reading those suspense novels he liked so much.
He looked over at Becca Powell, a nice young woman who
wasn’t, thank God, so pale now, or on the verge of hysteria. Hopefully
her cousin would keep her that way. After finding that skeleton,
just maybe she would be glad to have him around for a while. He
found himself studying Carruthers again. The guy was dark, from his
black hair–too long, in the sheriff’s opinion–to his eyes, nearly
black in the dim late-afternoon light in Jacob Marley’s living room.
He had big feet in scuffed black boots, soft-looking boots that looked
like he’d worn them for a good decade and waited in the shadows
with those boots on his feet, not making a whisper of a sound. He
wondered what the hell the man did for a living. Nothing normal
and expected, he’d bet his next meal on that. Just maybe he didn’t
want to know.
The sheriff looked around the living room. Jesus, the place
looked like a museum or a tomb. It felt old and musty, although it
smelled like lemons, just like at home.
He knew, of course, that everyone was looking at him, waiting.
He liked that. It built suspense. He was holding them in the palm
of his hand. Only thing was, they didn’t look all that scared or worried
or ready to gnaw off their fingernails. A real cool bunch.
Becca said finally, “Sheriff, won’t you be seated? Now, you have
news for us?”
He took the old chair she was waving at, eased down slowly,
then cleared his throat. He was ready to make his big announcement.
“Well now, it does appear that this skeleton isn’t your wife,
Tyler.”
There was a sharp moment of silence, but not the surprise he’d
expected, that he’d wanted, truth be told.
“Thank you for telling me so quickly, Sheriff. I’m pleased that it
wasn’t, because that would have meant that someone had killed her
and it wasn’t me. I hope that wherever Ann is, she’s very much alive
and well and happy.”
But Tyler hadn’t acted surprised. He acted like he already knew.
Well, damn, if Tyler hadn’t killed Ann, then he would certainly
know that the skeleton wasn’t her, or if it was, then someone else
had put her there. That logic made the sheriff’s head ache.
“Humph, I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve contacted all the local
authorities and they’re going to check on runaways from between
ten and fifteen years ago. There’s a good chance we’ll find out who
she is. She was young, probably late teens. That makes it even more
likely that she was a runaway. She was murdered, though. Now, that
makes it a big problem, my big problem.”
“It’s not possible that it’s a local teenager, Sheriff?” Becca asked.
The sheriff shook his head. “Nobody just up and disappeared in
the town’s memory, Ms. Powell. Something like that, folk just
wouldn’t forget. Nope, it’s got to be a runaway.”
Adam Carruthers sat forward, his hands clasped between his
knees. “You think this old man, Jacob Marley, did it?” He was sitting
in a deep leather chair that old Jacob had liked. He looked like
he was the one in charge and that burned the sheriff a bit. Fellow
was too young to be in charge, not too much beyond thirty, about
the same age as Maude’s nephew, Frank, who was currently in
prison out in Folsom, California, for writing bad checks. Frank had
always had soggy morals, even as a boy. Maybe the fellow was shiftless,
like Frank. But hell, the last thing this guy looked was shiftless.
“Sheriff?”
“Yeah? Oh, it’s possible. Like I told Ms. Powell here, old Jacob
didn’t like people poking around. He had a mean streak in him and
no patience to speak of. He could have bashed her.”
Adam said, a dark eyebrow raised a bit, “Mean streak or not, you
believe he actually bashed a young girl in the face with a blunt instrument
and walled her in his basement because he was pissed to
see her trotting across his backyard?”
Sheriff Gaffney said, “A blunt instrument, you say. Well, the ME
didn’t know what the murderer struck her with, maybe a heavy