She laughed and they made love again. It wasn’t until they were in the car and on their way back to town that they returned their attention to the questions at hand.
“Maybe all these things are separate situations.” Jane turned to Sloan as he drove. “Sage appeared to me because she wanted the truth known. She wanted her body found. Someone—maybe a cast member who wanted to torment Henri Coque—uncovered the stash of bones in the floor and put the head on the wig stand. Completely unrelated, there’s something going on in the desert. Jay Berman didn’t come out here just to enjoy the sights. He had a purpose that was illegal, and whoever his partners were, he double-crossed them. And perhaps his death was meant as a lesson to others—thus the ‘execution,’ and the old corpse dug up to point the way. Do you know who that corpse might be?”
“Who knows? Maybe Red Marston. He disappeared when Sage did. Maybe one of the stagecoach guards or the driver. I haven’t heard about any graves being disturbed, so it’s most likely someone who’d been buried out in the desert. Especially when you think about the mummified state of the remains. Sand will do that.” He shrugged. “The point is, someone’s been in the old mine shaft.”
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Sage made such a strong appearance to me because we’re supposed to know something we don’t.”
He glanced over at her. “You still going to dress up as Sage tomorrow?”
“I guess. You’re going to dress up as Trey Hardy, right?”
He smiled. “Me dressing up as Trey Hardy isn’t all that difficult. I wear a plumed hat and an old Confederate cavalry jacket. You, however, will have to walk around in a Victorian dress.”
“I can handle it for a day,” she said. “But seriously, should I keep working with the skull—sorry, your great-great grandmother’s skull? With everything else—”
“Yes, keep working on it. And the medical examiner’s office is going to clean up the skull of the old corpse we found. It would be good to learn who he was before we bury him again. And the more I think about it, the more I believe this might have to do with someone—or several someones—figuring they can find the gold that disappeared in the 1870s. Hmm.” He slowed the car as they came onto Main Street. “Town’s already hopping.”
And it was. People were crowding the street. The saloon was overflowing, and although it was almost eleven, people were coming in and out of Desert Diamonds, many wearing old-fashioned garb.
“I’ll see you at the station tomorrow,” Jane told him. “Don’t get out!” she said, suspecting that he meant to stop the car and open her door. “I’ll be fine.”
He nodded and watched her go.
Jane hurried through the busy downstairs of the theater and up to her room. She stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind her. “Hey,” she said quietly. “I hope you’re feeling better. We do know the truth, and we’ll bury you properly,” she promised. “Oh, and by the way, I take back anything bad I said about your great-great grandson. In fact, I think I’m a little too fond of the man!”
Sage didn’t respond. But later that night, when Jane started feeling chilly in the air-conditioning, she was suddenly warm.
Sage might have been Bohemian in her lifestyle; she might have been a great actress, stealing many hearts.
But Jane had the feeling that she’d been a very tender mother, as well.
*
It was barely six in the morning when Sloan’s cell phone rang.
He woke immediately and reached for it, afraid something else might have happened at the theater.
Grabbing the phone he noted the caller ID. Liam Newsome.
“We found the rental car, Sheriff. Want to meet out on the highway?”
“You bet. Where are you?”
Newsome gave him the coordinates, and Sloan told him he could be there in twenty minutes.
He got ready quickly, but before heading out, he went to his at-home office. He turned on the receiver, hoping he might have caught sounds from the cave shaft where he’d left the bug yesterday. He listened, but nothing registered.
Someone was doing something in the old mine. What? If he knew that, he was certain he could solve the murder.
He checked in with Johnny, asking him to monitor the audio and get in touch right away if he heard anything.
When he arrived at the site of the car, he wasn’t surprised it had taken so long to find. It was almost off the highway, strategically placed behind and to the side of a hillock of grassy shrub and brush, now covered by desert sand and blended into the landscape.
A tow truck from the county stood ready to retrieve it and bring it in for forensics, but Newsome had halted the recovery until Sloan could reach the scene.
“Thought you’d want to see where it was,” Newsome said.