Who Got the Meat Came Off Them Bones? by William B. Naylor (good book club books TXT) 📕

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“I'm going to solve your silly riddle and then I'm coming after you, "Millicent!"

"Goodnight and good luck."
With any thought of going back to sleep now gone, Darce stood at the window studying what was left of the night sky hoping to…what? As he watched the plump harvest moon peeped out from behind the scudding rain clouds.
Like the Greeks, First Nations people used myths and legends to explain the mysteries of the night sky. But they’d had 10,000 years to learn.

Talk about a nightmare!

Turning away from the view, Darce slapped his hands together, sat down at his desk, picked up his pen and started racing it over the scribbled notes, correcting, clarifying and adding to the scratchy fragments. Keep calm, he thought. Go back over everything she said. Take your time. Look for gaps, links, anything that's not here. This needs to be as complete a record as possible.

It took an hour but when it was finished, he had what appeared to be an accurate transcript of Millicent's call. Only then did he allow himself to think about what he was going to do.

He’d heard it said that winning a great deal of money on a horse race at an early age is the worst thing that can happen to a man.
Somehow, he knew it wasn’t. But even that thought only deepened the hole he felt himself trapped in. Glancing down at his scribblings and corrections, he felt every bit as alone as Oedipus must have felt under that hot, noonday sun as he stood face to face with the legendary Sphinx. At least he had the beginnings of a plan of action.

Chapter 2: Asked and Answered...

“He who is deaf, blind and silent, will live a hundred years in peace.” Sicilian Proverb.
Somewhere outside, Darce heard a car start. A dog barked, once, twice, then silence.
He hadn't smoked in years but he was croaking for one now.

Instead, he picked up the phone. The call he’d decided to make, to Lincoln T. Alexander, would go a ways towards making the playing field even. If he could convince Linc to weigh in... the problem was, he was never sure of being able to get Linc’s help. To make matters worse, he suspected Linc preferred to keep things that way.

Six, seven, eight r-i-i-i-n-g-s.

Linc once told Darce about a trip from his boyhood - before his old man left them. Took him out to a croc farm in the Bayou. For five bucks visitors got to watch the crocs explode up out of the cola colored water snapping their impossibly long jaws on a live chicken cast in the air off the rickety wooden jetty.

Seconds later, Linc said, the calm had returned to the water with only a few feathers from the hapless chicken floating on the widening circles of the dark water. Darce had never been capable of determining if Linc was one of the crocs or the farmer that lived off the chicken money.

Click! "Yo."

"That you, Linc?"

"Darce, my man. What're you sayin?'

"Linc, I got trouble, big time."

“An it can’t wait? Say, ‘til sunup?”

“This has a short fuse, Linc.”

“Darce, I don't know what you learned in your Daddy’s house, but in my house my Mamma taught us don't accept every invitation, and don't never accept one that comes in the middle of the night."

"C'mon Linc. This is real, man. This is no time for jive." If Linc had a favorite TV show, Darce thought, it would have to be Matlock. Both of them used that old 'Aw, shucks, no suh' huckster act. But woe betide anyone slow enough to fall for it.

"Tell you what, homes, less go back to bed now and talk later."

"It’s a kidnapping! Seriously, a girl’s life's in danger."

Big sigh. "You still with Children's Aid?"

"Family Services, yeah."

"One of your charges?"

"Yeah, a teenager. Aunt’s got her locked up.
Don't know how much time I've got - not long."

"What do the kidnapper say she want?"

"That's the weird part. She didn’t ask for anything.” Darce yanked the telephone cord to give himself a longer pacing leash.

"Nobody want nothin, man."

"Says she's got the child and she wants me to solve riddles to find her. If I don't succeed, Elizabeth dies."

"Dawg, how you know she not just pulling your chain? Prob'ly a crank call - like this present one."

"This is not a joke, pal. It's real. Aunt Millicent is crazier than a bag of hammers. I’ve crossed swords with her before. She may be nuts but she’s not stupid. She won that round by a whisker, but she still won."

"An all she give you this time is riddles?"

"Yes, and a lecture. She's one of the educated chattering class, you know, classics, humanities, all that."

"So watchoo do? Call your homey, get him out a bed in the chilly dark? Darce, Darce. You know I ain’t no c-o-l-l-u-d-g-e graduate."

"- isn't a spitting contest, Linc.” With an effort, Darce willed himself to slow his pacing. “Why do you think I called you? I'm no warrior. I'm an ordinary guy, a social worker, for God’s sake. I need your counsel, man."

"Dawg, I don't see where this sleepy black boy fits into your drama."

"I’m panicked, Linc.. Got nowhere else to turn."

"Why not call the man? You one of the righteous."

"Can't. If the cops get involved it's over. I need your help, man, for truth."

"I guess I need to break this down for you then, Darce. I'm sorry for your kid and I'm sorry Auntie Crazy Hammers got hinky with her anti-psychotic meds, but this is not my fight."

"Is that so? Let me get this straight, now. It's not that you're insensitive, as they say in my world; it's just that you simply don't give a damn. Is that about right, Lincoln?"

"'All human be-ins should learn what they runnin from, and where they runnin to, and also why they runnin in the first place.' Thass another of my favorite white boy writers Mister James Thurber –"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm sure he'd be proud. But what about that scrawny, strung out little black kid that landed in my case load? Panhandling for cheap wine and fifty-cent beds in filthy flophouses. What was he running from? And tell me this, Lincoln, while you’re at it, where exactly did he go?"

It was a low blow, and Darce knew it but the battle was almost lost and the war hadn’t begun.

Linc had been through the detox revolving doors for substance abuse more times than the addiction workers wanted to remember. This particular incident was caused by drinking Listerine. At their first meeting, Linc told Darce Rehab was for quitters. Darce had asked him how far he thought he was going if he kept waking up in the morning with blood in the corners of his mouth. Fourteen years old, for God's sake! Still has that smart-mouthed hard-headedness. Darce decided to push harder.

"You beat the odds, man. You got out!"
Big sigh. "Robert Frost say: 'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It -goes - on.'"

"Oh, so that's it, is it? Now that you're out of the gutter you don't need to look back? Oh, yes, I forgot, you're one of the Big Boys now. No time for us little peeps anymore.

Another big sigh. "Hey man, no need to get all disassociative on a brother. Fortune's expensive smile earned, not won."

"And this girl, deserving or not, is going to die if I don't get help!"

"Easy dawg, don't be bruising the fruit now, y'hear? Hate the game; don’t hate the player."

"Then help me with the godforsaken riddles.”

"Okay, okay! It's out there. Now chill, okay?'

Tell me exactly what she said for each riddle and give em to me in the order she gave you. Word for word, don’t skip nothing.”

Darce resumed pacing to contain his relief. He took three deep breaths.

"C’mon man, my bed is cooling.”

Darce used his notes to guide his retelling. His account was thorough and concise. Linc interrupted once to ask a question. When they finished Darce felt the trapped, short of breath feeling lift. "I appreciate your help with this, Linc. You won't be sorry."
Right here, dawg, right here. Jus’ needs some cogitation."

"But you can crack them? The negative logic stuff?"

"Piece-of-cake, my man. Piece-a-cake. Riddles operate on the principle of hiding things in plain sight. So they two things we need to know; where, and how to look. The rule is 'Truth-functional expansions of quantified statements."

"Queen's English, please?"

"Leave the riddlin to Linc."

"So, you’ve figured them out?"

"Not yet. Listen, I can’t help if you don’t work with me. Linc need some ponderin time."

"But you understand this is urgent, right?"

"Pickin up your signal loud and clear but things got to take they time, understand?"

"This means a lot to me, Linc."

"You buy, then. Bean Bank Café first light."

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Five past eight!" Cheida Faroudi was running late and feeling rushed. “What in the name of time are you two on about?”

"Richard Junior says I couldn’t name the monster Bela Legosi played in that horror movie we watched last night."

"And she can’t!”

"Can so – Frankenstein!" Whipping her head around she stuck out her tongue.

"Frankenstein," Richard Junior, the king of the all-knowing fourteen year olds pronounced with a smirk, "was the name of the Doctor that created the monster. The monster’s name was never mentioned."

"Whatever," she replied with lofty disdain and a shrug of the shoulders.

"Actually, Richard," Cheida interjected, "the actor you're referring to was Boris Karloff. He played the monster. Bela Legosi played Dracula."

Vindicated, Gail shot her brother the look, snatched up her things and quit the room.
Now, because of all the rushing, Cheida had fumbled her keys at the office door. Swooping down to scoop them up, she thought she heard the office phone ringing. Hurrying to stand up she almost bumped faces with the nosey old security guard.

She stabbed the key into the lock and shoved the door open. The phone was burbling and cooing. Already!

Dropping her purse and straining for breath, she snatched up the handset, "Family Services Agency, how may I direct your call?"

"Good morning." While the voice was female it was not feminine. Brusque, yet professional was the way Cheida described it later. The caller had a slight accent but she couldn’t place it at the time.

"I’d like speak to Darce Vardy, please."

"I'm sorry, he isn't available at the moment. May I take a message?"

"This is Lila Two Moons from the Post-Record. Five minutes ago I was paged by my night editor. Apparently, he received a mysterious phone call regarding your Mr. Vardy. The caller didn't leave a name. All my editor got out of her was that Mr. Vardy may want to speak to me about an old case file. I'm thinking it has some bearing on that story we broke in this morning's paper. Could you please have him return my call?"

Then, without any of the usual leave-taking niceties, the line went dead.