“Marnie Starr has an alibi for the night Ted Harvey was killed,” Jake informed me over eggs and bacon the next morning.
“Oh? Oh.”
Correctly interpreting my lack of enthusiasm, Jake said, “I know you think Harvey and Livingston’s deaths are related, and I know you have your heart set on lost gold mines and ghostly assassins, but it never hurts to answer the easy questions first.”
I ignored the jibe. “So what’s her alibi?”
“Ms. Starr was playing bingo. At least ten people will testify she was at the Moose Club all night eventually walking away with a lovely Elmer Fudd Chia Pet.” Jake splashed more coffee into my cup and then his own. “Your boy Kevin does not have an alibi.”
I wondered why he had not shared this information last night? Didn’t want to ruin the mood? “Does everyone else at the camp have an alibi?”
“Shoup and Marquez were going over grid maps or something.”
“At midnight?”
“That’s their story. There’s no reason to doubt it. Pocahontas was staying with friends in Sonora. O’Reilly and what’s-her-name-Bernice were sleeping in camp — not together, so it doesn’t count toward an alibi. The girl, Amy, took the first watch, and allegedly hit the sack afterwards.”
“So no one has an alibi except Marquez and Shoup. So that really doesn’t mean anything.”
“It’s not conclusive.”
“What about the autopsy results? Lab tests? Ballistics?”
“As of yesterday, Billingsly hadn’t got the ballistics report. The autopsy confirmed Harvey was the corpse in the cave; that he was most likely killed Thursday night or early Friday morning; and tentatively, that he was killed by the same weapon that killed Livingston, most likely a .22 hollow-point.”
“Why is this taking so long?”
Jake raised his eyebrows. “It’s not taking ‘so long.’ This isn’t TV with a fifteen minute crime lab turnaround. Lab results take a day or two. Figure in that this is a small town and a not particularly … urgent … case.”
“Have they confirmed that Kevin’s rifle was used?”
Jake’s honey-colored eyes met mine. “They haven’t confirmed it, but the kid’s rifle had been fired recently and the load is right. It was his gun all right.”
“He keeps that rifle in a gun rack in his truck. Anyone could have borrowed it.”
“You’re assuming premeditation?”
“Yes, definitely. First Livingston is murdered and hidden in the barn. Why?” I answered my own question. “Because someone wanted to hide the fact that he was dead. His car was parked in town so that everyone would think he’d gone to San Francisco as planned. And if his body were to be discovered, it would implicate Harvey.”
“Harvey is implicated. His being dead cinches that.” Jake swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Do you have any idea of the street value of an acre of marijuana?”
I applied the little gray cells. “You’d have to be able to process and market it. It would depend on the grade … and the particular street.”
“Taking all that into consideration, do you have a rough notion of what that cash crop was worth?”
“No.”
Jake’s mouth quirked. “At last estimate a pound of cannabis was valued between $700-900. An acre could bring in anywhere from $50,000 to a cool million. Now, do you still think that pot was not a motive?”
That shook my certainty, I had to admit. “It’s not the only possible motive, surely?”
“No, but it’s the most likely.” He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and set a misshapen bit of metal next to the peppershaker. “I dug this out of your front porch post. It’s a 30.06.”
As I suspected, the reason he had been so accommodating about my library research was he intended to do the real sleuthing while my back was turned. “So someone else shot at us?”
“Or the same perp used a different gun.”
“Because they couldn’t get access to Kevin’s?”
Jake sighed.
“You tell me what you think happened,” I invited cordially, picking up my coffee cup.
“I don’t know what happened. I can guess. Harvey arranged for a buyer. Someone with connections, maybe a student at a local college. Livingston found out about it, made threats. This unknown person eliminates Livingston. Maybe he tries to frame Harvey for it by planting Livingston in the barn here. It’s clear Harvey and his confederate had some kind of falling out because Harvey was iced five days later.”
It was a neat fit. Logical. Absently I scratched the yellow jacket bite on my hand. Looking down at the red welt a tiny memory flickered in the back of my mind.
Jake’s next words derailed my train of thought. “From everything I’ve been able to find out, Livingston sounds like an up and up guy. Strict but fair; I heard that about three times. The worst anyone could say was he lacked imagination.”
“Who said that?”
“Dr. Shoup.”
“Did you do any background checking on Shoup, while you were at it?”
Jake studied my face as though he couldn’t read my tone. “Yeah, I did some checking. Apparently there was some problem between him and the British Museum. A question of selling antiquities.”
I opened my mouth but Jake said flatly, “Nothing was proved, but he was asked to resign, and he did. His problems at Berkeley have to do with a salary dispute. From what I gathered, he felt he was worth a lot more than he was being paid.”
“Selling antiquities? And you don’t think there’s a tie in?”
“What antiquities were sold or even stolen here?”
“Jake, the man was suspected of —”
He cut me off. “Baby, you were suspected of murder once, remember? Were you guilty?”
“No, but don’t you think it’s too much coincidence —”
“Don’t you think the sheriffs think it’s too much coincidence that now you’re involved in a second homicide case?”
I didn’t have an answer. At last I said, “What about Marquez?”
“There’s nothing on Marquez. He had a parking ticket about ten years ago.” Jake said, more kindly than I was used to from him, “Let’s go home, Adrien. I’m running out of vacation and you’re not going to enjoy the next few days.”
I stared at him: the pale, sleep-mussed hair, the leonine eyes that could unexpectedly warm with amusement, the firm mouth that tasted uniquely Jake. What could I say? Maybe our relationship was undefined, but he had proven his friendship a dozen times over the past week. He had come to my rescue without being asked; he had spent his vacation making sure I didn’t get myself killed playing detective; hell, he had taken a bullet that could have been meant for me. Gay or straight, I’d never had a better friend. Now he was asking me for something, probably asking as much for my sake as his own. I listened to the water dripping from the leaky tap to the sink in slow, regretful tears. I nodded.
* * * * *
I had the best intentions.
I intended to go straight to the Realtor’s office and arrange for someone new to stay at the ranch as a caretaker. Somehow I found myself driving past the library one last time.
When Miss Buttermit saw me coming she made a fluttery gesture — like a villager warding off the Evil Eye.
“I was hoping …” I began.
Miss Buttermit whipped the key off her key ring and handed it over with conspiratorial haste. I thanked her and returned once more to the basement.
Though pressed for time, I was now convinced I knew what I was looking for. And after some feverish page turning, I found it. In 1857, a stagecoach traveling from Basking to Sonora had been robbed by three Mexican bandits. The stagecoach had been carrying an unusual load: gold from local mines bound for San Francisco. Valued at well over three million dollars, the hold-up had taken place in Senex Valley, minutes after leaving the stage stop. The two guards riding shotgun had been killed, the driver wounded.
I was absently scratching the yellow jacket bite on my hand as I read this, and as I stared down at the welt, a light bulb — metaphorically speaking — went off. Granted, it was an idea that probably should have lit the echoing corridors of my empty brain before now. The first clue had been right under my eyes that very first day.
Hurriedly I hunted through the shelves, poring through every volume, scanning every page, but I could find nothing more about the stagecoach robbery.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I cornered Miss Buttermit about the missing newspapers.
Miss B seemed to be mostly concerned with the defacement of library property, but at last I got her to focus on my question.
“You!” she answered indignantly. “You and Kevin were the last ones to examine those papers.” She looked mad enough to revoke my library card on the spot.
“Anyone else? Anyone from the archeological site?”
Miss Buttermit thought back and shook her head. “It was weeks ago. It couldn’t have been him.”
“Him who?”
“The doctor. The English doctor.”
“Dr. Shoup?”
“The very man,” concurred Miss Buttermit.
* * * * *
Taking Miss Buttermit’s advice, I left the library and cut across to Royale House. An urgency close to panic nipped at my heels.
I caught Melissa on the porch, locking the front doors. CLOSED, read the sign swinging inside the glass pane.
“I can’t talk now,” she said, whipping past me on the stairs. The tips of her black hair floated against my face and I thought of the ghost story she had told me about Royale’s first wife.
“Hold on.” I caught her arm. “Are there copies of The Basking Gazette archived here?”
She scowled. “Why?”
“Because the library doesn’t have a complete set and I need to check something out.”
“Can’t it wait? Kevin’s been arrested and the dig’s been called off. Hadn’t you heard?”
“No.” My fingers tightened on her arm as she started to pull away.
Impatiently she said, “They matched the bullets that killed Harvey and Livingston to Kevin’s rifle.”
Jake had hinted that was coming, but it was still a shock.
“I don’t believe it,” I said automatically.
“It’s a fact. They found traces of blood and hair in Kevin’s truck bed. They think he used the pickup to transport the bodies.” Her black eyes held mine. “But you know all this.”
“I do?”
“Sure. You and your copper pal have been working with the sheriff.”
“We have?”
“Don’t play dumb.” She smiled. I’d never noticed what sharp incisors she had. “What were you up to, wandering around in those caves above the hollow, if you weren’t looking for Harvey’s body?”
She was a pretty woman, but more than prettiness there was strength and character in the face turned to mine. I didn’t understand her, but I admired her in a way.
“I think you know what I was looking for,” I said.
A beat later red suffused her dusky skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about spirit voices echoing out of the caves at night when all good little archeologists are tucked snug in their sleeping bags. I’m talking battery operated Kuksu in stereophonic sound.”
She went very still, didn’t move a muscle. A hell of a poker player she’d make.
I said, “Are you going to let me into the museum or not?”
She pivoted on heel, marched back up the stairs and unlocked the frosted glass paned door.
“Do you have proof?” she questioned, her back to me.
“Yes, I think so.” Instinctively I patted the pocket of my denim jacket.
As we stepped into the museum she said, “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“But you know who did.”
She did face me then. “No, I don’t! If I did, do you think I’d let them arrest O’Reilly?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know.”
“Well, I wouldn’t! The guy’s a pain, but ….”
“Then what’s up with the sabotage? Are you saying you haven’t been trying to stop the dig?”
“NO ONE HAS BEEN HURT!” She yelled it so loudly I expected the portrait of the giant-sized Abraham Royale to blink.
“What about the dog?” I was beginning to feel like Sherlock Holmes in “Silver Blaze,” forever blethering on about the curious incident of the dog in the night.
“What about the damned dog? Coyotes got it.” Yet something about her expression wasn’t what it ought.
I thought, She believes in the legend of the Guardian.
More calmly she said, “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.”
She was silent. A born martyr looking forward to the first burning brand.
I said, “You took over your grandfather’s shaman duties, didn’t you? You’ve said a number of times you believe the hollow is sacred.”
“Oh for —! Life is sacred,” Melissa retorted. “I wanted to stop the desecration of holy ground, but I wouldn’t kill anyone to do it.”
“Did you put a snake in my mailbox?”
“Did I what?” Her mouth dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
I tended to believe her — or her expression anyway.
“Can I check the newspaper archives?”
Melissa checked her watch. I checked mine. I’d promised Jake I’d be back within the hour, and forty-five minutes had passed already.
“I don’t have time for this. The Student Union has asked me to organize legal aid for O’Reilly,” she said. “I’ve got things to do and people to see.”
“If we can prove who really killed Livingston and Harvey, legal aid won’t be necessary.”
Undecided, she contemplated me and then turned with a whirl of her black hair and led the way downstairs.
The cellar of Royale House was cool and dry. Melissa lit a lantern and the smell of kerosene mingled with the smell of dried apples and sawdust.
“What year are we looking for?” She inquired, dragging out a bulging cardboard box. I moved to help her.
“I’m thinking 1857. I read about a gun battle between Mexican bandits. Royale’s partner, Barnabas Salt was killed.”
“I know about that,” Melissa said. “The same banditos had robbed the stage a couple of weeks before. They got away with a couple million dollars worth of gold dust and bullion.”
“Everybody in the county must have been hunting them.”
“Yep, but Salt and Royale found them holed up in Senex Valley.”
“And in the ensuing fight, the bandits and Salt were killed.”
“‘Ensuing fight,’” she mocked. “I could listen to you for hours. Do you write like you talk?”
“You wouldn’t want to concentrate here, would you?”
“In the ensuing fight,” Melissa informed me, “all three bandits were shot to pieces, along with good old Barnabas Salt.”
“And was the gold recovered?”
Her expression went totally blank.
“Yoo-hoo,” I prompted. “The ill-gotten gains: whatever happened to them?”
She snapped back into life. “Never mind that box.” She disappeared into a dusty recess and reappeared dragging another box over. The friction of the stone floor tore the deteriorating box apart. Newspapers spilled everywhere. “Fuck! Try these. This is the time frame we’re interested in.”
Evelyn Wood couldn’t have speed-read any faster through those brittle, yellowed pages. The kerosene lamp threw flickering shadows that danced against the wall like Zuni spirit helper figures. I kept watching them out of the corner of my eye.
“Try to be careful, can’t you? These are historically valuable.”
“I am being careful.” I nodded pointedly as a piece of page broke off in her hand. Just like old times. “Maybe we should get some help.”
“There’s no time. He knows how close we are. He’s liable to split any minute.”
He. We both knew now who we were after though neither of us had put it in words yet.
“Without the gold?”
“Maybe he’s found the gold.”
Maybe. Maybe not. What was it about gold that drove men to leave their homes and families, to risk everything — to commit murder — on just the promise of it? Gold fever, they called it back then. In the 1800s it had been an epidemic; now and then there was still an outbreak.
“What happens if we can’t find anything?” Melissa asked after a silence of some time.
“I don’t know. Even if we find the right article it isn’t proof. We have to use that information to confront him.”
“You think he’s going to fall apart because we shove an old newspaper article in his face? We’ve got to do more than that.”
I should have listened to her, but my attention was caught by the article before me.
BANDITS SLAIN IN SHOOT OUT proclaimed the banner headline. In the faded old-fashioned typescript I read how Abraham Royale and Barnabas Salt had been set upon by the three notorious Mexican bandits who had robbed the Sonora stagecoach line only days before. A gun battle had ensued (that word again), and all three miscreants had been slain, saving the honest taxpayers the expense of hanging Juan Martinez, Eduardo Marquez, and Luis Quintana. Tragically Barnabas Salt, Royale’s long time partner in the Red Rover mine, had also been killed. The search for the stolen booty continued.
I lowered the paper. A moth was bumping against the lantern, a soft desperate sound as it fought to immolate itself. Melissa stared at my face and then eased the paper out of my hands.
While she read, I worked it out. The bandits had hidden their loot in an abandoned mine, but the mine’s previous owners, working nearby, had spotted them, or somehow become suspicious. There was a fight and everyone ended up dead except for one man. One man who chose to keep the hard-earned gold of his neighbors and friends for himself.
“What should we do?” Melissa asked when she finished reading.
“I think it’s time to call the cops.”
“The cops!” She looked outraged. “You said yourself this isn’t proof. The last thing we need is Barney Fife stumbling around in this.”
“Melissa, there’s enough here to give them a start. It implicates someone other than Kevin.”
“We don’t need the cops for this!”
My nerves on edge, I snapped back, “For what? What did you have in mind? A citizen’s arrest? He’s killed two people so far.”
“Your buddy Riordan —”
“Don’t drag Jake into this.”
She lowered her head, her hair falling across her face in a veil. At last she murmured, “Okay, you win. I’ll call the cops from upstairs.” Then she stood, backed up and ran for the stairs, shooting up the rickety staircase like a scalded cat.
A moment later the door to the cellar banged shut.
It took a nanosecond for the full implication of the sound of a slamming door — and the sound that followed: a key turning in a lock — to register.
I rocketed up the stairs in her wake yelling Melissa’s name with all the sound and fury I could muster. As I reached the top step she called through the wood, “Just be grateful it’s not a fruit cellar!”
“Open the goddamn door!” I pounded my fist on the door. Solid oak; it was like punching stone. I wasn’t getting out that way, not without a Roman Legion at my back. “Melissa, don’t be stupid. Melissa!” I rattled the doorknob.
The sound of her footsteps died away.
I ran back down the stairs, which shook under the force of my feet. A quick scan of the cellar didn’t offer much in the way of escape routes. There was no other door. There were a couple of small rectangular windows about ten feet up, probably street level.
Looking around for something to stand on, I spotted a trunk in the wavering lantern light. With some shoving and tugging, I got the trunk positioned beneath one of the windows. I hopped on top of it and found myself still two feet too short.
I jumped down, searched the corners, disturbing the spiders in their webs, and came up with a milk bottle crate. I placed the crate on the trunk and gingerly climbed back up. The crate wobbled crazily on the curved lid of the trunk. Crouched, I balanced surfer-like, straightened slowly and rested my hand on the windowsill.
Wiping a swath with my fist, I stared through the dirty window. I could see the street bathed in sunshine and the tires of cars whizzing past. I pried at the rusty latch.
No good. The damn thing could have been welded shut.
I was mad enough to punch through the window, but not stupid enough. I needed something that wasn’t my fist to break through the glass. A sledgehammer would be good, but that was too much to hope for. What kind of cellar didn’t have a handy crowbar or even a broom?
I was thinking about taking my shirt off and wrapping it around my hand when a face loomed into the window, one eye blinking through the circle of clean.
I nearly fell off my perch. When I had steadied myself and looked again, the face was gone from the window.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Help!”
Leaping down, I unbuttoned my shirt, swaddled my hand and clambered back up. The crate rocked and I teetered like Gidget Goes Berserk. Trying to stabilize my weight, I clutched the window sill and with my free hand feinted cautiously at the glass. With the second punch my fist shattered the pane. Most of the glass flew streetward, the rest of it dusting my face and shoulders. I shook my head, blinked carefully. Wiping the glass out of the window frame, I rested both hands on the sill and hauled myself up.
Though it looks easy enough in movies, it ain’t so easy in real life to pull yourself up and wriggle through a small square window. It took a lot of writhing and squirming — not to mention swearing — before I managed to scrape through the window and crawl out to the sidewalk.
“You are an abomination and shall be put to death, your blood upon your head,” the Reverend John Howdy shrieked into my sweating face.
I blinked up at him.
“How’s that?” I huffed at last.
He proceeded to tell me how.
Half listening while I took inventory, I decided that all my parts were in working order. I sat up, brushing off the glass and cobwebs.
“You — you!” he spluttered.
I ducked back from the fiery breath of the little man bending over me.
“Breaking and entering, you buggering spawn of Satan,” he cried. “I’m calling the police!”
“Breaking and exiting,” I retorted, getting to my knees. “And calling the police is a good idea. Send them to Pine Shadow ranch.”
I could hear him hollering for the law as I limped off down the street.
* * * * *
There was no sign of Jake at the ranch.
His car was packed with his gear; my suitcases were packed and sitting just inside the door. He was dead serious about our leaving on schedule. Mobil-I-zation had begun.
Dust covers blanketed the furniture once more, the shutters were closed and fastened, the thermostat was off, the fridge was empty.
“Jake!” I called, walking through the silent rooms.
There was no answer. Something felt wrong.
“Jake?”
Walking out on the porch, I froze mid-step at the distant crack of two gun shots.
It could have been hunters, but I knew it wasn’t, and can’t quite describe the sick chill that spread from my gut to my heart.
“He’s not dead,” I said aloud.
Nothing contradicted me. The cowbell chimes clanked in the breeze.
I turned and went back inside to call the sheriffs. I don’t think I really heard what the person on the other end of the line said. I was probably instructed to stay put, but the moment I hung up, I climbed the hillside behind the house, jogging past the scorched marijuana field, shearing through the trees, and slipping and sliding down the pine needles of the mountainside overlooking the camp in Spaniard’s Hollow.
Or, rather, where the camp had been. The kind of mass exodus that generally precedes the appearance of giant ants from outer space seemed to have taken place. I prowled the mauled grounds. Giant yellow squares indicated where the tents formerly sat, but the tents and the generators were gone, and the only vehicles parked by the tarn were Melissa’s white pickup, a Land Rover and another car. I figured the Land Rover was probably Dr. Shoup’s, since he lay face up beside it.
“The very man,” Miss Buttermit had said. I had thought at the time that Shoup must be in on the caper too, but now I wondered.
I squatted down beside his body. Felt his throat for a pulse.
Even dead, he had a supercilious expression at odds with the wound in his chest.
I guess you do eventually get hardened to violent death, or else I was too worried about Jake to feel much of anything for anyone else.
Shoup was stone cold, so the shots I’d heard had not been the ones that did him in. Rising to my feet I squinted at the sun glittering on the tarn, the dazzle stinging my eyes.
Why would Jake come back here? We were supposed to be getting the hell out of Dodge; why would he head back to the camp? It was so typical of that beef-witted lout to go off half-cocked, thinking he had all the answers when he only knew part of the story ....
After a despairing couple of moments it occurred to me where they must have gone. Now I had another choice to make. I could wait for the sheriffs; I could follow them down the stagecoach tracks; or I could try to beat them to the Red Rover mine by cutting across the mountainside. The wrong decision could cost Jake’s life.
If he wasn’t dead already.
I went bounding back up the mountainside without regard to my neck or heart. My shoes slipped over stones and dried grass. My heart pounded hard but it was mostly with the adrenaline rush. Hell, I figured if my pump hadn’t given out by now, it was probably good for the duration. Just so long as it saw me through getting Jake back in one piece; that was the bargain I was offering God.
By now I had worked out most of the details, like why Livingston, who everyone agreed was as straight and true as the needle on a compass, had to die the minute he got wise to what was happening at the site.
As for my former caretaker, Harvey must have been playing how-does-your-garden-grow on the mountainside and seen Livingston shot. Ever a lad with his eye to the main chance, he must have tried to cut a deal. My guess was he had threatened blackmail, probably claiming he held some incriminating evidence like photos. That would explain why his trailer had been searched a couple of times. I suspected there never was any evidence, but either way, the blackmail scheme had backfired. Livingston’s body had been planted in the barn to incriminate Harvey, and Harvey himself had been killed and dragged off to look like he’d rabbited.
While I climbed, I reconnoitered. Maybe I should have taken the time to search for one of my grandmother’s guns. What happened when I did catch them up? I didn’t have a gun, and I didn’t exactly have a plan; the force of my personality was not going to get us far.
I stepped wrong and went down on my knees. As I knelt there, panting and perspiring, I heard a sound. A minor explosion that resembled … a sneeze.
My heart lit and soared like a Roman candle; I’d recognize those tormented sinuses anywhere. Crawling a few feet, I peered through the bushes. And sure enough, a few moments later I glimpsed the top of three heads through the trees branches shading the trail below; Jake’s gilt hair shone like a knight’s helmet.
He was alive.
I crept forward as quietly as possible. Melissa was walking on Jake’s right; Marquez followed close — though not too close — behind. He carried a rifle aimed at their backs. I’d have bet money on a 30.06 load.
“Hurry it up!” His voice carried in the still air.
I didn’t envy his task; even from my hiding place it was clear from their rigid body language that Jake and Melissa were waiting for the first opportunity to turn on their captor. Marquez knew it too, if his strained white face was anything to go by.
How the hell had both Jake and Melissa managed to fall into Marquez’s clutches? But wasn’t it just typical of these damned “A” personality types, always thinking they knew best, always thinking they could handle whatever cropped up?
On hands and knees, I slunk forward. I had to get ahead of them. That was our best chance. But if I stood up, Marquez would spot me and probably start shooting. He was scared and desperate, so there was no predicting.
And in the clear mountain air even the sound of a snapping branch seemed to carry a mile. I could go back and wait for the sheriffs. It was probably the smartest thing to do. It was obviously the safest — and I was sure it was what Jake would have wanted me to do. I also knew it was not what Jake would have done were our positions reversed.
I moved the branches aside, listening tautly.
Reassuringly, Jake’s voice floated up. He sounded calm, even conversational. “You don’t have the gold then? You just think you know where it is.”
“It’s there.”
“It’s been over a hundred years, pal. Anything could have happened to it.”
“If someone else had found it, it would have made history. Royale’s wife didn’t find it; she died in poverty.”
“That’s my point,” Jake said. He was doing the cop thing: keep ’em talking; it distracts and builds a bond whether the bad guy wants it or not. “If the gold was there someone would have found it before now.”
“Before my great great grandfather was murdered by Royale and Salt he sent my grandmother a letter saying the gold was hidden in the mine.”
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I recalled Dr. Shoup saying only a few days earlier. How right he had been.
“Royale could have moved the gold before he died,” Melissa said scornfully. “Which means you’ve killed two people for nothing.”
“Shut up and walk!” Marquez sounded harassed. Clearly he was making it up as he went. What had gone wrong, I wondered?
The bushes were thinning. Dropping to my belly, I made like GI Joe, creeping along over the hard ground. This is another thing that looks a lot easier in the movies than it is in real life. In real life dragging yourself over rocky ground without making any noise is a slow and painful business. And as quiet and careful as I was being, I was still afraid they could hear the shift and slide of stones, the snap of twigs. I could sure hear them.
But slowly, surely I gradually pulled ahead of the trio in the road below. A few more yards of this and it would be safe to stand again. The dragging along on elbows was painful; my hips felt bruised.
Suddenly it occurred to me why it was so painful: I still had Melissa’s cassette player in my pocket.
As this realization sunk into my tired brain, I felt a spark of hope. Vigor renewed, I humped along, scraping myself raw over rocks and pinecones and tree roots.
The voices behind me faded. Scrambling to my feet, I ran like hell across the hillside, and then down through the trees.
I reached the mine a scant two minutes before they appeared down the track. I had just enough time to prop the cassette player in the ‘V’ of a pine branch. Hands shaking, I pressed play and slid up the volume, praying the recorder didn’t fall off its perch.
Up close the chanting sounded so obviously synthetic, I couldn’t imagine how it had fooled anyone, but as I moved away from the sound, it got creepier. More believable.
Inching down the hillside, I hid behind a thicket, sweating and trying to get my breath.
It didn’t take long before I heard their voices.
“So if Shoup was working with you, why kill him?” Jake was saying reasonably. As they drew even with my hiding place I could see Jake’s eyes rake the hillside, the road, looking for his chance. For a second his eyes seemed to find mine in the thicket I hid in, but his expression never changed.
A bruise darkened his forehead, but he was okay. He was alive and on his feet, and I planned on him staying that way. I felt around on the ground for a tree limb long and thick enough to use as a club.
“Because he finally figured out I … had disposed of Dan — Dr. Livingston. And that scum ball, Harvey.”
“Disposed of? You mean killed?”
Melissa said, “You mean murdered? Because that’s what it was. Cold-blooded murder, you bastard.”
“Shut up!” Marquez shouted.
“Yeah, shut up,” Jake growled. “You’ll hurt his feelings.”
Melissa stopped walking. “Do you hear that?” Her head jerked from side to side in disbelief. “What is that?”
About time too. I was beginning to think the three of them would never shut up long enough to hear the ghostly voices soughing on the afternoon wind.
“That’s enough!” bit out Marquez, his pale face glistening, his glasses shining like insect eyes in the sunlight.
“I hear it too,” Jake said.
“It’s the goddamn wind!” Marquez shoved at Melissa with the rifle barrel. She fell to her knees in the road and put her hands to her face. Jake wheeled to face Marquez.
I thought Marquez would blast them then and there, and I stood up.
Jake didn’t charge though, instead he said, “Listen! Hear ’em? Sirens.”
Sure enough, the distant wail of sirens could be heard echoing through the mountains.
“Bullshit! Hurry up, get in there!” Thoroughly rattled, Marquez tried to nudge Melissa to her feet with the rifle barrel. She wasn’t cooperating and I didn’t blame her. If he got them inside the mine they’d never walk out alive.
Keeping a wary eye on Jake, Marquez poked at her with the rifle. Suddenly Melissa surged to her feet, swaying, wheeling to face Marquez. Marquez gasped and stepped back from her, the gun shaking wildly.
Unnervingly, Jake also stepped back from her.
His body blocked my view of Melissa, but I could see Marquez’s face and I thought, it’s now or never. Sucking in a deep breath, I bellowed over the taped chanting — and the distant cry of approaching sirens, “Police! Drop your weapon!”
Marquez swung the rifle my way and both Melissa and Jake jumped him.
Things got confusing at that point, like one of those cartoon fights where all you see is a giant ball of dust and the occasional fist or foot. Jake wrestled for the rifle, which fired once into the sky and once into the forest before he wrested it away from Marquez. Marquez cursed and hung on with both hands, but Jake was bigger and used to fighting.
All the while Melissa howled like a war chief right out of cowboy cinema, clawing and kicking anybody she could reach.
I slithered the rest of the way down the hillside and circled the action, trying to see how to help without getting in the way or getting shot. Catching sight of Melissa’s snarling face I got the shock of my life. Her eyes were glowing red like something out of The Exorcist.
The fight didn’t last long. Jake closed on Marquez, punched him twice, and Marquez went down. Jake leaned over him, panting hard.
“Get up,” he ordered. He spared me a look. Just for a moment the grimness of his face eased. “Hey.”
I managed a smile, half my attention still drawn to Melissa’s demonic gaze.
Marquez, his glasses hanging from his ears, his nose bloody, tried to push to his knees.
Suddenly he launched himself forward, diving toward the mine entrance.
“Halt!” Jake yelled. Melissa screamed.
Marquez didn’t check. Jake fired into the timber frame of the mine opening. Undeterred, Marquez wriggled though the wooden slats still half-covering the mouth of the mine and disappeared inside.
“God damn it!” Jake swore.
We raced for the entrance.
From inside the mine Marquez screamed hysterically, a full-throated, sharp blood-curdling shriek straight out of Edgar Allen Poe that tailed and then abruptly cut off.
The silence that followed was more terrible than that dying scream.
Jake and I stared at each other, and then he started to climb through the boards.
“No, wait!” Melissa cried. We both grabbed for him.
“The stairs are gone!” I shouted, locking my arms around him.
“He’s fallen down the mine shaft!” Melissa said. Her face was blanched of color, her eyes … they were still glowing. Hastily I looked away.
Jake stared at us like we were speaking in tongues, and then to my utter amazement, he pulled me against him in a rough embrace that nearly knocked the remaining wind out of me.
“I owe you one, baby,” he muttered against my ear. I could feel his heart banging away with exertion and excitement against my own. It was the most beautiful sound in the world, and I closed my eyes as I listened and thought, I love you.
Old news really. I guess I’d known since I left LA. I guess that was why I’d left LA, because there wasn’t any future in it. Not really. The things I wanted from life — and Jake — weren’t things he could give. But somehow at that moment it just didn’t matter.
I barely heard Melissa babbling, “He must have forgotten that the stairs had rotted away. I know we told him. Kevin and I noticed when we were out here. Only the top two rungs are left. I know we told him. He forgot. He must have forgotten.”
“Maybe he knew,” I told her.
Jake’s arms tightened around me like he was picturing himself tumbling down the shaft on Marquez’s heels. “Poor bastard,” he muttered against my ear.
I nodded, sick with the thought of what a difference a few minutes would have made. If it had taken me longer to get out of the cellar, if I had waited at the house for the sheriffs, if I had taken my time running across the hillside — it would have been Jake and Melissa’s crumpled bodies at the bottom of that mine shaft. In fact, we might never have found their bodies, might never have known what happened to them.
What a nice little legend that would have made.
“No one could survive that fall,” Melissa said, though neither of us was really listening to her. “He’s dead. He must be. Maybe he meant to do it all along. Maybe …”
The sirens were close now, wailing through the trees like electronic banshees. As the first car appeared on the road, Jake released me and stepped back. He massaged the back of his neck self-consciously.
“He must be dead,” Melissa repeated. “Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Astonished, I realized that the shadows were lengthening. Another day gone in Paradise. I looked up at the heavy skies. There was a hint of rain in the air. In fact, it felt cold enough for snow. I rubbed my nose hard. “What happened?” I asked Jake. “Why the hell did you come back here?” I stopped as color rose in his face.
“I had a bad feeling,” he said. “You gave in too easily this morning. I know you — well, I thought I did. I started thinking you were going to come back here and do something … dumb.”
“Dumb?”
“Like in a book. You know, gather all the suspects in the drawing room and try to trick the murderer into confessing.”
“So you did something dumb instead?”
The clearing was suddenly full of cop cars and uniforms. The sound of voices and slamming car doors carried on the late afternoon.
Jake said, “I … er …” He cleared his throat. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shoup confronted Marquez. He was waving this old newspaper in his face. Then Marquez popped Shoup. That’s when she showed up. He glanced at Melissa, doing a double-take at her flaming red orbs, and breaking off what he was saying to exclaim, “And lady, what is with you?”
Melissa met our gazes blankly. Then she gave a weak laugh, and popped out the trick eyeballs.
* * * * *
“Well, it’s been real. And it’s been fun,” Jake said.
I gave a half laugh.
We stood beside our packed cars. It was nearly dark.
Marquez’s body had been retrieved from the mine a few hours earlier. There was no sign of any lost gold, assuming it had ever really been there. Melissa, Jake and I had given our statements to the sheriffs; Melissa had bid us a hasty goodbye and hurried off to see about getting Kevin freed. Jake and I promised to make ourselves available for the coroner’s inquest and any further questioning as requested.
It had been a long day and we could have waited to leave till the next morning, but Jake was in a hurry to start back.
I could feel him watching me, but when I glanced his way, he was staring at the long silent ranch house. The windows were shuttered. The cowbell chimes hung motionless in the still, cold air. Across the barren yard, the windmill groaned with phantom pains.
It already looked abandoned, like we had never been there, like no one had lived there for years.
“Maybe we’ll come back sometime,” he said, surprisingly.
He met my gaze and shrugged. Then he tossed his keys, caught them, and started for his car. Over his shoulder he called, “Are you following me or am I following you?”
I opened my mouth — then let it go. Mildly, I said, “Are you sure you know the way?”
He paused. Turned. “Hey,” he said. “I found you, didn’t I?”