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Chapter 15

Downstairs, Anne fumbled through the kitchen drawer for her address book. There's no reason to worry, she kept telling herself, but her hands shook so badly she could barely turn the pages, barely see the number. David lifted the book from her and carried it to the table. There, he kicked out a chair for her and began dialing.

Anne couldn't sit. Did he think she could sit until she talked to her friend?

There's no reason to worry.

Why didn't Karen answer? There. Thank God. Someone picked up the receiver. Her answering machine?

Anne held the receiver with both hands. She didn't realize she was rocking back and forth until David scooted the chair behind her knees and pushed her onto it.

The message was blessedly brief. Anne waited for the beep and spoke as quietly, as calmly as she could, but she heard and hated the tremor in her voice.

Karen's voice interrupted Anne's garbled message. "Anne?" she asked with a shaky laugh.

"Karen? You're all right?"

"Yeah. You've heard already? My word, bad news does travel fast. I thought you were so far in the boonies I'd have a chance to . . ." Karen's voice faded. "Sorry. It wasn't me. I don't know when they will release the name to the news media, but it was a lab assistant. Not me. And they haven't found the animal yet. If it was . . . an animal. But, hey. Thanks for calling. I'm still a little shaken. He had—He had some of my things—my driver's license—in his lab coat. The cops talked to me—it seemed like for hours. They didn't want to believe I didn't know him. Anne, he's probably the one who's been calling and, yes, stealing my things from the lab and from here, and I didn't even know him."

Karen's voice broke on a sob. Anne shivered. Cold, she was so cold and it had nothing to do with winter or high ceilings. She looked up at David, then gestured toward the telephone. He pulled a chair close and dropped his arm over her shoulder. She nodded, thanking him for the warmth and the comfort and tilted the telephone receiver so that he could listen in.

"Tell me what happened," she said softly.

"I wish I knew," Karen told her. "I wish to God I knew. Or maybe I don't. I saw him. I'm a pathologist. I work in a morgue. And I have never seen anything like that in my life."

"Karen."

"Yeah. Right. I—I don't know how to tell you this. But your bone's gone. I guess I'm glad for more than one reason that you called. I didn't know how you'd feel about my telling the police. I haven't yet. I didn't know it was gone until after they had released me to go home. I don't know if it's relevant. I don't know if he took it, or where it is. I can't give you any kind of report, except that, yes, it is old. More museum age than homicide, but I'd just gotten to the lab, just opened the package, when we had this damned impromptu staff meeting. And that went on and on and would probably still be going on if we hadn't heard the screams from the stairwell. Anyway, when I finally got back to my office, the box was in the cabinet where I'd put it, and all the packaging, but the bone was gone. I'm sorry, Anne—"

She saw David's eyes close, saw his lips thin, saw a nerve twitch in his jaw.

"Don't worry about it," Anne said. No, Karen, she thought, you won't have to. There are two people right here who will do all the worrying for you. She glanced at David. He nodded. "Do what you think best about the bone," she said. "It's no—It's no big secret. My uncle was an antiquities dealer. I was pretty sure it was something he had brought in, back in the thirties, but I wanted to be certain. You've confirmed that. Just—Are Rae and Mollie there? Or are they gone for the holidays?"

She heard what sounded like a sniff. "They're both due back any time now."

"You're sure? You don't need to be alone right now."

"I know," Karen told her. "My first reaction was to come home and hide, but I have a neighbor here with me now. I'm okay. Or I will be. I just don't know why this has upset me so much. After all, in my line of work—"

She heard the murmur of a man's voice in the background. Good. Karen might think she ought to be indestructible, but no one as softhearted as she was could face violent death on a personal level and not be affected. Anne knew from firsthand experience. "Hush," she told her friend. "See if your neighbor can find you some brandy. And for God's sake, call me if you need me. Heaven knows you were certainly there for me."

David replaced the receiver, but he left his arm over her shoulder, and the two of them sat in stunned silence until Anne whimpered, "I almost killed her. I almost killed her. If he hadn't stolen the femur, Karen would be dead, too. Why? Why, David?" But, of course, he had no answer.

The sky outside had gone completely dark, dotted in the distance by the lights of Allegro that only a short time before had seemed so pleasant. The table remained cluttered with the remains of their dinner. The ceiling gleamed under its coat of paint. All the things that such a short time ago had brought her so much pleasure now seemed to mock her. What in God's name was happening?

And almost simultaneously the two of them noticed what was missing from the clutter on the table. David picked up the address book and moved it. He removed his arm from around her so that he could scoot bowls and plates to one side, but the gorget wasn't there. He rested his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. "I don't want to go back upstairs. I don't want to know if it's returned."

Feeling as though she were moving on automatic, the way she had too often in med school, Anne got up and checked the back door. It was still locked. She leaned against it. "We have to go," she said. "We left the panel open. We left the light on."

Upstairs, the copper plate had resettled over the warrior's right femur, and on the edge of one cedar pole, half on, half off, lay a four-inch diameter shell gorget, marked with one unique nick, and easily identifiable as the one in the tracings.

 

They found no wires. No microphones. No hidden speakers. No electronic intrusion of any kind. With the aid of electric lighting where it was available, supplemented by two powerful flashlights, David and Anne searched the room where the grave goods lay, the closet, the adjoining sitting room with its chimney flue and plumbing run, the room in the north wing of the house, which must at least partially abut the hidden chamber, even the attic. They found dust. Lots of dust. And cobwebs. And, except in the attic where David and Wayne Samuels had worked the day before, no sign that anyone other than he and Anne had been anywhere near the walls, ceilings, and floors. Certainly no sign of any large animal.

And no one but the blind fool he had been only hours before could possibly believe that Anne Locke had any knowledge of what was happening, or how.

"There has to be an explanation," Anne said when they had completed their search and returned to the hidden room. "A logical, reasonable explanation."

Yes, there had to be. But God alone knew what it was. Anne stood at the foot of the litter, looking down at the warrior as though he could tell her what that answer was, and she hadn't yet noticed what David, standing just behind her, had seen the moment they reentered the room. The gorget no longer lay on the cedar pole.

They had left their flashlights in the sitting room, but David didn't need extra light to find the gorget. He knew where it would be—and it was—on the top of a pile of beads and engraved shells near the skeleton's copper-covered right shoulder, if not exactly where he had first found it, then so close his eye couldn't tell the difference.

David lifted his hands to Anne's shoulders and pulled her against him. "Look," he said, nodding over her shoulder toward the floor.

She sucked in her breath when she, too, saw that the shell had been moved. For a moment, she shrank against him. Then she straightened. "An explanation," she repeated. "All we have to do is find it."

Downstairs, David took a flashlight, his service revolver, and himself outside to search the perimeter of the house. Anne tried to go with him, but he stopped that foolishness by the simple expedient of glaring at her and pulling the door closed behind him. He found nothing. Of course, he found nothing. Life couldn't be that simple.

Anne spun around in alarm from where she stood at the kitchen sink when he opened the back door to return to the house.

"Nothing," he said. "I found nothing."

She didn't nod, smile, or ask any questions. "I'm putting the food away," she said, wrapping and scraping and reorganizing the remains of the holiday feast with quick, jerky motions. "What we really need on top of everything else is a case of ptomaine or salmonella."

David propped the flashlight on the table, tucked the revolver into the belt at his back, and began stacking and scraping their used dishes.

"You don't have to—"

"Yes, Annie," he said, silencing her protest and carrying the stack of dishes to the shallow sink. "I do."

 

They worked in silence. There were too many questions and too few answers for any conversation.

They had just finished drying the last dish when Anne heard the unmistakable sound of an engine coming up her steep driveway.

David's head jerked up and he cocked his head. Listening. "Someone's coming," he told her.

"Great," she said, sagging back against the counter. "That's just great."

"You don't get many drop-in visitors."

Anne choked out a laugh. "You noticed?"

Only emergencies. That thought sobered her. Not now, she thought. Please God, not now. I don't think I can handle anything more tonight.

Instead of coming on to the back of the house, the car stopped at the front, engine idling, where an overgrown and seldom used walk led to the front door. In the six months she had lived in the house, only three people had come to the front door: a salesman, and a pair of Mormon missionaries.

David walked to the back door and flipped on the light that illuminated the back porch and makeshift parking area, opening the door as he did so. After a moment, she heard the car resume its journey, then stop, then a door slam. She stepped to the back door beside David.

Blake Foresman. The sheriff. Oh, God, it was an emergency. Without knowing how they had gotten there, she found her hands clutching David's arm.

David glanced back at her. She couldn't call the expression on his face a frown, it was much too solemn for that, much too ingrained. But it softened slightly as he looked at her. He lifted his hand. For a moment she thought he might touch her cheek; with a shock she realized she was standing close enough to him for him to do so. Instead, though, after a lingering inspection of her face, he dropped his hand to hers in a light caress before he unlatched the screen and pushed it open.

"Blake," he said easily. "What brings you up here? Is there a problem?"

Blake wasn't in uniform. Anne grabbed that piece of information. He wore dark slacks, boots, a leather jacket, and a western hat, but he wasn't in uniform. "I don't know," he said as he stepped up onto the porch and removed his hat. "Evening, Doc." That formality concluded, he returned his attention to David. "I was across town when I glanced this way. Thought I saw a light bobbing and swaying around outside up here. After what you told me this morning, I thought I'd better check it out. You folks have any trouble?"

What had David told him? Anne found she still held David's arm. She released her grasp on him. David glanced over his shoulder, giving her a look she knew he meant to be reassuring, that he meant to tell her he hadn't betrayed any of her secrets. And she believed him. Just like that. She dredged up a smile and stepped back slightly so that he could, too.

"Come in, Blake," she said. "I was just getting ready to heat up some apple pie."

"Well, now," he said easily, smiling but wary as he entered the house. "Does that mean yes, you did have some trouble, or no, you didn't?"

David latched the screen behind the sheriff and closed the back door. "I was outside with the flashlight earlier."

"You hear something? Find anything?"

David shook his head. "Maybe to the first, no to the second." He turned toward Anne. "Do you need some help?"

"No," she told him as she reached for the coffeepot. "This will only take a minute. Why don't the two of you sit down?"

But they didn't sit, neither one of them, until she had filled and plugged in the coffeepot and started toward the refrigerator for the pie.

"Doc? Why don't you sit for a minute, too. There's something I've got to ask you."

She'd suspected Blake was a more than competent lawman; she'd heard it said and seen his quiet, calm professionalism herself too many times to doubt her instincts. But until now he had never turned his professional demeanor toward her. "What is it?" she asked.

He pulled a chair out from the table and stood behind it, waiting. With a shrug, she sat. Only then did he pull out a chair for himself on the opposite side of the table. "Huerra?"

David glanced at him but reached for the chair beside Anne.

"Is your search outside the reason you're armed?" Blake asked.

David sighed and shook his head. "Damn," he said as he felt for the pistol at his back. "Let me just put this away."

Blake grinned. "Good idea."

David stashed the pistol in a drawer and took the seat beside Anne.

"So," Blake asked. "What did you hear?"

"I don't know for sure what it was," David told him. "Or even where it was. Whatever it was, it was big."

Which was certainly true. As far as it went. Anne shuddered at the memory of those footfalls. At the memory of Karen's description of the lab assistant.

Blake nodded. "And no prints outside?"

"None that we could find."

"We might ought to get Samuels up here to look tomorrow. He's a pretty good tracker."

"He didn't find anything last time," David said.

Blake studied him steadily across the width of the table. "Just the same," he said finally. "I want him to look.

"Now, Doc," he said, smiling grimly, "I've got to ask you about a bone."

So Karen had told. Well, there really wasn't anything else she could have done.

"The Chicago P.D. called me a little while ago. They'd run your name through their computer but they wanted to know what I knew about you since you'd moved back here, and what I knew about a bone you'd sent to one of the Cook County medical examiners, a bone that disappeared today in connection with a particularly nasty homicide."

"A right femur," Anne told him.

"Yes. According to what Dr. Ready told them, an old femur. A very old one. I was just wondering, Doc, where you got it, and why you didn't run it through my office."

Those were good questions. Questions she wasn't sure how to answer. There wasn't any way she wanted to take him upstairs and show him where she'd found the femur. And where it was now. And yet, he wasn't going to leave without an acceptable answer.

"I found it upstairs," she said, deciding to stay as close to the truth as she could. "In a closet. I don't know if you knew that Uncle Ralph was an antiquities dealer, that he was involved with buying and selling artifacts and, according to what my mom told me, involved somehow in the early excavations at Spiro. I was pretty sure the bone was old enough to be an archaeological find, something left over from his days in the business, so I didn't want to bother your office with it. But believe me, if Karen had told me any different, I would have called you in a heartbeat."

"Any idea why somebody would want to steal it?"

"It was just a bone, Blake," David said. "A centuries-old bone from a very tall, very dead man. It had no monetary value. But from what Dr. Ready said Wednesday and again tonight when we talked with her, things belonging to her have been taking missing for a while. It's possible that whoever is responsible for taking those items also took the femur."

That too was true. As far as it went.

"Yeah. That's kind of what me and the Chicago detective came up with, but I had to check it out. Have you two been here all day?"

David nodded. "Yes."

"Can anybody confirm that for you?"

Alibis? Surely Blake wasn't asking them for alibis. Surely no one would think they had anything to do with a murder in Chicago. Unless they searched and found that damn bone.

David smiled grimly. "I saw you a little before seven this morning. Pete Tompkins called me here about six this evening." He glanced up at the ceiling. The new ceiling. "You can ask Samuels what shape this room was in when he and his wife left here last night."

"Pete got in touch with you then?" Blake asked.

"You knew?"

Blake nodded. "I was having dinner with Gene and Gretta when he called. I don't suppose you want to tell me what that was all about?"

Anne couldn't help it. She stretched out her hand toward David. He took it and wrapped it in his. "A homicide," he said. "But then I suspect you already knew that."

"Yeah," Blake said. "I know Pete. I like Pete. And when he called tonight, I talked to Pete. Doc, you want to tell me what was in the box you sent to Townley?"

"I sent it, Blake," David said. "Anne just used her supplies to mail it. You see, the bone wasn't alone. There was an engraved shell artifact with it. I sent it to Townley to see if it might shed a little more light on when and where the bone came from."

"Any idea why somebody might want to steal it?"

"Yeah," David said. "If my suspicions are right, several thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand more."

Blake gave a low whistle. "Yep. That's motive enough for murder, all right." He glanced toward the counter. "I think I'll take a cup of that coffee after all, Doc."

Anne brought cups and the coffeepot to the table. Even though she suspected Blake's request was a delaying tactic rather than a desire for coffee, she poured and smiled and resumed her seat and gave him the time he seemed to want. Gave herself some time.

"Let's see if I've got this in order. Wednesday night, Samuels sees what he thinks are mountain lions prowling around this hillside. Would I be wrong in thinking you shipped those packages out Wednesday?"

"Wednesday afternoon," David told him.

Foresman nodded. Anne suspected he'd already known that. "And Friday, noon or so, after one of your packages arrives, a man is killed in his locked house in Dallas by some sort of wild animal, and a couple of hours after that, after another of your packages arrives in the M.E.'s office in Chicago, another man is killed in a county building secure stairwell by some sort of wild animal. And tonight, you're out searching the yard because you hear something that just might be another wild animal. I leave anything out?"

Anne closed her eyes. "No."

"Did you leave anything out?"

Just the mention of a fortune in grave goods, Anne thought. Just any mention of an armor-clad skeleton. Just any mention that the two items sent had returned to that skeleton. "Such as?"

Foresman leaned forward. "What I'm asking, Doc, is, did you send anything else out in Wednesday's mail? Am I going to get a call from some other jurisdiction wanting to know who you are, wanting to know what was in the package, telling me of still another murder?"

"No," David answered for her. "We sent only the two items."

"Things like this don't happen in my county," Blake said. "I don't like this. I don't like this at all."

Neither do I! Anne wanted to cry. I came back here to be safe. I came back here to—To hide. Oh, God, yes she had, even if she had never fully admitted it until now.

"I don't like it either, Blake," she heard David say. "That's why I'm staying here tonight."

"Good." Foresman stood, picking up his hat, and looked down at Anne. "Good. You keep her safe."

"I will." Now David stood. As he walked with the sheriff toward the door, Anne knew she should, too, but as she started to rise, David looked back at her. "Keep your seat, Annie."

She heard them. Just because they stood outside on the porch, did David think she wouldn't?

"I'll be on duty at eleven," Blake said. "I'll try to stay here in the south end of the county. If you need me, holler."

"I will," David told him. "And thanks."

"The two homicides have to be connected. I know that; you know that. Any idea who might be behind them?"

David gave a short laugh. "If you'd asked me right after Pete called, I probably would have come up with all sorts of theories, and even a couple of suspects. But the lab tech doesn't fit with any of them."

"Yeah."

Their footsteps sounded as they moved across the porch, but their words still carried into the house.

"It really isn't your problem, Blake. Both murders were outside your jurisdiction."

"Yeah, right. But it sure feels like my problem. So I guess I'll keep an eye on this place as much as I can, maybe find out where Joe Hansom was today. And I'll stop by Wayne Samuels's place tonight before it gets too late and tell him you'd like to see him up here tomorrow morning."

David stayed on the porch until Blake turned his car around and drove down the hill. Then he closed and locked the door and leaned against it. "We're going to have to tell him, you know."

"Tell him what, David? What in God's name can we tell him?"

"If I knew that, Annie, I would have done it already."

Anne buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry I got you messed up in this. All you wanted to do this month was fish and think."

"I'm not."

He crossed the room quietly until he stood behind her. He lifted his hands to her shoulders and with deft, sure strength began kneading her knotted muscles, easing the tension that had gripped her since Pete Tompkins's telephone call.

She moaned a little and surrendered herself to his touch. No, she wasn't sorry, either. Not really. She didn't know if she would have had to face the problems in her upstairs room if he hadn't been here. On one level, she almost suspected she wouldn't. But he was here, and she did have the problems, and she didn't know how she could face them without his help.

And she didn't know how he had so quickly become a part of her life, or why his touch was so impossibly familiar. So blessedly welcome.

Too welcome.

David was a cop. A big-city cop. And after his vacation was over, he'd go back to being a cop. In a world she could never return to, a world where violence and death were commonplace, where children were victims and attackers, where life was no longer valued, where blood and screams—

She pulled away from his touch. "You don't have to stay with me tonight."

He sighed but dropped his hands. "Sure I do. I just can't decide whether I need to stay downstairs, to protect you from anything breaking into the house, or upstairs, to protect you from anything breaking out."

"I'll be all right alone. I've lived here for months without anything happening."

"Got a road map?"

"David, I'm serious."

"So am I, Annie. I'm staying. Now, do you have a road map?"

"Why?"

He grinned, his little-boy-gone-bad grin, and she knew he wouldn't answer. At least not completely. "Because I thought that after Wayne gets here tomorrow, we might take a little day trip. Say, up to Spiro? Check things out. And then, depending on what we learn, we might try to find your crazy aunt."

 

David didn't sleep. Since Annie's bed apparently wasn't an option, he'd chosen the downstairs sitting room to camp out in. It was a little far from Annie's room, but with its uncovered French doors and double windows it was the most logical room to watch from. But damn it was cold. He didn't want to risk the exposure the light from a fire would bring to the room, so he wrapped himself in a blanket and lay back against the arm of the lumpy old sofa.

Anne Locke. What the hell was there about the woman that made him feel as though she had been a part of his life forever? And was she completely immune to him? Occasionally he suspected she wasn't, like tonight when she moaned as he had worked the tension from her neck. Tonight, when she had pulled away from him as though he were the animal that had killed those people.

But she hadn't objected when he had taken over as host tonight, as though he had every right to: inviting Blake in, walking him out, answering the questions he had directed at Annie.

Well, what the hell was he supposed to have done? Let her go out on the porch alone to see who was coming? Flounder around wondering how to be honest and still not tell the sheriff what he really didn't want to know?

Hell, he didn't need this. Anne Locke was a forever kind of woman. He was a washed-up cop. She had a medical practice and a hundred-year-old home and roots in a small town. He had a career down the tubes, a rented condo, and a knowledge as old as he was that he could never live in a small town. She also had a not-so-small fortune in antiquities in an upstairs closet. He had, at most, savings to hold him for a year, a police pension that wouldn't take effect for another five years, and a limp little 401K he'd been meaning to add more to but just hadn't got around to it.

So why did he feel as though he had just found a part of his life that had been missing forever? Why did he feel as though he belonged down the hall in that impossibly romantic bedroom with that impossible woman?

He looked up at the ceiling. "More lessons?" he asked. "Do you mind cluing me in as to what course we're studying this time?"

He got no answer, but then, he seldom did.

And if he was to get answers, what he really needed to know was what force, what power, had he and Anne unlocked when they knocked the hole in that closet wall.

Were they responsible for the deaths of two people?

And were they, and possibly anyone around them, in danger?

Damn! Maybe he shouldn't drag Samuels into this mess. Wayne had already been through enough hell for a dozen lifetimes.

The sound was faint, just a whisper of noise from the direction of Anne's room. David cocked his head and listened. Yes. There it was again. He threw off the blanket and rose, easing his way to the door, into the hall, toward the stairs.

It was Annie, going quietly, stealthily upstairs.

David frowned but lowered his revolver. What the hell was she doing?

He gave her a moment before following.

She'd closed the closet door, but a strip of light found its way beneath it and into the sitting room and told him all too clearly where she was.

Damn it! Didn't she realize she could be in danger?

Still, he didn't barge into the room. He eased the closet door open and just as cautiously sidestepped boxes and the panel until he stood in the opening.

She knelt on the floor at the foot of the litter, her dark red flannel nightgown pooled around her like so much blood. In one hand she held the small cedar box, open now, with its engraved mica lid in her lap. With the other, she touched the carved shell images. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

The warrior was not aware of her. He'd never again be aware of anything as he lay there in solitary splendor. But David was aware of her, so aware it hurt, as she knelt grieving for a long-dead man.

He wanted to go to her, to yank her away from him, to tell her she was his, by God—

But something wasn't right.

"Annie?" he asked softly.

She didn't answer.

"Annie?"

Carefully he knelt beside her. When he reached for the box, she resisted only slightly before letting him take it. He placed the lid back on it and put it on the litter.

"Annie," he said again.

When she still didn't speak, he lowered his hands to her shoulders and turned her toward him. "Annie," he demanded. "Answer me."

She looked up at him, her eyes unfocused, then shuddered. At that moment, and only then, did she seem aware of him. Her face clouded with pain and then softened as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, holding on to him for dear life. "You're all right," she said. "It was just a dream. You're all right."

Heaven. Or it could have been. But something still wasn't right. David held her away from him and looked down at her. "Yes. I am. But are you?"

"What—David?" Now he didn't have to hold her away. Anne pulled back and looked at him, questions and fear and the residue of pain all too obvious in her expression. She glanced around, and he knew that only then did she become aware of where she was. Of who he was. "How . . ."

He rose to his feet and lifted her to hers. She swayed slightly and he put his arm around her, to steady her, to anchor her to his side. She didn't fight it. Maybe she couldn't. Hell, he knew he couldn't.

"I followed you," he told her.

"But I—I never sleepwalk."

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against her hair. "I wish you hadn't said that, Annie. I wish to God this wasn't something else that we're going to worry and wonder about."

"What did I do?"

He lifted his fingers to her cheeks and brushed across the dampness still streaking them.

"I cried? Why?"

"I don't know." He pulled her up against him hard. Damn it, he'd tried. He'd done everything he knew to avoid the hell this was probably going to cost him, but in the last five minutes, all the rules had changed. "I don't know much of anything anymore. But one thing I do know, I'm not letting you out of my sight or away from my side until this night is over."

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