“You know about Sylvester the Mummy, then?” asked Jones.
“Still dead?” I asked.
“As a doornail.”
Sylvester the Mummy was one of Huntington Beach’s main attractions-ranking a distant third behind waves and babes-and currently resided at the back of the Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shoppe in a cozy polyurethane case for all the world to see. Sylvester had been found in the California deserts over a hundred years ago near a ghost town called Rawhide. Since then, he’d been passed from museum to museum, exhibit to exhibit, until finally coming to rest at Ye Olde Gift Shoppe in Huntington Beach. Wouldn’t his mother be proud? Although his identity is unknown, most historians figure Sylvester had once been a cowboy. Which, I figure, means he probably once owned a horse and a six shooter, ate beans from the can over an open campfire and sang lonesome songs about loose women. That is, of course, until someone put a bullet in his gut and left him for dead in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Experts figured the old boy had mummified within 24 hours due to a rare combination of extreme desert heat and chemicals in the sand. A true John Doe, he had been named after the very miner who discovered him, which I always found a little creepy.
“What about him?” I asked.
“Two months ago, as a publicity stunt, I hired a young historian fresh out of college to look into Sylvester’s background. You know, generate some interest in my little store. Of course, I didn’t really think the historian would find anything on Sylvester. But that wasn’t the point.”
“The point being to generate interest in your little store.”
“Yes, exactly.”
Ah, exploiting the dead.
“Go on,” I said.
Jones shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable, as if his tight jeans were giving him one hell of a wedgie. “The historian-a kid really-provided me regular reports. He did original research, digging through old records, even traveling out to Rawhide once or twice to interview the town historian.”
He stopped talking. I waited. I sensed something ominous. I call this my sixth sense. Catchy, huh?
Jones’ expression turned pained. The mother of all wedgies? “Then the reports stopped, and I didn’t hear from him for a while. Shortly thereafter, his mother reported him missing. Soon after that, the sheriff’s department found him dead.”
“Found him where?”
“In the desert. Near Rawhide.” He took a deep breath. “And just this morning I received word from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department that his death was being officially ruled an accident. They figure he got lost in the desert, ran out of gas and died of thirst.”
I sat back in my chair and rested my chin on my fingertips. Sweat had appeared on Jones’s forehead. His flashy showmanship was out the window.
“I assume you disagree with their findings,” I said.
He thought about it.
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Why?”
He reached up and unconsciously rolled the brim of his Stetson, a nervous habit, which now explained why the thing looked like a Del Taco Macho Burrito.
My stomach growled. Lord help me.
“It’s hard to say, Knighthorse. It’s just a gut feeling I have. The kid…the kid was smart, you know. A recent college graduate. I was impressed by him, and not just by his book smarts. He seemed to have a sensible head on his shoulder; street smarts, too.”
“Too sensible to get lost in the desert.”
“Yes. Precisely. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
“That,” I said, “and you feel guilty as hell for sending a kid out to his death.”
He looked away, inhaled deeply. “Jesus, Knighthorse. Put it that way, and you make it seem like I killed him.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to look into his death. Make sure it was an accident.”
“And if it wasn’t an accident?”
“I want you to find the killer.”
“Finding the killer is extra.”
“Price is no object.”
“Zumbooruk!”
“Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?”
“It’s a camel-mounted canon used in the Middle East.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I.”