Buried Secrets Read online

  “She wasn’t any Elizabeth Taylor, but she was… I don’t know…magnetic looking maybe?” Colton said. “Is that even possible to tell from an old coin?”

  “No, it’s true,” Dallas said in a dreamy voice, lost in her own thoughts “She was said to be the most captivating woman that ever lived.”

  “And the most powerful.”

  “For sure,” Dallas said and took a picture with her phone, blowing up the view so she could see the faces on the coins better.

  Colton wandered off to the next exhibit, but Dallas stayed, mesmerized by the tiny coins. She imagined what it must feel like to hold them. But even more than that, she imagined what it had been like to unearth them on a dig. Even being the proverbial fly on the wall for something like that would be a dream come true for Dallas.

  It was more than the fact that these were the only things that showed what Cleopatra looked like. It was that these coins being found underwater in the sunken ruins of the ancient city of Alexandria were the first artifacts she’d ever seen that had a direct link to Cleopatra.

  If the coins could be found, if these massive statues could be found, who was to say that Cleopatra’s tomb couldn’t be found?

  As Dallas stood there, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. But it had nothing to do with the exhibit. It was something else.

  Dallas felt him before she saw him out of the corner of her eye.

  A man was standing behind her. He was about her height but stooped, as if he was shrinking into himself. He had longish brown hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed or brushed for quite some time. His bushy eyebrows were lowered over penetrating dark eyes. He wasn’t looking at the coins. He was staring at her.

  Dallas’s first impression, after unease, was that the man had a little bit of a mad scientist air about him. It could be the messy hair and wild look in his eyes.

  Self-consciously, Dallas reached for her ankh necklace, but it was tucked into her T-shirt. His eyes followed her gesture. His attention made her uncomfortable and she started to move past him when he reached out and placed his hand on her arm.

  She jerked away. “I don’t let strangers touch me.” Her voice was cold, strong, firm.

  He followed her as she headed into the small theater that was part of the exhibit. A film on the ancient history of Alexandria was slated to start in five minutes.

  He ignored her words and the angry set of her jaw and got in front of her.

  “You look a little like her,” he said, his eyes scanning her face. His voice held an accent she couldn’t place.

  She scoffed. “Does anyone really know what she looks like.”

  As she made a move to leave, he said, “I wasn’t talking about Cleopatra.”

  She froze.

  “I was talking about your mother.”

  Dallas’s heart leaped into her throat.

  “What?”

  Just then Colton appeared at her side.

  “Everything okay here?” Colton asked.

  The man stepped back a space.

  Dallas’s mouth was dry, as if all the moisture had been sucked out of it, and she couldn’t speak for a second.

  “This man says I look like my mother,” her voice was shaking.

  “You do. A little,” the man cocked his head, examining her.

  “Excuse me,” Colton said. “Do you know each other.”

  Dallas shook her head, feeling bewildered. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Colton said.

  Finally, Dallas regained her composure. “How did you know my mother?”

  “I didn’t,” the man said.

  Dallas’s eyes narrowed. “Then how do you know I look like her? Who are you? I think you have explaining to do.”

  Colton crossed his arms across his chest. He gave Dallas a look that said everything. She nodded at him that it was okay.

  The man’s eyes darted around wildly, not meeting her gaze.

  “I’ve seen pictures of her.”

  Dallas felt a wave of irritation. She was losing her patience. “Spit it out. Quit being so cryptic.”

  “I worked with your father.”

  Dallas raised an eyebrow. “Are you a photographer?”

  “Not exactly,” he said and bit his inner lip.

  “Keep talking.”

  “I saw a picture of your mother once.”

  Dallas noticed how he still hadn’t explained who he was.

  At that moment, an announcement was made, people poured into the small theater area, the lights dimmed and the film began. When she turned back, the man had slipped away.

  Colton was gone too.

  Dallas pushed through the crowd to the door at the back of the small room and opened it, stepping into the light, blinking. Colton was standing there examining a headless statue.

  When Colton saw her, he was frowning. “I tried to find that guy, but he disappeared. Kind of odd him showing up here and approaching you. I don’t like it.”

  “It was strange, but he seemed harmless,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Colton said. “Do you think he made all that up just to hit on you?”

  Dallas shrugged.

  “Want to go check out the jewelry and pottery?” he asked.

  She nodded, but couldn’t help but feel uneasy about the man’s words and his sudden disappearance.

  Later, as they were going down the stairs to the main floor to leave, Dallas felt a trickle of dread and looked around to see what might have caused it. Three stories up by the railing overlooking the stairway and main floor she saw him.

  At first, she hadn’t seen him because he blended into mannequins of the mid-century fashion exhibit but then he stepped forward slightly. It was definitely the same man who had been in the theater. He backed away from the railing and was gone.

  She paused. Her instinct was to go after him and ask what the hell his deal was, but by the time she went back up two stories, he’d be long gone.

  Colton noticed she was no longer behind him and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

  She cast one last glance upward and then went down to meet Colton.

  “Want to grab a drink?” he asked.

  Dallas made a face. “I wish. I have a hot date with a bunch of midterm exams that need grading.”

  “Fun times.”

  As she drove back to her place, Dallas thought about the man standing there watching her. It was so strange. It was almost as if he’d wanted her to see him.

  Two

  For a second, sitting at her desk in the front her classroom, Dallas tried to stifle her yawn, but then realized nobody was paying attention anyway.

  A night spent grading papers had meant only four hours of sleep. That was about eight less than she normally needed. At least it was the last day of the term. She’d make up for her lack of sleep during the break.

  All of Dallas’s students had their heads down, either on their phones, laptops or iPads. She’d given them the rest of the hour to do some independent study. It was the last day of the semester and she didn’t have anything new for them to do before break now that their midterm exams were graded and returned.

  The only person who noticed her huge yawn was sitting in the first row. Sam Randall. He shook his shaggy blond head of hair and matched her yawn with an even bigger one. Then he rolled his eyes at her.

  Looking at her graduate assistant, she decided he needed to eat a cookie or two. Maybe she’d buy some and give them to him as a Christmas present. He was so thin from running marathons and so naturally pale, he looked like a skinny white wraith sitting in the front row. Each new school year, at least one student would do a double take when they walked into class and saw the gifted programmer sitting in his customary front row seat.

  Once, when a student had come to her office and complained about Sam creeping him out, Dallas had lectured the kid on how the grad student was smarter than the entire anthropology department put together and that
if the kid didn’t like it, he didn’t have to take her class. And furthermore, Dallas told the kid, if Sam had wanted to, he could probably be filthy rich right now working for some tech company, but instead, he chose to sit in her classroom and help her out.

  Then Dallas made the offending student sit by Sam as she lectured the class about a powerful new cartographic mapping system that allowed archeologists around the world could enter writings and recordings found at any dig and the computer would plot out what the civilization looked like on a map. The program also estimated what tunnels and caves and temples might have existed and provided a map of what they looked like, as well.

  At the end of her presentation, she pointed to Sam.

  “And he played a major role in developing the program. We are so lucky to have him here helping us.”

  The student had looked at Sam wide-eyed and was in awe of him the rest of the semester.

  Now, as Sam rolled his eyes at her, she looked exaggeratedly at her watch and then nodded toward the door before making gestures as if she was guzzling beer.

  Sam laughed out loud and several startled students looked up. But only for a few seconds and then dipped their heads again to their online imaginary worlds.

  Soon, the hour was over.

  In her office, Dallas tidied up some papers and books and checked a few emails glancing frequently at the clock. She couldn’t wait to leave for the day. She was celebrating the last day of the semester by attending the reading from the two archeologists who’d discovered the sunken city artifacts.

  She’d googled the two men, but there was a surprising lack of information about them online, only a few research papers and a technical article or two in the European press.

  While the exhibit had been utterly mind-blowing, Dallas was even more excited about the reading and talk. She wanted to ask them archeologists about the search for Cleopatra’s tomb.

  Nobody had come as close as they had. They’d been the first people to unearth huge pieces of the sunken city of Alexandria. And yet, the literature at the exhibit had said that they’d only found an approximate ten percent of what was there to be found.

  She retrieved a few protein bars from a drawer in her desk and scarfed down two of them. She planned to go straight to the talk. She’d told Colton about it, but he’d said he had plans.

  Her heart had sunk a little. Did he have a date? He was so vague about it. Dallas tried not to let her thoughts go there but she had to admit she was jealous.

  Only a few more minutes and she’d leave. She glanced down at her outfit. The cargo pants, heavy sweater and combat boots might be a little unconventional for a professor, but she’d somehow made it work. At least none of the higher-ups had ever complained about them.

  Even though she’d worn what she considered her “dress-up” clothes today—her tight black cargo pants instead of her baggy tan ones—she still looked like she’d just stumbled in from a dig. She was uncertain how the look would go over at a fancy museum talk.

  Leaning over, she reached into a box on the floor and pulled out a wadded-up black blazer to throw on. She stripped off the heavy sweater, revealing the tank top underneath and tugged on the blazer. She unlaced her hiking boots, tossing them in a corner. After rummaging around through half a dozen boxes on the floor, she found what she was looking for. They were still boots, granted, but these babies had a three-inch-heel. They said, “I’m sexy and I can kick your butt!” she thought.

  After taking her hair down out of its signature ponytail and finger combing it into submission, she swiped a slash of pink lipstick onto her lips. Looking into the bathroom mirror on the way out of the building, Dallas smiled. She was ready to go.

  She closed her office door with a thud. She’d return the next day and straighten up the small tornado that she’d created over the past semester. It was her ritual during break. She’d finally have time to get organized. Usually as soon as she did, the new semester was ready to start up again, but that was okay.

  The reading was held in a small room on the second floor of the museum. She was directed to the elevator, but she took the stairs. Always take the stairs! She reminded herself. Then she suddenly grew sad. Would she always feel like the overweight girl who had to be on guard and give herself pep talks? She pulled her shoulders back. No. She was powerful. Strong. Healthy. Taking the stairs kept her that way. That was all.

  Traffic had been hellish and she realized she hadn’t given herself enough time to get to the museum so by the time she parked, the reading had already started. She slipped inside the door at the back of the room, hoping she wouldn’t be disruptive.

  At first, she scanned the seating area, looking for an available seat nearby, but then her eyes landed on the archeologist who was speaking and she drew back. It was the man who had spoken to her at the exhibit. He was seated before a name plate at the table in the front. His name was David Caldwell. The archeologist who found the sunken treasures. The other archeologist, Malcolm Land, a wiry, blonde-haired man who looked a little like Crocodile Dundee, was staring at her. Dallas could feel her face flush red, but then it got worse when he paused in mid-sentence and raised an eyebrow at her.

  A few heads turned. A few people made noises that seemed to scold her for coming in late. She pulled back her shoulders and dared anyone who was scoffing to look her in the eyes. Nobody did. She knew the people in the audience were acting that way because they thought she was rude for coming in late, but she also knew why David Caldwell, had raised his eyebrow at her and stopped talking.

  It was clearly a “Gotcha” moment.

  But why?

  The man, David Caldwell, continued speaking and Dallas caught her breath at his words.

  “The discovery of Cleopatra’s tomb would be as monumental as Howard Carter’s discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922,” he said. “It would be the most significant archeological find in a century.”

  He wasn’t telling Dallas anything she didn’t already know, but hearing it said out loud sent a chill down her spine.

  Ever since she was a little girl she’d been obsessed with Cleopatra

  Dallas knew the exact moment in her childhood when it happened.

  Her father, who had left them when she was a baby, had shown up at their Arizona house at dusk.

  At the time, Dallas had just returned from an utterly disastrous time at summer camp involving her nearly drowning where she had been mocked and taunted by her fellow campers and forever earned an unfortunate nickname.

  Over the years, her father dropped in now and then, staying for a day or two and then leaving again. He would send her postcards from around the world with pictures of the places he was photographing for National Geographic.

  And on birthdays and Christmas, he would send her exotic gifts, such as hand-carved dolls from Tahiti or scorpions encased in amber.

  On this day, when her father arrived unexpectedly at their house, Dallas had been home from camp for a week, but was still morose and pouting about the humiliation she’d endured. Her mother had been sympathetic, but not to the point of babying her. Instead, her mother had talked about getting Dallas private swim lessons and helping her learn aerobics.

  Even my mother thinks I’m fat, Dallas said, feeling sorry for herself.

  On this night, her mother had been sitting on the edge of her bed trying to coax Dallas to come downstairs and eat dinner when the doorbell rang. Their dogs, three giant labs, went wild.

  When they moved out to the Saguaro-dotted desert, her mother had said she was either going to buy a shotgun or a pack of dogs. She wasn’t going to spend her nights out here alone in the desert.

  Her dad came to visit and bought her mother a gun, saying dogs were too much work.

  But then six months later, he showed up again with three lab puppies he said had been abandoned.

  “Three?” Her mother’s voice contained a joy and excitement that was contagious. Her mother grabbed her father and kissed him and hugged him. Dallas was
used to it. Even though her dad didn’t live at home, her parents were clearly still in love. She no longer begged him to stay. Her mother said he was a “free spirit.”

  Then that one summer night, when the dogs were going bonkers, Dallas saw her mother’s eyes dart to her bedroom across the hall where the shotgun was on the closet shelf. Her dad had said that the gun didn’t even need to be fired—any prowler would run for the hills just hearing her mother chamber a round in the shotgun.

  Her mother was up now and across the room. Dallas caught up to her downstairs where the dogs were still barking like banshees at the silhouette of a man standing in the open doorway.

  It was her dad. Dallas ran and hugged him as hard as she could.

  After pouring themselves glasses of whiskey, her mother and father settled themselves on the front porch furniture. Their faces were barely visible from the fairy lights strung across the porch. In the distance, a cow bellowed. Chickens scratched and clucked on the side of the house. The smell of the neighbor’s fresh cut alfalfa field traveled on a breeze and Dallas inhaled deeply, sipping on her own Kool-Aid and listening in on the adult conversation.

  She didn’t want to miss a second with her dad. It was hard to tell when he would leave again.

  She looked down and saw a garden snake slithering under their feet. She leaned over to pick it up, letting it slither through her fingers in an endless circle.

  Her father had jumped a little when he saw the snake.

  “I forget those little guys are harmless. Some places I go, you see a snake, it could be a rattler or a Cobra. Most of the time when I see a snake, it’s one that wants me dead if I don’t kill it first.”

  “Cobras?” Dallas asked sleepily, stroking the snake’s head. “Will they really kill you? Like they did Cleopatra?”

  Dallas and her mother had watched a movie with Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra the previous winter. Her mother had rented it after Dallas asked about the necklace her mother always wore. It was an Ankh, her mother said.