by Quinn Avery
“Maybe,” he answered with another mouthful. “The prosecutor is considering dropping all charges if Ron shows us where she was buried and gives us a name.”
Molly bit into a donut, spraying bits of its jelly filling when she spoke. “I still don’t think you should rule out an evil twin.”
I shot her an annoyed look before glancing back Grayson’s way. “If you don’t have a way to identify her, couldn’t he just give you a bogus name to keep himself out of jail?”
He shook his head. “We would have to somehow verify the name he provided was legitimate before the charges would be dropped.”
“We need to contact the private investigator Ginger hired,” I decided. “Maybe he could tell us more about the estate sale, and give us the address to the grandfather’s house. We could talk to the neighbors and whoever bought the place. Maybe—”
Grayson’s elbow brushed over my ribcage. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, Zoey, and that’s not a bad idea, but this is now an official police investigation. If you start poking around into Ginny’s past, you could accidentally impede the process and somehow tip Ginny off that we’re searching for her.”
The momentum whooshed from my excitement. “You mean I can’t do anything to help find Ginny from this point on? You wouldn’t have caught Ron and discovered this woman if I hadn’t insisted on searching for her even though the chief thought it was a waste of time.”
“I know, and your dedication won’t go unnoticed.” He knocked his bare knee against mine. “For now, I’ll keep you up-to-date as best as I can. If I can think of any other way to get you involved without crossing a line, I’ll let you know.”
Grayson returned to the station shortly after finishing his last donut. Molly went back to bed, and Teenie returned from beach yoga to camp out in front of the television. Unable to sit still for longer than five minutes at a time, I slipped into my tennis shoes and took off without a destination in mind.
I ended up jogging all the way to Grayson’s house to tend to Lucky. I sat on the patio with him for a while, feeding him cold pizza to hold his attention as I vented.
“Maybe telling your new daddy I’d found a skull wasn’t the best idea after all,” I told my new buddy, tossing him a bite-sized chunk. “I could’ve made it this far without his help. Then again, maybe Ron and Glori really would’ve fed me to their koi fish if your daddy hadn’t been there, and who knows what Ron would’ve done to us last night if your daddy hadn’t been there that time too. But still.” Lucky wolfed the pizza down in a matter of seconds, and begged for more. Rolling my eyes, I fed him another chunk. “What am I doing? I must be way beyond exhausted if I expect you to comprehend anything I’m saying.”
Lucky finished chewing and barked.
“I know,” I told him, scratching the fur beneath his cone.
Since Grayson didn’t think he’d be back until late and Lucky was on strict orders not to move around too much, I called the Gorilla Bus. Lucky and I rode around the island for hours. I chatted with every group of passengers to ride during that time, catching up with other locals who didn’t see the need for their own vehicle, and losing myself in the tourists’ stories.
Whenever the bus was empty, I got to know Driver Stewy a little better. The skinny 20-year-old with blond dreadlocks was saving up to move out of his parents’ basement and buy a steel drum set so he could join a reggae band and travel the world. He had painted the neon graffiti-like illustrations covering the roof of the eccentric bus after a computer engineer from Silicon Valley had given him a batch of psychedelic mushrooms. Some of them were quite good, and some looked as if they had been drawn by a kid high on mushrooms.
Lucky was content resting his pillow cone on the edge of the window ledge and inhaling every scent the island had to offer. Whenever he whined to be let out, Stewy lovingly carried him up and down the steps.
Late in the afternoon, while Stewy was busy hitting on a group of sixteen-year-olds from Chicago, I laid back in one of the seats and closed my eyes. Just for a minute or two, I told myself.
Before I knew it, I awoke to darkness at the shrill sound of Lucky’s urgent barks. The bus was once again empty.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to wake you,” Stewy called from the driver’s seat. “You were, like, super out of it. At one point I thought maybe you needed an exorcism the way you were making noises and thrashing around.”
My cheeks warmed. I must’ve been out cold, caught up in more nightmares of the faceless woman. I bolted upright, rubbing the haze from my eyes while trying to focus on Lucky. With his one front paw on the windowsill, his gaze honed on something outside. “What’s he barking at?” I asked Stewy.
“Dunno. He just started flippin’ out, man. Maybe the dude has to tinkle. I haven’t stopped to let him out since you fell asleep.” Stewy met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “Want me to pull over?”
“Yeah, go ahead and let him out at the end of the block.” I grabbed my phone from the seat beside me to check the time. In the three hours in which I’d slept, I had missed dozens of calls from Grayson, Molly, and Beckett. I quickly hit redial on Grayson’s number. The call went straight to his voicemail.
I tucked my phone back inside my pocket and headed toward the front of the bus. The second Stewy opened the door, Lucky darted down the steps before either of us had a chance to hold him back. He sprinted away on his three limbs as if he wasn’t missing the fourth. It was equal parts impressive and frightening.
I tossed a $20 bill at Stewy. “Sorry, it’s all I have on me! I’ll give you more next time I see you!”
“No worries, Zoey!” Stewy called to my back as I ran after Lucky. “Give me a holler if you ever need a doggy sitter!”
I stopped short when my eyes adjusted to the street lights. I hadn’t been paying attention when I woke, and didn’t realize Stewy had dropped me a block away from Beach Bummers. Construction vehicles beeped and roared from somewhere nearby. It wasn’t totally unheard of for them to work after dark, but the only instance I remembered was after the island’s main waterline had burst.
“Lucky!” I called out while attempting to call Grayson again. “Here boy!”
Worry cramped my stomach. If I didn’t find Lucky soon, he might tear another stitch. And what if I completely lost him? Grayson and I would both be devastated. Even though we’d only known the dog for a short while, he had nestled his way into our hearts.
With the sound of more barking off to my right—in the opposite direction of the bar—I huffed out a relieved breath and took off running in the same direction. The construction noises grew louder along with Lucky’s persistent barks.
As I rounded the corner of the island’s only apartment complex, a large cluster of spotlights came into view. Grayson, Chief Shaw, and Deputy Hughes conversed with the driver of an excavator, each of them wearing navy windbreakers labeled “POLICE” in reflective tape. At least a dozen of the county sheriff’s deputies and a team of city workers in bright orange vests and hardhats gathered around them. In handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, Ron Finkle pointed at different spots in a community garden beyond a patch of St. Augustine grass. An attorney I recognized as being a regular at the tiki bar stood at Ron’s side.
I sucked in a sharp breath. They were preparing to dig for the woman’s body.
Relief washed over Grayson’s stone-faced expression as I crept closer to the site of the excavation. He exchanged quick words with the chief before darting over to meet me.
The way he seized my forearms and leaned in, eyes alive with something I couldn’t name, I was sure he was going to kiss me. “Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep on the Gorilla Bus. Have you seen Lucky?”
His head jerked back. “That was him barking?”
“Yeah. He rode around with me all afternoon. I woke when he started barking like a maniac. I thought maybe he had to pee, but he bolted outside when the driver opened the door.”
> Grayson's focus snapped to something over my shoulder. “There he is! Come here, boy!”
Heart swelling with joy, I spun around.
Then, it was as if someone had deflated my heart with a needle. When I spotted Lucky, I hoped maybe my tired eyes were deceiving me. Lips parted with a silent gasp, my pulse slowed to a bone-rattling thud.
Lucky had brought us a present of considerable size.
I blindly reached for Grayson, swatting his chest with urgency. “Is that—?”
“Holy…shit,” Grayson muttered softly.
Lucky dropped the missing skull at our feet.
Fifteen
I wasn’t sure if we should scold Lucky for possibly damaging the skull with his teeth, or reward him with a lifetime supply of milk bones. “Do you suppose…” I started, holding a hand over my erratic heart. Did people my age experience cardiac arrest? I licked my parted lips and tried again. “I mean do you think…” I was too stunned to finish, and my chest had become too tight to wrench another breath.
The sudden presence of Grayson’s firm hand on my back steadied my heartbeats. “He could’ve removed the skull the night you found it by the dumpster. He could even be the one that found the woman’s burial site, and dug it up.”
“What if that’s why he got so excited,” I wheezed, “you know, because he remembered where he’d put it?”
“Then our boy is smarter than we thought.” Grayson edged me forward with a light push. “See if you can get him to come to you. You can restrain him while I snatch the skull.”
On wobbly legs, I slowly squatted down to the pavement. “Come, Lucky,” I rasped, pointing down by my feet. “Here, boy. Be a good boy, and come. Daddy wants your present.”
“Daddy?” Grayson sniggered above me.
Lucky titled his head, whining in question. I reached out to him. “Come on, buddy.”
The dog growled with a soft gurgle. It wasn’t anything remotely close to the threatening way he had growled at Ron in the bathroom. Then his lips parted and his tongue flopped to the side like he was smiling. He wagged his tail and barked several times before nudging the skull with his nose.
Once I realized what was happening, I gasped. “Grayson!” I hissed from one side of my mouth. “He wants to play catch.”
“Pretend you’re all for it,” he told me in a quiet, steady voice. “Just reach down and grab the skull, then hand it to me.”
“I am not grabbing the skull. That was someone’s head.”
“If you don’t do it, he might pick it up and run off with it. He thinks it’s a toy.” Grayson nudged my rear with the toe of his loafer. “Hurry before he stashes it somewhere again.”
“Okay, buddy,” I told Lucky. “You’re gonna owe me big time for this.” Wincing, I lengthened my right arm as far as it would go, and waddled forward a few inches until my fingers brushed over one of the skull’s eye sockets. I attempted to swallow the squeal that came from my lips, but it came out in a piercing whine. Lucky’s sharp, excited barks rattled against my ear drums.
“Grab it, Zoey,” Grayson urged. “Fast, like tearing off a bandaid.”
“What if I can’t?” I cried in earnest.
“You can.”
I held Lucky’s stare when he started doing the weird growl thing again. “What if I drop it?”
“You won’t.”
“That just proves you don’t know me very well yet. I tend to drop things.”
“Do it, and I’ll take you out on a date.”
I snapped my head around to look up at him. “What about my naivety, and my tendency to make reckless decisions?” Beneath his dark gaze, my skin tingled with electricity. “I thought you weren’t ready for another relationship.”
“I’m still not, so we’ll have to take it extra slow. Not even a glimpse of first base for at least three to six months…or maybe until you turn another year older.”
My entire body ignited with the idea of there being bases between us.
His lips split with a grin. “Better hurry and do it before the offer expires.”
With a drawn-out squeal, I plunged my fingers into the depth of the eye socket and hooked them around the first crevice they came in contact with. A grotesque moment later, I was standing with the skull cradled against my stomach like a quarterback preparing to make the winning pass.
“Oh god!” I wheezed, extending my neck far away from my hands and twisting my head away. “Oh god! I’m seriously holding a woman’s head in my hands!”
“Easy does it,” Grayson said with a soft chuckle. As he stretched his hands out to me, Lucky let out two demanding barks. “Hand it to me.”
We moved together slowly, trying not to agitate Lucky any further. Grayson’s large hands slid over mine, gripping the dog’s treasured gift with care. The gold tooth inside its mouth caught in one of the spotlights.
Grayson’s eyes held mine. “You’ll have to hold him back while I take this over to the forensic team. Ready?”
With a slight nod, I slowly withdrew my hands. I dove at Lucky, relieved when he didn’t fight as I looped my arms beneath his neck pillow. As Grayson hustled back toward the site of the excavation, I anchored Lucky’s stout body to the pavement with a good portion of my weight.
Lucky licked his lips and let out a high-pitched whine.
“I know, buddy,” I told him. “I know. But you’re a really good, good boy.”
I smiled to myself as I buried my face in his thick fur, hoping it wouldn’t be long before they’d reunite the woman’s head with her body.
The process of recovering the rest of the woman’s remains was completed in under an hour. After one of the sheriff’s K-9 deputies worked with Lucky, allowing him to sniff the skull then leading him to the garden before repeating the same steps several times, our 3-legged pet began to paw at a section of dirt. Grayson placed Lucky in the back of a police cruiser while the forensic team began to cautiously uncover dirt until they came across a clavicle.
“It’s all here!” a woman from the forensic team confirmed, followed by a brief round of applause.
I watched on with a sense of peace, my eyes brimming with unshed tears.
“You did it, Zo,” Grayson whispered, hugging me close to his side. “This woman can finally be at peace because of you.”
Swiping my arm across my eyes, I shook my head. “Not until we find Ginny. If this really isn’t her, there has to be some kind of repercussions for what they did. It wasn’t right to rob this woman’s family of a proper burial.”
Grayson’s arm dropped from around me as Chief Shaw approached, head bowed and his POLICE baseball hat wrenched between his thick fingers. “Zoey, I owe you an apology. If I had listened to you from the beginning—”
“Then it may have taken us longer to find this woman without her help,” Grayson cut in.
“Or without Lucky’s,” I added, lifting my chin and smiling triumphantly.
The chief barked with a gruff laugh. “I just might have to offer that dog a job with the department after tonight.”
“What about me?” I blurted, surprising myself.
“What?” Grayson and the chief chorused.
“Grayson said Avery has been out sick a lot with medical complications.” I shuffled my feet and swallowed the lump in my throat. “I mean, I have a bachelor’s degree in business, and I could really use the extra money.”
“Is that right?” The chief slowly rubbed his chin. “Sounds like you might be overqualified.”
“Not if we gave her more responsibilities,” Grayson chimed in. “You said you’ve been toying with the idea of hiring another deputy to handle evidence and civil processing.”
“I am a fast learner.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I could just fill in until Avery feels better.”
Chief Shaw folded his arms while regarding me with a stern expression. “You know, that might not be such a bad idea. We’re going to get buried in paperwork from this case if we don’t do something. Can you come in tomorrow
morning?”
With an eager nod, I beamed back at him. “I don’t work at the tiki bar until four, and I’m sure I can talk Smith into finding someone to cover for me if I need to stay later.”
“Then I guess we’ll see how you work out.” He slapped Grayson on the back. “You better get some sleep tonight, Detective. We have a long week ahead of us.”
“Roger that,” Grayson answered, passing me a grin.
Although the idea had come to me on a whim, I was beside myself with joy. I would no longer be forced to stand aside and do nothing in the search for Ginny.
Monday morning, I arrived half an hour earlier than Chief Shaw had requested. The station door was already unlocked, and every last light was on. I set my handbag on the top tier of the front desk and stepped around it to discover one of Dee Dee’s pink boxes next to a small vase of vibrant wildflowers. A blue sticky note on top of the box read, “Good luck on your first day!” in what I recognized as Grayson’s handwriting. My suspicions were confirmed when I flipped the lid open to discover two of my favorite Bavarian cream donuts. Butterflies flooded my stomach.
“Good morning, Zoey,” Chief Shaw’s voice boomed.
Glancing upward, I returned his friendly smile. “Good morning, Chief.”
“Hope you've had your fill of caffeine already.” He stretched, rubbing his belly over his neatly pressed shirt. “With Hughes on patrol, and Grayson in Tampa to meet with forensic pathologists, I’m prepared to put a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.”
Admittedly, I was a bit disappointed to learn Grayson wouldn’t be in the office. I straightened my back and smoothed the skirt on the modest baby doll dress I had picked out with Grayson in mind. “I’m ready for whatever you throw my way, sir.”
“Grayson told me you have a few productive ideas on ways to find Ginny Jones. Once I’ve completed the standard processing to make you an employee and tech has programmed you into the system, I’m going to give you free rein to do what it takes to track that woman down. If Ron Finkle is telling the truth, I want her brought in A-SAP.”
