Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [25]
Sheriff Gaffney picked up the skull and slowly turned it in his hands. “Look at this. Someone bashed her but good, not in the back of the head but in the front. Now, that’s mean, really vicious. Yep, violent, real violent. Whoever did this was mad as hell, hit her as hard as he could, right in the face. I wonder who she was, poor thing. First thing is to see if any of our own young people went missing a while ago. Thing is, I’ve been here nearly all my life and I don’t remember a single kid disappearing. But I’ll ask around. Folk don’t forget that. Well, we’ll find out soon enough. I think she was probably a runaway. Old Jacob didn’t like strangers—male, female, it didn’t matter. Probably found her poking around in the garage or maybe even trying to break in, and he didn’t ask any questions, just whacked her head. Actually, he didn’t like people who weren’t strangers, either.”
“You said the blow looks violent, and it’s in the front. Why would Jacob Marley be enraged if she was a runaway, or a local kid, hanging around his property?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she back-mouthed him. Old Jacob hated back talk.”
“The white jeans are Calvin Klein, Sheriff.”
“You’re saying this is a guy now?”
“No, that’s the designer. The jeans are expensive. I don’t think they’d go real well on a runaway.”
“You know, ma’am, many runaways are middle-class,” Sheriff Gaffney said, and heaved himself to his feet. “Strange how most folk don’t know that. Very few of ’em are poor, you know. Yep, the storm must have knocked something loose,” he said, bending over to examine the wall closely. “Looks like old Jacob stuffed her in there pretty good. Not such a good job with the concrete and bricks, though. It shouldn’t have collapsed like that, nothing else in here did.”
“Old Jacob was a homicidal maniac?”
“Eh?” He spun around. “Oh, no, Ms. Powell. He simply didn’t like nobody hanging around his place. He was a real loner, once Miranda up and died on him.”
“Who was Miranda? His wife?”
“Oh, no. She was his golden retriever. He buried his wife so long ago I can’t even remember her. Yep, she lived to be thirteen, keeled over one day.”
“His wife was only thirteen?”
“No, his golden retriever, Miranda. She just up and died. Old Jacob was never the same after that. Losing someone you love, so I hear, can be real hard on a man. My Maude promised me a long time ago that she’d outlive me, so I’d never have to know what it’s like.”
Becca followed the sheriff back up the basement stairs. She looked back once at the ghastly pile of white bones wearing Calvin Klein jeans and a sexy pink tank top. Poor girl. She thought of the Edgar Allan Poe tale The Cask of Amontillado and prayed that this girl had been dead before she was stuffed in that wall.
Sheriff Gaffney had laid the skull on top of the skeleton’s chest.
An hour and a half later, Tyler stood next to her, off to the side of the front porch. Dr. Baines, shorter than Becca, whiplash thin, big glasses, came out nearly at a run, followed by two young men in white coats carrying the skeleton carefully on a gurney.
“I never thought Mr. Marley could murder anyone,” Dr. Baines said, his voice fast and low. “Funny how things happen, isn’t it? All this time, no one knew, no one even guessed.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose, nodded to Becca and to Tyler, then spoke briefly to the men as they gently lifted the gurney into the back of the van.
The unmarked white van pulled away, followed by Dr. Baines’s car. “Dr. Baines is our local physician. He got on the phone to the medical examiner in Augusta after I called him