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his posture wasn’t the first thing I noticed.”
    “Darla!”
    “What? I meant his face . Now who has the dirty mind? Didn’t you think he was handsome?”
    “I guess. Why didn’t any of you ever tell me about him?”
    Darla and Mariska exchanged a look.
    “Oh, honey. We all thought he was gay.”

 
     
    Chapter Five
     
    Charlotte grabbed her towel and headed to water aerobics at the Pineapple Port pool. It wasn’t so much aerobics as it was swinging limbs back and forth, but it served as the epicenter of some of the best community gossip. She stopped in front of her chalkboard wall and picked up the chalk she’d purchased the day before. It had taken the police until eight p.m. to finish removing Erin Bingham’s bones from her yard, and she’d gone shopping to kill time. She didn’t buy seedlings. It would be a while before she’d consider gardening again. She could officially remove gardener and archeologist from her potential career list.
    Charlotte wrote find Erin’s killer on her wall. It seemed dramatic, so she erased it and replaced it with solve mystery . The statement was vague enough that if someone saw it, they wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that she was nuts. She could say the mystery was the location of a missing earring, or the clicking noise her dishwasher made.
    Speaking of which…
    She added fix clicking to the board.
    It had been twenty-four hours since she’d found a skeleton in her backyard, and while life went on as usual, she felt strange in her own home. She fought a persistent urge to peek out her back window. A tingling feeling on the back of her neck made her suspect that at any moment, she’d find Erin Bingham standing in her lanai.
    But in what state? Would she look like she did when she was alive? Or a zombie? Or would she find a skeleton with a broken mandible tapping on her door?
    She couldn’t stop thinking about the poor woman or her handsome son. She felt terrible for Declan. She’d lost her own mother at a young age, so she empathized. To relive his loss through such a gruesome discovery; she could only imagine what impact that might have on the enterprising pawnbroker.
    Maybe the body wasn’t his mother’s? It would be a while before the officials identified the remains, but the appearance of the necklace didn’t bode well. Maybe, the necklace wasn’t unique. He’d only been a child when he bought it for her, surely, it wasn’t very expensive. Maybe a local store had sold hundreds of them.
    Her mind was still racing through the possibilities of both necklace sales and hauntings when she found Mariska and Darla waiting outside in their swimsuits and floral cover-ups. Mariska sat behind the wheel of her light blue golf cart, Darla in the passenger seat, her nose slathered in bright yellow sun block. Charlotte hopped on the rear seat and set her towel beside her.
    “Any news on your bones?” asked Darla.
    “No. Any details from Frank?”
    “Oh, you know that man. Getting him to talk is like pulling teeth. I told him about Declan’s mother and he just grunted at me and asked what was for dinner.”
    “He’s our only hope,” said Charlotte. “I don’t think the police are required to share information with the person who found the body. That would be Katie, anyway.”
    “It’s just so awful,” said Mariska. “You never think this sort of thing is going to happen in your neighborhood. The next thing you know we’ll have the Dateline people lurking around.”
    “Ooh, I hope so,” said Darla. “I like that Keith Morrison. He’s like sexy old saddle leather.”
    Charlotte turned to look at Darla, “I don’t even know what that means, but I do not want an explanation.”
    “Do you think this will lower our property values?” asked Mariska as she stomped on the pedal.
    “Yes,” said Charlotte, grabbing the cart to keep from flying off the back. “I think our homes will plunge tens of dollars.”
    She closed her eyes and enjoyed the artificial