The four exchanged a few pleasantries about the drive, the weather, and the size of Brian’s estate before Amy, in a loud voice so everyone could hear, said, “We need to leave soon to make our dinner reservation.”
Rod stretched. “Food sounds great,” he said. “If it’s all right with you, I’d like to change before going out.”
“Our guest rooms are on the second floor,” Brian said, grinning widely and flashing his neon white teeth. Maria hadn’t realized white could actually be neon.
He continued. “We weren’t sure if you need one room or two so Amy—”
“Rooms are perfect,” answered Rod, emphasizing the “s.”
Maria blushed, which, she reassured herself, was not a sign of a fear of intimacy. It was a normal, awkward moment for any dating couple.
“Great.” Brian brandished his arm toward the stairs. “Don’t take too long. We’re meeting everyone else at La Lena at six o’clock.”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready,” said Rod. “How about you, Maria?”
“I’ll be ready in five.”
Rod and Maria each grabbed their own travel bag and made their way up the stairs to their rooms—with an “s.”
Maria took another bite of the best guacamole she’d ever tasted. The chips, light and salty, made her mouth water. The salsa had a kick, but not too much. If the food was going to be this good, she might eat Mexican every day on this trip.
“If no one else is going to ask you, then I might as well,” said Melissa, one of the four other people sitting at the restaurant table besides Maria, Rod, Brian, and Amy. “How long have you and Maria been together?”
Maria mentally pulled up her CIA profile for Melissa Putram. Criminal lawyer. Witty. Intelligent. Confident. A devout vegetarian who only drew blood when she was in the courtroom. Happily married to the shy Jay Skunkard (of course she hadn’t taken that last name) who sat next to her and had hardly said more than ten words. If that wasn’t enough to show they were opposites, then their hairstyles were. Short blonde professional for her. Jet black and messy for him.
Rod glanced at Maria for a moment before answering Melissa’s question. He knew from past experience she didn’t like this line of questioning. Maria squeezed his knee under the table letting him know she was fine.
“We’ve been seeing each other a couple of months.” Rod scooped up a chunk of tomato smothered with salsa on a chip. “She takes pity on me and hangs around if I bribe her enough.”
“You must pay her a lot to deal with you,” joked Melissa, who then gave Maria a welcoming smile. “I think she’ll fit in with the gang fine.”
The “gang” was made up of Rod’s old law school cronies from ASU. The five of them had been inseparable during their three years of grad school. At the time they’d all been single and carefree.
“What do you do for work, Maria?” asked Tom Clark, the handsome man sitting across the table from her. He was a dead ringer for the actor Denzel Washington.
Maria reminded herself of the profile she’d made for Tom. “Mr. Straight A.” Flirt. Silicon Valley transplant. Tech geek turned entrepreneur of some sort. Never married.
“Well,” said Maria, never sure how much to divulge when it came to her job. “I’m the police chief of Kanab. I used to work for the federal government.”
Rod chimed in. “If she tells you which department, she’ll have to kill you.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “My dad was in the CIA, too.”
“CIA?” Rod’s eyes widened and a smirk spread across his face. “Did anyone say anything about the CIA?”
Everyone laughed except for the quiet, tall redhead who sat diagonally across from Maria. He hadn’t cracked a smile all night. Granted, he hadn’t frowned either. His expression was monotone, which is exactly how Rod had described Derrick Madison.
Derrick, “The Lumberjack.” Six feet, seven inches. Broad shouldered. Outdoor enthusiast. Environmental lawyer. Born and raised in Phoenix. His wife, Nicole, was home tending to their sick toddler. He had inherited Rod’s dog named Clyde after Rod had moved back to Kanab.
“Have you all decided what you’d like to order?” The waitress had returned for a third time to take their orders while the former law school cronies took time to visit instead of deciding on what to eat.
“Yes,” said Melissa, taking charge of the situation. “I’ll go with a chicken salad, without the chicken, please.”
As everyone else ordered, Maria thought about what a strange bunch of eclectic people Rod’s old friends were. But in college, apparently, they’d clicked. Now, it didn’t seem like they generated the same energy. People change. She certainly wasn’t the same woman she’d been six years ago.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Tom asking her what she’d done in the CIA. He clearly wasn’t going to let the subject drop.
“I was an analyst. Pretty boring stuff, really. I’ve seen more action since I moved to Kanab than I ever did in the CIA.” A lie, of course.
“Hey, that’s right,” said Brian, who was on his second Tequila. “Rod told me a little about the mayor getting murdered by the local journalist. Crazy stuff.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “You know, Rod. Out of all of us, I still can’t believe that you became the small town lawyer. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t need to earn money. Small town wages are fine when you’ve got plenty in the bank.”
Plenty in the bank? Maria looked at Rod. What did Brian mean by that?
Rod dodged Maria’s stare and shrugged. “I’m a simple man, Brian. No turrets for me, thanks.”
Everyone but Derrick laughed.
“Sounds like you’ve seen Brian’s mansion, then,” said Tom, grinning.
“Yep,” answered Rod. “I’m afraid I’m going to get lost in it while Maria and I are visiting.”
For the next few minutes everyone teased Brian about the size of his Phoenix estate. Brian loved the attention. And the Tequila.
Their food arrived and the night wore on. When the conversation went down memory lane at ASU, Maria would chat with Amy. Melissa’s husband, Jay, would check his email. At one point, however, the conversation got so loud that Maria and Amy both stopped what they were discussing to hear what was going on. Jay even looked up from his phone.
“Of course Professor Lankin is coming with us to the Superstitions,” insisted Brian. “It was his idea in the first place.”
“You mean Representative Lankin.” Melissa finished off the last bite of her chicken-less chicken salad. “He’s gone big time on us.”
Rod held up his glass. “A toast to our favorite professor turned politician.” The five of them toasted.
Amy scooted closer to Maria. “One of their professors, named Ted Lankin, ran for state representative last year and won. Brian was so excited about it.” Amy’s voice was low. “He was more like one of the group than their professor. But I’m—”
“We bumped into him at Walmart before going to your house. Interesting guy.” Maria appreciated Amy’s attempts to include her.
“When we are in the Superstition Mountains in a few days, we should take a poke around for the famous Dutchman’s gold mine,” said Melissa to the group. “Professor Lankin told me once he had a map that showed exactly where the treasure was.” She laughed, “He was always making up stories.”
“I’m in,” announced Brian. “I could use a treasure. My house payment is plenty big.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Tom folded up the napkin in his lap. “I hear you paid cash for the place.”
“Honestly,” said Melissa, crunching a tortilla chip, “I refuse to go hiking with you men if you have to argue the whole time about who makes the most money. I pretty much double all of your salaries. So there. I’m boss. Now let’s talk about other stuff. What do we need for the trip? Who all is going? Jay, are you going to be able to come?”
Melissa’s husband shook his head. Amy added that she too wouldn’t be able to go. After a bit of discussion, it was set
tled. Professor Lankin, Derrick, Brian, Tom, Melissa, Rod and Maria would be spending Friday night in the Superstitions with more hiking the next day until dinnertime.
“Here’s to finding the gold,” slurred Brian, downing his … well … who knew what number Tequila. Maria wondered how the guy was still sitting upright, though she did notice he leaned heavily into the window behind him.
“Guess I’ll be driving home,” said Amy with a forced half-smile.
Melissa lifted her hand to the waitress who walked by and asked, “Can we please get the check—”
Before Melissa could finish, Rod was on his feet. His face beet red. “What the—” he shouted at the restaurant window.
Maria would have expected a drunken outburst from Brian, but not Rod. He hadn’t had a drop all night.
“You okay, buddy?” asked Tom, glancing around the table, seeing if anyone else knew what was going on.
Rod’s breathing was fast and frantic.
Panic. Maria knew the rhythm.
“Rod?” She calmly stood up next to him.
Rod’s eyes had a wild, Tarzan look about them. It almost scared Maria … except that tense situations like these always made her feel alive and, oddly, quite collected.
“Come back!” Rod yelled at the window again. He threw the napkin he’d been holding onto the floor and bolted from the table. He shot out the front door of the restaurant and into the street.
Maria was five paces behind him.
Tom was five paces behind her.
Everyone else sat frozen at the table, wide-eyed with gaping mouths.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In 1748, Spanish King Ferdinand VI gave 3,750 square miles of what is now Arizona to a Mexican cattle-baron, Don Miguel Peralta of Sonora. The area contained several silver mines as well as a fabulous gold mine in Arizona. Over the next one hundred years, the Peralta heirs made only a few sporadic trips from their home in Mexico. They had a great respect for the Apache war parties and dared not press their luck. Gradually anyone in the Peralta family with direct knowledge on how to get to the mine died.
“THE DUTCHMAN’S LOST GOLD MINE,” BY LEE PAUL. (ONLINE)
The air conditioner in the truck was on “high” even though it was well past sunset. The temperature outside still hadn’t dropped below 80 degrees. A typical September night in Phoenix.
“I swear I saw her.” Rod’s hands shook. “She even looked right at me. Our eyes met!”
Maria rubbed the back of Rod’s neck. A gesture that she thought would help him relax. It wasn’t working.
“At first I didn’t recognize her. She was walking past the restaurant window and then stopped. She turned, and it was her. It was my wife. I couldn’t believe it. Dakota was outside the restaurant looking at me. After all these years!”
“You mean your ex-wife?” The words escaped Maria’s mouth before her mind had a chance to edit them. It perhaps wasn’t the most compassionate of things to say.
“Right. Whatever. The woman who totally screwed up my life. She was there.”
Maria’s hand dropped to her lap, and she studied it like she was a dermatologist looking for cancerous freckles. If only life was that easy. If only it took a blast of frozen nitrogen to eradicate the cancers of the soul.
Rod was hurting. That much was clear. Whether or not she was the right person to give him comfort was completely uncertain. She had too many of her own issues. She almost felt like finding the contact number for Dr. Roberts, pressing “call,” and handing the phone to Rod.
Would that really be as lame as it sounded?
Yes. Yes, it would be.
“How are you sure it was her?” Maria asked. “It’s been more than six years. People change a lot in that much time. I know most people from six years ago would hardly even recognize me anymore.”
Rod glanced up at her. For the first time since his nuclear explosion in the restaurant he looked almost like himself. “Maria, no one would ever not recognize you. People don’t forget beauty like yours.”
Tingles ran up her arms.
“And Dakota’s the same way. You don’t forget that face.” Rod pressed his lips together.
Maria’s arms immediately went back to normal.
In agitation, Rod ran his fingers through his short hair.
“Well,” she paused. “I’m pretty good at finding people. I’d be happy to spend some time digging around. I could call in a few favors from some old friends in the CIA. But I don’t even know what Dakota looks like. Can you give me something more to go on?”
Rod turned back to look at her. “You would do that for me? Research Dakota?”
“Sure. I’ll stay in Phoenix while you and your friends do your hike in the Superstitious Mountains and look for the Dutchman’s goldmine. Personally, after the whole Freddie Crystal mess in Kanab, I’m way over looking for lost treasure.”
“It’s the Superstition Mountains, and that would be really cool if you could find something out about Dakota. I’m not really in the mood for hiking so much anymore, but I’d better go after they went to all the trouble of planning it.”
The air in the cab of the truck was feeling less thick and stuffy. Either the temperature outside had finally dropped, or things between Rod and Maria were getting back to normal.
Rod was scrolling through the photos on his phone. “I’m sending you a picture of her, and I’ll get you any other information I have. It’s embarrassing, but I don’t know a lot. We only knew each other for a few months. Total. I never even met her family. She said they were all still living in Mexico.”
“Well, that’s somewhere to begin.” Maria’s text alert on her phone chimed. She tapped the message and up came a picture of Rod standing next to a gorgeous dark-haired woman.
The picture had been scanned, and it wasn’t the best quality. But it was good enough to tell that Dakota turned heads. A rubbernecking magnet.
Something about the picture was eating at Maria. She stared at the image a few more seconds and then gasped. “Rod,” she said slowly, “you’re sure you saw this woman outside the restaurant last night?”
“Yes.” Rod nodded. “That’s Dakota.”
“Because,” continued Maria, “I saw her in Kanab. She was out by the Cracks the day we saved Josh.”
Rod looked confused. “What? I’m sure I would have noticed her if she’d been—”
“She was a ghost.” Maria said it bluntly. Rod was the only person, besides Dr. Roberts, who knew Maria saw ghosts.
“She was? H-how could you tell?” Rod’s eyes were the size of full moons.
“She had the same fuzzy halo around her as Acalan always had. At first I didn’t notice it. She was standing behind you when I got off the cliff with Josh. But the closer I got to you, the more I could tell. It was kinda … weird.”
That was the understatement of the century—Rod’s former wife, coming back as a ghost, standing behind him as he, along with his new girlfriend, saved a teen about to die by falling off a cliff.
Yeah, that definitely qualified as weird.
“So if you saw her as a ghost, then …” Rod began.
Maria interrupted him, nodding her head. “Yep. That means you must be seeing ghosts too.”
“… then,” Rod hardly missed a beat, “Dakota really is … dead?”
And that, Maria decided, is why she would never win an award for the person with the most tact. Or any tact for that matter. “Oh.” A pause. “I … guess so. I’m … I’m sorry.”
Rod’s face paled, his eyes distant. At last he whispered to no one in particular, “At least I know.”
CHAPTER NINE
In the 1840s Don Miguel Peralta [a descendant of the original Don Peralta] led an expedition into the Superstitions. Peralta must have felt extremely lucky to find traces of placer gold almost right away. Over the years, [the younger] Peralta established at least eight gold mines in the Superstitions. Although these rather small-scale operations were yielding reasonable profits, they were hig
h-risk enterprises. The nomadic Apaches believed they and they alone owned all the land they rode across. Anyone who thought otherwise was in for trouble.
“MYSTERIES & MIRACLES OF ARIZONA” BY JACK KUTZ. RHOMBUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1992, PAGE 19.
The only place Maria had ever visited that even compared to the stifling heat of her cell in Tehran was the Superstition Mountains.
It was that ridiculously hot.
And barren.
The only sign of human life anywhere to be seen was the group of former ASU law students, their professor, Maria, and Clyde (Rod’s German shepherd now owned by Derrick).
Maria had accompanied Rod once they realized it was Dakota’s ghost Rod and seen. If she was dead, there was no reason for Maria to stay behind and try to find her.
However, Maria was the only non ASU grad in the group. None of the spouses came, which was fine with Maria as that gave her fewer people she had to keep track of. As it was, she already had made nicknames to remind her who everyone was.
Earlier that morning Derrick (alias Paul Bunyan, the know-it-all outdoorsman) had explained to Maria that nearly two hundred years ago the Pima Indians had their own name for the jutting spires and ragged canyons in which they were hiking. The Pima called it the “The Crooked Top Mountains.” The stories they told about the place always included odd sounds, strange sights and mysterious deaths. They thought it was bad luck to travel through and stayed away from it as much as they could.
“But not the serious treasure hunter,” Derrick had added. “We can’t seem to stay away.”
Now, hiking through the craggy, volcanic rock felt like exploring a different planet to Maria. The tall, eroded spires of black rock looked like malformed aliens. Ten-feet tall saguaro cacti seemed to mock the hikers, waving their outstretched needled arms, tempting the unaware to get caught in their sharp grasp. The only thing that could survive in a place like this had to sting, bite, or eat whatever was in its path. Maria already had several welts on her arm from unfamiliar insects.
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