One Grave Less

by Beverly Connor

  “What degree of difficulty does that require?” asked Gregory.

  “Quite a bit, I would think. It’s not my bailiwick. But I’m going to find out. Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll give the authorities in the town a call—Río de Sangue. Never heard of it.”

  “Nor have I,” said Gregory. “Thank you, Cameron. It’s good speaking with you again. I hope all is well.”

  “You too, Greg,” he said. “I’ll keep in touch. I have your number here.”

  Gregory hung up. Diane didn’t talk to Cameron and it seemed to her that Gregory hadn’t wanted her to. She asked him why.

  “I haven’t been telling anyone where I am. Just seems better to keep a low profile. I trust the people who were on our team, but not necessarily their confidants. Until we find out where this is coming from, we need to give out less information than we get. That’s why I didn’t tell him about Simone.”

  “So where are we?” asked Diane.

  “Nowhere at the moment. I’ve gone over in my mind what this could be about, who benefits from our disgrace, who we have offended, what was going on with Simone. The only thing I’ve discovered is that I need more information. To that end, I’m going to try my hand at speaking with Simone’s parents. Put my diplomatic skills to the test. Perhaps I can pry out of her brother where she might have put the things of Oliver’s that she kept.”

  The two of them sat staring at each other for several moments. Gregory broke the silence first.

  “We were investigators. Top-notch. Was there something going on around us that we completely missed?”

  “I don’t know,” said Diane. “We are still assuming that Simone is connected with the rumors. We don’t know that.”

  “No, we don’t. Quite a coincidence, however,” Gregory said.

  “And this latest Interpol thing originated in Brazil.” She got on the other computer and looked up the location on a map. “Near Peru,” she said. “About six hundred miles southeast of the mission, but still in Brazil. Everything seems to point to our time there.”

  Gregory nodded.

  “Could it be drugs?” asked Diane. “Could someone have been dealing in drugs and we not know it?”

  “As hard as that is to imagine, one must consider it as a possibility,” Gregory said. “We were out in the field a good deal of the time. Someone could have timed their activities to correspond to when we were gone from the mission. However, the other members of our team would have noticed something. And certainly Father Joseph or the nuns would have.”

  “Maybe Oliver did,” said Diane. “Maybe that’s what the drug-soaked bag was about. Perhaps that’s what Simone was investigating.”

  Gregory pressed his lips together in a tight line. “She wouldn’t have just taken up whatever investigation he may have been conducting, if that’s what she was doing, unless she thought it had something to do with his death.”

  They looked at each other again for a long time. Gregory’s gray eyes took on a steely appearance. “It was one of us?” he said.

  “But it was ex-bloody-dictator Ivan Santos who massacred the people at the mission.” Diane spoke through gritted teeth, defying Gregory to perhaps clear the man she had hated all this time.

  “Yes, yes, it was Santos. But was there something else involved too? Could he have been doing a favor for someone?” said Gregory.

  “That’s what Simone said: ‘It was one of us.’ I’ve been pushing that to the back of my mind every time I think about it. Damn it to hell, if that’s true.”

  Diane was silent for a long time.

  “How do we find out if it’s true?” she asked.

  She felt helpless. As if this would be important to Ariel’s memory to find the whole truth and she wasn’t up to it—just as she hadn’t been up to protecting Ariel. She suddenly felt like crying.

  Gregory stood. “I’m going to see Simone’s family. I’ll come back with answers.”

  Diane locked the door to Gregory’s office behind them. The two of them threaded their way through David’s maze of equipment. She wondered what he was working on. She wondered if she should ask. On the way up to the first floor she gave Gregory the keys to her SUV. He had a lot of experience driving in the United States, so she wasn’t worried that he would run into someone by driving on the wrong side of the road.

  On the way to her office she met Chief of Detectives Douglas Garnett.

  “Just the person I was looking for.” He smiled. “Did you know there is an international warrant out for your arrest?”

  Chapter 27

  Diane eyed Chief Garnett. He didn’t look like a man who was about to take her into custody.

  “I just found out,” she said. “Gregory Lincoln called a contact we have at Interpol about it.” She walked across the lobby with him, threading through the visitors, heading for her museum office.

  “You have an airtight alibi—I saw you here yesterday.” He laughed. “Detective Warrick is trying to track down that town—Río something. It looks like they may not have telephone service. Strange that they seem to be connected to Interpol.”

  “I think someone picked a place on a map and hacked it into Interpol’s system. I doubt the village even has a police force.”

  As they walked, Diane noticed a few people looking at her, then turning quickly away. She didn’t think much about it until a docent did the same thing. Odd. But people are probably hearing about Madge, she thought.

  “You and your British friend got any ideas what this is about?” Garnett said. “I hate having my people spend their time tracking down places that aren’t there.”

  “Not a clue, so far. But Gregory is good at this,” said Diane. She sighed, exhaling slowly. “What about Madge? Any news?”

  “It’s early,” he said. “I doubt Lynn has had time to start on the autopsy.”

  “I know. It’s just, well, so terrible, and so sad,” she said.

  They walked through the double doors into the administrative wing of the museum and down the hall to her office.

  “The Interpol thing, is that what you came here about?” said Diane.

  “Yes. Goose chase that it is, I have to follow through and do the paperwork. It’s a nuisance I could do without. But at least I can say I see the woman every day; she hasn’t had time to go to Brazil for a hit.”

  Diane entered through Andie’s office. Andie was hard at work answering the telephone. All lines were ringing off the hook.

  “What’s going on?” asked Diane. “Are these questions about Madge?”

  Andie looked up at her with wide, harassed eyes. Her reddish übercurled hair added to the hassled look.

  “Dr. Fallon, this is just awful. I’ve asked Liam to look into it. I hope you don’t mind. I know you have resources—really, really good ones—but it never hurts to have help . . . a lot of it.”

  Liam was Andie’s detective boyfriend. Diane couldn’t imagine what she had him looking into—obviously not Madge’s death. Andie wouldn’t have taken such a giant step as that without permission from Diane.

  “Slow down, Andie, and take a breath. What’s this about?” said Diane.

  “The news,” she said. “What everyone is calling about.”

  Andie clicked several keys on her computer keyboard and turned her monitor around so Diane could see it.

  “This is the Atlanta news feed,” said Andie.

  The local reporter, an attractive woman with brown hair, wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella, was standing in front of the Rosewood Police Station in the drizzling rain. Diane’s driver’s license picture, looking for all the world like a mug shot, was in the corner of the screen. Diane recognized Pris Halloran, a reporter from a small TV station in Atlanta, but judging from the logo on the screen, she was now on assignment for one of the major networks.

  “Dr. Diane Fallon, director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History, and director of the Rosewood Crime Lab, is on Interpol’s most-wanted criminals list. According to Interpol, Fallon allegedl
y murdered four men in Río de Sangue, Brazil. There is an uncorroborated report that the killings were in connection with a drug deal that went bad. It has been rumored for some time that Dr. Fallon was involved in drug smuggling while she was working for a human rights organization in Brazil, but that, as I said, is just a rumor at this point. In a strange note to this story, Fallon was questioned recently in regard to charges of soliciting in the city of Rosewood. So far, neither Diane Fallon nor Rosewood’s chief of detectives, Douglas Garnett, have returned our calls. Odd story, Kimberly. We’ll keep you informed as it unfolds.”

  Diane slowly sank down in the stuffed chair near her. Garnett’s face was red and contorted, the veins bulging in his swollen neck.

  “What the hell . . . ,” he said after a moment.

  Diane put her hands over her face. Disaster didn’t begin to describe the situation. This is not survivable, she thought.

  “Andie, roll the phones over to the secretary and tell her to say that there will be a statement to the press forthcoming. You get on the phone to Kendel and tell her to return from Mexico; she needs to take over as director . . .”

  “No,” said Andie.

  “Hopefully it will be temporary, but we can’t let the museum grind to a halt while I sort this out.”

  “But it will look like you are guilty . . . and you were here yesterday and, by the way, one day is an awfully short time for all this to happen. How long does it take to get someone on an international most-wanted list? This is just wrong in so many ways.”

  Diane stood up. “I already look guilty. I need the free time to clear myself. Make the call. Kendel and you will be in charge until I can sort this out. I need to call Vanessa.” She put the tips of her fingers to her eyes and rubbed. “Jesus. First Madge and now this. Vanessa must be beside herself.”

  The phone rang again as Diane started for her office.

  “AJC,” mouthed Andie as she started to tell them that they would hear something from the museum later.

  Garnett held out his hand for the phone. “Allow me to talk to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,” he said. “I’m sure they are trying to get me anyway.”

  Andie looked at Diane and she nodded. Andie handed Garnett the phone.

  “Chief of Detectives Douglas Garnett here,” he said.

  Pause.

  “No, I’m not here to arrest Dr. Fallon. I’m here investigating the most cynically vicious case of identity theft that I have ever had experience with. Dr. Fallon has had her e-mail hacked and stolen. She has been the victim of vicious rumors, and is now the victim of Interpol having their own system hacked. I don’t know who is targeting Dr. Fallon, or even if she is the primary target and not the crime lab or the museum. However, I will get to the bottom of this and I am asking the Atlanta computer crimes and fraud unit for help in the investigation.”

  He stopped talking for several moments.

  “No, she has not been to Brazil. In fact, I and a great many other people were meeting with her here in Rosewood at the times when these men were supposedly murdered. I might add, we haven’t been able to verify who these men are and if they are indeed dead . . . or even exist.”

  When he hung up, Garnett looked at the phone with distaste. “That will help some,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Diane.

  “We have to stop this. It’s not only you and the museum at stake. Every case the crime lab has processed is in danger,” he said.

  “Are you really going to ask Frank’s unit for help?” asked Diane.

  “Yes. I’m hoping they have some international connections that I don’t. It sounds like you have connections that I don’t.”

  “Our contact at Interpol is Cameron Michaels, who worked with us in Porto Barquis. He was our liaison with the United Nations. He’s now Interpol’s representative to the UN. He’s looking into it for me,” she said.

  “Andie’s right,” said Garnett. “This is happening too fast.”

  “It’s obviously just rumormongering,” said Diane. “They don’t really care whether authorities believe the charges. They just want the rest of the world to believe it. It really messes up my life.”

  “That’s probably the point,” said Garnett.

  “The first I heard of any rumor about South America was from that travel reporter, Brian Mathews,” said Diane. “I’m going to try and get a phone call to him, wherever he is.”

  “I think he has a blog,” said Andie. “He probably has his itinerary on there.”

  “Good thinking, Andie. Get the details for me, please. I’m going to call Vanessa, Mr. Mathews—and Colin Prehoda, and sic him on that Halloran woman.”

  “Good,” said Andie. “You need to get a lawyer like Prehoda on that . . . that . . . woman. Tell him to force her to make an on-air retraction. Naked.”

  Diane and Garnett chuckled. “I’ll do that.”

  Diane walked into her office and sat behind her desk. Garnett followed and pulled up a chair. She supposed he wanted to hear what Mathews had to say. She stared at the water fountain on her desk. It looked like a miniature grotto. That’s where she would like to be—in a nice, quiet cave. That would be heaven.

  But first she needed to call Vanessa. She wasn’t looking forward to that. She also needed to postpone her wedding. She hated that idea, but with everything going on, she didn’t want to walk down the aisle into the hands of U.S. Marshals, or the FBI, or whoever would come to arrest her should things get really out of hand.

  Chapter 28

  Maria committed the pattern of the city to memory—the mounds, the lines scarring the ground, every pile of rocks she could see. At the next overnight stop she would draw it on the back of the map. That was all she could do. Damn. Her fingers itched for some mapping equipment and a trowel. And the peace to work unmolested.

  She reluctantly climbed down from the ancient vantage. At the foot of the mound the edge of a smooth-looking object caught her eye. She scraped her boot gently over its surface—an artifact. She picked up the item along with a companion piece near it. A potsherd. A fragment of pottery. A fragment of the history here. The faint markings on the scorched surface looked as if the object had been shaped by coiling a snake of clay. She flicked the edge of the piece with her thumbnail. The substance had a gray temper, perhaps slate. She took the sherds with her and slipped them in the backpack.

  Rosetta had gathered up enough unburned wood and had a meal cooking. More soup.

  “The vegetables will not be good tomorrow,” said Rosetta. “We should eat as much as we can. I picked out the things we can save and threw the rest away.”

  “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be lost in the jungle with,” said Maria.

  Rosetta smiled.

  As their breakfast cooked, Maria walked over to the arrow on the ground she had made the previous night and checked the direction it pointed against the reading of her compass. They lined up almost perfectly. Nothing wrong with her compass. She hadn’t thought there would be, but it was a safety precaution to check. She took out the map and arranged it on the hood of the truck, spreading it out with her hands and weighing it down with the compass, orienting them both to the north.

  She thought she knew where they were on the map. She wanted to get to a place called Benjamin Constant. But there were no marked roads from where they were to where she wanted to go. The road she could connect up with looked to be about seventy miles away. That’s a long way through the jungle.

  She hoped the truck would start. If not, they were in for a long walk. She put the compass and map in the truck.

  “You doing okay?” she asked Rosetta. “Need help?”

  “I’m fine. It’s almost cooked,” she said.

  Food and sleep had made Maria feel better, think better. This was really a simple problem simply solved. Just get to a phone. The last few days she had been so filled with fear she couldn’t think and she’d bought into Rosetta’s fear of the man who worked at an embassy. Whoever he might be, he couldn�
�t possibly have control over everyone at all embassies and consulates, or whatever official places they had here. Her plan was to call John and tell him what had happened. He would find out what she needed to do and get help for her. Easy.

  As she waited for the food to get done, she took her knife and cut a couple of bandannas from the bolt of brightly designed fabric. She put one over the top of her head and tied it in back. The other one she tied around her neck as a scotch against the sweat and to afford her bare skin some protection from the bugs.

  Rosetta handed her a bowl of soup. “You look colorful,” she said.

  “Trying to keep the bugs out of my hair. Do you want me to make you one?”

  “Okay. Let’s eat first,” said Rosetta.

  They sat in the back of the truck and ate the soup with the last of the bread. Rosetta had used a lot of vegetables, so it was more of a stew. It tasted good. She had boiled some beef jerky with it and, though it was a little chewy, it added flavor. And it was protein.

  “You look happy,” said Rosetta. “You like finding these ruins, don’t you?”

  “I do. I wish we could stay and explore. But maybe I can come back,” she said.

  “Would you really come back here?” asked Rosetta.

  “Sure. With armed guards,” Maria said, smiling at her and taking a spoonful of soup.

  The sound of the jungle was loud. It was almost like music the way the birds and monkeys called to one another. She wished she had the luxury to sit and enjoy it. She hadn’t expected an adventure when she got here—just look at a few sites, talk with some archaeologists, and meet up with a tour group from Atlanta. She wondered if she had been reported missing or if they just thought she’d changed her mind. Foolish not to be more definite with her plans. She wasn’t a good traveler. She hadn’t been careful enough.

  “Good food, Rosetta. I don’t know what I’d be eating if I were alone. I’d probably end up poisoning myself.”