Рита Браун - Probable Claws

“Elkins always said Ali Asplundah was murdered.” Tony shook his head. “He’d whisper Ali knew too much.”

“Ali died of a heart attack, leaning up against the huge cat he was working. Amazing how much better equipment is today.”

“It’s easier to operate but all this computer chip stuff drives me crazy,” Tony responded.

“Might be right. But when I started in this business, if a track came off a giant Caterpillar, a new one cost ten thousand dollars. That would be dirt cheap today. Forgive the pun.” Sean smiled broadly.

“Yeah, nothing ever gets cheaper. Well, maybe computers.”

“The hell.” Sean spat. “Apple sells a phone now for one thousand dollars. It’s nuts and people are dumb enough to pay for it. As for equipment, it’s astronomical, but you know we can’t do what we do without it. And”—he paused—“the stuff does last longer, just like car engines last longer.”

“True.”

“So what or why did Elkins think Ali was killed? Never said anything to me. No one did.”

Tony felt a snowflake. “I don’t think anyone took him seriously. But even if they did, nothing to gain by that kind of talk around someone like you.”

“Jeez, Tony, now I wonder what else I missed back in the day.”

“Not too much. But finding his body makes me wonder about the complaining.”

“Whatever he did, it would have to be a lot worse than complaining for someone to shoot him,” Sean sensibly said. “Funny to think that years later that lead was still pressed into his ribcage.”

“I sure hope there are no more bodies under this ground or we’ll be way, way behind.” Sean also felt a snowflake on his nose, looked upward. “I swear February is the longest month in the year.”

“We’ve got at least six more feet to dig. That’s much deeper than the base for the Kushner Building. We’ll probably find pigeon bones, squirrels, and if we find more humans, I’m willing to bet the remains are much, much older than Elkins’s.”

“Yeah.”

“Any ideas?”

“About what?”

“About what to do if we find anything else?”

“Tony, for God’s sake, hide it if it’s human. We’ll never get this job done. And we can always put the bones in a box, put it on another site. Preferably one being dug by Franklin Bros.” Sean let out a loud laugh.

Tony shook his head, laughed. “Our biggest competitor is probably enjoying every minute of this.”

“Yeah, old man Frank Franklin was hot when they didn’t get the bid. But we knew this site a lot better. After all, Dad built the Kushner Building.” He then smiled at Tony. “We all did. By then you and I knew a little more.”

“Yeah, but times are different now. When we started out there was no Nature First, no Save the Bay, all the rest of it. Everyone has an ax to grind and yet everyone wants the city’s economy to tick up.”

“Doublethink.” Sean slapped Tony on the back. “Back to work.”

“What do you want to do if I find anything?”

“Hide it. I mean it. Whoever digs up whatever, you take over. Tell him not to worry about it and save the bones. I’m willing to bet if you find the remains of a homeless dog from 1810 the whole damned job will shut down again.”

Tony nodded, turned, and headed back to the men standing by their enormous machines.

Sean climbed into the Rankin truck to head back to the office. A review of the files as well as soil types was in order. The police made copies of Elkins’s employment record. He wanted to review what they were reviewing. So much had happened, including frantic calls from the bank, from Cloudcroft, he hadn’t had the time to check things himself. Rankin had taken no construction loans, of course, but Cloudcroft, for all their braying about their obscene profits with growth of 9.7 percent just last year, seemed reluctant to spend those profits, hence a large construction loan on their part. So the bank called Sean, who reassured them that Cloudcroft truly was good for the loan. They didn’t want to risk operating capital, which they had told the bank. Did he think they had lots of money? He did but he also figured they were all a nest of vipers.

Ronald Reagan’s quote of an old Russian proverb played in his mind. “Trust but verify.” He didn’t trust but he certainly verified.

31

February 2, 2017

Thursday

“Where’s Pirate?” Felipe asked when Harry walked through the door.

“Home with Tucker. I thought it would be too upsetting for him to come back here. He’s still looking for Lisa. Breaks my heart.” Then she added, since Felipe looked brokenhearted, too, “He’s settling in. Tucker adores him. Mrs. Murphy rubs up against him. Pewter, pfft.” She flicked her hand.

“Thank you for giving him a good home. I would have liked to have kept him. Such a mellow fellow, but my apartment is small and Pirate will not be small.”

“No. He’s a loving puppy. He’ll be fine in time.” She smiled. “I stopped by to see if you and Raynell needed anything? Where is she by the way?”

“Back in Lisa’s office. The sheriff’s department sifted through everything. She’s trying to get it all back in place before Kylie Carter shows up. Tomorrow.”

“Ah. I assume nothing much came of the crime team.”

He shook his head. “Well, they’re thorough. Actually, I was impressed with them, and we all know Cooper, of course.”

“That’s something, I guess.” Harry unzipped her worn work jacket. “Feels good in here. Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“No, but thank you.”

Raynell emerged from Lisa’s office, a sheaf of papers in hand. “Oh, hello, Harry.”

“Just dropped by to check in on you all.”

“We’re still in shock,” Raynell confessed, putting the papers on the side table by the front door. “I believe Lisa saved everything she’d ever read.”

Felipe smiled. “Close to it. She’d research something on her computer, but if she read a magazine she’d tear out pages.”

“Her file cabinets are organized. Give her that,” Raynell remarked. “Me, I’m paperless if I can help it. Just hit the save button. Takes care of everything.”

A colored glossy page caught Harry’s eye. “Dinosaurs. Gary had little rubber dinosaurs everywhere.”

“When he was working here, sometimes he’d be on all fours.” Raynell smiled. “The two of them would be yakking about a ‘saurus’ this and a ‘saurus’ that. I know Nature First has an interest in prior periods of life, but pretty much I stick to what’s on the planet now.”

“Me, too,” Harry agreed.

Felipe interlocked his fingers, placing his hands behind his head. “She had this theory that whatever happened before could happen again. Lisa believed Mother Nature moves forward and backward. She’d say, ‘Look at how rivers have changed course even in a few hundred years. Who is to say we can’t all be dragged back in time to the primordial swamp.’ ”

Raynell shifted her weight from one well-shod foot to the other. “I guess anything is possible.”

“Yeah, but the more we find from, say, the Triassic-Jurassic period to the Cretaceous period up to the Paleogene time, the more we will know about what truly happened. You know, the times of mass extinction. Look at what’s happening with these monster hurricanes. Maybe there will be evidence of enormous climate changes we haven’t found yet,” Harry said, betraying that she had done some homework.

“People are pushing this change,” Raynell said with conviction.

“We are, but that doesn’t mean that Nature wasn’t heading down that path. There’s so much we don’t know.” Felipe looked up at Harry, whom he much liked. “For instance, did you know that where the Blue Ridge Mountains are, our beautiful mountains, there was once a sixty mile by ten mile lake? It was a bit east of the mountains and over the millenia the mountains kept eroding into this lake. Every time there’d be an earthquake or an uplift of the mountains, they’d erode into the lake. So in this former lake, in the muds and that good old Virginia red clay, there is over two hundred and fifteen million years of stuff, of fossils, of footprints, of bones. We’re just beginning to understand what we are literally standing on.”