Tres Leches Cupcakes (9 page)

Margo’s eyes whipped to Shel, a triumphant look on her face. “So you
did
hear Bill say to stop.”

“So what if I did?” Shel said, leaning back in his chair as though wanting to appear casual. He failed, though, due to the tension still radiating from him. “I’d noticed that hill earlier in the day, and then after the first body came up, I thought we ought to check. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Actually it was a
really
big deal,” Margo said. Her words were calm, but intense. “If you’d have left it alone, Bill wouldn’t have told us to open up every grave like that.”

“So what?” Shel said, shrugging. “We dug ’em up faster.”

“Except we didn’t dig them up,” Margo snapped, losing her cool. “We
opened
them up, which is totally different. We completely compromised the cataloging, and now they’re sifting the bones instead of letting us do it right. You really screwed it up, Shel.”

“Those bones are worth less than the dirt they’re covered in.” Shel’s words lacked the bravado Sadie expected though, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. If he didn’t believe it, why did he say it?

Sadie looked away from Shel’s duplicitous expression and took another sip of her Coke while trying to think of something—anything—to say. She wasn’t much of a wingman so far.

“We are hired to preserve them,” Margo said, her eyes as focused as a laser beam on Shel. “That means treating them with the same care and respect we’d give our own family.”

Shel looked down at his beer bottle, his jaw tight with anger.

When Margo spoke again, Sadie could tell it was taking all she had to keep her voice calm. “And then you were hired back on the dig. That seems a little strange too, doesn’t it?”

Sadie considered excusing herself to the restrooms. The tension was getting to her, and she had half a Xanax in her purse which would keep the rising anxiety from getting the best of her. Yet the confrontation was a tiny bit exciting too.

“It’s all about who you know, isn’t it, Shel?” Langley muttered.

“Shut up, Langley.”

“What does that mean?” Margo demanded, looking between the two men.

Neither of them answered, though Sadie noticed that Shel tried to strike an even more casual pose. She wasn’t buying it, and she doubted anyone else was either. Rather than hiding whatever it was he wanted to hide, he was making it even more obvious that he
had
something to hide in the first place.

“I’ve been with D&E for years,” Langley said. “I don’t think there’s any question as to why I got called back.” The implication that there was a reason other than seniority that got Shel back on the job sat in the center of the crud-encrusted table. “Maybe you ought to tell them why you kept digging. Maybe you ought to tell them
who
told you to dig in the first place.”

“Langley,” Shel said between his teeth. “Shut. Up.”

Margo pounced on this new information, leaning further toward Shel. “So you went against a direct order from Bill because someone else told you to dig? Did you know there were fresh bodies at the site, Crossbones?”

Crossbones?
What did that mean?

Sadie saw Shel clench his fist on the table. She felt her heart pounding from the growing tension, and her hand tensed around the Coke bottle in response. She watched him closely. Garrett shifted in his seat and glanced around the bar as though considering the other occupants and wishing he were at their table instead of this one.

“He sure did,” Langley said, fast and crisp, suddenly confident. There was a challenge in his eyes. A pushing. A threat?

Sadie watched as his words registered on Shel’s face, triggering a new level of anger and . . . fear?

Shel suddenly lunged across the table toward Langley, but Sadie had been watching the coil of anger behind his eyes. With a flick of her wrist, Sadie turned the Coke bottle in her hand sideways, jumped forward, and bashed it onto the bridge of Shel’s nose.

Coke spilled all over the table, and Shel went careening backward so fast that it wasn’t until his chair, and perhaps his head, cracked against the concrete floor that Sadie fully realized what she’d done. Everyone at the table screamed or cursed, jumping up and back as the quick change of mood and circumstance caught everyone off guard.

Sadie blinked at the Coke dripping off the table, then turned to see Margo looking at her in shock.

The entire bar was frozen, except for the music, which sounded tinny and sparse in the instant silence.

Shel struggled to his feet while everyone stared, cupping both his hands over his face. Once upright, he pulled his hands away to reveal his mouth, chin, and hands covered with blood.

Sadie had hit him harder than she’d meant to, and she wondered if she should apologize.

He looked down at his blood-covered fingers, then up at the three of them standing across the table while Garrett, who was closer to Shel, started moving away. Shel narrowed his eyes, and in one movement, he grabbed the edge of the table and threw it over.

Margo, Langley, and Sadie tried to jump out of the way but ended up running into each other and the people from the table behind them, their feet sliding on the peanut shell-covered floor. Coke and beer went everywhere; Sadie dropped her Coke bottle as she stumbled over someone’s foot. She grabbed the back of a chair, hoping to save herself, only to realize someone was sitting in the chair. They tumbled to the ground together—the woman screaming and swearing while Sadie tried to apologize. She heard someone laugh, and from a few feet away someone else yelled “It’s on!”

People were enjoying this?

The entire bar seemed to erupt an instant later, and Sadie scrambled up from the sticky floor only to duck a punch. Who wanted to punch
her
? A moment later, she didn’t duck fast enough and a fist hit the side of her neck.

With her neck throbbing, she put her arms up in a protective block while trying to back out of the crowd. The next time an arm came toward her, she hit it as hard as she could in order to deflect the blow. There were easily a dozen people fighting as a mob now, everyone throwing random punches. For real? People just jumped into a fight and started punching whoever was in their way?

How did this night go from asking a few questions to a full-on barroom brawl?

Sadie caught sight of Langley holding some guy in a headlock. Margo was yelling at a man in a cowboy hat in the epicenter of the fight. Sadie wondered who he was—she’d never seen him before—and why Margo was so angry with him. The drinks had mixed with the scattered peanut shells and created a slippery mess all over the floor.

Sadie pushed toward Margo and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her out of the fray just as Shel appeared, getting in Margo’s face and screaming at her. Before Sadie could get her away, Margo threw a punch, catching Shel under the right eye. He responded like a wild animal, swiping at her and anyone else in striking range.

Where were the bouncers? Shouldn’t someone break this up? She didn’t see Garrett in the mix. She hoped he wasn’t involved, the poor boy seemed completely baffled by the direction of the discussion earlier, and she’d hate for him to be drawn into this as well.

Sadie heard glass break, and she pulled Margo again only to have someone step hard on her foot, causing her to stumble and lose her grip on Margo’s arm. Sadie pushed the person away, which earned her a push back. What a nightmare! The shouts were getting louder. Something hit the back of her head and made the room spin. She had to get out of the pileup. She reached for Margo again, but she was gone. Sadie couldn’t even see her now. She had to save herself!

Sadie started elbowing and pushing her way toward what she thought was the outskirts of the madness, getting pushed back almost as often as she made progress. She started yelling too, and she threw a few jabs of her own as adrenaline coursed through her veins. If the group could understand she didn’t want to be in the middle of the fight, they would let her go, right? She was beginning to feel the panic rising in her chest when she heard a whistle and authoritative shout. Thank goodness someone was putting an end to it!

The fighting mellowed a little, though there were still several people proceeding unheeded. Sadie continued toward the edge of the crowd—her eyes fixed on an exit sign at the back of the bar—her only goal self-preservation.

A hand grabbed her arm and threw her to the side; she tripped over a chair, but someone else caught her from falling completely.

“Thank you,” Sadie said, wondering if this same person hadn’t punched her at some point in the last few minutes. Her head throbbed and her lip burned. She reached up to make sure she wasn’t bleeding. Her hand came back red, but she quickly realized it was lipstick.

“Nobody leaves,” a booming voice said over the din of the crowd.

Sadie looked toward the main doors where a uniformed officer blocked the door, his hand on the gun in his holster. Another officer, built like a Viking, had waded into the middle of the fight, and there was more shouting as he flung people out of the group one at a time. The last two people to be broken up were Shel and Langley, both of them bloody as they stared at each other, chests heaving. Sadie couldn’t see Margo or Garrett anywhere.

“What happened here?” the Viking officer asked, looking from one to the other.

Shel turned away, scanning the crowd, and then he pointed at Sadie, who tried to shrink backward into the closest shadow.

He narrowed his eyes and his nostrils flared. “She started it!”

Chapter 8

You’re not really arresting me, are you?” Sadie asked the female officer who pushed her across the threshold of the police station an hour after Shel’s accusation. Sadie’s shaking hands were cuffed in front of her, and her anxiety was still building. She’d listened to her rights, dutifully put her wrists forward for the cuffs, and patiently endured everything based on the belief that the police would let her go once she was away from the bar. It was all part of an act, right? She was a BLM informant, for heaven’s sake!

“You started a fight,” the female officer said from behind her. “That’s disorderly conduct down here in New Mexico.”

“I didn’t start a fight,” Sadie contended, glancing over her shoulder at the officer who was staring straight ahead. “I blocked Sheldon Carlisle’s attempt to start one. He’s the one who should be arrested, not me.”

“He was arrested too,” the officer said. “Eyewitnesses confirmed the two of you as the primary aggressors.”

“But I was trying to stop him!”

The officer walked up beside Sadie and grabbed her arm as if Sadie might make a run for it now that they were in the police station. “Then you failed, didn’t you?”

“Is that a crime too?”

The officer gave her a look that made Sadie aware of her own cheekiness, and she ducked her chin. The woman was nearly six feet tall and wore her hair pulled up into a severe bun; Sadie didn’t want to call her out too much. “So what happens now?”

“Sit,” the officer said, pointing to a bench along one side of a long white hallway. “We’ll get you booked in a few minutes.”

Booked? Really? Sadie sat down, swallowed, and tried not to let her thoughts run away from her, but she’d seen way too much TV to not be absolutely terrified of being taken back to a cell full of thugs and drug dealers. Pete and Agent Shannon had told her not to tell anyone about her informant status, but surely they hadn’t meant in a situation like this, right?

Pete!

She’d told him she was going to the bar with Margo to ask a few questions, and he’d been hesitantly supportive. Pete would know exactly what she should say; in fact, he would probably tell the police about her informant status himself and then everything would be okay. She hadn’t even thought to text him before they’d put the handcuffs on her.

“Can I make a phone call, please?” she called out to the officer who’d retreated to a desk on the other side of a half wall.

“Not yet.”

“Doesn’t everyone get a phone call?” Sadie said. It was practically cliché, right?

The woman looked her over and held her eyes. “Not yet,” she said again, slower this time as though trying to make sure Sadie understood.

Sadie sat there, trying to think affirming thoughts until another officer told her to stand and follow her down a hallway.

“What’s your name?” the officer asked once she had Sadie sitting in a chair next to a desk.

“Uh, my name is . . .” Should she give them her fake name, Sarah Worthlin, like she had told the cops at the dig site, or should she give her real name? Would that mean her real name would be published in the newspaper? If so, she could be tracked to Santa Fe.

“Name,” the woman said again, watching Sadie closely. Annoyed.

“Can I please make a phone call first?” Sadie begged. She needed to talk to Pete in the worst way.

The woman swiveled in her seat and put her face within inches of Sadie’s. She’d had tuna for dinner. “Give me your name,” she said in slow, clipped tones.

Sadie’s heart rate took off like a shot. “Sarah Diane Wright Hoffmiller,” she said quickly, though she whispered it just in case. Heat washed over her at having told the truth. The truth was supposed to set you free, that’s what everyone said, but she felt sure she was making a mistake. Oh, she needed to talk to Pete!