Rattled (4 page)

“Please don’t expect us to believe this is a coincidence, after the accident,” Camie growled.

“Chances are someone heard about the accident or even read about it in the paper,” the officer said. “They figured Miss Hale would be in the hospital, so the house would be empty.” He looked at Erin. “You really ought to think about getting an alarm system.”

“But this is a rental,” Erin said. “And it’s supposed to be a safe part of town.”

The officer smiled. “That’s the problem with a town of only ten thousand people. The good part of town isn’t that far from the bad part of town. You could try a dog instead. But be especially careful for the next couple of weeks. Burglars sometimes keep an eye on a house after they’ve robbed it. If they see a bunch of boxes for computers and electronics that you bought to replace the things that got stolen, they’ll break in again to get the new stuff.”

Erin covered her face with her hands. “Great.”

“Look,” Camie said, “don’t you find this all a little odd? Okay, so I can see a burglar taking advantage of an empty house. But the stereo is still here, and the TV. Her jewelry is still upstairs, in a box on the bathroom counter. They stole her computer and made a huge mess, but as far as I can tell, they didn’t take anything else.”

“The TV and stereo are old and not top quality,” the officer said. “The jewelry box didn’t hold anything too valuable either. Crooks will often trash a place for fun, or in anger because they didn’t get a better haul. I’ve seen bags of flour and sugar dumped all over, even feces smeared on the walls.”

Erin made a face and put down her tea.

“But most of the damage is in the office,” Camie said. “They went through her file cabinets and her desk, even pulled books off the shelves. It looks to me like a search.”

The officer chuckled. “Let’s not get carried away. Despite what you see on TV, ninety-nine percent of break-ins are simple robberies, bored teenagers or drug addicts looking for a quick buck.” He frowned. “Still, they might’ve been looking for financial information.” He turned to Erin. “You want to cancel your credit cards, change account numbers, that kind of thing. Do you keep your passwords written down where someone could find them?”

Erin shook her head, then bit back a moan as the pain sloshed around behind her eyes. “No, and my computer is secure. They’d have to be expert hackers to get in.”

Camie took Erin’s mug and poured more tea. “I don’t even have to ask if you have backups, right?”

Erin managed a smile. “Automatic daily backups to an off-site server, plus I make copies monthly and keep them in my safe deposit box.”

Camie grinned. “That’s my very practical girl.”

Something else nagged at Erin, but she couldn’t grasp it. It had to be the painkillers making her so slow and stupid.

“It sounds like you got off lucky, then.” The officer stood. He glanced at Erin and then his gaze lingered on Camie. “You have my card. Call me if you think of anything or if you need anything at all.”

Camie scrambled to her feet. “I don’t think you’re getting this. I don’t think the house was just robbed because it was conveniently empty. I think someone targeted Erin and was searching for something specific.”

“That seems highly unlikely.” The officer glanced at his watch. “Your friend has had a run of bad luck, that’s all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other cases.” He headed out the door without glancing back.

Erin gazed up at Camie. “You blew that one. He liked you until you challenged him.”

Camie snorted. “My loss.” She gazed at Erin, her face troubled. “You need to go to bed. Come on. Everything else can wait.”

Erin barely managed to get out of her clothes before she collapsed into bed. When she finally woke, the room was pitch black, and she glanced around in confusion. Her bedside clock said 11:15. Nighttime, then, or the windows would be lit from the sun.

She stretched, testing her muscles. She felt all right, considering the painkillers should have mostly worn off. She felt stiff, and her whole right side was tender to the touch. But her headache was nothing a couple of aspirin couldn’t handle.

Her stomach growled. She moved gingerly until she could sit at the edge of the bed, barely feeling the urge to groan. She had to get up and find some kind of food. She hoped the kitchen hadn’t been badly trashed. Best not to think about the destruction yet, or the work ahead. All she had to do now was fetch her robe and slippers, make her way downstairs, and heat a bowl of soup.

Her bedroom door was closed. That had to be Camie’s doing; Erin left it open at night for better airflow. She shuffled over and opened it.

She heard laughter from downstairs.

The first jolt of surprise had her heart hammering. She took a deep breath and tried to be sensible. It had to be Camie. Maybe she had the TV on. They hadn’t stolen the TV.

She got properly dressed, just in case, and wished she had her phone in her bedroom. It was still downstairs in her waist pack.

Erin crept down the first few steps, her ears straining. The voices were coming from the kitchen. She didn’t have a TV in the kitchen. Her hand trembled on the smooth wooden banister.

All the downstairs lights seemed to be on. Burglars surely wouldn’t turn on all the lights. Erin took a few more steps and caught a whiff of—pizza?

“All right, guys, keep it down.” Camie’s voice. Erin went limp with relief. She took a deep breath to steady herself, went down the rest of the stairs, and turned toward the brightly lit kitchen.

“Professor Hale!” Karl, a tall, lanky undergrad with bushy red hair and beard, jumped up from his seat at the kitchen table. “Here, take my chair. Are you all right?”

Erin sat and gazed at three of her other students, eating pizza and drinking soda. “What are you doing here?”

“Right now, getting their just desserts,” Camie said. “Or more accurately, their just main course. I bribed them to help clean up the house.”

“She didn’t have to bribe us.” Karl gazed at Erin with the sweet, puppy love expression that always made her feel equally embarrassed and amused. “We were really upset when we heard you were hurt. We wanted to help.”

Erin looked at the grinning faces of her students and felt tears prick her eyes. She tried to keep her tone light. “There’s no point in sucking up now. I already turned in your grades, you know.”

Kalila, one of the few female African-American students at the college, grinned and raised an eyebrow. “There’s always next semester.”

Camie handed Erin a glass of water and she ducked her head to sip. It wouldn’t do to have her students see her cry, even tears of gratitude. It was a shock to realize that some of her students liked her enough to give up an evening for housecleaning, especially during finals week. She worked hard to come up with classes that would appeal to science and engineering students, like The Atomic Era or The History of Discovering the Stars, but most students made it clear that they were only in her class because they needed the Humanities credit, and would rather be programming computers or building circuit boards.

Kalila pushed a pizza box with two slices left toward Erin. “You’d better grab some before Karl and Mike eat it all.”

Erin’s hunger came roaring back. She pulled the box closer and glared at the two boys. “This is mine. All mine.”

They chuckled. Mike elbowed Karl and said, “Arm wrestle her for it. She’s in a weakened state, I bet you could take her.”

Camie pulled another pizza box off the counter. “Fortunately, we won’t have to fight over it. Supreme, anyone?”

Erin concentrated on her pizza while the students discussed the last week of the semester. Karl had finished his finals that day. Kalila and Rebecca had one more, but they didn’t sound worried. Mike hoped that he had finally passed Chem. II this time.

Finally sated, Erin leaned back with a satisfied sigh. She listened to talk of summer jobs and vacation plans, until Kalila asked, “What about you? Are you going to find your treasure this summer?”

Erin tried to think of a flippant reply. She knew word had gotten around about their “crazy scheme” months ago. Students and teachers alike teased her and Camie, wanting to know if they’d struck gold yet.

“I wish I could help,” Karl said, “but I’ll be in Maine this summer.”

“It would be so cool,” Rebecca said. “Just imagine finding something like the Victorio Peak lost treasure!”

Kalila chuckled. “How I spent my summer vacation: becoming rich and famous. If you find it, will you teach next year?”

Erin glanced at Camie, who looked worried. Erin felt a pressure in her chest. Things were coming back to her, memories from before the accident, comments Camie had made that Erin had tried to ignore. She itched to get up and run for her office, but forced herself to act casual. “It sounds like you kids think this is serious now.”

“People joked about it at first,” Kalila said, “but we know that if anyone can find lost treasure, it’s you two. And you are getting closer, right?”

Erin frowned. “What makes you say that?”

The students glanced at each other. Rebecca shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s just what people think now, I guess.” The others nodded.

Camie gave them all a bright smile. “Well, if everyone’s had enough pizza, we should clear out and let Erin get back to bed. Thanks for your help.”

Erin rose too and walked with them to the front door. She felt rather like a puppet, not quite in control of her own body, as she thanked them and wished them a good summer. As soon as the door closed behind them, Erin ran for her office. She paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room.

“You’ll probably have to go through everything again to make sure it’s in the right place,” Camie said from behind her. “I did the best I could, but I wasn’t sure about your filing system. Rebecca did the books; I think she grouped them by topic. We figured disorganized but tidy was better than a huge mess.”

“The library books, where are the library books?” Erin murmured, scanning the shelves.

“She kept them together, on the bottom shelf, I think.”

Erin dropped to her knees, yelping as she landed on her scrapes and bruises and then immediately forgetting them. She tilted her head sideways and ran a finger across the spines of the books. The one she wanted was oversize, taller than the rest. The one that held the clue.

She couldn’t find it. Her heart pounded.

She took a deep breath, trying to still her trembling. It had to be there. She forced herself to check carefully, sweeping her gaze slowly across the shelf.

There it was! She cried out and leaped toward the book lying on its side in the far corner. She rolled onto her butt and sat hugging it.

Camie looked over the desk at her with raised eyebrows. “Everything all right, then?”

Erin scrambled up and put the book on the desk. Her hands trembled as she flipped through it to find the proper page. “It’s right here. The clue I found....” She trailed off, unsure whether it was yesterday or the day before.

Camie let out a big sigh. “Thank goodness. I didn’t want to say anything earlier when you were so dragged out, but I figured maybe that’s what they were after. So you came to the same conclusion.”

“I don’t know.” Erin gazed down at the photo of the petroglyph. “I haven’t sorted it out yet. I just got panicked that maybe the book had disappeared somehow. Stolen, lost, damaged—or maybe even I just imagined the whole thing.”

Camie stood beside her and gazed down at the book too. “But you didn’t,” she whispered. “You really found something.” She grinned at Erin. “Feel up to telling me about it?”

Erin nodded. “Let’s sit in the living room. I feel like I’m about to fall over.”

They sat on the couch with the book open on the coffee table. Erin tried to get her thoughts in order. “You know I’ve been working on the theory that the treasure isn’t hidden under Victorio Peak at all. But the question then becomes, where is it? I started comparing other legends—”

“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Camie muttered. “You don’t need to play professor with me.”

Erin gave her a long, cool look and spoke even more slowly and precisely. “There are hundreds of legends about lost treasures, dozens just in this state. I identified two that I thought might be related, based on location and pertinent details.”

She was baiting Camie intentionally now with unnecessary information. Camie glared at her but couldn’t quite hide the smile twitching to break through.

“In any case,” Erin said, drawing out each word, “my investigations led me to an area south and west of Victorio Peak.”

“Lucky for us,” Camie said.

Erin nodded. “We’re still looking at government land, but BLM now, not military.” The Bureau of Land Management had plenty of rules, but at least their land was usually designated for public access. “But a general area isn’t good enough, even if your Finder works.”

“So you’ve been looking for a map or precise instructions.” Camie leaned over the book. “You found something?”

Erin leaned forward too. “This is an old, academic book about petroglyph fields around the Southwest. They probably only printed a few hundred copies and I’ll bet most of those have been destroyed by now. The library had this one tucked away in a back room, because it’s too big for the shelves. It wasn’t even in the catalog. I had asked for something stored next to it, and the librarian spotted this one. She brought it out, too, in case I was interested.”