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Chapter 9

What waited in the secret room was as overwhelming as it had been earlier. For both of them. Anne felt David standing close behind her at the foot of the array heaped up around the copper-covered skeleton within the confines outlined by the cedar poles.

But maybe it was getting easier to view this scene, or maybe her eyes were just becoming more accustomed to the forty-watt lightbulb.

The area defined by the cedar poles was perhaps six feet by eight feet. The body—she couldn't think of it in any less personal terms—lay in the center of that area on the remains of what appeared to be some kind of mat, although it was difficult to see for the profusion of items piled upon it.

She saw two wooden barrels and several boxes in the corner of the room. She made her way over to them and found them empty except for a small amount of dirt in the bottom of each of them. The same dirt, probably, that she felt sliding beneath the soles of her shoes. The same dirt that she saw in small piles among the artifacts and which lightly dusted everything within the boundaries of the cedar poles.

"Did you find anything?" David asked from the other side of the burial.

"No. Just dirt. And maybe the way he was brought up here."

"Then let's get on with it."

The harsh, bleak sound of his voice echoed her own emotions too closely for her to begin to examine. Deciding it fell in that area of things they wouldn't dwell on, she nodded, carefully walked around the perimeter of the burial and knelt beside David.

Almost reverently, he touched a round, engraved object four inches or so in diameter that rested on top of a pile of other engraved shells. Anne recognized the design on it as he lifted it and held it so the uneven light could illuminate it. "This is a gorget," he told her, again turning the item in the light so that she could see. "It's engraved on a circle of conch shell and made to be worn as a neckpiece. These two small holes here?" He pointed at a place near the top of the disk. "These were drilled so that a thong could be inserted." For a moment she thought he was going to place it back with the others. "I hate to separate this," he said.

"I know."

"I'll want to make a tracing of this before we send it away."

"Is it very valuable?" she asked.

"Yeah. Oh, yeah. If it's authentic, and I don't think there's any doubt of that, it won't really matter where it originally came from. It—Yeah. It's valuable."

"Something your friend Jack might decide actually belonged to him?"

He was silent for a moment. "I don't think so, Annie, but greed's a strange thing. It can make thieves of people you'd swear on your life were honest. So just to make sure Jack stays honest, we'll do the tracing, or photocopy it if we can find a copier, and—I don't know. Can you register overnight mail?"

"I don't know. I've never tried. Doesn't it have to be signed for anyway?"

He didn't answer, but he put the disk in the small box she had selected for it and then moved the larger box closer to her. "Do you want me to get it?" he asked.

He didn't have to say what "it" was. The unspoken words hung between them, all out of proportion, as everything had been since they'd pounded their way into this room. Leg. Thigh. Femur. She snatched onto that clean, impersonal word, hoping it would bring reality into their own private twilight zone. It didn't.

Did she want David to get it? Did she want David to be the one who desecrated an already desecrated grave? Anne didn't want either one of them to, but that was irrelevant now. She shook her head, trying to erase images of the skeleton before them as he once must have been—living, vital, dynamic—and leaned forward.

The copper plate covering the warrior's right thigh was in two pieces. It had been hinged. The remains of what appeared to have been leather thongs were still clearly visible. It also mirrored the copper plate on his left thigh. Two cats looked out from the armor, upright on their haunches. Their bodies twisted to one side for protection, but they were writhing, snarling, ready for battle. And she didn't want to touch either of them, but she knew she must. As reverently as David had lifted the gorget, she lifted the copper plate and laid it beside the thigh.

As much as she could see of the femur was intact. Part of it was still hidden by the copper plates that had covered the man's abdomen and groin. All connecting muscle, all flesh, had been gone for years, for centuries, but without the harsh intrusion of weather, the bone had taken on a soft, white patina, curiously unmarred by the green tinge ancient copper should have given it. Hesitantly, she reached for it.

A low growl seemed to come from all around them. Anne jerked her hands away and her head up, to meet David's frantic search of the room.

"What was that?" she whispered.

But then the wind rose outside and she recognized the scrape of that branch from the pecan tree that periodically threatened the roof as it raked against the side of the house. And sighed. "Wind," she said. "Just wind."

But still, she didn't want to go on. "Do we have to do this?" she asked David. "Can't we just sheetrock and paper over the closet wall and pretend we never found him?"

"And leave him here for your cousin Joe or someone else out for the quick buck to find?" David asked. "How long do you think it would take him and your buddy Hank Foresman to pick through and scatter this collection?"

Not long, Anne knew, and not with any respect. She reached again for the femur and couldn't help apologizing. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't do this if it wasn't absolutely necessary, and I promise to put it back just as soon as I can."

Walking over a grave? Yeah. They were doing that. Big time. And it didn't help that she felt an undue bond with the long-dead man whose grave they were desecrating. It didn't help that she sensed that David felt that bond too.

David's hand covered hers as she placed the femur in the box. His sigh echoed hers as they released the partially calcified bone. They remained kneeling there for a moment, then stood, not speaking. David was the one who reached over and replaced the copper armor to cover the length of missing bone. He picked up the boxes and stood, but waited until Anne had passed through the opening into the closet before he turned out the light and followed her.

Downstairs, the kitchen seemed abnormally normal. Anne left the room long enough to locate a package of white tissue paper in her gift-wrapping supplies. She gave it to David and he carried it to the round oak table where he made a tracing of the gorget. Together they located a box more suitable for the femur and carefully wrapped the bone and the gorget. They packed with the hope the fragile items would reach their destinations without damage and that the recipients would treat them with equal respect.

"I have labels and postage at the clinic," she told him when the items were wrapped and securely taped into their boxes.

"Good. It will mean Jack knows about you, but it might be better if it looks like these are really going out from the clinic. That way, no one around here will be curious about what we're sending overnight delivery on a holiday weekend."

"Do you really think anyone would even notice?"

"Annie, Annie," David said, with a grim sort of humor. "This is your small town. You know someone would. And if Cousin Joe is already suspicious about what you're doing in the house, you know it would be only a matter of hours before he or one of his friends began to wonder what you'd shipped off, and why."

David was right of course. Joe might not know about their friend upstairs, but since he'd so obviously sent Hank around to snoop he probably suspected something. And wasn't that a nice little piece of a puzzle she hadn't even been aware of until David Huerra came crashing into her life?

Anne looked at the long, squat box with the femur in it. Strangely, handling it, being responsible for it, caused her more concern than any thought of the small artifact David had said was so valuable. "You'll go with me?" she asked, but it wasn't really a question. She couldn't visualize carrying those two boxes through town without him by her side. She couldn't visualize him letting her do so.

"I don't think that's such a good idea. Not with that hole in the wall upstairs and with at least one person real curious about what's up there."

"Oh." He was right again, damn it.

David carried the packages for her, out to where she had parked Agnes, near the old barn. He opened the driver's side door, slid both boxes over the center hump until they rested on the floor on the other side, and turned to her. "Be careful."

For a moment as she looked up at him, she considered pleading with him to reconsider, to go with her. Pleading. Her. She had begged exactly once in her life. It had done no good. She couldn't suppress the shudder that ran through her.

"Annie?"

She shook her head. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that nothing was wrong, because she wasn't sure that everything wasn't wrong. But there wasn't anything either one of them could do about it right now except exactly what they were doing. "I'll be all right," she said as she climbed into the truck. "You be careful, too."

 

David watched until Anne had backed her truck to the wide, sparsely graveled area nearer the house, turned, and disappeared down the driveway.

Be careful.

His warning? Or hers? His concern? Or hers?

Did it matter?

Was it necessary?

He felt an all-too-familiar prickling along the back of his neck. Carefully, but with all appearances of casualness, he turned. Nothing. Nothing but the old barn, weathered, decrepit, all but falling down. Unless there was something or someone inside. He'd walked out here with Hank Foresman Monday, but they'd done little more than crack open one of the hinge-sprung doors.

Cautiously he began walking, pacing off his steps to the north wall and then to the rear of the barn.

Nothing. Nothing except a hastily made but ancient repair to the board and batten siding beneath the grime-blackened window on the rear wall: four one-by-fours laid unevenly across the siding and hammered in place with oversized nails. Nothing in the now bare, skeletal branches of the overgrown hedge.

He continued on around the barn until he once again stood in front of the doors.

Inside then?

Because the sensation of being watched was as real as when he first felt it. Because he had been through this too many times to disregard whatever warning system sparked this feeling.

Inside then.

He faced the doors. His service revolver lay safely stashed beneath the seat in the Blazer, half the oversized yard away. The locked Blazer. And the keys were on Anne's kitchen table. Whoever or whatever could be long gone by the time he retrieved them and his revolver.

He could risk a quick look. Joe was a bully but not necessarily dangerous. Hank was a blowhard and so out of shape David could outmaneuver him easily. The odds of him being physically harmed were minuscule so long as he wasn't taken by surprise, and there was little chance of that now that his early warning system had kicked in.

He stopped for a second with his hand on the ancient door. What an interesting qualifier his thoughts had just produced. Physically harmed. He shook off that thought and lifted the crossbar. He pulled one of the double doors open, keeping it between himself and the dark interior of the building. Then, moving quickly, he stepped to the other side and pulled that door open, too.

A hole in the roof helped light the back of the barn, although an old loft kept the north side in shadows. He stepped to one side to look into the dim interior to make sure that no one waited in ambush there, and saw only the rusted remains of an abandoned car, wheels and rotted tires sunk into half-composted leaves. It was an old Ford —fifty years or so old—with its windows rolled tightly up and covered with decades of grime. No one had touched those doors in years, just as no one had cleaned those windows, but to be on the safe side, he yanked down on the door handle, finding it every bit as filthy as it had looked. Finding it locked. He eased around the car. The other door was locked too, but the vent window on the passenger side cocked out at a slight angle. He found it stuck, but not locked, pushed it open and bent to look inside.

The car was empty, a rusting, mostly rotted hulk. He reached inside and jerked up on the door handle to free the lock. Damn. It didn't budge. He wiped at the lower corner of the window, smearing the dirt. The lock button sat squat and fat and still down, and what appeared to be an acre away from the vent window opening. He grimaced, but there was no other way. Leaning sideways against the filthy car, he stretched his arm inside along the base of the window until he felt his fingers touch the flattened top of the lock button. Thank God it was still there. He caught it, scissors fashion, between two fingers. Now, if he could just—yes! He felt a stubborn tension on it but it did ease up. He sagged against the car for a moment, and then withdrew his arm and opened the door.

What had he expected to find? He and Anne had used their quota of surprises in an upstairs bedroom. Or had they? A miasma of despair pervaded the interior, from the oversized dashboard with a key protruding from the ignition next to the starter button, to the small rear bench seat with its rusted springs clearly visible. Years of despair. A lifetime of despair.

Swearing, David slammed the car door, holding it shut with splayed hands as he leaned against it.

And then he realized what he had seen but not noticed before. Rust. In the humidity of this town, of this entire area, anything not zealously protected would rust and corrode in record time. Why hadn't the copper corroded? Other than the light sprinkling of dirt, barely more than dust, the entire hidden trove in that upstairs room had remained remarkably clean. Pristine. New.

Even the conch shell-core pendants had still carried the opalescent glow of new shell.

Why? How?

Not now! he told himself as he felt the despair from the car leaching its way out into his hands, up his arms. He jerked away and turned to continue his study of the barn. Four rotting tires without wheels rested against the wall along with what appeared to have once been harness and tack that had fallen from hooks on those walls.

Behind him, ladder-type stairs led to the loft.

And the back of his neck still warned him of something. . . . Something.

He tested the flattened rungs of the ladder and found them surprisingly secure, and when he gripped them and released them, his hands came away covered with still more previously undisturbed dirt.

He looked at his hands, at the ladder, and up toward the loft. Nothing was up there. Nothing could be up there unless it had wings. But still he climbed up and cautiously peered over the ledge into the loft. It was empty, entirely visible except for one corner that housed a pile of wooden boxes. David eased himself onto the flooring. Testing it, he found it sturdy. Sturdy enough, he thought, for a quick but careful examination of those boxes.

If the boxes contained anything, examination would have to wait, he decided when he reached the corner and discovered their primary purpose. Stacked as they were, they created an alcove, hidden from view, just large enough for—for what?

A gust of wind whistled through the barn, bringing in a chill and a scattering of dead leaves, and sounding at one moment suspiciously like the furtive laughter of young children, at the next like the sigh of a lover. David turned rapidly and felt the floor, not so sturdy after all, shake beneath his feet.

"There's nothing here." He spoke aloud, and the sound of his voice startled him almost as much as the wind had. But there was nothing there. If ever there had been, it was gone. Long gone.

He eased his way back to the ladder and down to the ground. Little remained in the rest of the barn: a pile of rotted lumber, a stack of discarded, beyond saving, furniture, the frame of what looked like an old hospital bed, and ancient trunk, empty, with the lock missing and the lid hanging crazily from one hinge. Nothing to explain the warning he'd been given.

Nothing.

Nothing except the car. The rusting, dead car. And the depression it had invoked in him.

Enough!

David whirled and marched out of the barn. He and Anne had enough to worry about without adding an abandoned car to the list.

Unless the car was part of the mystery.

He stopped. They had no way of ever learning if it was. Did they?

More carefully than he had opened them, mindful now of their age and disrepair, David closed the double doors and dropped the wooden brace into position, sealing whatever was in there, if anything was in there, securely inside.

 

Where the hell was Annie?

It was getting dark. Not really late, but dark. Too dark to be working in an unlighted closet, and David didn't want to open the frayed draperies in the upstairs sitting room or turn on any lights to advertise to anyone who watched that he was in that room.

And hell, yes, it was late. Too much time had passed since Anne left with the packages. She could have driven them to Fort Smith in the hours she'd been gone. She'd had more than enough time to fill in a couple of labels and waltz those two boxes over to the post office.

Unless something had happened to her.

"Damn!" The staple gun twisted in his hand, slamming his thumb between its handle and the edge of the panel he was constructing. He shook his hand, muttering at the minor pain. Carelessness. Stupidity on his part. He should have gone with her, would have gone with her if it hadn't been for that hole in the wall.

Well, that was just about fixed.

He had prenailed the remaining piece of trim. Now he aligned it along the edge of the paper-covered drywall and tapped it into place. He carried the drywall into the closet and fitted it over the opening that he had enlarged until it stretched between the two-foot centered studs, from the base nailed to the floor to the brace he had nailed between the existing studs just below the closet shelf. The paper matched, compliments a cheesecloth backed strip he'd cut from the inside closet front wall above one of the doors. And the trim matched those pieces he had nailed in place over each of the studs, making the stained vertical strips appear to be part of the original finish of the closet rather than an afterthought.

It would do, he thought, as the makeshift door eased snugly into place and blended into the surrounding wall.

Like it had never been disturbed.

He'd done most of the cutting and trimming downstairs, so with a minimum of pickup, this room would look like it had never been disturbed, either.

And then, by God, if she wasn't back, he was going after Annie.

He was returning the last of his tools to the converted sleeping porch adjacent to the kitchen when he heard the kitchen door open.

"David?"

"Where the hell have you been?" His growl burst from him before he'd even thought the words, surprising him as much as it must have surprised Anne. He dropped the armload of tools and drywall leavings and trim and whirled to face her.

And saw the blood.

"Annie?" His voice came out soft and shocked.

"Annie," he said again, louder but still not much more than a whisper as he moved into the kitchen, as he crossed to where she stood, as he gripped her shoulders. "What happened?"

"What?"

She followed the direction of his eyes, to the blood splattered on her shirt, clearly visible between the edges of her open jacket. "Oh, damn. That."

"Hell, yes, that," he said, drawing her toward the table. "Sit. Are you all right? What happened?"

With his hands still clutching her shoulders, he used his foot to nudge a chair out from the table and pushed her onto it. God, she was small. Why hadn't he ever noticed before just how small? Just how fragile? He felt the bones of her shoulders, of her arms, beneath his hands, but he couldn't ease his hold on her, not even to pull her jacket away and search for injury. He shouldn't have let her go on alone . . . go out alone. She wasn't prepared for the dangers. "Who did this?"

"David." Anne looked up at him with confusion at first darkening her eyes, then concern, before she smiled gently. "Bobby Preston. It's his blood, not mine. He was playing Superman and tried to fly off his parents' garage. He landed in his mother's rosebushes. He's the reason I'm so late. Now. Are you all right?"

Was he? Or had he gone completely over the edge? He didn't like not being in control, and he hadn't been. Not once today. Not since finding the body. Not in the barn. Not even now when any fool could look past the blood splattered on Anne Locke's shirt and see that she was not bleeding from any wound but that she was pale and drawn and that probably the last thing she needed was some madman interrogating her and shaking her hard enough to dislodge the pins in her hair.

And any fool could also see she was trying desperately to distract him from the subject of his interrogation.

He dropped his hands from her shoulders and spun around. "Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. I'm just dandy."

"Then why—" Her voice cracked, hoarsened. "Then why are you carrying your revolver?"

Damn! He felt for the small of his back, where he had tucked the revolver into his jeans.

"What happened while I was gone?"

He looked at her and tried for a grin—anything—to erase her worried frown. "Would you believe nothing? At least, nothing with a rational explanation."

She shook her head, and her chin came up a notch. "Everything has a rational explanation. Sometimes we just have to look harder for it than at others."

"Like our friend upstairs?"

He saw the change that clouded her face, saw the shudder she couldn't quite suppress. Low blow, Huerra, he thought. What are you going to do next? Find a puppy to kick?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "Exactly like our friend upstairs. Now, please tell me what else has happened."

He sighed, dragged out a chair and sank onto it. "Nothing, Annie. Absolutely nothing. I guess I just let my paranoia get out of control."

"How?"

Let it go, he wanted to tell her. But he sensed she wouldn't. And maybe she ought to know how far out of control he had let his imagination get.

"I—When you left today, I had a bad feeling about your garage."

"Bad enough so that you armed yourself to investigate?"

"Bad enough that I would have, if my weapon hadn't been so far away and if I hadn't been so sure the intruder would escape if I took the time to go get it."

"And did he?"

"Hell, Annie, there wasn't anyone there. Just a falling down barn, a rusted-out, locked hulk of a car, and a pile of clutter."

"Then what was the problem?"

"The problem was—" He reached across the table for the envelope with the drawing he had sketched only hours earlier, but he couldn't hide behind studying it. Not now. "The problem was, it felt as though there was someone there. There was no reason for the emotions I felt as I broke into that car."

"Like upstairs."

He heard no question in her soft voice, only a resigned statement of fact. For a while, he'd wondered if maybe he'd imagined the intensity of feelings—his and hers—in that upstairs room. Now he knew he hadn't.

"Yeah," he said. "Like upstairs."

"God." Anne folded her hands in her lap and sat up very straight. "Do I have to go out there, too?"

"No. Not now. Maybe not ever. But haven't you been in there? Haven't you—"

"I've been in there," she said. "Six months ago. I wondered about hauling off the old car. I considered trying some kind of renovation on the trunk but decided it was too far gone. And I climbed far enough up the ladder to see that the loft probably wasn't secure enough for exploring, and that except for those boxes in the back, it was empty."

"And felt nothing?"

She shook her head. "But then—and you're not going to like this—I never felt anything strange in this house or around it, until last Saturday morning."

She was right; he didn't like it. Whatever was here had been here a lot longer than a few days. It had been firmly in place before he felt the first chill shudder over him as he stepped down from Anne's truck. Unless— Unless Anne wasn't being as forthright as he had thought. Unless Anne had an agenda of her own that he knew nothing about. And now he needed to change the subject.

"With all the excitement at the clinic, were you able to get to the post office?"

She grimaced. "Not exactly. But I did get them mailed," she said quickly. "Margaret—you remember my nurse?—saw the crowd at the clinic and stopped to help. I had the packages ready to go when Bobby's family brought him in. I'll admit, I worried about it, but it was either that or run the risk of letting them sit until Friday, so I asked Margaret to carry them to the post office for me."

"And she did? You're sure?"

"Yeah, you're right," Annie said. "Your paranoia is working overtime. You met Margaret. What's not to trust? Besides," Anne fumbled in the pocket of her jacket and dropped a square of folded paper onto the pile of invoices, "she brought me the receipts."

He tried for a grin. Maybe he made it. "Once upon a time," he told her, "I was a reasonable, sensible person."

"You're sure about that?" She delivered the words deadpan, but he saw a glimmer of humor in her eyes.

"Come on," he said. "I'll show you what I've done while you've been off hobnobbing with the small and famous. And run something past you that I think will provide some additional protection as well as a reason for you to be up in the sitting room at odd hours."

"Do you really think someone is keeping tabs?"

"Do you want to accept at face value that Cousin Joe really doesn't suspect anything about our friend, and that Hank Foresman is just trying to make amends?"

She didn't answer, but she didn't have to use words to tell him that she trusted Joe and Hank no more than he did.

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