Bone Deep

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Kat would be safe enough for now. Hell, Grant thought, he’d starve to death if he did nothing but follow her around. He’d missed lunch as it was. Since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d shopped for groceries for his own kitchen, that meant eating out. And, unfortunately, that meant making nice with the citizens of his town, unless he wanted to waste the time to drive somewhere else.

  He chose a downtown café that had good burgers and fries, exchanged a few greetings and ate quickly, trying to keep his head down.

  Of course, he couldn’t get lucky enough to have dodged the entire city council. Eugene Gedstad came in with his wife, who was still walking slowly after hip replacement surgery. Eugene was the next oldest council member after Otto, which meant he was probably seventy. His gaze zeroed in on Grant right away.

  With a hand on his wife’s arm, he stopped here in front of Grant’s table. “See you took Otto’s advice,” he said.

  Grant ground his teeth. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. “Busy day,” he said, as though he hadn’t understood what Eugene was saying.

  “So I hear. Good thing you were there to take the guy down, instead of one of those kids you’ve hired trying to do it.”

  “Did you also hear that the guy was a kid himself?”

  Eugene hadn’t. Shirley expressed shock and regret. They talked about it for a minute before they went on to their table and Grant decided to skip the slice of key lime pie he’d been considering in favor of a quick getaway.

  He went home, where he noticed that the shrub he’d bought all those weeks ago at the nursery had dried up from neglect. Well, damn, he thought, gazing at it. So much for the tender, loving care he’d meant to give it. What had Kat said it was called? A girl’s name. Dinah or Dahlia or…Daphne. That was it. What Grant knew was that he’d spent a ridiculous amount of money on it, and now it was dead.

  Feeling morose, he went into his house, which had a closed-up, musty feel, as if it had been long-abandoned. It was in his imagination, of course. He’d only been staying at Kat’s for a few days. Not even quite a week.

  He tried to think what he’d usually do when he got home, and came up empty. He didn’t want to be here. Didn’t like the house, which he’d stayed in when Rachel moved out. In four years, he hadn’t bothered to replace the furniture she’d taken except for the bed. The dining room was empty; he ate at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. No sofa in the living room; his big recliner, a sturdy if ugly table where he could set the remote control and a beer, and a plasma TV were all he needed.

  Man, his life was pathetic, he thought. Maybe Kat was right. Maybe he had gone a little crazy sometime in the past four years. Had he really believed that someday she’d fall into his arms and say, “I’ve loved you all this time, too?” Just because he could tell she felt some spark, too?

  After a long time, he sank into his recliner and gazed at the blank television screen.

  Was she right, too, that he had been harboring some doubt about whether she could be a killer?

  Most people could kill under the right—or wrong—circumstances. He did believe that. Kat held a lot of hurt inside, but was a strong woman. Strong and ruthless weren’t the same thing, though.

  Killing in a fit of fury was one thing; hiding the body, lying to the police and coolly going on with your life was another altogether.

  There were those who thought cool described Kat perfectly. And he couldn’t deny that she had a talent for planning. Marketing, too. Did that translate to selling herself to the cops—specifically, to him?

  No. His every instinct revolted. No. He didn’t believe it. Her eyes gave too much away. She could be calm and utterly in control, while those blue eyes teemed with emotion. If you looked closely, she gave away what she was feeling. And when had he ever not looked closely at Kat Riley?

  So what was that scene last night about? He mulled it over, considering what he knew and guessed about her. She was undeniably vulnerable, like all the women who had been conned by Hugh. Despite her fears, Kat had had the guts to take a chance on him. She was also strong enough to have accomplished more than Hugh had been able to with the business. Despite having to live with unanswered questions and nasty gossip after his disappearance, she’d maintained her grace and dignity. The one person she’d chosen to trust had let her down big-time.

  Wouldn’t that leave her unlikely to want to trust anyone else?

  Grant laid his head back and groaned. Was that what happened? Had she chickened out about him?

  Yeah, but why then had he had the sense that there was something calculated about every word she’d said, at least until the end when she’d seemed genuinely upset?

  Maybe he’d blown it by introducing the subject of marriage too soon. She’d cautiously, bit by bit, let him into her life and then her bed. Maybe she could cope with sex but not commitment. He’d pushed too hard, and triggered a fight-or-flight reflex. Kat being Kat, she’d acted on both instincts.

  After a moment, Grant gave a harsh laugh and scrubbed his hands over his face. Hell, it could be that his behavior was off, not hers. It sure didn’t make sense that he hadn’t given up and moved on years ago.

  And maybe he should get realistic. Once he knew she was safe, he could do what he should have long ago. Make a clean break. Go back to Texas, maybe. He wouldn’t mind being closer to his family.

  But the emotion crowding his chest told him he wouldn’t be doing any such thing. Leaving was even more unthinkable now that he’d made love with Kat, seen her face when she climaxed, felt her somehow tentative yet wondering touch. Heard her awed whisper, “I’ve never… I didn’t know…”

  Damn it, he couldn’t be alone in what he felt. He couldn’t. She was panicking and feeling she had to push him away, but she loved him. Her eyes hadn’t lied to him.

  She loved him. Grant sat up. She’d thought he was crazy to want to marry her. Was it even remotely possible that she was trying to save him from what she saw as his own idiocy?

  He heard himself laugh, a low, hollow sound. He was trying to save her, and she was trying just as hard to save him. Now, that made sense.

  Well, damn.

  AUTOMATICALLY NOTING the nearly empty parking lot, Kat said, “Helen, I’ll be out back if you need me. I want to get that compost shifted before it starts to rain. Can you keep an eye on the cash register?”

  Her new employee was out front in the covered area, rearranging the annuals which had begun to look rather picked over and disorganized. Shoppers were prone to picking up a sweet william, say, then deciding to go with an orange and yellow color scheme instead and plopping down the discarded choice among the zinnias. With rain threatening, business was slow today and Helen had volunteered for the task.Helen turned, a black plastic flat in her gloved hands. “Sure. Unless you’d rather I shovel compost?”

  “No.” Kat made a face. “I feel like doing something strenuous and mindless.”

  Helen laughed. “Right.”

  Kat grabbed her own gardening gloves and made her way to the back, where the bins of compost, bark and shavings were hidden from browsers. Wallinger’s was to deliver a truckload of compost later this afternoon. She wanted to consolidate what was left in one bin before the new load was dumped.

  She slowed to glance into one of the greenhouses. The door had been hooked open, and Chad was in there, watering baskets of begonias. Kat didn’t stop to say hi.

  Instead, she located a wheelbarrow, pushed it into the nearly empty bin at the back of the last greenhouse, and began shoveling. Within minutes, she had to stop and take off her vest. A few minutes later, her sweatshirt joined the vest on top of the sidewall built of railroad ties. She got the first bin scraped down to hardpan and started on the second one. She distantly heard car doors slam and then voices; a few dedicated gardeners must have come shopping despite the gathering clouds.

  At one point she glanced at her watch and decided to open the side gate in case the guy from Wallinger’s came early. She unlocked the padlock an
d carefully pulled the chain-link gate open and anchored it, then went back to heaving one shovelful of compost after another into the wheelbarrow.

  The muscles in her arms and shoulders began to burn. She welcomed the feeling. With spring, she spent most of her time helping customers, doing ordering or other administrative stuff and not enough of the hard physical labor that kept a plant nursery going. She missed it.

  After dumping a load, she tackled the last corner. Ten more minutes and she’d be done.

  She’d just plunged the shovel in to the loamy, dark compost when she thought she heard movement behind her. She started to turn. “Helen…?”

  Something slammed into her head, bringing an explosion of pain. Her vision went dark. She crumpled to her knees, and felt herself toppling forward onto her face.

  GRANT LEANED AGAINST the scarred wooden counter. “Ms. Sanderson, I do understand your reluctance to discuss any relationship you might have had with Hugh Riley. I’d appreciate any help you can give me, though. I can keep confidential anything you tell me.”

  Crystal Sanderson didn’t look as if she had any intention of helping him. He couldn’t even blame her. He’d driven by half a dozen times today, until he saw that the paneled truck with the logo of the home decor company was gone, presumably out delivering flooring. He’d parked and sauntered in to catch Ms. Sanderson alone in the front office. She was one of the partners in a business that sold and installed flooring, tile and window blinds. The fact that part of her job was to go to customers’ homes and measure their floors and windows and show them samples had caught his attention. Her time couldn’t be pinned down, any more than a real estate agent’s could.“I suppose it’s my ex-husband who’s claiming I had an affair.” Her voice was sharp enough to cut glass. “I thought he’d gotten over it.”

  Interested, Grant said, “It?”

  She glared at him. “Me.”

  “So your husband believed you did have a romantic or sexual relationship with Mr. Riley.”

  “Lee thought I had a relationship with the postman, the animal control officer, my father’s male nurse…” She flung up her hands. “He was jealous of anybody male between the ages of fifteen and sixty. Do you get the picture?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I apologize for raking all this up.”

  “Then why are you?”

  Because I think you might have killed Hugh Riley.

  “You misunderstand. I’m interested only in what you can tell me about Hugh Riley.”

  “Did you talk to Lee?”

  “I have had no contact with your ex-husband, Ms. Sanderson.”

  “Then how…?” She broke off, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, what difference does it make?”

  Were her tears calculated or genuine? They were making him uncomfortable either way, but he wasn’t going to let a little weeping stop him from prying open her past. He’d gotten as far as he could without actually talking to her and Annika Lindstrom, or breaking into their respective outbuildings to search for the rest of Hugh’s remains. Since his second option was illegal, he’d settled on interviews as a next step.

  Crystal was thirty-four years old, a brunette with hazel eyes and a centerfold figure that she seemed to be trying to play down with loose-fitting clothing. She wore tiny gold hoops in her ears and a minimum of makeup. Mascara, obviously, because it was starting to run.

  She’d have appealed to Hugh, no question, Grant thought. By most men’s standards, she was prettier than Kat, with a body that was lush instead of slender and strong. He could imagine an insecure husband being convinced that every other man lusted after her. Grant didn’t feel even a twinge of sexual attraction, but then he couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a second look at any woman except Kat.

  He waited while Ms. Sanderson blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. At last she said in a hopeless voice, “What do you want to know? Whether I slept with Hugh? Why? That was years ago.”

  “So you did,” he said gently.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Yes! Yes! Okay? Once. I was so tired of being accused of cheating on Lee, I did it. And then I felt like crap. But I did do it. Are you satisfied?”

  “Ms. Sanderson, I’m not here to make a moral judgment or to—” His cell phone rang, and he took a look at the number. Local, but he didn’t recognize it. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, and turned away, cursing the interruption. “Haller here,” he said into the phone.

  “Chief Haller, this is Joan Stover.” She sounded upset. “I’m off today, but Helen just called me from the nursery. She can’t find Kat.”

  “Is her car still there?”

  “Yes. She was working out back, and…and she seems to have disappeared.”

  His stomach clenched with fear. “I’m on my way,” he said hoarsely.

  KAT MOANED. GOD, HER HEAD HURT. It hurt so bad another helpless groan escaped her. She fumbled a hand up to feel the back of her head, where she thought the pain started. Her hand didn’t want to cooperate. Or her brain didn’t know how to direct it. But finally she touched a huge lump up there and felt the sticky mat of her hair. At sluglike speed, she figured out what that meant.

  Blood. It had to be blood.Had she fallen? She didn’t want to open her eyes. They hurt, too. Maybe she was in the hospital. But if she was, wouldn’t they have cleaned up the blood? And…and this didn’t smell like a hospital. It didn’t smell like anything in particular.

  What’s the last thing I remember?

  Digging. She’d been digging.

  She felt like the shovel had connected with her head. Ugh. She had a vision of herself collapsing. Going to her knees, then falling forward. So maybe she was still lying there.

  Except…she didn’t smell compost, pungent and easily recognizable. And she wasn’t lying down. She knew that much. She was sitting up. Oh, God. She had to open her eyes.

  She was scared to open her eyes.

  She heard herself breathing hard. Panting. She couldn’t hear anyone else breathing. In fact, the silence was absolute, except for the smallest rustle when she moved, and her every exhalation.

  Slowly, so slowly, Kat opened her eyelids. She was sitting in a car or truck, looking straight ahead through the windshield. Only, she was looking at a wall. No—not a wall, a tall garage door. She turned her head painfully to the right and saw through the side window what must be another vehicle, shrouded in a dustcover. And beyond that was a black pickup.

  Her pickup.

  Her heart jumped, began pumping hard. Oh, dear God. She was sitting in another truck, and she knew suddenly that it was familiar. She was in the passenger seat, where she’d always ridden. More scared than she could ever remember being, Kat turned her head the other way…and saw the crumpled heap of bones in the driver’s seat.

  Hugh’s truck. Hugh.

  She screamed and reached frantically for the door handle.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. THE TRUCK from Wallinger’s backed in the side gate of the nursery, the driver’s face visible in his side mirror.

  Beyond one swift glance, Grant was impervious. He stood in the midst of one of the bins staring at the half-full wheelbarrow and the shovel that lay on the hard-packed ground where it had likely fallen from Kat’s hands. A single heavy canvas glove lay beside it. The other was missing. He’d already seen her vest and sweatshirt draped over the sidewall of the bin.A dark splotch on the ground caught his eye. Shit, shit. He crouched and touched the spot. His fingertips came away red with blood. It hadn’t had time to dry.

  “Is—is that blood?” The striken voice was that of the new employee, Helen.

  “Yes.” He couldn’t have gotten another word out to save his life.

  Kat’s blood. She’d been hurt. Snatched.

  She might already be dead.

  “Send the truck back to Wallinger’s,” he said brusquely. “They can’t unload. This is a crime scene.”

  “Yes. Okay.” After a moment, the woman moved toward the truck, which had
stopped.

  Don’t just react, Grant told himself. Think.

  Crystal couldn’t have snatched Kat. He’d been keeping an eye on her store. This had happened in the past hour, and he knew she’d been there.

  Schultz farm. He’d go there first. But despite the sense of urgency that drove him, Grant grabbed his phone first and called the real estate office where Lisa Llewellyn worked. He knew the guy who’d established the office, got him on the line and asked if Ms. Llewellyn was in today.

  “Yeah, sure,” Bob Standish said. “Is this something I should know about?”

  “Is she there right now? Has she left the office in the last couple of hours?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “Things are slow today. Weather puts people off, you know. Her door’s open. I’ve gone by several times. She’s making calls, trying to drum up some listings.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then no, I was given some misinformation. Don’t even tell her about this call.”

  “All right,” Bob said, puzzled but cooperative. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  The truck from Wallinger’s had rumbled into motion and was slowly pulling out through the gate. Helen stood waiting for further instructions.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Grant said, not caring how curt he sounded. “Close the nursery again. Ask any customers that are here now to stay. A couple of officers will be here soon to talk to them, and to the other employees.” She nodded.

  “We need to find out if anyone saw anything. Noticed a vehicle out here on Hazeltine Road.”

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  “All right. Find out who was last to see Kat. When. I’ve got a couple of ideas, and I’m going to follow up on them.”

  “This has something to do with the bones and the fire, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s safe to assume.”

  He left her his phone number and kept going when she stopped to talk to a man who was working in one of the greenhouses. There were only three cars in the parking lot besides his and Kat’s. All belonging to employees? He hadn’t seen anyone else around.