Riptide

13

Sheriff Gaffney said, “Well now, what we got was an anonymous tip, Mr. Carruthers.”

“That’s rather odd, don’t you think, Sheriff?” Adam had his arms folded over his chest and was leaning against Jacob Marley’s screened front porch. Sheriff Gaffney looked tired, he thought, a bit pasty in the face. He wanted to tell the sheriff to lose fifty pounds and start walking the treadmill.

“No, sir, not odd at all. Folk don’t like to get involved. They’d rather tattle in secret than come smartly forward and tell you what they know. Sometimes, truth be told, folk are just shits, Mr. Carruthers.”

That was true enough, Adam thought. “You said the girl’s name is Melissa Katzen?”

“That’s right. It was a woman with a real whispery voice who said it was Melissa. She didn’t want to tell who she was. She said everyone believed at the time that Melissa was going to elope right after high school graduation. So when she up and was just gone, everyone figured she’d done it. But she thinks now, what with the skeleton, that Melissa didn’t go anywhere.”

“Who was the boyfriend?” Adam asked.

“No one knew, since Melissa wouldn’t tell anyone. Her folks didn’t know what to think after she was gone. They didn’t know about any elopement talk, came as a shock to them. I’m thinking that maybe one of Melissa’s family called in this tip, or a friend and that friend is afraid she’s in danger if she tells us who she is. Now, if that skeleton is Melissa Katzen, then she didn’t elope. She stayed right here and got herself murdered.”

“Maybe,” Becca said, “she decided she didn’t want to elope after all and the boy killed her.”

“Could be,” said Sheriff Gaffney, shaking his head. “A bad way to end up.”

He got no argument.

The sheriff adjusted his thick leather belt that was digging into his belly and said on a sigh, “As the years passed, most folk just forgot about her, figured she was in another state with six kids now. And maybe she is. We’ll find out. We’re talking to all the people who remember her, went to school with her, things like that.”

“You don’t have any idea who called this in, Sheriff?”

“Nope. Mrs. Ella took the call, said it sounded like someone with a doughnut in her mouth. Mrs. Ella believes it’s a relative, or a chicken-shit friend.”

“You’ll do DNA tests now?”

“As soon as we can locate Melissa’s parents and see if they have anything of hers we could use to get her DNA to match against what they have in the bones. It’s going to take a while. Science-all this newfangled stuff-it’s all iffy as far as I’m concerned. Just look at how poor O.J. was nearly sent away because of all that flaky so-called DNA evidence. But the jury was smart. They didn’t believe any of that stuff for a minute. Well, it’s something to do. We’ll know in a couple of weeks.”

“Sheriff,” Becca said mildly, “DNA is the most scientifically solid tool that law enforcement has going for it today. It’s not flaky at all. It will clear i

“So you think, Ms. Powell, but you force me to tell you that yours is an Uninformed Opinion. Mrs. Ella doesn’t like all this fancy stuff, either. But she thinks it’s real possible that the skeleton is poor little Melissa, even though she remembers Melissa as being all sorts of shy and sweet and so quiet you’d have thought her a little ghost. Who’d want to kill a sweet kid like that? Even old Jacob Marley, who didn’t like anybody.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I go for the boyfriend. Hey, at least there’s something to go on now. Won’t you come in?”

“Nah. I just wanted to fill in you and Ms. Powell. I gotta go talk to the power company, hear they accidentally cut a sewage pipe. That’d be no good. You pray the wind doesn’t blow in this direction. Now, Mr. Carruthers, you going to hang around with Ms. Powell much longer?”

“Oh yeah,” Adam said easily, looking over at Becca, who hadn’t said a single word since Sheriff Gaffney, button sewn back on, bemoaned poor O.J.’s treatment. “She’s still real jittery, Sheriff, jumps whenever there’s a sound in this old house. You know how women are-so sensitive it makes a man want to coddle them until the sun’s shining again.”

“That was well said, Mr. Carruthers. We got us one of our perfect summer days. Just smell the air. All salty ocean and wildflowers, and that sun smell. Nothing like it.

“Ah, here’s Tyler and little Sam. Good morning. Just ru

“Not me, Sheriff,” Tyler said, raising an eyebrow. “Who did you say? Melissa Katzen?”

“Yep, that’s right. You remember her, Tyler? Didn’t you go to school with her? Your ages are about right.”

Tyler slowly lowered Sam to the porch and watched him wander over to a low table that held a stack of books, some of them very old indeed.

“Melissa Katzen.” Tyler frowned. “Yes, I remember her. A real sweet kid. I think she might have been in my high school class, or maybe a year behind me. I’m just not sure. She wasn’t really pretty, but she was nice, never said a bad thing about anybody, as I remember. You really think she could be the skeleton?”

“Don’t know. Got an anonymous call about her.”

Tyler frowned a bit. “I think I remember hearing that she was going to elope, yeah, that was it. She eloped and no one ever heard from her again.”

Sheriff Gaffney said, “Yep, that’s the story. Now DNA will tell us, at least if what those labs claim is true. Well, it’s time for me to see the power company. Then I’ll call that Jarvis guy in Augusta, see what they’re doing.”

Sam was holding a small, thick paperback in his hands.

Adam dropped down to his knees and looked at the little book with a fancy attack helicopter on the cover. He said, “It’s Jane’s Aircraft Recognition Guide. I wonder what Jacob Marley was doing with one of Jane’s publications?”

“Jane?” Sam said.

“Yeah, I know, that’s a girl’s name. Hey, they’re Brits, Sam. You’ve got to expect them to do weird things.”

Becca said, “Hey, Sam, you want a glass of lemonade? I just made some this morning.”

Sam looked up at her, didn’t say anything, but finally nodded.

Tyler said, his chin up, a hint of the aggressor in his voice, “Sam loves Becca’s lemonade.”

“I do, too,” Adam said. “Now, I’m out of here. I’ll be back tonight, Becca.”

She wanted to ask him where he was going, who he was going to talk to, but she couldn’t say a blasted thing in front of Tyler. “Take care,” she called out after him. She saw Adam pause just a moment, but he didn’t turn back.

“I don’t like him, Becca,” Tyler said in a low voice a few minutes later in the kitchen, one eye on Sam, who was drinking his lemonade and looking for the goody in the box of Cracker Jacks Becca had handed him.

“He’s harmless,” she said easily. “Really harmless. I’m sure he’s gay. So you knew this Melissa Katzen?”

Tyler nodded and took another drink of his lemonade. “Like I told the sheriff, she was a nice kid. Not real popular, not real smart, but nice. She also played soccer. I remember once she beat me in poker.” Tyler gri

“Rachel makes good lemonade,” Sam said, and both adults looked at him with admiration. He’d said four whole words, strung them all together.

Becca patted his face. “I’ll bet Rachel does lots of really good things. She rented me this house, you know.”

Sam nodded and drank more lemonade.

After they’d left ten minutes later to go grocery shopping, Becca cleaned up the kitchen and headed upstairs. She made her bed and straightened the bedroom. She didn’t want to have anything to do with Adam Carruthers, but she sighed and walked down to his bedroom. The bed was neatly made. Nothing was out in plain sight. She walked over to the dresser and pulled out the top drawer. Underwear, T-shirts, and a couple of folded cotton shirts. Nothing else. She pulled his dark blue carryall out from under the bed. She lifted it on top of the bed and slowly started to pull back the long zipper.