Shallow Grave

by Karen Harper

  They both put headphones with mics on. “You fly, and I’ll work the FLIR ground surveillance radar,” Falcon told him.

  “I basically know how, but give me an F-35. I don’t do helos.”

  “You do now, flyboy. I been missing combat and, from what you said, this just might be it. We just got to find them first.”

  * * *

  Claire was instantly exhausted, though she didn’t want Nick to know. They slogged out through the swamp, slipping, fighting for footing. At least the voices of their pursuers faded.

  Once they staggered out onto dry land, he’d tried to carry her. Her legs felt numb, her wrists aching. Her entire body hurt. She could only hope that their baby was not being hurt through all this. She prayed he was safe in his own little sea inside her. But she insisted on running on her own, praying they were going in the right direction.

  Nick had her pinned to his side, so he was running for both of them, half dragging, half lifting her. Leaving the cypress swamp behind, they headed through a prairie of sawgrass that snagged at their pants and could cut their skin. Thank heavens the moon didn’t throw much light, but their pursuers evidently had not only wheels now, but night-hunting gear.

  “We don’t dare—follow the road,” Nick gasped out. “Not sure if a cell phone would work here, but they’ve got mine.”

  “Mine’s long gone. Should we try to double back—get a vehicle? There has to be at least two there since Glover had one.”

  “We can’t chance that, and daylight will not be our friend. How are you—the baby?”

  “He’s a trooper. Remember, his nickname is Trey for Nicholas Markwood the third.”

  Claire could sense that Nick’s strength was flagging, and she’d just made him cry. But they pressed on. She put out her hand to wipe his cheek. “Nick, darling, whatever happens—”

  “Shh! I want to hear what you have to say, but I hear an engine.”

  “Helicopter?”

  “Swamp buggy.”

  He was right. And they stood in the middle of what must be an open field with no cover.

  “Down,” he said. “We have to get down.”

  Hoping there were no fire ants or worse, Claire lay flat beside him in the blowing grass. Nick threw an arm over her.

  “Heat source over here, maybe thirty feet!” a voice she didn’t know called out not too far away. “Got ’em!”

  That must be Grant. They had her and Nick pinned down. And she supposed raptors would clean their bones if these men didn’t put them in a shallow grave. At least Irv Glover would never give poor Duncan nightmares again.

  Then another sound, a roar. Claire pictured Tiberia angry about being caged, then sweeter scenes tore through her terror. She pictured Lexi cuddling next to her in bed. She and Darcy were children, both in bed, and their mother was reading to them from Kipling’s The Jungle Book about an evil, man-eater tiger.

  “Chopper too,” Nick said in her ear. “It may be theirs but...”

  She looked up. Not a big one, coming fast, sweeping the ground with a big beam of light.

  “It’s Jace!” she shouted through the roar.

  She lifted her head to see Stan running at them, keeping low, big rifle with a night-vision scope in his hand. But the chopper swooped fast, landed between them and him. The chopper’s lights made the area bright as day.

  “Stan’s down—helicopter’s landing skid hit him,” Nick shouted. “I see Grant running away from their vehicle! Stay down!”

  “No, Nick...”

  But he leaped to his feet and tore after Grant. She saw the rotor blast tear at his hair and shirt. The chopper lights blinded her, and the grass around her whipped wildly. She tried to get to her feet, then just stayed down.

  The wind from the rotors was still fierce, but Jace came hobbling out of the chopper. Keeping low, he helped her to her feet.

  “Nick chased Grant Manfort!” she screamed. “Can you help him?”

  “He tackled him, and Falcon’s helping him drag the bastard back. Claire, come on. Just do what I say for once!”

  Bending low, blown by the fierce wind, with Jace limping so she had to help him, they headed for the chopper. For one moment she was afraid he might have told her Nick was safe to get her to come, but no, there was Nick with a battered-looking man who must be Grant. And Jace’s pilot friend had the unconscious Stan Helter, bleeding from a head wound, and was tying him to Grant.

  Nick got in back of the helicopter with the bound men and pulled Claire in from the boost Jace gave her. Sitting on the floor behind the pilot seats, Nick tugged Claire to him as the chopper lifted, tilted and flew. Nick put his feet on the two trussed men—Stan unconscious, Grant bruised and bleeding.

  “Party’s over,” Nick shouted to Grant above the roar of the engine. “Your life’s over too. And ours, you lying, murdering bastard, has a new beginning!”

  36

  Four Months Later

  “I can’t wait to see Tiberia in his new home!” Duncan told Claire with a big, bright smile. “He’s gonna be so happy here!”

  Marta, holding her son’s hand, when he didn’t tug it away, whispered, “You bet! He’s gonna feel safe here at the zoo. Claire, no matter if life is a zoo, I’m right with him on that—feeling safe and happy too.”

  Standing near the expansive tiger enclosure at the Naples Zoo, the two of them smiled over the heads of their excited children.

  Irv Glover was in a deep, not a shallow, grave. The police in Tennessee had finally traced and arrested the ex-con who was sending Irv’s monthly checks to Marta.

  Grant and the ranch taxidermist had been charged with two counts of abuse of a dead human body.

  Those horrible preserved heads—it turned out when Irv Glover was supposed to just bury the bodies, he had decided to sell Hewitt the heads, to make a little extra on the job. Grant had finally admitted that he’d had Glover commit the Rowan murders and hide their bodies so they were presumed drowned and so that Grant could be out of the state that day to have a solid alibi.

  The two preserved heads of the murdered Rowans were temporarily being kept as evidence. But Drew Hewitt, the taxidermist, had disappeared, so somehow he must have gotten wind of the discovery and was on the run.

  Grant would stand trial next year on murder charges. Bullets from a gun still in his possession had caused the deaths of Steve and Leslie Rowan, though he’d hired Glover to do the killing. One bullet had shattered the back of Mr. Rowan’s skull and was still lodged there, though taxidermy work had smoothed the dried skin over. Stan had been complicit in those crimes too, even blackmailing Grant to help fund the Trophy Ranch or he would testify against him.

  Although Nick would testify at both trials, thank heavens he was not prosecuting. It had been a huge international scandal that the ranch had been importing women for prostitution, then passing them on to the West Coast in a sort of sex slave ring.

  The ruling for Ben Hoffman’s death remained an accident, not suicide, so that had helped Ann, and settled Lane down too. Nick and Claire kept quiet on that ruling, but Ann had told them privately that she had finally accepted that Ben had intentionally entered Tiberia’s cage.

  “I’m telling myself, though, that he changed his mind at the last minute—that he didn’t want to leave me,” Ann had insisted to Claire. “Maybe he changed his mind, turned away, fell, hit his head in his panic when he realized he was wrong—that there was a better way than taking his life.”

  Wanting to comfort her, wishing she believed that, Claire had tried to assure her. “That’s very possible, Ann. Besides, the medical examiners, even psychiatrists are not always right. I’ve seen that time and again.”

  But when it came to Brit, Claire realized she had accepted that the once strong man she knew as her father had simply caved in. What Lane really thought, Claire had no idea at first, until Nick talked
to him, and, for once, she didn’t want to psych Lane out up close and personal. How well she knew that family life could be more complicated than any crime investigation, and she vowed to focus on her own family for now at least.

  Brit did say that her father had probably hoped that his insurance policy would kick in to save the zoo. And it was true that he deeply regretted his ruined relationship with Lane. When she had shared all that, Nick had vowed to have a good, open relationship with his yet unborn son.

  Nick had had a long talk with Lane, trying to use some of Claire’s I-care-you-can-talk-to-me strategies, and they now believed Ben had actually written that hand-printed note, hinting at suicide, then hid it and just hoped Ann would find it someday. Too many deaths—including the alligator and even the snake Irv had admitted to Claire he had put in their yard because he hated Nick and wanted him to quit investigating the Trophy Ranch.

  So, finally, Claire was concentrating on nothing but being pregnant and healthy.

  She’d grown so big lately, but she would not have missed this event. Neither had Gracie Cobham and her sons. The old woman had donated several dozen orchids to the zoo and had a permanent entry pass. “Took my boy Thunder coupla months to get comfortable living here, but he’ll be fine,” she’d assured Claire and Darcy a few moments ago.

  But best of all, Jackson was with them today. Granted, he was in a wheelchair his oldest daughter was pushing, with Ann Hoffman hovering over him, but he was much better and was expected to make a full recovery. That and Jace and Brit’s engagement were two other good things to come out of a terrible time. Looking happy, they stood together, waiting for the moment Tiberia would appear.

  As the crowd, including Lane and his family, gathered around the tiger compound—Tiberia was finally not going to be living alone—the magnificent animal stepped out into view, seeming not a bit wary.

  “Looking confident, just like us,” Claire said, squeezing Nick’s arm.

  “Life is never dull, is it?” he asked, and laughed so loud Claire startled. He pointed to the side as Claire saw one of the flamingos from the BAA race past as if it had permission for the run of its new home.

  “Never!” Claire agreed, and, as Tiberia stretched his back haunches and roared to his new audience, she felt more than her baby kick. She sat down on a bench fast, but not before her water broke.

  “Nick, sorry to cut this short,” she told him, “but I’ve been through this before, and it must be baby birth time.”

  He looked shocked and scared. “Should I get Darcy? Now?”

  “Now!”

  * * *

  Nick had never felt more out of his element. Even arguing a case before the Florida Supreme Court had never scared him as much as being with Claire as she went through labor. The nurse who had been with them off and on had just sent for the doctor in a big hurry. Something about a “double footling birth” and a “pulsating cord where it shouldn’t be.”

  Nick felt helpless and panicked. “What does that mean?” he demanded of the doctor as he appeared and Claire was quickly wheeled out. “Why is she going to the operating room instead of a delivery room?”

  “Emergency C-section,” Dr. Summerhill told him. “Once the baby is this far down, it can’t be turned, and we need to get the baby out now. We’ll keep you posted—send for you soon.”

  As the doctor too disappeared, Nick banged his fist against the wall. He had expected to be with her, be strong for her. They’d gone through classes to prepare for this day. He’d give anything to help her, be there.

  And his son... Of course he’d be a fighter, of course he’d be all right. But there had been such haste, and all because of a throbbing umbilical cord? Damn, what did that really mean?

  But Claire was strong. Very. From the first, even when she was fighting her disease. A great mother, a great partner. After all they’d been through, nothing more could go wrong now.

  He paced. He prayed. He paced, he prayed.

  “Mr. Markwood, you can come in now,” the nurse at the door to the operating room told him. “You have a fine son, and Claire’s conscious and doing well. It was a bit of an emergency for a while.”

  A bit of an emergency for a while—the story of his life with Claire Fowler Britten Markwood!

  He hurried down the hall behind the nurse, tears nearly blinding him. But not so much that he couldn’t see the squalling, kicking little boy who was minutes old and needed a bath. He bent to kiss Claire on the other side of a drape that hid her lower body.

  “Told you it would be a boy,” she said, and promptly went to sleep.

  * * *

  Lexi sat on the side of Claire’s hospital bed and occasionally patted her new baby brother on the little knitted cap he wore. “I hope he grows up fast,” she told Claire. “I want to teach him to ride a pony. And I’ll tell people when they meet him, his name is spelled T-r-e-y and not like a tray with food on it.”

  “We’ll all teach him a lot of things,” Claire said with a smile at Nick, who hovered on the other side of the bed.

  Nick held Trey, walked him briefly around the room before the nurse came in to put him in his little bassinet just down the hall under what Lexi called “grow lights” because he had a touch of jaundice, but he looked just beautiful to Claire.

  “Here’s some cards, Mommy, that came to the house,” Lexi told her, and dug them out of her pink backpack. “And wait till you see all the orchids that tiger lady sent to you at the house—a couple dyed blue for a boy.”

  “Everyone has been just wonderful. Okay, before I take a nap and Bronco and Nita get here so Nita can see her new charge, I’ll open just a couple of cards.”

  “This one’s got a pretty stamp on it,” Lexi said, plucking one out.

  Claire looked at the foreign stamp and return address and gasped. She opened it with her fingernail. “Kristen Kane! She must still be living in Europe. We’ve been so out of touch. Oh, it’s not a baby card but a letter. It’s been forwarded to me from my old address.”

  Nick sank on the side of the bed, tipping her slightly toward him. He looked beat, she thought. Just wait until the baby woke up several times a night to be changed and fed. He would finally be able to grasp what narcolepsy was like—sleeping on your feet during the day, nodding off, then waking up the moment Nicholas “Trey” Markwood made a peep.

  “Oh, you won’t believe this, Nick,” Claire said as she skimmed the handwritten note. “Kristen was my Florida State roommate, who went on to do grad work in forensic archaeology. She’s studied and worked in Scandinavia. She’s coming back from Denmark, and read about what happened at the BAA, our finding the Rowans in a shallow grave years after they disappeared, all that.”

  “Do I know the Rowans, Mommy?”

  “No, honey. But, Nick, here’s the thing. Kris and I were especially close since I was fighting my disease and she had hers. Face blindness. Ever hear of that?”

  “Yeah. It’s got some long clinical name. I read Steve Wozniak, the guy who helped found Apple computers, has it.”

  “The last card I got from her said she was ‘all bogged down.’ She’s been studying prehistoric peat bog burials and says there’s one that’s been discovered not far from here, at the edge of the Glades, similar to the one they found up near Disney. Can you believe it? And she wants to talk to me about consulting, but says to keep it secret for now.”

  “You just told Dad and me about it,” Lexi scolded, “but I won’t tell.”

  Folding his arms over his chest in a classic “no way” posture, Nick said, “Lexi, honey, pick Mommy out another card, a baby one this time.”

  “Well, of course, I wouldn’t consult right now anyway,” Claire assured him. “But isn’t that fascinating? Studying bodies hundreds—thousands—of years old to try to find out about the culture and individuals? No villains or complications from that. I know, I know,” she said as L
exi thrust another card at her, “I’ll be too busy, I have another life now, but I’ll certainly read up on that. Imagine!”

  Nick sighed. “I guess that’s the best kind of clients to have—long gone, silent and beyond law suits or leaving gators in a pool or shooting guns. Reading up on it is fine, but...”

  “And visiting the new local dig,” she said, still reading. “Amazing.”

  Nick sighed and leaned in to kiss Claire. “I vote a definite maybe, if you just consult—after Lexi and Trey are off to college,” he added with a little smile. He pulled both of them into a one-armed embrace.

  Claire managed the last word. “No bogging down, indeed! Not us! It does sound exciting but very safe, so we’ll see. We’ll just see.”

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed SHALLOW GRAVE,

  don’t miss the next suspenseful story in

  Karen Harper’s SOUTH SHORES series,

  SILENT SCREAM,

  available soon from MIRA Books.

  Author’s Note

  Thanks as ever to my editor Emily Ohanjanians and my agent Annelise Robey for their advice and support for this series. And to publicist Shara Alexander, part of my great MIRA team. As ever, to my husband, Don, for his proofreading and business manager roles. With doctor questions, our ob-gyn friend Dr. Roy Manning comes to the rescue.

  The problem of indigenous animals fighting for their space in South Florida, as in other places on the planet, is real and sobering. Signs near highways warning of Florida panther crossings are frequent near Naples where my husband and I wintered for thirty years. Estimates for these solitary, elusive predators are that only 120 to 160 remain in the wild. Nothing like endangered animals and an endangered heroine for a suspense novel!