Free Riptide by Catherine Coulter

realized she was shaking. It was the oddest thing.
    A man came on the line and said, “Ella tells me you’ve got a skeleton in the basement. This don’t happen every day. Are you sure it’s a skeleton?”
    â€œYes, quite sure, although, to be honest, I’ve never seen one before, at least lying at my feet on the basement floor.”
    â€œI’ll be right there, then. You stay put, ma’am.”
    Becca was staring down at the phone when Mrs. Ella came back. “Edgar said I was to keep talking to you, not let you go all hysterical. Edgar tends to get tetchy around women who are crying and wailing and carrying on. I’m surprised that you fell apart on him, given the way you were talking to me about this and that.”
    â€œI appreciate that, Mrs. Ella. I’m not really hysterical, at least not yet, but how could the sheriff have possibly known that I was wavering on the edge? I never said a word to him.”
    â€œEdgar just knows these things,” Mrs. Ella said comfortably. “He’s very intuitive, now isn’t he? That’s why I’ll keep talking to you until he gets there, Miss Powell. I’m to help you keep your wits together.”
    Becca didn’t mind a bit. For the next ten minutes, she heard how Ann McBride disappeared between one day and the next, no explanation at all, just as Tyler had told her. She learned that Tyler wasn’t Sam’s father but his stepfather. Sam’s real father had just up and disappeared fromone day to the next, too. Odd, now wasn’t it, the both of them, just up and out of here? Of course, Sam’s father had been a rotter, whining and bitching about how hard life was, and he didn’t want to stay here, so his leaving made some sense, now didn’t it? But not Ann’s, no, she couldn’t have just up and left, not without Sam.
    Then Mrs. Ella began with all her pets, and there were a bunch of them since she was sixty-five years old. Finally, Becca heard a car pull up.
    â€œThe sheriff just arrived, Mrs. Ella. I promise I won’t fall apart.” She hung up the phone before Mrs. Ella could give her own mother’s tried-and-true recipe for stretched nerves. And she wouldn’t fall apart, either, because by Mrs. Ella’s fifth dog, a terrier named Butch, there were no more tears in her eyes and the bubbling, liquid laughter was long dried up.
    Sheriff Gaffney had seen the Powell girl around town, but he hadn’t met her. She looked harmless enough, he thought, remembering how she was squeezing a cantaloupe in the produce department at Food Fort when he first saw her. She was pretty enough, but right then, she was as white as his shirtfront last night before he’d eaten spaghetti. She’d opened the front door of the old Marley place and was standing there staring at him.
    â€œI’m the law,” he said, and took his sheriff’s hat off. There was something odd about her, something that wasn’t quite right, and it wasn’t her too-pale face. Well, finding a skeleton could put a person off in a whole lot of ways. He wished she’d stop gaping at him like she didn’t have a brain or, God forbid, was hysterical. He was afraid she would burst into tears and he was ready to do just about anything to prevent that. He threw back his shoulders and stuck out a huge hand. “Sheriff Gaffney, ma’am. What’s this about a skeleton in your basement?”
    â€œIt’s a woman, Sheriff.”
    He shook her hand, pleased and relieved that now she appeared reasonably under control and her lower lipwasn’t trembling. Her eyes looked perfectly dry to him, from what he could tell through her glasses. “Show me this skeleton who you believe with your untrained eye is a woman, ma’am,” he said, “and we’ll see if you’re guessing right.”
    I’m in never-never land, Becca thought as she showed Sheriff Gaffney down to Jacob