Dead Secret by Beverly Connor

“How are you doing—you know, after the almost fall?”
    “A little sore.” Diane stretched her muscles, bending down so that her head touched her ankles and stretching her back. It felt good.
    “That had to be scary,” said Neva.
    Diane sat up. “It was. But when something like that happens, as you know, you put all your energies into hanging on. I was lucky that Mike was there to throw me a rope.”
    “How do you get rid of the fear?”
    “You don’t. It’s kind of like pain—you just work through it.” Neva was silent for a moment, as if contemplating what Diane said. “You appear to be working through your fear of caving pretty well,” said Diane.
    Neva nodded and smiled. “Mike’s been a big help. He’s a really great guy, although . . . ” She smiled and lowered her voice, as if he might be lurking around listening. “Sometimes he’s a little stuffy.”
    Diane was surprised. “Mike, stuffy? How?”
    Neva took off her dirty shirt and slipped a clean tee over her head. “He’s a vegetarian and mostly likes classical music. And when he starts talking about geology . . . I mean, he thinks folded rocks are so interesting. I never knew you could fold rocks, but Georgia apparently has a lot of them.”
    “I knew he liked classical music. He used to date a violinist in a string quartet.” Diane slipped on a pair of clean blue jeans.
    “Did he? One thing I like about Mike is that he never talks about his ex-girlfriends, and he’s apparently had a lot.”
    “Oh?”
    “At least, a lot of girls seem to know him.”
    Diane knew that when Neva was first assigned by the Rosewood Police Department to Diane’s crime scene unit, she had been afraid of Diane. She had come a long way to be able to share girl talk with her.
    “I can imagine. He’s a great-looking guy.”
    “And smart. He’s the most educated guy I’ve ever dated. In my family, when I went to the police academy, you’d have thought I was going to Yale. Mike knows a lot of stuff. Sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
    “Neither do I when he starts talking geology. You and I aren’t geologists. But you know a lot of stuff he doesn’t. The whole area of evidence collection and forensics, for example. And your artwork.”
    “That’s true.” Neva nodded. “You know those little animals I do from clay? He loves that. I gave him one I did of a mustang.”
    “Mike admires talent.”
    Diane pulled her shirt off over her head and reached for her blouse—crisp white with an embroidered neckline.
    Neva stared at Diane’s rib cage. “My God, did you get that when you fell?”
    Diane looked down at her ribs. A large patch of skin had started to turn blue. “Must have been when I grabbed onto the rope. I swung into the wall pretty hard.”
    “It looks sore.”
    Diane fingered the bruise and made a face when it smarted. “It is a little tender. I’ll put an ice pack on it when I get home.” She pulled the blouse over her head. “This has been quite an eventful trip.”
    “I’ll say. Do you think the sheriff will let us process the evidence?”
    “I imagine he’ll go along with the coroner.” Diane scooped up her dirty clothes, rolled them up and tucked them into her pack, and walked with Neva to the vehicles. Diane climbed in hers and started the engine. She waved at Neva and MacGregor as they climbed into Mike’s SUV.

    The next order of business was to get the body of Caver Doe logged in and secured in the museum forensic lab until arrangements could be made for the autopsy. That job was made easier by a call on her cell phone from Sheriff Burns as she drove back to Rosewood. As she had suspected, the possibly fifty-year-old case of Caver Doe did not rank as a priority in Sheriff Burns’s pressing caseload. He was more than happy to let Diane arrange the processing of the body.
    Diane scrolled down her cell phone address book to the number for Lynn Webber, the medical examiner for Hall County, and got Lynn on