down the phone the second time, he looked over at her and smiled.
“It shouldn’t take long.” In no more than three seconds, the phone
rang. He motioned her away and picked it up. “Carruthers here.”
He listened, wrote something down on a sheet of paper. “Thanks
a lot,Jarvis, I owe you. Yeah, yeah, you know I always pay up. It just
might not be tomorrow. You know how to reach me. Okay, thanks.
Bye.”
He carefully laid the phone back into the cradle. “It isn’t Ann
McBride, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, of course it’s not Tyler’s missing wife. I never thought it
was. I’ve known him since I was eighteen. I’ve never met a more
decent man. Really.” But she was nearly shaking with relief, and he
saw it. However, it was his turn to let it go.
But then she said, “I couldn’t have stood it if Tyler had been a
monster instead of a really nice guy. I guess I would have just hung
it up.”
“Yeah, your boyfriend is off the hook. The skeleton was buried
inside that wall for at least ten years, possibly more. She was probably
in her late teens when she was killed by a hard blow right in the face,
the forehead actually. Whoever did it was really pissed, enraged, totally
out of control. Jarvis said it was a vicious blow, killed her instantly.”
“It looks like Jacob Marley really might have killed her, then.”
He shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not our problem, thank God.”
“It’s certainly mine, since she tumbled out of the wall onto my
basement floor. I can’t believe anyone would kill a teenager for
wandering across his yard, and with such viciousness.”
A second later the phone rang. It was Bernie Bradstreet, owner
of The Riptide Independent, wanting to know what she could tell
him. “I know the sheriff wants to keep a lid on this, but–”
She told him everything, omitting only what Adam Carruthers
had just found out from the medical examiner’s office. She didn’t
think the sheriff would like to be cut out of that particular loop.
Then Bernie Bradstreet asked her to dinner, with his wife, he hastened
to add when she didn’t say anything. She put him off. When
she hung up the phone, Adam said, “Newspaper? You handled it
well. Now you need to call the sheriff. Don’t tell him you already
know the answers just encourage him to call the medical examiner’s
office. Jarvis told me they’re not ready to release the information
yet, but if the sheriff calls, he might be able to pry it out of them.
Oh, yeah, when the sheriff comes, tell him I’m your cousin from
Baltimore come to visit. Okay?”
“Cousins? We don’t look anything alike.”
He gave her a crooked grin.”Thank heaven for that.”
Sheriff Gaffney didn’t like the news from Augusta. He liked tidy
conclusions, puzzles where all the pieces finally locked cleanly into
place, not this: an old skeleton, identity unknown, that had been
bricked inside Jacob Marley’s basement wall after her gruesome
murder. He didn’t really want Ann McBride to be dead, but it
would have made things so much cleaner, so nice and straightforward.
He glanced at Tyler McBride. The guy looked calm, but relieved?
He just couldn’t tell. Tyler had always managed to keep
what he was feeling close to his vest. He “was good at poker, nobody
liked to play against him. Funny thing, though, the sheriff
would have sworn that Tyler had killed his wife. He still kept his
eye on Tyler, hoping to see him do something strange, like visit an
unmarked grave or something. Well, he’d been wrong before. He
guessed maybe he was wrong again. He hated it, it wasn’t pleasant,
but sometimes it happened, even to a man like him.
Sheriff Gaffney looked over at Ms. Powell’s cousin, a big, tough-looking
guy who looked like he could take care of himself. His
body was hard and in good shape, but he seemed like a man who
could be patient, as if he was used to waiting in the shadows, like a
predator stalking its prey. Gaffney shook his head. He had to stop