Crystalline Crypt

by Mary Coley

  Jenna swallowed hard. It was hard to hear, hard to know that Max had been so conniving, and that someone who worked for her company had been his spy.

  Her legs ached. She was ready to get off the horse. The beams from the rising moon glistened off the crushed rock of the all-weather road. She glanced ahead, watching for signs of the ranch complex and cabins.

  “There’s more to this than a simple shipment of Chad’s paintings,” Sean said. “I’ve been working to uncover an art forgery operation in Tulsa. I’ve connected it with Medicine Park. Max is the ringleader; Chad is the artist.”

  “Chad is forging paintings? How?” Mandy asked.

  Jenna’s horse stumbled and then righted itself.

  “Several ways. Duplicating paintings from the Baroque period and forging papers of provenance. I have a team in place here. The plan was to round them up tonight. But our criminals were otherwise engaged. Couldn’t happen. I’ll have to explain everything to my team tomorrow.”

  “What do you think would have happened if Jenna had gone on to meet Max at the funeral home?” Mandy asked. Her horse was lagging several steps behind Jenna’s.

  “Because of what I know, I think you would have been kidnapped if you hadn’t seen the painting in the gallery and returned to your office,” Sean explained. “The funeral home was also storing forgeries and shipping them in caskets to other galleries around the United States.”

  Jenna shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Chad would never have gotten involved in something like that on his own. Max had to have taken advantage of him.” The memories she had of Chad were of a kind, sensitive young man. He loved animals, and he loved art. And he had fallen head over heels in love with her in a very short time. She’d loved him, too, but not so desperately.

  “Who blew up the gallery and Arnie’s that night? It WAS because of Mike and me, wasn’t it?” Mandy kicked up her horse so that she was riding next to Jenna again.

  Sean shifted on the horse’s rump. “I suspect it was Max. Your friend Mike probably knew those things were going to happen. He even expected the drive-by shooting, but not getting grazed by a bullet. That was an accident.” Jenna reached around and patted his thigh.

  “Are you doing okay? I know it’s not comfortable.”

  “I’m fine, honey. Almost there.” The mercury vapor light was a speck in the distance, about another mile ahead. Sean kissed her neck. “Mike must have been angry at Max after that. Probably demanded more money. Max wasn’t planning to pay him anyway. Mike was dispensable.”

  “Once he’d located me, Mike didn’t matter,” Jenna added. “He didn’t bargain on the fact that I’d tell you about the painting, Mandy, and that you would enlist Mike to help you find it and be such a bloodhound on the case. He thought his scare tactics would stop you.”

  “But he didn’t know what a good friend you were,” Mandy said. “I couldn’t let you slip out of my life without knowing why.”

  Jenna’s throat was dry, and tears pricked her eyes. “Max didn’t count on that. Lucky for me you felt that way. We both wanted a sister. You didn’t know that I already had one. And I had to find her.”

  Without warning, Jenna’s horse shied and bolted into the underbrush beside the road.

  “Whoa! Hold up!” Jenna held the reins tightly to slow the horse’s mad dash. Sean’s grip around her waist made breathing difficult.

  “We’re okay. Calm down now.” She patted the horse’s withers as she spoke over her shoulder to Sean. “You okay?”

  “What caused that?” he asked.

  “Everything all right?” Mandy called from fifty yards away.

  “Something spooked him. See anything in the grass?” Jenna circled the horse back to where Mandy waited on the road. “Might have been a rodent or something.”

  Mandy urged her horse to the edge of the road. “I don’t see… wait. Oh no!” Mandy vaulted off her horse.

  ~ Chapter 60 ~

  Mandy

  Mandy dropped to her knees in the tall grass beside the huddled figure. Sandy hair glinted in the moonlight. She held her breath. This couldn’t be happening.

  Jenna and Sean road up beside Mandy and hopped off, one after the other.

  “What is it?” Sean asked.

  “It’s…Lamar.” Mandy was afraid to touch him, afraid he was dead.

  Jenna stooped next to the man. She touched his shoulder, shook him. “Hey, wake up. Lamar?”

  His face was bloodied and bruised, his hands still tied with rope. His denim work shirt was covered with dirt and torn at the shoulder.

  Jenna leaned over him, her ear to his mouth and nose.

  “Is he breathing? Is he… dead?” Mandy’s heart raced.

  “He’s alive.” Jenna shook his shoulder again. “Lamar. Wake up. Lamar, it’s me, Sharon.”

  One eye had begun to purple with a bruise, and his puffy lips oozed. His shirt was soaked in blood.

  Mandy squatted beside Lamar. “He’s been beaten, maybe shot. We’ve got to get him to the hospital.”

  Jenna unbuttoned Lamar’s shirt and peeked at the wound. “He’s bleeding, but it’s not arterial. The gunshot caught him near his collarbone. Went clear through.”

  “Can we lift him?” Sean grabbed Lamar beneath his armpits and tried unsuccessfully to lift him. Lamar was bigger than Sean. Moving him was not going to happen while he was unconscious.

  Lamar groaned.

  “Lamar. Wake up. Please, wake up.” Mandy got to her feet and stepped close to Sean, close to where Lamar’s head rested on Sean’s shoulder, his body awkwardly leaning against him.

  Lamar shifted and groaned louder. His eyelids fluttered.

  “Lamar. Wake up. It’s me, Mandy.” Her heart fluttered with his eyelids. “Open your eyes. You’re going to be all right.” She patted his back. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”

  Sean lowered him to the ground; the cowboy looked around, confused. His eyes rolled in his head. He blinked.

  “Where am…?” His gaze rested on Jenna. “I’m dreaming.” He closed his eyes and sank to the ground. “Maybe I’m dead.”

  “You’re not dead,” Mandy said. “It’s my friend Jenna, the woman I’ve been searching for.”

  Lamar focused on Mandy. “Your friend. You found her.” He touched Mandy’s arm. “It’s over then. You’re both okay.”

  “Yes. But you aren’t. We need to get you to the hospital. Think you can walk a little way to the house??”

  “No hospital. Nothin’s broke. Shot. Bruised, a bit.”

  “But it looks bad,” Mandy insisted. “You need medical attention.” He looked like a car accident victim. There was blood everywhere.

  “Dale can see to it. No worse than being thrown by a bronc. Happened plenty of times. Just ask her.”

  “Can you stand up? We’re not far from the ranch house. Can you ride? Might be easier than walking.” Sean extended one arm and Lamar grabbed his hand.

  “I can make it.”

  Lamar slowly got to his feet. Mandy took one side and Sean the other as they helped him over to Jenna’s horse and shoved him up into the saddle.

  ~ Chapter 61 ~

  Dale

  Dale Hardesty sat on the porch of the ranch house, rocking in the glider. She heard the clopping of the horse’s hooves on the road long before the animals plodded through the night into the pool of brightness below the yard light.

  Ever since the sheriff had left with Max in the backseat of his cruiser, she’d been rubbing her hands together and staring into the southern sky at pinpricks of stars.

  She picked at her memory.

  The horses stopped near the porch. The woman who was her sister and Sean walked beside them. Together, they helped one rider slide off. Lamar? The four of them stepped into the pool of light surrounding the porch.

  “You look bad, Lamar.” Dale’s eyes widened as she stared at the cowboy. She had been afraid something had happened to him when Max and Chad returned to the ranch house for supper without him, but
neither man would answer her questions. Then, she’d expected to find Lamar at the line shack with Mandy and Sean. His absence had set off alarm bells in her brain, but the memories were sparking by that time, and it was all she could do to stay upright and put one foot in front of the other. The memories slammed back into her brain, too fast.

  “Come inside. I’ll try to patch you up,” Dale said. He looked horrific, bloody and bruised. He needed more than her limited experience patching up animals. But she owed him her best. Her husband Max had done this to him.

  She opened the door and Lamar limped into the house. “Have a seat,” she said to the others, tossing the words over her shoulder. “I need to talk to you.” She followed Lamar into the house. Her stomach pitched.

  Twenty minutes later, she returned to the porch. Her hands shook. Could she really talk about this, now? She had no choice.

  “He’s resting. Don’t think anything’s broken, but he’s shot, bruised, beaten.” Dale settled into one of the Adirondack chairs. Confusion buzzed in her head, but she was determined to get things straight. She had to speak it out loud.

  Dale watched Jenna cross the porch to sit in the chair beside her. Her sister was still thin as a rail. She never had eaten right, and she was an exercise fanatic. It didn’t look like that had changed. She didn’t like the color of her sister’s hair. Then, she reasoned, it was probably a disguise. She had recently realized her own hair color was a disguise as well, something Max had insisted on.

  When she’d gotten back from the line shack, she’d had a good look at her hair roots. Max had always said she was prematurely gray when he met her twenty years ago, and he wasn’t ready to accept a wife who looked older than he was. She was faithful to go to the hair salon every week for him, to have her roots done. Now that she remembered her former life, she knew she was a blonde.

  Max had hidden her from herself and from her sister, shrouding her memories with drugs. Memories were flooding back unhindered, now. Many of them were better left forgotten. But not her sister. She was here. She was alive.

  “All these years, so many nightmares.” Dale took a long sip of water. “Without the medication Max has been giving me, my head is starting to clear. I don’t know if I am remembering correctly. Twenty years have passed. These are teenage memories, interpreted by a teenage mind. Perhaps the reality of what happened is a combination of what both Sharon and I think we remember.” She rubbed her eyes for a minute and then stared out into the starry night.

  “I didn’t remember what happened that summer, only bits and pieces of something. Then Mandy started asking questions about the fire. I tried to break through the brain fog, tried to talk to Max about it last night. He gave me three headache pills instead of the usual two, said I was suffering from ‘the power of suggestion.’ I pretended to take the pills. I couldn’t sleep. This afternoon, I started to remember everything.” She grabbed Jenna’s hand.

  “I remember that night, everyone who was staying at the ranch that week ate together, like we do here,” she began. “Sharon left the table without Dad’s permission when she’d finished eating. Fifteen minutes later, she hadn’t returned. I asked to be excused and went to find her.”

  Jenna squirmed in the wooden chair. Dale kept her focus on the stars.

  “Outside, I searched. It was a hot night, typical August. Someone giggled near the bunkhouse where the cowboys lived, so I walked over. Sharon was on the porch in the shadows, her arms wrapped around a man; he was kissing her face. I called to her, but she pulled his head down to her and pressed against him. It made me angry. Chad was in love with her, but that hadn’t been enough, it wasn’t Chad she was kissing. It seemed callous. A woman was dead, and she was making out with another cowboy?” Dale closed her eyes. Why did the memory still upset her?

  “I went back to the dining hall and then to the barn dance with my parents. Sharon never showed. When my parents and the other older people left, several men, friends of the ranch owners, came in and the real party began. They’d been drinking. One of them introduced himself to me as Chad’s brother, Max.

  “He asked me to dance. We started off slow as he taught me the two-step. Soon we were following the other couples, circling the room. Max had been staring into my eyes all evening, telling me I was beautiful, telling me all the things a young woman wants to hear. I fell in love. Max said he had beer in his truck. I didn’t care about the beer. All I wanted was to touch his hair, close my eyes, and let him kiss me.

  “Out in the truck, Max watched me drink the beer, then took my empty glass and slid his hand up my arm to my chin. ‘You’re so pretty,’ he said.”

  Dale’s voice cracked. The memories crowded in. They’d been locked inside her brain for so long. Now, feelings rushed back with the memories. Max had been her husband for so long, but she’d never remembered that night before. He’d said they met in Texas, that she’d been in an accident. He’d repeated that story to her over and over again for twenty years. It was a lie.

  “Our lips met, and time stopped for me. I wanted to kiss him forever. But when he touched my breast, I pushed him away and told him I had to go inside. It was late. I got out of the truck and ran to our cabin. My heart was beating so fast.”

  Dale looked at Jenna. Her face was the color of spaghetti. “What’s wrong?” She squeezed her sister’s hand.

  “I wasn’t there. I don’t know about your kiss. But you’re mistaken about who I was with at the bunkhouse.”

  “Lamar, wasn’t it? Who else would it have been?”

  “Max.”

  Dale withdrew her hand. A lump filled her throat. “No, Max chose to be with me at the dance. Then we went to the truck. We kissed. It was late and I left him in the truck and went back to the cabin.” She rubbed her head. Why would Sharon lie and say she’d been with Max? It didn’t make sense.

  Sharon had been with Lamar that evening, she was positive. But the man had been in the shadows. Wearing jeans, and a t-shirt. What had Max been wearing? She couldn’t remember.

  “Go on, Molly,” Jenna said, her eyes wide, her face pale. “I want to know what you remember.”

  The rest was harder, she’d buried it the deepest. Even now, she didn’t want to remember. Dale wasn’t sure she could speak the words.

  “I was in my room at the cabin. Mom and Dad were in the living room. I heard someone come in, heard someone else’s voice. Dad yelled, and then I heard Sharon. She sounded hysterical. A door slammed.” Dale pinched her eyes shut. Am I remembering this right? “I heard Max. Dad yelled. Something crashed. I rushed out to the living room. Max had a hold of Sharon. I tried to get to Max, to talk to him. Mom and Dad were on the floor in the hall.

  “Sharon and Max struggled. She knocked the candle off the table. The tablecloth caught on fire.” She rubbed her head. “I… I don’t remember what happened next.”

  Dale closed her eyes and sat quietly. Her memory was foggy again. She wasn’t sure...

  “Maybe I passed out from the smoke. I couldn’t breathe. Then I was outside with Chad. I begged Chad to take me back to the cabin, back to my parents. Told him I wanted Max, but he carried me down the hillside to the bunkhouse. The sky was lit up with the flames from the cabin fire.” She stopped. “That’s all I remember.”

  She peered at Jenna. Her sister’s eyes drooped, and heavy tears rolled down her cheeks. “Is that what you remember?”

  An SUV drove up the driveway. As it neared, she could make out the insignia on the door, and the combination black and white paint job. The vehicle parked and the sheriff climbed out.

  “Dale. Mr. Wade,” the sheriff began. He nodded at Mandy and Jenna. “Interesting evening. I need to talk to each of you, individually. Inside?”

  “Of course, Sheriff.” Dale stood. She swayed.

  Why was he here again? Had something happened to Max? Had he told the sheriff who she really was? Was the sheriff going to arrest someone?

  “I’ll go first,” she offered. “Then I have a patient I need to chec
k on.”

  The sheriff followed her into the house.

  ~ Chapter 62 ~

  Mandy

  “What do you think he wants to talk to us about?” Mandy asked.

  “It’s obvious,” Sean said. “What happened tonight. He’s probably already interviewed Max at the police station. He has a few details, what we told him at the line shack. But now he’s heard Max’s side of things. No telling what he said. But I’m guessing it wasn’t the truth.”

  Mandy rubbed her neck. “We’re all exhausted. Do we have to do this tonight?”

  “Better to get it over with,” Jenna said. “Tell him the truth. You didn’t know what you were getting into. You were trying to help. You did nothing wrong.” Jenna bent over, elbows on her knees. She closed her eyes. “He’ll arrest me.”

  “No, he won’t, Jenna,” Sean said. “You did nothing wrong, either. You didn’t kill your parents. It was an accident. He’ll see that.”

  “Sean’s right, Jenna. Max will go to jail, not you. Tell the sheriff you’re filing charges for rape.”

  Jenna shook her head. “For a rape twenty years ago? There’s no proof, and Max will certainly deny it. He won’t be charged with that, or with my parents’ deaths. He’ll get off Scott free.”

  “No. He won’t,” Mandy said. “Your sister can charge him. He’s kept her a virtual prisoner all these years, giving her those pills.”

  Jenna sighed. “I wish that were true. But I don’t think my sister will file charges against the man she’s been married to, and loved, for twenty years.” She stared at the floor of the old porch.

  “But Max lied to her. He raped you. When you tell her that, she’ll never forgive him.”

  Jenna rubbed her palms together. She stood and paced the length of the porch.

  “We’ll tell the sheriff the truth about tonight, and I’ll be sharing with him what I can of our investigation into the forgery ring. Whether Max goes to prison for rape, murder, imprisonment or some other charge, I don’t know, but I can guarantee he’ll go to prison for forgery.”