Tres Leches Cupcakes (24 page)

She’d fallen asleep at her desk once the tears were spent, but woke up a few hours later with a massive headache and a kink in her neck. Upon awakening, she found that her desire to find more answers had diminished in direct correlation to the difficulty of what she’d learned. Today, she had awakened ready to leave Santa Fe, ready to let the police put the pieces together without her, ready to prepare for whatever the next chapter of her life would be. This chapter was closed. Oh, please let it be closed!

Marcus took the papers and thumbed through them. “Huh,” was all he said, which Sadie took to mean she should expound.

“This must be why she was so . . . confrontational with Shel that night at the bar, and then Langley must have shown her something relating to artifacts or bones for her to have followed him.” She thought again about how Margo had apologized in advance for something. She wished she knew what that apology meant.

Marcus scanned the papers while she spoke, then finally put them down and leaned back in his chair, watching her. “This was the kind of report the BLM had you develop for the crew members?”

Sadie shook her head. “They just wanted address verification, name confirmation, and job history via my conversations with the employees. Basically I was double-checking the information from the employment applications to make sure everything matched up. This one is far more in depth because I wanted to understand Margo and see if she had any connections to any of the other people in this situation.”

“And you don’t know why the BLM wanted these reports?”

“No,” Sadie said. “But I’ve developed a theory.”

Marcus raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Sadie cleared her throat and sat up straight. “I was gathering broad-range information without prejudice, which means that they must not have had solid leads or else they would have sent in someone more experienced who would have a more detailed focus. I suspect they had figured out that a D&E digger was selling artifacts, but that was all they knew. I’m sure you already know that a salvage company is the perfect ‘in’ for a would-be black-market reseller of archeological items. Salvage companies are not as highly monitored as actual archeological digs since they are for-profit companies whose items generally go straight to warehousing or back to the tribes for reburial. A pot here and there, or a shell necklace smuggled off the site at the end of the day could be a pretty good second income to someone with a connection to the underground markets. Kyle Langley drives a late-model truck and has a pretty nice apartment too, with nice furniture and a big TV and things. I looked into him in more detail too after finishing this report on Margo.” She paused for a breath. “After talking to Sheldon Carlisle last night, and reanalyzing everything I’ve learned, I also think the BLM might not be the only group with interest in that dig. Shel knew there were bodies at the site and he kept digging after being told to stop. Oh, and he went to school with Ethan Standage, who owns the ranch Margo went to after leaving the bar Monday night.”

Marcus just nodded, which she found infuriating seeing as how she had just laid out everything she knew. She was certain the police had additional information, but his walls were up. She was simply a civilian, an informant, and someone he didn’t necessarily trust.

“Did you guys go back for that cigarette butt at the ranch?” she asked.

Marcus nodded. “We did. We found it, and we’re having it analyzed.”

“Have you talked to the Standages?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Margo’s life is on the line here,” Sadie said, feeling the fire build in her chest. “She’s been gone for three days now, and I found a direct link between Ethan and Shel.”

Marcus held her eyes. “I checked back on the dig site, you know. Shel has been fired. And neither Langley nor Margo has checked in for work.” He didn’t look defiant or defensive, just thoughtful as he regarded her closely. “If I tell you to leave this alone, would you take that advice?”

Sadie was so surprised by the question she wasn’t able to form an automatic answer so she just spoke her thoughts. “After last night’s research,” she said, waving toward the papers she’d handed to him, “the idea of leaving this alone is more tempting than ever. I don’t want to make things more complicated for the police, but . . . ”

“But?”

“But I feel responsible for what’s happened to Margo, and I’m very worried about her. I’ve been up front with you—you know everything I know now—but I can’t help wanting more attention on this case, more people trying to find her. That you haven’t even talked to the Standages, when we’re almost certain she went to the ranch, makes me question whether entrusting it all to you is the best idea.”

“Ouch,” he said, still not looking defensive. “You don’t have much faith in us, do you?”

“It’s not that. I’m just worried about Margo,” Sadie said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. Sometimes honesty was awkward. “That’s all. Not doing what I
can
do is hard for me, especially since I’m the one who started all this.”

“You feel responsible for what happened to Margo?”

“Of course I do,” Sadie said, suppressing the rising guilt. “I’m the reason we went to the bar that night.” She waited for him to throw out platitudes about how Margo was the one who actually set up the meeting and chose to follow Langley afterward. Sadie could acknowledge those things were true, but it didn’t change the fact that if Sadie hadn’t gone to Margo’s on Monday, Margo wouldn’t be involved in this at all.

“And what if you weren’t the reason she went to the bar?”

“I was the reason, though.”

“What if you
weren’t
?”

“But I
was.
” Did he know how painful it was for her to say this out loud? Let alone to say it twice?

Marcus leaned forward slightly and tapped the stack of papers on the desk between them while holding her eyes. “What if I told you I already knew all of this?”

Sadie looked at the papers and felt instantly sheepish for assuming the police weren’t investigating Margo too. It
was
hard to have faith in law enforcement sometimes, but had her distrust set her up to have wasted her time and make a fool of herself too? “Why would you knowing about Margo’s daughter mean it wasn’t my fault she went to the bar?”

He held her eyes for a moment, and then let out a breath. “I can’t tell you everything, and I didn’t know about Ethan being connected to Mr. Carlisle,” Marcus said, his voice low and surprisingly trusting. “And the text messages worry me a great deal. You’ve already gotten dangerous attention, and now that you know this”—he tapped the papers again—“you’ve become even more vulnerable. I need you to stay out of this for your own safety.”

Sadie stared at him. Her automatic response was to assume he was saying this simply to get her to back off, but there was an intensity in his eyes that spoke of something more.

“If you learn anything else after leaving here,” Marcus continued, “I need you to bring it to me as soon as possible. And I need your word not to discuss this with anyone at all from here on out.”

Sadie opened her mouth, but then closed it. She didn’t know what to say—challenge what he’d just told her? Ask questions he’d already said he couldn’t answer? But her mind was spinning, connecting dots she didn’t know were connected until now.

Marcus must have seen the difficulty she was having. He took a breath. “You said that you think there may have been other people with interests in the site, and that Sheldon Carlisle had kept digging after being told not to—that’s
one
other group besides the BLM, right?”

“And Langley, if he’s involved somehow,” Sadie said.

“There may be at least one other group involved, and we think Margo was part of it.”

Sadie straightened and leaned forward. “What?”

“Because of your involvement with the BLM, we’ve collaborated with them on some matters involved in this case, and through them, we discovered some details about her history that weren’t readily available to us before.”

“The BLM has a history on Margo?”

Marcus nodded. “Margo used to be connected to an anti-antiquities trade group, a kind of straight-edge gang of heritage advocates who feel the federal government doesn’t act fast enough to really curtail the black market trade. This group, Tribal Preserve, goes after pothunters and dealers themselves—burning down trailers, even destroying artifacts to keep them from the market if they have to. They send threats, scout out newly discovered sites, and gather evidence they then anonymously share with the government. They also draw a lot of attention from the dealers they work hard to stop. Margo testified against a relatively large dealer in the Northeast about ten years ago, which might be what led to her daughter’s death.”

Sadie gasped. She hadn’t read anything about that. “They would kill a child over antiquities?”

“It was never proven one way or another, and the media kept it quiet because they’ve learned to be cautious about what they report—they get threats too. In fact, a few years ago, I talked to a journalist in Utah who said that the only time he’d personally received death threats was while he was working on a story about a black market ring he broke up.”

Sadie had to repress a shudder.

“After her daughter’s death, Margo left the States for awhile and worked some international projects. It seemed as though she’d broken ties with Tribal Preserve—they are primarily concerned with Native American artifacts. Then she suddenly reappeared here in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. The BLM came across her name when she hired up for D&E, and they watched her closely for a while, but she appears to be unattached to the group. Suddenly she’s smack-dab in the middle of our crosshairs on this, and we’re scrambling to put all this information together as quickly as we can in order to come up with the right plan on how to proceed from here on out. We fear there are some big guns involved in this situation.”

“And yet you didn’t care about the text messages she sent me last night.”

“They had already been forwarded to our database. We got a court order to monitor her phone yesterday afternoon. We were tracing them as they happened, and I didn’t have time to deal with you at the same time.”

“I was scared to death,” Sadie said, her chest hot with anger.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, inclining his head slightly. “But we have a procedure to follow, and from everything we’ve been able to find, no one knows who you are. They all think your name is Sarah and the address on your application leads to an empty rental house. If you hadn’t called me, I’d have followed up with you today.”

Sadie’s heart hammered in her chest. “Do you know who sent the text messages?”

“Not yet, but we know where the calls came from.”

“Where?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

Sadie almost swore, but then took a breath, knowing that he’d already told her more than he’d expected to, and she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. Instead, she focused on what she’d learned. “Oh my gosh,” she said, sitting back in her chair as she realigned every exchange she’d had with Margo. “Was Margo on the dig to find the same thieves the BLM was looking for, do you think? Same as me?” Was that what she was apologizing for? Had she been planning to take Sadie into her confidence with that call Monday night?

“Possibly,” Marcus said. “We are filtering and following the leads as quickly as we can, but doing so quietly is essential. Pete has told me I can trust you, regardless of some of your history that does not reflect that very well, and I am choosing to do so. But I need your word that you will step back and let us do our job—for Margo’s safety as well as your own. Going to Albuquerque is a good idea. Going sooner rather than later is even better.” He took a breath and then added in nearly a pleading tone, “Please don’t ask me any more questions.”

Sadie nodded, then paused, suddenly remembering something. “Margo called Shel ‘Crossbones’ at the bar on Monday,” she said. “Shel didn’t seem to know what it meant, but what if
Langley
did? What if that was Langley’s code name or something for his artifact dealings? He’d have known then that Margo knew something she shouldn’t know. It could be his motive for having her follow him out of the bar.”

Marcus scribbled a note on top of the papers Sadie had given him. “I’ll look into that.”

“Does Pete know what you just told me?”

Marcus sat back, allowing distance back into their discussion. “No, but let me be the one to bring him up to speed. In the meantime, make sure you don’t discuss this with anyone. You’re already more involved than we would like you to be.”

“Okay,” Sadie said, sufficiently convinced to do things his way. “I can’t believe Margo’s daughter may have been killed for this.”

“The antiquities market can be as bloodthirsty as drug cartels. There are very deep feelings involved from many different sectors, and when they cross one another, it’s like lighting a stick of dynamite. We are quickly trying to cut this fuse, but we need as much cooperation as possible in order for that to work.”

“I understand.”

Marcus let out a breath and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “We’ll also need your phone.”

Sadie automatically tightened her grip on the handle of her purse, but not in surprise. Pete had checked in with her this morning and told her something like this might happen, so she’d already downloaded her contact list, text messages, and copies of her photos to her computer. “I thought you had all the text messages forwarded to your computer.”

“I need to verify it, as well as check for photographs and other communications. It’s how I prove that you aren’t a part of this. It’s how you get cleared of any suspicion.”

Being cleared of any suspicion sounded good to Sadie. “Will I get it back?”

“Eventually, yes,” he said. His demeanor seemed to harden back into that of police detective. “Because it was the method used to make the threat, we need to clear it through our technical forensics department before we can return it to you.”

She took her phone from her purse and handed it to Marcus. “Do you know
when
I’ll get it back?”