Texas Gothic (28 page)

“Hello?” he finally said into the phone, his dark hair standing straight up. He gave a start when he noticed me standing there, brandishing the fireplace poker. I lowered it and watched his expression change from comical alarm to sober concern.

A loud yawn at the top of the stairs said the dogs had even managed to wake up Phin. She was just in time to hear Mark tell whoever was on the phone, “I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and looked at us. “Something’s happened at the dig.”

Even Phin got a move on. Mark drove us over in his Jeep, and we arrived just ahead of Dr. Douglas in the university van. Ben, Steve Sparks, and Deputy Kelly were already there.

Dr. Douglas parked the van and jumped out, ignoring them all as she ran down to the big, ragged hole where a neat excavation used to be.

“Son of a bitch!” Her reaction killed any doubt of the seriousness of the situation. “Those cretinous bastards!”

It was unnerving to see the stoic professor come unglued. Phin, Mark, and I stood back and watched her rant and curse. There wasn’t really anything else we could do.

The tidy, organized square where we’d worked was now a ragged-edged crater. Worse, bones that had still been buried deep were now scattered obscenely across the field. It was a desecration.

“These are human remains,” ranted Dr. Douglas. “What kind of morally bankrupt monster does this kind of thing?”

The list of suspects would fill a roadside honky-tonk.
Anyone in the Hitchin’ Post could have heard about the gold. Hell, anyone in
town
could have known about it.

“What happens now?” I asked Mark softly, after Dr. Douglas had wound down and Deputy Kelly had judged it safe to talk to her.

“I don’t know.” He looked grim. “We need to collect the scattered remains. Anthropological findings aside, like Dr. Douglas said, they used to be people.”

The thought hurt my heart. Whether these bones had belonged to
my
ghost or not, they once had been human beings, travelers who had never made it to their destinations. It was deeply
wrong
that someone motivated by greed had interrupted their journey again, this time on their way to permanent graves.

Across the field, Ben stood with Steve Sparks, the ranch manager. Mark told me that it had been Mr. Sparks who’d discovered the vandalism while he’d been making rounds through the pasture, checking fences. He looked across and, finding me staring at him, said something to Ben, who shook his head as if making an excuse. For my being there, maybe?

When Deputy Kelly finished with Dr. Douglas, Mark excused himself and went to talk to her. The deputy traded places, heading toward Phin and me. A coil of worry twisted tight in my stomach, and, eyes still on the approaching man, I grabbed Phin’s hand to get her attention.

“I can’t lie about the ghost,” I told her. “Or about being in the pasture last night. You’re going to have to cover for us.”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong,” said Phin.

“I know. But he already doesn’t like us, remember?” And with more than just a ghost prowling the fields at night, I
thought it was better to keep as few people distrusting us—or fearing us—as possible. “Just … no ghosts, no magic, okay?”

Deputy Kelly reached us before she could reply. Flipping to a new page in his notebook, he looked us up and down and asked, “You girls hear or see anything weird last night?”

Well, there was a loaded question. I could have filled his notebook. Phin said, “Like what? ‘Weird’ is a very relative term.”

He gave a snide sort of chuckle. “Especially for your family, huh?”

I stared at him coldly. Like his cattle-thieving relatives had room to talk. “I didn’t see or hear anything here at the dig site,” I said truthfully.

My phrasing didn’t get past him. “What about anywhere else?” he asked meaningfully. “Were you out and about last night?”

Phin, prompted by my squeeze of her hand, said, “I was out with Mark in town until around one. And at home after that.”

But the deputy was looking at me. “How ’bout you, Miss Amaryllis? Did you go anywhere on the McCulloch property?”

Crap
.

I blinked innocently. “Like where, Deputy?”

He lowered his notebook and looked me in the eye. “What about the rumor I heard that your car was parked out by the three-six gate?”

“The what?”

“That’s the mile marker. How we identify which gate
we’re talking about when someone has to run up here for the latest emergency.”

“Oh.”

“Well?” he asked impatiently. “Were you parked outside the three-six gate?”

Phin stepped in for me. “Flat tire, didn’t you say, Amy?”

Deputy Kelly looked at me.
Waiting
. On one hand, he was the law and maybe someone should tell him that my tire had been slashed. On the other, I noticed that Ben, who had been so worried about it, hadn’t told the officer when he’d had the chance, either.

I picked my words carefully, and it seemed I didn’t have a lot of conscience when it came to Deputy Kelly. “Yes. Flat as a pancake.”

He closed his notebook and put his pen in his pocket. “Listen, girls. I’m hearing all kinds of rumors about you two. Looking for ghosts in the middle of the night. Doing some kind of hoodoo voodoo to find these bones in the ground. But I got to tell you, I’m not going to put up with any hinky goings-on. Trespassing. Roaming around at all hours. Digging up people’s graves on your own.”

I stared at him,
almost
too shocked to be outraged. “You think
we
did this?”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Phin, dismissing the accusation entirely. “That would destroy valuable scientific evidence.”

“And besides,” I added, “we’ve been here helping the dig for two days. What reason would we have to come back at night and do something like this?”

“I don’t know,” he said, hostility curdling his voice.
“Maybe you’ve got the gold bug. Maybe you’re trying to exorcise the Mad Monk. Maybe—”

“Is there a problem, Deputy Kelly?” Ben stood behind the lawman, Mark at his shoulder to back him up. Steve Sparks completed the group, though he stayed to the side, distancing himself.

“He thinks we did this,” said Phin, calmly pointing out that there was, indeed, a problem.

“They couldn’t have,” Ben told the deputy. “I was with Amy until late, and Mark was with Phin. And then Mark was with them the rest of the night.”

The deputy’s brows shot up. “With both of them? All night?”

“I crashed on the couch at Goodnight Farm,” said Mark. I hadn’t thought it possible for a warm-natured guy to be so icy.

Robbed of a target, the deputy pocketed his report book and faced Ben, but I noticed he addressed Mr. Sparks just a little bit more, as if they were the adults and Ben was just a kid college student. “I don’t see what else I can do here. I’ll file a report, of course. And Dr. Douglas says she’ll be responsible for gathering the, er, remains. But I doubt we’ll figure out who did this.”

Mr. Sparks said, “I could put a man out here at night to watch over the place.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the deputy said casually. “If they didn’t find anything, they won’t be back. If they did, they won’t, either.”

Ben looked annoyed at the way the officer seemed to have wrapped everything up in his mind. “Thank you,
Deputy Kelly,” he said, implying dismissal with the formal address.

The deputy colored slightly but took his leave—slowly, wasting our time in his passive-aggressive way—and walked to his Blazer.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I exploded. “The nerve of him! What kind of person accuses someone of grave robbing?”

Mr. Sparks raised his brows. “A lawman who knows, but can’t prove, that you’ve been jumping fences?”

It was such a casual yet accurate accusation that I floundered for an answer. To my surprise, Ben came to my defense. “You can hardly compare a bit of nosing around to this,” he said. “The Goodnights are odd, but they’re decent folks.”

Sparks looked
pointedly
doubtful about that. “Whatever you say, boss,” he drawled as he turned to follow the deputy down the hill.

Ben frowned after him. I wondered if he had noticed how often Steve Sparks came up in his mother’s conversation, and how
he
felt about leasing the beautiful bluff for cell towers the way the ranch manager wanted. Whatever was going through his mind as he watched Sparks walk away, he didn’t share it. Not even in his expression.

“When are you headed back to Austin?” Ben asked Mark when he’d turned back to us.

“We were supposed to dig some test holes today, but we’ll probably spend our time cleaning all this up and packing things to take back to UT. Some of us are staying through the party, since your mother was nice enough to invite us.”
He glanced at Phin and me. “I thought I might hang around longer. Keep an eye on things.”

He could have meant the dig site, but I was pretty sure he meant our mystery. And from Ben’s nod, that was why he’d asked.

“You can stay at the farmhouse,” said Phin. “Might as well, since the deputy now thinks we’re hooking up anyway.”

“Well then,” said Mark, managing his first smile of the morning. “That’s a gracious offer.”

She frowned, confused by his roguish tone. “It’s just a couch.”

Mark put his hand on his heart like she’d wounded him, flashed a short-lived grin, then excused himself to go back to Dr. Douglas.

“Just FYI,” I told Phin, “he was flirting with you.”

She looked at me, then at Mark’s departing form. “Oh. That explains a lot. I’m good at a lot of things, but flirting isn’t one of them. Especially with someone I find extremely attractive.”

I was very aware of Ben standing there, watching our exchange with confusion. “Here’s a tip,” I said to Phin. “Don’t overthink it. It’s more of an instinct than an intellect thing.”

“Right,” she said. “Pheromones.”

With a sage nod, she followed Mark, leaving me with Ben, who shook his head in gentle disbelief. “You really are the weirdest family.”

“Thanks.” I fidgeted awkwardly for a moment, thinking of the irony of me telling Phin anything about flirting. “How are you?”

“Fine. Though I’d like one morning without a crisis.” That made me smile, and he asked, “What?”

“I was thinking the same thing when the dogs woke me up.”

He smiled slightly, too; then it slipped away. “Listen, Amy. I meant what I said last night. You need to be careful. No more jumping fences. Not to ghost hunt, and not to play girl detective.”

My amusement evaporated, and I raised a challenging brow.
“Play?”

“You know what I mean.” It wasn’t quite an apology. “Someone doesn’t want you nosing around. Maybe the same someone who doesn’t stop at desecrating graves.”

I didn’t want to admit he had a point, and I couldn’t lie and say I wouldn’t poke around or ask questions. Especially at the party that afternoon, with all the county concentrated in one spot.

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

He wasn’t fooled, and gave me a long stare. I stared back until he rolled his eyes in exasperation.

“Fine. I’ll see you at the party later.” As invitations went, it wasn’t the most gracious. Even when he added, “You don’t have to climb over the fence; you can use the front gate.”

Phin and I walked home. The early-morning air was cool and damp, especially so close to the river. The plants in their beds soaked in the dew, row upon row of them in orderly, irrigated ranks. All that organization wasn’t very Goodnight, until you breathed in the jumble of fresh, green
scents, which tumbled together in my head and pushed out, just for a moment, all of the noise and worry.

It was a shame to spoil it, but I had to tell Phin about the ghost in the cave. I hadn’t had a chance the night before.

“So,” she clarified when I finished, “it told you to be careful at the same time it was choking you?”

I’d realized that Phin’s questions weren’t out of disbelief, but a sign that something didn’t square with her logic. And in this case, I agreed.

“I know. I can’t figure it out, either.” I stopped on the path through the lavender fields, glad for the sun and the smells. “Unless it
was
a threat.”

“But you’re doing what it said.” She sounded outraged on my behalf. “You’re looking for it in the ground and you’re looking into the stories.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Phin.” For once I was calmer than she was.

“I just wish I knew how to help you.” She set her hands on her hips, her ponytail swinging indignantly. “All I can think is that this ghost is an
ungrateful bastard
.”

At the sight of her looking like a tall, irate pixie in pink cargo shorts and cussing out a ghost, I had to laugh. It was slightly hysterical but utterly uncontrollable. Maybe frustration and anxiety had sent me over the edge. I laughed until I was wiping tears from my cheeks; then Phin’s offended expression set me off again.

I finally pulled myself together and started walking back toward the house. The goats awaited their breakfast, and I had a lot of detective work ahead of me.

And then I stopped again. “I just remembered something Mom said.”

“That Daisy is coming today? I hadn’t forgotten. Trust me.”

“No.” I waited until Phin had stopped, too, and turned to look at me. “She said my conscience controlled the triple promise. The, um …” I tried to remember the word she used.

“Geas,” Phin supplied. It sounded like “gesh” when she said it. “Mom’s right. That’s why the vow isn’t unbreakable. Enough willpower can override the subconscious, um, conscience. Except for people who are
all
conscience.”

“I am not.” I faced her, mirroring her earlier posture, hands on my hips. “But here’s the deal. If
my
conscience is in charge, why did the vow take, when I thought she was saying ‘goats’? I should be obsessively cleaning their stalls and putting out their feed and …” I trailed off at her expression. “Oh. I guess I am.”

“Yes. You are,” she said. “But the other part, the ghost vow, that’s simple. Your
subconscious
realized what needed to happen. You
knew
the ghost needed dealing with.”