Beverly Connor - Dead Secret

“We have the rest of the evening and two full weeks,” he said.

“I am so looking forward to being in a mountain cabin with you, and no dead bodies, blood spatter, or fussy board members.” Diane relaxed back in the tub, feeling content and peaceful in the cool water, glad Frank was here.

“I brought some Thai food for dinner. Thought we could eat in the living room, look out your picture window, listen to music and. . ” He let his words drift off as he sloshed the water back and forth with his hand. Diane sat up in the tub and smoothed the water out of her hair with her hands. Frank took the towel she had folded and laid on the counter and opened it up. “I can help.”

Diane pulled the plug in the bathtub, stood up and reached for the towel. “Great, I’m in the mood to be waited on.”

“Diane, what happened?” Frank held on to the towel as he stared at the blue bruise that covered the length of her left rib cage.

“It’s nothing. I bumped into a wall in the cave.”

“It’s not nothing, and you don’t get a bruise like that bumping into a wall.”

“I was hanging on to a rope at the time-it was swinging. Look, it’s just a bruise. I get bruises all the time when I’m caving.”

“I see you naked on a fairly regular basis and I have never seen you bruised up like this.”

Diane grabbed at the towel. Frank wrapped it around her and helped her dry off.

“There’s not much to tell, really.”

“When you say there’s not much to tell, I know there’s a story lurking. What happened?”

“I fell through some loose rocks. . an ordinary caving mishap.”

“Fell through some loose rocks, hanging on a rope? I’m not getting a picture of this. You are going to have to draw a little better.”

Damn. Diane could see she was going to have to tell him. The last thing she wanted to hear from Frank tonight was a lecture on the dangers of caving. Noncavers just didn’t understand the allure of caves-and it wasn’t like she had accidents every weekend. “At least let me get dressed.”

“Is that necessary?” He drew her close.

Later, Diane, in faded jeans and a tee, sat on her sofa cross-legged, finishing her chicken-and-cashew-nut dinner. Frank sat on the other end enjoying a dish of spareribs in peanut curry sauce. Brahms’s “Waltz in A-flat” was just finishing on her CD player.

Frank took the plates to the kitchen and came back with a cup of coffee for each of them. “Okay, now that you’ve had time to think out your story, are you going to tell me how you got that bruise?”

Diane should have known he wouldn’t forget. She explained how the rocks were caught in the hole, creating a false floor, trying to make it sound like nothing. In fact, the near miss had rattled her, but she found ignoring it was more effective for her peace of mind than dwelling on it. What nagged at her the most was not as much the near fall, but the fact that she had overlooked something dangerous.

“Mike was there with some rope,” she said. “That’s why I cave with several people. We watch one another’s backs.”

“But for a while you were hanging by your fingers?”

Diane stared at the stereo. She had put some Beethoven sonatas on low. She was wondering now if she should turn up the volume and drown out the conversation. She glanced at the remote and sighed. “Yes. But when you climb rocks you develop strong hands.”

“Right. How far would you have fallen?”

“Not that far. I’m not sure,” Diane said as she took a long sip of her coffee and made a grab for the remote. Frank, apparently, anticipated her move and grabbed it first.

“Yes, you are. You map caves. You have that little laser gadget with you. Don’t tell me you didn’t measure the height of the chamber once you were in it.”

“Okay. Thirty feet.”

“Thirty feet! God, Diane, that could have killed you.”

“Probably only broken some bones. But I didn’t fall. Look, most of the time caving is uneventful, in terms of actual danger. This was an unusual trip.” She glared at him directly in his eyes. “Frank, I love caving. I’m a good caver, and a safe one.”

She decided not to mention the rock slide. That wasn’t even a near miss. They got out of the tunnel in plenty of time. . sort of.

“This is actually a fairly tame cave so far. But what was interesting was what we found in the chamber,” she said.

Frank raised his eyebrows. “What did you find?”

“A mummified caver who wasn’t as lucky as I was. Looks like he probably broke some bones and couldn’t get out.”

Frank shook his head. “Do you have some kind of compass that points you to dead bodies?”

“I think he got into that chamber from another entrance no one knows about. We may have discovered a connection to an entirely different cave. That kind of discovery is important to us cavers.”

“What good luck you had your crime scene people with you.”

“Wasn’t it? We got a call out to Jin and he brought the crime scene kit. We found quite a few things that may have belonged to the deceased. There’s no indication so far of who he might be. We’re calling him Caver Doe.”

“Caver Doe. . nice. How long do you think he was down there?”

“The body was pretty well desiccated, and he had an old carbide lamp with him. Several decades, I’m thinking-maybe from the fifties, maybe earlier. I won’t know until I examine him.”

The telephone’s sudden ring was shrill compared to the music that had just been playing. Diane wasn’t going to pick it up. But a glance at the caller ID told her it was Gregory.

Gregory Lincoln was Diane’s former boss at World Accord International. He had seen her through the tough time when her adopted daughter was murdered in South America. Even though now he was back in his home in England and she in the States, they had kept in touch and talked at least once a month.

“Diane, this is Gregory.”

“Hi, Gregory, it’s good to hear from you. It must be in the wee hours of the morning there. Is everything all right?”

“Just fine. It’s not too far beyond midnight. I do some of my best work at this time.”

“How’s your family?” Diane smiled at Frank. He leaned back on the sofa and took one of Diane’s feet and began to massage it. Frank had a knack for massage. She forced her mind back to what Gregory was saying.

“Marguerite is fine. The boys are in the United States. They went to space camp this summer. Got this thing about wanting to be astronauts. And how’s your museum faring?”

“We inherited an Egyptian mummy, so now everyone thinks we’re a real museum.”

Diane heard him chuckle. Gregory had the sort of low, throaty laugh that made you want to laugh along with him.

“You don’t say. A real Egyptian mummy. You’ll have to send pictures. Marguerite loves mummies.”

“I will. He was unwrapped, but we managed to get our hands on the amulets that were in his original wrappings. Our Web site has pictures. I’ll e-mail you the URL.”

“Your museum is the reason I called. I’m afraid I volunteered you to a friend. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Volunteered me?”

“Your expertise. He’s sending you the bones of a witch.”

“The bones of a witch?” said Diane. “Did I hear you right, Gregory?”

Frank lifted his brow, gave her that okay-this-is-interesting look of his, took her other foot and began kneading tender spots on the bottom of it.

“Perhaps I should have said the bones of an alleged witch. This is going to take a bit of explaining.”

“I’m all ears.”

“There’s a charming little museum here in Dorset we like to visit with the boys. It’s really more like the old cabinet of curiosities. It’s housed in this charming sixteenth-century cottage. John Rose is the proprietor. He’s collected a lot of odd bits of the cultural and natural history from around here. I think he barely makes a living at it. One of his main attractions is a skeleton called the Moonhater witch.”