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It was just after Officer Reyes had announced that there was another body, dead almost definitely, down there with Hank, that Nancy came in with a rope a late arrival had produced from the back of their pickup.
“Will that be strong enough?” Officer Reyes asked, eyeing the rope.
“That’s a lasso,” Nancy shot back. “If it can bring down a running steer, I think it can haul Hank’s carcass up.”
I heard Hank yell up from his ledge something which suggested that while he might generally adhere to the convention of his generation prohibiting the usage of strong language in front of ladies, this prohibition did not extend to Nancy Flynn.
It took all of us to get Hank up and over the edge and upright on his feet.
His ankle did not appear to be broken, just badly sprained. Ledbetter carried Hank out on his back. The fact Hank allowed such an indignity was a testament to just how much pain he was in.
Once Hank was out front of the cave and bundled into the front seat of Nancy’s pickup, I called Phyliss and let her know that her husband was out of the cave and in one piece.
I refrained from emphasizing how very differently things could have ended for her other half.
As I approached the open door of Nancy’s pickup to hand off my phone to Hank so he could reassure his wife that he was, indeed, alive, I thought of something.
I hung around until Hank was done being interrogated by Phyliss, then launched into a little interrogation of my own.
“Where’s your detector?” I asked. “That is why you went into the cave, isn’t it?”
“It’s broke,” said Hank. “Broke when I fell. Ledbetter went back in and got the pieces. They’re in the back of my truck. There’s $437.28 down the drain.”
“Why did you do it?
“Do what?”
“Go down in the mine?”
“Had to beat him to it.”
“Who?”
“Jimmy.”
I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t Jimmy lying dead down at the bottom of that shaft. I had only caught a glimpse of the body sprawled on the muddy rocks thirty feet down before Officer Reyes had adjusted the beam of light illuminating the poor soul down there.
It appeared to be a dark-haired man, but beyond that, I wasn’t prepared to get more specific.
“You know Morticia wasn’t trying to tell you to go down in the mine,” I said to Hank. “She’s afraid you got the wrong impression from her reading and that she’s somehow at fault for you getting hurt.”
“Morticia didn’t tell me anything,” Hank said. “She just read the cards. She’s a professional.”
Who wasn’t averse to occasional less-than-professional behavior in the furtherance of a good cause.
“Well, just the same,” I told Hank, “Morticia feels bad about it.”
“Can’t help that. Ain’t my fault.”
Technically, it kind of was Hank’s fault we were all up at the mine in the dark. The crowd had grown to at least twenty.
I wondered how many of them knew about the body down the mine shaft. I hadn’t said anything. I doubted Ledbetter would, and Jason had been waiting in the driver’s seat of his Range Rover all the while I was with Hank.
Officer Reyes certainly wouldn’t emerge from the cave and make such an announcement, although I had no doubt he’d inform his superiors to get the body recovery underway.
But, for the next twelve hours, or possibly longer, we might not know whose body it was down there in the mine.
The following morning, I took Earp over to the clinic to have his mange looked at. Dr. Bagley pronounced that the medication was taking effect but that I should keep on dosing Earp for another three days.
“When will the bald patches start growing back?” I asked.
I felt bad for Earp, although even if dogs were inclined to vanity, any embarrassment he might feel about his personal appearance due to the condition of his coat should pale in comparison to all those years of being dressed up daily in ridiculous outfits by my late aunt.
Not that the pug’s present existence was costume-free. But at least under my care, Earp got to run around nude until mid-afternoon when Maxwell invariably arrived to remedy the situation.
Dr. Bagley seemed preoccupied, so I repeated my question about Earp’s bald patches growing back.
“In three weeks or so, Earp should be back to normal,” said Dr. Bagley, “providing he doesn’t continue to scratch out of force of habit.”
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“I’m worried,” Roberta Bagley said. “About Duke.”
I was worried about Duke, too, but for likely an entirely different reason.
“Why are you worried?” I asked Roberta.
“Duke’s holed himself up in his cabin and won’t come out.”
“What do you mean?”
“He won’t answer my calls or come to the door.”
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to him?”
“Saturday evening.”
“The same evening Ledbetter and I stopped by?” I asked just to be sure I had heard correctly, and Dr. Bagley wasn’t getting her days mixed up.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been up there to Duke’s cabin since?”
“Twice. He won’t come to the door.”
“Do you know for sure he’s even there?” I asked.
Roberta said she believed he was, but when pressed, she admitted that she hadn’t actually seen any signs of life when she’d gone up there.
“When was the last time you went up to his cabin?” I asked.
“Yesterday after work.”
“And he hasn’t answered your calls for how long?”
Roberta said she hadn’t gotten a call or a text from Duke since she’d left his house late Saturday evening.
“I don’t want to scare you,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’d better try and confirm that he’s actually inside that cabin.”
And alive.
“Why do you say that?” Roberta said, her voice shaking. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“I don’t know anything,” I said. “I just have a bad feeling—”
I hadn’t wanted to voice my fears to Dr. Bagley. It felt cruel. I had a terrible feeling that it was Duke’s body that the search and rescue team was probably currently in the act of recovering from down the bottom of that mine shaft. I had no reason to suspect it might be Duke other than the fact he seemed to be missing, but that was a mighty compelling reason on its own.
“I just believe he may know who attacked Reba,” I said, which was a gross understatement of my real suspicions, but all I could bring myself to say to Duke’s mother.
“If he knows,” said Roberta, “why wouldn’t he go to the police with his knowledge?”
“I have reason to believe it’s a complicated situation.”
It was certainly becoming more complicated for me by the second.
“Oh, dear,” said Dr. Bagley.
“Would you like and maybe Ledbetter to go up there with you to Duke’s?” I asked.
“Why?”
“It’s just—” I said lamely. I didn’t want to say, “In case he’s dead.”
“I suppose I ought to use my key and let myself in to make sure he’s OK,” said Dr. Bagley. “I could go on my lunch hour.”
At 12:15, Roberta Bagley and I were bouncing up the road to Duke’s place in her old pickup. Ledbetter was tailing us on his bike.
The plan was that if Duke was located safe and sound, then Ledbetter would immediately take me back down to Little Tombstone, leaving Roberta to visit with her son.
I fervently hoped this was the scenario that would play out, but I was becoming increasingly apprehensive that was not what was going to happen.
When Roberta went up to Duke’s front door, knocked, and called out for her son, no one answered. Ledbetter and I followed her at a distance while she went around and climbed the steps to the smaller porch off the back and tried the same procedure at the back door.
Still nothing.
“I’m going to use my key,” Dr. Bagley told me.
She let herself inside and quickly came out again.
“Something’s happened,” she said grimly.
If I hadn’t half believed that Duke was already dead down the bottom of the mine shaft, I’d have wondered if he hadn’t harmed himself and his mother had discovered the body, but when Dr. Bagley called us inside, it became clear this was not the case.
The place was in chaos. A lamp with a stained-glass shade had been knocked over and shattered, two chairs from the small table in the kitchen were lying on their backs, one of which had two legs broken off.
“Oh, dear,” I said.
“We’d better call the police,” said Ledbetter.
“You’re sure he’s not here?” I asked, but I was too preoccupied to attend to Dr. Bagley’s reply because I’d just spotted a pair of woman's cowboy boots.
Under normal circumstances, I’d have supposed that Duke had had a lady friend over, and she’d left her boots behind for some reason. The boots had tumbled out of a tiny coat closet near the back door, which also seemed to have been wrenched open.
I glanced at Dr. Bagley, who was currently climbing the stairs to the attic, to confirm she wasn’t watching. I then picked up one of the boots and examined the sole.