Read Online Maya Mound Mayhem (A Logan Dickerson Cozy Mystery Book 3) by Abby L. Vandiver - Free Book Online Page B

bring
Uncle Greg because I’m going to need a good lawyer.
    “No, Mommy,” I
said instead. “Thanks though. I just had a quick question.”
    “What?”
    “Do you know an
archaeologist by the name of Aaron Coulter?”
    “Why do you ask me
that?” she said with a sudden panic in her voice. “Have you seen him? Did he
say something to you?”
    “No.”
    “Look stop beating
around the bush, Logan,” her voice had gone up two octaves and three decibels.
“Come out with it. Tell me why you asked me about him.”
    “Because he was at
my site-”
    “Your site. You
need to leave there,” she said before I could finish.
    “Mommy. Calm down.
His bones were at my site. He’s dead. Evidently murdered.”
    She didn’t say
anything for a long minute. I felt uncomfortable as the silence hung in the
air. I had upset her and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I needed to be upset, too. “Mommy.
Are you there,” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
    “Aaron Coulter was
the man Simon Melas called into Belize to take over your site. We met him in
Panama. I don’t know how you could forget that. He is the man that tried to
kill you. Tried to kill the both of us.” She took in a breath. “The man that
did kill Jairo.”
    I gasped.
    Jairo Zacapa had
been murder number one. The first murder I’d witnessed. Shot down. He had died
right before my eyes.

 
    Chapter
Nineteen
     
    My mother was the
master crier. She cried so much that my father once said he didn’t know how she
could have any tears left. But now I think I had her beat.
    After I hung up
from her, I sat on the floor of the bathroom and pulled my knees up to my
chest, and I just let loose. The tears were rolling out without any effort on
my part. No pulling my eyes tight, turning up my face, they just gushed.
    The man that was
dead was a man who had tried in the past to kill me.
    Had he been there
to kill me now?
    I didn’t know if I
was more scared of that – maybe even after death he still be able to carry it
out because he had a plan in place. Or what the police would say when they found
out that I knew Aaron and how.
    Maybe it was a
good thing for me that he was dead.
    The reason I’d
come to Georgia in the first place was because I had excavated Maya ruins in
Belize with my mother and found not only tunnels that ran under most of Central
America, but the possible America/Maya connection I had become obsessed with.
    My mother, Dr.
Justin Dickerson, biblical archaeologist extraordinaire, and keeper of the
secret of man’s true origin came because I’d needed her help in deciphering the
inscription on a stone slab I’d found in the jungle right outside of my
excavation site. It was my first time being in charge of an archaeological site
and I’d felt a bit overwhelmed. I knew the inscription on the slab meant
something significant, but I just couldn’t seem to figure it out. And like any
mom she came right away to offer her expertise.
    And her expertise
led us to Track Rock Gap. But the federal government wasn’t letting people in
to see it and our search for American Maya was stalled. I thought only
temporarily.
    But everything
just keep tripping me up.
    Like murder.
    What we didn’t
know was that the person that hired me, Simon Melas, an old nemesis of my
mother’s had surreptitiously gotten me on to run the dig. But what he really
wanted was my mother. He was counting on me to need her and get her down to
Belize. So he could kill her. And me too, I guess. But when he realized that my
mother and I had found out something big, he didn’t want to lose recognition
for the find. So he brought in Aaron Coulter.
    The dead man I
found at Track Rock Gap.
    How could I have
forgotten about him?
    Aaron wanted to
find us, take over the site by force, and it turned out by any force necessary.
Simon told Aaron that he’d given him the ability to track me on the GPS on the
satellite phone he’d given me as part of the equipment issued for the dig. But
so Simon could still