Skeletons Among Us: Legends of Treasure Book 2 Page 7

  She didn’t think Rod could hold her any tighter, but he did.

  “I want today over with so we can go home. These people were my friends, but I’ve moved on. I want to be with … you.” He laughed. “Wow, did that sound as co-dependent to you as it did to me? I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Actually, it sounded wonderful to Maria. While she loved the outdoors and always looked for new adventures, she would have preferred this trip to be just her and Rod. Maybe it was the visit of Dakota’s ghost, or maybe there was something not quite right about Rod’s ex-classmates, but she was ready to go home too. The Superstition Mountains held many secrets, and Maria didn’t want to know any of them.

  “Maria?” Rod undid the bun in the back of her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders. It was one of his favorite things to do.

  Yes?”

  “Do you remember the test you read to me during the drive down to Phoenix?”

  “Uh … yeah.”

  “One of the questions asked if I’d ever told you that I loved you.”

  “… right …”

  “And, well, I haven’t. But only because I was nervous about how you’d react.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Maria’s gaze had drifted from Rod’s chiseled features to the hazy figure of Dakota, who had just decided to join them for their romantic sunrise moment. She was dressed in the same clothes as when Maria had seen her in Kanab—well-fitted brown hiking pants and a spandex exercise shirt. Her face was sad. So very, very sad. It made Maria wonder once again how her life had ended.

  “Maria? Hey, Maria?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Are you paying attention to me?” Rod’s voice was tight. “Do you know what I’m about to tell you?”

  Maria’s eyes flitted between the image of Dakota’s ghost and Rod’s face. “Uh … kind of.”

  “Kind of?” Rod repeated, slightly indignant.

  “Maybe you should wait to tell me anything too personal until your ex-wife isn’t standing right behind you.” Maria jerked her eyes to the spot. Then whispering she added, “She really is pretty, but she has a bad habit of sneaking up on people.”

  Rod spun around. “Here?” His voice was strained. “Where is she?”

  “Two feet in front of you.”

  Rod reached out and swatted. When his hands were about to make contact with Dakota, her shoulders and chest seemed to sink into another kind of dimension, leaving her legs and head clearly visible but her upper body in a haze.

  “What the …” Maria had never seen Acalan do that before.

  “I can’t see her.” Rod swiped again. “Are you sure she’s here? Like she’s a real ghost? Not one of your fake kind?”

  “I know the difference between my hallucinations and a real ghost. Dakota is here.”

  “I can’t see her.” Rod blinked hard.

  “Huh,” said Maria. “I wonder why you can’t see her this time? Maybe it’s because I’m with you?”

  “Talk to her.” Rod barked out the order. His face had turned a light red. Both of his hands fisted at his side.

  Maria had never seen him so visibly upset.

  “Ask her where she went. What happened to her. Why she left. Ask her—”

  Maria put her hand on Rod’s arm. “Okay. Hold on. One question at a time.” She turned back to Dakota, who seemed confused. She didn’t seem comfortable as a ghost. Not like Acalan was. Of course, he’d been a ghost for hundreds of years longer.

  “Dakota, where did you go when you left Rod?”

  The ghost moved her head in the direction of Maria’s voice, but she made no attempt to answer.

  “What’d she say?” demanded Rod.

  “Nothing. She’s not answering. She looks really confused. I’m … I’m not sure she knows she’s a ghost.”

  Someone cleared their throat in a loud, unnatural way.

  Rod and Maria jerked their heads to see who was there.

  Derrick was fully dressed, backpack on, ready to start his day. “Hey,” he said, looking at them very strangely. “Everyone’s eating breakfast at camp. Brian and I think we should head back to the main mountain range. We don’t want to be hiking too late today.”

  “Okay, we’re coming.” Rod turned back to Maria and whispered, “Is she still there?”

  Maria shook her head. Dakota had vanished.

  ***

  “I should have warned you about Tom.” Melissa wiped her sweaty face with her shirt sleeve. She and Maria were at the tail end of the group. The males of the group, including the dog Clyde, were ahead by thirty yards or so, which had given the two women time to talk everything girl for the last hour.

  “It’s okay.” Maria took a sip of water. “He caught me by surprise.”

  Melissa nodded. “Tom especially likes women who are already taken. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to defend him in court someday—he’s going to get himself into trouble. But I didn’t think he’d go after you. I thought he’d learned his lesson after what happened with Dakota.”

  “Rod’s Dakota?” Maria was glad she was having this chat with Melissa. The woman was a wealth of information.

  “Yes. Tom came on pretty strong to Dakota—on Rod’s wedding day of all times. Anyhow, nothing happened except that Rod punched him in the face. Which Tom deserved.”

  “I would have liked to see that.” Maria smiled. Rod was typically such a gentleman.

  Melissa laughed but then her face grew serious. “How long have you known Rod?”

  “Not that long. About four months.” Though, Maria had to admit, this morning at sunrise it had felt like she’d known Rod forever. “Of course, we did go to high school together for a year—but it wasn’t like we dated or anything.”

  “Rod has been through a lot,” said Melissa. “After Dakota’s disappearance the investigation was pretty bad. The news media was convinced it was Rod.” Melissa wiped her face again. It was a pushing one hundred degrees already. “I told him I’d be his defense lawyer, but in the end he was never charged.”

  The image of Dakota interrupting Maria and Rod during their embrace that morning came back to Maria’s mind. Rod’s ex-wife had been haunting him long before her ghost actually showed up. He’d been living with the fear and confusion of her disappearance for years.

  “I … I really don’t know that much of what happened. I saw a picture of her for the first time this week. She was beautiful.”

  “Yes, she was beautiful … and quiet. And shifty. But that is my opinion. Rod hardly knew anything about her. They met and married while Rod was doing a legal clerkship in Apache Junction—a small town not far from the Superstition Mountains, actually. He was at a firm that was in the area temporarily, working on a land dispute of some sort. I never said this out loud to anyone else, but sometimes I wonder if Dakota showed up in Apache and charmed Rod for his money.”

  “His money?” Maria stopped and looked at Melissa, open mouthed. “Rod had money?”

  “Yes. And unless he lost the Thorton Empire betting millions in Vegas, I’m pretty sure Rod still has money.”

  The Thorton Empire?

  Somewhere deep inside her, Maria should have guessed Rod didn’t make enough money being a lawyer in Kanab to afford all of the cars he owned. Though, other than his obsession with automobiles, she would have never guessed he was loaded. His house was average. He didn’t dress that fancy. And he never talked about the stock market and things that most men who were into their investments talked about.

  “You didn’t know about his money?” asked Melissa.

  Maria forced a smile. “Nope.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” said Melissa, as if she could read Maria’s thoughts. “I knew Rod for four years before figuring it out. You’d never know he was rich by the way he acts, well, except for his cars.”

  “I know, right.” Maria felt a little better about her ignorance. “What is the Thorton Empire, anyway? Stocks? Bonds? Real estate?”

  “Dead animals,” answe
red Melissa. “His grandfather started an animal rendering plant in the 1930s. The family has been wealthy ever since. They take something nobody else wants and turn it into gold.”

  “Do I even want to know what an animal rendering plant is?” asked Maria.

  Melissa laughed and took a sip of water. “Probably not. The way Rod explained it to me was they take dead animal carcasses, butcher scraps, even rancid grease from restaurants, and make it into dog food. Oh, and makeup.”

  “Like blush and mascara and … ew … lipstick?”

  “Yeah. Crazy, huh?”

  No wonder Rod said he liked Maria best without makeup. He knew all the disgusting ingredients the stuff was made of. She promised herself she’d be buying non-animal based cosmetics from here on out.

  “Nasty,” Maria concluded. “That’s not a glamorous way to become rich. Personally, I think a good stock portfolio would be easier.” Without meaning to, she reached up and started to pick her mascara off.

  “It’s definitely a more smelly way, that’s for sure. I went with Rod to visit the plant once. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. I thought I was going to die it reeked so badly.”

  If Rod had to be rich, it made Maria feel better to know that it came from hard, disgusting work. Somehow that made it okay.

  A commotion up ahead interrupted the conversation. Clyde had bolted and was barking like crazy near an outcropping of rocks.

  Both Brian and Rod called for the dog to come back, but he wasn’t obeying.

  As the women approached, Maria heard Rod say, “I’ll go get him.”

  “I’ll go, too,” jumped in Brian.

  “Why don’t we all go,” said Rep. Lankin. “With that kind of barking, the dog must have found something it’s quite proud of.”

  “Probably some kind of dead animal,” Rod said under his breath.

  He ought to know, thought Maria. It was nice to have some ammunition to tease him with later. She already had formed several road kill jokes to use during their drive home from Arizona.

  Burrs and thorns scratched at Maria’s legs as she, with the others, walked to the rocks where the frenzied dog was making a commotion. Upon arriving at the outcropping, nothing smelled amiss. Whatever it was had been dead a while.

  “Come on, boy,” said Brian, who was bent over trying to get Clyde to calm down. “Whatcha found there?”

  Melissa, Derrick, and Tom didn’t stop for the dog. They side-skirted the commotion and walked past the first rock.

  Brian was not having any luck with Clyde. Rod stepped up with the collar and leash. “You might need this to get him to—”

  A gasp from Melissa and a string of expletives from either Tom or Derrick or both stole the attention away from the dog. Maria, Rod, Brian and Rep. Lankin sprinted to where the others were on the other side of a large black, jagged boulder that stood at least ten feet high. Behind, was a collection of smaller rocks, haphazardly strewn about, intermixed with thin, tall rock formations that leaned against each other, making miniature slot canyons of sorts. Among the rubble was a set of human bones, still attached to each other in some places, but a few were missing. A rib here. A finger bone there. And the entire skull was gone.

  “It’s a headless skeleton,” said Rep. Lankin.

  “It sure is,” added Tom.

  Derrick made some sign over his heart—not a Catholic one. More like … honestly, Maria had no idea. Rod was again fixated trying to get the collar on Clyde, probably so the dog didn’t grab one of the bones and take off. Melissa pulled her phone out and was snapping pictures, mumbling something about “possible evidence.”

  “Evidence?” asked Maria. “Do you think this is a crime scene?” She took a step forward to get a better look. She’d take several forensic anthropology classes at George Washington University and had some idea of how to identify at least the gender of a skeleton by its pelvic bone.

  Rep. Lankin scraped at something in the dirt next to the bones.

  “Don’t—” said Maria and Melissa at the same time.

  The former professor proudly held up a plastic insert from a woman’s wallet. “This might identify the person.” The cracked and brittle plastic insert fell apart in Rep. Lankin’s hand. Several credit cards fell to the ground.

  Maria leaned over the decapitated skeleton. All of the flesh and clothing had long since rotted away. Being in the severe, open elements of the Superstition Mountains had not been conducive to its preservation.

  Clyde bolted from Rod’s grip and ran toward the bones. “Dumb dog,” he said, lunging for the collar.

  “From the shape of the pelvis bone,” said Maria, her analytical side kicking into full gear, “we’re looking at a deceased adult female. From the amount of epiphyseal fusion on the ends of the bones she was young—in her twenties maybe.”

  Exasperated, Melissa said. “Let’s step away and go get the authorities. Let them do their jobs. They’ll do their DNA testing and figure it out.”

  “There’s not going to be much DNA left.” Maria shook her head. “Exposed to the heat, sun, and oxygen like this. If she’d been buried even a foot underground, some preservation might have—”

  No one was listening to her babble. Instead, all eyes were on Rep. Lankin whose shaking hand held a yellowed driver’s license from the state of Arizona. “I … I … can’t believe it,” he said.

  Clyde had once again escaped from Rod and bee-lined it to a group of rocks shaped like a mound of deer pellets. His paws dug furiously into the dirt. Derrick continued making strange hand symbols. In fact, Maria thought she heard him quietly chanting something.

  “So who is it?” asked Tom, reaching out to grab the license.

  Rod beat him to it. He snatched the card from Rep. Lankin and turned it over in his hand. He looked at it and froze. A gag escaped his mouth.

  “What’s going on?” demanded Melissa.

  “The license belongs to Dakota.” Rep. Lankin looked at Rod who still hadn’t moved. “Dakota Thorton.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  [Peralta’s next] caravan consisted of as many as fifty men. Peralta took his (young) sons along this time… They had labored no more than a few days before the Apaches made their presence known. Many versions relate the massacre that followed… In the last moments of Peralta’s life, he pushed his sons into a deep crevice in the rocks and made a frantic dash down the canyon to draw the Indians away from the hiding place. He was quickly shot down. It may have been days before the two boys dared to creep out of the rocks … to safety.

  —“Mysteries & Miracles of Arizona” by Jack Kutz. Rhombus Publishing Company, 1992, page 20-21.

  HANDCUFFED AND SHAKING, ROD sat in the corner of the Superstition Mountains State Park Ranger Station. Maria stood a foot away from him. Arms hugging her own waist.

  The last six hours had been a blur. A sickening, maddening, horrible blur.

  “Er … Maria?” A wiry thin man dressed in a tan colored State Park uniform approached. His name was Troy Ferlund. As head ranger of the Superstition Mountains, he was the law officer in charge until the sheriff’s department arrived. In slightly broken English he said, “I think we need to get you—and him—a blanket.”

  “Blanket?” Maria absently repeated the last word she’d heard.

  Ranger Ferlund scratched his shoulder in rapid short movements, like an African monkey. His dark hair and dark eyes only enhanced his resemblance to a primate. “I don’t mean to pry, but you don’t look so good. I think you’re in shock.”

  Shock? Of course she was in shock. She’d begun the day watching the sunrise in Rod’s arms, and now she was about to watch it end with Rod behind bars. Soon he would be taken into custody for the murder of Dakota Thorton. The awful thing was Rod looked guilty. The cards were stacked against him.

  Earlier that day, one piece of evidence after another found at the crime scene had pointed straight to him. Especially the damning journal dug up by Rod’s dog Clyde. It had been preserved in a nylon backpack lodged be
tween two lava rocks and covered with dirt. On its pages, in Dakota’s hand—though a writing expert would have to confirm it—was entry after entry about Rod’s anger issues, his threats to kill Dakota, and then those haunting last few lines before the journal fell silent:

  Tomorrow Rod and I are going hiking in the Superstitions. He says he wants to spend some time alone with me to work things out. I don’t want to go.

  “Here.” Ranger Ferlund shoved two blankets into her hand. “One for you and one for him.” He thrust his pointy chin toward Rod and pushed his glasses back onto his nose. The Arizona sun had not been kind to him. Ranger Ferlund’s skin was so weathered he looked as if he could be ninety. However his hair still had enough dark strands to place him around fifty. Well, at least not over sixty. Regardless of his age, he had done a good job of handling the sullied crime scene.

  As it turned out, despite Melissa’s emphatic instructions, the seven of them had made a mess of everything. Maria had known better. However, once Rep. Lankin found the license everything seemed to fall apart at once.

  Clyde had uncovered a hidden backpack.

  Tom had found Dakota’s wedding ring.

  Derrick had opened the journal and started reading.

  Rod had hyperventilated and thrown up all over Rep Lankin, who threw a fit, as if getting puke on him was worse than what happened to poor Dakota.

  The memory of it made Maria feel nauseated all over again. She stared absently at the blanket in her hand. What was she supposed to do with it?

  As if on autopilot, she tucked it around Rod’s shoulders. He shivered beneath its warmth, and Maria rubbed his shoulders. He looked up at her, stunned and emotionally drained. Maria wished she had something to give him, but she too felt near the breaking point.

  The fact was Rod was about to be hauled off in a cop car to the nearest holding facility to await a judge to set bail. Her boyfriend was going to be charged with murder. Of his ex-wife, no less.