Beverly Connor - Dead Secret

Diane sat down on the bench, pulled off her boots and wiggled her freed toes. Neva sat down beside her and began unlacing hers.

“This was certainly an eventful caving trip.” Neva kneaded her foot before she took off her jeans and put on a fresh pair. She slipped her bare feet into running shoes that didn’t look much cleaner than her caving boots. “How are you doing-you know, after the almost fall?”

“A little sore.” Diane stretched her muscles, bending down so that her head touched her ankles and stretching her back. It felt good.

“That had to be scary,” said Neva.

Diane sat up. “It was. But when something like that happens, as you know, you put all your energies into hanging on. I was lucky that Mike was there to throw me a rope.”

“How do you get rid of the fear?”

“You don’t. It’s kind of like pain-you just work through it.” Neva was silent for a moment, as if contemplating what Diane said. “You appear to be working through your fear of caving pretty well,” said Diane.

Neva nodded and smiled. “Mike’s been a big help. He’s a really great guy, although. . ” She smiled and lowered her voice, as if he might be lurking around listening. “Sometimes he’s a little stuffy.”

Diane was surprised. “Mike, stuffy? How?”

Neva took off her dirty shirt and slipped a clean tee over her head. “He’s a vegetarian and mostly likes classical music. And when he starts talking about geology. . I mean, he thinks folded rocks are so interesting. I never knew you could fold rocks, but Georgia apparently has a lot of them.”

“I knew he liked classical music. He used to date a violinist in a string quartet.” Diane slipped on a pair of clean blue jeans.

“Did he? One thing I like about Mike is that he never talks about his ex-girlfriends, and he’s apparently had a lot.”

“Oh?”

“At least, a lot of girls seem to know him.”

Diane knew that when Neva was first assigned by the Rosewood Police Department to Diane’s crime scene unit, she had been afraid of Diane. She had come a long way to be able to share girl talk with her.

“I can imagine. He’s a great-looking guy.”

“And smart. He’s the most educated guy I’ve ever dated. In my family, when I went to the police academy, you’d have thought I was going to Yale. Mike knows a lot of stuff. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“Neither do I when he starts talking geology. You and I aren’t geologists. But you know a lot of stuff he doesn’t. The whole area of evidence collection and forensics, for example. And your artwork.”

“That’s true.” Neva nodded. “You know those little animals I do from clay? He loves that. I gave him one I did of a mustang.”

“Mike admires talent.”

Diane pulled her shirt off over her head and reached for her blouse-crisp white with an embroidered neckline.

Neva stared at Diane’s rib cage. “My God, did you get that when you fell?”

Diane looked down at her ribs. A large patch of skin had started to turn blue. “Must have been when I grabbed onto the rope. I swung into the wall pretty hard.”

“It looks sore.”

Diane fingered the bruise and made a face when it smarted. “It is a little tender. I’ll put an ice pack on it when I get home.” She pulled the blouse over her head. “This has been quite an eventful trip.”

“I’ll say. Do you think the sheriff will let us process the evidence?”

“I imagine he’ll go along with the coroner.” Diane scooped up her dirty clothes, rolled them up and tucked them into her pack, and walked with Neva to the vehicles. Diane climbed in hers and started the engine. She waved at Neva and MacGregor as they climbed into Mike’s SUV.

The next order of business was to get the body of Caver Doe logged in and secured in the museum forensic lab until arrangements could be made for the autopsy. That job was made easier by a call on her cell phone from Sheriff Burns as she drove back to Rosewood. As she had suspected, the possibly fifty-year-old case of Caver Doe did not rank as a priority in Sheriff Burns’s pressing caseload. He was more than happy to let Diane arrange the processing of the body.

Diane scrolled down her cell phone address book to the number for Lynn Webber, the medical examiner for Hall County, and got Lynn on the phone.

“Well, hello, Diane Fallon. What can I do for you?”

As soon as she spoke in her deep South Georgia accent Diane visualized Lynn’s dark, well-coiffed hair and manicured nails. Lynn didn’t look like a medical examiner until you saw her elbow-deep in the bowels of a cadaver.

“I have a special situation here, and your expertise immediately came to mind.”

“Flattery usually works with me, but this sounds like a problem.”

“No, really, this could be a welcome break from what we usually see.” She explained the circumstances and the condition of Caver Doe to Lynn.

“You have the most experience with mummified remains of anyone in the area, so I’d like you to do the autopsy,” Diane said. “And the entrance to the cave is in Hall County, so technically, it could have been your body-sort of.”

“I looked at the MRI of the Egyptian mummy for your museum. That is the extent of my experience.”

“Yes, and that gives you much more experience than anyone else around.”

“A fifty-year-old mummy?”

Mike blew his horn as he passed her on the road. He was a much faster driver than Diane.

“Fifty, sixty, seventy. We don’t know the exact age. But his Moon Pie wrappers look pretty old.”

Lynn laughed. “This isn’t a joke, is it? Did that Brewster Pilgrim tell you to call me?”

“No, this is legit.”

“Okay, send him over. You want your mummy stripped when I’m finished, I guess?”

“Yes, please. And. . thanks, Lynn.”

“You tell Brewster that if this is a joke, payback’s a bitch.”

It took about twenty minutes for Diane to deliver the body to the hospital morgue where Lynn worked, and another twenty minutes to check it in with the attendant on duty. By the time the mummy was safely inside his drawer Diane was more than ready to be in her small Rosewood apartment soaking in her large claw-footed tub.

Just as Diane had anticipated, the bubble bath was soothing and relaxing. She would have preferred warm water, but with the bruises on her midsection, she opted for a cooler soak. She was leaning back in the tub when she heard Frank’s knock on the front door. He had a rhythmic knock he did with his knuckles before he let himself in with the key Diane had given him. And he always called out when he entered.

“Diane, it’s me.”

“I’m in the tub.”

“That sounds nice. Let me put the food down and I’ll join you.”

She smiled to herself as she heard him rattling around in the kitchen and then his footfalls coming toward the bathroom.

“You look all relaxed. Hard day at the cave?” He sat on the edge of the tub and dipped his hand in the water. “A little cool. How long you been soaking?” He shook the bubbles off his sleeve.

“I’m about ready to get out.”

Frank Duncan was a detective in the Metro Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit, where he investigated everything from white-collar and computer crimes to identity theft. They had dated before she went to South America to work for World Accord International looking for and excavating mass graves. When she returned to take over directorship of the museum, she had been surprised to discover that his blue-green eyes still made her quiver when his smile made them crinkle at the corners and sparkle-like they did now.