The Dig (The Blackwell Files Book 9)

by Steven F Freeman

  Marco’s eyes widened. He began to speak but stopped himself. At last, he said, “Come back here.”

  Once again, he led Mallory to the restaurant’s long bar. His eyes wandered, looking everywhere but Mallory’s.

  “You told me you were just friends with Eden Grey,” said Mallory, “and not very close friends.”

  Marco lowered his gaze to the floor. “Yes. So?”

  “I know you were more than that. And if you don’t start coming clean, you’re going to be thrown in jail until we sort this out.”

  Marco looked up and crossed his arms. “What do you think you know?”

  “You told me you were just friends with Eden and that some nights, the two of you met other friends for dinner at around seven o’clock.” She leaned forward. “But people around the basilica saw you waiting there more than once at five o’clock. And I just read the police’s investigatory notes on Eden’s murder. You were the person who first called the police. But you didn’t call until eleven o’clock. And I’m betting you can’t produce any friends who will confirm you and Eden were out with them regularly, the group you said you and Eden were a part of—not when they learn they’ll go to jail for perjury if they lie.”

  Marco ran his hand through a shock of hair. “Okay, look…yes, we were dating. But that’s not the sort of thing you want to tell the police when your girlfriend’s been murdered, you know what I mean?”

  “Lying is better?”

  “It…well, I guess not now, it isn’t.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what really happened? And understand that we’ll be verifying anything you say, so there’s no point in lying anymore.”

  Marco slumped back in his chair and sighed. “Not long after the dig start here at Zapopan, Eden and her workmates come in for dinner at my father’s restaurant. I notice her right away. I don’t know if you saw a picture of her, but she was pretty.”

  Mallory nodded.

  “I ask her if she want to go on a date,” continued Marco, “She said ‘yes.’ We were dating ever since.”

  “What happened that night? The night she died?”

  Marco looked her in the face. “Many nights, the ones my father don’t make me work, we’d meet up outside the basilica at five, like you say, then head to dinner—either at El Escondite or at my apartment. Sometimes she like to go running first, so we meet up a little later those nights. Did you know she liked to run?

  Mallory shook her head.

  “Anyway,” continued Marco, “we weren’t meeting at either of the usual places that night. It was our two-month anniversary. We were going to meet at El Cisne. It’s a nicer restaurant, more fancy. But it’s on the other side of town. Eden was going to drive back to her apartment to change into something nice first. But her apartment in the opposite direction of El Cisne, so we agreed to meet at the restaurant at six-thirty.” His eyes glistened. “She never showed up.”

  “But you didn’t call the cops until eleven.”

  “It’s easy now to say I waited too long. But at the time, I knew it was going to take a while for her to get there. And sometimes her boss ask her to stay late, so I didn’t think much about it the first few hours. Then I started worrying and tried to call her, but she never answered.”

  “Is there anyone at El Cisne who can confirm you were there that night?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  “No waiter, no one?” pressed Mallory.

  “I didn’t want to take up a table until she got there, so I sat at the bar.”

  “You didn’t have any friends there?”

  The man snorted. “Like I’m gonna invite someone else along on my anniversary dinner? No, I wasn’t with anyone. I was waiting for her by myself. And my friends are all on this side of town. They don’t hang out at a place so far away. Maybe the bartender remember me. I don’t know.”

  “I’ll make sure we check.”

  For a moment, neither spoke.

  “You got any more questions for me?” asked Marco.

  “Not right now,” replied Mallory, “but I have a feeling you’ll be hearing a lot more before long.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The day’s first auction had been held in the theater at lunchtime. As promised, Magda Novinsky had delivered the date and time of their next clandestine meeting to O’Neil on the back of the session’s program.

  O’Neil and Jess now lounged at the meeting spot, a four-person table positioned along a far wall in the “High Tide” buffet restaurant. On the shore below, groves of tropical vegetation hugged the bank of the canal in both directions.

  Magda Novinsky took a seat at the table and nodded to her potential customers. “You have decided on a product?”

  “I’d like to see the list one more time,” said O’Neil.

  Novinsky unlocked her phone. Opening the album of photos, she passed it across.

  O’Neil scrolled through the photos and stopped on one showing an emerald-encrusted ceremonial knife with a four-figure price tag. “Our collection focuses on Chapalas artifacts. We like this one but weren’t sure if it’s Chapalas or not.”

  “Let me see,” said Novinsky. She opened up another folder on her cellphone and studied lines of detail. “Ah, yes, I remember. This is a special piece.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s fresh on the market. The previous owner…ah…isn’t yet aware that the piece is on sale.”

  O’Neil smirked. “In other words, they don’t know it’s missing.”

  Novinsky smiled in return. “Something like that.”

  “So about the origin of the piece?” said Silva.

  “Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me,” replied the assistant auctioneer. “Yes, it’s definitely from the Chapalas region. In fact, it won’t be long before you’ll be hearing about more pieces from that region—one in particular.”

  “Cool,” said O’Neil. “In the meantime, we’ll take the knife. Same process as before?”

  “Almost. This time, the price will appear as a fine-wine charge on your onboard account.”

  Was there any crewmember not involved in the illicit scam?

  “Fine,” said O’Neil. “When will we get it?”

  “One hour,” said Novinsky. “Room service will deliver.”

  As promised, the room service attendant delivered a hearty lunch—and an antiquity listed on the bill as a bottle of rare-vintage Chianti.

  O’Neil scribbled his signature onto the receipt. Once the attendant left, he held the piece high, where its emeralds sparkled in the cabin’s light. “I don’t know much about artifacts. But I have to admit, even I like this one.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” agreed Jess. “But we’d better dust that knife for prints and put it in our room safe. No point in taking chances.”

  “Yeah,” said O’Neil. Over the next quarter hour, he methodically coated the blade in dusting powder. “Looks like we have a partial.” He snapped a picture on his cellphone and sent it via an encrypted text to Mallory.

  “Now to put this away for safekeeping,” he said, moving to the front of the cabin and punching in the safe’s entry code. Depositing the knife, he swiveled the door shut and locked it. “Now to play the part of high-society cruisers again. And hope we get a crack at bidding for the undertaker’s spear.”

  After spending a few hours topside, O’Neil and Jess left the pool deck to prepare for dinner.

  As they entered their cabin, O’Neil nearly collided with the safe’s open door.

  “Shit!” he said, darting back out into the narrow hallway.

  No one…except one of the ubiquitous cabin stewards pushing their cart along the carpet.

  “You there!” shouted O’Neil. “Have you seen anyone leaving this cabin in the last few minutes?”

  Rather than turning to answer, the steward grabbed a small metal case out of the cart’s laundry sack and sprinted away.

  “Oh hell, no!” said O’Neil, taking off after the thief.

  Jess also launched into
pursuit, passing her still-recovering partner within seconds. She rocketed down the hallway. If anyone exited their cabin into the narrow passage at the wrong moment, that unfortunate soul and Jess would suffer quite a collision.

  As he ran, O’Neil studied the steward as best he could: black, shoulder-length hair; medium stature; probably a woman—although it was hard to be sure, given the unflattering, loose uniforms worn by all the stewards.

  O’Neil’s abdominal injury began to protest, and he fell behind. Jess suffered no such constraint and continued to close the gap.

  The thief cut into a side passage, heading for the ship’s interior. O’Neil entered the same hallway just in time to witness Jess pounding down an interior stairwell in hot pursuit. He clenched his jaw against the growing pain in his side and followed.

  An elderly couple climbing the stairs looked up in surprise as he bolted past. No time to explain. Just maneuver around them and keep going.

  Jess and the thief had disappeared from sight.

  A surge of panic gripped O’Neil. Was recovering that rusty knife really worth Jess’s life? He pursed his lips. Pain or not, time to move faster.

  There! Two decks below, the thief turned off the stairwell and veered onto an outside walkway. Jess looked to be seconds behind.

  O’Neil grimaced as he sped down the remaining stairs and followed the others onto the walkway. A tropical breeze tugged at his shirt, blowing it sideways.

  Where…? Jess raced down the deck, mere strides behind her quarry. Yards ahead, a stairwell provided the only means of escape from a steel wall spanning the walkway.

  “I’m here!” called O’Neil.

  Jess understood. Rather than tackling the thief, she sprinted to the stairs, turned, and assumed a boxing stance.

  The thief skidded to a stop and began to turn, only to freeze as O’Neil bore down. She backed into a corner formed by the steel wall and the railing. Gusts of wind spilled ebony hair over her eyes.

  Jess and O’Neil closed in.

  Pushing her hair aside, the thief turned to face her pursuers.

  Silva let out a gasp of surprise. “You!”

  CHAPTER 37

  Alton and Vasquez were wrapping up lunch at a roadside food cart when the lieutenant’s cellphone buzzed.

  Answering the call, she cradled the phone against her ear. She listened for several minutes, speaking little.

  She ended the call and faced Alton. “That was the IJCF—my crime lab. Remember the samples the techs took from the tunnel where Dr. Miller’s body was recovered? The lab ran a chemical analysis of those samples. They said the dust and Dr. Miller’s shirt and suspenders had trace quantities of cocaine.”

  “So there were drugs in the tunnel,” said Alton.

  “At one point, yes. But not now.”

  Alton polished off the last bite of his torta ahogada, a spicy sandwich popular in the area. “And there’s probably no way to prove where the cocaine came from.”

  Vasquez smiled. “I said the same thing to my tech just now. He said the only way to do that is to match the cocaine in the dust to a sample taken from Cruz’s warehouse, since every batch has its own unique chemical signature.”

  “What about the stairs leading up to his warehouse from the tunnel?” asked Alton. “Would they be close enough to secure a warrant?”

  “It’s worth a try. I have a set of collection tubes in the trunk of my car. Let’s go check it out.”

  Half an hour later, the duo found themselves in the downtown cathedral’s underground tunnels.

  They set off down the passage leading to the warehouse. Knowing Cruz’s thugs could now be active in the cramped quarters, they once again used red-filtered flashlights and maintained a constant vigil. After spending a day in the cacophony of city noises above, the tunnels’ silence lent a claustrophobic, smothering quality to the mission.

  Alton’s leg had begun to throb by the time they reached the ladder leading to the warehouse’s trap door.

  A white smudge on the ladder’s rusty handrail pushed aside thoughts of pain.

  Alton motioned to the smudge. Donning latex gloves, Vasquez unscrewed the top from a glass vial. She brushed the powdery residue with a Q-Tip and deposited the potential evidence into the vial, then secured its cap.

  Using their subdued lighting, Alton and Vasquez discovered three more spots in which some kind of residue had been left behind. Vasquez took samples of them all before indicating a desire to head back to the cathedral.

  “You didn’t want to keep looking?” asked Alton when they reached the ladder leading back into the cathedral’s antechamber.

  “We have four. I’ll have my lab run a test and see if there’s a match to the residue found on Dr. Miller. If four samples aren’t enough, I don’t think five will be, either.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Alton motioned to the ladder in a ladies first gesture. Vasquez climbed the rungs, hesitating for a moment at the top before stepping into the room.

  Alton pushed himself up, avoiding the use of his bad leg as much as possible. His head crested the level of the floor.

  And peered into the business end of a Glock.

  CHAPTER 38

  “Yes, me,” said the cabin steward.

  Smirking, she pulled off the black wig and unfastened a bobby pin, prompting blonde hair to fall over her shoulders. “I guess I won’t be needing this anymore,” she said as she peeled off her white steward’s jacket and dropped it to the deck.

  Jess took a menacing step forward. “Why were you in our cabin?”

  Novinsky pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “I had to make sure you are who you say you are. In my…side business, I have to know exactly who I’m making sales to.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you cracked our safe.”

  “It most certainly does. People put their most important documents in there. If you had, say, a passport in a different name, I’d look into your real identities before I’d sell to you again. It’s just good business.”

  “So I suppose you didn’t take the knife out of my safe?” growled O’Neil.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Sorry for not taking the word of a thief, but I’m going to need to see the inside of your case.”

  “Fine,” said Novinsky, looking as relaxed as ever. She moved the case onto the rail and toggled four numbered dials into position. She then opened the case and swiveled it sideways for O’Neil and Jess to see.

  The velvet interior contained a porcelain, earth-tone pendent. But no knife.

  “Happy?” asked the assistant auctioneer.

  O’Neil glanced at Jess, perplexed. “I guess.”

  Novinsky gave the case a brisk shove. It and the pendant fell in a long arc and disappeared noiselessly into the water below. Observing O’Neil’s wide eyes, she broke into a laugh. “Of course I had to get rid of it. It’s part of my…special inventory—an inventory I can’t have anyone finding if the past ten minutes has upset you enough to consider telling someone about my excursion in your cabin.”

  The auctioneer took a long drag of her cigarette. She released the smoke in a slow exhale before turning to leave.

  “Wait,” said Jess. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Back to the theater. There’s another auction in thirty minutes.”

  “But you—”

  Novinsky laughed. “I did what? Looked at stolen merchandise in your cabin? Got rid of more stolen merchandise you might have wanted to buy?” She took another drag of her smoke. “You’ve already broken the law yourselves. You can’t say anything. Even if you did, there’s no proof other than the hot goods already in your possession. That pendant is on the bottom of the canal.”

  O’Neil shook his head. “Seems like a poor decision for someone looking for business on the side.”

  The assistant shrugged. “Beats going to jail.” She studied the empty deck. “I think I’ll be going now. Sorry we couldn’t make a deal on that piece. You would have loved it
.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The thug holding the handgun motioned for Alton to continue up the ladder.

  Alton complied and moved over to stand next to Vasquez.

  Two more thugs had their handguns trained on the investigators.

  “Cruz,” spat Vasquez, glaring at a man standing in the doorway.

  With khaki pants, a navy-blue Polo shirt, and a businessman’s haircut, the man stood in stark contrast to their captors. Alton would have never placed him as a drug runner.

  The man nodded. Glancing at Alton, he replied in English. “Sí, Lieutenant Vasquez. I am Gustavo Cruz.” He laughed at the policewoman’s raised eyebrows. “Yes, I know you.”

  “How did you know we were here?”

  Cruz smirked. “People talk, you know? I hear you are watching me. I think maybe I watch you, too. My men tell me you go into this church for a long time. I figure you are going in the tunnels.”

  “You’re taking a big risk,” said Alton, “drawing your weapons on a police officer.”

  Cruz pursed his lips in thought. “You’re right.” He turned to face his flunkies. “Lower your weapons.” Turning back to the investigators, he continued. “You surprised, Vasquez? I only have my men draw their weapons so you don’t shoot as soon as you see us. I got no problem with you or your gringo friend.”

  “So why the greeting committee?” asked Alton.

  Cruz walked to a battered, wooden desk and sat on its edge. “I hear you think I got something to do with the old gringo that died here. What’s his name…? Oh, Miller. I come to tell you I had nothing to do with that.”

  “You expect us to believe that?” asked Vasquez, incredulous. “After we just found traces of drugs down there? Drugs he probably found, too?”

  Cruz frowned and folded his arms. “Look, I ain’t no saint. But I didn’t kill the old gringo or those other guys he worked with. You can look all you want, but you ain’t gonna find any evidence on me. Killing Americanos…it ain’t good for keeping a low profile.”

  Vasquez looked to be on the verge of arguing, but eyeing the armed thugs, she merely added, “We’ll see.”