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Chapter 26

A few harsh, dry snowflakes dusted the tops of the vehicles in the driveway when Anne made her way to the kitchen to begin preparations for breakfast, but by the time Blake arrived and Wayne and Margaret returned, they had melted, though the day still promised to remain a grim and chilly gray.

Lilly bounced into the kitchen as the conspirators ate a hasty meal, followed by Nellie, whose bruises were even more prominent, and who walked as though each step had to be taken with painful deliberation.

Nellie. Oh, lord, Nellie. How could she have forgotten about her? Anne rose to go to the young woman, but Nellie spotted Blake at the table and stopped with a sharp gasp. "Sheriff?"

Blake rose. Anne saw the moment he realized the extent of the beating Nellie had taken, but to his credit, he hid that response from Nellie. "Morning, Nellie. You're just in time for breakfast. Come over and have some orange juice, honey."

Nellie cast a wounded, betrayed glance at Anne, but with Lilly bubbling through her good morning greetings to Wayne and David, she had little choice but to continue into the room.

David stood and held a chair for her, and by the time Nellie reached it, she was too weak to do more than collapse gratefully onto it.

David's eyes met hers over Nellie's head. Anne recognized his silent message. Nellie needed more medical help than a few aspirin and bed rest. She needed someone to take the responsibility of caring for her child while she healed; she needed someone to tend to her meals and her medication, and to see that her physical needs were met. She needed warmth and caring and loving.

And soon, very soon, all of those who could have given her that care and love would be leaving this house for several hours.

Nellie was also a wild card in their hasty and secret plans.

Could they trust her? Should they trust her? Or would confiding in her only give her a burden she wasn't equipped to carry?

Having completed her flirting, Lilly climbed into Margaret's lap and demanded juice. Wayne laughed. "Well, I guess that tells us who she thinks is really important."

"Not so." Margaret glanced up at her husband with a smile so full of love it hurt Anne to watch. "We saw who she went to first."

Already standing, David brought glasses, plates, and flatware from the cabinet to the table.

Nellie cringed from him. Without seeming to notice, David poured juice in her glass, passed her the toast, and spooned scrambled eggs onto her plate. Only then did he return to his chair by Anne's side.

Nellie looked at the food on her plate, at her daughter happily seated on Margaret's lap, and the people around the table who welcomed her into their midst and asked no questions. Her eyes filled. With a moan she stumbled to her feet. "I—I'm—Excuse me."

Anne watched as Nellie made her way from the room. No, damn it! The girl didn't need to be alone. And she was just a girl, even if she did have a four-year-old daughter. A girl who had to be in as much emotional pain as she was in physical pain. And if Anne understood anything, it was emotional pain. She tossed her napkin to the table as she stood. "Excuse me," she said. But without waiting for a response she followed Nellie.

Nellie sat on the edge of the bed. Her tears streamed unchecked; her fragile shoulders shook. "You think I should talk to Blake, don't you?"

Anne sat beside her and carefully pulled Nellie against her, cradling her, for the moment, against the pain of the world. "Yes, I do. But that isn't why he's here."

"It isn't?"

"No."

"I'm such a coward. My daddy always told me that. I thought—I thought when I saw all of you there that you were going to make me tell."

"But you came on into the room. And you sat there, even though you were obviously terrified. That doesn't sound very cowardly to me."

"But I—"

Anne held her shoulders and she leaned away and looked at Nellie's ravaged face. "Blake is here, and Margaret and Wayne, too, because something pretty serious happened yesterday. To . . . To David and to me. Something we need their help to deal with."

"Do you want me to leave?"

This child thought she was a coward? Good lord, did she know how much strength it would have taken for Anne to have asked that question?

"No. But we're going to leave you. I don't think you should be alone. What I think we should do is take you to Gretta for the day."

"And let her see . . ."

"And let her take care of you and Lilly. The other option is to leave you here alone. Lilly is wonderful, but she's an active four year old, and while I think you'll be safe here, I don't think you're strong enough to care for her right now. Not by yourself."

"Can I think about it a little while? Is there time for me to do that?"

"Yes. Yes, of course there's time. Why don't you lie back down. We'll send Lilly to you after breakfast, and you can give me your answer then."

 

The five of them crowded into the hidden room. David knew they had to begin. Frances would already have begun excavation. The longer they postponed this, the harder it would be.

Wayne had suggested one solution to the transport. To the burial. Tarps and sleeping bags. Anne had suggested another. Her vacuum cleaner looked incongruous beside a prehistoric relic.

She had gathered a great deal of soil with her hands and sprinkled it on the one opened sleeping bag they had spread to the immediate right of the warrior. Now the men exchanged troubled glances. It would either work, or it wouldn't.

Some sort of canvas lay across the ribbing of cedar poles. Would it hold?

David stepped to the head of the burial, Blake to the right, Wayne to the left. With quiet, drill-like precision each bent and grasped the visible tarp. Anne watched quietly from the foot until they started to rise. Then she stepped closer and grasped the tarp. And Margaret moved to stand beside Wayne, also sharing the responsibility for disturbing the grave.

The contents shifted and slid as they lifted and the ancient tarp ripped in places, threatening to tear completely, and sending dirt slithering down to the old wooden floor, but it held while they moved the few feet necessary and lowered it to the waiting bag.

The cats remained quiet.

Or maybe this was one of those times when they wouldn't hear them.

"Whatcha doin'?"

David jerked to his feet. Anne whirled around. The others seemed frozen in place.

Lilly. Four-year-old Lilly, who was supposed to be safely downstairs in her mother's care, stood at the opening from the closet.

All innocence, the girl came into the room and walked to Wayne's side. "Will you play hide and seek with me?" Trusting, totally ignorant of the danger she was in, she lifted her arms to Wayne to be picked up, and when he did she plopped her thumb in her mouth and looked down at the copper-covered skeleton.

"Did he get dead?"

Anne's eyes met David's, begging for guidance. Hell! How was he supposed to know what to do?

"Yes," he said. "But it was a long, long time ago."

"And it's a secret, Lilly. A big secret."

Lilly studied Anne's words. "Like the man who hurt my mama?"

"Yes, darling," Anne told her, finding words David couldn't. "But it's a secret even your mama doesn't know. A secret she must not know. No one else must know."

"What you don't know can't hurt you?"

"What?"

Lilly slid her little arm around Wayne's neck. "My grandma told me. I'd ask her, and she'd say that. But it did. My mama kept saying she didn't know, but he didn't believe her. That kind of secret?"

Annie's smile almost faltered, but she managed to hold onto it. "Yes, darling. That kind of secret."

"Okay," she said, squirming. Wayne shrugged, but he let her down. What else could he do?

Lilly bent to the jumbled pile of grave goods. The crystal jaguar had shifted to the top of the pile. She picked it up. David sucked in a breath, but nothing growled or menaced, and after a moment, she put it down and looked at the copper mask covering the skull. "Will you put him someplace where nobody can hurt him again?"

He saw Anne's eyes close. In prayer? Maybe.

"Yes, darlin'," he promised her. "That's what we're doing now."

"Okay." She flashed him a brilliant grin. "I've got to go back to my mama now."

The five of them watched in stunned silence as she skipped from the room.

Blake broke the silence. "What will we do?"

"Nothing," Wayne said. "There's nothing we can do."

"Yes, there is." Annie picked up her vacuum cleaner hose and switched the machine on, sucking the spilled dirt into the clean bag.

Yes. There was. David recognized the wisdom of her actions. He reached for the second sleeping bag and shook it open over the burial, then knelt to connect the zippers.

It wasn't the perfect solution. The grave goods jostled together inside the combined sleeping bags, and Annie hadn't been able to get all of the soil. The floorboards had dried out over the years of darkness, had shrunk and separated, and now a generous portion of the grave dirt lay between them and the subflooring or the ceiling of the room below. But it was a solution.

The rear seats of the Suburban had already been removed by a previous owner in an attempt to convert a nine-passenger truck to a hunting camper. It all would fit. They'd make sure of that. Anne and David had decided they couldn't risk separating any part of it at this point, not even with the dirt. And they couldn't risk the lives of any of their friends by asking someone else to transport any of it. The three men maneuvered the sleeping bags into the back of the truck. The poles were the problem. But they, too, fit. Barely, by extending them over the back of the front seat and bracing them between the windshield and the rear cargo door.

David slammed the cargo door and turned to Anne. "We need to go."

"Yes."

But first there was something else that must be done. He went with Anne back into the house. The bedroom door was open. Lilly played quietly on the floor beside the bed where Nellie slept. Anne sat on the side of the bed.

"Nellie."

The young woman moaned and turned her head on the pillow.

"Nellie. Wake up. We need to take you to Gretta's now."

"Oh."

Nellie eased up against the headboard, grimacing and holding herself against the pain. "Now?" she asked.

"Now." Anne told her.

"Let me—I—" Nellie shook her head and then sucked in a sharp breath. "I was going to say, let me wake up, but I think that just did it." She fell quiet, breathing with deliberate care. "I don't think I can. Not just yet. In a little while, maybe. Probably."

"We have to leave now, Nellie."

Nellie bit at her lip. "I can call Gretta in a few minutes. I can ask her to come for me. I will. I promise I will."

Anne didn't look convinced, but she knew they had to go. She gave Nellie a gentle hug and Lilly a fiercer one. "Take care of your mama, cupcake. Do you know how to dial zero for help?"

"Of course."

Anne brushed her lips across Lilly's hair. "Of course. How silly of me."

 

"We had to leave her, Annie," David told her later, on their way to the mounds.

"I know."

"She'll be all right."

Anne looked at him over the barrier of the cedar poles separating them. "I know that, too."

Frances had told them to where to park. A road ran along the east side of the park, back out of sight to a parking area where the archaeology students had camped the summer they helped excavate the Plaza. From there, half hidden now by briars, a stile crossed the fence and led to the north side of Craig Mound.

Blake led the way in his Jimmy, insisting they might need his police radio to summon help.

David and Anne followed in the Suburban.

Wayne and Margaret guarded the rear and brought the tarps and shovels they might need.

Frances met them at the stile. "We have freezing rain, maybe snow in the forecast for this morning."

Damn! Nothing about this was going to be easy.

But maybe it was. The tractor had started. And Frances had been busy. Very busy. She had already stripped sod from the back of the mound and stacked it neatly to one side and had opened a pit low in the back side of the mound. It was much lower than the relatively late burial of this man would have put him. But it was wide enough to accommodate the width of the poles and the litter burial, and it was long enough to accommodate his height.

They hurried. Even Anne, who'd visibly had to force herself to climb the stile and help carry the warrior into the park. The chances of being seen from the distant road were slim, and Frances argued that because she occasionally gave private tours she could explain their presence, if necessary.

They laid the poles in place over an all-weather tarp, laid the sleeping-bag-encased warrior on top of the poles, as he had been placed centuries before, straightening the bag even while knowing the goods would probably resettle themselves the way they had over the last fifty years, and finally they covered the entire burial with another all-weather tarp.

The six of them stood silently. David felt he ought to say something. His Catholic God was used to words at a time like this. He saw Anne's lips moving in familiar ritual and pulled her close with an arm over her shoulder. Each of them was having a similar problem.

Each of them was forgetting something very important. He looked around at the cluster of friends, so like mourners, who shared this moment. Six of them. Burying a fortune without one complaint about the loss of that fortune. Burying a man that none of them had known but who would forever be a part of their lives. "The words he would want to hear have already been said."

Anne smiled up at him through misty eyes. "Yes." She too looked around at the conspirators. "Thank you. All of you."

"One last thing." Frances pulled a plastic bag from her pocket and knelt beside the grave where she tagged the bag to a zipper pull.

"What?" Anne asked.

"Just a warning," Frances told her. "In case he's ever found, those who find him have to be warned to keep this burial together."

It was done.

All that remained was to close the grave.

Wayne commandeered the tractor, freeing Frances from this last, heavy work, and when the bulk of the soil had been replaced, they all took shovels and rakes and tamped and packed and filled, and eventually covered the raw wound on the mound with the waiting sod.

The snow started as they were gathering tools, preparing to leave. Frances looked up as the wet, fluffy flakes began drifting to the ground in rapid succession. "Thank you," she whispered.

She straightened and handed the shovel and hoe she had picked up to David. "Go now," she said. "These roads can get treacherous."

They went. At Fairview they all pulled into the parking lot at the sheriff's office. They looked at each other, but there didn't seem to be anything further to say. At least not now. Without speaking, Blake left his Jimmy and walked toward the courthouse, Wayne and Margaret turned toward an alternate route that would lead to their isolated mountain, and David and Anne headed for a purple house now emptied of its curse.

But maybe not quite.

 

David had expected the eerie sensation that first warned him of something ominous in the house to be gone when they returned.

It wasn't.

Or maybe it was his own depression he felt settling over him as they reached the top of the driveway and he parked the Suburban. Depression caused by the knowledge that he still had nothing to offer Anne Locke.

He turned off the key and sat in the truck and looked at that damned blank wall that he had first seen—what?—ten days ago? Only ten days? Eleven now. It seemed as though this house and this woman had been a part of his life for years. If they had been, would David now be considering telling Annie they had no future?

He felt her hand on his cheek, turning him to face her. "Don't say it," she told him. "Don't even think it. Not yet. We have the rest of your month. Besides," she said with a tremulous smile, "we haven't necked in this wonderful truck yet."

He pulled her against him and buried his face in her glorious hair. Annie, my Annie, he cried silently. I don't want to leave you. I never wanted to leave you.

But he would.

It was inevitable.

Why?

The snow had followed them south and intensified in the higher elevations of the mountains surrounding Allegro. In the minutes since they had stopped it had gathered in the corners of the windshield and built up against the wiper blades, although it still melted when it touched the hood. He glanced around. The outbuildings were already dusted white.

"We'd better go in," he told her and watched his breath condense in the rapidly chilling air.

She rubbed her cheek against his chest and rested it a moment over his heart, but eventually she lifted her head and pulled away from him. A seductive smile softened her eyes and parted her lips. "Yes," she said. "I think we'd better."

They made it into the kitchen before she turned to him again. The door had been unlocked. He frowned at it, trying to remember if they had left it that way. Surely not, not with Nellie in the house. But Annie shrugged out of her jacket and dropped it to the floor, and she lifted her hands to peel him out of his.

Annie, an intentionally seductive Annie, was almost more temptation than he could resist. He caught her hands with his, stilling her. "Do you know what you're doing?"

She grinned at him. "I hope so. But if I don't, can you teach me?"

"It's called an affirmation of life, Annie."

She looked at him, all seriousness now. "I certainly hope so. But it's also called love, David. Something we're going to have to talk about. But not yet. Not just yet."

No. Please, God. Not yet. He wasn't ready to leave her yet. "Right. So what do you say to closing up the house, taking the phone off the hook, and locking ourselves in an upstairs bedroom for the next three weeks or so?"

She lifted her hands to his neck and stretched against him. "Sounds good to me."

"I'm afraid that will have to wait a while."

Anne's hands clenched on his neck. David jerked his head up to confront the menace in the words that had just echoed across the kitchen. She tried to turn, but he pressed her face against his chest and held her still.

Joe Hansom stood in the door to the butler's pantry. He looked as immaculate as the last time—the only time—David had seen him. From his black, western-cut leather coat, black denim jeans, black triple-stitched custom boots, to the .38 Colt revolver held in his black-leather gloved hand.

"This is not a good idea," David said, moving to place Anne behind him. He'd hidden his pistol inside a tin on the top shelf of a cabinet near the sink when he'd realized Lilly would be in the house. Fifteen endless feet away.

"Don't move."

Maybe not as immaculate. And definitely not as contained. There was a wildness about Joe, in his eyes and in the jerky motions of his head, that David had not seen at the café. And he was, after all, Crazy Marian's grandson.

"Is whatever you want worth this, Hansom?"

"I said don't move."

David opened his hands behind Annie's back, but he refused to release her. If necessary, he could spin with her held this way, turning to put himself between her and Joe.

"Step away from her. My argument's not with you."

"Oh, I think you just invited me into it."

"Hush, David," Annie murmured against his chest. "Don't antagonize him."

Tiny tremors worked their way through her in wave after wave. Oh, hell. It was Chicago all over again. She had to be thinking that. There was no way he was letting her go. "It's all right, Annie," he said softly. "It's all right."

"What is it, Hansom? What do you want?"

"I want to know if she's going to file charges. I want to know why you've been spending all this time with Blake Foresman. I want to know where that secret room is. And you're going to help me find it.

"It's all connected. I know that. I just had no idea it was here, in the house. If she'd told me that in time, I could have bought it. I would have bought it. And then the two of you wouldn't have been snooping where you have no right to snoop.

"So move away from her and come on, slowly, carefully. It's upstairs. I know that much. I've been talking to that crazy old woman for years, and she finally gave me enough of the pieces to figure that much out.

"Move!"

"Annie," David said, feeling the shudder that wracked her at Joe's sharp command. "You can do this, darlin'." She nodded her head against his chest once, quickly, and raised her head. Maybe she could do it. And maybe this was the final straw that would send Anne Locke so far inside herself she'd never find her way out. "We can do it," he promised her, "together."

She took one step back from him, under her own power, and stood waiting. "Together," he said again.

"Upstairs," Hansom said. "Come on. Let's go."

David didn't know how Annie made it up the stairs unless it was by raw nerve. Each time David reached to help her, Hansom poked the gun in her back, far enough away that David had no chance of disarming him.

At the top of the stairs Hansom stopped them. "Now," he said, "where do you think my crazy grandmother would hide a secret room?"

Annie raised her head and looked at Joe with eyes that had already seen too much death to doubt what would follow. "Where do you think, Joe? Someplace where she could have easy access."

She was going to tell him. And why not. A protracted search might have given David more opportunities for a chance at overpowering Joe, but perhaps the shock of discovering he was only hours too late might do the same.

"You know!"

Anne drew herself tall. "Of course I know. But it will do you no good."

Joe gestured with the gun.

Damn it, Annie, David thought. Take your own advice. Don't antagonize him. Not now. Not until I can take advantage of it.

She led Joe directly to Marian's old room. Directly to the closet. Directly to the panel. Opened it for him. And stepped out of sight into the hidden room.

"Damn it!" Joe yelled. "Come out of there!"

"Don't you want to come in, Joe? Don't you want to see what your grandmother has kept hidden for fifty years?"

David's mind raced through a quick mental inventory of what was left in the room. A couple of barrels. A broken and discarded bed frame. A chest of drawers against the windowless wall. Anne's vacuum cleaner with its metal wand. Maybe. Maybe, if he could just get to it. If he could just make a moment for surprise. Don't do anything rash, Annie. He sent the thought silently. Please don't do anything rash.

She turned on the light.

Joe waved him forward and through the opening, but he followed too quickly for David to do more than reach Anne's side.

Inside the room the man stopped and stared at the siding visible through the windows, at the tattered floral wallpaper, at the dismal furniture and bare-bulbed light. He shook his head and turned in a wide circle, searching the room but never completely taking his attention from David or Anne.

"Where are they?"

His cry rang through the room, shocking even him. He rocked back on his heels and took a deep breath. "Where are they?"

Yes, where are they? David wondered, but about something that had to be completely different. A pair of golden attack cats would come in handy right about now.

But they were gone.

Protecting the dead.

"This is all there is," David said. "This is what you have been paying for, for how many years, Joe?"

"No. You've found them. You've done something with them. But you haven't told Foresman. Not yet. I'd have known if you had. So there's hope. There's hope."

Was there?

"Found what, Joe?"

"Oh, no. No you don't."

And when Joe Hansom looked at them with Marian's eyes, David knew that there would be no escape. Not for both of them. But if he was careful, if he played this man just right, maybe Annie would live. Please, he prayed, to his God, to the god of the man they had just reburied, to any god who would listen. Please let Annie live.

David took a half-step forward. "Found what, Joe? Or who?"

Beside him, Anne sucked in a sharp breath and tensed. But she wasn't staring at Joe; she was staring past him.

Oh, God. He almost moaned. Lilly stood in the opening. There was no way he could tell her to run or hide without calling Joe's attention to her, and she did that herself, darting past him to run to Anne.

"What the—" Joe spun around and fired a shot that went wide. Wildly wide.

Now or never, David thought. I love you Annie. He sent that thought to her. Be safe. Please, God, be safe.

He felt the blow. It knocked him to his knees before he reached Joe. Too soon. Too soon.

And finally he heard the sound. Annie's body jerked as though she had been shot, too.

Beg, darlin', he tried to say. Do what you have to, but live. God, yes. Please live.

But Annie didn't beg. With a screech, she thrust Lilly behind her and ran at Joe. "You will not kill him," she screamed. "You will not kill him!"

He couldn't move. His legs wouldn't work. His knees wouldn't straighten. Not even his hand would raise. He could only watch as Annie, brave, foolish Annie, tackled a man with a loaded revolver and as Joe—two Joes now in his rapidly blurring vision—caught her and twisted her around, holding the gun at her throat, as a shadow—someone—edged from the opening into the room, swinging something . . . swinging something high and hard and connecting with the back of Joe Hansom's head as the noise echoed through David's and finally his knees gave out and he fell the rest of the way to the floor.

 

"Damned hard head."

"Hush, Blake."

David swam back to consciousness and a ringing in his head that resembled Big Ben at noon inside a closed car.

Consciousness.

He didn't die.

Annie leaned over him with a cloth in her hand. A bloody cloth. God. A head wound? How bad?

He could think. He could see. And even with that infernal clanging in his head, he could hear.

He could feel. Hands. Feet. Arms. Legs.

Annie's expression as she looked down at him was grave. But her eyes were clear. She had cried. He could see the evidence of that on her cheeks. But she wasn't crying now. And she was here, fully here, with him. Not locked inside herself.

"I don't believe it, Huerra," Blake said. "Yeah, I do. Pete said you were stubborn. Just thank your lucky stars that your skull's so thick and Joe was such a bad shot."

"Hush, Blake," Annie said again.

He'd been moved, stretched out on that hideous sofa in Marian's sitting room.

That was a good sign, wasn't it? He tested moving his tongue and his lips. "Lilly?" he croaked.

Anne's hand stilled on his head. Her eyes closed and her head bent forward. Almost touching his. Almost.

"She's fine," Anne said. "She came to tell us that she had dialed zero and told the operator that the bad man who hurt her mama was here, that Doc Anne needed Sheriff Blake right now, and that she'd found the key and let her mama out of the closet where Joe had locked her."

Joe. Damn! He was the one who had terrified Nellie. "Who— Who took him out?"

"Nellie." Anne's eyes filled with more tears and her voice caught. "She swears she's never going to cower from anyone or anything again as long as she lives."

"Is she—"

"She'll be all right." Annie answered before he had to force out all the words. "Margaret and Wayne are here. Margaret's with her."

"You?"

She touched her palm to his cheek. "I think I know how Nellie feels."

It was good—it was more than good—having her hovering over him, touching him with such tender care, if the damned bells would quit long enough for him to remember what had seemed so clear just before Lilly burst into the hidden room.

He shifted on the sofa and dragged himself up.

"Be still," Anne ordered.

"I'm fine."

She choked on a laugh. Or was it a sob? "You're not fine. You've very probably got a concussion."

"And a dashing bullet wound" he asked. He had a feeling she would be leading him a merry chase for the rest of their lives. Hell, might as well play this damned headache for a little sympathy. It would probably be the last he got from her.

She shook her head. "Close, but no cigar."

He turned his head—bad mistake—to look at the bloody cloth she had stashed in the basin beside him and the suture tray beside it.

Once again she laid her hand against his cheek. Tears and laughter mingled in her eyes, but it was Foresman who spoke. "Hell, Huerra. The really spectacular wound came from hitting your head on Annie's vacuum cleaner when you passed out."

 

"No hospital."

He remembered saying those words, and apparently someone had listened, because when he awoke again, he was in bed. His and Annie's bed. He was alone, covered against the cold with the electric blanket turned on, staring at a buildup of fat, wet snow in the window ledges.

And the ringing—the gonging—had stopped.

Damn! A head hard enough to deflect a bullet. And taken out by a vacuum cleaner. If Pete found out, he was never going to live this down.

But he was going to live. For a while there he'd been too damned sure he wouldn't. And Annie was going to live. With him.

He made a few tentative stretches with his legs. They worked. They worked just fine. He eased himself to the side of the bed and sat up.

And he was still dressed, except for his boots and shirt. That simplified matters. He looked around the room and found his duffel bag. Carefully he knelt and rummaged through it until he came up with a pair of loafers. Better than boots anyway, right now. No tugging. No jarring. He slipped his feet into them and stuffed his arms in a soft, worn flannel shirt. Then he turned and came face to face with his bandaged, battered reflection in the dressing table mirror.

Matched bruises.

Damn.

If Joe had to shoot him in the head, why hadn't he had the decency to keep the bruise on the side that was already discolored? Now he really would look like an outlaw.

Joe. Joe. Where are they? Found what, Joe? Or who? Where are they?

And then he remembered what he had seen so clearly just before Lilly ran into the room.

"Oh, hell."

The cops were gone. Nellie and Lilly were gone. Everyone was gone except Wayne and Margaret, Blake, and Anne. David found them in the kitchen, still the only warm room in the house, all looking frazzled and about as bad as he felt.

"Caffeine," he said from the door to the hallway, remembering a morning only a few days before when he had teased and bullied Annie into feeding him and giving him coffee and letting him out of a trip to the hospital.

Anne jumped up from her chair and started toward him. Halfway across the room she stopped and frowned at him. "You belong in bed."

He grinned at her. "Go with me?"

Blake choked back a laugh.

David looked at the three still seated at the table. Now was as good a time as any, better than most. "I'm going to marry Anne Locke. The sooner the better. You're all invited."

Wayne smiled at Margaret and lifted his hand in salute. "Don't you think you ought to ask her?"

"Good idea. Annie, can I please, please have a cup of coffee?"

Anne closed her eyes, shook her head, and sighed. "Sit down," she insisted. "At least do that."

Gladly. Maybe he wasn't up to all that still had to be done. Nonsense. It had to be done. He pulled out a chair and eased himself onto it.

"Do me a favor, Huerra," Blake said. "Next time you decide you need a little peace and quiet, may I suggest Alaska for your vacation? Antarctica? Anywhere but my county? I'll be doing paperwork and fighting reporters over this day's work, and that's just the part we'll tell them about, clear up until time for reelection. What in hell got into Joe? What they was he screaming about? He didn't see the cats, did he?"

Annie leaned against him, her arm over his shoulder. David drank in the warmth of her closeness. "Is it time for some more of those nice horse aspirin yet, Doc?"

Anne shook her head. "Don't press your luck. Blake can have an ambulance here in a heartbeat."

"Yeah." And the time for teasing had passed. "How about the county coroner?"

"What?"

David slipped his arm around Annie's waist and returned her hug. "Joe may have meant the burial and the artifacts, but I think the they he was talking about was much more current than the cats. I think he was talking about Walter and Lucy.

"I think Marian was holding him to her with more than the promise of a fortune, even a sizable one. That she was probably up to her old tricks of blackmail and coercion.

"With Joe's political aspirations and their family history, that wouldn't have been too difficult. And if bigamy or adultery or incest, take your pick depending on Marian's mood, wasn't enough of a scandal to keep him in line or was too far removed, why not throw in a couple of murders?"

"Marian killed them? Not the cats?"

"She never really said the cats killed them. Not to us. She quite pointedly didn't answer when I questioned her on that. What she said was the curse killed them. What she said was that they were trying to move the burial, maybe like we did, to keep it safe, but we'll never know for sure. That she returned the items that they had taken and picked up the cedar box to take it to the country with her and get rid of the woman's miniature, too. Remember, Anne?"

"Yes." She pulled a chair close and sank onto it. "But where are they? And why didn't anyone find them?"

"I think because no one was looking in the right place. She was in the hospital for weeks, Marian said, weeks and weeks and weeks. Ellie went with her. While they were gone, no one would have come up here, at least not after the original search, because of the story of Ralph and the curse, because of Marian's insistence on supernatural killer cats. And when Ellie and Marian finally returned, no one could find Walter and Lucy.

"The car in the barn, Anne. The one your mother said Marian wouldn't let anyone drive. The car that sat through World War II with all its tires intact and the key in the ignition?

"I don't think Walter and Lucy went anywhere, because I believe Marian took her dive down the stairs before she had a chance to get rid of their bodies."

 

Blake and Wayne lifted the bar and opened the doors to the barn, but when they found the trunk lid on the old Ford coupe stuck, Wayne brought a pry bar from his truck and handed it to David.

The miasma of despair surrounding the car hadn't weakened. Beside him, Anne shuddered. Did she feel it, too? Or was he the only one?

He swallowed once—did he really want to do this?—and jammed the pry bar under the trunk lid, beneath the lock. It didn't budge; he simply didn't have the strength. Annie stepped aside as Wayne moved forward. He put his hands on the pry bar beside David's. "Let me help."

David searched Wayne's eyes and saw an acceptance of what was and what must be that was older than time. Yes. It was right for him to help. Together they bent over the bar, joining their efforts, until the old lock snapped and the lid popped loose.

"Blake?" David stepped back in acknowledgement of Blake's jurisdiction.

Blake fitted a towel under the edge of the trunk and lifted.

"Hell."

One syllable. Not three. But containing a wealth of emotion.

Annie clutched his arm. David dropped the pry bar and clutched her.

Was this the way she had felt when she grieved for the warrior? It felt as though it must be.

The two skeletons lay in the bottom of the trunk. Walter, for that was who it had to be, the larger of the two, lay on the bottom. The side of his skull that was visible clearly showed the fracture that had killed him. Lucy, smaller, almost tiny, lay draped over him, her arms and legs positioned awkwardly behind her as though she had been bound, but looking as though even in death she comforted him.

Annie burrowed her face against David's chest and moaned. Too much. This time it was too much for him. He turned, holding her tight and walked from the barn into the bright, harsh light reflected off the snow covering the yard, leaving the others there to deal with the reports and the realities.

He'd never be able to prove how Lucy Hansom died, but he knew. She'd died in the trunk of that car huddled over the body of the man she loved, hearing the cars and ambulance arrive for Marian and then the silence as she waited and no one came for her.

He stopped and grabbed Annie to him. "Whatever you want to do, Anne Locke, and wherever you want to live, I'm going to be there with you. City. Small town. Mountaintop. Deserted island. Somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn't matter anymore. Just as long as we're together."

Had he known all this at some level when he made his declaration in the kitchen? Somehow he thought he must have, that he must have known since the day he woke up on the side of the road and found her ordering him around and working her way into his heart. Back into his heart?

"And don't think you're getting out of this deal in thirty days," he warned. "This is forever, lady. Forever."

She turned her face up to his. Her eyes were washed with tears, but he saw enough love in them to last more than a couple of lifetimes. "Yes," she said. Just, "Yes."

It was more than enough.

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Framed