Free Disturbing the Dead by Sandra Parshall Page B

it.
    “Thank you,” Holly whispered. She hustled back to the diner.
    Buddy made an elaborate show of sweeping open the door for Holly, but he didn’t follow her. He strode to a black SUV nearby and climbed in. When Rachel started her Range Rover and backed out, he pulled onto the road behind her.
    Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. All those miles of lonely road before she reached Mountainview. Isolated stretches where he could do anything without being seen.
    Get hold of yourself, for pity’s sake. She was being ridiculous, letting her imagination run away with her. He was mad at her, yes, but why on earth would he want to hurt her, risk getting in trouble with the police?
    But she couldn’t relax because he stayed right behind her, close enough that even in the rain she could make out his face in her rearview mirror. What the hell did he want? Was he so damned macho that he couldn’t let a woman get away with talking back to him?
    She kept trying to reach 911 on her cell phone, although she knew she would sound absurd when she reported that a man was driving behind her. She didn’t get the chance, because the hills blocked the signal from the county’s only cell tower near Mountainview.
    Buddy was never more than a few yards behind her. When houses appeared along the road, widely spaced at first, then closely grouped to form neighborhoods, Rachel told herself she was safe now. The tension drained from her body and hot anger flooded back. She didn’t have a speck of doubt that she’d be doing the right thing if she rescued Holly from her bullying cousin and that grandmother who sounded like a jailer.
    He stayed behind her all the way into town, but stopped short of following her into the animal hospital’s parking lot. As she stepped from the Range Rover into the rain, Buddy braked his vehicle on the street, powered down the passenger window, and leaned over so she could see him clearly. Rachel thought he was going to speak, but instead he fixed her with a threatening stare she would have found laughably melodramatic if it hadn’t made her so damned mad.
    She did something she’d never done before in her life. She threw up a hand and gave him the finger.
    Chapter Eight

    Tom rattled the nearly bare fax sheet and told the sheriff, “I was hoping they’d give us a little more than this.”
    Sheriff Willingham relaxed in his office chair, lacing his fingers over his belt buckle. “You know the lab’s always backed up. We’re damned lucky we got that much the same day we sent them the bones. Sit down, will you? You put me in mind of my wife’s cat, the way you prowl around a room.”
    Tom dropped into a chair facing Willingham’s desk and skimmed the brief report again. The first skull they’d found had officially been identified through dental records as Pauline McClure’s. The wound to the parietal region could have been inflicted by the ax head found with the bones or by a similar object. On cursory examination, the other skull also appeared to be a woman’s, and like Pauline’s bones, it might have lain out in the open for years. The back of it was crushed, the probable cause of death. The report contained not a word about her age or ethnicity, the two pieces of information Tom most needed. Had she been Melungeon too? So much of the skull was missing that they couldn’t check for an Anatolian bump.
    “We could have a facial reconstruction done of the second woman,” Tom said. “Then release a picture and see if anybody recognizes her.”
    “We don’t have the budget for that kind of thing,” Willingham said. “Let’s ask the neighboring counties to check their old missing persons reports.”
    “If she died in Mason County, the chances are she lived here. Maybe nobody reported her disappearance because nobody realizes she’s missing. She could’ve had a falling out with her family, or left her husband, and they think she’s living a new life somewhere else. We should ask the public