Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 10

  “I’m going to have to get me a notebook,” I thought out loud. “I have some murder suspects of my own to list.”

  Chapter Thirty

  By the time I got to the hotel and all night, I felt bad about being so curt with Director Hutchinson. He hadn’t fired me and the website from what I could see for the Forest Service still didn’t have the article that Bugs showed me up.

  There were no messages or phone calls informing me that I couldn’t come back to the site. That Clive Armsgoode was taking over or anything. So I decided to go to Track Rock Gap. I pushed Miss Vivee and Mac to dress faster. Eat faster. Climb into my SUV faster. All morning. I was ready to go. And when we got there my team was there. Everyone had come to work.

  Not that there was that much work to do.

  Still, that made me smile. Things were normal. I took in a breath. We couldn’t excavate, but there were things to do.

  “Well,” Miss Vivee said as I was getting her out of the car. I think today we should read that article Aaron Coulter wrote and see if it gives us any clue as to who killed him.”

  “Oh shoot,” I said. “I forgot it at the hotel. Again.”

  “You are really a poor detective,” Miss Vivee said. “You’ve had it for two days. We haven’t read it yet. I would think that would’ve been the first thing you did.”

  “Really, Miss Vivee?” I said. “The first thing I’d want to do is read how someone else had proven something that I’d dreamed of proving myself?” I looked at her. “I’m dreading it. But you’re right, it might help. Get back in the car. We’ll go and get it.”

  “We’re not going. You’ve been rushing us all morning and for what? Now you forgot a valuable piece of evidence in our murder investigation.”

  Evidence of the murder?

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ll go by myself. You and Mac wait in the trailer. Stay out of the sun.”

  “We know what it is we need to do,” Miss Vivee said. “We’re just waiting for you to figure out what you’re supposed to do.”

  “I’ll be back,” I said and pulled off to head back to the hotel and retrieve the journal with the article.

  “What’s going on, Miss Vivee?” I said as I walked in the door. I had read the article and it was really bothering me about what I found out. But as soon as I spoke to them, she and Mac jumped a foot in the air, a hard feat for those two. I looked at them, their faces looked as if they’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Backs up against the closet door, they stood tight-lipped and nervous.

  “Nothing,” she said barely audible. “Is it, Mac?” She looked at him out the side of her eye.

  “Well,” he started slowly. “Certainly, in my medical opinion, I can say with surety that there is definitely nothing going on in that closet.

  “Let me see, Miss Vivee,” I said and tried to pry her from her roost in front of the door.

  “We’ll take care of it, Logan.” She leaned in and whispered to me and gave me a half-cocked smile. “Don’t worry about it.” She nodded her head toward the door and winked, like it was a signal. I turned and looked at the door and back at her. “You have better things to do,” she said. “Go do them.” She waved me away with her hand. “Go ahead.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I knew I needed to see what was in that closet. Those two were always up to something.

  “Move, you two,” I said.

  “Why would you want to see it again?” Miss Vivee asked as she and Mac stepped away from the door. “I knew she had it in her,” Miss Vivee muttered to Mac as I went to open the door. “I just didn’t know she had such a morbid sense of it.” She turned up her nose and shook her head.

  What was she talking about?

  I pulled open the closet door and something fell into my arms.

  It was Laura Tyler.

  A dead Laura Tyler.

  Crap!

  I jumped back and pitched her out of my arms. Running in place and shaking my hands, I screeched. “Oh my God, Miss Vivee,” I said. “What have you done?” I looked at the both of them. “What have the two of you done?”

  “What are you talking about,” Miss Vivee asked.

  “You killed Laura.” It came out more of a statement than I meant for it to. It was a question, but one that I really felt I already knew the answer to.

  “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, Logan,” Miss Vivee said and furrowed her brow making her wrinkles meet and sag even more. “It isn’t polite.” She went and sat down in a chair.

  “You kill a person and then hide the dead body and I’m the one that doesn’t know about manners?” I said surprised. “When did you do this? I wasn’t even gone all that long.” I looked down at Laura lying precariously on the floor. I tilted my head so it was at the same angle as hers. “And what were you planning on doing with her?”

  “Well, we thought you may have killed her so we were going to get rid of the body for you.”

  “How could I have killed her and I’ve been with you all two all morning.”

  “You may have snuck out last night. I’m a sound sleeper, you know” Miss Vivee offered. “And we were only trying to help.”

  “Who?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Help you,” she said. “By getting rid of the body.”

  “Who was going to get rid of the body?”

  “Mac and I.”

  “Really? And how were you going to do that.”

  “Well, we hadn’t quite figured that out,” she said and licked her lips. “But we were thinking we’d wrap her up in a rug, and I’d grab one end and he’d grab the other . . .”

  I was so upset with them, but I had to do all I could to keep a straight face. Mac limping with his cane in one hand, and Miss Vivee with her pocketbook in hers, carrying a body out and . . .

  “Wait,” I said at the realization. “What were you going to do with it after you carried out the door?”

  “Put it in the car and throw her in the river.”

  “Or,” Mac said. “I had suggested we could dig a grave.”

  “Neither one of you drive.” I darted my eyes between the two of them trying to understand their thinking. “You would have had to put her in my car, if you could have lifted her, and have me drive you to wherever.” I shook my head and looked back at Mac. “And the two of you could never dig a hole.”

  “I dig holes in dirt all the time in my greenhouse,” Miss Vivee offered in defense of their plan. “No big deal.”

  I felt my eyes rolling up toward the ceiling of the trailer.

  “Well. Like I said,” Miss Vivee seemed bothered that I was questioning her and their abilities. “We hadn’t worked out all the details yet.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” I shook my head and said. “And if I did, do you really think I’d stuff her in a closet and leave?”

  “You aren’t always too smart about things, dear,” Miss Vivee said. “And, if I must keep repeating myself we were only trying to help you out. No need to get testy.”

  I looked at Laura’s body. Her normally silky blonde hair was matted and dirty looking. Her skin was pale but had blotches of reddish rash-like bumps on her face – across her nose and mouth – and up her bare arms. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again. Yep. She was still there. Still dead.

  This was a nightmare.

  I swear. The body count around me was just building up at lightning speed. She made number five.

  Geesh . . .

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “This is a disaster,” I said. I just wanted to cry. A dead body in my trailer. Me and my geriatric gang of thugs trying to dispose of it. I could hear the detective now asking me about trying to hide the body. “What am I going to do,” I voiced my thoughts.

  “Well. We can help you,” Miss Vivee said.

  “Vouch for your whereabouts at the time of the murder,” Mac said.

  I shook my head. “How can you vouch for me, we don’t know what time she was killed.” I look
ed at them. “Plus, you two thought I had killed her.”

  “It was only because of the circumstantial information,” Miss Vivee said. “Your trailer and all.”

  “But we have to admit,” Mac said. “We weren’t able to come up with a motive for you to want her dead.”

  “I did have a motive,” I said. I figured I may as well spill the beans. “Aaron and Laura tried to kill me.”

  “What?” Mac asked.

  “When?” Miss Vivee said at almost the same time.

  “Back in Belize.” I swallowed hard. “Actually it was in Panama. They wanted to take over my dig in Belize and they had followed us there. They were going to force us out. They killed a guy on my team. Jairo Zacapa.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “I’m not sure who exactly pulled the trigger-”

  “He was shot?” Miss Vivee said before I could finish my sentence.

  “Yeah. In the stomach.” I saw Miss Vivee clutch her throat. “My mother and I were in a cave at the time,” I continued. “But he made it in to warn us before he collapsed. To tell us that there were bad guys outside. Those bad guys turned out to be Laura, Aaron and another man. I still don’t know who the other man was.”

  Mac walked crossed the room to where Laura’s body was and stood over it. “And she was there?”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me everything you know about Aaron Coulter,” Mac said.

  So I did. I told them both all about my experience in Mesoamerica. And about Simon Melas. And that what I knew about Aaron I had learned from him.

  “Tell us about Simon,” Miss Vivee said as she sat down on the couch.

  I had paused to take a breath and then I told them about him, too. About how my benefactor Simon Melas had said that Aaron Coulter was a prodigy boy gone bad boy. That he’d had a hard time with something he started over in Egypt - looking for tunnels under the Sphinx thinking there would be a library under here. But there wasn’t one in Egypt I told them because I had found it in Central America.

  “And that’s why they tried to kill you?” Miss Vivee said when I finished telling my story.

  “Yes. That’s why they tried to kill me.” I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It was scary to say out loud that someone had tried to take your life. I felt my heart picking up pace even though both of those people were dead, it still made me nervous.

  “Vivee,” Mac said. “Do you think all of this,” he waved his hand at Laura’s body, “has to do with what happened to Logan and her mother in Belize?”

  “I don’t think so. They didn’t seem to want Logan dead now. Leastways they didn’t attempt to take her life.”

  “Thank goodness,” I said. “But I’m not even sure if they knew who I was.”

  “I’m sure they did,” Miss Vivee said. “If Aaron Coulter was an archaeologist he would have known your mother, right?”

  “Yes. I’m sure he did. At least he knew of her,” I said. “Archaeologists, if they’ve made a name for themselves, good or bad, pretty much know each other.”

  “So if he saw your name on anything, or they mentioned to him when they were trying to decide who to put in charge down here, then he would have seen your last name.”

  “So you think that he was going to try and take this dig from me, too? Kill me to do it?”

  “Don’t know. But if he discovered you wanted to prove that there were Maya here, which they probably did, he might have.” She looked at me. “Everyone seems to know it, you must have been shouting it from the mountain tops.”

  “Maybe not that loudly,” I said sheepishly. I had made it known that that was my plan. “But I did find out something strange.”

  “What?” Miss Vivee asked. “The paper that Aaron wrote was taken from the website.”

  “What does that matter,” Miss Vivee said. “You’ve got a copy of it.” She pointed to the one I had dropped on the table when I first came in.

  “The publication is for undergrad students. The professors only have their names on as advisors.”

  “So Aaron Coulter didn’t write the paper,” Mac asked.

  “No,” I said. “Jackson Reid did.”

  “Who is that?” Miss Vivee asked.

  “Bugs,” Mac and I said at the same time.

  “Well isn’t that interesting,” she said. “How does he write an article for a school he doesn’t attend?”

  I hunched my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “So that means both Bugs and Aaron would have known that you wouldn’t last long here,” Miss Vivee said. “And at least Aaron knew what they wanted. He knew how to play the game.”

  “Yeah. They only put me here because they thought they could manipulate me,” I said. “They thought since I was young, trying to make a name for myself, I’d go along with what they wanted.”

  “But it doesn’t matter now what they were going to do. Bugs. Aaron. Or Miss Laura there,” Miss Vivee said and pointed to the body. “We just need to figure out who killed Aaron and Laura so we can save you from rotting away in jail.”

  “Really, Miss Vivee. I wish you’d stop saying I’m going to jail.”

  “I know, dear.” She looked at me sympathetically. “The truth hurts. But now that we know you have a motive, it will seem to the police like an open and shut case,” Miss Vivee said nonchalantly.

  “I don’t think the detective knows about her motive though, Dear,” Mac said. “And of course we won’t tell,” he looked at me as he spoke.

  “Oh my God,” I said and plopped down on the couch. “Why is this happening to me?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Well, are we hiding the body or not?” Miss Vivee asked. “Although, if you didn’t kill her, I don’t know if I want to risk Mac’s health to move it.”

  She was so matter-of-fact in her statements like finding a dead body and deciding to dispose of it was as easy as deciding whether you wanted eggs or cereal for breakfast.

  “We are not hiding the body, Miss Vivee.” I shook my head. “We are going to call the authorities.”

  “That’s fine with me, dear,” she said. “But you do know that they probably will arrest you.”

  “Why?” I said. The worry I had starting feeling inside I could tell was starting to spill out into my face. “Why would they arrest me?”

  With exaggerated animation she widened her eyes. “We just had this big discussion about it, Logan. Don’t you remember? I say. You’re not too bright sometimes. The woman, who is your archenemy, is found dead in your trailer. You can’t see that that looks suspicious?”

  I let my eyes roll to the back of my head.

  “She is not my archenemy.” But I knew she was right. “We need to figure this out,” I said. “C’mon.” I pulled Miss Vivee up from the couch, held her hand and walked her over to the body. Mac followed us and we stood over her and stared.

  “Well what do you think,” I said. I was hoping that Miss Vivee could use her sixth sense to determine how Laura Tyler died. Then, if we could figure that out, we’d be able to figure out who killed her.

  “I don’t see anything that could have killed her,” Miss Vivee said. “Do you, Mac?”

  “No. No bullet wound. No stab wound.”

  “Well what about poison?” I asked. “She’s got that rash-like stuff all over her.”

  “Looks like poison ivy,” Miss Vivee said and then a smile came over her face like she’d just had a realization.

  “What?” I said and looked down at the body. “Does that mean something to you-” But before I could finish my sentence something crawled out of Laura’s nose.

  “A bug,” I screeched.

  “Bugs,” Miss Vivee said at the same time.

  “Is there more than one?” I jumped back. “Oh crap!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Call Bay and tell him to come down here,” Miss Vivee said.

  “Why,” I said and narrowed my eyes. “Do you know who killed Laura?”

  “Don’t you?” she a
sked.

  “No. Not unless it has something to do with those bugs.” I said. Then I smiled. “Bugs? Is that who killed her?”

  “I think so,” Miss Vivee said. “Look at her face and arms.”

  “Yes. I know. I just asked you did that mean anything.”

  “It’s urushiol reacting with her skin. She was exposed to it before she died. It is from a black poisonwood tree.”

  “Bugs had lots of trees at his house, I’ll give you that. But did you see a black poisonwood tree?”

  “I did,” Miss Vivee said.

  “And so did you,” Mac said. “Bugs called it a Chechen tree.”

  “From the Maya story?”

  “They are one in the same,” Miss Vivee said. “A body’s response to the poison looks very similar to what you get from poison ivy. Same chemical causes the reaction. Might not have been identified correctly if I hadn’t of seen the extract at his house. Now it’ll be easy to prove that her rash came from the extract he has.”

  “It’ll be on him, too,” I said. “If he put it on her.”

  “Not if he used the antidote,” Mac said. “Remember the Chaca Tree Extract he had?” I nodded. “It’s a cure for the poison from the Chechen tree.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I knew that,” I said and smiled.

  “And that bug that crawled out of Laura’s face was one I’d seen at his house,” Miss Vivee said. “It’s called a burrowing bug. A cydnidae. We’re going to have to see if we can catch it. It’s evidence.”

  I wasn’t going after any bugs.

  “Is that what killed her?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Mac said. “They infect but I never heard of one killing anybody. But the way the rash is spread over her mouth and nose, I’d say he placed his hand or a cloth that had the extract on it over her face. Probably smothered her.”

  “That simple? No-never-before-heard-of method of death that you two usually come up with?” I asked.

  “There’s no making you happy, is it?” Miss Vivee said. “We’ve figured it out. You’re off the hook.”

  “Well what about Aaron?” I said. “We still haven’t figured out who killed him.”