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studying Carruthers again. The guy was dark, from his
    black hair--too long, in the sheriff's opinion--to his eyes, nearly
    black in the dim late-afternoon light in Jacob Marley's living room.
    He had big feet in scuffed black boots, soft-looking boots that looked
    like he'd worn them for a good decade and waited in the shadows
    with those boots on his feet, not making a whisper of a sound. He
    wondered what the hell the man did for a living. Nothing normal
    and expected, he'd bet his next meal on that. Just maybe he didn't
    want to know.
    The sheriff looked around the living room. Jesus, the place
    looked like a museum or a tomb. It felt old and musty, although it
    smelled like lemons, just like at home.
    He knew, of course, that everyone was looking at him, waiting.
    He liked that. It built suspense. He was holding them in the palm
    of his hand. Only thing was, they didn't look all that scared or worried
    or ready to gnaw off their fingernails. A real cool bunch.
    Becca said finally, "Sheriff, won't you be seated? Now, you have
    news for us?"
    He took the old chair she was waving at, eased down slowly,
    then cleared his throat. He was ready to make his big announcement.
    "Well now, it does appear that this skeleton isn't your wife,
    Tyler."
    There was a sharp moment of silence, but not the surprise he'd
    expected, that he'd wanted, truth be told.
    "Thank you for telling me so quickly, Sheriff. I'm pleased that it
    wasn't, because that would have meant that someone had killed her
    and it wasn't me. I hope that wherever Ann is, she's very much alive
    and well and happy."
    But Tyler hadn't acted surprised. He acted like he already knew.
    Well, damn, if Tyler hadn't killed Ann, then he would certainly

know that the skeleton wasn't her, or if it was, then someone else
    had put her there. That logic made the sheriff's head ache.
    "Humph, I wouldn't know about that. I've contacted all the local
    authorities and they're going to check on runaways from between
    ten and fifteen years ago. There's a good chance we'll find out who
    she is. She was young, probably late teens. That makes it even more
    likely that she was a runaway. She was murdered, though. Now, that
    makes it a big problem, my big problem."
    "It's not possible that it's a local teenager, Sheriff?" Becca asked.
    The sheriff shook his head. "Nobody just up and disappeared in
    the town's memory, Ms. Powell. Something like that, folk just
    wouldn't forget. Nope, it's got to be a runaway."
    Adam Carruthers sat forward, his hands clasped between his
    knees. "You think this old man, Jacob Marley, did it?" He was sitting
    in a deep leather chair that old Jacob had liked. He looked like
    he was the one in charge and that burned the sheriff a bit. Fellow
    was too young to be in charge, not too much beyond thirty, about
    the same age as Maude's nephew, Frank, who was currently in
    prison out in Folsom, California, for writing bad checks. Frank had
    always had soggy morals, even as a boy. Maybe the fellow was shiftless,
    like Frank. But hell, the last thing this guy looked was shiftless.
    "Sheriff?"
    "Yeah? Oh, it's possible. Like I told Ms. Powell here, old Jacob
    didn't like people poking around. He had a mean streak in him and
    no patience to speak of. He could have bashed her."
    Adam said, a dark eyebrow raised a bit, "Mean streak or not, you
    believe he actually bashed a young girl in the face with a blunt instrument
    and walled her in his basement because he was pissed to
    see her trotting across his backyard?"
    Sheriff Gaffney said, "A blunt instrument, you say. Well, the ME
    didn't know what the murderer struck her with, maybe a heavy

pot, maybe a bookend, something like that. Did Jacob do it? We'll
    just have to see about that."
    "Nothing else makes much sense," Tyler said, jumping to his
    feet. He began pacing the room. His -whole body was vibrating
    with tension. He had good muscle tone, the sheriff thought, remembering
    his own buffed self that the ladies had stared at