Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3) (8 page)

Chapter
Twenty-One

“It’s because you
want to take away the Creek and Cherokee heritage,” Miss Vivee said. “You’re
hard pressed to find the Maya in Georgia.” She took a bite of the tuna sandwich
she’d ordered. She hadn’t said anything else about she and Talisa’s
conversation until our food had come.

“I do not want to
do that.” I huffed. “And how did Aaron Coulter get killed because I wanted to
prove the Maya are the people that are responsible for the ruins at Track Rock
Gap, Miss Vivee?” I dipped a French fry in the glob of ketchup I’d squirted onto
my plate. “I don’t understand that,” I said and plopped it in my mouth.

“Perhaps they
meant to kill you,” she said matter-of-factly. “You ever thought of that.”

My God. I’ve gone
from killer to intended victim.

“It might be that
he needed to be eliminated from the competition,” Mac offered. “Didn’t you say
he was going to take over your work down in Belize?”

“Yeah,” I said
finishing a sip on my drink. “Take over my dig and my recognition, too.”

“So maybe he was
one of the other people that was being considered for your job,” Mac said and
wiped his mouth with his napkin then lowered his voice. “Talisa said they were
considering a few people and then you popped up with the job. We don’t know how
long he’s been dead, but if he was part of the competition maybe someone didn’t
want to have to go up against him.”

“If that’s the
case,” I said. “Then that would probably put Clive Armsgoode in first place for
the position.”

“We don’t know who
that is,” Miss Vivee said.

I looked up from
my food to tell her and I saw him walk in the door. “He’s one of the people
that was up for my job,” I said. “At least that’s what he told me. And don’t
look now, but he’s just come in.”

Of course they
both turned to look.

“Where is he,”
Miss Vivee said.

“The man standing
waiting to be seated.”

“He looks like he
should go in my notebook,” Miss Vivee said. “But that doesn’t eliminate you
from being next in line to be killed.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “He still
doesn’t have that position. Yet.” She bit into her sandwich.

Why is she so hard
pressed on getting rid of me? Jail or a casket . . . I wonder does she have a
preference?

“Well, he can try
if he wants,” I said. “But I’m not leaving my position. And I’m not giving up
on trying to prove that the Maya came to America.”

“But,” Miss Vivee
said. “If that Aaron Coulter did believe that the Maya came to America too,
then he could have been killed so he couldn’t prove it.”

“Which, according
to you would still leave me in the line of fire,” I said to her.

“Stop having such
a one track mind,” she said. “I’m thinking that maybe it was that Diwali Wilson
that killed Aaron Coulter.” She pulled out her notebook. “And if he did, that
means your little geologist might be in on it too.”

Me having a one
track mind?

“Shhh!” Mac said.
“You don’t know who in here knows him or sympathizes with him. Or if he can
hear us.”

“Riley Sinclair.
Diwali Wilson.” She licked the tip of her pencil not lowering her voice at all.
“I’m putting them both in my notebook,” Miss Vivee said with a nod. “And he
should be glad I’m not adding his to it.”

Chapter
Twenty-Two

I dropped Miss
Vivee and Mac back at the hotel. It was hard to get rid of them, because they –
well Miss Vivee – just couldn’t understand why they couldn’t go with me
wherever it was I was going. “We need to work on solving this murder,” she had
insisted. I didn’t want to tell her that I needed to be by myself. She just
didn’t seem to understand that this was really bothering me.

I drove over to
Track Rock Gap after I left them, sat outside the gate and stared in.

Why is this all so
hard? I assemble a team, we go in and dig. I find my evidence. Simple, right?
Instead people are getting killed. Got protesters threatening people.

Ugh . . .

I laid my head
down on the steering wheel and let out a grunt. Talisa had said that there were
other people that they had considered to lead the dig.

Armsgoode I knew
was one. But who else had there been besides Dr. Mouse-with-a-Moustache?

Where they still
around just waiting to pounce? And were they good friends with “Steve” as well?

Steven
McHutchinson had always treated me nice. Got me the people and equipment I
needed. But lately he seemed cryptic with me. I had just thought it was because
of the distraction of his campaign. Could it be it was because I wasn’t looking
for what he wanted me to find.

Or what he wanted
me to fabricate.

I tried to think
hard had I ever said definitively to him that I was looking for Maya. I know
that’s what I had always planned on finding. I hadn’t found any conclusive
proof of anything, yet. I don’t know why everyone was so up in arms about it.
Even the Forest Service officer who had took my initial statement didn’t
believe I was going to find Maya ruins.

Why in the world
would he care?

I decided to call
Bay. Maybe he knew something. He was the one they had put in charge of tracking
me down when they saw my car on video outside of the ruins at Track Rock Gap.
He would know things about the place. I hoped.

It was driving me
crazy. Questioning why I had been put in charge of a site. Couldn’t it ever be
because I was qualified? That I was the right person for the job? All my old
worries were being proven as true.

And was he in with
them?

Bay . . .

Did he know that
they just wanted me as a patsy?

We hadn’t ever
even had an argument, although we’d only been dating for a couple of months, I
felt that we couldn’t have a better relationship. At least, what I knew about
relationships. I had been a nerd so long, my father was afraid I’d never have a
boyfriend. But if I found out that Bay was part of putting me in place to use
me, we were definitely going to have an argument. A really big one.

“Hey you,” he said
when he picked up the phone.

“Bay did you have
anything to do with me getting the job at Track Rock Gap?” I started right in.
No time for small talk.

He didn’t say
anything. It seemed like his silence was an admission and that made me feel
like crying.

“What’s going on
with you?” he said. His voice low. I know he was trying to soothe me even
through the phone lines.

“I think that I
just found out that they put me in charge of the dig at Track Rock Gap because
they thought I’d be easy to control. Manipulate into saying what they wanted me
to say.” I sniffed back tears. “Did you know that?”

“It was a good
thing for you. What you wanted. I put in a good word for you.”

“Did you know that
they wanted me to go along with their idea of things?” I asked again. “That
they wanted me to conclude that there were no Maya in Georgia.”

“No, Buttercup. I
wouldn’t have ever recommended you if I’d known that. I know finding Maya is
what you do.” He paused. “Did someone say that to you?”

“No. But I just
know it is.”

“Don’t jump to
conclusions,” he said.

“This is all so
crazy,” I said. “Every job I get in archaeology there seems to be some ulterior
motive for hiring me.”

“No ulterior
motive at Stallings Island,” he said.

“No. But my mother
got me that job.”

He laughed.

“It’s not funny,”
I said.

“I know. But you
know it’s okay to get help when you’re first starting out. Everything isn’t
going to happen all at once.”

“I know that. But
I am just so frustrated. Sometimes I just don’t think it’s going to happen at
all. I am going to almost make a name for myself. I’ll get so close . . .”

“It takes time.”

“And now they
think I’m a suspect in a murder.” The tears were coming fast now. Man I didn’t
want to cry. It reminded me so much of my mother.

“They don’t think
you’re a murder suspect,” he said.

“Yes they do. And
that’s another thing – why didn’t they put you on the case?”

He was silent
again. I knew what that meant.

I answered for
him. My words came out between sobs, “Because they couldn’t put you on a case
where your girlfriend is the killer.”

“Oh babe. Don’t
cry.” I could hear the chuckle he was trying to conceal. “That’s not why.”

“Then why?”

“It’s because
you’re at the site
where
he was killed. You’re a witness. It’s not
because you killed him.”

“I didn’t kill
him.”

“I know you
didn’t, Buttercup,” he said letting that chuckle out. “Why would you even think
you need to say that to me? Nobody thinks you killed him.”

“Your grandmother
does,” I said. “I just hope if I get charged they won’t call her in as a
witness.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

“Miss Vivee,” I
said. The three of us were standing at the door to Riley Sinclair’s trailer.
Mac with his cane, Miss Vivee with her purse, and me with a look of
apprehension on my face. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Crying wasn’t
getting me anywhere, so I decided to go back to the hotel and get my partners
in crime (solving). Miss Vivee was ready to go. She thought that we should go
to the site and search Riley’s trailer to see if we could find any actual
evidence on she and Diwali trying to sabotage the site. “Even going as far as
murder,” she’d said.

It was late and I
hadn’t thought it a good idea. Miss Vivee did and usually that meant the
decision to do it had already been made.

“We have to look
for something to exonerate you,” she said. We were still standing outside. I
couldn’t get up the nerve to go inside. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

A wuss?

“I’m not, Miss
Vivee,” I said deciding not to even go there with her. “I’m trying to stay on
the right side of the law and not erode my teams’ trust in me.”

“They’ve
practically taken everything away from you as it is,” she said. “We have to fix
this. And if you want to stand here and debate this all night, we’ll get caught
and you will go to jail. What will people think of you then?”

How is it that I
would be the only one going to jail? What about her and Mac?

When we had first
gotten back to the ruins, Riley was still in her trailer. What she was doing
there so late when we still weren’t allowed to dig made me suspicious of her,
too. We hadn’t been there long when we saw Riley leaving.

“See,” Miss Vivee
had said. “It was meant to be.” With her words she headed out the door and nearly
broke out into a trot getting over to Riley’s trailer.

“It’s time to do
this,” Miss Vivee said and looked at me. “Mac.” She patted him on his shoulder.
“You keep a look out. Whistle if you see anyone coming.”

“Okie dokie,” he
said turning to keep watch and standing as much at attention as his age and the
need to lean on his cane would allow.

“C’mon Logan,”
Miss Vivee directed. “Find a window and climb in it.”

“I don’t think the
door is locked Miss Vivee,” I said. “This place is protected. No visitors
allowed. Remember? We don’t have to worry about intruders.” I turned the knob on
the trailer door and it opened.

“This place isn’t as
well protected as you let on,” Miss Vivee said stepping up into the trailer
with a push from me. “Because what I do remember is that you were able to break
in here and run amuck.”

Geesh. Will she
ever forget about that?

I decided not to
comment. “So what do we do?” I asked instead.

“We look for
clues.”

“Clues? Of what?”

“Of her
involvement in Aaron Coulter’s death. Or the reason she is always trying to
sabotage your authority around here.”

Now that was
something I would like to find out about.

I turned on the
flashlight on my iPhone 6 and scanned the room. “Look at that, Miss Vivee,” I
said a pointed to a wall on the opposite side of the trailer.

Riley had on
display a set of knives. They looked old and not from the time period we were
digging in, but it was odd. Why would she have knives?

 “Come over here,”
Miss Vivee said seemingly uninterested in the weapons. “Shine that little
flashlight from your phone here.” She was standing at what looked like Riley’s
makeshift work area. It was a square table set up in the middle of the trailer.
Samples of dirt and rocks spread out across it.

“Why does she have
this stuff in here?” I voiced my thought out loud. “It should be in the lab.”

“Maybe she’s found
something she didn’t want you to know about,” Miss Vivee said. “You’d better be
careful of that one. She seems like she’s got an axe to grind with you.”

“I don’t know
why.”

“It’s obvious,
Logan. And you’ve got to stop being so naive. Your mother did you a disservice
by not letting you find out about life the hard way. Always coming to your
rescue.”

I rolled my eyes.
Someone should have definitely warned me about hooking up with the
Voodoo-herbalist-amateur-sleuth Vivienne Pennywell. That was for sure.

“Are we going to
discuss my upbringing, or are we going to look for clues?” I asked.

“There’s the best
clue you could ever hope for,” Miss Vivee said and pointed to something on the
table.

It was Riley’s
cell phone.

“Don’t all you
young folk keep your entire life in those things?”

I stared down at
it.
We sure do
, I thought.

I took in a
breath. “I’m sure it’s locked. Everyone keeps a password on their phones. So
people can’t just pick it up and use it,” I said. I picked it up and swiped my
finger across the screen of Riley’s white Samsung Galaxy phone. It prompted for
a password. “See,” I said and showed her the phone.

“Well, break the
code,” Miss Vivee said. “I hear about people doing that all the time.”

“It’s not a code.
So you can’t ‘break’ it. It’s a password. I’d have to know her password to get
in.”

“Let me see it.”
She took it from me and starting pressing down on the now dark screen. “How do
you turn this dag-blasted thing on?”

Then I had an
idea.

I swiped my finger
over my own iPhone, put in my password and searched in my contacts. Miss Vivee
jumped and nearly dropped the phone when it started ringing.

“Oh my Lord
Jesus,” she said. “That scared the life out of me.”

“I think I bypassed
the need for the password,” I said taking the phone from Miss Vivee. I ran my
finger across the green “Accept” circle on Riley’s phone call screen. “I called
her phone. We’re in now.”

Actually, I hoped
we were in. My iPhone 6 wouldn’t let me do anything but answer without the
password. I couldn’t check messages or anything else. Riley had an older phone
and it wasn’t an iPhone. I tapped on Messages. It opened right up.

“Good, but next
time you have a bright idea,” Miss Vivee said, “try to make it one that the end
result isn’t one that will send me to my grave.” She put one hand over her
heart and fanned her face with the other.

“Here, Miss
Vivee,” I said. “Sit down.” I helped her sit in a metal chair near the table. I
smiled down at her and then at the phone. “So let’s see what we got.”