Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (44 page)

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.

A Dangerous Thing

277

“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.

278

Josh Lanyon

“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.

A Dangerous Thing

279

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 280

Josh Lanyon

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.

* * * * *

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.

A Dangerous Thing

281

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.