On Pins and Needles

“And you think you’re wasting your time,” she finished what he seemed to have left unsaid. “That’s okay. You aren’t the first person I’ve had to prove myself to and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”

His very attractive mouth eased into another smile, as if he thought he’d gotten her goat and it pleased him.

Well, he hadn’t gotten her goat. And to show him, she put some effort into sounding more professional.

“Have you had allergy tests to isolate what you are and what you aren’t allergic to?” she asked.

“No, but I can pretty much tell. Horses and hay seem to trigger it. And since, besides being sheriff and being around them pretty much every where I go, I need to work the family ranch, I have to do some thing about it.”

“Which is why you’re here.”

He merely inclined his head to concede the point.

“I’ll need to do some testing of my own—” Megan held up her hand when he opened his mouth to protest. “Unlike what an allergy doctor would do, my way of testing is much easier and absolutely non-invasive. It’s simple muscle testing through applied kinesiology.”

“Whatever that is.”

“You’ll see as soon as we get started. But I need to isolate everything you’re allergic to. For instance, if you were allergic to bacon you might have a sensitivity to pork, or it might be the nitrates the meat is cured with that bother you. I’d have to know which it is before you could actually be cleared.”

“For takeoff?”

Okay, so he could make her smile and she liked that in a man, too. She still tried to maintain her perspective, though, by reminding herself that he thought she was a quack. “No, not cleared for takeoff. Cleared of the allergy. That’s what it’s called when I cure you,” she said with exaggerated bravado.

He caught it. “When you cure me. Do you do laying on of hands and faith healing, too?”

“No, just acupuncture.” And she was enjoying their back-and-forth teasing too much, so she amended her tone to a more authoritative one and said, “Shall we get started?”

But before he could answer, the front door opened suddenly to admit the contractor Megan had hired to replace her septic tank.

It surprised both Megan and Josh. Their focus on each other had been so intense that neither of them had seen him coming despite the fact that anything was hard to miss through the huge windows.

“Never thought I’d find you both in one place,” Burt Connors said by way of greeting. “Glad to see it, though. Saves me a trip.”

“Hi, Burt,” the sheriff answered as if they were old friends.

“Josh,” the excavator countered the same way.

“What’s up?”

Apparently Josh Brimley thought he should take over. But since Megan was still trying to figure out why her contractor had been looking for her and the sheriff, she guessed it was just as well.

“Got that old septic tank out and put in the new one,” Burt Connors informed them both. “But when we were coverin’ it up again we dug a little in another spot for fill dirt and found somethin’ else. Somethin’ that looks like sheriff business.”

“You found sheriff business in my backyard?” Megan said.

“Yes, ma’am. Looks like a skeleton. A human skeleton.”

“Are you sure it isn’t just an old family grave?” Josh asked reasonably.

“Sure enough. He’s not too deep, there’s no coffin and it looks like the guy was planted belongings and all. I think you better come take yourself a gander, Josh. And you, too, Ms. Bailey. This ain’t no kind of formal buryin’. I’m bettin’ we’ve opened up somethin’ somebody thought would never come to light.”

Josh Brimley turned those dark, dark blue eyes to Megan again, this time from beneath one raised brow. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Only that I don’t have the foggiest idea what’s going on.”

But he didn’t look completely convinced of that as he led the way out of her office.

Chapter 2

THE OCCASIONAL CAR ACCIDENT. Reckless driving. Speeding. Mailbox bashing. Minor vandalism. Cattle tipping. Drunk and disorderly conduct. Brawling. A break-in here and there—in the history of Elk Creek that was as bad as it got in the way of crime. Until now.

It was a little hard for Josh to believe that only three months into his run as sheriff he was looking at what seemed to be a murder. But it didn’t take him long after reaching the Bailey place and looking over what had been un earthed to realize that could well be just what he was con fronted with.

“I’ve put up the crime scene tape to cordon off the area. Your men can work around it,” he told Burt Connors when he had the burial site contained.

Chaos reined supreme in the Bailey backyard since Burt insisted that he and his crew had to finish up their work so the Bailey sisters would have use of their plumbing facilities by night fall. And although Josh was fairly certain curiosity in what that same crew had uncovered was the real reason behind their lingering, he didn’t object. He had work of his own to do as he used a whisk broom to care fully and methodically brush away the soil that remained partially obliterating the skeleton so that the entire grave and its contents were visible.

Josh had trained with the Wyoming sheriff’s department and he knew all the procedures, including those for a crime of this magnitude. He knew the procedures by heart. But a murder investigation was the last thing he’d ever expected to actually have to do in his small hometown.

Of course he should have known better than anyone that not many things turned out the way a person expected them to. But still, it was a sobering job that lay ahead of him.

Daylight had disappeared by the time Josh backed away from the freshly cleared hole, confident that he’d done all he should do on his own for the moment. But he did avail himself of Burt Connors’s offer of floodlights to illuminate the area and then hunkered down on his heels at the grave side to get a closer look at what he’d actually exposed while he waited for the sheriff’s department’s forensic team.

Along with the bones that had been discovered, there was a knapsack and the clothes the victim had worn. The clothes were non de script, the same kind of clothes he and most everyone else around these parts wore—a plain shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots.

The sole of one of the cowboy boots was down to its last layer of leather and the fact that there was a tear in one knee of the jeans and the shirt was thread bare around the edges led him to believe this hadn’t been a prosperous man. Josh was betting that when they got into the knapsack that rested along side the skeleton, they’d find all his worldly goods contained in it.

The knapsack itself was a well-worn canvas bag and, although Josh was careful not to disturb anything so that the scene would be intact for the forensics unit, there was a local news pa per sticking out far enough for him to read the date without touching anything. It was a June news pa per. Eighteen years old.

After his arrival on the scene and his initial look into the grave Josh had radioed Millie Christopher—the woman Megan Bailey had referred to as his secretary—and had Millie look for any missing persons reports that might be on file at the office.

Millie said she’d look, but she knew for a fact that in the entirety of her thirty-eight years as the sheriff’s girl-Friday, the only missing persons case there had ever been was a teenage girl who had turned out to be a runaway in 1982.

So much for hoping for an easy lead.

The forensics unit arrived then and Josh met them at their van, introducing himself and filling them in as he took them to the site. Once they got to work he was left to stand by and oversee their first few chores—taking pictures of the scene from all angles, and closely ob serving and describing in notes the placement of everything. Nothing could be moved until that was accomplished.

Within moments of the arrival of the forensics unit, two state patrol cars showed up, too. The officers had heard over their radios what was going on and had come to see if they could help. They couldn’t, but they stayed around anyway, adding to the number of on lookers. One of whom, of course, was Megan Bailey.

Her sister hadn’t returned yet but Megan had set up a card table with beverages and bran muffins for anyone who might want them.

Josh was tempted to shout over to her “What do you think this is? A tea party?”

But he refrained. It wasn’t as if she appeared to be enjoying this because she didn’t. On a rational level, Josh knew she was only being consider ate of everyone’s comfort. But still, just having her there—even out of the way beside her back door—was damn distracting.

At least it was damn distracting to him.

No one else seemed to pay her much mind beyond quick trips to the table to accept her hospitality before getting right back to work. But for Josh it was a different story.