The Devil's Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  “Cosmo has to go,” she said. “I’ve had all I can take. We’ve tried to be decent people and good neighbors to a man who does nothing but harass us. We’ve turned the other cheek a hundred times. But enough is enough. I’m going to press charges against him and maybe some time in prison will teach him the lessons he needs to learn.”

  Daniel put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “It’s okay, honey. We’re going to let the sheriff sort this out.” He faced me, eyes widening. “Is Brutus okay? I just realized he isn’t in the house. Cosmo hates him and Brutus returns the favor.”

  “He’s fine. He was drugged but he’s coming out of it now. He’s outside, waiting for you,” Tinkie said. “Shall I let him in?”

  “Please.” Daniel didn’t seem to want to let go of his wife. The episode with Cosmo had really unsettled them.

  In a minute Brutus came bounding into the bedroom and jumped up on the Reynoldses. He was tall enough, standing on his hind legs, to lick Daniel’s face. The family was reunited. And we had other work to do. “Where did Cosmo go?”

  Daniel shook his head. “He didn’t say. He came by pretending to need our help. It was just a ruse to give us whatever he put in the tea to knock us out.”

  “Why would he do that?” Tinkie asked.

  “I think he was afraid we’d call the sheriff on him. He was running around the gardens and Daniel saw him. Instead of shooting him, which is what I would have done, Daniel invited him in for some tea,” Paulette said. “Daniel always wants to turn the other cheek, but I’ve never trusted him, because he’s not trustworthy. I don’t know why Erik Ward defends him. He said Erik was coming out here and—”

  “Erik is here on the grounds?” He was supposed to have been picked up by Sheriff Glory.

  “I haven’t seen him, but Cosmo insisted Erik was coming to get him, to help him hide somewhere else.” Daniel spoke with a lot of regret. “I should have called the sheriff, and I think that’s what Cosmo was afraid of. That I’d bring in the law the minute he was out of the house.”

  If Erik was truly intending to hide Cosmo from Sheriff Glory, I was going to bust his chops. So now we had Cosmo, potentially Erik, possibly Hans, Cece, and the killer all running around the miniature Holy Land. If Gertrude Strom was in the mix, too, then it was a gathering of fools and devils. It was one of those moments that called for some smiting.

  “If you two are okay, we have to go.” I motioned Tinkie to come with me. “Sheriff Glory is on her way. Our friends Cece and Hans are missing and we found his car down the path that goes behind the Dead Sea. Please tell Glory that’s where we are when she arrives. Tell her to check Hans’s car in the parking lot. There’s blood. Too much blood.”

  “What can I do to help?” Daniel asked.

  “Don’t you dare think you’re leaving me,” Paulette said, and I didn’t blame her.

  “Daniel, please stay here. Direct the sheriff to us. Be ready to call an ambulance.” I had to believe Cece and Hans were still alive. They might be hurt, but they had to be alive. “If you see Erik, tell him he’d better find us pronto and to answer his phone.”

  “Take Brutus. He can help you.”

  I wanted to take the dog, but he was still a bit under the influence. He’d climbed up on the bed and fallen fast asleep, snoring like a freight train. At the mention of his name, he looked up at us, then gave a sloppy “woof” before he put his head down and continued snoring.

  34

  As Tinkie and I drove to the place where we’d found Hans’s car—there was really no need to walk through the dark woods when we could drive the Roadster—I filled Tinkie in on the conclusions I’d come to.

  “The murder victims are all connected to what happened to Claudia Brooks,” Tinkie said. “That’s brilliant work. But who is the killer, and why are they trying to frame Erik? I mean if he’s part of this dance conspiracy that crippled a young woman and drove her to kill herself, why not kill Erik, too? Why kill all the others to frame him?”

  “Maybe this person has some weird crush on him? Maybe the killer feels being framed for murder is worse than being murdered.” It didn’t fit exactly, but it was the best I could do to reimagine the puzzle, as I’d been instructed to do. “That makes perfect sense, kind of. I saw something in the woods over that way.” I pointed as we got out of the Roadster. “But who would care enough about dancing to do all of this?”

  We looked at each other. “Someone who cared about Claudia Brooks!” We said it together, as we often did when our brains clicked.

  “She had a brother,” I said. “He quit his teaching job to take care of her.”

  “Listen!” Tinkie held up her hand. “Did you hear that?”

  “I saw someone in the woods here earlier. Or something.” I recalled the figure speeding across the path in the faint glimmer of moonlight. “It could have been an animal.”

  “Like a bear?”

  “No, it was smaller. Quicker. Probably a coyote.” I didn’t want to spook Tinkie or myself. We had plenty of work to do. The idea of some feral creature shuffling in the underbrush made my body prickle with fear.

  “Werewolf!” Tinkie jumped to the worst conclusion possible.

  “Hush up and listen. I hear something.”

  “What is that?” Tinkie moved a little closer to my side, even though she was the one with a gun.

  Something moved about in the underbrush. I could identify the sounds: the crackle of a stick, the shush of leaves being moved or crushed, and what sounded like a soft grunt. I couldn’t say what was making them. Whatever it was put no effort into being quiet. The sounds moved steadily closer to us.

  “We should run,” Tinkie said.

  I put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Let’s give it a minute.”

  Now the sounds were moving away, deeper into the woods.

  “What if that’s Cece trying to signal us? We should follow the noise.” We stepped off the road and into the woods.

  Tinkie and I were both unnerved. I tried to put up a front of bravery as we stepped into briars and deadfall. Tinkie stumbled and almost went down. I caught her elbow in time.

  “I don’t hear anything anymore,” Tinkie said. We both shut our pieholes and listened. There was nothing. “Maybe we should go back to the office and wait for more help.”

  “Sheriff Glory can find the answers to our questions much more quickly than we can. We have to find Claudia’s brother or at least someone who might feel Claudia was cheated out of her life.” I was about to talk myself into going back. Tinkie was correct. The noises had stopped and as it was, we were sitting ducks if anyone had a nightscope or any tactical equipment and malice in his heart. The more I worked as a PI, the more situations I encountered where people had really great killing devices. Maybe Santa would bring me some night-vision goggles for Christmas, but as it stood now, Tinkie and I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of us.

  I stepped sideways to prepare to retreat and tapped Tinkie on the shoulder to signal her to follow. Suddenly, the bush in front of us exploded as a human form burst out of it.

  “Help me! Please help me. He has Cece!” Hans O’Shea, disheveled and covered in dirt and leaves, grabbed me by the shoulders and all but shook me.

  “Where’s Cece?” I wrenched myself loose from him. “Where is she?” I had to find my friend. “Is she hurt?”

  “She was bleeding and he was going to do something with her. He was dragging her away when I saw my chance to escape. She’s back that way!” He pointed vaguely north.

  “Are you hurt?” Tinkie asked him, reaching up to a spot on his shirt that looked to be soaked in blood.

  “He cut me. He was going to slit my throat, but Cece stopped him. That’s when he turned on her. He knocked her out and he said he was going to gut her.”

  “Who is this man?” I demanded.

  Hans shook his head. “I don’t know. He was hiding in the backseat of my car. I’ve never seen him before. I don’t think Cece knew him either. He kept
talking about making Erik Ward pay for what he’d done.”

  “What, exactly, has Erik done?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hans said. “I don’t have a clue what’s going on or why any of it is happening. We just have to find Cece. She was bleeding a lot. He said he was going to gut her. Please, please find her.”

  “Tinkie, take Hans back to the office. You can take the car.” I was worried he wouldn’t make it if he was walking. “Let him out and ask the Reynoldses to help him, then come back to help me look for Cece. She’s somewhere in these woods.”

  “Got it,” Tinkie said. We both helped Hans into the front seat of the Roadster, and Tinkie hauled boogey. I was alone in the woods again.

  There’d been so much commotion that I abandoned all attempts to be silent. “Cece! Cece!” I called out to my friend hoping that if she were conscious, she would answer.

  I searched the area where I’d first heard noises and found nothing. About twenty minutes had passed and I went back to the road. Tinkie was nowhere in sight. Panic surged, but I fought it back. Tinkie could easily be treating Hans’s wounds, or helping the Reynoldses, or gathering Sheriff Glory and the locals she’d likely deputized to help search.

  I called Sheriff Glory and was shuttled to voice mail. I left a message, telling her everything and asking for a call back. The Reynoldses had said she was on the way. Where was she? Then I called Coleman, because I was growing more and more afraid that both of my friends were now in trouble. When my call to Coleman went to voice mail, I had to fight back panic. What if Gertrude had him? What if everyone I loved and cared about was in jeopardy right this minute? As a person who’d lost both parents at an early age, I knew that fate could be cruel and relentless. Fate did not believe in fair or just.

  I had to rein in my thoughts or I would render myself a victim of whoever was in the woods. Help was on the way, but I was the person on scene right now. It was up to me to find Cece, and possibly Tinkie, and put things to right. And when I found this person, whoever it was, I was not bound by the laws that prevented Coleman or Sheriff Glory from beating the thunderation out of him. I was going to inflict the maximum damage.

  “Cece!” I screamed her name as loudly as I could. I was at the end of my tether. Even the small creatures of the night had stopped shifting and hiding. My fear and anguish seemed to have frozen them in place.

  “Cece? Tinkie?”

  No one answered. There wasn’t even the snap of a twig. Flashlight in hand, I plunged into the woods. Tinkie had been gone over half an hour. The night was getting chilly, and the beautiful moon, now waning, was high overhead. I would track down the slope to the wetlands and back up in a pattern. I had to move, to search, to do something to find my friends. I would believe that Tinkie was caught up in helping Hans at the Reynoldses’ office or home. I would believe that Hans was being treated and would mend. I would believe that Cece was alive and I would find her before it was too late.

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket and my heart lifted. I prayed it would be Tinkie or Cece. I answered in a whisper.

  “Sarah Booth,” Sheriff Glory said, “I’m on the way. There’s something you should know. The fingerprints we lifted in Cece’s car were a match for the prints we took off the gasoline cans under Snaith’s house.”

  The person who’d attacked Snaith and planned to burn him alive in his shop had also been in Cece’s car. “Who do they belong to?” My heart was hammering so loud I almost couldn’t hear her answer.

  “No one in the system.”

  “You checked with Coleman?” He had Gertrude’s prints on file. He could match them.

  “I did. No match.”

  “The killer has Cece.” There was no other conclusion.

  “You and Tinkie stay safe. I’m on the way.”

  “See if you can find anything on Claudia Brooks’s brother. I believe he’s our killer.”

  “We’re already searching for him.”

  “Hurry, Sheriff Glory. I think Tinkie may be in big trouble, too.”

  * * *

  The sound of a dog howling came to me, and I thought I recognized Brutus’s voice far in the distance. Was something bad happening up at the office? I was having zero results trying to search the woods in the darkness. If Cece were gagged or unconscious, she couldn’t answer me, and I didn’t believe I would be lucky enough to just stumble upon her. I needed powerful lights and volunteers to truly do a grid search. In the darkness, with a flashlight fading to weak, it was possible I’d been ten yards from her and missed her. It was time to accept that my efforts here were useless.

  I started back to the road at a trot. I had to find Tinkie, to make sure she and Hans were okay. I could see the sandy trail through the last of the trees. I was almost there. My brain was going a thousand miles a minute as I shifted pieces of the puzzle, trying to make a solution fit, trying to look at the evidence anew. I stopped abruptly. We were looking for Claudia’s brother as a possible suspect. The memory of Hans dancing with Cece and Tinkie was like a physical slap. Hans said he came from a dance family. Hans, the journalist, had the perfect opportunity to ask questions about everyone. Fear surged through me. I’d just sent my best friend off with the killer.

  A noise in the underbrush told me someone was following me. I clicked the flashlight off and suddenly, something swung out from the darkness and hit my forearm with enough force to knock the flashlight into the underbrush.

  “What the hell?” I turned and ducked simultaneously, and a good thing. Hans O’Shea stood panting beside a big maple, a tree limb in his hand. He swung it again at my head. By some miracle, I avoided the blow and dove clear of the underbrush and into the sandy road. I rolled as he came after me, thwacking the ground with brute force as he tried to hit my head.

  “Hans! Stop it. It’s over. The law is on the way.”

  “He’s going to pay.” He struck at me again and missed my head by an inch. I felt the breeze of the tree limb. He was trying to beat me with a stick, but he had a pistol in the waistband of his pants. If I had half a chance, I’d get it. As if he could hear my thoughts, his hand went to the gun and brought it out.

  I’d watched a few Westerns back in my day, and it was always the bad guy who pulled this move, but I didn’t care. I grabbed a handful of sand, jumped to my feet, and threw it into his eyes. He cried out in rage and came at me blindly. I tripped him with my foot and grabbed the tree limb from his hand as he had to use his arms to break his fall.

  When he was down on both knees, I swung the limb with all of my might, making a solid connection with his ribs. Hans sent the gun flying into the woods, and he sank into the dirt in a moaning heap. I took one more swing with the tree limb, and Hans went down. He was whimpering so I knew he was alive, and he was conscious.

  I put my foot on the ribs I’d just broken and pressed. “Where is Cece? And if you’ve hurt Tinkie, I will flay you alive.”

  “I’ll deal with Tinkie and the Reynoldses when I’m done with you. Cece, though, is just another floater,” Hans gasped. He tried to laugh. “A floater in the Dead Sea. That really appeals to me.” He collapsed in the road. I tried to roll him but he grabbed my wrist. He’d been playing possum. I twisted free and this time I brought the tree limb home on his left temple.

  “Lights out, asshat.”

  I wanted to kick him repeatedly, but instead checked the trunk for something to tie him with. I didn’t find anything, but when I examined him, he was out cold. When I next saw Coleman Peters he was going to give me a set of handcuffs. And a Taser. And a baton. Next time, I would be equipped. My flashlight was completely dead, and I spent valuable minutes searching in the dark for the gun Hans had lost. He’d thrown it into the undergrowth and I couldn’t find it. Deviled by images of Cece slowly drowning in the Dead Sea, I gave up the search.

  I bolted up the path toward the Dead Sea.

  35

  The night was cool and I ran up and down the hills, praying my sense of direction was accurate. I didn�
�t even have a flashlight, and in hindsight I worried that I should have searched harder for the gun. Sure, Hans was unconscious, but that didn’t mean he was permanently disabled. Besides, I didn’t know who else I might run into.

  I thought of all the time we’d spent with Hans. He’d been so charming and interesting we’d never seen it. He’d all but served it up to us on a silver platter with his dancing and sticking to us like glue. And we hadn’t even realized it.

  It was almost perfect. Erik had once been investigated for poisoning a dance competitor, Johnny Braun. Time had passed, and suddenly Betsy Dell turned up trying to buy an ad in the local paper accusing Erik of murder. Betsy had undoubtedly been manipulated into trying to place that ad, which was intended to bring up the past and cast Erik in a bad light. With his former dance associates dropping like flies, Erik would look completely guilty to a jury. I had to hand it to Hans, he’d spun a delicate web that had snared Erik time after time until my client was completely cocooned in deceit. Hans was perfectly willing to put his burgeoning career on the chopping block to get this done. Hans had what it took to be a network personality. He was a travel reporter with an internet viewership that was skyrocketing. He’d trashed his whole life to frame Erik.

  In the distance I heard the wild baying of Brutus. He was ahead of me, and I hoped that somehow Daniel Reynolds was with the dog. If Cece were in the Dead Sea, I might need help with CPR. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. It was unthinkable. I had wheedled Cece into taking a little time away from work to come with us. I’d thought I could keep her safe. How wrong I was. Even Tinkie could be in risk. Hans said he hadn’t hurt her, and he really hadn’t had time to do much—he was back in the woods with me in a flash. But I didn’t trust him at all. Were the Reynoldses okay? My mind was a whirligig of dire scenarios.

  At least Brutus was out and running in the woods. I could hear him ahead of me. That gave me hope.

  I chugged up the last hill, panting and with a stitch in my side. The Dead Sea was not far now. Any minute I’d be able to see the ripple of the water in the moonlight. And Cece would not be there drifting about in a dead man’s float. She wouldn’t.