Read The Body in the Basement for Free Online Page A

Day. That’s a promise.”
    Pix heard him with only half an ear, although that half did cause an internal comment of promises, promises, before zeroing in on the matter at hand—literally. She’d have to watch out. Her mind was running amok. So, Seth claimed not to have been at the site for several weeks. The police could probably tell how long the soda cans and other debris had been around. Without carbon dating, it would be impossible to say when the venerable cement mixer had been set in place.
    There was no point in delaying further. She had to tell him. He’d spot it the moment he walked over to the excavation, and he was moving that way.
    â€œThere’s a dead body buried in the cellar hole. My dog started to dig it up.”
    â€œWhat!”
    Seth’s bushy eyebrows rose clear out of sight, disappearing somewhere into his mane of hair.
    Pix was patient. It was a lot to take in. “The dog was digging at something and when we went to see what it was, it turned out to be somebody’s hand. There’s a very dead person over there. Wrapped in a quilt.”
    â€œA quilt?” Seth seized on the word, the only one suggestive of normalcy.
    â€œYes, a patchwork quilt.”
    â€œI don’t believe it!”
    Pix knew he wasn’t referring to the quilt. “Come and see for yourself.” He followed her over to the edge of the pit he and his crew had dug in the spring. There hadn’t been anything other than rocks in the ground then.
    â€œHoly shit! It’s a hand!”
    Pix nodded. It was the third time she’d approached. The hand was beginning to look familiar.
    â€œWe’ve got to get Earl out here!”
    â€œSamantha was with me and she went to the Hamiltons’ for help. They should be here soon.”

    â€œI’ve got a shovel and a pickax in the truck. You sit out of the way and I’ll dig him up. It could be pretty nasty.”
    Pix figured Seth would want to take action. Most men usually did, however she’d been close enough to her friend Faith’s sleuthing activities to know that they should leave well enough alone. Not that she had exactly, but digging the body up would definitely be regarded by the police as tampering with evidence, and she told Seth so.
    Without something to do, he seemed visibly shaken and went to the truck for a beer.
    â€œWant one?”
    Pix did, but somehow the picture she might present to her daughter, Sergeant Dickinson, and Freeman Hamilton, who would surely not stay home once he learned there was a body on the Point, was a bit unseemly. Not to mention that it would be all over the island that she had been drinking with Seth Marshall while someone lay stone cold only a few feet away. Not by any stretch of the imagination could this be called a wake. At a wake, it was customary at least to know the name of the deceased.
    â€œDo you have anybody new working for you this summer? Anybody who’s been missing for a while?”
    Seth came and sat down next to Pix on her boulder. The dogs had long since quieted down and were snoring peacefully in the afternoon sun.
    â€œYou’re trying to figure out who it is, right? Well, I haven’t. It’s the same crew as last summer, and some from the summer before. The Atherton kid was helping us on the camp work, but I told his folks I couldn’t afford to hire him for other work. They were paying him for what he did there. Or didn’t do is more like it.”
    â€œHave you heard of anyone missing? Here or on the mainland?”
    Seth shook his head. “Of course, we don’t know how long the body’s been here, but I haven’t heard anything at all, and you know the way news gets around.”

    Pix continued to pursue her line of questioning.
    â€œI assume the whole island knew you were working out here and had dug the hole for the foundation.”
    â€œYup, it wasn’t a secret.”
    â€œBut who knew you