Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1)

by Aimee Gilchrist

  I shot up in bed, heart tripping wildly, drenched in sweat.

  "Are you feeling all right, dearie?" The question came from my new nurse. Sixty-five or so, with short clipped gray hair and kindly hazel eyes.

  "Yes. I think I might have had a bad dream. Or I was hallucinating. I don't remember. I'm confused."

  She patted my hand. "That's okay. Best not to dwell on the negative. How are you feeling?"

  "All right. Better actually."

  "Good to hear it. The cops are waiting outside the door to talk to you, but your boyfriend wouldn't let them in until you tell me you're feeling up to it. That young fellow isn't the sort to brook argument to his dictates, is he?"

  "So I've been told."

  "I was his nurse yesterday, you know. And to be perfectly honest, he was a fairly bad patient too. He just kept getting out of bed whenever he pleased and not listening to his doctor." She sighed heavily. "But, then again, his kind usually does that sort of thing." I had no idea what she was talking about. His kind, meaning what? Men? Irish people? Hard-asses? "They always do say that they make the worst patients."

  "Oh." The nurse didn't seem to notice that her conversation was mostly one-sided. By necessity, since she had completely lost me.

  "Actually, I like him. Aside from his forceful concern for your welfare, he's very sweet. Besides, he is your hero you know, so we all have to look on him with a little indulgence."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Don't you know? The poor man dragged himself sixty feet with one broken leg, a broken arm, two broken ribs, a concussion, and minor internal injuries to get to the cell phone. Some migrant farm workers saw it all. I can't imagine why they didn't help him."

  I couldn't either, but I wasn't very surprised that he'd done it on his own. Although I still wasn't convinced that he was a tough guy, I did know he was a strong and determined one. Plus, he was in much better shape than I was. If I had been in his shoes, we probably would have both died out there.

  "He got most of the injuries you know, your boyfriend."

  "I know. We went over on his side."

  A sudden flash of breaking glass and crunching metal brought my first memory of the accident. The flat finality of his words, the way he'd turned the car. He'd known we had no way to stop in time, so he'd directed himself over first. What an idiot. A selfless idiot but an idiot just the same. I shook my head to clear away the horrible memories, something I really shouldn't have done.

  "He's not my boyfriend," I corrected by rote, searching for any subject that wasn't the accident.

  "Oh, that's right." She winked at me conspiratorially. "Your cousin."

  "But he really isn't my boyfriend," I said with a long-suffering sigh.

  The nurse drew in a deep breath. "I see. Well when you get back to…" She looked at my chart, "Birdwell, you might take him to see someone who can define the appropriate feelings to have for one's relations." She tried to sound delicate.

  I sighed again. "He isn't my cousin either. He just isn't my boyfriend."

  "Oh." She seemed unsure what to say, so she changed the subject. One of my favorite tricks. "Well, here are some books to read when you're feeling up to it. Poetry and things." She held one up. "This is my favorite, but I like rhyming couplets. Not everyone does. My neighbor, Doris…"

  "Holy crap!" She jumped back in horror at my sudden shout. "Sorry. Aodhagan, I have to see him. Right now." I slapped the mattress.

  "Oh, well, I think that right now isn't the best time…"

  I cut her off again. "I have to see him now." I threw back the blankets and swung my feet out.

  "I'm sure it's not a matter of life and death." Her sweet persona was starting to slip.

  "No. That's exactly what it is. A matter of life and death."

  She'd told me there were police outside my door, but I was also willing to bet that there was a recently mutinous man out there as well. "Aodhagan!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. The nurse cringed.

  The door flung open, slamming against the wall. She squeaked and jumped back from the bed. He rushed in, followed by a soft-looking uniformed officer. "Seventeen, thirteen, thirty-nine."

  Aodhagan smiled at me, and suddenly he looked like himself, which he had not when he'd first come in. He looked swollen and strange, covered in cuts, bruises, and stitches. But who knew what I looked like. I knew for sure I had bandages on my head. Nursey stared at me like I had gone stark raving mad. Maybe she just thought it was from my brain bruise.

  "Good for you. I told you it would come back to you," Aodhagan said.

  "Only because of the accident," I countered.

  He frowned. "Don't try to put any good light on it. You would have remembered without it."

  I shook my head then wished I hadn't. "No, I wouldn't have. I only remembered because I've been delirious. I had this hallucination that I was seven again. That's when she taught me the numbers in a rhyme." I repeated it to him quietly, trying to prevent the other two from hearing. "Imagine teaching that to a child. I'd forgotten it because I got beaten at Upper Elton in the sixth grade for teaching it to other children. We used it to jump rope. That's why she wrote 4128 on the cigarettes. In case she didn't make it. So I'd think of the Port Victoria house."

  "As soon as we get back, we'll do it."

  I stood up. "When can we leave? I want to leave now." I looked around the room for anything that might be more appropriate as clothing than what I was currently wearing.

  "Helen." He laid his hand on my arm. "Get back in bed. You're not ready to go home yet. You can go home tonight, after Dr. Fielding checks you out."

  "No. We need to leave now."

  "Lay down, Helen." He used the voice that had probably gained him his current reputation around these parts. He sounded deadly, but I knew him, and those others didn't. The only thing dangerous about Aodhagan was the sheer power of his dimples.

  I stood my ground. He tried another tack. "Please, honey. You're scaring me. Head injuries are nothing to kid about. Just get back in bed, and I'll call Dr. Fielding and see if I can get him to come early tonight." His voice was coaxing, and he had that little bitty hint of a drawl that was my undoing.

  "Okay." I sat down, but I didn't get back under the covers. He didn't try to push the issue, but his relief was evident. He probably thought that I was going to pass out again.

  "The paramedics destroyed your clothes. Junior and Marian will bring you some when they come to get us."

  Apparently, we were trusting Junior again. At least more than Aodhagan trusted the friendly skies, and neither one of us was in the shape to drive. I was itching to get out of here, but Aodhagan was in control, and we were waiting for Junior. As it turned out, the day passed fairly quickly despite my impatience. Talking to the police alone, much like the last few times, took several hours.

  Aodhagan told the police that we weren't exactly sure why someone was trying to kill us, but we believed that there existed evidence implicating someone in a forty-seven-year-old murder. All I could do was agree. It was too late for another story.

  No, we didn't know what it was. No, we had no idea where it was or who the person might be. No, we weren't looking for it. I wasn't sure they entirely believed us, but the story was so absurd from start to finish, they probably had no idea what to believe.

  When Junior and Marian arrived, I was insanely happy to see both of them, as though they were long-lost family. Much to my chagrin, Birdwell, and especially these two, was starting to grow on me in a major way. Which meant I needed to get out of town as soon as this business was wrapped up. Marian told me she couldn’t find my clothes, and that made sense on account of how they were in my trunk. However, instead of improvising, they’d simply brought clothes for Aodhagan and none at all for me. Aodhagan fixed the mess which I was too brain injured to solve by saying he’d made friends with some of the staff and would borrow some scrubs, and that I was to wear the clothes that Marian had brought along for him. I left the group and went to take a
shower. I returned to the three of them having a whispered conference around my empty bed.

  They all looked up at me like they had received a memo that the end of the world was shortly to arrive.

  "They're all gone," Aodhagan told me. It took me a moment to connect the dots that he meant all of the suspects.

  "What do you mean all of them? You really mean all of them!"

  "First we saw on the news that Dennis Strinton's wife had reported him missing, and it looked suspicious, so there was a big man hunt," Junior updated me. "Then a few hours later, I heard on the radio that Lloyd Granger's secretary had also reported him missing, and there would be a manhunt for him as well because he's such a big name. They don't think the two cases are related. I guess they don't know the connection between them yet, but I don't think it will take them very long to figure it out."

  "What about Ari and Kitty?"

  "Gone too," Aodhagan said grimly. "Detective Strauss, who was interviewing you earlier, had some of the Santa Fe force go down and interview their neighbors. They left Saturday night and haven't been back since."

  "I don't understand. Are they all in this together?"

  Aodhagan shook his head, mouth a grim line. "I can't imagine it's true. But I can't imagine what else could be true, either."

  "Let's get Dr. What's-his-face in here to get me checked out, and then let's go home."

  Dr. What's-his-face turned out to be Dr. Fielding, and he was extremely reluctant to give me a clean bill of health. I didn't blame him. I didn't feel healthy. But I did want to get out of there. He and Aodhagan took my charts and went into the hallway. A few minutes later, they came back and Dr. Fielding spat that I was free to go but was to listen implicitly to Aodhagan, into whose care I was apparently being relegated.

  It was pretty obvious that the doctor was only discharging me because he was sick to death of Aodhagan, but I figured that was as good a reason as any if it got the job done. After I was discharged, we moved very slowly out to the car, a green Taurus that I assumed must have belonged to Marian, since I had never seen Junior in anything but a pickup. My balance still wasn't exactly what it should be, and I was shaky and weak.

  Aodhagan and I huddled together in the backseat while Junior drove. Marian sat silently in the passenger seat, wringing her hands like the heroine of a Gothic romance novel. Eventually, I realized that they probably couldn't hear us over Patsy Cline crooning out of the speakers.

  "Listen, Aodhagan. I really appreciate your help, but I think that I better handle this alone from here on out."

  "What are you talking about?" he hissed. "If you're saying this out of some misplaced fear for my life, it's too late now, honey. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

  "This is too dangerous, and it's not your problem. I shouldn't have involved you in the first place. Anyway, it's not easy. You could have been killed. Do you know what I felt like when I thought you were dead?"

  He shook his head slowly, the intensity of his eyes drowning me. "But I know how I felt when I thought you might not make it. I could never leave you to handle this alone."

  "You have to. I won't let you do this. I felt wretched when I thought I'd been responsible for the death of such a…" It was better to not even start describing how wonderful he was. It wouldn't be a favor to either one of us. "Of another human being. I don't want to be responsible for other people's lives. I don't have the tenacity for it. I'm hardly capable of being responsible for my own life."

  I hated to admit it, but it was undeniably true. I wasn't good at taking care of myself.

  "Helen, come on. Everyone's responsible for someone. It's a part of living. Any time you make a real friend, every time that you love, you become responsible for someone. I mean, don't you have friends? Haven't you ever loved?"

  He put it forward like a rhetorical question. He didn't expect an answer because he assumed the answer must be yes, but it wasn't. I wasn't even sure I was capable of either action. "You're already responsible for me because you care about me, and I'm responsible for you, for the same reason. I could never turn my back on you."

  He wasn't jumping to self-inflated conclusions. I did care about him. Far more than what was rational for someone I'd just met and probably more than I had ever cared about anyone before. It was frightening, and it didn't make sense, so I decided to just pretend it didn't exist. That particular defense had served me well in the past. "Look, I don't want to argue with you, Aodhagan."

  "Then don't," he countered, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. "It won't matter anyway because nothing you could say would change my mind. It's you and me, honey. Till the end. I would do anything that I had to do to protect you or anyone else that I cared about."

  I knew that was the truth. Aodhagan's problem, of course, was that he cared about everyone. Taking care of the people he cared about was a full-time occupation for him. I had seen it in action when he tried to get himself killed instead of me. The memory brought on another violent lurch of my stomach. As if he sensed what I was thinking, he tacked on, "Anyway, it's my turn to get potentially killed for you. I already almost killed you."

  "Don't be ridiculous. You can't possibly be blaming yourself for that accident."

  "You'd be surprised what I can blame myself for, but that really was my fault."

  "You took a calculated risk." I used his own words.

  "Yeah, well, I grossly miscalculated."

  "If you hadn't done it, Garth would have killed us for sure."

  "Maybe, maybe not." He crossed his arms over his chest, winced from the pain, put his arms back down, and fell silent.

  He was probably spending that time pondering about how he had let me down, and his mother, his priest, probably an extensive list of other people I hadn't even met yet, and the world at large by driving us into that ravine.

  I shook my head in the dark. I didn't know what was worse. A person like him with an Atlas complex or a person like me with practically no feeling for others at all. Probably me—who was I kidding? After we fell silent, the darkness, the motion, the smooth music on the radio, and my violent head injury lulled me to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When we got to Aodhagan's, it took forever for him to get the door open. Rather reluctantly, he paused. "I don't think I can get upstairs by myself right now."

  I probably couldn't either. "Maybe we can get up together?"

  I was so tired and out of it that I probably ended up hurting him more than I helped him. We were like the Keystone Klimbers, both of us half-dead and horribly uncoordinated. It was a long and painful trip up the stairs.

  I took him to his room and helped myself to the empty half of his bed. There was no way that I was moving another inch until morning. If he objected, he didn't say so. Possibly because he was already asleep and snoring softly, with his mouth hanging open. He must have been exhausted. He'd gone to bed without brushing his teeth.

  At 6:30 in the morning, Junior came by to get us. I guess he had the key because when I opened my eyes, suddenly aware that something was different, he was standing at the foot of the bed. Of course, I couldn't really see him so much as a big hulking form at the foot of the bed.

  My reaction was the same as any woman who woke up with a stranger standing by the bed. I screamed.

  Aodhagan shot up with a start, scrambling out of bed, looking for a fight. There was probably no chance he could win in his condition, but he was ready.

  "Holy cow, Helen. It's just me. Junior."

  "Sorry." I jumped up. Then I wished I hadn't moved quite so fast when my head spun, and my stomach heaved.

  I got control of my spinning head, just in time to see Junior giving us a curious look, and I really hoped that he wasn't working on getting the wrong idea. I didn't know how he could. Aodhagan was still wearing the gray sweatpants and green scrubs he'd come home wearing, and I was still, though just barely, wearing Aodhagan's pants and the borrowed T-shirt. I was lying under the blankets when Junior sho
wed up, and Aodhagan was still lying on top of everything, exactly where he'd fallen the night before. We weren't even touching. But if Junior wanted to see something, he would, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

  We all piled into Junior's truck, a process that took a painfully long time, and I wasn't using the word painful figuratively. I don't know why Junior didn't just bring back Marian's car, and I couldn't think well enough to even begin to guess. We drove through the empty streets until he dropped us off in front of Penny's house, like an irate taxi driver. "I'm going to go grab Marian. I'll pick you guys up in fifteen."

  We struggled out of the car and up the steps, a repeat of last night's foolishness. In the bedroom, I took down the picture and put it on the bed. Here was the moment of truth, but somehow I wasn't very excited. Possibly on account of the fact that my scrambled brain kept sending me messages like, "I bought this dress to go to China! Go now!" and "You should try to say the ABC's backward. It's very important."

  The doctor was right. I should have stayed in the hospital.

  When the safe door finally swung open, I hardly felt anything at all, except for a little bit of blackness at the edge of my consciousness that told me I was going to pass out if I didn't sit down soon.

  I handed the contents to Aodhagan, one by one. A stack of the copies that she'd made at the library. A third set of the letters stolen from Jamie. A yellowed journal and four delicate silver charms that probably went to the bracelet that Kitty had given us. "That's all."

  "Good, now you can give them to me." We turned in unison to see Lloyd Granger in the door with a gun that looked like it meant business trained right on us.

  "Oh, great." It was Aodhagan's only response, and he didn't even sound scared, just sort of annoyed.

  I thought that Lloyd Granger, out of all of them, was the least threatening. Plus, sending the evil televangelist to do the dirty work was so clichéd. They should have sent Dennis, at least. That guy was threatening without a gun.