TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) by Phil Truman Page B

things still gnawed at the boy. The day Buck died, Artie had taken up temporary housing in the county hoosegow for another one of his displays of public drunkenness. When he heard about his uncle’s death, it filled him with guilt and grief. Had he been sober, he reasoned, and working with Buck, his uncle would still be alive.
    For a while Buck’s death sobered him. When they put his Aunt Lorene in a nursing home, he continued to look after the Buchanan place. But when his “cousin” Sunny came home to stay, bringing her four cats, wind chimes, dream catchers, incense, her yard fairies and gnomes, and her somewhat patronizing attitude, he quit coming over. Besides, she told him she didn’t require his help.
    In April of 2007, Galynn filed for a divorce and moved back home in May to live with her mother. Artie hardly noticed, though, as by that time he’d gotten well back into his drinking which, eventually, led him into that culvert on County 118.
    * * *
    The young ER doctor at the hospital approached Galynn and her mother with an expression of practiced indifference.
    “Are you Mr. Lancaster’s family?” he asked.
    “No,” Jo Lynn said. “We’re just his... friends. Artie don’t have any family around here.” Her eyes looked imploringly back at the doctor, anxious that he give them some news. The frazzle-haired young doctor looked back at Jo Lynn with weary eyes.
    “Okay,” he said, and looked down at his clipboard. “Well, here’s what we’ve got. Your friend...” He consulted his papers again. “Arthur, sustained a compound fracture to his left radius and ulna.”
    The doctor looked up at Jo Lynn and Galynn, and said condescendingly, “That’s the lower arm bones,” then back at his papers and continued. “Three fractured ribs, a dislocated left ankle, a lacerated scalp, and a concussion. He’s probably going to require some pins in his arm. We’ve called in an orthopod, and we’re sending Arthur on up to surgery.”
    He paused to let the two women absorb his words so they could form the usual questions. When they took longer than he wanted, he continued without them.
    “There doesn’t appear to be any internal bleeding, but with that concussion and the surgery, we’re going to have to keep him a couple of days for observation.”
    “He’s going to be alright, then?” Galynn finally asked.
    “His condition is serious, but none of his injuries appear to be life-threatening. Pending surgery, he should be able to go home in a couple of days, three at the most.”
     

Chapter 9
    Punch Makes a Motion
    Nan Dorn wrote, Monday June 3, 2007 at the top of the page on her steno pad.
    The Founders Day Committee meeting started at 7 p.m. that evening, and Punch had left Sunny’s house at five that morning. The night before started out well enough, but ended badly. Punch had tossed Cornflakes—one of Sunny’s cats—across the bedroom and against a wall with a whump when it tried to get in bed between them at 4 a.m. He tried to explain to the outraged woman that he’d dreamed a skunk was trying to crawl into his sleeping bag. But Sunny didn’t buy it. She knew Punch’s attitude towards cats.
    Sunny and Punch were sworn adversaries at the committee meetings, and they wanted to make sure everyone there knew that. This evening, owing to the morning’s Cornflakes incident, acting the charade wasn’t a problem for either of them... or much of a charade for that matter.
    After Nan Dorn read her distorted and mostly fictional minutes of the last meeting, Chairwoman Purinton asked if corrections or additions were needed, briefly glancing sideways toward Mary Jo Waxworth.
    “Yes, I have a couple,” Mary Jo said on cue.
    Once the committee discovered early-on Nan’s minutes read more like a super market tabloid than factual committee proceedings, they decided to covertly record them. Doctor Mary Jo Waxworth, the town’s large animal veterinarian, brought a small recorder with her and taped