Suddenly Psychic (Glimmer Lake #1)(23)

Sully ignored her. “Before I get into details, I need to know if there was anyone or anything in the car with you a few weeks ago when you went in.”

Robin frowned. “I mean, we had our clothes and purses. I think there’s some fishing stuff in the trunk. Maybe a camp knife? What are you—?”

“Not worried about a camping knife,” he said gruffly. “Shit, ladies. I know all three of you. This doesn’t make any damn sense, but I have to ask.”

Monica cocked her head and stepped forward. She was small, but she was Gil Velasquez’s widow, which meant every civil servant in town treated her with a degree of deference.

“Sully, what the heck are you talking about?”

He turned and waved at them to follow. “Just… see for yourselves. Don’t touch anything.”

Mark grabbed Robin’s hand as they walked to the car. Val and Monica walked behind them.

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Robin murmured.

Before Mark could answer, Sully was shooing people from the car and pointing to something in the back.

Monica gasped audibly.

“Holy shit,” Val muttered.

Robin’s jaw dropped.

She didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. None of it did. The car was intact, save for the driver’s window, which was shattered. Broken glass littered the floor and seat. But lying in the back of the car, stretched across the bench seat, was a rotting skeleton, mouth gaping, a loop of rusted metal chain wrapped around its legs.

Val said, “Who the hell is that?”

Sully turned to her. “Yeah, we’re pretty curious about that too.”





Robin was at the sheriff’s station. She’d never been to the station before, except once when Austin was a baby and she couldn’t figure out how to buckle his car seat into their old Ford Explorer properly. She didn’t want to get a ticket and the highway patrol office was all the way down the hill, but the sheriff’s deputy had shown her. She sipped her coffee and waited for Sully.

He’d been taking statements from Monica and Val before he got to Robin. But before they could talk, Sully and Mark had gotten into a low-key argument when Sully said he needed to question her about the accident.

Mark had drawn him away, and she couldn’t hear anything clearly until Sully growled, “For fuck’s sake, Brannon, I’m not gonna arrest your wife for murder. Calm down.”

Robin’s eyebrows went up. Murder?

Well, that was definitely not boring. Maybe she should have felt more worried, but she was too confused about what had happened.

How on earth did a skeleton get into the car? If it had been in the bottom of the lake, had it drifted through the window? That didn’t make sense. It would have been in the front seat then. The back windows weren’t open.

Sully finally sat across from her. She wasn’t in an interrogation room or anything like you’d see on a TV show. Did Glimmer Lake even have an interrogation room? The sheriff’s office didn’t even look like it had a meeting room. She and Robin and Val were all just sitting at different desks.

Mark was pacing in the hallway. Should she be worried that her husband was worried about her being questioned?

Did Mark secretly think she was capable of murder?

He has seen you when you haven’t eaten all day and after an estate sale day with your mom.

Fair. She couldn’t dispute that.

Sully finally sat across from her at the too-small desk that likely belonged to a woman, judging from the flourishing houseplant and the line of framed pictures.

“Hey, Robin.”

“Hey, Sully.”

He took out a yellow pad of paper. “Okay, first off, I don’t think any of you three are likely to murder anyone unless they were gonna hurt your kids.”

Robin glanced over her shoulder. “I don’t know. Mark’s kind of driving me crazy with the pacing.”

Sully cracked a smile. “Eh, he wanted you to get a lawyer before you talked to me.”

“Should I?”

Sully rolled his eyes. “This is not a new crime. I don’t know if you noticed that chain around the guy’s… girl’s…? I don’t know. That’s for the state medical examiner to say. But I know chains and I know locks. That setup was old as hell.”

“How old?”

“Old old. Like, they were selling that before our parents were born.”

“So the bones are old?”

He took a deep breath. “Probably. We’re sending everything to the state medical examiner tomorrow. We don’t have any missing people reports in town, so it’s likely whoever it is has been dead for a long time.”

“So weird.”

“Agreed.” He was jotting down notes. “But tell me, for the report, what were you and your friends doing the night your car went into the lake?”

“It was Monica’s birthday. We were headed up to the lodge for drinks and karaoke.” She kept her voice low. “You know, it was her first birthday since Gil—”

“Yeah, Valerie brought that up too.” He glanced across the room. “How’s she doing?”

“Monica?” Robin shrugged. “Good days and bad.”

“That was a fucking tragedy. Excuse my language.”