Throw in the Trowel (4 page)

“Have they mentioned murder?”

“They're just calling it a crime scene, but what else can it be besides murder? An old graveyard? I don't think so. Okay, this drawer is empty.”

I handed him the tools I'd located. “Are you curious about who's buried there?”

“No.”

“Seriously?” I knocked the third drawer closed with my hip. “I am.”

“Big surprise there.”

I sorted through the drawer he'd just filled and sighed in relief. It was now stocked with my important tools. My world made sense again. “
Now
I can work.”

“I'm going to head back to the bar, then. I just stopped by to update you.”

“Marco,” I asked, before he could slip through the curtain, “aren't you even just a
little
curious about the bones? It's
your
bar they're in after all.”

“Abby.”

“What?”

Marco picked up my hand and kissed the center of my palm, then nibbled his way along my wrist and up the inner side of my arm, which always gave him unfair advantage. “We've got better ways to occupy our time now.”

Better than investigating a murder?
Well, at the moment, yes. But I'd have to ponder that question more seriously when he wasn't kissing one of my erogenous zones.

Seedy gave a little yip
.
She was sitting in between us, gazing up expectantly.

“I wasn't talking to you,” Marco said, crouching down to scratch her behind the ears.

The bell over the door jingled and Seedy scooted back under the table. “Does she do that every time?” Marco asked, rising to his feet.

“Every. Time. I have to find a way to get her accustomed to the sound.”

“Do you want to have dinner at the bar or take something home to eat?”

How odd to think of Marco's apartment as my home. Seedy wasn't the only one who had to get accustomed to new situations. “Let's eat at the bar. Then we can shop for groceries afterward.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

•   •   •

Seedy did better in the afternoon, reacting with not quite as much trepidation when the bell jingled. She finally grew brave enough to venture out from beneath the table to explore the workroom and small kitchen in the rear of the building. Later, while I worked on orders, she curled up in the pink-and-green-plaid doggy bed Lottie and Grace had bought and took a nap.

At five minutes till five, I came out of the workroom to close up shop and heard Grace and Lottie chatting in the coffee-and-tea parlor while they prepared the machines for the next morning.

“I've been thinking about the body in the basement,” Grace was saying. “There's a story way back in a cubbyhole in my mind of someone who went missing years ago, but I haven't been able to retrieve it.”

My ears perked up. I paused just outside the doorway to listen.

“Same here,” Lottie said. “Danged if I can call it up, though.”

“A search of the newspaper's archives might bring up a name,” Grace said, “if I could remember how long ago it was. Bother! I hate when that happens. I may just have to ring up my friend Caroline. Old girl has a memory like an elephant.”

“You're not going to suggest to Abby that she and Marco investigate, are you?” Lottie said.

“Oh, heavens no,” Grace said. “I would never suggest that.” There was a pause, and then she said, “On the other hand, we know our Abby, don't we? She won't rest until she has answers, and the detectives will be in no great rush to work on it, not with this current rash of bank robberies to investigate. Not that I blame them. They have their priorities, and this is a cold case after all.”

I hadn't even considered that. According to the latest news, the entire police force was working around the clock to find the pair of armed robbers that had hit three banks around the county in the past four weeks. The detectives certainly wouldn't drop everything to investigate a bundle of old bones.

“How long do you think it'll be before Abby is champing at the bit?” Grace asked.

How about I was already there?

“You know Marco won't be for it,” Lottie said. “Abby's already told us that.”

Grace sighed. “Sad, isn't it, knowing how our Abby enjoys a challenge?”

“On the other hand,” Lottie said, “she could investigate on her own time. Wait. Never mind. Forget I said that. We don't want her to go against Marco's wishes.”

“Well, he's not the king, is he?” Grace asked with a sniff. “Shouldn't Abby have an equal say in the matter?”

Yes, Abby should. Make that would.

The women had stopped chatting, apparently having finished their chores, so I knew they would be appearing momentarily. I cleared my throat as I walked to the door to turn the sign to
CLOSED
.

“All set?” I asked when they came through the doorway.

“You bet,” Lottie said.

“Big plans for this evening, love?” Grace asked.

“
Big
plans,” I said. “Eat dinner and buy groceries.”

Lottie and Grace glanced at each other with looks that said,
She'll be champing at the bit in no time flat.

When Seedy and I got to the bar, Marco was working in his office, so I peered around his door to let him know we were there. “Did the police finish downstairs?”

“They're done photographing and taking samples, but the coroner wasn't able to get here today because of a fatal accident on the toll road involving multiple cars. He's coming tomorrow, but no one could give me a time frame for when the detectives would be out to sift through the dirt. They're focused on the robbery investigation.”

Grace had certainly called it.

“They did assure me that the bones will be removed tomorrow,” Marco said. “I want them out of here as soon as possible.”

Tomorrow? Yikes. If I were going to snoop around—I mean investigate—I'd have to do it soon. “What about your drain problem?”

“There's nothing I can do about that until the detectives finish.” Marco shrugged. “It is what it is, I guess.”

But it wasn't what it could be.

And who knows how long it will take detectives to make those bones a priority?
I wanted to ask him. But all I said was, “That's annoying,” because I knew the smartest thing to do would be to let Marco draw the conclusion I had already reached.

“I'm just finishing up here,” he said. “Give me about fifteen more minutes.”

“No problem,” I said, checking the time on my watch.

I shut his door and headed straight for the basement.

C
HAPTER FOUR

I
put Seedy down in the storage room and tucked the end of her leash under a box of paper towels on a low shelf. “I'll be right through that doorway,” I told her, pointing. Seedy sat on her haunches and gave me a perplexed tilt of her head as I took a penlight from my purse.

In the next room, yellow crime scene tape circled the excavated area starting about three feet from the doorway. To avoid it, I'd have to edge along the wall for about twenty feet before I reached solid concrete on the far end. Fortunately, I had no such plans.

Shining the beam on the ground in front of me, I ducked under the tape and picked my way through gravel and dirt until I was close enough to see the skeleton without disturbing anything. Marco had warned me often enough not to tamper with evidence.

Detectives had pushed the soil that had covered the bones off to one side, so I crouched on the opposite side near the head and aimed the light at the skull. It took only a moment to spot an arc-shaped indentation on top that was about three inches wide. Surely that blow had been the cause of death, but what kind of weapon would make such an unusual mark?

I moved the light slowly down the rest of the body, focusing not just on the bones to see if there were any other signs of trauma, which I didn't find, but also on the spaces between and under them. I wanted to see if the victim's clothing was there or if the body had been placed on newspapers or a rug or anything that might provide a clue. But all I saw was dirt, so clearly the clothing had been stripped away. Grace had called that one, too.

The skeleton's shoulders stretched wide, the arm, hand, leg, and foot bones were long and thick, and the pelvis was narrow, leading me to believe the victim had been a good-sized male. As I got to my feet, I thought of my brothers, both of whom were tall. How tragic that someone's brother, son, or father had ended his life right here in the pit of a dank cellar. How long had his family searched before they had given up hope and begun to grieve?

I heard a noise and turned around to see that Seedy had pulled her leash free and was in the soil near the doorway, digging with abandon.

“Seedy, no! Bad girl!” I gave the bones a wide berth as I hurried toward her. At least she wasn't digging up the body.

I grabbed her leash to tug her away but she strained against it, trying to get at something in the hole she'd dug. I shined my beam down and saw what appeared to be a piece of a brown leather strap about an inch wide and three inches long. Before I could stop her, she snatched it up and turned to hobble away.

“Let me see,” I told her, pulling on her leash, but she planted her feet and growled, determined to keep it. Not wanting to engage in a tug of war, I tried telling her what a good dog she was and scratching her under her chin, but she didn't fall for it.

I checked the time. Marco's fifteen minutes were almost up. I had to get back upstairs.

I picked up the dog with the object still clamped in her teeth, brushed off her paws as much as possible, stuck the flashlight in my purse, and headed for the staircase. My hand was on the light switch at the bottom when I heard from above, “What are you doing?”

I glanced up. Marco stood at the top.

“Just checking out the detective's handiwork,” I said, climbing the steps. “Have you been down there since they left? They've got the full body uncovered.”

“I saw it earlier.”

“Did you notice the deep indentation in the skull? It's an odd shape, curved, about three inches long—”

“Let's let the detectives figure that out.”

Where was the challenge in that?

Marco crouched in front of Seedy, who was now sitting beside me in the hallway, tail thumping as she gazed up at him. “What do you have in your mouth?”

Seedy dropped the piece of leather at his feet and looked pleased to do so, proving that Marco's charisma worked on females of many species, not just on the human variety.

He picked it up, frowning as he looked it over. “Seems to be part of an old leather strap. Where did she get it?”

“She found it downstairs.”

“Where downstairs?” His right eyebrow was raised. He was onto us.

Mimicking Lottie's you're-not-going-to-like-this expression, I said, “In the dirt.”

“You let her cross the yellow tape?”

“I didn't
let
her cross the tape. She got loose and crossed it all by herself when I wasn't looking.”

“I hope this doesn't turn out to be evidence, Abby, because if it is—”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “We've tampered with it.”

“I don't like getting on the detectives' bad sides.” He turned the strap over, clearly as curious as I was. “They can make my PI work a lot harder if they don't trust me.”

“Then we'll put it back where Seedy found it, and no one will be the wiser.”

I knew he'd nix that. Marco was first and foremost an investigator. In fact, he was so busy examining the piece, my words didn't even register. Whew.

“See the tab at the bottom?” I asked, pointing it out. “It looks as though there might have been a ring attached at one time. Maybe it was a key chain.”

“You're right.” Marco ran his fingertip over a faint impression on it. “What does this look like to you?”

“A logo of some sort?”

“I'll photograph it so I can blow it up for a closer look.” He started toward his office, then came to a sudden halt. I had to put out my hands to avoid colliding with him.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Old habits die hard. We have to put this back.”

Darn! I'd thought we were on the same page. Now I had to do something fast before that little piece of leather ended up back in the dirt. “I suppose you're right.”

“Take the
suppose
out of it,” he said, heading for the basement steps. “And then we're going to go have a relaxing dinner.”

So sayeth the king of Down the Hatch Land. But this vassal wasn't giving up yet.

As I followed him back downstairs, holding Seedy, I said, “I certainly hope the detectives will realize what a find that is. I just hate to think what will happen if Al Corbison gets his hands on it. Remember how he lost the evidence in that big criminal investigation last summer? Or how he ignored the evidence when I was accused of killing the law professor? That man put me through hell.” I took a deep breath and blew it out so Marco would see how that still affected me. “But that's in the past. He must have improved since then.”

“We're not investigating this case, Abby,” he said over his shoulder.

When had Marco become such a monarch? “You mean
you're
not investigating. I haven't made up my mind about it yet.”

He stopped at the bottom of the steps and waited for me. “What?”

I put Seedy down and held out my hand for the strip. “Before you put it back, I want to take a picture with my cell phone. You don't have to be involved.”

“Abby, we agreed that we need to spend more time together. We can't do that if we're working on a case.”

“That's where you're wrong, Marco. It's when you work at the bar all evening that we're not spending time together. Cut back there if you want to have more time with me. In the meantime, I need something to do in the evenings.”

“You know I'm trying to cut back, babe, but Rafe isn't exactly a fast learner.”

He looked so sincere that I couldn't help but soften. “I'm not criticizing you, Marco. I know you're trying. I'm just saying that I could investigate this while you're tied up at the bar in the evenings.” I held out my hand again. “Ergo, I'll need that for a photograph.”

He didn't hand it over. “You're a really stubborn woman—you know that?”

“Like you never knew that about me before.” With a smile, I slipped my arms around his waist and hugged him. Too bad he hadn't put the strap in his pocket. I could have slipped it out. “Does this mean you'll help me?”

“No, and we're still putting the evidence back.”

“Is that a royal proclamation, King Marco?”

He stepped over the yellow tape and looked around. “Where did Seedy find it?”

I pointed out the hole. With a sigh, I said, “I sure hope Corbison doesn't screw up this investigation, too.”

Marco dropped the key chain in the hole.

“I wonder if their lab will detect Seedy's dog drool on it,” I said.

He cupped his hand in the dirt, ready to cover the evidence. I had to make one more attempt. “Can't you just see Corbison on a hunt for a maniacal-yet-old killer dog?”

He frowned. I had him thinking.

“That is, if our bones ever become a priority,” I added. “I wonder how long leather lasts after it's been chewed by a dog.”

Marco got the message. Plucking it out of the hole, he rose and stepped over the tape. “There's no harm in taking a closer look at it.”

Eureka! I'd done it. I held out my hand. “I'll hold it for you.”

“But all we're going to do, Abby,” he said, placing it in my palm, “is take a closer look at it. As soon as I photograph it, I'll put it somewhere safe. Now let's go eat.”

I picked Seedy up and headed upstairs first so Marco wouldn't see my triumphant smile. I hated to say that I had tricked him, but, well, as Grace liked to say, the proof is in the pudding.

At the top I said, “I guess it's true about those old habits dying hard.”

He gave me a long look as if to say,
You weren't fooling anyone, Sunshine.

•   •   •

Seedy was chewing on a steak bone under the table and we were finishing our bowls of hearty beef stew when Gert stopped at our booth. “Heads up, lovebirds,” she said. “That slick newshound from the
New Chapel News
is asking for you. He's up at the bar talking to Rafe now.”

We both turned to look just as Rafe pointed us out to a man around Marco's age. The man was dressed in a beige jacket covered with flap pockets, brown khaki pants, and brown hiking boots, as though he'd just returned from a safari.

“Connor MacKay,” I said with a groan. “Is it possible word about the skeleton leaked out already?”

Marco did not look pleased. “Why else would he be here?”

Connor was a crime reporter who'd covered most of the murder cases that Marco and I had helped solve, even giving me a good lead on one case, but only because it had worked to his advantage. Popular with young women in town, he was strikingly handsome, with gorgeous blue eyes, golden brown hair that hung below his collar, and a lanky physique.

“Hey there, you newlyweds,” he said, slipping onto the bench beside me. “I heard about the nuptials. Congratulations.” He reached across to shake Marco's hand and then turned to give me a hug. I stuck out my hand instead. With a wry grin, Connor shook it. “Have it your way, Freckles. Looks like the best man won anyway.”

“What do you want, MacKay?” Marco said. He hated small talk, especially from a man who had once flirted with me to gain confidential information.

“A reliable source told me you've got a skeleton in your closet, I mean basement, so here I am, ready to help you sift through the dirt—or clues.
Hello
. What's that?” He pointed to the leather strap, which we were now calling a key chain, that lay on the table near my plate. “That looks old and dirty and interesting.”

“It's just an old key chain,” Marco said. “Nothing of interest to you.”

“My dog likes to chew on it,” I said. “There's a story for you, Connor. Why don't you write about my rescue dog? She'll make a great human interest piece.”

“Right. Let's leave that for the features editor.” Connor whipped out a notepad, pen, and minirecorder, and pressed a button on the side of the machine. “You don't mind if I record this interview, do you?”

“There's not going to be an interview, MacKay,” Marco said, looking around, as though bored. “I don't have any facts.”

“You have at least one,” MacKay replied. “There's a skeleton in your basement.”

“Then you've got the whole story,” Marco said, as I discreetly pulled the key chain toward me and slipped it into my purse.

“You're kidding,” Connor said. “That can't be all you know.”

“Try me,” Marco said.

Connor tapped his pen on the notepad, giving Marco an assessing glance. “Okay. Was any identification found with the bones?”

“Don't know.”

“Any signs of a struggle?”

Marco shrugged. “You'd have to ask the cops.”

“Male or female?”

“You've got me,” Marco said.

Connor sat back with a huff. “You're the best PI in town and you don't have a clue about a skeleton in your building's basement?”

“It's all in the detectives' hands, MacKay. Abby and I aren't involved.”