“No, he never said where in Mexico. When I hired him, he was living in San Antonio.”
“And the deceased?”
“Rebecca Haas, if that’s her. She used to live here on the ranch in that house.”
“The name sounds familiar,” Tysdal said and paused a moment. “Oh, yeah. They briefed us at roll call about her last week. Tell me what happened when you entered the house?”
“I lost my breakfast.”
The Deputy grinned. “Been there; done that.”
“I made it to the bedroom, saw the body and hightailed it out of there.”
“Did you touch anything? Will we find your prints on anything?”
“I probably touched the back door, but it was already open when I entered. That’s why I went in, besides the smell. Maybe the counter between the kitchen and living room to steady myself on the way out. I was moving pretty fast, Buck.”
“If you knew there was a body inside, why didn’t you call 911 and wait?”
“I called.”
“But you still went inside?”
“I thought it was Tomás Martinez inside. The man worked for me. I didn’t do anything against the law. It’s my house.”
While we were talking, Deputy Prade walked up looking a little green himself. “There’s a gold crucifix approximately four inches in length around the deceased’s neck. Make sure Forensic bags and tags it, if Hernandez isn’t here, yet. He won’t want to go looking for it later,” Prade said.
“I’ll need that crucifix back when this is all done with,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? How do you figure that?” Prade said.
“It belongs to the estate and the Trust that actually owns the ranch. And then the State of Texas has claim to all antiquities found on the property.”
“Whatever. You got this?” he asked Tysdal.
“Yeah. Maybe we should put out a BOLO on the caretaker. Mr. Howard hasn’t seen him since last week. What do you think?”
“That’s Detective Hernandez’s call. He’s on his way out. I’ve got another situation on the river.”
“Can I go?” I asked already knowing the answer. Nothing was ever quick with the Solms County Sheriff’s Department.
“You need to wait until Detective Hernandez gets here. He’s in charge. Later, Buck.”
“Yeah,” Deputy Tysdal said.
“Buck, make sure you enter it into your notes that I have requested the return of that crucifix. It’s a very valuable Spanish artifact that I’m accountable to the State of Texas for,” I said.
Then, I realized the crucifix was probably why she had come back to the Pape Ranch. It was the original and had been hidden here all along. The one used in the trial as evidence was one of her fakes. During her murder trial, Rebecca Haas had claimed the Spanish crucifix had been stolen from her aunt, Fran Pape, by Fran’s attorney, Constance Pickering. And, she argued that Fran had originally stolen it from her and now it belonged to her by right of survivorship. It was a weird trial and I doubted that anyone knew they were waving a fake crucifix around in front of the jury.
Prade gave me an annoyed look at my familiarity with a fellow deputy.
“I will. Tell me what your connection is to the deceased, Mr. Howard,” Deputy Tysdal said.
“May as well. It looks like we’ll be here for a while. I was supposed to meet some investors here this morning. Can I call them first and let them know I’m running late?”
“Sure, no problem. Any chance you have WiFi inside?”
I shook my head, no.
“AC?”
“I think it’s on.”
“Well, then, what are we doing standing out here?”
. . .
It was after three o’clock in the afternoon when the Sheriff’s Department personnel finally left the scene. Shane and Hannah were now on their way to the Pape Ranch and were bringing me a Whataburger and fries for the lunch I had missed. James Lee and George had flown back to Houston a little after noon. I was sorry about the missed opportunity to meet George Landau, but it would have been awkward with all that was going on. I’d invite him back another time, I told myself.
After Deputy Tysdal finally left, I hoped he would keep his word and let me know how Rebecca Haas had died. I thought he was the kind of man that would and he would save me the trouble of following-up with Sheriff Molina.
I hadn’t hung around long enough in Tomás’ house to get a close look at the body, but it looked like to me she had decided to lie down in the bed and die. She was in a peaceful pose, I thought, as I looked at the image in my phone. But when I flicked the image to enlarge it then I could see her face and it said she was in pain. I’d taken the picture to protect myself and show how I’d had found the body, in case there were any questions later. I then noticed her swollen leg in the picture.
I didn’t trust the investigative skills of the Sheriff’s Department. They had missed the evidence in the murder of Rebecca Haas’ aunt and her cousin. It was pretty hard to miss the swollen discolored leg in the photograph, though, and I could tell how Rebecca died without an official explanation. I was glad I’d taken the picture.
Before Rebecca was caught and tried for the murder of her aunt, she had told Sunny and I she had been cheated out of her father’s ranch by the Pape family. The ranch should have been hers and we had believed her. Well, I did. I wasn’t sure Sunny believed her completely.
I decided I’d look after her remains if no one stepped forward. She deserved that much. I figured the least I could do was spread her ashes on the mesa as I had been the one who discovered the truth behind the deaths on the Pape Ranch and had helped recover evidence that eventually convicted her.
It occurred to me that maybe my earlier feeling of unease might not have been about the cistern at all or even the Maya. Perhaps I had sensed that Rebecca Haas had returned to the ranch and what I was feeling was her passing.
Chapter 10
After Shane and Hannah arrived with my lunch, I told them what had happened. They didn’t know much about the murder trial or all that had gone on at the Pape Ranch before I took it over. They were too young to appreciate the loss of someone they didn’t know and were more interested in the way she died. They could relate to the dangers of being bitten by a rattlesnake in the terrain of the Pape Ranch.
I ate my hamburger as Shane drove out to the cistern site. Hannah was in the front seat with the endoscope and teasing Shane with it. The device’s USB cable was plugged into her laptop and she was waving the flexible camera cable in front of his nose.
“It has a fifty-four degree viewing angle and the illumination is adjustable from the handle,” Hannah said.
“It’s not very long,” I noted with a mouthful of fries.
“I know. It’s only two point nine feet. We’ll at least know if there’s anything directly below the false bottom.”
“Or, not,” Shane added.
“You’re such a pessimist,” Hannah said.
“I meant it could be a deep sinkhole.”
“I’m betting anything below the carved chamber vault is nothing more than a small hole from a natural formation. I think the real purpose was to hide the map on the bottom of the capstone,” I said. What Ava had told us made sense to me. Priests were a sneaky lot, I remembered from my elementary school days.
“Someone traveled a long way from Mexico City and went to a lot of trouble to build that cistern and carve the center stone for it; not to mention the chamber and capstone. It was done by a skilled stone mason, for sure,” Hannah said. “Either he came with the party that originally built the cistern and carved it on site or the carved center stone was brought in by wagon. Either way it’s a significant site‒we just have to determine why it’s there”
“I doubt they lugged the carved center stone all the way from Mexico City,” Shane offered.
“More likely it was from one of the missions in Bexar County or along the Texas Coast, if that’s what they did. We may never know,” I offered.
“It makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? That floor vault carved into the limestone isn’t very big. It wouldn’t have held a large treasure,” Hannah said. “And then there are the Maya carvings on the capstone. I have a friend at Bryan Station helping me with the translation of the glyphs. I didn’t recognize the second one. The first glyph represents the whole word rather than the syllables that make up the word. It’s called a logogram and was like shorthand for those that couldn’t read the complex written language using the syllables in a word. I’m a little rusty myself. The first logogram is an Emblem Glyph for Tikal. It generally represents a lord or royalty. I have no idea what the second glyph represents. Tim said he would get back with me on that one.”
“Who’s Tim?” Shane asked.
. . .
A half hour later, I helped Shane to position the small Honda Generator in the bed of the truck and run the power cord over to the cistern. Hannah had already walked over to the cistern to gear up.
“Max!” Hannah cried out.
Shane and I looked and saw Hannah bent over the edge looking down into the cistern.
“It’s gone,” she said and straightened up.
When Shane and I arrived at the cistern and had a good look inside, we could see the capstone had been pulverized into chunks of stone and with only a few pieces of recognizable stone left intact, notably the corners.
On the floor of the cistern next to the rubble was a stone mason’s hammer used for shaping pieces of limestone for construction. Limestone masonry was a big industry in the Hill Country. It was one of those backbreaking jobs dominated by skilled Mexican workers and it employed thousands of them in Texas. We had a man on the ranch working on the stone foundation to the ranch house.
My first reaction was to drive back to the ranch house, and then I remembered that I had let the men go for the day. I would talk to him as soon as I could the next day. I considered myself a good judge of a man’s character and I could tell if he was lying to me or not.
I ignored what we’d seen in the bottom of the cistern and looked around the immediate area for the capstone. Truth was I was in denial. I couldn’t believe someone had trespassed on the ranch and found the site. Even though I was angry, poor Hannah was inconsolable that her archeological site had been vandalized. She was trembling so badly, Shane had to hold her. She felt like she had been violated I heard her say to Shane. It was obvious she considered the cistern her site now after Ava had backed out. She sat down on the ground cross-legged, buried her face in her hands and cried.
“It had to be someone from one of the crews on the ranch,” Shane said.
“Or Tomás. He’s missing,” I said and tried to think when he disappeared. No, it couldn’t have been Tomás. He was missing before we discovered the capstone, unless he was hiding out somewhere on the ranch.
“What do you want to do?” Shane said.
“Help Hannah up. Let’s finish what we came to do.”
Twenty minutes later Hannah had cleared away the rubble that had once been the capstone and cleared the chamber vault. She started to drill through the limestone and was immediately hidden by a cloud of dust. She stopped the drill and coughed. “Pull me up,” she said.
When she was up and out of the cistern she made Shane drive back to the ranch house and get the small shop vacuum the construction crew used while sanding the sheetrock and the oak flooring. An hour later she inserted the endoscope’s camera cable down into the drilled hole.
“Anything?” Shane asked.
“Nothing.”
We watched her rotate the handle slowly in a full circle with her eyes on the laptop screen. Finally, she extracted the scope and closed her laptop. She unplugged the USB cable and secured the gear in her backpack. I had brought a rubberized wine bottle stopper with me to plug the drill hole when we were finished. She inserted it into the hole and tapped it with her boot to make sure it was secure. “You can pull me up now,” she said.
We drove back to the ranch house in silence. Not only were we disappointed that we couldn’t see anything with the equipment we had; we were still in shock that the discovery of the cistern was no longer our secret to keep. I think Hannah was more upset that a Mayan artifact of possible historical significance had been destroyed than she was about someone knowing about the site.
We went inside the ranch house so we could see the laptop screen better. Hannah though she might see something she had missed while down in the cistern. Shane and I stood behind her and looked over her shoulders as she went through the video again.
“I’m sorry, Max. It’s just too big a cavern for that low-power endoscope. We need a longer probe. I can get a more sophisticated camera or even a LIDAR unit, if we go through the University.”
“Explain what LIDAR is,” I said.
“For LIDAR, we’ll lower a probe that uses near-infrared light in the form of pulsed laser beams to measure the distance to objects. We then use the millions of data points from the pulses to construct a highly accurate 2D or 3D image. I’d rather not drill all the holes we’d need for 3D, though. I’d settle for a static image from just one hole before we start any excavation. I want to leave the smallest footprint possible in case we decide not to excavate.”
“Alright, get an agreement set up with Texas A&M University and I’ll notify the State of Texas that we’ve made a find and you’re going to excavate it.”
“Let’s not use the word, excavate, just yet. Better to say, we’re going to investigate the site. Better yet, explore it. What about the Capstone?” Hannah said.
“What capstone?” I replied. It was gone forever now. “Let’s not even mention it. How soon can you get an agreement set up?”
“It depends on funding. How much and by whom? Who has authority over the site? I’ll need to provide them with the usual details that go into the legal rights to examining an archeological site. It could take months.”
“That’s too long to wait, Hannah. I’ll fund it and hire you as a consultant to oversee the site work. How soon can you do that?”
Hannah smiled. “Let me talk to my Department Head and get back with you.”
“By Wednesday?”
“I don’t know, Max. The University doesn’t make decisions that fast,” Hannah said.
“If you want to be in charge, get it done, otherwise the State of Texas might want to take it over once they get wind of the site. I need to bring them up to speed soon. Now, one other thing: You know they recovered the body of Rebecca Haas on the ranch this morning. And now the capstone has been destroyed. Those two things could be related?”
“I’m sorry about the woman, of course, but why would someone destroy the capstone too? It’s so senseless,” Hannah said.
“It sure changes the dynamics of this,” Shane said.
“Yes, it does,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” Hannah said to Shane.
“I’d say someone didn’t want us to find whatever was carved on the bottom of the capstone,” Shane offered.
“He’s right. Originally, I thought one of the crew came back looking for the treasure and broke the capstone trying to get it up, but now I agree with Shane the more I think about it. Someone deliberately destroyed it,” I said.
“No one knew what was on the bottom of the capstone except us,” Hannah said. “Someone would have had to be watching us when we brought it up to photographed.”
She had a point, but this turn of events was now mine to manage. “I don’t want either of you out here alone. Understood?”
“Okay with me,” Hannah said. “What about Shane? If it was one of his men, he shouldn’t be out here with them either.”
Shane looked embarrassed. I felt for the boy. True or not, no man wants to hear his girlfriend say that he can’t take care of himself.
“I’m not worried about Shane, Hannah. Let the men go tomorrow, Shane. Pay them through the end of the week and give them a week’s severance pay. On the chance that it was one of them,
I don’t want them on the ranch anymore.”
“What about the land reclamation? We’ve already fallen behind because of the cistern,” he protested.
“Our goal, after the land restoration, was always to make the ranch financially self-sustaining. I thought if there was a big cavern beneath the cistern, then that was our ticket. I don’t believe that anymore. Right now, I’m more of a mind to begin looking for a buyer for the ranch. I do want to explore what’s down there, though. It could enhance the value of the ranch. Until we know who the sonuvabitch is that damage the capstone, the reclamation work is on hold, as well as the remodeling on the ranch house. I don’t want anyone on the ranch from now on, but us.”
“What about the treasure and the conquistador’s burial site? Are you giving up on that, too?” Shane said.
I could tell the boy in him saw himself as Indiana Jones on a hunt for treasure. That he also got an attractive archeologist in the end was just icing on the cake. All men were boys at heart when it came to adventure and love and I envied him his youth.
“I’m not giving up on anything, yet. I’m working on the map. Okay, I’ll see you here in the morning, Shane. I want to be the one to tell the men.”
“I can tell them.”
“I know you can. But it’s my call to let them go; my responsibility to tell them. And, I want to talk to the man doing the stone work.”
. . .
That night before I went to bed, I called my grandson, Bryan. It was an hour earlier in Billings, Montana and I wanted to bring him up to speed. I also had a question for Ava.
“I didn’t wake you guys, did I?” I said as soon as Bryan answered and we had said hello.
“No, the baby is down and I was running the kid’s bath. You want to talk to Ava?
“Sure. I just wanted to bring you up to date.”
“I’ll get her and she can fill me in later. Hang on,” he said and was gone before I could tell him goodbye.
I sensed a change in Bryan over the phone. A new mouth to feed will do that to a man, I remembered. Nevertheless, I felt it was more than that. He had found his place in life and he was happy. He would not be coming back to Texas to live his life.
The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Page 12