19, MASSAGE THERAPIST. CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. BLOTCHY FACE, RED EYES. SILLY GIRL, PROBABLY DIDN’T DESERVE TO BE FIRED. EMPLOYED 13 MO.
Xander sat cross-legged on the floor in the lotus position, his hands resting upright on his knees.
Mara turned up the lights. “Kellen wants help identifying the body.”
Sheri Jean sucked in her breath.
Destiny gasped. “The body?”
Every eye was fixed to the towel.
Mara shook her head violently. “No, I don’t mean… That’s not the body. It’s clothes.”
Kellen pushed magazines off a low table, placed the towel in the middle and opened it. She stepped back and gestured. “It’s not much. We think she was wearing a dress and the white rubber thing is a tennis shoe sole with some of the canvas attached.” Her hands didn’t shake; being here with these people helped her get a grip on herself.
In a voice that sounded as if it was coming from far away, Mara said, “I never get used to seeing the sad scraps of another person’s life.”
Kellen looked at her in surprise. How many “scraps” had this pretty, competitive female looked at?
“So it was definitely a lady?” Destiny asked in a wobbly voice.
Kellen thought of that hip bone. “Definitely a lady.”
“She was a guest?” Destiny’s voice got higher.
“There’s no one missing from the area that I’ve heard,” Mara said. Which was no answer.
But Destiny said, “Good. I mean, not good, but I don’t want to think that’s one of us.”
Heads nodded.
“That cloth was against her skin?” Ellen dragged a table lamp over to the table and knelt on the rug to study the scrap. “It was sky blue at one time, cotton or lightweight wool, a natural fabric and probably worn in the summer. There’s a lot of disintegration here, but exposure to dirt, wind and rain will do that. There’s a lot of salt in the air here, too. That should actually preserve the color.”
Kellen stared at Ellen. The woman was talking like a CSI investigator.
Ellen looked up and saw the general wariness. “I’m a colorist. I’m a hairdresser. I understand how color fades, and hair is a natural fiber, too… You didn’t get any hair? Did you see hair?”
Kellen had captured a mental snapshot of the skull. She didn’t want to review it…but she did. “The hair was wet. It looked brown. Maybe ash blond?”
“But the hair could be dyed, and that doesn’t get us anywhere.” Sheri Jean was impatient.
Even more impatient was Frances. “How are we supposed to ID a body based on a scrap of cloth and a piece of tennis shoe?”
Mara disappeared and came back with a pair of large tweezers. She used the towel to pick up the rubber sole. She poked around inside.
Sheri Jean continued, “We could pull this apart and still it would be the same shoe that every woman wears when she’s—”
Mara jerked out the insole.
A silver ring flew out, landed on the rug, bounced to rest at Destiny’s feet.
10
Mara dropped the shoe.
The room settled into a profound silence, marred only by the soothing harp music that played in the background. Then—screams, high pierced and terrified.
Like a cartoon character afraid of a mouse, Destiny jumped onto a chair and shrieked and pointed.
Xander stood in one smooth movement and stepped away.
Kellen tried to calm them down. “It’s a ring. It’s okay…”
Heads shook wildly.
Kellen got it. There was something about this ring. “What? Tell me. What?”
The screams died down. Shock quivered in the room.
Destiny visibly trembled, and her voice trembled, too. “That’s Priscilla’s ring.”
“Who’s Priscilla?” Kellen asked. Someone they knew, obviously. Then she remembered. “Wait. Priscilla, the assistant manager before me? The one who left without notice?”
Destiny nodded her head, up and down, up and down.
Xander went to the pitcher of lemon-infused water and poured glasses full. He put them on a tray and started around the room, offering them like fine wine.
“I never thought…” Mara took a glass and tossed it back like a shot. “That woman was such a—”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead,” Ellen warned.
“Right.” Mara gathered her thoughts. “She disappeared one day and we all thought… Well, her car was gone and her cottage was cleaned out, and we thought… But that’s her ring. Her toe ring. She always wore it, a Celtic knot with a purple topaz. She said it was her lucky ring.”
Destiny crouched down in the chair and covered her face with her hands.
“She hid it under the sole of her shoe. She must have done that when she knew she was in trouble.” Sheri Jean waved Xander away and turned to Kellen. “What did you say killed her?”
Kellen thought about those hands cut off at the wrists. “I don’t know. I’m not a coroner.”
“The question isn’t what killed her, but who.” Mara leaned down, wrapped the shoe in the towel and placed it on the table again. With the tweezers, she picked up the ring and placed it beside the shoe.
“Why do you think it’s murder?” Frances asked.
“Kellen said it was,” Mara answered. “She said it wasn’t a natural death, and I have to say I agree. Why would Priscilla hide her ring in her shoe if she wasn’t trying to send a message?”
“Definitely murder.” Kellen accepted a glass of water and sipped, a wonderful dampness in a mouth that had been dry for too long.
Destiny lifted her head out of her hands. “Was her other shoe out there?”
“I didn’t see it,” Kellen said. Because she hadn’t wanted to look. “But as gloomy and wet as it was, I didn’t spot this one, either.”
“I wonder if she hid any messages in the other shoe,” Destiny suggested.
Kellen had her phone pulled out before Destiny finished speaking. “I’m texting Lloyd Magnuson and Temo right now. If it’s out there, they’ll find it.”
“Good thought, Destiny,” Mara said.
“The killer can’t be one of us!” Ellen said. “It must be a stranger. A vagrant! There are always weird people floating through town.”
“It could be a guest.” Destiny took a glass, too. She tried to take a drink, but her teeth chattered on the edge. “Some of them are not nice people.”
Kellen’s phone chimed. She checked the message. “Temo’s got the other shoe. When Lloyd gets back with his car, it’ll go to the coroner with the other remains.”
“Shouldn’t we examine it?” Frances asked.
“It’s evidence in a murder investigation. I suspect we shouldn’t have messed with the first shoe.” Kellen saw the look on Frances’s face. “I know. I half want to look, too.”
“How did it happen?” Sheri Jean was working it out in her mind. “Priscilla came in, all smiles, volunteered to take the tour. I sent her off with the group. One lady said she got sick out there, that she was white and sweating. She dumped the group, went to her cottage and…”
“Someone was there and abducted her!” Ellen said.
“And packed up her bags and drove her car?” Sheri Jean scoffed.
“So she packed and got ready to leave, and he jumped her?” Ellen was on the trail now. “Forced her in the car, forced her to drive, took her somewhere and killed her?”
“Or she stopped in town on the way out and he grabbed her there,” Destiny whispered.
“Maybe it was your boyfriend, the one you left the door open for,” Frances taunted.
“It wasn’t!” Destiny straightened out of her hunch. “In September, he was in Seattle at community college. He didn’t come home until Christmas.”
“Flunked out,” Frances told Kellen.
Xander placed the tray with the extra glasses on the table within easy reach and sank back into his meditative pose.
“Where was the body found?” Mara asked.
“On the grounds above the beach.” Kellen would never forget the scattered bones, the shattered remains of a life. That image would never fade from her mind, and yet, how could she have survived a whole year—and forgotten?
“Maybe she washed in from somewhere else,” Destiny said hopefully.