Free Riptide by Catherine Coulter Page A

Marley’s basement.
    She walked behind him. He was nearing sixty years old, and was a walking heart attack. He was a good thirty pounds overweight, the buttons of his sheriff shirt gaping over his belly. The wide black leather belt tight beneath his belly carried a gun holster and a billy club, and nearly disappeared in the front because his stomach was so big. He had a circle of gray hair around his head and very light gray eyes. She nearly ran into him when he suddenly stopped on the bottom step, stood there, and sniffed.
    â€œThat’s good, Ms. Powell. No smell. Gotta be old.”
    She nearly gagged.
    She kept back when he went down on his knees to examine the bones.
    â€œI thought it was a woman, maybe even a girl, since she’s wearing a pink tank top.”
    â€œA good deduction, ma’am. Yep, the remains look pretty old, or maybe not. I read that a dead person can become a skeleton in as little as two weeks or it can take as long as ten years depending on where the body’s put. It’s a shame that it wasn’t airtight, you know, a vacuum back behind that wall. If it had been, then maybe something would have been left of her. But critters can get in most places and they were looking at a whole bunch of really good meals with her. Lookee here, the person who put her down here hit her on the head.” He looked up at her, expecting her to see what he’d found. Becca forced herself to look at the skull that had snapped, probably during the upheaval, and rolled away from the neck.
    Sheriff Gaffney picked up the skull and slowly turned it in his hands. “Look at this. Someone bashed her but good,not in the back of the head but in the front. Now, that’s mean, really vicious. Yep, violent, real violent. Whoever did this was mad as hell, hit her as hard as he could, right in the face. I wonder who she was, poor thing. First thing is to see if any of our own young people went missing a while ago. Thing is, I’ve been here nearly all my life and I don’t remember a single kid just up and disappearing. But I’ll ask around. Folk don’t forget that. Well, we’ll find out soon enough. I think she was probably a runaway. Old Jacob didn’t like strangers—male, female, it didn’t matter. Probably found her poking around in the garage or maybe even trying to break in, and he didn’t ask any questions, just whacked her over the head. Actually, he didn’t like people who weren’t strangers, either.”
    â€œYou said the blow looks violent, and it’s in the front. Why would Jacob Marley be enraged if she was a runaway, or a local kid, just hanging around his property?”
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe she back-mouthed him. Old Jacob hated back talk.”
    â€œThe white jeans are Calvin Klein, Sheriff.”
    â€œYou’re saying this is a guy now?”
    â€œNo, that’s the designer. The jeans are expensive. I don’t think they’d go real well on a runaway.”
    â€œYou know, ma’am, many runaways are middle-class,” Sheriff Gaffney said, and heaved himself to his feet. “Strange how most folk don’t know that. Very few of ’em are poor, you know. Yep, the storm must have knocked something loose,” he said, bending over to examine the wall closely. “Looks like old Jacob stuffed her in there pretty good. Not such a good job with the concrete and bricks, though. It shouldn’t have collapsed like that, nothing else in here did.”
    â€œOld Jacob was a homicidal maniac?”
    â€œEh?” He spun around. “Oh, no, Ms. Powell. He just didn’t like nobody hanging around his place. He was a real loner, once Miranda up and died on him.”
    â€œWho was Miranda? His wife?”
    â€œOh, no. She was his golden retriever. He buried hiswife so long ago I can’t even remember her. Yep, she lived to be thirteen, just keeled over one day.”
    â€œHis wife was only