Grave Danger (2 page)

“Any chance you forgot tonight?”

She paused for a moment to consider her answer. “No,” she said firmly and scanned the contents of the back of the truck. “It looks like everything is here. The burial notes.” She flipped through a binder. “The field catalog, the photologs, the excavation notes.” She pulled out a bucket, revealing a bright orange case. “That’s the GPS mapping unit.”

He pulled out the case and opened it. The expensive survey equipment was nestled in gray foam padding. Relief rushed through her. She’d live to dig another day.

Leaving the equipment, the police chief walked a complete circle around the SUV, scanning each surface. He opened the driver’s door. Curious, she walked to the passenger side and peered through the window. He used his flashlight to inspect the interior, and then pulled the latch to release the hood. His gaze met hers briefly across the seat, and she felt a strange foreboding. He left the cab to raise the hood. She followed.

He rested a hand on the radiator and then touched the spark plugs, followed by the engine block. He straightened and studied her. He wasn’t happy. “Ms. Maitland, I’ll ask again. Is this where you parked your truck?”

“And again, no. I parked in front of the restaurant.”

“What time did you enter the restaurant?”

“A little before nine. I think they were just getting ready to close the kitchen.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Just after ten. When I realized my truck was stolen, I walked straight to the police station.”

“Ms. Maitland, have you been drinking?”

She felt blood drain from her face as his meaning sunk in. He thought she was so drunk she hadn’t seen her beast of a truck on an empty street. “I had a glass of wine with dinner, yes. One glass.” She reached into her purse. “Here’s the receipt.” The contempt in her voice adequately conveyed her outrage at his question, but inside, she could teach Jell-O to quiver.

“It doesn’t look like your vehicle’s been stolen. There’s no forced entry on any of the doors and no sign of how the engine was started. Is there any chance you parked here, then forgot, and didn’t see it when you left the restaurant?”

“How on earth is that possible? I’d have to be blind or crazy!”

His look was pointed. “You don’t appear to be blind.”

She took a startled step backward and then gathered herself enough to say, “I’m not crazy.”

“The engine is barely warm. It isn’t hot enough to have been driven on a joyride. It couldn’t have been driven more than a block, if at all. Don’t waste my time here. If you forgot where you parked, say so now. We’ll have a good laugh and you can go home.”

“When I left the restaurant, my truck wasn’t here.” She touched the engine herself, desperately seeking something hot, something to prove him wrong, but she couldn’t.

He studied her intently, evaluating and judging her.

“My truck was stolen,” she said with a firmness she no longer felt.

“Is there anyone you know who could be playing a joke on you? Or anyone who might have borrowed it?”

“If one of my employees wanted to borrow it, they would have come into the restaurant and asked. Besides, I’m the only one with keys.”

“Do you have a key hidden in the undercarriage?”

“My only spare is in my desk at the Shelby house.”

“Look for it when you get home. Maybe you gave it to an employee and forgot.”

“I wouldn’t forget something like that.”

“Do you know how much gas you had in the tank?”

Hope blossomed. She could prove she wasn’t crazy. “The tank was full. I filled it this morning.” She could show him the receipt.

With her key, he started the engine. She watched anxiously. Hope fled when the needle rose to the full line.

Chief Colby cut the engine. “Okay. You’re free to go.”

“Aren’t you going to dust for prints?” she asked. He could at least
pretend
to investigate.

“No reason to. Be grateful you won’t have black powder everywhere. This isn’t a GTA—the vehicle’s here, undamaged, and no gas burned. No crime.”

“So this was a total waste of your time.”

“Pretty much,” he said, heading toward the police station.

“Is there anything else you need from me?”

“Believe me, I’m done,” he said as he walked away. “Goodnight, Ms. Maitland.”

Libby stood next to her vehicle. The hood was up, the driver’s door and the rear doors open. Strewn on the ground was the field equipment she’d removed to check on the mapping equipment.

What had just happened?

Unsure of herself, she stared at the parking lot in front of the restaurant, and tried to remember how her truck had looked when she’d parked it there, but now she began to question her own memory.

She collected the equipment and closed the doors. The police chief’s reaction shook her. As she slammed down the hood, she glanced in the direction of the police station. He was gone. He must have run the last blocks to the station. She looked up and down the empty street. The only movement came from insects flying in the dim cones of light cast by streetlamps some distance away. Standing in front of her truck, centered in the long stretch of darkness between two streetlamps, a chill ran through her.

Her truck had been left in the darkest stretch of Main Street on a nearly moonless night. She hadn’t made a mistake. She didn’t imagine this. She pressed her palms flat against the cold hood of the Suburban and took a long, slow breath. Her heart began to race. Cold sweat broke out on her face and neck. Someone was out there, watching.

Oh, God. It was happening again.

M
ARK
C
OLBY STOOD IN THE SHADOWS
, watching the archaeologist as she gathered her equipment and reloaded her truck. He wanted to see her reaction. She slammed the hood and glanced up and down the empty street. She looked afraid and the cop in him felt a trace of guilt for letting her believe she was alone in the darkness.

He waited until she was safely in her vehicle and driving away before he headed toward the station. As far as he could tell, she really did believe her truck had been stolen. But still, she could be just another flake who’d forgotten where she parked and refused to admit it.

He stopped and glanced back at the empty street. Coho was quiet as usual, the fire station the only other Main Street building with lights on. He considered stopping in to have a cup of coffee with whoever was on duty. Short-staffed all week, he still had eight hours to go on this double shift, and the ten minutes he’d just spent on the street with Libby Maitland were likely to be the most interesting of the night.

He should be grateful the paperwork on this was minimal and file his report and be done, but her insistence her truck had been stolen troubled him. He wanted to believe the only reason he listened to her was because he was a sucker for tall women with deep green eyes, and he was tired from working doubles since Monday, but the truth was, something about her story bothered him.

Her name was familiar. She’d mentioned living in Seattle, and he had a feeling he’d heard her name when he was on the Seattle police force. He dropped the idea of coffee at the firehouse and hurried to the police station. He wanted to run a background check on Libby Maitland.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

L
IBBY CURSED AS HER KEYS
slipped from her fingers, bounced off the edge of the flowerpot, slid under the banister, and landed somewhere in the shrubs that bordered the back porch of the Shelby house. After a sleepless night, she should have known better than to handle keys before her morning coffee had kicked in.

She was on her knees in the damp grass searching for her keys when she heard the insistent chirping of her cell phone. She toyed with the idea of ignoring it, but that ringtone meant it was a business call. Caller ID said it was Dan Parker, the Corps of Engineers archaeologist who had the power of God over Jack’s permit, and therefore over her excavation.

“Hi, Dan, what’s up?” She tried to put some enthusiasm in her voice, but calls from Dan were rarely good.

“Well, Libby, I’m pretty much reeling from a series of phone calls I’ve had this morning, starting with the one I received at six a.m. from the colonel. Do you know who he is?”

“You’re not talking about the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy, are you?”

“No. He doesn’t have my number. The colonel I’m referring to is the head of the Seattle District US Army Corps of Engineers. He called me at home. Care to guess how many times that’s happened in my twenty years at the Corps?”

“I’d guess never, Dan.” Libby sat with a thump on the bottom step of the back porch staircase. Dan did not have a flair for the dramatic, making her certain something with huge fangs was about to bite her on the ass.

“I always knew you were smart. The colonel called me at six, because the Kalahwamish tribal chairman called him at five to initiate some nation-to-nation consultation, and it was all about you. There’s a problem with the background section of your survey report.”

Acid formed in her stomach. The report ran through her mind. She could think of nothing that would trigger a high-level, early-morning nation-to-nation confab. “The background was only preliminary. The scope of work states plainly a more detailed background section will be included in the final report, after we finish data recovery.”

“I know, and I explained that to the colonel. The chairman was acting at Rosalie Warren’s bidding. She is requesting—insisting, really—that the background section state exactly the way the tribe was treated by Thorpe Log & Lumber for the nearly one hundred fifty years they were in operation. Specifically, she wants Lyle Montgomery’s abuses to be documented.”

“Why?”

“She wants his actions to be part of the public record.”

Rosalie Warren was an elder of the Kalahwamish tribe, and considered a living treasure by all the Northwest tribes. Her favor or disfavor could shape an archaeologist’s career. Libby needed the Kalahwamish’s cooperation to remove the burial on her site, or her project was in the toilet. “Why now? Why my project?” she asked.

“The burial you found yesterday gave the chairman leverage, but more important, Rosalie was admitted to the hospital earlier this week. She’s dying. I spoke to her this morning. She’d like to read your history before she goes.”

Stunned, she groped for words. “I’m sorry.”

“Look, Libby, I know this is highly unusual, but we’ve got no choice. You’ll get full cooperation from the tribe.”

“It’s not the tribe I’m worried about. What does she want in the history?”

“Everything. How mill development affected the tribe. The way the Kalahwamish were treated by the white settlers. The difference in pay and treatment between white and Indian mill workers. She wants everyone to know what a bastard Lyle Montgomery was. She doesn’t want anyone to ever consider naming a street or an elementary school after him.”

“You need an historian to research and write that type of background history. I can recommend several.”

“We don’t have time. You can give her what she wants.” Dan paused, and then said, “And I can force you to do this. I’ve got a permit application from your client, Jack Caruthers, sitting on my desk right now.”

“But I’ll have to interview Lyle’s children. They’ll never cooperate, especially if they know I’m researching at Rosalie Warren’s request. Plus, I don’t have the budget for this kind of research.”

“You’ll have to work that out with your client. Usually I’d call him first, but I wanted to give you the heads-up as soon as possible. I’m calling Jack next. I’m going to tell him that if you don’t do the work, we’re pulling the permit. I mean it.”

She resisted the urge to bash her head against the banister.

“And Libby, because of Rosalie’s health, I need a draft in two weeks.”

“Two weeks? But, Dan, I’ve got the burial to deal with. I can’t possibly—”

“Two weeks is pushing it for Rosalie. She wants to talk to you. She can give you names of people to interview to speed things along. You need to meet with her today. She’s at the community hospital in Coho.”