“Yes,” I said, feeling incredibly weary. “I agree. I’m going outside.”
I was the older, and it was time for me to shoulder the burden. Drawing myself up to my full four feet, eleven inches, I jammed the baby monitor into the pocket of my robe. So far adrenaline had carried me along, but now it had become an effort to put one foot in front of the other. I was shamefully glad when Phillip followed me out the patio door.
I looked up to see how full the moon was, but a distant bolt of lightning showed me the sky was full of heavy clouds, moving fast. As we stepped onto the grass, a slight breeze picked up locks of my tangled hair, and I had to hold it off my face. There was another ominous rumble.
“Smells like rain,” Phillip said quietly.
I felt a terrible impulse to turn back; but of course, we had to keep going. If we were seeing a person, that person needed help. We had to check. Too soon, we passed the mimosa tree and looked behind it. Phillip aimed the beam of the lantern, and all too clearly we saw the woman.
Phillip said, “This is big trouble.”
I had to agree.
She was wearing tight jeans, loafers, and a sweatshirt. Her body lay on its back, with her arms flung out to the side and her knees slightly bent. With a shiver of revulsion, I realized the body’s posture mimicked Sophie’s as she lay sprawled in sleep, her little arms thrown out, her head turned to the side, and her legs slightly akimbo.
But this woman wasn’t sleeping. She was dead.
And she wasn’t Virginia Mitchell.
Chapter Six
Though her face was turned away from us, and the light wasn’t good, there was no mistaking the fact that this woman was a few things Virginia was not: white, full-figured, and blond.
“What the hell?” Phillip said very quietly, a beat before I said exactly the same thing.
Phillip’s flashlight was wavering in his hand, so the beam trembled in a disconcerting way. Still, I could tell the woman’s skull was not shaped like a skull should be. The flashlight grazed her hands, and I could see her fingernails were painted green. Somehow, that just tore me apart. I saw that something glinted in the grass beside her right hand, but I couldn’t tell what it was, and at the moment I didn’t care.
Phillip made a noise that expressed disgust and distress, all at once. He handed me the flashlight, and took two big steps to squat next to her.
“Don’t touch her, Phillip!” I sounded like death was contagious. I meant that he should not lay a finger on her, that the police would take care of her, but it didn’t come out that way.
“I have to make sure she’s dead.” Phillip sounded far more reasonable than I did.
“You’re right.” I felt guilty. I should be doing the checking.
Phillip laid his fingers on her neck. After maybe a minute—a very long minute—he said, “No pulse, at least none I can feel.”
“Her chest isn’t moving at all.” I’d kept a sharp eye on her. I felt a weird impulse to put my hand on her chest, as I did Sophie’s. In fact, I moved forward, despite my previous advice to Phillip. He said, “She’s gone, Roe. No breathing.”
He rose to his feet.
We looked at each other for a long moment. Phillip said, “I hate to confess this, and I know you won’t fall for it … but after the trouble last year, I feel like dumping her over the fence. So she’d be in someone else’s yard.”
“I wish we could, too,” I said, and I meant it. “But you know we can’t. Of course, it would be wrong. For another thing, I bet we’d get caught.”
Phillip looked regretful. “So … where is the babysitter?” My brother said this as if he were sure I knew the answer.
“I’m totally at a loss.” I’d thought of, and rejected, a dozen possible scenarios. Maybe Virginia had gotten an emergency phone call from her mother and this woman had coincidentally happened to die in our yard. Or maybe Virginia had suddenly developed appendicitis, and this woman had tried to stop her from going to the hospital.…
“I can’t think of any reason she’d leave. Can you?” He looked down at me. “Do you think Virginia might be dead, too?”
I shook my head drearily. “She’s missing, and a body’s here. I don’t know what to make of it. We’d better go call the police.”
As we trudged back to the door, accompanied by the grumble of thunder not quite so distant, I said, “I am way more familiar than I want to be with the law enforcement people of Lawrenceton and Sparling County.”
“Me, too.” My brother had had to undergo intensive debriefings with the locals and the FBI after he’d survived the kidnapping, and the experience was still fresh in his mind.
Though the baby monitor had remained silent, I quickened my steps to be closer to Sophie. While my baby had been inside our house, unguarded, while I was asleep, while Phillip slept, someone had murdered a woman just yards away. The realization and its implications were becoming clear to me.
Since Virginia, my baby’s caregiver, had vanished, she was a prime candidate for the role of murderer.
When the dispatcher answered, I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t know where to start. “I’m Aurora Teagarden, I live at 1100 McBride. There’s a dead woman in my backyard,” I said, since that was my most serious problem. “And my babysitter is missing. And … could you not turn on the sirens? My baby’s asleep. I don’t want to sound self-centered, but the body’s not going anywhere.”
There was a moment of silence. “All right, Roe, gotcha,” said the dispatcher. “Dead woman, missing woman, baby.” Though I couldn’t place her voice, I was certain it was someone I’d been in calculus with, or someone whose brother I had dated, or someone who sat three rows behind me in church (or all of the above). “Someone will roll up within five minutes. Don’t leave the house.”
Too late for that. “Thanks,” I said politely, and hung up.
Though I desperately needed to sit, I had to return to Sophie’s room to lay eyes on her … on her back, arms flung out, legs slightly akimbo. This time, I did put my hand gently on her chest, and I was reassured to feel its rise and fall.
I would kill anyone who tried to harm her. I would give my life for her.
And for the first time in this terrible night, tears ran down my cheeks.
I struggled to get back on an even keel. The police would be here any minute.
I had just rejoined Phillip in the living room and collapsed on a couch when the first knock came at the door. Sure enough, it was discreet. Phillip opened it to admit a uniformed patrol officer, Susan Crawford. I had sent her a card when I’d heard she was pregnant a couple of months ago.
“Where’s the body?” Susan asked. She might be thicker about the middle, but she was all cop. “Why are your lights off in here?”