Admit One (6 page)

“I
tripped,”
Mason said before she could answer, looking back at Will just as testily as Will looked at him. 

“Is it possible you lost a hair tie? A black ribbon?” he asked his sister again.

She shook her head, and Will frowned at Mason’s hair. “I guess it’s not yours, is it, Fabio?”

The Brit merely gave him a look out of his good eye. “No.”

“Will,” Allie said, exasperated. “What
is
this about?”

That was the question. “A grave seems to have been…disturbed,” he said, for lack of a better description. “I’ve got a team there gathering evidence, and I wanted to separate what you and Mason here might have left behind when you
tripped
over the scene.”

“Oh no.” Allie said. “Sounds to me like you’ve got some teenagers acting up again.”

“Possibly.” The cemetery, being one of the oldest in the area and connected to a church that had famously been destroyed by a lightning strike back in the thirties, was a hotbed for paranormal lore and legend. Consequently, it had also become a magnet for thrill seekers and tourists alike. Usually it was the old mausoleum that attracted daredevils and vandals, but since his department had padlocked the doors, things had been relatively quiet.

Looked like the respite was over.   

“The soil,” Mason said, pulling the compress away from his eye again. “Where I tripped over the marker. It was all turned over. Like someone had been digging.”

Indeed they had. “As it turns out,” he told the other man “it was lucky you fell when you did. A few more feet and the Hawbaker you were rolling around with would have been dearly departed Cousin Eugene.”

CHAPTER SIX

“SO,”
said a voice from behind her. “How was your weekend?”

Allie paused in the act of stowing her purse in the desk drawer, glancing over her shoulder at the statuesque redhead lounging in the office doorway. “Fine. Busy.” She shut the drawer. “How was yours?”

“Oh, you know.” Sarah blew over the top of her coffee. “About the same.”

They stared at each other across the room for the space of several heartbeats.

Allie finally sighed. “Bran or Rainey? No, don’t tell me.” She held up a hand. “Rainey. I guess I should feel fortunate she didn’t post it on Twitter.”

Abandoning nonchalance, Sarah came in and shut the door. “You know I didn’t know he was coming, right?”

“I gathered. Mason told me he told Tucker, who, I’m subsequently gathering, neglected to tell you.”

“For which he has been duly punished. Now.” She shoved aside some paperwork, perched on the edge of the desk. Tell me all. Do not spare a single detail.”

“You mean Rainey left something out?”

“Allie.”

“Okay, fine.” She dropped down into the chair and began ticking items off on her fingers. “Storm, power outage, tree blocking the road, awkward
Hey, fancy meeting you here
encounter in the loft of your guest cottage – and before you get any ideas, I kicked him in the balls and blacked his eye. While stark naked. And shrieking like a boo hag. Romantic, it was not.”

Sarah blinked. “Wait,
you
gave him that shiner?”

“Well, partially. Then Will sort of made it worse.” Allie chewed her lip, and told herself she didn’t care. But curiosity got the better of her. “Did it look really bad when you got home last night?”

“Awful.”

“I’m going to hell for deriving the tiniest bit of satisfaction from that, aren’t I?”

Allie’s cell phone rang before Sarah could reply. “Sorry, I better get that. It might be Dad’s nurse. Hello?”

The voice on the other end had Allie freezing in place.

Her face must have conveyed her shock, because Sarah sat up straight.
What happened?
she mouthed, but Allie could only shake her head. “Why?” she heard herself asking, followed by “I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid today isn’t good for me. No, tomorrow isn’t going to work either. No. No. Thank you, but no. Goodbye, Wesley. Well,” she said as she hung up. “I guess that’s what I get for not checking caller ID.”

“Wesley.” Venom practically dripped from Sarah’s mouth as it formed Allie’s ex-fiancé’s name. “What did that little worm want?”

“To take me to lunch.”

“Why?”

“He said he wanted to catch up. See how I was doing. I told him no,” Allie reminded her friend when she saw the look on Sarah’s face.

“A lot more politely than warranted, if you ask me.”

Allie suppressed a spurt of irritation. She knew her friend meant well. But, much like Allie’s brothers, she tended to be overprotective. Granted, Allie had gone through a patch after her broken engagement where she was certainly… fragile. But she’d come a long way since then. It would be nice if the people closest to her noticed.

A knock on the office door brought a halt to the conversation. “Sarah?” Rainey poked her dark head around the corner. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a woman here wanting to talk to you about yarn or something?”

“Oh, the cozy mysteries group. Thanks, Rainey. I’ll be right there.”

“The what?” Allie said after Rainey departed.

“I’ll explain later.” Sarah slid from her perch on the desk. “And don’t think you’ve escaped. Interrogation will resume shortly.”

“Good thing we’re all out of rubber hoses.”

“I’ll send Rainey down to the hardware store right away.”

When Sarah was gone, Allie leaned back in the chair, her breath easing between her lips in a hiss. She wondered what Wesley was up to. Granted, she’d done her best to keep things as amicable as possible after their breakup – in a town the size of Sweetwater, bumping into one another was inevitable. But they certainly weren’t on bosom enough terms that he should be calling her up to say
let’s do lunch
. 

Evicting thoughts of Wesley from her head, Allie pushed away from the desk, rolling the chair closer to the window.

Then a little closer. Closer. With one finger, she lifted a slat of the wooden blinds. From this vantage point, she could just make out the porch of Sarah’s little cottage. No movement.

Of course there was no movement. Mason was probably still asleep.

“Pathetic,” she said out loud. Though whether she was referring to herself or to Mason, she really couldn’t say.

“TELL
me again,” Mason said, “why it was necessary for me to accompany you to the veterinarian at…” he peered blearily at the dashboard clock “nine o’clock in the morning?”

“Simple,” Tucker said, his elbow perched on the open window. The air streaming in smelled faintly of fish and decaying vegetation, indicating their proximity to the river. “You put me in a position of withholding information from Sarah. Sarah was displeased with said withholding. She retaliated by ‘asking’ me to take her damn cat to the vet for his shots and grooming, whatever the hell that entails, knowing that what is normally a fat, lazy and complacent blob with fur turns into the Demon Beast from Hell when he sees the carrier.  I thought it only appropriate you should share in the joy.”

Mason turned around in his seat, surveying the Demon Beast with a jaundiced eye. The Beast eyed him back through the metal grating of its carrier, equally displeased. He’d already acquired a nasty set of scratches on his arm trying to help Tucker corral the animal. Two days in Sweetwater, and he was beginning to look like he’d been hit by a bus while running from a pack of rabid dogs. Given the fact that he’d been clouted on the head, sustaining a concussion during his last visit, perhaps the universe was trying to give him a hint.

“I’m a fool,” he muttered, turning back around.

“There’s a news flash.” Tucker glanced over, and Mason caught sight of his reflection in the lenses of his friend’s aviator shades.  His eye was turning an interesting shade of purple, but at least it wasn’t puffy. Hooray for green ice. “So what happened in the cemetery?”

“That,” Mason said frostily “is none of your business.”

“I’m not talking about Allie, you idiot. Although I suspect you’d be a lot more jovial this morning if things in that area had gone well. I want to know about the grave that was tampered with.”

“What about it?”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

“More unusual than the fact that someone was apparently digging up a two hundred year old grave?”

“You know what I mean,” Tucker said, pausing at a stop sign to look both ways.

“Considering the fact that by the time I’d realized what it was I’d stumbled over, Allison’s brother was blacking my eye, mostly what I saw were stars. What –” Just then, a large, furry shape darted in front of the truck and Mason called “Look out!”

Tucker swerved and hit the brakes, but wasn’t entirely able to avoid a collision.

“Shit,” he said as the smell of burnt rubber filled the air, along with a pitiful wailing of the cat in the backseat. “Thank God I buckled him in,” he said, leaning over the seat to double check the carrier’s vocal occupant. “What the hell did I hit?”

“I don’t know.” Mason opened his door, walking around to the front of the hood while Tucker approached from the opposite side.

“Ah, hell,” Tucker muttered, squatting down. “Hey pal. Hey buddy.”

The dog, a large shaggy creature of indeterminate breed, thumped its tail, then whined as it tried to get up.

“No.” Tucker laid his hand on the animal’s side. “How about you just stay put.”

“Looks like a broken leg,” Mason murmured, looking the animal over. The back left appendage lay at an awkward angle. “Luckily you weren’t going very fast. It could have been much worse.”

Tucker sighed. “Well, at least we’re headed to the right spot. Help me get him in the bed of the truck and I’ll see what the vet can do for him.”

Tucker got a rag from the cab of the truck, tying it around the animal’s muzzle so that he couldn’t bite when they attempted to move him. “There’s blood on his mouth,” he said, frowning. “Though it doesn’t seem to be his.”

“Maybe he caught a rabbit or something. He could have been chasing some sort of prey when he ran into the road.”

Lifting carefully, they managed to get the animal into the truck with minimal damage to any of them. Mason’s shirt was smeared with blood from the broken leg, but that was hardly worth noting. They settled him on an old blanket Tucker kept for protecting the paint when he was hauling wood and whatnot.

“Nice dog,” Tucker said, stroking the shaggy black head, guilt in every line of his body. “I wonder who he belongs to.”

You,
Mason thought with a wry twist of his lips, after catching Tucker’s expression. Unless the animal was already spoken for, of course.

As he walked back around to the passenger side, something lying in the tall grass at the side of the road caught his attention.

He paused, looking closer, then froze.

“Um, Tucker?”

“Yeah?” Tucker looked across the bed of the truck, his hand resting on the door he’d just opened.

“You might want to take a look at this.”

“What is it?” He sounded slightly annoyed. “That dog is in pain. I’d like to get going.”

Mason studied it again, wanting to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. “I think,” he said, suddenly glad that he hadn’t taken the time to eat breakfast. “That it’s a human arm.”  

KNEELING,
Will
pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to dispel the ache that had begun to throb there. Spring had taken its sweet time this year, meaning that the pollen which had normally come and gone was still thick in the air, covering everything in its path like a fuzzy, allergy-inducing blanket.

Including the mangled remains of the human arm lying at his feet.

And that, he was forced to admit, was a much bigger headache inducer than any allergen he’d ever encountered.

“You don’t think the dog did this, do you?”

Will looked up at Darryl Tolliver. The young officer’s face was pale beneath his coffee-colored skin. “You mean do I think the dog killed the victim and ripped off his arm? No.”

“There’s blood on its mouth,” Darryl pointed out.

“Yes, and you’ll notice that despite the teeth marks here and here,” he gestured with his penlight “the wounds are remarkably blood free. Also, look at the point at which the limb was severed. Tell me what you see.”

Darryl swallowed visibly, but leaned closer. “It’s not jagged,” he said after a moment, professional interest overcoming his instinctive revulsion. “Like it would be if a dog had bitten it, I mean. It’s… clean.” He hit the side of one hand against the opposite palm. “Like a chop, instead of a tear.”

“Very good.” Darryl was relatively new to the force, and didn’t have a lot of experience with dead bodies. He was, however, observant, with a keen mind. “Now, see how the tissue looks bloated? If I were to guess, I’d say this limb has spent some time in the water.”