Bonnie of Evidence

Bonnie of Evidence - By Maddy Hunter


ONE



THROUGHOUT HISTORY, WHEN PEOPLE realized that the sulfur-spewing crater down the street was an active volcano, they invented both sober and creative ways to deal with the predicament.

The once mighty Incas flung virgins into theirs.

Ancient Pompeians built a resort around theirs.

Battle-hardened Scotsmen plunked a fortress on top of theirs.

Thankfully for the Scots, the volcano had stopped spewing sulfur when they undertook the project.

Tilly Hovick waggled her walking stick at the impenetrable hillfort turned castle, looking like a native in her beret and tartan plaid skirt. “The ancients called it Din Eidyn, meaning, ‘the stronghold of Eidyn.’”

“Who was Eidyn?” I asked.

She shrugged. “No one knows. But when the Angles invaded the country thirteen hundred years ago, they dubbed the rock Edinburgh, and it’s gone by that name ever since.”

To say that Edinburgh Castle dominated the cityscape was an understatement. It was so imposing, it looked like the medieval version of an alien mothership perched atop a mountain of stone, and oddly equipped with round towers, cannon embrasures, and an impossibly steep curtain wall. Its turbulent history had been explained to us by the local guide who’d provided our group with a personalized tour of the buildings and battlements, but his accent had been so thick, I’d only caught half of what he’d said.

My grandmother peered up at Tilly in awe. “Was that somethin’ you knew on account of you was a professor, or somethin’ you seen on the History Channel?”

“I believe it was the first historical fact out of our guide’s mouth this morning,” acknowledged Tilly.

“No kiddin’?” Nana gave a little suck on her uppers. “George said the fella was speakin’ English, but I didn’t believe him.”

“His burr was quite pronounced,” Tilly admitted. “I’m not surprised you couldn’t understand him, Marion. If I hadn’t cut my anthropological teeth mastering non-labial consonants on Faraulep Island, I wouldn’t have been able to understand him either.”

We were killing time on the Royal Mile, an inordinately wide, brick-paved street that stretched like a landing strip from Edinburgh Castle all the way to Holyrood Palace, where the Scottish Queen Mary had resided for a handful of years in the sixteenth century. Since our visit coincided with the city’s famous festival and military tattoo, we were sharing the street with musicians, jugglers, acrobats, actors, bagpipers, and craftsmen hawking everything from Celtic crosses to tam o’ shanters. Normally, I’d be concerned about losing guests in the chaos, especially since my tour group consists entirely of seniors who might be easily disoriented. But thanks to modern technology, my worries have all but been eliminated.

“Time’s up,” shouted Dick Stolee as the stopwatch on his cell phone beeped. He was carrying the most advanced mobile phone known to man, boasting science-fiction technology in a unit the size of an index card. Not only could he make face-to-face calls using the video feature, he could download the entire Library of Congress onto the e-reader, uplink to the international space station, and with his new and improved user-friendly global positioning system, knew he could visit anywhere in the world and never get lost again, even if he wanted to. The entire Windsor City contingent had purchased their phones at Pills Etcetera at a huge volume discount—knockoff Smartphones with high def, mega-pixel cameras. The only glitch was, when cell service went down, so did the cameras.

“You s’pose Team Number Five found the container?” asked Nana.

“Show of hands,” said Osmond Chelsvig, who’d popularized opinion polls long before Gallup or Zogby had ever hit the scene. “How many folks think that having Bernice on Team Five is gonna doom it to failure?”

“Point of order.” Tilly raised her walking stick in objection. “In the spirit of fairness, wouldn’t it be better to phrase the question in a way that doesn’t emphasize such obvious negative bias? We’re Iowans. We pride ourselves on being fiercely democratic. We demand impartial results.”

Osmond nodded. “Absolutely.” He paused thoughtfully and began again. “How many folks know that having Bernice on their team is gonna screw up their chances of winning Emily’s grand prize?”

Tilly’s hand flew into the air. Four others followed.

“Opposed?”

“We don’t got no one left to oppose,” observed Nana. “Everyone else hightailed it into the Fudge Kitchen.”

“The ‘ayes’ have it,” announced Osmond. “Team Five is toast.”

Yup. That was unbiased.

Dick Teig pumped his fist with glee. “More opportunity for the rest of us to make it into the final drawing, right Emily?” Dick had to be cautious about broad gestures with his fist because his head was so big, one wrong move, and he could knock himself out.

I’m Emily—Emily Andrew Miceli—glorified chaperone for a core group of a dozen Iowa seniors who regularly sign up for international tours. On this trip, twenty-nine guests from across the Corn and Rust Belts had booked the Scottish tour offered by Destination Travel—the travel agency my husband opened after moving across the Atlantic to settle in my hometown of Windsor City. The prize Osmond alluded to is a promotional offer I thought up to attract more business in a bad economy—a drawing at the end of the tour to award a free trip to the lucky winner. And the only thing a guest would have to do to qualify for the drawing would be to locate a series of objects stashed in obscure places throughout Scotland by avid geocachers.

Decades ago, when children ran all over their neighborhoods armed with lists of nonsensical items to find, they called it scavenger hunting. Today, adults still look for the same nonsensical items, but they’ve expanded the playing field to the entire world, and they’re using Internet websites and sophisticated GPS units to assist their search. Today, the pursuit is called geocaching, and it’s become the favorite pastime of every member of the Windsor City Senior Center, next to texting and synchronized back floating in the new warm-water wading pool.

“Don’t get too cocky,” I advised the group. “This is only the first site, so I wouldn’t count Team Five out just yet.”

“Did you miss the discussion?” asked Dick Stolee. “They can’t win. Bernice is on their team.”

I’d divided the group into five teams of five guests apiece and stipulated that each team would have a limited amount of time to find the cache. After all, we were on a tour and had a schedule to maintain. Whichever team registered the most number of finds at the end of the trip would be eligible to enter the lottery for the grand prize, with yours truly drawing the name of the winning team member out of a hat. On paper, it looked like a pretty good system, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

“You wanna see what we found in the first cache?” Nana asked me as she fiddled with her phone. She held up the picture of a narrow alleyway that dipped below street level as it snaked between two buildings. “This here’s the alley where it was hidin’, but the locals don’t call ’em alleys. They call ’em ‘closes,’ and they’re so historic, each one’s got its own name on a fancy sign on the entrance. I can’t remember what this one’s called on account of I forgot to take a picture of the sign.”

New York City had alleys, too, but when I’d lived there, the only signs I’d ever seen had read KEEP OUT.

She showed me the next photo—swirls of green and yellow set against a rough gray background. “This is the graffiti what someone spray-painted all over the wall. It musta been the real expensive brand ’cuz I didn’t see no signs of chippin’.”

George Farkas thumped toward me on his wooden leg. “This one’s my favorite.” He angled his phone so I could see the image on the screen. I tilted my head left and right.

“What is it? A sewer grate?”

“Steel bars. They’re on all the windows in the alley. I thought they added a nice touch to the general ambiance.”

Right. Kind of like razor wire added a nice touch to state prisons.

This opened the floodgates for Osmond, Tilly, and the two Dicks to crowd around me, offering up their own photographic masterpieces.

“This is the doorstoop where the container was stashed,” enthused Tilly.

“Here’s the container,” said Osmond, displaying a photo of a plastic box the size of a brick.

“This is the little notebook what was inside,” said Nana. “We signed and dated it to prove we was actually here and found it.”

“And then we put it back under the stoop for the next team to find,” Dick Stolee chimed in. “And we did it way under the fifteen-minute time limit.”

“That’s all that was inside?” I asked. “A notebook?”

“And a pen,” said Tilly. “A very thoughtful gesture on the part of the person who hid the cache. Without a writing implement, you can’t sign the register.”

“And if you don’t sign the register, you don’t got no right to score it as a find,” added Nana. “The rules say you gotta have proof.”

“Does anyone ever leave anything inside for you?” I asked. “A little reward for your efforts?”

“We are rewarded,” said George. “We get to see our names posted on the official geocaching website in really big black letters.”

Nana pulled a face. “That’s on account of folks what’s in our age bracket don’t got good eyesight no more.”

“I found a bottle of Jack Daniels in a cache near Lars Bakke’s grain elevator a couple of months ago,” Osmond reflected.

“And you didn’t offer the rest of us a little nip?” barked Dick Teig.

Osmond lifted his ninety-something-year-old shoulders in a helpless gesture. “It was empty.”

“Don’t look now,” Nana said as she shot a glance across the street, “but we got incomin’. And would you look at them long faces?”

The members of Team Five were clumped together at the crosswalk on the opposite side of the street, looking pouty and irritated as they waited for the traffic light to change.

“Do those look like the faces of a team that registered a find?” Dick Teig asked me.

He was right. They looked miserable. Uh-oh. “Look,” I urged the gang, “if it turns out they didn’t find it, would you try to be sympathetic when they join us?”

“You bet,” said Nana.

“He who laughs last, laughs best,” said Tilly.

George lifted his Pioneer Seed Corn hat to scratch the back of his bald head. “What does that mean anyway?”

Dick Stolee snickered as he elbowed my arm. “Did I call that or what? I’m telling you, Emily. The other teams are going to mop up the floor with them.”

“So how did it go?” I asked in a cheery voice as the five team members trooped onto the sidewalk.

“Why don’t you ask Bernice?” Lucille Rassmuson locked her arms across her chest and pursed her dime-thin lips in what was recognized as the Iowa version of a hissy fit. “She said she knew where she was going.”

Lucille was sporting a new, easy-care hairstyle for the trip. Gone were the tight, kinky curls of her home perm, replaced by longer, layered strands that hugged her skull like a bathing cap. She’d even tweaked the color, replacing her peach Margarita tint with a soft shade of powdery pink. If her late husband—cigar-smoking, practical joking Dick Rassmuson—had still been alive, he might have passed her on the street and not even recognized her.

“My coordinates were right,” Bernice huffed. “We were practically standing on top of the thing! It was Tweedledee and Tweedledum who dropped the ball.” She fired accusing looks at the two other women on her team.

“I beg your pardon?” Tweedledee’s mouth fell open, drawing attention to her beautifully capped teeth and neatly applied lipstick in the season’s most vibrant color. She’d listed her occupation as “retired retail buyer” on her guest information form, and judging from the way she’d added a stylish belt to glam up a simple sweater and designer jeans, I’d guess she’d been a whiz at it. Her name tag identified her as Dolly Pinker from Chicago. “There was no hidden cache in that alleyway. You entered the wrong numbers in your GPS.”

“Did not.”

“Did so. And you were too pigheaded to admit you were wrong, so thank you very much for helping us to end up with nothing. This is all your fault.”

“Is not.”

“Is so. I want to change teams.”

“Me, too,” said Tweedledum, whose real name was Isobel Kronk from Gary, Indiana. “I could use a free vacation, but it ain’t gonna happen with Wrong Way Corrigan calling the shots.” Isobel was hard-edged and rough-angled, with long gray hair, sun-damaged skin, and eyes that snapped with impatience. Her lone fashion accessory was a backpack handbag in an exotic animal print that made it look as if she had a zebra strapped to her back. She owned a scrap metal business in Gary, where she probably spent most of her time crushing car engines between her teeth. “Are we the only team who didn’t find the cache?” she asked me. “Our timekeeper refused to tell us.”

Unwilling to hammer the first nail into their coffin, I resorted to evasive tactics. “I’m sure the timekeeper simply wanted to tabulate all the results before she released—”

“Everyone scored a find except you,” ratted Dick Teig.

Dolly held up her iPhone. “Is this the alley where you found it?” The image on the screen showed a seemingly endless flight of stairs shoehorned between two buildings.

“We didn’t have to climb no stairs,” said Nana.

Dick Stolee scrunched his eyes in thought. “Are you sure? I remember stairs someplace.”

“Show of hands,” said Osmond. “How many people remember climbing stairs?”

“Geez-Louise,” griped Bernice in her former-smoker’s rasp, “would all you whiners just put a sock in it? We didn’t find the stupid thing, all right? Get over it. We’ll find it next time.” The humidity had caused her hair to frizz around her head like exploded electrical wire, giving her the look of a person who’d just had a run-in with chain lightning.

“Will someone please switch teams with me?” Dolly begged, making her appeal to the entire Iowa gang. “I’m willing to offer bribes.”

“Me, too,” pleaded Isobel.

“Hey, team.” The lone male member of Team Five waved his hand in the air. “Remember me?” He was of average height, with thinning brown hair, a weak chin, bulbous nose, neck wattle, and a little paunch belly, but his ever-present smile made up for all his shortcomings, making him appear taller, handsomer, more physically fit. His name was Cameron Dasher, and he was proving to be quite the people magnet with his self-deprecating sense of humor and upbeat mood. The unattached ladies on the tour found him particularly attractive—not so much because he was of the same generation and made them laugh, but because he possessed the one quality they were all looking for in a man.

He was still alive.

“What are we? A team of quitters?” Dasher scolded. “Tell me this—how flavorful would our food be if Marco Polo had given up trying to discover a trade route to the East? How exciting would our world surfing competitions be if Balboa had given up searching for the Pacific Ocean? Where would all of us be living today if Columbus had quit trying to find his way to the New World?”

Osmond shot his hand into the air. “Croatia?”

“Come on, ladies,” Dasher goaded. “This was only our first try. There’s eleven more sites to explore. Where’s your fighting spirit? So we messed up the first one. If we stick together, I guarantee we’ll find all the rest. We can do this! If you want to quit after just one round, I can’t stop you. But if we hang tight, one of us can look forward to a free vacation in our future! Are you with me?”

Eye rolling. Sighs.

Not surprisingly, Cameron had listed his occupation as “motivational speaker.”

“What’s our team slogan?” he prodded, cupping his hand around his ear.

“Yes, we can,” came the grumbled reply from his teammates.

“I can’t heeeear you.”

“Yes, we can,” they recited with slightly more gusto.

“Once more with feeling!”

“Yes, we can,” they chanted as they tapped into his enthusiasm. “Yes, we can!” Lucille, Dolly, and Isobel high-fived each other. “YES, WE CAN!”

“Yes, we can,” chimed Osmond, pumping his spindly arms as he boogied to the beat. Dick Teig whacked him on the shoulder.

“Cool it. You’re not on their team.”

Cameron Dasher banded his arm around Bernice and gave her a squeeze. “And from now on, Bernice promises to respect all our opinions and not hijack the whole show. Right, Bernice?”

“Good luck with that,” wisecracked Dick Stolee.

Bernice glanced from Cameron’s hand to his face, melting against him with a breathless sigh. “Whatever you say,” she gushed, fluttering her lashes like a silver-screen movie goddess.

Whoa! This guy was good. I wonder if he’d ever consider freelancing as an assistant escort on tours saddled with especially nasty guests?

Bernice’s teammates fell suddenly silent, their mantra dying on their lips as they narrowed their eyes and hardened their jaws. Unh-oh. It had been awkward enough that every woman on the tour had wanted to be on Cameron’s team, but if they started throwing daggers at each other every time he paid attention to one of them, there was going to be trouble.

“It’s decided then?” Cameron asked good-naturedly. “We’re still a team?”

“Of course we’re still a team,” Dolly assured as she looped her arm through his, smiling possessively. “And just to set the record straight, it wasn’t my idea to change teams in the first place.” Honey oozed from her voice. “It was Isobel’s.”

“Me?” Age might have ruined Isobel’s complexion and turned her hair gray, but her hearing still rocked. “What the hell have you been smoking? You’re the one who—”

Cameron raised his hands in Biblical fashion as if to calm the waters. “Laaadies, laaadies, it doesn’t matter who said what first. All that’ll matter in the end is how many checkmarks we have in the ‘Find’ column, so let’s put this episode behind us and start with a clean slate tomorrow. Fair enough?”

Bernice and Dolly took wary measure of each other as they lingered at Cameron’s sides, looking like two spurs of an about-to-be-snapped wishbone. “Fine,” they crooned in unison.

Lucille heaved a sigh and nodded grudgingly. “Okay.”

Isobel’s mouth strained at the corners as if she were trying to force her lips into a smile, but all she managed was a sneer. “Whatever,” she spat, her eyes narrowing to hostile slits.

Yup. There was going to be trouble.

As a troupe of Shakespearean players paraded past us, reciting extraneous lines of prose to any tourist willing to listen, Nana grabbed my arm and dragged me aside, concern etched across her face.

“I know what you’re going to say,” I offered preemptively. “You’re afraid that glaring jealousy issues on Team Five might lead to trouble, and I have to admit, that makes me a little nervous, too, but here’s the thing.” I raised a determined finger. “It’s going to be different this time because Etienne is with us. Guests will not be creeping around, trying to knock each other off, with a former Swiss police inspector watching their every move. So, even if the ladies of Team Five get into it with each other, I don’t expect it’ll escalate beyond snotty name calling or an occasional cat fight.” I flashed a confident smile. “I think we’re good!”

“Whatever you say, dear.”

My smile morphed into a wince. I hung my head. “I’m in denial, aren’t I? Those women hate each other already and the tour has just begun.”

“I don’t wanna be no alarmist, Emily, but we got bigger problems than them four women.”

“We do?”

“You bet. Team Five come up with a snappy slogan for themselves. The rest of us don’t got one.”

I stared at her, non-plussed. “That’s a problem?”

“You bet it is. They’re makin’ the rest of us look bad, so we’re gonna have to think of one, too.”

“Is that going to be difficult?”

“Emily, dear, we got one Catholic, two Lutherans, one birther, and a vegetarian on our team. How are we s’posed to compromise? That don’t give us no common ground to work with.”

Ew. She had a point. I just hoped their diversity didn’t set them up to get sucked into knockdown-dragouts over issues of a more ideological nature—like, if Catholic priests should be allowed to marry, or, which Gilligan’s Island character was hotter, Ginger or Mary Ann? That could get really ugly.

I gave her a hug. “Chin up. You’ll think of something.”

“I just did. I’m gonna let Tilly figure it out.”

Nana had three chins, blue hair, and stood four-foot-ten in her bare feet. She’d won millions in the Minnesota lottery a few years back, but the experience had changed neither her outlook nor her practical spending habits. She was the treasurer of the Legion of Mary at church, a card-carrying computer geek, and an enthusiastic subscriber to every TV channel offered by her cable provider. She had only an eighth-grade education, but given her addiction to the Discovery and Smithsonian networks, she was the smartest person I knew.

“Uh-oh,” Nana fretted in a sudden panic. “I don’t mean to ditch you, dear, but I’m outta here.” Like a video playing at warp speed, she raced behind me in her size five sneakers and ducked into a shop displaying a selection of tartans and kilts on headless mannequins.

I stared after her. What in the world? And then it hit me.

I turned slowly.

She was barreling toward me with her laptop slung over her shoulder in its trusty carrying case and her fannypack riding her opposite hip like an oversized jellyroll. Her little moon face was flushed from exertion, and her salt and pepper hair was disastrously windblown, but her girlish excitement made it quite apparent that she wouldn’t have missed this for the world. The tour guests knew her as “the timekeeper.”

Nana knew her as Margaret.

I knew her as Mom.