Dead Girl Running (Cape Charade #1)(25)

Both women grabbed it, fought with it, got it under control and got inside.

“What a wretched day.” Kellen meant more than just the weather.

“I heard.” Mara had that significant tone in her voice.

Kellen turned to her. “How did you hear?”

“Lloyd Magnuson called Sheri Jean and asked for a storage box. Said he had to drive something out to Mike Sun in Virtue Falls. She knew you were picking up something the scavengers brought in. She figured it out. A natural death?”

Kellen shook her head.

“Damn it.” Mara looked around at her determinedly peaceful domain. “Damn it,” she said again. “Do you know who the body is?”

Kellen held up the towel she had twisted shut. “That’s what we’re supposed to deduce using a piece of cloth and part of a shoe.”

“This way. Don’t drop it, and don’t make a mess.”

She led Kellen to the spa waiting room, where nine anxious employees waited.

Sheri Jean + three concierge staff:

FRANCES:

34, CONCIERGE/FRONT DESK, CHICAGO NATIVE, TOUGH, SARCASTIC. EMPLOYED 7 YRS.

GERALD:

MALE, 42, FRONT DESK. GUATEMALAN, FLUENT IN SPANISH. EMPLOYED 16 YRS.

TRENT:

37, DESK STAFF. CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. EMPLOYED 7 YRS., THEN SERVED PRISON TERM FOR BREAKING AND ENTERING, REEMPLOYED 4 YRS.

Mara + four spa staff:

ELLEN:

23, BEAUTY PROFESSIONAL, CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. EMPLOYED 4 YRS.

DAISY:

67, CLEANING LADY WITH APPARENT SANITATION FETISH. EMPLOYED 42 YRS.

DESTINY LONGACRE:

19, MASSAGE THERAPIST. CAPE CHARADE NATIVE. BLOTCHY FACE, RED EYES. SILLY GIRL, PROBABLY DIDN’T DESERVE TO BE FIRED. EMPLOYED 13 MO.

Xander sat cross-legged on the floor in the lotus position, his hands resting upright on his knees.

Mara turned up the lights. “Kellen wants help identifying the body.”

Sheri Jean sucked in her breath.

Destiny gasped. “The body?”

Every eye was fixed to the towel.

Mara shook her head violently. “No, I don’t mean… That’s not the body. It’s clothes.”

Kellen pushed magazines off a low table, placed the towel in the middle and opened it. She stepped back and gestured. “It’s not much. We think she was wearing a dress and the white rubber thing is a tennis shoe sole with some of the canvas attached.” Her hands didn’t shake; being here with these people helped her get a grip on herself.

In a voice that sounded as if it was coming from far away, Mara said, “I never get used to seeing the sad scraps of another person’s life.”

Kellen looked at her in surprise. How many “scraps” had this pretty, competitive female looked at?

“So it was definitely a lady?” Destiny asked in a wobbly voice.

Kellen thought of that hip bone. “Definitely a lady.”

“She was a guest?” Destiny’s voice got higher.

“There’s no one missing from the area that I’ve heard,” Mara said. Which was no answer.

But Destiny said, “Good. I mean, not good, but I don’t want to think that’s one of us.”

Heads nodded.

“That cloth was against her skin?” Ellen dragged a table lamp over to the table and knelt on the rug to study the scrap. “It was sky blue at one time, cotton or lightweight wool, a natural fabric and probably worn in the summer. There’s a lot of disintegration here, but exposure to dirt, wind and rain will do that. There’s a lot of salt in the air here, too. That should actually preserve the color.”

Kellen stared at Ellen. The woman was talking like a CSI investigator.

Ellen looked up and saw the general wariness. “I’m a colorist. I’m a hairdresser. I understand how color fades, and hair is a natural fiber, too… You didn’t get any hair? Did you see hair?”

Kellen had captured a mental snapshot of the skull. She didn’t want to review it…but she did. “The hair was wet. It looked brown. Maybe ash blond?”

“But the hair could be dyed, and that doesn’t get us anywhere.” Sheri Jean was impatient.

Even more impatient was Frances. “How are we supposed to ID a body based on a scrap of cloth and a piece of tennis shoe?”

Mara disappeared and came back with a pair of large tweezers. She used the towel to pick up the rubber sole. She poked around inside.

Sheri Jean continued, “We could pull this apart and still it would be the same shoe that every woman wears when she’s—”

Mara jerked out the insole.

A silver ring flew out, landed on the rug, bounced to rest at Destiny’s feet.





10

Mara dropped the shoe.

The room settled into a profound silence, marred only by the soothing harp music that played in the background. Then—screams, high pierced and terrified.

Like a cartoon character afraid of a mouse, Destiny jumped onto a chair and shrieked and pointed.

Xander stood in one smooth movement and stepped away.

Kellen tried to calm them down. “It’s a ring. It’s okay…”

Heads shook wildly.

Kellen got it. There was something about this ring. “What? Tell me. What?”

The screams died down. Shock quivered in the room.