Chapter Forty-Nine

During the drive to the Ross farm, Jillie sat ramrod straight, her mind a chaos of thought. Everything seemed unreal.

One day she and Beth were happily planning to go away; the next, Beth was in the hospital, and Jillie was eating lunch on top of a skeleton while everyone in the world was looking for her.

All she wanted was for her life to go back to the way it was before Pops died, before someone started that stupid rumor about a treasure. But like in Pandora’s Box, all the evil had been let out, and nothing could put it back.

Once the treasure rumor had caught on, everything changed. Kids at school suddenly wanted to become Jillie’s friend. People they hardly knew invited the family to dinner and talked about the weather for a second or two before asking pointed questions about Pop’s trips, while pretending only passing interest. Then as time went on and Pops didn’t magically produce a treasure trove to share with everyone, the rumor mill turned nasty.

And now, with what she’d discovered in the shed, it was obvious the Elliotts were playing by a different set of rules than the ones by which Jillie’d been raised.

One thing was obvious: she couldn’t keep denying there was a treasure. Even if that were true, it wouldn’t work with those people. And neither she nor Miss Dix would be able to talk their way out of the fix they were in. Just like in the true crime stories she and Beth used to watch on television after Pops had gone to bed, she and Dix could be made to disappear. And they’d never be found in the miles and miles of open desert—at least not by anything human.

Unwelcome scenes from those television episodes flashed into her mind—images of sun-bleached bones scattered and carried off by predators, of dried, leathery skin and crushed skulls, made not so horrifying by the calm, matter-of-fact voice of the narrator. And, of course, on television there’d been no smells.

The worst part of those episodes was that a lot of the murdered people had willingly gotten into cars with their murderers. And many of them had been killed by people they’d once loved.

Searing pain and the taste of blood made her aware she’d started chewing her nails again. Gingerly, she wiped the pads of her fingers on her jeans and thought about the skeleton in the toolbox.

Jillie decided that the bones belonged to a woman, since she couldn’t picture anyone putting a man on a folded flower-print dress. And the hair had been long.

The mental picture of those teeth and the skimpy hair attached to a dried, crusty-looking scalp made her shiver. The image would no doubt make an unwelcome addition to her nightmares.

You been chatting to her again?

Those words meant either Mort or Toby murdered the tool chest person, or maybe they both did it.

Regardless, although Jillie hadn’t actually seen Toby kill the man in the trailer, she knew he had. And as soon as she got the chance, she’d turn her drawing over to the police.

But just then, she needed to revise her plan of escape. As she mulled over tidbits of information, some of it learned from her favorite forensic television shows, slivers of thought bubbled up from her survival-brain.

The most important thing was to say nothing about what she found in the toolbox to anyone other than Miss Dixie; there was no way to know how many of the Elliotts were involved in the murder.

Next, she had to pretend the treasure was real; hopefully, that would buy some time.

Finally, she had to figure out a way to get Miss Dix to Moms Potter’s so they could call the police; not only was her godmother a tough old lady, but she had a shotgun and could keep the Elliotts from hurting anyone until the police could get there.

Jillie had heard that the best ideas were usually the simplest. She’d also heard that people see what they expect and want to see.

So, if the Elliotts wanted and expected to see a treasure, that’s what she’d promise them.

By the time Miss Dix turned the truck up the farm’s drive, bits and pieces of an idea had begun to grow. If her plan worked, they might at least have a chance.

And it had better work; Beth was depending on her.