Drago #2a. Art LLC Spinella
been back to the place since it was sold and said she just couldn’t go back, although she talked about all the good times we had there a lot.”
Sarah gave us the location of the farm which Sal plugged into his iPhone GPS; located it in a bare minute. He pulled up the Google Map and zoomed in on the property.
“Can you tell me where the tree is, or was?” he asked.
She looked at the screen. “Isn’t that amazing,” she said then pointed at the location on the northern-most edge of the property. The new owners apparently never turned the property into a bog because the aerial view showed grassland and a small herd of white specks we assumed were sheep.
“One last thing,” I said. “How did you know there was a skeleton in the tree?”
She blushed. “My oldest brother Andrew started whittling away at the bore hole daddy started figuring he could make a hiding place for some of his own treasures. I think they were magazines of a kind daddy would not have approved.” Sal and I both chuckled. “He kept making the hole bigger until one day you could look in it. And looking back was a skull, the eye sockets exactly aligned with the hole as if he was staring out while Andrew was staring in.” She leaned forward and quietly said, “It scared the chicken poop out of him.”
“What did your father have to say about it?” Sal asked.
“Oh, daddy never knew. Andrew and us kids made a wooden plug out of Madrone bark and covered the hole. It was our secret. I had just turned 10 the day before so I considered it a special secret gift for me. Over the years, we’d remove the plug, talk to Tree Man, tell him jokes and stuff, ask his advice about things and then put the plug back.” She smiled, “It was a great secret to have as a child. Adults weren’t allowed to know.”
Sarah Cavanaugh rose from the seat and smiled, her clear hazel eyes leveled at me. “Mr. Drago, the Tree Man was special to us. Now that I’m older, and another one has shown up, would you mind letting me know if you find out how people wound up in these trees? As a kid, we didn’t think much about it. Now I’m curious and I’m sure my siblings would like to know, too.”
“My pleasure. All I need is a phone number.”
She removed a small pencil from her jeans pocket and scribbled on a napkin. “It’s a Phoenix area code. That’s where I and my brothers now live. I’m here to visit friends, but I’ll be heading back in a couple of days.” She smiled, “We’d really like to know.”
“You got it, Sarah.”
She returned to her table, gathered up her purse and left money for the bill, giving a wave to Sal and me as she left the restaurant.
“Nice woman,” Sal said.
“Tree Man. Huh. Who woulda thunk it. I’ll give Forte a call and fill him in.”
After telling him about the conversation with Sarah Cavanaugh, Forte said he knew the farm and the owner, a grouchy long-time resident, and he’d send one of his officers to see if the tree was still standing.
“Can that wait, Chief? I’d rather keep this piece of news close to the vest. We don’t need old man Wilson carving up the Madrone out of curiosity. Besides, I figure we’ll have a better idea of what we’re looking at when Sal’s and my fire burns the wood from the skeleton.”
“Fine by me. We’ve got a raccoon terrorizing some misplaced Californians on Lewis Lane,” he said joking. ”Can’t stop the important stuff to go looking for another man in a tree.”
I slipped the cell back in my pocket.
Sal rubbed his beard. “I’m hungry.”
“You just finished four eggs and two sides of bacon, Sal. How could you be hungry?”
“That was breakfast.” He looked at his watch. “It’s now lunch time. I want a cheeseburger.”
We ordered two, with fries and chocolate shakes.
CHAPTER TWO
I sat on the deck, coffee mug throwing steam into a clear dawn and watched the last of the fire’s embers spark and flare as the Madrone dwindled to a white ash. Tendrils of smoke spiraling upward, the sweet wood smell mixing with a hint of gritty aroma from the coffee.
Sal had been right. The bones were unaffected by the fire, needing far more heat to burn than the surrounding wood. The skull was most intriguing, poking through the ash, crown first, sooty and slightly charred, somehow grizzly. A person at least 120 years dead laying out a puzzle of who and why.
“That’s just wrong,” Cookie’s soft voice interrupted as she stepped through the glass slider and parked in the accompanying chair. She, like Sal, had learned long ago not to say that miserable phrase Good morning. “The fire reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I got home.”
I turned and smiled at her. Her hair hadn’t been combed, hanging in dark brown waves to her shoulders, enough mussed to be enticing, not mussed enough to be scary. “Yes, my sweet, and what would that be?”
“What the hell did you do to your car?”
“Are you speaking ill of the flames or the side exhaust or the spoiler?”
“All of it, Nick. It looks like a pimp mobile.”
Laughing, “It was either that or go to Reno and chase women.”
She cocked her head and chuckled. “Did I tell you I love the flames?” She leaned across the table, kissed me on the ear, “And you.”
“Good answer.” I took a long pull of coffee. “When do you leave?” I could hear a tinge of sadness in my own voice even though I wasn’t intending it.
Cookie sat silent for a moment then, “The club would like it if I came back next week. Nick, it’s not like last time. I’d only be gone till the end of the season and hopefully, the way they’re playing, through the World Series and you know you’ve been invited to come along for all of the post-season games. You’d have a blast.”
Last time was a full year absence after Cookie won a trillion to one game of chance.
The Chicago Cubs started the previous season with what they thought was a gimmick promotion. Anyone who could guess the batting average each rostered player would have at All Star Break would win a full year with the team. Every game. Every flight. Every team meeting. Sit in the dugout during games and practices, home and away. Be part of the owners and general managers’ meetings. Be an observer in trade talks and player negotiations. In effect, a Cubs shadow with unlimited access.
In the off season, time with scouts in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and anywhere else a future “phenom” might be found. Then back to Mesa for Spring Training and the opening half of the new season up to the All Star break.
More than six million entries flooded the Cubs North Side offices. The Cubs figured there was no way anyone would win because the odds of guessing just the batting average for one player over the opening four months of a season would be difficult. Multiply that by 20-plus players and suddenly the odds were so miniscule it was all but assured the team wouldn’t be babysitting some fanatical sports-talk caller-dimwit from Staten Island for a year.
The problem: Cookie is an analyst, a baseball fan, a Cubs fanatic... and damn lucky.
When the Cubs finished inputting all the entries to a computer and matching it against player batting averages, no one was more surprised than Cubs management at the result. Someone had actually beaten the billion to one odds. Even worse, it was a woman from Oregon -- a state that didn’t even have a professional baseball team – who admitted she could barely hit a baseball.
Initial panic turned to the biggest public relations hype since the club’s cross-town rivals the Chicago White Sox had Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 when blowing up a crate of vinyl records turned into a near riot with fans surging onto the field to the shouts