Читать книгу Arizona Homecoming - Pamela Tracy - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe Lost Dutchman Museum was on the edge of town, and Emily always came out on her days off. Sometimes she spent hours in the barn, working on the back section that was considered storage. She wanted to open it up to Apache Creek history, and she had enough pieces from the Majestic for one display that would appeal to people interested in both small-town and movie lore.
Just not John Wayne.
She also had remnants from Apache Creek’s first church, school and post office. If she could talk the trustees into going to the city for more funding, she’d buy a few acres from the Pearl family. They owned most of the land around the museum. At one time, there’d been a Pearl Ranch. Now it was open space and for sale.
Emily hoped no one ever bought it.
Another reason she came in was to make sure everything was where it should be. Twice she’d deterred tourists from breaking in to the barn where exhibits were.
Even adults thought it okay to pull away boards and pick or break locks just so they could see. Once, she’d just missed a vandal who’d spray painted graffiti on the barn housing a replica of Jacob Waltz’s cabin. The paint had still been wet! Officer Sam Miller had filled out a report. She’d repaired the damage.
Emily noted now how quiet the museum was first thing in the morning. Usually she felt a little jog of excitement when she opened the door and entered. Her world. She felt privileged and amazed. How blessed she was to have a career she loved. She cared for the past, brought history to life and made sure an imprint remained for the future.
Today, the woven blankets and pieces of pottery didn’t speak to her. The air in the museum felt different, quiet and unassuming.
She was being ridiculous. And she knew it. Turning on the lights, she adjusted the temperature and went around checking the exhibits. Nothing was out of place.
No, it was her life that had been trespassed on, and she wasn’t sure how to restore peace.
She walked through the aisles of the main building, whispering prayers while straightening photos and realigning displays. She did not believe her dad had a connection with the body discovered last week. Still, her prayers felt ineffective.
Sometimes the present was more important than the future, especially when it involved her dad.
She’d made it through only one room when someone knocked at the front door. She ignored it. Hours were posted and she wasn’t in the mood for giving a private tour. She didn’t dare go to the window and try shooing a visitor away. For one thing, it felt rude. For another, twice when she’d done that it had been church members with family in town. Thus, the private tours.
Her phone buzzed. Taking it out, she checked the caller ID.
Elise’s name displayed. She swiped her thumb across her phone to answer it, and said, “What’s happening?”
“They’ve taken Dad in for questioning.”
“I’ll meet you at the police station.” Emily turned, wanting to grab her purse from her desk drawer.
“Sam says it’s routine. I’m on my way to be with him. Of course, he says he doesn’t need me. Eva’s handling everything here. Are you sure there’s nothing you overlooked at the Baer place?”
“I’m sure, but I only looked at a certain perimeter where the body was found.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I stayed within about one hundred and forty-four square feet.”
“Paint me a picture.”
“The size of your bedroom.” Already, Emily was thinking ahead. She needed to look farther. The man had somehow arrived at his burial spot. He’d either walked or been carried. It would take a while, but she might be able to discover the path.
Yeah, right.
“I’m heading to the Baer house now,” Emily promised, entering her office to grab her purse and then locking the door on her way out.
But as she stepped onto the front stoop, she found the one person she wasn’t in the mood to see. Randall Tucker.
“I’ve been meaning to check out the museum. Any chance you could show me around?”
“I’ve an appointment. We open at nine tomorrow.”
To his credit, he didn’t brush past her and enter. Instead, he studied the building. Emily couldn’t help herself. She looked, too. The exterior was roughly sawn ponderosa pine. The museum sign was lighter wood and the words Lost Dutchman Museum appeared to have been burned in.
Emily smiled. Her museum looked at home nestled against the backdrop of the Superstition Mountains. The barn distracted from it a bit, but the cook shanty to the left helped.
“This is a great location,” Randall said. “You get much traffic?”
“We get plenty of traffic. We, however, are closed on Monday. Come back on a different day, and I’ll show you around.”
He scanned the main building. “Solid foundation. How old?”
“About fifty years. It was built in the sixties.”
“Private or state?”
She’d learned a long time ago that losing her temper only made things worse. “When you come back, I’ll get you a brochure. Or, you can go to the website. I update it every week.” She gave one last tug on the door, making sure it was locked, and then headed for her truck.
On the drive to the Baer place, a good fifteen miles, she deliberately pushed Randall Tucker from her thoughts and focused on the events involving the body, in order.
She, along with Donovan, had been among the first to see the bones. He wasn’t her first choice for a comrade, but he might do. She needed to talk to him some more because while she’d found the knife, it had been the medical examiner who declared the site a crime scene. Donovan, no doubt, had been present through every step.
She needed to talk to the medical examiner, too. She knew the man was a stickler for details and rarely missed a clue. Even though her perusal of the area turned up nothing else in the vicinity that might point to who the skeleton was and how he died, maybe the ME had noted something.
Besides the knife.
Nothing in the perimeter would vindicate her father. Yesterday, he hadn’t been worried. “My word has always been truth,” he said a dozen times at church. It was half a scripture. He was good at that.
She wondered if he was worried today.
She was, and she wasn’t exactly sure why. She knew her father hadn’t been involved in a murder.
Turning onto Main Street, she noted that the Miner’s Lamp was doing a steady breakfast business. No doubt, the skeleton’s discovery would give the people of Apache Creek something to talk about for weeks, maybe months.
Especially since suspicion had fallen, if only for a brief second, on her father.
Jacob Hubrecht, Emily thought as she drove past the park, still believed a handshake was binding. It had been decades since he’d lived outside Apache Creek. Before that, he’d been a bull rider, and she knew, having met most of his friends from those long-ago days, that they’d had their own code of honor.
A cowboy’s handshake.
She didn’t trust such casual contracts. She’d been across the United States, even working in South Dakota, where her job had been to return stolen artifacts to local tribes. Legislation claimed that it was necessary “to secure, for the present and future benefit of the American people, the protection of archaeological resources and sites which are on public lands and Indian lands.” Yet, some of the most grievous offenders were fined in the three digits while they’d earned in the five digits from their stolen loot, no jail time or restoration.
The Natives called it erosion of justice.
She called it misplaced trust.
A handshake worked in her father’s world, but just as the knife by the skeleton was eroded, so might be justice. This corpse was an intruder to George Baer, who thought a monstrosity of a house belonged on sacred soil.
The sign designating Ancient Trails Road was fairly new and looked out of place. She made a left and then slowed down so she could study the Baer house without anyone noticing. She no longer thought the soil so sacred.
Some secrets should stay buried.
Two trucks were parked where a driveway would one day be. Emily recognized one as belonging to John Westerfield, who had been out of work for almost two years. He’d have probably shown up even if they’d found a mass grave. The rest of Donovan’s crew appeared to be missing. She knew Smokey quite well. It would be a while before he ventured back.
The other truck was Donovan’s.
She edged her foot onto the gas and then braked, slowing, suddenly sure that driving out here was the wrong thing to do. She’d wanted to shut the construction down, but not this way.
Unfortunately, Donovan stepped out the front door, giving her no choice but to park, exit her truck and head for the house he was building.
* * *
“Everything okay?” For the most part, their paths had been crossing via controversy, but Donovan—thanks to his ex-fiancée, Olivia—knew how to recognize a damsel in distress.
Olivia had perfected the art; Emily not so much.
“I hope so,” she managed. “My dad’s at the station for questioning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. So strange that there would be two knives. Did your dad ever remember how he came to have that one?”
“Right after you left. It was his prize for finaling in a Prescott Rodeo.”
Donovan nodded, thinking it made perfect sense. “You want to come in? I’ll show you the guts of this place. It’s not as bad as you make it out to be.”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen this house a million times, usually in a gated community on an upscale street in a big city.”
“You haven’t seen this house,” Donovan protested. “It’s one of a kind, and I designed it.”
She looked at the Baer house again. He did, too, pleased with what he saw. Even without the doors, windows and cabinets in place yet, he could visualize how they’d complement his creation.
He was bringing his drawings to life.
“A million times,” she muttered. As if to prove her point, she questioned, “Two-car garage with a workshop attached?”
“Yes.”
“Four bedrooms, each with its own bath?”
“Yes.” Now he was getting annoyed.
“A study and dining room?”
Had she seen his plans? “Yes.”
“I forget anything besides the kitchen and family room?” she queried.
“Baer specifically asked for a hallway that would serve as a gallery.”
“Ah,” she quipped, “that must be the custom part.”
“The arrangement, proportions and style make it custom. Plus, when we finish with the landscape...”
She pointed behind him. He turned, seeing the Superstition Mountains in all their glory.
“You can’t compete with that,” she said simply.
“I don’t want to. I just want Baer to be able to sit on his back porch and enjoy the view.”
“The view he’s wrecking.”
Ah, now the Emily Hubrecht who’d first approached him was totally back.
“This house is not on a hill. There are no neighbors for miles. He’s not infringing on anyone’s view.”
“You mentioned style. What style would you call your design?”
He answered without thinking, because he knew the style and had answered the question a million times. “French Country.”
“French Country in Arizona. That’s different.”
“It’s what Baer wanted.”
For a moment, he thought she’d protest. Then she nodded before following him through the door. “Big” was all she said, walking through the foyer and living area to the kitchen. “And there will just be two people living here?”
“Just two.”
She shook her head, sitting in a camp chair while Donovan pulled a bottle of water out of a small cooler. She took a long drink. “This house could be made of gold, and I wouldn’t like it. Until you showed up with your plans and permits, my life was perfect.”
“Perfect? I don’t think anyone’s life is perfect.”
“My life’s not perfect now.”
He decided to give her a break and change the subject. “If you know the exact rodeo, can you find out if someone else finaled, maybe in a different event, and had the same initials?”
“We hope. Sam is checking. I guess they want to authenticate it. See if it’s the knife made for my dad by the Rannik company. Both knives that is.”
“Who did the initials?” Donovan asked.
“They did, at least on Dad’s. He says it’s common for a company to have a booth right at a rodeo event.”
“That’s good. Because it means anyone could have purchased the knife and asked for the same initials. Not just the winners.”
“The difference is Dad’s knife also has the logo of the rodeo branded into the handle.”
“Does the one we found have the logo?” Donovan thought about the mound of dirt no longer cordoned off but still as the medical examiner left it.
Her sudden look made him rethink what he’d said.
We.
It wasn’t the word but how he’d said it. Making them more or less a team.
* * *
“Sam won’t tell us.” For a moment, she thought Donovan was going to scoot his chair closer, reach out for her. That was silly. He was the enemy. If not for this house, there’d be no body and no knife.
She shook her head a little harder than she meant to. Those kinds of thoughts did no good. “Dad having that knife physically in his possession was really...” Her words tapered off. She didn’t know how to finish. Her dad wasn’t under suspicion, not really, especially for a crime where there were no witnesses and the body hadn’t even been identified.
“Amazing,” Donovan said. “And all because the home owner decided he wanted to add a circular driveway.”
Around him the house loomed, like a monster ready to engulf whatever got in its way, whether land or human.
After a moment, when she didn’t respond, he queried, “Museum closed today?”
Emily nodded. “It’s closed every Sunday and Monday. Monday because of numbers and Sunday for a day of rest.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Do you work on Sunday?” she asked.
“If I need to.”
“Did you work yesterday? I didn’t see you at church.”
He laughed, but she caught something in his eyes, maybe sadness. “You’ve never seen me at church. I don’t attend.”
“Did you ever?” This was not the conversation she meant to have. She was here to look for clues.
He took a long gulp of his water before answering, “Yes, a long time ago I went to church. Why are you asking?”
“It was at church that I found out you were building this house.”
“You mean people were praying for me before I even arrived?”
“No, more like people were talking about you. I heard about it from your mailman.”
“That’s a first. I don’t think I’ve received any mail here.”
“It was added to his route. He mentioned it to me and said he’d driven by this lot after delivering mail nearby. I almost fell out of the pew when he described some builder out at Ancient Trails Road already making decisions about where to put utilities, a septic system and driveway.”
“Still not doing so well with driveways,” Donovan mourned.
“And I am not doing so well in stopping you.” She’d offered God a dozen apologies throughout that day because after what the mailman shared, she’d not heard a word of the sermon.
Emily had lost valuable time. The land had already been sold and paid for, making her protests too little and too late. Donovan Russell had been a brick wall when it came to reason.
She’d always been more of a husky, taking hold and shaking until she got her way. And she hated losing.
“You’ve stopped me now. I still don’t have a full crew and I’ve been advised to leave the area around the grave alone, just in case it’s a crime scene.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She finished her water and stood. “I want to see if there’s anything I missed.”
He stood, too, but didn’t move toward the door. “I don’t think there’s as much as a rock left. They bagged everything.”
“I want to see if I can figure how he got there—”
Donovan finished her sentence. “Vehicle, animal, footprints or shoe marks.”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“They did all that.”
“What did they decide?”
“That they agreed with your original assessment that the body had been here more than thirty years.”
“I really wish it had been here two hundred and thirty years.”
“Life’s not always fair.”
* * *
Emily wasn’t telling Donovan something he didn’t already know.
He followed her back through the living room and foyer and out to the crime scene. Except for the cordon tape and markers, it was just a hole.
“I’d think it was ready for a hot tub if it wasn’t in the front yard,” Donovan tried to joke.
She, apparently, didn’t think he was funny.
“So, what are we going to do first?” he queried. She didn’t answer, just stood looking down at where the skeleton used to be.
The whole thing spooked Donovan somewhat. He just wished he could, in good conscience, fill the hole back in. Without meaning to, he stepped too close to the edge of the hole so a few kernels of dirt fell back into the grave.
Emily’s eyes grew big.
“What?”
“I can’t help but think of Ecclesiastes and ‘the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’”
He nodded, thinking she was a whole lot more connected to the earth and to family than he was.
“Just think,” she said softly, “some mother, wife, sister, daughter, might be waiting for the return of a man who no longer lives. He’s been buried in this shallow grave and forgotten.” She never ceased to surprise him. Compassion was a trait he knew he needed to develop.
“The only clue to his identity,” she continued, “a knife that looks identical to one my father owns, down to the initials.”
“A knife your father still has,” Donovan reminded her. It somewhat amazed him that their roles had switched, and now he wanted to stop work and help her. The woman whose job it was to ruin his day, either by producing a five-page petition with the names of Apache Creek residents who didn’t want their view marred by a minimansion, or by going to her knees next to what could have been the ancient bones of a Native American, claiming there might be more and gloating that she’d be here a long time.
He almost wished it had been a Native American skeleton. Then, her father wouldn’t be under suspicion.
“It will be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” she muttered.
“Hey, I grew up on a dairy farm in Mytal, Nebraska. I know a lot about haystacks. I know which cow needs to maintain her weight, and where to spread the hay, and—” For the past two months, she’d been a thorn in his side always ready to battle. He liked that Emily better. This dejected one was out of character. Still, his attempt to encourage her didn’t seem to be working.
Her expression was so serious that he knew he had to help. It surprised him, the sudden need. “I watched the authorities all last week. I know where they looked and where they didn’t.”
It took her a moment. He watched as she inhaled, a big breath that seemed to fill her. Then she drew herself up to her full height and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
John Westerfield chose that moment to make the mistake of coming outside to see what they were doing. Donovan should have texted him and warned, Avoid front of house until I call you.
“You can help,” Emily informed John, running to her truck and retrieving trash bags that she quickly handed out.
“She’s always been a bit high maintenance,” John said.
Donovan believed him. For the next two hours, they walked a square mile, what Emily called a grid, slowly. She told them to pick up anything that didn’t belong, anything suspicious. He doubted the old shoe, candy wrappers, beer can or piece of tire he’d stowed in his garbage bag was going to help.
John’s contribution was a page from an old newspaper, ripped in half, and a dozen bullet casings, which he wanted to keep.
Her cache wasn’t much better. She also had candy wrappers, plus ten beer cans, what appeared to be a section of tarp and thirty-five cents.
Still, she looked quite happy.
When she drove away, he realized he’d only seen her smile twice, when she first saw the bones and now leaving with her trash.
He slowly walked back to the Baer house. He understood ceramic tile more than he did women.
* * *
Tuesday morning, Emily got to the museum early. She had a lot to do. At the trustees meeting, she’d been encouraged to plan some kind of activity to get people to the museum, similar to the library’s celebration of its sixtieth birthday this coming Saturday.
She knew for a fact that the library had more funding than she did—maybe because they made money on overdue books.
She also knew that unless she got more private funding, the museum would be in danger of closing down. Her biggest enemy was its location. The Lost Dutchman Museum was part of eighty acres of land and only this tiny portion had been donated to the city. The rest belonged to the Pearl Ranch, and Emily didn’t know the Pearl who still owned the land. He or she didn’t live in Apache Creek, hadn’t in decades.
After walking the museum’s main room and ascertaining that all was well, she sat at her computer and researched other museums in Arizona. Comparatively, she curated at a very small one. Most of the museums that had special events were bigger, and in every case those events called for bringing exhibits from other museums in. The Lost Dutchman Museum was so tiny that lending a small Salado bowl was really something. She’d only be able to ask for something small in return.
That wouldn’t generate visitors.
If she were to have some sort of event, it had to be museum themed.
Unlocking the door, she flipped the sign to Open and wished there were a line waiting.
Back at her computer, she checked emails. Some were from college students who’d been passed her name by their professors. She answered a few questions and for the others, she provided names of people who could help.
Two people queried about job openings.
She managed not to laugh.
The Heard Museum sent her a photo of her Salado bowl. It looked lost among the others being displayed.
At the end of more than three dozen emails came a query that surprised her. In the United States there were very few museums that centered only on Native American artifacts. Her final email was from the curator at the Native American Heritage Museum, asking if she was looking for work and included a job description that advertised a salary three times larger than what she was making in Apache Creek.
Not wanting to be rude, she sent a thank-you.
Not even for three times the money did she intend to move. Apache Creek was in her blood, and her blood lived in Apache Creek.
With that, she looked up and smiled at the museum’s first visitor of the day.
Six hours later, at four, she closed and locked the door. On the computer, she filled in the daily accounts, entering the number of visitors, what souvenirs sold—the Lost Dutchman Gold Map was the top seller, followed by pens shaped like a pickax—and her hours.
Then she headed home.
“You working the floor tonight?” Elise queried her at the front desk. Emily’s whole life she’d walked through a dude ranch front desk and down a hallway to where the family lived. The family was getting smaller, though, with Eva, and soon Elise, moving.
Granted, both weren’t moving far.
“Yes.”
“I rented out two of the cabins as well as one of the rooms. I expect we’ll be a little busier tonight. Did Sam call and say if anything you found yesterday while walking the Baer place was helpful?”
“No, he hasn’t called.”
Elise shook her head. “I spent a long time talking with Cook. He has no clue if he attended the Prescott Rodeo all those years ago. He says they all blur together after a while.”
“Probably for Dad, too. What year would that have been? Did Dad remember?”
“He says nineteen seventy-eight or nine.”
“Sounds about right. Dad would have been in his twenties.” Emily took off down the hallway. On each side were photos. A few were of a twenty-something Jacob. Her favorite showed him on a horse in full gallop heading for the camera. His hat was on, but you could see his longish hair breezing from the sides. He leaned forward slightly. His face was mostly in shadow, but no one could fail to notice its beauty.
She’d said that once to her dad, almost to the very word.
Men aren’t beautiful, he’d responded.
Mom thought you were beautiful, Eva had piped up. If Emily remembered, that had been the year Eva went off to the university, driving back and forth every day to Tempe because she couldn’t bear to leave the ranch.
Elise and Emily were a little more willing to spread their wings, but both had flown back.
In a matter of minutes, Emily was out of her museum shirt and khakis and into her blue Lost Dutchman Ranch shirt and jeans with a black apron tried around her waist.
The dining room was at the back of the main house. Picnic tables held guests, visitors and employees. The atmosphere was meant to be fun and relaxed. They did not serve a four-star meal. Tonight’s menu was barbecue pork, beans and potato chips. All homemade by Cook, who’d traveled with Jacob on the rodeo and retired at an early age to work at the Lost Dutchman. His specialty was Mexican food, but actually there wasn’t a food type he couldn’t produce.
Meals were served buffet style with only one server walking around, taking orders, and making sure all the guests had what they needed.
At the back of the restaurant was a game room, mostly a kids’ area, complete with a television for watching movies or playing video games. This late in June, as hot as it was, they didn’t get many kids.
An hour into her shift, Emily’s cell sounded. She took it out and checked the screen: Jane de la Rosa. Looking around, she noted her dad sitting at his favorite table with one of the families who’d checked in today—strangers becoming friends—and Jilly Greenhouse, who lived in the house closest to the Lost Dutchman Ranch. Ducking into the kids’ game room, she answered.
“You’ll never guess! Never,” Jane said.
“Aren’t you working?”
“Yes, though we’re pretty slow tonight.” Jane worked at the Miner’s Lamp, the rustic restaurant in town. It had been around even longer than the Lost Dutchman Ranch.
“What do you want me to guess?”
“I waited on a man tonight. He’s still here. He’s an EPA inspector out of Phoenix—don’t ask me what EPA stands for—who came to check some sort of levels at the Baer house.”
“Okay...” Emily tried to figure why this was news. Since the groundbreaking, Donovan had had one inspector after another at the Baer place.
“Well, I heard this guy on the phone. I guess the levels of something called radon gas were high.”
“And that’s bad?” Emily queried.
“Bad enough that when Donovan called Baer with the news, Baer apparently said to halt construction.”
“For how long?”
“Maybe for good,” Jane said. “The inspector was on the phone with his boss. He sounded a bit surprised. I’m wondering if Baer’s getting fed up. I mean first it’s you protesting, then it’s a skeleton and now this.”
Emily should have felt elated, should have jumped for joy, but all she could picture was the brown-haired man who’d walked in the hot sun for hours picking up an old shoe and plenty of beer cans just because she’d asked him to.
