On Pins and Needles. Victoria Pade
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actually exposed while he waited for the sheriff’s department’s forensic team.
Along with the bones that had been discovered, there was a knapsack and the clothes the victim had worn. The clothes were non de script, the same kind of clothes he and most everyone else around these parts wore—a plain shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots.
The sole of one of the cowboy boots was down to its last layer of leather and the fact that there was a tear in one knee of the jeans and the shirt was thread bare around the edges led him to believe this hadn’t been a prosperous man. Josh was betting that when they got into the knapsack that rested along side the skeleton, they’d find all his worldly goods contained in it.
The knapsack itself was a well-worn canvas bag and, although Josh was careful not to disturb anything so that the scene would be intact for the forensics unit, there was a local news pa per sticking out far enough for him to read the date without touching anything. It was a June news pa per. Eighteen years old.
After his arrival on the scene and his initial look into the grave Josh had radioed Millie Christopher—the woman Megan Bailey had referred to as his secretary—and had Millie look for any missing persons reports that might be on file at the office.
Millie said she’d look, but she knew for a fact that in the entirety of her thirty-eight years as the sheriff’s girl-Friday, the only missing persons case there had ever been was a teenage girl who had turned out to be a runaway in 1982.
So much for hoping for an easy lead.
The forensics unit arrived then and Josh met them at their van, introducing himself and filling them in as he took them to the site. Once they got to work he was left to stand by and oversee their first few chores—taking pictures of the scene from all angles, and closely ob serving and describing in notes the placement of everything. Nothing could be moved until that was accomplished.
Within moments of the arrival of the forensics unit, two state patrol cars showed up, too. The officers had heard over their radios what was going on and had come to see if they could help. They couldn’t, but they stayed around anyway, adding to the number of on lookers. One of whom, of course, was Megan Bailey.
Her sister hadn’t returned yet but Megan had set up a card table with beverages and bran muffins for anyone who might want them.
Josh was tempted to shout over to her “What do you think this is? A tea party?”
But he refrained. It wasn’t as if she appeared to be enjoying this because she didn’t. On a rational level, Josh knew she was only being consider ate of everyone’s comfort. But still, just having her there—even out of the way beside her back door—was damn distracting.
At least it was damn distracting to him.
No one else seemed to pay her much mind beyond quick trips to the table to accept her hospitality before getting right back to work. But for Josh it was a different story.
Here he was, in the middle of some thing as big as a potential homicide and his thoughts—and eyes—kept wandering to Megan Bailey.
She’s a flake, he told himself impatiently. Allergy elimination acupuncture—that was how she made her living, for crying out loud. With a gazillion bracelets on one wrist and those nutty-looking wooden clogs on her feet instead of regular shoes. A flake. That’s what she was all right.
It didn’t matter if she had gleaming blond hair that was so silky and flawless that even the flood lights made it seem to glow. It didn’t matter that she had skin like porcelain or high cheek bones the color of summer roses. It didn’t matter that she had a small, sculpted nose or lips that gave off the sensuality of a siren. It didn’t matter that she had a perfect, compact little body with just enough up front to make a man wonder. And it sure as hell didn’t matter that she had long-lashed doe-eyes the pale color of cream stained by blue berries.
The only thing that mattered was that she was a flake. A flake with a body buried in her backyard.
And even if she hadn’t had a body in her backyard, she was not the kind of woman he should be distracted by.
He’d learned his lesson the hard way. Taught in painful detail by an off-the-wall woman. He definitely didn’t want anything to do with another one.
Plain, down-to-earth females—those were the only kind he intended to give a second look, and Megan Bailey was a long way from that.
So why was he standing there, watching her open a soda can for the lead forensic investigator and noticing how delicate her hands were? Why was he straining for a look at her shape through the gossamer draping of her dress when he should be straining for a look at his crime scene? Why was he memorizing the way her hair fell around her shoulders rather than memorizing every word that passed from one forensic investigator to the other? And why on God’s green earth was he paying more attention to a detail like her earlobe and the sweet spot just below it than to the details of his own job?
He didn’t know why. He only knew that even though he felt as if he was being derelict in his duties, he still couldn’t tear his eyes off her….
“I think we can start to move ’im out, see if there’s anything important underneath ’im, and get everything to the lab now.”
The head of the forensic team’s voice yanked Josh’s attention away from Megan and his confused reveries, and back to what he was supposed to be concentrating on.
“Anything you can tell me yet?” he asked.
“Not much. So far there’s no obvious indication of cause of death—like a bashed-in skull. But these are hardly optimum working conditions. Hope fully we’ll be able to tell more at the lab and won’t need a forensic anthropologist. There are only a handful of those in the whole country. For now the best I can do is put the time of death at June, eighteen years ago.”
“Yeah, I saw the date on the news pa per, too.”
The team leader shrugged. “You probably already guessed it’s the skeleton of a man, too, from the clothes. I’d say he was in his midfifties. Probably Caucasian. Not well-off. We haven’t gotten into the knapsack yet, could be some thing in there will tell us more.”
Josh nodded. “Just let me know as soon as you find anything out.”
“Your case. You’ll be the first.”
The septic tank crew seemed to have finished up, too, because they were clearing out as Burt Connors stood talking to Megan Bailey at the card table. Josh crossed to them and drew both glances.
“Find anything out?” Burt asked without preamble.
“Not yet. But I’m going to need a few preliminary questions answered,” Josh said, aiming the statement at Megan.
“Can we do it inside? It’s getting kind of chilly out here,” she responded, crossing her arms over her middle to rub them with those long-fingered hands he’d been watching before.
Some thing caught in Josh’s throat at the sight, and what he really wanted to do was put his arms around her and warm her up himself….
He nixed that idea in a hurry, wondering where the hell it had come from in the first place.
Then he said, “Yeah, no matter how nice the days are this time of year, April nights cool off plenty. If you can’t take it, go ahead in. I’ll be there as soon as everybody out here is gone.”
Megan’s eyebrows rose slightly at the gruff ness in his tone but he couldn’t worry about that. She didn’t have to like him. He didn’t want her to like him. As far as he was concerned she was part of a murder investigation and that was it.
Josh turned back to the excavation site then. And as he retraced his steps he told himself to use this time before he went in to question Megan Bailey to get a handle on whatever this was that was going on with him.
She’s a flake, he repeated to himself as a reminder of why he had no business noticing the things he’d been noticing about