Maria looked at Whitney’s shirt. It was clean of pretend beetles and of hair. “Yeah, it’s gone.”
“Thank heavens.” Whitney sounded relieved. “I know I’m a wimp. Charlie says I get scared of the silliest things.”
Strike one, thought Maria.
The dinner conversation continued. Underneath the table, Maria switched her wristwatch to her right arm, the one closest to Whitney. As Whitney leaned across the table to give Rod the platter of green beans, Maria put her arm around the back of Whitney’s chair. It wasn’t a comfortable position, but the idea wasn’t to look cool. It was to get a hair sample.
“Maria, are you still liking Kanab?” Rod looked curiously at Maria’s arm oddly draped behind Whitney.
“I am. I love everything about Kanab except the water. It’s metallic tasting.”
Bent over, cleaning leftover crumbs from the rolls off of the tablecloth, Whitney gave up and sat back in her chair. “I didn’t like the water at first either. I think it’s the—” Her head bumped into Maria’s arm. “Oh!”
Instead of pulling her hand away, Maria twisted her watch into Whitney’s curly locks, snagging strands of hair on the band’s buckle.
“Ouch. Sorry.” Whitney reached up and rubbed her head.
“Oh no, I’m the one who should be sorry,” said Maria, pulling her hand out of Whitney’s hair. “My watch must have gotten caught.”
Whitney looked down and saw the buckle to Maria’s watch with a tangled mess of her hair stuck in it. “Oh, wow. That’s disgusting. Let me clean it off.”
“Oh, no need, I—”
Whitney reached over, undid Maria’s watch buckle, and carefully removed every strand of hair from it using a paper napkin.
In horror, Maria watched Whitney complete the task. She handed the watch back, completely devoid of hair.
Strike two.
Rod watched Maria carefully. She’d have to lay low for a few minutes. He looked a little too strangely at her. Did he know what she was trying to do?
Maria was about to take another bite of green beans, when she happened to spot the end of a thin, inconspicuous hair in the vegetables. Normally, that was not something that made Maria excited, but tonight was different. She wasn’t going to have to get the hair sample. Instead, the hair sample had come to her.
Discretely, Maria pulled the strand out of her food, but she was disappointed by what she saw. It was a dark strand only about three inches long. The same length and color as Whitney’s husband’s hair. He was the cook after all.
Strike three.
Maria set her fork down, no longer hungry.
“Charlie,” Rod asked, “what are in these boxes you keep finding from Maria’s grandfather?”
Wiping his lips with his napkin, Charlie answered, “I’m not sure about everything. I only look through it long enough to see what it is and if it’s worth calling Maria about. This one had a sketchbook with line drawings in it. There was one symbol in particular he drew a lot. It was a circle with a line through it. There was also an old book about Montezuma’s treasure.” Charlie took a drink. “Was your grandfather a little nutty?”
The question stung Maria. She had always thought of her grandfather as one of the wisest men she knew.
Rod looked ruffled as well. “Owning a book about Montezuma doesn’t make someone nutty.”
Charlie laughed. “Oh come on. It’s all a bunch of idiocy.”
Shrugging, Rod replied, “Maybe not.”
“You’re an educated lawyer. Don’t tell me you believe Montezuma’s treasure is in Kanab?” It wasn’t really a question but more of a challenge.
“There are a lot of historians who think the Aztecs transported Montezuma’s storehouses of wealth northward to prevent the Spaniards from getting it. Just how far north is the question,” said Rod. “It could still be in Mexico, Arizona, or a bunch of other places, including Utah.”
“Well, I don’t believe in it.” Charlie stood up. “I’m surprised you do.”
Rod’s demeanor transformed from his typical easy self to strained and uptight. “Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen some of the things I have.” His eyes glanced to Maria’s. “There are things out there we don’t understand.”
Charlie snorted. “That’s ridiculous. You make it sound like you believe in these stories of dead Aztec soldiers running around the place.”
“I do.” Rod blushed. It was the first time Maria had seen him look anything but in control. “You can have your opinion, Charlie. I’m fine with that. But the rest of us can also have ours, too, without being belittled. How about you, Maria? What do you think about ghosts?”
It was practically the same question he had asked her the first day she’d met him, when he’d driven her home after her meltdown in the cave.
The fact that he had asked her the same question here, in front of Whitney and Charlie, made Maria mad. How dare he put her on the spot like this? She didn’t want to make him look stupid in front of the Thatchers, but there was no way she was going to say she believed in the supernatural. Just because she saw ghosts all the time didn’t mean she believed they were real.
“I don’t. Ghosts are the product of an imaginative, traumatized mind.” She’d said it, and she’d meant it.
Rod glared at her for a solid five seconds, which felt more like a minute in a room as quiet as this one was. At last, he looked down at his plate and shoveled food into his mouth. The evening was not going well. Maria hadn’t gotten to the subject of Whitney’s alibi, she hadn’t gotten a sample of her hair, and she was mad at Rod for having asked her about ghosts.
If there was one subject Maria had no desire to discuss, it was ghosts. The rest of dinner consisted of a little bit of small talk and of Whitney telling them about her job. Before dessert was served, Rod said he had an early morning meeting and he needed to get some work done before turning in. It was an excuse for Maria to gracefully excuse herself as well.
As the Thatchers escorted Rod and Maria to the front room to say goodbye, Maria realized she still had to get the hair sample. “Whitney, do you have a curling iron I could borrow? Mine broke, but I have to get my picture taken tomorrow for a news story Sherrie Mercer is writing about me.”
Whitney looked pleased to help. “Oh, totally. Hang on a second.”
She returned a minute later with a wide barrel and offered it to Maria.
“Thank you so much. I will get it back to you ASAP,” Maria said. She glanced down at it. The metal was a little old. The top plastic edge, where people hold to avoid burning their fingers, was brown around the edges. But none of that mattered because in the hinged area, where the lever met the barrel, was what Maria needed. A tangled mess of hairs were caught in the crack.
A home run!
Maria took her grandfather’s box and the curling iron with her out the door. Once it was just the two of them on the front sidewalk, Rod began to use that hypnotic voice of his. “Listen, about the funeral . . . Tara makes this stuff up. I had actually been looking forward to sitting by you when she popped into the conversation saying—”
“My hands are full,” Maria interrupted, still thinking about the maddening question about ghosts Rod had asked her at the dinner table. “I gotta go. Everything’s cool.” Balancing everything in one hand, Maria opened the passenger door to her jeep with the other. She threw her grandfather’s box and Whitney’s curling iron inside on the seat and closed the door.
Rod stood a couple of yards away, watching and looking slightly perturbed himself.
Maria opened the driver’s door and slid inside. “See you,” she called out and waved. Turning, so he couldn’t see her face, Maria shoved the stick shift into reverse and jolted out of the Thatcher’s driveway.
At least she had done one thing right tonight.
She hadn’t let Rod Thorton get to her.
Maria was completely in control.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
[Freddie’s cave] in Johnson Canyon wa
s just a diversion, a red herring designed to throw gold seekers off the track. The actual place where Montezuma buried his treasure . . . is in another canyon ten miles to the west—at the bottom of an algae-green pond called Three Lakes.
RANGE MAGAZINE. “MONTEZUMA’S REVENGE” BY RICHARD MENZIES, FALL ISSUE 1998.
“It’s true. Rod got mad and so did I. We both left early. I knew we weren’t a good match.” Maria felt guilty calling Beth at this time of night. Her friend had her own life to take care of—a husband and three kids. But Maria hadn’t been able to get Rod out of her mind. At dinner, he’d looked at her as if she’d run over his favorite dog. And then when she’d taken off outside? Good grief. It’d been like someone had taken the man’s appendix out without medication.
Maria should be the one mad at him. He had put her on the spot in front of the Thatchers. He’d assumed she’d seen a ghost in the cave. He’d even tried to put words into her mouth the night after her meltdown in the cave, but she hadn’t said them. The man hadn’t left well enough alone.
However, perhaps she hadn’t needed to say what she did—that people who believed in ghosts were mentally ill. It wasn’t really fair. Rod was probably just a little superstitious. There was nothing horrible about that. It wasn’t like he was crazy like her.
“Honestly, Rod’s not the type to get mad,” Beth answered. “I bet you read him wrong.”
“Nope. He was mad. I promise.” Maria knew anger when she saw it. “I pretty much insulted him.”
“Then you should apologize,” concluded Beth. “Rod is one of the nicest guys I know. And he’s been through a lot. Do you know Tara was the first person he’d dated in years? Ever since his wife ran off and left him. For three years the man did nothing but sit and hope she’d come back. He totally cried the day he got divorced. And then, after moving back to Kanab, he had the bad fortune of getting snared in Tara’s web. At least he had enough sense to get out of it. So, give him a break. All right?”
Beth’s words sank deep into Maria. Rod really had been nothing but nice to her. Why did she treat him like she did? It had a lot more to do with her own state of mind than it did with Rod’s qualities.
“Should I do something?” Maria asked Beth. “Call him? Text him? But what do I say?”
“You’re not going to like my answer,” said Beth.
“Actually, I’d like any ideas you have. I don’t know what to say to people most of the time.”
“First, tell me why you care what Rod thinks?” asked Beth.
Why did she? Maria sniffed and rubbed her nose. “He seems like a nice guy. I don’t want to make enemies in the town, especially not with the head of Search and Rescue.”
Beth didn’t respond for a second. “Nothing else?”
Maria sighed. “Maybe.”
Beth’s voice perked up. “All right. That’s at least sort of an honest answer. So here’s my advice. When you talk with Rod, be yourself. Don’t overthink everything. And open up for goodness sakes! You have so many secrets. I never know if what you’re saying is really what you think. Be upfront. You don’t need to tell me how you feel, but if you want to smooth things out with him, you need to tell him the truth.”
The words stung Maria. Secrets were a part of who she was. Legally, she wasn’t allowed to tell people half of the things she knew.
“Are you saying I’m a liar?” Maria bit her lip. Her tone was a little more upset than she’d wanted to sound.
“No, not a liar. Well, kind of. Listen, I know your life is totally different from mine. You know important people. You investigate people’s secrets. And I’m pretty sure you have some big ones about yourself. The problem is little by little, you’ve let your professional habit of holding back the truth creep into your personal life. Your life’s a show. You’re not happy. Open up to someone. Let someone in.”
“I . . .” Maria had nothing to say to that. There was no comeback because Beth was right.
“I’ve got to go,” said Beth. “It sounds like my baby is up again. She’s been teething. No hard feelings, okay? You asked for my advice. You know me. I don’t hold back, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“No hard feelings.” Maria’s lips quivered. “It’s all good.”
“Okay, goodnight, Maria.”
“Goodnight.” Maria stared at the screen of her cell phone as the clock on her living room wall ticked off the minutes until morning.
At a quarter past midnight, Maria opened her contacts list and found Rod’s name. She touched it and the phone dialed. There was no going back. He would see it was her number.
“Hello.” Rod didn’t sound tired.
“Hi.” Be the new “open Maria”, she told herself.
“Hi.”
Nothing else.
He was not going to make this easy.
“Rod, I’m sorry.” Maria sounded sincere. She was proud of herself.
“For what?”
“For insinuating that you are mentally unstable because you believe in ghosts.”
“Oh, that?”
“Yes, that.”
“It’s cool.”
A long pause.
“You sure?” Maria didn’t know how to respond to his two-word sentences.
“I’m sure.”
“Well, that’s all I was call—” Maria stopped. The new “open Maria” would not end a conversation this way. Things were obviously not okay. “Rod?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I come over? I’d love to check out some more constellations with you.”
There was a silence on the other end, enough to make Maria feel beads of sweat on her upper lip.
“I’ll get the hot chocolate ready,” he said. “See you in five.”
“I’ll hurry. I hate cold cocoa.”
The green laser lay unused on the wooden bench where Rod and Maria sat outside in Rod’s backyard. Beside it were their cups of cocoa that were half empty. Maria curled up inside the fluffy fleece blanket Rod had gotten for her once he’d noticed she was shivering in the desert night air.
“I have a confession.” Rod wore a navy blue hoodie that brought out the ocean in his eyes. And he smelled of clean, fresh linen. A day’s growth of stubble darkened his jawline, but as usual, it wasn’t haphazard—it was manicured stubble that gave off a gritty yet sophisticated look.
As he smiled, it was hard for Maria not to watch his mouth. He was animated and witty. His face held so much expression when he spoke. She purposely scooted a little bit closer. Their shoulders rubbed.
“What is it?” she asked, pretty sure she knew what he was going to say. After all, he still hadn’t admitted his fear of ghosts to her.
“I’ve been stalking you online.”
Surprised, Maria responded, “I looked you up on Facebook too. Nothing too exciting. Lawyers on LinkedIn lead pretty dull lives.”
“But I’ve been keeping tabs on you for a couple of years.”
Maria sat up, the blanket falling to her lap. “What? But we didn’t know each other.”
“Technically, I did know you,” said Rod. “From high school. You just don’t remember me.”
Maria pursed her lips. “Hold on, maybe I do. It’s just that I don’t know who I’m trying to remember. From your description of yourself you’ve . . . errr . . . changed. I think what I need is a yearbook. Then I can tell you for sure.”
“Sorry,” said Rod, head back, looking into the sky. “I don’t have one.”
“Not a single yearbook? What happened to them?” Maria didn’t hide her disappointment.
“I burned them.”
Maria gasped. “That was a little overkill, wasn’t it? You couldn’t have looked that bad.”
Laughter spilled from Rod. “It wasn’t on purpose. Typically I don’t tell the chief of police these sorts of things, but since I wouldn’t actually mind if you arrested me for the night, I’ll risk it. It was … gosh … fifteen years ago. Right before the senior graduation all-nighter. For fun, my f
riend and I decided to make mini-explosives with my chemistry set and . . . well . . . my yearbooks, headboard, shoes, desk all got in the way of the project.”
Maria stared at him in disbelief. “You did not blow up your bedroom. You’re kidding me.”
“I can call my mom right now. She’ll tell you it’s true.” He pulled out his phone.
Maria laughed and tried to grab it away from him. He turned and held it higher into the air so she couldn’t reach it.
“Okay, fine.” Maria surrendered. “So maybe I don’t remember you as well as you remember me from high school, but that doesn’t explain why you’ve been stalking me for three years. I could book you into jail for something less creepy stuff than that.”
“It’s pretty much your old friend’s Beth’s fault.” Rod pulled the blanket back up around Maria’s shoulders, tucking it behind her back. His breath was warm on her forehead. “Ever since I moved back to Kanab, she’s been talking to me about you. The first time she cut my hair, I sat down in her chair and she said, ‘I know the perfect woman for you.’ ”
“Oh no,” groaned Maria. “She said that for real?”
“Yep.”
Maria put her hands up to her face. “She’s crazy.”
“She is,” agreed Rod. “Every time I came back for a haircut, she’d pull out her phone and make me read everything you’d posted on Facebook.”
“Why did you keep going back to her?” asked Maria. “You could have changed stylists you know. There is that 100-year-old barber on Center Street.”
“I kept going back because I liked it. When we stalked you together it didn’t feel so . . . pathetic.”
There was no way for Maria to stop the blush that crept up her chest and onto her cheeks.
Rod continued. “But about two years ago it was like you dropped off the edge of the planet. Together we tried calling you, but there was no answer. In fact, there was some weird automated message from the phone company. Beth was worried. She called your work several times, but she only got messages saying you were overseas.”
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