The toothless mouth opened and a sound emerged, something like a piece of cellophane being crushed and then ripped. The old woman wiped at her forehead and made some more throat-clearing noises. Finally, words emerged. “Not . . . for . . . long.”
“What? Can I do something for you?” Sam reached for one of the water glasses on the nightstand but the clawlike hand waved her away.
“I have . . . something . . .”
Sam leaned in a little closer, and the woman cleared her throat noisily. She jammed a tissue at the scrawny fingers and stepped back. When the woman spoke again her voice was noticeably stronger.
“I have something for you,” she said.
“I don’t think you even know me, ma’am.”
The birdlike woman raised up on one elbow and her tiny eyes lost their blurry look for a moment. “I know . . . you were meant to come here . . . today. You are to possess the secret.”
What on earth did that mean?
She fell back against her pillows, clearly tired from the effort.
“Quickly, girl. The bottom . . . drawer . . . in the dresser.”
“You need something from the dresser.” Sam turned toward it.
“A wooden box. Bottom drawer . . . look . . . under . . .”
Sam went over to the dresser, stooped clumsily, and fumbled at the cheap brass handles, pulling it open. It seemed to be stuffed full of cloth—bedding, knitted items and such.
“Get . . . the . . . box. Under—” The words caught in her throat.
Sam glanced up at the sick woman. She lay against the pillow, eyes closed, breathing shallowly through her mouth. Sam dug through the fabric, feeling for anything that might be the box she wanted. In the back left corner she felt a hard surface and pulled at it.
It was about the size of a cigar box, with a crude metal clasp and a lumpy, carved surface. She picked it up and went back to the old woman’s side.
“Here you go. Here’s your box.”
The eyelids fluttered but didn’t really open. “No . . . for you.”
“Me? Are you sure?”
From somewhere deep inside, the ancient woman called up the strength to raise her head again. “The box has . . . special powers. It holds . . . many truths.”
Sam stared at the ugly, lumpy thing. “What’s in it?”
The old head fell back to the pillow. “Quickly . . . take it. Put it in a safe place.”
Sam stood there, uncertainly, wondering what the woman was telling her.
“Now, girl. Take it.” A labored breath. “No one must know.”
The lady needed medical attention but the poor thing wouldn’t be satisfied until she thought Sam had taken the box to a safe place.
“I’m going to call an ambulance for you. I’ll put this in my truck for safe keeping.” Sam’s voice shook, worried that the woman would go into cardiac arrest at any second.
The pained expression on the old woman’s face relaxed. The answer seemed to satisfy her.
“Okay, just rest. I’ll have some help here for you soon.” Sam patted the woman’s shoulder, shocked to feel sharp bones under the papery skin. She rushed outside.
But by the time she’d put the box on the backseat of her truck and returned to make the 911 call, the old woman was dead.
Chapter 2
In her fifty-two years, Sam had never been alone with someone recently deceased and standing by the bed gave her the willies. She stepped outside and dialed her USDA contracting officer’s number. She’d never met Delbert Crow in person but she imagined a gray-haired fussy bureaucrat who was a year or two from retirement. At times he was so by-the-book that he drove her crazy with details; other times she got the impression he didn’t want to be bothered, that he couldn’t wait to be out on his fishing boat on a lake a hundred miles from nowhere. Somehow she had a feeling that finding a dying woman at one of her properties would be something he’d want to know about.
“Have you called the police?” he asked.
“The Sheriff’s Department, actually. We’re just outside the town limits here. Well, I just dialed 911 and—”
“Fine, fine.” She heard papers rustling, as if he were looking in the procedures manual for an answer. What could this be listed under—discovery of dead body on premises? “Ms. Sweet, it will be all right. Just wait there until the authorities arrive. I’m sure they can handle it. If the sheriff needs to speak to me, I’m at my office all day.”
Sam paced the front porch, unable to make herself go back into the house with the dead woman. A Sheriff’s Department SUV, an ambulance and a private car arrived within minutes of each other. The man in the private car introduced himself as the county’s Field Deputy Medical Investigator before he bustled into the house.
The lean guy who unfolded himself out of the SUV walked over to her. “Ms. Sweet? Deputy Sheriff Beau Cardwell.” There was definite Southern in the accent and the way he said her name made it sound like an invitation to dance a waltz. The last guy she knew named Beau was way back in her teen years in Texas, but that was a whole other story involving a girl with lusty hormones and a football player whose kiss would send any good girl off the deep end. She firmly shut that image out of her head.
The deputy was staring at her.
Awkward moment. “Uh, yes. I’m Samantha Sweet. Just call me Sam.”
He sent a lopsided grin her way, as if he’d just read her mind.
“Okay. Sam.” He cleared his throat and flipped open a small notebook.
At the back of the ambulance, two EMTs snapped on latex gloves and yanked out a gurney, which they wheeled toward the house.
“The mortgage on the house was government guaranteed and was in foreclosure,” Sam told the deputy. She gave the basics of how she’d gotten inside. She told him the old woman had spoken to her very briefly and died while she’d stepped outside to summon medical help for her. Remembering the woman’s warning, she didn’t mention the wooden box although she felt a little funny about that.
“Do you know who she was?” Sam asked.
“Bertha Martinez. She lived alone.” He scratched notes as he talked. “We think there’s a grandson in Albuquerque. He may have been the one who talked her into signing a mortgage to get some cash out of the property. Can’t imagine why she would have done it otherwise. Place has been in her family for a couple hundred years. She refused to go to a care home when her neighbors recommended it. I’d been out here several times, but never could convince her. Last five years or so she used to chase me off. Met me on the porch with a shotgun a couple times.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. A real sad thing. Local stories ran wild. Some say she was a witch, some just held that she was crazy. Got old and sick but never would see a doctor. Just wanted to be left alone, I guess.”
“USDA sends me to clean out abandoned places so they can be sold. I’ve never had one where anyone was still living in the house. I’m sure they thought she’d moved away or already died.”
He wrote on his forms, filling out the address of the property and noting what she’d just told him.
The M.I. came out of the house, stuffing his stethoscope into the black bag he carried. “Natural causes, old age,” he said. “Albuquerque OMI will confirm that and issue the death certificate at the morgue.” He got into his vehicle and drove away.
“So, what should I do?” Sam asked Deputy Cardwell. “Ordinarily, the owners have taken away whatever they want and I just clean the place up.”
“Can it wait a day or two? Give us time to remove the body, do a quick check of the house to be sure nothing’s out of order. Make one more run at finding the grandson. Maybe you could come back on Thursday?”