Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(85)
“Oh, Grant,” she whispered and burst into tears.
Shaking hard, she tried to get hold of herself. He couldn’t take it back now, could he, hide it again, throw her out, off the property? The answer to all her work, all her dreams! She could have kissed that fierce face, centuries old, despite its grotesque, glazed leather skin studded with delicate mica chips, some missing now, and its broken teeth of some beast killed long ago by arrowhead spears. And, amazingly, the human-skull base—it had been a large person, tall like the Adena—was intact, and the tips of the stag horns were still barely tinted, probably by blood. Blinking back tears, she studied the eyeholes where a real shaman had peered through—one descended from the Celts, not the Toltecs or any others!
To prove it was real, she touched it once, on the leather snout protruding from the flat-nosed human skull. It needed to be carefully preserved—at least as kids they hadn’t played games with it.
“Grant, in this good shape, it’s a find to match the Danish Beastmaster cauldron! It had to be preserved in the mound, not just buried.”
“Yes,” he said, as if this had cast a spell on him, too. She saw she was not the only one blinking back tears.
She jumped when his phone rang. He let it ring twice and squinted at the screen to see who was calling. “Keith,” he said.
He took the call while she stared raptly at the mask. He’d finally admitted it was from the mound! But every time Keith called, something was wrong. Had the timber thieves struck again, or did that Wisconsin mill have a lead on a delivery of his oak trees? Nothing but this stupendous find—her missing link—mattered right now.
“He what? Damn! He’s been doing so well. You think Lacey left him? Maybe she was better for him than I thought if he’s off the deep end now. Yes, I’ll be right there.”
“What?” she asked, coming out of her trance. “Is Brad okay?”
“He must have had booze stashed at the mill somewhere, because he’s drunk and lecturing Keith from the high catwalk above the saw line, saying he should have half say in the Mason Mill because Todd won’t ever be back to work. Kate, I’ve got to go, talk him down. Let’s put the mask back in safe storage for now, since you know where it is. We’ll figure out how to handle all this when I get back.”
“Can’t I keep it out?”
“Will you just compromise here?” he demanded, putting the lid on the box and locking it. “What if Brad’s suicidal? He could fall or jump. I need to go!” He pushed it back into its little tomb, and she shoved her business card in after it.
Picturing the horror of Todd’s free fall from the tree, she helped him shove the three masonry blocks back in place. Brad mattered; living people mattered, yes, even more than buried treasure.
Grant pocketed the key.
They stood, bumping shoulders. “We’ll work together on this,” he told her. “I thought Brad was safe from himself—and I want you to stay safe.”
He hugged her hard and ran upstairs, leaving her to put the oak panels if not the hutch back in place. She sat on the floor with her back to the blocks, as the guardian of the precious mask that lay within, just behind her. She wasn’t angry with Grant for the crime he’d committed and the lies he’d told her. After all, he’d shown her the mask and he’d hugged her goodbye. Surely, everything would be all right now. They would work together on this.
She just sat there, waiting for Grant to call, still stunned by all that had happened and amazed she had no desire to phone Carson, despite the magnitude of this find. She loved being so close to the proof her years of work and research had been right. After sitting for maybe fifteen minutes or so, she heard footsteps upstairs. Oh, no! Had Keith called Grant with bad news? Or could it be that Brad had come down from the catwalk at the mill and come here, missing Grant? Who else but the cleaning woman had a key to this house?
She hurried up the steps. “Grant?” she called as she rushed into the living room.
Standing with a pistol pointed stiff-armed at her was Carson Cantrell.
28
At first, Kate’s mind wouldn’t register that Carson was actually here, in Grant’s living room, so close to the mound. And with a gun pointed at her. Too many shocks today, too much to handle...
“Carson, did you come here to force Grant to let us dig? How did you get in?”
“Let’s just say I’m here, darling, and your Grant’s not.”
He picked up the sketch of the four artifacts from the coffee table. “Paul Kettering was quite a good artist. It was a tragedy he died. He contacted me about selling his eagle pendant and hinted that he might have access to a deerlike antlered mask.”
“Which you failed to mention to me, knowing it would make my case.”
“And your name, instead of mine. He said he needed an expert opinion, then changed his mind, even though I’d offered him an outrageous amount of money. He threatened to expose me for wanting those items for my private collection if I wouldn’t keep his secret. There was no going back.”
“You—you killed Paul?”
“It was ruled an accident and rightly so, since we struggled. But then, wouldn’t you know, I couldn’t find where the man had hidden the pendant. I couldn’t rely on you, either, two-timing me, choosing Grant over me after all I’d done for you. Do you think you would have moved up in the department or the academic world so fast without my mentoring and collaboration?”