Anne Marie Duquette Read online

  It was one of the reasons Caro had never married, had pushed aside her secret desire for children. She’d seen too much evil, too much perversion as a forensic scientist. As far as she was concerned, no one, absolutely no one, was above suspicion. Dr. Caro Lynn Hartlan rarely trusted anyone save herself, her immediate family and the tools of her trade.

  “Are you okay? Do you need to stop for anything?” Wyatt asked. “Coffee, maybe?”

  The request held sincerity rather than just politeness, tempting Caro to break the peaceful silence.

  “No, thank you, Sheriff. I don’t need to stop. But,” she added on impulse, “I would like to hear how you decided to go into law enforcement.”

  “It’s a dull story,” he said. Even the good-natured warning looked good on him.

  He certainly is a handsome man, she thought to herself. Then she sternly told herself to back off. First, this was business. Second, the chiseled perfection of that face under the Stetson didn’t necessarily guarantee good romance material. Still, conversation never hurt anyone.

  “I’d really like to know,” she urged.

  Wyatt relented. “There’s not much to tell. My older brother, Virgil, was small for his age as a child, and Morgan was always sickly. They tended to be targets for bullies. I grew up protecting them both, and other underdogs, as well.”

  “I see… Well, I wasn’t protecting others as much as I was solving mysteries. I was one of those terribly nosy children who couldn’t stand secrets.”

  “Let me guess. You opened the wrapping on your presents before Christmas.”

  Caro grinned. “Wrong. I peeked inside the closets to see what they were before they were wrapped.”

  “And just one turtle changed you from curious child to future forensic scientist?” He actually sounded interested, Caro noted.

  “Well, there was the family thing. Dad’s a cop, Mom’s a judge, and my younger sister, Desiree, is just finishing at the police academy. Crime was always a part of the discussions at the family dinner table. And I was always interested.”

  “But not in becoming a law-enforcement officer or part of the judicial branch?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s an easy one,” Caro said airily. “Uniformed officers discover the crime, while judges and lawyers are there at the end. Forensic scientists, along with homicide detectives, always get the meat of the matter. I wanted the drumstick, not the leftover-turkey soup, so here I am. How about you? Were you another curious kid?”

  “No. I was too busy making my own rules to worry about anyone else’s. It was only those who broke my rules—like hassling my brothers—that I went after.”

  “That’s still a long way from law enforcement.”

  “The justice system might be flawed, but the concept of fairness appealed to me. Maybe because children aren’t fair. When I was a teen, I apprenticed in the summer with the sheriff’s office doing pretty much what Kimberly does for me now. Eventually I signed up for law enforcement.”

  “You must have done well for the voters to elect you.”

  “Well enough to work with the Tucson DEA for five years before I was elected.”

  “You gave up the Drug Enforcement Agency?”

  “Didn’t like it.”

  “The city or the work?”

  “Both. Border-town police chase a lot of drug smugglers. It’s the bulk of their job, and that wasn’t for me. I missed dealing with the public.”

  “So you returned here, campaigned for sheriff and won.”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t that a big change from Tucson? The pace here must be so much slower.”

  “A lot slower. We get a few minor infractions—you know, the occasional shoplifter, illegal parking, tourist-traffic jams, expired commercial permits, a few loose cattle now and then. I like it that way. Any free time, my ranch keeps me busy, though I do antidrug work at the local schools, churches and Boy Scout troops.”

  “Really? So do I!”

  “Ah, but do you show up on horseback? The kids love it—and around here, it’s much easier to get places on a horse.”

  “Especially out-of-the-way cemeteries with unburied skeletons,” Caro said glibly.

  Caro saw the warmth leave Wyatt’s face. The companionable atmosphere in the car started to slip away. There I go again. She tried to repair the damage.

  “You’ll have to excuse my smart mouth, Sheriff. My black sense of humor is an old habit. Try not to take my comments personally.”

  “I don’t find death a joking matter.”

  “No, I agree. It never is.” Caro’s face grew sober. “But I’d rather joke around than cry in my beer. It’s a release and a sort of defense when things get too grim. You worked for the DEA for five years. You should understand.”

  Wyatt’s lips drew together in a thin line. “I do understand. I guess it’s just that I got out of the habit since I moved to Tombstone and got away from drugs, felonies and deaths.”

  “But I haven’t.” Caro swung around in her seat. “Tell me, Sheriff. How many dead bodies have you discovered in your career? One? Two?”

  “I’ve seen a couple in my day.”

  “A couple. I’d like to see how you’d react to my little jokes after more than a hundred bodies. Because that’s how many I’ve seen. Would you like to know how many were tortured to death? Mutilated? Would you like a break-down of how many were babies? Children? Pregnant women? If you’ve seen the things I have, handled the broken pieces of people’s once-healthy bodies…” Caro stopped. She couldn’t go on.

  Wyatt placed a hand compassionately on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “I guess I’ve been spoiled working here in Tombstone. I do more community service than anything else.”

  “I’m afraid my job is just the opposite—and always will be.” She was quiet for a while.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t think about it so much,” Wyatt suggested kindly. “Give yourself a break.” He paused a moment “How about letting me take you out for dinner some night soon?”

  “I’ll have to think about it. You see, I have three rules I never break when it comes to men.” She peered out the window again, waiting to see if Sheriff Bodine was curious. If he isn’t, then he’s a poor excuse for a lawman. The best cops were the stubbornly curious ones—a trait she shared.

  She waited. Wyatt didn’t disappoint her. “And they are?”

  “I don’t date men who are taken.”

  “Sensible,” he said.

  “I don’t date men I work with.”

  “Professional.”

  “And last, I never date men who look better in jeans than I do.” She saw him flick her a glance and waited for him to take the bait.

  “I never date men, period,” he said, neatly avoiding her trap.

  Caro laughed, and the gloom of earlier disappeared. “I’m impressed, Sheriff. That’s the best answer I’ve ever heard in my little test. I usually get a ‘Your loss’ or ‘You’re in luck.’ But you pass with flying colors.”

  “So tell me, Doctor, do you always test the men you work with?” Caro was pleased to note the trace of warmth in his voice.

  “Men, women, dogs, cats, you name it.” Caro settled more comfortably into her seat. “I want to know what I’m dealing with.”

  Wyatt searched for something to say, but settled for silence. What was it about this woman that caught him so totally unawares? He found himself out of his element with her, and he was a man who always had things under control. He didn’t care for this strange, fish-out-of-water feeling, a feeling that remained all the way to the parking lot at Boothill. And, he reminded himself, with all that clever chitchat, she’d managed not to answer his dinner invitation.

  Great. Now he had two mysteries on his hands—a displaced if lifeless body and a very-much-alive woman, a woman who’d already let herself out of the truck and was around back hauling out her equipment.

  He waited patiently for her, and the
n they walked to the gift-shop entrance together—he empty-handed, Caro with a bag slung over one shoulder, a camera case over the other.

  Wyatt knocked loudly on the locked door to the gift-shop/cemetery entrance. “It’s Sheriff Bodine,” he called.

  A few seconds later “Catfish” Chilton, complete with the walruslike mustache that had inspired his nickname, let them in. Wyatt quickly performed the introductions; the elderly Catfish remembered Caro from the day before at the cemetery.

  “Catfish was running his family’s mine when my father was a boy,” Wyatt explained to Caro.

  “That was a long time ago, ma’am. I retired once, but retirement wasn’t for me. So I putter around the cemetery and play docent to our visitors. Sorry your visit here was such a shock, ma’am. Here, let me take one of them bags for you.”

  Catfish’s garrulous conversation was full of Old West charm. Wyatt watched Caro unthaw so much she even let Catfish take her camera bag. It appeared the lady could be gracious with the right man—which he obviously wasn’t.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chilton,” she said.

  “Call me Catfish, ma’am. Everyone does. If you’ll follow me… I kept everything right as rain, just like the Sheriff ordered.”

  After first locking the front door, a spry, energetic Catfish led the procession through the store to the cemetery grounds.

  “I’m gonna leave you to it,” Catfish said. “I need to get the register trays for the cashiers, plus I need to man the phone. By the way, your little neighbor called, Sheriff.”

  “Kimberly?”

  “Yep. She’ll stop by later with that information you wanted, so I’ll go wait for her. Oh, and ol’ Milt—that’s the undertaker, ma’am—he dropped off a transport box already. It’s near the dearly departed and your grave guard.”

  He gestured ahead. Sure enough, the box waited next to a uniformed deputy.

  “Milt said if you don’t want to use your truck bed for delivery, give him a call.” Catfish graciously handed Caro her camera bag. “It’s been a pleasure, ma’am. Holler if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, Catfish. And thanks for the help.”

  Catfish tipped his hat, and after more fussing over Caro, finally took his leave.

  “What a lovely man.” Caro graced Catfish with one last sunny smile, Wyatt noted rather sourly. Then he sent the nighttime guard home for some well-deserved rest.

  He and Caro were left alone amidst the tombstones, with only the desert sun and the skeleton for company.

  Wyatt expected Caro to jump right into her work. Instead, he watched as she clasped her hands, closed her eyes and bowed her head. Wyatt blinked. She was praying!

  She obviously didn’t share his point of view that all of Boothill’s permanent residents were long past the point of help. Still, Wyatt found himself unexpectedly moved by her concern for this poor soul.

  After a moment she raised her head and opened her eyes to meet his gaze. “Melancholy name for a town—Tombstone.”

  “Blame Edward Schieffelin.”

  “Sorry, the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Schieffelin was a miner who prospected here for silver. But this was the center of Apache territory at the time. The soldiers warned him that the only thing he’d find would be a tombstone. When Schieffelin struck it rich, he decided to name his claim ‘Tombstone.’”

  “Because of the soldiers?”

  Wyatt nodded. “He thought it was a good joke. You see, he found a mountain of silver that would eventually pay out eighty-five million dollars to Tombstone’s inhabitants.”

  Caro straightened, her eyes lively again. “What a whimsical sense of humor. Mr. Schieffelin is a man after my own heart. Well. I’d best get started.”

  And start she did. This time when he offered his assistance, she accepted. She only wanted him to take photographs, but it pleased him immensely. She handed him one of her two cameras and asked him to follow her lead, taking the same shots she did.

  “Insurance purposes,” she explained when he asked why. “One camera might break down. And I always develop the film at two different labs. I don’t like leaving anything to chance. Once we move the skeleton, we can’t ever go back again.”

  “Makes sense,” Wyatt said, but she was already off and running.

  Her plastic-gloved hands were everywhere, as were brush whisks, scraping knives and airtight sealed bags. Soil samples, bone samples, insect, pollen and debris samples were all taken and carefully logged.

  “The more details I log, the easier it is to narrow down the original crime scene. Especially since we’re actually solving two crimes—what happened to poor Mr. Bones and why he was removed from his resting place. Wherever that may have been. I need to know what’s already present here so I can label what’s been brought here,” she elaborated.

  That Wyatt already knew, but he’d never seen a crime scene worked with such minute attention to detail, not even when he worked for the city of Tucson. Dr. Hartlan was fast and thorough, yet not once did she treat the skeleton with anything other than respect. Any bone she lifted, she carefully, gently replaced. But she wasn’t so cautious that she missed an inch, a speck, a detail of any sort.

  By the time she was finished and the bones rested in the travel box, Wyatt doubted this woman missed much of anything. In fact…

  “Lucky you’re working for us,” he said as Caro repacked her tools and he felt free to speak without disturbing her work. “The good guys, I mean. Because you’re the type who could commit the perfect crime.”

  “I hope that’s a compliment. Either way, it would never happen. I enjoy uncovering secrets, not keeping them.”

  Caro straightened, then brushed the dirt off her jeans.

  “All through?” Wyatt asked.

  “For now.”

  He checked his watch, which sat between the turquoise-and-silver band his brother had made him; it matched his belt buckle, as well.

  “Kimberly should’ve arrived by now,” he said. “With the three of us, it’d be no trouble to get the box onto the bed of my truck.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

  Wyatt was puzzled. “It isn’t heavy, just bulky. We should be able to lift it.”

  “I’m not talking about lifting. I don’t know if I should move valuable evidence to your ranch.”

  Wyatt didn’t like the expression on her face—or the tone in her voice. “Is there a problem?”

  “Yes. I’d hate to compromise the investigation.”

  “Compromise?” That was a strange word to use. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because, Sheriff, the evidence points to you as our body snatcher.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Still Thursday morning

  BODY SNATCHER? Grave desecrator? Him?

  Wyatt felt the sun hot on his back, felt her words scorch deep into his soul. “Explain,” he demanded harshly.

  “Come see for yourself.”

  Wyatt approached the transport box, the lid propped up against the side. She knelt on the ground and gestured with one finger. Wyatt knelt, too, and peered inside.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said.

  “Look in the eye sockets.”

  He shook his head, still confused.

  “Here. Use this.” She passed him a penlight.

  Wyatt lit up the skull. His insides went as cold as the graves beneath his feet. It can’t be my brand!

  But it was. There, reflected back silver in the light, were a silver S and a D. The S was inverted, the D was not. They stood back to back, just as they had for his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him.

  Silver Dollar. The brand marks of his ranch!

  Caro gingerly fished inside the skull with a tapered finger and withdrew a set of keys, SD gleaming on the key tab. “I couldn’t see this until I moved the skull.” She traced the raised silver letters with her opposite forefinger.

  “They’re in the same position as the letters in yo
ur ranch sign,” she said.

  “They certainly are,” Wyatt answered through clenched teeth.

  “Well, then you can see my dilemma. I’d hate to set up shop on what could be our culprit’s home turf.”

  Wyatt snapped off the penlight and handed it back to her. “I had nothing to do with this, Doctor. And if I did unearth this corpse, I’d have more sense than to leave my keys for you to find! These keys…”

  “What?”

  They’re not mine! Mine are in my pocket. They’re Morgan’s! What’s going on here? Instinctively he reached into the back pocket of his khaki pants.

  He felt the cool, reassuring touch of metal.

  Caro wasn’t looking at him. She toyed with the penlight, then put it away in her shirt pocket to study the keys more closely. “Morgan did this, didn’t he?”

  Wyatt’s mouth was desert dry. “Did what?” he asked hoarsely. Dug up graves? Hid things from me? What?

  “Made this key chain for you. It’s a perfect match for your belt buckle.” She pointed to the turquoise-and-silver buckle at his waist, a birthday gift from Morgan in the same pattern. It, too, had the silver SD in the center. “You must have dropped them yesterday. Or last night,” Caro said.

  “I don’t know how these got here,” was his honest answer. But I sure as hell intend to find out.

  Caro stared at him for a long, brooding moment.

  “I believe you, Sheriff. But unless someone left them here intentionally—” she paused “—you lost your keys.” Shrugging, she added, “Maybe when you were checking out the crime scene.” She grinned, and her face lit with sudden amusement. “I hate to carry things in my pocket when I ride,” she said. “I always end up losing them. But never in a skull.”

  Wyatt started to reply, then caught himself. He wasn’t ready to admit that these were his brother’s keys, that his brother might have had something to do with this. He owed it to Morgan to speak with him first. Surely he’d have a rational explanation. Sighing, Wyatt wished he’d noticed the hidden keys before Caro Hartlan had, though he knew he would have spotted them sooner or later.