Deadly Night (37 page)

Miriam walked over and looked at the tooth. “There’s something really wrong here. We need to take this stuff over to the visitors’ center and have someone look at it. We’d better tell them about the tree too.”

The blood drained from Tyler Hobbs’s face as he looked up toward the second floor of his family’s spacious home in Littleton, Colorado.

“
You’re
so
busted, Ty!” Twelve-year-old Jillian Hobbs adjusted her oversized Denver Broncos sweatshirt and turned to leave him in the backyard.

“
Hey,
wait!”
he called after her. “Jill, come back here!
Please!”

His sister didn’t respond until she reached the deck, and only to show him her tattletale smile. Despite the brisk weather’s affect on her hip, due to chronic SCFE, she limped gleefully to the back door.

“
Stop her, Chris!”

Tyler’s urgent plea to his brother sitting on a bench next to the door went ignored. By the time Christopher looked up from his PSP she was already inside the house.

Damn it!

Frustrated, Tyler shook his head. Yes, he had just done the one thing his dad warned them to
never
do in the backyard. He kicked a football. Dad always said you could throw it. But, you could never
ever
kick it.

“
You shouldn’t have kicked the ball, Ty,” said Christopher. His nose reddened from the autumn chill, he waited for Tyler to step onto the deck and join him at the door. “Jill’s right. Dad’s going to
kill
you when he and Mom get home tomorrow!”

The youngest of the Hobbs children, he would be nine in November, five years younger than Tyler, who turned fourteen the past August.

“
Yeah, I’m sure he will,” sighed, Tyler.
Just frigging great!
He opened the back door and motioned for Christopher to come inside with him. “Thanks a lot for being so helpful, you little twerp! Next time I need a favor—like stopping Jill from telling Auntie Jan what just happened—I’ll be sure to keep you in mind.”

Christopher looked up at him, his expression pained. He began to sniff, which annoyed Tyler all the more. He ran his hands nervously through his thick, dark brown hair. His brother was a sure bet to tell Auntie Jan the name he just called him. And even now, in the living room he heard Jillian give her a full report on the football incident.

He hung his jacket on the hall tree in the foyer and followed Christopher into the living room. Jillian stood next to the sofa where Janice Andrews sat. Auntie Jan was Mom’s best friend. A freelance editor, Mom once told him that the two of them had been friends since their freshman year at the University of Colorado, nearly two years before Mom met Dad, who attended the same school. Tyler’s buddies considered Auntie Jan sort of hot—at least that’s what they told him whenever they came over to his house and she was around. Not bad for a thirty-something divorcee. Pretty and petite with sandy hair and big brown eyes…he tried not to think of her in that way.

“
All right, Ty, tell me about the window,” she said, frowning. She set aside the latest mystery galley she worked on. “Before you do, I want all three of you to stand in front of me, so I can see each of your faces. That way, I’ll know who’s telling me the truth about what just happened.”

Janice motioned for them all to line up on the other side of the coffee table. Once ready, she told Tyler to begin. He hesitated, glancing at both his sister and brother, who stood on either side as troll-like sentries blocking the only path for escape, between the loveseat and coffee table. They were mini-versions of Dad, with the same blond hair and deep hazel eyes. He alone favored their mom, with blue eyes and dark hair. Jillian and Christopher looked up with innocent, expectant eyes—detached from their roles that helped worsen the world of doggy-doo he found himself in.

“
Well,” he began, coughing nervously. “We were playing with the ball out back, and…I kicked it.” The confession slipped out, but brought immediate relief. It was much better this way, instead of prolonging the inevitable. “I know none of us are supposed to do that, but I never intended to kick the ball so hard, or for it to go so high. But it did.”

Janice nodded in response, her lips a thin line. “There’s probably no way you can afford to fix the window, is there?”

He shook his head ‘no’ and lowered his eyes.

“
He’s going to be in
big
trouble when Dad finds out!” said Jillian, her tone solemn and worried, for the moment devoid of the tattletale joy she spoke with earlier.

“
Well, hopefully we can keep that from happening,” said Janice, as she stood up. “Let’s take a look at the window, and go from there. All right?”

Tyler shrugged his shoulders. Her look now softer than a moment ago, it gave him hope things might work out after all.

“
You really should be more careful,” she continued, on the way upstairs. “But we all make mistakes. Just never make the same one twice.”

They moved past Jillian and Christopher’s bedrooms on the left side of the landing. Tyler’s room sat at the end of the hallway. He insisted on going in first. His two younger siblings rarely got to visit his private domain. Christopher, wide-eyed, surveyed the array of posters covering the walls. A couple of scantily clothed females made Jillian blush and Janice raise an eyebrow.

“
Mom knows about them,” he advised, after noticing their reaction. “There’s the window.” He pointed to a large French-paned window facing the backyard. The damage wasn’t as extensive as he feared. Only one corner of the window was broken, the panes directly above and below bore small spider web-like cracks.

“
This might not be too bad.” Janice moved over to the window and took a closer look. Most glass shards large enough to pick up safely, only a few splinters remained on the windowsill and Tyler’s desk. “Jill, would you mind grabbing the scissors and masking tape from the bottom shelf in the pantry downstairs?”

While Jillian left the bedroom, Tyler retrieved a cardboard box he no longer needed from his Guitar Hero game stashed inside his closet. His sister soon returned with the scissors and tape.

“
Now, give me a hand here and let’s see if we can’t repair this bad boy,” said Janice.

She moved over to the window and tested the strength of the two cracked panes. When satisfied they would hold for the time being, she turned her attention to the broken pane, making a rough estimate of the cardboard patch she needed. With the kids’ help she completed the patch and secured it in place within fifteen minutes, and then cleaned up the remaining glass shards and splinters.

“
If David decides to dock your allowance for this, I’ll pick up the tab, Ty,” she offered. Grateful, he smiled and thanked her. “Since this is our last night together before your mom and dad return home, how does pizza and a movie sound?”

“
Yeah-h-h-h!! Thank you Auntie Jan!!!” the younger kids shouted, followed by a hearty “Woo-hoo!” from Tyler.

***

Janice waited downstairs while the kids finished getting ready. She returned to her spot on the sofa in the living room, next to the fire that slowly died in the fireplace. The late afternoon sun had begun to set behind the foothills at the base of the Rockies. Its light diminished to a mere trickle through the main floor’s back windows.

Necessary to turn on a table lamp, she pulled out a note from her galley that also served as a bookmark, which had all of the pertinent memos and phone numbers Miriam had given her two days prior. On impulse she picked up the phone, prepared to dial the number. But then she noticed the ‘EST’ memo next to the phone number and remembered the two-hour time difference between Littleton and Gatlinburg.

“
Probably out on the town right about now, I imagine,” she mused to herself. “Enjoy yourselves, because there’s a little surprise waiting here when you get home.”

“
Hey, hon’, what are you thinking about?” asked Miriam. She reached across the table to gently grasp David’s hand, bringing him back to the present with her.

“
Huh? Sorry, babe,” he said, sitting up straight in his seat and taking another sip from his beer.

Spending their last Gatlinburg dinner in one of the more expensive steak establishments, he smiled as he set the bottle down on the table. She smiled as well, and then urged him again to tell her what was on his mind.

He really didn’t know where to begin, as the day’s strange events filled his head like a spinning Roulette wheel. After they left the ravine and Cades Cove’s ‘forgotten’ Lovers’ Lane, and had reached the edge of the meadow that separated John Oliver’s property from the path leading to the ravine, she suggested they stop for a farewell photo. They hoped to find a passing tourist to take their picture together, but nearing dusk and the park’s closing time, they found themselves alone.

At David’s insistence, Miriam posed first since sunset came quickly. He managed to get two excellent shots of her standing in front of an incredible backdrop of the Smoky Mountains.

His turn next, she captured one good shot of him standing in the same place she stood a moment earlier. The sun fell behind the mountains just as she snapped the picture. When they reached the parking lot adjacent to John Oliver’s place, only their rented Chevy Malibu remained.

“
Well…I’m waiting, Mr. Music,” she prodded.

“
I’m still trying to put today’s experience in its proper perspective,” he said, once he defined the main theme fueling his rampant thoughts.

“
I’m sure it’s just a strange string of coincidences, which only seemed connected in some weird way,” she said, and then momentarily looked away, as if she’d already filed the event away in the recesses of her mind and was unhappy to deal with it again. “Like we talked about earlier, maybe we just happened upon some stuff that had already been there for awhile.”

David shrugged his shoulders and took another sip from his beer. “But, now that you turned the bag and tooth over to the park service,” she continued, “we no longer have to worry about it.”

Ah…therein lies a problem, thought David, still smiling at her. When they reached the visitors’ center next to the Cable Mill, he was the one elected to give the items to a ranger. For efficiency, he opened the bag and dropped the tooth inside. He did this as soon as he stepped out of the car. Once he walked into the building and on up to the main information desk, he held out the bag for the park service employee working behind the counter to take. A pudgy middle-aged woman with thick eyeglasses and short gray hair, he waited for her to finish filling out a report.

Unsure if the employee was an actual ranger or not, he intended to give her the bag anyway. Right before she finished working on the report and finally acknowledged his presence, a peculiar sensation overwhelmed him. He pulled his hand back, and by the time the woman looked up at him he’d deposited the bag inside one of his coat pockets that already contained a pair of Indian arrowheads and an unusual-shaped piece of pyrite he found on the way to the ravine. Without saying a word, he turned and walked out of the visitor’s center.

“
So, what did they tell you?” asked Miriam, when he returned to the car.

He started to tell the truth, but then sensed that he shouldn’t—more like
couldn’t—
without incurring some terrible consequence for doing so. After opening his mouth and saying nothing for a moment, he lied.

“
The lady I just spoke to said she’d take care of the bag and tooth.”

Miriam frowned and David feared his ruse would be uncovered.

“
What did she think about what happened? You did tell her everything, right?”

“
Yeah, I told her,” he said, worried he hadn’t stayed inside the visitor’s center long enough to make his story believable. “But I’m not sure she took me seriously.”

He hoped this explanation sufficed. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t give the items away, and worse yet, why he lied to the one person he cherished more than any other.

“
Well, that takes care of it then,” she said, seemingly relieved.

She pulled the car out of the parking lot and back onto the main road out of the park. Once they returned to the chalet, they took a quick shower and then headed back into town to look for one of the nicer venues to eat at….

“
Thanks a lot for reminding me about that poor girl and her lost beau,” she said, as he nodded in silence across from her at their table in the restaurant. “Can you picture how lonely she must’ve been out there in the cove?”

“
Yeah, I imagine it was no picnic for her,” he concurred, pausing to brush his fingers through his thick blond bangs. “I wonder when our food’s coming?”

Ready to move on to other business, he wanted to forget about the strange afternoon and enjoy their last night together in this quaint mountain town. Miriam seemed lost in her own thoughts as she stared at the flickering candle in the center of their table. When she looked up again, he could tell she had more questions. Luckily their food arrived.

The conversation shifted to other, more pleasant things, and before long the issue of Allie Mae and her mysterious bag of treasures seemed truly behind them. After dinner they walked along Gatlinburg’s historic strip, where they picked up a few souvenirs for their kids and Janice. Hand in hand, they walked back to their car, enjoying the town’s ambience and the cool autumn evening.