to check on Dr. Moon,” Robert said, “and then decide what we should do.”

  Sarah could read the doubt in Robert’s face. She could hear it in his voice. She understood his reasoning well enough. The cops would never take Robert Collins seriously. Not after they ran his record. They wouldn’t even write his statement down unless it was corroborated by stable members of society. A legless cemetery caretaker and a visiting

  anthropologist with a crazy mother hardly filled the bill.

  “The note will help.” Sarah promised, even though she shared Robert’s misgivings. A simple drawing of an owl with a list of children’s names didn’t seem like much in the way of hard evidence, especially if the authorities learned it had been hidden in a dead man’s pocket.

  “Victoria Tiger will testify,” she said, “Once Hashilli is in custody.”

  Big Shorty eased himself off of his couch and lurched across the room as quietly as a galloping horse. The prefabricated metal building vibrated with every step, and the folding metal guest chairs shook in sympathy. If the late Helen Keller had been in the room, she would have interpreted Big Shorty’s alarming stroll as an earthquake no less than seven on the Richter scale.

  Sarah and Robert were out of their seats, preparing to take cover in a doorway or run into the questionable safety of the dark graveyard.

  “Real show stopper,” Shorty told his audience of two. “Always gets a standing ovation.”

  Big Shorty chuckled as he collected sealed beam flashlights from a shelf in the corner of his single room.

  “Owls have slippery ways,” he said. “Let’s find out if yours has flown the coop.”

  Big Shorty led Sarah and Robert on a meandering pathway from the caretaker’s cottage to the Indian Baptist Cemetery.

  “No lights,” he told them, “and no conversation till we get there.”

  Sarah understood that words and beams of light might alert Hashilli to their approach, but stealth was not something Big Shorty managed easily. The pads on his amputated limbs pounded a broken rhythm through the graveyard like a drug-addled drummer breaking in a new instrument.

  But it didn’t sound like footsteps—not human footsteps anyway. If Hashilli were listening, he would know something was headed in his direction, but he wouldn’t know what to expect until it arrived.

  Robert tapped Sarah on the shoulder. He pointed to the empty space where Dr. Moon’s SUV had been parked. Not a good sign.

  The door to the Maytubby bonehouse was still locked. Sarah retrieved Hashilli’s pistol from her shoulder bag and handed it to Big Shorty. She didn’t know whether he would pull the trigger if it came to that, but at least he looked dangerous. Hashilli wouldn’t take a chance with Shorty—if he was still their captive.

  It took Sarah three tries to find the right key on Hashilli’s key ring. Any opportunity for surprise was gone. If their prisoner was still locked inside the bonehouse, he would be waiting for them, armed with bricks, skeletal remains, and grave goods. She pulled the door open as quickly as she could. Robert and Big Shorty flicked their sealed beams on and flooded the bonehouse with enough light to blind their captive if he were still inside.

  But he was not. The Maytubby crypt was empty, except for the remains of the ancestors, which Sarah noted had been returned to their boxes and filed, once again, like an orderly library of the dead.

  Big Shorty pointed to an open space under the peak of the roof where the stars and the crescent moon shined through a pentagonal void in the wall.

  “No mortar between the bricks at the top of the western wall,” Big Shorty said. “So the ghosts can fly off to paradise.”

  “A supernatural escape route.” That would have been useful information a few hours earlier. Sarah was embarrassed to find that her anthropology studies had left her somewhat less informed on this subject than the caretaker of a cemetery.

  “Don’t know much about the Choctaw,” Big Shorty said, “But that’s how they did it in the Indian Baptist Cemetery.” Big Shorty learned everything he knew about tribal burial practices from simple observation and eavesdropping. “People talk when they visit the dead. Keeps their minds away from their sorrows.”

  “What else have you heard people say?” Sarah asked. “What do you know about the Maytubbys? What do you know about Hashilli?”

  Big Shorty wouldn’t say much until he walked Robert and Sarah back to his cottage. “The dead are not much good at keeping secrets,” he warned them. “Not much good at all.”

  Shorty had been watching the mysterious black SUV come and go for a very long time. Sometimes the driver did maintenance on the Maytubby building. He kept the white owl on the door fresh and clear.

  “Other Indians visit the cemetery, but he’s the only one who goes inside the sandstone wall. Comes all hours of the day and night.” Sometimes Hashilli collected moonflowers. Sometimes he collected the yellow puffballs that proliferated in the spring and matured in the late summer and fall.

  Big Shorty had seen Hashilli’s mushrooms before. “Ghost buttons, that’s what my great-great-grandpa called them. The spores are powerful medicine. A tiny pinch can jar a man’s soul right off the tracks.”

  “Or jar it back on track again.” Robert’s wistful tone aroused an unexpected pang of jealousy in Sarah. The wind was his old girlfriend who still came around but wouldn’t speak to him. He desperately wanted her back.

  Sarah almost asked him, “Is she prettier than me?”

  But Big Shorty saved the day. “I’ve seen another painted owl, just like the one on the bonehouse door.” Big Shorty had shifted the conversation back on track before Sarah could embarrass herself. “A place not far from here. I’ve seen your missing man there too.” He told them about his encounter with Hashilli outside of the Wise Owl Child Development Center.

  Robert knew the place. Sarah had seen it too. She remembered now, the same white owl was painted on the door of that building. She reached into her shoulder bag and found the wallet she had taken from Hashilli Maytubby. She flipped through it until she found his driver’s license.

  “How do you suppose the staff at the Wise Owl Center would react if we showed them Hashilli’s photo ID?”

  “They might know him by another name.” Robert said.

  “They might know Andrew Tiger by another name as well,” said Sarah. She might still be able to recover Victoria’s little boy, even if Hashilli was now beyond their reach. But first they needed a plan.