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skeleton. Import
    Carly
scrutinized the trail map. “Look here,” she said. “In her email to you Payton
wrote ‘CAC Trail’. It might not be the same, but here’s a trail named the
Cactus Canyon Trail.”
    “It
clearly wasn’t a trail of paperwork from the Paris Bourse, so we have nothing.
That’s something . Let’s go hiking!”
    We’d picked
up some cat food and made sure Teddy had plenty of water, then we hit the road.

 
    We
missed the trailhead three times. When finally we parked our rental car and
laced up our boots, I had a single goal. If we were on to something, we were
looking for the next part of Payton’s email. Three skeletons.
    “Do you
actually think we’re going to find three dead bodies up here?” Sterling moaned.
    “Of
course not. For one thing, it’s been too long. Someone would have seen them.
But maybe it’s something like a skeleton. And maybe it’s not human,” I said.
    “Still,”
Carly added, “I think we should look for lumps in the grounds.”
    “You
mean like graves,” Sterling whimpered.
    “Hell, I
don’t know what I mean,” Carly said. “But Lauren’s right. Payton was smart.
Damn smart. There are other definitions of the word skeleton.”
    “Yeah,
right. Like what?” Sterling picked off cholla cacti that had already jumped
onto her legs.
    Carly
stopped walking. “Supportive structures. Like frames. You know, bare bones
means the essential parts are left. There might be some old out-buildings up
here from early homesteaders.”
    Sterling
resumed the hike, hollering back to us, “Now you’re talking. I prefer to think
we’re not up here looking for cadavers.”
    We hiked
up a section of loose rocks, all of us with our eyes on the ground in order to
see unstable earth and rocks, icky desert critters, piercing stickers, and to
prevent falling on any three mounds of human remains.
    “Skeleton
could me something very thin. Like, skeletal.”
    “Are you
kidding me,” Carly said. “There’s a billion skinny looking cacti up here.”
    “So we
look for a grouping of three,” I said, trying to keep the faith. Trying to make
sense of it all.
    Carly
did a quick, “ Pffft ,” but lead the way. “Still,
there’s a billion Three Musketeers up here,” she said.
    Three
and a half miles seemed manageable, but after the first mile the terrain grew
steeper. Luckily, we prepared for the harsh climate with plenty of water.
    We stuck
to the trail, assuming Payton wouldn’t have ventured off it. Having lived in
the desert for so many years she knew about the dangers of reptiles and wild
cats more than any of us dared imagine. I only mentioned watching out for
rattlesnakes and Gila monsters once, when Sterling fell out from taking the
lead.
    “I
didn’t even know Payton liked to hike,” Carly said.
    Payton
had never mentioned hiking to me, either.
    Carly
stopped to take a gulp of water and her vaporous eyes fixed on mine. “If we’re
even close to the where , just what are we looking for?”
    “I don’t
know, but we all agree it must be important.”
    “Yeah.
Maybe that’s what she meant when she typed the word import. Nothing she’s
importing, but it’s important,” Carly said.
    Sterling
fiercely nodded her head in agreement, pulling out a clip to secure her long
blond hair off her neck.
    Every
time we spotted an obvious cluster of three cacti or bushes, we hiked over to
them for a closer inspection. We’d root around at the base of them, look across
the horizon from where they stood in case something jumped out at us. Nothing
jumped out at us but for the cholla cacti.
    Carly
cursed at the spines of the fuzzy cactus now piercing through her boot.
    Using leather
gloves we’d picked up at the hardware store, we took turns trying to reach
inside some of the lower holes animals had carved into the giant saguaro. I
quickly deduced no one would hide anything that way unless they didn’t want it
to be discovered for a hundred years, when maybe the cacti would