Page 47 of Artifacts

“We should go.” Darrell stepped down and helped Aldric down too, holding his hand for longer than was necessary. Aldric couldn’t resist smiling his thanks, and Darrell returned it.Oh.Aldric’s heart squeezed again and he wondered how long the seeds of love actually took to sprout…and if they’d taken root at first sight, after all.

“Wait,” Elliot said, holding up a hand. The other held something he was refusing to let a police officer take. “Before you go and before this is taken into custody or evidence or whatever, don’t you think we should have a final chance to open it? To solve it, Aldric?” He passed what he carried to him.

Aldric was sick of the sight of the Buckman artifacts, this one especially, and almost dropped the puzzle box. “Me? I tried. We all did, remember?”

“Darrell didn’t,” Elliot pointed out, nodding at him. “Let him try.”

“I don’t know anything about these things!” Darrell protested to Elliot. “I couldn’t even solve a Rubik’s Cube.” Still, he took the puzzle from Aldric and held it up to catch the light, then turned it around, examining it from all angles and sides.

“You think it’s the inlay squares that hold the key?” Aldric asked Elliot, who nodded. He stared at the hexagonal box in Darrell’s hands. The pale blue of the police vehicle light played over it, giving it a macabre appearance.

“These are different colors, right?” Darrell said at last. “I mean, I know they’re white, not brown like the wood. I remember that from seeing the box before. But are some of them yellower than the others?”

“I think so!” Aldric put a hand around the box, so he and Darrell held it together, one hand each, their free hands touching. “They make a pattern, I think? They go up in a curve around the side here, to the middle of the back and up over the top to stop in the middle of what could be the lid here…”

“And the same on this side, to meet in the center of the lid. And see what the shape is?” Darrell asked.

Aldric studied the curvature his fingers were making, and the identical one Darrel’s hand was curled into. “It’s a heart,” he whispered. “Isn’t it?”

“Looks like it. Shall we try?”

“Yes. Even though we don’t know for sure, and we might get it wrong, we should try.” Aldric brushed the back of his hand against Darrell’s, trusting that Darrell understood the question and that his answer had been about far more than the puzzle. They were gathering an audience.

“On three? Elliot, count us in?” Darrell suggested.

On Elliot’sthree, with everyone standing close and holding their breaths, Aldric and Darrell touched their fingertips to the off-white inlaid squares that felt cooler to Aldric than the wood of the box—and nothing happened. They stopped, together. “Elliot?” Aldric asked.

“Try again,” came his suggestion, and he began the count.

Still nothing happened.

“I’ll count,” Darrell said, and they did it again.

“Anything?” Sean asked, with a sidelong glance at the other patrol officers. “Only they really need to get to the station and process all this in.”

“I know!” Darrell snapped. “Aldric, you say go.”

“Go?” Aldric said, and he and Darrell pressed the tips of their fingers onto the ivory squares. “Nothing!” he exclaimed.

“Maybe nothing’s right.” Darrell dropped his hand from the box. “As in, there is nothing. Or it’s something else that opens it. Either way, we can’t keep doing this all damn night.”

“Hmm. I wonder.” Elliot coughed. “How many times have you tried that move?”

Aldric frowned. “Four.” He turned the box around in his hand, feeling its hexagon shape.Hexagon.Five!“So we should do it again! Darrell, five! On three, go. One, two—”

“Three.” Darrell finished the count and pressed in perfect symmetry with Aldric, and the box lid slid open. Everyone gasped and half of their audience cheered. “Grab that thing inside it,” he ordered and Aldric plunged his fingers in and snatched the many-folded sheet of paper out.

Before anyone could stop him, he smoothed the paper flat. After all they’d been through, he had to know. The tiny writing was difficult to make out, but he managed, and drew Darrell’s attention to what Buck Buckman had left his son. It was more than just the house. “No wonder Randa was worried and tried to retrieve the items she’d sold.”

He imagined she’d thought it would be a simple matter of snatching them back and destroying them before anyone found the will, only to discover it wasn’t.

“Buckman must have told his son, sent him some hints or messages,” Darrell mused. “And his son came to town. Or maybe just for the funeral. Guess we’ll find out.” He dropped the puzzle box into an evidence bag Sean was holding out and grinned at Aldric. “It’s amazing what we can do, if we try together.”

* * * *

They were together again for another occasion in which the SAPD was involved, almost a month later. The Buckman funeral had been held, a private ceremony, which his son Nick and the guy he was seeing, Mateo—Darrell’s former hook-up—attended, but not his widow, Randa. The case was ongoing, and Darrell had no choice but to be involved, but preferred to focus on other things, such as changes in his career, and him and Aldric.

Like now, at the police substation, in the press briefing room. Captain Miller didn’t have as much to say on an occasion like this as Fuentes would have, and the audience was a lot smaller, but Darrell was just as reluctant to step into the spotlight. He did, though.

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