by Karen Harper
“I did it for this amazing project but for you too. Andrea still trusts me, and I’ve kept things secret like you said, so I’d like to stay.”
Claire silently clapped her hand over her mouth. Brad and Yi Ling had been having an affair? Of course, the girl looked up to him, but he must have been the instigator, the seducer. Kris had said the young woman took his photographs for him, so this conversation couldn’t be about that, could it? Maybe Yi Ling knew too much. After all, there were petroglyphs as Kris had called them on some artifacts which Yi Ling had perhaps photographed. Or maybe Yi Ling was in on the fake jewelry and ancient weapons being sold undercover, and he didn’t want her questioned or caught.
Though she wanted to stay to hear more, Claire quickly did a U-turn and hurried back to her office. She hadn’t told anyone on staff except Kris that she was coming in this morning. With Andrea away, and Kris evidently out at the bog, perhaps with the dig team, Brad and Yi Ling must have believed they were alone.
And, darn it, but she really felt for Yi Ling! A girl here on a green card who wanted to make good, but she had been brought here by the woman she was betraying—if she and Brad were lovers. Yet Brad Vance was the power partner in the affair, and she blamed him for this.
Still, she was going to calm down and put on a good front and face him about seeing those artifacts—at least a complete set of photos—today.
And here was her chance to face him alone, she thought, as Yi Ling raced past her office door, ebony hair flying. The poor girl looked distraught. Had she even stopped eating over this betrayal—this love affair? She looked almost gaunt.
When Claire thought she’d given her enough time to get outside, she went out of the office. If Brad was in a bad or sad mood, so be it. This couldn’t wait. Maybe it would help to hit him when his defenses were down.
But there was Yi Ling, pressed into a corner inside the exit door to the bog, turned away, shuddering with now silent sobs.
Claire meant to leave her to grieve over the double hit of the end of a love affair and Brad’s insistence she go back to China for a while. But the young woman must have heard her and turned her teary face away from the wall.
“Oh, sorry,” Yi Ling said.
“Is there anything I can do to help? Are you ill?” First thought—don’t let her know I overheard her and Brad.
“Just that I must go back to China for a bit,” she said with single nod. She squared her thin shoulders. “My father—he is ill.”
Claire darted back into her office and snatched two tissues from Kris’s box on her desk. She hurried back and held them out to Yi Ling. “I’m sure with your experiences—all you have done here—you can work on a project there, or maybe go back to school for a year.”
“If so, I must never tell—tell about this dig—until they are ready for the world to know.”
“Secrecy is hard,” Claire said. “Necessary at times, but sometimes not good.”
The girl wiped under her eyes. “So very true. I will miss it much here,” she whispered and blew her nose. “I am sorry.”
It almost seemed the young woman was apologizing to her, but for what? She meant she regretted leaving.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to come back.”
“Thank you for those words—for your kindness,” the slender young woman said as she opened the door to the bog. There was something familiar in the way she walked away before the door closed behind her. She seemed so defeated, but Claire was still angry at how Brad had treated the girl, used her, then planned to just send her away. But maybe that anger would help her to face him now.
Claire strode down the hall and called in his door, “Brad, excuse me.”
“I didn’t know you were here. No one except Kris and the dig team are around.”
“I just got here. I may go out but wanted to ask you something first.”
He sat on one of his stools and motioned her to step in. He looked totally calm, not like a man who had just broken someone’s heart. And wouldn’t Andrea be very upset when he or Yi Ling told her one of her dig team was leaving—for a year?
“To ask me what?” he said.
“It’s come up that there was quite a unique petroglyph, perhaps on Hunter’s dagger and perhaps on the staff or whatever that was that Leader had with him. One of a woman with her hands raised. Yet I did not see it on the photos you shared with me earlier and feel it could be key in my theory of their roles and relationships to each other.”
“I can’t imagine those weren’t in the pictures you saw,” he said, frowning and looking very concerned. “Yes, there was such a petroglyph on the artifacts of both men.”
“I see now why you’ve called the artifacts relics.”
“Did I? I try not to, though, to me, each thing we get from the bog is a relic—essential, almost sacred to understanding these ancient lives. Yi Ling took the photos, so perhaps she skipped or mislaid those of, not Reaching Woman per se, but Raised Arms Woman, almost as if she was under arrest, right?”
“That’s another way of describing her positioning, perhaps better than my saying it was like a football ref calling a touchdown.”
“Saying to whom?” he asked, frowning, though he didn’t budge from his stool, nor she from just inside the doorway.
“Saying to myself as I try to figure out what that figure means.”
“The woman with upraised arms may not even be Reaching Woman. But yes, let me go through the photos, because I’m sure I can find ones that showcase that figure.”
She was surprised. So easily accomplished? “Brad, why not just let me look at the figure on the items—the relics—themselves? It would save you from going through the pictures.”
She was trying to study his body language, but he seemed frozen in place. Yet his eyes darted toward the door at the back of the lab, no doubt the one Kris had said was his office.
“My rule from the first—Andrea’s too, of course—is that we protect the bog bodies and their grave goods,” he went on, sounding now in lecture mode. “The photographs will have to do. And, if the ones Yi Ling took do not have that raised hands figure, I must be certain she didn’t pull them out for some reason.”
“I’m sure she would have done exactly as you ordered.”
He stared at her a bit too long, then said, “And I’m sure you have things to do while I check on this.” He lifted his left arm and stared, frowning, overlong at his watch.
He went on, “I’ll have them here for you to study to your heart’s content in about an hour, because I have some other business. By the way, I’ve been glad to see you and your high-profile husband have managed to keep your names out of the news lately, because—I repeat—we like to keep a low profile here, to say the least.”
“I understand,” she said, deciding not to rush to Nick’s defense but keep on track with the relics. “I’ll be back in an hour, Brad. I really think that figure is important.”
She went toward Kris’s office, relieved no one knew of their ties to the helicopter wreck, which had received media coverage. Is that what Brad had been referring to? If so, Kris had probably told him about it, in connection with Mitch. But once Claire saw those petroglyphs, she would be clearer on her theories about the status of Reaching Woman and the men in her life. It was obsessing her, and that wasn’t good.
And now, once again, Claire had seen that human nature had not changed over the centuries. A powerful man had seduced or coerced a younger woman, one in a weaker, dependent position, into a relationship with him. No doubt poor Yi Ling would have done anything to please him. If Andrea had known, would she have protected her and blamed Brad?
Claire jumped as the door to the outside banged open and Yi Ling strode in from the bog. “I don’t want to leave,” she told Claire, “but I must accept. My dig team friends and Kris, they are sad. I’ll be gone tomorrow. I will pack my important things
now,” she added and went down the hall to the small room the dig team shared.
The door to the bog opened again. Kris, Doug and Andy stood there.
“Have you heard Yi Ling’s leaving?” Kris asked, and Claire nodded. “She’s really torn up about it, but her father’s very ill in Beijing. It’s quite sudden, and she’s flying out of Miami tomorrow.”
“Wait until Andrea hears and has to replace her,” Doug said, shaking his head.
“Anyhow,” Kris said, “we’re going to take her out to dinner to say goodbye for now, an early dinner since she has to pack. If you’d like to join us, that’s great, but I suppose you’ll want to head home to your family.”
“Yes, and I have a meeting at four,” she said, deciding not to tell Kris in front of the others that she’d gotten as far as Brad promising photos, at least.
“Do you know if Andrea will be here this afternoon?” Claire asked.
“Not sure,” Kris said. “Doctor’s appointment, I think. But, listen, if you have a second, could you help us with repositioning the platform and planks out in the bog? It helps to have four people, and Yi Ling’s pretty upset. We’ve decided to branch out just a bit from the area where we found the trio to see if there are any artifacts we’ve missed before we move on.”
Claire certainly didn’t say so, but she felt there was something missing in understanding the living people here at Black Bog, not just the dead ones.
34
Nick left work early, even though it was a Monday and he had a lot to do. Bronco had said he and Nita were doing okay in the house this weekend—which meant Nita had probably stopped crying—so he’d given Bronco today off.
The guy had stuck with him from the first case Nick had worked with Claire, when he’d almost lost her. He hated to be so possessive of her now, but he couldn’t bear to ever be in a position like that again. She had always said if anything happened to her that her sister would raise Lexi, but now there was Trey too. And he wasn’t sure he could go on if she was hurt or lost.
He’d like to check with her right now, he thought, as he turned into the housing division which had once all been Twisted Trees mansion grounds. But until she drove partway back toward town on the Trail, there were no cell towers to pick up a call, and the bog staff used walkie-talkies, no less. Claire had said the place was state-of-the-art, but that sort of communication—or lack thereof—to the outside world seemed as primitive as the people they were digging up. He wished too that he knew more about the culture Claire was studying, because “Stone Age” didn’t really say much to him, but he honored her contract with its secrecy clauses and just accepted whatever she chose to tell him. After all, legal contracts helped to make his world go round.
He pulled up in front of Dale’s mother’s old house, next to Dale’s own vacated one. He had to admit Bronco and Nita’s place looked better than when he’d last seen it. Bronco had not only cut the grass but had trimmed the overgrown bright pink bougainvillea bushes. The windows sparkled in the late afternoon sun, and it looked like Nita had hung fresh curtains. Claire would be thrilled.
He got out and went up to the front porch, glad he didn’t see Betty and her little dog spying on him. He heard the purr of the air-conditioning. Bronco must have gotten that repaired, because Dale’s mother supposedly hadn’t used it. But had she used the freezer for more than hoarding frozen food? Nick used to think perhaps the old lady had offed Cyndi Lindley, but evidently not, since Lucy Braun was dead by the time Marian was strangled—unless Mrs. Braun had come back as a ghost.
As he raised his hand to knock, Bronco opened the door.
“Hey, things are looking up!” Nick greeted him as Bronco unlocked the screen door and held it open.
“They were,” he said, his voice quiet, which was unusual for the big guy. “Come on in. Finally got Nita to take a nap. She’s been working hard.”
“I’d say you both have. The front yard looks one hundred percent better. But what do you mean things were looking up?”
They sat in the front room, which also looked clean and rearranged from when Nick had seen it last. Bronco hunched forward, hands on his knees.
“That old busybody next door stopped by with a welcome gift—pecan rolls.”
“Sounds nice. And?”
“And in chatting with Nita when I was out in back finally getting that shed cleaned out, the old lady evidently told her she always pictured her friend Lucy here—Dale’s mother.”
“They were friends for years. But that upset Nita?”
“When Nita asked her more about it, she said she’d seen her ghost here recently. For sure it was a woman, she said, maybe even Cyndi, all white, like covered with frost.”
“What?”
“Lights at night. Shadows passing the windows in the daytime.”
“Oh, hell. That’s ridiculous and not what Nita needed to hear.”
“No kidding, boss. I’m scared it will set her back about this place. I don’t want to get off to a bad start in this neighborhood by telling the old lady to stay away—man, she walks by all the time—but she’s really screwing things up.”
“Crazy Betty has seemed to like me from the first, lucky me. I’ll just stop next door on my way home and tell her that she needs to stop that kind of stuff. If she can’t support her new neighbor, be upbeat, all that, she needs to stay away.”
“She’s creepy to say the least. Anything you can do—’preciate it, ’cause now I’ve got to settle Nita down again.”
* * *
Claire knew she had to settle down. Finally, she was going to see missing photos of the petroglyph that must be key to her work here. Finally, Brad was going to trust her enough to share those with her, so she’d be fully informed in theorizing about the bog trio—and who knew what bodies they would dig up here after that? She hoped, as wary and difficult as he sometimes seemed, that she could establish a good working relationship with him the way she had with Andrea.
She didn’t see him in his lab. She stood in the doorway, uneasy about going in if he’d stepped out for a moment. Or maybe he was in his office at the back. She glanced at her wristwatch. Exactly four o’clock.
“Brad? Senator Vance!”
Perhaps he’d just stepped out to the bathroom or to get some of that perpetual coffee and a BB frosted doughnut.
She saw a note on the stool where he’d sat last time she was here, and she stepped in to glance down at it. Yes. To her.
Her heart fell. What if he had left, made some excuse to put her off? But no, she thought, as she skimmed his angular handwriting. Be back soon. Pics in desk drawer.
What a relief! She moved to the desk in the corner of the lab and tried the open the center drawer. It didn’t budge. Locked?
She tried to slide out each drawer, but all held fast. Maybe he didn’t mean this desk, but she could hardly just start opening drawers in here. She looked around for anything else that resembled a desk. His light table for viewing negatives. Shelves. Surely not that filing cabinet.
Could he have meant his desk in his office? Kris had seen it, described it. Well, if the door to that room was locked, she’d know that wasn’t what he’d meant.
Just to be sure he wasn’t coming down the hall, she stepped out and looked up and down the corridor. Then she punched in #1 on her handheld radio, his number. Andrea was #2, and Claire had recently peeked outside again to see her car wasn’t back yet. Only Brad’s and Claire’s were there because Kris and the dig trio had gone out to a restaurant to say goodbye to Yi Ling. She could see that the gate guard’s car was gone, so perhaps he’d been invited to Yi Ling’s impromptu farewell dinner.
Brad didn’t pick up on his radio. What if he’d fallen asleep or somehow hurt himself? Surely, he hadn’t gone out to the bog, especially on his own. That was against Andrea’s rules and anyway he feared the place that was the fierce focus of his attentions.
She went back into his lab, then to his office door. “Brad!” she shouted. “Are you in there? Are you okay?”
Feeling it would be locked, like so much around here, Claire knocked, then reached for the knob. It turned easily in her hand, and the door opened.
The light was on. Oh, whew, there was a note on the desk with an arrow and the word pictures.
Leaving the door ajar, she stepped into the room.
* * *
Nick knocked on Betty’s door and heard her little dog start barking. At least she was home. He needed to get her to back off. Her snooping had gotten way out of line.
Wearing a pink housecoat, she opened the door, holding the dog.
“Oh, my favorite criminal lawyer has come calling,” she said with an almost coquettish smile.
“Hi, Betty. Can you step out so we can talk for a second?”
“Any more trouble in this lunatic neighborhood?” she asked. He thought she might balk at coming out, but she didn’t, and they sat in matching pink plastic molded chairs.
“I sure hope no more trouble,” he told her. “I think you know that your new neighbors, the Gateses, are friends of mine.”
“He works for you and you gave him the day off so he and Nita can finish tidying things up.”
“Right. They will be good neighbors, but Nita’s kind of shaky with all that’s gone on here, so—”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Yes, well, I’m hoping you won’t scare her with ghost stories about her new house. It’s hard enough that Cyndi’s body was found there.”
“Not to mention that not far away from here, another woman died—before a fire finished off the rest of that mansion. Talk about haunted. Besides, I think my dear friend Lucy—Dale’s mother—probably does haunt her house. She loved living there all these years.”