“Pleasant fellow,” Neva said, turning to MacGregor. “Bet you had a good time with him out here, Mac.”
“Oh, that’s just him. My cousin said he was like that as a kid-like everything puts him out. I tried to get him in a good mood for you guys, but I guess I failed.”
Diane couldn’t suppress a chuckle; neither could Mike or Neva. Diane looked at her watch. It was almost three o’clock. If she hurried she’d have time for an extra-long soak in the tub before her date with Frank. She and the others got their clean clothes out of the car. The guys went behind Mike’s SUV to change.
Dick MacGregor had built a blind just into the woods for Neva and Diane to change behind. The blind was at the base of a hillside with thick woods all around, and it included a bench. For all his annoying habits-talking incessantly, humming The Twilight Zone theme song every time they passed through the twilight zone of a cave, telling bad jokes-MacGregor was actually a kind and considerate person. She and Neva both appreciated the place he had built for them.
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.
“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.”