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Especially since suspicion had fallen, if only for a brief second, on her father.
Jacob Hubrecht, Emily thought as she drove past the park, still believed a handshake was binding. It had been decades since he’d lived outside Apache Creek. Before that, he’d been a bull rider, and she knew, having met most of his friends from those long-ago days, that they’d had their own code of honor.
A cowboy’s handshake.
She didn’t trust such casual contracts. She’d been across the United States, even working in South Dakota, where her job had been to return stolen artifacts to local tribes. Legislation claimed that it was necessary “to secure, for the present and future benefit of the American people, the protection of archaeological resources and sites which are on public lands and Indian lands.” Yet, some of the most grievous offenders were fined in the three digits while they’d earned in the five digits from their stolen loot, no jail time or restoration.
The Natives called it erosion of justice.
She called it misplaced trust.
A handshake worked in her father’s world, but just as the knife by the skeleton was eroded, so might be justice. This corpse was an intruder to George Baer, who thought a monstrosity of a house belonged on sacred soil.
The sign designating Ancient Trails Road was fairly new and looked out of place. She made a left and then slowed down so she could study the Baer house without anyone noticing. She no longer thought the soil so sacred.
Some secrets should stay buried.
Two trucks were parked where a driveway would one day be. Emily recognized one as belonging to John Westerfield, who had been out of work for almost two years. He’d have probably shown up even if they’d found a mass grave. The rest of Donovan’s crew appeared to be missing. She knew Smokey quite well. It would be a while before he ventured back.
The other truck was Donovan’s.
She edged her foot onto the gas and then braked, slowing, suddenly sure that driving out here was the wrong thing to do. She’d wanted to shut the construction down, but not this way.
Unfortunately, Donovan stepped out the front door, giving her no choice but to park, exit her truck and head for the house he was building.
* * *
“Everything okay?” For the most part, their paths had been crossing via controversy, but Donovan—thanks to his ex-fiancée, Olivia—knew how to recognize a damsel in distress.
Olivia had perfected the art; Emily not so much.
“I hope so,” she managed. “My dad’s at the station for questioning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. So strange that there would be two knives. Did your dad ever remember how he came to have that one?”
“Right after you left. It was his prize for finaling in a Prescott Rodeo.”
Donovan nodded, thinking it made perfect sense. “You want to come in? I’ll show you the guts of this place. It’s not as bad as you make it out to be.”
She shook her head. “I’ve seen this house a million times, usually in a gated community on an upscale street in a big city.”
“You haven’t seen this house,” Donovan protested. “It’s one of a kind, and I designed it.”
She looked at the Baer house again. He did, too, pleased with what he saw. Even without the doors, windows and cabinets in place yet, he could visualize how they’d complement his creation.
He was bringing his drawings to life.
“A million times,” she muttered. As if to prove her point, she questioned, “Two-car garage with a workshop attached?”
“Yes.”
“Four bedrooms, each with its own bath?”
“Yes.” Now he was getting annoyed.
“A study and dining room?”
Had she seen his plans? “Yes.”
“I forget anything besides the kitchen and family room?” she queried.
“Baer specifically asked for a hallway that would serve as a gallery.”
“Ah,” she quipped, “that must be the custom part.”
“The arrangement, proportions and style make it custom. Plus, when we finish with the landscape...”
She pointed behind him. He turned, seeing the Superstition Mountains in all their glory.
“You can’t compete with that,” she said simply.
“I don’t want to. I just want Baer to be able to sit on his back porch and enjoy the view.”
“The view he’s wrecking.”
Ah, now the Emily Hubrecht who’d first approached him was totally back.
“This house is not on a hill. There are no neighbors for miles. He’s not infringing on anyone’s view.”
“You mentioned style. What style would you call your design?”
He answered without thinking, because he knew the style and had answered the question a million times. “French Country.”
“French Country in Arizona. That’s different.”
“It’s what Baer wanted.”
For a moment, he thought she’d protest. Then she nodded before following him through the door. “Big” was all she said, walking through the foyer and living area to the kitchen. “And there will just be two people living here?”
“Just two.”
She shook her head, sitting in a camp chair while Donovan pulled a bottle of water out of a small cooler. She took a long drink. “This house could be made of gold, and I wouldn’t like it. Until you showed up with your plans and permits, my life was perfect.”
“Perfect? I don’t think anyone’s life is perfect.”
“My life’s not perfect now.”
He decided to give her a break and change the subject. “If you know the exact rodeo, can you find out if someone else finaled, maybe in a different event, and had the same initials?”
“We hope. Sam is checking. I guess they want to authenticate it. See if it’s the knife made for my dad by the Rannik company. Both knives that is.”
“Who did the initials?” Donovan asked.
“They did, at least on Dad’s. He says it’s common for a company to have a booth right at a rodeo event.”
“That’s good. Because it means anyone could have purchased the knife and asked for the same initials. Not just the winners.”
“The difference is Dad’s knife also has the logo of the rodeo branded into the handle.”
“Does the one we found have the logo?” Donovan thought about the mound of dirt no longer cordoned off but still as the medical examiner left it.
Her sudden look made him rethink what he’d said.
We.
It wasn’t the word but how he’d said it. Making them more or less a team.
* * *
“Sam won’t tell us.” For a moment, she thought Donovan was going to scoot his chair closer, reach out for her. That was silly. He was the enemy. If not for this house, there’d be no body and no knife.
She shook her head a little harder than she meant to. Those kinds of thoughts did no good. “Dad having that knife physically in his possession was really...” Her words tapered off. She didn’t know how to finish. Her dad wasn’t under suspicion, not really, especially for a crime where there were no witnesses and the body hadn’t even been identified.
“Amazing,” Donovan said. “And all because the home owner decided he wanted to add a circular driveway.”
Around him the house loomed, like a monster ready to engulf whatever got in its way, whether land or human.
After a moment, when she didn’t respond, he queried, “Museum closed today?”
Emily nodded. “It’s closed every Sunday and Monday. Monday because of numbers and Sunday for a day of rest.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“Do you work on Sunday?” she asked.
“If I need to.”
“Did you work yesterday? I didn’t see you at church.”
He laughed, but she caught something in his eyes, maybe sadness. “You’ve never seen me at church. I don’t attend.”
“Did you ever?” This was not the conversation she meant to have. She was here to look for clues.
He took a long gulp of his water before answering, “Yes, a long time ago I went to church. Why are you asking?”
“It was at church that I found out you were building this house.”
“You mean people were praying for me before I even arrived?”
“No, more like people were talking about you. I heard about it from your mailman.”
“That’s a first. I don’t think I’ve received any mail here.”
“It was added to his route. He mentioned it to me and said he’d driven by this lot after delivering mail nearby. I almost fell out of the pew when he described some builder out at Ancient Trails Road already making decisions about where to put utilities, a septic system and driveway.”
“Still not doing so well with driveways,” Donovan mourned.
“And I am not doing so well in stopping you.” She’d offered God a dozen apologies throughout that day because after what the mailman shared, she’d not heard a word of the sermon.
Emily had lost valuable time. The land had already been sold and paid for, making her protests too little and too late. Donovan Russell had been a brick wall when it came to reason.
She’d always been more of a husky, taking hold and shaking until she got her way. And she hated losing.
“You’ve stopped me now. I still don’t have a full crew and I’ve been advised to leave the area around the grave alone, just in case it’s a crime scene.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She finished her water and stood. “I want to see if there’s anything I missed.”
He stood, too, but didn’t move toward the door. “I don’t think there’s as much as a rock left. They bagged everything.”
“I want to see if I can figure how he got there—”
Donovan finished her sentence. “Vehicle, animal, footprints or shoe marks.”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“They did all that.”
“What did they decide?”
“That they agreed with your original assessment that the body had been here more than thirty years.”
“I really wish it had been here two hundred and thirty years.”
“Life’s not always fair.”
* * *
Emily wasn’t telling Donovan something he didn’t already know.
He followed her back through the living room and foyer and out to the crime scene. Except for the cordon tape and markers, it was just a hole.
“I’d think it was ready for a hot tub if it wasn’t in the front yard,” Donovan tried to joke.
She, apparently, didn’t think he was funny.
“So, what are we going to do first?” he queried. She didn’t answer, just stood looking down at where the skeleton used to be.
The whole thing spooked Donovan somewhat. He just wished he could, in good conscience, fill the hole back in. Without meaning to, he stepped too close to the edge of the hole so a few kernels of dirt fell back into the grave.
