Rock Bottom (Imogene Museum Mystery #1) (20 page)

“
Greg!” I yelled.

Only my own voice came back, bouncing off the hard surfaces.

Then a shuffle, or a grunt — and it wasn’t Tuppence.

But the dog whined in reply.

“You stay,” I reminded the hound.

The largest crack in the floor extended up the wall on the far side of the chamber. I straddled the fissure and crawled toward the opening. I shined the flashlight between its jagged edges. A wide-eyed owl stared back.

I screeched. The owl didn’t blink.

It took a few seconds to realize it was the most gorgeous petroglyph I
’d ever seen. Perfect, clean design. At least two feet tall. White lines chipped with precision into dark gray basalt. I had to get through the crack.

CHAPTER
19

I wondered what Greg had thought when he saw the owl. Spectacular. Amazing. And worth every scrape and bruise. He must have been so excited. On the scent of a great discovery, his eyelids and toes tingling with anticipation
— because that’s how I felt. No wonder he pressed on.

The crack was a foot wide, maybe. I pulled off my jacket
— forgot all about the cold and that I was already shivering like a naked Eskimo. Adrenaline buzzed in my ears. Most of me is pretty squishy, so I thought I could make it. Your skeleton is actually a lot smaller than you probably think it is.

The crack in the floor was a problem. I stretched my arm down into it but couldn
’t feel the bottom. I’d have to go through sideways without anything to stand on. Since I’d need both my hands, I stuffed the flashlight in my back pocket again.

I crooked my right arm into the owl room, feeling for the wall. The crack was like a narrow hallway entering a larger chamber. I had to angle around a ninety-degree corner but figured I could hug it.

I swung my right leg through space and wrapped it around the corner, probing for a toe hold. There — a little cleft. I pressed my weight into it. Rock climbing lessons would have been helpful, if only I’d taken them at some point in my past, which I hadn’t.

Free of the crack, I balanced on my toes, clinging to the wall of the petroglyph room like a bat. The cavern felt large
— the way sounds bounced back to me had shifted. The echoes took longer. There had to be a ledge or something. Greg had made it through. So could I.

But, I couldn
’t go anywhere without seeing. I leaned into the wall and let go with my right hand to reach for the flashlight. That’s when the sneeze came.

As the tingling sprang up in my nose, I lunged to resume my grip
— too late.

I somersaulted until my shoulder slammed into the cavern
’s floor. The flashlight clattered after me, swinging its beam around like a spastic strobe light.

Pain flashed through my body, and I drowned in it. I couldn
’t breathe. My brain screamed when I thought about breathing. Maybe I was screaming. No, my lungs were flat. I couldn’t scream.

CHAPTER
20

I awoke later
— hours, minutes? Groggy and bone-cold, I lay perfectly still in the darkness, taking inventory of my body parts. Swallowing tiny sips of air — focusing on the slight rise and fall of my chest and the stabbing pain each breath brought.

My shoulder throbbed. My neck throbbed. My head throbbed. Must have knocked it on the way down. The second concussion in a week.

My legs were twisted uncomfortably. I slowly stretched my quads and calves, wiggled my toes, bent and unbent my knees. All there. Not paralyzed.

I was going to be stiff if I didn
’t move. The flashlight lay several feet away, still on. My eyes fastened on the round dot of light it projected as I pushed up to a sitting position. Pain sliced through my right side from shoulder to hip. I clenched my teeth against a scream and wheezed in short breaths.

My eyes rolled back.

Focus. Focus on the light. Not a good time to pass out.

Pressing my left palm against a wall, I pulled my legs under me, squatted, then rose, teetering, to my feet. My right hand worked, but something was terribly wrong with my shoulder.

Grimacing — and using my left hand, I pushed my right hand into my front jeans pocket to take the weight off my shoulder.

I stumbled toward the flashlight. A grunt escaped as I bent to pick it up.

I leaned against the cool wall and forced shallow breaths. Sweat trickled behind my ears. If I held perfectly still, my brain seemed to have a little room for thoughts other than the pain. Any movement brought sharp stabs — breath-stealing stabs.

I played the shaky flashlight beam around the walls.

The owl had friends. Lizards, a sun face, big-eyed goblins, a man with hairy legs, hard-shelled beetles, a cat-headed jellyfish. They probably had much more meaning than I could ascertain, and they danced over the walls.

“
Wow.” It came out as a croak. I squinted at each new carving as it appeared in the light. The Florence Accademia Gallery, but for petroglyphs — master versions with cruder student copies near them, squiggles that looked like doodles on a notepad, practice renditions that became progressively more sophisticated. Truly a treasure trove. And protected — for how many years?

Greg would have been ecstatic when he found this. But where was he?

I scanned the floor. A few scattered rocks along the edges and a bat skeleton. I wrinkled my nose. From the pungent stinky-sweet smell, I guessed there was also a fresh skunk carcass nearby.

The flashlight beam revealed a tennis shoe then a jeans-clad leg. My breath caught, and I forced shallow panting to conquer the shooting pain in my side. I clenched my teeth and directed the beam up the body
— belt, blue button-down shirt — Greg lying on his back, eyes closed, head at an odd angle.

I staggered to him, knelt and laid a hand on his chest. My hand was trembling, but there was other movement underneath
— barely. His ribs settled after a faint exhale. I waited a long time for them to rise again.

“
Greg?” I whispered.

Nothing.

“Greg?” Louder.

Nothing.

I pulled his eyelids back but didn’t know what I was looking for. Didn’t they do that on TV?

I examined the rest of his body. The denim around his left ankle was crusted with dried blood. I gingerly pulled the hem up and nearly passed out again. The leg above his ankle was fractured badly, the yellowish end of a bone sticking through scabbed-over skin.

Greg moaned, and I whirled to look at his face.

“
Huhhnn.” I clutched at my side and screwed my eyes shut — no sudden movements.

Greg was out, but he was still feeling at least some of the pain. That was good, right? That he could feel his leg? I carefully tucked the fabric over the break
— he needed all possible protection.

His backpack lay on the ground within arm
’s reach. And several open plastic containers. I picked one up and sniffed. Sour, but with the sweet undertone of cream cheese frosting. Greg had been eating my carrot cake. Surviving on my carrot cake. I counted containers. Four — so it was all gone. 

One of my containers had a few tablespoons of water in it. He must have scooped some out of a puddle to drink. He
’d kept his wits about him. Of course, he would.

I rummaged through his pack
— my books, his cracked laptop and dead cell phone. He’d pulled his pack with him through the opening above. And it had saved his life — so far.

Should I try to wake him? But what could I do for him now? Not much. Neither one of us could climb out of here.

“Oh, Greg. Why didn’t you tell me?” I picked up his limp hand.

How long would we have to wait? I
’d left my truck, phone, jacket and dog as bread crumbs and given general directions for Sheriff Marge. It was hard to tell in the dark exactly where we were.

Tuppence wasn
’t very good at staying — she’d wander around. Someone would spot her, eventually.

I sat beside Greg and scooted his things into a pile to prop up the flashlight. I aimed the beam at the crack we
’d come through so anyone peering through the first crevice would see it.

My stomach rumbled. Betty
’s cookie was long gone. I laid snug against Greg and flung my good arm over him, giving him what was left of my own body heat.

My shoulder and side knotted in throbbing spasms. But crying required energy I didn
’t have. I grabbed a fistful of Greg’s shirt and whispered, “Hold on. Just hold on.”

CHAPTER
21

I slept, fainted, had waking nightmares
— I don’t know. My mind flashed through a bizarre jumble of memories and keen sensations. Tommy was chewing on my ribs, which were exposed and bloody. I looked at them poking up out of my chest. I moved to push him off me, but my arm wouldn’t work. 

Clyde
stuck his tongue out at Tommy, and the cat scampered away. Sheriff Marge shouted at Lindsay to sneeze into a pillowcase to keep the germs away from other people. And the robber with the stolen dentures brought me a towering carrot cake on a platter, fresh from my favorite Portland bakery.

“
Nice and easy,” Ford repeated as he pounded his fist on a transport cart. I shouted at him to stop that racket, but he ignored me.

My ex-
fiancé told me to hold still while he tried to take my picture, but my long, wavy hair — the hair he preferred that took an hour and fifteen minutes to style every day — kept blowing in my face. Then the wind blew him off the cliff, and he fell into the river without a splash. He went straight to the bottom holding a yellow nylon rope.

Tuppence growled in my ear. Her breath smelled like licorice, and she pulled on my collar, dragging me
— dragging me away from Greg.

“No!” I shouted. “No!

But no one listened.

George Longshoe served tea in tiny white plastic cups with tiny white plastic saucers while we huddled around a child-sized table and balanced on tippy little chairs.

o0o

Bright light forced its way under my eyelids. I turned my head away and moaned. A squeaky wheel revolved underneath. I was riding the squeaky wheel, and I wanted off. I felt for Greg, but my hand clanked against a cold, metal railing. I tried to sit up, and something heavy pushed me back.

“
Greg?”

“
Fine. He’s going to be fine.”

I knew that voice. Maybe. It was all fuzzy and bright. And antiseptic. Angels don
’t wear antiseptic. But that robber guy — he was menthol.

o0o

Voices murmured, a buzz. A hive. A hive of owls. No, not a hive. A covey? Someone ratcheted tape off a roll. Scritchy sounds — around and around. They were packing me into a case for shipment with the chamber pots back to Germany. Well, that’d be nice. Maybe then I could sleep. I wanted the darkness of the cavern. I wanted Greg to be safe.

o0o

Someone was standing over me, breathing on me. I opened my eyes. Sheriff Marge.

“
Ahh, you’re back,” Sheriff Marge said.

“
Where have I been?” My voice came out raspy.

“
Hard to say, exactly. I’m still trying to figure it out myself. But it seems you visited Betty, then drove to the heritage marker, forged a trail to an unknown cavern and cracked yourself up pretty badly on the rocks when you fell in. Sound familiar?”

I tried to swallow.

“Here, you’re supposed to be sucking on these.” Sheriff Marge placed a plastic cup in my left hand.

I tipped it to my lips and slid an ice cube into my mouth.
“Where’s Greg?” I asked around the frozen lump.

“
In surgery. He won’t be walking for a while, but the doctor says he can set the bone. He’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” Sheriff Marge patted my good shoulder. “The guys had to pull his shirt off because you were hanging on to it for all you were worth. They let you keep the shirt and hauled Greg out first.”

“
Oh.” I wrinkled my nose, embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t hinder —”

“
Nope. You were protecting him, if incoherently. Pretty voracious, considering the nature of your injuries.”

I looked down. I was propped in a white bed, covered in white sheets, in the middle of a white room. I seemed padded.

“Broken collarbone, cracked ribs, concussion, mild hypothermia, severe dehydration — but that might be related to the sinus infection. You’re amped up on antibiotics and morphine.” Sheriff Marge gestured toward the tubes running into my arm.

“
Oh.” Boy, I was slow. My brain crept along. “How did you find us?”

“
You didn’t hear that crazy dog of yours howling her head off?” Sheriff Marge studied me over the top of her reading glasses. “Well, first, Betty called. She thought you were acting unusual and was worried about whether you should drive. So we started looking for you. Wasn’t hard to guess where you went. We found your truck at the heritage marker with its back bumper sticking out into the highway. Lousy parking job. Confirmed Betty’s suspicions about your ability to drive.” Sheriff Marge paused and scrutinized me again. “We may talk about that later.”

“
Codeine,” I mumbled.

Sheriff Marge raised one eyebrow.

“Cough syrup. I had some.”

“
Some?”

“
I didn’t measure.”

Sheriff Marge sighed.
“Found your footprints and skid marks on the slope. We almost bypassed that rock pile thinking no one in their right mind would try to scale it. But Pete climbed part way up to have a look and took a tumble when Tuppence hit him in the chest. She just came flying over the heap and crashed into him.”

“
Pete?”

This earned another disapproving look from Sheriff Marge.
“Wild horses couldn’t have dragged him away. I think you and he need to settle some things.”

I slid another ice cube in my mouth.
“Did you get my message?”

“
Yeah. After we found your phone. You must have called while I was divvying up leads with the State Police, and I didn’t notice until we saw your phone sitting there and figured out why you’d done that. Tuppence was carrying on with horrible, yippy howls, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. She led us into the cave where we could see your jacket and broken sunglasses.”

“
Did you see the flashlight beam, through the next crevice?”

“
Nope. There wasn’t any light. We got firemen in there with big battery-powered light packs and jackhammers. Made the openings big enough to get them through with their gear. They rigged up some kind of sling. It took a community effort. There’s a whole bunch of people waiting to see you, but the doc won’t let them in yet. I claimed official privileges.”

I managed a faint smile.
“Did you see the petroglyphs? Greg found them.”

“
I didn’t go in that far, but Pete was impressed.”

“
Pete?”

“
Like I said, wild horses.”

“
They need to be protected from vandalism. And the Confederated Tribes should be notified. Can you —?” I shifted and gritted my teeth. The edges of things were getting fuzzy.

“
Done.” Sheriff Marge pressed a slender knob with a button on the end into my hand. “Here, click this if you need more pain killer.”

I sighed and closed my eyes.

o0o

The bed jerked hard, sending painful light streaking behind my eyeballs. I groaned.

Someone had bumped the bed. I opened my eyes and saw a flash of red and black buffalo plaid.

Pete and his big feet. Pete in buffalo plaid and heavy boots.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

I gasped and remembered. I clutched the corner of his jacket, pulled it to my face and inhaled. Licorice.

“Mmmmm,” I said into the rough cloth. I might have said some other stuff, too.

Pete unwrapped my fingers from his coat and held my hand in both of his. He rubbed his thumb across my knuckles.

What had I just said? Something loopy, no doubt, and hopefully slurred. Good grief. My face was stuck in a goofy smile as I slipped back into dreamy morphine land. I was probably drooling too.