Buried Secrets. Margaret Daley

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СКАЧАТЬ put the keys in my mailbox when you’ve got a chance.”

      She again looked back, but all she saw were a mother and her son coming into the hospital. Was the person still outside waiting for her to leave? Was it Zach Collier? Had she imagined being followed?

      The bustle of people comforted her as she made her way to a doctors’ lounge on the second floor. She crossed to the window overlooking the main parking lot, to inch open the blind’s slats. She searched the rows of vehicles. Still no red sports car. But there were other places for someone to sit and wait for her to emerge from the hospital, especially now that the person had been alerted to the fact that Maggie knew she was being followed.

      She snatched up the phone and ordered a cab to pick her up at the service entrance in fifteen minutes. Pacing the room, she kept glancing at the window as though that would produce the car that had been behind her since she left the ranch. She hoped that if it was Zach Collier he would sit in his Corvette for hours waiting for her to come back outside. Too bad it wasn’t freezing. And if it wasn’t him—She wouldn’t think about that. It had to be him. He had to be wrong about her grandfather being murdered.

      Ten minutes later, she eased open the door to the doctors’ lounge and checked the hallway. Two nurses stood at a counter at the end, and the elevator opened to reveal an older couple getting off. She hurried toward the elevator and slipped inside, punching the button for the basement level, where the service entrance was. Her heart hammered a maddening beat. She took several deep breaths to slow its pace.

      She was letting a Collier’s fantastical ravings get her all worked up. Lord, why are You doing this to me? Wasn’t it enough You took Gramps?

      When the elevator reached the lower floor, Maggie peered up and down the hallway. Empty. Where was everyone? Home, where she should be. She realized most of the labs and offices were on this level and that the majority of the people were gone by now.

      She stepped out, and the doors swished closed. The click of her heels echoed down the long corridor as she walked toward the exit. The hairs on her nape tingled. She quickened her pace and peered back several times. Nothing. Yet.

      Reaching the service door, she pushed it open and surveyed the area. Again, nothing. Lights from a car swept through the darkness and blended with the security lights. She squinted and made out the lines of a cab. It came to a stop ten feet away. She rushed toward it.

      Slipping inside, she gave the driver her address, then slid down in the backseat so she wasn’t visible to someone on the street. Several blocks away from the hospital, she inched up and glanced around. The empty street calmed the frantic beating of her heart, and she inhaled enough air to fill her lungs.

      Leaning back against the cushion, she closed her eyes, and immediately the image of Zach Collier materialized in her thoughts. She shivered. Never in her life had she had a day like this one. She tried to get a handle on all that had happened, but her exhausted mind refused to think beyond one thought: she could be in danger.

      When the taxi pulled up outside her house, she scanned the street, searching for anything unfamiliar. She felt as though she were in the middle of a spy story, caught up in the intrigue. She paid the driver, then walked quickly toward her front door. After fumbling around in her purse, she withdrew her key and inserted it into the lock.

      A dog barked next door.

      She jumped, her purse slipping from her grasp. Her nerves raw, she snatched up the large leather bag and threw a quick look over her shoulder, as if she expected someone to rush up the sidewalk or leap out from the bushes by the porch.

      A sigh trembled past her lips. Empty. She hurriedly entered her house, immediately flipping on a light. The bright glow killed the darkness, and she sank back against the closed front door, her body quaking. When she peered into the living room off to the right, half expecting to see a chaotic mess, she slid to the tile floor. Relief mingling with exhaustion swept through her. Everything was in perfect order, as neat and tidy as always.

      She should get some rest—put this whole day behind her—but the blur of the past few hours numbed her. She clasped her legs and lay her head on her knees. This time she didn’t close her eyes, and yet she pictured Zach Collier as though he stood in her entryway, as arrogant and audacious as earlier.

      What if he was right, and someone had killed Gramps? What if he hadn’t been the person behind her on the highway? What if Gramps’s killer had been tailing her into town, watching her at the ranch? Maggie sat up straight. She realized in that moment that she wouldn’t be able to rest until she knew the truth about his death. And the place to start was the diary.

      She shoved to her feet and headed for her bedroom, the first room she’d put in order when she’d moved in a few weeks ago. She spent most of her time in it. When she entered, she bypassed her king-sized, four-poster bed and headed for the armoire. She opened the bottom drawer. An old black book, protected in a temperature-and humidity-controlled case, lay nestled among her sweaters. Her hands quivered as she carefully lifted it out.

      Had Gramps died for this?

      She opened the case. Cautiously, because the aged pages were fragile, she perused the diary, written by a Spanish monk during the sixteenth century. His handwriting was bold and daring. She’d often thought the man must have been like his handwriting, if what he had written about his journey was true. Had he really found evidence of a lost group of Aztecs who had settled in the southwestern part of the United States? Had they carried with them some of the codices that experts thought had been destroyed by the Spanish conquerors? Could the diary and map really lead to where the codices were hidden? Or was it all a legend, as Gramps had come to believe in the end?

      She settled onto her bed, carefully laying the diary, still in its case, in her lap. Her grandfather had given it to her on her thirtieth birthday, two years before, because she had always loved hearing about it. The diary had been one of his most prized possessions, yet he had parted with it because of his love for Maggie. If he had been murdered, she had to find the person responsible and make sure he paid for it. And if that meant working with Zach Collier, then she would—just as soon as she checked out his story about his grandfather’s death.

      THREE

      Maggie stared at the Indian pottery—from various nearby pueblos in a cabinet in the lobby of the science building at Albuquerque City College. The brown, white and black geometric lines blurred as her thoughts became a tangle of possibilities. The receptionist had told her Dr. Zach Collier wasn’t expected on campus because he didn’t have any classes that day, which seemed strange in light of what he had told her the night before.

      The young woman must have surmised that the disappointment in Maggie’s expression was due to the fact she wouldn’t get to bask in the man’s presence. Shortly afterward, the receptionist had begun telling Maggie how popular Dr. Collier was with the students. His classes were in demand and filled within one hour of registration.

      She should have called ahead to see if he would be here, but she hadn’t wanted to alert him to her coming. What a waste! She’d even arranged for another doctor to take her patients this afternoon.

      After loitering in the lobby for thirty minutes and still undecided as to what to do, Maggie returned to the reeptionist’s desk to see if she could persuade the woman to give her Dr. Collier’s home phone number. Five minutes into all the reasons Maggie needed to get hold of him, a dreamy look appeared on the woman’s face, and Maggie wondered if the young lady would swoon in her chair from just talking about the man.

      A tingle pricked Maggie’s nape. She rotated slowly СКАЧАТЬ