Mighty Old Bones Read Free

refused to let anyone come on his land and enforced his wishes with a shotgun. Though he hunted himself, he did so to eat. He didn’t believe in killing for sport. From the day he died and left his private forest to me, I knew hunters in the area might do as they pleased. A little old lady like me wouldn’t be seen as an obstacle.
    With fall almost upon us, it was hardly a surprise that someone was already testing the waters. Actually, on three previous occasions, I found smaller bits of evidence that uninvited humans had been in the woods in the past two weeks. The blood I’d found that morning, however, changed things, for it was the first to point specifically to hunting activity.
    “So, you don’t mind if we stop off at the Pig first?” Phoebe said as she reversed out of her driveway. The Piggly Wiggly is where we always buy our groceries.
    “No, not at all. We have plenty of time, I think.”
    “Loads. I figured I might as well use it to get my baking supplies. The weatherman predicted we might have tornado warnings this week, so I need to stock up and get busy. I like to take food out to the workers when the electricity goes out, which it usually does when the least little wind blows around here.”
    We chatted on the way, Phoebe doing most of the talking since she was excited about the real reason for our outing. She had scheduled both of us for hair appointments at the Beauty Barn that morning. It would be my first visit.
    “Somebody has got my place,” she said. She referred to a large motor home that took up a substantial number of parking spots, among them one Phoebe called her own. I knew immediately that the motor home did not belong to a resident of Tullulah.
    We walked inside amid a flurry of excited conversations. A number of customers stood about, most with paper cups in hand beside a table of breakfast rolls and coffee, compliments of the Pig. One customer tipped his hat on seeing me, a patrolman in uniform whom I had met not long after I moved here.
    While Phoebe got to the bottom of things with the group, I noticed a young man watching us. He stood at the clear plastic window of the manager’s station, an elevated platform by the last cash register. He turned away when our eyes met, or perhaps the manager or a clerk spoke to him at that moment. I didn’t know him, but I had seen him when we parked. I noticed his car behind us earlier when we turned onto the town square as well.
    Phoebe rolled a shopping cart to me and we began our trek through the aisles. “That trailer belongs to those movie people. They were in here buying snacks and told the regulars they were thinking about doing some of their filming in Tullulah, rather than doing all of it in Hamilton like they planned.”
    Almost every edition of the local newspaper devoted some space to the “movie people” who were working on location just south of Tullulah. Their project, an independent film, required much greenery and rolling hills, both abundant in the countryside that surrounds and spreads out from the bottom of Tullulah’s mountain.
    As Phoebe shopped, she moved faster and faster through the store. I managed to keep up but couldn’t understand why she hurried. “What’s the rush? We still have plenty of time.”
    “I know, but I want to get back outside before they leave. They might need some local actors. Or actresses. I thought I’d stop and say hello, tell them we’re so happy they’re here and then ask, you know, real casual-like.”
    I kept a straight face.
    Once through the checkout, I took my purse out of the cart. The automatic doors opened for us as Phoebe pushed the cart outside. She turned to say something to me when suddenly I felt my arm pulled down. At the same time, Phoebe was knocked to the side by a figure that put me off balance as well. All I saw was the torso of a young man in a maroon T-shirt with another shirt, plaid and worn open, over it. The next instant, I saw the back of his dark curly hair as