Desert Heat (10 page)

Pale
pink stained his gray skin. “I didn’t notice. I was trying to catch up with a
buddy of mine. He was walking ahead of me. My mind was on him, and I didn’t pay
attention to anything else.”

Mallory
held in a snort. In a town the size of this one, you could toss your dirty
socks from one end of it to the other without even trying. The black Durango
with
The Jumping Cholla
stenciled in big gold letters parked on the main
drag had to be a little hard to miss. “I see.”

 
“Who were you visiting?” Mike’s voice held a
note of disbelief.

 
“Does it matter?” Dianna took the seat next to
Mike. “All that’s important is that everyone is safe. Does the SUV have any
damage?”

 
“A small dent where it
rammed into the tree.”
Mike answered her,
then
focused on Brent. “I’m just curious. Who did you come out here to see? Anyone I
know?”

 
“Yeah.
Jimmy. You
know,
the guy who runs the Salt River Rafting? The SRPL nuts
have him shut down, too. He called and wanted me to go boating on Canyon Lake
with him. I didn’t have a lot to do, so I agreed. I never got there because I
got stuck in the ravine.”

To
hide her skepticism, Mallory looked around for sweetener. Seeing some on a
nearby table, she rose to retrieve it. She didn’t believe one word. Who went
boating in the rain?
Nobody.
Lightning could strike or
the waves come up and capsize a boat. No one with any sense went out on a lake
in a storm. And Brent was knowledgeable about boats. He was in charge of
rafting at The Cholla.

Faye
said, “You folks
gonna
eat, or you going to stand
around and gab?”

Mallory
grabbed her sweetener and took her seat. She ordered the hotcakes, hoping she
could choke them down. Mike must not have been in a similar predicament because
he put in a double order. Faye filled their cups and moved away. She perched on
the edge of her stool and stared at her show.

 
“So, did you find what you were looking for?”
Dianna looked at her, but Mallory could’ve sworn the question was directed to
Mike. Her mind was playing tricks on her again. What could Mike be looking for?

 
“Yes. I wanted to understand my father a
little better. I think I accomplished that.”

 
“He loved it out here,” Brent said. His sunken
eyes looked a little damp. “The freedom, the way he lived.”

 
“Like a bum?
With nothing
but the clothes on his back and a burro?”
Mallory’s voice was a little
harsher than she intended.

 
“He didn’t have a lot of possessions, but he
was happy.” Brent held his cup with both hands and stared into it. “If a man
dies with that, then he’s had a full life.”

 
“Even if he turns his back
on everything that should matter to him?”
Scorn filled her tone. “What
if the price for your own happiness is someone else’s? Who’s more important?”

No
one met her eyes.

Realizing
she’d shared too much, she snapped her mouth shut.

Faye
set a steaming plate of buckwheat pancakes in front of her, but Mallory’s
appetite had fled. She was twenty-seven years old. Much too mature to feel
resentment over something that happened years ago.

Her
head knew it, why didn’t her heart agree?

Chapter
Ten

The
minute Mike
parked,
Mallory excused herself and headed
inside for a shower. Her door was locked, just as she’d left it. Nerves
humming, she opened the door and stepped inside. Everything looked okay. Just
to be sure, she checked in the closet and the bathroom. Her clothes and
toiletries were exactly as she’d left them.

She
closed the bathroom door and locked it. Dropping her dirty clothes on the
floor, she turned the shower on and stepped in. The hot water poured over sore
muscles and she leaned against the tile wall, letting the steam relax her. She
shampooed and washed with her favorite mango-mandarin scented gel then stepped
out and dried off. A sound in the bedroom alerted her she wasn’t alone.

Someone
was going through her room.

She
drew the towel tight about her and cracked the door. The hinges squeaked, tipping
off whoever was there. Without her glasses, Mallory only caught a glimpse of a
white shirt and jeans as the person bolted out of her room. The door slammed
behind the culprit. Mallory leaped after him, grabbing her glasses off the
night stand on the way by. By the time she got them on, opened the door, and
into the hall, no one was around.

Palms
sweaty, she tucked in the top of her makeshift robe and rested against the
wall. Maybe she ought to leave. Someone was snooping or at the very least,
lurking. Of the people she knew on the ranch, Dianna seemed the most likely.
She hadn’t been shy about marking Mike as her territory. Resorting to sneaking
around didn’t seem in her nature. She’d been direct about her feelings. She
seemed to be more likely to confront face-to-face than sneak around behind your
back.

Shelby
and Alan seemed too wrapped up in each other to be any danger to anyone. As far
as she could tell, they didn’t have any reason to want her gone. Shelby’s
concern over Mallory’s injured hands had seemed genuine. Alan wasn’t overly
friendly, but he didn’t seem to be the lurking type.

Brent
hadn’t made any bones about not liking the fact that she was concerned about
the environment. But, Mallory couldn’t see any reason he’d want to follow her
or sneak into her room. She still didn’t believe his story for being in
Goldfield and stuck in the flash flood. Although she had trouble picturing him
rifling her things, he stood out as the most likely to do so. The question was
why? Had he taken the map, and not Mike?

Mike
.

She
didn’t want to believe he would search her room, not once, but twice. What
could she have that he could possibly want? The half of the map sewn in
Skeeter’s
pant leg was gone. Did he think she had the other
side? It made sense. He’d probably taken the half from her purse and come back
for the missing part. Her chest felt too tight and she sat in the chair by the
desk with a thud.

She
didn’t want to believe it. He’d been so kind. Was his generosity a mask for
something sinister? There wasn’t any proof that he’d taken the map . . . but he
had been in the desert when she fell down and got
cholla
stuck in her hands. When the horse mowed her down he was on the scene in
seconds, when no one else heard her scream. He denied it, but she knew better.

Her
glasses has
flown off and she hadn’t been able to see
clearly, but she was reasonably sure he hadn’t been riding the horse. So who
had? Brent?
Or one of the others?

Her
head ached.

She
needed Tylenol.

Standing,
she walked across the room to where she’d dropped her purse. She dug inside for
the travel-size bottle of medicine she’d placed there. Her fingertips brushed
something—a crinkly piece of paper. It couldn’t be. She sat on the edge of the
bed and dumped her bag on the bedspread. Among her possessions lay the map the
coroner had given her.

She
reached for it with numb fingers. Unfolding it, she saw it was the same piece
of paper she’d lost. Whoever had just snuck in her room had replaced it,
apparently hoping she wouldn’t notice it had been removed. She trembled, but
not with fear. Her teeth clenched and she doubled her hands into fists. How
dare someone sneak in here, go through her things, take her personal property
and then put it back like nothing had even happened? If it was the last thing she
did, she would find out who had done this.
And why.

A
few minutes later, she entered the kitchen. Shelby sat at the counter drinking
a Coke and reading the
Phoenix Sun
.
Wearing a bright green and blue sundress with a white tank top under it, she
looked fresh and sunny. She looked up and smiled. “Hi, you look better. Did you
get some rest?”

 
“Not yet, but a shower did wonders.” Mallory
nodded at the paper.
“Anything interesting in there?”

 
Shelby made a face.
“Just a
small article about the SRPL.
They’re at it again. This time they
managed to get a copper mine up north shut down.
The
bastards.”

“Do
you think they’ll manage to keep this ranch from reopening?” Mallory rested a
hip against the counter.

 
“I hope not.” Shelby’s broad, friendly face
took on a hard look. “And not if we can help it. We’ll fight them as hard as we
can.”

 
“What can you do?”

 
“We have to prove we’re not damaging the river
or the desert by using them.” She tossed the paper on the counter.

 
“That shouldn’t be too hard. Hire a respected biologist
who can testify in your favor.” Mallory reached for the paper. “Are you done
with this?”

 
“Yeah, sure.
Do you
know how expensive that is? Hiring an expert? Mike is about out of money. He
doesn’t think we know, but any fool could see. He has this ranch, but without a
business to go with it, it’s virtually worthless.”

 
“Could he sell it to developers? They’d
probably pay a fortune for it.” The idea of The Cholla being torn up for tract
homes made Mallory’s stomach turn.

 
“Mike would give it to the wildlife society
before he’d do that,” Shelby said. “He grew up on a guest ranch in Scottsdale
and that’s exactly what happened. It ripped him apart. He couldn’t stand to go
through that again.”

Mallory
nodded. On the drive from the Sky Harbor, Mike had mentioned this. His love for
the land went deep. She didn’t doubt that. “How many people from the ranch use
the river and the desert?”

 
“It varies. At full capacity we have about
fifty here a week. But not all of the guests ride or raft. There are three
other rafting businesses up the highway a ways.
And a riding
stable.”

That
didn’t sound like too many to her, but she’d have to look at the river and the
trails to see if there was any actual damage. Maybe she could help out. Her
credentials should be good enough to satisfy any judge. But she wasn’t sure she
wanted to get involved. These people were strangers to her and one of them had
if not stolen, at least borrowed from her without permission. “Does the Bureau
of Land Management support this group?” Usually the BLM had jurisdiction over
how many people could use public land.

Shelby
shrugged. “No. But it doesn’t matter. They have enough political connections
that they pressured a judge into shutting us down. We could have guests on the
ranch, but without being able to use the surrounding public lands, there’s
nothing for them to do other than swim in the pool or use the
rec
room. As you can imagine, that grows old pretty quick.”

 
“What will you all do if Mike loses in court?”

 
“I have no idea,” Shelby said. She twisted her
wedding ring. “This life is all any of us
know
.”

 
“I hope it works out,” Mallory said, meaning
it. She picked up the paper. “Do you know where the others are?”

 
“I think Mike is sleeping. Alan and Brent must
be outside. I don’t know about Dianna.”

Mallory
thanked Shelby and walked outside. Skeeter had believed there was gold in the
Superstitions. He had a small vial of it sewn in his pant leg. Where had it
come from? What if he had found buried treasure, maybe even the Lost Dutchman?
He died while at the ranch. Had someone killed him for his gold? Desperate men
had done more for less. And there were a lot of desperate people here.

But if he’d been killed for gold, why the need to see the map?
Had someone known Skeeter had located the treasure, but not divulged the
location? Mallory gave her head a little shake. She’d watched too many
adventure movies.

The
horses drew her and she walked that way.

As
she approached,
Nobody
spotted her and brayed. The
little guy tugged at her heart. One of the homeliest animals she’d ever seen,
he was an unremarkable dusty brown with a darker, coffee-colored cross over his
withers. His big, deep eyes, rimmed with black, were kind and his lips were
cotton candy soft when they touched her palm searching for a treat. She
couldn’t help but like him. She reached through the bars and scratched his
forehead. “Hi, little guy. I wish you could tell me about my dad.”

The
burro closed his eyes and sighed. If he knew any secrets, he wasn’t spilling
them. Mallory smiled at him and rubbed her blunt nails over his poll a few more
minutes. Her arm grew heavy and she dropped it. Nobody opened one eye,
then
closed it.

A
horse came to the fence to see what was going on. Mallory liked him instantly.
The fat black-and-white pinto had a face marking that looked like a raccoon’s
mask. He tipped his head sideways and stuck his nose through the rails. She
touched his velvety nose. “Hi, buddy. What’s your name?”

Mike
said she could ride. Should she? Why not? Surely there wasn’t any harm if she
stayed on the ranch, and not public land. A barn stood nearby and she went
inside and found a bridle. Letting herself into the corral, she caught the
gelding and led him to the hitching post and tied him. She groomed him with a
brush she found inside, loving his silky hair under her hands. Dozens of
saddles sat on racks. Choosing a likely looking one, she placed it on the
pinto’s back and cinched him up.

Deciding
it might be wise to tell someone where she was going, she ran back to the
lodge. Shelby had disappeared from the kitchen and was nowhere in sight.
Mallory grabbed a coke and an apple out of the fridge and stuck them in her
coat pocket, then checked the rest of the building. There wasn’t a soul in
sight. She scribbled a quick note on a piece of paper and propped it against
Mike’s door, then hurried back to the barn.

Sticking
two fingers between the horse and the cinch, she checked to make sure the
saddle was tight, then untied the gelding and mounted. He turned willingly and
she headed him down the road. As the horse stepped along in a smooth, easy
gait, she surveyed her surroundings. She’d come in this way on the way in, and
then again when she and Mike had gone to explore the Apache Trail.

Passing
under the wooden arch that had
The
Jumping Cholla
burned into it, she frowned at the ugly, hand-painted signs
stuck in the ground. The SRPL sounded like a bunch of radicals who didn’t want
anyone on the desert. In this day and age, that simply wasn’t possible. There
were too many people, and too little resources.

Mallory
knew that everyone could enjoy the lands set aside for the public, if all would
join together and form a plan. Had Mike been given the chance to work with the
environmentalists, or had he just been slammed with no choice? From what she
knew, it had been the latter. One of the things she tried to impress upon her
students was tolerance. Violence and seeing only one side got you nowhere.

About
halfway to the highway, a road intersected with the one on which she rode. She
knew the one she was on connected with Bush Highway. Riding alongside a busy
highway held no appeal, so she reined the pinto the other way. The dirt track
quickly turned to sand. It posed no problem for the horse and he walked along,
his ears up and alert and his gait steady. The sides of the lane were lined by
cholla
, saguaros,
yucca
and
palo
verdes
. Keeping far out of
reach of any of their angry thorns, Mallory guided her borrowed horse down the
middle of the road. A bright red cardinal flew out of a bush and she watched
his scarlet body drift into the horizon. The sun warmed her, and she lifted her
face to its rays. If she allowed herself, she could almost forget what brought
her here.

A
long straight stretch beckoned and she touched the gelding with her heels.
Obediently, he broke into a lope. Like a luxury sedan, he moved in a smooth
fluid motion that was a joy to ride. The gentle breeze kissed her cheeks and
lifted her hair off her shoulders. She could have gone forever, but the horse
could not, and she reined him in to catch his breath. His sides heaved under
her legs and his neck was damp beneath her palm. He had to be cooled down
before he was turned loose.

 
“I wish I knew your name, boy, because you’re
much too special to be called just horse.” She patted him again and urged him
forward.

The
road wound around and came out behind the ranch on a rocky overlook. She was
higher than she realized and could see for miles. To her right, Mesa and
Phoenix were covered in a brown haze. But to her left all she could see was
miles of sandy, cactus-covered hills against a bright blue horizon. Directly in
front of her jagged red cliffs called the Bulldogs rose to the sky and the Salt
River ambled below them. Further, she located the city of Apache Junction and
the Superstitions. At this time of day, the mountains had a purple tinge.