21 INSPIRATION

I didn’t have any trouble falling asleep. I was so tired, it felt like I was out before my head even hit the pillow.

But then I woke up in the middle of the night, needing to go to the bathroom, and I couldn’t get back to sleep.

My mind, having had some rest, was now full of questions. Starting with: Was it actually safe to go to the bathroom?

The night before, I had run into a grizzly bear. And even though I had witnessed the front door being locked, that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t have unlocked it again. Either a careless stargazer like Ray—or someone looking to lure Sasquatch back into the house once more.

I proceeded to the bathroom with caution, alert for any strange sounds or large animals emerging from the shadows. The house was surprisingly quiet, save for J.J.’s snoring, and I made the trip to the bathroom and back safely.

Then I lay in bed, thinking about both of the mysteries.

Although I had no proof, I was relatively sure that Sasquatch hadn’t eaten the necklace. But if it had been stolen, who had done it? The reason for stealing it seemed pretty simple: It was worth a great deal of money. J.J. had managed to keep the actual price a secret from almost everyone else—but anyone who saw the jewel-encrusted necklace could tell it was expensive. Even me, and I hardly knew anything about jewelry.

I ran through all the potential suspects, starting with the Krautheimers.

Sidney and Heidi seemed pretty desperate to sell their ranch to J.J. Maybe they were in serious financial trouble. They had already stooped to the crime of bear baiting to make the ranch look more appealing. They also knew their house better than anyone; if there was a secret route from the McCrackens’ bedroom to the underground liquor room, they would probably know about it. And if Sidney had been there when J.J. originally bought the sapphire, perhaps he felt he had some claim to it. Maybe Sidney had also wanted to purchase the stone, but J.J. had outbid him for it and Sidney had been resentful ever since.

But if the Krautheimers were that desperate for money, why would they steal from the very person they intended to sell their ranch to? Wouldn’t that sour the deal?

So maybe it was one of the Krautheimer kids who had stolen the necklace, trying to help the family out. They knew the hidden parts of the house too, maybe better than their parents. Perhaps they were just trying to help the family weather its financial difficulties. Or maybe they wanted the money for themselves. It was also possible that one of the kids didn’t want to sell the house at all. Stealing the necklace would serve two purposes: ruining the deal to sell the ranch, while giving their family the money they needed to keep it. Melissa was the one who really seemed to love the Oy Vey Corral, but Evan could have lied about his dislike for the place in order to deflect attention from himself.

Then there were Pete, Ray, and Karina. All of them had been in the house the previous night, in rooms very close to the McCrackens’. If any of them were in financial trouble, stealing the sapphire might have seemed like a quick solution.

Karina was ex-military, so she maybe she knew how to unlatch the bedroom door from the other side and let herself in. Although latching it again once she had stolen the necklace didn’t seem easy. And what would be the point of doing that?

Meanwhile, I had no idea how Pete or Ray would have gotten into the room with the door and windows locked.

I also had to consider the ranch hands: Jasmine, Zach, Arin, and Gavin. As I had observed, it wouldn’t have been hard for any of them to slip out of their apartments at the bunkhouse and slink over to the ranch house at night. Perhaps one of them knew a secret way into the McCrackens’ room. And someone from the outside entering the ranch house would explain the open front door; maybe the thief had forgotten to shut it tightly behind them while they were racing back to the bunkhouse.

The thought occurred to me that even if someone had stolen the necklace, that didn’t necessarily guarantee them millions of dollars. The necklace was really just a bunch of rocks: a lot of tiny diamonds and a great blue sapphire. Except for being pretty to look at, they were useless if you couldn’t find someone willing to pay for them. And unloading a famous giant sapphire certainly wouldn’t be easy. Conceivably, there would be shady people willing to buy it, but the thief would have to know who they were and how to reach them.

As I lay in bed, I could hear the bison herd outside, making noise even in the middle of the night. Which made me think about the other mystery at hand.

Despite the size of a year-old bison, stealing one didn’t seem to be nearly as complex a crime as stealing a necklace from a locked room. The bison were always outdoors and rarely under close watch. Yellowstone was never closed; tourists were free to range around the park at all hours—and the bison were free ranging. No one would have to dismantle a fence to get to get them there—although the Krautheimers’ fence hadn’t been much of an impediment. It wasn’t electrified or monitored with security cameras, and it could have been taken apart and reassembled relatively quickly with only a screwdriver, a hammer, and a few U-shaped nails. True, year-old bison wouldn’t have been as easy to make off with as, say, a koala—but a person, or more likely, a small team of rustlers, could have done it without too much trouble.

Unfortunately, the ease of the theft made the list of potential suspects quite large. Any cattle rustler for hundreds of miles could have taken the bison. Or one of the many antibison local ranchers might have committed the crime—although what they stood to gain was questionable. Certainly, stealing a year-old bison now and then wasn’t going to stop the rise of bison ranching, was it?

I then found myself wondering why the thieves had changed tactics. Why steal one or two bison from the Krautheimers and then start stealing them from Yellowstone? Had the thieves simply decided that it was easier to get them from Yellowstone, where there weren’t any fences to take apart? Or was it possible that they had been stealing from Yellowstone all along and only been noticed now? And how were they getting the bison out of the park? Wouldn’t a truck with a young bison in the back of it be noticeable? Perhaps there weren’t many rangers on duty late at night, but still, there were only a few roads in and out of the park, and there must have been some security at them. It seemed unlikely that someone wouldn’t have noticed. So did that mean there was a crooked park ranger involved, getting bribed to look the other way—or maybe even directly involved in the thefts?

Something creaked in the house, interrupting my thoughts. I lay quiet and listened.

The creaking came again. It appeared to be coming from upstairs, so it was probably one of the Krautheimers going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, just as I had done. But even after coming to that conclusion, I couldn’t shake the fear that perhaps the creaking was Sasquatch getting back into the house. I knew it was irrational—and yet it had happened once already. It could always happen again.

I got out of bed and locked the door to our room, just in case.

And the main question at the center of the stolen-necklace mystery came back to me:

Why had Sasquatch come into the house at all?

The Krautheimers had lived in that house for generations without ever having a bear get in. And now one happened to invade their home on the very night that the necklace vanished? That seemed too great a coincidence to be unconnected.

Had the thief lured the bear inside to help cover their tracks? If so, how? And why had Sasquatch gone through all the trouble to break into the McCrackens’ bedroom, while ignoring all the dirty plates in the kitchen? Had something lured the bear to the McCrackens’ room? Something besides the single dirty plate of dessert Kandace had left behind?

A memory suddenly came to me. In the midst of all the chaos, after Sasquatch had licked Kandace’s dessert plate clean, he had still been sniffing the air, like he was trying to find something. As though the leftover dessert had only been a brief distraction from what the bear was really searching for.

A bear didn’t see the world the same way humans did, by using its eyes. In a way, it saw the world with its nose. And its nose worked far better than our eyes did. A human would be lucky to see something a hundred feet away in the dark, whereas a bear could smell something from miles away. In addition, it could detect smells that humans wouldn’t even be able to sense. It was quite likely that Sasquatch had been lured by the smell of something that seemed powerful to him, but not to any of us humans in the house.

The bear had been sniffing in the direction of the bookcase.

I looked around my room. There was no bookcase in our room, while the McCrackens’ had a whole wall lined with them.

I unlocked our room and stepped out into the hallway.

The door to the McCrackens’ room was directly across the hall from ours. Karina’s room was farther down, on the same side of the hall. The door to her room hung slightly open.

I walked down to it. I hadn’t been in Karina’s room yet. I peered through the slight gap.

It was dark in the room, but my eyes had adjusted to the night over the time I had been lying awake. Karina was asleep in the bed, snoring softly. The room was quite small, about the same size as the apartments in the bunkhouse, with only the twin bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a closet. One person didn’t really need a big room, but still…

The room seemed smaller than it should have.

I was suddenly struck by an idea, a big one that could explain how the previous night’s crime had been committed.

The problem was, I needed to get into the McCrackens’ room to see if I was right. And it was after four in the morning. I really should have been going back to bed.

Only, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. I was too excited now.

And while it was really bad manners to wake the McCrackens, I figured that they might not be upset when I explained why I was waking them.

So I went back down to their door. I knew it wasn’t locked because the lock hadn’t been replaced.

I slipped inside, then crossed over to Summer’s bed and gently shook her.

“Hey,” I said softly. “I’m sorry to wake you. But it’s important.”

Summer slowly opened her eyes, then groaned when she saw it was still dark. “It’s the middle of the night. Can’t this wait until morning?”

“No.”

In the bed, Kandace snapped awake, startled. In her drowsiness, she forgot that she still had her sleep shades strapped over her eyes. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Where is everyone?”

“We’re right here, Mom,” Summer said calmly. “You still have your sleep shades on.”

“Oh. Right.” Kandace pulled the shade off her eyes, flicked on the lights, then gave me an imposing stare. “Teddy Fitzroy, what are you doing by my daughter’s bed?”

“Asking for her help,” I said. “I think I know what happened to your necklace.”