Dance of the Bones

“All right then,” Lassiter said with a shrug. “Nothing to do with me. I haven’t seen him in years. Where did this happen, down in Mexico?”


“No,” Brandon answered. “It happened right here in the States. What made you think he might have died in Mexico?”

“He used to talk about going there someday and being able to live on the cheap. And when he took off the way he did, that’s where I thought he went. A -couple of years ago, when they finally got around to declaring him dead, I went along with the program, and why not? But I still didn’t believe he was dead, not really.”

Brandon was caught off guard. “Are you saying Amos Warren has already been declared dead in a court of law?”

Brandon’s obvious consternation seemed to amuse Lassiter. “You didn’t know about that?” he asked with a grin. “But that’s exactly what happened. Three years ago or so and seven years after Amos took off, his attorney, a guy named Ralph Roundtree, initiated proceedings to have him declared dead. The first time I knew anything about it was when Ralph let me know that I was the only beneficiary under Amos’s will. That was news to me. You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

“What do you mean, it was news to you?”

“After the way he played me? I didn’t care if I ever saw the snake in the grass again, and yet he left me everything—-like nothing had ever gone wrong between us.”

“What exactly did go wrong?” Brandon asked.

Lassiter didn’t answer immediately.

“What did he do to you?” Brandon pressed.

Lassiter took a deep breath. “He knocked me flat on my ass, for one thing. In public. In front of our friends. Then there was the supposed partnership thing. That rotten SOB cheated me out of what was rightfully mine. Then, seven years later, I find out he’s named me in his will? Big deal. I wasn’t exactly impressed. It didn’t come close to making up for what he’d done. It may have been ten years after the fact, but friends who cheat friends are lower than low.”

Lassiter’s voice broke. He turned away and swiped at his eye with the sleeve of his shirt. It was clear that the passage of time had done nothing to diminish the man’s hurt at being betrayed by a trusted friend.

“You said you were partners,” Brandon interjected after giving Lassiter a moment. “Partners in what?”

“We’d go out into the desert and find stuff—-mineral samples, geodes, artifacts, whatever,” Lassiter answered. “We’d drag it all into town and sell it. At the time Amos took off, we had a whole storage unit full of stuff set aside and ready to take to market. He made off with all of it. Cleaned out everything and sold it, most likely. Probably made a killing. Half those proceeds should have been mine.”

“You said Amos named you in his will,” Brandon said. “What exactly did he leave you?”

“An almost worthless piece of property—-five acres out in the middle of nowhere on the far side of Catalina,” Lassiter answered. “That’s where Amos was living when he pulled up stakes. The land came with a little house that wasn’t much more than a one--room shack. He called it a cabin and claimed that it used to be a stage stop, but that could have been so much BS.”

“After Amos disappeared, did you ever go up to his place to check it out?”

“Of course I did. I went up there to see if maybe he had tried to sneak into town behind my back, but the place was emptied out, too, slicker’n snot—-just like the storage unit. I should have figured. Amos had some valuable stuff of his own that he kept there—-stuff he wouldn’t sell. That was most likely a lie, too. Anyway, I left the place just like I found it, with the door unlocked and everything. The next time I went back—-years later as the supposedly new owner—-the house had been burned to the ground. There was nothing left but a -couple of walls and a foundation.”