“Fast worker,” Kelsey teased.
“It was...”
“The circumstances. Believe me, I know. Who instigated it?” Kelsey asked.
“Me.”
“Wow. I am impressed.” Kelsey laughed.
“Kelsey—”
“Sorry! But does this ghost talk to him?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We should find out,” Kelsey said. “For now, let’s eat.”
As they left the Old Jail, Jane waved to Mike at the desk where he seemed to be going through paperwork. He smiled at her. “Out to enjoy the evening? Oh, I guess you’re working, what with everything going on here. Shame about Caleb Hough—although I doubt anyone in town is really surprised.”
“I wonder if that’s why no one wanted to shut down Silverfest,” Jane watched Mike’s reaction. “I mean, I guess he was universally disliked.”
“Pity about the kid and his wife being hurt, though,” Mike said.
“Interesting that no one seemed to be deterred from coming here, despite everything that’s been going on,” Kelsey said.
Mike shrugged. “In big cities, you sometimes have a murder a day. No one leaves a city because of a murder. Now, I’ll grant you, our population is small in comparison, but, heck, we haven’t had a murder since before I moved here. I have faith in the sheriff. He’ll straighten it all out. Especially with the county—and you feds—working on it, too.”
“Actually, it was two murders in less than a week—and four assaults,” Jane said.
“Four?” Mike asked.
“You mean Zoe and Jimmy Hough and—”
“Jennie and me in the basement of the Gilded Lily,” Jane finished.
He gave her a patient smile. “The basement—it’s a death trap, you know. You should stay out of it. Those mannequins are unstable. Jennie probably fell. You just got whacked by one of those fake people.”
“Wow.” Jane grimaced, looking at Kelsey. “Imagine. Jennie fell—right on the rough end of a walking cane.”
“I’m always warning you about those mannequins,” Kelsey said jokingly.
Jane didn’t laugh, responding to Mike instead. “Mike, I’m not part of the theater—and I’m not known for overreacting!”
Mike frowned at them.
Kelsey took up the conversation. “Well, it’s really great to hear that you have faith in your law enforcement system, Mike.”
“Town, county—and federal!” he said pleasantly.
“See you later, Mike,” Jane told him.
“Take care now,” he said, returning to his paperwork.
They left the Old Jail and walked the few steps to the entrance of the Gilded Lily. Country music was playing on the stereo system when they arrived. The bar area was busy but they quickly saw Logan and Sloan at a four-top table.
They slid into seats to join them.
“Anything new?” Jane asked Sloan.
“A bit of an interesting twist,” he said, leaning close. “You know the mummified corpse in the desert? Well, it’s been stripped down to the bone for you to do a reconstruction. But the M.E. found something interesting—or rather, something lacking—in the skull when he removed the rest of the soft tissue.”
“What?”
“The tongue,” he replied. “Whoever our mystery corpse might be, he had his tongue sliced out before he was shot in the chest.”
“Gruesome.” Kelsey shuddered. “But that’s a classic punishment for talking too much, isn’t it?”
“Heretics sometimes had their tongues cut out,” Logan said. “I guess you could say they talked too much—against the establishment or the church. It’s beginning to look as if whoever we found in the desert was killed to prevent him from talking.”
Kelsey shook her head. “That was cruel and brutal, since they obviously meant to kill the victim, anyway. What difference did it make if he could talk. They were going to kill him. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Some people are cruel and brutal,” Logan said, “and we’ve all learned that cruelty doesn’t have to make sense. Sloan, I know Jane is still working on the skull you’ve already determined to be that of Sage McCormick, but if she did up a quick two-dimensional drawing from photos and scans of the second corpse, do you have old photographs or paintings we could make comparisons with?”