So what do you know about the fossil trade?” I asked Alan as he followed my directions to the seepage meadow where I’d first made Nigel’s acquaintance yesterday.
“Only the little I gleaned from a program on the History Channel,” he replied.
No surprise there. The History Channel was another one of Alan’s favorite pasttimes. Even when we roomed together in college, I’d find him up late into the night, glued to shows about naval battles during World War II, or the training of Japanese samurai, or secrets from Confederate army diaries. Those shows put me to sleep in the first ten minutes of the telecast, but for Alan, they acted like prescription-strength stimulants.
I hoped Lily was ready for a lifetime of boring documentaries.
Then again, not everyone is crazy about my hobby, either. When I was in high school, my buddies called me the Bird Nerd. It wasn’t till I was in college that my pals came to appreciate the extent of my ornithological expertise: I can’t remember how many times our team squeaked out a win for the free pitcher of beer at the local bar on Trivia Night because I was the only person in the place who knew the Latin name of the American Robin. Believe me, my buddies developed a whole new respect for my chosen avocation.
“And what does the History Channel say?” I asked Alan.
“Apparently, fossils are big business,” he replied. “And there’s a brisk commercial trade for them, too, which has opened more than one can of worms. On the one hand, you’ve got the scientists—the paleontologists—trying to preserve collection sites because so much of what they can learn about the fossils and the animals they once were depends on the little details they find around them.”
“You mean like nesting materials, or prehistoric dunghills,” I prompted him.
“Exactly. The site of a fossil find is critical to understanding the fossils themselves. So the paleontologists want all that preserved. Most of the commercial collectors, on the other hand, don’t give a rip about the integrity of the sites because all they want to do is cash in on selling the fossils to everyone from tourist gift shops to fancy interior decorating firms to museum curators looking for rare display pieces. And since some of the best fossil finds—especially dinosaurs—seem to be in North America, international buyers, both museums and private collectors, are ready to shell out big bucks to buy American.”
“And the government doesn’t have a problem with that?” For all the other facets of life that our politicians wanted to control, I found it hard to believe that this particular industry was escaping regulation.
“America is wide open for business when it comes to fossil sales, Bob,” Alan reported. “Other countries have laws about the export of fossils, but not the United States. As a result, any private individual who owns the land can legally sell what he finds on it. Or underneath it. And that’s just the legal market we’re talking about. I have to believe there’s an illegal market as well.”
“The black market for bones,” I observed.
“Yup.” He made the right hand turn off the main road towards the meadow along Rice Creek, just as Tom had done the day before. His car navigated the rutted road a whole lot better than Tom’s old beast, though. I didn’t get my head bounced against the ceiling even once.
“What exactly are we looking for here?” Alan asked, easing the hybrid over the bumps in the track. “For some reason, I get the distinct impression that this stop isn’t about adding to my very short list of birds for the day.”
“Very astute, professor. We’re trading in our binoculars for caving equipment.”
Alan shot me a look of panic. “You have got to be kidding me. No way am I looking for a cave. Bats, remember?”
I socked him lightly on his right shoulder. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”
“Not funny,” he answered. “It also wasn’t especially funny when I felt the ground give way beneath me back in that prairie, Bob. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes, but I did think about Lily.”
“So did I. I thought she’d kill me if you disappeared from the face of the earth, especially if it was during my watch.”
Alan laughed. “Your sister is a marshmallow. You have no idea.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I have no idea. And I never will. She lives to boss me around. I was kind of hoping maybe she’d direct some of that bossing around at you, now, and that she’d give me the break I so richly deserve.”
“You marry Luce, and I’m sure Lily will let up. She’ll just pass the torch to her.”
“Luce doesn’t boss me around. Luce is the easiest person in the world to live with.”
“So why aren’t you living with her?”
That made me pause. Why wasn’t I living with her?
“I guess I’m just an old-fashioned kind of guy,” I finally said. “Besides, the point is now moot, isn’t it? I lost the bet. I’m going to propose to Luce, get married and live happily ever after with her.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I felt stunned by how right they felt to say. I was going to spend the rest of my days and nights happy with Luce.
The earth moved beneath me in revelation.
“Geez!” Alan hissed as we heard a rock scrape the car’s undercarriage.
Oops. My mistake: it wasn’t a revelation after all, just the car jolting over the lousy road.
“I’m going to end up with some damage thanks to this track,” Alan groused. “You’d have to have a car built like a tank to get in and out of here to avoid any repair bills.”
“Just pull into the grass and park,” I told him. “We’re going to be walking all around the meadow, so you might as well get off the road.”
“Gladly.” Alan glided a few feet into the meadow and switched off the engine. Silence filled the afternoon.
I got out of the car and surveyed the meadow. To one side, Kami’s wire fencing stretched along the grasses; the big hole in the fence that had tempted Nigel was still there, though the torn wire had been cleared away. Walking closer to the fence, I tossed a stick at the wires to gauge if it was electrified. As Eddie had said, it wasn’t, and the stick fell to the ground without striking a spark.
“And that was supposed to make me feel more secure in case Nigel shows up?” Alan asked from behind me. “Knowing that this little old wire fence is absolutely useless in defending itself against a stick, let alone a full-grown tiger?”
I pointed at the fence in front of me and repeated to Alan what Eddie had explained to me. “None of this is electrified anymore, Alan. It’s to keep people off Kami’s property, not to secure Nigel inside it. The fence to keep Nigel in is invisible, and it’s set up about ten feet inside of this one that you see. The wire fencing might give you some peace of mind, but it’s the invisible one that does the job, and as long as it’s operating, Nigel’s not leaving the farm.”
“Plus he has that collar that Kami used to zap him, right?”
“Right. It gives her a back-up for restraining him. And it’s got a tracking device so she can check on his location anytime. That’s how she knew he was by the ATV track.”
“Slick. Though I guess you want the slickest system you can find if you’re going to be keeping a tiger on your property.” He squinted into the sun beating down on the meadow. “Of course, that system is only good as long as it’s not compromised, which seems to beg the question of who else has access to Kami’s control center?”
“That is the question, all right,” I agreed. “I know that Eddie upgraded it because he said that he designed the new invisible fencing system, but other than the company that helped him install it, I don’t know who else might even know about it.”
Alan squinted my way. “Ben?”
“Good chance, I’d say. If he had a key to the house, I’d expect he’d know about the security system. At the very least, we know that whoever could access it to turn it off today also knew that Kami wasn’t at home, or at least, came calling and found she was gone, leaving the perfect opportunity to sabotage another piece of the fence. Wait a minute,” I interrupted myself. “If someone came to Kami’s house this morning, there might be a record of it.”
I pulled out my cell phone to place a call. “If Eddie’s monitors caught Jack and Billy’s cars at Kami’s place on Friday night, then that means there are mounted cameras somewhere near her house. As long as those cameras were running this morning, they would have captured any visitors.” I tapped in Eddie’s number and after a short conversation with him, ended the call.
“He says the cameras are motion activated,” I told Alan, “so if someone parked near the house, it will be on the surveillance loop.”
“And then you’ll have a suspect. At least for sabotaging Kami’s fence.”
“Right.” I waved my hand out at the meadow. “And, if I’m not mistaken, I think we’re going to find the motive for Jack’s death right here in this meadow. Start looking for water trails, Alan. One of them is going to lead us to that cave Ben wanted to show Kami decades ago.”
“A cave filled with prehistoric fossil specimens?”
“Either that, or it’s the entrance to a network of caverns. My guess is that the caverns lead under Kami’s property—that would explain Ben’s sudden urge to marry Kami now after all these years. He’d get joint title to the property and would own whatever he found. This seepage meadow isn’t part of Kami’s parcel—it’s state land, and no one can claim any fossils found on it, or underneath it. But Kami’s land is privately owned, which means whoever lives upstairs can legally explore the basement.”
I shaded my eyes with my hand from the glaring sunlight, straining to see if I could spot some creeks sparkling in the meadow, and another piece of the Ben puzzle fell into place.
“That’s why Ben hasn’t publicly supported the ATV manufacturer and the recreational vehicle park,” I realized. “He doesn’t want them to have the land any more than he wants an eco-community built on it. He’s hoping the whole conflict will come to a stalemate with the zoning council, and then, Chuck’s property, which is already trashed, won’t be worth anything to anyone else. He’ll be able to snap it up at a bargain, combine it with Kami’s place, and bingo! He’s sitting on top of his personal, prehistoric goldmine.”
“Assuming Kami marries him, which I think is looking pretty doubtful given her rather distraught reaction to your comments this morning, Bob,” Alan reminded me. “And even if she did, that still doesn’t guarantee the council is going to stall out on making a decision favoring either of the other two parties—the ATV gang or the eco-community group. Typically, in local cases like this, one or the other party will get the nod. That’s still a hurdle if Ben wants ownership of the land.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “No, it’s not, Alan. Ben might be taking a low profile in this debate, but the fact is, he has a lot of pull in this county. Ask anyone. Big Ben plays the fiddle down here and everybody dances. Besides, as a local boy, he’s probably got long histories with enough council members to guarantee that nobody gets the nod to develop that property unless he says so. As for the ATV people, they must think he’s working behind the scenes to help them out, especially since he’s funneling Chuck’s money into their lobbying group.”
“But you think he’s playing them for fools, using them to stonewall the eco-community while he manipulates the zoning council to shut both groups out.”
“That’s exactly what I think,” I assured him. “If nobody can get the zoning they need, the land can’t be developed, which means the buyers go away, and the property continues to sit and deteriorate.”
“Which drives the price of the land even further down.”
“Absolutely. Then Ben, Chuck’s good old family friend, offers to take the property off his hands at a bargain price. Chuck can say ‘good riddance’ to a painful reminder of his quarrel with his father, and Ben gets legal rights—at a cut-rate price—to whatever he finds underground, maximizing his bone-selling profits.”
I scanned the meadow again and caught some sun reflecting off the surface of a stream that meandered through the sedge. “I’m starting with that one,” I said, striding towards the little ribbon of water. “Don’t fall through the earth again, Alan. Or if you do, yell really loud so I can hear you.”
“This is crazy!” he called after me. “We don’t know anything about finding caves.”
“You’re never too old to learn, Hawk,” I shouted back to him. “Don’t you have some secret Lakota trick for finding water?”
“Yeah,” he yelled to me. “It’s called ‘look for a faucet,’ White-man.”
I could feel a grin pulling at my mouth. Maybe having my best friend as my brother-in-law was going to be all right after all.