Dead Secret by Beverly Connor Page B

help.”
    Diane pulled the plug in the bathtub, stood up and reached for the towel. “Great, I’m in the mood to be waited on.”
    “Diane, what happened?” Frank held on to the towel as he stared at the blue bruise that covered the length of her left rib cage.
    “It’s nothing. I bumped into a wall in the cave.”
    “It’s not nothing, and you don’t get a bruise like that bumping into a wall.”
    “I was hanging on to a rope at the time—it was swinging. Look, it’s just a bruise. I get bruises all the time when I’m caving.”
    “I see you naked on a fairly regular basis and I have never seen you bruised up like this.”
    Diane grabbed at the towel. Frank wrapped it around her and helped her dry off.
    “There’s not much to tell, really.”
    “When you say there’s not much to tell, I know there’s a story lurking. What happened?”
    “I fell through some loose rocks . . . an ordinary caving mishap.”
    “Fell through some loose rocks, hanging on a rope? I’m not getting a picture of this. You are going to have to draw a little better.”
    Damn. Diane could see she was going to have to tell him. The last thing she wanted to hear from Frank tonight was a lecture on the dangers of caving. Noncavers just didn’t understand the allure of caves—and it wasn’t like she had accidents every weekend. “At least let me get dressed.”
    “Is that necessary?” He drew her close.

    Later, Diane, in faded jeans and a tee, sat on her sofa cross-legged, finishing her chicken-and-cashew-nut dinner. Frank sat on the other end enjoying a dish of spareribs in peanut curry sauce. Brahms’s “Waltz in A-flat” was just finishing on her CD player.
    Frank took the plates to the kitchen and came back with a cup of coffee for each of them. “Okay, now that you’ve had time to think out your story, are you going to tell me how you got that bruise?”
    Diane should have known he wouldn’t forget. She explained how the rocks were caught in the hole, creating a false floor, trying to make it sound like nothing. In fact, the near miss had rattled her, but she found ignoring it was more effective for her peace of mind than dwelling on it. What nagged at her the most was not as much the near fall, but the fact that she had overlooked something dangerous.
    “Mike was there with some rope,” she said. “That’s why I cave with several people. We watch one another’s backs.”
    “But for a while you were hanging by your fingers?”
    Diane stared at the stereo. She had put some Beethoven sonatas on low. She was wondering now if she should turn up the volume and drown out the conversation. She glanced at the remote and sighed. “Yes. But when you climb rocks you develop strong hands.”
    “Right. How far would you have fallen?”
    “Not that far. I’m not sure,” Diane said as she took a long sip of her coffee and made a grab for the remote. Frank, apparently, anticipated her move and grabbed it first.
    “Yes, you are. You map caves. You have that little laser gadget with you. Don’t tell me you didn’t measure the height of the chamber once you were in it.”
    “Okay. Thirty feet.”
    “Thirty feet! God, Diane, that could have killed you.”
    “Probably only broken some bones. But I didn’t fall. Look, most of the time caving is uneventful, in terms of actual danger. This was an unusual trip.” She glared at him directly in his eyes. “Frank, I love caving. I’m a good caver, and a safe one.”
    She decided not to mention the rock slide. That wasn’t even a near miss. They got out of the tunnel in plenty of time . . . sort of.
    “This is actually a fairly tame cave so far. But what was interesting was what we found in the chamber,” she said.
    Frank raised his eyebrows. “What did you find?”
    “A mummified caver who wasn’t as lucky as I was. Looks like he probably broke some bones and couldn’t get out.”
    Frank shook his head. “Do you have some kind of compass that points you to dead