On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  Megan gave herself a quick, silent talking-to about the inadvisability of letting herself be distracted by a client’s appearance and cut the chitchat to get down to business before she completely forgot herself and why he was here.

  “When your secretary made the appointment—at least I assumed it was your secretary—”

  “Millie. She’s the dispatcher and the post mistress, too,” he explained.

  “Oh. Well, she said you’re suffering from an allergy that Dr. McDermot thought might benefit from acupuncture.”

  “Mmm,” he answered noncommittally, glancing around at the waiting room. “And I’ll take a look at your locks, if you want, too.”

  Megan had almost for got ten she’d said that only moments before outside. But now that he’d brought it up, she said, “I’m not really worried about the locks. It just seemed as if you might not be comfortable letting Mr. Burns know you were scheduled to come in for acupuncture so I thought I’d cover your tracks.”

  The sheriff’s full eyebrows drew together at that. “I wasn’t worrying about who knew or what anybody thought. I just wasn’t sure I was going to actually do this,” he answered matter-of-factly. “No offense, but it just seems like some kind of hocus-pocus or voodoo or some thing. Not anything that could actually do me any good.”

  “Ah, I see. I appreciate your honesty,” she said, not taking offense because it was a sentiment she’d been con fronted with before. “But if Dr. McDermot recommended me he must have told you that acupuncture can be effective.”

  “He wasn’t all that convinced himself. But this damn—this allergy thing has just come up recently and the medicines he’s given me make me fuzzy-headed and too tired to think. I can’t have that on this job. So Bax thought I might as well give you a try.”

  She couldn’t be sure but she thought there might be a bit of innuendo to the last part of that statement. Especially since the give you a try had come with the tiniest upward quirk to one side of his mouth. But once more she opted for pushing aside the idea and sticking to matters at hand.

  “In other words, I’m the last resort,” Megan concluded.

  “That’s about it.”

  “And you think you’re wasting your time,” she finished what he seemed to have left unsaid. “That’s okay. You aren’t the first person I’ve had to prove myself to and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”

  His very attractive mouth eased into another smile, as if he thought he’d gotten her goat and it pleased him.

  Well, he hadn’t gotten her goat. And to show him, she put some effort into sounding more professional.

  “Have you had allergy tests to isolate what you are and what you aren’t allergic to?” she asked.

  “No, but I can pretty much tell. Horses and hay seem to trigger it. And since, besides being sheriff and being around them pretty much every where I go, I need to work the family ranch, I have to do some thing about it.”

  “Which is why you’re here.”

  He merely inclined his head to concede the point.

  “I’ll need to do some testing of my own—” Megan held up her hand when he opened his mouth to protest. “Unlike what an allergy doctor would do, my way of testing is much easier and absolutely non-invasive. It’s simple muscle testing through applied kinesiology.”

  “Whatever that is.”

  “You’ll see as soon as we get started. But I need to isolate everything you’re allergic to. For instance, if you were allergic to bacon you might have a sensitivity to pork, or it might be the nitrates the meat is cured with that bother you. I’d have to know which it is before you could actually be cleared.”

  “For takeoff?”

  Okay, so he could make her smile and she liked that in a man, too. She still tried to maintain her perspective, though, by reminding herself that he thought she was a quack. “No, not cleared for takeoff. Cleared of the allergy. That’s what it’s called when I cure you,” she said with exaggerated bravado.

  He caught it. “When you cure me. Do you do laying on of hands and faith healing, too?”

  “No, just acupuncture.” And she was enjoying their back-and-forth teasing too much, so she amended her tone to a more authoritative one and said, “Shall we get started?”

  But before he could answer, the front door opened suddenly to admit the contractor Megan had hired to replace her septic tank.

  It surprised both Megan and Josh. Their focus on each other had been so intense that neither of them had seen him coming despite the fact that anything was hard to miss through the huge windows.

  “Never thought I’d find you both in one place,” Burt Connors said by way of greeting. “Glad to see it, though. Saves me a trip.”

  “Hi, Burt,” the sheriff answered as if they were old friends.

  “Josh,” the excavator countered the same way.

  “What’s up?”

  Apparently Josh Brimley thought he should take over. But since Megan was still trying to figure out why her contractor had been looking for her and the sheriff, she guessed it was just as well.

  “Got that old septic tank out and put in the new one,” Burt Connors informed them both. “But when we were coverin’ it up again we dug a little in another spot for fill dirt and found somethin’ else. Somethin’ that looks like sheriff business.”

  “You found sheriff business in my backyard?” Megan said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Looks like a skeleton. A human skeleton.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t just an old family grave?” Josh asked reasonably.

  “Sure enough. He’s not too deep, there’s no coffin and it looks like the guy was planted belongings and all. I think you better come take yourself a gander, Josh. And you, too, Ms. Bailey. This ain’t no kind of formal buryin’. I’m bettin’ we’ve opened up somethin’ somebody thought would never come to light.”

  Josh Brimley turned those dark, dark blue eyes to Megan again, this time from beneath one raised brow. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”

  “Only that I don’t have the foggiest idea what’s going on.”

  But he didn’t look completely convinced of that as he led the way out of her office.

  Chapter 2

  THE OCCASIONAL CAR ACCIDENT. Reckless driving. Speeding. Mailbox bashing. Minor vandalism. Cattle tipping. Drunk and disorderly conduct. Brawling. A break-in here and there—in the history of Elk Creek that was as bad as it got in the way of crime. Until now.

  It was a little hard for Josh to believe that only three months into his run as sheriff he was looking at what seemed to be a murder. But it didn’t take him long after reaching the Bailey place and looking over what had been un earthed to realize that could well be just what he was con fronted with.

  “I’ve put up the crime scene tape to cordon off the area. Your men can work around it,” he told Burt Connors when he had the burial site contained.

  Chaos reined supreme in the Bailey backyard since Burt insisted that he and his crew had to finish up their work so the Bailey sisters would have use of their plumbing facilities by night fall. And although Josh was fairly certain curiosity in what that same crew had uncovered was the real reason behind their lingering, he didn’t object. He had work of his own to do as he used a whisk broom to care fully and methodically brush away the soil that remained partially obliterating the skeleton so that the entire grave and its contents were visible.

  Josh had trained with the Wyoming sheriff’s department and he knew all the procedures, including those for a crime of this magnitude. He knew the procedures by heart. But a murder investigation was the last thing he’d ever expected to actually have to do in his small hometown.

  Of course he should have known better than anyone that not many things turned out the way a person expected them to. But still, it was a sobering job that lay ahead of him.

  Daylight had disappeared by the time Josh backed away from the freshly cleared hole, confident that he’d done all he should do on his own for the moment. But he did avail h
imself of Burt Connors’s offer of floodlights to illuminate the area and then hunkered down on his heels at the grave side to get a closer look at what he’d 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 her, or thinking the things he’d been thinking about her. Why he should know better than to notice those things or think those thing
s.

  But neither the fact that he considered her a flake nor the fact that she might be involved in some way with a murder, kept him from wishing the state patrolmen, Burt Connors’s crew, and the forensics team would hurry up and clear out of there.

  Because the sooner they did, the sooner he could get back to Megan Bailey.

  And be alone with her again….

  Megan sat in her kitchen, trying to sort through what had happened today.

  There was no denying that returning to Elk Creek had been fraught with complications. The house had been in such disrepair. Worse than room after room of cobwebs, four broken windows, and a need for new paint inside and out, there had been problems with the electrical wiring, old appliances that had refused to come out of retirement, and the need for a whole new septic system.

  Not only had she and Nissa had to do all the home repairs they could possibly do them selves, they’d also had to set up their office on top of it—complete with more cleaning and painting and furniture moving—because they hadn’t been able to afford to hire help.

  Certainly clients hadn’t been clamoring to their door and they hadn’t been met with a warm reception.

  And now this.

  Someone was buried in the backyard? Megan didn’t know what to make of that. Especially when Josh Brimley turned officious and contrary on her. As if she’d had some thing to do with it.

  Did he think she and her sister had brought the skeleton with them and planted it behind the house for fun? Or maybe he thought it was part of some hocus-pocus or voodoo ritual since that’s what he considered the practice of acupuncture.

  Well, fine. It was good to know from the start what kind of man he was. That he was not the kind of man she would ever allow to get close to her again. The next man she let into her life was going to be accepting and tolerant and receptive. He was going to be open-minded, liberal, enlightened and unbiased.

  In short, he wasn’t going to be anything like Noel.

  And so far, Josh Brimley seemed a whole lot more like Noel than not.