Buried Secrets

“You probably stole that, too.”

“C’mon, lady. I did not have anything to do with this. I came here—”

“Oh,” she said, cutting him off, “then you just make a habit of stopping by houses that have been ransacked to have a look around? Were you looking for some garage sale and made a wrong turn? Or perhaps you’re an insurance adjuster getting a jump on the job?”

“No, I came to talk to you,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Before or after you robbed me?” Her anger held her firmly now that he was tied up. She sat on the coffee table and laid the rifle across her lap. She settled one hand on her knee, the other on the .22, so she’d be prepared if the intruder tried anything.

“I came in after the fact. I did not rob you.” Each word was spoken slowly, distinctly, as though he were talking to a child who didn’t understand.

“That’s what all the criminals say. I think you need to work on your delivery if you’re going to get a jury to believe you.” She raked her gaze down him, hoping to convey her contempt. “It lacks conviction.”

He didn’t say another word. His eyes said it all, boring into her with a ferocity that warned her never to be alone with this man.

As she waited for the sheriff, she drummed her fingers on her knee and tried to avoid looking at his eyes, and at the chaos about her. Which was very hard to do, especially the pottery that Gramps had found, each piece smashed beyond repair. She wasn’t ready to deal with the mess. One crisis at a time. As a doctor, that was how she handled a medical emergency. That was how she would handle this, too.

Minutes stretched into fifteen, the tension-laden silence gnawing away at her fragile composure. The occasional times she caught the intruder’s glare she felt as though she were a specimen under a microscope—pinned to the paper, unable to move, laid bare for examination. The feeling left her extremely uneasy.

“You’re pretty isolated out here. It’ll take the sheriff a while to ride to your rescue.” His sarcasm broke the stillness.

“Is that why you picked this place? Its isolation?”

“I picked it because it’s Jake Somers’s ranch.”

“You scum!” She shot to her feet, the .22 clutched in her hands. “You read about his funeral today and came here to rob the place while everyone was gone.” She brought the weapon to her shoulder, chambering a bullet. She wanted this man to squirm for what he had done to her grandfather’s memory, to his prized possessions, which he’d lovingly collected over the years.

Several heartbeats passed; Maggie stared into the man’s cold eyes.

“It’s true. I did read this morning about Jake’s death and the funeral, but—”

“Shut up! Not another word.”

Icy silence pervaded the room, heightening the strain even more.

Finally the sound of car doors slamming closed pulled her attention from the stranger. She lowered the rifle. The sheriff and one of his deputies entered the house and scanned the damage.

“Hello, Maggie. I see you’ve had some trouble.” The sheriff pushed his hat up on his forehead.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Tom. I caught this man going through my grandfather’s things.”

Tom’s regard swung to the man in the rocking chair. “You did, did you? Is the whole house like this?” The sheriff gestured at the wreckage.

“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to check.”

“Why don’t you and Rob do a walk-through? Then he can take your statement while I take care of this stranger. We’ll have him out of your hair in no time.”

Glad to be out of the intruder’s line of vision, Maggie led the way, with the deputy following. After checking the two bedrooms and finding everything in disarray, she headed for the kitchen, her grandfather’s favorite room. When she saw the extent of the wreckage, she shuddered. Every drawer was dumped, each cabinet emptied, many dishes smashed. Food was scattered about, as boxes and containers had been ripped apart.

“Dr. Somers, can you tell if anything is missing?” While the deputy began inspecting the area, he withdrew his pad and pen from the front left pocket of his tan shirt.

Maggie pivoted, her gaze taking in the chaos about her, but her mind refusing to register the robbery’s total impact. “I don’t know. I probably won’t know that for days, at the very least. Gramps didn’t have a lot of valuable things, except for some Indian artifacts he’d collected. They were destroyed.” She waved her hand toward the living room, remembering the shattered pottery underfoot. “This land was about it.”

“Tell me what happened when you came to the ranch.”

“When I pulled up, I saw the door wide-open and that sports car out front. I knew something was wrong. I know I shouldn’t have come inside. But I was so angry. I got Gramps’s .22 from his pickup and decided to see what was going on. All I wanted to do was catch the thief.”

“You could have been hurt.”

“I’d just buried my grandfather and someone was trying to steal his things. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Besides, Gramps taught me how to shoot, to take care of myself.”

“You said you found that man going through your grandfather’s belongings. Is that right?”

Remembering back to the first few seconds when she had seen the intruder in the living room made her breath come up short. She took several deep inhalations to fill her oxygen-deprived lungs. “When I came into the house, he was standing by a table, looking at the contents of a drawer piled on top of it. He held a piece of paper, which he dropped when he heard me.”

“We’ll take him to the station and sort through this mess. I’ll give you a few days to see what’s missing. You’ll need to file it with us for insurance purposes, but I suspect there’s nothing missing, since you interrupted the man.”

“Probably not, but the damage has been done.” She waved her arm at the disarray.

Maggie trailed after the deputy into the living room. The sheriff had the intruder handcuffed and was reading him his rights. She took great pleasure in watching the scene. She hoped they threw the book at the thief for trying to rob a dead man.

When Tom asked the stranger if he understood his rights, the man looked straight at her. “Yes, I understand perfectly.”

“Where are your keys?” the sheriff asked the man.

“In my front right pocket.”

“My deputy will follow us to the station in your car,” Tom said, retrieving the keys from the trespasser, “and we’ll check out your story.”

The intruder’s stare knifed through Maggie like an Arctic gale. Shivering, she spun away as the officers led the thief outside.

When the cars left, Maggie picked up the rifle and walked outside. She placed the .22 on the gun rack in her grandfather’s black truck, near the barn where she had parked her Mustang so that whoever was in the house wouldn’t hear her arrival. Yes, she’d known how to shoot since she was a young girl, but as a doctor she’d seen what people could do with a gun and she hadn’t picked one up in years.

After slamming the truck door shut and locking it, she stood and let the silence enfold her in its comforting embrace. For days people had surrounded her, giving her no time to think, to feel.

Now she was finally alone.

She leaned against the pickup and stared at a mesa in the distance. Stark, sharp lines jutted upward toward the sky. Sunlight glittered off the red-and-white surfaces of the rock. In this land of harsh beauty, the mesa stood alone, like her. Suddenly, with all that had happened in the past hour, she couldn’t handle the solitude she had sought so desperately after the funeral. The quiet screamed at her, declaring to the world just how defenseless she was, miles from Santa Fe, alone, with only the wind’s whisper and the occasional rustle of an animal scurrying across the yard.

She peered at the dirt road leading to the highway, at the remains of the dust kicked up by the cars settling back into place, as if nothing had happened. Alone, until someone intruded, she thought. Why? What did Gramps have that the creep would want?

Most likely nothing was gone. Anything the intruder had taken would have been on his person or in his car, and the sheriff would recover that. Unless someone else had been with him and had already left. The scope of the destruction was vast, almost too much for one man. She would never know if something was missing unless she went inside and started the laborious task of straightening up.

Shoving away from the truck, she scanned the ranch. Mine now. The feelings she’d held at bay for three days inundated her all at once. Anger, bereavement and a bone-weary tiredness flooded her and made her steps leaden as she trudged toward the house.

On the porch she paused, not wanting to go back to the chaotic mess in the house that had once been so neat and orderly. She whirled around and stared off into the distance, at the top of the mesa near the highway. She watched a lone hawk circle, looking for its prey. Then suddenly the bird swooped down for the kill. Maggie closed her eyes. She couldn’t take seeing the hawk rise triumphantly with its catch in its talons. That man today had made her feel like helpless prey, vulnerable, afraid and not in control. She’d struggled never to feel those emotions again.

“What am I going to do, Gramps?” she whispered, needing to hear the sound of her own voice. With his death, she had no family left. She was as alone as that bird’s quarry. As alone as that time…No, she wouldn’t think about the past.