Then Mrs. Ella began with all her pets, and there were a bunch of them since she was sixty-five years old. Finally, Becca heard a car pull up.

“The sheriff just arrived, Mrs. Ella. I promise I won’t fall apart.” She hung up the phone before Mrs. Ella could give her own mother’s tried-and-true recipe for stretched nerves. And she wouldn’t fall apart, either, because by Mrs. Ella’s fifth dog, a terrier named Butch, there were no more tears in her eyes and the bubbling, liquid laughter was long dried up.

Sheriff Gaffney had seen the Powell girl around town, but he hadn’t met her. She looked harmless enough, he thought, remembering how she was squeezing a cantaloupe in the produce department at Food Fort when he first saw her. She was pretty enough, but right then, she was as white as his shirtfront last night before he’d eaten spaghetti. She’d opened the front door of the old Marley place and was standing there staring at him.

“I’m the law,” he said, and took his sheriff’s hat off. There was something odd about her, something that wasn’t quite right, and it wasn’t her too-pale face. Well, finding a skeleton could put a person off in a whole lot of ways. He wished she’d stop gaping at him like she didn’t have a brain or, God forbid, was hysterical. He was afraid she would burst into tears and he was ready to do just about anything to prevent that. He threw back his shoulders and stuck out a huge hand. “Sheriff Gaffney, ma’am. What’s this about a skeleton in your basement?”

“It’s a woman, Sheriff.”

He shook her hand, pleased and relieved that now she appeared reasonably under control and her lower lip wasn’t trembling. Her eyes looked perfectly dry to him, from what he could tell through her glasses. “Show me this skeleton who you believe with your untrained eye is a woman, ma’am,” he said, “and we’ll see if you’re guessing right.”

I’m in never-never land, Becca thought as she showed Sheriff Gaffney down to Jacob Marley’s basement.

She walked behind him. He was nearing sixty years old, and was a walking heart attack. He was a good thirty pounds overweight, the buttons of his sheriff shirt gaping over his belly. The wide black leather belt tight beneath his belly carried a gun holster and a billy club, and nearly disappeared in the front because his stomach was so big. He had a circle of gray hair around his head and very light gray eyes. She nearly ran into him when he suddenly stopped on the bottom step, stood there, and sniffed.

“That’s good, Ms. Powell. No smell. Gotta be old.”

She nearly gagged.

She kept back when he went down on his knees to examine the bones.

“I thought it was a woman, maybe even a girl, since she’s wearing a pink tank top.”

“A good deduction, ma’am. Yep, the remains look pretty old, or maybe not. I read that a dead person can become a skeleton in as little as two weeks or it can take as long as ten years depending on where the body’s put. It’s a shame that it wasn’t airtight, you know, a vacuum back behind that wall. If it had been, then maybe something would have been left of her. But critters can get in most places and they were looking at a whole bunch of really good meals with her. Lookee here, the person who put her down here hit her on the head.” He looked up at her, expecting her to see what he’d found. Becca forced herself to look at the skull that had snapped, probably during the upheaval, and rolled away from the neck.

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 just up and 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 over the 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, just hanging around his property?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she back-mouthed him. Old Jacob hated back talk.”