Before Sunrise

by Diana Palmer

  The resident chuckled and went to arrange for a room for her. Phoebe gaped at Cortez. Her heart was racing wildly.

  “You want to marry me?” she whispered, shocked.

  “Of course,” he said simply.

  “But you never said…you always talked about…I didn’t think…” she faltered, unable to formulate even one single coherent thought.

  He touched her mouth gently with his. “I love you with my very soul,” he whispered, his eyes dark and soft and solemn. “With my heart, with my mind, with my body. I want to share my life with you. I’ll love you all the way to the grave, Phoebe,” he whispered. “Until I close my eyes forever. And the memory of you will go with me into the darkness.”

  She was fighting tears. She drew her long fingers against his cheek. Tears were stinging her eyelids. “I’ve loved you since the day we met,” she whispered back. “I never stopped. Not even when I thought you tossed me aside for some other woman who was closer to your own culture.”

  “Now you know why I did it,” he replied. “Why I had to do it.”

  She smiled. “I love Joseph, too.”

  “We’ll have children of our own,” he said. “Starting with this one,” he added, tracing her belly lightly. He smiled. “What a delight!”

  Her fingers rested atop his and she smiled with wonder. “Yes.”

  They looked into each others eyes and dreamed of the future.

  BUT REALITY INTRUDED when Phoebe was settled down in a private room. Cortez’s cell phone rang noisily. He answered it.

  “We found the pistol and got impressions of the tire tracks. We’ve got her on the run,” Sheriff Steele told Cortez. “Every unit in the county is on the road looking for her and she’s been spotted just outside town. Do you have any idea where she might go underground?”

  Cortez thought for a moment. “Where’s the last place you’d think to look for her?”

  The sheriff paused. “Miss Keller’s house.”

  “My guess, too. I’m on my way. I’ll meet you at the end of Phoebe’s driveway.”

  “Post a man at the door of her room, just in case,” the older man suggested.

  “No argument there,” Cortez replied.

  He hung up and went to the bed, where Phoebe, although sedated, was still awake enough to worry.

  “Don’t you go out there and get yourself killed,” she said firmly. “If I really am pregnant—and God knows how they could tell this quickly from a blood test—our baby is going to need a father!”

  He smiled down at her. “And a mother,” he pointed out. He bent and kissed her tenderly. “I’m going to call the local police and have them send an officer over to take care of you while I’m gone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “We can’t let her get away,” he added grimly.

  “No, we can’t. I’ll just hang around here. I love gourmet food.”

  He winked, and left her reluctantly.

  THE RESIDENT CAME IN a few minutes later, looking whimsical. “I have two announcements,” he said.

  She held out her hand, palm up.

  “You’re pregnant.”

  She grinned from ear to ear and propped her hands on her stomach. “Gosh, I didn’t get you anything!”

  He grinned back.

  “Second announcement?” she prompted.

  “It seems that you have a visitor.” He stood aside. A tall, slim, elegant silver-haired man in a vested gray suit walked in. He had dark eyes and high cheekbones. He looked vaguely Spanish.

  Phoebe was puzzled. She stared at the newcomer intently. The resident smiled and walked out the door to finish his rounds.

  “So you’re Phoebe,” the man said in a cultured voice. He smiled warmly. “I’m impressed, and not only with your credentials. You have courage.”

  She blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you, do I?”

  He waved the question away, moving forward to stand over her. “That isn’t important. I’m glad you’re safe. I had worried that I wouldn’t be in time.”

  She was more confused by the second. Perhaps the drugs had her hallucinating.

  “I was already in Atlanta. The problem was getting a commuter flight up here, with the weather being so bad,” he said. “But just in case they had too much trouble finding you, I was going to volunteer for the search party. God knows how I’ll explain this to my boss,” he added wistfully.

  “Your boss?”

  “I teach history at our local community college in Oklahoma. Final exams are in four days.”

  Her lower jaw fell. “You’re…!”

  “Jeremiah’s father, yes,” he confirmed. He grinned from ear to ear. “See, no rattles, no bells, no beads and I actually did courses in anthropology. Think what a handy grandfather I’m going to make!”

  CORTEZ HAD MADE IT to his own car, still parked at the motel. Tina came running out with Joseph in her arms.

  “Is she all right? Did you find her?” she exclaimed.

  “She’s fine. They’ve got her at the hospital, and they’re keeping her overnight.”

  “She was hurt?” Tina exclaimed, crushed with guilt.

  “A little, but they’re keeping her for further precautionary tests. We think she’s pregnant.” He grinned wickedly. “You’re going to be an aunt again!”

  Tina’s eyes widened like saucers. “It’s…yours?”

  He glared at her. “Of course it’s mine!”

  “How could I have been so wrong about Drake and Phoebe?” she groaned.

  “Love makes us do crazy things, I suppose,” he said gently. “Drake knows everything now, I might add. He’s walking on clouds because you care about him.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “He is? He is?” She cleared her throat. “About Phoebe. I’ll apologize to her on my knees, I swear I will. Where are you going?”

  “To catch the perp. Stay inside with the door locked.”

  “I will. Oh, did you get the call?”

  He paused. “What call? From whom?”

  “From your father,” she replied with a wicked grin. “He’s on his way to the hospital!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CORTEZ LAUGHED. “Didn’t he think we could handle this by ourselves?” he asked.

  “You know Uncle Charles,” she said brightly. “He’s already fond of Phoebe. He said he couldn’t wait to see her. He also said that he wanted to be at the wedding. He hoped he was in time.”

  Cortez, from a lifetime of living with his father’s uncanny gift, only shook his head. “We’re getting married in five days, God knows how he knew.”

  “Can I come?” Tina asked wanly.

  “Of course you can. Phoebe doesn’t hold grudges.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  He kissed Joseph and then Tina, and got into the car. “I’ll see you later. Lock the door!”

  “You got it!” Tina ran back inside, her face radiant with delight.

  Cortez burned rubber getting out to Phoebe’s house. At the end of her driveway, he found Sheriff Steele, Drake, and a recently-arrived special agent from a nearby field office, Special Agent Jack Norris.

  “The same neighbor who saw her leave here yesterday just confirmed that she came back a few minutes ago,” Sheriff Steele told Cortez. “We’re debating tactics.”

  “Rush her,” Cortez said coldly. “I won’t risk letting her get away.”

  “She can’t,” the sheriff assured him. “This is the only road out. The snow’s getting pretty deep. She slid around just getting to Phoebe’s house.”

  “Waiting her out is going to use up manpower and time,” Cortez replied. “She’s got nothing to lose. She won’t mind killing again. Homicide, or even suicide, would make no difference now.”

  “We can draw straws to see who doesn’t have to go first,” Drake mused.

  Cortez stalked back to his car. “There’s no need for straws. I’m going. Norris, you’re backup. You drive. Go slow, because I’m diving out at the old well in
the front yard. You continue around back, but keep your head down.” He glanced toward the sheriff. “I’m counting on you two to stop her if she gets this far.”

  They nodded solemnly. “It’s your show,” Sheriff Steele said. “Good luck.”

  Cortez threw up his hand in acknowledgment. Norris, a new agent, dark-haired and tall, climbed in under the wheel and Cortez got in on the passenger side.

  They eased closer to the house. Cortez expected a shootout, but there were no shots fired at them from the house.

  “Here, when you turn at the pine trees just at the side of the house, slow down and I’ll get out. They’ll provide cover,” he told Norris.

  “Yes, sir. Then what do I do?”

  “Park in front of her SUV so she can’t move it forward,” Cortez told him. “The only alternative then would be for her to back into the trees. There’s a sheer drop of about a hundred feet down that foot path. I checked it out one day when Phoebe was at work. She didn’t even know about it.”

  “That’s a long fall,” Norris agreed.

  “A fatal one, in a vehicle. Okay. Here goes. Stop!”

  Norris stopped, Cortez jumped out and pulled his service revolver. He’d like to take Claudia Bennett alive, but she’d already killed once. He wasn’t taking chances.

  He eased to the front porch and peered in through the windows while Norris was making noise backing in the snow-covered driveway.

  Under the cover of the noise, he tried the door and found it unlocked. He eased in, glad he was wearing crepe-soled shoes, so that he made no noise. He hoped the boards didn’t creak.

  He stopped, closed his eyes, and listened. Norris had stopped the car and cut off the engine. It was quiet, except for the sound of the wind outside. The snow had stopped, but the wind hadn’t.

  There was a faint scuffing sound in the kitchen. Holding the automatic firmly in both hands, Cortez moved past the dining room and to the doorway of the kitchen. He saw the stove and refrigerator and the tile floor. He saw a shoe, barely moving.

  He darted into the room with the pistol leveled and grimaced. Claudia Bennett was lying on the floor. Beside her, on the tile, was the pistol Phoebe had learned to shoot. The blond woman had a spreading red stain on the front of her skirt. She looked up at Cortez through dazed, cold eyes.

  He knelt beside her, yelling for Norris. The other agent opened the back door, which was unlocked, and moved into the room. He had his service revolver out as well, but he put it away when he saw the woman on the floor.

  “Were you shot?” Cortez asked her.

  She swallowed. “It doesn’t hurt much, isn’t that strange?” She swallowed again. “Fred was supposed to keep the artifacts for a year…before he sold them. The fool went straight to the museum here…and sold one to that Keller…woman.” She tried to breathe and winced. The stain was spreading even more.

  Cortez reached onto the counter and pulled down a dish towel. He folded it quickly and pressed it hard to the woman’s wound. She groaned.

  “Call 911,” Cortez told Norris.

  “It’s no good,” she told Cortez. “I’ve been lying here…several minutes. I aimed for…my heart but I fumbled and shot myself in the stomach.” She laughed and then choked, coughing and wincing even more. “My husband…called that archaeologist, his cousin. I panicked. I told Fred. We called the man and told him we were in law enforcement and that we knew about the artifacts. He told us to come get him and he’d show us where they were. We went to his motel. He was on the phone. We didn’t know who he’d called. As soon as he hung up, Fred shot him. He’d taped an empty soft drink liter-sized bottle to the end of the pistol to make a silencer. Nobody heard. We loaded him in the car and dumped him on a dirt road…out of town. We had no idea…it was on Cherokee land,” she added miserably. “The last thing we wanted…was to involve the feds.”

  Praying that the EMTs would get to her in time, Cortez listened intently as she struggled to get the words out.

  She swallowed hard again before continuing. “Fred said he wasn’t going back to prison, no matter what. He scared me. I figured he’d turn me in, and I’ve got…a record. So I posed as a teacher to get to Miss Keller. It was a stroke of good luck on my part—I found the name of a real teacher from an article in the local paper about the woman winning some fancy teacher’s award. Anyway, I hoped Phoebe would remember Fred and tell the police, so he’d get put away real fast. But it had the opposite effect.” She caught her breath. Her voice was getting weaker. “Fred said he was taking the artifacts and he was going to pin the murder on me.

  “I wasn’t about to let that happen. So I lured Walks Far to the cave so he could catch Fred red-handed and turn him into the authorities. But Fred was too smart. He knocked out Walks Far and was going to kill him. I had a pistol of my own in my pocket, a .45 automatic. I told Fred to check my husband’s pockets to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire. I knew he wasn’t—I just needed Fred…to bend down. He did, and I shot him in the back of the head.”

  “You could have pleaded self-defense,” Cortez said curtly, acknowledging Norris’s nod that the medics and police were on the way. “How did you move the body?”

  “After I killed Fred, it was just a matter of time until they found me. I was so scared that I could have moved a stove by myself! I dragged Walks Far to the truck, drove him back to the construction trailer and turned on the lights. I thought that would buy me some time. Maybe they’d think Walks Far killed Fred and managed to get out of there to the construction site somehow. But Miss Keller was a wild card, you see. I had to kill her so she couldn’t identify me as the woman from the museum. She could connect me to Fred.”

  Cortez stiffened in anger.

  “But Miss Keller knocked my pistol out of my hand and it got lost. I couldn’t find it and she ran where I couldn’t take the SUV. I took off, but before I could get packed I heard on the radio that Miss Keller had been found. I knew that it was all over. I came here, because I thought I’d be safe while I decided what to do. She had a pistol of her own—I found it by the bedside table.”

  Despite all the misery Claudia had caused, Cortez couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for her final act of desperation. He squeezed her hand, urging her to continue.

  She laughed pathetically. “Suddenly it just didn’t seem worth all the trouble, to run and hide. And I couldn’t go to prison. Walks Far used to talk about how horrible it was…” She grimaced. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking up at Cortez with glazed eyes. “Tell my brother…and my husband…I love them, and I’m sorry!”

  “I’ll tell them,” Cortez said quietly. “Just one more thing…how did you arrange the museum heist?”

  “Fred impersonated a guard so that we could get into the museum in New York at night. I helped him steal the artifacts,” she added sadly. Claudia closed her eyes. “It was all for the excitement. Walks Far was so boring and normal. I wanted adventure, money…power.” She sighed slowly and she opened her eyes one last time. “I was…so close…to making it. Tell my husband…he should have turned me in…years ago. I let him take the rap for me when I stole those jewels from the museum. He’s got a record, and he never did anything wrong…except love me. What a…fool…what a sweet, sweet fool…”

  Claudia’s eyes closed. Her breath sighed out and she went still. Cortez felt for a pulse. She’d bled to death internally, he was sure of it. But he tried to revive her, all the same. He was still trying when the EMTs roared up and took over for him.

  He locked the house to preserve the crime scene and he and Norris followed the ambulance to the hospital. But Claudia Bennett was pronounced dead on arrival.

  Cortez stopped by Walks Far’s room to tell him what had happened. His brother-in-law, Bennett, came in a few minutes later. He repeated the story for the other man as well.

  “Norris and I heard her confession,” Cortez told the Cherokee man somberly. “A deathbed confession is as good as a written, notarized one. You can hire a lawyer and apply to
the governor for a full pardon for the crime you were convicted of. We’ll back you up.” He glanced at Bennett. “You could get the dumping charge off your record as well. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I had a brother who was in trouble with the law all his life,” he added. “Sometimes all the love and care in the world won’t save another person from prison.”

  “I suppose not,” Bennett said. He shook hands with Cortez. “Thank you, for not letting her die without trying to save her. She did shoot herself?”

  He nodded. “With Phoebe’s gun—the one our deputy sheriff gave her to protect herself with.”

  “You can’t win when Fate starts calling in bets,” Walks Far said solemnly. “I loved her. But she didn’t know what love was.”

  “She said to tell you both that she loved you, and that she was sorry,” he replied. He leaned forward, his eyes intent on Walks Far’s sad face. “She saved you from being shot by the killer. She didn’t have to. She was already an accessory to murder. One more wouldn’t have mattered. But she killed him to save you.”

  Walks Far managed a smile. “Thanks.”

  Cortez shrugged. “Give it time,” he advised both men. “It does heal.”

  Bennett only nodded. “I’d better call the funeral home…” He hesitated.

  “We’ll have to have an autopsy first,” Cortez replied. “No coroner is going to take my word for how she died. You can still have her taken to the local funeral home, though. The state crime lab will take it from there.”

  Bennett grimaced. “I’ll never stop wondering if I could have saved her, if I’d let her take the rap for the first felony she committed. I was so concerned with our family name. Now look at it.”

  “You can’t second-guess the past. You just have to live with it and go on. I’ll be in touch,” he added. “I have to see about Phoebe.”

  “You found her?” Bennett asked abruptly. “She’s alive?”

  “She’s going to be fine.” He smiled. “So one good thing came out of an otherwise rotten situation.”

  “Thank God,” Bennett said. “That’s one death I won’t have on my conscience.”