Buried Secrets. Margaret Daley
purse slipping from her grasp. Her nerves raw, she snatched up the large leather bag and threw a quick look over her shoulder, as if she expected someone to rush up the sidewalk or leap out from the bushes by the porch.
A sigh trembled past her lips. Empty. She hurriedly entered her house, immediately flipping on a light. The bright glow killed the darkness, and she sank back against the closed front door, her body quaking. When she peered into the living room off to the right, half expecting to see a chaotic mess, she slid to the tile floor. Relief mingling with exhaustion swept through her. Everything was in perfect order, as neat and tidy as always.
She should get some rest—put this whole day behind her—but the blur of the past few hours numbed her. She clasped her legs and lay her head on her knees. This time she didn’t close her eyes, and yet she pictured Zach Collier as though he stood in her entryway, as arrogant and audacious as earlier.
What if he was right, and someone had killed Gramps? What if he hadn’t been the person behind her on the highway? What if Gramps’s killer had been tailing her into town, watching her at the ranch? Maggie sat up straight. She realized in that moment that she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew the truth about his death. And the place to start was the diary.
She shoved to her feet and headed for her bedroom, the first room she’d put in order when she’d moved in a few weeks ago. She spent most of her time in it. When she entered, she bypassed her king-sized, four-poster bed and headed for the armoire. She opened the bottom drawer. An old black book, protected in a temperature-and humidity-controlled case, lay nestled among her sweaters. Her hands quivered as she carefully lifted it out.
Had Gramps died for this?
She opened the case. Cautiously, because the aged pages were fragile, she perused the diary, written by a Spanish monk during the sixteenth century. His handwriting was bold and daring. She’d often thought the man must have been like his handwriting, if what he had written about his journey was true. Had he really found evidence of a lost group of Aztecs who had settled in the southwestern part of the United States? Had they carried with them some of the codices that experts thought had been destroyed by the Spanish conquerors? Could the diary and map really lead to where the codices were hidden? Or was it all a legend, as Gramps had come to believe in the end?
She settled onto her bed, carefully laying the diary, still in its case, in her lap. Her grandfather had given it to her on her thirtieth birthday, two years before, because she had always loved hearing about it. The diary had been one of his most prized possessions, yet he had parted with it because of his love for Maggie. If he had been murdered, she had to find the person responsible and make sure he paid for it. And if that meant working with Zach Collier, then she would—just as soon as she checked out his story about his grandfather’s death.
THREE
Maggie stared at the Indian pottery—from various nearby pueblos in a cabinet in the lobby of the science building at Albuquerque City College. The brown, white and black geometric lines blurred as her thoughts became a tangle of possibilities. The receptionist had told her Dr. Zach Collier wasn’t expected on campus because he didn’t have any classes that day, which seemed strange in light of what he had told her the night before.
The young woman must have surmised that the disappointment in Maggie’s expression was due to the fact she wouldn’t get to bask in the man’s presence. Shortly afterward, the receptionist had begun telling Maggie how popular Dr. Collier was with the students. His classes were in demand and filled within one hour of registration.
She should have called ahead to see if he would be here, but she hadn’t wanted to alert him to her coming. What a waste! She’d even arranged for another doctor to take her patients this afternoon.
After loitering in the lobby for thirty minutes and still undecided as to what to do, Maggie returned to the reeptionist’s desk to see if she could persuade the woman to give her Dr. Collier’s home phone number. Five minutes into all the reasons Maggie needed to get hold of him, a dreamy look appeared on the woman’s face, and Maggie wondered if the young lady would swoon in her chair from just talking about the man.
A tingle pricked Maggie’s nape. She rotated slowly and found Zach Collier striding toward her. His body conveyed a leashed energy ready at a second’s notice to explode into action. The man before her had a manner and confidence about him that couldn’t be feigned.
He paused at the desk. “Good afternoon, Kim.”
The receptionist smiled. “I was just telling this woman you wouldn’t be in today.”
“A change in plans. We’ll be in my office, but I’d prefer my presence here be kept a secret.”
Surprise flitted across Kim’s face as her gaze swung from Dr. Collier to Maggie. “Sure.”
Zach indicated for Maggie to go first toward a hallway behind the receptionist’s desk. “My office is the third one on the right.”
Maggie made her way to the door and stopped. Okay, so everyone at the college thought the world of Dr. Zach Collier. That didn’t mean he wasn’t behind whatever was going on—and she still wasn’t sure what that was. She needed to be cautious. After years of conditioning by Gramps, she wouldn’t easily trust anyone with the last name Collier, no matter how persuasive he could be or how popular he was with his students and the college staff.
He unlocked his door and waved her inside. “I must say I wasn’t expecting a change of heart this fast, but I’m glad you want to work with me.”
Maggie froze a few feet into the office, then pivoted toward the man. “Work with you? I never said I was going to do that.” The very idea still didn’t sit well with her, even though logically she knew she should work with him if she wanted to find out what was going on.
“Then why are you here?”
The sound of the door clicking closed shimmied down her. “You know, that is a good question.”
He arched a brow. “And? Are you going to answer it?”
“No.” Because she didn’t have an answer. Why was she here? In the light of a new day she wondered if what had happened less than twenty-four hours ago was all a dream. The one thing she did know was that her grandfather would be furious if he knew she was talking with the enemy.
“So you aren’t convinced that Jake Somers was murdered?”
“Gramps’s horse got spooked, and it threw him. That wasn’t the first time he had fallen from one. This time he hit his head on a rock.” As she stated the facts told to her by the sheriff, she tried to distance herself from the situation, but she couldn’t shake the vision of Gramps lying at the top of the mesa for half a day until his body had been discovered by a ranch hand, who had found her grandfather’s horse riderless near the barn.
“Accidents can be faked. How do you explain your grandfather’s house being ransacked yesterday, like my grandfather’s was?”
“Everyone knew about Gramps’s funeral.” Of course, those people were his friends and neighbors, whom she couldn’t imagine robbing him. So the possibility that Zach Collier might be right had taken root in her mind while she had tossed and turned in her bed. Finally at five in the morning she’d given up the pretense of sleeping, and had done some research concerning Zach Collier on the Internet. She’d read about his grandfather’s death and about Zach’s disappearance the year before in the Amazon. Everyone had thought he was dead until his sister, Kate, had found him living with a tribe of Indians in a remote part of the jungle.
Zach went behind his desk and sat. “Was anything taken?”
“I don’t know. I still have a lot to clean up.” She lowered herself onto a chair nearby, and although a desk separated them, the room was too small, too intimate with its wall-to-wall bookcases filled with Indian artifacts interspersed among scientific volumes, mostly dealing with chemistry and biology. She felt enclosed in a tomb, drawn toward this man against her better judgment.
“I