Third Grave Dead Ahead

As I scaled the mountain of debris, I reached down for Teresa’s hand. She moaned and tried to squeeze back.

  “Hey, hon. I’ve got help coming, but we need to get you out of here if that is at all possible.”

  She squinted against the light coming from the phone, but it allowed me to check her pupils. They constricted perfectly. She had the same coloring as her brother and sister, dark hair and startlingly blue eyes. She was thin and pale, but that could be the circumstances as much as heredity.

  I pushed through the opening and climbed over the top of her to turn around. After sliding down the incline, Hardy appeared behind me and cast his light toward a backpack that had apparently been full of supplies, water, basic medical aids, as well as a caving helmet and spelunking gear. She’d splinted her leg with the aluminum brace from the backpack and a rope. Smart girl. Apparently, she’d been exploring when the ceiling gave.

  Now I was really confused. Dr. Yost was guilty—I’d felt it—but of what? Sabotaging the mine? And if he did that, then what the heck was Teresa so guilty of?

  “Have you thrown up, Teresa?”

  She shook her head. “No concussion,” she said, her voice hoarse and whispery. She could barely lift her head. “Just a broken leg.”

  I felt her skin. Warm, but not overly so. Hopefully, the flow of blood to her foot hadn’t been blocked and she didn’t have gangrene.

  “I don’t know how much longer that ceiling is going to hold. Do you think you can make it through with my help?”

  She nodded.

  “I have more help on the way. We can wait.”

  “No, I just couldn’t get through the opening alone. It wasn’t big enough. How did you find me? Did my husband tell you where to look?” Just the thought of being rescued seemed to be giving her strength. I could feel adrenaline coursing through her veins, raising her heartbeat.

  “I heard you,” I said, lying as I combed through her backpack. “You have one more bottle of water.” I took it and climbed back up to her.

  “I was saving it.”

  “For a special occasion?” I asked, popping the seal on the cap. “I could shake it up and spray it all over you, if that would be more festive.”

  A thin smile spread across her face as she took a sip, then handed it back to me.

  “Did your husband know you were here?”

  She tried to shrug but gave up. “I explore this area all the time, but I didn’t tell him I was checking out the mine again. I come here pretty often, though.”

  “So, he wasn’t here with you at any time?”

  She squinted her eyes, trying to figure out what I was getting at, then shook her head. “No. I left early Saturday morning, before he got up.”

  Then someone had to have done something to sabotage the mine before Teresa got here or while she was deep inside. But what? Those beams hadn’t been cut. It literally looked like they’d slipped and shifted somehow.

  Hardy knelt beside me, a grim expression on his face as though he knew exactly what I was trying to figure out. “She did it,” he said, shaking his head.

  Startled, I furrowed my brows in a question.

  He nodded. “Loosened the beams herself.” His gaze drifted about the walls. “Been working on it awhile now.”

  My heart fell. “Why?” I whispered.

  With a shrug, he said, “Not quite sure, ma’am. But I don’t think she was planning on being here when it gave.”

  I took a deep breath and forced the questions from my mind. “Are you ready, hon?” I asked Teresa.

  “I think so.”

  “We’ll take this slow.” With infinite care, I wrapped one of her arms around my neck and hiked her farther up the incline. The miner did the same for me, boosting me inch by inch. After about two minutes of work, we were only about a foot farther. “Okay, not that slow.”

  She laughed softly, then grabbed her side.

  “Are they broken?” I asked, gesturing toward her ribs with a nod.

  “No, just bruised, I think.”

  With a little more effort, we were able to get her to the opening and scoot her through it. But Teresa paid a heavy price. She groaned through gritted teeth as she slid to the other side. Well, not the other side. Jagged rocks scraped and skinned along the way.

  “Your friend’s coming back,” Hardy said.

  Without hesitation, I chanced another cave-in and yelled through the opening. “Cookie, stay back!”

  “What? No. What about the supplies?”

  “I’ve almost got Teresa through the opening, but the ceiling is crumbling as we speak.” As I looked out, I saw the beam of a flashlight bouncing off the ground. “Cookie, what the heck?”

  “Don’t what the heck me,” she said, her voice winded. “I didn’t walk all that way for nothing.”

  She put the flashlight on the incline and reached up to help Teresa. A steady stream of dirt fell a few feet from us and she looked back at me, her eyes wide. “Hurry.”

  The minute I got Teresa through, I scrambled back for the helmet, climbed over the mountain of debris with Hardy’s help, then hustled down to assist Cookie. Together we eased Teresa toward us. She clutched on to me, moaning as pain pounded through her. So much so, I was worried she would pass out.

  “Help is coming,” Cookie said as I put the helmet on Teresa and wrapped my arms around her.

  Teresa cringed as another wave of pain carpet-bombed her entire body. She cried out as Cookie and I started forward.

  “I’m so sorry, Teresa,” I said.

  She shook her head, determined to make it. Adrenaline coursed through her as she hobbled and we dragged. Another avalanche of dirt plummeted onto our heads, almost knocking the helmet off Teresa’s head. I repositioned it, and we started forward again.

  Then, with a really inappropriate gasp, it hit me. “Aldrich-Mees!” I shouted.

  When the ceiling started crumbling down around us, I realized how wrong of me that was.

  23

  Seemed like a good idea at the time.

  —T-SHIRT

  “You had to shout it?” Cookie asked, literally bitching all the way out of the stupid mine. “At the top of your freaking lungs?”

  We were covered from head to toe in dirt and some kind of root system. “Now is not the time, Cook,” I ground out as we struggled to get Teresa from the mine.

  “This is where I get off,” Hardy said. I started to protest, but he tipped his helmet and with a soft, “Ma’am,” disappeared.

  Then Uncle Bob rushed in, and a wave of relief washed over me. However, the look of shock on his face proved that either he had no faith in me whatsoever and was taken aback by my success in finding Teresa Yost, or I looked worse than I thought.

  Agent Carson was there, too. Though I’d never seen her before, I recognized her instantly. Her looks matched her voice perfectly. Short dark bob, solid build, intelligent eyes. She hurried forward, and together with Uncle Bob took Teresa out of our arms. Before they’d gotten two feet, Luther Dean rushed in as well, ducking at the entrance and taking over for Agent Carson.

  “Luther,” Teresa said, surprised he was there.

  The smile that warmed his face was simply charming. “You never call. You never write.”

  A soft laugh escaped her despite everything.

  Carson turned back to me, and I tried to raise my hand to shake hers, but my muscles had completely given out. Though they did twitch occasionally. An officer helped Cookie outside while Agent Carson took my arm to help me, careful not to get too close. Dust still lingered in the air from the latest cave-in.

  “I can’t believe you did it,” she said, shaking her head as daylight blanketed us.

  “I get that a lot.” My hair was so caked with dirt and rocks, it actually hurt. Then again, I did get pummeled by a boulder the size of Long Island.

  “I left the flashlight inside,” Cookie said over her shoulder, suddenly remembering.

  “Well, you’d best go back and get it. It’s not like I can get an
other one at pretty much any store between here and Albuquerque.”

  She snorted the likelihood of that happening. I couldn’t wait to tell her about Hardy. I’d have to come back someday, get to know him better—another cave-in sounded down the shaft, sending a wave of dirt billowing out the opening—or not.

  I saw Rescue hustling up the trail carrying an aluminum litter, bags of medical supplies, and a flashlight I was certain I could talk them out of. And Rescue was built. All three of them, in fact. Tall. Nice tone. Good overall posture.

  “Who’s the help?” I asked Carson.

  “Your uncle brought them.”

  “Nice of him.”

  We stopped a moment to admire the view. “Sure was,” she said. “By the way, I couldn’t get a copy of the message the first Mrs. Yost left on the doctor’s answering machine before she mysteriously died in the Cayman Islands. Apparently, the investigator didn’t actually hear it for himself. Just took Yost’s word for it, since it wasn’t a suspicious death.”

  “That’s odd,” I said, my eyes still glued to Search, Rescue, and Just Plain Hot. “I don’t think he had any intention of killing his wife this go-around. Somewhere in their relationship, she caught on. I think he was trying to kill somebody else entirely.”

  “Mind if I ask who?”

  “Can you give me half an hour to confirm my suspicions?”

  She turned to me. “How about thirty minutes?”

  I planted my best smile on her. “I’ll take it.”

  Luther carefully helped Teresa onto the litter as his other sister, Monica, came running up the trail. My heart lurched at the sight of her. I wanted to run to her, explain what had been happening, but she was really busy.

  “Teresa!” she shouted, tears streaming in rivulets down her face. “Oh, my god.” She rushed up to them, threw her arms around her brother for a quick hug, then took her sister’s hand as Rescue strapped Teresa in and started an IV drip. The emotion pouring out of Monica felt like cool water rushing over me, refreshing and pure.

  Luther walked back to me then, amazed. My ego was taking quite the beating.

  “You did it,” he said.

  I grinned as Agent Carson nodded and stepped away. “So I’ve heard.”

  He shook his head. “I owe you.”

  “You’ll get a bill,” I promised.

  He laughed out loud, too happy to care about much of anything other than his sister.

  I turned to Cookie and gave her a thumbs-up. “We can totally eat this month.”

  “Yes!” she said as Uncle Bob helped her onto a big boulder. “I’ve had my eye on a low-carb diet you’re going to love.”

  “I said we could eat. I didn’t say anything about eating healthy.”

  Uncle Bob walked up to me. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Did Yost do this?”

  “In a roundabout way.” Yost may not have used the ATV and winch to sabotage the mine as I’d originally suspected, but he drove Teresa to desperation, in ways I doubted she was even aware of. I led Uncle Bob a little farther into the trees as everyone worked around us. Talking quietly, I said, “You have to keep an open mind.”

  “My mind is always open,” he said, slightly offended. “Twenty-four/seven.” When I offered him my best glare of doubt, he waffled. “Okay, six/five, at the least. What’s up?”

  I leaned into him. “I think, and this is a big think, Nathan Yost is doing what he does. He’s trying to control Teresa by controlling her environment.” I put my arm on Ubie’s, begging for an ounce of faith. “I think he’s trying to kill Teresa’s sister, Monica.”

  Uncle Bob frowned, looked back toward the crowd before refocusing on me. “That could be hard to prove.”

  After releasing the breath I’d been holding, I fought the urge to hug his neck. Displays of affection made him uncomfortable, which was exactly why I utilized them as often as I did. But I wanted him on my side on this.

  “I have a plan, but we’re going to have to work fast,” I said as Dr. Nathan Yost hurried up the trail, still in his lab coat.

  Angel was behind him, caught sight of me, offered a salute, then disappeared, his job apparently done. I could hardly blame him. He was a teenager, after all. Keeping confined to one place too long was tantamount to torture.

  I glanced back at Yost. While the practiced look on his face was one of utter relief, the emotion in his heart was not happiness, nor was it disappointment, as might have been expected had he been responsible for the cave-in. It wasn’t anger or resentment or fear. It was … a whole lot of nothing. No emotion that I could feel whatsoever. At least until he caught sight of Luther and Monica. Then emotion reared within him. And it was most decidedly resentment in the worst way possible. I realized in that instant how he saw them. As enemies. Barriers. Obstacles he had to get past.

  Still, if my suspicions were right, Teresa did all this to leave him, which put her in mortal danger. The statement he’d made to Yolanda Pope all those years ago when they were in college rose to the surface of my dirt-covered brain. One stick is all it will take. “She’s not out of the woods yet,” I said to Uncle Bob. “Keep someone on her.”

  “Absolutely.” He eyed the doctor with that hard gaze of his I knew and loved so well. Unless it was directed at me.

  “Oh, and I need you to gather a few things and meet me at the hospital, including a bottle of flavored sparkling water.”

  He glanced back at me. “You doin’ healthy now?”

  I grunted. “Not likely. When all this is said and done, I’m heading straight for Margaritaville.”

  * * *

  Since it took me over an hour to get back to Albuquerque, a little over half that to shower and change into clean clothes, then another forty-five minutes for Uncle Bob to get a warrant to search the Yosts’ house, I had to call Agent Carson and give her the bad news. It took me longer to figure out how to prove the doctor’s guilt than the thirty minutes we’d originally agreed upon, but considering travel time and the fact that cleanliness was next to godliness, she said we were still good. Which, whew.

  Teresa Yost’s leg didn’t require surgery. They’d set it and wheeled her to a private room when she suddenly needed more tests, thanks to Uncle Bob and his wily ways with the women. Namely a nurse who looked at Ubie like he was a sugary morsel dipped in chocolate.

  A couple of cops posing as orderlies wheeled Teresa into a labor and delivery room that contained some very interesting equipment. It made me only slightly less comfortable than that time I got to sit in an actual electric chair. You know, for giggles. As the men left, I stepped inside with a nod and closed the door. The lights had been turned low, and Teresa lay on the gurney half asleep as a result. She’d been covered in pale blue hospital gowns, and her leg, which had been propped up by pillows, had a temporary brace on it until the swelling went down enough for a cast.

  “Teresa?” I said, inching toward her.

  She blinked her eyes open and drew her brows together.

  “I’m Charlotte Davidson. You might remember me from the mine?”

  Her eyes registered recognition. “Yes. You found me.”

  I nodded and stepped closer. “I’m not sure how much you can recall. I’m a private investigator. Luther and Monica hired me. Kind of.”

  She smiled sleepily at the mention of their names.

  I needed to hurry. Yost would know there was no reason for Teresa to be in a delivery room unless she was seriously holding out on him. Thankfully, he had rounds to make.

  “We don’t have much time, Teresa, so I’m going to sum up what I know happened and what I think happened and see where we stand. Is that okay?”

  Her mouth thinned with worry, but she nodded.

  “First, I know you sabotaged the mine.” When she looked away without arguing, I continued. “You used the ATV and the winch to loosen the beams along the shaft. But I don’t think you meant to be in it when it collapsed.”

  “I forgot to leave my cell phone
,” she said weakly, embarrassment wafting off her. “I went back in to leave it with my stuff so they’d think I was still in there.”

  “And that’s when it collapsed.”

  With a hesitant nod, she confirmed what the miner had said. “The mines are so deep, they’d stop looking eventually.”

  “But before you did all this, you took out a life insurance policy on yourself for your sister, so she could get medical help.”

  She turned an astonished expression on me.

  “Somehow,” I continued, “you found out about Nathan’s first wife. You found out he killed her when she tried to leave him.”

  Her expression didn’t waver.

  “He smothers you. Tries to control every aspect of your life.”

  A hint of shame flitted across her face.

  “And you wonder how it could have come to this. How it could have gone so far.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, the shame evident in her crinkled chin.

  “Teresa, your husband is very good at what he does. He’s a practiced surgeon in both the physical and the emotional realms. He knew what he was doing. He knew how to control you. That you wouldn’t tell your brother what was going on, because you were afraid of what Luther would do.”

  A soft gasp echoed in the room, confirming everything I’d just said.

  “Why should your brother have to pay for your mistakes, right? He would have hurt Nathan. Possibly killed him and then paid the price for the rest of his life.”

  Her nod was so slight, I almost missed it.

  “So you took out the insurance policy, planned your escape, and tried to disappear. But you would never have left your siblings completely. You would have gotten them word that you were okay somehow, and Nathan would have figured it out, hon. He would have come after you. Or Luther would have ended up killing him when he found out why you’d left. Either way, it would have ended badly.”

  She pressed her mouth together and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the tears that had gathered there.

  “But what you did was so brave, Teresa. I admire you more than you will ever know.”

  “It was stupid.”