Crowned and Moldering

“Thanks for seeing me.” He stepped inside and removed his wet leather jacket. I took the jacket, and he glanced down at the small puddle on the hardwood floor. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Don’t worry about that. Let me hang this up.” He followed me into the kitchen, and while I hung his jacket on the service-porch rack to dry, he grabbed several paper towels and walked back to the front door to sop up the rainwater.

“It’s pouring out there,” he said a minute later as he returned to the kitchen.

“I know. My hair was sopping wet by the time I made it home.”

“It looks great now.”

“Oh,” I said, foolishly pleased by the compliment. “Thanks.”

Robbie had been patient long enough. He let out a quick bark and toddled up to Eric’s feet, where he sat expectantly.

“Hey, buddy,” Eric said, and bent down to scratch Robbie’s back.

Tiger joined them, and Eric gave the cat’s neck and ears a soft rubbing.

I almost sighed out loud. My pets recognized an animal lover when they saw one. And I did, too. Eric had recently adopted Rudy, a German shepherd he was training to become the first member of the Lighthouse Cove K-9 patrol. There had been a run on pet adoptions last month when the local no-kill animal shelter had rented a booth at the town’s Valentine’s Day Festival.

Mac was another one who’d taken advantage of the pet-adoption service and found himself a beautiful black cat. He’d named him Luke, short for Lucifer, and it was sweet to see how instantly they’d adapted to each other. At the time, I wasn’t sure how my Tiger would feel about sharing her backyard territory with Luke. But the two felines had scrutinized and sniffed and circled each other for a little while before they slowly decided to become new best friends.

Mac had since assured me that he’d be paying another visit to the pet-adoption booth to find himself a big, clumsy, lovable dog, as soon as he moved out of the small garage apartment and settled into his new life in the lighthouse mansion.

“Let’s sit in here,” I said to Eric, gesturing at the kitchen table. “I didn’t have lunch, so I was going to throw together something to eat. Do you have time to join me?”

“I’d love to. I missed lunch, too.”

“I need to feed these two ragamuffins first, if you don’t mind. Otherwise, they’ll be begging for scraps.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

Eric took a seat and watched me fill the pet bowls with food and give them fresh water to drink. Then, rather than prepare a real meal for Eric and me, I pulled out my favorite snacks and put them all on a platter. There were pickle spears, potato chips, cheese, crackers, pistachios, some rolled-up ham slices, and olives. I placed the goodies on the table, along with napkins and utensils and small plates for each of us.

“Would you like something to drink? I’ve got bubbly water, soda, beer?”

“Just water. I appreciate it, Sha

Once I’d poured two glasses of sparkling water, I sat and we began to munch. He seemed perfectly happy to enjoy a quiet moment, but I was dying of curiosity. So after a few minutes of small talk, I prompted him. “You said you need some background information on Lily.”

He nodded and finished chewing a slice of ham. “Yes. I’ve debated back and forth about saying anything. I realize you’re very loyal to Sean.”

“I am, and I hope you don’t believe for one minute that he could have anything to do with Lily’s death.”

“Not so far.”

“I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with that for now.” I reached for a slice of cheese. “But I was also a friend of Lily’s and I would love to know what happened to her. So I’ll help you in any way I can, and I promise that anything you tell me will be kept in complete confidence.”

“I’ll count on that,” he said, “because I don’t want one word of this getting out. I know how things operate in this town.”

“You mean Gossip Central?”

“Exactly,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s amazing how fast news travels around here.”

“Well, if anyone hears anything, it didn’t come from me. I know you’re worried about that, but don’t be. I won’t tell a single soul.”

He grabbed a potato chip and popped it in his mouth. He chewed slowly and appeared to be internally debating the question of my discretion. I sat back and waited. It was no hardship. The man was too attractive for my own good. In fact, thanks to the recent arrivals of both Eric Jensen and Mac Sullivan, the women of Lighthouse Cove—especially me—were a very happy group.

But time was marching on, so I gave Eric another nudge. “So, what do you want to know about Lily?”

“Well, that’s the thing: we still don’t even know if the deceased is Lily Brogan.” He sounded exasperated.

“You’ll know soon enough.”

“It’s never soon enough,” he grumbled.

I hid a smile. “It’s only been a few hours.”

“Yeah, but you know me—I’m a results-oriented kind of guy.” He gave me a half smile, easing my fears that this conversation might devolve into another interrogation.

“Did you talk to the medical examiner yet?”

“Yeah. He hasn’t had a chance to study the skeleton yet, but the coroner said that he thought it was a young woman.”

“I guess he would know,” I said. As the sheriff-coroner, the man had probably seen his share of skeletons. Still, the ME would make the final determination.

“The coroner also said that her skull was crushed in.”

I winced. “Ouch. Does he mean crushed by a bat or some other kind of weapon? Or was it crushed from falling through the dumbwaiter’s shaft?”

“My guess is that it happened a long time ago, so the fall through the shaft wouldn’t be a factor. But, again, the ME will know more once he gets everything back to the lab.”

“Did you give him the MedicAlert bracelet?”

“Yeah. If there’s a trace of DNA on the surface, he’ll find it.”

I thought about the bracelet and tried to remember if I’d ever seen it on Lily’s wrist. And that was when I realized what it was that had struck me as so odd about the image of those bones in the basement. “Did you find anything else down there besides the bracelet?”

His eyes narrowed. “Like what, exactly?”

“Like remnants of clothing or personal effects?”

“Good question. But no.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. No clothing was found in the basement or anywhere else in the house.”

“I knew it. I knew something was wrong when I first saw the bones. There was no sign of any clothing.”

“That struck me, too.”

My next thought made me a little sick to my stomach, but I had to ask. “Was there any hair left on her skull?”

“Not that I could see, but the medical examiner will be able to check more closely. Chances are, if the remains are, in fact, Lily Brogan’s, it means that she’d been in that shaft for fifteen years. The close quarters might’ve protected her body from rodents and such, but not from insects like moths and beetles. Because of the ocean air and the closed-in conditions, the space would be humid, which would attract bacteria. Her hair would have been consumed within two or three years.”

Consumed. I clutched my stomach and had to take a few slow breaths to ease that queasy feeling. “I just thought, since she was a redhead, you’d be able to tell right away that it was Lily. If there was any hair left on her head.”

“It’s a good point.”

A sickening point, but a good one. After a few sips of bubbly water, my stomach calmed down a touch. “Did you see the mattress in the attic?”

“Yeah. Tommy’s got the crime-scene gals working on it. They searched the entire house all over again after we left and they didn’t find anything, either. No clothes, no bed sheets, no towels.” He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing that would indicate that someone might’ve actually lived there or even crashed there occasionally. Nothing except that mattress and the bones.”