Paranormal Mystery Boxset Books 1-3: Legends of Treasure

by Lois D. Brown

  “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 between 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.

  “Do you need to sit down?” asked Ranger Ferlund.

  Stomach juices inched their way up Maria’s esophagus, and she tasted rancid heartburn in the back of her throat. If what they had found in the Superstitions was real, today had to be one of the worst days of her life. And that included her time of torture in Tehran. That had been done by her enemies. But deceit and lies from Rod felt like a knife to the heart. She had lov—

  Maria stopped herself mid-word. She had liked him. And that was bad enough.

  Numb and confused, Maria watched in a trance as Melissa approached them. “Hey,” she said in a voice twice as loud as her normal one. “The police are a couple of minutes away. Tom, Derrick, and Brian are waiting outside keeping a watch. Rep. Lankin had to go … home.”

  The truth was the minute Rep. Lankin realized a murder charge was about to go down with him in close proximity, he’d called for an “emergency driver” to come and get him out of there. No reason to “complicate” matters, he’d said. Valiantly, the rest of Rod’s friends had stayed, though none of them seemed overly friendly anymore. Except for Melissa. Her job as a criminal lawyer made her right at home.

  “Rod?” Melissa spoke again. “The police are going to take you to the Apache Junction jail. You’ll stay the night there. I’ll come tomorrow and talk to the judge about setting bail. Do you want me to call your parents?” She enunciated each word like a parent talks to a small child.

  Rod shook his head. “No, they’re … out of the country. You could try my brother, Grant. He’s traveling but not too far away. Maria?”

  Maria instinctively looked at him. Her heart wanted to break apart. He looked pathetic.

  “Maria, I didn’t do it. You believe that, right? Someone else did this. You have to find out—”

  “They’re here.” Ranger Ferlund hoisted up his pants as he continued to rearrange a rack of free maps. “I can hear their sirens.”

  Maria let her hand rest on Rod’s shoulders. Her mind lurched back and forth from thoughts of him as a murderer to conclusions it was all a set up. Thirty seconds crawled by and Maria, at last, picked up the sound of wails. This was it. Rod was going to jail. Like a criminal. Like a murderer. Like someone who could kill another person. In cold blood.

  More acid burned its way up Maria’s throat.

  Please, let today end. Maria’s fingers itched to call Beth, her best friend in Kanab. Beth thought Rod was one of the best of the best. A gentleman in every way possible. Maria need to talk to her. She needed reassurance this wasn’t what it seemed to be.

  Tom, Derrick, and Brian burst through the door. “The police are here, but so are some reporters,” said Tom. “They must have followed the sirens like a rat pack.”

  “Maria?”

  It was Rod again, trying to get her attention.

  “Yes?”

  “Maria, I … you’ll find out what’s going on, right? I need you to. I … I didn’t . . .”

  A group of armed men and women burst through the ranger station’s door. There were enough of them to take down a crazy, violent killer. Once they saw their suspect—a handcuffed, docile, confused man with a blanket about to fall off his shoulders—most of them stopped by the door.

  “Deputy Martin, will you please help the prisoner stand while I read him his rights?” said the uniformed woman in front.

  “Yes, Sheriff,” said the man behind her. He moved past her and grabbed Rod by the elbow, yanking him to a standing position.

  “Whoa,” said Maria. “Calm down, deputy. It’s not like he’s resisting arrest.”

  He glared at her.

  The sheriff cleared her throat and began. “You have the right to remain …”

  Maria’s mind drifted. She needed to keep herself together. She had to decide what to do. Did she go back to Kanab? Take a bus? Call Beth? Maybe Pete could come get her? When would she be contacted to give her testimony?

  Without Maria realizing it, the sheriff had finished the Miranda rights and the deputy was leading a confused-looking Rod outside. As he was being roughly escorted out of the ranger station, he turned to Maria, eyes pleading. “Help me.”

  The ranger station door shut. Only Maria and Ranger Ferlund were left inside. Melissa and the guys had gone outside to ward off reporters.

  Maria’s knees buckled and she fell to the ground.

  Tears streamed down her face.

  There was no sobbing. No unattractive noises.

  Maria had learned to cry in quiet. She could never let her captors know she was in pain.

  Ranger Ferlund sat down on the floor next to her, legs crossed. He put the blanket that had fallen off of Rod’s shoulders over hers, and he hummed. Nothing that Maria recognized. But it was soothing.

  He patted her back and, surprisingly, Maria let him.

  The two of them stayed that way for what seemed like ages. In actuality, it was only a few minutes until Brian and Melissa came back in the ranger station and offered Maria a ride back to Phoenix. Rod’s truck was being impounded. Not like the police would really find any evidence in it. Not six years after the crime.

  But Maria knew the routine. She understood how law enforcement had to follow the routine. It was that this time, she was on the other side of the system.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sometime in the ensuing years, the Apaches had a change of heart because they offered to show Dr. Abraham Thorne a place where he could pick up gold. Thorne was an Army surgeon stationed at Fort McDowell, just north of Phoenix, and he had lived among the Apaches for many years. After curing several Apaches of some kind of eye disease, he was blindfolded for a twenty-mile trip deep into the mountains … When the blindfold was removed, he saw a pile of almost pure gold. It was apparent the gold had already been partially refined. The Apaches allowed him to take as much gold as he could carry. He decided one day he would try to find the mine on his own.

  “THE DUTCHMAN’S LOST GOLD MINE,” BY LEE PAUL. (ONLINE)

  Maria must have walked fifteen miles between the hours of midnight and six a.m. By the time she returned to Brian’s house, she was drenched in sweat from the hot and muggy Phoenix night. She entered the mansion’s kitchen, looking for a drink.

  “Hey,” said Amy, “did you get any sleep?”

  Maria shook her head. “No.”

  “Why don’t you try to lie down. I’ll make you something to eat.”

  “Can’t. Melissa texted me. Rod needs his overnight bag. His migraine meds and contact solution is in it.”

  Amy waved her spatula. “Brian’s already taking it to him. You need some rest.”

  “Oh,” said Maria, surprised. “That was nice.” She truly was relieved. She should have been the one to take Rod his stuff, but she didn’t really want to face him yet. She needed at least a day to process everything.

  At least, that’s what she told herself.

  “Ready for some pancakes?”

  “Nah. I’m going to go upstairs and shower—make a few phones calls. But thanks. You and
Brian have been great hosts. I’m happy to get a hotel though. I don’t want to keep putting you out.”

  “Absolutely not.” Amy looked firm. “You’ll stay here as long as you need to. This must be awful for you. If you need anyone to talk to, it’s what I used to do for a living.”

  “Thanks.” Maria nodded and walked out of the living room. She dialed Beth’s number as she climbed the stairs. What she really needed was “Beth therapy.”

  “Hello?”

  “Beth, it’s Maria.”

  “Hey!” A happy voice filled Maria’s ear. “How’s it going? You two having a romantic time?”

  “Rod’s been arrested for the murder of his ex-wife. It’s a long story, but I don’t know what to do. I . . .”

  “Rod’s been what?”

  “He was arrested last night. We found Dakota’s body, well her skeleton at least, in the Superstition Mountains. It’s all so crazy. I don’t even know where to start. I can’t—”

  Maria’s voice cracked. A tear started. She wasn’t going to be able to hold it in.

  “Honey, I don’t know what’s going on, but something very wrong has happened. Rod didn’t kill his wife. He didn’t. I know it. Listen, tell me where you’re staying. I’ll rearrange my clients and be there tomorrow morning to help you sort this out.”

  “Okay.” Maria gave her friend a few more details and then hung up. The thought of her best friend coming to Phoenix helped calm her enough to allow her a few hours of sleep.

  She woke up at 9 a.m., a swarm of skeleton ghosts in her room. They taunted her, lifting their skulls off and on. Beheading themselves while they laughed.

  Maria picked up her phone and with shaking fingers pushed a name in her “favorites” list. “Dr. Roberts?”

  “Maria? How are you?”