Dreaming of a Hero (Heroes Series Book 2)

by Lyssa Layne

  “Would you be one of the fellows that environmental bunch is trying to put out of business? What’s your name again?”

  “Mike Malone, and yes, the SRPL has gotten a judge to issue an injunction which keeps me from operating. We go to court in June.” Mike tried to keep the bitterness from his voice and failed.

  “You have any physical run-ins with any of that bunch?” The sheriff’s voice took a hard edge.

  “No. I heard they shredded all of the rafts at the River Adventures place up the road, but so far they haven’t done any vandalism other than sticking a bunch of signs outside my gate.” Mike matched the sheriff’s tone. “If you’re implying I had something to do with this guy being out here you’re way off base.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” Bodine declared. “Just asking questions. Now get your shorts unbunched. You ever have any treasure hunters on your place?”

  Mike hesitated. The minute he mentioned Skeeter, the whole investigation was going to turn. Two gold chasers dead in a month on his land. Odd, but not impossible. There couldn’t be a connection between the two, could there? Hundreds of people traipsed all over the desert grasping for lost gold and buried treasure without being killed for their trouble. Skeeter had been old and sick. No one had killed him.

  “One. Skee– I mean Gary James. He was a desert rat. A full-time treasure hunter. Once in a while he dropped in and stayed a day or two. Then he went about his business. I didn’t know much. He didn’t share a lot, and I didn’t pry.”

  “I want to interview him. Where can I find him?” Bodine reached for his little notebook.

  “He died a few days ago,” Mallory said.

  The sheriff scratched his ear. “That’s mighty inconvenient. Any idea what happened to him?”

  “He passed from natural causes,” Mallory said. “At least that’s what the coroner believes. But she is going to do an autopsy on Friday.”

  “What’s your interest in this?” Bodine wrote down something.

  “He was my father. I came here to bury him.” Her voice shook.

  “Sorry, Miss.” He tipped his head to her, then turned back to all business with Mike. “Have you ever heard of any treasure on your place? Is there any way this Wallace could’ve found something and been killed for his trouble?”

  Mike shifted. He had a choice to make. He had to confess. Mallory would hate him when he did. At this point she wasn’t far from it. He drew in a long breath. “I think there’s a possibility that her dad believed that.” Keeping his eyes firmly on Bodine’s, he said, “Skeeter had a map with my ranch marked on it.”

  At Mallory’s sharp, indrawn breath he faced her. “Yes, I took it. I looked it over and put it back in your purse this morning while you went to the ladies’ room in Tortilla Flat.”

  “If you did that, who was in my room this morning?” Clearly she thought he was still lying.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could you two sort this out on your own time?” Bodine waved an impatient hand. “I have a dead body on my hands. He was a gold chaser. Somebody else died who was also a treasure hunter. They both kicked the bucket on your ranch. That leads me to believe someone thinks there’s a pot of gold stashed somewhere and they’re willing to kill for it.”

  “That’s absurd.” Mike crossed his arms over his chest. “First of all, I’ve lived here my entire life and I know this land like the back of my hand. If there were any treasure, I’d know about it. Secondly, if there was some kind of windfall, wouldn’t I have dug it out by now to pay my legal fees?”

  “Maybe you just found out.” Sheriff Bodine raised his brows. He nodded toward the spot where they’d found Wallace. “Along with him and this Skeeter fellow. Maybe you killed them both to keep it for yourself.”

  “I didn’t.” Mike felt his world spinning out of control. How had he gone from helping out a needy friend to being accused of murdering him? Mallory looked at him like he was a bug. Something to be stepped on.

  “I want to get a look at this map,” Bodine said. “Where is it?”

  “In my purse at the ranch.” Mallory glared at Mike. “At least I think it is.”

  Sheriff Bodine motioned toward his deputy. “Find somebody to take their horses home. Get me the results on forensics ASAP. I’m going to escort Mr. Malone and Miss James to The Jumping Cholla Resort. I have some questions I want answers to.”

  ~*~

  Mallory handed over the crumpled paper.

  The sheriff took it and studied it for a long time. Finally he looked up. “Where’d you get this?”

  “The coroner gave it to me. She found it sewed inside Skeeter’s pant leg, along with a vial of gold dust.” She passed that to him, too. “Here.”

  He took it and lifted it toward the light in the library, where they’d gathered. “This real?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I think so, but I’m not an expert.”

  “You don’t have any idea where this came from?” He held the tiny bottle almost reverently.

  “No.”

  He focused on Mike. “Do you?”

  “Not even a guess.”

  “There’s nothing on this map that gives you an idea?” Bodine held the paper toward him but Mike didn’t take it.

  “No.”

  Why should he want to see it again? He’d probably memorized it. Mallory fought the urge to say so. He might be a liar, but she didn’t think he killed Skeeter, or the poor man in the desert. She’d seen Mike’s face when they’d uncovered the guy’s face and he’d been as troubled as she was. Keeping the location to treasure secret was another thing. Why hadn’t he just asked her to look at the map? There really wasn’t a good excuse...unless there was something on it he didn’t want her to see. He’d only caught a glimpse of it when she dropped it after the barbeque. She was going to leave in a few days and take it with her. If he wanted to get a good look without her knowledge he had to take it.

  Disappointment coursed through her.

  She knew better than to trust men. Her father taught her that lesson well. For a short time, she’d wanted to forget. Mike reminded her. He was exactly like her father. Willing to walk over anybody, anytime to get what he wanted.

  She couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

  “You said someone was in your room this morning?”

  Mallory forced herself to answer the sheriff. “Yes. Him.”

  “I wasn’t,” Mike insisted.

  Why didn’t he just admit it? She wanted to yell at him. The game was up, she wasn’t playing any more. “Sure you weren’t.”

  “If you weren’t there, do you know who was?” Bodine acted like Mike might be telling the truth.

  “I don’t know. I was tired and I laid down when we got home. I didn’t get up until after lunch.” He sounded so sincere she almost believed him. Almost.

  “What were you wearing today?” The intruder wore a white tee and jeans. She stared down her nose at him. He hadn’t even changed.

  He glanced at his shirt. A cream-colored polo and faded Levi’s. “This.”

  “Exactly what you had on when you came into my room to put back the map.” She wasn’t going to listen to any more of his lies. He wasn’t even good at it. She pushed her glasses firmly in place. “I saw you.”

  “Did you have on your glasses?”

  “Why?” She shifted. So what if she couldn’t see well without them? She could make out colors and shapes. “No.”

  “You didn’t see me.” He didn’t blink or look away.

  A tiny niggle of doubt bit her. Could he be telling the truth? For once?

  “If you two aren’t the only ones who know about this map, maybe somebody else thinks they had to eliminate the competition,” Bodine said. “So tell me. Who else could have seen it?”

  “My employee, Dianna Lewis,” Mike admitted. “I told her about it. But I didn’t show it to her.”

  “Did you tell her it’s no good?” Bodine asked.

  “Yes.” Mike looked
surprised. “I told her it was worthless and that I put it back this morning.”

  “Do you think she believed you?” He looked at the evidence again.

  He rubbed the back of his neck while he thought. “I guess not. She was convinced this was the answer to find money to fight the SRPL group.” He shot Mallory an apologetic look. “She came up with a plan to lure Mallory out of her room so I could get ahold of the map. When I told her it wasn’t any good she was angry.”

  “Mad enough to look for herself?”

  Mike shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Mad enough to kill?”

  Mike sat up straight. “No way. There’s a big hole in this theory of yours. We didn’t know about the map until I saw Mallory drop it. Skeeter had already died. No one killed him for it. And the guy out there in the desert has been missing for a month or more. Dianna had no way to know he was searching for gold, if he was. She couldn’t have killed him a month ago to stop him from beating her to some lost treasure.”

  “Are you sure she didn’t know?” Bodine let his question hang. “You say you didn’t know about this map. But if Wendell Wallace found out about it, then maybe this Dianna did, too.”

  Mike felt his face go numb. “No way.”

  “I’m going to need to do some checking with this woman.” The sheriff stood. He picked up the map and vial of gold dust. “I’ll be back tomorrow with some more questions. I’ll expect to find both of you here. If I were you, I’d lock my doors.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mike flinched as Mallory looked at him with contempt, but she couldn’t make him feel worse than he already did. Now, on top of everything else, his friends were being looked at on suspicion of murder. There was no way he’d ever consider the possibility of Dianna killing anyone. He’d known her for more than ten years and she wasn’t capable of offing anyone.

  “I’m going to take Sheriff Bodine’s advice and go to bed.” Mallory rose to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Mike said.

  She pinned a steely glare on him. “What is it?”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  She continued to stare at him without responding.

  “What I did with the map was wrong. But I swear to you, I wasn’t in your room this morning.” He ran a hand across the back of his knotted neck. “And there’s more.”

  “Yes?” She held on to the back of the chair as if she needed it to hold her up.

  He couldn’t find the right way to tell her he had taken the other half of Skeeter’s map. What he had already done had been so despicable, adding more was too much. The map was worthless. But he had to come clean. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  He ran to his suite and found the map he’d taken from Skeeter’s knapsack and stuffed it in his back pocket. He hurried back to the library and found that Mallory had moved to stand in front of the shelves. She ran a finger down the spine of one of his books and winced. Her jammed fingers. He had completely forgotten about them in all the excitement. He moved beside her and took her hand in his. “Let me see.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then relaxed.

  “You need to see a doctor to make sure these aren’t broken.” He smoothed his thumb over the middle joint of her index finger and she winced. “I’ll get Shelby. She’ll know what to do.”

  “I’m fine.” But she continued to let her hand rest in his.

  “You’re not fine,” he said. “These last two days have been hell for you.”

  She took her hand back. “They haven’t been great, but I’ll recover.”

  Would she? Could she ever bounce back after all that had happened to her? He wouldn’t blame her if she never crossed the Arizona state line again. Her father’s death, the flood, being bucked off a normally gentle horse, finding a dead man...the way he’d lied to her. He held back a sigh. “I hope so.”

  “I just want to go home as quickly as possible.”

  “There’s one more thing you need to know.” He reached toward his back pocket.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to hear it. I can’t take any more. Please, just save it, whatever it may be. All I want to do is pack and go to a hotel and wait for the coroner to call so I can go home.”

  “You can’t go.” His hand, halfway to his back pocket stilled. “You heard the sheriff. He wants us here when he comes back in the morning.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t have anything more to add. He can find me at the hotel if he needs me.” She pushed up her glasses.

  “At least rest until morning. I’ll take you in to a hotel myself.” He didn’t want her to leave like this. The first woman he’d cared about since Elisha, and she hated him. If he could convince her to stay, maybe, just maybe he could straighten things out. “You’ve got to be tired and sore.”

  She wavered. “I am worn out.”

  “And hungry? Breakfast was a long time ago.” The sausage and eggs Faye served that morning seemed a lifetime ago.

  “A little,” she admitted.

  “Stay. I’ll fix something to eat and get Shell to look at your hand.”

  “Just for the night.” She sounded like she’d been sentenced to hard labor in Yuma. “But after that I’m leaving.”

  Come to the kitchen,” he coaxed.

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  He’d won. He had about an hour to begin to redeem himself.

  ~*~

  Mallory sat at the counter and watched him warily.

  True to his word, he called Shelby from the kitchen phone and asked her to come up to the lodge. Then he began to rummage through the stainless steel fridge for something to eat. “What sounds good?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t care. My stomach is still rolling after seeing that poor man like that.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty nasty.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Dianna didn’t do that. I don’t care what the sheriff thinks. She isn’t capable of doing something that horrific.”

  Mallory cradled her sore hand and she kept her eyes on it. “People do crazy things.”

  “But not murder.” He took a skillet from the cupboard. “Not that.”

  Shelby walked in. “Not what?”

  Mike waved the pan. “I was just telling Mallory that Dianna isn’t capable of murder. No one here is.”

  “Murder?” Shelby’s big blue eyes got larger. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mike found a dead body in the desert. The sheriff seems to think Dianna might have had something to do with it.” Mallory spoke in a very controlled tone.

  “A body?” Shelby almost shrieked. “Where? And what’s Dianna’s connection to it?”

  “Somebody bashed this guy, Wendell Wallace, over the head and buried him in a shallow grave in the gully bellow the petroglyphs,” Mike told her. “And Dianna didn’t have anything to do with it. Period.”

  “Why would she even be a suspect?” Shelby asked.

  “Because she knows my father left me half a treasure map,” Mallory told her. “The sheriff thinks someone, Dianna, may have possibly killed him for it.”

  “Dianna wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Shelby shook her head. “I don’t understand. What did this Wendell have to do with Skeeter?”

  “He was a treasure hunter, too. The sheriff thinks Wendell might have had a copy of the same map Skeeter did,” Mallory said. “And that someone hit him over the head and took it.”

  “It’s a stretch at best.” Mike slammed his pan down on the stove. “As if we don’t have enough problems already, now one of us is under suspicion of murder.”

  “This is terrible,” Shelby said. “Not only for the dead guy, but for us, too.”

  “I have no idea what happened to him, but this will really give the SRPL people ammunition.” His tone was flat. For the first time, defeat filled him. He’d fought the good fight, and he thought they had a chance to win. If they could fund it, anyway. But now with this, he didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in Phoenix of a judge listening to him.
If people were dying out here, it was just another reason to close off the desert to public use.

  “Yeah,” Shelby said. “It stinks. But we have to stay strong.” She looked at Mallory, abruptly changing the subject. “What happened to your fingers? More cactus?”

  “Zorro bucked her off and they’re jammed,” Mike said. “Can you tape them for her?”

  “What?” Shelby’s mouth fell open. “That sweet little horse bucked? He’s bombproof.”

  “Not when someone deliberately sticks cactus under his saddle pad.” Mike took eggs and cheese from the fridge. He cracked the eggs, poured them in a bowl and stirred in salt and pepper. “There’s going to be hell to pay when I find out who did it.”

  Shelby came to her feet. “Nobody here would kill anyone or try to get someone hurt. Especially Mallory. She’s just an innocent bystander in the whole river mess.”

  “I agree.” Mike poured the eggs in the skillet and added cheese. Sticking a half dozen pieces of bread in the toaster, he glanced at Mallory. “But someone did try to get her at least bucked off. And that’s not all. Earlier, someone snuck in her room.”

  Looking at Mallory, Shelby said, “That’s why you were asking me if I’d seen anyone earlier and you were upset.”

  “Yes,” Mallory said. “Someone snuck into my room while I was in the shower. I heard them, but only caught a glimpse. I didn’t have on my glasses so I didn’t get a good look.”

  “Did they take anything?” Shelby looked as if she didn’t believe any of it.

  “No.”

  “This is crazy,” Shelby said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” Mike turned the omelet. “Hand me a plate, Shell.”

  She did as asked. “Eat first, Mallory. Then I’ll tape up your fingers for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mike placed the steaming omelet and toast in front of her. “Milk or tea?”

  “Tea.”

  Shelby raised her eyebrows a bit at Mallory’s tone, but he didn’t take offense. She could talk to him a lot worse. He deserved it. He retrieved a tea bag from the cupboard and made her a cup of raspberry-orange herbal tea. He cracked more eggs. “You hungry, Shell?”