Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3) (7 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

That detective had
acted like I would know who Aaron Coulter was once I found out his name. But I
didn’t. And that made me even more upset. It had worried me all the rest of the
day.

Miss Vivee said
that I should have just slapped that smirk off the detective’s face. That, she
said, would have made me feel better.

When Bay told me
the dead guy’s name it did sound vaguely familiar. But I didn’t know if that was
because I had actually heard of him before, or because Bay had told me that he
was an archaeologist and I thought I should know him.

 I decided to call
my mother and find out if she knew who he was. I glanced at the clock and then
over at Miss Vivee asleep in the other bed. It wasn’t very late to me, but I
knew late enough for Miss Vivee to be sleep, and probably my parents. They had
started acting so old.

I grabbed my cell
phone and went into the bathroom, closed the door and called my parents’ house.
My dad answered the phone. Unfortunate for me, because even though he sounded
as if I had woken him, I had to go through a barrage of questions about my new
boyfriend and when he was going to be able to meet him before he’d relinquish
the phone

What about the
important work I’m doing down here, Daddy? Aren’t you interested in that?

And then I thought
about the predicament I was in. If my dad knew that I was a murder suspect,
betcha’ then he wouldn’t be so concerned about my love life.

“Hi, Mommy,” I
said when I finally got my father to pass the phone to her.

“Hey, little
girl,” she said. “You’re up late. You doing okay?”

“Yep. I’m good,” I
lied. I drew out the words thinking whether I should tell her how I was really feeling.

“Have you outed
your Maya connection with North America yet?” she asked. “If you want, I can
come down and help you. We make a good team.”

I almost chuckled.
Yeah, Mommy you coming might just be a good idea. In fact, I was thinking,
you and Daddy might have to come and bail me out of jail. Oh, and be sure to bring
Uncle Greg because I’m going to need a good lawyer.

“No, Mommy,” I
said instead. “Thanks though. I just had a quick question.”

“What?”

“Do you know an
archaeologist by the name of Aaron Coulter?”

“Why do you ask me
that?” she said with a sudden panic in her voice. “Have you seen him? Did he
say something to you?”

“No.”

“Look stop beating
around the bush, Logan,” her voice had gone up two octaves and three decibels.
“Come out with it. Tell me why you asked me about him.”

“Because he was at
my site-”

“Your site. You
need to leave there,” she said before I could finish.

“Mommy. Calm down.
His bones were at my site. He’s dead. Evidently murdered.”

She didn’t say
anything for a long minute. I felt uncomfortable as the silence hung in the
air. I had upset her and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I needed to be upset, too. “Mommy.
Are you there,” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Aaron Coulter was
the man Simon Melas called into Belize to take over your site. We met him in
Panama. I don’t know how you could forget that. He is the man that tried to
kill you. Tried to kill the both of us.” She took in a breath. “The man that
did kill
Jairo.”

I gasped.

Jairo Zacapa had
been murder number one. The first murder I’d witnessed. Shot down. He had died
right before my eyes.

Chapter
Nineteen

My mother was the
master crier. She cried so much that my father once said he didn’t know how she
could have any tears left. But now I think I had her beat.

After I hung up
from her, I sat on the floor of the bathroom and pulled my knees up to my
chest, and I just let loose. The tears were rolling out without any effort on
my part. No pulling my eyes tight, turning up my face, they just gushed.

The man that was
dead was a man who had tried in the past to kill me.

Had he been there
to kill me now?

I didn’t know if I
was more scared of that – maybe even after death he still be able to carry it
out because he had a plan in place. Or what the police would say when they found
out that I knew Aaron and how.

Maybe it was a
good thing for me that he was dead.

The reason I’d
come to Georgia in the first place was because I had excavated Maya ruins in
Belize with my mother and found not only tunnels that ran under most of Central
America, but the possible America/Maya connection I had become obsessed with.

My mother, Dr.
Justin Dickerson, biblical archaeologist extraordinaire, and keeper of the
secret of man’s true origin came because I’d needed her help in deciphering the
inscription on a stone slab I’d found in the jungle right outside of my
excavation site. It was my first time being in charge of an archaeological site
and I’d felt a bit overwhelmed. I knew the inscription on the slab meant
something significant, but I just couldn’t seem to figure it out. And like any
mom she came right away to offer her expertise.

And her expertise
led us to Track Rock Gap. But the federal government wasn’t letting people in
to see it and our search for American Maya was stalled. I thought only
temporarily.

But everything
just keep tripping me up.

Like murder.

What we didn’t
know was that the person that hired me, Simon Melas, an old nemesis of my
mother’s had surreptitiously gotten me on to run the dig. But what he really
wanted was my mother. He was counting on me to need her and get her down to
Belize. So he could kill her. And me too, I guess. But when he realized that my
mother and I had found out something big, he didn’t want to lose recognition
for the find. So he brought in Aaron Coulter.

The dead man I
found at Track Rock Gap.

How could I have
forgotten about him?

Aaron wanted to
find us, take over the site by force, and it turned out by any force necessary.
Simon told Aaron that he’d given him the ability to track me on the GPS on the
satellite phone he’d given me as part of the equipment issued for the dig. But
so Simon could still exact his revenge on my mother, he gave Aaron the GPS to
Jairo’s phone, the liaison between me and my benefactor. And soon an asset to
me and my mother getting to the bottom of my find.

When Aaron
followed Jairo’s GPS, he found him outside of the cave we were in and shot him.
In cold blood. My mother and I were able to get away and Aaron, his girlfriend,
and another man chased us, but we lost them.

Wait . . .

His girlfriend.
That woman I saw at the police station. The blonde who was eyeing me. I think
that was her.

Why were there
here in Gainesville? Why was Aaron Coulter at Track Rock Gap?

What am I going to
do?
I started sobbing and buried my head in my pillow.

Are they out to
kill me?

I stretched out on
the floor, lying on my back, I stared up at the ceiling and tried to sniff back
tears that threatened to fall. I stayed like that for a long while. Thinking.

Then I thought,
am
I just going to just lie here, do nothing and let someone come and kill me?

I sprang up, a
sudden bravado shot through my body. I wasn’t just going to sit back and find
out if I was in danger of being the next body upturned. Or, if Detective Davis
had his way, the prime suspect. I needed to find out what was going on. What
they were doing there.

Somehow I had
gotten away from Aaron and Simon when they had set out to kill me. And even
though I had had a little help, I had been in charge of three excavation sites.
I was only twenty-eight. But I was strong, I told myself.

I can do this.

Be strong. Use my
experience to get out of this and not just cry and cry “Woe is me.”

Yeah, but you
don’t know how or where to start.

I laughed at that
thought because I knew someone who did.

I had been with
Miss Vivee when she solved two murders. She already wanted me to let her solve
this one.

I glanced at the
screen of my iPhone. Four a.m. I took in a breath. Now is a good of time as
any.

I jumped up from
the bathroom floor and stared at myself in the mirror. My light-brown skin damp
and eyes red from crying.

Pitiful.

I shook my head
and narrowed my eyes at my reflection. “Stop being so pitiful. You can do
this,” I told myself. I splashed cold water on my face and grabbed a towel on
my way out of the bathroom.

“Yoo-hoo, Miss
Vivee,” I said gently shaking her. “Wake up. We need to solve a murder.”

Chapter
Twenty

Miss Vivee was so
excited that I wanted her to help me. Although I knew me saying before she
couldn’t, never would have stopped her. She didn’t listen to me.

She wanted to go
to a diner. She had been trying to get me to take her to one since we’d got to
Gainesville. I knew (just like Viola Rose and Mac) that it was where she always
started her murder investigations. Even if it wasn’t Jellybean Café, the
atmosphere must hold some magical aura for her.

Although I had
told her I didn’t know where a diner was that we could go to get information, I
really did. It was a place that people from around Track Rock Gap, including my
team, went often to eat. I’d never gone, but I knew just where it was located.
It was in Itza.

How apropos.

 “May I help you?”
an older woman, maybe in her mid-forties stood at our table after we arrived
and was seated said to us. A Viola Rose she was not. No sparkle. No sass. She
seemed not too happy to take our order either. Her black straight hair was
pulled back into ponytail at the nape of her neck. A rectangle-shaped plastic pin
with the name Talisa in bold black lettering pierced the strap of her uniform.

“We’ll all take a
glass of iced tea,” Miss Vivee said. “Do you have egg salad?”

“No,” she said,
head down.

“Okay then, well
give us a minute to go over the menu.”

“Be right back,”
she said.

“You think you’re
going to find out anything from her,” I asked with a grin. “I don’t think so.”

Mac had a beam in
his eye. “You should know better than to underestimate Vivienne Pennywell,” he
said.

The forlorn
looking waitress came back over and sat down our drinks. I usually don’t drink
the iced tea Miss Vivee always orders for me. I drink Pepsi, but I didn’t want
to interrupt while she was supposedly working her magic.

“Hard day, honey?”
Miss Vivee asked.

“No more than any
other day?” the waitress said staring down at her order pad.

“People coming in
to eat thinking ‘bout their own needs. Never thinking about how their server
might feel,” Miss Vivee said. “Never makes for putting anybody in a good mood.”
Talisa didn’t say anything in response to Miss Vivee’s words.

“But it must be
nice to have a rough day, and still look as pretty as you do,” Mac said
following Miss Vivee’s lead.

Talisa looked up
after Mac complimented her.

“My hair used to
be just the color of yours,” Miss Vivee said. “You remember that, Mac?”

“Yes, I do,
Vivienne. Beautiful.” He smiled his eyes beaming. I wasn’t sure if it was part
of their act, or he was actually remembering. I looked at Miss Vivee’s long
gray braid that was slung over her shoulder, strands of dark hair still
showing.

“Her hair’s
beautiful.” Miss Vivee said. They spoke to each other, but they had her
attention.

“Yes it is,” Mac
said.

“How lucky you
are!” Miss Vivee looked up at our now interested server. “I wish my hair was
still that color.”

“It isn’t
anything,” Talisa said, but blushed. She ran her hand over her hair. “It’s my
heritage.”

“Yes. I know,”
Miss Vivee said. “We’re just passing through. We’re from Ohio. Beautiful
country down here.”

That made Talisa
look up. “I know you,” she said and looked at me. “Don’t you work over at that
archeological site over at Track Rock Gap?”

“Yes, she does,”
Miss Vivee didn’t let me answer. “She’s our granddaughter.” She pointed her
finger to Mac and back to her. “Smart as a whip.” Miss Vivee let a sickly sweet
smile curl up her lips. “She’s actually in charge of that dig. We came down for
a visit.”

Funny, she only
says good things about me when she’s lying.

Talisa eyed me. A
smile appearing up the side of her mouth.

“
She’s
your
granddaughter?” she asked noting the obvious color difference.

“Yes,” Miss Vivee
said. “And she is the apple of our eye.” Miss Vivee looked down at the menu. “Now
what do you recommend?” she asked Talisa.

“If you like egg
salad you might like our tuna. We put egg in that. And we have the best apple
pie around.”

“Then that’s what
we’ll have. Tuna sandwiches on white toast. Lettuce. Tomato and just a touch of
mayo.”

“I’ll have a bacon
cheeseburger,” I said. If I was going to have to sit here and be talked about,
I needed strength. A greasy burger would do that I thought. “French fries and a
chocolate milkshake, please.” I smiled at her with one of the fake smiles Miss
Vivee always used.

“You see. She’s
coming around,” Miss Vivee leaned in and whispered to me after Talisa left to
put our order in. “Might get something useful out of her.”

“Yeah. We’ll see,”
I said and leaned back in my seat.

“To be honest,”
Miss Vivee said and touched Talisa’s hand with hers when she returned with our
drinks. “Things aren’t going so well for our granddaughter and we wanted to
come down to help her.” Miss Vivee sighed. “She’s all the family we have left
and when she’s unhappy it makes things hard for us.”

“Even at my age,
she had me drive down here from Ohio to see about her,” Mac chimed in pointing
to Miss Vivee. “Gotta keep the wife happy.” He looked at Talisa. “I’m sure you
have family, though. You know how much they mean to ya. Do whatever you can.”

I hung my head and
closed my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen anyone like those two
once they went into action.

“Well she can’t
come down here from Ohio and make waves,” she said. “People around here got
their own agenda.”

“That’s what we
tried to tell her,” Miss Vivee said nodding her head in agreement. “But you
know how young people are. Head strong.”

“Yes. I do know,”
Talisa said.

“You have
children?” Mac asked.

“No. But I am
raising my nephew,” she said and looked over at me. “You may know him. He’s
very vocal about what’s going on at Track Rock Gap. He gets it from my
husband.”

“Who is your
nephew,” I said. Thinking that I couldn’t know him, because I hadn’t really met
anyone that wasn’t associated with my dig.

“His name is
Diwali,” she said.

But before I could
answer, Miss Vivee jumped in. “Oh yes. Diwali Wilson, isn’t it? I’ve met him.
Nice boy. Very respectful of his elders,” she said.

I was wondering if
she really remembered him because she wasn’t describing the Diwali Wilson I’d
met.

Talisa smiled.
“How did you meet him?” she asked.

“He was at the
Logan’s excavation site the day we arrived,” Mac got into the conversation.
“Very passionate young man. I admire his commitment to his ideals.”

“Sometimes I think
he’s a little too zealous,” she said. “I worry what he might do to make sure
things go the way he sees they should.”

“It’s a worthy
cause,” Miss Vivee said. “And that’s what we were saying to our granddaughter
once we listened to what he had to say.”

“Everyone was so
worried about what was going to be found over there at the ruins,” Talisa said.
“I always wondered why if it didn’t prove Maya were here that they’d want to
try and hide what was there.”

“Sounds like you
have a different perspective on it than your nephew does,” Mac said.

“I don’t have a
view on it one way or another. And I don’t have an axe to grind,” Talisa said
and looked at me. “Whoever got to be in charge of the dig was fine with me.
Long as the truth came out.”

“Someone else was
going to be in charge of the dig?” Miss Vivee asked.

“A couple of
people. So I heard. They were looking at a couple of people from over at the
University.”

“University of
North Georgia?” I asked.

She nodded her
head but never looked at me. “Then your granddaughter was chosen from out of
the blue,” she continued talking to Miss Vivee. “Somebody not from around here.
Some people thought that was good. Some didn’t.” She looked at me. “I guess
we’ll see.”