Friday afternoon

Only two hours had elapsed since Shep and Miranda's early morning meeting with Professor Clarkson in Gainesville.

For the second time in her life, Miranda stood on the bank of the Pig River and watched Shepard's handmade, work-of-art canoe being shoved gently onto the water. She was not boarding the vessel herself this time, and she did not think anybody else should get in it, either.

Grabbing Shep's bicep and stepping between him and the river, she said, "Tell me again why you think this is a good idea?"

"Bean, we've already discussed this."

"We're not finished discussing it until you listen to reason."

"And by 'listen to reason,' you mean 'do it my way,' — 'my way' meaning your way, in this instance." He moved to sidestep her, but she moved with him and still blocked the way.

"How about this," Miranda urged. "We call nine one one and tell the police to get over to Rigby's farm on the double. Then we go home and wait to hear how everything turned out."

Carlo brushed past them to place two backpacks in the canoe. "And what will we say when they ask why they should race to Signor Rigby's farm, sirens blaring and helicopters circling?" He continued in a girlish falsetto, "Um, I'm pretty sure there are murderers out there, digging up a prehistoric elephant."

Miranda turned on Carlo. "Well, of course it sounds silly when you say it like that."

She stood with her back to Shep, while Carlo collected the heavy wooden oars from the grass and moved them into the boat.

Shep stepped closer and put his arms around her waist, drawing her back against his chest. "We talked about this. We have a lot of suspicion and informed guesswork on our side, Bean, but we don't have anything the authorities would consider real evidence. That could change if we catch Felicia and Maynard red-handed."

"That's the problem!" She leaned her head back against his pectoral muscles. "They might actually be red-handed — they could have David Zhang's blood on their hands. Or Tom Rigby's. Or both! And, they might not hesitate to shed the blood of anybody who tries to stop them from getting what they want."

Shep kissed her ear before he spoke soothingly into it, "Think about it, Castor Bean. What's the difference if the police go instead of us — assuming we could even convince the cops to stop laughing and investigate? Felicia and Maynard could shoot at a policeman just as easily as they could shoot at us, right?"

Carlo added, "Plus, sirens and helicopters are very loud. The police will not sneak up in a quiet canoe, like us."

"You think about it!" said Miranda. "Police officers have guns and, and, and bulletproof vests and stuff! Do you have guns?"

"No, but—" Shep began.

"Do you have bulletproof vests?"

Carlo said, "We got those orange flotation collars, but I was not planning to take them. They are bulky, and the color looks terrible on me. I am not an Autumn."

Miranda turned within the circle of Shep's arms and flattened her palms against his chest. "You have no guns and no vests. What do you think will happen if these two criminals — who have nothing to lose — decide to shoot at you?"

"I'm going to hide behind Carlo," Shep said. Then he kissed her on the top of her head and stepped away from her to board the canoe.

"See? Nothing to worry about. He has a plan," Carlo said, from his seat in the bow of the boat.

Zeus trotted past Miranda on his way to join the men in the canoe. When he leaped from the bank to the canoe, the boat's slight movement alerted Shep.

"Not this trip, buddy," Shep told him. "Your job is to stay here and protect the womenfolk."

Zeus vaulted back to the shore and trotted to sit beside Miranda's feet.

Shep used his oar to push away from the bank, while Carlo sliced the river water with strong oar strokes that sent them into the current and downstream as if they were in a race.

Miranda waited on the riverbank until the river's course and overhanging foliage made them invisible. Then she took out her cellphone and scrolled through her contacts. She found a number and tapped to initiate the call.

When her party answered, she said, "Good afternoon, Deputy. It's Miranda Ogilvy. I need to tell you about a crime — maybe two crimes. One has already happened and one, I believe, is happening right now. See, I owe you a favor, and I thought giving you credit for single-handedly capturing a murderer could be good for your career. Am I right?"

Less than half an hour later, Miranda and Zeus approached the front porch of Martha Cleary's cottage on Magnolia Street.

From her rocking chair on the porch, Mrs. Cleary watched them come. "Well, ain't this a important-lookin' delegation. What you two got on yer minds this fine day?"

Miranda stepped onto the bottom step and wasted no time on trivialities. "Shepard and Carlo have gone downriver to Tom Rigby's farm because Tom Rigby was murdered, and maybe David Zhang was murdered, and probably the murderer is digging up a dead elephant from Tom's new sinkhole right this very minute."

The rocking chair's rhythm never faltered. Calmly, Mrs. Cleary said, "Ain't no elephant, sweetie. It's a mammoth."

"Mammoth, then," said Miranda. "Did you hear me about the murderer?"

"Sure. I'm old, I ain't deaf. Question is, what do expect me to do with this momentous piece of information? You didn't come over here to borrow no cup of sugar, I reckon."

"I want to drive to Tom Rigby's farm, but I really don't want to go alone."

"Myrrt!"

"I mean, without another human."

"You don't wanna drive out there," said Mrs. Cleary, still rocking.

"Believe me, I don't want to. I've driven that awful road before, and I nearly crashed a dozen times. But I have to go. Shep and Carlo could be confronting a murderer! We have to—"

"Now, jest hold on, hold on. I don't necessarily disagree that we need to go, I jest think you don't want to go in a car. Too noisy and smelly; impossible to sneak up on 'em in a big car like mine — or yours." She nodded to Miranda's car, which had been returned to Miranda's driveway.

"Right," said Miranda. "So, um, do you have a canoe?"

"Heck, no! And I don't have no muscle-bound oarsman to power a canoe downriver, neither. Somehow I don't see you and me getting very far trying to paddle ourselves."

"You don't?" Miranda sounded deflated.

"Buck up, gal! I got somethin' better'n a canoe." Mrs. Cleary stood up from her chair, lifted her rifle from the floor by her side, and looked at Miranda. "Foller me. It's out in the shed."

Minutes later, Miranda approved the old widow's solution: the late Mr. Cleary's flat-bottomed aluminum jonboat, complete with quiet, electric motor. It was dented, scuffed and scratched, and the silver paint was peeling, but it was seaworthy, lightweight, and quiet.

The women rolled the boat on its trailer out of its shed and attached it to the trailer hitch of Mrs. Cleary's red Cadillac. In no time at all, they were at the nearest Pig River boat ramp, lowering their ten-foot yacht into the water.

Miranda more-or-less stumbled into the boat, while Zeus skipped easily aboard.

The old lady waded into the water to push the boat away from the bank and clear of shoreline plants and entanglements. Then she climbed in, took the rudder, and started the electric motor.

The cavalry was on its way to rescue Shep and Carlo.

(It was actually the navy, and nobody could guarantee who would actually need rescuing.)

Nevertheless, the ladies were on a mission, armed with stout hearts and pure motives — and Martha Cleary's .22 caliber rifle.

On arriving at the Rigby farm, Miranda and Mrs. Cleary shut off their electric motor and dragged their flat-bottomed boat onto the shore beside Shepard's distinctive canoe.

Zeus abandoned ship and sat down on dry land to wash his face.

Mrs. Cleary was considerably more graceful than Miranda when disembarking and beaching the boat, but this was only the second time Miranda had been boating on the Sho-ke-okee.

On shore, Miranda took the lead, with Mrs. Cleary and Zeus following. They marched bravely up the trail.

Something large pounced in front of them from the bushes and blocked their path.

Miranda screamed.

Miz Martha almost shot it before she identified it as Carlo.

Carlo said, "I knew it! Why can you not resist putting your lovely self in danger, signorina?"

"I wasn't in danger. I was with Mrs. Cleary," Miranda answered.

"Mrryt!"

"Mrs. Cleary and Zeus," she corrected. "And you're the one doing something dangerous. Where's Shepard?"

"Calm down," said Carlo. "Shep is fine. He is at the sinkhole, where the killer had been working but is gone now — probably back at the farmhouse, loading bones into her vehicle — or Tom's truck."

Miranda plunked her fists on her waistline, indignant. "Shep's all alone, watching for 'the killer' to return. And you don't think that's dangerous?"

"Somebody had to stay there, and somebody had to run back to the river to intercept the incorrigible Captain Castor Bean ..." he sent an accusing look at Mrs. Cleary, "... and crew!"

He refocused on Miranda, saying, "We never thought for a minute that you would not come. You do not have a history of taking good advice, signorina."

"That's true, sweetie," Mrs. Cleary agreed. "Remember that time—"

"That was different," Miranda insisted.

Carlo placed gentle hands on Miranda's shoulders and turned her around on the trail. "We will discuss more later. Right now, please, turn around, go back down the trail to the river, get in your little boat, and go home."

A new voice said, "Oh, don't go! You only just got here!"

Felicia Harper stepped onto the trail behind Martha Cleary, snatched Martha's rifle, and shoved the 75-year-old to the ground.

Miranda rushed to help Mrs. Cleary up.

Zeus disappeared into the forest.

"Big help you are," muttered Miranda.

Carlo moved, but Felicia pointed the rifle in his direction. "Stay where you are. If you have any weapons, take 'em out slow and easy and toss 'em into the bush."

Carlo shook his head.

"No, you won't do it? Or no, you don't have any weapons?"

"I have no weapons."

"And Blondie, up at the sinkhole, does he have a gun? Yours, maybe?"

"We do not own a gun."

"Excellent. Let's hike on up to the sinkhole and join your friend. I gotta tell ya, it made me laugh when you two decided the best plan was to leave the blind guy behind as lookout!"

"He has excellent hearing," Carlo said.

Felicia scoffed. "Dude. Really? Anyway, he's not a lookout now. He's a prisoner. And you three will join him in just a few minutes."

A moment later, the four people walked single file through the woods, with Felicia in the rear, pointing Mrs. Cleary's rifle at their backs.

Earlier, upon arrival at the sinkhole, Shep and Carlo had found signs the mammoth-thieves had indeed been digging recently.

Most likely, Felicia and Maynard were at that very moment loading their first haul of bones into Tom's truck.

The students might as well steal the vehicle; they were already stealing something worth much more — and they could be guilty of murder, as well.

The two Minokee men drew straws to see who would wait at the hole to catch the thieves, and who would return to the river to send Miranda back home.

Shep had learned not to flip a coin to make decisions, because Carlo would lie to him about whether the coin turned up heads or tails — depending on which outcome would best keep Shep out of trouble.

By drawing straws, Shep could not be fooled. One straw was long, and one was short. If Carlo drew the long straw, he could not simply break it to make it shorter, because Shep would hear the break every time.

Carlo did not like leaving Shep alone near the crime scene, with the criminals expected to return any minute. He went into the woods toward the river, despite his misgivings, because he knew Shep would be insulted if Carlo did otherwise.

Shep listened to Carlo's progress through the twigs, leaves, and vines. Unfortunately, Carlo's noises masked the stealthy approach of someone else.

Returning to the sinkhole from the farmyard, the two thieves spotted Shepard acting as watchman. Since Felicia was the brains of their operation, without doubt, and Maynard was the more capable digger, he was told to take care of the lookout and get back to work.

Felicia sneaked around the clearing and through the woods. Her stealth rewarded her with sounds of people talking on the trail near the river.

She crept closer, her steps easily hidden by their conversation, and assessed the situation. The weak link seemed to be the old lady at the end of the line of three people. Also, the old lady had a weapon, which Felicia could turn to her own advantage.

Without a second thought, Felicia Harper attacked. The old lady went down easily, and the rifle was easy to snatch and turn against her new hostages.

That is when Carlo, Miranda, and Mrs. Cleary began their forced marched through the forest at gunpoint.

Maynard was no hero. In fact, he took pride in his cowardice. He was happy to creep up behind the big man with the ponytail and whack him across the back with a four-foot, fifteen-pound club of oak.

The tree limb smashed into Shepard's shoulder blades with a solid whack. Shep flew forward and face-planted into the rough ground. While he lay in the dirt, trying to breathe and mostly failing, Maynard fetched a rope from the nearby pile of supplies, sat on Shepard's glutes, and tied Shep's hands behind his back.

As soon as Shep was able to draw breath, Maynard managed, with his help, to raise Shep to a sitting position and back him up against the nearest tree.

"Who are you?" said Maynard, squatting to look into Shep's face.

Shep said nothing.

Maynard passed his hand back and forth eight inches from Shep's face. "Dang! Felly was telling the truth for a change. You really can't see, can you?"

Shep said nothing.

Maynard leaned to one side to retrieve Shep's sunglasses from where they had landed in the leaf litter. He pushed the glasses onto Shep's face. "And you're the lookout for your team? Ha! You guys must be dumber than a bucket of sand."

Shep said nothing. Blood and loose sand clung to one side of his face, and the cheek bone on that side was lacerated, swelling and turning purple. The rest of him — at least, the front side that had smacked the ground — did not look any better than his face.

His shirt was torn, and multiple cuts and bruises showed through gaps in the fabric. Spiky, fallen tree limbs and bits of razor-edged limestone on the ground had proved effective accomplices for Shep's attacker.

Maynard rose from his crouch and stepped away. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I still got digging to do, and we're burning daylight. That's in all the cowboy movies: 'burning daylight.' I always wanted to say it. Ha! That's good. 'We're burning daylight, boys!'"

Shep heard Maynard chuckling to himself as he scuffled back down into the hole. Soon the sound of shoveling drifted up from inside the crater.

Shep had almost worked one hand out of Maynard's sloppily tied rope when a silent cannonball of fur shot out of the woods behind him and crash-landed on Shep's shoulder. Shep smothered a cry of pain when Zeus slid down Shep's back, claws digging into flesh as well as clothing all the way down.

"Well, I know you didn't come with me on this trip, so you must have come with Bean," Shep whispered.

"Mnyatt."

"And you're here, but she's not, so I'm guessing we've got trouble."

"Mnyatt," agreed Zeus, and added "K-k-k-k-k-k-k" for emphasis.

"Then let's go," Shep said, easing himself quietly backward on his butt, past the tree he'd been leaning against, and onward until nearby cabbage palms closed around him. Once they were well back into the foliage, Shep finished freeing his hands. Then he and Zeus melted into the trees.

Felicia and her three captives were hiking single file along the narrow game trail toward the sinkhole, when the younger female hostage shouted back at Felicia.

"What happened to David Zhang?"

Felicia seemed amused. "Oh, yeah, good old David. I heard he went back to China."

"You know he didn't," said Miranda.

Felicia chuckled. "Nope. He didn't. ... He could have. We offered to pay if he'd go home and forget the whole thing."

Carlo asked, "What 'whole thing'?"

"The dissertation and fellowship, of course," said Felicia. "He was smart enough, he could have started over and written another dissertation, if he wanted to. He could've been a success at any university. Just not mine. That fellowship was meant for me."

Miranda stumbled over a jutting strangler fig vine, and Carlo grabbed her arm to keep her upright. "Thanks," she said. To Felicia she said, "So, all that romantic story you told me about David being your intended, the love of your life, that was all crap?"

Carlo chuckled. "Language, signorina!"

Felicia responded, "You believed it, though, didn't you? It would've been fine if his stupid mother hadn't emailed Clarkson."

"Did you even like David?" said Miranda.

"Oh, sure. I mean, David was perfect. That's why we picked him. He was exactly what the doctor ordered."

Carlo said, "'We'? Who is 'we'?"

Felicia hesitated a split second before answering, "Me and Maynard. Who else?"

Carlo pressed on, "So, Maynard helped you get rid of David?"

Mrs. Cleary interjected, "Lawd, cain't tell one player from another'n without a program. How many crooks does it take to steal one elephant?"

"Mammoth," said Carlo, Miranda, and Felicia at once.

"It was just me and Maynard," Felicia said, "and we didn't start out to steal the fossil. Too much hard labor to dig it up and haul it off, for one thing."

Miranda deduced, "No, you wanted to steal David's laptop, with his dissertation on it."

"We offered to buy it," said Felicia. "But David was such a Goody Two-shoes — Do they even have that expression in China? — All he had to do was take the money, act all homesick, and go back to mama. Then I would turn in the dissertation, win the fellowship, and my honey and me could work together happily ever after, on dig sites all over the world."

"Your boyfriend is an archaeologist?" Miranda said.

"So, it's not Maynard," Carlo said, with absolute conviction. "What will you do with him? You don't really want to share the mammoth money with him."

"We'll offer him a payoff, like we did with David. If he's smart, he'll take it."

"David didn't take it," said Miranda.

Felicia shifted the rifle to her opposite hand, and she watched the captives while she used her free hand to lift her water bottle from her belt and take a swig. She did not offer water to anyone else.

"He almost took the money," Felicia said. "When he thought it was only the fellowship that I wanted, and that my paper could win if he dropped out. And, it might've, but there was no guarantee. David's paper, however, was a sure thing.

"He caught me downloading his dissertation and research notes from his computer, the Saturday night after the Audubon trip. David was taking a shower, and I figured I had plenty of time. But I guess they shower fast in China, because he walked into the room before I was finished.

"Anyway, David knew what I was doing the minute he saw me with my hands on his keyboard.

"I panicked. I bashed him with the laptop, and he went down. Out cold."

Miranda sounded hopeful when she said, "So, you didn't actually kill him! He isn't dead!"

Felicia shrugged, even though she was bringing up the rear, and no one could see her. "I don't know. I didn't think so, but he didn't wake up the whole time Maynard and I were driving him out here to dump him."

"In the sinkhole, you mean," Carlo said.

Mrs. Cleary said, "You wasn't sure he was dead, but you was gonna plop him into the water? How'd you know he wouldn't wake up and swim right on outta there?"

"We weighed him down pretty good," said Felicia.

"Lord have mercy!" Miranda whispered. "So, if he wasn't dead already, you drowned him!"

A thousand tree shadows seemed to coalesce into one forest-sized cloud of twilight. Three prey humans and one predator crushed twigs and leaves underfoot in a somber march toward doom.

The image of David Zhang awaking to ropes, weights, deep water and total darkness bloomed in the minds of the hostages.

No one spoke until minutes had passed, and the initial horror relinquished its stranglehold on their psyches.

At last, Miranda said, "So, you have David's laptop. That's why we couldn't find it. I guess you had his cellphone, too — until you arranged for the police to find it in that dumpster."

"Yeah, I had 'em," Felicia boasted. "His car, too, rattle trap that it was. I followed Maynard in my car, and we pushed David's car into a deep canal on an isolated stretch of road, later that same night. The laptop was in it. I kept the phone a while longer."

Miranda stopped and spun around to shake an accusing finger at Felicia. "You! You tried to frame Shepard for David's murder!"

"What!" Carlo spat, spinning to join Miranda. Mrs. Cleary was forced to stop walking, so as not to trample the other two.

"I didn't hear nothin' 'bout Shep committin' no murder!" said Miz Martha.

"He didn't, of course," Miranda said, "but he was arrested for it. They used David's cellphone as evidence, but it didn't work out."

"Hmpf. Sloppy," Miz Martha said, shaking her head. "Y'all ain't very skilled criminals. New at it, are ya?"

Carlo turned on Miranda. "Shep was arrested? He was in jail? Why nobody told me?"

"He wasn't there very long," said Miranda.

Felicia poked the rifle at them and snapped, "That's enough! Story time's over. Get movin'. I wanna get this done before full dark."

The reluctant hostages turned toward their destination and resumed walking. A hog grunted and snuffled in the middle distance, but nobody was afraid of a wild pig this afternoon. Something more fearsome than feral swine walked the trail close behind them, and it held a loaded weapon.

AUTHOR NOTE: Thanks for reading!  Don't forget to leave me your comment, and click that little star at the bottom of the screen to leave your vote.  See you next time for chapter 28 of The Mammoth Murders.