Harold came out. There were so many mitigating circumstances that he was reluctant even to hazard a guess at either woman’s date of death, but when pressed, he estimated that the first woman had probably been dead six to eight weeks, and the other one, possibly three months.
A cry went up while Joe and Jeremy were talking with Harold.
A third set of bones had been found.
Harold groaned, and they all winced.
Spotlights went on, because the light was starting to fade, and the third set was scattered.
The police kept searching, and in the end, parts of a fourth victim were found. She was going to be hard to identify, because her skull was missing….
“Who owns this field?” Jeremy asked.
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “We’ll have to check the county records. I know Ginny’s land stretches pretty far, and the Rolfes owned land out this way once, too, but I’m pretty sure Eric’s mother sold everything but the house when she moved to Florida.”
One of his men cleared his throat. “Sir, this is MacElroy land now. They picked it up, since it bordered Ginny’s land.”
“Makes sense,” Joe muttered, shaking his head. “Ginny hires people to work it, and folks who are hired aren’t as thorough as folks who own.”
Dr. MacElroy deserved some scrutiny, Jeremy thought. Could the kindly pediatrician be a killer?
He’d heard of stranger things.
Jeremy looked up to the sky. The last of the day’s light was going. He turned to look out across the nearby stretch of bracken. The last rays of sunlight must be playing, because he saw the boy again. Standing there, just looking at him, looking like a real live boy, with his tousled hair and T-shirt, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.
Jeremy shook his head, as if to clear his vision, and told himself that the obvious explanation was almost always the right one. No doubt there really was a boy out there. There were houses around here. Somewhere. Farmhouses. And farmers had sons.
But then the boy moved, pointing toward the sky, as if to draw Jeremy’s attention to the fading light. Then he pointed again, toward Jeremy’s car.
He was a good distance away, but Jeremy could swear that the boy mouthed a word.
“Hurry.”
And then he vanished.
It was almost dark.
Rowenna. He had to get Rowenna.
He knocked Brad in the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Joe looked at him. “You’re not hanging around?”
“I’ve got to pick up Rowenna,” he explained.
“Something else may turn up here,” Joe said. “I’ll call you later if we find anything. You get going.”
His stride long as he hurried, heedless of the rough ground, Jeremy tripped over something as he passed close to where they had found the first body. When he looked down as he caught his balance, he noticed something sticking out from under the rock that had nearly brought him facedown in the field. He pulled a tissue from his pocket and carefully picked it up.
He frowned. It looked like a business card, but it, like the body, was the worse for the elements. It would probably have dissolved already if it had been paper, but it had been laminated.
In the fading light, he could just make out the curlicue writing, the pentagram in the upper left and the fairy on the right.
It read Magick Mercantile, Adam and Eve Llewellyn, Proprietors, followed by the store’s address and phone number.
Anyone could have dropped a card, he reasoned. But there was something stuck to the back of the card.
It looked like gum. Old, dried-up gum.
And Adam Llewellyn was always chewing gum.
It would have to be tested, to see if his guess as to its identity was correct.
But even though he didn’t know for sure, Jeremy’s blood chilled in his veins.
“Joe!” he shouted.
“Hi, there, Ro. You working for the Llewellyns now?”
She felt frozen where she stood. She’d been just about to reach for the doorknob when the door had opened, and she’d jumped back to avoid being hit by it. But now she couldn’t move.
It was Eric Rolfe. He had looked like a menacing giant seen through the glass of the door, but up close he was merely a fairly tall man in a big Windbreaker.
“Ro? You look upset. Is everything all right?” he asked.
“I…I can’t find Adam or Eve,” she said.
Eric frowned and looked at his watch. “I had an appointment to meet Eve here. She was going to give me a reading. I can’t believe she would just stand me up.”
“I can’t believe she would, either,” Rowenna said, and started behind the counter.
“What are you doing?” Eric asked.
“Something’s wrong. I’m going to call 911,” she said.
“Ro, wait. I don’t think you should do that,” Eric said.
“Eric, a woman is dead, another one is missing…and now Eve!” She couldn’t bring herself to say that Eve thought her husband might be a killer and point out that her husband wasn’t there, either.
Eric shook his head. “Rowenna, what if you get the police all stirred up and then it turns out they just ran out for coffee? Or a quickie? You could cause all kinds of trouble for them. When did you last see Eve?” he asked.
“About twenty minutes ago,” she said.
He arched a brow. “Twenty minutes?” he said.