Buried Secrets. Evelyn Vaughn

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СКАЧАТЬ with its pitted parking lot and faux-adobe bungalows. It was one of the oldest businesses in town. Its first incarnation had been as the Tumbleweed Motel, before interstates had put the original town out of business. Jo spotted Lorenzo’s black Ferrari, a rental with New Mexico plates, and she parked her battered blue Ford beside it.

      God, she was tired.

      For a moment, right after she killed the engine, she let her head fall back and wondered what the hell she was doing here. The sensation felt very much like panic, but at what? The story she finally was going to tell?

      Or the man she meant to tell it to?

      Since she never allowed herself to panic, Jo grimly shook it off and got out of the truck, sand crunching between her boots and the warm, worn asphalt. At least her cowboy hat—stained white straw, for summer wear—kept the worst of the sun off.

      She knocked on door #7. Then she waited, squinting even through the shade of her hat brim and sunglasses. She noticed the drapes were closed.

      She knocked again, harder. Nearby a snake of some kind flowed off a flat rock and into the desert. Jo thought she might just fall asleep on her feet out here.

      Then the door swung open, and she found herself surrounded by a burst of air-conditioned coolness and nose-to-hairy-chest with the P.I.

      Lorenzo had obviously just woken. His thick, dark hair was messy, his shirt was halfway open, his jeans partly unbuttoned, and he was barefoot. For a long moment, Jo just stared—breathing again. She forced her gaze slowly upward. From the small, gold medal nestled in his chest hair to his throat, his shadowed jaw, finally his intense eyes squinting down at her against the glare of Texas sunlight. The awareness that whispered through her from his proximity surprised her. It was another sensation she didn’t generally allow herself to feel.

      When Lorenzo covered a wide yawn and waved her in—“Nice hat”—Jo entered his cool, dark cave. She didn’t like caves.

      Yet it was so unlike anyplace she expected a man who drove a Ferrari to stay that she found herself grinning. “Pink Formica?”

      He snorted. “You got something against Formica?”

      But her attention had moved on to the rumpled, king-size bed. It looked particularly inviting, more than this morning’s cot had, and Jo hid her own yawn as she took off the hat and sunglasses. “It’s kind of dark in here,” she hinted.

      “Oh yeah. Sorry.” Lorenzo flipped on the lights.

      Accepting that as the best she’d get, Jo sank into one of the hard plastic chairs by the paper-strewn table. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

      “No problem.” Belatedly, Lorenzo buttoned his jeans, then sprawled with his odd, lumbering grace into the other chair. He dwarfed it. “I’m gonna send out for lunch—you want anything?”

      She tried not to look at the bed, wishing she didn’t feel so…so alert, around this man. “Almanuevo has delivery now?”

      “Not exactly.” He smirked at the rotary phone as he dialed, as if something about it amused him, then said, “Yeah, this is Lorenzo at the Alpha. Send me the usual, and….”

      He widened his eyes, waiting on her.

      “Just coffee,” she insisted.

      “Toss in a slice of apple pie and an extra coffee. Yeah.” And he hung up. “Delivery in Almanuevo is me saying I’ll give five bucks extra to whoever carries my order across the street from the Ambrosia Café. Sometimes it’s a waitress, sometimes it’s another customer.” He shrugged at the quirks of small-town life. “So you thought about what I said yesterday?”

      “I thought about the cave-in,” she admitted.

      “Want to tell me about it?” It wasn’t exactly concern, but she appreciated his pragmatism. Concern might make her want to cry, or say something embarrassing, and she didn’t need that. Lorenzo found a legal pad buried amongst the pile of loose pages on the desk and fished a pen out of the mess as well.

      Jo hesitated. She hadn’t told anyone what she’d seen—thought she saw—since the reporter, and she’d been doped up on painkillers at the time. Since she’d been quoted as an anonymous source, she doubted even her brothers knew she was the one who’d started the rumor about zombies.

      A laptop computer sat on the kitchenette bar, plugged into a phone jack, and paperwork covered the table. But did she really mean to recite the whole, unbelievable story to a stranger from Chicago?

      She was here to make the dreams stop, that was all.

      “You changed your mind again,” guessed Lorenzo, sagging back in the chair and looking ceilingward.

      “I’d just like to know more about why I’m telling it,” Jo challenged. She’d been more comfortable in her jail. Now in his motel room, his messy bed sprawled beside her and his chest hair staring her in the face, she felt distinctly out of her league.

      Like the world had started vibrating at a faster speed. But to hear some folks talk, maybe that was just Almanuevo.

      He seemed to consider the request, then shrugged. “Right. I can handle that. What I do, Miss James—”

      “Ms. James,” she corrected easily. “Or Sheriff.”

      He stared at her, then tried again. “What I do, Mzzz. James, isn’t the usual private investigation stuff. I do that too—cheating spouses, skip-traces on bounced checks, crap like that. A guy’s got to make a living, no matter how well-off his partner is. But our specialty is the weird stuff. Cults. Curses. Ghosts.”

      Zombies. Jo’s discomfort settled into her gut as she pursued the less remarkable claim. “You believe in ghosts?”

      “My partner does. Me, I’m careful not to disbelieve in anything nowadays. What with the Internet, it’s pretty easy for people with, let’s call ’em special requirements, to find me. Most of them are major flakes, by the way, same as the assholes who generally suck them in. But a few of ’em aren’t.”

      And that, apparently, was important.

      He shifted in his seat, though it looked a bit small for him to get truly comfortable, then continued, one hand sculpting the story out of air. “So a few weeks back, we get a call from a mother whose son vanished, maybe four months ago, in Almanuevo. Not a child—a college kid. Thing is, he vanished dead. Seems he and his buds tried rock-climbing under the influence of God-knows what, with the expected, pancakelike results. No biggie.”

      Jo didn’t bother to hide her scorn. “No biggie?”

      He was unfazed. “So one minute his remains are safe in the town clinic, toe-tagged and body-bagged. Next thing you know—” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Like he got up and walked away.”

      “But clearly,” said Jo, “he didn’t get up and walk away. Corpses have been stolen before….” Though not around there. That she knew of. “Haven’t they?”

      Lorenzo’s rugged expression stilled. Then he frowned.

      When a knock sounded at the door they both jumped—then avoided each other’s eyes. “Lunch,” the detective СКАЧАТЬ