Wild Wild Death (22 page)

“We’re not sure,” I said, because leaping in with the story of the basebal fans would only muddy the water. “The cops are doing everything they can to find out. That’s why we need your help. Caridad, when was the last time you saw Dan?”

She considered it for a moment. “Two weeks or so. Yes.” There was a calendar on her desk and she stabbed one finger toward a date a couple weeks back. “He was here, putting the final touches on the entrance into the kiva.” After al Jesse had told her about the phony permits and the sacredness of the site, Caridad’s cheeks got dusky.

“And when you didn’t see him for two weeks…

didn’t that seem a little weird to you?”

“He told me he was going to Cleveland. To see you because… You must forgive me, Ms. Martin, I know this sounds bizarre, and as I said, I am a person of science. But you know Dan, so you wil understand. You know he has a tendency to not only think outside the box but to sometimes not even know where the box is. He told me he needed your help on this project because you are able to talk to the dead.”

This didn’t seem like the right moment for me to mention that the talent had deserted me, so I went on with my questioning. “I’m going to guess the kidnappers haven’t exactly given him access to his cel phone. Didn’t you think it strange that he hadn’t cal ed?”

Another lift of those delicate shoulders. “Dan is a genius. You know this. He doesn’t always fol ow rules. If he needed me, I knew he would cal . If not…

then I knew I would see him when he came back here to the mountain. Only now… now you tel me…”

Her voice broke and she got up and went over to the camp bed and the smal table next to it where there was a box of tissues. She dabbed one to her nose.

In an elegant sort of way, of course. “Do you think this has something to do with the bones of Goodshot Gomez?” she asked.

I jumped out of my chair. “You know about Goodshot?”

“I see I have touched a nerve.” Caridad swept back across the tent. No easy thing considering it was so smal and the two of us pretty much fil ed it up. “Dan, he always told me that here the spirits could be cal ed forth with the bones of one of the members of the tribe who…” She passed a hand over her eyes. “I am sorry. I do not remember very clearly except for this odd name, this Goodshot Gomez. When Dan speaks of the paranormal, I am afraid I do not always pay as close attention as I should. There is a legend about a sacred silver bowl with healing powers and the people who were once entrusted with the secret of its hiding place. This is the story Dan was drawn to, for the legend says spirits guard the bowl and they can be cal ed forth by those who know how and that this, it has something to do with the bones of one of the old ones. I do believe he thought you were the one who would know how to make this happen. Perhaps it is true since you know about the bones, too.”

“I was the one who brought the bones here to New Mexico. To ransom Dan.”

“So the kidnappers…” Caridad’s brow creased.

“They know about the bones and about the ceremony to cal the spirits? And they want to perform this ceremony so badly, they are wil ing to kidnap Dan to do it? It makes no sense.”

She was right. It didn’t. It didn’t explain about the basebal curse. Or Norma’s murder. Or why Arnie basebal curse. Or Norma’s murder. Or why Arnie had been gunned down right before he could talk to me.

I told Jesse al that later when everyone was off the mountain and he was leading the way back to the car.

We’d just passed out of the narrow passage and he said, “I dunno. It actual y makes plenty of sense to me.”

By that time, it was nearly dark and I stepped careful y around the jagged rocks in my path. “Come on. You weren’t listening to everything I told you. It real y doesn’t.”

He was standing at the driver’s door and he looked at me over the roof of the SUV. “Think about it, Pepper. Everything fal s into place. That is, if your friend Dan is the one who forged those papers. And faked his own kidnapping.”

I

t was bad form to argue with a guy who’d just gotten out of your bed—and had made the last few hours pretty spectacular.

That didn’t stop me.

When Jesse walked out of the bathroom, showered and dressed, I was ready to pick up the conversation he’d started right before he went in there, the same one we’d had on our way down the mountain a couple evenings before.

“You’re nuts.”

Big points for him, we were on the same wavelength and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. “Mine is a valid theory,” he said.

“Yeah, if you’re nuts.”

“No, if you’re not so involved with the suspect that you’re unwil ing to admit it’s possible he could be a suspect at al .”

“Except Dan and I are not involved.” I emphasized that last word, just like he had. “We’ve never been involved.”

“But you are friends.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Sure it does. You can’t see the forest for the trees. You think Cal ahan can’t be guilty because—”

“Because he’s Dan. And he can’t be guilty.” I crossed my arms over my chest and the plaid shirt I was wearing with my no-name jeans.

Since that’s exactly how Jesse was standing, we must have looked like a pretty pair. Apparently he realized it, because he’d left his boots by the side of the bed and he went over to slip them on.

“Cal ahan’s fingerprints are al over those forged papers,” he said, and that wasn’t exactly fair. He’d already dropped that bombshel the day before—two days after we’d visited the pueblo on the mesa and shut down the excavation there—and he didn’t need to keep reminding me. “And you know what the workers from the site told me when I brought them into the station for questioning. There was never any doubt at the site about who was in charge of everything from who worked there to where they were digging—Dan Cal ahan.”

“Of course he was in charge. Dan is smart.

Smarter than anybody I know. If somebody was going to be in charge—”

“In charge of an il egal excavation on lands that belong to the Taopi nation.”

I huffed. There wasn’t anything I could say. Not about that.

Time to change the subject. A little, anyway. “But Dan was kidnapped weeks ago!”

Leave it to a cop not to be swayed by the passion in my voice. “There’s no evidence to support that.” He stood up. “You know that as wel as I do.

Come on, Pepper, look at the facts.”

I’d tried. Honest. In the last couple days, I’d listened to every piece of evidence Jesse and his officers presented. To me, none of it added up.

Not the lack of anyone’s fingerprints but mine or Dan’s on the watchband that came with the ransom note.

Not the hunting cabin the pueblo police had found far out in the wilderness that looked like it had been recently occupied, but not like anyone had ever been kept there against his wil .

Not a body. Thank goodness, not Dan’s body.

It was frustrating. And confusing. And I groaned.

“But why would—”

“Cal ahan fake his own kidnapping? To get the bones, of course. When you talked to her, Dr.

Valenzuela told you that, more than anything, he wanted to excavate that site on Wind Mountain, right?” I guess Jesse took pity on me, because after staring at me for a heartbeat and knowing I wouldn’t give him an answer because I didn’t want to be forced to admit the truth, he barreled on. “She told me the same thing when I talked to her yesterday.

Cal ahan knew the bones were an integral part of a sacred ceremony. He knew that ceremony cal ed the spirits. That al checks out. The shaman confirms it.

Fol ow the logic here, Pepper. If Cal ahan is as obsessed with the paranormal as everyone says he is, and if he needed the bones to cal the spirits of the ancient pueblo—”

“Then why not just give me a jingle and ask me to come out for a visit and, oh by the way, bring a dead come out for a visit and, oh by the way, bring a dead guy with me?”

“I guess he knows you’re more honest than that.”

As compliments went, it was a good one. Too bad Jesse didn’t cut his losses and stop right there.

“Cal ahan knew you needed a real y good reason to break into a mausoleum and haul away a guy who’d been buried there for more than a hundred years,” he said. “He found one. And I’m sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but I guess you’re just not getting it. He played you. If you thought he was in danger—”

“Then what about Norma, huh?” A good question, and I gave him a sort of
aha
look along with it.

“There’s no connection between Dan and Norma.”

“Number one, there’s no connection between them that we know of. And number two, the sheriff here in Antonito is working that angle, and so far, he hasn’t found anything. For al we know, Norma’s murder may have nothing to do with any of this.”

I had to give him that. Even if I didn’t have to admit it. I lifted my chin. “Then what about Brian? You can’t tel me it’s just coincidence that he’s in Antonito, Colorado, when I’m in Antonito, Colorado. I saw him at the grocery store, remember. I fol owed him and he flattened the tires on my car. I saw him at Norma’s that one afternoon, and he’s probably the one who whacked me on the head and knocked me out. Brian and Dan—”

“Know each other from the ghost-hunting community so it real y wouldn’t be any big surprise if they were involved in this together. And speaking of that…” He raised his eyebrows. “Did you ever get a hold of that guy you said you knew back in Cleveland? The one you were with the night you ran into Brian and his friends? You said he might remember Brian’s last name.”

Talk about touchy situations. New lover asking about old lover, only new lover didn’t know old lover was a lover. Or a cop for that matter. No way I was going to mention any of that and have some sort of law enforcement bonding mojo going on. Once that happened, who knew what kinds of secrets Jesse and Quinn would share. I was in no mood to be the topic of their conversation. Or some weird game of macho one-upsmanship.

“I cal ed when you asked about it,” I reminded Jesse. “And again yesterday. He hasn’t returned my cal s.”

“Busy guy, huh?” I didn’t like the way Jesse said this. Like he already had his suspicions and he was just waiting for me to confirm them.

I guess it was just as wel that my cel phone rang.

“Quinn.” I recognized the number so I was talking as soon as I answered. “You got my message?”

“That’s not a very friendly hel o from someone I haven’t heard from in a couple weeks.”

Quinn is not the chipper sort so when I realized there was a bit of a lilt in his voice, it made me paranoid.

I turned my back on Jesse. Yeah, like that would actual y give me some privacy in a room the size of the walk-in closet I’d once had back home. “I’m working a case,” I said.

“With dead people?”

“No.” The whole truth and nothing but. “In fact, you’l be happy to know I can’t see them anymore.

The ghosts are gone and I’m on my own and—”

“Real y?” Don’t ask me why it interested him that I couldn’t see ghosts. When I could, he didn’t much care. “What are you doing about it?”

“I’m investigating without them.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

I actual y might have gotten irritated if he didn’t sound so damned perky. I know, I know…
Quinn
and
perky
. Two words that have never before been used together in the same sentence.

I crinkled my nose. “Are you okay?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I heard him draw in a deep breath and let it go in a kind of whoosh that said that, at least to him, al was right with the world. “Why haven’t you cal ed?”

“Phones work both ways. Why haven’t you cal ed?”

“I actual y did. A couple days ago. Before you cal ed me, in fact.”

A couple days ago, I was up on Wind Mountain at the site of the ancient pueblo. Not much oxygen up that high and, for sure, no cel service. “What did you want?”

“I was going to come see you.”

“And I wouldn’t have been there because, like I said, I’m working a case. And for this case I’m working, I need some information. So that’s why I cal ed. I thought you could—”

“You don’t have to wait for me to cal you. You know you can cal me anytime. Or hey, I could come know you can cal me anytime. Or hey, I could come over to your place right now. Then we can talk.”

“We could, but I need information now and—”

“How about dinner?”