9
Kellen was pretty sure she already knew the situation out there in the scrubby grass, and she drove that ATV fast enough to make the rain splat against the windshield and Lloyd Magnuson clutch at his seat. He didn’t say a word, though. He, too, knew what they were likely facing.
When they got close to the place where Temo stood, draped in rain gear and leaning against a shovel, she rolled to a stop. Not only because she didn’t want to run over any evidence, but also…she didn’t want to see this.
My God, hadn’t she witnessed enough death in the war zones and…
A pickax, its long spike lethal and shining. Gregory lifting it above her cousin’s head… Kellen blinked the rain out of her eyes. It was just rain…
Lloyd leaped out before the ATV stopped moving and hurried to stand over the carcass. Except it wasn’t a carcass. Even from a distance, she could see that. The scavengers had stripped away most of the flesh and scattered some of the bones over the landscape. But the bones that remained were concentrated and arranged in roughly a human shape. This was a body.
Kellen got out, the wet turf squishing beneath her black leather shoes.
Lloyd stood over the remains, then backed away. “Gross.” Then, “Either of you got a camera?”
“Um. Yes.” Kellen pulled out her phone.
So did Temo.
They looked at Lloyd questioningly.
He retreated farther. “I’ve got a flip phone. Never seen a reason for more.”
“Now you have,” Temo muttered.
“How do you want this photographed?” Kellen didn’t want to take the pictures. She didn’t want to look.
“Um, like, all around. From a distance and close in.” Lloyd shoved his hands into his pockets. “Do you know the last time there was a murder victim around Cape Charade?”
They both shook their heads.
“Neither do I, and I’ve been here for over ten years.” Lloyd glanced at the body. “I’ve never seen someone who was dead and…and rotting. That’s creepy.”
How had Kellen managed to land in the middle of a death investigation with an inexperienced police officer? She asked, “How do you know this is a murder?”
“I’d say her hands have been removed. Wouldn’t you?”
“Dear God.” She didn’t want to know. But for the first time, she looked. Most of the smaller bones were gone or scattered. One hip bone remained, most of the leg bones, one with parts of the foot still attached. The rib cage had been gnawed, the spine had been dismembered and scattered. Wisps of hair clung to the skull…
Don’t look at the skull. Don’t think of Kellen, helpless under Gregory’s pickax.
The arms were there, close to the rib cage as if the victim was holding herself.
“I don’t see her hands.” Kellen had to hold her hood with one hand to keep the wind from slashing it from her head. “But that doesn’t mean they’ve been removed, only that the scavengers—”
“No, he’s right.” Temo knelt in the grass taking pictures with his phone. “The ends of the bones show rasp marks, like marks a saw blade would make, and little bits of joint are hanging in there.”
That’s horrible. She looked around, at the start of the path that led down to the beach, at the rise that led to the cliffs, at the one wind-mangled tree that pointed its defiance at the sky.
“You hope she was killed somewhere besides here,” Kellen said to Lloyd.
“Don’t you?”
Yes, of course she did. A death here at Yearning Sands Resort created problems she was ill equipped to deal with.
“She’s awfully dirty.” Temo was zoomed in on a piece of cloth. “Seems like with all this rain, she shouldn’t have dirt ground into her clothes and hair.”
“If this woman was buried around here, she wasn’t buried deep enough, but there’s not much in the way of clothing remaining, which means she’s been exposed to the elements in a big way. No coffin, no blanket, no care whatsoever for her remains.” For someone who allegedly didn’t know what he was talking about, Lloyd Magnuson sounded confident. “I’d say whoever did this hated her.”
“Or maybe hated all women,” Temo said. “There’s a lot of that in this world.”
Kellen had to say it. “High tide. Really high tide. She could be from one of the sea caves.”
“Sure. Wow. Murder. Definitely need to show this to Sheriff Kwinault. If she—” he gestured at the body “—washed out of the sea caves, maybe the murder took place here.”
“God forbid,” Kellen said fervently.
“Could mean there’s a murderer on the loose.” With a towel, Lloyd picked up a grubby piece of rubbery material and a torn piece of faded cloth and offered them to Kellen. “Take this and show it to the women at the resort. Ask them if they recognize the shoe or the material and remember who they belong to. Maybe we can figure something out that way.”
Kellen looked at the misshapen thing. A shoe. The sole of a tennis shoe. And a swatch of material.
She didn’t take it. “I’m not showing this to the staff! It would create a panic.”
“If you don’t show it to them and somebody else gets murdered, you’re responsible,” Lloyd said.
She didn’t need more guilt to deal with. Yet—“This body has been around for a while and no one else has been killed.”
Temo stuck his two cents in. “That we know of.”
She looked down at her friend. She thought of all the staff who were on vacation, how some of them had already called to say they weren’t coming back. She thought of all the guests who came and went, and never returned. Temo had a point. Still, she argued, “No one’s going to know who wore this tennis shoe. It’s just…a tennis shoe. I can’t even tell what color it is. Or was.”
“You have a better idea for identifying the body?” Lloyd was honestly asking.
“A coroner?” she suggested.
“We haven’t got a coroner. We’ve got an undertaker. He’s not busy and he likes it that way. But…good idea.” Lloyd pulled out his cell phone. “The county coroner is in Virtue Falls, too. Mike Sun has dealt with this kind of thing before—murder and whatnot. I’ll drive the bones up, deliver them to Mike, talk to Sheriff Kwinault and see if either one of them can figure out something about the death and who it is.”
“It’s a nasty drive in this weather,” Kellen said.
“I don’t mind.” Lloyd sounded positively cheerful. “I’ve got friends in Virtue Falls. Good time for a visit!”
“Go on, Kellen,” Temo said. “I’ll get the photos taken. I’ll get her up off the ground. You’re not doing any good here.”
Kellen knew she shouldn’t make Temo do something she wouldn’t do herself. But it wasn’t so much wouldn’t as couldn’t, at least she couldn’t without vomiting. “Thank you. Really. Thank you.” Gingerly, she took the towel by the four corners, carried it back to the ATV and drove back as fast as she’d driven out. She didn’t want to go in the front lobby and face the guests, so she parked by the back door to the spa, the one Destiny Longacre had left open for her boyfriend. Before she got close, Mara swung the heavy metal door open.
The wind caught it and slammed it against the wall.
Both women grabbed it, fought with it, got it under control and got inside.
“What a wretched day.” Kellen meant more than just the weather.
“I heard.” Mara had that significant tone in her voice.
Kellen turned to her. “How did you hear?”
“Lloyd Magnuson called Sheri Jean and asked for a storage box. Said he had to drive something out to Mike Sun in Virtue Falls. She knew you were picking up something the scavengers brought in. She figured it out. A natural death?”
Kellen shook her head.
“Damn it.” Mara looked around at her determinedly peaceful domain. “Damn it,” she said again. “Do you know who the body is?”
Kellen held up the towel she had twisted shut. “That’s what we’re supposed to deduce using a piece of cloth and part of a shoe.”
“This way. Don’t drop it, and don’t make a mess.”
She led Kellen to the spa waiting room, where nine anxious employees waited.
Sheri Jean + three concierge staff:
FRANCES:
34, CONCIERGE/FRONT DESK, CHICAGO NATIVE, TOUGH, SARCASTIC. EMPLOYED 7 YRS.
GERALD:
MALE, 42, FRONT DESK. GUATEMALAN, FLUENT IN SPANISH. EMPLOYED 16 YRS.
TRENT:
37, DESK STAFF. CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. EMPLOYED 7 YRS., THEN SERVED PRISON TERM FOR BREAKING AND ENTERING, REEMPLOYED 4 YRS.
Mara + four spa staff:
ELLEN:
23, BEAUTY PROFESSIONAL, CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. EMPLOYED 4 YRS.
DAISY:
67, CLEANING LADY WITH APPARENT SANITATION FETISH. EMPLOYED 42 YRS.
DESTINY LONGACRE:
19, MASSAGE THERAPIST. CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. BLOTCHY FACE, RED EYES. SILLY GIRL, PROBABLY DIDN’T DESERVE TO BE FIRED. EMPLOYED 13 MO.
Xander sat cross-legged on the floor in the lotus position, his hands resting upright on his knees.
Mara turned up the lights. “Kellen wants help identifying the body.”
Sheri Jean sucked in her breath.
Destiny gasped. “The body?”
Every eye was fixed to the towel.
Mara shook her head violently. “No, I don’t mean… That’s not the body. It’s clothes.”
Kellen pushed magazines off a low table, placed the towel in the middle and opened it. She stepped back and gestured. “It’s not much. We think she was wearing a dress and the white rubber thing is a tennis shoe sole with some of the canvas attached.” Her hands didn’t shake; being here with these people helped her get a grip on herself.
In a voice that sounded as if it was coming from far away, Mara said, “I never get used to seeing the sad scraps of another person’s life.”
Kellen looked at her in surprise. How many “scraps” had this pretty, competitive female looked at?
“So it was definitely a lady?” Destiny asked in a wobbly voice.
Kellen thought of that hip bone. “Definitely a lady.”
“She was a guest?” Destiny’s voice got higher.
“There’s no one missing from the area that I’ve heard,” Mara said. Which was no answer.
But Destiny said, “Good. I mean, not good, but I don’t want to think that’s one of us.”
Heads nodded.
“That cloth was against her skin?” Ellen dragged a table lamp over to the table and knelt on the rug to study the scrap. “It was sky blue at one time, cotton or lightweight wool, a natural fabric and probably worn in the summer. There’s a lot of disintegration here, but exposure to dirt, wind and rain will do that. There’s a lot of salt in the air here, too. That should actually preserve the color.”
Kellen stared at Ellen. The woman was talking like a CSI investigator.
Ellen looked up and saw the general wariness. “I’m a colorist. I’m a hairdresser. I understand how color fades, and hair is a natural fiber, too… You didn’t get any hair? Did you see hair?”
Kellen had captured a mental snapshot of the skull. She didn’t want to review it…but she did. “The hair was wet. It looked brown. Maybe ash blond?”
“But the hair could be dyed, and that doesn’t get us anywhere.” Sheri Jean was impatient.
Even more impatient was Frances. “How are we supposed to ID a body based on a scrap of cloth and a piece of tennis shoe?”
Mara disappeared and came back with a pair of large tweezers. She used the towel to pick up the rubber sole. She poked around inside.
Sheri Jean continued, “We could pull this apart and still it would be the same shoe that every woman wears when she’s—”
Mara jerked out the insole.
A silver ring flew out, landed on the rug, bounced to rest at Destiny’s feet.