Split Second - Catherine Coulter [51]
Stop being a wuss; open the blasted trunk. There aren’t any bogeymen to leap out and cut off your head. Besides, you’d shoot them. You’re frightened of a memory, but that was then, and everything here is now.
She looked away from the dark windows and the shadowed corners of the attic, drew a deep breath, and pushed the steamer trunk’s lid back. It hit with a sharp clunk against the trunk behind it.
An old musty smell welled out to hit her in the face. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was thick enough with a smell she recognized, something dead, and she sneezed as she lurched back. She sneezed again, wiped her nose, and leaned forward over the trunk, her hand over her nose. A thick white towel was spread over the top, and on top of the towel were at least a dozen room deodorizers, solid, giving off nothing now. She felt her heart began to hammer hard again.
Stop it; get it together. You’re an investigator—investigate. But why the deodorizers?
She shoved the hard deodorant cakes away and lifted the edge of the white towel. Something caught on it, then broke free with a loud crack. She stared down at a hand, but there wasn’t any flesh on it. It was a skeleton’s hand, still attached, except the one finger that had snapped off when the towel caught it. She scuttled madly back on her hands, and barely managed to swallow the scream poised to burst from her throat. She sucked in her breath, swallowed a couple of times, trying to control her sudden terror.
You’re FBI; you’ve seen bodies. Stop it.
She reached down, ripped the towel away, and looked at the skeleton that filled up the trunk. She couldn’t recognize him, not anymore—
Lucy got to her feet, picked up her SIG, which was ridiculous, and forced herself to stand over the open trunk. She stared down at the skeleton of a man dressed in casual clothes nearly rotted through. She looked at the skull, at the empty eyeball sockets, at the rictus of shock on the skeleton’s wide-open mouth.
The skeleton didn’t date back to the twenties.
The skeleton dated back exactly twenty-two years.
Lucy backed away from the trunk as she pulled her cell from her shirt pocket and punched in Savich’s number.
One ring, two, then, “Savich.”
“Dillon, it’s me, Lucy. I found a skeleton in a steamer trunk.”
There was a beat of silence, then, “Where?”
“In my grandmother’s attic.”
“You okay?”
“No, but I’m able to function.”
“Good. I want you to go downstairs immediately. I’m going to call a homicide detective I know in the Chevy Chase Police Department. I’ll meet him and his people there at your grandmother’s house. Go slug down a shot of brandy, Lucy. Everything will be all right.”
“Well, actually, it won’t be all right, Dillon. You see, I know it’s my grandfather. Since I know his wife murdered him, we don’t really need the police, do we?”
She could feel his surprise, though he tried not to let it sound in his voice. He calmly repeated, “Go downstairs. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
Without thought, Lucy called Coop, said only, “Coop, please come right now to my grandmother’s house. I need you.”
“I’m close. I’ll be there in a minute, Lucy.”
Lucy didn’t look back at the trunk; she simply hightailed it down the attic steps, flipped off the lights, closed the door, and stood there a moment in the carpeted corridor, still holding the knob, waiting for her heart to begin to slow. Of course it was her grandfather. Of course he hadn’t gone walkabout as everyone had claimed. Nope, he’d been murdered by his own wife, just as her father had shouted before he’d died, his body laid to rest in a steamer trunk and covered with a white towel and cake deodorizers to mask the smell. Of course they’d locked the attic door. Of course they’d made the attic off limits to her. Of course.
A white towel—that was obscene. Her grandmother and her father hadn’t buried him, they’d carried him up here to the attic. Is that why she’d been so afraid? Had some part of her known her grandfather was in one of those steamer