Anne Marie Duquette

by She Caught the Sheriff

  “You?”

  “Yes. I’ve got more medical knowledge than anyone in this group.”

  “Medical knowledge of the dead?” Catfish interrupted.

  “Doesn’t matter. Dead or alive, the human body is still the human body.”

  “She’s right,” Wyatt said unexpectedly.

  There was silence among the four. The wind picked up and blew harder as the sun darted behind the rising thunderheads. The vultures above had to flap hard to keep from being blown away from their prospective meal.

  “Have you ever done work rope before, Caro?” Wyatt asked.

  “Some. I’m no expert, mind you, but most murderers like to hide their victims’ remains in deserted areas. There’s rarely a paved path to the body’s location. I have to get to the crime scene any way I can, and that’s included ropes.”

  “So you aren’t afraid of heights?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about the dark? And snakes? What about—”

  Caro held up a hand to silence him. “Please, Sheriff. Give me some credit. I know what I’m doing.”

  Wyatt heard the determination in her voice. “All right,” he said curtly. “But for God’s sake, be careful.”

  Caro nodded. “I’m ready to go. Jasentha can supervise the ropes, and the three of you can lower me down. I’ll let you know if Kimberly can be moved.”

  “It’s a good plan, Wyatt,” Catfish said. “What do you think, Jaz?”

  “It could work,” Jasentha’s reply was stiff.

  “Then we’re agreed,” Caro said matter-of-factly. She gently pulled the harness from Wyatt’s grasp and pivoted to face Jasentha. “Now, help me put this on.”

  Jasentha soon had Caro outfitted and ready to descend, complete with Wyatt’s backpack containing the first-aid kit and a second rope and harness for Kim so that Caro wouldn’t have to remove her own. Jasentha went over some last-minute details regarding the gear. Wyatt watched Caro lean over the edge of the pit, her eyes dark with concentration and the reflected gloom of the deep.

  “Sure you want to go through with this?” Wyatt asked softly as he made certain the beam on her hat was working properly.

  “Hey, at least I won’t be bombed by bat guano,” Caro said. She attached an extra flashlight—Wyatt’s—to her belt. “Besides, I can ID a broken bone with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back. So lower away.”

  “Someday I’ll find out what you are afraid of.”

  Caro shrugged. “It’s no big secret. Get me out of this hole in one piece and maybe I’ll tell you.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Wyatt reached for her shoulders. At first she thought it was to help her maneuver her weighted-down body into a sitting position on the ledge. But suddenly he placed two hands on her face and pulled her close. His lips descended on hers for a kiss that was hard, fast and sweet.

  His movement unbalancing her, she grabbed his chest for support. Wyatt used the excuse to pull her even closer. Then, as quickly as he’d begun the embrace, he ended it.

  “What…what was that for?” Caro asked shakily.

  Wyatt almost smiled. Caro Hartlan could be rattled, after all. “For luck. So you know you have something to come back to.”

  Caro blinked, but before she could say anything, Wyatt passed her the rope, pressing her fingers around it. “Hold tight,” he warned. “Because here we go.”

  She made a thumbs-up gesture and gave them all a confident nod. “By the way,” she called up as her head dropped below the lip of the pit, “My uncle’s a lawyer. So don’t drop me, or I’ll sue the pants off the whole bunch of you. Starting with Wyatt.”

  Jasentha lifted one eyebrow and Catfish snickered, but Wyatt refused to join in their amusement. He recognized her attempt at black humor for what it was, understood the reasons for it, but wouldn’t, couldn’t, laugh. His eyes were intent on her miner’s helmet as it dropped lower. And the lower she went, the more his heart choked his throat. Praying for her safety and Kim’s, he continued to feed the rope.

  Occasionally Jasentha called out to check on Caro, but her answer was always the same. “I’m fine. Keep going.”

  They lowered her carefully with an almost maddening slowness. The pulley system Jasentha had hooked up and around a nearby pillar was working perfectly. It took most of Caro’s weight, so no one was straining. But no one was taking the situation for granted, either. The deepness of the pit and the darkening sky didn’t help.

  The wind whipped Jasentha’s long hair about her face. Unearthly moans issued from the pit. Wyatt’s hands clamped so tightly on the rope that the progress of the feed was actually stopped before he realized it was the wind, not Caro or Kim moaning. Jasentha had to call his attention to it.

  “Sheriff, loosen up! You’re giving Dr. Hartlan a jerky ride here.”

  Wordlessly he did. The minutes passed, and the darkness and wind increased. The smell of approaching rain filled the air. And in Arizona, with its massive downpours and flash floods, a geographical depression was one of the worst places to be. Wyatt’s nerves were stretched taut. He almost yelled out to Caro, but she beat him to it.

  “I’m down!” she called out, her voice a hollow echo in the deepness of the pit. “Give me some slack, then hold up!”

  They did, everyone up top waiting anxiously to hear about Kimberly.

  “She’s breathing!” Caro yelled. “And I’m right about the skeleton. It is our old friend! No sign of Morgan.”

  Wyatt exhaled deeply. Kimberly was alive! As for Morgan, he’d hang on to that old truism, “No news is good news,” for now. Just for now, until I know Caro and Kimberly are safe.

  A flash of lightning. The rumbling crack of thunder reverberated among the mile-high rock formations. The wind increased so much that even the huge, strong-winged vultures disappeared to seek shelter. The moans from the pit sounded like a woman crying.

  It was a woman crying! Wyatt’s adrenaline shot up so high it gave his mouth a metallic taste, but then he heard Caro’s soothing voice comforting Kimberly.

  “Caro! Kimmie! What’s wrong?”

  “Looks like Kimberly’s awake,” Jasentha said with satisfaction.

  “And unhurt,” Catfish added. “She’s squalling like an angry cat, instead of a wounded bird.”

  His words were confirmed a few minutes later when Caro yelled to the group that Kimberly was ready to be pulled up. The smaller woman was dirty and hungry, but otherwise unharmed. Her mental state wasn’t nearly as stable as her physical one. As soon as she was hauled to the top, Kimberly flung herself into Wyatt’s arms and once more broke into hysterical tears.

  Wyatt folded Kimberly in his arms and held her tight as she tried to talk and cry at the same time. “It was Morgan,” she sobbed. “He lowered me down there because…because…” A new onslaught of tears.

  Wyatt held her tighter, but he had no time to try to decipher her disjointed story. All he could think of was Caro still at the bottom of that pit. No matter that Kimberly was someone he’d grown up with, no matter that she seemed to be accusing Morgan. He couldn’t bear the thought of Caro alone down there in the dark. He motioned Jasentha to join him at the pulley and passed the weeping Kim to Catfish.

  “Take care of her, Catfish. Try to find out what’s going on with Morgan. I need to get Dr. Hartlan up before the rain starts flooding the caves.”

  “Oh, so we’re back to Dr. Hartlan now, not Caro?” Jasentha asked with a smirk.

  “Your manners do your parents shame. Now shut the hell up and pull,” Wyatt ordered.

  “Like your manners are any better. Well, Sheriff, I’ll pull, but you’d better pull, too. Catfish isn’t helping, and your friend down there weighs a ton!”

  A few minutes later Caro was pulled from the pit. Wyatt stared at the broken pieces of skeleton shoved into the spare sections of her backpack.

  Jasentha shook her head at the sight, but said nothing. Wyatt allowed himself the luxury of speech. “You and that damn skeleton!�
��

  “Not all of it! Just a few shards to keep as evidence.” Caro pushed back the metal helmet, where an indentation from the inner hat band was visible on her forehead. Wyatt reached out to smooth it away, but Caro thought he was after the shards.

  “Hands off! This poor skeleton—what hasn’t been smashed into a million pieces down in the pit—has already been roughed up enough.”

  Wyatt’s hand dropped, but not his temper. “There were only two of us hauling you up, you fool! You could’ve been killed!”

  “I said it was only a few pieces!” Caro yelled back.

  “You…” You scared me half to death! The rope could have broken! I could have lost you!

  The thunder accompanying another flash of lightning drowned out his next words. It didn’t matter. He pulled her close and held her even tighter than he’d held Kimberly, so tight her harness pressed its outline into his chest, so tight he could feel her heart beating against his. He could have stood that way forever, but Jasentha once again took charge.

  “We have to get back to the mine before the rain starts. Stow the gear now, or we’ll be going home on a stretcher, instead of our feet.”

  That broke whatever spell Caro’s presence in his arms had woven. They separated, Wyatt to put his miner’s hat on Kimberly, Caro to be unharnessed by Jasentha. The gear was packed just as a light rain started, and they were hurrying as fast as they could to the cleft that was the connecting spot between the elevated surface and the natural caves. They left the caves for the mine only seconds before the downpour began. And had their feet back on the guanofilled lower level of The Silver Dollar Mine just as water started streaming down the incline.

  Despite the filth under their feet and the foul smell as water mixed with dried guano, all of them, Jasentha included, sank down into the muck for a much-needed rest Wyatt found himself with Kimberly in his lap, her shaking arms around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder. He stroked the hair that was below the miner’s hat, wished the curling red locks were a straight brunette, and hated himself for wishing Caro was in his arms when his friend Kimberly was suffering. When his brother was missing. But Caro had somehow become just as important as family and old friends. Maybe more so…

  After a while Kimberly raised her head. “Morgan…”

  “What about Morgan, sweetheart?” Wyatt asked. The oft-used endearment now sounded strange on his lips. Suddenly he knew he would never be able to call Kimberly that again. Kimberly didn’t notice his distraction. She was ready to talk and nothing would stop her.

  “He’s crazy, Wyatt. Crazy! He got into trouble with his jewelry store. No one wanted to buy his gold work and—”

  “What gold work?” Wyatt asked sharply. “Morgan makes turquoise jewelry.”

  “He wanted to get into the wedding market. But I guess his gold bands and diamond engagement rings were too expensive for Tombstone.”

  “Diamonds? Hoo-ee, Wyatt, you didn’t tell us Morg was into diamonds!” Catfish said.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He was into diamonds,” Kimberly repeated. “He had a jewelry consignment shipped to Phoenix, only no one there wanted them, either. He was in debt, so he mortgaged…he mortgaged…”

  “The ranch. I know, Kimberly.”

  Kimberly laid her hand on his cheek. Wyatt permitted it to remain. “Morgan decided to leave town rather than face you. I’m so sorry, Wyatt. I tried to stop him, but…” A fresh torrent of tears.

  “Leave town!” Catfish burst out. Caro, Wyatt noticed, was silent. Like Jasentha, she was listening carefully.

  Kim nodded, her hair bouncing from beneath the helmet. “He came to see me. Said he was taking all his jewelry to Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles!” Catfish burst out again. Wyatt threw the older man a quelling look.

  “Keep going,” he urged Kimberly gently.

  She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand and made a visible effort to calm herself.

  “Morgan said there had to be a market for his jewelry in California. He was going to sell his rings, pay back the mortgage and have some money left over for… for us.”

  “But he left you in the pit!” Jasentha protested.

  “Because I said I was going to tell you. He said he had something to show me first—something important. In the mine. So I followed him. We climbed up through the mine—to those caves. Oh, Wyatt, don’t look like that. Morgan may be crazy, but he didn’t hurt me!”

  “So what do you call being thrown down a hole?” Catfish asked incredulously.

  “He didn’t throw me. He lowered me. Left me water, too. He said maybe some time alone to think things over would change my mind, make me want to go with him. He loved me. He’d show me the world. And he promised he’d be back for me later, when he’d squared things with you and Virgil about the mortgage.”

  “With me?”

  “Yes. But he didn’t say when, and I had no food, and I was so scared, and that awful, filthy skeleton was down there with me, and…and… He’s insane, Wyatt! Insane!” Kimberly dissolved into another torrent of weeping.

  Catfish and Jasentha both came to Wyatt’s aid, patting her shoulder, holding her hands, fussing over her. Caro did not. She had risen, and stood some distance apart from everyone.

  That’s not like her. Wyatt knew of her empathy for people, her sense of fairness, her passion for life. What’s wrong?

  He carefully eased Kimberly over to Jasentha, then rose and joined Caro. She was looking up at the rivers of water racing down the inclined edges of the cave.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “This storm.” Caro dropped her voice to a soft, confidential level that only he could hear. “Awfully convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  Wyatt was confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “Can’t climb back up in this weather to wait for Morgan now, can we?” she asked. “I doubt even Jasentha could do the climb in that downpour.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know it. What rotten luck!”

  “Is it? Arizona weather this time of year is pretty predictable. Any native knows about the monsoons. I think there’s something rotten in this cave, and it’s not just the guano.” Caro stared pointedly in Kimberly’s direction.

  “You think she’s lying?”

  “Don’t you? Do you honestly believe your brother would kidnap someone—someone he loves—dump her down a shaft and just leave her there?”

  “I… No. No way on this earth.”

  “Who’s Kimberly protecting? Either Morgan or Hugh or…”

  “Me?”

  Caro shook her head. “No. No,” she said again in a stronger voice. “Wyatt, I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  Relief at her confidence in him was short-lived. Caro didn’t know the real Wyatt. Or the real Morgan, either, for that matter.

  “Morgan lied, that’s a fact,” Wyatt said. “But why do you suspect Kimberly?”

  “I noticed something when I hooked her up to the harness. Something you would’ve noticed if you weren’t so worried about Morgan.” Caro gave him that sleek, satisfied smile he’d learned to recognize as pride in her work.

  “What?”

  “Look at her clothes.”

  Wyatt glanced over at Kimberly. “So?”

  “According to Kimberly, she and Morgan traveled this way up to the surface.”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “Think back, Sheriff. Think about her appearance when you pulled her out of the shaft. Think about the way she smelled.”

  Wyatt frowned. Suddenly his breath caught as he relived Kimberly’s throwing himself into his arms. He remembered her uniform smelling of cologne and dust and sweat.

  But not of guano. There wasn’t a smear, a stain, a single whiff of guano about her.

  Caro’s expression was grim as realization swept through him.

  “Kimberly lied.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Saturday, early evening

  THE EVENING RAI
N was still falling as Caro stepped out of Marta’s motel-room shower. She could hear it beating on the windows as she dressed, pulling on the spare clothing she’d packed with the skull. Her soiled clothes were already sealed and left outside for the laundry service. And she’d cleaned her boots in the motel parking lot before coming in out of the rain.

  She was alone.

  Marta had driven Kimberly, accompanied by Hugh, to the local clinic to be checked out, and then driven the old man and his granddaughter back to the ranch. Catfish, Luciano, the two ranch hands and Caro had caught a ride in the other truck. Despite the violence of the storm, Wyatt had ridden Arabian Pride back to the Silver Dollar; he’d led Cactus Blossom.

  Everyone had thought Caro’s suggestion of unsaddling the horses and turning them loose to find their own way home blasphemous. “Leave his horses?” Catfish had sounded as if she was asking him to drown kittens.

  “The horses will go straight home,” Caro insisted. “You know that. If you ride, you could get struck by lightning!”

  Wyatt had merely shrugged.

  “City girl,” one of the ranch hands had mumbled.

  Then Wyatt had retrieved the mounts, unsaddled her mare and thrown the tack in the back of the truck. Caro had watched with disbelief as he mounted up, the tethered mare already close to the stallion’s side, the rain already puddling in the brim of his Stetson.

  “You can ride home with the hands, Caro. I’ll see you later.”

  “If you don’t get yourself killed first!”

  Her words sounded heartless, but they were born of fear. Yet no one else seemed to be worried, not even the hands. Obviously this was a cowboy thing. If Caro knew that horses were herd animals, obviously these cowboys did, too. The horse’s instinct to rejoin the herd was so strong that a loose, unattached animal would immediately seek out the shortest way home, an instinct that would prompt the mare to follow Wyatt’s stallion. Caro wasn’t concerned about her. But any rider could be a target for Arizona’s monsoon lightning…

  The drive back was silent, and the hands had worn dour expressions. She knew that their frowns weren’t merely disapproval of her for “abandoning” her mount; they were in a bad mood because the search for Morgan had been called off. Lightning wasn’t the only danger the searchers faced. The monsoon rains caused flooding above and below the ground. The caves, their deeper shafts already flooded since the end of Tombstone’s boom days, became more dangerous than usual.