The Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines (22 page)

The second cruiser came up beside the fishing boat and tied on to it. A handful of Coast Guard officers swarmed over the side.

As she watched the officers boarding the fishing boat, Grace recognized a familiar face on the Coast Guard cruiser. She watched in horror as Stuckless stood up, took a step toward her, and leapt onto the fishing boat.

Suddenly, it didn't feel like a rescue at all. They'd traded one set of bad guys for another!

Chapter
30

“WHAT ARE
YOU
DOING HERE?” GRACE ASKED, BACKING AWAY FROM
Stuckless.

“Grace, please don't look at me like I stole your puppy. I am
not
the bad guy.”

“Could've fooled me,” she said. “You're with him!” She pointed to Rick Stanley.

“I haven't a clue who that is,” Stuckless said, barely glancing at Stanley. “I want to apologize if I've scared you.”

“Scared me?” she said. “You followed me! You eavesdropped on us!”

She waited for him to deny it.

“I can explain,” he said. He gestured to a tall man at his side. “My son's company, Breton Hauling Limited, almost went out of business waiting for those strip mining leases to come through. They kept getting delayed by your dad's protests.”

Grace glanced up at Stuckless's son and gasped. He was wearing a hat that looked just like her dad's, but the letters on his were BHL, not DAL. “He was the one in the truck with you on Shore Road?” she asked, realization dawning on her.

Stuckless nodded. “You
were
there?” he asked. “I didn't see you.”

“Strip mines?” Mai asked. “You mean you weren't dumping toxic waste? You don't work with Sandstar?”

Stuckless frowned. “Dumping waste? No, of course not! What we do is perfectly legal.” He gestured to Grace, Fred, Mai, and Jeeter. “But you kids have been trespassing on company lands. I was sure you were up to something after I saw you at Halfway Road—more protests or other mischief. That would have been disastrous for my son's company.”

“We're sorry, though,” his son said gruffly. “We didn't mean to frighten you.”

“So you decided to listen in on our walkie-talkie conversations?” Grace asked.

Stuckless turned red. “Ah, well…yes,” he admitted, sheepishly holding up a walkie-talkie identical to Grace's. “I found this by one of the sinkholes. It's easy to pick up conversations if you find the same channel.”

“Hey, that's mine!” Fred said, snatching his walkie-talkie from Stuckless.

Stuckless flushed even redder. “Again, my apologies,” he said. “I was sure you were up to something. I had hoped that by listening in on your plans, we'd know ahead of time about any protests—and we'd be able to stop any vandalism.”

“We weren't doing either of those things!” Grace said, outraged.

“I know that now,” Stuckless said, holding up his hand. “But the other day when I saw you at the Halfway Road pit I thought you were spying for that protest group.”

“We weren't,” Grace said smugly. “If you really thought we were up to something, why didn't you tell my mother we were there?” she added.

Stuckless shrugged. “We'd started the strip mining a few days early. We weren't anxious to draw attention to that fact.”

“But we didn't do anything at your strip mine sites,” Grace said, confused. “Even today, when we were in the sinkhole, that was past the strip mines.”

“I know,” Stuckless said. “But who knows where those tunnels lead? When you didn't come back up from the sinkhole, I didn't know where you could have gone. I was looking for you out at the cliff by the lighthouse when I saw you below on the shore. When you boarded that boat, I had no idea what was happening. But as soon as I saw your father, I knew something was terribly wrong. I called the Coast Guard right away.”

“
You
called the Coast Guard?” Grace asked. “Um, well, thanks.” She felt weird saying it, especially after all that had happened.

Stuckless's son mumbled something to his father and the pair returned to the Coast Guard boat.

Grace watched as a handcuffed and scowling Rick Stanley was escorted to the Coast Guard boat along with the two men from Sandstar. She knelt beside her father, touching his cheek. “Dad, are you okay?” she asked.

His eyes fluttered open and he smiled up at her. Grace couldn't be sure, but his cheeks seemed to have some pink in them. She kissed him softly on the forehead.

Mai and Fred knelt down beside Grace and wrapped her in a group hug. “We did it,” Grace said, feeling wet tears on her face. “We saved him.”

“Grace?” Jeeter called. He was standing apart from everyone, leaning against the wheelhouse. “Can I talk to you?”

Grace stared at him for a minute, then nodded and followed him inside the wheelhouse. She retreated to the far corner, folding her arms across her chest. What could he possibly have to say to her after all the lies he'd told her?

“I need to explain things,” he said. “So you can see my side.”

“
Your
side?!” Grace spat. “You said your mother was dead! Who does that? You lied about everything—even your name!”

Jeeter stared out the window, his jaw clenched tight. “The thing about my mom didn't feel like a lie,” he said. “Since the divorce…I never see her. She didn't just leave Roger. She abandoned me, too. All those things I said about how much it hurt…those were all true.”

Even though she was angry, Grace felt a surge of sympathy for him.

“And Roger…I hardly even know him,” he continued. “He works all the time. I feel like an orphan.”

“I'm sorry, but what's that got to do with what you did to me?” Grace asked, her voice cold and sharp.

Jeeter looked at her, his eyes welling. “It's got
everything
to do with it! When Jonathan—your dad—came out to Alberta last year, he stayed with us. I got to spend time with him—he even took me out fossil hunting. It was the best time of my life.”

Grace leaned against the wall. “I remember that…my dad used to write to me about this great kid, Marcus…
you!
” she said.

“He did?” Jeeter smiled through his tears. “He was so awesome! We went everywhere together. He was more of a father to me than Roger's ever been.” He pulled a crumpled photo out of his pocket and handed it to her.

Grace looked down at the picture. It was a photo of her dad and Jeeter. They were both smiling, standing in a field. It looked a lot like the pictures she had of her and her dad together. She handed it back to him, not knowing what to say.

“Roger had been planning on coming here for some time. I begged to come, too. He was going to do a review of the tar ponds for Environment Canada. He and Jonathan used to talk about it all the time. The tar ponds are, like, the biggest environmental disaster in all North America. I think Roger thought it would be great for his career if he could find something wrong with the cleanup project. Jonathan was always saying the method they were using wouldn't work.”

“Yeah,” Grace nodded. “He was sure it would fail.” She thought about the toxic waste.
He was right, too
, she thought to herself.

“So Roger and Jonathan were talking a lot on the phone about it, especially just before we came here. Roger was getting Jonathan's advice on how to do the review and what to look for. That last night, I picked up the phone—I wanted to say hi. I overheard Jonathan saying something about the trouble he was having with this Stanley guy that worked for him.”

“Really?” Grace perked up.

“Yeah, and then we got here and your dad was gone.” Jeeter shuddered. “I couldn't believe it. It felt like my own dad…. Anyway, I went to the police and told them to check Stanley out. But the police called Roger and I got into a whole pile of trouble.”

“So then you changed your name and came after me!” Grace exclaimed.

“No,” Jeeter said, looking horrified. “It wasn't like that. I had nowhere left to go. I thought maybe I could find something out by talking to you. Jeeter's my first name, by the way, but not what my dad calls me. I thought you'd recognize Marcus.”

“I still don't know why you didn't just tell me,” Grace said.

“Tell you what? I didn't have any proof. I even went to Stanley's house, watched him. I didn't see him doing anything suspicious. You never mentioned him in all the times we talked. Nothing. And then I started running out of time. Roger said there was nothing wrong with the tar ponds project, and that we'd be going back home as soon as school was over. I had to do something!”

A light bulb went off in Grace's head. “So you put that note in Stanley's mailbox at the same time you put the other one in my locker?”

Jeeter nodded. “I didn't know what else to do. By this point we'd become close and it was too late to tell you who I was—you would've freaked. But my plan worked. I knew Stanley was guilty as soon as I heard he'd gone to your house!”

“So the note in my dad's office….that was yours too, wasn't it?”

“Yeah. Your dad emailed Roger and mentioned that stuff about Stanley. It didn't seem like anything at the time. But right after…well, there was the accident…”

“Oh.” Grace's head was spinning. She clenched her hands. Her knuckles brushed against the walkie-talkie strapped to her belt, triggering another thought. “So where did you get the walkie-talkie? Fred has yours.”

“He has
one
of mine. When I bought them, they came in a set of two.”

Grace frowned. “How come you didn't tell us that when we borrowed yours?”

“I could tell you were up to something—you're not a very good liar, Grace,” Jeeter replied. “I wanted to know what was going on.”

“You should have told me the truth,” Grace said.

“The truth is I'm your friend, Grace,” he said. “I was your friend all along. Please don't give up on me.”

“I don't know, Jeeter,” Grace said reluctantly. “I'll think about it.”

Jeeter gave Grace a small, sad smile. “Okay. That's not what I was hoping for, but I'll take it.”

Chapter
31

“MOM, ISN'T THAT ENOUGH BALLOONS?” GRACE ASKED. “I MEAN,
my actual birthday was over three months ago!”

“Almost,” her mother smiled, tying off another helium balloon and letting it float to the ceiling. A cloud of the coloured orbs swayed to and fro above them—a dancing rainbow ceiling.

Grace laughed. “The house is going to float away.”

“Then let it! You never had a proper party and we have lots to celebrate.”

It's now or never
, Grace thought. Everyone would be arriving soon. “Mom, would you…? she started.

“What, sweetie?”

“Um,” she looked down at her ugly chewed-off nails. “Could you, you know…?” Grace held up her hands.